Digital Commons Network^™

Acculturation And Intimate Partner Violence Among Kenyans In The United States, Max J. Stein, Peter Ndiang’Ui, Eunice Menja

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is abuse by a partner or spouse. This study focused on IPV among Kenyan immigrants to the United States. Several studies reported connections between IPV and cultural tensions experienced during the acculturation process. Scholars disagree whether acculturation buffers against IPV by exposing immigrants to adaptive social norms or heightens risk factors among those facing challenges acclimating to new settings. Whereas this association has been researched among Latinx and Asian communities in the United States, it is understudied among African and especially Kenyan diasporas. This descriptive study explored how acculturation and IPV among U.S. Kenyans were experienced …

Burned But Not Forgotten: Foodways Analysis Of Cooking Spaces From The First Kitchen On Thomas Jefferson’S Monticello Plantation, Peggy Marie Humes

Masters Theses

This thesis research evaluates the macrobotanical assemblage identified in soil samples from contexts collected throughout the South Pavilion kitchen space (44AB089) at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation in Charlottesville, Virginia. My primary research objectives strive to establish what types of plant remains are represented in soil samples recovered from three stratigraphically assigned temporal periods in this late eighteenth-century kitchen space. As the first kitchen at Monticello, where enslaved cooks prepared meals influenced by African American and French dishes for the Jefferson family until 1809, this site can help better establish an understanding of the cultural foodways and dishes within this time …

Current Developmental Challenges In Nepal: How Can The Diaspora Help?, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Nepal now enjoys a unique opportunity to positively transform the country’s economy and society. The economic activities fueled by remittance, supported by foreign aid, and aided by domestic economic activities such as tourism, trade, and services, including start-ups, are helping increase individual incomes. However, the earnings from remittances, which measure to about 25% of Nepal’s GDP, are spent on consumer goods and not on investments that can generate employment and raise the standards of living. The foreign aid is often donor driven and also not always well managed and wisely spent on national priorities. Further, it is frequently marred by …

Answering The Call: Disrupting The Logics Of Capitalism Through Indigenous Economies, Madeline Jaye Bass

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Capitalism, racialism, and indigenous exploitation are deeply entangled practices. In their implementation, they each rely on forms of extraction and subjugation with long-lasting impacts. Denise Ferreira da Silva uses a Black feminist practice of “reading” in order to explicate the ways lives are valued and lost within this pursuit of global capital. Despite overwhelming extraction, looking closely and reading into Indigenous lifeways and organizing practices encourages the pursuit of “otherwise worlds.” This essay uses a close reading of da Silva’s chapter on global capital, and the larger collection it comes from, as a way of exploring the economic practices of …

2022 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2022 IGGAD Conference: Who Owns This? Communities, Heritage, and Preservation.

No Going Back: Ground-Breaking Lab Sends Students To Balkan Route To Learn About Refugees--And Themselves, Arne Norris

Colby Magazine

A double major in global studies and anthropology with a minor in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Powers was in Istanbul networking, scouring the city, making contacts with LGBTI refugees and activists, finding people to share their stories as part of a project at Colby, the Insurgent Mobilities Lab. The lab, involving more than a dozen students, is researching the dynamics of migration along the Balkan Route that hundreds of thousands of refugees have traveled in a grave effort to seek a better life in Northern Europe.

An Archaeological And Spatial Exploration Of Yard Use At The Oval Site, Stratford Hall Plantation: A Mid-18th-Century Mixed-Use Site On The Northern Neck Of Virginia, Delaney Resweber

Student Research Submissions

The Oval Site (44WM80) is located on the grounds of Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia and was excavated by the Department of and Center for Historic Preservation at Mary Washington College/the University of Mary Washington between 2001- 2014. The Oval Site was one component of a larger eighteenth-century plantation and is comprised of four structures. These buildings are currently interpreted as an overseer’s house, a barn, a kitchen, and an unidentified building. The kitchen had also served as a quarter for the enslaved Africans and/or African Americans that worked on this site. Using methods developed in landscape archaeology …

Coming Attractions

Insights

With the pandemic prohibiting in-person learning and campus visits, the college offered an assortment of creative online offerings this summer to give newly admitted DePaul students a taste of the LAS experience. Among the offerings were a mini-course, "Critical Perspectives on Our Current Moment," taught using Zoom, an introduction to the Center for Black Diaspora and the Center for Latino Research, and panel discussions with current students and faculty in the Honors program.

Blackness, Gender And The State: Afro Women's Organizations In Contemporary Ecuador, Beatriz A. Juarez-Rodriguez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation presents an ethnographic analysis of the Afro women’s social organization CONAMUNE (Coordinadora Nacional de Mujeres Negras del Ecuador), the political thought and praxis of its members and their entanglement with myriad ethno-racial political spaces in contemporary Ecuador. CONAMUNE is an umbrella organization comprised of Afro women’s grassroots organizations from different provinces of Ecuador. In addition to their activities within CONAMUNE, many of the women with whom I worked have sought out positions of government employment or political representation (as teachers and principals, as employees of government ministries or programs, as local municipal councillors, etc.), through which they bring …

Syrian And Lebanese Identity In The American South, Caetlind Moudy

Honors Theses

For Americans of Arab descent, identity can present a number of difficulties to define within the existing ethnic and racial categories of the United States. While several scholars have looked at the ways that Muslims American of Arab descent navigate these categories, less attention has been paid to the complex self-identification Christian Arab Americans, many of whom come from Lebanese and Syrian backgrounds. It is the objective of this thesis to explore how Americans of Syrian and Lebanese descent understand their ethnic, racial, cultural, and national identities as well as how these identities both inform and are informed by religion. …

Freedom And Food: Transformations And Continuities In Foodways Among The People Who Labored At Stono Plantation, James Island, South Carolina During The Eighteenth, Nineteenth, And Twentieth Centuries, Brandy Kristin Joy

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation compares archaeological assemblages from the Stono Plantation/Dill Farm, James Island, South Carolina between the periods of enslavement and Emancipation. Further comparisons are made with the neighboring Ferguson Road archaeological site and the Smith Plantation archaeological site, Port Royal, South Carolina. These comparisons are made in order to understand how Emancipation impacted the foodways including diet, vessel type and use, and cuisine of Lowcountry residents. Results suggest that while technological innovation and increased globalization enabled a shift in material culture, the overall foodways of the region remained relatively unchanged through time.

2020 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2020 IGGAD Conference: Without Borders: Tracing the Cultural, Archival, and Political African Diaspora.

Reggaeir@ Sou Eu: Race, Nation And The Politics Of Identity In Roots Reggae Culture In Sao Luis Do Maranhao, Brazil, Gloria Angebelle Yawson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the performative space of roots reggae music and dance performancescape in São Luis do Maranhão, Brazil. It examines the ways in which Caribbean sounds are employed by Afro-Maranhese to create performative spaces that contest representations of blackness in Brazil. In this examination, I address how Afro-Maranheses engage in the process of transformation by appropriating Caribbean Sounds in the performative spaces of blackness. The dissertation also examines the ways in which these performative spaces, as spaces of struggle are objects of legal forms of surveillance, discipline and punishments that are targeted by the policia militar (military police) because …

Commemorative Bodies: (Un)Making Racial Order And Cuban White Supremacy In Little Havana's Heritage District, Corinna Jeanne Moebius

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation unearths memory- and place-making practices, processes and “racializing regimes of representation” in Little Havana’s heritage district, now a major tourism destination in Miami, Florida. It draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and consultations of various archives that span decades back to the 1960s and trace the origins of the district in plans for a “Latin Quarter.”

My analyses borrow from and combine various bodies of scholarly work to examine and deconstruct the use of always multi-vocal “commemorative bodies” for the production of racial narratives that are embedded in--and give shape to--acts of memorialization and commemoration.

By examining the …

How Black Lives Matter Has Influenced And Interacted With Global Social Movements, Arelle A. Binning

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a chapter-based and member-led organization created out of grief by three queer black women. This thesis examines the international impact of BLM. I conducted telephone interviews with activists and advocacy organizations who have organized activist networks and/or won struggles against institutional racism outside of the United States. These activists are located in Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, India, Spain, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Paris. I conclude that BLM has inspired the creation and supported the continued development of organizations advocating for national and transnational social and racial justice on a global scale. BLM in spite …

Postcolonial Trauma In The Mediterranean: The Italian-Libyan Transnational Community, Rosario Pollicino

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study aims to recuperate the Italian collective remembering originating from the colonial offense in Libya. Focusing on works of testimony in different genres of contemporary literature written by the Italian former settlers in Libya, I analyze how these former settlers who moved to Libya have been subjected to different kinds of traumas by the Fascist government. I focus on how these traumas, individual and collective, are documented through these works and discuss how they continue to be relevant today. Drawing on sociology, anthropology, history, literary and trauma studies I argue that these cultural representations prove the existence of a …

2019 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2019 IGGAD Conference: Tracing the African Diaspora: Places of Suffering, Resilience, and Reinvention.

Dekalb, Illinois, Muslim Women’S Agency Negotiating And Re-Affirming Their Muslim Identity, Sinta Febrina

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Post 9/11 American Muslim women are stereotyped as victims of their patriarchal religion and as perpetrators of terror. These conditions led to the discrimination of American Muslim women which requires them to continuously strategize and negotiate their identity. This thesis examined DeKalb, Illinois Muslim women’s agency to strategize and negotiate their identity in lager American society. In this study, fifteen Muslim women from three different categories were interviewed: American-born citizens, naturalized citizens, and immigrants. This study found that Muslim women’s various backgrounds (country of origin, education, socio-economic status, and immigration status) affected their strategy and agency to negotiate and re-affirm …

Educational Experiences Of 1.5 Generation Cambodian Americans, Kassandra A. Chhay

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

During the 1980s, an influx of Cambodian Americans resettled in the United States due to the Cambodian genocide. Those Cambodian refugees who came to the United States as either infants, children or adolescents due to warfare, are members of the 1.5 generation. This thesis examines the educational trajectory of 1.5 generation Cambodian Americans in the context of family, school, and community from their resettlement in the United States to adulthood. Using a narrative approach, I examine how the eighteen participants in the study overcame certain challenges to attain success and how they negotiated their cultural and ethnic identity in relation …

Cultural Models Of Democracy Among Burmese Residents In Chicago, Illinois, And Fort Wayne, Indiana, John Hillory Hood

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines implicit assumptions about democracy among Burmese residents in Chicago, Illinois and Fort Wayne, Indiana. A major focus of the research is the durability of foundational cultural models – basic, simple, widely-shared modes of thought – that may or may not change over time, measured in this study through length-of-residency. As such, I examined three distinct sample groups: temporary residents, immigrants, and adult offspring of immigrants. This research comprised methods of ethnography, semi-structured interviews, as well as a free-listing memory task. A key point of inquiry is intracultural variation occurring between sample groups. Particular attention was paid to …

Material Girls: Consumption And The Making Of Middle Class Identity In The Experiences Of Black Single Mothers In The Washington, Dc Metropolitan Area, Aysha L. Preston Ph.D.

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the ways in which black single mothers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area use material goods and consumption practices to inform their identities as members of the middle class. Black middle class women are challenging stereotypes surrounding single mother households, the idea of family, and class status in the United States, as more women overall are having children while single, delaying or deciding against marriage, and are entering the middle and upper-middle classes as a result of advanced education and career opportunities. Because of these demographic and sociocultural shifts, the romanticized “nuclear family” which consists of a …

An Alternative Narrative Of Integration In Germany Through An Ethnographic Exploration Of Cuban Immigration, Ana M. Rusch

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study on Cuban immigrants conducted in Germany explored the dynamics of integration through an understudied immigrant population. Most of the research conducted on integration in Germany has overwhelmingly been on Turkish immigrants, which is Germany’s majority immigrant group. To contribute to Integration Studies, this research focused on a minority and lesser studied immigrant group, Cuban immigrants. Cuban immigrants in Germany not only have a different historical and geopolitical relationship with Germany than its majority group but they also subscribe to different cultural and ethnoreligious categories. Because of these varying circumstances, Cubans act as a counter example to the …

Jarrod Hayes. Queer Roots For The Diaspora: Ghosts In The Family Tree. Ann Arbor: U Of Michigan P, 2016., Annie De Saussure

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Jarrod Hayes. Queer Roots for the Diaspora: Ghosts in the family tree. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. 325 pp.

Black In Beijing: How Transient Black Foreigners Create Community In China, Myhana M. Kerr

Anthropology Honors Projects

This ethnography describes how Black people adapt to life in China and how they deal with the various meanings imposed on their bodies by Chinese society. In five chapters, I describe why Black people move to China, how they form relationships and find communities, and how Black people interact with Chinese society. In China, one’s Blackness is salient because it is the defining attribute that sets people of African origin apart. Moreover, even though most Black expatriates are only in China for a temporary period, there are more Black people traveling to China overall, creating a critical mass to demonstrate …

Jewish Women’S Transracial Epistemological Networks: Representations Of Black Women In The African Diaspora, 1930-1980, Abby S. Gondek

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how Jewish women social scientists relationally established their gendered-racialized subjectivities and theories about race-gender-sexuality-class through their portrayals of black women’s sexuality and family structures in the African Diaspora: the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, Swaziland, and the U.K. The central women in this study: Ellen Hellmann, Ruth Landes, Hilda Kuper, and Ruth Glass, were part of the same “political generation,” born in 1908-1912, coming of age when Jews of European descent experienced an ambivalent and conditional assimilation into whiteness, a form of internal colonization. I demonstrate how each woman’s familial origin point in Europe, parental class and political …

Seeking Friends With Benefits In A Tourism-Based Sexual Economy: Interrogating The Gambian Sexscape, Mariama Jaiteh

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation engages with the driving motivations behind the actions of all those involved in The Gambia’s tourism-based sexual economy: the Gambian and other West African male and female sex workers, the Global North (habitually European) male and female tourists, the Gambian and expatriate Lebanese bar and restaurant owners, the Gambian state, and the semesters (members of the Gambian diaspora on vacation in The Gambia). It presents thick ethnographic accounts of interactions with Gambians and tourists, as they form temporary couples or friendships for the duration of tourists’ vacations, and sometimes for longer. This ethnography-rich dissertation pays careful attention to …

International Migration In Macro-Perspective: Bringing Power Back In, Marcel Paret, Shannon Gleeson

Shannon Gleeson

This paper challenges the inward looking perspective of recent immigration research by situating migration to the United States within a global and historical context. This macro-stratification perspective breaks out of the confines of national contexts to explore how international migration is shaped by global power divides. We argue that in order to fully understand international migration, it is necessary to account for both the emergence of global power structures and the historical domination of Europe. We develop our argument by first outlining the significance of global power divides, with a particular focus on the United States. We then demonstrate how …

Critical Race Ip, Anjali Vats, Deidre A. Keller

Articles

In this Article, written on the heels of Race IP 2017, a conference we co-organized with Amit Basole and Jessica Silbey, we propose and articulate a theoretical framework for an interdisciplinary movement that we call Critical Race Intellectual Property (Critical Race IP). Specifically, we argue that given trends toward maximalist intellectual property policy, it is now more important than ever to study the racial investments and implications of the laws of copyright, trademark, patent, right of publicity, trade secret, and unfair competition in a manner that draws upon Critical Race Theory (CRT). Situating our argument in a historical context, we …

Transnational ‘Interruptions’ In Eritrean Refugee Lives In The Bay Area, Meron Y. Semedar Mr

Master's Theses

For many refugees, the day they flee their home country is the start of the interruption of their life. For refugees, such interruption brings the absence of continuity and loss of vision for the future, that they have to be present in the current situation – not knowing their future. This interruption literally 'interrupts' the life plan of refugees. Many Eritrean refugees vocally state that, "Our body might be here, but our soul is all in Eritrea". Eritrean refugees, having fled an oppressive regime, continue to experience nonstop interruption to their lives in their new country. Due to both the …

Book Review: Ghost Walls: The Story Of A 17th-Century Colonial Homestead, By Sally M. Walker, Garry Wheeler Stone

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Ghost Walls: The Story of a 17th-Century Colonial Homestead, by Sally M. Walker, 2014, Carolrhoda Books, Lerner Publishing, Minneapolis, MN, 136 pages, 105 photographs, 18 drawings, $20.95 (cloth).