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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Theses/Dissertations

Race and Ethnicity

Race

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Slavery, Colonialism, And Other Ghosts: Presence And Absence In The Rise Of American Sociology, 1895-1905, Aaron Yates Mar 2022

Slavery, Colonialism, And Other Ghosts: Presence And Absence In The Rise Of American Sociology, 1895-1905, Aaron Yates

Masters Theses

US sociology has historically denied slavery and colonialism as demanding of sociological study. The roots of this can be examined at the turn of the twentieth century in the early years of the institutionalization of the discipline in American universities. The inattention stems from a white supremacist racial ontology that underpins US sociology in general (embedded in the category of modernity and the category of sociology itself). There are traces or identifiable ‘moments of silencing’ during the first ten years of the American Journal of Sociology (AJS), the discipline’s first professional journal in the US, in which early (white) sociologists …


The Voice Of The Other: The Influence Of Capitalism On The Representation Of Gender And Race In Western Classical Music, Marie Comuzzo May 2021

The Voice Of The Other: The Influence Of Capitalism On The Representation Of Gender And Race In Western Classical Music, Marie Comuzzo

Masters Theses

This thesis argues that in order to understand the non-representation of women and BIPOC in the Western musical canon, the analysis of their cultural musical production and reception must start in early modern period, a time heavily influenced by the establishment of capitalism. Intertwining political feminist studies, critical race theory and musicology critique, I argue that the witch hunts and the inhumane colonial practices in Africa and the America (fundamental to establish capitalism as a global system), had an important role in shaping Western musical culture as homogeneous and monolithic. Thus, I first trace the change in female customs in …


Mothering In A Era Of Choice: Race And Gender In Schooling Decisions Of Homeschool And Public School Families, Mahala Stewart Jul 2018

Mothering In A Era Of Choice: Race And Gender In Schooling Decisions Of Homeschool And Public School Families, Mahala Stewart

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation draws from in-depth interview data to compare the schooling choices of 95 mothers living in United States. The sample is split between white and black mothers. Within each racial group, one set teaches their children at home and a second set sends them to public schools. School choice, which places the responsibility of selection on individual families, is central to current U.S. education debates. Yet homeschooling, an option that transfers labor from schools to home, is often overlooked in these debates. To date no research has compared homeschoolers to other schooling families in the same region, or examined …


Negotiating Race, Work And Family: Cape Verdean Home Care Workers In Lisbon, Portugal, Celeste Vaughan Curington Nov 2017

Negotiating Race, Work And Family: Cape Verdean Home Care Workers In Lisbon, Portugal, Celeste Vaughan Curington

Doctoral Dissertations

In Portugal, high levels of women’s labor force participation, rapidly aging populations, along with the retrenchment of welfare states, has led to the expansion of publicly subsidized private care work such as home care. Much of this caring work is carried out by low-paid citizen and migrant women from the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde, an independent archipelago nation off the West African coast. At the same time, Portugal is a “post-colonial” setting, with comparatively progressive policies around family settlement for migrants, and where the language of “legal race” does not exist. Taking the lived experiences of Cape Verdean …


Distributing Condoms And "Hope": Race, Sex, And Science In Youth Sexual Health Promotion, Chris A. Barcelos Nov 2016

Distributing Condoms And "Hope": Race, Sex, And Science In Youth Sexual Health Promotion, Chris A. Barcelos

Doctoral Dissertations

This project uses discursive, visual, and ethnographic approaches situated in a critical feminist methodology to understand how ways of knowing about youth sexuality and reproduction influence community health work. I understand the “problem” in this inquiry as the discursive contexts that limit critical ways of knowing about young people’s sexual subjectivities and practices and about the design of policies and programs. Although race, class, gender, and sexuality are understood in the public health literature as important social determinants of health, there is a lack of research that applies a critical, feminist lens to these constructs. I draw on three years …


“Race Talk” In Organizational Discourse: A Comparative Study Of Two Texas Chambers Of Commerce, Natasha Shrikant Jul 2016

“Race Talk” In Organizational Discourse: A Comparative Study Of Two Texas Chambers Of Commerce, Natasha Shrikant

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation takes an interpretive, discursive approach to understanding how organizational members create meanings about race, and other identities, through their everyday communication practices in the workplace. This dissertation also explores how these everyday discourses about race might reproduce, negotiate, or challenge ideologies that maintain the dominant position of Whiteness in United States racial hierarchies. I draw from data collected during eight months of ethnographic fieldwork (from Jan-Aug 2014) with two chambers of commerce in a large Texas city: an Asian American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) and what I call the “North City” Chamber of Commerce (NCC). The AACC explicitly …


A Mixed Methods Analysis Of The Intersections Of Gender, Race, And Migration In The High-Tech Workforce, Sharla N. Alegria Jul 2016

A Mixed Methods Analysis Of The Intersections Of Gender, Race, And Migration In The High-Tech Workforce, Sharla N. Alegria

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite public policy initiatives and private sector investment to recruit more women, women’s participation in high-tech work has decreased since 1990. I use interviews with tech workers and nationally representative quantitative workforce data from the American Community Survey to examine the consequences of race, gender, and immigration for tech workers’ experiences and wages. While previous research shows a decrease in the proportion of women in tech work, these conclusions are somewhat misleading as they do not consider the intersections of race and migration with gender. I find only modest change in the absolute numbers of women. Rather, as the field …


Creating The Ideal Mexican: 20th And 21st Century Racial And National Identity Discourses In Oaxaca, Savannah N. Carroll Nov 2015

Creating The Ideal Mexican: 20th And 21st Century Racial And National Identity Discourses In Oaxaca, Savannah N. Carroll

Doctoral Dissertations

This investigation intends to uncover past and contemporary socioeconomic significance of being a racial other in Oaxaca, Mexico and its relevance in shaping Mexican national identity. The project has two purposes: first, to analyze activities and observations of cultural missionaries in Oaxaca during the 1920s and 1930s, and second to relate these findings to historical and present implications of blackness in an Afro-Mexican community. Cultural missionaries were appointed by the Secretary of Public Education (SEP) to create schools throughout Mexico, focusing on the modernization of marginalized communities through formal and social education. This initiative was intended to resolve socioeconomic disparities …


On Belonging, Difference And Whiteness: Italy's Problem With Immigration, Flavia Stanley Mar 2015

On Belonging, Difference And Whiteness: Italy's Problem With Immigration, Flavia Stanley

Doctoral Dissertations

In the past thirty years, Italy has transitioned from a nation defined in part by a history of emigration, to a nation where immigration and attendant issues surrounding increased cultural and ethno-racial diversity dominates as a national concern. The research presented in this dissertation illustrates the ways in which, within this context, immigration is promoted and perceived unequivocally as a “problem” and a “threat.” However, rather than discussing Italy’s immigration problem, the issue here is recast as Italy’s problem with immigration. Despite deep regional differences and identities that continue to exist, increased immigration and the permanent settlement of …