Дисертації з теми "Women – caribbean area – history"

This study considers the social and economic lives of free women in Jamaica from 1760 to 1834. Throughout the period studied Jamaica was Britain's most important imperial holding. The colony's slave economy, driven by the labour of hundreds of thousands of enslaved men and women, generated incredible wealth. Still, Jamaica was the deadliest place to live in British America. Due to the endemic nature of tropical disease and atrocious mortality rates, neither the enslaved population nor the white population maintained itself naturally prior to emancipation. However, an environment characterized by death and demographic crisis engendered heightened opportunities for women to take part in tropical enterprise and to shape the futures of their families. Inheritance norms were weakened by the omnipresence of death, precipitating more generous inheritance bequests for women and a greater role given to wives and daughters-both white women, and those of mixed-race descent-in tropical commerce. Additionally, as slave ownership was not limited by gender or race, free women of all races took part in the slave economy. Free women's visibility in the island's formal as well as informal economies, and the wealth accumulated by some, was unsurpassed in a British American context. However, in this slave society, free women's prosperity rested upon the exploitation and oppression of others. In contrast to familiar historical trajectories that have presented Caribbean participation in Atlantic markets of slavery and capital as male-driven ventures, this study argues that free women of all races were vital participants in the slave economy and principle beneficiaries of plantation profits. This project moves beyond previous studies on women in colonial Jamaica by revealing how women's enterprise and relations with one another shaped the nature of this economy and society, including the commercial, familial and kin networks that bound it together. In doing so, it enhances our understanding of this colony and the operation of race and gendered power within it.

This thesis analyses the themes of history, memory, and authorship in the works of four women playwrights from the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. In doing so, it aims to reveal the three levels of marginalization to which Caribbean women theatre practitioners are subjected: being a woman, being a French Caribbean woman, and being a French Caribbean woman who writes theatre. The thesis seeks to contribute to the expansion of the field of French Caribbean literary and drama studies, endeavours to redress the gender balance in studies on French Caribbean literature, and aspires to add to the existing body of work on French Caribbean women's writing. Therefore, the thesis aims to reveal and to analyse the world of French Caribbean women's theatre and to study how the playwrights address socio-political issues that affect their communities and influence their own writings and careers. The corpus consists of plays by Gerty Dambury, Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé, and Suzanne Dracius from the 1980s to the early 2000s. While focussing on a different theme, each chapter rests its analysis on theatrical works of a similar genre. The analysis of the plays deploys theories of the theatre pertaining to postcolonial drama and gender. The first chapter serves as an introduction to a group of female French Caribbean writers and their predecessors. The second chapter is a study of two historical plays, focussing on the collective experience of historical events and the role played by women in those events. The third chapter analyses plays that problematize the relationship between the collective and the individual. The fourth chapter looks at the image of the French Caribbean female artist and the multiple barriers she encounters in achieving creative independence.

American history has celebrated the involvement of black women in the "underground railroad," but little is said about women's everyday resistance to the institutional constraints and abuses of slavery. Many Americans have probably heard of and know about Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth - two very prominent black female resistance leaders and abolitionists-- but this thesis addresses the lives of some of the less-celebrated and lesser-known (more obscure) women; part of the focus is on the common tasks, relationships, burdens, and leadership roles of these very brave enslaved women. Resistance history in the Caribbean and Americas in its various forms has always emphasized the role of men as leaders and heroes. Studies in the last two decades Momsen 1996, Mintz 1996, Bush 1990, Beckles and Shepherd, Ellis 1985, 1996, Hart 1980, 1985) however, are beginning to suggest the enormous contributions of women to the successes of many of the resistance events. Also, research revelations are being made correcting the negative impressions and images of enslaved women as depicted in colonial writings (Mathis 2001, Beckles and Shepherd 1996, Cooper 1994, Campbell 1986, Price 1996, Campbell 1987). Some of these new findings portray women as not only actively at the forefront of colonial military and political resistance operations but performed those activities in addition to their roles as the bearers of their individual original cultures. Their goal was achievement of freedom for their people. Freedom can be seen as a magic word that politicians, propagandists, psychologists and priests throw around with ease. Yet, to others freedom has a different meaning which varies with the individual's sense of associated values. Freedom without qualification is an abstract noun meaning, "not restricted, unimpeded", or simply, "liberty"; but when it is concretized in individual situations its meaning is narrowed, and it becomes clear that no one can be fully free. Yet the love of freedom is one of our deepest feelings, a truly heartfelt cry, freedom of wide open spaces, liberty to enjoy the taste, in unrestricted fashion, of the joys of nature, to live a life free from external anxieties and internal fears; freedom to be truly ourselves. All living creatures, even animals seem to value their freedom above all else. Enslaved people were not submissive towards their oppressors; attempts were made both subtly, overtly and violently to resist their so-called "masters" and slavery conditions. Violent and non-violent resistance were carried out by the enslaved throughout colonial history on both sides of the Atlantic, and modern historical literature shows that women oftentimes displayed more resistance than men. Enslaved Africans started to fight the transatlantic slave trade as soon as it began. Their struggles were multifaceted and covered four continents over four centuries. Still, they have often been underestimated, overlooked, or forgotten. African resistance was reported in European sources only when it concerned attacks on slave ships and company barracoons, but acts of resistance also took place far from the coast and thus escaped the slavers' attention. To discover them, oral history, archaeology, and autobiographies and biographies of African victims of the slave trade have to be probed. Taken together, these various sources offer a detailed image of the varied strategies Africans used to defend themselves and mount attacks against the slave trade in various ways. The Africans' resistance continued in the Americas, by running away, establishing Maroon communities, sabotage, conspiracy, and open uprising against those who held them in captivity. Freed people petitioned the authorities, led information campaigns, and worked actively to abolish the slave trade and slavery. In Europe, black abolitionists launched or participated in civic movements to end the deportation and enslavement of Africans. They too delivered speeches, provided information, wrote newspaper articles and books. Using violent as well as nonviolent means, Africans in Africa, the Americas, and Europe were constantly involved in the fight against the slave trade and slavery. Women are half the human race and they're half of history, as well. Until recent years, Black women's history has been even less than that. Much work has been done studying the lives of slaves in the United States and the slave system. From elementary school in the USA on through college we are taught the evils of slavery that took place right here in the Land of the Free. However, how much do we know about the enslaved in other places, namely the Caribbean? The Caribbean was the doorway to slavery here in the New World, and so it is important that we study the hardships that enslaved people suffered in that area. Slaves regularly resisted their masters in any way they could. Female slaves, in particular, are reported to have had a very strong sense of independence and they regularly resisted slavery using both violent and non-violent means. The focus of my research is on the lives of enslaved women in the Caribbean and their brave resistance to bondage. Caribbean enslaved women exhibited their strong character, independence and exceptional self worth through their opposition to the tasks they performed in the fields on plantations. Resistance was expressed in many different rebellious ways including not getting married, refusing to reproduce, and through various other forms as part of their open physical resistance. The purpose of this project is to identify the role enslaved women in both the Caribbean and the USA played in some of the major uprisings, revolts, and rebellions during their enslavement period. The research identifies individual female personalities, who played key roles in not only the everyday work on plantations, but also in planning resistance movements in the slave communities. This study utilizes plantations records, archival material, and official sources. Archival records from plantations located in archives and county clerks' offices; interviews with sources such as researchers and experts familiar with the plantations of slave communities in designated areas; and research in libraries, as well as other sources, oral histories, written and oral folklore, and personal interviews were used as well.

xi, 236 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
Writers in the Caribbean, like writers throughout the postcolonial world, return to colonial texts to rewrite the myths that justified and maintained colonial control. Exemplary of a widespread, regional phenomenon that begins at mid-century, writers such as Aimé Césaire and George Lamming take up certain texts such as Shakespeare's The Tempest and recast them in their own image. Postcolonial literary theory reads this act of rewriting the canon as a political one that speaks back to power and often advocates for political and cultural independence. Towards the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Caribbean women writers begin a new wave of rewriting that continues in this tradition, but with certain differences, not least of which is a focused attention to gender and sexuality and to the literary legacies of romance. In the dissertation I consider a number of novels from throughout the region that rewrite the romance, including Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Maryse Condé's La migration des coeurs (1995), Mayra Santos-Febres's Nuestra señora de la noche (2006), and Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here (1996). Romance, perhaps more than any other literary form, exerts an allegorical force that exceeds the story of individual characters. The symbolic weight of romance imagines the possibilities of a social order--a social order dependent on the sexual behavior of its citizens. By rewriting the romance, Caribbean women reconsider the sexual politics that have linked women with metaphorical constructions of the nation while at the same time detailing the extent to which transnational forces, including colonization, impact the representation of love and desire in literary texts. Although ultimately these novels refuse the generic requirements of the traditional resolution for romance (the so-called happy ending), they nonetheless gesture towards a reordering of community and a revised notion of kinship that recognizes the weight of both gendered and sexual identities in the Caribbean.
Committee in charge: Karen McPherson, Chairperson, Romance Languages; David Vazquez, Member, English; Tania Triana, Member, Romance Languages; Judith Raiskin, Outside Member, Womens and Gender Studies

As policy makers and educators from varying philosophical platforms develop strategies for facilitating inclusive education, there is a subsequent realization that this involves inclusive leadership. Such leadership may be addressed through ethical decision-making, exceptionality in learning, equity, effective programming, and partnerships (Crockett, 1999). Related to the moral and ethical aspects of decision making is the issue of caring leadership. Among the educational leaders who have demonstrated caring leadership, and who have had transformative influences over followers are the four women who constitute this study. To understand how they evolved as educational leaders, testimonies of their experiences and perceptions were developed. These testimonies are presented as reconstructed narratives. The discussion on these narratives explores relationships between who these women are in character, their experiences of the ethic of care, and leadership. The study directs focus on the lives of these women with a view to documenting their contributions and sharing their voices about the education systems of Trinidad and Tobago, and the broader Caribbean area. Oral history interviewing, within the biographical tradition, is the methodology used for data collection. The data as transcribed narratives and topical life histories were then content-analyzed to identify common themes and link these with contemporary research on leadership, women, and the ethic of care as discussed in the review of the literature. Findings from the study revealed caring leadership as an evolutionary process, and the importance that spirituality, community, and a sense of gender-equity and inter-relatedness played in the lives of the participants.
Ph. D.

This thesis examines how mental hygiene principles were adopted for a student audience through the elementary-level health textbooks series, Health and Personal Development, used in Ontario schools from 1952 until 1963. In particular, I explore the didactic messages pertaining to mental hygiene as they related to girls. The results of this analysis demonstrate that healthy mental hygiene and personal development for girls, according to the textbooks, meant becoming wives, mothers, and homemakers, as their own mothers model. While these roles required many skills and responsibilities, and provided women with a certain amount of agency in the female-dominated sphere, girls were represented in the textbooks as having a limited set of options in life: to emulate their mothers’ feminine domesticity, or to risk a life marred by poor mental hygiene.

viii, 91 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
Caribbean cultural ideas and values placed on death and mourning, especially in relation to cultural roles women are expected to perform, are primary motivating factors in the development of female self and identity in Caribbean women's literature. Based on analysis of three texts, QPH, Annie John, and Beyond the Limbo Silence, I argue that notions of death and funerary rituals are employed within Caribbean women's literature to (re)connect protagonist females to their homeland and secure a sense of identity. In addition, while some texts highlight the necessity of prescribing to the socially constructed roles of women within the ritual context and rely on the uproper" adherence to the traditional process to maintain the status quo, other texts show that the inversion or subversion of these traditions is also an important aspect of funerary rituals and notions of death that permeate contemporary Caribbean culture.
Committee in Charge: Dr. Dianne Dugaw, Folklore; Dr. Lisa Gilman, English; Dr. Phil Scher, Anthropology

In 1807, Parliament passed an Act to abolish the slave trade, leading to the Royal Navy’s campaign of policing international waters and seizing ships suspected of illegal trading. As the Royal Navy captured slave ships as prizes of war and condemned enslaved Africans to Vice-Admiralty courts, formerly enslaved Africans became “captured negroes” or “liberated Africans,” making the subjects in the British colonies. This work, which takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the everyday experiences of liberated Africans in Tortola during the early nineteenth century, focuses on the violent conditions of liberated African women, demonstrating that abolition consisted of violent contradictions that mirrored slavery.

La memoria della seconda guerra monidiale negli Iblei si esprime oggi grazie anche alle fonti orali, ricordi degli ultimi testimoni viventi di quel periodo. Si tratta per lo più delle donne e dei ragazzi dell'epoca che tornano su quegli eventi a fatica ma con grande ricchezza di particolari. Oltre alle testimonianze orali arricchiscono il ventaglio dei ricordi anche diari e lettere alle famiglie.

À travers le cas des Antilles françaises, cette thèse examine les transformations de l’État liées au passage de la colonie au département. Dans le cadre d’une histoire du politique, elle entend se centrer sur l’étude du fonctionnement de l’État dans une optique large et transversale, en interaction avec les acteurs locaux, et à l’intersection d’autres champs historiographiques comme ceux du fait colonial ou de la Guerre froide. Son originalité tient à l’inscription de cette problématique de départementalisation dans diverses échelles d’analyse, permettant de confronter les contextes locaux, nationaux et mondiaux sur une période de quatre décennies, entre la réorganisation des structures impériales au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et la mise en œuvre de la décentralisation en France au début des années 1980. L’objectif de la thèse est à la fois d’appréhender l’ensemble des facteurs internes et externes à l’appareil d’État qui rythment la chronologie du processus de départementalisation et de caractériser la gestion des départements d’Outre-mer par l’État
This PHD analyzes the consequences of the transformation of the French West Indies colonies into “departements”. It is focused on political history and centered on the functioning of the State Administration from a wide and cross-cultural point of view, taking into account the interactions between the State Administration and local players. This PHD is at the crossroads of many historiographic fields such as Colonial History or Cold War History. The originality of this PHD lies in the various scales that it encompasses, making it possible to compare local, regional and world issues over forty years, between the end of War World II and the beginning of the decentralization process in France. The purpose of this PHD is to assess the set of internal and external factors inside the State Administration which have an influence on the chronology of the “departementalization” process. It is also to typify the management of overseas French West Indies initiated by the French state

La presente investigación reconstruye la historia económica y agraria de los Montes de María, región ubicada en el Caribe interior colombiano, a partir del estudio de un fenómeno histórico concreto en América Latina: el impacto de la globalización económica sobre economías regionales periféricas que, por diversas razones, se insertaron en las redes del intercambio global durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y principios del XX. El análisis de este fenómeno se realiza mediante la explicación de cuatro procesos específicos: i) el surgimiento y desarrollo del capitalismo comercial en una economía campesina caracterizada por una frontera agrícola abierta; ii) las transformaciones de la economía regional y de la economía campesina a lo largo de las distintas fases del ciclo exportador; iii) la distribución del ingreso a lo largo de la cadena de producción-comercialización y los cambios en los niveles de vida de la población campesina, y iv) las dinámicas del proceso de diferenciación económica tanto al nivel de los ingresos como de la estructura de tenencia de la tierra. La investigación se basa en un exhaustivo empleo de fuentes primarias, especialmente documentos notariales consultados en varios archivos de la región, así como prensa nacional y regional. Los resultados del trabajo resaltan la importancia de un aspecto de la dinámica agro-exportadora de Colombia en el siglo XIX que ha sido poco estudiado en la literatura: el hecho de que, a pesar de los cambios estructurales y las transformaciones en la economía agraria impulsados por las fuerzas de mercado externas, la agro-exportación, cuando se basó en trabajadores rurales relativamente independientes (economías campesinas típicas), mostró una gran capacidad de adaptación que se reflejó en la continuidad de la producción, aun en periodos de crisis. En este sentido, la experiencia de los Montes de María durante el siglo XIX, con la exportación de tabaco, emula, a pequeña escala, algunos elementos que serían característicos del gran auge del café, en el siglo XX. En la reconstrucción de esta historia, además, la investigación aporta nuevas series de precios que son claves para comprender las dinámicas del cambio regional, tales como los precios campesinos de exportación, los precios de los alimentos básicos y los precios de la tierra.

À travers le cas des Antilles françaises, cette thèse examine les transformations de l’État liées au passage de la colonie au département. Dans le cadre d’une histoire du politique, elle entend se centrer sur l’étude du fonctionnement de l’État dans une optique large et transversale, en interaction avec les acteurs locaux, et à l’intersection d’autres champs historiographiques comme ceux du fait colonial ou de la Guerre froide. Son originalité tient à l’inscription de cette problématique de départementalisation dans diverses échelles d’analyse, permettant de confronter les contextes locaux, nationaux et mondiaux sur une période de quatre décennies, entre la réorganisation des structures impériales au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et la mise en œuvre de la décentralisation en France au début des années 1980. L’objectif de la thèse est à la fois d’appréhender l’ensemble des facteurs internes et externes à l’appareil d’État qui rythment la chronologie du processus de départementalisation et de caractériser la gestion des départements d’Outre-mer par l’État
This PHD analyzes the consequences of the transformation of the French West Indies colonies into “departements”. It is focused on political history and centered on the functioning of the State Administration from a wide and cross-cultural point of view, taking into account the interactions between the State Administration and local players. This PHD is at the crossroads of many historiographic fields such as Colonial History or Cold War History. The originality of this PHD lies in the various scales that it encompasses, making it possible to compare local, regional and world issues over forty years, between the end of War World II and the beginning of the decentralization process in France. The purpose of this PHD is to assess the set of internal and external factors inside the State Administration which have an influence on the chronology of the “departementalization” process. It is also to typify the management of overseas French West Indies initiated by the French state

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
The fragmented bodies and lives of postcolonial Caribbean women examined in Caribbean literature beget struggle and psychological ruin. The characters portrayed in novels by postcolonial Caribbean writers Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo are marginalized as “Other” by a Western patriarchal discourse that works to silence them because of their gender, color, class, and sexuality. Marginalization participates in the act of fragmentation of these characters because it challenges their sense of identity. Fragmentation means fractured; in terms of these fictive characters, fragmentation results from multiple traumas, each trauma causing another break in their wholeness. Postcolonial scholars have identified the causes and effects of fragmentation on the postcolonial subject, and they argue one’s need to heal because of it. Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo prove that wholeness is not possible for the postcolonial Caribbean woman, so rather than ruminate on that truth, they examine the journey of the postcolonial Caribbean woman as a way of making meaning of the pieces of her life. This project contends that fragmentation – and the fracture it produces – does not bind these women to negative existences; in fact, the female subjects of Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo locate power in their fragmentation. The texts studied include Danticat’s "Breath, Eyes, Memory" (1994) and "The Farming of Bones" (1999), Cliff’s "Abeng" (1984) and "No Telephone to Heaven" (1987), and Mootoo’s "Cereus Blooms at Night" (1996) and "He Drown She in the Sea" (2005).

abstract: The primary aim of this dissertation is to make a substantial contribution to the better understanding of the identity formations of Black Caribbean migrant women in Britain. The dissertation outlines a theory of Black female subject formation in Britain. This theory proposes that the process of subject formation in these women is an interrupted one. It further suggests that interruptions are likely to occur at four crucial points in the development of their identities. These four points are: 1) the immigrant identity; 2) the Caribbean identity; 3) “the Jamaican” identity; and 4) the Black British identity. In order to understand the racial and gendered dynamics of identity formation in these women, I hypothesized that the structure of institutional racism in Britain has taken the form of a “double wall” or a “double portcullis”, which much be scaled by these “immigrants”. My research, based on interviews with 15 Black professional women who identify with a Caribbean ancestry, confirmed very strongly the existence of this double portcullis. It further supported the hypothesis that the above points of identity transition were also points of possible interruption. My research also revealed that through a variety of social movements, cultural and political mobilizations, it has been possible to get over the negative stereotypes of the immigrant identity, the Caribbean identity, “the Jamaican” identity and to succeed getting over the first or the Black British wall of the double portcullis. For me, the most interesting findings of my research, are the continuing difficulties that the women I interviewed have faced in attempting to climb over the second portcullis to achieve the Black English identity. The dissertation concludes with some suggestions about the future of this “unfinished” Black British identity and its prospects for easier access to the Black English identity, and thus to “life success”.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2019

This thesis explores how the works of three contemporary women writers “write back” to the silences in the dominant historical narratives--made at various stages of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s notion of the production of history and in varying ways--surrounding the sexual lives of women of color in the Caribbean and how, in turn, each offers an alternative narrative of women’s history. Chapter 1 focuses on Edwidge Danticat’s novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), a realist antiromance set in Haiti and the United States during the final years of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) in the 1980s. Chapter 2 examines Rosario Ferré’s novel, The House on the Lagoon (1995), an example of the genre of Latin American feminist historical fiction that follows the history of a Puerto Rican family on the island beginning with the transition from Spanish to U.S. occupation to the textual present (1898-1980s). Chapter 3 situates Andrea Levy’s novel, The Long Song (2010), a neo-slave narrative set in Jamaica in the years leading up to and following emancipation (1807-1898), alongside an original slave narrative, The History of Mary Prince (1831), that recounts Prince’s experiences as an enslaved woman in Bermuda and Antigua in the same era. Enlisting different literary genres, representing regions that are culturally and linguistically distinct, and narrating histories that are centuries apart, these novels certainly share as many differences as commonalities. Yet these differences, when read next to each other, further reveal a transnational interest among contemporary women writers, in the Caribbean and its diasporas, to contest dominant representations and silences of women’s sexuality in Caribbean history and to use fiction to offer an alternative version that spotlights the sexual lives of women. ​
acase@tulane.edu

M.Ed.
In a country which has just acquired its democracy, education for all citizens is of primary concern. The illiteracy rate in South Africa is high, especially in the rural areas of the country. During this time when South Africa finds itself in a period of transition and of prioritizing items on its agenda, education in general and in particular education of those who had little or no education at all, is high on the priority list. While the government has targeted illiteracy as a major issue, other issues such as gender make the illiteracy situation even more complex, especially in the rural areas where the traditional tenets of the communities are still observed. The aim of this study is to explore the role gender plays in the involvement of adult learners in literacy programmes in the rural Mapulaneng area of Mpumalanga Province, in order to determine the possible implications for literacy programmes in other similar rural areas of South Africa. In order to achieve this aim, an interpretive design is applied and qualitative methods of data—collection are utilized. A literature study which consists of the exploration of the field of Adult Basic Education and gender in global education, with special reference to South African rural areas in particular, forms the theoretical background of the empirical research. Empirical data was obtained through observations and interviews and processed and analyzed by unitizing, categorizing and patterning, resulting in the findings of the research. Lastly, findings of this investigation are discussed in the light of relevant theory. The following are the main research findings: Gender does play a role in the involvement of learners in adult literacy programmes in the rural Mapulaneng area of Mpumalanga. There are learning needs that are specific to females but no particular needs specific to males. However, some needs are not gender—related and are common to both females and males. The main implications of the findings are: Adult literacy classes should be conducted during the evening, in order to accommodate workers, mostly men. There is a need for teacher training of both female and male literacy teachers. Some of the gender—related reasons for non—involvement of adult learners, particularly those that pertain to the dominance of males, would be difficult to address as they are deeply rooted in culture. In order to address the needs of male and female adult learners, a holistic approach should be applied. A holistic approach entails: not only teaching literacy but addressing other needs of the learners; not only addressing the expressed needs of learners (male and female), but also addressing the needs that they are not aware that they have.