This research examines urban renewal in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb of 30,000 inhabitants located in the northeast of Paris. It studies the modalities of spatial racialization, nation building, and subject formation among Afro-French young men living in the city. It also builds on a world-historical perspective to explore the diasporic webs in which the lives of Afro-French are embedded. Taking spatial racialization as a point of entry, the study attempts to understand how governmental strategies and urban policies regulate lives and residential patterns in the city. Three lines of investigation are pursued: 1) an examination of Afro-French racialization and genealogies; 2) an analysis of narratives and struggles of these communities and their impact on neoliberal spaces; 3) an exploration of the various ways spatial governmentality constrains and/or produces Afro-Frenchness. The primary purpose of this ethnographic research is to comprehend the French colonial history and its impact on the racialization of diasporic Afro-French living in metropolitan France. For this end, the study proposes the notion of "Afro-French," an analytical concept that designates a constellation of groups from Sub-Saharan, North African, and Caribbean origins. The term provides a heuristic to comprehend the urban and cultural experiences of diasporic sub-groups who have different but overlapping genealogies. Second, the project helps understand why Afro-French living in Clichy-sous-Bois embody and at the same time transgress official narratives of the nation. It argues that France's nationalism, like other forms of European nationalisms, is facing a contradictory moment in the neoliberal conjuncture. On the one hand, discourses about liberalization of the economy involve the deployment of narratives that celebrate mobility and flexibility. This new dependence on a global neoliberal economy destabilizes national economies and erodes the state's structures. On the other hand, state actors diffuse identitarian and xenophobic discourses that blame ethnic and religious minorities for the socio-economic crisis. Third, the study argues that spatial governmentality and urban strategies enable certain aspects of Afro-Frenchness but constrain others: there is no homogenous or unified logic to regulate lives and spaces in Clichy.

Considering Os Grão-Capitães: uma sequência de contos by Jorge de Sena belongs to a literary genre not well studied, led to my motivation to research the elements that make this collection a short story sequence. Sena’s book is, as far as I am aware, the only Portuguese language book titled by its author as a “short story sequence.” Consequently, the present study aims to discuss the theoretical principles of this genre, as well as the structural and thematic elements that render this volume as an integrated collection. Jorge de Sena’s book utilizes various aesthetic elements that enable its conceptualization as an integrated collection of short stories. In this context, I study Sena’s book as a paradigm of the short story sequence genre and analyze the elements of paratextuality, with carceral and desolation imagery within the Estado Novo society, which integrate the different, yet interconnected, stories into one organic whole. Thus, I study how the nine stories comprising this book explore plots that complement each other and provide the collection with a narrative integrity that only the “short story sequence” genre allows.

As a strategy of subversion and domination, recodification was deployed by the colonizer and the colonized under colonialism to reach their goals. In either case, the result was a deep impact of the other on the agents involved in recodification. In early nineteenth century, institutionalizing Persian was a product of colonial devaluation of vernacular languages, which recodified Persian as a classical language used for literature administration and law-making. As rewriting the cultural codes became a way for historiography to display the arguments and discursive models, it combined “useful” adaptations with the question of power, as we also notice in the case of the reform movement, the Arya Samaj. A return to origins of Hindu theories was an attempt by the Aryas to frustrate hegemonic models of colonialism. Recovery in this case led to an image of the Hindu woman that was at the intersection of tradition and modernity. Can new models replace colonial epistemologies? Can the nation indeed allow redefinitions to include everyone? These are among the questions that Ismat Chugtai's “Lihaaf” brings up. The heterogeneous nature of the nation may challenge patriarchal scripts only to be rewritten in re-positioned scripts that attempt to redefine the nation in dominant voices. Through the act of recodification, marginal positions intersect with hegemony where both are changed and marginality never takes center stage.

This dissertation studies the politics of collective identity in the essays of Jesús Colón, Julia Álvarez and Richard Rodriguez. Through their essays I study the different configurations of collective identity (mainly those of Latino people, minorities, diasporic, transnational and national subjects) that these writes evaluate from their social position in the United States. A review of their works reveals important aspects about the problem of identity of a first and second generation of Latinos who try to understand themselves as part of the heterogeneous community in the United States. These three writers focus on the malleability of identity and use it to understand different ideologies and values. In his essays Colón highlights the reality of a subject that is economically marginalized by the historical process of capitalism. In addition, he advocates for the union of transnational workers of the Puerto Rican Diaspora in New York, who face stratification and social isolation. In contrast, Álvarez explores the construction of a diasporic identity that relies on history and on transnationalism. This author places emphasis on her writing as a nation, as a means to reflect and re-write the Dominican transnational identity. Rodriguez, the third essayist I study in this research, promotes the foundation of an American identity and evaluates the ways in which it is obstructed by the practices of communities that identify as minority. The objective of my research is to analyze the development of Latino identity using the models that these authors explore. I rely on their ideas and techniques to study the complicated and conflicting process of the evolution of a collective identity. Throughout the 20th century, these authors developed their own approach to the ideological fragmentation and mestizaje emphasized by postcolonial thought. This fragmentation influences their interpretation of history, ethnic/racial identity, family, language, education, cultural hybridity, representation and nationalism.

This dissertation is a book-length investigation of race representation in three different East German feature film genres produced by the Deutsche Film Aktiensgesellschaft (DEFA): the western (Indianerfilm), the musical, and the science-fiction film. The primary films examined include Osceola (1971), Meine Frau macht Musik (1958), Revue um Mitternacht (1962) and Der schweigende Stern (1960). I specifically articulate how each genre structures a temporality around race politics that tells us more about unique East German conceptions of whiteness, non-whites' role in society and "progress" than it tells us about the objectives of international and interracial solidarity espoused by the state. In the introduction, I discuss the relevant foundations of this study, including the various discourses one must mobilize to explain East German racism and to frame DEFA cinema from a contemporary perspective. In Chapter I, I posit some theories of race and genre that show their historical linkages with regard to film. Chapter II is a historical overview of interactions between East Germany, DEFA cinema and the Global South. Chapter III focuses on the way the western film Osceola views 1830s American racism within a 1970s Marxist-Leninist paradigm that elides opportunities for its Cuban co-production partner or the anti-racist history of the Seminoles to speak. Chapter IV looks at the phenomenon of the musical in East Germany in terms of its production of East German whiteness, as theorized by film theorist Richard Dyer. Chapter V describes science-fiction film Der schweigende Stern in terms of its accomplishment as the first multiracial space crew seen on television or film and the problematic race hierarchies that nevertheless underpin the final product. The conclusion deals with the very notion of "progress," especially with regard to racial equality, and looks at recent German cinema as a site where the discussion initiated by this dissertation might continue.

This study explored the educational journeys of 17 academically achieving, low income and first generation college attending Latinas at three different selective institutions. While many studies have been dedicated to the reasons for the low graduation rates of Hispanics, this strength-based study focused on resiliency and on the relationships and strategies Latinas used to achieve success in the most unlikely of environments. The interviews considered: the ways in which Latina students persist and whether their pathways were consistent with Tinto’s traditional model of persistence; how students developed the scholastic capital required for persistence; and the ways in which culture and campus affected their persistence. The central themes fell into two broad categories: family and capital. Cultural context was found to be an essential component for academic success for these students, and family involvement was central to this context. Families wanted their daughters to become not just well-educated, but bien educadas, a term that includes formal education as well as cultural norms, values, and protocols. The study also revealed that the educational pathways of these women had been made possible thanks to teachers, friends or programs that helped expand the family’s social capital. However, the expansion of a student’s capital and her growing development of scholastic capital were experienced as hollow unless she was able to integrate these experiences into her cultural world in a meaningful way. Family, teachers, mentors, and micro communities all played an essential role in the integration of this capital and in helping students develop bi-cultural identities. Finally, the findings suggested that there may be some advantages for Latina students who attend a women’s college or are at least a strong women’s studies program. Because the Hispanic culture tends to be male dominated and perhaps because in the U.S. Hispanic populations tend toward higher rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, teen pregnancy, etc. all associated with poverty and lack of education, the students in this study gravitated toward education about women’s issues, women’s health, birth control, and women’s rights. The findings from this study offer guidance for ways institutions of higher education might betters support Hispanic persistence.

abstract: This dissertation examines the embodied experiences of domestic workers and their children as they emerged in organizing campaigns aimed at achieving a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in California. I analyze the ways domestic worker organizers have historically conceptualized their movements around demands for dignified labor and immigration reform. I argue that their demands for protections and rights force them into a contradictory space that perpetuates vulnerability and recasts illegality—a space where domestic workers’ bodies get continuously figured as exploited and in pain in order to validate demands for rights. I trace this pattern in organizational survey material across generations, where worker’s voices resisted prefigured mappings of their bodies in pain, and where they laid out their own demands for a movement that challenged normative frameworks of fair labor and United States citizenship that continue to center race and gender in the transnational mobility of migrant women from Mexico and Central America. Furthermore, I explore the embodied experiences of domestic workers’ children, and the embedded power relations uncovered in their memories as they narrate their childhood accompanying their mothers to work. Their memories provided an affective landscape of memory where the repetitive, and demeaning aspects of domestic work are pried apart from western, colonial arrangements of power. I argue that their collective embodied knowledge marks a reframing of pain where transfiguration is possible and transformative patterns of becoming are prioritized. I propose interpreting these collective, embodied memories as a constellation of shimmers—luminous points that align to expose the relationships between workers, their children, employers, and their families, and the specific context in which they were produced. Altogether, they create what I call a brown luminosity—forces activated by their mothers’ labor that created multiple worlds of possibilities for their children, resulting in nomadic memories which move beyond victimizing their mother’s bodies to enable an ever-changing perspective of the ways their labor has radically transformed homes, livelihoods, and transnational spaces. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2019

This dissertation examines the first ten years in the publication of a literary and cultural magazine by and about Black Germans and Blacks living in Germany: afro look. The dissertation demonstrates that, in trying to develop a discourse to position themselves within German society, Black Germans are faced with a linguistic gap: they can not easily build upon the discourse advanced in race studies because the very notion of race has been discredited in Germany. My analysis of afro look shows that, with the emergence of a strong Black consciousness, Black Germans are developing new terminologies to depict and analyze their experience. An increasing number of Black Germans now refer to themselves as Blacks or Afro-Germans . The term Black may denote ethnic origin, and/or occasionally represent a political statement as well. The hyphenated identity Afro-German affirms a unique linkage with a Black and German heritage. In chapter two I present an introductory overview delineating the history of Blacks in Germany. This places the history of afro look in a wider context. Chapter three examines how Black Germans, in their search for a Black identity, are simultaneously developing a stronger Black community. In this effort, linguistic visibility proves crucial in building a self-determined social identity. Chapter four investigates the role of Black (and white) women within the context of afro look. To a great extent, Black women position themselves outside traditional western feminist discourse. Chapter five examines how Black Germans express their unique experiences in poetic form. Poetry gives these authors immediate access to their inner feelings: they make strong statements about Black German identity and the interconnectedness between ethnic and personal identities. This dissertation affirms that independent subjecthood can only be achieved after individuals have developed the ability to perform actions outside the discursive parameters constructed for them by society. Black Germans' hyphenated background places them both inside and outside the racial paradigm. Afro look proves its uniqueness, in having provided—for more than a decade—one independently minded forum that documents the continuing formation of Black German identity.

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