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<p>This dissertation contributes to Indigenous archaeology, particularly along the Northwest Coast, the Coast Salish region and the territory of the Squamish Nation. I examine the regional archaeological sequence and provide an Indigenous perspective of time and space of Squamish Nation territory. Closer examination of this region’s archaeological record focuses on the occurrence of suitable igneous tool stone sources and their use over the past 10,000 years. A full understanding of these lithic sources comes from three different perspectives Squamish Nation culture, the archaeological and geological records.</p> <p>I propose that lithic sources are important places of the Squamish Nation cultural landscape and that the distributions of certain material types is linked to Squamish Nation place names and oral histories. Expanding this concept outward, I consider the distribution of the occurrence of these materials from 25 archaeological sites ranging from sea level ocean shore to mountainous alpine contexts. I then examine lithic source materials and artifacts from these sites on a visual and chemical basis (X-Ray Fluorescence) to illustrate the varying importance of certain lithic materials across Squamish Nation territory. Resulting analysis demonstrates that these materials have varying spatial and temporal distributions that relate to predominant themes of Squamish Nation oral history, concepts of Transformation and Mythical Beings. Material distributions, place names, oral history related to the region’s archaeological record are discussed under different theoretical frameworks of the Northwest Coast building from culture history, processual, post processual, and humanist perspectives cumulating at a Indigenous perspective of lithic sources and flaked stone artifact distributions.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This dissertation explores the social history of genetic counseling in the United States between 1930 and 2000. I situate genetic counselors at the interstices of medicine, science, and an increasingly “geneticized” society. My study emphasizes two central themes. First, genetic counselors have played a crucial role in bridging the “old eugenics” and the “new genetics” as mediators of genetic reproductive technologies. Genetic counselors negotiated the rights and responsibilities of genetic citizens in their patient encounters. Discourses of privilege and duty were also extrapolated outward to public debates about the new genetics, demonstrating the highly-politicized contexts in which counselors practice and women make reproductive choices. Second, I interrogate the professionalization process of genetic counseling from a field led by male physician-geneticists in the 1940s and 50s, to a profession dominated by women with Masters degrees by the 1980s and 90s. This transformation is best understood through the framework of a “system of professions,” and counselors’ professional position between “sympathy and science.” These frameworks similarly structured the client-counselor relationship, which also centered on concepts of risk, the promotion of patient autonomy, and the ethics of non-directiveness and client-centeredness. These principles distanced counselors from their field’s eugenic origins and the traditional doctor-patient relationship. I emphasize the voices of genetic counselors based on 25 oral history interviews, and hierarchies of gender, race, and educational status at work in the profession’s history. A study of genetic counseling is an important contribution to the histories of health and medicine, medical sociology, bioethics, disability studies, and gender and women’s studies.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The Philadelphia Public History Truck is a nearly two-year-old mobile museum project which creates interdisciplinary exhibitions about the history of Philadelphia neighborhoods with those who live, work, and play within the places and spaces of the city. Since I founded the project in 2013, I have navigated partnerships with both grassroots organizations and larger institutions and faced a wide-ranging gamut of experiences worthy of examination by public historians concerned with power and production of history as well as practice-based reflexivity. The first half of this thesis documents my key reflections of the first eighteen months of work and serves as a primary source on the project. This paper also places History Truck into a long historiography of both public history and mobility in the United States of America to explain the emergence of what I am calling the New Mobile History, an emerging form of practice in which community members and public historians work together from the onset of project development using ephemerality and movement as a tool for creativity and civic-driven history making. By analyzing oral history interviews with Cynthia Little and Michael Frisch, I argue firstly that Philadelphia was the birthplace of this New Mobile History. Secondly, I posit that for this New Mobile History to continue evolving, public historians must balance digital work and relationship-based process to create exhibitions which directly serve communities of memory. Lastly, I consider one possible future for History Truck, including its transformation from project to nonprofit organization manned by post-M.A. fellows who have the ability to work passionately on city streets and with new media. / History

The main aim of the study is to make a historical-biographical analysis of four selected Northern Sotho dramatic texts. Chapter one illustrates that the texts we have selected are historical dramas since they deal with the life histories of historical characters. In order to comprehend these texts, it is important to view them as evidence of oral history. The chapter also discusses the approach used by Fleischman which consists of the following parameters: authenticity, intention, reception, social function, narrative syntax and finally narrator involvement. Chapter two discusses the play Marangrang as a reflection of the consequences of Shaka's imperialism and how this affected the Eastern Transvaal in 1820. The chapter illustrates that in order to understand the life history of Marangrang, it is important to discuss it in relation to this period, popularly known as difaqane. It is clear that information about Marangrang has been deliberately distorted because of fear. Chapter three deals with the destructive consequences of Western religion on the traditional African religion. The chapter is based on the life history of Kgasane, who was murdered in 1884, allegedly for his devotion to Christianity. The chapter shows the importance of the need to make a re-interpretation of missionary writings, specifically those surrounding the Berlin Mission Society in South Africa. Chapter four focuses on the role of formal education in the destruction of the Bakgaga ba GaMphahlele history. The chapter is based on the life history of Kgosi Mmutle Ill in bringing formal education to the people of Mphahlele and how this destroyed certain traditional institutions such as chieftainship. Chapter five deals with the problems experienced by mineworkers and also shows the sufferings of Africans at the hands of the government. The chapter is based on the life of Serogole Mathobela, who once worked in the mine. Chapter six is a conclusion where the findings of the previous chapters are made. The reasons why the authors of these texts suspended certain information while highlighting other information varies from fear to propaganda. In conclusion, it is observed that in order to do justice to oral history more financial support is needed. / African Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

This thesis is a study of the cultural history of children’s reading. It is argued that it is important to apply a wider historical perspective to the contemporary debate on the rapid changes in children’s and young people’s reading habits, and that existing historical research rarely deals with reading as a practice, but rather with its institutional and textual conditions such as the school, the library system and children’s literature. The thesis thus aims to explore the practice of reading and its relations to historical circumstances.Through a close reading of 30 retrospective interviews conducted in the 1970’s and 80’s, the analysis deals with some of the experienced motives, inter- pretations, materialities and social dimensions of children’s reading practices experienced in the first decades of the 20th century. It offers a discussion of these practices as related to wider historical contexts. Theoretically, the analysis is in- spired by the conceptualizations of a ‘history of reading’ in the works of Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton and Jonathan Rose.It is concluded that even if the informants in principle had access to different models, motives and genres for reading, the practice of reading often had to take on the character of improvisation in contexts where material resources and soci- al sympathies for reading were lacking. Furthermore, in relation to the complex social tensions and dynamics surrounding reading, the practice may also be defined by its degree of legitimacy and/or autonomy in a given context.These results imply that further research and debate is needed on the con- nections between the value attributed to reading in relation to changing concepts of work and “usefulness”, on the collective historical experiences of cultural progression, and on issues of the identity of the modern children’s library. / Akademisk avhandling som med tillstånd av Forsknings- och utbildningsnämnden vid Högskolan i Borås framläggs till offentlig granskning klockan 13.00 fredagen den 16 december 2011 i sal M506, Högskolan i Borås

This research discusses communication and meaning in the context of orality, using a variety of theoretical perspectives, including memory theory, media and communication theory, and semiotics. Drawing on the work of Walter Ong, it provides new insight about the characteristics and limits of oralnarration by assessing the memes, tropes, and phraseological units in the oral narrations of Armenian Genocide survivors. This research identifies a list of replicable forms of stories and oral devices that are used by the group in question; it then proposes that oral narration of non-fictional topics designed to convey historical or episodic information to others is intuitive, reactive, directed, fuzzy, and sticky. Concerns about the legitimacy and historical value of the narrations under review do not play a role in this research; instead, the focal point is the meaning embedded in the form and structure of the narrations under study.

This thesis contends certain contentious court cases can be traced beyond their legal roots to deep, sometimes incommensurable philosophical disagreements. However, the unitary nature of the judicial system effectively forces the court to take sides, putting its institutional weight and moral authority behind one set of principles and not another. Following Cover, I contend that this encourages future litigants to rephrase their claims in the court’s preferred normative language, thus influencing our normative environment. The theories which guide judicial decisions, however, are generally insufficiently attentive to the court’s normative influence. In response, I attempt adapting Dworkin’s Law as Integrity around Cover’s more sociological view. Chapter 1 examines Cover’s view, Chapter 2 explores Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem and Delmaagukw v. B.C. as case studies, and Chapter 3 adapts Dworkin around Covers view. My conclusions argue that further inspiration can be drawn from EU Coordinate Constitutionalism and Sui Generis aboriginal rights.

This thesis will explore how the Supreme Court of Canada understands and frames the religious ways of the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en First Nations peoples, in the case Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (1997). The case started as a land claims case but at the Supreme Court level it became about whether Aboriginal oral knowledge could be used as historical evidence in a Canadian court of law, in particular for this dispute, as an aid for First Nations peoples to establish title to their traditional territories. The Court decided that Aboriginal oral knowledge could be used as evidence. This thesis does five things: 1. It examines some of the tools that can be used to examine and evaluate how the religious ways of Aboriginal peoples are discussed in law in Canada. Here it focuses on using a broad understanding of religion as “lived” to understand religion. It also establishes a social-scientific method of discourse analysis, drawn from a number of sources, to evaluate legal documents. 2. This thesis explores the socio-legal context in Canada in which Aboriginal peoples and their claims need to be understood. Here the presence of European and Christian views that are still present in society and social institutions in Canada and the way they affect how Aboriginal religious ways are understood is determined. The characteristics of law that make it difficult for Aboriginal claims to be understood and handled adequately in court in Canada are also investigated. 3. The third aspect that this thesis focuses on the markers of the religious ways of Aboriginal peoples in the Delgamuukw case and how are they understood in the Canadian socio-legal context. Here there is discussion of oral knowledge, land, crests, feasting and totem poles and what each might mean for the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en peoples and how the legal system might have trouble handling them. 4. Analysis of the Delgamuukw case is the fourth part of this thesis. How the law understands and frames the religious ways of the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en peoples in the Delgamuukw case are investigated. It is determined that the Court downplayed the religious ways of Aboriginal peoples (by “writing out”, by using vague language to refer to it or by not mentioning it at all); it did not do justice to Aboriginal beliefs by labeling oral knowledge as “sacred”; the Delgamuukw decision fell short of really treating oral knowledge as equal to other forms of historical evidence by excluding oral knowledge with religious content; legal adjudicators made pronouncements on the religious uses of land for the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en and finally; land was quantified, regulated and title was diminished by the ability for the court to infringe on it. What these actions by the Court suggested about how it understands religion and the religious ways of Aboriginal peoples where also contemplated. It was noted that the law characterized issues and used language in particular ways to avoid discussing religion, to discount it as evidence, and used a Christian understanding of religion to comprehend Aboriginal religious ways, which did not do justice to their beliefs. 5. The last part of this thesis questions whether there other ways in which the law, and the majority of non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada, could come to better understand and handle the religious ways of Aboriginal peoples than they did in the Delgamuukw case. It determines that there are a number of indications that suggest that this is possible including, the unique historical situation of Canada, the teaching and communication skills present in many Aboriginal communities, the space opened surrounding the inclusion of oral knowledge as evidence in law, increasing dialogue with Aboriginal communities, and the current revaluation of history. Nevertheless, there is also an ambivalence on behalf of the law regarding whether or not it will go in the direction that could view Aboriginal religious ways in alternative ways which could result in a better understanding these ways on their own terms. The thesis concludes that according to analysis of the Delgamuukw case, law has difficulty understanding and handling the religious ways of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.