Project (M.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Project (Dept. of History) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Manitoba, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 210-217). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ32285.pdf.

Despite the documented history of women's athletics and minority students' participation in Canadian postsecondary institutions, little is known about Black female student athletes and their experiences within Canadian higher education. This dearth of information is paradoxical considering the academic and athletic legacy of this subgroup, as well as the noted importance of the student experience and athletic participation within Canadian universities. The aim of the study was to gather data on the experiences of Black female undergraduate students involved in varsity athletics. The goal was to gain an understanding of their experiences as students, as athletes, and as Black women. Additionally, the study intended to help fill a gap in the existing literature on race, sport, and the student experience in the Canadian context. The study employed an intersectional framework to examine how race, gender, athleticism and the student role intersect to shape the student experience. The investigation utilized a mixed method approach consisting of an online survey and in-depth interviews. This national study included participants from each of the four Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) regions. Twenty-eight Black female student athletes completed the online survey, while an additional thirty-two Black female student athletes were interviewed. The findings were divided into seven major themes: University Expectations versus Reality, Pressure and Positivity, Complex Relationships, Unique Experiences, Negotiating and Navigating, Hiding and Highlighting and Levels of Blackness. In a number of ways, the Black Canadian female student athlete's experience is similar to that of other student athletes. However, it also was found that Black female student athletes have a unique experience due to the intersection of their race, gender and athleticism. Thus, Black female student athletes have a distinct experience as they deal with racial, gender, and athletic stereotypes; the underrepresentation of Black females and Black female athletes in higher education; the intricacies of Black dating and intimate relationships; and the complex interactions within the Black communities on campus.

Despite the documented history of women's athletics and minority students' participation in Canadian postsecondary institutions, little is known about Black female student athletes and their experiences within Canadian higher education. This dearth of information is paradoxical considering the academic and athletic legacy of this subgroup, as well as the noted importance of the student experience and athletic participation within Canadian universities. The aim of the study was to gather data on the experiences of Black female undergraduate students involved in varsity athletics. The goal was to gain an understanding of their experiences as students, as athletes, and as Black women. Additionally, the study intended to help fill a gap in the existing literature on race, sport, and the student experience in the Canadian context. The study employed an intersectional framework to examine how race, gender, athleticism and the student role intersect to shape the student experience. The investigation utilized a mixed method approach consisting of an online survey and in-depth interviews. This national study included participants from each of the four Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) regions. Twenty-eight Black female student athletes completed the online survey, while an additional thirty-two Black female student athletes were interviewed. The findings were divided into seven major themes: University Expectations versus Reality, Pressure and Positivity, Complex Relationships, Unique Experiences, Negotiating and Navigating, Hiding and Highlighting and Levels of Blackness. In a number of ways, the Black Canadian female student athlete's experience is similar to that of other student athletes. However, it also was found that Black female student athletes have a unique experience due to the intersection of their race, gender and athleticism. Thus, Black female student athletes have a distinct experience as they deal with racial, gender, and athletic stereotypes; the underrepresentation of Black females and Black female athletes in higher education; the intricacies of Black dating and intimate relationships; and the complex interactions within the Black communities on campus.

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to explore the aspirations of parents of elementary children of Caribbean background in Montreal. Several studies show that these children tend to do poorly in Canadian schools. Research indicates that a significant variable in the home environment which influences school performance is the aspirations of parents for their children. The aspirations can be manifested through parental encouragement and are influenced by factors such as culture, class and/or ethnicity. / A sample of 20, English speaking West Indian parents agreed to participate in this research. An interview protocol was used to collect the data by telephone. The semi-structured interview was based on questionnaires used in similar studies and from issues emerging from the literature review. / The findings show that despite West Indian parents' high aspirations, their socioeconomic and/or ethnic status influence the outcome. They feel disadvantaged in a society where the realization of their perceptions of success are dependent on their ethnic status vis-a-vis the dominant group. Despite human rights legislation and multicultural policy, these parents anticipated racial and socioeconomic disadvantages for their children. The language factor in Quebec is seen as compounding the problem for English speaking Canadians of Caribbean origin.

No description available.

Describing historical accounts of Canadian Nikkei1 experience, historian Midge (Michiko) Ayukawa (1996) writes that these accounts represent "history in the passive voice, and that it is necessary to retell it with the eyes and ears of the people who were directly involved" (3). For Nikkei women, "history in the passive voice" has either completely overlooked their experiences or narrowly defined their social role in terms of domesticity and submission to a patriarchal authority. The dominant image of the Japanese Canadian woman has been that of the "good wife, wise mother" (Ayukawa 1995). This ideal image of womanhood emerged as a component in the dramatic processes of social reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912). Both Caucasian and Nikkei historians have sustained the power of this mythical image by characterizing those experiences that exceed its conceptual boundaries as merely idiosyncratic. Simultaneously, however, Nikkei women have been weaving narratives of their history which both duplicate and subvert this image of quiet domesticity. This study contrasts processes of identity formation in twentieth-century writing by and about Canadian Nikkei women. I approach these narratives by first analyzing the categories of race, class, ethnicity, culture, and gender that historians, anthropologists, literary theorists, and theorists of ethnicity have constructed in order to interpret and contain them. I then examine how the narratives engage with three dominant discourses of being, namely those concerned with food, sexuality, and the transmission of culture. For several reasons, I treat this body of writing from an interdisciplinary and multi-theoretical perspective. My sources include published and unpublished texts from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history, literature, and geography. These texts embrace a wide range of genres, among them fiction, poetry, autobiography, the essay, the journal, the letter, so-called conventional scholarship, and responses to an ethnograhic questionnaire that I have collected. The texts are also informed by both Japanese and "western"2 cultural ideas and practices, and sometimes by several additional cultural influences. Their writers create a complex interrelation of textual identities which invites a range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Thus I examine the texts by engaging with a number of theories, including deconstructive postmodernism, deconstructive feminism, feminist anthropology, feminist history, and close textual analysis. I base this study on the theoretical premise that to treat narratives of experience rigorously, the researcher must regard the texts as both objects of study and authoritative critical voices (Cole and Phillips 1995; Chow 1993; Trinh 1989; Clifford and Marcus 1986). Therefore, I look to writing by Nikkei women for its reflections on Nikkei women's experiences, but also for guidance in interpreting the texts under study. As well, I read these texts for their critical comment on the conceptual categories that conventional scholarship has used to manage the unruliness and ambiguity of Nikkei women's narratives and experience. By welcoming the categorically disruptive, my analysis offers a theoretical perspective that may help to ensure a creative interrelation of theory and praxis. [Footnotes] 1 "Nikkei" are individuals of Japanese descent living outside of Japan. 2 Some researchers favour the upper case "Western" to describe North American and European theoretical traditions across disciplines (Mennell 1985). I include in the category of "western" all those ideas that become a body of thought as they are used to distinguish them from "eastern" or "oriental." With the success of European and American imperialist projects from the nineteenth century to the present, this "setting-off against the Orient," as Said calls it (Orientalism 3), exceeds national boundaries. One can say, then, that there are critics of Japanese ancestry, residing in Japan and elsewhere, who write from a western point of view. Thus, I depend on the lower-case "western," to emphasize the constructed nature of western ideology, as opposed to the stricter geographical or political connotations suggested by the proper noun.

This thesis endeavors to create an architecture that will contribute to the revitalization of Vancouver’s Japantown, mending severed cultural ties between the community and this historically significant neighborhood. Building upon the success of the Powell Street Japanese Cultural Festival, this project proposes a series of architectural interventions that will re-establish a Japanese-Canadian presence and serve as the catalyst for future phases of development. Focusing on the processes and rituals that permeate Japanese culture, the design seeks to celebrate the act of making at both the neighborhood and building scales. The initial phase of development concentrates on the preparation and consumption of Japanese foodstuffs and their potential to mitigate existing urban maladies.

Discursive psychology was used to analyze constructions of Canadian Muslim identities in the Canadian mainstream daily press. News and opinion discourse from a six-month period (November 1, 2008 - April 30, 2009) was examined. Whereas previous research has typically focused on negative news coverage, I examined the full range of identity portrayals of Canadian Muslims available in the daily press. Not unexpectedly, the most overtly negative identity constructions of Canadian Muslims were found in coverage of terrorism trials. In that coverage, the accused were typically worked up as endorsing an extreme interpretation of Islam. These extreme descriptions of the accused may suggest a particularized and therefore non-representative Muslim identity. Negative identity was also constructed in articles that reported on Canadian Muslims’ interactions with the legal and immigration systems: the behaviours of some Canadian Muslims (e.g., polygamy) were formulated as a threat to mainstream Canadian social values. The coverage also dealt with the issue of discrimination against Canadian Muslims. The case for discrimination was accomplished via comparison (e.g., government treatment of Muslim versus non-Muslim Canadians). However, in some coverage, Canadian Muslims were indirectly and subtly portrayed as possibly deserving of discriminatory treatment. Canadian Muslims were favourably portrayed when they: 1) upheld mainstream Canadian social values, 2) had a sense of humour about their Muslim identity, and 3) educated non-Muslim Canadians about Islam. However, favourable identity constructions of Canadian Muslims were often accompanied by background information that negatively portrayed Muslims in general. This juxtaposition of positive representations of individual Canadian Muslims with negative general information about Muslims and Islam may have subtly suggested that good Muslims are an exception rather than the norm. Overall, it was found that Canadian press coverage offers a fuller picture of Canadian Muslim identity than elsewhere (e.g., the U.S. and the U.K.). However, Sampson’s (1993) distinction between accommodative and transformative voice suggests that this picture is still incomplete. Several possibilities for improvement are suggested; for example, the press’s reliance on ready-made news (e.g., staged events) may provide opportunities to increase favourable identity portrayals of Canadian Muslims.