Arts and Humanities Commons^™

River Of Dreams, Kaysone Syonesa

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

3 Lao American poems

New Australia, Un Nuevo Mundo, Elizabeth Christensen

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

I focus on the diaspora of the Australian immigration to the South American colony known as New Australia. My project addresses the question of identity. I address questions such as: how much do the surviving descendants of the New Australia colony identify with the homeland of Australia or the hostland of South America? How has their identities influenced the way they raise their children

Personal Geography, Floating Identities And Inter-Asian Migration In Stories By Migrant Workers In Taiwan, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Personal Geography, floating Identities and Inter-Asian Migration in Stories by Migrant Workers in Taiwan," I-Chun Wang discusses narratives by migrant workers with the purpose of looking into their personal geographies, their possibilities of integration, their floating identities and their dreams of settlement and possible success. This paper stresses the stories of migration show not only common human values, shared across cultures and creolization, but also sad stories of human-rights violations, injustices, discrimination, and even human trafficking. In these fictional stories or witness literature, cross-cultural conflicts, cultural in-betweenness and cultural hybridity are intertwined with the migrants’ ways to …

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 …

Voix Narratives Et Transfigurations De L'Écrivain Dans Le Roman Francophone, Cheikh M. Diop

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In biblical language, transfiguration refers to the "change in bodily appearance" of the crucified Christ revealing his "divine nature". In the same way, it can be said that the writer is metamorphosed through the process of writing by the creation either of an alter ego or of an imaginary double, be it, animal or inanimate. The first case proposes original figures of the "social status" of the writer. In the second, the latter borrows the voice of a cat or makes a piece of furniture or an intimate object to speak. Therefore, we wonder if the transfiguration of the narrative …

Forbidden Citizens: The Chinese Diaspora Of Monterey Bay, Veronica Sanchez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The purpose of this essay is to educate California State University Monterey Bay students, the professors, and members of the Marina, Seaside, and Monterey community about the oppressive history that occurred in Pacific Grove towards the early Chinese who traveled to California. As far as research methods go, I read scholarly articles that included a history of the reoccurring conflicts between the Chinese fishermen and the business along Cannery Row, and books on what the Chinese endured while traveling to California. I attended events in the town of Pacific Grove that relate back to my topic, such as The Walk …

“Muslim Women In The Diaspora: Shaping Lives And Negotiating Their Marriages”, Enaya Othman

Enaya Othman

Muslim Women In The Diaspora: Shaping Lives And Negotiating Their Marriages, Enaya Othman

Enaya Othman

The Politics Of Feeling And The Work Of Belonging In Us Immigrant Fiction 1990 - 2015, Lauren Silber

Doctoral Dissertations

“The Politics of Feeling and the Work of Belonging in US Immigrant Fiction 1990 – 2015” presents readers with a distinct optic: if we are to fully grasp contemporary US racial politics, we must recognize the narrative work emotion performs in popular US diasporic fiction. Comparing the work of authors who have become mainstays in the multi-ethnic US literary canon such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Julia Alvarez, Junot Díaz, Lan Cao, Achy Obejas, Cristina Garcia, Kiran Desai, and Nora Okja Keller, I explicate how these popular authors exhume the complex entanglements of racialization, US empire, and global capitalism by narrating the …

Rhotic Variation In The Spanish Spoken By Puerto Ricans In Puerto Rico And Western Massachusetts, Alba Arias Alvarez

Doctoral Dissertations

The Spanish trill is known to present a wide range of phonetic variation in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS), attested not only on the island but in the diaspora. Combining auditory and acoustic analysis, this research project studies acoustic data on onset /r/ in Holyoke, MA, the city with the largest per capita population of Puerto Ricans living outside the island. The aim of this dissertation is to analyze whether there is trill variation in the PR community in Holyoke, and, whether it mirrors the variation found in Puerto Rico. Special attention is paid to glottal, velar, or uvular /r/ realizations. …

Illusions Of "Blackness" In Contemporary Visual Culture, Michaël Dorn

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

My thesis begins with a primer of the historical concept of “black(ness)” and the roots of its racialization. Intertwined throughout my discussion in Section I, I will highlight a few of my research findings and discuss some of the installation images that I created as I studied the work of contemporary artists who use lexical and literal figurative “blackness” in their work—in particular, the oeuvre of Kerry James Marshall as featured in his retrospective exhibition Mastry. My discourse unfolds with a brief etymological review of both the English word “black” and its precedent conceptual forms in Section II. Section …

From Borderlands To Border Islands: Intersections Between Anzaldúa's Chicana Feminist Theory And U.S. Latina Literature From The Hispanic Caribbean, Cristina Gonzalez Martin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies three texts by three U.S. Latina authors from the Hispanic Caribbean through the lens of Chicana feminist border theory. The works analyzed are How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) by Dominican author Julia Alvarez, Dreaming in Cuban (1992) by Cuban-American novelist Cristina García, and the memoir Almost a Woman (1998) by Puerto Rican author Esmeralda Santiago. The theoretical framework used is Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. The objective is to show how these texts manifest the formation of a hybrid, diasporic, in-between identity that corresponds with Anzaldúa’s definition of mestiza consciousness or la …

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.

Redefining “Home”: The Concept Of Dala In Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye’S Chira, Jennifer Ongalo, Jane L. Fernandez, Daniel Reynaud

Daniel Reynaud

The debates about Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye’s identity either, exclusively identify her as Kenyan or British-born Kenyan without explicitly interrogating the process by which she became Kenyan. This research recognises that Macgoye is Kenyan through her marriage to a Luo. The Luo are a language group whose traditional land is on the shores of Lake Victoria. To the Luo, the word dala has varied meanings including, but not limited to: a homestead, the ancestral land, the clan, and the general direction of dala before the Luo is Kenyan. As a Luo wife, Macgoye has multiple belongings to these dala spaces, which …

Leila Abdelrazaq Interview, Quest Sawyer

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Leila Abdelrazaq is a Palestinian author/artist, who was born in Chicago. Her work combines art and activism, addressing topics such as diaspora, refugees, history, memory, and borders. In 2015, she graduated from DePaul University with a BFA in Theatre and BA in Arabic Studies. She is best known for her graphic novel Baddawi (April 2015)- a story about her father’s refugee experience. Her website (https://lalaleila.com) also contains comics and zines, illustrations, and prints she’s created based on self- expression and her love of activism. Leila is also the founder of a blog called Bigmouth Press and Comix, …

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 …

“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 …

A Race Of Angels And Their Nameless Longings, Andrew Van Dinh

Theses and Dissertations

I use drawing methods to navigate my diasporic perception and conjure narratives of displacement. This indecipherable distance between self and Other, Vietnam and I, has formed into enigmatic desires, which informs the use of the imaginary in my works as temporary solutions to issues of self-hood and nameless longings.

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 …

Supernova: Performing Race, Hybridity And Expanding The Geographical Imagination, Raheleh Saneie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis attempts to explore the many socio-political, temporal and spatial factors that contribute to the formation of cultural identity. Through my video work, SuperNova, I examine how race is performed and the discursive structures that contribute to the process of racialization. The core question that is central to this thesis is how race is performed and the potential benefits and drawbacks of this performance. In chapter one, I explore how whiteness is performed and how racial hierarchies are maintained through performance. I critique the Aryan race discourse that is a part pf Iranian nationalist discourse of identity. In …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

“The Only Way Out Is In”: Negotiating Identity Through Narrative In The House On Mango Street And The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, Brianna E. Taylor

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

While aimed at vastly different audiences, Sandra Cisneros’s beloved coming-of-age story The House on Mango Street and Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao both uniquely capture the complexities of navigating the hyphenated territory between their respective Mexican-American and Dominican-American identities. Cisneros engages readers with the simple yet profound narrative voice of Esperanza in a series of vignettes that subtly reveal a growing consciousness of her role as a young Mexican-American woman and her creative consciousness as an artist. Through the multifaceted narrative perspective of Yunior, Díaz skillfully weaves together “ghetto nerd” Oscar de …

The Face Of A Young Girl, Isabel Acevedo

Poetry MFA Theses

This collection of poems grapples with identity. What is home in relation to one's physical surroundings and even personal relationships. "The Face of a Young Girl" is a coming-of-age, not quite grown-up poetry collection.

Development Of A Literary Dispositif: Convening Diasporan, Blues, And Cosmopolitan Lines Of Inquiry To Reveal The Cultural Dialogue Among Giuseppe Ungaretti, Langston Hughes, And Antonio D’Alfonso, Anna Ciamparella

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to create a literary dialogue among the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, the African American author Langston Hughes, and the Quebecois writer Antonio D’Alfonso. Giuseppe Ungaretti and Langston Hughes were more or less contemporaries. Ungaretti was born in 1888 and Hughes in 1902, and both were active in modernist movements that shaped the literary history of their own countries. D’Alfonso was born in Canada about half a center after Ungaretti and Hughes. Besides significant generational differences, these three authors also underwent personal and intellectual experiences that shaped their writing in seemingly incomparable ways. While a traditional comparative approach …

Helen Oyeyemi And Border Identities: Contesting Western Representations Of Immigrants Through Transnational Literature, Susanna L. Mills

Student Publications

Oyeyemi is a Nigerian-British writer whose writing, like other immigrant authors', participates in a dialogue about and contestation of essentialized immigrant and ethnic identities that are a result of global and local processes. Her writing produces counter-narratives in which immigrant identities are multiple, conflicting, intersectional, and most of all self-represented. This paper explores readings of Oyeyemi accompanied by the following: an examination of globalization and flows of migration; the connections of national epistemologies through media to processes like migration: how literary canon has excluded transnational fiction from the mainstream, thereby decreasing the ability of multi-ethnic and im/migrant writers to represent …

De Pura Cepa: Seis Cuentos De Puerto Rico, 1548–2017, Rita M. Pérez-Padilla

Honors Papers

"De pura cepa" is a collection of six short stories, each in a different time period and different conflict in Puerto Rican history: the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, the era of slavery and sugar plantations in the mid-19th century, the transition from Spain to the United States in the first years of the 20th century, the start of mass emigrations from Puerto Rico in the mid-20th century, and finally the immediate effects of Hurricane Maria in the latter half of 2017. There is also an introductory story that takes place in the early 2000s. The collection confronts and …

South Asian American Visual Culture And Representation, Bakirathi Mani

English Literature Faculty Works

South Asian American visual culture is a diverse field of visual art, created by artists who are first-, second- and third-generation immigrants from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, among other diasporic locations (e.g., Kenya). South Asian American artists work in a range of media forms, including photography, sculpture, installation, video, painting, and drawing. Collectively, these artworks are frequently exhibited in museums and galleries as depictions of contemporary South Asian immigrant life. However, a close reading of individual works produces a more dynamic picture. Instead of viewing South Asian American visual culture solely in terms of artists’ own immigrant biographies, scholarship and …