Esta dissertação apresenta as principais transformações institucionais, estéticas e musicais das escolas de samba da cidade de São Paulo entre 1968 e 1996. O corte cronológico inicial se justifica a partir da oficialização do concurso de cordões carnavalescos e das escolas de samba pela prefeitura da cidade, em 1968, que introduziu novas regras que modificaram a estrutura dos desfiles, contribuindo para a extinção dos cordões nos bairros da cidade. Já o corte final é justificado pelas transformações ocorridas na década de 1990, quando os desfiles deixam o espaço público da rua e passam a acontecer em um espaço construído exclusivamente para esse fim, o Sambódromo. A pesquisa histórica se dá reconstruindo a atuação das duas principais federações carnavalescas da cidade de São Paulo: a União das Escolas de Samba Paulistanas (UESP), fundada em 1973 com o objetivo de reunir as escolas de samba e blocos carnavalescos e representá-las junto ao poder público, e a Liga Independente das Escolas de Samba de São Paulo (Liga), fundada em 1986 a partir de membros descontentes com a atuação da UESP e que representa as escolas de samba do Grupo Especial e Grupo de Acesso. / This masters degree dissertation presents the main institutional, aesthetic and musical changes of samba schools of São Paulo between 1968 and 1996. The initial chronological mark is justified starting from the official street carnival contests and samba schools organized by the City Hall in 1968, which introduced new rules that changed the structure of the parades and contributed to the extinction of the street carnival in city districts. The final period is presented by the changes occurred from 1991 on when the parades moved from street public space to an area built strategically for this purpose, the Sambadrome. The historical research is done assessing the performance of two main carnival representative institutions of São Paulo city: the UESP (Union of Paulistanas Samba Schools) founded in 1973 with the goal of bringing together the samba schools and the street carnival blocks and representing them before the government, and LIGA (Independent League of Samba Schools of São Paulo), which was founded in 1986 by members that were unhappy about the performance of the UESP, whose objective is to represent the samba schools of the Special Group and the Access Group.

This study explores what oral history interviews with my mother reveal about the familial and community dynamics that influenced Finnish-American children growing up on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula between 1930 and 1950. Close to four hours of oral history interviews were conducted with Viola Nixon, who is second and third-generation Finnish-American on her father’s and mother’s sides, respectively. After conducting a narrative analysis of the interviews, five themes emerged as significant to community function: family, language, education, work and church. I grouped some of these themes together to create three stories informed by materials drawn from the interviews, a cookbook, and my personal experience. These stories were written for oral performance. The stories provide audiences the opportunity to learn about and feel empathy for America’s immigrants, as well as to explore their own immigrant roots. Opportunities for further studies exist to explore the immigrant experience on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Using the techniques of oral history, residents of the Cypress Creeks area of southwestern middle Tennessee were questioned about their perceptions of the social change since 1940. In that year, the National Park Service hired men in the area to help snake out logs for the Natchez Trace Parkway's right-of-way. For most men in the area, the temporary positions on the Trace were the first "public" jobs they ever had. After these positions were no longer needed, outmigration brought residents north to factory-cities; thus, the building of the parkway remains a watershed in residents' memories as the benchmark when change began. In this study I examined oral material concerning pre- and post-change periods, to see how social change is articulated in people's talk about changes in social folk custom. Moreover, it was found that residents today regret the sense of loss associated with the "good old days" and that this abstract loss is most easily expressed by talking about the concrete changes in the area's customs.

Every semester across the United States, countless students join Greek letter organizations. While some may recognize the Greek letters, many Americans do not know the racial divide within the Greek life system, and the difference of purpose those organizations hold. This study focuses on eight historically Black fraternities and sororities and more specifically, their chapters at the University of New Orleans, a university that throughout its history has had a predominantly White student body, and often fostered an environment overtly and subtly hostile to African-American students. Using oral histories, university yearbooks, and university newspapers this study demonstrates how Black fraternities and sororities at UNO promoted and supported the academic success of African-American students by emphasizing community service work, communal bonds, and connections to campus activities. These organizations provided emotional and academic support for African-American students and actively resisted the racial divisiveness present on their university campus.

Diante de um conflito que se estende por muitas décadas, como é o caso do israelense-palestino, um rastro de dor marca vidas e parece não deixar muito espaço para a esperança. Ao registrar o testemunho de mães a respeito de sua história de vida e experiência emocional diante da realidade violenta em que vivem, busquei, a um só tempo, lhes escutar a voz, tantas vezes silenciada e, da humanidade de seus relatos, extrair uma centelha que fosse de possibilidade de transformação. No campo da Psicologia Política, é da intersecção entre a Teoria Feminista e o Estudo das Emoções que desenho meu olhar e na História Oral traço o caminho. Mas esta jornada teve início muito antes, e é nos registros pessoais de mulheres que busco preencher espaços vazios das narrativas históricas tradicionais. E, contrariamente à lógica do conflito que não vê lugar para mais de uma perspectiva, exploro, apesar das assimetrias, todos os pontos de vista que consigo alcançar, a fim de propor, não uma solução, pois esta não me caberia, mas um meio fértil para seu desenvolvimento. / Faced with a conflict that extends itself for many decades, as is the case of the Israeli- Palestinian, a trail of pain marks lives, and does not seem to leave much room for hope. By recording the testimony of mothers about their life history and emotional experience in face of the violent reality in which they live, I sought, at one and the same time, to listen to their, so often silenced voice and their stories\' humanity, to draw a spark of possibility of transformation. From the intersection between Feminist Theory and the Study of Emotions in the field of Political Psychology, I draw my gaze, and in Oral History I trace the path. But this journey began much earlier, and it is on women\'s personal records that I seek to fill empty spaces of traditional historical narratives. And contrary to the logic of conflict that sees no place for more than one perspective, I explore, despite the asymmetries, all the points of view that I can attain, in order to propose, not a solution, for it would not be up to me, but a fertile environment for its growth.

Feminist and social historians have long been interested in that particularly female ability to become pregnant and bear children. A significant body of historiography has challenged the notion that pregnancy and childbirth considered to be the acceptable and 'appropriate' roles for women for most of the twentieth century in Australia - have always been welcomed, rewarding and always fulfilling events in women's lives. Several historians have also begun the process of enlarging our knowledge of the changing cultural attitudes towards bereavement in Australia and the eschewing of the public expression of sorrow following the two World Wars; a significant contribution to scholarship which underscores the changing attitudes towards perinatal loss. It is estimated that one in four women lose a pregnancy to miscarriage, and two in one hundred late pregnancies result in stillbirth in contemporary Australia. Miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death are today considered by psychologists and social workers, amongst others, as potentially significant events in many women's lives, yet have received little or passing attention in historical scholarship concerned with pregnancy and motherhood. As such, this study focuses on pregnancy loss: the meaning it has been given by various groups at different times in Australia's past, and how some Australian women have made sense of their own experience of miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death within particular social and historical contexts. Pregnancy loss has been understood in a range of ways by different groups over the past 100 years. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when alarm was mounting over the declining birth rate, pregnancy loss was termed 'foetal wastage' by eugenicists and medical practitioners, and was seen in abstract terms as the loss of necessary future Australian citizens. By the 1970s, however, with the advent of support groups such as SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Support) miscarriage and stillbirth were increasingly seen as the devastating loss of an individual baby, while the mother was seen as someone in need of emotional and other support. With the advent of new prenatal screening technologies in the late twentieth century, there has been a return of the idea of maternal responsibility for producing a 'successful' outcome. This project seeks to critically examines the wide range of socially constructed meanings of pregnancy loss and interrogate the arguments of those groups, such as the medical profession, religious and support groups, participating in these constructions. It will build on existing histories of motherhood, childbirth and pregnancy in Australia and, therefore, also the history of Australian women.

<p>The focus of the dissertation is on the performance of the yoiks, what the yoikers tell the audience and what the yoikers mean with their narratives. The results demonstrate that the verbal art of yoik includes both song and spoken messages. The analysis of the yoik tradition is couched within performance theory. The discussions of the performance give keys to understanding storytelling, oral history, verbal art and a means to recognize when a yoiksong, vuolle, begins or when it stops and why the performer yoiks its vuolle the way he or she does. I argue that an inside perspective in conjunction with performance theory, provides a highly fruitful method to research in yoik tradition. In order to understand the tacit knowledge in the performance, it has been highly relevant to discuss the seminal work by the Sami author Johan Turi and to compare his theories with Sami scholars like Israel Ruong, Nils Jernsletten and Harald Gaski.</p><p>In the 1900s there were three broader documentation projects of yoik tradition in Sweden. The first one was conducted in the 1910s by Karl Tirén, who used the phonograph and wax cylinders. In the 1940s the Institute of Language and Folklore (ULMA/SOFI) undertook a documentation project and in the 1950s the Swedish Radio did so too. Now, it was now possible, with the modern technology, to analyse the yoik tradition in new ways. It enables re-listening to the stories that was told and to see them in a context where the performers’ artistic skill, together with their social background and their relation to their audience is made visible.</p><p>It has been discussed if there was an epic yoik tradition in South Sami areas. One hypothesis says that epic yoik was found only in northern areas in close connection to Finnish culture. However, this study shows that there was an epic yoik tradition in southern Lapland and probably the last of these epic singers passed away in the 1960s. The yoikers presented here are all good representatives of an epic yoik tradition. Sara Maria Norsa, Nils Petter Svensson, Jonas Eriksson Steggo and Knut Sjaunja are my main informants in the archive material, where their performances are described with accuracy. This makes it possible to analyse the events they are participating in. They are all in fact telling their lives’ stories by describing reindeer herding.</p><p>This dissertation demonstrates the yoik tradition in its context, and I show that the vuolle has a structure where one can recognize when it begins and when it ends. The yoik tradition is not only music or song, the story that is told is equally important. The way of presenting a vuolle is also a part of the yoik tradition and one has to consider both the spoken and the sung messages in order to understand what the performer means. In short, yoik must be recognized as verbal art or storytelling.</p>

This project examines the landscape of the farming community of Beagle, Oregon prior to and during the Second World War and the effect on it due to the construction of Camp White, a World War II training facility. The Beagle landscape is examined through the prism of current theory that suggests that landscapes are not discrete units of analysis but are, instead, symbiotic relationships between land and people. Utilizing archives, contemporary newspaper accounts, photographs, oral histories, and archaeological investigation, the history of the construction of Beagle landscape, the effects of the construction of Camp White, the subsequent removal of Beagle residents, and postwar renewal are examined. The project concludes that the Beagle landscape was, and is, a holistic entity that, though dramatically changed in 1942, continues to exist and inform the lives of surviving original residents as well as the history of the Beagle area. / Graduation date: 2007

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.