The colonial formation and imagination of the Canadian nation and its citizenry has historically been rooted in processes of racial inclusion and exclusion. This thesis considers the ways in which the historical exclusionary process of citizenship manifests within today’s “War on Terror” through the language of national security. The analysis focuses on the discourses of two former Conservative bills: Bill C-24 – Strengthening the Canadian Citizenship Act and Bill C-51 – Anti-terrorism Act. Mobilized through a critical race perspective, my thesis documents first, the narratives that are told, and second, the discursive strategies that are used, to construct those deserving and undeserving of inclusion. My findings demonstrate that the ideal nation and its ideal citizens, who are deserving of inclusion within the nation, are fundamentally constructed in Whiteness. Meanwhile, the threatening ‘Other’, who is to be excluded and expelled from the nation, is imagined as a racialized Muslim, Arab and brown terrorist in the “War on Terror”. By examining their respective parliamentary debates, my research reveals how the political discourses utilized in both bills uphold the racial exclusionary mechanisms of citizenship. As such, my research speaks to the evolving relationship between citizenship, national security, surveillance, and securitization by demonstrating how citizenship is used as a tool within the broader security regime of the state to fight the “War on Terror”.

This thesis examines the ways in which Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s 2016 album Lemonade works as a culturally significant text in the realm of popular media. Situated within Black feminist theoretical concepts of freedom practices and Black Feminist Love Politics, the thesis argues that Lemonade mobilizes stylistic and strategic intertextual references to develop a transmedia storyworld within a paradigm of resistance to, and healing from, white supremacist histories. Such intertextual information exists within the musical, lyrical, visual, poetic, and transmedia domains of Lemonade. The transmedia extensions include interviews, live performances, speeches, social media posts, and photoshoots. Combined with theories from Black feminist thought of freedom practices—which include talking back (bell hooks 1989), dark sousveillance (Simone Browne 2015), and interruptions to whiteness (DiAngelo 2011)— and Black Feminist Love Politics (Jennifer Nash 2013), the intertextual data present in Lemonade can be analyzed using methodologies from the field of popular musicology (intertextuality and mediality).

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This dissertation studies identity formation and race informed by the discipline Whiteness Studies. As such this dissertation conceptualizes Spanish Whiteness historically and analyzes its representation in Spanish narrative in prose and film. This research responds to two questions: 1) How has Spanish culture historically instrumentalized Blackness thus contributing to the creation of the Western’s conceptualization of Whiteness? 2) What does Spanish representation of Empire say about its Whiteness? In an effort to answer these questions, this study is divided into two parts that correspond to the conceptualization and representation of what are termed ‘Situational Whiteness’ and ‘Imperial Spanish Orientalism.’ I argue that both are the result of a Spanish differential exceptionalism based on Orientalist cultural practices of tactical assimilation, by means of which the Black experience is subsumed on the margins as a part of Spanish Whiteness. To prove this hypothesis, Spanish Whiteness is conceptualized for the purpose of exploring the strategies of tactical assimilation of the Spanish Orientalism (Hispanism, Arabism, Africanism, Hispanotropicalism) towards its former colonies in Latin America and Africa. In addition, the contrasting cases of instrumentalization of Blackness as resistance in José Martí and Fernando Ortiz’s notion of Cuban racial ‘counterpoint’ as well as and the racial ‘particularism’ of Joan Maragall and Blas Infante inform cultural notions of Spanish Whiteness as well as its fragmentation. In the second part of this dissertation, the analysis focuses on understudied cases of the Spanish Imperial Whiteness’s representation in relation to Equatorial Guinean and Afro-Cuban Blackness. The overall propose of this research is, on the one hand, to explain how the situational nature of Spanish Whiteness is present throughout foundational moments in diverse forms of Spanish Orientalism; and, on the other hand, to inform Whiteness Studies from a different cultural angle thus providing the discipline with a transnational bridge towards a better understanding of white processes of racial formation, historical strategies and cultural forms of structural domination.

In the United States, rural culture is frequently thought of as traditional and “authentically” American. This belief stems from settler colonial histories in which Native lands are stolen and “settled” by white colonial communities. Through this process, the rugged “frontier” becomes a symbol of American identity, and rural communities become the home of “real” Americans. Because settler colonization is invested in maintaining systems of white supremacy, sexism, and heteropatriarchy, these “real” Americans are figured as normatively white and straight. This dissertation analyzes the rhetorical construction of rurality in the United States, specifically focusing on the ways in which settler colonial histories shape national discussions of rural sexuality. I theorize a rhetorical practice I call rural drag, a process by which individuals in settler society can assert membership in white heteropatriarchy by performing “rurality.” I trace the development of this rhetorical practice through three case studies. In the first, I analyze 19th-century Texan legislative writings during the creation of Texas A&M University. These writings and related correspondences reveal a baseline of white supremacist and settler colonial rhetorics upon which the university established its ethos. In the second, I look at how these rhetorics continue to inform performances of sexuality and gender at Texas A&M. These performances derive from earlier rhetorical practices designed to create a space for white settler privilege. Together, these two case studies suggest that rhetorical practices shape and are shaped by the spaces in which they are practiced and the rhetorical histories of these spaces. In my final case study, I interrogate national discourses of rurality through an analysis of country western music to show how rhetorics of rurality are simultaneously local and national. I conclude by challenging scholars of rhetoric and queer studies to recognize that the relationship between rhetoric and place is key to recognizing our relationship to privilege and oppression in the United States. To further this, I propose a decolonial queerscape pedagogy that accounts for the multiple overlays of sexual identities and practices that travel through the academy while challenging the colonial histories and actions upon which the academy is built.

In an attempt to close the gaps between diaspora and regional studies an Afro-Asian comparative perspective on African and Indian identity will be explored in the countries of Guyana and South Africa. The overlying aim of the ethnographic research will be to see whether blackness can be used as a unifier to those belonging to enslaved and indentured diasporas. Comparisons will be made between the two race models of the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean worlds. A substantial portion will be set aside for a critique of the concept of Coolitude including commentary on V.S. Naipaul. Further, mixing, creolization, spirituality and the cultural politics of Black Consciousness, multiculturalism, and dreadlocks will be exemplified as AfroAsian encounters.

In an attempt to close the gaps between diaspora and regional studies an Afro-Asian comparative perspective on African and Indian identity will be explored in the countries of Guyana and South Africa. The overlying aim of the ethnographic research will be to see whether blackness can be used as a unifier to those belonging to enslaved and indentured diasporas. Comparisons will be made between the two race models of the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean worlds. A substantial portion will be set aside for a critique of the concept of Coolitude including commentary on V.S. Naipaul. Further, mixing, creolization, spirituality and the cultural politics of Black Consciousness, multiculturalism, and dreadlocks will be exemplified as AfroAsian encounters.

The purpose of my thesis seeks to uncover the constructed nature of the Anglo-Saxon ethnicity within two works of fiction. My thesis utilizes London’s The Valley of the Moon (1913) and Norris’s McTeague (1899) because they were published in a similar era. Both authors lived and wrote in the Bay Area during the Progressive Era of American politics. Therefore, there is political, stylistic, and regional proximity. Although Anglo-Saxonism has always been present in the United States, the construction of race was changing in the 1900s. The Valley of the Moon and McTeague both contain intriguing (and antiquated) notions of whiteness that further exacerbate the class struggle in California. This thesis describes the convergence of Progressive politics, eugenics, and Marxism within a unique chapter of American history. Through an exploration of Anglo-Saxonism, this examination of racial classifications is an attempt to reveal the inner workings of oppression in America.