Boundary maintenance in Qatar: Interpretation of domination, segregation and subordination

This study explores the interaction of expatriates in Qatar and their perception of their subordination. The study design included participant observation in an all female University and University housing as well as interviews with Qatari government agencies and ministries, expatriate embassies and expatriates. Semi-structured interviews were conducted across seven expatriate groups: domestic workers, unskilled laborers, semiskilled, professionals, housewives, second-generation expatriates with host country other than Qatar, second-generation expatriates with host country Qatar, and Gulf Cooperation Council citizens. Forty-two subjects completed the interview schedule while 87 interviews were incomplete. ^ Physical control of expatriates occurs through the Gulf practice of sponsorship (The Kafeel System), and local cultural and Islamic related controls intertwined with the Arab Code of honor. Interviews and observations revealed rankings of Arabs and foreigners which emphasize Qatari superiority such as tribal identity, moral ranking of female groups by dress, legal protection and power, sexual consideration and desexualization and salaries and job opportunities based on nationality and ethnicity. Individuals who desire to transcend boundaries into the Qatari realm through citizenship or marriage view Qataris as possessing the “image of the unlimited good” and have acquired Qatari social and cultural capital. Members from all expatriate groups engaged in various forms of resistance to labor and gender domination which ranged from forms of “exit,” expressing a hidden transcript in the privacy of their own group, disguised resistance in public, and occasionally, direct confrontation with the Qatari. Although the legal arena created the appearance that worker's needs were being addressed, laborers engaged in forms of “exit” to escape their oppression. Omani students in the hostel disguised their resistance by spreading gossip, nick-naming homosexual Qatari students at the University, acting out a skit depicting their exclusion from Qatari privilege, spreading rumors of impending freedom, and singing songs of despair in the courtyard. Other sites of resistance were expatriate embassies, the road, the newspaper and technology. This study emphasizes that blaming oppression of the expatriate worker on globalization is a simplistic view of oppression in the Gulf, and ignores complex issues within Qatari society and other Gulf States. Sponsorship, servitude, and gender segregation intersect in Qatar to create a system of segregation and domination of expatriates. ^

Speaking Up: A Phenomenological Study of Student Perceptions of Being Silenced in their Higher Education Classrooms

This phenomenological study explored students’ experiences of being silenced in their higher education classroom. Themes emerging from this study include the influence of past experiences, devaluation of students’ previous knowledge and learning, use of communication patterns to silence students, and internalization of conflict and oppression resulting from being silenced.

Lucumí (Yoruba) culture in Cuba: A reevaluation (1830s -1940s)

The status, roles, and interactions of three dominant African ethnic groups and their descendants in Cuba significantly influenced the island's cubanidad (national identity): the Lucumís (Yoruba), the Congos (Bantú speakers from Central West Africa), and the Carabalís (from the region of Calabar). These three groups, enslaved on the island, coexisted, each group confronting obstacles that threatened their way of life and cultural identities. Through covert resistance, cultural appropriation, and accommodation, all three, but especially the Lucumís, laid deep roots in the nineteenth century that came to fruition in the twentieth. During the early 1900s, Cuba confronted numerous pressures, internal and external. Under the pretense of a quest for national identity and modernity, Afro-Cubans and African cultures and religion came under political, social, and intellectual attack. Race was an undeniable element in these conflicts. While all three groups were oppressed equally, only the Lucumís fought back, contesting accusations of backwardness, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and brujería (witchcraft), exaggerated by the sensationalistic media, often with the police's and legal system's complicity. Unlike the covert character of earlier epochs' responses to oppression, in the twentieth century Lucumí resistance was overt and outspoken, publically refuting the accusations levied against African religions. Although these struggles had unintended consequences for the Lucumís, they gave birth to cubanidad's African component. With the help of Fernando Ortiz, the Lucumí were situated at the pinnacle of a hierarchical pyramid, stratifying African religious complexes based on civilizational advancement, but at a costly price. Social ascent denigrated Lucumí religion to the status of folklore, depriving it of its status as a bona fide religious complex. To the present, Lucumí religious descendants, in Cuba and, after 1959, in many other areas of the world, are still contesting this contradiction in terms: an elevated downgrade.

Nec(Romantic)

NEC(ROMANTIC) is a poetry collection thematically linked through images of insects, celestial bodies, bones, and other elements of the supernatural. These images are indicative of spells, but the parenthesis around romantic in the collection’s title also implies idealism. The poems explore the author’s experiences with death, grief, love, oppression, and addiction. NEC(ROMANTIC) employs the use of traditional forms such as the villanelle, sestina, and haiku to organize these experiences. Prose poetry and a peca kucha ground the center of NEC(ROMANTIC) which alternates between lyrical and narrative gestures. NEC(ROMANTIC) is influenced by Sylvia Plath. The author uses Plath’s methods of compression, sound, and rhythm to create a swift, child-like tone when examining emotionally laden topics. Ilya Kaminsky influences lyrical elements of the poems, including surrealism. Spencer Reese’s combination of the natural and personal world is also paramount to this book. Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde influence NEC(ROMANTIC)’s political poetry.

Spatial Articulations of Race, Desire, and Belonging in Western North Carolina

The sociocultural mythology of the South homogenizes it as a site of abjection. To counter the regionalist discourse, the dissertation intersects queer sexualities with gender and race and focuses on exploring identity and spatial formation among Black lesbian and queer women. The dissertation seeks to challenge the monolith of the South and place the region into multiple contexts and to map Black geographies through an intentional intersectional account of Black queer women. The dissertation utilizes qualitative research methods to ascertain understandings of lived experiences in the production of space. The dissertation argues that an idea of Progress has been indoctrinated as a synonym for the lgbtq civil rights movement and subsequently provides an analysis of progress discourses and queer sexualities and political campaigns of equality in the South. Analyses revealed different ways to situate progress utilizing the public contributions of three Black women interviewed for the dissertation. Moreover, the dissertation utilizes six Black queer and lesbian women to explain the multifarious nature of identities and their construction in place. Black queer and lesbian women produce spaces that deconstruct the normativity of stasis and physicality, and the dissertation explores the consequential realities of being a body in space. These consequences are particularly highlighted in the dissertation by discussions of the processes of racialization in the bounded and unbounded senses of space and place and the impacts of religious institutions, specifically Christianity. The dissertation concluded that no space is without complication. Other considerations should be made in the advancement of alleviating oppression deeply embedded in United States landscapes. Black women’s geographies offer epistemological and ontological renderings that enrich analyses of space, place, and landscape. The dissertation also concludes that Black women’s bodies represent sites for the production of geographic knowledge through narrating their spaces of material trajectories of interlocking, multiscalar lives.

Spiritual Violence: Queer People and the Sacrament of Communion

This thesis addresses spiritual violence done to queer people in the sacrament of Communion, or Eucharist, in both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in the U.S. Rooted in the sexual dimorphic interpretation of Genesis, theologians engendered Christianity with sexism and patriarchy, both of which have since developed into intricate intersections of oppressions. Religious abuse is founded on the tradition of exclusionary practices and is validated through narrow interpretations of Scripture that work to reassert the authority of the experiences of the dominant culture. The resultant culture of oppression manifests itself in ritualized spiritual violence. Queer people are deemed “unworthy” to take ‘the body and blood of the Christ’ and, in fact, are excluded altogether. This “unworthiness” is expressed as spiritual violence against queer people who are shunned and humiliated, internalize hateful messages, and are denied spiritual guidance or life-affirming messages. By “queering” Scripture, or reading the Bible anew through a framework of justice, queer people have begun to sacramentalize their experiences and reclaim their place at the table.

Playing Miami : Afrocuban performance artists negotiating cubanidad

The social scripts that are deeply involved in cultural production by AfroCuban identified artists in Miami, during the late nineties to the present, participate in a climate that is informed by and feeds from the so-called Latin Explosion of this time period. More specifically, varying historical, socioeconomic, and geopolitical trajectories have placed Africa and African-based religion and cultural production (via music and theatre) at the center of Cuban national identity. The purpose of this study is to facilitate a discussion of the experiences of AfroCuban performance artists and the climate for production, given the aforementioned dynamics, in mass media. These experiences are directed by a study of transnational structures for cultural production (including the more recent memory-shadow of hip-hop culture in Cuba) and discourse that engages theories of modernity, authenticity, and resistance. Through the interventions of artists, producers, and distributors via their art and business, the text identifies and resists the pervasive oppression of stereotype, dehumanization (Othering), and essentialism.

Lucumí (Yoruba) Culture in Cuba: A Reevaluation (1830S -1940s)

The status, roles, and interactions of three dominant African ethnic groups and their descendants in Cuba significantly influenced the island’s cubanidad (national identity): the Lucumís (Yoruba), the Congos (Bantú speakers from Central West Africa), and the Carabalís (from the region of Calabar). These three groups, enslaved on the island, coexisted, each group confronting obstacles that threatened their way of life and cultural identities. Through covert resistance, cultural appropriation, and accommodation, all three, but especially the Lucumís, laid deep roots in the nineteenth century that came to fruition in the twentieth. During the early 1900s, Cuba confronted numerous pressures, internal and external. Under the pretense of a quest for national identity and modernity, Afro-Cubans and African cultures and religion came under political, social, and intellectual attack. Race was an undeniable element in these conflicts. While all three groups were oppressed equally, only the Lucumís fought back, contesting accusations of backwardness, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and brujería (witchcraft), exaggerated by the sensationalistic media, often with the police’s and legal system’s complicity. Unlike the covert character of earlier epochs’ responses to oppression, in the twentieth century Lucumí resistance was overt and outspoken, publically refuting the accusations levied against African religions. Although these struggles had unintended consequences for the Lucumís, they gave birth to cubanidad’s African component. With the help of Fernando Ortiz, the Lucumí were situated at the pinnacle of a hierarchical pyramid, stratifying African religious complexes based on civilizational advancement, but at a costly price. Social ascent denigrated Lucumí religion to the status of folklore, depriving it of its status as a bona fide religious complex. To the present, Lucumí religious descendants, in Cuba and, after 1959, in many other areas of the world, are still contesting this contradiction in terms: an elevated downgrade.