After World War II, film audiences of American crime dramas, later termed film noirs, witnessed the relocation of several film narratives to settings outside of the traditional urban environment. These films began to defy the conventional notion that crime only exists in densely populated cities and began to incorporate alternative spaces, like suburban communities, small towns, and the open road, to tell their stories. This thesis examines how social and geographical spaces contribute to, rather than oppose, a noir sensibility by employing an intertextual analysis of three film noirs set in locations out of the city: Fallen Angel, The Stranger, and Gun Crazy. This project explores the possibility that noir cinema is not bound to a conventional urban environment, but that the ambiguous essence of film noir can also flourish in non-urban settings by preying on the fears and anxieties many Americans experienced after the end of the War.

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This report examines the use of grandmother figures in the construction of imagined communities in Arab American literature. Through the lens of diaspora studies, it argues that grandmother figures become integral in the creation of an Arab American imagined community based on two main tropes: a theoretical collapse between notions of patriotism and the maternal figure (in which the homeland becomes the Motherland) and the tendency of second-generation Arab American authors to connect their immigrant grandmothers to ethnic homelands. In exploring this connection, the report argues that the creation of an Arab American imagined community is necessitated by anti-Arab racism in the United States and the need for the community’s authors to be seen in tandem with the literary traditions of other ethnic minorities in America. The report problematizes the imagined homeland by arguing that it is constructed on the basis of simplistic juxtapositions between different generations within the Arab American community, and ends by examining the anxiety that is generated when this juxtaposition and the imagined community are threatened. / text

Recent work has shown the importance of identity in language learning and how the desire to belong to an imagined community drives individuals to invest in their learning (Norton, 2000). This work has documented that a mismatch between students' imagined community and the community envisioned by the teacher can have negative outcomes on students' learning trajectories. Other research has explored how institutional policies and their linked educational practices reflect differences in the imagined communities each institution sees their students potentially joining in the future (Kanno, 2003) and how reading materials and the discourses reflected in them can affect learners' visions of themselves(Pavlenko, 2003). However few studies have tried to document how an `imagined community' might be collectively constructed for others through a complex interaction of social and cultural structures, circulating discourses, institutional discourses, educational practices, group dynamics and personal histories that produce visions of potential identities (I) and their respective imagined communities (IC's) in which newcomers get socialized. There is a gap in current research on how `imagined communities' and `identities' for second language learners get constructed, circulated and made available to learners within institutional contexts.Through this qualitative study involving questionnaires and autobiographical research I studied the construction of imagined communities in an English language major in Mexico. I explored how professional identities and their related imagined communities are collectively constructed and made available to students in order to understand how institutions, programs administrators and faculty members could enhance the spread of successful professional identities and inspire/stimulate L2 speakers in their educational and professional trajectories.

In recent years, scholars have emphasized the importance of collective memory in the making of national identity. Where does death fit into the collective memory of American identity, particularly in the economic and social chaos of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did death shape the collective memory of American national identity in the midst of a pluralism brought on by immigration, civil and labor rights, and a transforming culture? On the one hand, the commemorations of public figures such as Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt constructed an identity based on Anglo-Saxonism, American imperialism, and the “Strenuous Life.” This was reflected in the burial of American soldiers of the Spanish American and Philippine American wars and the First World War. On the other hand, the commemorations of soldiers and sailors from the Civil War, Spanish American War, and Great War created opportunities to both critique and appropriate definitions of national identity. Through a series of case studies, my dissertation brings together cultural and political history to explore the (re)production and (trans)formation of American identity from the Civil War to the Great War. I am particularly interested in the way people used funerals and monuments as tools to produce official and vernacular memory. I argue that both official and vernacular forms of commemoration can help historians understand the social and political tensions of creating national identity in a burgeoning industrial and multicultural society.

This study aims to explore how the imagined Chinese community, as the nation of Taiwan, was created and recreated between 1949 and 2011, to become the Taiwanese community. The theoretical concept of the ‘imagined community’, which is interconnected with the concepts of ‘invented tradition’ and ‘banal nationalism’, has been used to suggest a sociological interpretation of the transformation of people’s self-identification from ‘Chinese’ to ‘Taiwanese’, as a kind of reflection of the changing nation of post-war Taiwan. The social phenomenon of Taiwan residents’ changing self-identification raises a key concern, namely, has the nature of the nation in Taiwan changed? Junior and senior high school history textbooks (1949 to 2011), which can be regarded as representing the officially invented history, were used as resources, and analysed together with data gathered during interviews with twenty-five history teachers, who had not been screened for age or ethnic differences. The history textbooks provided content for a case study, comparable to that of the theoretical concept of the ‘invented tradition’. This could be regarded as ‘banal nationalism’, through which the life environment is subtly shaped and reshaped to become the ‘imagined community’, namely, the ‘national’ environment. The interviews with teachers were intended to help the researchers understand how the content in history textbooks had been taught, in order to explain how, or whether, the society undermined or reinforced the officially structured ‘imagined Taiwanese community’. The two approaches – one of which could be regarded as a top-down power, while the other could be considered as a social force – jointly provided the research framework and a perspective consistent with the changing social phenomenon of the increasing ‘Taiwanese’ identity among members of the population. This study concluded that ‘Taiwan’ has been produced and reproduced from the local identification to the national. The research results show that the meaning of ‘China’ and ‘Taiwan’ changed during three time periods: from the 1950s to the late 1980s, from the 1990s to the 2000s, and from the 2000s to 2010 and later. Through this process, mainland China and Taiwan were identified as one Chinese nation-state, beginning in the 1950s to the late 1980s, as one nation but two states, from the 1990s to the early 2000s, and finally, as two nation-states, from the early 2000s to 2010 and later. This research explored how ‘Taiwan’, an ‘imagined community’, has been shaped over time. Teachers further manifested ‘Taiwan’ as an explicit concept of national identity by providing other examples, in addition to the content in textbooks, and noting distinctions between ‘China’ and ‘Taiwan’. Theoretical logic is coherent with this empirical investigation, and this study provided the perspective to interpret how the state worked as a top-down force cooperating with society’s bottom-up perseverance, to invent ‘Taiwanese’ national history, through which the national identity of Taiwan was manifested.

This study examines the issues of Transnistrian conflict, Transnistrian identity and Transnistrian statehood through the fields of historiography, economic development, language and educational politics, religion, Soviet ideology and the place of memory in two parts of the Republic of Moldova, Bessarabia and Transnistria. The results of this study reveal the influence of the above-listed spheres on identity in both regions, the significant role of the leadership of Transnistria and the Republic of Moldova in shaping peoples' opinion and strengthening the idea of Transnistrian statehood, and the existence of regional identity in Transnistria during a phase of transition.

This dissertation explores the construction of Filipino national identity by examining the Philippine national government’s appropriation of Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) between 1975 and 2010. FMA’s nationalization offers a window into the larger dynamics of nation-building in the Philippines. Having been colonized for nearly four centuries (1565-1946), the Philippine national government reified the Filipino nation by appropriating older symbols as national ones, and with the purpose of articulating a unique Filipino national identity. The nationalization of FMA is analyzed using Benedict Anderson’s constructivist interpretation of nations as ‘imagined communities’. The dissertation argues that in order to understand the logic behind the national government’s nation-building project using FMA, Filipino postcolonial anxieties over national identity (or their perceived lack of) must be taken into consideration. In this regard, FMA’s nationalization is engaged with Anthony Smith’s concept of the ethnie (ethnic community). Studying the history of how decentralized indigenous martial arts practice became institutionalized in FMA clubs, the dissertation finds that FMA as an ethnographic concept was formulated mainly since the 1970s in consonance with its commercialization, increasing popularity and nationalization. By looking at how national identity is represented in FMA films and in reconstructions of the national hero Lapulapu, the dissertation argues that FMA practitioners seek to highlight their localized identities by inserting their own symbols and interpretations into the national identity being articulated. This process, termed the ‘reverse appropriation’ of nationalism, was a way for FMA clubs to preserve their local institutions and identities from being totally consumed by the nationalization and nation-building project.

abstract: In 2016, the United Nations reported a historical high of 65.6 million globally displaced people. Within the current protectionist and isolationist climate, the U.S is accepting a fewer number of refugees for resettlement than ever before and less governmental funding is being allocated to resettlement organizations, which provide support services for refugee resettlement and integration. Increased migration and the advancement of communication technologies with affordable access to these technologies have produced extensive communication networks and complex relational ties across the globe. While this is certainly true of all migrants, building and maintaining relational ties has added complexity for refugees whose journey to resettlement, economic insecurity, political disenfranchisement, and vulnerability impact the motivating factors for digital engagement. This dissertation seeks to understand to what extent Diminescu’s (2008) concept of the connected migrant addresses the lived experience of resettled refugees in Phoenix, Arizona. The connected migrant through Information Communication Technology (ICT) use maintains transnational and local networks that produce mobility and belonging. Connected migrants are able to produce and maintain socio-technical sociality abroad and in the country of settlement to create and access social capital and resources. Using a grounded theory approach and qualitative methods, this research project explores concepts of mobility, connectivity, and belonging in relation to resettled refugees. The research indicates that age, imagined affordances, digital literacy, language, and time moderate connectivity, belonging, and mobility for resettled refugees. Finally, I offer the concept of transnational contextual relationality to understand refugee communication strategies with the transnational and local network. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication Studies 2019

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