No description available.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Mary T. Copple / The English article system is one of the most difficult and subtle structural elements for EFL learners, and even advanced learners make errors in article use. This research analyzes patterns of use of English articles (a/an, the, zero) in guided conversations with Afghan Dari speakers who are intermediate or advanced English learners and who do have an article system in their primary language, Dari. In this research, six intermediate and six advanced learners participated by discussing similar topics (their first impressions of the USA, their life in Manhattan, their classes, and their future plans). These conversations were recorded and transcribed. The collected data were analyzed on the basis of referentiality, information status, and various properties of nouns. The results indicate that the participants were most accurate in their production of the indefinite article ‘a/an’ in referential and non-referential contexts with new information, the definite ‘the’ in referential contexts with known information, while the zero ‘Ø’ was difficult for both ELP (intermediate) and Post-ELP (advanced) learners mostly in referential contexts.

With one in two women delivering surgically, Iran has one of the highest rates of cesarean section (CS) worldwide. CS overuse in low-risk pregnancies potentially exposes women to Maternal Near-Miss (MNM) morbidity with minimal health benefits. This thesis studied obstetric care quality and MNM at hospitals with high rates of CS in Tehran, Iran. In Study I, we investigated whether audits of CS indications and feedback influenced CS rates at a general hospital. Subsequent to the audit, a 27% reduction in the risk of primary CS was found. In Study II, characteristics of MNM were investigated at university hospitals between 2012 and 2014. During a 26-month period, 82 MNM cases were identified using the WHO MNM approach. Severe postpartum hemorrhage (35%), severe preeclampsia (32%), and placenta previa including abnormally invasive placenta (10%) were the main three causes of MNM. Iran has a huge influx of migrants from Afghanistan. Women with antepartum CS and those who lacked health insurance, almost all Afghans, had increased risk of MNM. In Study III, audits examined whether MNM care quality differed between 54 Iranians and 22 Afghans and whether near-miss events were preventable. A majority of MNM cases (62%) arrived at hospital in a moribund state and obstetric care was more suboptimal for Afghans than Iranians (adjusted odds ratio 5.1, 95% confidence interval 1.2–22.6). Moreover, MNM was commonly (71%) potentially preventable and professionals with suboptimal practice were involved in 85% of preventable cases. In Study IV, a qualitative interview study was conducted to explore care experiences of Afghan MNM survivors. Discrimination, insufficient medical attention, and ineffective counseling were the main experiences. To a lesser extent, poverty and low education were perceived as contributing factors to delays in accessing care. This thesis emphasizes the importance of high-quality care for preventing undesirable maternal outcomes. The audit method along with interviews was useful to determine quality and equity gaps in care provision. Policymakers and professionals should consider these gaps when structuring programs to reduce adverse maternal outcomes.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the performances of gender that permeated the justifications for Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan, focusing on the representational practices that dominated the Bush administration's narratives of rescue and circumscribed our understanding of the actors involved. In particular, I will argue that the image of Afghan women as the helpless victim of Taliban oppression not only allowed the United States and its coalition allies to cast themselves as heroic masculine warriors but also helped to reinforce the idea that Afghan women were little more than mere symbols of helplessness, placing them in a position of absolute inferiority and dependency. Crucially, I will claim that this image of Afghan women as the passive prisoners of the Taliban was contingent upon the suppression of a series of alternative perspectives that could not be accommodated within the parameters established by the prevailing frames of war. On the one hand, I argue that the dominant representations of Afghan women tended to show them in decidedly monolithic and one-dimensional terms, with the Bush administration and its coalition allies defining them almost entirely by the suffering they experienced. Absent from these accounts, however, was any mention of women's resistance to Taliban rule or their criticisms of the military intervention. On the other hand, I will show how the international community relied upon a particular historical narrative that allowed them to present Afghanistan as a barbaric aberration in the modern world whilst allowing them to dismiss the period of Taliban rule as a terrifying oddity in the country's history, destroying many of the freedoms that were said to exist under previous regimes. As well as ignoring the myriad of interactions between Afghanistan and the outside world and the complex social, economic and political forces that helped to precipitate the rise of the Taliban, I will argue that this historical narrative reinforced the idea that the lives of Afghan women were in a state of suspense during this period, their very existence as human beings held in abeyance until coalition troops could intervene to redeem them. What distinguishes my argument from the work of other feminists is my attention to the way in which these representational practices are contingent upon an uneasy process of repetition and reiteration, leaving them vulnerable to the possibility for subversion and resignification. Drawing on Judith Butler's work on performativity, normative violence and the politics of intelligibility along with Gayatri C. Spivak's work on the subaltern subject, I show how the activities of organisations such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and the voices of individuals such as Malalai Joya help to expose the limits of the dominant norms of intelligibility, opening up the possibility for a less violent and less exclusionary re-imagining.

This study attempts to better understand gender relations in the process of resettlement among families of Afghan forced migrants in Turkey. In addition it tries to gain an insight into whether those gender relations have been changed by this migration. In order to ascertain these possible changes a field study including participant observation, in depth interviews and interviews with experts was conducted in a city in Central Anatolia to which Afghan migrants are assigned. Since 2007 Afghan asylum-seekers represent a new event in Turkey. They have admitted the right to seek asylum in Turkey very recently. Furthermore, as their population has risen to become the third largest of the non-European asylum seekers in Turkey / there is a need for more research about them and the associated issues. The research findings demonstrate patterns of changes concerning gender relations. Changes can be explained by using the concepts of liminality. Those changes sometimes accommodated emancipation for women / alongside this the opposite occurred too. Liminality produced different patterns of gender relations.

The First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839-1842 was one of the most disastrous conflicts in the history of the British Empire. It caused the death of thousands and the annihilation of the Army of the Indus. Yet this defeat came after a successful invasion. In analyzing the actions of officials and officers of the British imperial state and the East India Company leading up to and during the invasion, I will argue that these actions served to securitize British India. Securitization is a process by which an actor takes a series of steps to persuade an audience that a specific referent object faces a critical and existential threat. I contend in this thesis that the need for security was used to justify, in the eyes of both British and Indian audiences, the continued territorial expansion and military dominance of the British in India and its borderlands.

Thesis (LL.M.)-University of Toronto, 2005. / "November 2005." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.J.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 280-299). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas Christian University, 2009. / Title from dissertation title page (viewed Nov. 2, 2009). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008. / Title from screen (viewed on August 27, 2009). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Ulla Connor, Aye Nu E. Duerksen, Honnor Orlando. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-70).