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The Dream Itself Was Home”: Imaginary Homelands As A Model For Analyzing Contemporary African Return Narratives, Renee King

Masters Theses

Although contemporary African return narratives featuring female protagonists explore a wide range of themes, they consistently portray women who struggle to situate themselves within an increasingly globalized world. In these narratives, the homeland initially functions as a stabilizing anchor that emboldens the protagonist to pursue education or employment abroad, yet works such as Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish and Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah reveal that the homeland the protagonists once treated as immutable ultimately exposes itself as a dream. This destabilization unsettles the notion of an unshakeable cultural identity and demonstrates how migration reshapes both the self and the meaning of home. …

Examining Transcultural Approaches In Art Education: Transversality, Identity Formation, And Intercultural Understanding, Alexandra Grace Parsons

Master's Theses

Art education is often treated as marginal within formal schooling, valued as enrichment rather than recognized as a vital contributor to students' intellectual, cultural, and emotional development. Funding and policy decisions made by state and local bodies produce significant regional disparities in access to art education across the United States. This thesis examines how transcultural approaches to art education can respond to increasingly diverse, post-migrant school communities. Using a comparative qualitative case study design, the study analyzes program structures, partnership models, and pedagogical practices at Birmingham Arts School in the United Kingdom alongside schools within Fulton County and Atlanta Public …

Book Review - Ayodeji Olukoju And Tokunbo A. Ayoola (Eds.), Politics, Economy, And Society In Twentieth Century Nigeria, (Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2023), Xvii + 328 Pp. $120.00. Hardback. Isbn: 978-1-66692-996-6., Omon M. Osiki

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review - Lindsay Pérez Huber And Susana Muñoz, Why They Hate Us: How Racist Rhetoric Impacts Education, (New York, Ny: Teachers College Press, 2021), 240 Pages, Isbn: 0807764981, Olufemi Oyebade

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

No abstract provided.

Southern History Remixed: Conversation With Dr. Michael Bertrand1 On His Book, Southern History Remixed, (Gainesville, Fl: University Press Of Florida, 2024), 322 Pp., Sheri Bartlett Browne

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

No abstract provided.

Myth, Spirituality, And Thought Patterns In Two African And Brazilian Ritual Dramas, Dele Layiwola

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

This essay conceptualizes and historicizes the phenomena of religion, custom, and belief systems by utilizing two celebrated dramatic texts and performances as practical illustrations of the complex roles they play in the social, political, and cultural lives of human beings, irrespective of their geographical locations. The arguments demonstrate that religion or spirituality is a given phenomenon in the personal and public lives of the denizens of various societies. It possesses its own logic and rules, which may not be mutually compatible, nevertheless constitute a constant universal principle. The paper employs dramatized examples to show that in classical or modern times, …

Ikenga: Symbolism, Spirituality, And Sociocultural Importance In Igbo Traditional Belief Systems, Chinyere Ndubuisi

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

The Ikenga, a noteworthy relic of the Igbo people of southern Nigeria, is examined in this paper as a major art object for a better understanding of African traditional religions and belief systems. Ikenga is a wooden sculpture traditionally made to represent an individual's power, achievements, and spiritual essence among the Igbo. Ikenga is ascribed the embodiment of the relationship between personal action, ancestral respect, and divinity within Igbo mythology. Within the framework of Igbo traditional religion, this paper examines the ontological significance, spiritual purposes, and social consequences of the Ikenga. The symbolic relevance of Ikenga as both a personal …

Language And Culture: Exploring The Links Between Africans And African Americans, Joash J. Gambarage

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

Due to the generational distance between contemporary African Americans and the earliest generations of enslaved Africans, the deep cultural connection between these two groups has not been sufficiently explored. Moreover, much of the existing literature on African culture in the Americas primarily focuses on retentions related to religion, music, food, and language, often missing other critical aspects of cultural continuity within the African diaspora, such as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Niger-Congo linguistic ties, naming practices, and African epistemologies. This exclusion limits our understanding of how the historical movement of Africans and the persistence of African cultural legacies, have …

Situating Everybody Hates Chris (Ehc): The Appeal Of The Show, Elizabeth Johnson, Donald Culverson

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

"Everybody Hates Chris" (EHC) achieved critical success by employing comedy to address significant social issues, distinguishing itself in early-2000s television. Unlike earlier and contemporary series such as "Moesha," "The Hughleys," and "The Cosby Show," EHC offered a nuanced portrayal of Black family life, engaging an audience often overlooked or misrepresented by mainstream media. This article examines shifts in the television industry from the late 1990s to the early 2000s that facilitated EHC's innovative approach. The series departed from traditional family sitcoms, functioning not merely as entertainment but as a social commentary on the complexities of the family as a societal …

Christian Missions’ Medical Work In The Colonial Ilorin Province, 1900 To 1960, Rasheed Onagun

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

A scarcity of labor and the pursuit of optimal profit maximization led to the colonial government's collaboration with Christian missions to disseminate and expand Western healthcare to the populace. In Ilorin Province and Nigeria as a whole, missions undertook the majority of colonial medical work and public health initiatives. For the first time in the history of Ilorin Province, missionary endeavors introduced Western medicine as an alternative healthcare source to many, necessitating a historical examination. This paper explores existing literature, oral testimonies, and extensive archival documents to analyze the impacts of missionary medical work on the well-being of the people …

Editors’ Note: Introducing The Inaugural Edition

Global Africa: Journal of African and African Diaspora Studies

No abstract provided.

Belonging Across Borders: A Framework For Transnationally Resonant Retail Design, Zakkiya Khan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As global cities become increasingly transnational, retail environments have become key sites where mobile publics negotiate belonging through spatial and commercial experience. While transnational consumers are widely theorised, the spatial implications of their participation in global retail remain underexplored. This conceptual paper draws from transnational and diaspora studies to argue that retail design operates as a transcultural interface where familiarity and difference coexist, shaping plural modes of belonging. It proposes the concept, ‘Transnationally Resonant Retail Design’, a conceptual framework outlining how affective resonance, cultural mediation, and social recognition foster civic belonging within commercial spaces. These principles are illustrated by the …

“Subjugated Knowledge And Narrative Justice”: An Interview With Grace M. Cho, Anupama Arora, Yuni Kim

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Hybrid Generation: Globalization, Migration, And Cultural-Theological Reconfiguration Among Second-Generation Ghanaian Pentecostal Immigrants In The United States--Toward A Diasporic Mission Theology, David Osei-Nimoh

College of Theology and Ministry Dissertations, Projects, & Theses

This dissertation investigates how globalization, migration, and Pentecostalism shape the cultural and theological of second-generation Ghanaian Pentecostals in the United States. Using Mark Cartledge’s four-stage empirical theological cycle, it interprets participants’ lived experience as theological data in critical dialogue with Scripture, the doctrine of The Church of Pentecost (COP), and Pentecostal theological method. The study is based on 26 weeks of multisite fieldwork in three COP U.S.A. congregations—Washington, D.C., Dallas, and Tacoma—and draws on participant observation, 55 semi-structured interviews, three focus groups, and archival materials. The analysis yielded three interrelated findings. First, participants negotiate a bicultural Ghanaian American identity within …

Cyberspatial Cartographies: Mapping Digital Nationhood Within The California-Punjabi Diaspora., Saihajpratap Singh Bajwa

Master's Theses

This research investigates the phenomenon of digital nationhood, the idea that a new form of community is actively produced through interactions taking place within digital social networks and forums. These spaces function as more than repositories of information or cultural archives; they are living ecosystems in which identity is constructed through mutual encounters among members of a diaspora, where shared references, meanings, and concepts proliferate across multiplex networks. The central questions animating this inquiry are: can a nation exist without a territory, and are these encounters producing what we might conceive of as a digital nation?

The Punjabi people serve …

Reading Indian Newspaper Reports To Uncover Cinematic Misrepresentations Of Rape In Mom (2017) And Guilty (2020), Samikhya Dash, Soumya Jose

Journal of International Women's Studies

Hindi cinema has witnessed a transformation in the portrayal of rape narratives subsequent to India’s Nirbhaya rape case in 2012 and the global #MeToo movement in 2017. The rape narratives released after the #MeToo movement are characterised by a departure from the stereotypical depiction of rape victims as forlorn and vulnerable figures; instead, they are depicted as assertive and empowered survivors that challenge entrenched power dynamics. Hindi films such as Mom (2017) and Guilty (2020) exemplify this paradigm shift by featuring women characters who defy gender stereotypes and resist patriarchal constraints, experience rape trauma syndrome and post-traumatic growth, and embody …

From Farewell To Fáilte: The Voices Of Iowa’S Irish Daughters, Katie Hermanson

History Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

Irish women’s immigration to Iowa brought rich culture and lasting impacts, despite their contributions being silenced by history. Women left Ireland for economic opportunity and education abroad to support their impoverished families. Millions emigrated between 1830 and 1915, spreading across the world. The Irish women who came to the United States encountered discrimination and cultural stereotyping as they worked in domestic service, developed religious orders, taught school, owned businesses and raised families. Women bore the burden of supporting their families in Ireland by sending remittances home and communicating between countries. Their cultural identity as exiles dwelled in guilt for leaving …

Fluid Belonging, Soft Boundary, Jingyi Liu

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis conceptualizes cultural identity as a fluid and dynamically generated process shaped through the experience of migration. Drawing on contemporary art practices and theoretical frameworks of diaspora and hybridity, the thesis is structured around four interrelated dimensions: fluid identity, memory fragmentation, material interaction, and spatial displacement.

Within the artist’s practice, traditional techniques are reactivated as both cultural signifiers and material approaches that adapt and transform across shifting contexts. Fragmentation is understood not as the loss of information but as a mode of reassembly. Materials such as ink, textile, and dye function as active agents that carry time and cultural …

Collective Memory Of Partition: A Study Of Trauma, Martyrdom, And Survival In Women’S Post-Partition Fiction, Abi Sarkar, Sandip Sarkar

Journal of International Women's Studies

Gender and the distortion of memory are two important aspects of Partition literature about the division of the Indian subcontinent into two nations, India and Pakistan. Women writers, such as Geetanjali Shree in Tomb of Sand (2022) and Anjali Enjeti in The Parted Earth (2021), delineate the collective trauma of the 1947 Partition of India through the theme of memory. This article will demonstrate two types of violence experienced by women during the time - political violence (perpetrated by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs) and patriarchal violence and uncover how their memories haunt and shape their present, constructing and reconstructing their …

Teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters’S “On Being Brought From Africa To America” For The First Time In An Online Undergraduate Women’S Literature Course, Shazia Khan

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

As one of Phillis Wheatley Peters’ most famous poems, “On Being Brought from Africa to America” is often introduced to undergraduates; however, it is also an often-misunderstood text by undergraduate and graduate students alike when they first read it. Students often believe that Wheatley Peters is happy about her condition as an enslaved person in America and out of Africa. But upon deeper analysis of her word choice, use of punctuation, and biblical references, a reader can see her unique voice as an enslaved person criticizing slavery through sarcasm. Such responses can discourage instructors from teaching the poem, especially in …

Patterns, Pressures, And Pathways : An Ethnographic Study Of Discipleship In Nepali-Speaking Immigrant Churches In The United States, Ram Kumar Budhathoki

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Maroons: The First Black Nationalists Of The Americas, Marquise K. Camp

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Maroon communities are seldom discussed in academic discussions about Black nationalism. This suggests that the goals and achievements of the Maroons differed from those of Black nationalists, and that there are no significant historical links between the two. This project argues that Black nationalists and the Maroons are closely related, not only because of their shared roots in the African diaspora but also because they both sought independence and self-governance for Black people. The aims of Black nationalists like Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X closely resemble those of the Maroons. By examining the Maroons alongside Black nationalism, one can gain …

Assessing Knowledge, Attitudes, And Consumption Of Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine Among Filipinos Post Covid-19 Pandemic, Jane Yugioksing

Social Transformations Journal of the Global South

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in the Philippines has existed as early as the first wave of migrants but has remained confined within a prescribed settlement in the Manila district known as Parian. Over the years, TCM has existed independently as a modality of treatment to improve one’s health, mostly catering only to the Chinese in the country. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Philippines’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of the TCM capsule Lian Hua Qing Wen as part of the COVID-19 treatment option, which was highly patronized by the mainstream Philippine society at that …

Book Review Of To Save And To Destroy: Writing As An Other, Nguyen H B Le

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s To Save and to Destroy is a collection of his Norton lectures where he uses his generational stories of continuous immigration throughout Vietnam and the United States to explore how writing, with both internal and external experiences, shape our own identities, and forces that come into oppression, silence, and Otherness. In other words, the book depicts how he himself is seen from multiple others: “the Vietnamese, the Asian, the minoritized, the racialized, the colonized, the hybrid, the hyphenated, the refugee, the displaced, the artist, the writer, the smart ass, the bastard, the sympathizer, and the committed” (p. …

The Representation Of The Grandmother In Arab American Fiction: Alia Younis’S The Night Counter As A Case Study, Asmaa Belbachir, Eman Mukattash

Jordan Journal of Applied Science-Humanities Series

The increasing phenomenon of long-living grandparents and their novel roles and positions within both family and society in today’s world has inspired authors to produce literary works that address this subject. This article, in turn, aims to offer a clear representation of the grandmother’s character in Alia Younis’s The Night Counter (2009) by analyzing the various roles that the grandmother’s character plays in the lives of her grandchildren. As an Arab-American, Younis has an extensive background in the structure, norms, and values of the Arab Lebanese family, which are reflected in the novel. By choosing the grandmother as a central …

Call For Papers For The Journal Of Social Encounters’ Special Issue

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

The Italian Colony Of São Paulo: Race, Class, And Cultural Capital In Brazil, Giulia Riccò

Race & Ethnic Studies

WINNER, 2024 ALDO AND JEANNE SCAGLIONE PUBLICATION AWARD FOR A MANUSCRIPT IN ITALIAN LITERARY STUDIES, MODERN LANGUAGES ASSOCIATION

Introduces a way to study migration that privileges literary analysis over and against sociological data and insists on the importance of culture in the production of political identities

This book argues that Italians first became racialized as white in São Paulo, Brazil, at the turn of the twentieth century. Whereas Italians in the United States struggled with xenophobia and were often not fully acknowledged as white, in São Paulo, due to a series of social, economic, and cultural fac­tors, Italians became closely …

Refashioning The Meanings Of Dress In Palestinian Transnational Communities, Enaya Othman

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

This paper examines how Palestinian women in both the homeland and diaspora contexts have sustained and redefined cultural heritage through tatreez embroidery and revitalized the traditional thob since 1948. As designers, artisans, and entrepreneurs, they have transformed cultural dress into a site of socio-political agency, economic empowerment, and national identity-making. Their work not only preserves inherited forms but also recasts them as living cultural practices that resist colonial erasure and counter Orientalist and Western feminist narratives portraying Arab and Muslim women as passive. From post-Nakba efforts to safeguard thobs as tangible material testaments of Palestinian life to contemporary hybrid fashion …

Nepaliness As Assemblage: Diasporic Belonging, Colorism, And Caste In The Associational Life Of Nepali Migrants In Florida, Shuvechha Ghimire Sharma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The research fundamentally challenges romanticized ideas of migration—shedding older inequalities, idealizing “leveling up,” and being a part of “unified diasporic communities”—and unmasks a rather uneasy, far more intricate reality: the preexisting sociocultural and political structures and identities are not shed, rather actively reproduced and rigorously, often consciously, reconfigured within the transnational diasporic spaces. As such, the research reveals that Nepali diasporic associations in Florida play a vital role in perpetuating and reshaping social inequalities and contested national identities, significantly impacting transnational dynamics. The work contends that caste hierarchies persist in structuring associational life, influencing participation and resource distribution. Concurrently, colorism …

Narrating The New Cold War: Investigating Chinese Cyber Propaganda And Sino-American Tensions On Bilibili, William G. Highfill

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

This thesis examines Bilibili, a Chinese video-sharing platform originally known for its anime, comics, and gaming (ACG) content, as a critical site for the formation and circulation of nationalist discourse in the context of a “New Cold War” between the United States and China. As ideological rivalry increasingly shifts from traditional state media and military posturing to decentralized digital platforms, Bilibili offers a unique case study in how propaganda evolves in participatory online spaces. Through a combination of digital ethnography and discourse analysis, this research explores how Bilibili’s algorithmic infrastructure, comment culture (弹幕), and remix-oriented design allow users to not …