Building the New Society in the Shell of the Old: Finnish-Canadian Hall Socialism and the Canadian Industrial Unionist Support League

The literature on Finnish immigrant working-class movements in North America frequently makes reference to the phenomenon of "hall socialism," so-called because of the central position that the socialist or labor hall occupied in the political, associational, and cultural life of many Finnish communities throughout the twentieth-century. In the 1930s, over 80 such Finnish halls were spread across Canada, and many people associated with these halls vigorously supported the mission of organized labor. This paper will examine the history, ideas, and practices of the Industrial Workers of the World-influenced Canadan Teollisuusunionistien Kannatus Liitto (CTKL; Canadian Industrial Unionist Support League), and its connections to Finnish Canadian hall socialism. The paper will consider the role of the CTKL in supporting workers' struggles, the significance of the hall as a part of the infrastructural bedrock that sustained this support, and the broader interaction between social and radical organizing commitments.

Interrogating the spaces of personal photography : women, identity, and the cultural formation of photographic practice

Personal photographs permeate our lives from the moment we are born as they define who we are within our familial group and local communities. Archived in family albums or framed on living room walls, they continue on after our death as mnemonic artifacts referencing our gendered, raced, and ethnic identities. This dissertation examines salient instances of what women “do” with personal photographs, not only as authors and subjects but also as collectors, archivists, and family and cultural historians. This project seeks to contribute to more productive, complex discourse about how women form relationships and engage with the conventions and practices of personal photography. In the first part of this dissertation I revisit developments in the history of personal photography, including the advertising campaigns of the Kodak and Agfa Girls and the development of albums such as the Stammbuch and its predecessor, the carte-de-visite, that demonstrate how personal photography has functioned as a gendered activity that references family unity, sentimentalism for the past, and self-representation within normative familial and dominant cultural groups, thus suggesting its importance as a cultural practice of identity formation. The second and primary section of the dissertation expands on the critical analyses of Gillian Rose, Patricia Holland, and Nancy Martha West, who propose that personal photography, marketed to and taken on by women, double-exposes their gendered identities. Drawing on work by critics such as Deborah Willis, bell hooks, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, I examine how the reconfiguration, recontextualization, and relocation of personal photographs in the respective work of Christine Saari, Fern Logan, and Katie Knight interrogates and complicates gendered, raced, and ethnic identities and cultural attitudes about them. In the final section of the dissertation I briefly examine select examples of how emerging digital spaces on the Internet function as a site for personal photography, one that both reinscribes traditional cultural formations while offering new opportunities for women for the display and audiencing of identities outside the family.

Governmentality in higher education : a critical analysis of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)

In this dissertation, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) serves as a nodal point through which to examine the power relations shaping the direction and practices of higher education in the twenty-first century. Theoretically, my analysis is informed by Foucault’s concept of governmentality, briefly defined as a technology of power that influences or shapes behavior from a distance. This form of governance operates through apparatuses of security, which include higher education. Foucault identified three essential characteristics of an apparatus—the market, the milieu, and the processes of normalization—through which administrative mechanisms and practices operate and govern populations. In this project, my primary focus is on the governance of faculty and administrators, as a population, at residential colleges and universities. I argue that the existing milieu of accountability is one dominated by the neoliberal assumption that all activity—including higher education—works best when governed by market forces alone, reducing higher education to a market-mediated private good. Under these conditions, what many in the academy believe is an essential purpose of higher education—to educate students broadly, to contribute knowledge for the public good, and to serve as society’s critic and social conscience (Washburn 227)—is being eroded. Although NSSE emerged as a form of resistance to commercial college rankings, it did not challenge the forces that empowered the rankings in the first place. Indeed, NSSE data are now being used to make institutions even more responsive to market forces. Furthermore, NSSE’s use has a normalizing effect that tends to homogenize classroom practices and erode the autonomy of faculty in the educational process. It also positions students as part of the system of surveillance. In the end, if aspects of higher education that are essential to maintaining a civil society are left to be defined solely in market terms, the result may be a less vibrant and, ultimately, a less just society.

Technical communication in the global context : a heuristic approach to disciplinary identity and pedagogical practices

There is nothing new or original in stating that the global economy directly impacts the profession of technical communicators. The globalization of the workplace requires that technical communicators be prepared to work in increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse contexts. These new exigencies have natural repercussions on the research and educational practices of the field In this work, I draw on rhetoric, linguistics, and literacy theory to explore the definition, role and meaning of the global context for the disciplinary construction of professional and technical communication. By adopting an interdisciplinary and diachronic perspective, I assert that the global context is a heuristic means for sophisticating the disciplinary identity of the field and for reinforcing its place within the humanities. Consequently, I contend that the globalization of the workplace is a kairotic moment for underscoring the rhetorical dimension of professional and technical communication.

WOMEN, CYCLING, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE: HOW DISCURSIVE AND COMMUNITY PRACTICES AFFECT ENGAGEMENT

This thesis considers the impact that discursive and community practices have on women’s access to the public sphere by examining female cyclists and a cycling community in Miami, Florida via interviews and observation. In the interviews, female cyclists frequently reported fears for their safety, including concern over harassment, when riding in public space. I interviewed participants of the cycling community and observed Emerge Miami’s meetings and events, where publicly organized cycling excursions were a major component. Using the theoretical and methodological lenses of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis and Communities of Practice, I examined the interviews to understand how participants discursively framed and contextualized gender-based harassment. I found two meta-discourse frames in operation: a normative frame (that essentially accepted the status quo) and a feminist frame (that challenged the “naturalness” of women’s harassment as just what one had to live with). The feminist frame offered a pathway for women to exert control over their experiences and alter the cultural understanding of harassment’s meaning and effect. The local community practices of Emerge Miami also challenged the normative frames that often silence women, employing explicitly invitational practices, which demonstrates how local discursive and social activity can impact and increase women’s involvement by creating a more accessible space for women to engage with their local cycling community.