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Hame, Russell Clarke

Dance (MFA) Theses

Researcher Russell Clarke contemplates the need for human belonging, looking into ways that human belonging shows up in the contemporary world. Clarke explores the interconnection between his identity and memories from his childhood along with exploring his life’s journey of searching for belonging. He focuses his research on main themes throughout his life that have influenced his need to belong: family, migration, dance, and his connection to the outdoors. Growing up in Scotland and later migrating to America, Clarke found his relationship with his family and dance as constant threads entangling and influencing his life—the call of his homeland is …

The Art Of Surviving: Alchemy Of Healing Trauma In Relation To Identity: A Self Study., Rebecca Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis explores trauma’s physical and psychological aspects concerning identity as an artistic practice. Through exploring materials, subject matter, and media, my approach to trauma is based on personal and socially engaged experiences and my attempt to re-conceptualize that experience through the language of contemporary art. Extensively this work is governed by childhood memories and the critical aspect of being raised as a female in a patriarchal society. Being raised female comes with a certain number of expectations and requirements. This work creates a physical and spiritual connection between trauma and the identity of what is female. Discussing these …

He Had Two Women To Die For, Ireland And The Missus”: Mothers As Abject And Sons As Scapegoats In Edna O’Brien’S House Of Splendid Isolation And In The Forest, Emily Nix

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This thesis examines the protagonists in Edna O’Brien’s In the Forest and House of Splendid Isolation and applies Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Rene Girard’s theory of the scapegoat. In doing so, I attempt to give a richer understanding of O’Brien’s masculine and feminine characters and how their constructed identities are based on their cultural circumstances and positions in their societies. I use Kristeva’s theory of abjection to analyze the single women in these novels, Eily and Josie, who become metaphorical single mothers by the invasions of young men into their homes. Then, I apply Girard’s theory of the …

Fractured Selves, Gearoid Dolan

Theses and Dissertations

Fractured Selves is a self-portrait that examines the histories and points of conflation and diversion of my four public personas. In the style of a Zoom meeting, they chat with a host against animated backgrounds. Interactivity creates non-linear consuming of the content and user directed navigation through four timelines

“Give Me Some Beautiful Holy Images That Are Colorful, Play Music, And Flash!” The Roma Pilgrimage To Csatka, Hungary, István Povedák

Journal of Global Catholicism

This study introduces the Csatka pilgrimage, which is one of the most significant festive events for Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. Csatka, a small and secluded village, became one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Roma since the mid-20th century. Tens of thousands of Roma, entire families from Hungary and the surrounding countries arrive to the feast on Nativity Day at the beginning of September. For them, however, the rite is not only about religious actions, but also about their powerful role in strengthening Roma ethnic identity. Through the analysis of the rite, we can gain a good …

Colonial Possessions: Producing The Zombie In Erna Brodber's Myal, Joanna Lee Valdes

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Erna Brodber’s 1988 novel Myal reveals the fatal injuries performed on the spirit by the colonizing efforts of others. In the novel, biracial Jamaican protagonist, Ella, experiences a profound devastation when her husband, Selwyn, creates a ‘white’ persona for her in his production Caribbean Nights and Days. In my thesis, I argue that Selwyn’s aggressions upon Ella’s spirit are only a fraction of the many conducted by those around her. Granted, while Selwyn’s play brings Ella’s zombified spirit into fruition with his distortion of her childhood— the Grovetown community, the Brassington’s and Mrs. Burns also aid in the process of …

James I: Monarchial Representation And English Identity, Elizabeth Maria Taylor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This work unpacks James’s representational performance and the issues he faced in assimilating himself into English identity during him time on the English throne. He implemented tropes he previously utilized in Scotland, presenting himself as Solomon, David, Constantine, a philosopher-king, and Rex Pacificus. James relied upon print for his public representation, he was an avid writer and seems to have thought of himself as something of a theologian, for he frequently commented upon religious doctrine and paid acute attention to sermons. This dissertation explores his entrance to England, the union debates, the Gunpowder Plot and its remembrance, James’s religious …

The Process Of Cultural Appropriation In Literature And How It Can Be Changed, Wendy Meza

Dissertations and Theses

This paper explores the ways cultural appropriation has existed in literature from the time of Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" to the present, with the publication of Jeanine Cummins's novel American Dirt. After dissecting the motives behind the exploitation of traumatic events and acknowledging the consequences appropriation has on the individuals it is portraying, the inclusion of NoViolet Bulawayo's novel We Need New Names proposes a way for contemporary literature to revolve around cultures without silencing voices and allowing individual identities to shine in the texts.

Diasporic Strangers In The Mirror: Ever-Evolving Identity And The Immigrant Experience, Meriam Metoui

Theses and Dissertations

This text explores the disparity between immigrant parents and their American born or raised children and show the chasm of misunderstanding between generations navigating different national and cultural contexts found in novels such as The Joy Luck Club, The Namesake, Americanah, and Everything I Never Told You.

Curating An American Immigrant Identity : German And Latin American Heritage Weekends As Placemaking In Louisville, Kentucky, 1974-1980., Sarah Elizabeth Mccoy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The multicultural Heritage Weekends, which began in 1974 in time for the bicentennial, were ethnic festivals in Louisville, Kentucky, and were used by different groups in disparate ways. German Americans and American Latinos used the festivals as placemaking, as they laid claim to the city of Louisville and curated their own interpretation of an American identity. Festival organizers, including city officials, however used the festivals as a way to encourage pluralism, while still promoting hegemony and assimilation. By analyzing newspaper articles and the history of both German Americans and American Latinos in the city, the work of heritage among ethnic …

Name Changes In Search Of A New Identity: Southern And Eastern European Immigrants And The Fashioning Of White Identity In The United States, Kathryn A. Penick

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

This thesis examines the reasons, methods, and implications of the process by which immigrant individuals and families changed ethnic/heritage surnames to anglicized/Americanized surnames. Eastern and Southern immigrant groups are the focus of this work. Names have implications for group membership and personal identity; as a broad trend, the changing of family names was a significant way in which immigrant groups acculturated to mainstream American culture. In American history, immigration has been inextricably linked to issues of race and racial identity. These themes are explored in depth as they relate to personal and group identification and belonging.

Fathers And Sons In Modern British, Irish, And Postcolonial Fiction, Alison Hitch

Theses and Dissertations--English

In this dissertation, I examine the portrayal of filial relationships in the fiction of James Joyce, Hanif Kureishi, and Zadie Smith. I assert that each of these authors, albeit in different ways, uses the archetypal father and son relationship to interrogate the formation of national identity and the concept of national belonging in modern, anticolonial or postcolonial cultures, including Ireland at the dawn of the twentieth century and Britain in the late twentieth century. Chapter one focuses on Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922). I argue that rather than solely bonding in …

Immigration, Identity, And Genealogy: A Case Study, Thomas Daniel Knight

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines the life and experiences of a 19th-century immigrant from the British Isles to the United States and his family. It examines his reasons for immigrating, as well as his experiences after arrival. In this case, the immigrant chose to create a new identity for himself after immigration. Doing so both severed his ties with his birth family and left his American progeny without a clear sense of identity and heritage. The essay uses a variety of sources, including oral history and folklore, to investigate the immigrant’s origins and examine how this uncertainty shaped the family’s history in …

Operating Outside Of Empire: Trading Citizenship In The Atlantic World, 1783-1815, Mark Dragoni

Dissertations - ALL

Operating Outside of Empire: Trading Citizenship in the Atlantic World, 1783-1815, looks at markets and ships as spaces for negotiation between merchants and the state. The dissertation follows the experiences of former British colonists in America who won independence and then immediately tried to find a way to get back into the British empire. For American merchants, such as Nicholas Low, William Constable, and Thomas Handasyd Perkins, the inconsistently-governed Caribbean provided an entry point to the greater British Atlantic and the markets of the empire. These merchants won access by exploiting the opportunities offered by environmental catastrophes, slave rebellions and …

Girl-Junk, Sugar-Funk, Natalie Tombasco

Graduate Thesis Collection

A poetic look into the life of a girl which centers around food, alcoholism, mommy issues, sexuality, identity and mortality.

Frida's Daughter, Myrta Vida

Theses

The purpose of my creative writing is to highlight a group of U.S. citizens still woefully underrepresented in literature proper: the Latinx middle class. I’m keenly interested in exploring Puerto Rican and first- and second-generation Latinx immigrant stories. Even though some of the experiences from these groups have been elegantly visited by writers such as Giannina Braschi, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Julia Alvarez, and others, there are nuances to the Latinx middle class experience that are yet to be uncovered. Being stuck in the cultural, linguistic, socio-economic, and political middles in a country that has recently taken a largely nationalist …

Ultramontane Piety And Catholic Sociability: The Prescription And Practice Of Identity In Acadian Patriotic Songs, Jeanette Gallant

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The emergence of ultramontane thought during the Catholic Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France had wide-reaching effects in Catholic communities beyond Europe. One such community was a francophone colonial minority population in Atlantic Canada called the Acadians who, as Canada became a nation-state in the second half of the nineteenth century, came under the control of ultramontane nationalists working to protect Acadian cultural rights from the English-speaking Protestant majority. This paper looks at the role that music played in the transmission of ultramontane thought with these new socio-political circumstances. The Acadians, exiled for seven years during Canadian colonization, were resettled in disparate …

Neither Here Nor There: Northern Ireland, Myth, And The People In Between, Amanda L. Judge

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Northern Ireland is often portrayed in political, journalistic, and academic literature as having two main communities – Catholic/Irish/nationalist/republicans and Protestant/British/unionist/loyalists. This study argues that there is a Third Community in Northern Ireland that consists of political moderates, those who resist categorization into these two communities, and those who consistently defy traditional communal boundaries. Through an examination of primary and secondary sources, including political party literature, the press, web sites, poetry, short stories, music, and important academic studies, this community is depicted in great detail. It has a history and a mythology in addition to its own political ideals, symbolism, and …

Lost Boys And Girls: Navigating Experience And Identity During Operation Pedro Pan, Caleb M. Still

Honors College Theses

Over 14,000 unaccompanied children came from Cuba to the United States during Operation Pedro Pan. Once they arrived they were faced with an entirely new living situation and were forced to adapt. One of the remaining similarities to their Cuban home was the Catholic Church. The Church played a significant role in shaping these children’s fluid concept of their ethnic, national, and religious identities. Previous scholarship has not addressed the role of the Church in the program or the issue of the fluidity of identity among these children. This study builds on the existing scholarship and aims to fill in …

Immigrant And Irish Identities In Hand In The Fire And Hamilton's Writing Between 2003 And 2014, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Immigrant and Irish Identities in Hand in the Fire and Hamilton's Writing between 2003 and 2014" Dervila Cooke discusses the intertwining of Irish and immigrant identities. Cooke examines the connection between openness to memory and embracing migrant identities in Hamilton's writing both in the 2010 novel and as a whole. The empathetic and inclusive character of Helen in Hand in the Fire is analyzed in contrast to characters who have repressed memory including the Serbian Vid. Helen's ties to elsewhere, her openness to new influence, and her willingness to engage with traumatic elements of the past (Irish …

Hospitable Climates: Representations Of The West Indies In Eighteenth-Century British Literature, Marisa Carmen Iglesias

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

British expansion to the West Indies in the eighteenth-century resulted in vast economic growth for the British Empire and a rise in literature set in the region. Examining the literature allows for an in-depth exploration of how the Caribbean has become associated as a place of relaxation and escape though its early history of colonialism is fraught with violence. My study builds on the understanding of the Caribbean region in the eighteenth-century and utilizes hospitality theory to articulate the role that cultural exchange and physical setting play in the texts and in the formation of national identity, both in the …

Indigenous Helpers And Renegade Invaders: Ambivalent Characters In Biblical And Cinematic Conquest Narratives, L. Daniel Hawk

Journal of Religion & Film

This article compares the role of ambiguous character types in the national narratives of biblical Israel and modern America, two nations that ground their identities in myths of conquest. The types embody the tensions and ambivalence conquest myths generate by combining the invader/indigenous binary in complementary ways. The Indigenous Helper assists the invaders and signifies the land’s acquiescence to conquest. The Renegade Invader identifies with the indigenous peoples and manifests anxiety about the threat of indigenous difference. A discussion of these types in the book of Joshua, through the stories of Rahab and Achan, establishes a point of reference by …

Identity To Be Determined: The Development Of The American Ideal In The Early Republic, Andrew S. Mills

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Late victories in the War of 1812, like General Andrew Jackson’s triumph in the Battle of New Orleans rekindled the growing sense of nationalistic fervor that had appeared after the American Revolution. Americans saw themselves as a people with a unique destiny granted by God. Between the 1780s and the 1820s, different political party visions of American identity competed. The Jeffersonians were agrarian-focused. They envisioned a nation based on the morality of citizens. Federalists saw a more hierarchical, European-like society as the best hope for the American cause. These competing visions of identity led to continued attacks by the leading …

"Favorite Of Heaven": The Impact Of Skin Color On Atlantic Ethnic Africans In The Eighteenth Century, Kimberly V. Jones

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Stephen Dedalus' Search For Identity In Catholic Ireland, Cristina L. Cuevas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of my research was to explore the interplay between religion and art in James Joyce’s novel, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. My aim was to trace the development of the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus by analyzing how Catholicsim is an institution that forms him, yet must reject to realize his artistic potential. I researched Joyce’s background to gain an understanding of the exilic experience on the literature. Through the exilic lens, I realized that Catholicism was the predominant influence on Stephen’s need to embark on a self-imposed exile at the end of the novel. …

My Family, My Identity: An Ethnohistorical Exploration Of A Multiethnic Family, Sarah Oosahwee-Voss

All Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on family identity in a time when multiethnic couples are increasing in population. How will this populace choose to define who they are? The purpose of this thesis is to focus on a multiethnic family, specifically one with different tribal heritages, and explore how their identity was formed over time and maintained through various times in their history. Multiple ethnographic methods were utilized in tandem to collect the information. A framework was then created to determine the main themes found throughout the history and information compiled in order to define the core values within their family identity. …

Whose Identity? An Argument For Granting Authority Of Identity To The Individual, Demetrius A. Lalanne

CMC Senior Theses

Who are you? And did you have any say in choosing who you are? Identity is a complicated issue, it is both individualistic and necessarily relies on your environment and peers. I believe that as it stands, your identity may be a result of both solitary and societal thinking. However, I think that society and government act as the sole authenticators of an individual’s identity. I do not believe this is how an individual’s life ought to be treated. Thus, I am arguing in this thesis that the individual has the capacity to choose their own identity, and that society …

Constructing Loyalty, Citizenship, And Identity: A Rhetorical History Of The Japanese American Incarceration, Kaori Miyawaki

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reexamines loyalty, citizenship, and identity in the United States by closely reading historical materials about the Japanese American incarceration. The Japanese American incarceration is a unique and important historical event for studying citizenship and identity, since it was a moment in the U.S. history that citizens of the country were incarcerated by their government. This raises a larger question beyond the incarceration. What does it mean to be a loyal American citizen?

By closely analyzing texts generated by the U.S. government, the Japanese American community, and White American photographers, I identify multiple, conflicting meanings and implications behind the …

We Are Aquin: The Creation Of Community And Personal Identity In The Freeport Catholic Schools, Sherry Ann Cluver

Theses and Dissertations

Aquin Central Catholic High School, a tiny institution in the rural, Midwestern town of Freeport, Illinois, is a case study unlike the schools from Chicago, Boston, and other large cities highlighted in previous scholarship. Freeport's patterns of schooling in the 1970s and 1980s were largely unaffected by race or "white flight," and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockford afforded to its schools a greater than usual degree of local control. Yet, Aquin (founded in 1923) followed the trends of Catholic schools with regard to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), assimilation of previously immigrant Catholic families into middle class American social …

“All Data Is Credit Data,” Or, On Close Reading As A Reciprocal Process In Digital Knowledge Environments, John Hunter

Faculty Journal Articles

The new knowledge environments of the digital age are oen described as places where we are all closely read, with our buying habits, location, and identities available to advertisers, online merchants, the government, and others through our use of the Internet. This is represented as a loss of privacy in which these entities learn about our activities and desires, using means that were unavailable in the pre-digital era. This article argues that the reciprocal nature of digital networks means 1) that the privacy issues that we face online are not radically different from those of the pre-Internet era, and 2) …