Digital Commons Network^™

Propelling Separatism Into Transnational Spaces: A Critical Analysis On The Pro-Ltte Tamil Diaspora In Canada, D.G.Niruka Sanjeewani

Journal of Terrorism Studies

Despite being less discussed, the transnational spaces of diaspora communities are often used by terror groups to achieve their ideological and political targets. Their projection of separatist claims in association with terrorist groups threatens not only the territorial control of the home state but also the security and immigration policies of the host state. Linked to these scopes, pro-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) diaspora in Canada serving as a case study in this paper to illustrate the dissemination of its separatist ideologies. In addition, this paper also analyses the current rhetoric of the Tamil diaspora for ‘federalism’ that has …

Current Developmental Challenges In Nepal: How Can The Diaspora Help?, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Nepal now enjoys a unique opportunity to positively transform the country’s economy and society. The economic activities fueled by remittance, supported by foreign aid, and aided by domestic economic activities such as tourism, trade, and services, including start-ups, are helping increase individual incomes. However, the earnings from remittances, which measure to about 25% of Nepal’s GDP, are spent on consumer goods and not on investments that can generate employment and raise the standards of living. The foreign aid is often donor driven and also not always well managed and wisely spent on national priorities. Further, it is frequently marred by …

Social Media's Impact On The Puerto Rican Diaspora After Hurricane Maria, Heidi Lynn Steidel Ii Camacho

Theses and Dissertations

Puerto Rico has belonged to the United States for more than a century. In 1898, more than two decades after the Spanish American War, Spain formally ceded the island to the United States. Just over 20 years later, islanders officially became American citizens. Since then, the 100-mile-long by 35-mile-wide island has experienced economic and political crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, and life-threatening natural disasters. These events provoked a vast fluctuation in its population. After Hurricane Maria unfolded in September 2017, more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the continental United States to start new lives (Schwartz, 2018). This qualitative study sheds …

Neither Fully Queer Nor Somali?: What Queer Somalis' Narratives Reveal About Space, Identity, And Community In Western Diaspora, Dominik Drabent

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The field of Muslim sexuality studies has grown over the past two decades because of the aftermath of 9/11. This master’s thesis is a textual content analysis of the personal narratives of queer Somalis in Western diaspora. It addresses the intersections of their identities that create unique forms of oppression. Not much research has been conducted on queer Somali communities. This analysis of queer Somalis’ personal narratives aims to illuminate parts of the invisibility of queer Somalis, their experienced accusations of inauthenticity, and the erasure of their existences. I utilize an intersectional, transnational feminist, queer, and Black feminist lens. By …

"‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎", Stephen Harmon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work tries to perplex the viewer to acknowledge themselves in the act of seeing. In order to perplex them, I use ambiguous reference to figure and space using multiple perspectives, vantage points, gaze, marks, mediums, and, more recently, light and site specificity to establish liminal relationships and experiences. Liminality is a kind of in-betweenness, being on the threshold of places or states of being. My experiences in and studies of the Jewish Diaspora have been my path towards understanding liminality, but liminality is not unique to diaspora or to the Jewish experience and my work does not attempt to …

The Ripple Effect Of Terror: Escalating The Rules Of Patriarchal Conformity Upon The Psyche Of Women In The Oleander Girl, Chitra Susan Thampy, Pauline V N

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women continue to be deprived of their right to live independently and within acceptable boundaries. Indian women frequently take up the responsibilities of preservers of culture and tradition. They are constrained by an excessive number of laws and regulations, most of which are justified in the name of customs and religion. The patriarchal power that is inherent in Indian society shapes how they experience the Indian value system. In the case of the lives of women in the diaspora, due to their struggles with the financial and psychological uncertainties of exile, the responsibilities of family and career, and the claims …

Gendering The Diaspora: Experiences Of British-Pakistani Muslim Women, Aisha Anees Malik

Journal of International Women's Studies

Migration and settlement accounts have primarily been men’s stories within which women are either absent or represented by community spokespersons who again are largely men. The host community and state see their existence within policy perspectives regulating immigration. To fill this gap, this paper explores the gendered experiences of British-Pakistani Muslim women by investigating how they negotiate certain aspects of their diasporic lives. It builds on their narratives in matters related to education, employment, language, dress, and community associations. It discusses the pressures on women due to multiple systems of oppression created by their various identities and how women deal …

Longing For The Homeland: The Palestinian American Diaspora And Palestinian Advocacy In The United States, Mohamed Khaled Ghumrawi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how Palestinian Americans in the diaspora connect with Palestine, Palestinian advocacy, and the Palestinian question. It analyzes and synthesizes the interaction of the Palestinian American diaspora and Palestinian advocacy, exploring its domestic and transnational linkages. It also explores the nexus of domestic and transnational aspects relating to Palestinian identity, political life, advocacy, culture, and politics. This project utilizes two main frameworks, the first is the tripartite composite state theory, focusing specifically on the normative-social structure. The second applies a framework of intersectionality, highlighting the interconnectedness of the Palestinian diaspora and the Palestinian question with other social …

Indian Classical Music In The New York Metropolitan Area: The Development Of A Transnational Ecosystem, Andre Fludd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the development of North and South Indian classical music communities in the New York metropolitan area from the mid-20^th century to the present. In this investigation, I primarily focus on local musicians from diverse backgrounds and communities rather than internationally recognized stars. In the instances where I discuss famous musicians such as Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain, I focus on how they impacted New York metropolitan area communities particularly and what their success can teach about international Indian classical music careers. The dissertation is organized chronologically, and I highlight vital people, non-profit organizations, historical moments, and …

Identity, Activism, And Rap In The Filipino American Diaspora, Scott Cooper

Master's Theses

For close to two decades, an established network of Filipino American rap artists have developed on the West Coast of the United States. These artists share musical narratives exploring their working-class immigrant experiences as well as the impact of colonization in the Philippines. Outside of music, these artists often engage in community organizing and activism, but few scholars have explored hip hop's effect within these spaces. Recently, a younger generation of Filipino American youth actively make use of hip hop in community organizations and activist groups. This paper will specifically examine how the identity of 1.5 and second generation Filipino …

Transitional Portraits: Syrian Immigrants Of The North American Mahjar In 'Abd Al-Masih Haddad's Prose, Benjamin Smith

Arabic Faculty Works

This article argues that the 1921 collection of diasporic short stories Hikayat al-mahjar, written by ‘Abd al-Masih Haddad, makes a unique and notable contribution to mahjar literature by mobilizing formal literary techniques and innovative thematic content to capture a Syrian immigrant community engaged in a transitional moment in America. This paper situates Haddad (best known as the founder of the biweekly Arabic newspaper al-Saʼih, and a founding member of the literary society al-Rābiṭa al-qalamiyya) among his literary peers and provides an analysis of Hikayat al-mahjar that demonstrates the work’s points of convergence and divergence from the literary norms of the …

“The Spirit Of Turbulence”: East Indian Political Imaginaries In Early 20th Century British Guiana, Faria A. Nasruddin

Honors Projects

After the abolition of slavery, the Colonial Office instituted an indentured labor scheme that lasted from 1838 to 1917, in which they brought East Indians to the plantation colonies as laborers under five year contracts. Due to the planter class’ desire for permanent sources of labor in British Guiana, the Colonial Government incentivized East Indians to permanently settle. East Indians thus dominated the British Guiana’s agricultural landscape and became the single largest ethnicity in the Colony by 1920. This thesis explores the early negotiations of the meaning of diaspora and diasporic citizenship for East Indians in British Guiana. They comprised …

Final Master's Portfolio, Hammed Oluwadare Adejare

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains four related essays concerned with issues of race and migration in literary creations of diasporic African writers and film texts by African American film producers. The first essay offers a general exploration of contemporary African diasporic writings and the pervading Afropolitan politics of home and belonging. The next essay in the collection provides a theoretical grounding for this writing genre, tracing the connections between the theory, Afropolitanism, and earlier modes of theorizing global race relations such as postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism. The third essay explores the application of these theories to Teju Cole’s diasporic novel, Open City, explicating …

Reconsidering Diasporic Literature: "Homeland" And "Otherness" In The Lost Daughter Of Happiness, Qijun Zhou

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the transformation of “homeland” and “otherness” as well as the relationship between each other in The Lost Daughter of Happiness （扶桑 Fusang). I begin by exploring how the migration of Chinese to the United States is depicted as an endless trajectory in the story through a historical engagement and a dialogue between two generations. From there, I plan to point out that the story complicates the meaning of diaspora as it can not only represent a spatial dislocation, but also a temporal dislocation. Thus, I argue that it destabilizes the conventional ideology which refers “homeland” to a …

Where Blackness And Cape Verdeanness Intersect: Reflections On A Monoracial And Multiethnic Reality In The United States, Callie Watkins Liu

Journal of Cape Verdean Studies

As a Black American and fourth generation Cape Verdean American growing up in the United States, I’ve found that race and ethnicity are frequently conflated in ways that obscure my social reality and identity or put two integrated parts of myself into opposition with each other. In examining my own ethno-racial experience, I use critical race studies and identity construction to disentangle the structural concepts of race and ethnicity and build a frame work for understanding my own integrated existence within the United States. My personal trajectory is situated within the current and historical sociostructural context of Diaspora, White Supremacy …

Racial Theory In Sports, Connor Caspersen

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This research paper examines several scholarly sources related to race and sport. This paper dives into the topic of sports in the African Diaspora and how star "black athletes" have used their podium to express social injustice. This paper will also explain how these athletes are helping better their communities. The paper will also explore the challenge athletes of color face against global white supremacy and Western sports media.

Postcolonial Trauma In The Mediterranean: The Italian-Libyan Transnational Community, Rosario Pollicino

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study aims to recuperate the Italian collective remembering originating from the colonial offense in Libya. Focusing on works of testimony in different genres of contemporary literature written by the Italian former settlers in Libya, I analyze how these former settlers who moved to Libya have been subjected to different kinds of traumas by the Fascist government. I focus on how these traumas, individual and collective, are documented through these works and discuss how they continue to be relevant today. Drawing on sociology, anthropology, history, literary and trauma studies I argue that these cultural representations prove the existence of a …

"Death Stars, Death Breathes:" The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao And The Trauma Of Diaspora, Hannah Quire

Senior Theses

The following thesis aims to examine the interlocutions of diasporic trauma and genre in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. Centering the work of prominent theorists regarding diaspora, trauma, and literature, this project enacts a close reading of the novel in order to frame it as a text that is at once principally concerned with diasporic trauma while also defying thematic labels and genre categorization. This project begins by foregrounding the work of trauma and diaspora scholars to demonstrate the relationality between the two fields of study, while the second chapter examines those presences in Oscar …

The Pearl Of The Prairies: The History Of The Winnipeg Filipino Community, Jon G. Malek

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Canadian historical and national narratives often prize the creation of “White Canada” through immigration from European nations. Significant movements of people from the Asia-Pacific region often get left out of these narratives, even though Asian populations have been in Canada as long as white settlers. Furthermore, the growing body of Asian Canadian literature itself has developed a tunnel vision for East and South Asian immigrants, neglecting myriad other groups from regions such as Southeast Asia. While Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian immigrants have dominated immigration from Asia until recently, other groups such as Filipinos have long been living and working …

Rethinking Foreign Missions: How Churches Can Engage In Global Missionary Work Without Leaving Their Communities, Stuart Alan Cocanougher

Doctor of Ministry

For three hundred years, the modern missions movement has established a paradigm in which evangelical churches, denominations, and parachurch agencies have recruited, trained, funded, and sent missionaries around the world. Taking seriously Christ’s command to reach the nations with the gospel, U.S. churches spend millions of dollars each year to send a few select missionaries to faraway nations, while most Christians are not engaged in cross-cultural ministry. But the world has changed. Now there are millions of foreigners living in the United States. I propose that evangelical church leaders consider a new strategy that involves training American Christians to minister …

Diaspora, Migration, And Refugees In Europe: Developing Leadership Within Multicultural Teams, Matthew S. Paschall

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research study addressed the challenge of developing leaders in the midst of the recent refugee crisis in Europe, historic waves of immigration, and ongoing global migration of diaspora peoples. Migration has led to unprecedented diversity in leadership as leaders from the Global South are relocating North and West. Each person carries preconceived cultural notions of how leaders should function and interact. Church and mission leaders must be equipped to navigate this complex cultural environment in order for multicultural teams to work effectively. The researcher based the theology of multicultural leadership in the Trinity where Father, Son, and Spirit expressed …

Guest Editor's Introduction, John Lowe

The Southern Quarterly

One of the consequences of situating the U. S. as part of the circumCaribbean is that it creates an opportunity to examine important subjects—such as slavery, agricultural production, trade patterns, immigration, diaspora, travel writing and tourism—through a more comprehensive lens. Numerous slave owners had plantations in both the lower South and on the islands. Maroon culture created by runaways were common across the circumCaribbean, be they in lowland swamps or mountain retreats. Runaways also found refuge with Native Americans, leading to intermarriage and cultural exchange. Transnational studies are beginning to clear away artificial barriers separating the peoples and cultures of …

Jarrod Hayes. Queer Roots For The Diaspora: Ghosts In The Family Tree. Ann Arbor: U Of Michigan P, 2016., Annie De Saussure

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Jarrod Hayes. Queer Roots for the Diaspora: Ghosts in the family tree. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. 325 pp.

“Home Sweet Home”: Displacement And Belonging In Post-1960s Diasporic Chinese Literature, Melody Yunzi Li

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Situated at the intersection of Sinophone and Diaspora Studies and focusing on the rhetoric of “home,” my dissertation explores the ways in which Chinese immigrant Sinophone writers and Anglophone writers in the U.S. construct “imaginative homes” in response to the absence of their physical homes. Through detailed analysis of works by Yu Lihua (Again the Palm Trees, 1967), Yan Geling (The Criminal Lu Yanshi, 2011; A Woman’s Epic, 2006), Pai Hsien-yung (Taipei People, 1971), Shi Yu (New York Lover, 2004), Chen Qian (Listen to the Caged Bird Sing, 2010), Rong Rong (Notes of a Couple, 2004) and Ha Jin (A …

Review Of Michael Budde's "Scattered And Gathered: Catholics In Diaspora", Michael M. Canaris

Institute of Pastoral Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A review of Michael L. Budde's book Scattered and Gathered: Catholics in Diaspora written by Michael Canaris.

Experience As Counterpoint: A Qualitative Study Of Home, Happiness & Aging Amongst First-Generation South Asian Migrants In The U.S., Angela Singh

Theses and Dissertations

Susan Stanford Friedman writes that “Home comes into being most powerfully when it is gone, lost, left behind, desired and imagined” (202). My dissertation addresses notions of home, nostalgia, happiness and aging often found in South Asian diasporic fiction, and from the results of a qualitative study I conducted in which I interviewed five migrant couples who moved to the US from India for educational and professional purposes in the 1960s and 1970s. This project draws on and contributes toward the fields of Migration and Diaspora Studies, Transnational Studies and South Asian Studies. My research aims to explore more uncommonly …

How To Read The Black Atlantic, Brian J. Klarman

CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal

n/a

Cruising Borders, Unsettling Identities: Toward A Queer Diasporic Asian America, Wen Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I challenge the dominant conceptualization of Asian Americanness as a biological and cultural population and a cohesive racial category. Instead, I consider it as a form of flexible subjectivity and an affective emergence that occurs and materializes due to the multiple sites of convergence in the neoliberal assemblage of model minority ideology, imperialist geopolitical history, racialized queer politics, and criminal (in)justices. I examine the spatial and temporal configurations of Asian American subjectivity through a queer and postcolonial lens, first by conducting a critical historical review of the category of Asian American in the geopolitical history of psychological …

Chinese Diaspora And Western Australian Nature (Perth Region): A Study Of Material Engagement With The Natural World In Diasporic Culture, Li Chen

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Based on an ethnographic study of the everyday practices of diasporic Chinese residents of Perth, this project focuses on the relationship between the ecologic environment and diasporic Chinese cultures in contemporary Western Australia.

With the acceleration of globalization, studies in diaspora have increasingly absorbed geographic ideas. Research on the relationship between ecology and humankind has thrown new light on discussions of diaspora. However, there are few in-depth studies addressing the construction of diasporic place and space with an engagement of the material world. Considering the relative absence of the natural world as a serious subject in contemporary diaspora studies, the …

"Diaspora Is A Greek Word: Words By Greeks On The Diaspora", Marina Frangos

CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language

The article explores the different types of the Greek Diaspora in the past 150 years and how these different types are identified in literary production. Following global diasporas’ theory and particularly Robin Cohen’s typology of victim, labour, trade, cultural and imperial diasporas, various literary works are cited by writers of Greek heritage from different countries to determine whether these different types of diaspora have been represented and presented to a global audience. The article adds to a better understanding of global migrant literature. Writers cited include Elia Kazan, Pulitzer-prize winner Greek American Jeffrey Eugenides and Australia’s Christos Tsiolkas.