This dissertation explores women’s participation and engagement in literacy courses from an identity perspective within the broader context of women’s life stories and the socio-cultural, economic and institutional contexts within which the courses take place. The approach I develop rests on a combination of literacy, discourse and identity theories. It draws on the social theory of literacy to show how women’s valuations of literacy and education contributed to the construction of the subject positions they attempted to enter through their participation in literacy courses. Drawing on Norman Fairclough’s understanding of discourse, I focus on the link between identity processes and the discourses and socio-political structures which are understood to be in a dialectical relationship with each other. I draw on feminist theories of self and subjectivity to understand how women attempted to change aspects of their selves created by the interplay of their social and material circumstances, their agency, and specific life trajectories. In Turkey, the majority of the participants in the literacy courses are women. The state-funded People’s Education Centres (PEC), with their extended network, attract the majority of the participants. Adult literacy programmes are organised as Level 1 and Level 2 by the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) and these two levels of adult literacy and basic education courses in Turkey are offered under the monitoring and inspection of said Ministry. I chose for the sites of my research two PEC literacy courses in disadvantaged areas of Istanbul where the occasional shanty house coexists with haphazardly-built apartment buildings. Methodologically, my study has an ethnographic approach to feminist discourse analysis. I observed one Level 2 literacy course at each centre over the course of four months. I had repeated interviews and conversations with seven women participants at Akasya PEC and four women participants at Lale PEC. Fieldnotes and interview transcriptions of more structured interviews constituted the major body of my data. The study shows that women’s accounts of their participation in the courses were underlined by discourses of formal education and literacy. These discourses have a prominent role in the official policy documents. However, the dissertation argues that the significance of the discourses of formal education and literacy was equally rooted in women’s attempts to redress, through their participation in the courses, some of the structural and institutional injustices they experienced as girl-children. These injustices made it difficult for my participants to access most of the prestigious literacy practices, knowledge and associated identities. The study highlights the meanings of the subject position of the schooled person which women attempted to take on through their participation. It also brings to the fore ways in which the discourses of formal education and literacy and the subject position of the schooled person were underpinned by socio-political structures such as gender, social class, ethnicity, rural-urban migration and the extent of poverty individual women lived in. It reveals women’s persistent attempts to access and continue the courses within the constraints of bureaucratic hurdles and socio-economic hardship and responsibilities. The study demonstrates how women “took hold” of the dominant literacy practices and power relations they found in the literacy classrooms. It shows the ways in which women aligned themselves with the schooled literacy practices and at times challenged the dominant literacy practices and power relations they found in the classroom. The study shows that women’s understanding of the value they found in education changed as a result of their educational experiences. It shows that women found joy in learning things they found both challenging and important. These findings contribute to discussions on the symbolic value of education and school literacy practices for literacy learners by exploring the roots of this symbolic importance in women’s life stories. The study demonstrates the importance of both schooled literacy practices and the broader value of education and the emerging specific uses of literacy in everyday life. The findings challenge the portrayal of literacy learners in policy documents and most of the literature in Turkey which assume that their most important literacy need is access to school literacy practices. The findings also challenge the deficit view of literacy learners in policy documents which undermines their social and economic capabilities. Thus the study extends understanding of what is considered as literacy that has the potential to improve one’s material and social conditions by exploring the perspectives of different women who lived in differing levels of poverty and socio-economic obligations. It also contributes to arguments on the reasons of finding value in education by showing the ways in which women found joy in learning in formal literacy classrooms as a result of their educational experiences.

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Utilizing archival research from Berea College's Appalachian Sound Archives and Appalachian State University's Belk Special Collection, more than 45 survey results, 15 extensive interviews, and participant observations from 15 festival field sites, I examine bluegrass festivals as sites of identity production through feminist methodologies and a participatory ethnographic approach. This requires careful analysis of the nature of the genre's audience and audience members' investments in the process of framing the performance of bluegrass music's history through a shared historical narrative. More broadly, this analysis clarifies the nuanced role of bluegrass festivals in constructing generalizations about place-based identities, race, and gender within the performative space of festivals. In this assessment, the political and economic actions generated as a result of bluegrass performances are explored as temporal and spatial organizers for the (re)production and consumption of generalized ideals which are projected onto both literal and figurative southern stages. I perform this research utilizing the conceptual frameworks of theories of space and place, politics of culture, and feminist methods, combined through critical regionalism. My hypothesis is that bluegrass festivals serve as spaces to perform white patriarchal capitalist desires while relying on marginalized and hidden cultural productions and exchanges. My findings reveal that in order to gain a fuller understanding of politics culture, the stage must be subverted and the researcher's gaze must go beyond that which is typically traditionally framed to encompass the festival in its entirety. This requires seeking out not merely that which is intentionally framed but also narratives that create the stage or are omitted by dominant ways of interpreting the festival space. Ultimately, I find the significance of temporary physical sites for identity construction and the potential for dynamic social change within these spaces relies on the ability of scholars and participants alike to re-historicize and retell dominant narratives. / Ph. D. / The fantasized rural Appalachian region and greater south—a social construct, constantly created and recreated by social desires, political needs, and economic trends—has been a space of cultural production and experimentation, notably since the reconstruction era. One result has been the stereotypically regional genre of bluegrass music. This project asks how bluegrass music festivals began, for whom, and to what end. More importantly, it turns an eye towards research methods and power structures within the community. Research was conducted at Berea College’s Appalachian Sound Archives, at Appalachian State University’s Belk Special Collection, and through online surveys, participant observations, and interviews. In this dissertation, I carefully examine the role(s) of bluegrass festivals, specifically those envisioned and enacted by Carlton Haney (notably, in Fincastle, Virginia, in 1965). My findings illuminate how bluegrass festivals serve as sites where widely accepted generalizations about place (specifically, Appalachia and the rural American south) and specifically the bluegrass community are formed. Further, I address the role of gender within these spaces and the symbiotic relationship between female labor and bluegrass. The history of bluegrass festivals is approached with the intention of broadening discussions of gender, labor, and historical narratives beyond the festival grounds.

Water scarcity and water contamination are persistent problems facing large numbers of people in India. In order to combat scarcity, the Indian Federal government designated 2016 to be the Year of Water Conservation. In order to prepare for the success of this initiative, different management strategies and awareness campaigns began in 2015. Critics have generally responded favourably to these shifts in water management because conservation is considered a benevolent and even environmentally-friendly, or “green” process that can successfully combat water scarcity. However, these initiatives often change the ways in which people access water based upon new governing mentalities. The governing mentality most strongly underpinning these initiatives is based on a neoliberal rationality, which is generally admonished by academics and activists due to the production of uneven socio-economic landscapes under neoliberal economics. Similarly, in an effort to combat water contamination, governing authorities have initiated programs and policies to ensure that safe water is provided for citizens. However, this too has often been influenced by neoliberal governing mentalities. In order to analyze these shifts, this dissertation takes a closer look at the narratives of water conservation, water scarcity, and water contamination using a political ecology framework in three states in North Western India: Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Haryana. The following manuscript style thesis consists of five independent papers, plus an introduction and conclusion, linked thematically through the discussion and analyses of the shifting nature of the hydro-social cycle under the pressure of various neoliberal reforms and processes initiated by federal and state governing authorities in North Western India. Having independent papers lends itself to a more nuanced discussion of the ways in which neoliberal water management strategies are lived-out in various communities. Neoliberalism is not an overarching hegemonic project or phenomenon, and as such the discourses of neoliberalism have had different consequences for different communities and populations. As such, this thesis highlights the ways in which the shifting hydro-social cycle has changed gender-related activities of water collection, the ways in which contamination is a form of slow violence, the ways in which defacto public-private partnerships operate in water scarce urban centres, and the ways in which discourses of conservation can be misleading and even manufactured. / Graduate / 2019-05-23

<p>My dissertation is a Black feminist inquiry into how Black women writers employ soul food imagery to equally assert their characters’ Blackness and sexual agency in post-Black Arts texts. These include Gayl Jones’ <em>Eva’s Man </em>(1976), Ntozake Shange’s <em>Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo</em> (1982), Gloria Naylor’s <em>Bailey’s Café</em> (1992), and TT Bridgeman’s <em>Pound Cake for Sweet Pea </em>(2004). These novelists tell complex stories of Black women’s grappling with respectability, trauma, and erotic and sexual agency. In each novel, these Black women share a common reliance upon soul food that is often underexamined in critical scholarship. I argue that soul food is essential to how Black women cope with the duality of pleasure and pain by helping them assert liberated senses-of-self amidst sexism and its attendant emotional and physical violence. I also conceptualize this coping as a vibrational reprieve. </p>

<p dir="ltr">Colombia has endured the longest armed conflict in Latin America. In 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) signed a historic peace agreement. The reintegration of ex-combatants into society is one of the most challenging aspects of any peace process, particularly for women fighters who break traditional gender norms, often have lower socioeconomic status, and some belong to indigenous communities. This study examines their challenges, focusing on the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and class systemic oppressions. Using in-depth interviews with 30 former FARC-EP combatants, this research explores how gender norms influence reintegration, how intersectional stigma is navigated, and how resilience is enacted. The findings reveal that while some former women fighters defy traditional gender norms, others accept them, potentially contributing to higher unemployment rates. The study also uncovers the complex layers of intersectional stigma these women face, including gender-based discrimination, assumptions about their sexual behavior, and rejection from indigenous communities. To navigate this stigma, ex-combatants employ various strategies, such as choosing silence, hiding their identity, avoiding outsiders, ignoring stigma, or challenging stigma. The study illustrates how former women FARC-EP combatants demonstrate resilience through collective action by developing projects that benefit both ex-combatants and surrounding communities. Rooted in FARC-EP's revolutionary principles, this approach showcases their dedication to building a more equitable society and serves as a powerful response to intersectional oppression. The study makes three key theoretical contributions. First, it significantly advances feminist organizational communication by highlighting the connection between feminist resilience, collective action, and the pursuit of the common good. Second, it further develops the Stigma Management Communication (SMC) theory by showing how intersectional stigma is managed. Third, it integrates the concept of intersectional stigma experienced by ex-combatants into organizational communication literature, particularly within the context of peacebuilding efforts in Colombia. The findings can inform the design of more effective reintegration programs and policies for former women FARC-EP combatants in Colombia, addressing their unique challenges.</p>

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation is a Black feminist qualitative inquiry of the interconnections between Black women, literary activity, community, activism, and restoration and healing. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Black Women’s Literary Renaissance and the Black feminist movement converged to create one of the richest periods in Black women’s history. Black women came together in community, through the text, and through various literary spaces–often despite or even because of their differences–to build an archive that articulates a multivocal Black women’s standpoint which many believed to be monotonously singular. During this period, for example, Black women writer-activists wrote more novels, plays, and poetry in these two decades than in any period prior while also establishing new literary traditions. These traditions included the recovery of previously published yet out of print Black women writers, the development of the Black Women Anthology era, the creation of Black women writer-activist collectives, the founding of bookstores, as well as the development of Black Women’s Studies and Black feminist literary criticism in the academy. In the dissertation, these traditions are intrinsically tied to the articulation and definition of the theoretical concept of literary kinship. Conceptually, relationally, and materially literary kinship is the connection generated by the intergenerational literary activity between Black women and girls. In the dissertation, I use literary activity in slightly different ways including to denote community-engaged oral practices, publication, relationships defined around literary sites, and the practice of reading. Literary kinship provides access to community based on and derived from a connection to the literary that is often marked by intergenerational activity. I argue that Black women writer-activists during the period of the BWLR articulate and define literary kinship as a practice of communal restoration and healing for individuals and the collective.</p><p dir="ltr">Literary kinship is explored in four interrelated, yet distinct ways in the dissertation. In chapter two, literary kinship is located in and operationalized through Black women’s literary kinship “networks” founded during the Black Women’s Literary Renaissance. In chapter three, the focus is on the Black Women’s Anthology era that begins in 1970 and becomes a pipeline for the development of the interdisciplinary field of Black Women’s Studies in the 1980s. The fourth and fifth chapters shift the impact of the Black Women’s Literary Renaissance to the 21st century and examines how literary kinship is rearticulated or re-visioned a generation later. The fourth chapter, in this vein, uses autoethnography and literary analysis to illuminate the interconnections between Black girlhood, geography, and my concept of literary kinship. The chapter explores my experience of literary kinship at the kitchen table, in public libraries, and in secondary and higher education as transformative opportunities that fostered my love for reading, engaging in literary community, and developing reading as a restorative and healing practice. In the final chapter, the rapid reemergence of Black women booksellers and their bookstores in the last five years (2018-2023) become integral to a contemporary rearticulation of literary kinship.</p><p dir="ltr">The Black Women’s Literary Renaissance is a significant period of literary output by Black women writer-activists that has had intergenerational impact in the lives of Black women. During the Renaissance, Black women writer-activists were catalysts for critical and necessary literary interventions, strategies, and methods that supported their sociopolitical activism, the development of a rich Black feminist and literary archive, and that manifested community functional practices of restoration and healing. Black women’s articulation, definition, and utilization of literary kinship in the 20th and 21st centuries has supported their literary labors as activists, as intellectuals, and as community members, and is therefore a practice of community restoration and healing.</p>