This dissertation examines how postcoloniality affects identity formation in contemporary women's immigrant literature. In order to do so, it must interrogate the critical fields that are most interested in issues of national and cultural identities, migration, and the appropriation of women by both Western and postcolonial projects. By examining the fiction of Bharati Mukherjee, Elizabeth Nunez, and Jhumpa Lahiri through the triple lens of ethnic American studies, postcolonial theory, and transnational feminism, I will argue that theorizing postcolonial women's writing in the United States involves sustained analysis of how particular socio-political experiences are translated into the context of American identity. I am particularly interested in the manner in which female subjects in these texts navigate between the various and often contradictory demands placed on them by their respective homeland cultures and their new immigrant positions in the United States. Although each of these writers depict immigrant women protagonists who adapt to these demands in their own particular ways, a study of these characters' gendered and cultural identities reveals a powerful relationship between the manner in which women are figured into the preservation of the postcolonial nation-state and the ways in which these women utilize immigration as an occasion to appropriate and subvert this role in the establishment of a new, negotiated identity. This project draws on three important and current fields of interest to both cultural and literary studies. Postcolonial studies, which has been central to the study of literature by minority writers, provides a useful foundation for understanding hybrid identities, dislocation, and the ways in which empire gave rise to nationalisms that utilized women in the formation and preservation of the nation-state. Transnational feminist theories are critical to understanding the implications of nationalism's appropriation of women and their bodies in it projects, and are especially useful in establishing feminisms that are not limited by American or European definitions and that defy homogenizing the experiences of postcolonial women. They affirm that there are many strategies for employing female agency, and that we must consider the particular circumstances (economic, cultural, racial, national, gender) that allow women of color to favor one strategy over another. Finally, U.S. Ethnic studies will inform my readings of texts that are, at their core, narratives of immigration to the United States and the seeking out of the American Dream. However, this dissertation suggests, the precarious position of immigrants in a nation whose ideals and dominating mythology are marred by a dark history of racism and exclusionary practices plays an important role in the establishment of an ethnic American identity in the United States.

This paper is an analysis of the novel Season of Migration to The North by Tayeb Salih. Season of Migration to The North was first published in 1967 and it is the most accomplished among several works in modern Arabic literature. I shall focus on one of the two major characters, Mustafa Said, a young Sudanese student whose brilliant career at school in Sudan and Cairo eventually brings him to England; he has a successful academic career in England as a lecturer at the University of London. One of the major themes of the novel is the confrontation between Mustafa Said and England, which in other terms is described as the confrontation between East and West. The conflict is rooted in colonialism. Mustafa Said’s native country, Sudan, was a British colony when the story takes place. It is a period marked by war, oppression and colonial violence. Hence Mustafa Said comes to England as a conqueror and invader. The confrontation is mainly depicted through Mustafa’s relationships with a number of English women. These relationships are nothing less than complex and they symbolize the clash of two cultures within a Western context. My main purpose is to more closely examine the relationship between Mustafa Said and the English women. In these relationships an important part is played by the stereotypes; the women see Mustafa as an object of their “oriental desire”. This is something he is well aware of but chooses to use the stereotype of himself as the typical Arab-African male, (so as) to seduce and “conquer” the women. In this context the term “orient/oriental” references Edward Said’s theoretical definition as described in his book Orientalism. Questions that will be raised in this paper are: what (is the composition of) the relationships between Mustafa Said and the English women. How does Mustafa Said construct an “oriental identity”, what role does the female body play in the relationships? These questions will all be discussed through a postcolonial perspective. One of the central features of postcolonial theory is an examination of the impact and continuing legacy of the European conquest, colonization and domination of non-European lands, peoples and cultures. What is also central to this critical examination is an analysis of the ideas of European superiority over non-European peoples and cultures that such imperial colonization implies. I will be referencing the postcolonial theories of Edward Said in Orientalism but my main focus will be on Black Skin, White Mask by Frantz Fanon, which is a psychological analysis of colonialism.

The purpose of this essay is to examine sfi (Swedish for immigrants), which is an ingrational-political tool with objective of teaching immigrants to read and write in Swedish. With the use of critical discourse analysis we examine the discursive practices within sfi. We also examine our methodological and theoretical approaches, and our application of them. Our research questions are as follows: • How are the discursive usage of “person centered” and “society centered” expressions being used? • How well does our methodological and theoretical resources work? In our theoretical viewpoint we use “post colonial theory”, which is a perspective concerned with global power relations seen from a historical perspective. Colonialism, in this view, still continues to determine the course of the world and cultural identity formation even after it has formally ended. According to our second theoretical viewpoint, “Governmentality”, the focus of analysis concerns differing forms of control. The shift from the state to the individual is of special interest. The results of the analysis show that the integrational-political discourse order within sfi seems to be fragile. We also find that “person centered” expressions are more frequent than “society centered” ones. The results also show that our theoretical and methodological resources are bound with certain difficulties. Firstly, critical discourse analysis has been found to be inadequate with regard to our empirical material. It was first when we applied Ulrich Becks theory regarding individualization that the discursive practice became comprehensible in a larger context. Secondly, our results showed that governmentality was problematic in the context in which it was used.

Human rights have become a dominant framework through which to narrate and read political violence in contemporary literature concerning Africa, the Caribbean, and the Indian subcontinent. This dissertation argues that human rights discourse depoliticizes crises that result from histories of colonialism, inequitable development policies, and the growth of transnational capital. The testimonial narrative structure of human rights treats political violence as trauma and portrays the narrator as testifier and reader as witness. It assumes that in the exchange between these figures a cathartic process takes place and that by proxy the original political violence may be resolved. The language of human rights is thus deployed to illuminate the suffering of others without interrupting processes of global capitalism or narratives of US exceptionalism. This dissertation examines the intersection of human rights discourse and postcoloniality. It analyzes the decolonial strategies through which postcolonial texts challenge human rights discourse and shift focus from trauma and catharsis to the national and international policies, business practices, and cultural narratives that sustain inequitable power structures. This dissertation begins by critiquing the concept of literary humanitarianism, which suggests that the reader may fulfill a humanitarian act by reading a story of suffering. After showing in the introduction how this literary trend is connected to changes in the nation-state system, the first two chapters analyze the narrative mechanics of the testimonial narrative structure. As these opening essays examine depictions of apartheid in South Africa, genocide in Rwanda, and slow violence in India, they problematize the expansion of the 'universal' humanist narrative voice and critique the construction of a humanitarian reader. Chapter three then compares methodological approaches to storytelling to analyze the relationship between literature, the archive, and lived reality in post-apartheid South Africa. Moving into a discussion of the economic and cultural imperialism that characterize the postcolonial condition, the final two chapters reveal how representations of old and new diasporas across Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Americas resist the language of human rights. Together, these chapters argue that the political potential of literature is not in staging humanitarian resolutions but in interrogating the frameworks that sustain inequality.

Over the past two decades the contribution of postmigrant literature to Germany's literary landscape has attracted significant scholarly interest. This study investigates selected prose of Turkish-German authors. Six primary texts are reconceived as "transgressive" as they intervene in contemporary spatial, especially urban and global discourses. They employ diverse "spatial tactics" by citing conventional dichotomies (local-global, West-East) in order to abandon and replace them subsequently with dynamic views on space and time. This thesis proposes a new theoretical model of literary analyses in order to grasp the multidimensional aspects of space. Thereby, Lotman's cultural semiotics is used as springboard to expand the model throughout the readings of the texts. By including additional theories on space from disciplines such as gender studies (Gleber; Weigel), urban geography(Lynch; Downs/Stea), cultural-historical psychology (Nora; Assmann) and postcolonial criticism (Said), this analysis focuses on narrative strategies that challenge physical and conceptual concepts of boundaries. The originality of this approach lies in a perceptive, thorough reading of textual productions of space that refrains from pinpointing the texts as homogenous minority literature. The theoretical model examines spatial motifs and themes inherent in the primary texts while disregarding the alleged "foreignness" of the authors. Each of the main chapters discusses two works focusing on the dimensions gender-space, memory-space and geography-space: Emine S. Ozdamar's Die Brikke vom Goldenen Horn and Aysel Ozakin's Die Blaue Maske are analyzed as novels transgressing gender-coded urban spaces. The Berlin settings in Aras Oren's Berlin Savignyplatz and Zafer Senocak's Gefahrliche Verwandtschaft are conceived as multi-discursive fragments shedding new light on German "realms of memory". Yade Kara's Selam Berlin and Feridun Zaimoglu's Zwolf Gramm Gluck are investigated in relation to "glocal" dislocations and Oriental imaginations. This dissertation makes two key contributions to German literary studies: First, it proposes an alternative reading to the common practice of categorizing postmigrant literature by cultural heritage and generation by putting forward the idea that writers adopt manifold perspectives on spatial configurations. Second, by reading literary spaces through an alternate disciplinary lens, this dissertation reads the texts as multilayered complexities of spatial presentations and advocates a comparative, text-centered method of literary analysis.

This dissertation examines the ways in which socio-cultural, economic and religious ideologies shape discourses on women’s rights, higher education and empowerment in Ghana. The study starts from the premise that female identity in Ghana is constructed through discourses of reproduction that produce and reproduce unequal gender relations that negatively impact women’s higher socio-economic and educational attainments. Consequently, discourses of women’s rights and empowerment are inextricably linked to normative reproductive labour expectations. Using a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework, I argue that women’s rights and empowerment issues must be located within particular historical, local and global socio-cultural and political discourses in postcolonial societies. Subsequently, this study situates women’s rights concerns within the larger framework of global systemic inequalities that reinforce the local socio-cultural, political and economic disadvantages of women in Ghana. I interviewed women’s rights activists, conducted focus group discussions with male and mostly female participants during an intensive six-month field study. In line with postcolonial feminist epistemologies, I consider participants as knowledgeable subjects in the production of knowledge about their lived realities, by centering their voices and experiences in my analyses. The experiences of research participants (heterogeneous as they are) provide excellent insights into transnational feminisms, gendered postcolonial landscapes, and global cultural patriarchal hegemonies. These experiences also illustrate how global discourses of rights provide leverage to simultaneously challenge and politicize colonial discourses of race and gender in the global south. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-31 11:45:32.468

This study is an exploration of the process of accessing dementia care for Aboriginal Older Adults living in Northern Saskatchewan. The research question for this project was, What is the process of accessing formal healthcare for dementia from the perspective of Northern Saskatchewan Aboriginal communities, and what factors specifically impede or encourage accessing formal care? <p>Grounded theory methodology informed the research process. Theoretical sampling resulted in a sample of thirty participants. Data were generated through eighteen in-person, semi-structured interviews; two in-person, semi-structured group interviews; and three focus group discussions including a directed activity led by participants. Analysis of data using the grounded theory constant comparison method led to an emergent theory that was verified by research participants.<p>The theory that emerged explains the basic social process at the heart of the research question. The grounded theory, The process of negotiating culturally incongruent healthcare systems explains the access to and use of formal healthcare from the perspective of those living in Northern Saskatchewan. Specific attention to the social context of healthcare access helped to illuminate the challenges faced by Aboriginal Older Adults when accessing healthcare services. The findings indicate a need for enhancing the cultural competence of healthcare provision to Older Adults with dementia in Northern Saskatchewan while providing formal support for those persons with dementia as well as for their informal caregivers.

South African painter turned photographer, Zwelethu Mthethwa, was born in Durban during Apartheid. In 1980 Mthethwa began taking his photographs in the shanty towns on the outskirts of Cape Town and later took pictures in Mozambique and New Orleans. His work has global significance. Using art and literary theory and criticism, I expand upon the significance of his photographs in the contemporary world. I do “readings” of eight photographs from eight different series of Zwelethu Mthethwa’s work using postcolonial theory, abjection, and cultural studies as theoretical constructs to provide three different angles for interpreting his work.

This study is an exploration of the process of accessing dementia care for Aboriginal Older Adults living in Northern Saskatchewan. The research question for this project was, What is the process of accessing formal healthcare for dementia from the perspective of Northern Saskatchewan Aboriginal communities, and what factors specifically impede or encourage accessing formal care? <p>Grounded theory methodology informed the research process. Theoretical sampling resulted in a sample of thirty participants. Data were generated through eighteen in-person, semi-structured interviews; two in-person, semi-structured group interviews; and three focus group discussions including a directed activity led by participants. Analysis of data using the grounded theory constant comparison method led to an emergent theory that was verified by research participants.<p>The theory that emerged explains the basic social process at the heart of the research question. The grounded theory, The process of negotiating culturally incongruent healthcare systems explains the access to and use of formal healthcare from the perspective of those living in Northern Saskatchewan. Specific attention to the social context of healthcare access helped to illuminate the challenges faced by Aboriginal Older Adults when accessing healthcare services. The findings indicate a need for enhancing the cultural competence of healthcare provision to Older Adults with dementia in Northern Saskatchewan while providing formal support for those persons with dementia as well as for their informal caregivers.

The essay examines the marriage of Antoinette and Mr. Rochester in the novel Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.With the use of postcoloial feminist theory and close reading the essay shows that Mr. Rochester dominates Antoinette leaving her oppressed and diminished.