Digital Commons Network^™

Crafting Lives: Experiences Of Ethiopian Refugees In Cairo, Nayrose S. Abd El-Megid

Theses and Dissertations

There has been an ongoing influx of refugees for years driven by political instability, famine, and prolonged conflicts in the region, leading many individuals to seek sanctuary in other countries. Egypt has become a host country for many years, whether for settlement or transit, for various populations from different nationalities hoping to find refuge. However, amidst this influx, Ethiopian refugees often find themselves overlooked or usually associated on the sidelines with other African nationalities; their stories and struggles are marginalized in broader narratives of displacement. The experience of Ethiopians is heterogeneous and multidimensional in terms of their intersectional identities of …

A Journey To A Black Woman’S (Read Black Girl’S) Joy And Her Story Of Coming Home, Brittany Lauren Brock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an auto/ethnography about the self-actualizing journey of reclaiming storytelling as my native tongue and my journey to joy. Throughout, using my story and the stories of so many others, I not only lay out the wounds (the pain, the loss, then the hope that comes) within the academy and outside in the world but I also use storytelling as a tool of healing—my tool of healing—to show how I wrote myself free.

When Black women (read Black girls) go through The Reckoning (the moment we realize something isn’t right with how we are perceived by others) …

Redrawing The Contours Of Care: Ethical Commitments And Gendered Politics In The Work Of Government Psychological Counsellors In Sri Lanka, Nadia Augustyniak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the last three decades, Sri Lanka has seen a growing popular interest in psychology as a field of professional practice as well as a steady expansion of mental health services. Historically, this shift has been linked to the impacts of political violence (1971, 1987-1989), civil war (1983-2009) as well as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, with local and international trauma and humanitarian interventions shaping recovery and the country’s mental health and psychosocial care infrastructure. More recently, however, psychology and mental health have been increasingly decoupled from the discourse of trauma, entering into everyday life and popular culture through the …

“I’M Still Suffering”: Mental Health Care Among Central African Refugee Populations In The Tampa Bay Area, C. Danee Ruszczyk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An estimated 500 Central African refugee families have been resettled in the Tampa Bay Area since 2002 (RPC, 2022). The cycles of trauma that they have endured place them in vulnerable positions regarding their mental health. Struggling to exist within underfunded social programs that are rigid in their expectations and with the current system of reactive care vs preventative care, the refugees in Tampa are put in a difficult situation of navigating their own health and wellbeing in lieu of having the full support of the United States government and their community. I will discuss how these refugees experience and …

“It Takes A Village”: The Implications For Gender Roles On Appalachian Family Dynamics, Taryn Jayde Rollins

Undergraduate Theses

When we hear the word “Appalachian”, many will look towards the countless examples of negative stereotypes displayed in the media. From Hillbilly Elegy to hyperbolized stories of blue people in the mountains, Appalachians have been perpetuated as backward, dirty, incestual, and stupid. Through incessant dehumanization by the media, Appalachian communities have been ignored and even blamed for their disparities. However, there are historical and social implications factors that stemmed from the major shift in the economic makeup that has led to Appalachian poverty and in turn, shaped the culture and values of the region. In addition, due to geographic isolation, …

“Nails Done, Hair Done, Everything Did!”: Consumption And The Creation Of Black Feminine Selves, Simone Reid

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how race and gender shape the meaning that Black women associate with their beauty consumption practices and spending. Much of the existing feminist scholarship on beauty has been postfeminist, privileging the concept of agency and empowerment over structural realities. However, the materialist feminist frame has more utility to address how beauty operates within the lives of Black women as a form of distinct gendered racial oppression. The concept of aesthetic capital emerges from the materialist feminist perspective and suggests that beauty demands the investment of considerable economic resources and can deliver economic returns. Despite this, aesthetic capital …

Sexually Selected Preferences For Human Altruism Across Sexual Orientation, Gender, Age, And Reproductive Status, Katherine Valinske Kappelman

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Prior studies have attempted to establish how human altruism has evolved, including theories of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and costly signaling. Recent investigations have explored the evolution of altruism as the result of sexual selection, where individuals may exhibit altruistic behavior because it is preferred by potential mates. In this study, I examine how altruistic behavior toward different people (family, friends, strangers, or general altruistic acts) is preferred when considering potential short-term and long-term mates. While previous research has examined this question using college-aged heterosexual participants, this study uses a more diverse sample, including individuals who identify as LGBTQ, those …

Gender Neutral Parenting: Raising A Generation Outside The Gender Binary, Toni Noelle Martinez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, the social and cultural reality remains organized around the gender binary. The binary legitimizes itself on the widely held belief that gender is determined by biology and, therefore, is “natural.” By exploring and firmly placing gender as a cultural construct, this thesis looks at the possibilities of fracturing the binary. Borrowing from Stephan Hirschauer (1994) and Judith Butler’s (2004), this thesis theorizes what a gender neutral world could look like and examines how Gender Neutral Parents contribute toward a gender revolution. Gender Neutral Parents, a community that is mostly found online, represent a small group that …

“Even If You Have Food In Your House, It Will Not Taste Sweet”: Central African Refugees’ Experiences Of Cultural Food Insecurity And Other Overlapping Insecurities In Tampa, Florida, Shaye Soifoine

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, resettled African refugee populations experience food insecurity at rates up to seven times higher than those of the general population. In Tampa, Florida, anthropologists have documented high levels of food insecurity among Central African refugee households since members of this population began to be resettled in the area in 2016. Utilizing an intersectional lens and drawing upon theoretical concepts such as cultural food security, navigational capital, and social reproduction, this thesis examines how Central African refugees, particularly women, experience food (in)security and other overlapping forms of (in)security as they integrate into US systems of structural inequality …

Navigating The Cairene Table: Food And Family Between What Is Ideal And What Is Real, Iman Afify

Theses and Dissertations

Our daily encounters with food, especially during our childhood, play a crucial role in shaping and informing our identity and our habitus. In this research, by using multimodal and auto ethnography, I argue that due to the guiding path that our senses carve for us, we make sense and contextualise our surroundings through our senses, and not only the five senses of vision, smell, taste, hearing, and touch, but also through our inner senses of time and temporality, and how time and memory play an important role in the registration of our surroundings through our bodies and senses. I am …

Is The Ivory Tower Made Of Glass?: Examining Work Experiences Of Women Faculty At Butler University, Erin Elizabeth Mahan

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The guiding research question for this study is: “What are the structural, cultural, and situational factors that affect women faculty’s experience at Butler University?” While this project focuses broadly on women as an identifying group, it also requires attention to the intersectionality of individuals’ experience as issues such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and disabilities are also factors shaping women’s experiences. The information from this study draws attention to the experiences that women faculty have related to their gender and potentially facilitate change starting at Butler University. This paper will discuss the experiences of women faculty at Butler University regarding …

Otavalan Women Weavers: Rethinking Gendered Labor And Crafts In Ecuador, Kaitlin Marie Zapel

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This research focuses on the gendered labor of craft production and distribution of Otavaleños, an indigenous group in the Imbabura Valley in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador. Otavalans are often described as a society of weavers with strong gender divisions. Households typically function as units of production, with tasks ideally broken down along gender lines. Women are generally depicted as secondary workers who do not weave the textiles that make Otavalans famous; however, they are generally perceived as being responsible for selling these textiles in the market. This research argues that current gendered labor relations in Otavalan textile production can …

Reimagining Recovery: Debt, Mutual Aid, And Disaster Governance In Puerto Rico, Sarah Molinari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the politics and lived experiences of debt and climate disaster recovery in Puerto Rico. It examines mutual aid and debt resistance in relation to governance techniques and overlapping crises marked by the U.S. territory’s bankruptcy, the aftermath of Hurricane Maria (2017), and culminating with popular mobilizations in the summer of 2019 that propelled the governor’s resignation. Tracing the ways that the post-hurricane social disaster and debt crisis are mutually constitutive, I investigate a case of women-led grassroots mutual aid organizing in the east-central municipality of Caguas, Puerto Rico and a political movement calling for a citizen audit …

Feminist Readings Of Evangelicalism: Views On Gender And Sexuality From Evangelical Perspectives, Rubi Elizabeth Cibrian Llamas

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

There are approximately over 10,000 distinct religious practices in the world, some of these religions are either a variation of each other or very different. Historically and presently, certain religions are positioned in popular discourse as not fit for our times or too conservative for example, evangelicalism and Islam have often been two religions that are viewed as ‘too traditional’ and in need of modernization of their ‘extreme’ beliefs.

This typically gets reduced to specific ideologies and viewpoints revolving around feminism and LGBTQIA+ identity. Ideologies regarding the treatment and place of women have been backed up by ‘evidence’ presented in …

Flexible Lives On Engineering's 'Bleeding Edge' : Gender, Migration And Belonging In The Semiconductor Industry, Sarah E. Appelhans

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation explores gender, flexibilization, and belonging within professional high tech employment, particularly amongst women and migrant engineers. Prior studies of women in the “integrated circuit” focused on low-skilled factory labor (Nakamura 2014, Grossman 1980); however, women are increasingly choosing careers in the male-dominated engineering workforce, which designs and manufactures semiconductor technology. Fieldwork for this dissertation took place between May 2018 – Aug 2019 in the Northeastern US, a regional hub for semiconductor manufacturing companies. Thirty-eight life history interviews were conducted with participants from several companies in the area, along with frequent follow ups and participant observation with seventeen engineering …

"Roses Remind Me Of Aleppo": Ironic Home, Beckoning States, And Memories Of Syrian Armenian Women In Yerevan, Armenia, Anahid Matossian

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This project contributes to anthropologies of the state, (diasporic return) migration, belonging, home, and conflict, including genocide and war. It intervenes in the anthropology of home by focusing on both the social and physical aspects of home, its pain, joys, and ironies, and it speaks to the anthropology of genocide by showing how a population a century removed from a genocide uses it to interpret their experience. This dissertation also deals with state constructions of ideal citizen formation--one of obligation and devotion to the socially constructed ancestral homeland, where descendants who share an ethnic identity have a role to play …

The Ghost Town: An Autoethnographic Study On The Effects Of Loss And Trauma On A Saudi Arabian International Student’S Well-Being, Salman J. Alzowibi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We all have fought on grief’s battleground; some of us started at early ages, while others during their developmental age, teen’s years, or later in their adulthood. All of them are valuable resources and sites of knowledge that need to be explored. Yet, recent studies reduced grief into clinical psychological well-being. However, as I lived these experiences, trauma, loss, and grief impact all well-being dimensions. Grief intersects with large structures (e.g., social, economic, cultural, locations, etc.); all these components impact our way of grief how socially displayed (mourning). This dissertation encapsulates my personal experience elevating it to an academic work …

Beyond Choice: An Intersectional Analysis Of Identity And Labor In Online Sex Work, Shawna F. Felkins

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

This intersectional project seeks to understand the complex labor, social lives, and community building of online sex workers. Building on the work of foundational sex work researchers, this project utilizes in-depth interviews, a survey, social media posts, and published writing and research from online sex workers to understand how marginalization and identity impacts participation and success in online sex work. Providing analysis on how race, gender, class, and ability intersect in the digital sexual marketplace, this project critiques the rise of neoliberal feminism in sex work spaces that stems from the centering of white and otherwise privileged sex workers using …

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 …

Revisiting Juchitán: Witnessing An Indigenous Mexico Within The Latin American Archive, Michelle G. De La Cruz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout archives of photographic collections, as one discovers the focused, artistic selective process of images that become part of a photographer’s collection, one must venture further and ask: will these choices be decisively remembered by an individual or collective audience or actively be dismissed, misunderstood, and denied presence? For my master’s thesis, I will be analyzing Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s photobook, Juchitán de las Mujeres, a photo-collection of the women-empowered indigenous society in Oaxaca, Mexico which erupted during Latin American photography’s prime in the 20th century, turning away from a deeply exoticized past and towards a celebration of Hispanism as …

‘It’S Been A Huge Stress’: An In-Depth, Exploratory Study Of Vaccine Hesitant Parents In Southern California, Mika Kadono

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2015, the US experienced a widespread measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland, California and spread to six other states, Mexico, and Canada. That year, California passed Senate Bill 277 (SB 277), which eliminated the personal belief exemption for vaccinations required for school entry; California became the third state in the country to eliminate nonmedical exemptions. In 2019, Washington, Maine, and New York followed suit eliminating all nonmedical exemptions amid the largest measles outbreak in the US in 25 years. Many countries, including the US, are experiencing a rise in vaccine preventable diseases due, in part, to increasing vaccine hesitancy, …

Love In South Korea: Transformations Of Intimacy And Gender Relations In Korean Romantic Relationships, Alex Joseph Nelson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Romantic love holds a central place in South Korean imaginaries, animating television dramas and pop ballads, but has been largely overlooked in Korea's ethnographic record. Drawing on data collected through 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, survey research, interviews, and analysis of folklore, the present study investigates how South Koreans conceptualize romantic love, how those conceptions have changed over time, and the ways they are transforming with the Korean field of gender relations.

This study documents love's entwinement with marriage in South Korea. Koreans are developing companionate ideals of marriage that shift the focus of kinship from the parent-child relationship to …

A Bite Of The Big Apple: The Anthropology Of Pesticide Use In New York City, Faye O'Brien

Theses and Dissertations

Pesticide exposure in the developing world is well described in anthropology. How pesticide use and exposure is ordered and experienced socially, economically and culturally in Western urban communities is less well studied. The long-term consequences of synergistic pesticide exposure is not easily measurable, which this research addresses through social inquiry.

Gendered Recreational Fisheries Management And North American Natural Resource Policy, Erin Burkett

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation applies feminist theory to investigate women’s participation in wildlife-based recreation and how natural resource management organizations conduct stakeholder engagement in a North American context. Gendered social processes, including norms and expectations, as well as gendered cultures, can constrain women’s participation in recreation through social sanctions and disenfranchisement. Gender and leisure scholars have studied these dynamics in sport and leisure contexts, but how individuals negotiate these constraints is understudied in a wildlife-based recreation context. Social constructions of gender also contribute to imbalances of power within formal natural resource management organizations and influence how stakeholder engagement policies and programs are …

(In)Difference To Survivors: The Anti-Violence Comics Project, Henry Solares

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Sexualized violence prevention at the university level can sometimes leave out the perspectives and needs of marginalized groups. Ethics should always serve to temper any endeavors to work with marginalized groups. Any endeavor into the field requires methods and frameworks that serve not only the needs of the researcher but also the knowledge builders involved. Postmodern ethnography articulates a need for contesting a positivist understanding of knowledge through use of alternative methods like novelized fiction, autobiography, documentary, and visual art. In conjunction, intersectional theory forces us to consider our place as researchers and the larger power dynamics within our culture. …

The Everyday Sacred : A Symbolic Analysis Of Contemporary Yucatec Maya Women's Daily Realities, Crystal Sheedy

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

As a collaborative effort between myself and the Maya women with whom I worked, who live in Xocén, this dissertation seeks to illuminate the sacred world of Maya women, as well as dismantle the insidious narrative that younger generations of Mayas are losing their culture. Instrumental to this process is the use of decolonial methods (Lawless 1993) and descriptive theoretical premises (Geertz 1973; Turner 1967, 1969) that allowed me to analyze Maya women’s discursive speech, referred to as both chismes and heridos in Spanish, which can be translated as gossip, as well as the speech genre of u t’àan nukuč …

"We Get Nothing" : An Ethnography Of Participatory Development And Gender Mainstreaming In A Water Project For The Bhil Of Central India, Indrakshi Tandon

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Through the close examination of a state-sponsored watershed project being implemented by Association for Integrated Social Development (AISD) in the district of Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, this dissertation project explores how current development approaches in water projects impact its intended targets, in this case the Bhil tribal community. A key aspect of this research is to analyze in detail how development narratives such as participatory or bottom-up approaches and gender mainstreaming often result in unintended consequences. With a focus on the gendered nature of participatory policies, I argue that popular development practices in India often lead to governing and managing target …

Storied Realities: A Case Study Of Homelessness, Housing Policy, And Gender In Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Alexandra E. Nelson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Homelessness, as an inherently gendered phenomenon, places women who experience it in a doubly marginal position: not only are people experiencing homelessness often rendered “silent”, but the form women’s homelessness takes is often “hidden”. This thesis explores the intersecting topics of homelessness, housing policy, and gender in Whitehorse, Yukon, highlighting the role of lived experience, narrative, and sharing stories in creating more effective and inclusive public policy. Through both critical feminist analysis and dialogic storytelling, this thesis considers the potential utility of narrative and ethnographic method in creating policy, the visibility of women who experience homelessness in broader political and …

Gender And Religion In A Shifting Social Landscape: Anglo-Saxon Mortuary Practices, Ad 600-700, Caroline Palmer

Undergraduate Honors Theses

My thesis examines seventh-century East Anglian mortuary practices and cross-correlates grave goods and human remains to determine whether there was an expression of the sexual division of labor during this period of social and religious change. I argue that gender roles changed as a result of adopting kingdoms and Christianity. Prior to this time period, Anglo-Saxons were primarily pagan and were buried with extensive burial goods. In addition to changes in religious and burial practices, during the Final Phase (600-700 AD) there appears to have been a division of labor that was not as dichotomous in the Migration Phase (450-600 …

Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a so-called post-racial America, a new gay identity has flourished and come into the limelight. However, in recent years, researchers have concluded that not all men who have sex with other men (MSM) self-identify as gay, most noticeably a large population of Black men. It is possible that a tainted history of Black enslavement in this country that is inextricably linked with ideas of space, surveillance, subversion, and survival inform a Black male’s self-identification as being “on the down low” (DL). This begs the question: What does mainstream society view as gay-ness and how is the DL constructed …