Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons^™

Women And Western Mission: A Case Study On The Christian Khasi And Garo Tribal Women, Rosemary Philip

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Western mission justified a mission to the Global South that was ingrained with the dominance of its culture and values. Women’s mission, as a tool of this mission, patronized themselves as the ‘care-taker’ of the ‘subjugated’ women of the Global South. This mission promulgated new ways of thinking and prescribed new gender roles and values to the Global South. In doing so, it framed the traditional roles and cultural values of the non-Western world as oppressive and replaceable. Subsequently, Women’s mission along with Western feminism and Feminist theology as a broad idea has been challenged by feminists from the Global …

The Effects Of Multilingualism And Music Experience On Tone And Vowel Discrimination Ability, Niloufar Ansari Dezfuly

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study investigates the effects of language background (monolingual/bilingual and early/late bilingual exposure), knowledge of a tonal language and music experience on auditory discrimination by employing tone and vowel discrimination tasks. A total number of 8,769 observations were analyzed using logistic regression to answer the following questions: (1) Do vowel and tone discrimination abilities correlate with language background in diverse groups of speakers such as monolinguals and bilinguals of different types (early/late bilinguals)? (2) Does musical training affect tone and vowel discrimination? (3) Does knowledge of tonal language affect tone discrimination? The findings suggest that with regard to vowel discrimination, …

“Fashionable To Be Ethnic”: Malka Marom, Yorkville Reimagined, And The Cbc’S A World Of Music, Maureen Chow

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 1999, looking back at her 1960s career as a folk performer, Malka Marom commented that she and her former singing partner, Joso Spralja, had reached mainstream success in Canada when it was considered “fashionable to be ethnic.” Here, Malka is referring to the mid-1960s, when she was classified as an ethnic folk singer in Toronto’s Yorkville Village folk scene. She performed alongside Canadian folk “greats” such as Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, and Ian and Sylvia. Malka and Joso released four studio albums through Capitol Records of Canada and were later chosen to host their own CBC television show, A …

Exploring The Acquisition Of American Sign Language By Deaf Kindergarten Children: Early Language Access And The Use Of Appropriate Resources, Jenelle Rouse

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the accounts of educators and parents regarding the accessibility of American Sign Language (ASL) and its acquisition by deaf children in Ontario, Canada. It is generally known that deaf children’s ASL acquisition and proficiency is directly affected by their early exposure to the language; the earlier and greater the exposure, the greater the acquisition and proficiency, while later and inadequate exposure results in poorer acquisition and proficiency. In the face of societal and educational systems in Ontario, there have been some attempts to provide opportunities for deaf children and their families to develop and acquire ASL (Snoddon, …

"I Need To Fight The Power, But I Need That New Ferrari": Conspicuous Consumption, New-School Hip-Hop And "The New Rock & Roll", Emmett H. Robinson Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

2017 marked the year in which hip-hop officially became the most listened-to genre in the United States. This thesis explores hip-hop music’s rise to its now-hegemonic position within the music industry, seeking to provide insight into the increasingly popular sentiment that hip-hop is “the new rock & roll”. The “new-school” hip-hop artists of the last six years or so have also been the subject of widespread critical disdain, especially for their heightened degree of emphasis on conspicuous consumption. This study will track hip-hop’s ascent from the mid-1980s through to its current position as both a political vehicle and a commercial …

A Data-Driven Analysis Of Video Game Culture And The Role Of Let's Plays In Youtube, Ana Ruiz Segarra

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Video games have become an important part of the global popular cultures that are connecting broader audiences of all ages around the world. A recent phenomenon that has lasted almost ten years is the creation and upload of gaming-related videos on YouTube, where Let’s Plays have a considerable presence. Let’s Plays are videos of people playing video games, usually including the game footage and narrated by the players themselves. In this work I use the metadata, of popular channels and their videos to analyze the current state of video game culture in YouTube and what is the role of Let's …

Cultural Diversity In Artificial Societies: Case Studies Of The Maya Peoples, Roberto Ulloa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The existence of cultural diversity in a connected world is paradoxical given that all individuals constantly interact and share information, and that individuals are all part of one giant network of connections. In the long term, it seems logical to assume that everybody should hold the same cultural information and, therefore, the same culture. Yet cultural diversity is still manifest around the globe. Cultural diversity as a phenomenon becomes even more puzzling when we take into account how it survives catastrophic events which regularly befall societies, such as invasions, natural disasters, and civil wars. In this thesis, agent-based computer simulations …

From Nizam To Nation: The Representation Of Partition In Literary Narratives About Hyderabad, Deccan, Nazia Akhtar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines literary representations of the Partition of India in 1947 as it affected the southern princely state of Hyderabad, Deccan. Through my focus on Hyderabad, I interrogate and reject the assumption generally made in scholarly analyses of Partition that this momentous, life-changing event did not significantly affect South India. In doing so, I also question the origins of the self-professed secular, egalitarian, and democratic Indian nation by shedding light on the invasion of Hyderabad and the subsequent erasure of this event from Indian historiography and mainstream culture.

Different literary texts respond differently to this fraught, suppressed history. Engaging …

Architectures Of The Veil: The Representation Of The Veil And Zenanas In Pakistani Feminists' Texts, Amber Fatima Riaz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation, which works at the intersections of feminist theory, architectural theory and postcolonial literary theory, examines the spatiality of the zenana and the burqa as represented in Pakistani literary and cultural texts. I propose that the burqa creates a portable closet, an interstitial, liminal, “third space” that allows Pakistani (secluded and veiled) women to not only traverse the borders between the private (female, domestic) and public (male) spaces, but to also signal chastity and religiosity while in the public, and semi-public spaces of the cities and villages of Pakistan. I argue that the dupatta, the chador and the hijab …