Throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, theories of race contributed to the justification and authorization of global European imperialism and the colonization of indigenous people. In Canada, racial theories influenced perceptions of each citizen as either superior or inferior. Although European and American theorists constructed hundreds of ideas about race, there are several key ideas that continue to linger in the minds of Canadians. This thesis examines the socio-ideological context of racial theories and provides an historical account of the construction of race. The historical account highlights four prominent ideas: white superiority, non-white inferiority (marked by low intelligence levels), the belief in inherent racial characteristics, and racial purity and contamination. In Saskatchewan, these ideas continue to surface in discourse about Aboriginal people and relations between the non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal population. Although constructed ideas about race are scientifically unsound and grounded in the belief in white superiority, these ideas are often normalized as common sense and not easily recognized as constructed. Discourse and practices that appear to be emancipatory for Aboriginal people but rely on constructed ideas about race need to be re-examined. This thesis provides several examples of where these ideas surface in Saskatchewan discourse and recommends anti-racist education as an alternative.

Throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, theories of race contributed to the justification and authorization of global European imperialism and the colonization of indigenous people. In Canada, racial theories influenced perceptions of each citizen as either superior or inferior. Although European and American theorists constructed hundreds of ideas about race, there are several key ideas that continue to linger in the minds of Canadians. This thesis examines the socio-ideological context of racial theories and provides an historical account of the construction of race. The historical account highlights four prominent ideas: white superiority, non-white inferiority (marked by low intelligence levels), the belief in inherent racial characteristics, and racial purity and contamination. In Saskatchewan, these ideas continue to surface in discourse about Aboriginal people and relations between the non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal population. Although constructed ideas about race are scientifically unsound and grounded in the belief in white superiority, these ideas are often normalized as common sense and not easily recognized as constructed. Discourse and practices that appear to be emancipatory for Aboriginal people but rely on constructed ideas about race need to be re-examined. This thesis provides several examples of where these ideas surface in Saskatchewan discourse and recommends anti-racist education as an alternative.

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The subject of the diploma thesis is an analysis of how the official Swiss institutions worked with the reference of World War II, thus contributing to the formation of collective memory of the Second World War in Switzerland. World War II and, above all, Switzerland's role in it, was covered in myths by official institutions in order to maintain a positive attitude towards the actions of Switzerland during the Second World War until the second half of the 1990s. For this purpose, three major myths were made during the war and post-war years in Switzerland around which the official remembrance of World War II was build - the myth of Réduit Alpin, the myth of neutrality and the myth of Swiss solidarity. Main institutions that influenced collective memory in Switzerland during World War II and subsequently in the post-war years were the army headed by General Henri Guisan and the Swiss government. This diploma thesis analyzes the evolution of the perception of the legacy of World War II in Switzerland in two periods. The first one is the period of the Second World War and immediately afterwards. The second one is the period from the second half of the 1990s, when the International Commission of Experts was established which was an important milestone in the debate on the Swiss role in the Second...

This thesis focuses on Czechoslovak radio broadcasting on BBC from September 1939 (when the separate Czech program started there) to the end of World War II in which there were participating political representatives of Czechoslovakia after partial recognition of Czechoslovak government in the exile by the British government in summer of 1940. Main theme of the thesis are the radio speeches of Jan Masaryk, the former (longtime) Czechoslovak ambassador in London and future Minister of Foreign Affairs of the exile government. He launched the Czech Programme of BBC for listeners in the Protectorate on 8th September 1939 and began to appear on the waves regularly once a week in February 1940. The thesis analyzes how he tried (in his speeches and comments) to encourage self-confidence of the nation, how he tried to nullify germanization endeavors of occupiers and quislings to reinterpret Czech historical narrative and by usage of what ideological weapons he was creating the image of small, but internally strong and mature Czechoslovak nation, morally exceeding its inherent German enemy. He used this story as a rhetorical shield against the Nazi interpretation of the Czech tribe, who returned to the womb of the modern Holy Roman Empire, where it belongs as natural part - by the words of the Nazi propaganda.