Poetry is a versatile tool in the Arab tongue and is the medium which the nation’s civilizations are constructed. It holds an exalted position in Iraq, qualifying it as the conversational mode for all the pulsations of public and private life. It is and has been an important outlet for the expression of people's suffering due to the harsh conditions experienced by Iraqis during the twentieth century, while Iraq was under the domination of the Ottoman Empire and later the British. Poetry is a mirror which reflects the events of this era. Poets formed salons in different cities in which poetry became one of the important links between people in Iraqi society. This study depends principally on literary research including books written in Arabic as well as some written in English. This project contains a short analysis of Iraqi history until 1940 and focuses on the events from 1900-1940 in relation to Iraqi poetry, and an analysis of the poems of al-Jawahiri and al-Baseer with a specific emphasis on concurrent Iraqi social movements, also this project addresses how their poetry interacted with the socio-historical atmosphere of the revolution of Iraq in the year 1920. Poetry in Iraq is indicative of Iraqi passions and emotions and reflects the nature of the Iraqi people’s experience, including the culture, religion, education, history, beliefs, and politics of that time. I intend to reveal how culture, knowledge, and Iraqis’ daily lives and concerns are reflected in poetry. Ultimately, this is an exploration of how poetry highlights the bonds of human relationships in this community.

My research aims to counter the notion that women do not mind the silencing, sexualization, and objectification of their bodies by providing a platform whereby the often unseen and unheard female body can voice a resounding reply that, on the contrary, she does mind, and very much so. My research examines works of contemporary historical fiction, like Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life, in order to explore the silencing of particular women in critical moments of capitalist transformation within and beyond the United States: the transatlantic slave trade, colonization, and imperialism, and the subsequent 20th century proliferation of neoliberalism, nation-building, and imperialism. It highlights this silencing by tracing traumas the female body endures. And does this specifically by defining the different female body parts that function as primary shock-absorbers as women who are coping with the effects of dislocation, displacement, and diaspora are not only gendered and sexualized in these labor markets but are also raced – a key component of representation and sexual exploitation. Vehemently criticizing the phallocratic order responsible for these various states of uprootedness is Luce Irigaray, whose essay “This Sex Which Is Not One” is concerned with the search for and implementation of a uniquely feminine language. My research interrogates the possibility of such a language existing and the significance it would bear in breaking the univocal shroud restricting the expressions and movements of the female body. This analysis utilizes a Marxist reading of the commodification of woman and her sex, as well as Irigaray’s conception of mimesis as it pertains to the recognition and viewing of the female. The injuries of being sexualized, gendered, and raced, unfortunately restrict the feminine discourse that female bodies could potentially produce by dehumanizing the female and rendering her nothing but a voiceless soft slip of flesh.

The traditional black slave narrative was a political tool used to document the experience of being subjugated and commodified in early America. A revised literature has appeared in the contemporary, post-Civil Rights moment that takes on the pretense of the slave narrative: the neo-slave narrative. Unlike traditional slave narratives, neo-slave narratives’ potency does not hinge on veracity--each neo-slave narrative is a synthesis of oral history and the author's imagination. In this presentation, I investigate how narratives go so far as to rerender history, and transform the image of the brutalized slave to a determinist, autonomous figure in exceptional situations using humor. I will close read two neo-slave narratives: Flight to Canada (1976) by Ishmael Reed and Oxherding Tale (1982) by Charles Johnson. Of particular interest to this literary investigation are the novels’ respective protagonists who, between them, bear atypical Western educations, cosmopolitan friends, and traverse the landscape of the Antebellum South with wit and manner. I highlight how Johnson and Reed cater to contemporary readers' premonitions of what ought to happen in a treacherous slave narrative by creating comical encounters between the subjected and the empowered. I also discuss how Johnson invokes explicit Western and Eastern philosophical concepts to lend an air of consciousness to slavery's absurdity, and how Reed places deeply stereotyped characters in an anachronistic setting--a time structure that often conflates the events of the Civil Rights moment with the early 19th century--in order to track how black political progress has and has not changed in the intermediate time. Ultimately, I unearth how the two authors use neo-slave narrative humor as a tool to subvert notions of the slave as a stagnant, brutalized subject and foster discussions of black agency between the signposts of enslavement, emancipation, and progressivism in the black experience through American history.

This paper will describe the occurrence and context of dismissive, condescending, or infantilizing linguistic behavior as used by female characters toward male characters in stable heterosexual partnerships portrayed in American television. This study will be based on grounded theory, in that the initial interpretive framework for the analysis will stem from preliminary analysis of data gathered in the study; this working framework will direct the analytical approach as more data is analyzed and will also be further developed by the findings. The data-processing method used in this study will be a qualitative application of discourse analysis, an applied linguistic method of studying small units of spoken and written language, such as sentences or individual words, within the larger context of a conversation. In the sample this study will examine, a conversation will comprise an exchange of pre-written conversational dialogue in a televised scene. This study will examine sitcom interactions between partners to determine how frequently and in what contexts such exchanges may occur. For the purpose of exploring the possible ways in which this relational power imbalance has been absorbed into American popular culture, the discourse data will be drawn from three American sitcoms: Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, and Rules of Engagement. The interactions within this database will be qualitatively analyzed, and discussion of the findings will focus on the extent to which they reinforce gender stereotypes which rely on power imbalance.

During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Asian Americans were labeled as the “model minority.” The integration of the Asian American community into mainstream American society without relying on welfare or political protest was used to demean the civil rights struggle of African Americans and Latinos. The Immigration Act of 1965 and the aftermath of the Vietnam War saw an influx of Asian immigration prompting the homogenization of disparate Asian groups within American society. The 1980s were a period of turmoil for the US economy, while Japan was an economic power on the rise. The dialogue about Asian Americans changed during this decade to reflect the growing threat of Japanese economic supremacy. The rhetoric of the model minority shifted to represent the Asian American as smart and hardworking tying it to Japanese success in the auto industry and the threat of Japan’s economic rise. The deindustrialization of U.S. manufacturing jobs, created a backlash against Asians Americans. The homogenization of Asian groups in the 1980s ignored class differences and became a tool to dismantle affirmative action and welfare services. This article will explore the model minority myth and the representation of Asian Americans in American society. The study will include popular media during the 1980s: newspapers, television, periodicals, political speeches, and movies. The use of these primary source documents will track the changing perceptions of the U.S. population during the 1980s. Research into the Asian American model minority myth and the shift in public perception during the 1980s will shed light upon the changing nature of race perception and relations in the United States.

A monastic reformation movement swept through Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries resulting in increased access to the religious life for peasants and noble women. The introduction of these new elements caused tension and anxiety among existing ecclesiastical elites. A prime example of these tensions is the Gilbertine Order, a monastic sect founded in England ca. 1131 that provided for the needs of these newly active populations. Originally created to serve a group of cloistered nuns, the Gilbertines soon began to include lay brothers to oversee the external governance of the monastery. At some point after 1147, the Gilbertine Order introduced Canons, monks of socially elite backgrounds, who usurped the lay brethren’s position of authority. This usurpation created tensions that resulted in the Gilbertine lay brothers filing a formal complaint with the pope ca. 1161. Existing research on this topic generally relegates the lay brothers’ actions to a marginalized extreme and scholars have often described the brothers’ actions using terms originally employed by the lay brothers’ adversaries, such as “rebellious” and “violent.” There has been little attempt to understand the lay brothers’ intentions nor to situate the petition in relation to the larger social, political, religious, and economic movements sweeping throughout Western Europe in the mid- to late-twelfth century. My research has found that their actions represent an attempt, albeit frustrated, to integrate themselves within a larger, society-wide discussion of rights, duties, and relationships between the period’s various social hierarchies, both ecclesiastical and lay. A comparison of the language and procedures outlined in letters surrounding the Papal investigation of the lay brother’s petition indicates that, rather than being an attempt to upend prevalent social hierarchies, the lay brothers’ actions serve to illustrate their attempts to integrate themselves within these power structures.

 In 1943 Hanford, Washington became home to the first full scale nuclear production complex and is now the most contaminated nuclear Superfund site. How have the lived experiences, local knowledge, health indicators and perceptions of risk in disparately-impacted communities shaped the complex processes of planning and decision-making of the clean-up at Hanford? Community Based Action Research can provide critical insight into the socio-cultural dimensions of the Hanford site needed to understand the complex processes that shape clean-up efforts, and how those decisions affect the lives of primary stakeholders. This methodology can also be utilized to critically examine how those decisions impact the experiences and health of the larger community. Archival research, participant observation and interviewing have been utilized to identify stakeholder groups and create accessible collaborative descriptive accounts of the Hanford site. This research will add to our collective understanding of the importance and use of cultural resources found on the Federal reservation, the contemporary economic importance of the super fund site, as well as how Hanford has and continues to affect a diverse array of stakeholders. This research has the potential to contribute to understandings of environmental justice policies as well as increase involvement of marginalized stakeholders and facilitate the implementation of collaborative, sustainable solutions to mitigate threats to population health and safety.

In today’s digital world, cultural transmission through popular media, such as music, occurs on a grander scale than ever before, connecting people and ideas across the globe. Dancehall music is deeply embedded in Jamaican culture as a culturally significant source of self-identification, but it has also spread globally. This is a study of the globalization of culture through popular media, including aspects of production, dissemination, consumption and appropriation of Jamaican dancehall music in the United States. Many studies of the commodification of culture describe diminished creative authenticity; however this study will attempt to situate actors in their social context as culture creators. It will address the dynamics of economic production and artistic creation as cultural products and social processes, while exploring the strategies employed to create and disseminate music. By looking at cultural transmission through music as a social process, this study is seeking to address questions of authenticity and hybridity, explore local and global identities, and reveal cultural assumptions stemming from musical interactions as key discursive elements in the limited body of research concerning dancehall music culture.

While sexual co-mingling of the races in the Americas began as early as the first cases of colonization, miscegenation remained an unspoken taboo in America until roughly the mid-century, when many cases of mixed-race couples began increasing in visibility in local communities, popular culture, and the courts. These couples found themselves thrust into the spotlight as either martyrs for the cause, fuel for the propaganda against mixed unions, or examples for popular interest pieces in magazines and newspapers. The role of news outlets in bringing public awareness to the presence of interracial relationships, for good or for bad, was crucial. This project explores newspaper articles over a 20 year period (late 1950s through the early 1970s) from three American Black newspapers: New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburg Courier, and Atlanta Daily World, and analyzes them from several perspectives, considering regional differences, date of the article (before or after the Loving v. Virginia decision), and subject matter of the article. Findings revealed several themes: emphasis on the white, female opinion, shifting generational divides, and the role of celebrity and celebrity mixed unions in public interracial marriage awareness. This project displays my discoveries in how the black community felt about interracial marriages during this period, as well as how the black media sought to influence public opinion regarding the topic.