The scholarly study of punk is a growing interdisciplinary field. Within that already specialized group, research into punk pedagogy is emerging as a vital component of punk scholarship. However, no study in punk pedagogy has narrowed its scope to any one influential punk band to determine what constitutes its punk pedagogy. This dissertation weaves diverse disciplines together to elucidate the hidden curriculum of the progressive Canadian punk band, Propagandhi.

An understanding of Propagandhi’s punk pedagogy is formulated through textual analysis of the band’s lyrics, a sonic investigation of their music, interviews with the band, and surveys of Propagandhi fans, all informed and supported by an auto-ethnographic fan and learner experience of the researcher. As self-proclaimed “failures in school,” it is incredible that Propagandhi succeed in doing what so many schools wish to do: create critically engaged students embarking on a journey of becoming global citizens. Resolving how this could be the case brings many fields of study to task. What is the hidden curriculum woven into Propagandhi’s body of work that has effectively changed so many lives across the globe? Are they simply embodying a critical pedagogy, or have they crafted an approach unique to their brand of punk rock? Furthermore, this dissertation legitimizes the hidden curriculum found within informal educational settings. Propagandhi, ultimately, are able to strike a balance between reasonable critical thought and inquiry as outlined by Neil Postman’s theories on education, while Propagandhi also focus on changing social issues that are relevant and crucial to a free society. Propagandhi show that pain and hope can both be utilized as fuel for creative production.

From President Kennedy's first announcement of a non-military US volunteer corps in 1961, the Peace Corps has been one of the preeminent government grassroots volunteer development agency. This study explores the history of the ambiguities inherent in this contention, pressure primarily stemming from the organization's role as both a governmental diplomatic and a popular grassroots development agency. The genealogy of conflict stems from three ill-defined and considered elements: the grassroots volunteer, development, and the discourses of grassroots programming. In bracketing these terms, this study illustrates the ways organizational epistemology is fractured among political actors, staff, and volunteers. Though the Peace Corps organizational rhetoric has shifted these categories over the years, the organization's political face has remained dominant in organizational attitudes and expressions.

This dissertation underscores the disproportionate weight of this side of the discourse, which is simultaneously most at odds with the idea of the horizontal, grassroots rhetoric of the organization. In demonstrating the paradox of the Peace Corps' simultaneous rhetorical role as a grassroots development organization and US political theater, I combed archival resources such as pamphlets, reports, internal memos, and posters produced by the organization to better understand the particular messages contained in these documents. While the images and narratives concerning the grassroots volunteer, development, and programming are varied, the overwhelming message is one of unexamined US benevolence. For comparison with volunteers with actual experience with these concepts, I conducted ethnographic interviews of volunteers and staff in one Peace Corps country, Outer Mongolia. In order to contextualize the Peace Corps' struggle with other similar governmental agencies, I also interviewed volunteers of the Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteers working in similar projects in Mongolia. Through an ethnographic semi-structured interview model of volunteers working in education, health, community economic development, and youth development sectors, I assessed volunteers' 1.) motivations and awareness of development, 2.) understandings of "empowerment" and "participation" among current development constituents, 3.) perceptions of host-country partners culture and history and 4.) visions for re-constituting the Peace Corps.

Findings suggest that while some of the volunteers reiterated the Peace Corps' rhetorical perspectives of volunteer roles, development, and programming, many had either not considered these important aspects of their development experience or expressed views starkly opposite to that of the organization. The resulting investigation reveals not a splintered, failed program, but one internally odds with stated participatory, democratic ideals. Far from condemning this notable organization, this dissertation argues for greater organizational imagination through self-reflection among volunteers and staff about the horizon of possibilities of grassroots cooperation untethered from political rhetoric.

Many if not most historians, and many if not most other academicians who employ history as a significant part of their discourse, form and present their arguments in ways strikingly analogous to those of lawyers in an adversarial legal system. Historians sift through and strategically select from among the legion available facts ("evidence") to create a proof-based rhetorical narrative in support of the specific interpretation, with the understanding that reviewers, including proponents of competing arguments, will likely contest perceived instances of claim excess. While the central thesis is primarily descriptive, it may be possible to extend its logic to serve as a means of reconciling the literary and referential elements in history. The attempt to integrate those two threads has been a dominant concern in historiography for some decades now.

The central thesis takes the form of an analogy, itself emerging from a synthesis of numerous reflections by historians and historiographers about their field and subfields. Testing proceeded first through a comparison of the literature on the theory and practice of law and history, then via an examination of zones and instances where law and history considerably overlap, including legal cases where the history of a specific question is the gravamen of the case, notably in some of the landmark education decisions.

Recognition of strong parallels in the two fields should not alarm. For with historians and lawyers alike, the good ones at least, persuasion is both the primary means and ends of argumentation. And for persuasion the chief currency of exchange is trust. In turn, trust is often a function of fairness. Real benefits to historical scholarship can accrue through the recognition and adoption of some aspects of the lawyer's approach, prominently the need to assess critically, before dissemination, one's own narrative for internal coherence, including sufficient treatment of predictable counternarratives.

Yet some of the more salient points emerge from those instances where the analogy proves imperfect. For example, while academic users of history often behave as professional advocates, in some settings they might do so without the lawyer's fuller range of checks against abuse of position. In this respect, the thesis also is somewhat of a cautionary tale, for in extreme cases asymmetries in local leverages are anathema to good scholarship and good teaching. The findings here apply mostly to professional historians but are also applicable to non-historian academicians and thus are amenable to a wider pedagogical focus on encouraging modesty and generosity in intellectual exchange.