Many black Cubans decided to join the Cuban criollo separatists in their fight for independence from Spain in the late nineteenth century because rebellion seemed to promise a means to end slavery and shake their bonds of second class citizenship. To a large degree this was true as Cuban independence represented a multiracial triumph that ignored race and social status. Racial fraternity quickly faded, though, as the twentieth century began and black Cubans found themselves in the same disadvantaged position as before independence. This essay discusses how racism and limitations on black organization in the early republic dashed any real hopes for social mobility and spurred many Afro-Cubans to seek alternative ways to fight for racial and socioeconomic equality. I will focus on how Afro-Cuban racial awareness and black organization grew following the disappointments of Cuban independence and how the application of the 1910 Morua amendment restricting political organizations and the 1912 massacre of thousands of Afro-Cubans forced black activists to seek less direct means to redress problems of poverty and inequality. Following an analysis of why many black Cubans renounced assimilation and decided to organize based on race, I will discuss the small political space within which Afro-Cubans were able to operate and the various strategies they employed to avoid being labeled as racists and anti-Cuban. These strategies were generally passive in nature, though, and employed racial uplift or regeneracion as a means to become accepted by white society. Considering that many black elites accepted racial uplift as a means to fight for black opportunities and equality, I will evaluate if this strategy served their goals of penetrating white society at the expense of poorer Afro-Cubans. I will also focus on the rare efforts of Juan Rene Betancourt, one of the very few black activists that rejected regeneracion and endorsed black nationalism as the sole means to achieve racial equality in Cuba. The paper will conclude with an analysis of the efficacy of black Cuban organizations to improve the position of blacks in Cuban society leading up to the 1959 revolution and why they were not more successful.

My project explores ways in which legitimacy is granted within the literary field. This is done through an analysis of literary anthologies, university course syllabi, publishing trends, literary prizes, and levels and sources of critical attention. The project seeks to determine the extent to which the works of Afro-descendant Spanish American and Belizean writers are reflected in the hegemonic Spanish American and Anglophone Caribbean literary canons. I examine the works of Cristina Rodríguez Cabral (Uruguay), Shirley Campbell Barr, and Delia McDonald Woolery (Costa Rica), and Zee Edgell, and Zoila Ellis (Belize). The project records the varying degrees of legitimation these writers have received and the factors that have had an impact on their recognition. It also shows that literary interculturality is possible in Spanish America and the Anglophone Caribbean through the aesthetics some writers employ and the activities of legitimizing agencies. Further I propose a plurality of canons based on the concept of plural public spheres/counterpublics as outlined by Nancy Fraser and Michael Warner. My analysis of Belizean works emphasizes ways in which a national literary canon can be considered a counterpublic within a regional literary corpus. The concept of counterpublics I use to present the works analyzed is a model other scholars can employ in their examination of other minority literatures.

Texte remanié de: Dissertation--Marburg--Universität, 2004. / Bibliogr. p. 409-418.

Recent surveys have found that Afro-Venezuelans vote disproportionately for Hugo Chávez as President. This paper seeks to explain why Chávez has received significant support from non-white voters. I argue that this support is not only due to his mixed racial background, but more importantly due to the tangible benefits from the Chávez regime in the form of policies directed specifically at redressing racial discrimination and class inequalities. These policies include legislation against racial discrimination, educational reform, the mass enfranchisement of Afro-Venezuelan voters, and the recruitment of Afro-Venezuelan political leaders within the Chávez administration. / text

How are music, literature and migration connected? How are these transnational conversations affecting the way countries construct their national discourses today? This dissertation studies how gender and race are constructed and questioned in the 'cross-genre' dialogue among contemporary urban literature, performance, and reggaeton music produced in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and New York City from the1990s-2000s. This ongoing dialogue of marginalized music and literature, made possible by the accessibility of new media, results in a unique urban configuration in which gender and racial identities are negotiated, resulting in the reinforcement of a trans-Caribbean cultural circuit. Following a non-traditional structural approach this dissertation proposes a new analytical and reading model beginning with the Puerto Rican diaspora's cultural production in New York City as a point of departure, and from there expands to the rest of the Spanish Caribbean. I specifically focus on the writings of poets Willie Perdomo (NYC), and Guillermo Rebollo Gil (PR), the videos and lyrics of the reggaeton artists Tego Calderón and Calle 13 (PR), and the music and literary work of Rita Indiana Hernández (DR) in order analyze the complex interplay between music and literary texts to convey gender and racial imaginaries. I conclude that these literary, cultural, and performative texts abolish "national" configurations and are being replaced by broader definitions of "us," race, and gender to address the complexities of contemporary Caribbean transnational identitary circuits. / text

Changes in macro-moth populations related to habitat creation were monitored using light-traps between 1993 and 1995 on low-lying, previously intensively managed, arable land at College Farm, Long Wittenham, Oxfordshire (grid reference SU 554 939). Research measured the effects of the establishment of set-aside and agro-forestry in farmland on macro-moth abundance, diversity, guild and seral structure. College Farm data from the newly created habitats were compared with unchanging and established ones within the Farm, a nearby Garden (500 metres away at Long Wittenham) sampled concurrently, and data from other farmland, gardens and woodland sites. Mobility was measured within College Farm and between it and the Garden at Long Wittenham. Large numbers of moths, of a comparatively small number of ubiquitous species, were found within College Farm. Abundance, which can be as high as in woodlands, indicated that the farmland environment is less hostile to moths than has been previously thought. Analyses showed rapid and large increases of abundance in the newly created habitats on College Farm related to the establishment of a more diverse and architecturally more complex ground flora. The differences in abundance between the Farm and Garden, where moths were generally more numerous but which were sampled with more effective light traps, progressively decreased throughout the research period. Changes 10 abundance were less marked in the Garden in line with regional population changes. Species richness was low on College Farm in comparison to woodlands and gardens. Within the Farm it was highest along a linear drainage Ditch but increased rapidly in a tree Plantation in association with greater diversity of the ground flora. Species richness was found to be constant between years in the Garden. Both the Farm and Garden and other sites investigated in Oxfordshire and elsewhere in Britain exhibited constant species proportions within the larger families, sub-families and genera. Alpha diversity was constant for the Farm as a whole and for the Garden (and did not increase after the first field season at either site) but was found to increase significantly in a tree Plantation in the second year after its establishment. Removal of vagrant species and individuals from analyses of the Farm and Garden totals showed that alpha diversity increased for the Farm (but not the Garden) between 1993 and 1995. Diversity, dominance, evenness and dissimilarity measures showed distinct habitat differences on the Farm and that the tree Plantation improved to a similar state to that of the permanent Ditch in its second year. These improvements were not associated with the presence of trees but were related to increased herb diversity and complexity. Intensive management in the Plantation in 1995 resulted in reductions in diversity. Analyses of guild structure showed that herb feeding individuals were most abundant in a tree Plantation, associated with the ground flora, and that grass feeders dominated the catches in a Barley-field, along a drainage Ditch and in a field of Set-aside. There were some marked changes between years with grass feeders contributing greater numbers to all habitat totals, being greatest in 1995. Abundance changed asynchronously and disproportionally for herb, grass and polyphagous guilds on the Farm in comparison to the changes in the Garden indicating that habitat creation was the cause. The proportions of herb, grass, woody-plant, polyphagous and other moth species were found to be constant on the Farm and in the Garden and in all other habitats investigated. Species represented by fewer than 10 individuals on the Farm and fewer than 100 individuals in the Garden were found to comprise the vagrant fraction of their, respective, totals. The majority of woody-plant feeding species and the guild 'others' were contained within this fraction. There was no evidence for an increase in abundance or species richness of woody-plant feeders as a consequence of tree planting on the Farm. The majority of individuals on the Farm and in the Garden were representatives from early seral communities. Almost all others were contained within the vagrant fraction of the faunas in these sites. Abundance changed asynchronously and disproportionally for early seres on the Farm in comparison to the changes in the Garden indicating that habitat creation was the cause. Species proportions within all seres were found to be constant on the Farm, in the Garden and in other habitats investigated. Mark-release-recapture studies showed that certain species arc highly mobile in farmland, others are comparatively poorly mobile, and that patterns of mobility change (mobility between Farm habitats increased each year for some species) in association with habitat creation. Moths increasingly remained within the Farm as evidenced by progressive increases in recapture proportions there, progressive decreases in recaptures of Farm marked moths in the Garden, and increasing proportions of multiple recaptures.

Jezebels, Mammies, and Matriarchs… These labels signify racialized and gendered social constructions that transnationally pervade the lives of black women. By contextualizing black women’s artwork as visual responses to social subjugation and objectification, one can discern the (literal) materialization of black feminist epistemology through artistic production and the aesthetic concerns that drive expressive work. This thesis therefore analyzes black Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino’s work as a visual form of resistance to three major “controlling images” of black women in Brazil as sexually promiscuous, domestic laborers, and unfit mothers. Her work represents not only the Brazilian black woman’s experience; it broadens and deepens the conversation on black women’s art in Africa and its diasporas, where similar stereotypes exist. Several of Paulino’s personal statements and artworks address subjects that parallel those made by black women artists--María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Lorna Simpson, Zanele Muholi, and Wangechi Mutu, to name a few--whose artwork is also considered in this paper. Articulated to an international community of black women artists, Paulino’s artwork contributes to the development of a space in art history for the representation of black Brazilian women that enriches understandings of other established areas, be they social, artistic, medical, sexual, cultural, political or economical. / text

This study examined the influence of acculturation on disordered eating attitudes and behaviours of Afro-Caribbean women living in Canada. 134 Afro-Caribbean women, aged 18-35 years, completed an online questionnaire evaluating body satisfaction, two indices of acculturation, adaptation and maintenance, and disordered eating attitudes and behaviours. One domain of acculturation, Canadian cultural adaptation, was found to moderate the relation between body satisfaction and disordered eating: Those who most strongly identified with Canadian culture had the strongest relation between body dissatisfaction and disordered eating and attitudes. Disordered eating attitudes and behaviours were reported most often in individuals with high Canadian cultural adaptation and identification with Canadian values. Suggestions for further research and clinical implications are discussed

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INTRODUCTION Although the controversy surrounding the medium of education for deaf individuals rages on, language professionals including educators are now realising that literacy is the single most important factor in determining the successful education of the deaf child. The medium of education selected, should thus ultimately foster literacy skills. Supporters of oralism (referring to the principal that Deaf people should learn to commnicate by speech and lipreading without the use of Sign Language) claim that with recent technological advances eg cochlear implants, the ability of even the profoundly deaf child to obtain spoken language fluency, has never been better. Oralists maintain that because the majority of the population is comprised of hearing individuals, educators are morally obliged to enforce the teaching of society�s dominant language as first priority as it is only by acquiring spoken language that the deaf child will be able to fully integrate himself in society (Gregory, Hartley, 1991). In contrast, supporters of a signed language as a medium of education argue that signed language is the best language model that is within the biological grasp of the deaf child � it is easily and naturally acquired (Lane, Hoffmeister & Bahan 1996). When used as a medium of education a signed language can impart new knowledge to the learner as well as knowledge about other languages. With first language proficiency in signed language the acquisition of second language skills i.e. literacy skills is facilitated. Deaf high school graduates (if they graduate at all) have literacy skills equivalent to roughly a third or fourth grade level. (Holcomb, Peyton & Kreeft 1992). This frightning statistic holds true for the deaf population of South Africa. Poor literacy skills resulted in the Deaf being trapped in a vicious circle of powerlessness, dependence and marginality, consequently depriving them of their dignity and rightful place in society (Carver, 1990). Recent researchers are of the opinion that the Deaf share similar language backgrounds and literacy challenges to other minority groups and that poor literacy skills can possibly be attributed to linguistic, cultural and educational factors. Hence the importance of determining the best language medium for the deaf child to receive his education. Deaf literacy is an attainable goal. What now needs to be determined is whether a signed language or a spoken language as a medium of pre-school education is the catalyst for initiating and facilitating literacy skills, which will ultimately enable the Deaf to reclaim their power, independence, dignity and rightful place in society, thus enabling them to actively contribute towards the economic and social growth of the country.