Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“Men Of Good Timber”: An Archaeological Investigation Of Labor In Michigan’S Upper Peninsula, Aaron Howe

Masters Theses

This study approaches the material assemblage of Coalwood, a cordwood camp that operated from 1900-1912 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with a dialectal method and a theory of internal relations in order to understand how daily life was produced and reproduced. Common sense notions often see home and work as separate entities that only relate to one another externally. My archaeological and historical research abstracts domestic labor as a set of social relations that are dialectically and internally connected to the processes of capital accumulation. My archaeological analysis concludes that both productive and reproductive labor was conducted within the home and …

The Legends Of Bigfoot: Or How I Regained My Manhood, Blaine Mccarty

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Masculinity is a culturally defined identity that exists with no single way to express it. However, the cultural politics police masculinity to appear natural and non-changing, but masculinity changes over history influenced by events and the culture from which it gets its definition. Because of this twofold influence on the identity, there is a constant struggle of the appropriate ways to express masculinity in its attempt to normalize itself by defining what is and is not masculine. This work examines how Bigfoot, the hairy fabled monster, embodies conversations about masculinity during a shift in the masculine identity in a constantly …

Ts'msyen Revolution: The Poetics And Politics Of Reclaiming, Robin R. R. Gray

Doctoral Dissertations

As a result of the settler colonial project in North America, Ts’msyen have been thrust into a state of reclamation. The purpose of this study was to examine the distinctiveness of what it means for Ts’msyen to reclaim given our particular history and experiences with settler colonialism. Utilizing the poetics and politics as a theoretical, methodological and practical framework, this dissertation synthesizes the motivations, possibilities and obstacles associated with Ts’msyen reclamation in the contemporary era. Further, as a contribution to the literature on decolonization, Indigenous nationhood, Indigenous subjectivity, Indigenous methodologies and repatriation of Indigenous cultural heritage, I report on two …

Life Is Calling ... How Far Will You Go ... Back In The Closet? Identity Negotiation And Management Among Queer, Peace Corps Volunteers, Kate Elizabeth Slisz

Theses and Dissertations

There is little to no research surrounding the experiences of queer, foreign-aid workers. To address this gap, a study was conducted to explore how compulsory heterosexuality affects the social construction of sexuality in societies where queer, foreign-aid workers serve and how this influences their identity negotiation and management processes. Participants consisted of ten self-identified queer, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), as well as, the researcher herself who also identifies as queer. Data was gathered through both semi-structured interviews and autoethnographic research. Meaning structuring through narratives was used to analyze the data. Analysis revealed that strategies of silencing, counterfeiting, and lying …

Transportation And Sanitation Drivers Of Land Use/Land Cover Change: Loss Of The Jamaica Bay Wetlands, Margaret Joy Cytryn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an analysis (1830-2014) of the historical events of land use/land cover change in the Jamaica Bay estuary, identification of the agents of change, and a perspective on the potential drivers of transportation and sanitation in land use/land cover change.

Giving A Voice To The Powerless: Participatory Monitoring & Evaluation As A Tool For Inclusive Development Through Microfinance, Evan T. Burke

Capstone Collection

The greatest experts on the situation of the marginalized peoples of the world are the marginalized communities themselves. This paper explores how participatory monitoring & evaluation can be a powerful tool for giving voices to marginalized communities, ensuring that the voices of beneficiaries and local stakeholders are heard and inform sustainable project design. It analyzes a participatory monitoring and evaluation methodology implemented for women’s credit cooperatives in Gujarat, India by the Human Development & Research Centre, and examines lessons to be learned to design evaluations facilitating inclusive development.

Strategies for the monitoring and evaluation of microfinance have evolved along with …

Conduits Of Communion: Monstrous Affections In Algonquin Traditional Territory, Ian S.G. Puppe

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project investigates the legacies of shifting land tenure and stewardship practices on what is now known as the Ottawa Valley watershed (referred to as the Kitchissippi by the Omamawinini or Algonquin people), and the effects that this central colonization project has had on issues of identity and Nationalism on Canadians, diversely identified as settler-colonists of European or at least “Old World” descent and First Nations, Métis and Inuit (Lawrence 2012).

Focusing on historical and contemporary political and social issues related to Algonquin Provincial Park and its establishment, this project explores; 1) Competing claims levied by First Nations Peoples, local …

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 …

Philosopher's Stone: The Faustian Geist Of Development, Salikyu Sangtam

Dissertations

The present study juxtaposes scientific rationality with polyphonic rationality in respect to societal development. This is done to illuminate how scientific rationality provides a narrow and truncated view of development. In order to explicate the exclusion of polyphonic rationalities/knowledges in favor of scientific rationality, several development scholarships are examined along with an episode of developmental scheme and two episodes of development programs. This is done to expound (note: ‘→’ = influences) how scientific rationality → scholarships → organizational/institutional schemes, such as the MDGs → actual applications of development schemes, such as transmigration and compulsory villagization. The present inquest, …

Media Representation Of Islam And Muslims In Southern Appalachia, Saundra K. Reynolds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern Appalachian attitudes about the religion of Islam and Muslim adherents are influenced largely by mass media's representations. With more than 80% of Appalachia’s population following Protestant Christianity, exposure to Islam in daily life is limited. Media outlets offer the greatest exposure to information about the religion and its adherents. This thesis examined the region's media representation of Islam and Muslims to determine what images are most often portrayed. Research following a twoyear span of reporting in Southern Appalachia studied substance, word frequency, imagery, and editing used in articles that focused on Islam and Muslims. Through the use of content …

Sounding Identity: Soundscapes, Music, And Technoculture In The Chinese Diaspora Of Panama, Corey Michael Blake

Masters Theses

Present in Panama since the 19^th century, the Chinese diaspora in Panama City, Panama represents an empowered community of individuals who identify as both Chinese and Panamanian. These Chinese Panamanian hybrid identities emerge within sonic environments through an engagement with transnational media and digital technologies, notably within retail stores. Specifically, music surfaces as an especially important sonic marker of the Chinese Panamanian hybridity. Within the mall of the Panamanian Chinatown of El Dorado, an interesting mixture of both Chinese and Latin American popular music genres sounds throughout the various stores. This mixture of music genres demonstrates Chinese Panamanian agency …

Mining, Resistance And Livelihood In Rural Bangladesh, Md Rashedul Alam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 2006, over fifty thousand people in the Phulbari Sub-District of Bangladesh mobilized against an open-pit coal mining-project that posed serious environmental and social risks. The state authorities negotiated with the protesters intensively over four days to reach an agreement. However, the state failed to fulfill the agreement, and the protest movement continued. The agrarian communities successfully halted the mining project for the last nine years. My research aims to understand how the protesters resisted this project. My objectives have been to explore the practices of a grassroots movement, attendant transformations in the sociopolitical landscape and role of the state …

Architectures For A Future South: Posthumanism And Ruin In The Novels Of Cormac Mccarthy, Joshua Ryan Jackson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reads the novels of Cormac McCarthy as posthuman southern literature to explain why fiction from the South after World War II could no longer convey a sense of place during postmodernity: that is, because the region's culture and economy were transitioning from predominantly humanistic thinking (i.e., believing that humans [and especially southern humans] are supreme beings) to predominantly posthumanistic thinking (i.e., believing that humans are not as supreme as they think they are). It argues that we can trace this ideological change over time via structural shifts in the South’s architectural record, which we see in the ruins …

Performing Genders: A Study Of Gender Fluidity, Nicholas Jkmk Coney

Senior Theses

The subjective quality of identity and the relativistic nature of gender bemuse and attract social scientists. In this study I combine both topics by examining gender fluidity – an inconsistent gender identity – within the framework of Western ontology. Within my informants’ narratives I identify what I term feelings of gender as feelings that influence how people perceive and interact with their bodies. Gender fluidity entails a constant yet inconsistent fluctuation of those feelings. Furthermore, I found other important elements that may have influenced my informants' understanding of their gender identities and bodies: upbringing, previous relationships and interactions, communities, and …

Here I Am And Here I’M Not: Queer Women’S Use Of Temporary Urban Spaces In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Vigdís María Hermannsdóttir

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis builds on previous work on the relationship between queer identities and urban space. Drawing from an analysis of two recurring New Orleans-based queer women’s events, I examine how lesbians and queer women not only use but also actively produce social spaces of their own through participation in events organized specifically for lesbians and queer women. Using qualitative methods, I examine the ephemeral and transient quality of lesbian and queer women’s social spaces in post-Katrina New Orleans and the processes through which such spaces come into being. I argue that lesbian and queer women’s production of ephemeral social spaces …

Black Culture: A Societal Problem, Quamesha Brown

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

American society, regardless of what history has been told, has never been a society that is truly free of social prejudices especially for its black community. The many depictions of black people in America has caused a number of psychological and physical difficulties for black communities. In this paper, the main topic is the ways in which black culture is portrayed in American society and how that representation has affected the black community and the black experience. Although there are common experiences shared between people in the black community, the black experience is highly individualized; there is no singular definition …

Pressing: Where The Objective Meets The Subjective, Mariana Parisca

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

Through this essay I describe the theoretical and anthropological ideas that led to the creation of the Cushing Series. An interest in the obsession with photography in popular culture leads to an understanding of the permeation of structured reasoning beyond scientific research and into everyday life. Taking evidence from photography, and philosophy of science I establish the limitations of structured reasoning, both as a way of perceiving the world and as an understanding of identity, and define surface and frame as its physical representation. Using Sartre’s existential theory and phenomenological anthropology I then describe the infinite subjective existence of …

Reflections Of Globalization: A Case Study Of Informal Food Vendors In Southern Ghana, Arianna J. King

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the context of rapid urbanization, globalization, market liberalization, and growing flexibility of labor in the post-Fordist era, urban environments have seen economic opportunities and employment in the formal sector become increasingly less available to the vast majority of urban dwellers in both high-income and low-income countries. The intersectional forces of globalization, and neoliberalization have contributed to the ever-growing role of informal economic opportunities in providing the necessary income to fulfill household needs for individuals throughout the world and have also influenced social, cultural, and spatial organization of informal sector workers. Using a case study and ethnographic information from several …

Confirmation Of Prophecy By Proxy: Audience Anticipation And Reception Of The 2014 Movie Left Behind And Its Relevance To The Dispensational Premillennialist Worldview, Andrew R. Burns

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Media has the potential to legitimize or spread a belief system to the general public. The 2014 movie Left Behind is an example of a deliberate attempt at promoting the belief system referred to as dispensational premillennialism (DPM), or belief in the imminent rapture of Christians. Producers of Left Behind (2014) sought to promote DPM to the general public, hoping for a mass conversion. Online discussion and interviews were gathered and interpreted qualitatively. Content analysis of audience anticipation and reception show believers were as concerned with the conversion of the general public via this movie than the movie itself. Differences …

Stand Strong, Stand Proud: Alternative And Pariah Femininities In San Diego's Punk Rock Community, Steve Moog

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since its inception nearly 40 years ago, punk rock has often been understood as a Social space for rebellion and resistance to dominant cultural norms. As such, punk rock culture becomes fertile ground for explorations of subversive constructions of genders. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the San Diego punk rock community, this thesis unpacks the construction, embodiment and enactment of alternative and pariah forms of femininities and examines their impact on gender dynamics within the scene. Ultimately, this thesis argues that (1) the San Diego punk rock community is a space where alternative and pariah femininities can be embodied …

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 …

The Paleoepidemiology Of Malaria In The Ancient Near East, Nicole Elizabeth Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The end of the Late Bronze Age in the Near East (1300 - 1200 BCE) saw the widespread collapse of several large cultural centers, the reasons for which are a subject of continued debate. Evidence from events leading up to this cultural collapse suggest epidemic disease may have factored into the eventual downfall of these early civilizations. Recent DNA analysis from Egyptian mummies who lived during the period leading up to the Late Bronze Age collapse identified malaria in several elite individuals, suggesting the widespread prevalence of this infectious disease in Egypt. However, the exact prevalence, antiquity, and dynamics of …

The Girl With The Peanut Necklace: Experiences Of Infertility And In Vitro Fertilization In China, Ruoxi Yu

Student Work

A 2014-2015 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Ruoxi Yu (Berkeley College '15) for her essay submitted to the Department of Anthropology, “The Girl with the Peanut Necklace: Experiences of Infertility and in vitro Fertilization in China.” (Marcia Inhorn, William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology, advisor; Susan Brownell, Professor of Anthropology at USML, secondary reader.)

Ruoxi Yu’s essay, “The Girl with the Peanut Necklace: Experiences of Infertility and in vitro Fertilization in China,” situates original research within the history of the one-child birth control policy and the tension between the …

To The Savannah Irish: An Ethnohistory Of The Culture From 1812-1880, Sarah A. Ryniker

Honors College Theses

Between the years of 1812-1880, the Savannah Irish created and maintained an identity based on the Irish ideologies of separatism, independence, and egalitarianism. Through an analysis of Hibernian Society archival toasts and semi-structured interviews, the social, economic, and political institutions which influenced the Savannah-Irish culture emerged. While many aspects of Irish life in Savannah are left to be explored, this research serves to illuminate the creation of identity in the public space between Savannah and the Irish through social, economic, and political means.

Becoming Kin: Modernity, Authenticity, And The Construction Of Spiritual Relatedness In An Evangelical Parachurch Ministry, Brad Codr

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation explores how families are formed and spiritual kinship is created by members of the Body of Christ evangelical parachurch ministry at one public university in the United States. Spiritual relatedness is used to conceptualize members' social relationships and demonstrate the diverse forms of Christian community that emerge in the lives of young adults. Results from this study provide an alternative perspective to social science literature labeling Christianity as an individualistic belief system. It also contributes to continuing dialogue within the anthropology of Christianity, which seeks to describe and understand what it means to be Christian. I argue that …

Negotiating Trans Activism In Guatemala City: The Case Of Redmmutrans, Maria Alejandra Wundram Pimentel

Open Access Theses

The purpose of this ethnographic project is to investigate how the activists in REDMMUTRANS, a trans women rights activist group in Guatemala City, understand their individual and collective identity as trans. By analyzing the way REDMMUTRANS navigates and negotiates national and transnational discourses on gender, this thesis takes particular attention to the influence that activist practice has had in individual's adoption of 'trans' as an identity category. By looking at the way REDMMUTRANS's members construct their collective identity, I explore the interactions between the transnational development industry, localized experiences, and activist practice has in constructing what 'trans' means in the …

Female Genital Mutilation: Islamic Roots Or Culture Conflated?, Mazin E. Khalil

Senior Theses and Projects

Despite the fact that circumcision can be traced to various pre-Islamic societies, female genital mutilation is commonly associated with Islam. This thesis investigates female genital mutilation in Sudan. In the first part, I investigate the reasons for female genital mutilation in Sudan and the reasons for its continued occurrence. In the second part, I analyze the narrative of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her personal account as it relates to female genital mutilation. Finally in the third part, I examine the role that the discourse of female genital mutilation has in Islamophobic rhetoric.

Right To Land And The Rule Of Law: Infrastructure, Urbanization And Resistance In India, Preeti Sampat

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Special Economic Zones Act 2005, a critical infrastructure model, was enacted in India in two days amid total political consensus. Within two years, intense conflicts over land and resources erupted in SEZ areas across the country between corporate developers, the state, and peasants' and citizens' groups. In the ensuing furor, several SEZs foundered and Goa state unprecedentedly revoked its SEZ policy, suspending 15 SEZs, some with construction underway. Amid raging debates and accusations of corrupt real estate deals over SEZs and other "infrastructure" and urbanization investments, the central (federal) government attempted to redraft land acquisition policy, eventually enacting a …

My Family, My Identity: An Ethnohistorical Exploration Of A Multiethnic Family, Sarah Oosahwee-Voss

All Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on family identity in a time when multiethnic couples are increasing in population. How will this populace choose to define who they are? The purpose of this thesis is to focus on a multiethnic family, specifically one with different tribal heritages, and explore how their identity was formed over time and maintained through various times in their history. Multiple ethnographic methods were utilized in tandem to collect the information. A framework was then created to determine the main themes found throughout the history and information compiled in order to define the core values within their family identity. …