African American Literature in the 20th century engaged many social and racial issues that mainstream white America marginalized during the pre-civil rights era through the use of rhetoric, setting, plot, narrative, and characterization. The use of passing fostered an outlet for many light-skinned men and women for inclusion. This trope also allowed for a closer investigation of the racial division in the United States during the 20th century. These issues included questions of the color line, or more specifically, how light-skinned men and women passed as white to obtain elevated economic and social status. Secondary issues in these earlier passing novels included gender and sexuality, raising questions as to whether these too existed as fixed identities in society. As such, the phenomenon of passing illustrates not just issues associated with the color line, but also social, economic, and gender structure within society. Human beings exist in a matrix, and as such, passing is not plausible if viewed solely as a process occurring within only one of these social constructs, but, rather, insists upon a viewpoint of an intersectional construct of social fluidity itself. This paper will re-theorize passing from a description solely concerning racial movements into a theory that explores passing as an intersectional understanding of gender, sexuality, race, and class. This paper will focus on contemporary cultural products (e.g., novels) of passing that challenge the traditional notion of passing and focus on an intersectional linkage between race, gender, sexuality, and class. / Ph. D.

This doctoral project considers the conceptual and practical articulation of emancipation through examination of two temporally, culturally and politically distinct working-class community-led children's school movements in Britain. Attesting to a different history of working-class relationships to education than that offered in long-held dominant gendered and raced discourses of working-class inactivity and deficiency, examination of the Socialist Sunday School (SSS) and Black Saturday (BSS) movements has offered a significant opportunity to explore the genealogy of radical working-class education. Challenging the contemporaneous dominant tropes of 'empowerment', SSSs and BSSs rearticulated the existing emancipatory intent found in their respective radical political fields (socialist and Black) in the formation of children's educational cultures. In depth analysis of these two movements, and comparison across them, has provided the opportunity to discover similarity and difference in complex cultural processes ofeducational resistance in very different working-class communities. Mobilising methodological praxis, this project places the notions of class and emancipation at the centre of the research itself. Thus, following the literature review and the explication of the methodology, this dissertation turns to a theoretical examination of the notions of class and emancipatory education in order to develop these concepts for the research, and at the same time open them to further investigation in the historical cases. Attending to the unsettling of class by poststructuralist excursions, a conception of class is developed embedded in the Gramscian concept of hegemony, with attention to class' constitutive diversity and fragmentation, and its interaction with other oppressions. Exploring the public and common enterprise of education, this discussion also considers emancipatory education as a public space through an examination of Nancy Fraser's notion of 'counterpublics'. Following this, the dissertation explores the inception and periods of growth of the SSS and BSS movements in turn (1892-1930 & 1968-1990 respectively). Drawing on oral history testimony, school records, minute books, personal correspondence, and national and local press, this project develops understanding of the ways in which these school movements understood and expressed their purpose. Giving due attention to their surrounding social and political contexts, the ways in which these schools created childhood educational cultures, developed curriculum and pedagogies, connected with their broader radical fields, and interacted with the wider public sphere - including the State and mainstream education, is explored. Here complex (gendered and 'raced') expression and understanding of both class and emancipation is found within the diverse voices of the teachers and students of these highly localised school movements. Finally, returning to the conceptual frames with which this research began, this dissertation compares and contrasts across these cases to explore the differences and similarities intheir development of educational cultures of resistance. Borrowing from the knowledge traditions of their respective communities, proving capability of existing dominant knowledge, and creating hope for a different future, the SSS and BSS experience reveals complexity and ambiguity in their relationships to their radical political milieus and mainstream educational institutions, and within the educational counterpublics themselves.