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“And Am I Born To Die?”: Collective Memory And Trauma In Contemporary Appalachian Heavy Metal, Alexandra Dellgren

Masters Theses

This thesis delves into the terrain of Appalachian heavy metal by tracing the histories of both the region's people and its pristine landscapes marred by capitalist exploitation and colonial abuses. Through a case-study based exploration of the lyrical and sonic expressions of contemporary Appalachian heavy metal bands, my research explores how these artists serve as modern-day storytellers, confronting and processing the enduring trauma embedded in Appalachian history. The musicians, rooted in the very communities they address, are pivotal actors in the ongoing struggle for identity and justice in the face of historical injustices.

The research herein serves as a testament …

Beyond The Rupture: The Palestinian Moment In Kuwait And Its Implications, Eman Alotair Abdulla

History Theses

Even before its independence from Britain in 1961, Palestinians formed large, settled communities in the State of Kuwait and made major contributions to its socioeconomic and cultural development. Their experience in Kuwait spanned over five decades and ended abruptly with the First Gulf War in 1991. Details about the symbiotic relationship between Palestinians and Kuwait reflect developments in Kuwait and milestones in the trajectory of the Palestinian cause, identity, and formation of an effective diaspora there.

Kuwait’s Palestinian community was one of the prime casualties of the First Gulf War. Over 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait and had to …

Defining Greekness: The Effect Of Ethnic Identity On Foreign Policy Opinions, Iliana Tzafolias

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Many scholars agree: identity plays a significant role in shaping political opinion. What about foreign policy opinions, though? The literature on ethnic identity focuses on how ethnic identity affects domestic political opinion and political activism, paying little attention to its effect on foreign policy opinions. However, in a nation like the United States, where ethnic interest groups hold much power to influence US foreign policy, it is important to understand how people’s ethnic identity affects their foreign policy opinions about homeland politics. The Greek diaspora is widely considered one of the most politically involved diasporas in the US. By conducting …

The Political Mobilization Of The Croatian Diaspora: Analyzing The Impact Of The Croatian Diaspora On Croatian Politics., Regina Cabrera Hernandez

Honors College Theses

This paper examines the relationship between the Croatian diaspora and the Croatian nation with the goal of better understanding this relationship and how diasporas can affect the homeland politically. I attempt to do this by studying and analyzing the history of the diaspora, their identity formation, and their actions throughout the 20th century. I begin with a look at the origins of the Croatian diaspora, and the developing relationship between the diaspora and the government of the homeland. With this, as changes in the makeup of the diaspora affected the relationship with the homeland, changes in the homeland also affected …

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 …

Unveiling Identity: Exploring Afrofuturism In Ekow Nimako’S Contemporary African Diasporic Sculptural Art, Kandra James

Theses

Identity expressed within African diasporic arts has historically been connected to traditional genres such as portraiture. Over time, contemporary artists have explored identity through genres beyond portraiture and through the use of non-traditional materials. The sculptural practice of Ghanaian Canadian artist Ekow Nimako, a fine arts sculptor based in Toronto, Canada, employs the unconventional material of LEGO® to offer a multi-generational perspective into deep diasporic memory. Examining Nimako’s sculptures through the perspective of colonialism and de-colonialism, materiality, and Afrofuturism, this thesis investigates the artist’s exploration of Black historical pasts to shape identities and construct narratives of Black futures. The monumental …

A Church Of The People: Coptic Church Building And Direction In Central New Jersey, Bishoy Garis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Building off Michael Akladios’ work on early Coptic migration and the ad hoc institutionalization of the Coptic Orthodox Church in North America, this dissertation proposes that the construction and direction of Coptic churches in Middlesex County, New Jersey was laity driven, ad hoc, reactive, and dependent on local variables. Additionally, it reveals that the creation of St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church in East Brunswick, New Jersey spurred migration to the Middlesex County area and transformed their small community into a domestic and international Coptic migration center. Unlike previous scholarship that places greater attention on urban Coptic communities and transnational networks, …

There’S No Space In History: Affiliation, Eros And Colonial Entanglements In North American Nuclear Poetry, 1945-Present, Marguerite Daisy Atterbury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates “affiliation” as a socio-spatial poetics and spatial ontology, a departure from the past and future to the material, landed present. The author’s experience growing up proximate to federally ordered uranium mining and nuclear weapons research on Indigenous land and at Los Alamos National Labs drives this work’s aim to render visible the economic, social, and ideological structures governing social-spatial dynamics in the North American context. This dissertation argues for a poetics of affiliation as a methodology, to move beyond theoretical and discursive questions in scholarship to negotiations of the social at scales that affect systems beyond the …

From Antiracism To Abolition: The Role Of University Culture Centers In Black Students' Academic Identities And Language, Kristin Demint Bailey

Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on focus group, interview, and participant-observer data collected as part of this IRB-approved [19.177] qualitative research project, this dissertation provides insights about how Black American students develop academic identities through coursework and extracurricular involvement in a Black culture center on the campus of a historically white institution (HWI). I apply the lens of “abolitionist education” (Love) to explore the languaging that students and faculty in the Black culture center do to create community and racial uplift in a type of institution where racial identity historically has been marginalized and obscured—and where, the collected data indicate, such occlusion continues despite …

Rethinking The Role Of Cultural Empowerment In African Identity, Madina Tall

Theses and Dissertations

Narratives pertaining to the cultural inferiority of Africans have plagued the mindsets and consequently, the actions of millions around the world. The undermining beliefs of societies globally towards the African continent and its people has historically created opportunities for colonialism, imperialism and various other forms of exploitation. Various educational, political and socio-cultural gaps have manifested themselves in disguise of fundamentally/intrinsically poor African management. Examples range from more educational and socio-cultural issues such as cultural rejection/dissociation to everyday manifestations of identity displacement which can be understood as western cultural mimicry. Throughout this thesis, I shall argue that the core of the …

"Perché Il Mondo È Cambiato": Second Generation Italian Hip Hop And The Authorization Of Postcolonial Italian Identities, Anthony Sargenti

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Second generation Italian hip hop artists negotiate, contest, and decolonize italianità through their lyrics, music, and activism. Italian Postcolonialism, Cultural Theory, and Musicology inform my approach to understanding the struggle over contemporary Italian politics of identity and belonging. I utilize Discourse Analysis to contextualize lyrics, music, and music videos that resist hegemonic notions of italianità and champion inclusive citizenship. Artists analyzed include Amir Issaa, Karima DueG, Ghali, Tommy Kuti, Cécile, Chadia Rodriguez, and Alessandro Mahmoud. Centralizing hip hop as a collective site of resistance demonstrates the movement towards recognition as well as equal representation. Second generation artistry and lyricism starts …

Final Master's Portfolio, Oluwatobi Idowu

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this portfolio, Oluwatobi Idowu engages with texts and cultural artifacts that explore the concept of power, identity, oppression, and imperialism as they relate to Africa, African American and Indigenous cultures in North America. He also explores late capitalism in relation to Mark Fisher's central ideas about capitalist realism, and its effect on young people in the 21st century.

Social Media's Impact On The Puerto Rican Diaspora After Hurricane Maria, Heidi Lynn Steidel Ii Camacho

Theses and Dissertations

Puerto Rico has belonged to the United States for more than a century. In 1898, more than two decades after the Spanish American War, Spain formally ceded the island to the United States. Just over 20 years later, islanders officially became American citizens. Since then, the 100-mile-long by 35-mile-wide island has experienced economic and political crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, and life-threatening natural disasters. These events provoked a vast fluctuation in its population. After Hurricane Maria unfolded in September 2017, more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the continental United States to start new lives (Schwartz, 2018). This qualitative study sheds …

Making And Unmaking Collective Memory Through Food: A Case Study Of Windsor, Ontario’S Yugoslav Diaspora, Amanda Skocic

Major Papers

The preparation and consumption of food is not merely a physical act, but a deeply social one, conveying cultural meaning that functions to tie us to our identity and profoundly influence our memory. Drawing upon interviews done with members of Windsor’s Yugoslav diaspora community, this research seeks to explore the ways in which this group has negotiated its collective memory within the host society through the use of food. I identify four central aspects of food’s relation to collective memory within the diaspora. First, the use of food as a means of connection to the homeland, and therefore, to collective …

Erasing The Past For Marketability: The Effects Of Selling National Myth In Ybor City's Public Historical Narrative, Janine A. Galindo

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Ybor City is a historical neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, and a tourist attraction known for its immigrant roots and once-thriving cigar industry. This thesis places Ybor City into the context of the burgeoning heritage tourism market, examining how cities financially reliant on tourism often sanitize their public historical narrative. I identify the main actors involved in Ybor City's marketing and preservation by investigating contemporary newspaper articles and multiple National Park Service documents, thereby uncovering the motivations and decisions that led to Ybor's cultural image of a bustling, relatively peaceful early 20th-century "Latin" community. To correlate Ybor's aestheticized public image with …

"‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎", Stephen Harmon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work tries to perplex the viewer to acknowledge themselves in the act of seeing. In order to perplex them, I use ambiguous reference to figure and space using multiple perspectives, vantage points, gaze, marks, mediums, and, more recently, light and site specificity to establish liminal relationships and experiences. Liminality is a kind of in-betweenness, being on the threshold of places or states of being. My experiences in and studies of the Jewish Diaspora have been my path towards understanding liminality, but liminality is not unique to diaspora or to the Jewish experience and my work does not attempt to …

Renewing A Nation: The Impact Of The African Diaspora On The African American Family, Culture And The Black Church, Lolita R. Gilmore-Randall

Doctor of Ministry

Despite the notion the past can never be removed, disassembled or altered, variant versions of African American history continue to serve as a fluid document in time without accountability, acknowledgement, or consciousness of the liabilities associated with the African diaspora. Studies show an estimated 12.5 million African men, women, and children were forcibly transported as part of the transatlantic slave trade, an egregious act that remains impactful to this day. African Americans represent 12% of the American population, but constitute 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million in correctional facilities. Though African American children make up 14% of …

Jazz As An Imperfect Metaphor For Democracy: The Asian American Woman's Experience, Irene Choi

UVM Patrick Leahy Honors College Senior Theses

Jazz as a metaphor for democracy is a popular argument made by both jazz scholars and musicians. There are certainly democratic elements in jazz: the music promotes individual self expression while keeping in consideration the collective group experience. However, this assumes that the jazz world is accepting of all musicians regardless of identity. In reality, jazz has only been accepting of a specific demographic--Black or white men--and those outside of that demographic are frequently excluded and given less recognition. In this thesis, I argue that jazz cannot be a perfect metaphor for democracy until all voices, regardless of identity, are …

Neither Fully Queer Nor Somali?: What Queer Somalis' Narratives Reveal About Space, Identity, And Community In Western Diaspora, Dominik Drabent

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The field of Muslim sexuality studies has grown over the past two decades because of the aftermath of 9/11. This master’s thesis is a textual content analysis of the personal narratives of queer Somalis in Western diaspora. It addresses the intersections of their identities that create unique forms of oppression. Not much research has been conducted on queer Somali communities. This analysis of queer Somalis’ personal narratives aims to illuminate parts of the invisibility of queer Somalis, their experienced accusations of inauthenticity, and the erasure of their existences. I utilize an intersectional, transnational feminist, queer, and Black feminist lens. By …

Alternative Southern Communities: Cultural Other "Asians" In Contemporary Fiction About The American South, Mariko Hiwatashi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores the representation of minority groups in contemporary U.S. Southern literature, with a particular focus on Asian communities. It not only challenges the conventional perception that Asians in America are primarily associated with the West Coast but also underscores how Asian representation in literature plays a crucial role in illuminating the complexities of regional identity and social structure in the American South.

Historically, Asian immigrants have been part of the Southern landscape since the eighteenth century when Filipino sailors settled in New Orleans. Chinese immigrants also played essential roles as laborers in the post-slavery South. However, their experiences …

Navigating Waters: Experiences Of Filipino Canadian Identity Making In The Diaspora, John Felix Tolentino

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Research states that while Filipino Canadians are the largest growing migrant population in Canada, they are the least represented and understudied subjects in the academy. The primary purpose of this qualitative study is to better understand the experiences of Filipino Canadians and how they create their identities in the diaspora. Since few studies take on a social work lens to explore these important stories, I attempt to unearth these experiences using these guiding questions: (1) How do Filipino Canadians integrate their cultural identity in the diaspora? (2) What are the sociopolitical and historical conditions that inform these identities? Following Charmaz’s …

Re-Curation And Recognition: Addressing The Curation Crisis Through The Garnet Ghost Town, Jocelyn A. Palombo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As universities, federal curation facilities, public museums, and private collections struggle to create space on their shelves curators and archaeologists continuously evaluate what must continue to be stored and what needs to be deaccessioned. Utilizing a collection housed at the University of Montana I explore strategies for combating this issue. The collection originates from the Garnet Ghost Town and has been in the university’s care since its excavation. The objectives of this project are to obtain new information and incorporate innovative techniques to learn more about the collection itself and provide an updated analysis to one of Montana’s most complete …

The Political Economy Of State Fragility And The Extent To Which It Fuels International Migration Amongst Nigerians., Funmilola Olorunfemi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined the political economy of state fragility and the extent to which it fuels international migration amongst Nigerians and adopt a qualitative research method to critically review 15 articles that was identified using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). The thesis argues that while migration is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria, there is a renewed fervor amongst Nigerians to migrate and that migration amongst Nigerians is in the context of forced mobility. Employing thematic analysis, the thesis demonstrated how state fragility factors which includes economic factors, sociological factors, geographical factors, and unifying factors …

Dalit Studies: The Impacts Of British Colonization In India, Dalit Identity & The Internationalization Of Caste Discrimination At The United Nations, Yashpreet Birdi

Major Papers

The centuries-old caste system dividing individuals in society in a hierarchical order has long been responsible for the continuous oppression of the Dalit (also referred to as Untouchables) population in India. Experiences associated with British colonization period in the country have greatly influenced the fundamental social values, structures, and institutional frameworks of modern and democratic India, along with the identity of Dalits. Scholars in the newly emerged academic field of Dalit studies have examined contemporary issues of the Dalit population, whereas academics of post-colonial studies have analyzed the various social, economic, and cultural losses of British colonization in India. Although …

Exploring Ghanaian Immigrants' Healthcare Access And Utilization Of The U.S. Health System, Kweku J. Agyeman

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

ABSTRACT

EXPLORING THE GHANAIAN IMMIGRANTS’ HEALTHCARE ACCESS AND

HEALTHCARE UTILIZATION OF U.S. HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

BY

Kweku J. Agyeman

Background and Purpose of the Study: Healthcare access and utilization in the U.S. continue to pose serious challenges to immigrants. Although the U.S. spends the most on healthcare ($3.8 trillion) among developed countries, accessing and utilizing the U.S. healthcare has become an illusion to most immigrants living in the U.S. including Ghanaians. To date, little is known specifically about Ghanaian immigrants’ access and utilization of the U.S. Healthcare system. For Ghanaians and other immigrants to fully understand the complex U.S. Healthcare …

An Examination On The Role Of Culture And Socialization On South Asian Women’S Pursuit Of Stem Education, Kinza Shaukat

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study examines the experiences of five South Asian women who aspire for careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) at the University of Western Ontario. It also analyzes the ways in which cultural and societal experiences shape their pursuit of a STEM degree. The research questions being investigated through this study are: (1) How has a South Asian woman’s experiences in the home influenced their own perception of education? (2) What types of experiences have South Asian women had in different levels of schooling? (3) How does cultural identity inform the experiences of South Asian women in their …

The Queer God, Rodney Simpson

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This thesis explores the impact of dance/movement therapy practices on the embodied healing experience of Black queer and LGBTQIA++ - identified people to heal from religious and spiritual trauma. Currently, there is limited research dedicated to the understanding of Blackness, queerness, and spirituality and the unique perspective dance/movement offers in combatting oppressive systems of religious trauma. Research is needed that acknowledges and amplifies the ways Black queer people have adapted, survived, and thrived. This literature review provides a discussion of historical contexts at the intersections of Blackness, queerness, and spirituality to engender a remembering, reclaiming, and reimagining of Black queer …

The Foundation And Center Of American Studies; An Introduction To Native American Histories And Cultures - A Syllabus, Rhonda L. Baldonado

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

The contention of this Capstone is that Native America is the foundation and should be the center of American Studies. One way to facilitate such an effect on the discipline is to expose community college students to American Studies early, by offering an elective course about Native American communities within the US. The heart and soul of this Capstone applied project is a syllabus for an American Studies course in Native American Histories and Cultures. It is an elective, introductory, survey course that that covers four important aspects of Indigeneity: Indigenous Histories, Native American Politics and Activism, Indigenous Women and …

Math Achievement Opportunity For American Mexican Children In Mexico: A Structural Equation Modeling Analysis Using Multilevel Data, Jimmy E. Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

Since the U.S. Recession of 2008, more Mexicans are leaving than coming to the United States. Many Mexican families return to Mexico with their U.S.-born--or American Mexican--children and youth. Approximately 700,000 American Mexican children and youth are now living and attending K-12 schools throughout Mexico (Gándara & Jensen, 2021; Jacobo-Suárez, 2017; Jensen et al., 2017; Passel et al., 2012). They are part of a broader category of students who have educational experiences on both sides of the border often referred to as transnational students. Return migration to Mexico presents both challenges and opportunities that affect their adaptation to Mexican schools. …

Not Or But And: Tusán Identity In 1920s Chinese-Peruvian Poetry, Zachary Young

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.