Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2006, Political Science

The purpose of this research is to explain differences in the transnational organizing strategies of U.S. trade unions. Of particular interest is the degree to which economic globalization (e.g., import competition, foreign direct investment, and multinationalization) influences the nature, scope, and priority U.S. labor unions assign to transnational organizing strategies. Toward this end, this research compares the transnational strategies of three U.S. labor unions — the United Steelworkers of America (USW), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — each of which represents a distinct sector of U.S. labor market (manufacturing, service, and professional) and experiences a different level and type of exposure to economic globalization (high, moderate, and low). Using an updated theory of labor transnationalism and primary source data, this study finds that transnational organizing strategies are highly correlated with exposure to economic globalization, particularly multinationalization in a union's core industries. At the same time, in cases where exposure to economic globalization is low, transnational strategies are better explained through intra-organizational dynamics, such as leadership ideology, membership interests, and union size. In the main, this study suggests that in order to explain differences in transnational organizing strategies, one must consider both the level and type of exposure to economic globalization, as well as organizational dynamics in cases where exposure is minimal.

Committee: John Rothgeb (Advisor) Subjects: Political Science, General

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Music

This dissertation examines K-pop as a genre, not as a fixed concept bound to national identity (“Korean Pop”), but as a floating signifier that operates in a global sphere, in which the “K” in K-pop takes on multiple meanings. Though K-pop has been studied and understood in the conventional sense, as an ethnic national musical genre and cultural community (Korean popular music performed by dance idol Korean musicians), the live and mediated reality of contemporary K-pop reveals that this convention is not enough to explain K-pop today. K-pop resounds beyond Koreanness. For example, it is now quite normal to have non-Korean musicians in K-pop groups. Indeed, K-pop groups consisting entirely of non-Korean musicians have been present on the scene since the 2010s. K-pop groups also often sing in non-Korean languages. In addition, the K-pop style, which has been musically diverse from the beginning, continues to incorporate other musical forms, including popular and folk (“traditional”) musics from around the world. As such, K-pop continues to be defined by an ever-shifting social diversity and stylistic complexity. This research aims to explore how K-pop has become a transnational phenomenon, how the meaning of K is (re)interpreted differently by individuals and social groups in a new context, and what social, cultural, political, and musical elements constitute K-pop today. Through close textual analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and archival study, this project sheds new light on the neglected diversity and apparent transnational impact of contemporary K-pop, among artists and fans, in government policy, and through the music itself.

Committee: Ryan Skinner (Advisor); Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Committee Member); Pil Ho Kim (Committee Member); Morgan Liu (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Music

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2022, Film Studies (Fine Arts)

The thesis considers the transnationalism of cinema's last thirty years and its disruption of the previous ways for conceiving of isolated national cinemas. The work of filmmakers Olivier Assayas and Tsai Ming-liang are examined for their dealings with national identity, both of whom resist the label of national filmmaker and instead embrace the international cultural exchanges that reflect the 21st century's globalization. I argue that by confronting cinema's past and its relationship to nation, these filmmakers posit a cinematic identity unbounded by borders. Specifically, I analyze Assayas's work as an instrument to capture the crisis of both national cinema and national identity, while for Tsai a cinematic lineage dating back to mid-century art cinema supplants identity for the transnational filmmaker.

Committee: Erin Schlumpf (Committee Chair); Matthew Wanat (Committee Member); Ofer Eliaz (Committee Member) Subjects: Film Studies

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2020, Antioch New England: Marriage and Family Therapy

This was a quantitative study which examined past and present transnational activities as predictors of multiracial identity challenges and resilience among second generation U.S. born Asian mixed-race adults. Two hundred seventeen participants completed the following three survey questionnaires: a demographic form, the Multiracial Challenge and Resilience Scale (MCRS; Salahuddin & O'Brien, 2011) and an author-adapted version of the Past and Present TS- Transnationalism Scale (Murphy & Mahalingam, 2004). This study is based on the idea of integrating critical race theory, critical mixed-race studies, and intersectionality of both participants' and parents' gender and ethnic/racial identity among self-identified Asian mixed-race individuals. The results showed overall significant correlations between MCRS and TS. No gender of Asian immigrant parents' effects were found, but the Asian region ones' parent migrated from led to differences in participants' childhood and adulthood TS Political and Economic engagements. Participants' gender moderated the relationship between MCRS and past/present TS. More females identify themselves as being mixed-race and showed a higher level of MCRS resilience than male participants. This study contributes to the fields of marriage and family therapy and immigrant family studies by developing insights into an understudied population: second-generation immigrants of Asian mixed-race descent.

Committee: Kevin Lyness Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Annamaria Csizmadia Ph.D. (Committee Member); Janet Robertson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethnic Studies; Families and Family Life; Social Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Dance Studies

This dissertation “Taiwanese Eyes on the Modern: Cold War Dance Diplomacy and American Modern Dances in Taiwan, 1950–1980” examines the transnational history of American modern dance between the United States and Taiwan during the Cold War era. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the Carmen De Lavallade-Alvin Ailey, Jose Limon, Paul Taylor, Martha Graham, and Alwin Nikolais dance companies toured to Taiwan under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. At the same time, Chinese American choreographers Al Chungliang Huang and Yen Lu Wong also visited Taiwan, teaching and presenting American modern dance. These visits served as diplomatic gestures between the members of the so-called Free World led by the U.S. Taiwanese audiences perceived American dance modernity through mixed interpretations under the Cold War rhetoric of freedom that the U.S. sold and disseminated through dance diplomacy. I explore the heterogeneous shaping forces from multiple engaging individuals and institutions that assemble this diplomatic history of dance, resulting in outcomes influencing dance histories of the U.S. and Taiwan for different ends. I argue that Taiwanese audiences interpreted American dance modernity as a means of embodiment to advocate for freedom and social change. Taiwanese dancers received American modern dance as representations of freedom through the dance tours under the Cold War rhetoric. By practicing modern dance of their own, Taiwanese choreographers and audience members repurposed American freedom rhetoric to resist the censorship of the White Terror in Taiwan. Since then, the idea of the modern, for the Taiwanese, has taken the name of freedom: free to explore, free to express, and free to advocate. These ideas do not only happen verbally, but also within the body. This dissertation in this sense provides a fuller picture of U.S. postwar dance diplomacy from Taiwanese perspectives than American views and also shows Taiwanese choreographers' agencies reacting to Ameri (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Hannah Kosstrin (Advisor); Harmony Bench (Committee Member); Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Committee Member); Morgan Liu (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian American Studies; Asian Studies; Dance; Performing Arts; World History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Music

In recent years, scholars have commenced to reevaluate the advent and origins of 20th-century artistic movements, with the repositioning of experimental artistic networks like Fluxus as a decentralized, transnational network of artists, a component as integral to Fluxus' identity as its interdisciplinarity. Despite such claims, many art historical and musicological inquiries remain focused upon the activities of Fluxus artists within historically conceived artistic “centers” in the United States and Western Europe, as opposed to a more holistic investigation of Fluxus' “transnational” aspect. Informed by archival and ethnographic research, and engaged with art historians, musicologists, and cultural anthropologists, this dissertation interrogates these dominant narratives through three interrelated, yet distinct case studies involving Icelandic and non-Icelandic artists: Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman's scandalous performance at Reykjavik's Theatre Lindarbær, the emergence of the Icelandic collective SUM, and Magnus Palsson's role in experimental arts pedagogy. Such an investigation is not only concerned with examining Iceland's (and the Nordic region more broadly) historical and socio-political position within this transnational milieu, but also the individuals who cultivated, embodied, and lived these cross-cultural exchanges, who have been relegated to the periphery of contemporary historiography.

Committee: Arved Ashby (Advisor); Ryan Skinner (Advisor); Richard Fletcher (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Music; Scandinavian Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2019, Sociology

Remittances, the money that immigrants send back to recipients in their country of origin, are one of the most prominent types of transnational economic ties and provide many migrants with continued interaction with family and friends who remain in their origin countries. These transactions may prove to be beneficial or detrimental to migrant mental and physical health. Using the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), I assess whether remittance-sending has countervailing associations with migrant mental and physical health. I hypothesize that remittance-sending puts migrants at a physical health disadvantage by depleting already lower incomes. I also hypothesize that remitting migrants experience a mental health bonus through fulfillment of family roles. Overall, I find that remittances are associated with a physical health disadvantage and only provide a mental health bonus under certain circumstances. I also find that the composition of migrants who select into remitting is consequential for health outcomes. And for both physical and mental health, the type of remittance transfer (to extended or nuclear family) and the magnitude of the transfer conditions the overall health impact, particularly for mental health. My findings underscore the complexity of transnational ties, in terms of who selects into transnational economic behavior (i.e. remittance sending), the type of behavior (magnitude and type of remittance transfer), and the health consequences, both physical and mental, of that behavior.

Committee: Reanne Frank Dr. (Advisor); Kristi Williams Dr. (Committee Member); Cynthia Colen Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Demographics; Demography; Families and Family Life; Finance; Health; Health Care; Hispanic Americans; Individual and Family Studies; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Public Health; Social Research; Social Structure; Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2019, Mass Communication (Communication)

This research examines how Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants in Columbus, Ohio, have employed social media to retain and reinforce their cultural identity and community, and how their migration experiences have been mediated on these platforms. This study seeks to explore how migrants use social media in their daily interactions as a tool for personal communication. In particular, how it contributes to individual and collective memory, retention of their culture, survival, resilience and wellbeing, identity formation in relation to the question of integration, and survival. This study also explores how the application of various social media has improved their lives. The epistemological assumption is that for far too long migrant voices have been neglected and relegated to the background as they are often not given the platform to tell their own lived experiences. As a result, pertinent issues concerning migrants' lives have been muted, their stories have not been told, and their voices have not been heard and this impacts them and society at large. The argument is that social media have provided migrants the platform to express their voice, including their memories, joys, shared information, anxieties, and even trauma. The hope is that my work gives migrants the opportunity to tell their own stories as they have experienced them against a set of key theories, notably, communication, postcolonial and decolonial theories as they pertain to social media. The research used an ethnographic approach to delve into the conditions and the migrants' everyday life, what I refer to as quotidian. In this research, the participants used the word “everyday” a great deal. They talked about the rituals, memories and actions as everyday things, both in the past and in the present, like drinking coffee, or eating injera, remembering their loved ones, re-living their horror, going to church, or calling or sending texts to their loved ones, in the USA or elsewhere. I used a qualitative (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Steve Howard (Committee Chair); Devika Chawla (Committee Member); Laeeq Khan (Committee Member); Assan Sarr (Committee Member) Subjects: Mass Communications

BA, Oberlin College, 2018, Anthropology

With the advent of user-generated social media, people are able to assert their ideas, opinions and positionality through online multi-way communication and participation. One such website is YouTube, a video platform where language production and identity negotiation are common. This thesis looks at a series of videos published on YouTube, entitled the "Moroccan Tag" to examine the ways five second-generation French-Moroccan YouTubers assert their national identities online. Using methods of guerrilla ethnography, I glean discourse from video content and comments to outline three key scaler processes through which identity performance manifests: through semiotic ideologies surrounding authenticity, language and imagined community. Together, my observations add to continuing conversations on diasporic identity, translanguaging and digital discourse.

Committee: Erika Hoffman-Dilloway (Advisor); Baron L. Pineda (Advisor) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Ethnic Studies; Linguistics; Web Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, EDU Teaching and Learning

This ethnographic study documents the ways four Indonesian-Muslim families who migrated to the United States used online digital telecommunication technology in socializing children into languages, literacy, and religion. Within the primary framework of language socialization, I used multiple theoretical lenses (i.e., transnationalism, cultural and social capital, and community of practice). Through these lenses, I explored children's processes of becoming competent members of families and communities. In transnational families who came from cultures in which their extended families and communities play significant roles in children's upbringing, the use of online technology is important in raising the next generation. Studies of transnational online language socialization has mainly focused on adolescents and adults. These previous studies examined how language learning and identity formation occur through online interactions between participants of the same age range. This study contributes to the language socialization field by providing insights into online family practices to understand the roles of parents, extended families, and communities in children's socialization. Using the conceptual lenses of transnationalism (Levitt, 2001; Vertovec, 2009) and simultaneity of connection (Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004), I found that the participants' movement to the United States shaped the way they apprenticed their children's socialization into multiple communities. Online digital telecommunication technology had provided ways in which families lived simultaneously within local as well as across translocal and transnational borders. These simultaneous connections supported parents in socializing children into languages and religion tied to their multiple identities and memberships by using and enhancing their cultural and social capital (Bourdieu, 1986). I examined each family through the lenses of social field (Bourdieu, 1993) and as a community o (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Leslie Moore (Advisor) Subjects: English As A Second Language; Literacy; Multicultural Education; Multilingual Education; Multimedia Communications

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

This study was motivated to provide a thick narration (Christou, 2006; Shenhav, 2005) of life experiences of English language learners and users from one of the Kachru's (1990) Expanding Circles, Indonesia. The Indonesian government's official political position dictates that English be granted a foreign language status. Within these sociocultural and political circumstances, the study examined the life histories of seven Indonesians regarding their identity construction, language ideology, and their transnational experiences. The participants were undertaking their doctoral degree in Indonesian universities and came to a US large university in the Midwest for a semester-long study abroad program called PKPI. The study utilized narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; 2006) and case study (Merriam, 1998; Stake, 1997) methods in its attempt in understanding the meaningful real life events (Yin, 2011) in their landscape of action and consciousness (Brunner, 1986) throughout the participants' life-long and life-wide (Duff, 2012) experiences as English language learners and users. This study contributes to a better understanding of EFL learners and users' unique, profound, and rich stories from a periphery context regarding their identity constructions, language ideology and transnational experiences to fill the voids in SLA, TESOL and related fields (e.g Firth & Wagner, 1997; 2007; Kumaravadivelu, 2012; Pavlenko, 2001). The scholarship of identity and identity construction has been at in the center stage in the L2 research in the last few decades (e.g. Block, 2007; 2009; Gee, 2001; Norton Peirce, 1995; Norton, 2000; 2007; 2013). In this study, the participants' identity construction is described through the themes of (1) the emergence of identities, (2) moments of realization, and (3) establishing membership and affiliation. Throughout the themes, the participants indicated that the stories of their identity construction were complex, multiple, contradictory, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Keiko Samimy (Advisor) Subjects: Curriculum Development; Education; Education Policy; English As A Second Language; Foreign Language; Higher Education; Language; Literacy; Sociolinguistics; Teaching

Master of Arts in History, Youngstown State University, 2016, Department of Humanities

Filipino culture was founded through the amalgamation of many ethnic and cultural influences, such as centuries of Spanish colonization and the immigration of surrounding Asiatic groups as well as the long nineteenth century's Race of Nations. However, the events of 1898 to 1914 brought a sense of national unity throughout the seven thousand islands that made the Philippine archipelago. The Philippine-American War followed by United States occupation, with the massive domestic support on the ideals of Manifest Destiny, introduced the notion of distinct racial ethnicities and cemented the birth of one national Philippine identity. The exploration on the Philippine American War and United States occupation resulted in distinguishing the three different analyses of identity each influenced by events from 1898 to 1914: 1) The identity of Filipinos through the eyes of U.S., an orientalist study of the “us” versus “them” heavily influenced by U.S. propaganda; 2) the identity of the Filipinos themselves—the Spanish American War introduced an awareness of Philippine national identity, and the Philippine American War cemented this idea; 3) associating with a national identity—emphasized in the papers of David P. Barrows, William Howard Taft's Manila Superintendent of Schools. Barrows introduced U.S. citizens to the perception of Filipinos as “Negritos,” his own personal ethnographic study of possible African blood within all of the Filipino classes. Barrows' patriotic loyalty to U.S. ideals of Manifest Destiny can be comparatively analyzed through the experiences of David Fagen, an African American soldier from Florida, and several of his fellow African American soldiers of the twenty-fourth regiment who defected from the United States military to join the ranks of Philippine Revolutionary leader, Emilio Aguinaldo.

Committee: L. Diane Barnes PhD (Advisor); David Simonelli PhD (Committee Member); Helene Sinnreich PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; American History; American Studies; Asian American Studies; Asian Studies; Black History; Cultural Anthropology; Ethnic Studies; History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, EDU Teaching and Learning

This qualitative study addresses the research problem of understanding and theorizing the construction of social identity among adolescents in the current context of globalization and transnationalism. To address the question, the study focused on five young men in Innsbruck, Austria, who were self-described “hip hoppers.” Hip hop is more than a musical style; it is a complex, diverse, and sometimes contradictory social and cultural movement and ideology that is both global and local. It lies at the nexus of globalization and transnationalism, playing itself out in diverse ways in local settings globally. The theoretical perspective of the study emphasized the variability and contextual embeddedness of social identities as part of the performativity of identity (a theory espoused by Butler). This theoretical perspective argues that social identity is multiple and iterative, meaning that participants are continually enacting and modifying their social identities as their contexts change over time and space. Social identity is, according to this study, socially constructed and governed by the relationships and environments in which the participants function. The sociolinguistic principles guiding this study are analyzed derived from microethnographic discourse analysis. The spoken linguistic codes performed by the participants and the literacy practices these codes enable the subject to not only their own social constructions, but those given to their practical cultural environments. Language is viewed as a code through which the participants can communicate their hip hop affinities and an inclusion in a hip hop community. The methodologies and research methods employed in this study are compatible with the principles and practices of ethnographic and sociolinguistic research as are the values placed on individual's experience and agency in various contexts and how they are revealed to the researcher. The logic of inquiry for the study was informed overall by (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Bloome PhD (Committee Chair); Sarah Gallo PhD (Committee Member); Alan Hirvela PhD (Committee Member); Jan Nespor PhD (Committee Member); Cynthia Selfe PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

PHD, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This dissertation focuses on Richard Wright's later non-fiction works Black Power, The Color Curtain and Pagan Spain. It investigates the effects of Wright's travel writings on his worldview and his attitude towards people from different national, racial and cultural backgrounds. It deals with transnational connectedness and the novel subjectivities it engenders. It also attempts to comprehend how the circumstances of interconnectedness, versatility and mobility engendered by globalization influence people's worldviews and their belonging to a community, concentrating on the transnational aspect as its case. While analyzing these issues, this study attempts to further our understanding of transnationalism and transnational phenomena in Wright's trilogy which fundamentally inverts the emphasis of most essentialists critics by crossing racial and national boundaries. Moreover, this dissertation examines cross-currents of influence on Wright's worldview. Wright's works serve as a heritage for critics and thinkers in the United States and elsewhere in the World. Wright calls for a renewed focus on intercultural and transnational dialogue in modernist studies. In addition, this study explores how Third World subjects map and narrate their multiple and hybrid identities among and between various discrepant cultural spaces, borders, communities, places and identity narratives. Rather than promoting the claims of sameness, identity politics and the primacy of a single cultural space, Wright's non-fiction works suggest these subjects' tactical articulation of their identities between, across, and through a transnational matrix of permeable borders and provisional places in their search for an ethical language of coalition politics and transformation.

Committee: Yoshinobu Hakutani (Committee Co-Chair); Babacar M'Baye (Committee Co-Chair); Robert Trogdon (Committee Member); Timothy Scarnecchia (Committee Member); Elizabeth Smith (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; American Literature; Literature

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Music Ethnomusicology

Japanese popular music, particularly the video-sharing website Nico Nico, represents a site of creation and production that encompasses a complex interplay between vocality, expression of identity, and capitalistic ventures. In this thesis, I will explore how expressions of gender and sexuality are articulated through both vocality and the (digital) body, or the visual aspect of music videos on Nico Nico, and the dialogic relationship between business models and the articulation of these modes of identity. In terms of both gender and sexuality, contemporary Japan is composed of interweaving histories, ideologies, and traits characteristic of the transculturalism experienced by many nation-states of an increasingly globalized world. How Japanese popular music - utilizing the internet as a space for dialogic interchange - transforms these gender ideologies within frameworks of commercialization and global discourses is a topic that significantly informs current notions of gender. Additionally, music culture, not only a source of empowerment or power for a group of people, has become a commercialized product, one that has become an integral part of global commercial exchange. Given the significant influence that Japanese popular culture has on global popular culture, J-pop should be further interrogated as a linguistic imaginary riddled with contestations of gender norms, sexual binaries, and power, all of which operate under the auspices of global capitalism. The ryouseirui, a Nico Nico term designated for a singer that utilizes both “male” and “female” voices, contributes a substantial part of Nico Nico content, with ryouseirui music videos present on the website. By investigating vocality, the business model of video-sharing websites, and various ryouseirui and their respective music videos, I will describe how economic practices may form and inform resistance and change of gender on the video-sharing website Nico Nico. Considering a diverse range of literatur (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Katherine Meizel PhD (Advisor); Sidra Lawrence PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Gender Studies; Music

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Cross-Cultural, International Education

This multiple case study of five Sri Lankan women explored their lived experiences as second generation immigrants in Rome, Italy, in order to better understand their various pathways to higher education and their choice of whether to pursue that education in Italy or elsewhere. The study attempted to explore the financial, political, cultural, and educational challenges that impacted the decisions these women made, including the process of navigating between the Sri Lankan and Italian cultures. Utilizing an interpretive qualitative approach and a combination of purposeful and convenience sampling, I selected and interviewed women who had either been born in Italy or moved there prior to or during primary education, conducting interviews with them via Skype at their various locations around the globe. From these interviews, a narrative of each participants' life was constructed, followed by cross case analysis of themes brought to light by the participants themselves. Findings indicate that although economic opportunity was a significant factor in the participants' decisions to pursue higher education and career outside of Italy, the greatest motivation was their parents' desire for them to move beyond the constraints of Sri Lanka and Italy and into the best possible future they could have. The women navigated the tension between conservative Sri Lankan culture and western Italian culture in different ways, but their parents' decisions to enroll them in an international school profoundly impacted both their integration into the Italian system and their expectations of moving beyond Italy post-graduation as much or more than other potential that exist within the Italian immigrant experience.

Committee: Bruce Collet (Advisor); Hyeyoung Bang (Committee Member); Timothy Messer-Kruse (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Gender; Higher Education; Multicultural Education; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Sociology

Since the late 1990s, India has asserted its modernity through a “new middle class” that promises inclusion to all worthy citizens. Yet India's claims to modernity are consistently challenged by trenchant gender, caste, and class inequalities. The figure of the poor, uneducated rural woman marks the limits of Indian modernity. As such, rural young women and their families have become key targets of development programs. This dissertation looks at how families and young women in rural India are responding to new pressures to achieve social mobility and represent the nation. Using ethnographic data from ten months of fieldwork in the Guntur region of south India, I argue that gender, class, and caste are reproduced in distinctive ways, despite the vastness of change associated with modernization in India. I distinguish the current re-articulation of gender, class, and caste inequalities from the formations of the past on the basis of three characteristics: First, though women are becoming more educated, I find that education alone is insufficient to address social inequalities and may even increase disparities. Second, I demonstrate how the transnational migration of elites has transformed social life in Guntur. Lastly, I find that educational privatization has produced a highly stratified educational system that almost perfectly reproduces the class system. My analysis clarifies whether and how rural young women, who are often perceived as the most disadvantaged fraction of Indian society, are able to achieve social mobility.

Committee: Steven Lopez (Committee Chair); Mytheli Sreenivas (Committee Member); Korie Edwards (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Sociology; South Asian Studies

PHD, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

With an increased interest in the literature of the African Diaspora, scholars have concurrently begun to call upon theories of transnationalism. This joint emphasis has created a critical discussion of the significance of global studies in examinations of modern black identity. One aspect that remains unexamined is the impetus for transnational transition that arises at the crossroads of race and self-identity. This dissertation addresses this gap through the concept of liminality, which refers to an in-between state characterized by marginalization and figurative homelessness. The presence of a perpetual liminality frequently leads to geographical relocation, often transnational in nature, as liminal subjects attempt to discover a place where their self-identity will not result in compromise or tragedy. The Harlem Renaissance presents a microcosm wherein writers frequently traveled internationally and incorporated these dynamics and themes in their literature. The theory of transnational liminality thereby provides a critical lens for underscoring the significance and necessity of a global understanding of the Harlem Renaissance—specifically the fictional and autobiographical writings of Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Langston Hughes. These texts demonstrate the intellectuals' irrevocable challenge of racist milieus of the early twentieth century. Therefore, Harlem Renaissance writers and their protagonists looked to a transnational world in their quest for self-identity and home. In a similar vein, liminality is central to the study of Black Transnationalism in the twenty-first century, as contemporary writings of the African Diaspora continue to use international travel as an essential tool highlighting disillusionment in modernity's ability to eradicate racism and the ubiquitous quest for home. The lens of transnational liminality offers a cultural theory capable of illuminating and addressing these recurring concerns.

Committee: Babacar M'Baye (Advisor) Subjects: African American Studies; American Literature; Black Studies; Ethnic Studies; Literature

PHD, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Geography

This dissertation examines the construction and development of diasporic networks by recent Polish migrants to London, UK. The 2004 EU expansion had allowed citizens of new member-states to relocate to other European countries, and resulted in a large-scale migration of 700,000 Poles to the United Kingdom. A significant portion of migrants settled in London. This research, based on interviews, mental maps, and participant observation, presents insight into the experiences of post-2004 Polish migrants to the UK, their migratory stories, process of settling in London, and the nature of their connections to Poland. It also includes a focus on the variation in migrant experiences of two distinct groups of Polish migrants: service-sector labor migrants and elite professionals. This research furthermore identifies a new way that migrants create and maintain diasporic networks and live transnational lifestyles in a heavily digitized world.

Committee: David Kaplan (Advisor); Sarah Smiley (Committee Member); Daniel Hammel (Committee Member); Andrew Barnes (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2014, English

The recent “translingual” turn in composition demonstrates how language difference is a valuable resource, rather than a problem to be solved, challenging composition and rhetoric's “tacit language policies” of monolingualism that often rely on stable and discrete notions of language (Canagarajah 1999; Horner and Trimbur 2002; Kachru 1990; Matsuda 1998). Multilingual writers are too often isolated institutionally, disciplinarily, and even historiographically by notions of an ideal native speaker. Though this native speaker ideal has often been criticized, it has rarely been historicized (Bonfiglio 2010). In this dissertation, I argue that informal theories about second language acquisition emerged through the synthesis of classical and belletristic rhetoric with faculty epistemologies of the mind in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a result, the native speaker ideal became sedimented, or reified through habits of thought, within comparative methodologies that later formulated disciplinary and institutional knowledge about language instruction in the twentieth century. Through archival research into the early Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), I show how translingual moments within the extracurricula of composition provide unsedimented approaches to comparison that can contest and rearticulate cognitive constructions of a masculine, Anglo-Saxon native speaker ideal.

Committee: LuMing Mao (Committee Chair); Yu-Fang Cho (Committee Member); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); James Porter (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Wilson (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Composition; English As A Second Language; Religious History; Rhetoric