Ok, I found out the conflict that I thought was attributable to xmonad. As a reminder, "control-space" is a keybinding under emacs for the set-mark-command feature which allows a user to select text. For some reason, control-space wasn't working when emacs was under x-monad, but was working when it was using Ubuntu unity. Actually, the conflict over the keybinding happened with ibus. ibus somehow maps control-space and prevents emacs from using that key command. When I disabled ibus, the problem stopped. so it wasn't xmonad's fault. I am putting this on the maillist just in case other people have this problem, they can look it up through keywords or whatever. - Steve PS I really LOVE x-monad. It's so much more efficient with larger monitors. Keep up the good work guys!
Yes; I was looking for what you just told me, that you were using Unity which presumably loads a keymap. (I have no idea which one, though.) xmonad will be using the server default.
Unfortunately, control expansions are special-cased in both xkb and xmodmap and can't be specified --- which makes me wonder how you managed to lose it, unless the real problem is whatever terminal emulator you're getting (given gnomeConfig, presumably gnome-terminal) was handling it itself, and has different settings when not running in a Gnome 3 session. (You cannot use xmonad, or any window manager that is not a Gnome Shell derivative (gnome-shell, or the Unity or Cinnamon forks thereof), with Gnome 3. This is not something we have any control over.)
MATE's fork of gnome-terminal does the right thing under xmonad --- but I am using a MATE session (since it's a fork of Gnome 2, it still allows alternative window managers). I also don't see a way to control it from its preferences or keyboard shortcuts. Gnome 3's gnome-terminal may differ, though.