306 p., While it has long been assumed that schooling is integral to the construction of modern nation-states, surprisingly little is known about whether and how teachers actually go about transmitting national culture in the classroom. Relying on ethnographic research conducted in lycées on the French island of Martinique, including classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with teachers, informal interviews with school administrators and regional policymakers, and archival research, the author explores the ways in which history-geography teachers negotiate the construction of national and regional identities on an everyday basis, and in doing so become active participants in the formation of these identities within schools. The author finds that teachers in Martinique have long had significant influence over the implementation of national curricula.
This paper explores the African Diaspora and the psychological, social, political, and economic effects of the Atlantic slave trade on people of African descent in the historical fiction text The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat and the travel narrative The Atlantic Sound by Caryl Phillips. By examining the complex history of the British and French slave trade and its later consequences in the twentieth century, this paper examines the connection between the evidence of displacement and the search for identity coupled with the idea of healing in regards to trauma suffered by the spirits of Danticats' and Phillips' characters symbols of those in the African Diaspora.
242 p., As a feminist approach which takes into consideration how gender collides with race, national origin, and class in the context of neo-colonial imperialisms, transnational feminist studies attempt to bridge the gap left by these theories that either look at gender or at race. This dissertation examines the work of Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Philip, and Makeda Silvera in the light of these recent transnational feminist developments. By insisting on a fluid and multiply positioned self, these writers enact a transnational feminist identity that repudiates simplistic notions of gender oppression at the same time as it challenges masculinist notions of home.
276 p., A critical examination of Haitian migration and displacement in North America that engages both a theoretical and literary analysis of exile and diaspora as consequences of migration and displacement. Argues that Haitian writers in North America inscribe migration by troping exile and diaspora to speak of the predicament of displaced migratory subjects and their inevitable crossings of places, landscapes, borders, cultures, and nations. Analyzes three novels by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat: Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), The Farming of Bones (1998), and the Dew Breaker (2004); and two novels by Haitian Canadian writer Myriam Chancy: Spirit of Haiti (2003) and The Scorpion's Claw (2005).
172 p., Although selective colleges and universities boast higher numbers of Black students more than ever before, new data show that a disproportionate number of these Black students are of immigrant-origin rather than native-born. The data also show that students of immigrant origin (at least one parent born outside the United States) attend selective, predominantly White institutions and Ivy League colleges and universities at disproportionately higher rates than native Black students (both parents born in the United States).
356 p., In the U.S., individuals of Afro-Caribbean and Latino descent are two to three times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than non-Hispanic whites. Caribbean and Latin America migrants, particularly minority women bear a disproportionate burden of type 2 diabetes and its risk factors. The purpose of this research is to investigate if Afro-Caribbean women share a cultural belief model about type 2 diabetes and how this belief model, along with structural barriers to health care, influence disease risk and management. A sample of 40 women, primarily Jamaican and Trinidadian, 35 to 90 years of age previously diagnosed with type 2 diabetes were recruited in southwest Florida.
118 p., The purpose of this research study was to determine the health-promotion behaviors during menopause of English-speaking Caribbean Women in New York City and to identify implications for health practitioners. Data were obtained from a population sample of (N = 60) women between the ages of 45-64, from two predominantly Caribbean churches in Brooklyn using a convenience sampling method. A self-administered questionnaire packet consisting of three surveys totaling 89 questions was mailed to participants. The findings of the study indicated that there was a significant relation between self-efficacy and health-promotion behaviors. While level of education did not appear to have any influence on health-promotion behaviors. There were no significant differences of health promotion based on country of origin.
108 p., Investigate how contemporary fiction written by mixed race North American authors challenges theories of cultural and racial fluidity. Specifically looks at the works of Lawrence Hill, Shani Mootoo, and Danzy Senna, because their work uses similar conditions of hybridity in identity, through the lens of cultural performance. These authors represent my politics of an inclusionary mixed race theory by representing differences amongst themselves that resolve into a focus on language, as it reflects on mixed race literature.
84 p., Examines literary blackness in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. The literary construct of the GhettoNerd, a character whose voice and worldview is informed not only by the harsh realities of inner-city life, but also by the other-worldliness of Genre and popular culture, stands as a testament to the cultural mixtape that is hip-hop. The author argues that the GhettoNerd is useful for making visible historical trauma and exposing marginalization while articulating agency and self-determination. In the case of Oscar Wao, Díaz creates the GhettoNerd in a Dominican context as a vehicle for exposing the blanqueamiento, the trujillato, and the deracialization among the Dominican diaspora.
