Arts and Humanities Commons^™

An Exploratory Study Of Acculturation Experiences Of Graduate Student Immigrants At The University Of San Francisco, Courtney Lamar

Master's Theses

This study explores the shared challenges during the acculturation process of graduate student immigrants pursuing higher education in the United States. 13 graduate student immigrants at the University of San Francisco discuss their experiences of cultural adjustment into U.S. culture. Through qualitative interviews and thematic analysis, this study seeks to understand the acculturation experiences of graduate student immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. This analysis is based on the individual-level experience examining attitudes and acculturation strategies in the dominant society. Analysis, possibly policy implication for institutions of higher education, and possible directions for future research …

The Spirit Is Willing, But The Flesh Is Weak: Contemporary Pan-Africanism And The Challenges To A United States Of Africa, Adesola Adeyemo

Master's Theses

Establishing a ‘United States of Africa’ to the average individual is deemed as a mythical idea in contemporary Africa, irrespective of the popularity of this idea several years ago. Today, the idea is idealized as overambitious – considering the balkanized state of the continent post-colonialization. Because of this, attempts made since then have favored enforcing regional integration over continental integration. Undeniably, this idea would not have come into being if it wasn’t for the concept of Pan-Africanism - which has for long guided the political and socio-economic policies created on the continent. The goal of this research is …

Inside The Virtual Ambazonia: Separatism, Hate Speech , Disinformation And Diaspora In The Cameroonian Anglophone Crisis, Sombaye Eyango Jules Roger

Master's Theses

This study examines the dynamics of the anglophone separatist claims in Cameroon, the so-called “Anglophone Crisis”. I focus on explaining why the separatist claims reemerged in 2016 after being shut down for about 20 years. It explains how the Anglophone separatist revendications have sustained over time despite the extremely centralized power of the Paul Biya government.This paper first argues that the Anglophone Crisis is more than an identity struggle between Anglophone/Francophone Cameroonians, but rather a conflict about historical and institutional grievances, political competition, and regional politics involving the neighboring state of Nigeria.

Second, it verifies the hypothesis that the sustainability …

It Could Never Last: Why British Sovereignty And Its Influence Since 1945 Resulted In Brexit, Jeffrey Brandt

Master's Theses

The EU Referendum of June 2016 marked a watershed moment for the United Kingdom, as it sought to once again reassert its sovereignty and retake its place in the world as an independent state, free from European Union infringement. The British are usually seen as the cussid ones in Europe, stubbornly holding on to their principles and traditions of sovereignty. But why is that? Carefully tracing UK history, particularly from the end of the Second World War to the present day, it becomes understandable why the result of the 2016 referendum should not be quite a surprise. Studying events in …

Women With A Cause: Art, Representation, And Feminist Progress In Eighteenth-Century France, Darby Marie Leahy

Master's Theses

Throughout the eighteenth century the Age of Enlightenment transformed public discourse across Western Europe. In France, the salons of Paris became the primary institutions of Enlightenment thought. Hosted by women, the salons possessed a unique atmosphere in which men and women were regarded as intellectual equals. My thesis focuses on the role the female hostesses, salonnières, had in initiating French movements for gender equality that continued with great momentum throughout the French Revolution. By using popular artwork, literature, and memoirs I show how the efforts of French women to achieve gender equality helped give early rise to feminism.

Cornerstone Of Union Victory: Officer Partnerships In Joint Operations In The West, Aderian Partain

Master's Theses

The American Civil War included one of the pivotal naval contests of the nineteenth century. A topic of considerable importance is the joint operations on the western waters that brought about a string of crucial victories in the conflict for the Union. The effective cooperation of the naval river fleet and the western armies was a major cornerstone of Union victory. Scholars have written biographies of the more noted admirals and narratives of the flotilla have been detailed. What has not been accomplished is an exploration of the Union officers’ professional partnerships between the Mississippi Squadron commanders and their corresponding …

Mississippi’S First Statewide Teachers’ Strike, Emily Doyne Smith

Master's Theses

This thesis argues that the Education Reform Act of 1982 (ERA) inadvertently led to Mississippi’s first statewide teachers’ strike in 1985 because of the Southeastern pay average clause recommending that the teachers’ pay should reach the average of the southeastern states, if possible. The teachers’ associations in Mississippi used this clause to lobby and promote teachers’ pay to that average. However, after two years of stagnated pay raises, the teachers’ associations led a state statewide teachers’ strike. The strike successfully raised the teachers’ salaries and moved state legislators to consider the teachers’ pay issue carefully afterwards. However, the pay raise …

"For All Such, A Country Is Provided": Choctaw Removal, Slave Trading, And Law In Southwestern Mississippi, 1800–1841, Anthony Albey Soliman

Master's Theses

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were few white settlers in the Mississippi Territory. Over the course of two decades, the United States used treaties to force the indigenous inhabitants, the Choctaw, out of this area by the United States to lands west of the Mississippi River. The United States’ goal in the region was to create a plantation economy in the Mississippi Valley based on the production of short-staple cotton sustained by enslaved African American labor. Focusing on the removal of the Choctaw and the subsequent installation of a plantation regime in the Mississippi Valley, this thesis …

From Davao City To Daly City: Examining Translanguaging And Transnationalism In The 1.5-Generation Filipin(A/O) Americans Of Daly City, Rita Ewing

Master's Theses

In the field of migration studies, research on transnationalism has been well

established. Applying an intersectional framework of post-colonial narrative and

linguistic anthropology to transnational migration, this research allows us to better

understand how the transnational immigrant deploys language. Through a nostalgia

studies approach, this study is able to analyze how transnational immigrants place value

on their heritage and second languages, and reflexively deploy their language sets to

reflect their unique positionality. This paper is a case study examination of five adult

members of the 1.5-generation of Filipin(a/o) American immigrants, who immigrated to

the US before the age of eighteen …

From Dago To White: The Story Of Sicilian Ethnic Evolution In New Orleans Amidst The Yellow Fever Epidemic Of 1905, H. Denise Lopresto Saucier

Master's Theses

The story of the Sicilian immigrants’ experiences in Louisiana is a tale of racial and ethnic evolution in the face of physical threats. With the end of the Civil War, many emancipated slaves migrated to other parts of the country, which left Louisiana planters in need of laborers. Planters turned to European labor to fill that need, bringing thousands of Sicilian peasants to work on their plantations. Extreme poverty and oppression made the opportunity to emigrate highly attractive, but Sicilians found problems in Louisiana as well. In addition to low wages, crowded living conditions, discrimination, and violence, the immigrants faced …

"There Was Something Grotesque": The Application And Limits Of Respectability In The Daughters Of Bilitis, Elizabeth Diane Greer

Master's Theses

Living in both the “deviant” and “normal” worlds, the leadership of The Daughters of Bilitis generally adhered to a respectable and assimilationist public persona as evidenced through political activities and the publication of their periodical The Ladder. Due to this juxtaposition, the largely middle-class, white membership exhibited socially conservative views in order to make long-term social change, leading to an inherent contradiction between maintaining their middle-class identity and public respectability. Seen from the organization’s founding in 1955 until its collapse in 1970, these contradictions and the focus on respectability politics adds to the existing scholarship on the DOB.

The …

The Resurgence Of American Nativism In The Early-Twentieth Century And Its Effects On Industrial Hemp Production In The United States, Roman King

Master's Theses

Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act on August 2, 1937, which officially made it illegal to handle any form of Cannabis sativa L. without adhering to mandatory taxes and registration forms. The American cultivation of industrial hemp (fibrous, non-psychoactive C. sativa L.), became non-existent by 1958 due to the strict penalties associated with the 1937 Tax Act. Industrial hemp served as a staple of American life from the arrival of the first English colonists in North America up until the textile conquest of King Cotton in the early-nineteenth century. Despite the rise of cotton and the importation of cheap foreign …