This dissertation uses the Latino cultural citizenship framework to show how Mexican immigrant young adults are using the GED classroom to construct, negotiate, and transform their lives in the United States. It examines the educational experiences of Mexican immigrant young adults enrolled in GED classes at Central Texas Community College and specifically documents their motives for enrolling, their educational journeys, the value of the GED, and the impact of the GED program on their lives and on their future aspirations. The significance of this study is that it will give Adult Basic and Secondary Education programs, especially the program housed at Central Texas Community College, an ethnographic snapshot of one of their fastest growing student populations. Latina/o students represent 73 percent of GED enrollment in this program. Although this dissertation only includes a very small subgroup of Latinos, findings will supplement the limited academic research available on Mexican immigrant young adults within the scope of adult education. / text

abstract: This project is a critical look at Chicano artist Vincent Valdez's 2002-2004 series Stations. The theoretical framework for this work is the concept of cultural citizenship, which refers to a variety of ways in which marginalized groups of people create, fight for, and retain space, identity, and rights within American society through acts of daily life. This research considers how the ten large-scale charcoal drawings that comprise Stations contribute to the construction and representation of distinct and unique Latino spaces and identities. Valdez establishes space in the sense of belonging and community engagement that his work allows. Within this context, thoughtful attention is paid to the cultural meaning of the artist's subject choices of boxing and religion. This research considers the significance of these subject choices and how the connections between the two create unique spaces of shared experience and consciousness for a viewer of the work. However, the parallels that Valdez draws between the Christ figure and his boxer also allow for a careful examination of the representations and contradictions of contemporary constructions of masculinity that are present in the series. Within this project, the work of Gloria Anzaldúa is critical in understanding and discussing the fluid nature of Chicano identity. This study also considers how in the tradition of Chicana writers, Valdez expresses and affirms identity through autobiographical methods. Further, the artist's use of charcoal to create these large scale drawings is considered for its narrative qualities. This study concludes that Valdez's series Stations is an act of cultural citizenship. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2010

abstract: In 2001, a refugee group of unaccompanied minors known as the Lost Boys of Sudan began arriving in the United States. Their early years were met with extensive media coverage and scores of well-meaning volunteers in scattered resettlement locations across the country. Their story was told in television news reports, documentary films, and published memoirs. Updates regularly appeared in newsprint media. Scholars have criticized public depictions of refugees as frequently de-politicized, devoid of historical context, and often depicting voiceless masses of humanity rather than individuals with skills and histories (Malkki 1996, Harrell-Bond and Voutira 2007). These representations matter because they are both shaped by and shape what is possible in public discourse and everyday relations. This dissertation research creates an intersection where public representation and everyday practices meet. Through participant observation as a volunteer at a refugee community center in Phoenix, Arizona, this research explores the emotions, social roles and relations that underpin community formation, and investigates the narratives, representations, and performances that local Lost Boys and their publics engage in. I take the assertion that "refugee issues are one privileged site for the study of humanitarian interventions through which 'the international community' constitutes itself " (Malkki 1996: 378) and consider formation of local 'communities of feeling' (Riches and Dawson 1996) in order to offer a critique of humanitarianism as mobilized and enacted around the Lost Boys. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Geography 2014

This paper explores the daily life of female Japanese spouses and the performance of their cultural citizenship under the constraints of the Taiwanese mainstream culture and social structure.. With in-depth interview of fifteen female Japanese spouses marrying Taiwanese men in Taiwan, and observation of two field sites where these spouses teach their children, this research finds that the ¡§cultural citizenship¡¨ of these Japanese spouses is not a static concept which marks the differences between Taiwanese and Japanese cultures, but a dynamic process that these Japanese spouses need to negotiate the daily Taiwanese cultures in everyday life, especially in the domain of language use and maternity performance.

Applied ethnomusicology emerged as a sub-discipline within the larger field of ethnomusicology in the late 1980s. The approach has gained considerable attention in recent years, evidenced by the publication of the first book-length treatment of the subject in 2010 and numerous scholarly papers and roundtables devoted to the topic at the 2011 SEM conference. I review of the literature in order to trace general trends and shifts in frame and approach in order to establish a context for critically reflecting on the role of activist scholarship in ethnomusicology today. Drawing from the literature on applied ethnomusicology, cultural rights projects in Brazil, and personal experiences working with black women hip-hop activists in Recife, I suggest that activist approaches allow greater possibilities for progressive social change, facilitating dialogue and critical reflection in ways that applied approaches do not. I propose that we must re-think activist scholarship in ethnomusicology, and in Brazil more specifically, seriously considering the possibilities and limitations of music making for establishing sustained community activism that incorporates dialogic pedagogy. / text

Cultural diversity is a central issue of our times, although with different emphases in the European and Australian context. Media and communication studies have begun to draw on work in translation studies to understand how diversity is experienced across hybrid cultures. Translation is required both for multilingual (multicultural) societies such as Australia and for trans-national entities such as the European Union. Translation is also of increasing importance politically and even emotionally as individual nations and regions face the challenge of globalisation, migration, and the Americanisation of media content. The thesis draws on cultural and media policy analysis. Programming strategies are reviewed and 'conversational' interviews conducted with broadcasting managers and staff at SBS Australia and across multilingual public broadcasters in the EU (BBC WS, Deutsche Welle, ARTE, Radio Multikulti Berlin, Barcelona Televisió). These are used to investigate the issues, challenges, and uses of the multilingual broadcasting logic for Australia's and Europe's cultural realities. This thesis uses the concept of 'translation' as a key metaphor for bridging differences and establishing connections among multicultural citizens in the context of the European Union and Australia. It is proposed that of the two versions of translation - institutional in the EU and mediated in Australia respectively - the mediated version has achieved higher success in engaging ordinary citizens in more affective, informal and everyday forms of cross-cultural communication. Specifically, the experience of the Special Broadcasting Service (Australia's multilingual and multicultural public broadcaster) serves as a model to illuminate the cultural consequences of the failure of the EU to develop translation practices beyond the level of official, institutional and political communication. The main finding is the identification of a need for more mediated interlingual exchange; that is a translation of language policy in Europe into media experience for ordinary citizen-consumers, at both institutional and textual levels.

abstract: In recent years the state of Arizona passed a series of laws affecting undocumented immigrants, including Proposition 300 in 2006 outlawing in-state tuition for undocumented youth. However, there has also been a reaction from these youth who refused to be relegated to the shadows and are demanding rights. Using mixed ethnographic methods, this dissertation research analyzes how undocumented Mexican youth in Arizona have experienced liminality after the passage of Proposition 300 as well as their ability to utilize their increased marginalization in order to build community amongst themselves and fight for basic rights--a process known as cultural citizenship. These immigrant youth are of the 1.5 generation, who are brought to the United States at a young age, grow up in the country and share characteristics with both first and second- generation immigrants. Even though undocumented 1.5 generation immigrants are raised and acculturated within this country and treated the same as other children while in the public school system, they have been denied basic rights upon approaching adulthood because of their illegality. This includes limiting access to affordable higher education as well as public services and legal work. Consequently, they are unable to fully incorporate into U.S. society and they end up transitioning into illegality after leaving school. This is especially true in Arizona, a state that has passed some of the strictest anti-immigrant laws in the country aiming to deter undocumented immigrants from staying in the state. However, I argue that this increased marginalization has had an unintended consequence of creating a space that allowed for these youth to come together and form a community. I further posit that this community provides valuable social capital and access to resources and information that mitigates the possibility of downward assimilation. Moreover, this community offers its members a safety net that allows them to publically claim their undocumented status in order to fight for their right to have a pathway towards citizenship. As a result, they have been able to gain some victories, but are still fighting for their ultimate goal to become citizens. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2014

No description available.

Los Angeles stands as the largest city in the United States without comprehensive street vending regulation. Over the span of ten years, between 1984 and 1994, street vendor activists challenged Los Angeles to regulate street vending through the work of the Street Vendors Association. Within the same ten years, the city hosted the Olympics; the city introduced broken windows policing; immigration from the global south increased; and, a riot broke out. This thesis explores how Los Angeles’ ambition as a “city of the future” and its Mexican “past” impacted the politics of street vending during this span of time.

This thesis – Online Parody Videos and the Enactment of Cultural Citizenship – examines the enactment of the practice of cultural citizenship in new media contexts. Through a cultural study approach, it seeks to find how citizens enact the practices of cultural citizenship, participate in public deliberation, engage in politics and construct identities as citizens in an informal way through digital creativity. In this thesis, “JorKawTeun,” an online news parody program, is selected as a case study. The main research question is, “based on the case study of “JorKawTeun,” how are the practices of cultural citizenship and popularization of politics enacted through online parody videos in Thailand? Specifically, how is humor utilized in the videos, and what rhetorical strategies/tactics are used to make political points?” The theoretical framework is comprised of monitorial citizenship and cultural citizenship. In addition, the concept of “parody as genre” is also employed in order to be implemented in the analysis of the techniques used in the videos. The methodology is critical discourse analysis. The findings of the study reveal the complex and paradoxical dimensions of citizenship, the tendency towards individualized political participation, and the subversive potential of parody: a vernacular form of political communication that is remediated in a media convergence environment. Finally, the thesis aims at contributing to an understanding of the relationship between popular culture and politics in contemporary mediated contexts, as well as the rethinking of the notion of citizenship, political participation and civic engagement based on a culturally-oriented perspective.