This dissertation provides an ethnographic account of a popular education-fieldwork project carried on with a group of Puerto Rican women (puertorriqueñas ) residing in a small Western Massachusetts city. The project, intended to examine the processes of individual and collective identity formation, affirmation, and representation in the context of the diaspora, was conducted from November, 1995 through June, 1997. At a theoretical level, this dissertation manages to contextualize the macro-structural approaches prevalent in the literature on nondominant identities produced within both postcolonial scholarship and Cultural Studies in Communication. Its focus on the experiences and histories of the diasporic puertorriqueña allows this work to engage with the complex debates on identity and nationality that have enthralled generations of scholars and critics committed to inscribing Puerto Ricans as a distinct pueblo (people) despite their lacking a nation-state; and to challenge the de-gendered character of the national fictions that have been written by Puerto Rican intellectual and political elites during the past two centuries. By wedding ethnographic fieldwork to popular education—defined as a political praxis that entails both reflection upon the world and concerted action toward transforming it (Freire, 1974)—this investigation renders a program of scholarly research capable of redistributing the privilege of education and cultural interpretation, via fostering reciprocal collaborations between the researcher and those conventionally thought of as her “research subjects.” Las Luchadoras, as the (puertorriqueñas) on whom this work is based came to name themselves, provide a portentous example of how research participants can become themselves researchers of their own culture and histories, thus turning the fieldwork process into a forum for effecting social transformations. Finally, at an ethical and political level, this dissertation discusses the usefulness of testimonial practice—the collective process of eliciting, listening to and responding to oral histories—as a means for challenging and subverting the colonizing dichotomies of traditional ethnographic methods, namely: observer/observed, reader/writer, self/other. In so doing, it provides a model for both generating popular histories that advance a rooted understanding of the intersections of class, gender, capitalist and colonial ideologies, and for making academic work accountable to marginalized group’s own struggles for political enfranchisement and self-representation.

Spain has had a significant influence on the Americas since Christopher Columbus landed at Hispañola in 1492, sailing in a Spanish ship with a Spanish crew. That event began a period of conquest that left Spain in control of much of Latin America and dominant in the territory that would become much of the southwestern and western United States. Much has been written about the conquistadors and explorers who came to the “New World,” but after this period there is little mention of Spanish immigrants in the United States. This country experienced a period of mass immigration during the end of the 19th century and the first quarter of this century. Spaniards were among them, but accounts of this immigration rarely mention this fact. Several thousand Spaniards immigrated to West Virginia, drawn primarily by jobs in the coal mines. However, this story is virtually unknown because no one has documented it, like so much of America's past that is ignored in the “official history” of the country. This study fills a gap in knowledge about Spaniards who came to West Virginia while addressing the broader question of who is included and who is excluded in our history. The study employed oral history interviews and a review of documents and records to explore and document the experiences of the Spanish immigrants. It found that Spaniards immigrated primarily from the southern region of Andalucia and the northern regions of Galicia and Asturias. They left Spain for economic, political and social reasons and many lived in other countries and states before settling in West Virginia. Most labored in the coal mines, struggled in their day-to-day lives and experienced the sting of prejudice. They maintained their culture in many ways, including language, food ways and by starting a Spanish club in 1938, the Ateneo Español. The study suggests ideas on how the stories of the Spanish immigrants can be used to make a social studies class more multicultural through oral history. It also includes a survey of social studies educators and an analysis of textbooks.

Professions and careers related to science and mathematics lack representation of minorities. Within these underrepresented minority populations there is no other group more affected than Latina women and girls. Women in general, are still underrepresented in many areas of our society. While women's roles are changing in today's society, most changes encourage the participation of more White/Anglo women in traditionally male roles. Latina women are still more disadvantaged than White women. There is no doubt that education is significant in increasing the participation of minorities in the fields of science and mathematics, especially for minority girls (Oakes, 1990; Rodriguez, 1993). This study explored the interests, life experiences, characteristics and motivations of Latina girls of Puerto Rican origin who are successful in science and mathematics high school courses. The study identifies factors that can influence the interest of Latina girls of Puerto Rican origin in science and mathematics career choices. This research is significant and relevant to educators and policy makers, especially to science and mathematics educators. The research is primarily descriptive and exploratory. It explores the social characteristics of Latina girls and professional women who have been successful in science and mathematics high school courses. The research offers the reader a visit to the participants' homes with descriptions and the opportunity to explore the thoughts and life experiences of Latina girls, their mothers and young Latina professionals of Puerto Rican origin. This research reveals the common characteristics of successful students found in the Latina girls of Puerto Rican origin who where interviewed. Creating a portrait of Latina girls of Puerto Rican origin who are successful in science and mathematics high school courses in one of the school districts of western Massachusetts. The research findings reveal that teacher relationships, family expectations, mother's support, mother - daughter relationship, cultural pride, talent recognition, the girls' perception of teachers and school and the girls strong desire to change their economic situation contribute to their success in school regardless of their low socio-economic backgrounds.

This qualitative research inquiry explores the development of intergroup relationships across race and ethnicity in a college classroom. The study describes the conditions that support the development of positive intergroup contact among members of racially and ethnically diverse groups and identifies the factors that impede intergroup relationships. College faculty are searching for effective ways to work with diverse racial and ethnic populations in college classrooms and for interventions when faced with challenging intergroup dynamics. Issues of differential status among students often impact their ability to develop intergroup relationships. The literature in the field of intergroup relations lacks an analysis of social inequality to balance the literature on intergroup difference. This study positions intergroup relations within a framework of social justice education that acknowledges issues of inequality as well as difference. Focus groups were the primary methodological tool for this study, complemented by additional data sets drawn from field notes and student writing that was used as confirming data. The constant comparative analysis approach was useful for the emergent style of the data, as patterns and themes guided the process of analysis. Five significant themes emerged from student reports regarding their perceptions and experiences with racial and ethnic difference. Distinctions between the responses of White students and Students of Color reflected the impact of different lived experiences and perspectives shared by their racial and ethnic differences. Allport's Contact Hypothesis (1954), particularly his emphasis on equal status roles, was used as one of the frameworks for analysis, supplemented by social justice theory. The findings in this study suggest that equal status roles cannot be achieved between members of unequal social groups in a classroom but that positive intergroup relationships among students are achievable by the presence of a number of other environmental factors. Participants identified conditions in the classroom setting and the role of the teacher as enabling factors that supported their ability to develop intergroup relationships. Educators can enhance the learning outcomes for their students when attention is given to the diverse racial and ethnic identities in the classroom population and the development of relationships among students.

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions held by inner city, low-income, 12th grade, Black males of their educational experiences. The study was conducted using a qualitative, phenomenological in-depth interview methodology. The study sample consisted of 9 inner city, low-income Black males from 5 different high schools in Western Massachusetts. Data was collected using audiotape and field notes. There were nine major themes that emerged from the study data. These themes were labeling; differential racial treatment; importance of teachers who care; connection with Black teachers; family influences; the degree of motivation; the role of anger and conflict; the role of sports; and the influence of Black male role models. Key findings from this study suggest that Black males are motivated to achieve academically when specific factors are in place including parents who demonstrate positive, consistent, interaction and feedback promoting academic engagement; school personnel that demonstrate an ability to relate to cultural, racial and community backgrounds of students, school personnel that demonstrate a capacity to care and support the personal and academic needs of Black males; and self directed academic behaviors and positive peer influences that motivated participants towards higher academic levels and high school graduation. Other findings identified were specific obstacles and supports for the participants' academic achievement. These include factors such as family influences and lack of positive male role models. Additionally, racism, racial labeling and racial double standards in schools fostered hostile educational environments that negatively affected the participants' opportunities for academic success and resulted in a decrease in academic motivation and lower academic achievement levels. The results of this study will provide a resource to parents, educators, policymakers, researchers, and populations with similar demographics who seek an increased understanding of the factors affecting the academic achievement of inner city, low-income, 12th grade, Black males.

This dissertation is a two-fold project. The first half is a methodological examination of how memoirs can be used as instruments of historical understanding. The second half applies this methodology to the study of several memoirs written about life in the American south in the first half of the twentieth century. Memoir is a peculiar genre which straddles the disciplines of literature and history. Currently the field of autobiography studies is dominated by literary critics. However, there is nothing inherent about the genre dictating that this should be the case. This dissertation analyzes memoirs from a historical perspective. I argue that insights drawn from life writing have the potential to greatly enhance our historical understanding. I broach several topics including the problem of defining autobiography, the disciplinary proprietorship of the memoir, the relationship between history and theory, and the linkages between the historical study of memoirs and interdisciplinary conversations about historical memory. I describe the nature of historical reality, arguing that the individual thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and misperceptions of each historical agent are constitutive of the historical reality of a particular moment. Memoirs capture the entire universe as it appeared from one acknowledged perspective. Furthermore, skilled, creative writers are especially adept at capturing the complexity of a past moment. Authors of literary memoirs draw on the aesthetic power of literary language and on literary devices such as metaphor and irony to powerfully portray particular historical moments. I apply these ideas to an examination of memoirs about life in the segregated American south. I analyze memoirs written by African Americans, by whites, by men, by women, and by individuals with various political points of views. I find these accounts bear certain similarities to one another but are often strikingly at odds. Different ideas about the psychological impact of segregation, dissimilar characterizations of the black community, and contrary descriptions of the same moment and the same geographical space reveal that there is no singular Jim Crow experience. Historical reality is multifaceted, and the complexities of individual experiences are best captured in artfully constructed literary memoirs.

Resource dependency arguments bring IT businesses and their strategic efforts to recruit, hire, train and retain women and minorities into the center of this study's analysis. In essence, organizations, like IT businesses, depend on their ability to control and solve external and internal resource dependencies (Pfeffer & Salancik 1978). In the case of IT businesses attempt to attract, develop and retain women and minority IT talent, this ability is dependent on the firm's link to the outside world. In this effort, IT businesses must interact with other organizations given the critical need for human resources. Hence, the environment is thus the critical factor in which IT businesses become dependent. Building on the works of Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) and DiMaggio and Powell (1983), considerable attention has been devoted to understanding organizational structures and behaviors and their responses to the environment in terms of resource dependencies. Grounded in institutionalists, interorganizationalists, neoinstitutionalists and bureaucratic control theorists' arguments, this dissertation provides evidence of four imperatives underlying the business of diversity : (1) enforcement imperative; (2) business imperative; (3) moral imperative and (4) pluralistic imperative. The multiple and distinctive imperatives determine, at least in part, whether and to what extent IT businesses adopt and implement strategies. Data collected for this study involved two phases. First, a mail survey of a random sample of 600 U.S. IT businesses stratified by employee sizes of equal proportion was conducted. The second phase of this study involved in-depth interviews with twenty-five human resources managers and executives focusing on factors that contribute to a firm's decision to implement a diversity strategy and structure as well as how they enter into and negotiate relationships with other organizations in order to obtain their diversity goals. Together, this multi-method approach provides data that predicts how environmental and organizational factors predict how IT businesses adopt and implement strategies and structures to recruit, hire, train and retain women and minority IT professionals.

The purpose of this study was to access a research population of self-identified student perpetrators of ethnoviolence in order to learn more about their motivations, their perspectives of self and others, and their considerations for making moral decisions. The study design was quantitative and qualitative in nature and relied on both statistical analysis and ethnographic field study methods. The research procedures consisted of three basic phases: theoretical applications, perpetrator sample identification, and in-depth interview administration and analysis. A perpetrator screening survey was developed based on an Ethnoviolence Severity Scale Model and administered to a class size sample of 340 students of which 306 responded. Survey findings indicated a surprisingly high percentage of students (27.2%) admitted to committing ethnoviolent behaviors across the severity model. A significant number of students also admitted to both verbally (36.3%) and physically threatening (18.0%) others on the basis of race or ethnicity. In addition, 15.0% were physically involved in an actual hate fight and 6.0% injured someone over an issue of race or ethnicity. The survey also yielded several statistically significant relationships based on gender as well as Greek membership and the perpetration of both multiple and individual acts of ethnoviolence. Using a weight-based scoring system, 8 survey respondents were selected for in-depth interviewing (6 perpetrators and 2 non-perpetrators). Using two schemes for coding responses developed by Lyons (1983), the predominant Relational Component for self-definition among perpetrators was Separate/Objective (91.4%). As a group, perpetrators were 11 times more likely to use this mode, whereas, non-perpetrators were 18 times more likely to use the Connected one. These findings indicate that the majority of perpetrators see themselves as separate versus connected to others and view relationships as part of obligations or commitments with societal duty and principles to uphold. In addition, the perpetrator subjects were found to consistently use (greater than 80%) the Morality as Justice versus Care construct when considering moral problems. Across conflict types, perpetrators were 3.3 times more likely to use the moral ideological concepts of rights and fairness versus the concepts of situational response and interpersonal relationships in their considerations for making moral decisions.

This dissertation examines the sexual dimensions of miscegenation and the effect that it had on the lives of three slave women, their children, and their white slave masters. Chapter 1 explores the historical dynamic concerning the issue of cross-racial relationships in the slave South. Chapter 2 will examine the black female experience under slavery and the dynamics that helped to shape their lives including the issues of race, class and gender. Although we are well aware of the exploitation of slave women, we will also examine how these women used “agency” to resist and to control their day-to-day lives. Chapter 3 revisits the lives of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, which continue to ignite questions concerning their relationship, despite the revelation of the DNA study published in 1998. We will explore Jefferson's behavior, not as a politician, but as a man confronted with issues and choices, as most men are, particularly when the choices concern affairs of the heart. Chapter 4 concerns the dynamics of love, miscegenation, and murder in the lives of George Wythe, Lydia Broadnax, his freed slave woman, and Michael Brown, Lydia's mulatto son. Equally as important is the relationship between Wythe and his closest friend and confidant, Thomas Jefferson, which causes us to question how much Wythe really knew about Jefferson's personal life, particularly with Sally Hemings. Chapter 5 explores the lives of Richard Mentor Johnson, Vice President under Martin Van Buren, his slave Julia Chinn and their two daughters, Imogene and Adalaine. By all standards, their relationship was unusual. Richard lived openly with Julia, his slave, and their children in defiance of the South's social customs and laws. Chapter 6 will conclude with a look back at the significance of resistance in the lives of slave women and how the issue of public vs. private helped to shape relationships that crossed the color line in the slave South. It will show how America historically looked at race and sexuality, and why the color line and cross-racial relationships continue to be a problem in the twenty-first century.

The study takes a grounded theoretical approach to the study of conflicted communication among adolescent youth in an inner city middle school. Ethnographic field methods were utilized over an eighteen month period in an inner city middle school and the surrounding neighborhoods. Conflicted communication is concerned with the use of patterned forms and content of conflict behaviors to both maintain and transform the youths' social world. It arises out of the social construction of adolescence, the institutional and community settings and familial practices. Three questions are posed: What are the patterned forms and content of adolescent conflicted communication? How does the school, community, and family make an impact on conflicted communication? What does the enactment of conflicted communication reveal about the social world of adolescent youth? Audiotapes of mediation sessions between youth, interviews with youth, school personnel, community members and families, as well as field notes comprise the primary data sources. Analyses of these data necessarily cross traditional boundaries to explore these research questions. Descriptive analyses reveal the presence of overarching patterned processes and particular repeated content in conflict situations. An interpretive analysis of 'face,' an often-mentioned symbolic theme, reveals the importance of taking the symbolic dimension into account in order to understand the hidden values inherent in conflicted communication practices. Lastly, a critical analysis examines the interplay between conflicted communication practices and the influence of the inner city institution and neighborhoods on such practices. Framing these three analyses is a meta-theoretical proposition regarding the social world of adolescent youth which suggests that adolescent youth engage in conflicted communication because it provides the means to re-organize social groupings, to experiment with displays and exercise of power, and to test the strength of socio-familial alliances. The study concludes with the suggestion that conflict resolution/mediation programs in schools consider the socio-cultural dimensions and functions of conflict in the lives of adolescents. Rather than striving to eliminate institutional conflict, school personnel need to encourage critical reflection about conflicted communication and help youth identify junctures within conflict situations where less destructive actions might be chosen.