Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-02, page: 0711. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-122).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 1999. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 73 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-73).

In this thesis I attempt to examine the way that rural women in Natal, from the early 1950s to the 1980s, were relegated to the periphery of both white society and black traditional society. Lauretta Ngcobo's second novel And They Didn't Die is therefore a very useful resource as it takes a look at the interplay of traditional black patriarchy, white patriarchy, and the way rural women were affected by these oppressive institutions. And They Didn't Die examines the way that apartheid affected rural communities and the individual. It investigates the various struggles faced by rural women; how women have to negotiate their own identities within different systems. And They Didn't Die focuses on the political, economic, and traditional struggles of rural women in Natal at the end of the 1950s, but unlike other novels, And They Didn't Die also focuses on the sexual identities of rural women, and how they mobilised themselves through political activities such as the struggle against the dreaded pass laws, and the protests against the beer halls. And They Didn't Die is a novel which explores political, traditional, economic, sexual, and communal aspects of rural life. Ngcobo foregrounds the communal, political, economic, and traditional problems that the women in the novel have to face. Ngcobo recreates the various political protests that were happening at this time, to demonstrate the construction of the black woman as political subject. She carefully demonstrates how agency has to be negotiated with both the white authorities and black patriarchy. Black South African women were forced to fight double political battles on the domestic and national fronts. The split structure of the political and traditional struggle is at the center of Ngcobo's work. And They Didn't Die shows that the struggle for female subjectivity is a dynamic process. In South Africa, rural black women had to negotiate numerous subject positions. Forging a sense of selfhood was difficult, especially when confronted with dual patriarchies, apartheid, and the constant negotiation with tradition. Ngcobo's novel is an interesting fictional account that draws on various historical events that offers the reader a sense of what women had to go through in order to survive the atrocities of apartheid. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Photocopy. Supervisor: Helena Woodard. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (P. 156-160).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Helena Woodard. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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Canada's continued forgetfulness concerning slavery here, and the nation-state's attempts to record only Canada's role as a place of sanctuary for escaping African-Americans, is part of the story of absenting blackness from its history. Rinaldo Walcott The fact that people of African descent have had a presence in Canada for over four hundred years is not well known within the Canadian mainstream. The fact that slavery existed as an institution in Canada is another fact that is not well known. Within the Canadian mainstream writing of African-Canadian history, Blacks most often appear in historical narratives around the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, as American fugitives or refugees—either as escaping slaves or British Loyalists. Through the representative writing of the "the Black refugee," Canada is often constructed as a "Promised Land," a sanctuary or safe haven for Blacks, a place of refuge and redemption that does not speak to the complex history of slavery that existed well before the American exodus. Many Black Canadian writers and scholars argue that there is a price to be paid for this kind of representation. First, the absence of people of African descent in Canadian historical narratives, prior to the coming o f the American refugees, ignores the long presence of Blacks in Canada and the contributions that Blacks have made in the development of Canada. Second, in focusing on the American Loyalists and refugee slaves, Canadian writers and historians often construct Black Canadians as a homogenous, genderless group, ignoring the diversity within Canada's Black population and, in particular, the concerns of Black women. Finally, the mainstream representation of Canada as a 'safe haven' proves problematic for any critical discussion of racism in contemporary Canadian society, for notions of "Canada the good" and "America the evil" that arose from those crossings North still penetrate the Canadian mainstream today. This autobiocritical exploration examines the representation of the haven and offers alternative readings to contemporary mainstream writings of African-Canadian history. In part one, I track the appearance of Black Canadians, over the past fifty years, from 1949 to 2001, in a survey of mainstream and scholarly texts. Using the results of this survey, which does not see the appearance of Blacks in Canada until 1977, I examine how mainstream texts might use the works of Black writers to offer more critical and complex histories of Black Canadians and, in particular, Black women. In part two, I take up an analysis of George Elliott Clarke's Beatrice Chancy. Seen as a counter-narrative to mainstream writings of African-Canadian history, Clarke's work, which takes up the subject of slavery in early-nineteenth century Nova Scotia, presents an/Other kind of Loyalist story, one with a Black woman at its centre. In this discussion I examine how Clarke's poetic work subverts the national narrative, as he speaks to the diversity within blackness and the complexities in defining racial identities.

Canada's continued forgetfulness concerning slavery here, and the nation-state's attempts to record only Canada's role as a place of sanctuary for escaping African-Americans, is part of the story of absenting blackness from its history. Rinaldo Walcott The fact that people of African descent have had a presence in Canada for over four hundred years is not well known within the Canadian mainstream. The fact that slavery existed as an institution in Canada is another fact that is not well known. Within the Canadian mainstream writing of African-Canadian history, Blacks most often appear in historical narratives around the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, as American fugitives or refugees—either as escaping slaves or British Loyalists. Through the representative writing of the "the Black refugee," Canada is often constructed as a "Promised Land," a sanctuary or safe haven for Blacks, a place of refuge and redemption that does not speak to the complex history of slavery that existed well before the American exodus. Many Black Canadian writers and scholars argue that there is a price to be paid for this kind of representation. First, the absence of people of African descent in Canadian historical narratives, prior to the coming o f the American refugees, ignores the long presence of Blacks in Canada and the contributions that Blacks have made in the development of Canada. Second, in focusing on the American Loyalists and refugee slaves, Canadian writers and historians often construct Black Canadians as a homogenous, genderless group, ignoring the diversity within Canada's Black population and, in particular, the concerns of Black women. Finally, the mainstream representation of Canada as a 'safe haven' proves problematic for any critical discussion of racism in contemporary Canadian society, for notions of "Canada the good" and "America the evil" that arose from those crossings North still penetrate the Canadian mainstream today. This autobiocritical exploration examines the representation of the haven and offers alternative readings to contemporary mainstream writings of African-Canadian history. In part one, I track the appearance of Black Canadians, over the past fifty years, from 1949 to 2001, in a survey of mainstream and scholarly texts. Using the results of this survey, which does not see the appearance of Blacks in Canada until 1977, I examine how mainstream texts might use the works of Black writers to offer more critical and complex histories of Black Canadians and, in particular, Black women. In part two, I take up an analysis of George Elliott Clarke's Beatrice Chancy. Seen as a counter-narrative to mainstream writings of African-Canadian history, Clarke's work, which takes up the subject of slavery in early-nineteenth century Nova Scotia, presents an/Other kind of Loyalist story, one with a Black woman at its centre. In this discussion I examine how Clarke's poetic work subverts the national narrative, as he speaks to the diversity within blackness and the complexities in defining racial identities. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

In the 1928 romance novel, Dark Princess, W. E. B. Du Bois used the form of a love letter to ask "the first question of our world-work: What are you and I trying to do in this world?" Structured around this vexed notion of "world-work," "'Our World-Work': Gender and Labor in African Diasporic Literatures" takes seriously this communal question of what “you and I”—or we—are "trying to do." I extend Du Bois’s idea to locate the boundaries of the "we" in the face of variations in labor and gender. Thinking world and work together, I consider the grounds of collective narration and social organization on a broad scale, one structured by gender even as anti-sexism is evoked, such as in the case of Du Bois, who is often called a feminist by contemporary scholars. "'Our World-Work'" covers a range of twentieth-century writing, focusing on how figures and figurations of the "black woman," often at the site of the domestic, came to embody some of the urgent issues raised by the globalization of capital. Reading multi-genre works by Du Bois, Alice Childress, Ousmane Sembène, Paule Marshall, and others, "'Our World-Work'" explores how black writers and intellectuals were thinking, writing, and critiquing the world—and worlds—through their encounters with labor and gender during the middle of the last century. Attention to gender in this dissertation illuminates how modes of affiliation also contain exclusions. "'Our World-Work'" contributes to scholarship on accounts of worlding, intervening in critical debates around race, gender, and labor in the fields of black, feminist, postcolonial, and comparative literary studies.