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Ploy : An Immigrant Daughter's Archival Survival Strategy, Porntip Israsena Twishime Aug 2023

Ploy : An Immigrant Daughter's Archival Survival Strategy, Porntip Israsena Twishime

Doctoral Dissertations

Transnational human migration is commonly conceptualized as the moment a person crosses national borders. In “PLOY : An Immigrant Daughter’s Archival Survival Strategy,” I advance a framework of migration in which migration is an ongoing embodied and relational process, one that continues after a person crosses national borders. This framework maintains that migration exists as a meaningful concept because of the social, political, cultural, and historical contexts that gives this type of mobility meaning. I use a performative novel methodology to construct and represent this argument; a performative novel methodology uses fiction and the novel as a performative text …


Timing Is Everything: Climate Change Implications For Phenological Events And Reproductive Success In River Herring, Meghna N. Marjadi Aug 2023

Timing Is Everything: Climate Change Implications For Phenological Events And Reproductive Success In River Herring, Meghna N. Marjadi

Doctoral Dissertations

Anadromous river herring (alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis)) make annual spring spawning migrations from the ocean to freshwater, where juveniles reside before emigrating to the ocean. Climate change may alter environmental and biological cues that prompt both adult migration and juvenile emigration, with implications for adult spawning success and offspring survival for these imperiled species. Shifts in adult migration have been observed in some rivers, while impacts on reproductive success and juvenile survival remain unknown. Cues for juvenile emigration are poorly understood as they have been explored at limited spatial and temporal scales. …


Beyond The Fat: Protein Metabolism And Muscle Function As Part Of The Migratory Syndrome Of Songbirds, Cory R. Elowe Apr 2023

Beyond The Fat: Protein Metabolism And Muscle Function As Part Of The Migratory Syndrome Of Songbirds, Cory R. Elowe

Doctoral Dissertations

Migration allows animals to seasonally exploit favorable habitats that are geographically disparate, and migratory animals have a suite of adaptations to complete their extraordinary journeys. This “migratory syndrome” of traits is comprised of seasonally-responsive adaptations that together result in changes to metabolism, body composition, and reproductive status, all of which act to increase the probability of a successful migration. The focus of my dissertation is to investigate the suite of changes in metabolism and muscle function that enable birds to undertake long-duration flights. In chapter 1, I compare fuel use in flight between two related migratory warbler species that migrate …


The Survivors Of The Train: Disability, Testimonio, And Activism In Migrants With Disabilities, Claudia J. Morales Sep 2022

The Survivors Of The Train: Disability, Testimonio, And Activism In Migrants With Disabilities, Claudia J. Morales

Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract My dissertation centers the healing processes and praxes of migrants from Central America who have suffered injuries resulting in amputations on their way to the US through Mexico atop an old freight train known as "La Bestia" (The Beast). My scholar activism is based on fieldwork and research conducted with amputated migrants recovering at rehabilitation centers in central Mexico and alongside the activist group Migrant Disabilities Organization (MDO) based in California. My contributions place emphasis on converging dialogues between Afro-Indigenous conocimiento/knowledge and theory from medical and linguistic anthropology (specifically Aulino’s phenomenological approach to the praxis of care and Arnold’s …


Drivers And Direct Impacts Of Lean Mass Dynamics On The Stopover Ecology And Migratory Pace Of Nearctic-Neotropical Migrant Songbirds In Spring, Mariamar Gutierrez Ramirez Mar 2022

Drivers And Direct Impacts Of Lean Mass Dynamics On The Stopover Ecology And Migratory Pace Of Nearctic-Neotropical Migrant Songbirds In Spring, Mariamar Gutierrez Ramirez

Doctoral Dissertations

Annual migration in songbirds is one of the most demanding life-history stages. It represents a period of high mortality, yet there is still much unknown about the ecological correlates that influence its successful completion. After long non-stop migratory flights, birds require a stopover period to rest and replenish depleted energy reserves. Birds use fat as the primary fuel to power long-distance flights. However, birds also burn lean tissue, which results in significant reductions in muscle and organ masses. The discovery and quantification of lean mass catabolism represented a paradigm shift in migration ecology because non-fat components were thought to remain …


Raising Global Elites From A Distance: Transnational Parenting Of South Korean Students, Juyeon Park Apr 2021

Raising Global Elites From A Distance: Transnational Parenting Of South Korean Students, Juyeon Park

Doctoral Dissertations

Drawing on interviews with 74 South Korean (hereafter Korean) students and 34 parents at ten elite U.S. colleges, I examine how elite Korean parents seek to reproduce and extend their family privilege through children’s transnational education. I analyze how each group – children, mothers, and fathers – interprets and represents their views of the elite transnational parenting they experienced or practiced. By triangulating the narratives of three groups, I explore the family dynamics of the transnational families of high-achieving Korean students abroad. Well-educated yet opt-out mothers intensively managed their children’s early education, often relying on gender-segregated networks. In contrast, cosmopolitan …


A Genealogy Of Victimhood: Empathy And Memory In Recent German Fiction, Catherine E. Mcnally Dec 2020

A Genealogy Of Victimhood: Empathy And Memory In Recent German Fiction, Catherine E. Mcnally

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses literary representations of empathy and altruism in Jenny Erpenbeck’s 2015 novel Gehen, Ging, Gegangen and Bodo Kirchhoff’s 2016 novel Widerfahrnis. These novels demonstrate continuities and discontinuities between German literature of the postwar, reunification and contemporary contexts.Analyzing expressions of empathy by Erpenbeck and Kirchhoff’s protagonists, I locate them in historical and literary contexts, the roots of which can be traced to the first generation of postwar German literature (1945-1968), particularly Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass. In both Grass and Böll’s early postwar fiction, German experiences of the war and its aftermath are foregrounded, and focus is placed …


Don't Delay: The Effects Of Tide Gates And Road-Stream Crossing Culverts On River Herring (Alosa Spp.) Spawning Migrations, Derrick J. Alcott Dec 2020

Don't Delay: The Effects Of Tide Gates And Road-Stream Crossing Culverts On River Herring (Alosa Spp.) Spawning Migrations, Derrick J. Alcott

Doctoral Dissertations

River herring (Alosa spp.) are anadromous fish that spawn in freshwater rivers and lakes in North America from Florida to Nova Scotia, CA. They have been listed as a species of conservation concern due to dramatic stock declines observed in the 1970’s. Stocks have failed to show significant signs of recovery despite over a decade of harvest restrictions throughout their range. Bycatch in commercial fisheries and reduced access to spawning habitat due to anthropogenic barriers to migration, such as dams and tide gates, have been identified as major causes of the decline in herring populations. Physical barriers to …


What Will You Do Here? Dignified Work And The Politics Of Mobility In Serbia, Dana N. Johnson Jul 2019

What Will You Do Here? Dignified Work And The Politics Of Mobility In Serbia, Dana N. Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

Serbia is said to have one of the highest rates of brain drain in the world. For the generation glossed as the “children of the 1990s,” stances toward mobility and migration have shifted along with geopolitics. Following nearly two decades of wartime entrapment, in 2009 the conditions of possibility for mobility fundamentally changed for Serbian citizens. Of both symbolic and material consequence, the country’s return to respectable geopolitical standing also marked a shift toward more nuanced stancetaking in relation to mobility and migration. Namely, by the time of my research, the expectations of youth—not only of “normal mobility” but of …


Three Essays On Network Dynamics And Liminality, Diego F. Leal Nov 2018

Three Essays On Network Dynamics And Liminality, Diego F. Leal

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the emergence and evolution of social networks by paying particular attention to the spanning of cultural boundaries that segregate actors in the context of specific societies. In particular, I use systems science methods to study the bridging of cultural holes in small and relatively dense artificial societies, as well as in an American high school. I also study the significance of local triadic configurations in giving rise to the highly hierarchical system of aggregate-level migration flows in place in the Americas during the late 20th century. I use the concept of liminality as a way to …


Not Gone With The Wind: Addressing Effects Of Offshore Wind Development On Bat Species In The Northeastern United States, Zara Rae Dowling Nov 2018

Not Gone With The Wind: Addressing Effects Of Offshore Wind Development On Bat Species In The Northeastern United States, Zara Rae Dowling

Doctoral Dissertations

Development of coastal and offshore wind energy resources has the potential to add considerable renewable electricity capacity to the United States electrical grid, but could have detrimental impacts on wildlife. Land-based wind energy facilities are estimated to kill hundreds of thousands of bats every year in the United States, and could threaten population viability of some species. Little is known about the potential impacts of offshore wind development on bat populations along the North Atlantic coast, but a number of species are known to frequent marine islands or fly over the ocean during migration. This dissertation helps to characterize risks …


Cadherin-11 Ectodomain Signaling In Cranial Neural Crest Migration, Ketan Mathavan Mar 2018

Cadherin-11 Ectodomain Signaling In Cranial Neural Crest Migration, Ketan Mathavan

Doctoral Dissertations

During development, a multi-potent group of cells known as the cranial neural crest (CNC) migrate to form craniofacial structures. Proper migration of these cells requires proteolysis of cell adhesion molecules, such as cadherins. In Xenopus laevis, preventing extracellular cleavage of cadherin-11 impairs CNC migration. However, overexpression of the soluble cleavage product (EC1-3) is capable of rescuing this phenotype. The mechanism by which EC1-3 promotes CNC migration has not been investigated until now. Here we show that EC1-3 stimulates phosphorylation of Akt, a target of PI3K, in X.laevis CNC. Through immunoprecipitation experiments, we determined that EC1-3 interacts with …


Tracking Migratory Bird Movements In The Gulf Of Maine With Automated Radio Telemetry And Stable Hydrogen Isotope Markers, Jennifer Smetzer Mar 2018

Tracking Migratory Bird Movements In The Gulf Of Maine With Automated Radio Telemetry And Stable Hydrogen Isotope Markers, Jennifer Smetzer

Doctoral Dissertations

Coastal and offshore areas of the eastern United States provide valuable resources for both migratory songbirds and breeding seabirds, but face some of the most drastic rates of habitat alteration and urbanization. Coastal development can result in loss of significant habitats, and in proliferation of collision hazards that can pose a grave threat to birds. Conserving birds that use these coastal and offshore areas requires better information on how coastal stopover habitats are used, what breeding populations visit these regions during migration, how birds move through these landscapes, and how development can be most sensibly and responsibly directed to minimize …


Negotiating Race, Work And Family: Cape Verdean Home Care Workers In Lisbon, Portugal, Celeste Vaughan Curington Nov 2017

Negotiating Race, Work And Family: Cape Verdean Home Care Workers In Lisbon, Portugal, Celeste Vaughan Curington

Doctoral Dissertations

In Portugal, high levels of women’s labor force participation, rapidly aging populations, along with the retrenchment of welfare states, has led to the expansion of publicly subsidized private care work such as home care. Much of this caring work is carried out by low-paid citizen and migrant women from the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde, an independent archipelago nation off the West African coast. At the same time, Portugal is a “post-colonial” setting, with comparatively progressive policies around family settlement for migrants, and where the language of “legal race” does not exist. Taking the lived experiences of Cape Verdean …


Movements And Conservation Of The Migratory White-Eared Kob (Kobus Kob Leucotis) In South Sudan, Malik D. Marjan Nov 2014

Movements And Conservation Of The Migratory White-Eared Kob (Kobus Kob Leucotis) In South Sudan, Malik D. Marjan

Doctoral Dissertations

The annual movements of white-eared kob (Kobus kob leucotis), tiang (Damaliscus korrigum tiang), in eastern South Sudan was investigated to provided appropriate information for developing effective conservation actions for the migratory kob. Although kob is the focus of the study tiang has been included as the two migrations are ecologically linked and overlap at least in the wet season. During the 20 years of the civil war which ravaged South Sudan, the kob and tiang populations were thought to be severely hunted for food by both the combatants and local people to the extent that their …


Palm Trees Y Nopales: The Commodification And Hybridization Of The South Texas Borderlands, Andriana M. Foiles Sifuentes Nov 2014

Palm Trees Y Nopales: The Commodification And Hybridization Of The South Texas Borderlands, Andriana M. Foiles Sifuentes

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines social inequalities rooted in capital. Through research conducted in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, this project interrogates how social characters use capital to access goods and services. By investigating seasonal migration of US and Canadian retirees into the region, the work highlights the social construction of retirement, the use of state and local governances to establish white only enclaves, and the nation-state’s role in creating marginalized populations in the Texas-Mexico borderlands. Ethnography is the primary research method with demographic and popular culture analysis as secondary modes of collecting data.


Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent Aug 2014

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …