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Browsing by Author "Shadle, Brett L."

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    Artists for Humanity's Sake: An Ameliorative Project Concerning Artists and the Existentialist Struggle Against the Dominant Narrative
    Shepard, Kathryn Ann (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-25)
    Existentialist ethics tell us that we as individuals cannot be truly liberated until all are. This means that we must pursue a more just world for all. Interestingly enough, as we look at the evidences of the ways in which cultural violence have been used historically and today as a means to withhold power from the people, we find that participating in the arts grants a great deal of power to the people. Thus, accessibility to participating in artistic acts or the creative process become fundamental to activism for social justice. This work lays out five fundamental aspects of the creative process that help us move towards liberation—confrontation of ideas, vulnerability, choice making, truth or world building, and authentic identity formation. In order to realize the full potential of positive impact the creative process can have in the realm of social justice, however, we must reframe our understanding of artists and the creative process in our society. This is a call to action both to artists and audience to recognize and wield the power of the arts to liberate all within our society.
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    Bridewealth and Female Consent: Marriage Disputes in African Courts, Gusiiland, Kenya
    Shadle, Brett L. (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
    From the early 1940s Gusiiland (Kenya) underwent a series of transformations that pushed bridewealth to unheralded levels. As a result, many young couples could not afford a proper marriage and eloped. Some fathers forced their daughters into marriages with men wealthy enough to give cattle ; many of these women ran off instead with more desirable men. In the hundreds of resulting court cases, Gusii debated the relative weight to be given to bridewealth, parental approval and female consent in marriage. Young people did not reject marriage, but fought against senior men who would ignore women’s wishes. Gusii court elders usually agreed with fathers and husbands but also believed that female consent did carry some significance.
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    Brown Skin, White Dreams: Pigmentocracy in India
    Dhillon, Komal K. (Virginia Tech, 2015-06-24)
    Pigmentocracy or colorism refers to the practice of intraracial groups applying a preferential valuation to lighter skin, resulting in a system of contextual privileges and discriminations based on skin color. In India, this phenomenon is informed by numerous factors, including colonialism, the caste system, media, cultural practices, and patriarchy. The fundamental forces contributing to pigmentocracy are explored independently as well as in conjunction with each other in order to elucidate the multifaceted aspects of social organization in India, specifically, the larger effects of imperialism, capitalism, globalization, racism, and sexism as they relate to colorist ideology. Everyday practices and attitudes informed by caste, class, religion, language, region, and customs are also examined in relation to pigmentocracy. Although there are numerous mechanisms that contribute to the complexity of examining pigmentocracy, larger patterns also prevail that allow for a comprehensive understanding of how pigmentocratic notions influence and are influenced by multiple background and demographic conditions. Benefits for those who are on the lighter end of the skin color spectrum are recognized and leveraged in accordance with the systemic logic of being naturally superior. Conversely, often those on the darker end of the spectrum are perceived as inferior, thus perpetuating the superiority of whiteness. Pigmentocracy is detrimental psychologically, physically, and socioeconomically due to the ways in which darker skin is often viewed (by society, media, lighter individuals as well as darker people who subscribe to the belief that white is better) as less attractive, less valuable, less pure, and less clean. For those perceived to be darker, the consequences can include violence, marginalization, and discrimination in areas of employment, education, government, access to resources, psychological trauma, disparities in marital opportunities and conceived notions of beauty, and underrepresentation in media.
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    ’Changing traditions to meet current altering conditions’: Customary Law, African Courts, and the Rejection of Codification in Kenya, 1930-60
    Shadle, Brett L. (Cambridge University Press, 1999-11)
    If the aim of British colonizers, Frederick Lugard wrote, was to civilize Africans ‘and to devote thought to those matters which…most intimately affect their daily life and happiness, there are few of greater importance than the constitution of native courts’. Moreover, he argued that only from native courts employing customary law was it ‘possible to create rudiments of law and order, to inculcate a sense of responsibility, and evolve among a primitive community some sense of discipline and respect for authority’. Britain had not the manpower, the money nor the mettle to rule by force of arms alone. Essentially, in order to make colonial rule work with only a ‘thin white line’ of European administrators, African ideas of custom and of law had to be incorporated into the new state systems. In a very real way, customary law and African courts provided the ideological and financial underpinnings for European colonial rule. In Kenya from at least the 1920s, but especially in the 1940s and 1950s, administrators struggled with the question of how customary law could best be used in African courts. Prominent among their concerns was the codification of customary law, against which most administrators vigorously fought. British officials believed that reducing African custom to written law and placing it in a code would ‘crystalize’ it, altering its fundamentally fluid or evolutionary nature. Colonizers naturally harbored intentions of using the law to shape society (as Cooper has demonstrated for the Kenya coast) but a fluid, unwritten law provided much greater latitude to pursue these goals. It was necessary, as one administrator put it, to allow ‘changing traditions to meet current altering conditions’. This case study of Kenya offers a different understanding of the history of customary law.
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    The Devil in Virginia: Fear in Colonial Jamestown, 1607-1622
    Sparacio, Matthew John (Virginia Tech, 2010-03-16)
    This study examines the role of emotions – specifically fear – in the development and early stages of settlement at Jamestown. More so than any other factor, the Protestant belief system transplanted by the first settlers to Virginia helps explain the hardships the English encountered in the New World, as well as influencing English perceptions of self and other. Out of this transplanted Protestantism emerged a discourse of fear that revolved around the agency of the Devil in the temporal world. Reformed beliefs of the Devil identified domestic English Catholics and English imperial rivals from Iberia as agents of the diabolical. These fears travelled to Virginia, where the English quickly ʻsatanizedʼ another group, the Virginia Algonquians, based upon misperceptions of native religious and cultural practices. I argue that English belief in the diabolic nature of the Native Americans played a significant role during the “starving time” winter of 1609-1610. In addition to the acknowledged agency of the Devil, Reformed belief recognized the existence of providential actions based upon continued adherence to the Englishʼs nationally perceived covenant with the Almighty. Efforts to maintain Godʼs favor resulted in a reformation of manners jump-started by Sir Thomas Daleʼs Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, and English tribulations in Virginia – such as Opechancanoughʼs 1622 attack upon the settlement – served as concrete evidence of Godʼs displeasure to English observers. A religiously infused discourse of fear shaped the first two decades of the Jamestown settlement.
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    Discourse, Practices and Historical Representations in Two Guerrilla Groups: the Eln and the Mpla, Colombia-Angola, 1956-1986
    Sanchez Sierra, Juan Carlos (Virginia Tech, 2008-04-30)
    The purpose of this thesis is to present some theoretical elements used in a comparative research that studies two guerrilla groups. The contexts of study, Angola and Colombia, in long internal conflicts during the second half of the twentieth century, witnessed the apparition of two guerrilla groups: the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional/National Army of Liberation, 1963) and the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola/Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, 1956). The goal is to provide an interpretation of the rise, transformations and uses of specific forms of historical representations. In the form of discourses and practices, the ELN and the MPLA constituted historical representations with the purpose of building new political imaginaries, in whose analysis it is possible to explain features such as the structures of power, knowledge and language, how they are constantly changing, and how guerrillas gain legitimacy within a society by using ideological paradigms. For instance, the research suggests that internal crises in the MPLA and the ELN promoted the change from a national liberation discourse, towards a more explicit use of Marxist-Leninist ideological principles. Also, such transformations are associated with the persistence of social distinctions—ethnolinguistic in Angola; rural/urban in Colombia— and their reflection in embryonic institutions that by the middle of the 1970s where supposed to constitute a revolutionary New Society in both Angola and Colombia. In a paradox, the embryonic institutions created by revolutionary groups let infer that they assume the role of a New Establishment because the deployment of power implies mechanism of control, coercion and discipline, rituals, ceremonies, practices and discourses that create truth, law, and language.
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    An Exploration of How Primary School Teachers in Malawi Plan and Implement Social Studies Lessons for the Preparation of Active Participatory Citizens in a Democratic Society
    Mhango, Ndalapa Adrian C. (Virginia Tech, 2008-03-25)
    The purpose of public schooling in many democratic nation-states is the preparation of an active participatory citizenry. For this reason, educators advocate the use of participatory classroom practices for instilling in students knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes for active civic responsibilities. In this connection, Malawi has since the re-introduction of democracy in 1994, reformed the primary school curricula to emphasize participatory classroom practices. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore how primary school teachers in Malawi planned and implemented social studies lessons for the preparation of competent citizens in a democratic civil society. The study used a case study genre of qualitative research involving three senior grade teachers as research participants. The study yielded four major results based on four generic research questions. The first result was that the social studies primary school curriculum has content and pedagogical approaches that are appropriate for the preparation of active participatory citizens. The second result was that the three teachers displayed limited understanding of the concept of participatory learning that was suggested to them in the curriculum documents. As such, their planning of lessons was largely teacher-centered, which they thought was participatory in approach. The third result was that the teachers’ limited conception of participatory learning, as reflected in the teaching plans, was transferred to their classrooms. In this way, the teacher-centered classroom practices caused a lot of missed opportunities for the students’ development of skills in critical thinking, problem solving, and rational decision-making that are necessary for active participation in a shared democratic political community. The last result was that state policies on the use of English as the medium of class instruction and the grade eight mandated examinations negatively contributed to the decisions that the teachers made in the organization of participatory classroom practices. Thus, the general picture based on these research results showed that there was a discrepancy between the state’s intended curriculum and the teachers’ enacted curriculum.
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    Gender, water and development: The multiple impacts and perceptions of a rural water project in Nampula, Mozambique
    Van Houweling, Emily (Virginia Tech, 2013-05-16)
    Development organizations claim that rural water projects deliver a wide variety of benefits - from poverty reduction to women's empowerment. This research explores these claims in the context of a rural water project (RWP) in Nampula, Mozambique. From August of 2011 to July of 2012, I spent 11 months conducting ethnographic research in five communities where handpumps were installed as part of the RWP. The goal of the research was to describe how the water project unfolds "on the ground" from the perspective of men and women in Nampula and illuminate the social and gender related impacts of the project that are not captured in standard evaluations. In Nampula, water is closely connected to exchange networks, power dynamics, cultural traditions, spiritual practices, and social values. Gender roles are formed in relation to water and negotiated around changes in water access. Women spend most of their day in contact with water in some form, and through water practices women fulfill the societal expectations of a good wife and mother. The meanings and everyday uses of water were not considered in the design of the RWP, and the handpump technology and community management model were not well suited for the socio-cultural context of Nampula. The plans for the RWP were based on a number of incorrect assumptions about "community" local decision making processes, and men's and women's priorities, resulting in a significant gap between what project planners expected to happen and what actually happened in the communities. The impacts of the RWP rippled beyond the narrow range of economic benefits expected by the MCC, reconfiguring the meanings associated with water, disrupting social exchange networks, and aggravating social divisions. People who did use the handpump also describe the impacts in very different terms than those used by development organizations. This research contributes to theoretical debates about the relationship between gender, water, and development, and also offers practical suggestions for designing water projects that are more equitable, culturally sensitive, and sustainable.
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    Governing Migrants in the European Union: A Critical Approach to Interrogating Migrants' Journey Narratives
    Safouane, Hamza (Virginia Tech, 2018-03-23)
    Is it possible to conceive of migrants as active stakeholders of migration and asylum policies rather than passive objects of political and humanitarian intervention? In the public discourse on migration, migrants' voices are largely ignored and their political future in the reception country is often that of ascribed muteness and disenfranchisement. Yet, migrants have a voice, a history, a context, and therefore, potential aspirations to a political existence. In this dissertation, I propose an empirical study of the migratory journeys that occurred during what has been known as "the summer of migration," which described the incoming of migrants via the Aegean Sea and through the Western Balkans to Germany and the rest of Northern Europe. Based on field observations in initial reception centers for asylum seekers in Hamburg and semi-structured interviews with fifteen participants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who came to Germany between 2015 and 2016, this dissertation proposes an analytical framework that provides a critical approach to the migration management regime and migrants migratory journey narratives. The claim of this dissertation is double. First it argues that it is analytically necessary to systematize the production of immanent knowledge about migrants' journeys through their own subjectivities. Such a perspective enables a deeper understanding of the impact of human mobility on state sovereignty, borderscapes and the workings of the migration management regime. Second, it is equally necessary to politically contribute to the normalization of integrating migrants' voices in the public debate and discourse to address oppressive practices of migration management and control.
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    Human Capabilities and Collectivist Justice
    D'Amato, Claudio (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-05)
    The capability approach to justice, made popular by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, has been a stalwart of the human development literature for the last 30 years, and its core ideals underwrite the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. This dissertation offers a new version of the approach, rejecting many of its ideological commitments to liberal-democratic humanism and replacing them with more distinctly collectivist and communitarian ones. It contends that the capability approach, when used as a theoretical framework for global development, need not contain almost any ethical normativity with regard to a definition of justice, and indeed it is much more functional when it endorses a moderate ethical relativism. The argument proceeds in four steps. First, it shows that all existing versions of the capability approach are ideologically committed to a specific kind of liberal humanism, which its proponents consider universalist but that is actually quite provincial. Second, it argues that collectivist critiques from prominent capability theorists in the last decade have been misunderstood and their recommendations unheeded, a fact that this dissertation attempts to rectify. Third, it offers a properly collectivist account of group capabilities and group self-determination, which can do all the normative work that individual capabilities and agency perform in the approach's original versions. Finally, it introduces the notion of public objective capabilities, which justifies a higher deference to collective self-determination at the expense of some individual freedom and equitable participation in democratic polity. The overall goal of this new collectivist version of the approach is not to reject the worth of capability as a metric of global justice, but rather to reinforce it. A collectivist capabilitarianism shows that capability is so well suited to global development work that it can function across diverse political realities, without the ideological constraints of a liberal humanism that is widely accepted in the Global North but whose cross-cultural appeal has been far overstated by its proponents.
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    I Am Because We Are: Africana Womanism as a Vehicle of Empowerment and Influence
    Blackmon, Janiece L. (Virginia Tech, 2008-06-16)
    The purpose of this research project has been to shed light on the experiences of Black women in Afrocentric groups' Nation of Gods and Earths, the Black Panther Party, and Rastafarians' that operated on the fringes of society during the 1960s through the early 2000s. This work articulates the gender dynamics between the men and women of the groups. In it, I trace the history of Black nationalism and identity in the United States in the late 19th century to the 20th century which set the framework for the formation of the Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE), the Black Panther Party(BPP), and Rastafarianism and its members to see themselves as a part of the Black nation or community and the women of these groups to see their identity tied in with the goals and desires of the group not as one set on individualistic ambitions. The Africana womanist did not see herself as an individual but rather a vital part of the entire Black community. From a feminist perspective, it would appear as though the women of these Afrocentric fringe groups were marginalized and oppressed by the men but this perspective fails to give credence to the fact that Rasta women, Earths—the female members of the NGE—and women Panthers saw race and racism as a more pressing issue than that of sexism. That is not to say that women in these groups did not question or challenge some of the sexist actions of their male counterparts. When there was a challenge it was done so in a way that reminded the men of the tenets of their respective group and their responsibility to uphold those principles; principles that required the men to consider the women as equally valuable in the cause of the group and deserving of just treatment. While adhering to a gender order that afforded the male members a more visible position, the women of this study did not view their positions as mothers, wives, and sister members as a hindrance to their own personal joy or freedom. In fact, using an Africana womanist point of view, they would argue that it was in the best interest of the entire Rasta, NGE, or BPP and by extension, the Black community for them to own their statuses as a form of empowerment. For it was through their wombs and nurturing that the next generation would be born, through their providing a stable home that would allow their husbands to focus their attentions on the issues concerning their communities outward and through their role as supportive "sisters" encouraging the men that the community could advance socially.
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    Introduction: Towards a History of Violence in Colonial Kenya
    Carotenuto, Matt; Shadle, Brett L. (African Studies Center, Boston University, 2012)
    An introduction to the journal is presented in which the authors discuss topics addressed in the issue related to violence in colonial Kenya, including corporal punishment, the connections between the death penalty and racial hierarchies, and repatriation.
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    A Jane of all Trades: Janet Taylor's Contributions to Victorian Navigation
    Putnam, Marlee Love (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-11)
    Janet Taylor made major contributions to Victorian navigational practices. She did so through creating business opportunities for herself as an educator, author, and inventor of nautical instruments.
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    Making the Maasai Schoolgirl: Developing Modernities on the Margins
    Switzer, Heather D. (Virginia Tech, 2009-08-25)
    In 2000, the United Nations hosted the Millennium Summit, billed as the “largest gathering of world leaders in history” (UN Millennium Project). This delegation defined The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as the primary set of metrics that serve as benchmarks against which development, the world over, is to be measured. Of these eight goals, one focuses specifically on education and four relate to women and girls’ empowerment.This study of identity formations among Maasai schoolgirls in southern Kenya, then, is designed to shed some new theoretical light on life as a target of these goals. In this dissertation, I consider the lived experience of development in the form of formal schooling from the subjective point of view of Maasai primary schoolgirls. The study explores the textured variation of identities within the single social category, “schoolgirl,’ in an effort to uncover the on-the-ground meanings of development imperatives focused on recruiting girls to school, keeping girls in school, and supporting their achievement. Designed as an ethnographic case study focused on the nine government co-ed primary day schools in Keekonyokie Central Location, Ngong Division, Kajiado District, Kenya, interviews were conducted with 98 Maasai girls aged 12-20, enrolled in primary school at the time of the interviews. Additionally, interviews were conducted with some of the schoolgirls’ mothers and teachers, along with 8 secondary schoolgirls from the immediate area (Lood-ariak). Along with ethnographic data, policy documents and overlapping literatures were reviewed in order to ascertain education-as-development imperatives articulated by local, national, and international development institutions. The purpose of the research is an attempt to capture the complex interrelations between formal schooling, multi-scalar development imperatives, and individual everyday life worlds within the changing economic and social context of postcolonial Kenya in the age of globalization. My research suggests that “the schoolgirl” has emerged as a historically new and profoundly salient social category in contemporary Maasai life that has implications for gender dynamics and iii social forms like marriage, family and household structure and maintenance, and labor relations. I argue that the “schoolgirl” as a category has been created by the collusion of local and global discourses that define girls’ education as a singular and primary development imperative. Moreover, Maasai schoolgirls themselves deploy the discourse of development in their use of the schoolgirl category which enables them to negotiate and redefine who a girl is and can be in Maasailand today vis-à-vis education. Based on literature reviews prior to the research in Kenya, I went to Kajiado expecting to hear stories of the problems associated with the schooling imperative combined with the pressures of adolescence as a biosocial process that can make staying in school a perilous passage for rural African girls. While many participants did describe the obstacles they faced in their pursuit of schooling, I also found that nearly every girl my translator and I spoke with marshaled a poignant and pronounced sense of agency in their use of the schoolgirl category as both discursive tool and practical fact. Deployed and employed by schoolgirls and others on their behalf, the schoolgirl category gives Maasai girls unprecedented room to negotiate current realities and future trajectories. This positive finding not withstanding, the theoretical implications of my research also suggest that the schoolgirl subject position has been (and perhaps could have only been) forged in the particular crucible of the market-driven economic development context defined in recent year by neoliberal ideology, and because of this, there are structural limits to the autonomous and independent existence modern development ideology predicts and requires for and of agents. As I argue, the Maasai schoolgirl subject-position is made—produced, constructed—by and within an intricate matrix of forces, including the discourse(s) employed and deployed by Maasai schoolgirls themselves about their own circumstances. This exposition of Maasai schoolgirls is embedded in a history, political economy, and a symbolic universe. Therefore, the arguments forwarded here must go beyond the mechanical dissection of discourse; they must illuminate the lived realities, contextualized histories, and meaning systems that are enacted and embodied by the storylines and characters that give shape to the arguments themselves. Thus, the earliest chapters (1-3) are dedicated to Maasai subject formation through Kenyan history along with the paradoxical relationships many Maasai have had with formal schooling through out this history, as well as a broader context for girls’ education in selected Sub-Saharan African contexts. By focusing on African schoolgirls as creators of knowledge around their own experiences and highlighting that experience, this study’s findings contribute to at least two broad literatures: iv 1) the critical feminist theoretical literatures that are concerned with the construction of gendered subjects in late capitalism and 2) critical development literatures (both conceptual and practical) that are concerned with the contradictory processes of development and their gendered, and gendering, impacts. As Chapter 5 and my conclusions suggest, feminist development interventions must squarely account for these contradictions rather than be seduced by reductive rhetoric that empties gender analysis of its critical edge. In so doing, development scholars, local practitioners, and everyday people may be better equipped to confront the real gendered effects of institutional changes based on sex, such as recruiting and retaining more girls in school. My ultimate goal is to expand and localize the working knowledge of gender in development contexts so that we might face the matrix of complexity of life in the development zone and thus, perhaps, craft more reasonable, just, and gender-centered interventions aimed at transformative and positive change for all, not just girls.
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    A Matter of Increasing Perplexity: Public Perception, Treatment, and Military Influence of Refugees in the Shenandoah Valley During the American Civil War
    Crawford, Noah Frazier (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-28)
    This thesis examines the ways in which definitions and perceptions of refugees in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia evolved over the course of the American Civil War. It investigates perspectives from individuals in both the United States and Confederate States to illustrate how misconceptions about refugees—who they were, what they wanted, and how they could benefit each side—dominated how displaced people were discussed. I argue that despite significant attention to refugees in newspapers, military reports, and among the public, both sides failed to adequately assist refugees who were displaced as a result of the war. Utilizing a broadly chronological approach allows greater insight into how the situation in the Shenandoah Valley escalated over time with the addition of various refugee demographic groups, including white Unionists, Black self-emancipated people, deserters, and pro-Confederate civilians. This thesis discusses how each of these groups challenged Americans' culturally-constructed definition of the word "refugee." It also demonstrates how military commanders made use of refugees as sources of military intelligence who directly influenced the events of several military campaigns. This thesis argues that misconceptions about refugees hindered an effective and meaningful response to the Valley's refugee crisis among government officials, military officers, and the general populaces of the North and the South.
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    "The Negro Experiment": Black Modernity and Liberia, 1883-1910
    West, Laura Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-25)
    This thesis explores the notion of "black modernity" in the context of the Liberia at the turn of the twentieth century. Despite Liberia's recognition by the international community as a sovereign nation, Liberia fell subject to the imperial ploys of the European powers in the Scramble for Africa. Americo-Liberians, the governing elite of Liberia, toiled to preserve Liberia's status as an autonomous nation and the only self-governed black republic in Africa. This thesis examines the complexities of Liberia's sovereignty crisis, highlighting the ways in which Americo-Liberians used methods of "modernity" for their own purposes. Using Liberia as a case study, this thesis argues that the concept of "black modernity" hinges on contextual factors such as the plight of the people, pending circumstances, power structures, and understanding of self in relation to these variables. Americo-Liberians, unlike most black people at this time, were protected from race-based oppression by the state. Thus, when Liberia's sovereignty was in jeopardy, Americo-Liberians diligently fought to ensure that the Republic of Liberia maintained its sovereignty by using methods of colonialism and diplomacy. While these methods mirrored those of the European imperialists, Americo-Liberians employed these methods to preserve Liberia and, accordingly, challenge the prevailing notions of black inferiority.
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    Patronage, Millennialism and the Serpent God Mumbo in South-West Kenya, 1912–34
    Shadle, Brett L. (Cambridge University Press, 2002-02)
    This article traces the history of Mumboism, a millennial cult of south-west Kenya, 1912–34. Mumbo, the serpent god of Lake Victoria, promised to eject whites and chiefs from the region and usher in a period of prosperity. Mumboism gained followers, it is argued, because it mixed older ideas of patron–client relations with newer ideas of omnipotent, unseen beings, introduced by Europeans as Government and God. Mumbo challenged chiefs and missionaries, struggling to create patronage networks, by attracting clients, and threatened to unmask Government and God as impotent. Chiefs and, to a lesser extent, missionaries directed state power to the repression of Mumbo, eliminating it before it could undermine the very basis of European power.
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    Perfectly White: Light-Skinned Slaves and the Abolition Movement 1835 - 1865
    Atkins Jr, David Lee (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-29)
    This project looks at American abolitionists use of light-skinned slaves to prove to Northerners slavery was an abomination. This project is also a study of the social constructions of race and the meanings of skin color in Northern and Southern American societies. This research draws mostly upon primary sources including anti-slavery newspapers, images, slave narratives, and slave testimonies. The stories of light-skinned slaves in this thesis challenged the neat assumptions of what it meant to be white or black and deeply disturbed white Americans. The descriptions and images of these former slaves blurred the lines between black and white and made Northerners, and in some instances Southerners, rethink how they decided a person's racial classification. Light-skinned slaves were living proof of the evils of the American slave system and they were one of the tools abolitionists used to help end slavery.
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    Precarious Bodies in Motion: Choreopolitics, Affect, and Flamenco Dissent in Spain
    Yildiz Alanbay, Sengul (Virginia Tech, 2023-09-27)
    This dissertation explores the political potential of dance and dance performances in public protests whereby dancing bodies are capable of performing politics through actions and movements within the boundaries established by existing power structures. Building upon the insights of political theorist Jacques Rancière, dance theorist André Lepecki, and affect theorist Brian Massumi, this study reveals the micro-political value of dancing in the form of dissensus and as an affective and aesthetic practice in politics. Dissensus, as articulated by Rancière, refers to the collision between the prevailing order and opposing viewpoints that disrupts "the distribution of the sensible" (or common sensual perception) in society. In this sense, this study suggests that the subversive affective intensities of dancing in the form of dissensus not only transgress politics as what is articulated in words, but also, transindividually, spread to other bodies and thus potentially compel them to act and think differently. Within this theoretical framework, this study argues that dissensual dancing not only expresses via the body political messages and alternative ways of living and becoming in motion, but also enables bodies to disrupt the predominant, normative, representational, and choreographic structures of power that control them in certain ways. Following the insights of critical theorists Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi, Judith Butler, François Debrix, and Nigel Thrift, this dissertation methodologically problematizes the idea of a singular mode of knowledge and the operation of normative frames that limit our apprehension of different worlds and lives. Thus, it adopts a more-than-representational mode of thinking, coupled with affect theory to work towards a pluralistic methodological perspective that avoids simplistic dichotomies stemming from established linguistic constructs and structures of meaning. In doing so, this study offers an alternative mode of intelligibility about precarious and resistant dancing bodies in the context of dissensual flamenco performances. Within the context of flo6x8's protests in Spain (between 2010 and 2019), this study explores how these dance performances affectively destabilized the ways people perceived and understood flamenco as an art form and challenged the physical embodiments and social norms associated with it. By putting the flamenco body at the center of this exploration, the dissertation argues that flo6x8's dissensual dance performances are not only dialectical or antagonistic, in other words, designed to be positioned against relations of economic oppression. Rather, choreographically and affectively, they also unsettle the very categories of historical, social, cultural, and normative understanding and representation of flamenco as an art and of flamenco bodies.
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    Pushing Marginalization: British Colonial Policy, Somali Identity, and the Gosha 'Other' in Jubaland Province, 1895 to 1925
    Blaha, David Ryan (Virginia Tech, 2011-05-04)
    Throughout the 19th century, large numbers of enslaved people were brought from southeastern Africa to work on Somali plantations along the Benadir Coast and Shebelle River. As these southeast Africans were manumitted or escaped bondage, many fled to the west and settled in the heavily forested and fertile Gosha district along the Juba River. Unattached, lacking security, and surrounded by Somalis-speaking groups, these refugees established agricultural communities and were forced to construct new identities. Initially these riverine peoples could easily access clan structures and political institutions of surrounding Somali sub-clans, which in pre-colonial Jubaland were relatively fluid, open, and—in time—would have allowed these groups to become assimilated into Somali society. British colonial rule however changed this flexibility. Somali identity, once porous and accessible, became increasingly more rigid and exclusive, especially towards the riverine ex-slave communities—collectively called the Gosha by the British—who were subsequently marginalized and othered by these new "Somali." This project explores how British colonial rule contributed to this process and argues that in Jubaland province a "Somali" identity coalesced largely in opposition to the Gosha.