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This dissertation traces the development, growth, and eventual fall of a white Creole intellectual and literary community in New Orleans, beginning in the 1820s and continuing for a century thereafter. In histories and novels, poetry and prose, the stage and the press, white Creole New Orleanians—those who traced their parentage back to the city’s colonial era—advocated both an intimate connection to France and a desire to be considered citizens of the United States of America. In print, they consciously fostered, mythologized, and promoted the idea that their very bifurcated nature made them inheritors of a singularly special place, possessors of an exceptional history, and keepers of utterly unique bloodlines. In effect, this closely-knit circle of Creole writers, like other Creole literary communities scattered across the Atlantic World, imbued the word Creole as a descriptive identity marker that symbolized social and cultural power. In postcolonial Louisiana, the authors within this white Creole literary circle used the printed word to imagine themselves a unified community of readers and writers. Together, they produced newspapers, literary journals, and art and science-based salons and clubs. Theirs was a postcolonial exercise in articulating a common identity, a push and pull for and against their French and American halves to create a creolized Creole self. Looking to their American brothers and to their French motherland, they participated in idealistic, literary, and wider cultural movements witnessed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Over the course of the long-nineteenth century, these movements included romantic historicism, religious reformation, pan-linguistic nationalism, racial refashioning, a preoccupation with genealogy, and a social feminization. Though few of these white Creole authors are still read today, their fashioning of a city and state literature continues to resonate in most all literary representations of New Orleans and Louisiana. By the turn of the twentieth century, and the end of their era of prominence, the white Creoles had popularized the idea of a New Orleans centered in the city’s mythologized white, Gallic past. They had imagined the “Creole City.” / acase@tulane.edu

<p>At the turn of the 19th century, ideas promoting women’s rights were sweeping across America. During that time Kate Chopin’s The Awakening was published, portraying a young woman, Edna Pontellier, who after several years of emotional unfullfilment in her marriage questions her place as a woman in her marriage as well in society. Edna’s Presbyterian Kentuckian upbringing is in opposition to Catholic Creole society that her husband belongs to. Creole society, at that time, was governed by its unwritten social codes, which were especially clear on issues concerning women’s traditional roles in society in connection to marriage and social duties. In this essay I present how Edna’s emotional awakening and her struggle to achieve independence are in conflict with the cultural norms that exist in Creole society. Also, I argue that the reason why Edna fails in her search for individual freedom is because her awakening is emotional and not intellectual; she lacks knowledge and cannot perceive herself beyond the conventions that limit and oppress her. Additionally, Edna cannot find guidance in any of the other women because they all act within the frames of the role they are playing.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Section des langues romanes, Université de Regensburg. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 631-653).

Thesis (doctoral)--Section des langues romanes, Université de Regensburg. / Dissertation : Regensburg : Literaturwissenschaften : 1981. - Bibliogr. p. 631-653. -

In this report, I discuss the re-contextualization of a working-class Jamaican speaker’s discourse in the media and the new meanings his speech acquires in the process. The series of re-contextualizations starts out with an interview on Jamaican television, which is in turn remixed into an electronic dance song and accompanying music video. The song entextualizes individual stretches of the speaker’s original dis­course into readily identifiable quotes that turn into Jamaican slang items. In the process, linguistic disorderliness is foregrounded in the utterances in question while their propositional content is virtually erased. In a further instance of re-contextualization, the speaker encounters his by now entextualized utterances in an interview on Jamaican breakfast television and struggles to re-establish his originally intended framing of it. His success in the specific interaction is very limited, but viewers’ comments reveal that the interview does effect a change in the meta-linguistic discourse surrounding the incident. I analyze the data as a case in point of ‘speaky spoky,’ a Jamaican label for un­successful attempts to emulate foreign prestige accents, resulting in linguistic dis­orderliness. By considering aspects of performance, entextualization and the keying of different frames, I demonstrate the interactional work that goes into the construc­tion of speaky spoky as a label, as well as the ideological work that label is put to in turn and its political effects. Based on these observations, I argue that speaky spoky is best understood as a multivalent construct resource for sustaining and influencing lan­guage ideologies. Its interactional versatility renders its relationship to authenticity in the Jamaican speech community complicated and potentially ambiguous. / text

In this dissertation, I trace academics' attitudes to writing and its instruction through the six-decade history of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, in Jamaica. I establish that while the institution's general writing courses facilitate students' initiation into the academy, these courses reflect assumptions about writing and learning that need to be reassessed to yield versatile writers and disassociate the courses and writing from the alarmist rhetoric that often emerges in the media and in academe. In Jamaica, critics of university students' writing often promote what Mike Rose calls the "myth of transience" and perpetuate the "the rhetoric of transparent disciplinarity." According to the myth of transience, if writing is taught correctly at pre-university levels, students will not need writing instruction in the academy. The concept that I call "the rhetoric of transparent disciplinarity" is defined in the work of David Russell, who examines the view that writing is a single, mechanical, generalizable skill that is learned once and for all. Advocates of this view consider writing as a transparent recording of reality or completed thought that can be taught separate from disciplinary knowledge. Based on my analysis of archival materials and data gathered from questionnaires and interviews with past and current writing specialists, this view has been evident at the UWI, Mona, since the institution's earliest years. Academics there have perpetuated a certain tacit assumption that writing is a natural process. By recalling the country's history of education, I demonstrate how this assumption parallels colonial administrators' determination that Jamaican Creole speakers should naturally learn English to advance in society. I argue that if the university wants to widen participation while maintaining excellence, then academics should foster knowledge production (rather than only reproduction) by acknowledging the extent to which disciplines are rhetorically constructed through writing. If writing specialists and other content faculty draw on rhetoric's attention to audience, situation, and purpose, they can foster learning by helping students see how writing contributes to knowledge-making inside the academy and beyond. This study contributes to international discussions about how students learn to write and use writing in higher education.

The Sierra Leonean Creoles, formed by a conglomeration of black returnees to Africa, arrived over the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century from Britain, Nova Scotia, the West Indies, and other parts of Africa. Heavily influenced by the British, their culture set them apart from the surrounding natives. That distinction resulted in critical identity problems as British philanthropy turned into colonial racism. The Rambler was a contributor to the Sierra Leone Weekly News from 1913 to 1919 and from 1929 to 1939. His work suggests that he was an energetic and informed thinker. Historians use him to support points concerning Creole and West African history, but do not examine him completely. His work, examined holistically, reveals a Creole still struggling with British abandonment, native encroachment, and Creole obstinacy while clinging to the civilizing mission. His struggle fails and eventually he dismisses the civilizing morality, subscribing instead to a racially assertive morality.

The purpose of this thesis is to find out whether theatre translation into Mauritian Creole can contribute to the formation of a national identity in post-colonial, multi-ethnic and multilingual Mauritius. There are currently fourteen languages spoken, many of which, as carriers of symbolic value, are often used as markers of ethnic identity. Moreover, the fact that they do not all carry the same socio-economic and political status has created a linguistic hierarchy which positions English at the top, closely followed by French, in turn followed by Asian languages and finally by Mauritian Creole, even though the latter is the most widely spoken language on the island. I argue that translation into Mauritian Creole is largely an ideological endeavour, designed to challenge the existing asymmetrical linguistic power relations, and to highlight the language’s existence as a shared cultural capital and as a potential force for national unity. I show how such an endeavour is closely linked to the political and socio-cultural aspects of the target society. This is done by using complementary theoretical perspectives, such as Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory (1979, 2000), André Lefevere’s systemic concept (2004) and post-colonial approaches to translation, and by drawing upon the case study research method, with its emphasis on multiple sources for data collection. The thesis examines Mauritian Creole translations of six plays by Shakespeare and two by Molière. I suggest that the reasons for choosing Shakespeare and Molière for translation are highly symbolic in the Mauritian context, where the educational system, a British colonial legacy, has continued to assign a privileged position to canonized British and French literatures; a system which contributes towards the perpetuation of colonial values. The translation of canonized texts is therefore intended to highlight the persistence of hegemonic socio-cultural values. Equally, it is designed to promote cultural decolonization and to point to the emergence of new creolized practices that offer areas of shared meaning for the Mauritian population as a whole. I also argue that since translation is an ideological undertaking, it is essential to understand the purposes of those actively involved in its production and dissemination. Because theatre texts can function as literary artefacts and as performance scripts, I look at the role played not only by translators and publishers, but also by theatre practitioners (producers, directors and actors). I explain their beliefs and their political agendas, showing why neither translation, nor stage production can constitute a neutral activity. In the process, my examination reveals the opposing forces at work which disagree over the way Mauritian Creole should be used in the discourse of nation-building. I then look at the intended target audiences with a view to finding out if the translations and the stage productions have had any obvious impact upon Mauritian society. My findings show that neither readers nor spectators are likely to have represented a large proportion of the population. Although this seems to indicate that theatre translation has had little direct impact so far upon the construction of a national identity, I suggest that in fact, its contribution to the Mauritian Creole literary and cultural capital should not be underestimated, as the language is very slowly emerging as an important symbol of the island. I conclude that should theatre translation be combined with other societal efforts in the future, it could still have a part to play in the formation of a national identity based upon Mauritian Creole.