Thing theorist Bill Brown writes that “the thing names less an object than a particular subject-object relation.” This article examines the subject-object relation between African things and African bodies in Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's first novel, Purple Hibiscus. While the main character, Kambili, eventually learns to assimilate Western Catholicism into her Nigerian reality, her Christian fundamentalist father, Eugene, uses Catholicism to justify his self-hating destruction of African things and bodies. This article argues that both reactions are rooted in the characters' ability or inability to see African material things, including both objects and bodies, as autonomous subjects. Adichie's novel demonstrates that religious syncretism centered in an ethics of things is a viable, fruitful reaction to the colonizers' religion, and that religious practice can be healthily enacted through the medium of things and bodies.

Colonial legacies continue to impact representational practices in contemporary society. Social media platforms have provided a patriarchal marketplace in which female bodies become commodifiable products as ‘influencers’ and processes of racialisation and Othering are reproduced. A novel feature is the emergence of computer-generated imagery depicting feminized and racialised figures, or avatars, created by US and UK companies for profit. The objective of this thesis is to examine the problematics of the avatars in their construction, discursive practices and potential social and political impact by examining a range of material spanning from articles to social media images. To this end, a critical discourse analysis is conducted with a theoretical framework comprising feminist postcolonial theory and intersectionality. Building on feminist works on colonial legacy, conceptions of the Other, and Donna Haraway’s cyborg idea, measures of objectification and exotification are investigated. Exemplified by two leading avatars, the thesis explores their potential implications for power dynamics in society. The analysis found that while claiming to enhance representation and diversity the avatars effectively work against these goals. Considering histories of colonialism and the avatars’ profitability for patriarchal and capitalist agendas, they overtly and subtly reinforce systemic inequalities and materialise processes of Othering and racialisation embedded in social discourse. Expanding on existing disparities the avatars produce a novel marketable feature for corporations through social media that influences and shapes social perceptions spanning from fashionable ideals to, ultimately, political beliefs.

This thesis analyses media portrayal of the People's Protection Units (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in US media by making use of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis. The thesis investigates if these portrayals have been used as a justification by the United States White House to intervene militarily in the conflict in Rojava. Three ways of portraying the YPG and YPJ have been identified: an Orientalist portrayal contrasting the YPG and YPJ to the Orient and including them in a Western ‘us’, a liberal feminist portrayal where the YPJ are contrasted and distanced to the ‘Third World woman’, and the portrayal of the fighters as nationalist and violent suicide bombers, placing them as ‘the Other’. The Orientalist ‘us’ portrayal was found to be used by the US government to justify military intervention. The contextual analysis of US media and politics showed that these portrayals depend on political agendas and therefore say much more about the political climate in the US than being representative of the YPG and YPJ which in its turn causes troubling misrepresentations of the YPG and YPJ.

In 1790s England, an expanding empire, a growing diaspora of English settlers in foreign territories, and spreading political unrest in Ireland and on the European continent all helped to contribute to a destabilization of British national identity. With the definition of “Englishperson” in flux, Ireland, France, and Italy—nations which are prominently featured in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794), Ann Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and The Italian (1797), and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)—could be understood, similar to England’s colonies, as representing threats to the nation’s cultural integrity. Because the people of these European countries were stereotypically perceived as being economically impoverished victims of political and “popish” tyranny, it would have been easy to construct them in popular and literary discourse as being both socially similar to the “primitive” indigenous populations of colonized territories and as uneasy reminders of England’s own “premodern” past. Therefore, the overarching goal of this project is twofold. First, it attempts to account for the Gothic’s frequent—albeit subtle—use of imperialist rhetoric, which is largely encoded within the novels’ representations of sublimity, sensibility, and domesticity. Second, it claims that the novels under consideration are preoccupied with testing and reaffirming the salience of bourgeois English identity by placing English or Anglo-inflected characters in conflict with “monstrous” continental Others. In so doing, these novels use the fictions of empire to contain and claim agency over a revolutionary France, an uncertainlypositioned Ireland, and a classically-appealing but socially-problematic Italy.

This study examines the portrayal of refugees in BBC News reports, focusing on postcolonial perspectives in two time periods: 2015 and 2022. The analysis involves language, images, and frameworks used in representing refugees. Findings reveal that in 2015, refugees were depicted as economic migrants, whereas in 2022, Ukrainian refugees were portrayed as genuine victims of war. Factors such as race, gender, religion, and politics influenced their portrayal. This research sheds light on how BBC News represents refugees, impacting public perception. It underscores the importance of critically examining media's portrayal of refugees, considering power relations, especially in major channels claiming neutrality. The study contributes to media studies, refugee studies, and postcolonial theory.

This study offers a feminist critical discourse analysis of how Sida’s discourses can be viewed as consolidating a gender ideology and power asymmetries in gendered social orders. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) and feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) offer the theoretical and methodological framework to the investigation of gender ideology in Sida’s discourses. Postcolonial theory offers an additional theoretical framework with explanatory understandings of the ideological assumptions identified. According to the findings and in the light of chosen theories, this study suggests that a gender ideology that is underpinned by colonial and capitalist ideologies can be identified in Sida’s discourses. The results show that analyzes of how power systems operate in complex ways to produce gendered inequalities are not accounted for by Sida, whereby their contestation and transformation is hindered. It is also suggested that Sida, in complicity with other actors in the international development arena, has appropriated and distorted feminist concepts in a way that conceals dominant group interest and power dynamics. By shifting the focus away from such, it is further argued that Sida risks reproducing colonial images of underdevelopment and vulnerability as inherent to marginalized groups and as especially inherent to women. This study further suggests that Sida’s consolidating of power asymmetries in discourses is partially explained by the intertwining of institutions and discourses in the international development arena. The reasons behind the power of the identified discourses are argued to serve the maintenance of global hierarchies based on constructions of race and sex, in order to ensure a status quo in the capitalist process of accumulation by dispossession, which continues to benefit wealthy northern countries like Sweden.

Scéla Muicce Meicc Da Thó (SMMD; The Tale of Mac Da Thó's Pig) is a humorous Old Irish myth that takes its cues from its Ulster Cycle cousins, notably, An Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). The connective tissue is its cast, plot structure, and the author's mastery of cultural and storytelling traditions. SMMD is brief and rapid, which aids its near-absurdist representation of masculinity, kingship, and honor in heroic saga culture. This thesis uses postcolonial and medieval literary scholarship to analyze medieval and modern depictions of the Ulster Cycle. Contemporarily, the Irish Republicans and Loyalists evoke the image of Ulster boy-hero Cú Chulainn to express their sense of cultural ownership. Chapter One contextualizes the Ulster Cycle, SMMD, and its issue of hyper-masculinity to expand traditional scholarship and interpretation by analyzing how SMMD's humor operates culturally while demonstrating Bourdieu's social capital. This study also considers modern Ireland's murals, some of which draw on medieval themes and contribute to a global understanding of its colonial struggle. There is a spatial quality to these representations that reinforce border sensibilities à la intimidation via images of masculinity that resemble bragging contests in the Ulster Cycle. Chapter Two further interprets medievalism in modern Ireland using the onomastic dindshenchas toward a spatial reading of SMMD relative to public representations of Ulster's boy hero. Overall, this work calls attention to the ongoing issue of medievalism as propaganda. Ireland and the children of its diaspora maintain complicated relationships with its colonial history. Thus, this work's secondary goal is to provide a deeper context to this rather fragmented issue in a way that advocates for the nuance necessary when studying three postcolonial communities on one island.

This study aims to examine and compare the representations of the colonial era in history textbooks from Uganda and Sweden to broaden the understanding of colonial discourses. Utilizing critical discourse analysis (CDA), it seeks to uncover and emphasize the variations in colonial discourse between the two countries. Findings reveal a nuanced portrayal of colonial history in Ugandan textbooks, characterized by complex and conflicting relationships between colonizers and the colonized, yet heavily patriarchal and overlooking women’s experiences. On the other hand, Swedish textbooks present a stereotypical and dualistic portrayal of colonizers’ cruelty and colonized inferiority. A potential implication from the analysis is that these different representations could impact students’ perspectives and identities, at both individual and societal levels.

<p>The purpose of the first paper is to serve as a critical review of the international student research. Particularly, the paper will explore current barriers in international student research specifically for Asian international students. The paper will use three frameworks for the critical review: neo-racism, critical race theory, and postcolonial theory and suggest three main barriers in international student research because of this: homogenization, overemphasis on individual factors, and the impact of stereotypes present about Asians in the U.S. Based on the frameworks used for critical review and the identified barriers, the paper will explore systemic racism in the experiences of Asian international trainees and suggest recommendations to support trainees in counseling psychology.     </p> <p>The study within the second paper explored the experiences of neo-racism for 13 Asian international doctoral student participants at Purdue University using qualitative thematic analysis. The study demonstrated a wide variety of experiences with racism, including interpersonal racism and the impact of racism that participants viewed as occurring to other Asian and Asian international students in the U.S. Results indicated that participants’ experiences of neo-racism were different based on social identities, language abilities, and nationality. The study proposes implications of these experiences, including ways higher education institutions can better support doctoral students during this sociopolitical time. </p>

This dissertation examines representations of the forest in Canadian and Brazilian literatures and cultural imaginaries in order to question utilitarian models of environmental use and discuss issues of deforestation in both countries. I argue that these models draw on aesthetic and narrative strategies that were consolidated through cultural myths about the Canadian woods and the Brazilian Amazon during the period of colonization and settlement which reified the wilderness and the jungle as uncultivated environments in need of being tamed, optimized, and civilized through consistent projects of land transformation and economic development. Furthermore, I argue that myths about the wilderness and the jungle founded a particular mode of knowing, interacting and existing in and against the environment based on the antagonism between humans and non-human nature which was imposed as universal and continues to shape current material practices in both countries. Despite the differences between the Canadian wilderness and the Brazilian jungle, similar patterns and problems are visible in the literatures of both countries because of their colonial histories and economic models based on the capitalist development of primary resources. Thus, by analyzing a variety of Canadian and Brazilian texts, my dissertation draws attention to the relations of power within which "the forest" was constructed in the Canadian and Brazilian national imaginaries, and which, in turn, were naturalized by particular representations of the wilderness and the jungle. In so doing, my project shows the centrality of Western-centric ideals of progress, culture, nature, and modernity in both countries, and how these concepts continue to inform current institutional policies and environmental debates about forestry management, deforestation, and conservation. I argue that by questioning utilitarian models of land management, writers like Brian Fawcett, Daphne Marlatt and Jeannette Armstrong in Canada as well as Márcio Souza, Regina Melo, and co-writers Bruce Albert and Davi Kopenawa in Brazil call for a critical reinterpretation of master narratives while also inviting alternative frameworks of knowledge that run against dominant economic, environmental, and ontological models. The Canadian wilderness and the Brazilian Amazon occupy a central role in the national literatures and cultural myths of these countries. Nevertheless, the idea of the wilderness and the jungle they reify is mostly symbolic and, as such, tends to obscure the material realities of these landscapes. In turn, the texts I analyze in this dissertation unveil a connection between the imaginary and actual forestry practices enacted by companies and governments to call for epistemic, ontological, and material changes on the ground. Put another way, these narratives mediate between real world issues and aesthetic form, and try to offer a discursive structure for acting upon current environmental, cultural, and economic crises. In their critique of the sustained exploitation of humans and non-humans in postcolonial nations like Canada and Brazil, the writers I examine in my project offer the seeds a theoretical (un)thinking that brings epistemology, ontology, nature, and politics to the forefront of discussions about the environment.