Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Speculative Citizenship: Race, National Belonging, and the Counterfactual Imagination in the Literature of the Long Reconstruction(2024) Ewing, Annemarie Mott; Levine, Robert S.; Wong, Edlie; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Speculative Citizenship: Race, National Belonging, and the Counterfactual Imagination in the Literature of the Long Reconstruction” explores how key Reconstruction writers addressed citizenship as a guiding concept. Writers such as Charles Chesnutt, Albion Tourgée, Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman), and Edward A. Johnson revealed the malleable, unstable, and speculative nature of US citizenship and the Reconstruction era itself. Even as the 14th Amendment formally defined citizenship for the first time in 1868, its interpretations varied, causing citizenship to remain a contested concept with actively negotiated legal inclusions and exclusions. Debates and uncertainties about citizenship provided an opportunity for Reconstruction writers to delineate more capacious concepts of citizenship than its evolving legal definitions. This dissertation examines Reconstruction authors’ use of what I am calling the “counterfactual imaginary,” a mode characterized by dislocating, retrospective, or utopian speculation that works to represent the fluid boundaries of national belonging. The counterfactual, often signaled by conditional tenses, considers what could have been and what might be. Conditional tenses best express the expansive, utopian possibility of Reconstruction while depicting its present injustices. The authors discussed in my dissertation focus not only on citizenship’s legal definitions in their writings, but also on citizenship as it was performed and practiced. They speculate, sometimes wildly in experimental fiction, about what sort of world could still be created. They forecast a nation in which citizenship and national belonging were defined more inclusively than in the courts or Congress. Collectively, “Speculative Citizenship” illuminates inclusions and exclusions afforded by the 14th amendment. The first and fourth chapters examine literary portrayals of the ways the 14th amendment expanded citizenship in two ways—intentionally to African American men and inadvertently to corporations through the establishment of the concept of corporate personhood. The 14th amendment, Albion Tourgée and Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton suggest, established corporate personhood in ways that aided Westward expansion and the dispossession and exclusion from full citizenship of Mexican Americans and Indigenous peoples. The second and third chapters explore two exclusions of the amendment–the brief exclusion of former Confederates from the rights of full US citizenship and the ongoing exclusion of Indigenous people both in terms of a refusal to grant citizenship and a parallel refusal to recognize Indigenous sovereignty. Foregrounding the perspectives of authors like Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman) and student writers publishing in Indigenous boarding school newspapers offers new ways of looking at how citizenship and national belonging were conceptualized in the literature of the long Reconstruction era and beyond.Item "We Heard Healthcare": The Long Black Freedom Struggle as Health Justice(2023) Catchmark, Elizabeth; Enoch, Jessica; Fleming, Jr., Julius; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In her project, Elizabeth Catchmark traces the ways Black liberation organizers have positioned a guarantee of health as a prerequisite for citizenship since Emancipation. Their challenges to white supremacy named the violence of the state in making Black America sicker and organized communal acts of care to enable their survival in the wake of state neglect. By situating health justice as key to full participation in civic life, these activists refuted a disembodied interpretation of citizenship and offered instead an embodied, capacious vision of racial justice that acknowledges the entanglements of our environments, bodies, and minds. The genealogy Catchmark develops demonstrates that the right to health is a constituent feature of the Black political imagination across the long Black freedom struggle. Ultimately, she finds that Black liberation organizers, through their racial-justice informed theorizations of health and citizenship, illustrate that democracy and health are inextricable from the eradication of white supremacy while offering new ways forward for public policy, racial justice organizing, and interpersonal care.Item REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MILITARY IN 20TH CENTURY ETHNIC AMERICAN LITERATURE(2017) Fontenot, Kara Parks; Nunes, Zita C; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 20th century ethnic American literature, writers deploy representations of the US military to expose the operations of American hegemony, articulate relations of power, reveal how they are maintained, identify contradictions in the rhetoric of American nationalism and imagine not yet manifest possibilities for social justice coalitions that cross racial, ethnic, and national lines. As a national institution controlled by the US government and consuming labor in the form of military service from citizens of all classes, races and ethnicities in ways that reflect existing relations of power in American society at large, the US military presents a unique and powerful site for articulation of relationships between nation, race, and class. As evidence, this dissertation explores six American novels, all published in the 20th century and taking as their subject matter US military involvement in declared and undeclared military conflicts of that era. Close readings of these novels bring our attention to three specific examples of political projects for which representations of the US military in literature have been deployed: to question constructions of American nationalism by highlighting contradictions and inconsistencies, to consider the military’s institutionalized labor practices in order to explore relationships between race and class as well as imagine means of struggling for social justice, and to critique US foreign policy and military operations overseas. These writers individually and collectively refuse to examine race and/or ethnicity in isolation but instead consider these aspects of subjectivity in the context of national identity, class relations, immigration, globalization, and other social forces. While the relationship between ethnicity and military service has been addressed in other disciplines, such as history, political science, and social science, I argue that literature is a medium especially well-suited for this exploration as it not only allows for the articulation of existing social relations but also for the imagination of not yet manifest possibilities for social justice coalitions that cross racial, ethnic, and national lines.Item TEACHING CITIZENSHIP & DEMOCRACY IN A NEW DEMOCRACY: PEDAGOGY, CURRICULUM & TEACHERS’ BELIEFS IN SOUTH AFRICA(2017) Fogle-Donmoyer, Amanda; Lin, Jing; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 2014, twenty years had passed since the first free elections, the birth of democracy and implementation of transitional educational reforms in South Africa. While efforts to create an education system based on human rights, democracy, equality, and unity were made, questions remain about how teachers should address these principles in their classrooms. It is difficult to determine, therefore, how citizenship and democracy education should be taught and how teachers perceive their role as educators of South Africa’s new generation of democratic citizens. Using Davies’ and Jansen’s concepts of post-conflict pedagogy, this dissertation investigates how teachers responsible for citizenship and democracy education in South Africa perceive the abstract topics of citizenship and democracy and how their beliefs, backgrounds, and life experiences influence how they present the national curriculum to their learners. In order to answer these questions, a multiple and comparative case study of sixteen teacher participants at three schools was carried out in Durban, South Africa. Using in-depth interviews, classroom observation, and document review as data collection methods, the dissertation investigates how teachers’ beliefs, the national curriculum and teaching methods intersected. Data analysis was conducted through thematic coding. Results suggest that teachers’ beliefs and experiences with democracy shape how they teach civic education topics, especially concerning their racial background and experiences during apartheid and the democratic transition. Inequalities in school resources also limit pedagogical choices, especially in methods designed to educate active and informed citizens.Item Violence and Belonging: The impact of citizenship law on violence in Sub-Saharan Africa(2016) Fruge, Anne Christine; Birnir, Johanna K; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Many countries in Africa are embroiled in heated debates over who belongs where. Sometimes insider/outsider debates lead to localized skirmishes, but other times they turn into minor conflict or even war. How do we explain this variation in violence intensity? Deviating from traditional explanations regarding democratization, political or economic inequality, or natural resources, I examine how nationality laws shape patterns in violence. Citizenship rules determine who is or is not a member of the national political community. Nationality laws formalize these rules, thus representing the legal bond between individuals and the state. Restrictive nationality laws increase marginalization, which fuels competition between citizenship regime winners and losers. This competition stokes contentious insider/outsider narratives that guide ethnic mobilization along the dual logics of threat and opportunity. Threats reduce resource levels and obstruct the exercise of rights. Opportunities provide the chance to reclaim lost resources or clarify nationality status. Other work explains conditions necessary for insider/outsider violence to break out or escalate from the local to the national level. I show that this violence intensifies as laws become more exclusive and escalates to war once an outsider group with contested foreign origins faces denationalization. Groups have contested foreign origins where the “outsider” label conflates internal and foreign migrants. Where outsiders are primarily in-migrants, it is harder to deny the group’s right to citizenship, so nationality laws do not come under threat and insider/outsider violence remains constrained to minor conflict. Using an original dataset of Africa’s nationality laws since 1989, I find that event frequency and fatality rates increase as laws become more restrictive. Through case studies, I explain when citizenship struggles should remain localized, or escalate to minor or major conflict. Next, I apply a nationality law lens to individual level conflict processes. With Afrobarometer survey data, I show that difficulty obtaining identity papers is positively correlated with the fear and use political violence. I also find that susceptibility to contentious narratives is positively associated with using violence to achieve political goals. Finally, I describe the lingering effects of a violent politics of belonging using original survey data from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.Item THE GUANTÁNAMO TRIALS: SOVEREIGNTY AND SUBJECT FORMATION IN THE WAR ON TERROR(2016) Andrist, Lester Howard; Korzeniewicz, Roberto P; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent political theory has explored the idea that states reconstitute sovereign power by deciding on the exception to law. By deciding on which laws to follow and how to interpret them in new ways, sovereign states not only reconstitute sovereign power but they also exercise the power to set the terms of citizenship and political exclusion. By focusing on the U.S.-led global War on Terror, I argue that this explanation of how sovereignty reconstitutes itself and how it sets the terms of citizenship focuses too narrowly on the juridical dimension. Sovereign power also reconstitutes itself in a representational dimension by attending to processes of signification and representation. The juridical dimension and the representational dimension are connected because the decision on the exception is simultaneously an effort to create exclusions, both legally and through the deployment of representations. I analyze these exceptional decisions as orchestrated security events that create discursive openings and a platform for state officials to introduce frames and narratives for understanding the unfolding events in the War on Terror. Specifically, I look at the first few years after the 9/11 attacks and analyze the legal documentation that comprise the rationale and wording of key decisions on the exception, which created the Guantánamo Bay detention camps. I also conduct a textual analysis of newspaper articles written about Guantánamo Bay during the same time period in order to catalogue the frames, narratives, and representations deployed by state officials. One major aim of this dissertation is to describe how the juridical and representational dimensions articulate with one another.Item Citizen-Civilians: Masculinity, Citizenship, and American Military Manpower Policy, 1945-1975(2013) Rutenberg, Amy Jennifer; Muncy, Robyn; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Citizen-Civilians" argues that military manpower policies between the end of World War II in 1945 and the shift to the All-Volunteer Force in 1973 separated military service from ideals of masculine citizenship in the United States. Manpower policies, especially those that governed deferments, widened the definition of service to the state and encouraged men to meet their responsibilities for national defense as civilians. They emphasized men's breadwinner role and responsible fatherhood over military service and defined economic independence as a contribution to national defense. These policies, therefore, militarized the civilian sector, as fatherhood and certain civilian occupations were defined as national defense initiatives. But these policies also, ironically, weakened the citizen-soldier ideal by ensuring that fewer men would serve in the military and equating these civilian pursuits with military service. The Defense establishment unintentionally weakened its own manpower procurement system. These findings provide context for the anti-war and anti-draft protest of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Vietnam exacerbated points of friction that already existed. The war highlighted assumptions about masculinity and citizenship as well as inequities in the draft system that had existed for a generation. This dissertation, therefore, explains the growth of the mechanisms that allowed men to avoid military service, as such avoidance became relatively simple to accomplish and easy to justify. Thus, when draft calls rose in order to support a war that many Americans did not agree with, men used the channels that the Defense establishment had already created for them to avoid serving in the armed forces. This work also demonstrates how policies and ideas about masculine citizenship affected one another. Competing visions of manhood as well as debates over the rights and responsibilities of citizenship influenced policy debates. Moreover, policies took on a social engineering function, as the Selective Service and Department of Defense actively encouraged men to enter particular occupational fields, marry, and become fathers. In this way, this project is an example of the "lived Cold War." It suggests that individual men made career, school, and marriage decisions in response to Cold War policies.Item Discourse and Dissent in the Diaspora: Civic and Political Lives of Iranian Americans(2013) Zarpour, Mari Tina; Freidenberg, Judith N; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines the political agency of Iranian immigrants. Through the rhetorical device of "political talk" which encompasses politically- and civically- oriented discourse, action and ideology, this research follows political talk as it presents itself in two locations within the public sphere: in the life course of Iranian Americans, and through online discourse. Methods used included a combination of conventional ethnography (participant observation, informal interviews, life history interviews), and virtual ethnography to develop a typology of political and civic action. Life history interviews provided an understanding of the meanings informants assigned to political and civic action within the larger trajectory of their lives, especially within the context of migration experiences. Virtual ethnography involved the analysis of three different Iranian digital diaspora communities. First, this research found that the civic and political spheres of engagement are linked, and that Iranian immigrants use organizations to learn participatory democracy. It illustrates how ethnic organizations, online and offline, act as both vehicles and activators for immigrant political participation and further civic engagement in the U.S. Additionally, this research uncovers how factors (age at migration, length of time in U.S., particular migration experience) impact notions of belonging and solidarity. It unpacks immigrant political agency to demonstrate the range of behaviors and activities which constitute political and civic participation. It contributes to understanding modes of citizenship and belonging by relating individual, historical, and situational variables in order to understand the relationship between homeland events, immigrant politicization and political behavior. Analysis of the three digital communities evidenced the multiple ways that digital diasporas can be a forum for engaging politically and in creating political community by allowing for a diversity of voices. Finally, merging conventional and virtual ethnography highlighted the dominant discourses about participation in larger society, and demonstrated the formation of a distinctly Iranian-American civil society.Item Work Under Democracy: Labor, Gender and Arendtian Citizenship(2013) Staudinger, Alison Kathryn; Elkin, Stephen; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the interest of promoting a co-constitutive theory of democratic citizenship, this dissertation explores three questions. I ask how work is defined and how this definition creates a hierarchy of types of work, which then leads to my second question, which is how definitions of work or what is not work are carried over into the public space of poli- tics and citizenship, such that even legal citizens may be marginalized by the type of work that they do. I first critique democratic theory, particularly as centered on the idea of the public sphere, for failing to think about work, especially the labor that is required to build these political spaces. I then show how the contemporary economy challenges the ability of citizens to engage in political work because it produces conditions of pre- carious labor, ubiquitous work, the depoliticization of work itself, and incompatibility of wage labor and family life. I use two historical case studies to explore how groups have claimed collective rights housed in the substantive needs of communities when asserting the validity of their work for citizenship. I look to the Articles of Confederation and Daniel Shays for an example focused on waged labor, and then the temperance and Anti-temperance movements for a consideration of gendered reproductive labor. I then address my third question, which is whether it is possible to promote the political work of co-constituting a shared public world without also denigrating the labor, particularly care labor, that is supportive of this project. I claim it is possible, with the aid of Hannah Arendt's understanding of the complex interrelations between action, work and labor and locating of citizenship in the work of world building. I argue for the support of this conception of work and agnostic institutionalism, despite the challenges of the contemporary economy, by advocating for a coalition-based democratic politics aimed at supporting the compatibility of work and family for people who do all sorts of work.Item DEMOCRATIC IMPLICATIONS OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION THROUGH GRADUATES WHO WENT ON TO NONPROFIT WORK(2012) Kiesa, Abigail I; Paoletti, Jo; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Three trends have been evident in civil society for at least the past two decades: a gap in civic participation between young people with college experience and those without; increasing investment in college student civic participation by higher education institutions; and a narrowing of opportunities for all Americans to participate in civic life. This last point, some believe, is leading to a smaller, more homogenous and privileged group directing civic life, particularly nonprofit organizations, jeopardizing their democratic role. No research has attempted to bring all of these dynamics into conversation. This exploratory research begins to fill this void. By interviewing participants in one multi-year collegiate civic engagement program, we learned the skills, values and identity as "active citizens" graduates took into nonprofit work. Results suggest that lessons from trainings and civic activities within the program impacted the career choices that graduates made and how they conceive of their work.