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- Title
- “THE CHINESE ARE COMING” : A HISTORY OF CHINESE MIGRANTS IN NIGERIA
- Creator
- Liu, Shaonan
- Date
- 2018
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
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My dissertation examines the historical and contemporary migration of Chinese people to Nigeria as well as their interaction with the Nigerian state, workers, and consumers in late colonial and post-independence Nigeria. Beginning in the 2000s, Chinese migrants, together with Chinese products, have indeed greatly influenced the economy of Africa, and particularly Nigeria; but the significant Chinese presence in Nigeria is not a particularly recent phenomenon. As early as the 1960s, an...
Show moreMy dissertation examines the historical and contemporary migration of Chinese people to Nigeria as well as their interaction with the Nigerian state, workers, and consumers in late colonial and post-independence Nigeria. Beginning in the 2000s, Chinese migrants, together with Chinese products, have indeed greatly influenced the economy of Africa, and particularly Nigeria; but the significant Chinese presence in Nigeria is not a particularly recent phenomenon. As early as the 1960s, an influential yet understudied group of Chinese migrants began to dominate key manufacturing industries in Nigeria, including textiles, footwear, and enamelware, controlling more than 50 percent of the Nigerian and even the West African market in these three product types. These early Chinese immigrants had a profound influence not only on the economy, but also on the daily lives of ordinary Nigerians. What factors have pulled and pushed Chinese migrants to Nigeria? How have early and recent waves of Chinese migration influenced the local economy and people’s daily lives? How have the meanings of Chinese products to different groups of Nigerians changed over time, and how have these groups made cultural as well as economic sense of these products? How have Chinese transnational networks of information, capital, and goods interacted with African networks, institutions, communities, and individuals?Combining archival records, oral history interviews, and participant observation, I will examine the long-term and recent influence of Chinese activities on Nigerian societies and economies. I argue that the Chinese presence in Nigeria was a historical and evolving concept that changed over time, varied with place, and differed by targeted groups. Hong Kong Chinese industrialists who built factories, employed Nigerian workers, and manufactured products locally in the 1960s had a different influence from the mainland Chinese traders who imported made-in-China products and undermined local manufacturing industries from the 1990s onward. Therefore, by focusing on Chinese migrants in Nigeria and placing them in a wider historical context of Nigerian industrialization from the era of decolonization to the present, my dissertation challenges the Eurocentric narrative of Chinese migrants’ role as laborers and reveals how different groups of Chinese migrants—entrepreneurs, traders, and workers—were shaped by, and in turn shaped, the history of both Nigeria and China. However, this transnational influence was not unidirectional. I also argue that it was the changing policy of Nigerian governments, the evolving preference of Nigerian consumers, and decisions of Nigerian traders that attracted both the early wave of Chinese industrialists and the later wave of Chinese traders and products to come. It was also the broader historical context of Nigeria— decolonization, industrialization, civil war, and economic crisis—that determined the destiny of Chinese migrants in the country.
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- Title
- “THE NAME ISN’T GOING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING, BUT IT’S GOING TO MAKE IT BETTER” : GENDER INCLUSION IN TRADITIONALLY SINGLE-GENDER CHORAL ENSEMBLES
- Creator
- McKiernan, Jessica
- Date
- 2021
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
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The purpose of this dissertation was to tell the stories of conductors leading traditionally single-gender choral ensembles and how they considered practices and discourses surrounding gender and gender inclusion in ensembles traditionally defined by gender exclusion. In line with narrative inquiry, the research puzzles explored (1) how conductors’ intra- and interpersonal experiences with gender influenced the ways they saw and experienced gender, and (a) how those experiences influenced...
Show moreThe purpose of this dissertation was to tell the stories of conductors leading traditionally single-gender choral ensembles and how they considered practices and discourses surrounding gender and gender inclusion in ensembles traditionally defined by gender exclusion. In line with narrative inquiry, the research puzzles explored (1) how conductors’ intra- and interpersonal experiences with gender influenced the ways they saw and experienced gender, and (a) how those experiences influenced their choral pedagogy; (2) the discourses surrounding gender in traditionally single-gender choral ensembles, (a) how those discourses were created, and (b) who created the discourses; (3) practices the conductors employed to create environments honoring and valuing a variety of gender identities; and (4) the areas in which the conductors felt they succeeded in creating or struggled to create environments honoring and valuing a variety of gender identities. The research design was emergent. Megan and Chris (pseudonyms)–two directors of women’s and men’s choirs, respectively, at public universities–and the singers of those ensembles co-constructed narratives surrounding gender inclusion in their choirs. Through a series of individual interviews and small-group and large-group discussions with the conductors and singers, five major themes emerged. First, both singers and conductors found the ensembles to be important spaces for meaning-making, and they problematized many of the values and challenges of choral ensembles defined by gender. Second, the conductors and singers addressed a number of stereotypes and assumptions related to women’s, treble, men’s, and tenor-bass ensembles and interrogated assumptions about gender, particularly as it related to trans and gender-expansive singers. Third, they addressed gender inclusion as it related to policies and practices such as uniforms, rehearsal language, and program logistics. Fourth, they stressed the importance of open communication between students and conductors, allowing for student agency and input, facilitating difficult conversations within choral ensembles, and centering the voices of trans and gender-expansive singers. Finally, allyship was a central theme to the project as singers and conductors reflected on privilege, inclusion and exclusion, and ensuring that allyship is actionable and not performative. At the end of the project, the women’s choir singers and the conductor chose to move away from a gendered choral model. The conductor of the men’s choir saw moving away from a gendered choral model as an essential part of creating a gender-inclusive ensemble, while the singers saw the benefits of the gendered choral model outweighing the drawbacks. Based on the themes, a number of implications, considerations, and recommendations emerged as it related to choral policies and practices. Conductors and singers can implement more inclusive policies as it relates to language, literature selection and discussion, uniforms, voice classification, external image of the ensemble, and choral program hierarchies. Regardless of ensemble classification, conductors and singers need to acknowledge and problematize the impact of gender in choral ensembles. Future research related to gender must prioritize an intersectional approach and center the voices of trans and gender-expansive individuals.
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- Title
- “THE UNIVERSITY OF THE VILLAGE” : THE UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA AND THE MAKING OF POST-INDEPENDENCE NIGERIA
- Creator
- Stevenson , Russell Wade
- Date
- 2020
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
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ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN, the first indigenous university in Nigeria and the first land grant university in Africa. This dissertation argues that UNN represented an innovative experiment in African higher education by expanding higher education to the general populace rather than the colonially privileged elite. However, its construction drew upon patronage politics and taxation regimes that expropriated funding at the same time other regions...
Show moreABSTRACT This dissertation examines the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN, the first indigenous university in Nigeria and the first land grant university in Africa. This dissertation argues that UNN represented an innovative experiment in African higher education by expanding higher education to the general populace rather than the colonially privileged elite. However, its construction drew upon patronage politics and taxation regimes that expropriated funding at the same time other regions faced education taxes. Resistance to the University’s construction reflected local sentiments of inequitable distribution of tax resources throughout Nigeria’s Eastern Region. The University also served as a mechanism in post-independence Nigerian geopolitics: as a mechanism for removing the influence of the British-established University College, Ibadan and British educational models more generally. The University of Nigeria, Nsukka would be, as Taiye Selasi and Achille Mbembe have phrased it, an “Afro-politan” institution—porous and all-encompassing of knowledge systems throughout the globe. During the Nigeria-Biafra war, UNN faced sustained wartime damage—damage from it could not easily recover. The Nigeria-Biafra war laid the groundwork for a period of sustained infrastructural decay and internal resistance, even as the Nigerian federal government enjoyed larger access to oil revenue. This dissertation examines what makes African institutions “indigenous” and how UNN represented the halting transformation from coloniality to indigeneity in the post-independence Nigerian nation-state.
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- Title
- “This story was inside me this whole time, just waiting” : Coming to Blackgirl storying
- Creator
- Johnson, Lauren Elizabeth Reine
- Date
- 2021
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
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This dissertation project explores the various ways Blackgirls (Hill, 2016) from across a New Orleans came together in a collective space to engage in discussions of Blackgirlhood, wherein they shared and developed insights into their individual and collective understandings of self and community. Collective members’ multimodal storying, discussions, and reflections, are centered in this dissertation in response to an urgent need for more expansive presentations of Blackgirls. Informed by...
Show moreThis dissertation project explores the various ways Blackgirls (Hill, 2016) from across a New Orleans came together in a collective space to engage in discussions of Blackgirlhood, wherein they shared and developed insights into their individual and collective understandings of self and community. Collective members’ multimodal storying, discussions, and reflections, are centered in this dissertation in response to an urgent need for more expansive presentations of Blackgirls. Informed by theories, methodologies, and pedagogies, including: Black feminisms and Black Girlhood Studies (e.g., Collins, 2000; Dillard, 2016; Hill, 2016; hooks, 1996; Owens et al., 2017), Indigenous storywork (Archibald, 2008), sociocultural perspectives of literacies (e.g., Street, 1984), and culturally responsive/sustaining humanizing pedagogies (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris & Alim, 2017; Paris & Winn, 2014), this study also builds with the works and examples as put forth by other Blackgirls and Black women, such as Toni Cade Bambara’s (1996) “The Education of a Storyteller” to inquire into how centering Blackgirls and their narratives may move us towards what I conceptualize as “Blackgirl storying,” a medium that we used to critically name and honor our lives and the plurality of Blackgirlhood.
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- Title
- “WE ARE THE BAD POOR” : GENRE AND WHITE TRASH IDENTITY IN GRIT LIT
- Creator
- Ploskonka, Mitchell
- Date
- 2021
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
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This project explores the Southern white trash’s fraught relationship with difference through Grit Lit—literature by and about the white trash. In a historical moment where poor whites have been (sometimes rightfully) scapegoated as key cogs in Trump’s demagoguery characterized by hateful speech and reactionary rhetoric, Grit Lit is a coming-to-terms with its whiteness and trashiness. It is an ongoing search for a usable, unshameful identity amidst a centuries-old construction of the white...
Show moreThis project explores the Southern white trash’s fraught relationship with difference through Grit Lit—literature by and about the white trash. In a historical moment where poor whites have been (sometimes rightfully) scapegoated as key cogs in Trump’s demagoguery characterized by hateful speech and reactionary rhetoric, Grit Lit is a coming-to-terms with its whiteness and trashiness. It is an ongoing search for a usable, unshameful identity amidst a centuries-old construction of the white trash as racially, economically, and regionally as waste people. As this project articulates, to reckon with an inherently liminal and marginalized community, one long associated with (again, sometimes rightfully) assumptions of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny, Grit Lit is only able to come to that identity through a sometimes painful acknowledgment of difference. One key way Grit Lit accomplishes this is through its experimentations with and reconceptualizations of genre. Beginning with Harry Crews and progressing chronologically to the present (through Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg, and Tom Franklin, among others), foundational Grit Lit authors, are studied in relation to their generic choices (ranging from autobiographical realism and literary naturalism to revisionist westerns and detective fiction) and their impact on the literature’s identity politics (including race, gender, sexuality, and disability). As the “Rough South” aesthetic continues to expand beyond the South and into new mediums—comics, television, film—a theoretical basis for understanding white trash identity from the inside provides much-needed (and perhaps unlikely) allyship in a cultural moment marked by racial and social injustice.
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- Title
- ⁵¹CrCl₃ mobility and cellulose digestion in three gallinaceous species
- Creator
- Ingman, Donald Lee, 1945-
- Date
- 1971
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations