This study examines the identity categories of gender and race in the Cuban context of the first thirty years of the Revolution and focuses on black and mulata women, in which both categories converge. In this work I analyze the literary discourse of the Afro-Cuban female poets between the 1960s and 1980s and discern the role of self-representation that each of these poets constructs within the framework of "being black" or "mulata" woman. Also, since gender and race are redefined by the dominant power, this project analyzes the political hegemonic discourse of the period in relation to race and gender, and illuminates its role in preserving racial stereotypes as well as the patriarchal normatives of gender.
261 p., Italian painter Agostino Brunias first traveled to the Caribbean sometime around 1770 in the employ of Sir William Young, First Baronet, a British aristocrat who had been charged with overseeing the sale of lands in the islands won by Britain from France at the end of the Seven Years War. Working primarily on the islands of Dominica and St. Vincent, as Young's official painter, Brunias was ostensibly charged with documenting the exotic bounty and diversity of the islands. For roughly the next quarter century, he painted for plantocrats and the colonial elite, creating romanticized tableaux that featured Caribbeans of color--so called "Red" and "Black" Caribs, dark-skinned Africans and Afro-Creoles, and people of mixed race. Examines how the artist's images reflected and refracted ideas about race commonly held by Britons in the colonial Caribbean during the late 18th century.
203 p., Explores the work experiences of professional Caribbean immigrant English-speaking women in the United States. Much study has been dedicated to the experiences and success of Caribbean immigrant women and men in service and domestic roles. The study explores these professional immigrant women's experiences attaining career success in the United States racial society. Data was obtained from 12 professional Caribbean immigrant women using semi-structured interviews conducted by the researcher.
217 p., A comparative study of late 20th-century migration narratives by African American and Afro-Caribbean women, such as Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Loida Maritza Pérez. Informed by critical race theory, postcolonial, and feminist approaches to literature, this dissertation intervenes in literary studies of the African diaspora by underscoring the cultural and political implications that class and national differences have on intra-racial relations among Blacks.
225 p., This dissertation is a cultural history of Barbados since its 1966 independence. As a pivotal point in the Transatlantic Slave Trade of the 17th and 18th centuries, one of Britain's most prized colonies well into the mid 20th century, and, since 1966, one of the most stable postcolonial nation-states in the Western hemisphere, Barbados offers an extremely important and, yet, understudied site of world history. Barbadian identity stands at a crossroads where ideals of British respectability, African cultural retentions, U.S. commodity markets, and global economic flows meet. Focusing on the rise of Barbadian popular music, performance, and visual culture this dissertation demonstrates how the unique history of Barbados has contributed to complex relations of national, gendered, and sexual identities, and how these identities are represented and interpreted on a global stage. This project examines the relation between the global pop culture market, the Barbadian artists within it, and the goals and desires of Barbadian people over the past fifty years, ultimately positing that the popular culture market is a site for postcolonial identity formation.
Explores the experiences of Caribbean women teachers who are recruited to teach in a mid sized Southern city. Narrative methods were used to analyze four Barbadian women teachers' perspectives on their: initial experiences and challenges; teaching philosophies and approaches to teaching American students; and successful transition into Louisville, Kentucky's public schools after five years of teaching. In an age where school districts across the nation seek educators from overseas to address the well-documented teacher shortage, this study has implications for helping future international teacher candidates transition into U.S. public schools.
159 p., Metamorphic literatures is both the identification of a cohesive group of texts, as well as the assertion that these particular texts are part of a global literary movement. The literatures coming out of this movement fundamentally seek to (1) resist colonization and enslavement, (2) re-vision history and resurface figures of redress, and (3) reimagine gender, sexualities, and the queer diasporic body. The tropes of this new literary movement that are expanded upon in the following work will organize the language, characteristics, and outlines of this movement of contemporary diasporic writers.
Examines death and barrenness images prevalent in literature produced by black women during the 1970s and 1980s, taking for study the novels Bluest Eye (1970), Praisesong for the Widow (1983), Corregidora (1975), and Mama Day (1988). Argues that images in these narratives represent contemporary manifestations of social death that directly relate to what belief in the American dream, and that these images symbolize the ways in which decisions made had a deadening effect on black communities, primarily experienced as a loss of social sensibility and vitality of relationships.
101 p., Little published research describes views of intimate heterosexual relationships among non-Western samples of women. This study represents a first attempt to document Afro-Caribbean women's views about their intimate relationships. A small sample of 53 Afro-Caribbean women from the island of Barbados were interviewed in their homes for a larger study of body image. Included in the measures were questionnaires about the extent to which women's expectations were or were not met in their current heterosexual relationships and if symptoms of depression were experienced. The women in this study generally reported, like Western women, that their relationships met their expectations (whatever those expectations may have been), that they contributed more positive than negative behaviors to the relationship, and that they experienced mostly mild or infrequent depressive symptoms. Unlike findings for Western samples, however, neither relationship duration, women's level of education, nor the extent to which they reported depressive symptoms covaried with whether they reported that their expectations were met or not. In summary, this study did not shed light on possible sources of Afro-Caribbean women's relationship satisfaction, although it potentially ruled out a few.
