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Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) are humans' stomach-dwelling bacteria that pose high mutation and recombination rates. These features allow them to achieve great genetic diversity and adapt to a wide range of within-host environments with different selective pressures, including presence of antibiotics. This study focused on the H. pylori population in Cape Verde, an archipelago that was first inhabited in the 15th century by Portuguese colonists and African slaves, followed by their extensive admixture. The high prevalence of H. pylori infection and crowded living environment facilitate cross infection and genetic exchange between divergent strains, which promote rapid evolution of the bacteria. This thesis aimed to study between-host and within-host genomic variation and evolution of H. pylori from asymptomatic individuals in Cape Verde. The genetic architecture and evolution of antibiotic resistance of H. pylori in Cape Verde were also investigated. Population genetic analyses based on whole genome data discovered that the main axis of genetic variation of H. pylori in Cape Verde was not due to admixture as in their hosts, but presence of four populations groups, two of which were highly differentiated from African and European ancestral strains and were likely to represent recent clonal expansions. Evidence of within-host genetic exchange through recombination was found between strains within-host, regardless of the presence of multiple strains, the presence of mixed ancestry and the ancestry/ancestry combinations. Resistance mechanisms of four antibiotics (Amoxicillin, Clarithromycin, Metronidazole and Tetracycline) of H. pylori in Cape Verde were only partially explained by known resistance-associated mutations. Significantly associated variants identified using GWASs included both established and novel variants. The understanding of this H. pylori population from asymptomatic hosts will serve as a major step towards establishment of Cape Verde as a model population for studying co-evolutionary trajectories of human hosts and bacteria.

The Raso lark is a Critically Endangered bird endemic to the islet of Raso, Cape Verde. This thesis investigates two phenomena that particularly put the species at risk: its extreme fluctuations in population size, and its potentially very low genetic diversity arising from small population size and severe past population contraction. More specifically, two chapters estimate year-to-year survival and explore the factors - environmental and individual - that influence it, while two other chapters examine the lark’s genetic characteristics compared to its two continental closest relatives, including phylogenetic relationships and levels of genetic diversity. The conclusion of the thesis then uses these results to make recommendations for the conservation of the Raso lark. Each of the data chapters is summarized below: Chapter 3 estimates adult survival in the Raso lark and tests whether it could be linked to two population phenomena observed in the field: a highly variable population size and a male-biased sex ratio in certain years. Using a dataset spanning 10 years, I estimated survival for both sexes to fluctuate between 0.76 and 0.94 over this period. This is much higher than the survival rate of its closest relative, the skylark. I also found strong evidence for survival fluctuating over time and differing between males and females (with males having higher survival until 2011, at which point the trend inverted), which could play a role in the aforementioned population size fluctuations and male-biased sex ratio, respectively. Chapter 4 aims at understanding which factors shape survival in the Raso lark. Two types of variables were considered: year-dependent (rainfall, population size, population mean clutch size) and individual-dependent (age, body size characters, size ratio with mate, Ase18 genotype). Amongst the year-dependent variables, only sameyear rainfall impacted survival, with a 13% decrease in survival in the wettest year compared to the driest year, making it the most likely explanation for the inter-annual fluctuations in survival found in Chapter 3. Results also hint at some of the individual factors - morphological measurements and Ase18 genotype - influencing survival. The picture that emerges is that of a species whose life history strategy is to invest heavily in maintenance and survival, but less into fecundity, which stands in sharp contrast with the mainland-dwelling skylark. This is consistent with the theory that island birds generally have slower life history strategies than their continental counterparts. Chapter 5 determines the precise relationship between members of the Alauda clade, resolving a node on the phylogenetic tree of all larks that the study by Alström et al. (2013) was unable to resolve. My RADseq results indicate that the Raso lark and the skylark are sister species, and that the Oriental lark is likely to be a subpopulation, or maybe a subspecies, of the skylark. Chapter 6 compares the population genetics of the Raso lark with those of the skylark. In particular, it estimates the genetic diversity of the Raso lark and investigates the drivers behind it. I found unexpectedly high nucleotide diversity in the Raso lark, and explain this by showing that the population contraction that the species underwent was recent enough for most of the diversity to still be present. Moreover, 16% of the Raso lark genome has levels of heterozygosity on average 6.6 times higher than elsewhere on the genome, likely due to suppressed recombination and the existence of a neo-sex chromosome in larks. Despite this, I found high levels of relatedness and of linkage disequilibrium in the Raso lark, two clear genetic signs that it underwent a severe population contraction several centuries ago.

Background and aims: Southern European countries have been showing high overweight and obesity (OW/OB) rates especially among the younger generations (Cattaneo et al. 2010). Portugal is one of those countries with 37.9% overweight and 15.3% obesity in 6 to 8 year olds (Rito et al. 2012). However little is known about the health of ethnic minorities living in its capital city, Lisbon. The Cape Verdean community in Lisbon, the second largest group in Portugal, would be expected to be more affected by this epidemic due to social inequalities. This community also tend to have low educational levels, material deprivation and struggle with discrimination and racism, factors that would likely be associated with a higher prevalence of OW/OB. The aim of this study was to assess the nutritional status of Cape Verdean ancestry children aged 6 to 12 years old living in Lisbon according to their socioeconomic status, general living conditions, family composition, diet and physical activity levels. To compare the findings with previous projects conducted in 1993 and 2009 in the same location with Cape Verdean ancestry children and with Portuguese ancestry children (national study conducted in 2009). To determine what early life factors have significant effect on these children's nutritional health. Methods : Physical measures and household information were collected from November 2013 to February 2014 in Cova da Moura Neighbourhood in Lisbon. Physical measures included height, weight, skinfolds, arm and waist circumferences. From these survey data body mass index (BMI) and the prevalence of stunting (chronic malnutrition - low height-for- age) and underweight (low-weight-for-age) were calculated according to reference values proposed by Frisancho (2008). Overweight and obesity values were defined based on the references established by the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), CDC, and WHO depending on the specific aim or research question. Results: Results show this is a very deprived community with low educational levels and mostly employed in the service sector. Maternal height and child birth order showed a significant association with child's height. Moreover maternal height and age are associated with child leg length. Living in a single parent family is associated with an increase in child BMI of 1.412 units when accounting for maternal waist circumference. Also significant differences in height for boys and girls were observed between Cape Verdean and Portuguese children. Generally, Cape Verdeans growth falls within the healthy range of International growth references across all of the survey data collected. Cape Verdean rates for combined over nutrition (overweight and obesity) in 2013 (9.8% for boys and 16.7% for girls) are lower than the Portuguese (33% for boys and 31.7% for girls). Logistic regression models showed that Cape Verdean children have a lower risk of being OW/OB compared to Portuguese children when accounting for breastfeeding,birth weight,maternal education and occupation. Conclusions : Despite living in a deprived neighbourhood these Cape Verdean children seem to have grown healthier than Portuguese ancestry children. The challenge for policy makers will be to support improvement of the poverty related living conditions of this community without creating a risky environment for increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity.

The food memoir Bom Sal focuses on popular Cape Verdean dishes as a way to explore mother and daughter relationships while uncovering the struggle of identity as a Cape Verdean American. The phrase “bom sal” is commonly used in Cape Verdean kitchens to indicate that a dish is seasoned well and has excellent flavor. Salt is also used to preserve food from bacteria and to maintain a proper balance of water and minerals in our bodies. This thesis, the first six chapters of my memoir, aims to introduce the foundation of multi-generational mother-daughter relationships. It follows my struggle to preserve the culture to which I’ve attached my identity while balancing being a black woman in America. The thesis includes recipes for popular Cape Verdean dishes and cooking techniques that allow food to become a means to explore character and the complexity of relationships. The audience for Bom Sal is women navigating who they are and where they come from while unpacking and preserving who they want to be.

This dissertation explores Subject Pronoun Expression (SPE) in Cabo-Verdean Creole (CVC), a Portuguese-based language spoken in the Republic of Cabo Verde. The CVC subject domain has at least three types of nominative anaphora: a subject clitic, a null subject, and a double-subject construction. This study is the first to examine the distribution of these subject categories by combining a quantitative methodology with formal syntactic theory, as well as insights from functionalist, usage-based, cognitive linguistic, and typological approaches. In so doing, it offers a new perspective on this issue that is intended to move the field past protracted theoretical debates over the morphosyntactic status and discursive functions of these grammatical elements. For instance, the formal category underlying subject clitics has been contested in CVC and cross-linguistically; some have claimed that they are independent pronouns that cliticize at the phonological level (Déprez 1994; De Cat 2005; Costa & Pratas 2013), others have identified them as inflectional affixes in the VP layer (DeGraff 1993; Baptista 1995; Culbertson 2010), while in language typology they are analyzed as ‘person markers’ that can engage in local grammatical agreement or nonlocal anaphoric agreement (Bresnan & Mchombo 1987; Zribi-Hertz & Diagne 2002; Siewierska 2004; Creissels 2005; Kari 2017). Sociolinguistic interviews and picture description narratives were collected from native speakers of CVC from the islands of Santiago and Maio. Sampled speech was transcribed prosodically (Chafe 1993; Du Bois et al. 1993; Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2019) in order to evaluate several aspects of discourse organization. Data were submitted to descriptive and inferential inspection in four analyses using R (R Core Team 2019): one was an exploratory test that served to delimit the variable context for SPE in CVC, the second involved a fixed-effects multinomial logistic regression, and the third and fourth were based on mixed-effects binomial logistic regressions. Results revealed highly significant effects for linguistic structural priming: double-subject and singleton tonic pronouns primed subsequent double-subjects, while null subjects primed additional null subjects. Lexical Determiner Phrase (DP) antecedents that were semantically referentially deficient (i.e. they bore inanimate, indefinite, or nonspecific reference) also promoted anaphoric zeros. These results lend partial support to the claims regarding the semantic properties of strong pronominals proposed under the Typology of Structural Deficiency (Cardinaletti & Starke 1994, 1999), and suggest that, as in Brazilian Portuguese, there is an “avoid referentially deficient pronoun” constraint (Kato & Duarte 2003, 2005; Duarte & Soares da Silva 2016) that is probabilistically active in CVC. The zero-to-zero priming effect and the favoring effect from referentially deficient lexical DPs were only active at short anaphoric distances, and were promoted when adjacent intonational units were prosodically linked or simultaneously prosodically and syntactically linked (Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2019). The priming effect for double-subjects obtained at longer anaphoric distances; they are promoted when their antecedent is in a non-adjacent clause. Results suggest that double-subjects function as switch-reference devices, can establish contrastive focus, and reintroduce old discourse referents. These are much the same functional and discursive values that singleton tonic pronouns have cross-linguistically (Givón 1976; 2001[1984]; 2017). The realization of zero subjects is mostly contingent on antecedent accessibility (Givón 1976; 2017, Ariel 1990), but is also modulated by the aforementioned “avoid referentially deficient pronoun” constraint. Inferring from the results for zero and double-subjects, it appears that CVC subject clitics are ‘ambiguous person agreement markers’ (Bresnan & Mchombo 1987; Siewierska 2004): like independent pronouns, they engage in nonlocal anaphoric agreement, but like inflectional affixes, they also engage in local grammatical agreement. This in-between morphosyntactic status is related to the infinitival origin of CVC verbs (Quint 2008b): the absence of bound person-number inflection is likely to have initiated grammaticalization on tonic pronouns, causing them to be eroded into subject clitics, and eventually become ambiguous person agreement markers, which are probabilistically dropped according to the properties of their controllers and the dynamics of antecedent accessibility. In line with Wratil’s (2011) ‘Null Subject Cycle’, it could be argued that CVC subject clitics are grammatical elements that have stagnated at an early stage of a grammaticalization cline, which entails the transformation of independent pronouns into clitics, and then eventually into bound affixes. Sociolinguistic interviews and picture description narratives were collected from native speakers of CVC from the islands of Santiago and Maio. Sampled speech was transcribed prosodically (Chafe 1993; Du Bois et al. 1993; Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2019) in order to evaluate several aspects of discourse organization. Data were submitted to descriptive and inferential inspection in four analyses using R (R Core Team 2019): one was an exploratory test that served to delimit the variable context for SPE in CVC, the second involved a fixed-effects multinomial logistic regression, and the third and fourth were based on mixed-effects binomial logistic regressions. Results revealed highly significant effects for linguistic structural priming: double-subject and singleton tonic pronouns primed subsequent double-subjects, while null subjects primed additional null subjects. Lexical Determiner Phrase (DP) antecedents that were semantically referentially deficient (i.e. they bore inanimate, indefinite, or nonspecific reference) also promoted anaphoric zeros. These results lend partial support to the claims regarding the semantic properties of strong pronominals proposed under the Typology of Structural Deficiency (Cardinaletti & Starke 1994, 1999), and suggest that, as in Brazilian Portuguese, there is an “avoid referentially deficient pronoun” constraint (Kato & Duarte 2003, 2005; Duarte & Soares da Silva 2016) that is probabilistically active in CVC. The zero-to-zero priming effect and the favoring effect from referentially deficient lexical DPs were only active at short anaphoric distances, and were promoted when adjacent intonational units were prosodically linked or simultaneously prosodically and syntactically linked (Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2019). The priming effect for double-subjects obtained at longer anaphoric distances; they are promoted when their antecedent is in a non-adjacent clause. Results suggest that double-subjects function as switch-reference devices, can establish contrastive focus, and reintroduce old discourse referents. These are much the same functional and discursive values that singleton tonic pronouns have cross-linguistically (Givón 1976; 2001[1984]; 2017). The realization of zero subjects is mostly contingent on antecedent accessibility (Givón 1976; 2017, Ariel 1990), but is also modulated by the aforementioned “avoid referentially deficient pronoun” constraint. Inferring from the results for zero and double-subjects, it appears that CVC subject clitics are ‘ambiguous person agreement markers’ (Bresnan & Mchombo 1987; Siewierska 2004): like independent pronouns, they engage in nonlocal anaphoric agreement, but like inflectional affixes, they also engage in local grammatical agreement. This in-between morphosyntactic status is related to the infinitival origin of CVC verbs (Quint 2008b): the absence of bound person-number inflection is likely to have initiated grammaticalization on tonic pronouns, causing them to be eroded into subject clitics, and eventually become ambiguous person agreement markers, which are probabilistically dropped according to the properties of their controllers and the dynamics of antecedent accessibility. In line with Wratil’s (2011) ‘Null Subject Cycle’, it could be argued that CVC subject clitics are grammatical elements that have stagnated at an early stage of a grammaticalization cline, which entails the transformation of independent pronouns into clitics, and then eventually into bound affixes.

This dissertation reassesses the literatures of the nineteenth-century Iberian empires after the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, as the persistence of Spanish and Portuguese coloniality tends to be misinterpreted within their respective literatures as a result of their omission from the dominant historiographical narratives of Modern Europe. This project shifts the focus of literary analysis away from Eurocentric debates that compare Spain and Portugal to the rest of the Modern European empires, and instead compares their reinvigorated engagement with the Antilles and Africa after the significant colonial losses incurred early in the century. As such, this study calls for the analysis of colonial/hybrid texts in conjunction with the rereading of metropolitan works to elucidate the persistence of coloniality and its relevance previously unexplored within the cultures and literatures of the nineteenth-century peninsular metropolises, while also emphasizing the imperial discourses and colonial practices that not only articulated but also served to perpetuate the power dynamics of coloniality along the century.The examination of the nineteenth-century Iberian literatures by way of an archive that reflects the reach of their empires reveals the documentation of imperial ideologies and practices largely erased from the popular imperial narratives of Spain and Portugal, as well as those of the larger Modern Atlantic world: namely, the persistence of slavery and its illegal trade, the harsh realities of historically idealized miscegenation, the role of colonial subjects as protagonists in decolonization, as well as the continuing role of Iberian migration and slavery within the nineteenth-century imperial Atlantic. On the other hand, the study of the Spanish and Portuguese empires through a comparative perspective highlights the important differences between the two enterprises, offering more productive readings of their literatures as a receptacle for the particular expressions of coloniality and its resistance that led to decolonization for Spain while allowing for Portugal’s persistence in Africa well into the twentieth century, as well as the respective imperial and national myths that persist to this day as a result. More generally, refocusing the discussion of nineteenth-century imperial Iberia and widening the scope of its literatures reflects the goals of the emerging field of Iberian Studies, which aims to transcend the national boundaries imposed by the separation of academic disciplines to instead move towards inter- and transdisciplinary scholarship reflective of Iberia’s diverse cultural legacies.

To what extent does language policy affect or have an impact on the quality of democracy? In third wave democracies of sub-Saharan Africa, a diglossic language policy--the type of policy that organizes the languages of the community in an asymmetrical manner, in which the language of the former colonial power assumes political and social predominance--constitutes a powerful hindrance to engaging citizenship. Such a policy perpetuates the linguistic divide between the state and society. Subsequently, ordinary citizens' political departicipation ensues, with serious consequences on the quality of democracy. Deriving from the data gathered in Praia, Cape Verde, through a combination of archival research, informed direct and focus groups interviews, during summers of 2010 and 2011, I argue that diglossic language policy limits the quality of democracy by way of lower classes' diminished surveillatory and initiatory political participation. Diglossic language policy creates and reinforces a state that is linguistically detached from society. The state, as such, is illegible to the non-high language speakers, who may find it very difficult to follow its operations, procedures, and processes. Ultimately, state illegibility breeds low levels of surveillatory participation on the part of non-high language speakers. Inability to "read" the state translates into failure to properly supervise it. At the same time, initiatory political participation, the entering and engaging in political discussion and deliberation with peers or state agents, is also constrained. This state of affairs derives from: a) inaudibility, the notion that political communication in the vernacular is of less value; and b) ridicule, the idea that to speak the high language incorrectly is to succumb to public derision, a condition that invalidates the message. In the final analysis, diglossic language policy preserves the divide between elite and masses, whereby the latter participation in politics is limited to voting. While it creates the conditions for political effervescence at the top, through elite pluralism and competition, the Schumpeterian elite democracy freezes the bottom. Given the limited forms of political participation of ordinary citizens, states with diglossic language policy, such as Cape Verde, should not be considered quality democracies.

This dissertation investigates the interrelationship of language and music in the complex cultural domain of Cape Verde and the Cape Verdean diaspora in West Africa, Europe, and North America. I illustrate how derogatory tropes of degeneracy, inferiority, and impurity applied to Creole languages and cultures (Creole exceptionalism) have prevented language parity between Portuguese, Cape Verde’s official colonial language, and Cape Verdean Creole (CVC), the vernacular of the country’s entire population. These tropes and their sociological implications are, ultimately, detrimental to efforts toward development in the country. I show that music, a safe and welcoming space for CVC, plays an integral role in preserving and promoting the language. The results of centuries-old exceptionalist beliefs include the historical association of women as closer to nature than to culture in the Cape Verdean context and the perception of CVC language and culture as similarly subaltern as compared to their European counterparts. While men have traditionally been the revered songwriters and cultural intellectuals in Cape Verde, on world music stages Cape Verdean women have had the lion’s share of success. I argue that this gender role reversal is largely due to the unique career of Cesária Évora. Drawing on discourse-centered analysis, I chart the elements of race, gender, and social class indexed by song texts into the sociopolitical world of which they are a part and analyze the fruitful interventions and subversions made by Cape Verdean women performers in discussions of womanhood, “Africanness,” and “Creoleness.” This study contributes to numerous ongoing scholarly debates in African diaspora studies and Creole studies, especially regarding the politics of representation, and offers one of the few existing comprehensive historical and ethnographic studies of language in music and of a Creole language specifically. Inherently political, the research for this dissertation has been accompanied by a decade-long project of social engagement advocating for the linguistic human rights of CVC speakers.

Cape Verde is located at the geographical and cultural crossroads between West Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The archipelago's location physically isolates the islands, while a lack of financial opportunities encourages Cape Verdeans to emigrate to study or work. Cape Verde is a point of union for many nations around the world and many Cape Verdeans identify with being both European and African. The islands are divided culturally and linguistically while united as part of the Cape Verdean Kriolu mosaic. Opposition between isolation and union has developed divisions regarding which languages and traditions will be privileged as markers of national identity. These tensions create the context for the archipelago's first contemporary dance company, Raiz di Polon. I show how director Mano Preto has innovated a style that blurs boundaries using techniques rooted in the archipelago's folk practices and informed by intercultural collaboration. Through conducting participatory ethnographic research, accessing archives, collaborating on performances and documentating the company's work, I clarify both the strengths and the constraints of migratory flows, globalization, and the financial need for a global audience. Four strategies are employed to analyze Raiz di Polon: a grounding of key historical events that built a culture of adaptation and resistance; a discussion of Kriolu as a mode of ontological expression to which to compare movement; a dissection of the performance "Cidade Velha" that reimagines the nation through narratives and the development of a "kriolized" movement lexicon; and an examination of RDP as a local, regional, and global dance training center. Five case studies highlight how Raiz di Polon's impact can be evaluated through festival and musical concert contexts. This project makes the case that RDP succeeds in reclaiming muted postcolonial histories, uniting internal archipelagic divides, and promoting sustainability through the creation of a corporeal Kriolu lexicon. I show that RDP is emblematic to Cape Verdeans who seek to officialize Kriolu against contestations regarding the archipelago's identity as an African Nation. This dissertation shows the impact of dance, art, creolity and globalization on the autonomy of small nations and highlights dance as an important subject of diaspora and globalization studies.

In many countries around the world, controversy surrounds state policy on language. The West African archipelago of Cape Verde is no exception. Ever since the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975, a movement of bilingual Cape Verdeans has spearheaded planning efforts for the national language (Cape Verdean Creole) in an attempt to build the case for making it the country’s co-official language. Nevertheless, these individuals face resistance from others who view the project as an attempt to marginalize the current official language (Portuguese) and/or regional dialects of Cape Verdean Creole. This study looks at texts taken from the discourse of language policy in Cape Verde in order to identify the language ideologies, i.e. “sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure or use” (Silverstein, 1979, p.497), that Cape Verdeans use to support or to resist certain language policy and planning options.