Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Dancing Mi Cultura: The Production Of Ethnic And National Identity In Midwestern Mexican-Americans Through The Performance Of Ballet Méxicano Folklórico, Katrina J. Frank

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies how Mexican Americans living in the northwest suburbs of Chicago produce connections to their Mexican heritage and culture through the performance of ballet Mexicano folklórico. Through ethnographic interviews of current and former folklórico dancers, as well as participant observation of adult folklórico dance practices, I contextualize the experiences of the interviewees using the anthropological theories of habitus, continuous and discontinuous selves, double-consciousness, liminality, and collective effervescence, as well as the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Frantz Fanon, with the discussion of folklórico as an art, and the concept of institutional use of dance as …

Soul Quest Church Of Mother Earth: Ayahuasca Decriminalization And The Struggle Of An Institution To Become A Church, Tarryl Janik

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the process by which Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth Inc., an ayahuasca church, in Orlando, Florida, seeks to become a legal church in order to be exempted from the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which classifies DMT, the psychedelic by-product of the boiled ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaf, as an illicit substance. The three-year study charts the process by which Soul Quest undertakes to demonstrate their practice and belief in terms that will conform to the State’s idea of what “church-ness” looks like and how sincere belief should be demonstrated in terms the law will find …

Let Go And Let God: An Ethnographic Study Of Overeaters Anonymous, Subjectivity, And Extreme Eating Distress, Abby Forster

Theses and Dissertations

Academic discussions regarding eating disorders have been dominated by two frameworks: biomedical and feminist. While the former explains eating disorders as a product of individual pathology, the latter asserts the cause is culture. An aspect of culture that is often suggested is neoliberalism. This ethnographic study utilizes the term “eating distress” to acknowledge the localized idioms that occur outside of the bounds of biomedical settings. The research documents the experiences of many members of Overeaters Anonymous dealing with eating distress within a social context in which their body types are stigmatized. The dissertation examines the relationship between subjectivity, Overeaters Anonymous, …

Function And Aesthetic Value: An Analysis Of The Milwaukee Public Museum's Thai Royal Silver Collection, Aislinn Sanders

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes 45 objects from the Thai Royal Silver collection currently housed at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM). Of these, 41 were donated by a single donor, Dr. Louis Schapiro, who collected the objects during his time working as Medical Advisor for the King of Siam in 1931-1932. Following his death, his son Mark held onto the objects until 1969, when they became a part of the MPM’s collection. The chosen objects include boxes, bowls, and other types of vessels. Through researching this collection, the following questions guided the direction for this thesis: How did the silver industry begin …

Incipient Games: Restoring The Past Through Play In Historical Reenactment, Luke Konkol

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an ethnography of an historical reenactment group which stewards a living history village portraying the nineteenth-century “Wisconsin frontier.” It analyzes productions from improvisations, to scripted vignettes, to a “whodunit” mystery game. Across their practice, reenactors are met with a host of challenges including ‘authenticity,’ balancing constructionism and objectivism, visitor engagement, educating the public, and the bleeding together of period techniques and modern thinking. Such challenges push against the boundaries of analyzing the project of reenactment (or larger social life) as theatre. Given terms like “play-acting” and “role-playing” in the space of reenactment, this thesis examines this phenomenon …

Evidence Of Lives Not Seen: The Bioarchaeology Of Material Personhood At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Catherine Rebecca Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Cadaverized individuals in nineteenth and twentieth-century America were overwhelmingly poor, indigent, institutionalized, and unidentified. Their bodies were utilized to transform medical students into professionals while they, in turn, were transformed from human to medical waste, and disposed of as such. The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery was one such disposal site utilized from 1882-1925. Archaeological excavations at the site recovered cadaverized remains in multiple individual burial contexts. Analysis of mortuary patterns provides a richly nuanced medium through which this project examines the creation of social personhood and the formation and maintenance of community boundaries. These shared patterns, evident in burial …

"Making God's Love Manifest": American Expressions And Productions Of Charisma In Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi's Global Following, Karen Margaret Esche-Eiff

Theses and Dissertations

While situating it in a changing American religious landscape marked by increasing participation in metaphysical religion, this dissertation examines the appeal of contemporary Indian godperson, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma), to Americans. Although replete with portraits of individual Indian spiritual leaders’ charisma, the anthropology of religion literature seldom addresses the processes whereby such figures’ charisma gets produced. Drawing on thirteen months of multi-sited ethnographic research conducted between 2015-2016, this dissertation uses Max Weber’s theory of charisma to answer the following questions: what extraordinary capacity do American devotees attribute to Amma; what is the process whereby they and she co-produce this …

Heirloom And Hybrid Corn In The American Corn Belt: An Ethnography Of Seed Saving Practices, Rachelle Halaska

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study examines the practices and context of contemporary heirloom corn seed saving practices and projects in the American Corn Belt. It examines heirloom corn conservation and hand pollination practices at Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa in 2015. From there the study extends to interviews with heirloom farmers, breeders and gardeners in Wisconsin and Illinois. The findings indicate that the lines between the mainstream and the margins of corn production are highly blurred, and that there is a considerable amount of cross-pollination of ideas and practices between alternative corn farming and dominant industrial hybrid production in the American …

Looking For Group: Sociality, Embodiment, And Institutions In World Of Warcraft, Christopher J. Cooley

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography examines the varying degrees of conflict between multiple stakeholders involved in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). The game’s designers, like many software developers in the contemporary world, tend to be guided by an ideology influenced by classical liberalism, but also inspired by a utopian view of technology in general. That ideological position has directly affected many aspects of the game, from the largely unregulated in-game economy, to the strong emphasis on individual mastery of the game’s systems to progress through the complete content of the game world. World of Warcraft advertises itself not …

Everyday Perseverance & Meaningful Toil: Mapping The (In)Distinguishable Process Of Recovery Post-Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Louisiana, Monique Hassman

Theses and Dissertations

For nearly a century, anthropological scholarship on disaster has contributed to advancing emergency preparation and management, however examination focusing on survivors’ return and responses in the aftermath of catastrophe, specifically the ways in which residents work to recover—if at all—remains far from comprehensive, especially in urban, post-industrial settings.

Following calamity, what remains? What is disturbed? What becomes reconstructed? Who repairs the tattered social fabric or restores the built environment? And how do these processes transpire? These questions summarize the research interests of this dissertation, which examines the place-making practices not of experts or administrators, but, rather, those enacted by (extra) …

The Waiting Room: Re-Making Adulthood Among America’S Underemployed, Susan Hill

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation takes as its starting point the problem of underemployment among young adults in the post-recession United States. Recent studies have shown that the number of college-educated Americans employed in positions not requiring a degree has reached historic highs. Such analyses are limited, however, in that they do not capture the lived effects of such trends—how underemployment insinuates itself into a person's worldview and identity. This ethnographic study delves into the intimate correlates of macroeconomic change by investigating the impact of underemployment on notions of adulthood among recent college graduates working in the Minneapolis-St. Paul restaurant industry. For the …

A Return To Dark Shamans: Kanaima & The Cosmology Of Threat, Tarryl Janik

Theses and Dissertations

Kanaima in Amazonia has been theorized within anthropology as “assault sorcery,” “dark shamanism,” and “anti-structure.” Among the Patamuna Indians of Guyana kanaima have been theorized as “cultural expression” of “hyper-traditionality” in response to an encroaching state, its industry and development, evangelism, and modernity (Whitehead; 2002). Kanaima is a mode of terror and violence, of healing, enhancing power, and performing masculinity—a symbol that operates in Patamuna mythology, cosmology, and place-making. Kanaima is intimately entangled with jaguar identity and the wildness of the Pakaraimas, functioning as the ultimate symbol of terror and control over the Patamuna and outsiders. The threat of kanaima …

Faouda Wa Ruina: A History Of Moroccan Punk Rock And Heavy Metal, Brian Kenneth Trott

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

FAOUDA WA RUINA: A HISTORY OF MOROCCAN PUNK ROCK AND HEAVY METAL

by

Brian Trott

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2018

Under the Supervision of Professor Gregory Carter

While the punk rock and heavy metal subcultures have spread through much of the world since the 1980s, a heavy metal scene did not take shape in Morocco until the mid-1990s. There had yet to be a punk rock band there until the mid-2000s. In the following paper, I detail the rise of heavy metal in Morocco. Beginning with the early metal scene, I trace through critical moments in its growth, building …

Rules Of The House: Strategy, Tactic, And Violence In One World By Night, World Of Darkness, Live-Action Role-Play Games, Laya Liebeseller

Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis focuses on governance of institutionalized play in three World of Darkness live-action role-play (larp) games (ethnographic field work conducted between May and August of 2016), whose players have willingly allowed the international organization of One World by Night – an organization made up of their peers – to unify them in such a way as to create connection, community, and shared story across the world. I analyze four locii within these games (the book, the organization, the storyteller, and the player) using Michel de Certeau’s, The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall, specifically focusing on …

Decolonizing African-American Museums: A Case Study On Two African-American Museums In The South, Anastacia Jonique Scott

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to understand how African-American museums’ exhibits help individuals gain their sense of racial identity through public memory. In an era where the United States is supposedly “post-racial” African-American museums are flourishing. As institutions serving an important role in preserving the collective memory of African-American people in the US, African-American museums evoke questions of representation within the larger US narrative that confirm the persistent saliency of race in society, and therefore continue to have a public function in maintaining and developing a racial African-American identity (Jackson 2012; Eichstedt and Small 2002; Wilson 2012; Golding 2009).

My research is …

Welfare Queens To Childcare Queens: The Political Economy Of State Subsidized Childcare In Milwaukee, Wisconsin (2009-2012), Anika Yetunde Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Through the privatization of childcare in Wisconsin, thousands of impoverished, under-educated and low skilled African-American women became micro-enterprising entrepreneurs. In 2006 through the instituting of Wisconsin Shares (Shares), Wisconsin’s low-income childcare program, the average family daycare provider in Milwaukee County earned over $50,000 a year (Pawasarat and Quinn 2006). Drawing on neoliberal ideas of micro-enterprising entrepreneurship, these women were successful, but this success appeared to not align with the architects of Shares. Loic Wacquant (2009, 2012) argues that neoliberalism should not be viewed as market strategies or exercises, but rather, it should be viewed as a quintessential political project that …

Three Research Essays On Human Behaviors In Social Media, Jiao Wu

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media (SM) has grown to be one of the most popular Internet technologies for individual users and has fostered a global community. For instance, recent statistics reveal that monthly active users of Facebook are almost 1.5 billion by Mar 2015. At the same time, 20% of internet users in the US are expected to have Twitter accounts. This figure has grown from 15.2% in 2012, and is expected to rise to 24.2% by 2018 (Twitter 2015).

People like spending their time on SM to track the latest news, seek knowledge, update personal status, and connect with friends. It is …

Enlightening The Bats: Sound And Place Making In Burmese Buddhist Practice, Andrew Dicks

Theses and Dissertations

In Burma (Myanmar), the Abhidhamma, a rigorous and abstract soteriological treatise situated within the vast Pali Buddhist canon, is the focus of both monastic and lay practitioners’ close study and popular veneration. In particular, the Paṭṭhāna, the last and most complex volume of the Abhidhamma, is envisioned as a keystone in the long-term preservation of the Buddha’s teachings, which are also understood to inevitably disappear. As a result of these conditions and understandings, a popular ritualized and amplified recitation of this difficult text has developed in order to maintain the text’s presence in popular consciousness. This is a conscientious move …

Medicina Del Barrio: Shadow Medicine Among Milwaukee's Latino Community, Ramona Chiquita Tenorio

Theses and Dissertations

As a result of exclusionary state and federal policy decisions on immigration and health care, marginalized immigrants often seek health care in the shadows of U.S. cities through practitioners such as curandera/os (healers), huesera/os (bonesetters), parteras (midwives), and sobadora/es (massagers). under the radar of biomedical practice. This research focuses on this phenomenon in the context of globalized social networks and health care practices of marginalized Latino immigrants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and within the broader economic and political context in this country. Latino immigrants continue practicing forms of their medicine even after immigrating to this country. People do not just throw …

Never Put Your Head Down Unless You Pray: The Stories Of African American Men In The Wisconsin Prison System, Julia Marie Kirchner

Theses and Dissertations

Prior research on offender narratives has not examined culture as a factor in how prisoners explain their crimes. This qualitative ethnographic research project explores the self-constructions of African American male prisoners using both participant observation with active gang members on the street and discourse analysis of over 300 letters written by incarcerated men. Focusing primarily on six prisoner consultants, this study investigates the claims that offenders make about themselves in reference to their identity. These convicted felons justify their crimes as rational under the circumstances prevalent in segregated inner cities. In reference to economic crimes such as drug dealing and …