Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Paradise Remixed: The Queer Politics of Tourism in Jamaica(2023) Abdullah-Smith, Hazim Karim; Mirabal, Nancy R; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Employing an interdisciplinary approach, “Paradise Remixed: The Queer Politics of Tourism in Jamaica” examines the dominant historical, literary and ideological narratives of tourism in Jamaica. At the same time, it examines the intersection of tourism and sexuality through an analysis of media representations of homophobia and queer Jamaican discussions of progress. Noting that tourism is a privileged form of mobility, this dissertation uses tourism to interrogate the array of historical and contemporary tensions of class, race, sexuality and how such tensions are negotiated through Black diasporic and queer Jamaican ways of knowing. This dissertation begins by tracing how the promotion of Jamaica as an ideal tourist destination, since the early 1900s, heavily shaped politics and culture on the island and abroad. Jamaica’s reputation as a tourist paradise was manufactured and depended on a continual rearticulation of what Jamaica is and who Jamaicans are. Drawing on a range of media archives from Jamaican newspapers to African American lifestyle publications, this dissertation argues that the success of Jamaica’s paradisical tourist image comes after difficult debates about how Jamaica should be represented. Interestingly, the successful touristic representations would greatly impact how African Americans would imagine Jamaica as a tourist destination. By the late 20th century, tourism again becomes a site of fracture and precarity. The calls to end homophobic music and a proposed boycott threatened Jamaica’s image as a welcoming paradise. The leaders of these campaigns, primarily North Americans, deployed a global strategy that brought attention to homophobia in Jamaica. However, these same leaders failed to amplify the nuanced voices of queer Jamaican activists who were progressively gaining visibility, strengthening their own organizations and articulating for themselves what it means to be queer and Jamaican. In recent years, some have even established their own tourism businesses. For example, initiatives like Connek create safe spaces for queer people, spark genuine transnational connections and transform perceptions of queer life in Jamaica. In centering queer Jamaican experiences, this dissertation highlights the nuanced voices, artistic expressions and activism of queer Jamaicans, and acknowledges the safe spaces they have and continue to create through tourism and beyond.Item THE TEACHER SHORTAGE ISSUE IN CUBA: HOW THE CHANGES IN ITS ECONOMIC SYSTEM IMPACTED TEACHERS DECISION TO ENTER, REMAIN, OR LEAVE THE PROFESSION(2020) Lee, Changha; Ginsburg, Mark; Klees, Steven; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Cuba has suffered from the severe economic constraints since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, and as a response the government directed various economic policies that largely dealt with the opening of the market economy. The expansion of the tourism industry was one of them, and many teachers left the profession to seek opportunities that allowed access to foreign currency. Although there have been other periods of teacher shortage in Cuba, the post-1991 era has witnessed an almost continuous situation of teacher shortage. The purpose of this study is to focus on the issue of teacher shortage in the contemporary Cuba and analyze how the changes in its economic system, particularly the opening of the market economy, have impacted teachers‘ decision to enter, remain, or leave the profession. To address this question, I conducted a qualitative study, relying primarily on semi-structured interviews with 22 teachers, who were in various stages of their careers, in Havana, Cuba. The study was informed by Bronfenbrenner‘s ecological systems theory and human capital occupational decision-making theory and contextualized by a review of policy documents and other literature. For analytical purposes, the informants were divided into groups based on the different historical periods they entered teaching. The overall trend has been that the more senior teachers are, the more likely they are to depend on high level of factors (i.e. social norms, values, perspectives on the government) when they make occupational decisions. However, few factors were equally represented by all groups such as the interest in teaching (individual level), poor teaching environment in public schools (microsystem), low teacher salary and alternative jobs (exosystem), and perspectives on the government (macrolevel). In some cases, the same factor applied in different ways for different groups. For example, poor teaching environment provided for younger cohort of teachers a rationale to drop out, while for the older cohort, it served them as motives to persist and demonstrate solidarity by continuing teaching even after retirement.Item The role of the government in the creation of Places and, the impact that that action has on Identity: A case study in Puerto Rico(2018) Sanchez-Rivera, Ana Ivelisse; Geores, Martha; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Identity is at the crux of a person’s life. People’s pursuit of uniqueness strongly motivates the process of constructing identity. Place has a major role in that process but present theories focused on identity consider places as manifestations of the self, at the mercy of their populations who change and give meaning to them. The research presented here demonstrates that places are more than personal or groups’ constructions and that they act as agents, directly influencing identity dimensions. This research tests how places created by the government -and not by the people who live in them- can directly influence identity creation in Puerto Rico. The Island was selected as a case study because in 1948 the government decided to re-define “Puerto Ricannes” after recognizing the cultural influences the US was having on the population. Although it highlighted three groups as representatives of the culture -i.e., Tainos (Native-Indians), Spaniards (colonizers) and Africans (slaves)-, it selected the “Jíbaro” -a light-skinned peasant from the mountains- as the main representative of the “real” Puerto Rican. Today, even though PR is understood as a racially diverse place, over 75% of the population selects White as their race in the US Census. This study seeks to understand if the narratives created by the government about the Island influence how participants selected a racial category and identified with the ethnic/racial groups involved in history. Also, it tests how the construction of Loíza, (municipio with the highest proportion of “Blacks”) affects the way people talk and identify with it. The research uses Mixed Methods to interpret data collected in four communities. The result are analyzed using two binary logistic regression models on over two-hundred-and-ninety surveys and, a Two-way Cluster Analysis based on frequency codes of twenty-five in-depth interviews. Findings suggest the identity construction the government has created around Puerto Rico and Loíza as places, actively informs participant responses to questions about their ethnic, national and racial identities.Item PROTEAN GODS: A RETELLING OF HISPANIOLA’S STORY THROUGH THE MAROON(2018) Rivera, Ines Pastora; Ontiveros, Randy; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation argues that an exploration of the maroon, or the runaway slave, in literature can be a means to acknowledging the too-often-repressed historical, political, and cultural connections between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and can also help us uncover more accurate and less restrictive versions of Hispaniola’s story. Hispaniola’s story is often told through the fatal-conflict narrative, reducing Haitian-Dominican relations to an unending cockfight. The fatal-conflict narrative paints the Dominican Republic and Haiti as two nations fated to regard one another as ultimate, foreign archenemies,destined to be in total conflict. It also paints the Dominican Republic and Haiti as two nations whose fight for Hispaniola and for the preservation of their respective cultures is fatal. The formation of the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti has bolstered the fatal-conflict narrative, silencing a shared history of resistance and cross-pollination. My work extends and contributes to existing scholarship by uncovering instances of cooperation and collaboration that suggest alternative views of a united island and that complicate contemporary political and social realities in the Dominican Republic. Rather than reaffirming a discourse of national difference through a focus on the border, I focus on the maroon as a protean figure who undoes the fatal-conflict narrative. I argue that these change agents, the maroons, anchor the island in what Cedric Robinson calls the Black Radical Tradition, the evolving resistance of African people to oppression. Maroon figures also reveal different angles to Hispaniola’s story through their forms of resistance and penchant for metamorphoses. I also examine twentieth and twenty-first century maroons found in Dominican and Dominican American literature. Like their counterparts from the past, modern-day maroons take flight, resist forms of enslavement and oppression, and undergo transformations that challenge conventional ways of thinking about Haitian-Dominican relations and the island of Hispaniola. Writers from the Dominican diaspora—among them Angie Cruz, Junot Díaz, and Nelly Rosario—have played a pivotal role in interrogating history, and more specifically, memories of violence and the repercussions associated with migration. Not only does this interrogation rewrite history, but it offers a means of forging a new, fuller story that erodes the border and expands the island’s boundaries, all the while magnifying the role of the Black Freedom struggle in the making of a whole Hispaniola.Item CRAFTING CONVERSATIONS: ARCHITECTURE AS A MEANS AND A VENUE FOR EXPLORING CONTEMPORARY,POSTCOLONIAL, JAMAICAN IDENTITIES(2017) McKenley, Joseph Stephen; Lamprakos, Michele; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis will explore the relationships between postcolonialism, the formulation of identities, architecture, fine art and folk art, making and craft-making. It will delve into postcolonial discourse to understand what postcolonialism is, how it is defined, and what it means in the Jamaican context. It will explore how identities are defined and what factors are considered in the creation or unearthing of identities. It will explore what role making and craft-making have in creating and/or expositing identities as well as the relation between making and craft-making with architecture. Ultimately, the research will lead to the question, in what ways can architecture manifest cultural identity and how can architecture illustrate a Jamaican, contemporary, postcolonial identity.Item The Drama of History: Representation and Revolutionaries in Haitian Theater, 1818-1907(2016) Dize, Nathan Hobson; Orlando, Valérie K; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since the beginning of the Haitian theatrical tradition there has been an ineluctable dedication to the representation of Haitian history on stage. Given the rich theatrical archive about Haiti throughout the world, this study considers operas and plays written solely by Haitian playwrights. By delving into the works of Juste Chanlatte, Massillon Coicou, and Vendenesse Ducasse this study proposes a re-reading of Haitian theater that considers the stage as an innovative site for contesting negative and clichéd representations of the Haitian Revolution and its revolutionary leadership. A genre long mired in accusations of mimicking European literary forms, this study proposes a reevaluation of Haitian theater and its literary origins.Item The geography of the pineapple industry of Puerto Rico(1953) Burchfiel, William Wesley; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Item Trends in land use in southeast Puerto Rico(1953) Beishlag, George A.; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Item UNHOMELY STIRRINGS: REPRESENTATIONS OF INDENTURESHIP IN INDO-CARIBBEAN LITERATURE FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT(2014) Baksh, Anita; Collins, Merle; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the ways in which East Indian Caribbean (Indo-Caribbean) writers negotiate history, identity, and belonging. Nineteenth-century government officials and plantation owners described Indian indentureship (1838-1917) in the British West Indies as a contractual system of employment implemented after abolition and as a civilizing mechanism aimed at reforming heathen laborers. Challenging these accounts, historians have shown that the system was a new mode of exploitation. Colonial administrators used coercive tactics to control workers and implemented strategic laws to confine Indians to the plantation. These policies constructed Indians as foreigners and interlopers in colonial society, perceptions that have significantly impacted the formation of Indo-Caribbean subjectivities and Indo-Caribbean claims to postcolonial citizenship in the region. Reading both canonical and lesser known texts, my project argues that Indo-Caribbean writers frequently engage with indentureship as a means to come to terms with this history of oppression and as a way to contest their elision in Anglophone Caribbean culture more widely. Drawing on postcolonial theory, I examine works published from 1960 to the present by authors from Guyana and Trinidad, countries where Indians constitute a significant portion of the population. My analysis begins in the 1960s because it was at this time that literary and political debates began to focus on decolonization and on defining a culture distinct from Britain. Given that Indian indentures were unable to record their own experiences, their perspectives are largely omitted from the Caribbean historiography. Moreover, as Indians moved off the plantation and gained socio-economic mobility, they often viewed indenture as a shameful part of their heritage that was best forgotten. By examining V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, Peter Kempadoo's Guyana Boy, Harold Ladoo's No Pain Like This Body, Ramabai Espinet's The Swinging Bridge, the novels of Shani Mootoo, and the poetry of Rajkumari Singh, Rooplall Monar, and Mahadai Das, "Unhomely Stirrings" traces the processes by which indenture has been subjected to willful acts of forgetting within Indo-Caribbean communities and in larger national histories. These texts engage the ways in which the legacy of indentureship continues to shape the contemporary lives and identities of Indo-Caribbean people at home and in the diaspora.Item On the B-Side: A Dub Approach to Defining a Caribbean Literary Identity in the Contemporary Diaspora(2013) Semaj, Isis Nailah; Collins, Merle; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)United under an aesthetics of dub and utilizing both literary critique and social and musical historiography, this dissertation analyzes Caribbean texts that acknowledge a particular kind of identification that occurs in the diaspora and has implications, too, for the study of the Caribbean subject at home in the region. Inspired by dub music, which developed out of the distinct socio-political climate of newly independent Jamaica as a music juxtaposing the capital city's street violence with new nation optimism, the dub aesthetic finds application in Caribbean literary texts written within the undefined subjective space between dislocation from home and late twentieth and early twenty-first century globalism. Thus, while paying respect to Derek Walcott's pronouncement that colonialism is the common ground of the New World, this dub approach moves beyond a joint postcolonial identification to an interrogation of the overlapping histories and social realities present in the contemporary Caribbean diaspora.