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Dance And Know You Are A Part: The Instrumentality Of Performative Politics And Dance In The Configuration Of Local Social Memory And Afro-Brazilian Identity And Agency In Pelotas, Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil, Triston R. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The arts have been a refuge from perpetual repression and omission, and, a platform for social activism for Afro-descendants in the Americas. In Brazil this is very much the case. With performance serving as a social barometer or a looking glass, dance becomes a source of cultural knowledge, acts as preservative, and negotiates individual mobility within a given context. The Afro-Brazilian dance company, Cia de Dança Daniel Amaro in Pelotas, Brazil grants its members a means of activism and agency to challenge entrenched national narratives and reinterpret local social memory.

Most academic writings about dance or performance in Brazil, focus …

Indigenous Coaches And The National Aboriginal Hockey Championships, Dallas Gerald Hauck

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the National Aboriginal Hockey Championships (NAHC), an annual hockey tournament held in Canada where Indigenous youth compete in provincial/territorial teams. Research focused especially on the insights that coaches, organizers, and other tournament officials can provide into this tournament that aims to both highlight the skills of Indigenous players and also to provide cultural activities and enhance pride. Drawing on interviews at the NAHC at the 2019 tournament in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, this thesis aims to understand the impact the tournament has on those involved, as well as outside influences that constrain and impact the event. The major …

Identity In The Late Woodland Northeast: Interpreting Communities Of Practice From Paste Composition At The Thomas/Luckey And The Losey 3 Sites, Douglas S. Riethmuller

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Thomas/Luckey’s 13th -15th and Losey 3’s 14th-17th century occupations in the Late Woodland Northeast contain assemblages with incongruous regional pottery types; Kelso Corded and an assumed non-local Shenks Ferry. I argue the presence of Shenks Ferry vessels at these two sites indicates the movement of people who reproduced their natal designs upon arrival, rather than trade. The question of whether identity and communities of practice can be discerned from pottery decorations and paste was answered by analyzing sherds with pXRF. While pottery types are based on visual attributes, pXRF looks at elemental composition. Decoration is mimicable, but paste is not; …

The Subaltern Magazine, Rebecca Fox, Riese Nichols

Social Sciences

The Subaltern intends to reach Cal Poly students who do not feel as if their voices are heard and allow them the platform to share their stories. Our focus is on unheard stories from our campus - whether this involves race, class, gender identity, mental health, ethnicity, culture, or any unique part of one’s identity or experience. We hope that these stories will begin to shed light on what we usually consider “taboo” topics and allow students to feel as if they aren’t alone.

Being a very homogeneous campus, it is important for us to realize that privileged voices are …

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. …

Night Of The Witch: Alternative Spirituality, Identity And Media, Andreana Tarleton

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis works to understand the relationships witches and conjurors have with the film and television depictions of them. Employing the method of film critique, I argue that the witch stands as a cultural symbol in the US of women and femmes with power, and that their stories serve as lessons to these populations about what it means to be an acceptable woman or femme, while simultaneously creating and perpetuating stereotypes of magic practitioners. Then, using the combination of hashtag ethnography, in-person and video interviewing and internet surveys, I argue that #witchblr and #witchesofcolor, as well as the space of …

Not All Fun And Gaymes: Technology, Transgression, And Representation Among Gaymers, Kyle Bikowski

LSU Master's Theses

Over the past decade, a new identity has emerged within gaming and gay communities. This identity, Gaymer (Gay-gamer), incorporates elements from both gaming and gay communities, but is accepted by neither. This thesis asks how the interplay of actual and virtual worlds have shaped Gaymer identities, and further asks what the relationship between Gaymers and both the gay and gaming communities are; what elements are conducive to the formation of Gaymer communities; how Gaymers work with or around affordances to assert their identities in virtual and actual spaces; and to what degree representation, either within games as playable characters or …

People And Place: A Journey Through Film, Tourism, And Heritage, Sarah Beals

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Old Tucson Studios is a theme park where film, tourism, and heritage all converge through the American Western genre. During national social change, Westerns increase in number to reflect national values and identity. Westerns that ally with landscapes and people are potentially the most powerful storytelling tool in mainstream media. My research shows that this paring of people and place creates a prevailing image in the audience’s memory. The results suggest that the current image of the West comes from films made between 1951-1970, despite there being newer Westerns. John Wayne and saguaro cactus are enduring images with historic, cultural, …

Migration And Women’S Relationships To The Land And Food In Myanmar, Allison Joseph

Scripps Senior Theses

Abstract

In the 21st century, Myanmar has become the largest migration source country in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. To achieve its economic and political goals, the government has conducted extensive confiscation and reallocation of communal lands, which has resulted in a growing class of landless and dispossessed citizens. Under the new laws, rural women are disproportionately impacted and more vulnerable to the processes of dispossession, often lacking the rights or resources of their male counterparts to fight for the land of their ancestors. This has resulted in the wide-scale disinheritance of Myanmar’s rural women from their land and food, as …