The purpose of this dissertation was to capture the voice of the Louisiana Native American students who attend Louisiana institutions of higher education. Native Americans are the least represented minority in colleges. More have entered college in recent years, yet they continue to leave college at a high rate. It is important to understand what motivates Native students to attend college and what keeps them in college. When an understanding of their persistence is achieved, strategies can be implemented to assist others. Research questions that prompted inquiry relate to a Louisiana Native American perspective. All of the research questions ask about the higher education experience and support the primary question: How can the higher education experiences of Native Americans be explained in models of persistence? This dissertation reviews the literature concerning persistence and departure of minority students. Development of ethnic identity is reviewed. The focus of this phenomenological qualitative research study was to examine the experiences of Native Americans during their collegiate journey. Twelve Native American students who attend five institutions of higher education in southern Louisiana were interviewed with open ended questions about their college experiences. Three participants were male and nine were female. Three tribal groups were represented: Choctaw-Apache, Coushatta and the United Houma Nation. Responses have been analyzed using the cultural model presented by Guiffrida (2006) and support the need for a cultural perspective, with the addition of the tribe as an influence. Students were satisfied overall with their experiences. Instances of stereotyping were present that made some students uncomfortable. Intrinsic motivation focused on competency and was frequently coupled with the sense of belonging. Extrinsic motivation came from tribal educational values which provided the cultural capital to pursue a degree. Intended application of the degree was most frequently tied back to the Indian community. Tribal influence was present from intention through to application of the degree. The responses of the participants in this study support a bicultural level and strong enculturation. A model of enculturation is proposed to address the participants' responses.

The Isleños of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana trace their ancestry to eighteenth century settlers from the Canary Islands. Currently, St. Bernard Parish is home to two separate Canarian heritage organizations: Los Isleños Heritage and Cultural Society and the Canary Islands Descendents Association. This thesis examines how the Isleños are currently renegotiating their cultural identity through the use of heritage via the structure of heritage organizations. I argue that under mounting economic, environmental, and political pressure, people of Canarian descent in St. Bernard Parish have begun to adjust Isleño cultural identity in order to make it more widely inclusive. This is a creative means by which the Isleños attempt to maneuver around the increasingly rapid pace of change and deal with threats to the survival of their culture.

Thesis advisor: James D. Wallace / James Fenimore Cooper, George Catlin, and Margaret Fuller all spent significant portions of their lives living outside the United States, among people who - at least initially - were foreign to them. The writing those cross-cultural forays inspired demonstrated that they learned a great deal about American culture in addition to the foreign cultures they visited, and that sometimes the insights gained were difficult to hear but impossible to refute. These writers became advocates for a cosmopolitan approach not only to travel but also to cultural identity. Each felt the slipperiness of U.S. cultural identity and determined that the most productive means of securing it was by active cosmopolitan engagement with foreign others. This project explores how travel led them to view culture as a moveable category, and as a result, to work proactively to encourage a culture of patriotic cosmopolitanism in the United States. While Fuller, Cooper, and Catlin lived and wrote, the United States was marked by an isolating insistence on exceptionalism that dominated American culture. Calls for transformative, active, or personal engagement with foreign cultures were rare. Juxtaposing Appiah's approach to cosmopolitanism with the cultural analysis of such critics as William W. Stowe and Mark Renella on travel and nineteenth-century American culture, and Larry J. Reynolds and Michael Paul Rogin, on political issues of the same era gives a new perspective to these writers. Catlin, Cooper, and Fuller were dissimilar in many ways, but all enacted a cosmopolitanism that was unusual for their time and striking in its opposition to nationalist cultural currents. Their careers were defined by travel experiences marked by challenges to their cultural identity, and they met these with self-reflection that led to their awareness of the treatment cultural others received from Americans. Engaging with both Amerindian and European versions of "foreignness" led these writers to preach a cosmopolitan consciousness and to model the best ways for Americans to comport themselves while acting as citizen diplomats. A close reading of Catlin's presence as cultural intermediary in his ethnography reveals a man seeking to meet Amerindians on their own terms; he was a rare case study, and the lukewarm support he received is telling; mainstream Americans were not interested in viewing Indians as living people with a culture worth learning about. Most important, Catlin's writings of his experience in Indian lands and abroad demonstrate his exceptional receptivity to foreignness. Catlin did not see or market himself as a "travel-writer" but rather an artist and advocate for the Indians offering his own brand of proto-ethnography to the nineteenth-century reading public. Nevertheless, his work is an unusual addition to the travel-writing genre, and particularly productive in its presentation of how one adventurous traveler's experience of cultural difference led to cosmopolitan awareness. The extent to which one's experience of a foreign culture can be communicated to others who have not shared in those experiences is limited, and this accounts, in part, for the contradictions, defensive rationalizations, and rambling reflections present in Catlin's accounts. He faced a task that travel writers who direct their work to home-bound readers can't avoid: the unacknowledged naiveté of such readers must be dealt with, and foreignness presented in terms of the known. The psychological processes undergone by cross-cultural travelers can be significant, and are not so easily translated to the uninitiated. Cooper recognized that cross-cultural encounters had formed American identity from the start and worked against the prevailing tendency to denigrate, dismiss, and destroy Amerindians. He noticed that efforts to encourage international acceptance of American culture as a distinctive, worthy addition to the catalog of world cultures were often hampered by cross-cultural missteps and failures. More than most, Cooper understood the process of exploring foreignness as well as the value of the experience, but found that understanding difficult to communicate to less-cosmopolitan audiences. Cooper's cross-cultural engagement is explored in two works that participated in the ongoing transatlantic squabble over the insinuations about U.S. culture in travel writing by Europeans. In Notions of the Americans (1828) and "Point de Bateaux à Vapeur--Une Vision" (1832), Cooper advanced American arguments against the propriety and usefulness of such judgments. Homeward Bound and Home As Found (1838), took these transatlantic discussions to a different level. Remaining staunchly American, Cooper was less interested in defending his country from European "attacks" than in understanding the differences that inspired them; his argument, aimed at Americans, was for a more enlightened U.S. culture--one that had the cosmopolitan skills required to command respect internationally. Cooper's ultimate understanding of "culture" as a moveable category of human difference in The Monikins (1835). Fuller worked for a cosmopolitan American culture that would be able to lead the world for the sake of the progress of humanity. Americans would be simultaneously citizens of the United States and of the world. Through her engagement with other cultures, she sought to fit her own to her ideal. Hers was not a consuming globalism, but a model of international engagement from the ground up. By extending the transcendental opposition to individual conformity to the cultural scale, Fuller hoped that thinking Americans would learn to benefit from the "variety" that surrounded them. In her writing and by her example, she shifted the focus of travel from place to people, urging Americans to travel not only to see foreign places but to meet foreign people and immerse themselves in foreign points of view. She relates her impressions of Native Americans as foreigners who suffer from Americans' failure to see them as a people worthy of respectful engagement, and her desire that her country not repeat that mistake in dealing with other nations. In her first significant travel experience, which exposed her to immigrant settlers and Indian communities, she discovered her interest in learning about and forming relationships with groups of people who were different from her, displaying not only cosmopolitan curiosity but cosmopolitan willingness to put herself forward into the unknown. Her years of study of foreign language and arts had left her better prepared to make meaningful connections there. As a woman she felt especially well-positioned to practice a cosmopolitanism that was its own kind of revolution. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

Thesis advisor: Marilyn Matelski / This thesis examines the various ways in which cultures across the world have used the game of soccer, or football, as a cultural unifier. With minimal equipment and simple rules, football is universally understood and globally popular. The uniting and inspiring power of football reaches its peak every four years during the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup. The tournament pits 32 of the world‘s best national football teams against one another in a dramatic and wildly popular contest that declares one team the World Champion. Despite the competition on the field of play, the bidding process to win the privilege to host the FIFA World Cup is equally intense. Nations across the world vie for the chance to host one of the world‘s biggest and most prestigious sporting events, seemingly in the hopes of boosting the nation‘s economy. Scholarly research, however, claims that hosting a World Cup has a negligible, and sometimes even negative, effect on the host nation. Why, then, do nations bid so fiercely to host the World Cup? This thesis posits that the host nation is not primarily concerned with earning money, but with accruing ―social profitability‖ from hosting the tournament. The intangible benefits to hosting the World Cup include situating the nation as a world class destination for business, trade, and travel. Further, hosting the World Cup gives the host nation the chance to showcase its unique culture to the world, while fostering peace, unity, and fair play across the globe in celebration of the beautiful game, football. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Communication Honors Program. / Discipline: Communication.

Este trabalho trata dos descendentes da diáspora armênia, cujas comunidades se fixaram na Argentina e no Brasil após o genocídio armênio perpetrado pelo Império Otomano durante a Primeira Grande Guerra. O objetivo principal é apresentar relatos de indivíduos descendentes e integrantes das comunidades formadas a partir de 1920, especialmente as de Buenos Aires e São Paulo. Busca-se averiguar a presença de uma memória coletiva que evidencie elementos comuns a uma possível identidade cultural armênia nesses grupos de descendentes. Objetivos secundários: abordagens sobre a formação das comunidades na América do Sul, processo de imigração da diáspora armênia e condição refugiada no contexto de outros fluxos migratórios para Argentina e Brasil no início século XX. É uma pesquisa exploratória investigativa, sem postulados de memória, que busca na memória individual traços comuns a uma identidade coletiva. / This research deals with Armenian diaspora which migrated to Argentina and Brazil after Armenian Genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Empire during the Great War. The main objective is presenting reports of descendants from communities created since 1920 in Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo. The purpose is check the presence of collective memory which can shows common elements belonging to a possible Armenian cultural identity in these descendants. Approaches about community formation to South America as well as the immigration process of Armenian diaspora and the refugee status in the context of other migration flows to Argentina and Brazil in the XX Century constitutes secondary objectives. Exploratory and investigative research without memory postulates or filters aiming to find common traces belonging to a collective memory through the individual memory nature.

A temática que nos propusemos a estudar se refere à afirmação identitária latino-americana à luz das obras Nuestra América (1891) de José Martí e Manifesto Antropófago (1928) de Oswald de Andrade. O problema fundamental de nossa pesquisa se refere ao fato de que, mesmo tendo surgido em momentos e lugares diferentes, tais obras apresentarem conteúdos com propostas emancipadoras para a América Latina. Nossa hipótese é a de que, mesmo que esses autores tenham escrito essas obras em momentos cronológicos e em lugares distintos, sem terem tido contato direto um com o outro, as referidas obras estão conectadas por meio do pensamento emancipador em busca de uma afirmação identitária da América Latina. Nossa escolha se deu justamente pelo fato de ambos os autores apresentarem, como ponto em comum, o uso da língua em obras literárias como instrumentos difusores de suas propostas emancipadoras. Nossos objetivos foram analisar sob quais condições estas obras foram produzidas, articulando-as ao contexto latino-americano, porém não necessariamente de modo comparativo. Também quisemos examinar a trajetória intelectual de Martí e de Oswald e os processos de produção destas obras para, enfim, compreender e interpretar as produções de sentido no discurso de ambos. Neste estudo empregamos como método a pesquisa bibliográfica, tendo como dispositivo analítico a análise do discurso sob um viés histórico, mas lançando mão de uma farta bibliografia interdisciplinar que nos auxiliou na tentativa de compreensão do tema aqui estudado. Para ambos, a ausência de uma identidade própria da América Latina configurava um dos maiores empecilhos da região em alcançar autonomia cultural e econômica. Ainda hoje suas obras continuam a contribuir para o debate sobre a integração da América Latina, justamente por proporem a reflexão de uma nova concepção de mundo em que os latino-americanos buscam protagonismo. / The subject that we proposed to study refers to the Latino America identity affirmation from the perspective of the works Nuestra América (1891), although they were created in different moments and places, articulating them to the Latino America context, as a common point, but calling upon to an extensive interdisciplinary bibliography that helped us in an attempted comprehension of the subject studied. For both, exactly because they propose a reflection about a new concept of the world where the people from Latino America intend to act as protagonists., Fernanda Oliveira Filgueiras. In defense of Nuestra America Anthropophagic: the identity affirmation Latin American in the discourse of José Martí and, having as analytical dispositive the analysis of discourse under the historical bias, in their literary work the use of the language as diffuser instruments with emancipatory proposals. Our goal was to analyze the conditions, SANTOS, São Paulo, such works present in their contents emancipatory proposals to Latino America. Our hypothesis is that although these authors have written these work i, the absence of a self-identity in Latino America used to configure one of the greatest obstacles in the region in reach cultural and economic autonomy, the mentioned work are connected through an emancipator thought in a search for identity affirmation in Latino America. Our choice happened exactly be, to in the end get a better comprehension and to interpret the meaning productions in both discourses. In this study we used as method the bibliographi, under which these works were produced, Universidade de São Paulo, which does not mean necessarily a comparative mode. We also wanted to examine the intellectual trajectory of Martí and Oswald and the process of produ, without have a direct contact with each other

Trata-se de um estudo a respeito de uma das obras referenciais da historiografia maranhense no século XX - a História do Maranhão de Mário Martins Meireles, - publicada pelo DASP em 1960. Empreende-se um esforço interpretativo voltado para o conhecimento da obra em seus múltiplos aspectos, privilegiando-se, desse modo, os sentidos de sua produção e suas implicações com a realidade da época, o perfil intelectual do autor que a tornou possível, bem como os conceitos e as noções temporais inscritas na narrativa. Analisam-se as possibilidades discursivas subjacentes a essa produção intelectual que reforçaram construtos míticos, utilizados como instrumentos de reafirmação elitista em meio à ameaça de desintegração identitária. Entende-se os conceitos de decadência, moralidade e ordem, cujos critérios de validade estavam voltados para a tentativa de retorno a uma passadidade arcaica, como elementos centrais da obra, desenvolvidos com a finalidade de fixar um ponto de vista tradicional e regionalista da história, tendo em vista a invenção de um espaço de excelência intelectual e material num contexto histórico vivenciado sob os signos da escassez e das carências. / This study deals with one of the key reference works in the historiography of Maranhão in the twentieth century the História do Maranhão by Mário Martins Meireles published by DASP in 1960. It utilizes an interpretive approach centered on knowing the work in its multiple aspects, privileging, in this way, the meanings of its production and its implications in the reality of the epoch, the intellectual profile of the author which made it possible, as well as the concepts and temporal notions inscribed in the narrative. The study analyzes the discursive possibilities underlying this intellectual production which reinforce mythic constructions, used as instruments of an elite reaffirmation in the midst of the threat of the disintegration of identity. Central elements in the work of Meireles include the concepts of decadence, morality and order, whose criteria of validity are based on the attempt to return to an archaic past. These are developed with the intention to establish a traditional and regionalist interpretation of history with a view to invent a space of intellectual and material excellence in a historical context characterized by scarcity and need.

Na África francófona muitos intelectuais usaram a literatura e o cinema como veículos de exaltação aos valores culturais da terra, de transformação social e política. O escritor e cineasta Sembène Ousmane pode ser considerado um destes intelectuais, uma vez que por meio de uma vasta produção literária e cinematográfica abordou temas recorrentes à sociedade na qual pertencia, fazendo dessas duas artes importantes aliadas no seu percurso de militante. A presente pesquisa visa estudar de que maneira a novela e o filme homônimo La noire de... exprimiram a visão do escritor e cineasta sobre de identidade cultural do Senegal. Para tanto, discutiremos o projeto literário e cinematográfico de Sembène, levando em consideração o contexto político do Senegal e da França. Além disso, discutiremos também o conceito de pós-colonialismo, por entender que esse campo teórico é imperativo para se pensar a identidade cultural senegalesa. / In Francofone Africa lots of intellectuals used literature and film-making as means of exaltation to the lands cultural values, social and political transformation. The writer and film-maker Sembène Ousmane can be considered one of these intellectuals, once through a vast literary and film production brought current issues about the society he belonged to, allying these two important pieces of art in his millitant path. The present research aims to study in which way the novel and the eponymous film La noire de... expressed the vision of this writer and director about the cultural identity of Senegal. Therefore, the literary and film Project of Sembène will be discussed, taking into consideration the political context of Senegal and France. Furthermore, we will also discuss the post-colonialism concept, for understanding that this theoretical field is highly importante to think about the Senegalese cultural identity.

O presente trabalho propõe uma tradução anotada e comentada da obra El amante bilingüe (1990), de Juan Marsé. Escritor espanhol atuante até os dias de hoje, Marsé é pouco conhecido do leitor brasileiro, fato que parece reforçado pela escassa tradução de sua obra. Especificamente no que se refere a El amante bilingüe, Marsé oferece um olhar questionador sobre as incongruências que permeiam a transição democrática pós-franquismo e os anos subsequentes, agravadas pela divisão econômica, social, cultural e geográfica verificada em Barcelona, espaço narrativo da obra. Tais conteúdos estão ligados não somente ao desenvolvimento do enredo centrado na cisão identitária sofrida pelo protagonista como à estrutura da obra, revelando-se em sua linguagem e nos recursos estilísticos utilizados. Escrita predominantemente em castelhano, a obra traduz certa sensibilidade à cultura catalã, de natureza bilíngue e, além disso, traz um dialeto literário como recriação da variante dos imigrantes provenientes do sul da Espanha. Espelhando a multiplicidade cultural do contexto retratado, esta pluralidade de linguagens e representações constitui-se como fonte de problematização, tanto no nível da narrativa como em relação ao ato tradutório. Desta forma, entende-se que o texto traduzido deverá prever a contextualização de um panorama bastante complexo, que possa oferecer recursos iniciais de leitura e indicar caminhos de análise. Entretanto, para além do movimento contextual, a tradução do romance pretende sugerir a discussão sobre temas como as identidades culturais, sociais e históricas espelhados na crise vivenciada pelo protagonista e na tensão provocada pela pluralidade linguística presente no texto. A busca por uma tradução ética procura assim responder aos recursos estéticos empregados pelo autor e à possível universalidade da obra. / The present work proposes an annotated translation and commentary of Juan Marsé\'s 1990 El amante bilingüe. Probably due to scarce translations of his work, Marsé, a Spanish writer still active nowadays, is little known to the Brazilian reader. With respect to El amante bilingüe, specifically, Marsé offers an inquiring look into the incongruities that permeate the post-Franco democratic transition, and subsequent years, which are aggravated by economic, social, geographical and cultural division in Barcelona, the work\'s narrative space. Such contents are connected not only to the development of the plot - centered on the identity split the protagonist undergoes but also to the structure of the work, revealing themselves through the language and stylistic features employed. Predominantly written in Castilian, the work translates certain sensitivity to Catalan culture, bilingual in nature. In addition, it holds a literary dialect as a re-creation of the southern Spanish immigrants\' variant. The plurality of languages and representations constitute a source for inquiries, both in terms of narrative and in relation to the translation process, mirroring the multiplicity of the cultural context it depicts. In this way, we understand that the translated text should provide for the contextualization of a fairly complex landscape that can offer initial reading resources and indicate paths for analysis. However, beyond the contextual movement, the translation of the novel means to suggest a discussion on topics such as the cultural, social and historical identities mirrored in the crisis experienced by the protagonist and the tension caused by the multiple languages of the text. The search for an ethical translation seeks to respond to the aesthetic resources employed by the author and the possible universality of the work.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-27T13:48:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ROSANGELA DA SILVA GOMES.pdf: 5328904 bytes, checksum: 86b1dca4cbd16f06d884b295139e7042 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-27 / This thesis is a socio-anthropological study on the Festival of the Boi Bumba festival in the city of Parintins - State of Amazonas, cultural event that has as background a magnificent symbolic universe with several peculiar aspects of the region. For its upward trend and style is recognized internationally by attracting visitors from several locations in Brazil and abroad. The event today is an important source of affirmation of the popular culture of the State. Attention is given to reading party in an educational perspective, sociological, anthropological and historical, focusing the aspect of cultural identity of young participant of the festival. Therefore, the bias of the binomial "feast and culture" connects the way in which we focus our theoretical basis for understanding the dynamics of the Feast of Boi-Bumba as an educational tool and source of identity construction. For that, throughout the research seeks to analyze the festival not as a phenomenon described by the sight of mercantilism, the culture industry, but as a social phenomenon that creates space for transformation of people participating in social subjects. / Esta dissertação é um estudo sócio-antropológico sobre a Festa do Boi-Bumbá na cidade de Parintins Estado do Amazonas, evento cultural que tem como pano de fundo um magnífico universo simbólico com diversos aspectos peculiares da região. Por seu estilo e trajetória crescente é reconhecida internacionalmente atraindo visitantes de diversos locais do Brasil e do Exterior. O evento atualmente representa uma importante fonte de afirmação da cultura popular do Estado. Privilegia-se a leitura da festa em uma perspectiva pedagógica, sociológica, antropológica e histórica, centrando a atenção ao aspecto da identidade cultural do jovem participante da festa. Por esse motivo, o viés do binômio festa e cultura interliga o caminho em que concentramos nossa base teórica para compreender a dinâmica da Festa do Boi-Bumbá enquanto instrumento pedagógico e fonte de construção de identidade. Para tanto, ao longo da pesquisa busca-se analisar a Festa não como um fenômeno descrito pela visão do mercantilismo, da indústria cultural, mas como um fenômeno social que cria espaço para transformação das pessoas em sujeitos sociais participantes.