The Buraku people have been segregated, oppressed, and discriminated against throughout Japanese history. The Japanese can dismiss the Buraku issue because of assimilation theories, the belief in homogeneity, and passive attitudes by the Buraku people. The Buraku Liberation League (BLL), which has fought for equal rights on behalf of the...
This thesis is a collection of six essays with interconnecting elements and themes. Two overriding themes which pervade the collection are the search for spiritual wholeness and the relationships between humans and their environments. The essays document my recent explorations of and experimentations with the "creative nonfiction" genre. have worked...
Nineteenth-century England witnessed burgeoning urban growth and the resultant struggle of the poor to find adequate shelter. Against this backdrop, Charles Dickens was a fierce advocate for the rights of the street people of London to have sanitary and adequate housing, earning him the title of radical. By combining sentimentality...
This thesis outlines dominant ideologies and practices that affect women's authority in the urban social milieu of north India. Theories that consider the causes of social stratification by gender as well as social movement patterns are useful for understanding the durability of gender roles. The utility of these theories for...
In this paper I focus on the process of formulating an ethnic identity in the United States for individuals of mixed-ethnicity. My main question explores the complexities an individual with parents of separate and distinct ethnic heritages faces when constructing an ethnic identity in our society. American society is reaching...
Mukti Ashram is a rehabilitation center in north India that works with ex-child laborer boys. Fieldwork completed at the ashram in 1997-98 centered around the issue of the organization's attempt to enact social change through the engineering of community within the ashram's walls. Several fundamental processes that contribute to this...
The two literary touchstones of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Willa Cather examined in this thesis anchored a larger discussion of the discourse about gender and sexuality during the First and Second Waves of feminism in America. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Gilman deconstructed the notion of "femininity" manifested at the turn...
The stories here are stories of childhood. To me, they concern the shift between dependence to independence, comfort to instability, which is disastrous for the characters but also a point of awakening. The move from childhood to adulthood puts the characters in a world that is neither made for the...
The six stories in this collection center around an extended Jewish family in the New York Metropolitan area and the curse its members relentlessly wish upon themselves. The protagonist in four of the six stories is Daniel Brickman, younger brother in a very ordinary and chaotic household in suburban New...
The six stories within, "Still and Silent," "Cold Comfort," "The King of Porn," "Miscuts," "In Between," and "Renovations," are part of a work in progress. They attempt to show how the characters, although they may seem to struggle for independence from the family unit, are in fact strengthening the bonds...