Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Berbers: Constructed Identities By Foreigners On African Soil, Zineb Askaoui

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the textual evidence pertaining to the identity of the local North African population of Morocco. In examining the literature about North Africans and the inscriptions in North Africa, I wish to determine who their authors were. Since North Africa has been invaded and colonized multiple times throughout history, the available literature written by both the foreigners who colonized it and the locals yielded interesting and sometimes contrasting results.

The names that address the local North Africans are pertinent expressions of identity or of forceful submission. This study examines four different terms that have been used to describe …

Positioning And Repositioning: Transnational Identity (Re) Construction And (Re) Negotiation By American-Senegalese Children, Aminata Diop

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The main aim of this dissertation is to study the ways American-Senegalese children position and reposition themselves as they (re) construct and (re) negotiate their transnational identity upon returning to the U.S. from Senegal. This project explores the following questions: 1) why do US-residing Senegalese parents send their children back to their homeland to be raised by relatives? 2) how do these American-Senegalese children (re) construct and (re) negotiate their multiple layers of identities upon returning home after being raised by extended family members for more than a decade?3) and how do the American-Senegalese children (re) story their racial, class, …

The Guinea-Bissau Constitutional Reform Debate, Watson Aila Gomes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The enactment of law is not to be confused with the rule of law, and simply having a constitution does not guarantee political order. In Guinea-Bissau there have been calls to write a new constitution, but whether that helps Guinea-Bissau become a more stable country is questionable. Currently, there is a gap in the research of social science, history and political science examining how the processes of instability have unfolded in Guinea-Bissau. Few studies attempt to examine the correlation between a country’s stability and its constitution. A paradoxical situation exists in many countries in Africa where the political system is …