The study of women in higher education has been compartmentalized from the overall history of higher education. Educational historians continue to influence future discovery on the higher education of women by continuing to reinforce the master narrative of women in history. Acknowledging and confronting the master narrative within the history of higher education provides a useful endeavor by uncovering a deeper understanding of the history of the United States and educational systems. The challenge of continuing to be open to new perspectives of history will allow educators, policymakers and the general public to contribute to a better understanding about how education contributes in the journey for discovery.

This study focused on the testimonios [life narratives] of 33 Mexican American Ph.D.s who successfully navigated educational systems and obtained their doctorates in a variety of disciplines at 15 universities across the United States. The theoretical and methodological frameworks employed were critical race theory (CRT), Latina/o critical race theory (LatCrit), and narrative analysis in order to examine power relations, multiple forms of oppression, and the intersections of race, social class, and gender within educational contexts. CRT and LatCrit frameworks were expanded by attending to the experiences of middle class participants and participants who identified as second- or third-generation college students, which challenge traditional paradigms that essentialize Mexican American communities. This study uncovered and contextualized the ways that Mexican American Ph.D.s resisted and reproduced power relations, racism, sexism, and classism through master narratives constructed by the dominant culture to justify low rates of Mexican American educational attainment. The findings suggested that as the dominant culture develops master narratives, Mexican American communities reproduce these stories as well. Mexican American communities also crafted counter-narratives that resisted the master narratives. The dominant culture master narratives were: Mexican American families do not value education; Mexican American women are not allowed to get an education; The dominant culture and Mexican American communities reproduce masculinist ideology; If Mexican Americans would work hard enough and persevere, they can succeed in education; The U.S. is a colorblind, gender-blind, and class-blind society; and Mexican Americans are only in college/graduate school because they are minorities. In addition, Mexican American communities constructed two master narratives in an effort to advocate for educational equity and increase research in Mexican American communities: Mexican Americans must struggle through educational systems and Mexican American Ph.D.s should research Mexican American issues. This study provided a venue for narratives on Mexican American educational attainment that reflected struggle and survival, privilege and merit, as well as overcoming obstacles and not finding any barriers along the way. These narratives have the power to reshape, reframe, and transform discourses of deficiency to those of empowerment and resistance in K-12 education, postsecondary education, and graduate school.

No description available.

Mali, a poor country in the West African Sahel region, has been at war since 2012. What began as an uprising in its sparsely developed northern half has spread to the rest of the country and enveloped large parts of neighbouring countries. Several outside militaries and a UN peace-keeping mission have been deployed to the country, making the Malian government dependent on outside support to maintain territorial control. This thesis analyses speeches delivered in 2012-2023 by Malian state representatives at the United Nations General Debate and United Nations Security Council. Narrative method and theory are used to identify strategic narratives in these speeches, i.e., narratives employed by an actor in international affairs to gain a favourable outcome for that actor. These narratives are identified and contextualised to understand what Mali’s ultimate strategic objectives with deploying them could be. They are put in the context of already existing master narratives, dominant stories told about the country and the region. The thesis identifies two major strategic narratives, one covering 2012-2020, when Mali portrays itself as a democratic country under assault from terrorists, it latches on to dominant narratives on fears of state collapse and the Sahel region as a front line in the war on terror, ultimately seeking to portray its civil war as a matter that should concern the entire world. In late 2020, the military takes control in Mali and a new strategic narrative is employed at the UN. The military regime breaks ties with France, the old colonial master, and employs a narrative that casts Mali as a post-colonial victim of a nefarious French plot to subjugate the Malian state.

No description available.

Until the 1980s, the People’s Republic of China was principally opposed to United Nations peacekeeping, understanding the institution to be a thinly veiled excuse for powerful states to intervene in the sovereign affairs of others. However, the meaning the country attributes to peacekeeping has changed drastically since then. China has adopted a more pragmatic attitude and has gradually become more supportive and involved in United Nations peacekeeping. Today the country stands as a major contributor to peacekeeping, not least in terms of the number of peacekeepers it contributes to missions. However, how does China make sense of its current behaviour? This paper seeks to understand how the participation of Chinese military personnel and police in peacekeeping operations is made coherent with Chinese self-identity. The paper employs a narrative analysis that focuses on how narratives draw on master narratives about Chinese collective memory to construct participation in peacekeeping as a natural conclusion to already accepted notions about what it means to be Chinese. On the one hand, this paper confirms the findings of previous scholarship on Chinese identity and the country’s attitude on peacekeeping. Like these, this paper finds that China’s self-identity as a part of the Global South and as a great power plays a role in how China conceptualizes peacekeeping. However, on the other hand, the paper also finds dissonance in how the narrative relates peacekeeping to China’s identity as a part of the Global South. Additionally, this paper also demonstrates that the narrative draws on several master narratives that have not previously been identified as important to how China makes meaning of peacekeeping. Specifically, these are the collective memories of ‘Asian values’, China’s experiences from the Second World War, and the revolutionary history of the CPC.

A investigação do romance Girlfriend in a Coma permitiu perceber alguns elementos centrais que estruturam a obra como mito e paródia. O mundo ficcional é caracterizado por uma sociedade à beira de um colapso devido a sua incapacidade de mudar seu comportamento e sequer consegue perceber o que está errado. Na narrativa são utilizados recursos estéticos identificados com o realismo maravilhoso, pois, juntamente com a descrição de eventos coerentes com a racionalidade humana, há eventos sobrenaturais realizados pelo divino. Nesta narrativa, a ideologia do trabalho árduo como estruturador da vida em uma sociedade democrática e capitalista é esfacelado em vista dos terríveis efeitos sentidos pelos personagens: trabalho extenuante, drogadição, anorexia e individualismo. Com o uso de teoria da narrativa e pós-modernista, argumenta-se que este romance é um ‗mito do novo mundo‘ ao fazer uso da paródia como forma de contestar meta-narrativas, e ao propor novas cosmogonias baseadas na experiência pós-colonial Canadense. / The investigation of the novel Girlfriend in a Coma revealed some central elements that structure this work as myth and parody. The fictional world is characterized by a society incapable of changing its behavior or even realizing what is wrong with it. In the narrative some aesthetic resources are used which are related to magic realism because, along with the description of events coherent with human rationality, there are supernatural events performed by the divine. In this narrative, the ideology of hard work as the main structure of life in a democratic capitalist society is unveiled, taking into account some terrible effects felt by the characters, such as: overworking, drug addiction, anorexia and individualism. With the use of narrative theory and postmodernist theory, it is argued that this novel is a ‗new world myth‘ because it makes use of parody as a way to refute masternarratives and to suggest new cosmogonies based on the Canadian post-colonial experience.

A investigação do romance Girlfriend in a Coma permitiu perceber alguns elementos centrais que estruturam a obra como mito e paródia. O mundo ficcional é caracterizado por uma sociedade à beira de um colapso devido a sua incapacidade de mudar seu comportamento e sequer consegue perceber o que está errado. Na narrativa são utilizados recursos estéticos identificados com o realismo maravilhoso, pois, juntamente com a descrição de eventos coerentes com a racionalidade humana, há eventos sobrenaturais realizados pelo divino. Nesta narrativa, a ideologia do trabalho árduo como estruturador da vida em uma sociedade democrática e capitalista é esfacelado em vista dos terríveis efeitos sentidos pelos personagens: trabalho extenuante, drogadição, anorexia e individualismo. Com o uso de teoria da narrativa e pós-modernista, argumenta-se que este romance é um ‗mito do novo mundo‘ ao fazer uso da paródia como forma de contestar meta-narrativas, e ao propor novas cosmogonias baseadas na experiência pós-colonial Canadense. / The investigation of the novel Girlfriend in a Coma revealed some central elements that structure this work as myth and parody. The fictional world is characterized by a society incapable of changing its behavior or even realizing what is wrong with it. In the narrative some aesthetic resources are used which are related to magic realism because, along with the description of events coherent with human rationality, there are supernatural events performed by the divine. In this narrative, the ideology of hard work as the main structure of life in a democratic capitalist society is unveiled, taking into account some terrible effects felt by the characters, such as: overworking, drug addiction, anorexia and individualism. With the use of narrative theory and postmodernist theory, it is argued that this novel is a ‗new world myth‘ because it makes use of parody as a way to refute masternarratives and to suggest new cosmogonies based on the Canadian post-colonial experience.

A investigação do romance Girlfriend in a Coma permitiu perceber alguns elementos centrais que estruturam a obra como mito e paródia. O mundo ficcional é caracterizado por uma sociedade à beira de um colapso devido a sua incapacidade de mudar seu comportamento e sequer consegue perceber o que está errado. Na narrativa são utilizados recursos estéticos identificados com o realismo maravilhoso, pois, juntamente com a descrição de eventos coerentes com a racionalidade humana, há eventos sobrenaturais realizados pelo divino. Nesta narrativa, a ideologia do trabalho árduo como estruturador da vida em uma sociedade democrática e capitalista é esfacelado em vista dos terríveis efeitos sentidos pelos personagens: trabalho extenuante, drogadição, anorexia e individualismo. Com o uso de teoria da narrativa e pós-modernista, argumenta-se que este romance é um ‗mito do novo mundo‘ ao fazer uso da paródia como forma de contestar meta-narrativas, e ao propor novas cosmogonias baseadas na experiência pós-colonial Canadense. / The investigation of the novel Girlfriend in a Coma revealed some central elements that structure this work as myth and parody. The fictional world is characterized by a society incapable of changing its behavior or even realizing what is wrong with it. In the narrative some aesthetic resources are used which are related to magic realism because, along with the description of events coherent with human rationality, there are supernatural events performed by the divine. In this narrative, the ideology of hard work as the main structure of life in a democratic capitalist society is unveiled, taking into account some terrible effects felt by the characters, such as: overworking, drug addiction, anorexia and individualism. With the use of narrative theory and postmodernist theory, it is argued that this novel is a ‗new world myth‘ because it makes use of parody as a way to refute masternarratives and to suggest new cosmogonies based on the Canadian post-colonial experience.