Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis is an exploration of the historical, socio-cultural, economic, and political settings in which identities are negotiated and performed among Cameroonian immigrants in Cape Town. Focusing on language as localized practices and different interaction regimes, the thesis investigates how Cameroonian immigrants maintain and reconfigure the Anglophone/Francophone identity options in novel and hybrid ways. In addition, the study examines how ideologies favouring different languages are reproduced and challenged in translocal and transnational discourses. Guided by the poststructuralist theories the thesis explores the stance that reality is socially constructed, based on symbolic and material structural limitations that are challenged and maintained in interaction. That is, whatever we do or believe in, is supported by some historical or cultural frames of meanings in our lived world, which often gives room to some manoeuvre to do things in a new way. The study adopts a multiplex interpretive approach to data collection. This entails a qualitative sociolinguistic approach where interviews, discussion and observations at different socio-economic places namely; meetings, workplaces, homes, restaurants, drinking spots and many sites from all over Cape Town, were explored. The study suggests that Cameroonians have a multiplicity of identity options, which are manifested and negotiated performatively through language, dress code, song, food, business, and other practices that comprise their lifestyles. These identities are translocal and transnational in nature, and tend to blend South African, Cameroonian, and even American traits. It is also suggests that the different identity options which they manifest are highly mobile, enabling Cameroonians to fit into South African social structures as well as the Cameroonian ways of doing things. Additionally, the multiplicity of identities that Cameroonians manifest, blur the fault-line between Anglophone/Francophone identities. It is evident from the study that hybridity and the reconstruction practices are not only confined to languages. Hybridity also extends to discourse orders especially in terms of how meetings are conducted. The Cameroonian meetings captured through the activities of Mifi Association and CANOWACAT are characterised by ‘disorder of discourse’ in which both formal and informal versions of English and French are used separately or as amalgams alongside CPE and their national languages, not only in side talks, but also when contributing to the meeting proceedings. Ultimately, the study concludes that Cameroonians are social actors making up an indispensable part of the social interaction in the Cape Town Diaspora. Just as they influence the languages, the entrepreneurial practices, and spaces in which they interact, the Cameroonian immigrants are also transformed. The major contribution of the study is that it adds to the recent debates about the nature of multilingualism and identities in late modern society. It emphasises that languages and identities are fluid, complex, and unstable. The distinction or boundaries between the various languages in multilingual practices are also not as clear-cut. This leads to a reframing of voice and actor hood as meaning is constructed across translocal and transnational contexts and domains in a networked world transformed by the mobility of endless flows of information, goods, ideas, and people. Thus, the study contributes to those arguing for a paradigm shift in sociolinguistic theory in which language is not a property of groups, nor is it an autonomous and bounded system fixed in time and space. Thus, identities, languages and the spaces of interaction are not fixed systems; identities, languages, and spaces are dynamic and in a state of flux. This in turn questions the notions of multilingualism and language itself, as well as the veracity of concepts such as code-switching, speech community, language variation, as the search for a sociolinguistic framework that can deal with phenomena predicated by motion, instability, and uncertainty, continues. / South Africa

Achieving sustained economic growth and development has been an area of concern for policy-makers in the Anglophone Caribbean since the transition from colonial rule to self-governance. To date, the researcher did not find any research that has explicitly examined the role of policy-making effectiveness as a strategy for achieving the goals of sustainable development. This qualitative multiple case study of Barbados and Grenada was conceptualized from the perspective of critical theory from the World Commission on Environment and Development to explore and understand why sustainability has not been sufficiently realized and how sustainable development may be pursued in territories that are small and prone to hazards. Purposive sampling was used to identify 30 candidates for the study. Eighteen key policy-makers participated in semi-structured interviews. Secondary data from publicly available government documents in Barbados and Grenada were acquired. All data were inductively coded and data analysis was carried out at three levels using thematic, content, and cross-case analyses. Key findings suggest a need exists to increase understanding of the concept of sustainable development and the unique characteristics of the territories to enable policy-makers to better define the safe operating space for human development. Recommendations for positive social change include advice to strengthen institutional capacity across the full spectrum of policy-making practice for sustainable development including mechanisms to promote a learning culture and accountability in policy-making practice in the Anglophone Caribbean, particularly among those territories that are small and prone to hazards.

This collective of videos provides quick prompts for literature responses to springboard students into analytical thinking so they can avoid merely summarizing the material. This approach involves breaking down aspects of the readings through the points of civics, science, and culture to better understand how each piece of literature might affect readers and the world around them. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-oer/1010/thumbnail.jpg

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The ubiquity of "things" in Victorian fiction tempts the reader to let them remain hidden in the domestic background, but in overlooking these objects both cultural context and historical meaning are lost. Elaine Freedgood's foundational work, The Ideas in Things, calls for a reading of objects in Victorian novels that follows them beyond the pages of the text; following this, I consider two specific objects of empire—diamonds and tea—in light of Jane Bennett's theory of vibrant matter, which posits that things engage with people in ways that "impede or block the will and designs" of humans and calls for a "cultivated, patient, sensory attentiveness to ... things and their affects" (xiv). Alongside Bennett, I employ Sianne Ngai's notion of ugly feelings to explore the affects that attach to diamonds and tea. Ngai argues that ugly feelings like envy, irritation, and boredom stall rather than instigate action and that their stagnating effects make them "far better suited to interpreting ongoing states of affairs" than bigger, louder affects such as fear and anger (27), allowing "texts to become ‘readable in new ways' and generate fresh examinations of historically tenacious problems" (8). My investigation of Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868) and Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford (1853) reads their objects as vibrant matter while attending to minor dysphoric affects running underneath the grander emotions of the narratives. Placing them in conversation with the periodical press and household manuals that sought to justify imperial control, I argue that the ugly feelings in these novels expose a fraying English moral fabric and undermine the framing of empire as a civilizing mission. By tracing currents of irritation and anxiety that circulate around the diamond in The Moonstone and by reading resignation and regret in the dregs of tea in Cranford, I uncover subtle critiques of empire.

Ma thèse de Doctorat porte sur un ensemble d’œuvres romanesques d’écrivains libanais issus d’une même génération (1959-1969), et dont les romans sont écrits et publiés après la Guerre civile libanaise (1975-1990), hors du Liban, en anglais et en français. Elle met en avant les aspects distinctifs de ces fictions qui relatent la double expérience de la guerre et de l’émigration. Les travaux sur l’analyse du discours de Ruth Amossy et Dominique Maingueneau ainsi que les apports de Peter Brooks sur la construction narrative en situation thérapeutique contribuent à notre analyse des stratégies narratives. La mémoire est également un biais par lequel le discours s’articule, et devient l’objet d’âpres tentatives de réappropriation. La théorie du trauma de Cathy Caruth et les travaux de Maurice Halbwachs sur la mémoire collective et sociale nous éclairent sur les mécanismes mémoriels déclenchés. Parallèlement, ces romans s’inscrivent dans une tentative d’écriture de l’histoire par l’utilisation d’archives, la mise en fiction d’évènements réels et le choix d’une multiplicité de voix narratives. Ces recours appellent à une réflexion autour de la production de mémoires. Les stratégies narratives, les mécanismes mémoriels et l’écriture de l’histoire sont autant de procédés qui trahissent un questionnement permanent autour de l’identité. Les écritures libanaises de l’émigration, par leurs stratégies audacieuses, leurs techniques innovantes et leur volonté de représenter une double expérience complexe, contribuent à la modernité des littératures libanaises et mondiales, et surtout à l’impossibilité de réduire la fiction à des catégories fixes. / My PhD thesis focuses on works of fiction by Lebanese immigrant writers that are part of the same generation (1959-1969) and whose novels were written and published after the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), outside of Lebanon, in both English and French. The thesis sheds light on distinctive aspects of these novels all of which share the dual experience of war and emigration. This dual experience generates various discursive strategies analysed in Ruth Amossy and Dominique Maingueneau’s work on the analysis of discourse as well as Peter Brooks’s contribution to narrative construction in therapy framework. Memory is a mean through which narrative is articulated as it turns into the object of harsh attempts of re-appropriation. Trauma theory, as developed by Cathy Caruth alongside the work of Maurice Halbwachs on collective and social memory, shed light on the mechanisms in which memory works in the studied novels. The novels are also part of an attempt to write history and draw on mixed material to do so: They use archives, fictionalise real events, and develop multiple narrative voices. These techniques lead to a reflection on historiography, the production of memories, and the traditional functions of reading. Narrative strategies, memory mechanisms, and the writing of history are part of a process illustrating a permanent concern about identity. YLebanese immigration narratives, through their audacious strategies, innovative techniques and willingness to represent a dual and complex experience, contribute to the shaping of both Lebanese and world literature’s modernity and more importantly to the impossibility of reducing fiction to fixed categories.

<p>This dissertation draws on a broad range of postcolonial literature in order to explore literary representations of environmentalism in the global South. Although this project draws heavily on the particular environmental histories of different nations and geographic regions, I am also interested in areas of overlap. In this study I do two interrlated and simultaneous things that I hope will refine postcolonial ecocriticism. The first involves a broadening of the definition of 'environment,' informed by the environmental justice movment, in ways that make it more applicable and accountable to people's lived lives. This expanded definition of the environment includes those spaces where people live and work. Such a redefinition, I argue, is a crucial counter-measure to ecocriticism's Anglo-American focus, where traditional American environmental values of conservation, preservation, and the cult of the wilderness prevail. The second intervention involves using ecocriticism alongside this expanded notion of the environment to unearth the everyday environmentalisms at work in postcolonial literature that may go unnoticed through traditional ecocritical approaches. I argue that this everyday approach successfully avoids some of the common hurdles in postcolonial ecocriticism. These hurdles include debates over the origins of environmental thought, questions about the link between affluence and environmental consciousness, and the contentious space of animals in postcolonial thought and literature. By beginning with an examination of the ways in which people interact with their own local environments, I am able to explore environmental thought and action on the ground and can begin theorizing there. What is revealed through these analyses is that this expanded definition of environmentalism and this new ecocritical approach open the door to viewing environmentality as a common and foundational feature of postcolonial literature. My chapters explore various facets of these everyday environmentalisms, including ecofeminist perspectives, anthropocentric versus biocentric representations of the environment, urban space, and finally the idea of going back to the land. The issues that I explore throughout these chapters include legacies of colonialism, globalization, racism and speceism, ecolocial/ecocritical imperialism, and postcoloniality.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Leopold Plotek est un artiste montréalais, né en Russie, qui consacre sa carrière artistique à la peinture depuis cinquante ans. Contrairement à l’intérêt que lui manifeste le milieu des arts visuels, l’histoire de l’art n’a pas encore témoigné de son importance. La description de sa carrière depuis les années 1970 jusqu’à aujourd’hui, soit de ses peintures ainsi que des expositions et des écrits qui s’y rapportent, comble en partie cette lacune. Une perspective interculturelle permet de présenter Plotek comme artiste issu de l’immigration et comme anglophone au Québec ainsi que d’identifier des critères fondés sur l’identité culturelle et linguistique, qui expliquent en partie son absence de l’histoire de l’art, particulièrement de l’art contemporain. D’une part, cette étude au sujet de son œuvre fournit un nombre significatif de renseignements factuels : inventaire des peintures, des expositions, des collections, des catalogues ainsi que des articles de revues et de journaux. D’autre part, elle démontre que l’étude des relations interculturelles aide à démystifier la croyance selon laquelle l’histoire de l’art retient les artistes principalement en fonction de la qualité de leurs œuvres. / Leopold Plotek is a Montreal artist, born in Russia, who has devoted his artistic career to painting for nearly fifty years. Contrary to the interest demonstrated by the visual arts milieu to his work, art history has not yet acknowledged its importance. The description of his career, since the beginning of the 1970s until today, namely of his paintings as well as the exhibitions and the texts about them, fills part of this gap. An intercultural perspective presents Plotek as an artist coming from immigration and as an Anglophone in Quebec, and identifies factors, based on cultural identity and language, that in part explains his absence from art history, particularly contemporary art. On one hand, this study about his work gives a significant number of factual information: inventory of paintings, exhibitions, collections, catalogues along with periodical articles. On the other hand, it shows that the study of intercultural relations helps to demystify the belief that art history remembers artists primarily according to the quality of their works.

Embedded within various works of Eighteenth-Century literature lie themes regarding how the protagonists of these stories pursue their own versions of happiness. This thesis examines how characters from a wide variety of Eighteenth-Century novels engage with their surroundings, often resisting the dominant social structures of the time, to fashion more fulfilling lives for themselves. From Robinson Crusoe to Elizabeth Bennet to Frankenstein's monster, these characters come from a wide variety of backgrounds but all reveal several unifying themes. They seek out personal connections rather that striving to fulfill antiquated social expectations and they focus on their own agency, rather than circumstances out of their control. Their respective journeys are often fraught with peril, but each one is a journey worth embarking on.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.