Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Finding Your Mathematical Roots: Inclusion And Identity Development In Mathematics, Linda Mcguire

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper details a semester-long course project that has been successfully adapted for use in mathematics courses ranging from introductory level, general-education classes to advanced courses in the mathematics major. Through creating aspirational mathematical family trees and writing mathematical autobiographies, this assignment is designed to help battle belonging uncertainty, to challenge students to self-situate in relation to the history of mathematical and scientific knowledge, and to make visible a student’s developing identity in mathematics and, more broadly, in STEM.

The construction and scaffolding of the project, assignments, examples of student work, foundational readings, assessment and outcomes, and adaptation strategies for …

Recognition And Domination: A Hegelian Approach To Evolving Gender And Technology Paradigms, Zachary Davis

CMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to develop a strong account of recognition. It begins with a Hegel-inspired account of recognition as a fundamental desire that drives humanity. This account establishes recognition as fundamental to the initial subject formation of independent self-consciousnesses as agents. I offer the lord-bondsman dualism to provide a critique of domination as oppositional to securing the means for recognition. This entails that, as history progresses the world ought to move towards universally adopting mutual recognition relationships without domination. I adopt this goal as an ideal form of recognition. In Chapter 2, I apply this recognitional framework to gender. Through …

菠蘿包(Pineapple Bun): Exploring Memory And Language Through Animation, Elaine Yang

Scripps Senior Theses

菠蘿包(Pineapple Bun) explores the themes of reconstruction, evocation, and memory through my childhood in Taiwan. Inspired by other Asian American animators, I aim to tell a simple story of connection through my grandfather and I's daily swimming ritual. The film is a 3-minute animated short film following our language barrier and how we engage with each other's differing backgrounds.

The Ways I'M A Fraud: Essays On Imposter Syndrome In Identity, Jack Friedman

Pitzer Senior Theses

In this day and age, great progress is being made in acceptance of all kinds of "alternative identities." With growing numbers of identities, imposter syndrome about identity rises with people feeling as though they don't fully belong to an identity group. What does it even mean to be a member of an identity group, and why do I, and many others, feel like an imposter in them? I offer two essays discussing the matter. The first covers alcoholism and how not committing fully to sobriety feels like it excludes my using the identity of alcoholic or addict. The other on …

An Analysis Of The Justifications Behind The Japanese Internment Camps And Its Impact On Japanese American Identity, Elizabeth Yoshitake

CMC Senior Theses

In the first half of my paper, I will be reviewing the rationale from political leaders, citizen group organizers, and military officers on the issuing of Executive Order 9066. Additionally, I will be addressing the types of support and dissent that contributed to the eventual mandating of the Japanese internment camps during World War II. By looking into these aspects, I hope to find clarity behind why the internment camps were considered constitutional at the time and how it was received throughout society. The second half of my paper will address the dual identities amongst the Issei and Nisei Japanese …

Harry E. "Indian" Miller: Spectacles Of Identity In The Early Twentieth Century American Southwest, Courtney Lamb

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Harry E. Miller was a self-styled historian, writer, lecturer, archeologist, sideshow impresario, zookeeper, and Route 66 curio shop owner who spent most of his adult life promoting himself as an Apache known as Indian Miller, Chief Crazy Thunder. Miller insisted on his Native American heritage despite the fact that he was born to a European-American family of pioneers, and for most of the early twentieth century, his audiences and customers apparently accepted the ruse. This paper examines Miller’s choice to engage in various kinds of what I define as spectacles of identity—performances dependent upon markers of ethnographic identity for their …

The Self, My Self, And Female Portraiture, Kenza Fernandez

Scripps Senior Theses

Growing up in Mexico was a privilege for many reasons. I am most grateful for its history of preservation and storytelling through art, specifically portraiture. I learned about my country's history and its most influential figures primarily through visuals. From mesoamerican sculptures to Mexican modern mural art, one did not have to be literate or speak vernacular Spanish to understand the story of our culture through time. It is this visual way of recording history that I have decided to turn to for interpretation and self exploration. Throughout the course of this academic year, I will be creating a series …

Mathematics Heritage Project: An Exploration Empowering Students' Mathematical Identities, Siddhi Desai, Brianna Kurtz, Farshid Safi

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The International Study Group on Ethnomathematics (ISGEm) supports incorporating cultural diversity of mathematical practices to promote the teaching and learning of school mathematics. Through The Mathematics Heritage Project, students at a middle school in the southeastern United States developed unique creations to connect with the mathematics connected to their identities and self-identified cultural group. Upon reflection, students reported an increased awareness of the relevance of mathematics in their lives and a sense of ownership that is both meaningful and modern.

Painting While Black: Exploring Racial Identity Through Iconography, Blake Morton, Blake Morton

CMC Senior Theses

I constantly experience external pressure to make identity-related art work in response to the ongoing racial-reckoning occurring in the United States.

Initially, I was concerned with the pitfalls of creating identity-art. One of which being pigeon-held as a Black artist— whose sole function is to share my vulnerable experiences —and be commodified and diluted for superficial consumption. A Black artist whose work would only be valuable when institutions needed to satisfy a diversity quota, a Black History Month initiative or to conduct damage control after being “canceled.”

All of which may very well still happen. I’ve utilized this project to …

Painting While Black: Exploring Racial Identity Through Iconography, Blake Morton

Scripps Senior Theses

I constantly experience external pressure to make identity-related artwork in response to the ongoing racial-reckoning occurring in the United States.

Initially, I was concerned with the pitfalls of creating identity-art. One of which being pigeon-held as a Black artist— whose sole function is to share my vulnerable experiences —and be commodified and diluted for superficial consumption. A Black artist whose work would only be valuable when institutions needed to satisfy a diversity quota, a Black History Month initiative or to conduct damage control after being “canceled.”

All of which may very well still happen. I’ve utilized this project to work …

What If Anything Still Meant Something, Andrea Munive

CGU MFA Theses

My drawings are active reflections of my surroundings and their intrinsic relationship to the ideal and banal. My surroundings have encompassed my memories and present, revealing a sense of slow time and peripheral consciousness.

What If Anything Still Meant Something is about this duality of care and disregard- an eternal mental state it seems.

What Gets Checked At The Door? Embracing Students' Complex Mathematical Identities, Jennifer L. Ruef

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Identity formation is complex, ongoing, and context specific. To be successful in mathematics classes, students must negotiate and navigate the normative identity of the class--what counts as being "good at math" (Cobb, Gresalfi & Hodge, 2009). Within the constraints of normative identity, students must also negotiate a personal doer-of-math identity: who they are within the context of this particular mathematics class. When students are compelled to suppress key aspects of their identity in order to accommodate the normative identity of the class cognitive bandwidth for learning may be impeded (Steele, 1997). Conversely, when students are guided in braiding individual identity …

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 …

Cruzando La Frontera: Choreographing The Mexican-American Identity, Chloe Vich

CMC Senior Theses

This dance project explores the consequences of assimilation on immigrants’ cultural practices and identity specifically for Mexican-Americans in Southern California. The dance project explores the crossing of borders through mixed contemporary and Mexican ballet folklorico dance styles in order to tell a story of immigrants trying, failing, and succeeding in crossing the U.S. and Mexico border. By exploring the integration of Western dance styles with Mexican ballet folklorico, this paper will analyze how Mexican identity, as expressed through dance or song, is maintained by immigrants to remain connected their culture, but is changed through the process of assimilation.

Mexican ballet …

Passe Pas: Rethinking The Passport, Miriam E. Bankier

Scripps Senior Theses

Filled with national symbols, stamps and basic identifying information, a passport can obscure the humanity behind the individual passport holder, inverting it from a symbol of citizenship and belonging to one of marginalization and xenophobia. In today’s political climate, the meaning of art has become intersected with politics and the law. Using the very tools and some processes of passport production, i.e. mixed media and printmaking techniques, my work responds to and disrupts the bureaucracy and impersonal settings involving passports and identification documents. I draw from my own experiences and privilege as having Austrian, Italian, and American citizenship, as well …

Exploring Gender Through Art In Myanmar, Allison E. Joseph

EnviroLab Asia

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Cultural Identity To Liberal Democracy, Rebecca Ilana Shane

CMC Senior Theses

The challenge facing liberal theories of democracy is to describe an organization of state that both legitimates state power and protects individual liberty. In Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government, Corey Brettschneider develops the value theory of democracy that resolves this tension. By locating the democratic ideal in a set of core values with both procedural and substantive implications, the value theory legitimates state coercion only when it protects citizens’ rights. While the value theory guarantees both substantive and procedural rights, this thesis will show that Brettschneider fails to account for the necessity of a secure cultural context, without which …

A Global Hybridity: Snakehead Influence On Identity And Migration, Teeana Cotangco

CMC Senior Theses

Through introduction of Fujian Province as home to the largest migrant population in the world, this article aims to address the negotiation of intersections between local and global forces that form new spaces throughout the diaspora. The "third space," a term coined by Homi Bhabha, addresses the fluid identity of Chinese-Filipino individuals that both acknowledges the traditional notions of "Chinese" while being influenced by a history of colonization in the Spanish Philippines. I incorporate my own personal experience as an American-born Chinese-Filipino navigating new spaces, and also the experience of my family members through interviews.

My Flesh Is Your Pasture, Dakota Noot

CGU MFA Theses

Painting my body frees it from the limits of reality. My body exists in a collaged state between man and woman, human and animal, abstract and figurative. By embracing my body’s power as an object, it isn’t limited to being a representation of myself. My painted body can be owned or identified with. It can be feared, hated, and lusted after. I submit my body, blasting it with horror, humor, and a sheer sense of enjoyment.

Encountering Greek American Soundscapes, Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

For this chapter I will look at Greek American music making through the eyes of a non-Greek, my younger self, who enjoyed and sought out this musical tradition for over fifty years, primarily as a folk dance enthusiast. For the international recreational dancer of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Greek music has rich melodic lines and many different rhythmic patterns (5/8; 7/8; 9/8, etc.) that attracted many individuals of Anglo American background like me to learn these dances, especially in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s when recreational and performance folk dance constituted a major leisure-time activity for hundreds of thousands …

Culture As A Tool Of Exclusion: An Analysis Of Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, Abigail Maccumber

Scripps Senior Theses

Using the film La Haine (1995), directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, as an object of analysis, this paper explores culture as a tool of exclusion in France through sociological, architectural, and political contexts. It investigates La Haine as one of the first representations of the banlieue to mainstream French audiences, as well as the ways in which the film reveals how immigrants and children of immigrants struggle to find personal, cultural, and national identity in France.

Performing Gender: An Exploration Of The Relationship Between Expression And Identity, Allegra Barnes

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper discusses the relationship between gender expression and gender identity. It recounts my personal exploration of the two through the process of photographing two fellow AFAB individuals to create visual representations of their gender expressions while interviewing them to examine how these expressions relate to the gender with which they identify. Following this, I engage in self-reflection taking into consideration both the narratives of my peers as well as Judith Butler's insights on gender. The project culminates with a series of self portraits and a conclusion on how I came to understand both facets my gender.

The Places That Became Home: A Collection Of Short Stories And Memories, Stephanie Ewing Mace

CMC Senior Theses

This is a collection of short stories and memories from the eight places that I have lived. Through these stories and memories, I reflect on themes of identity and community. I also consider the idea of home: what defines a home, how we make a place feel like a home, and what transforms a city or a town into a home. Each chapter also includes my own original designs and photographs.

The stories about Sharon and Westwood, small towns in Massachusetts, focus on childhood and familial relationships. The narratives about St. Louis, Missouri and Toluca Lake, California, consider the transition …

The Demandingness Of Morality: The Person Confined, Jose Salazar

CMC Senior Theses

Losing ownership and control over the development of and connection to our own person detaches us from the most innate embodiment of ourselves, our person. Without being able to develop and connect to our person, we become detached from expressing our identity, exercising our autonomy, and formulating our own values, the most intrinsic features our person encapsulates. While we yearn to act on our own projects to express our identity, exercise our autonomy, and formulate our own values the way we want, morality imposes huge demands on our person that restrain us from doing so. Morality’s major requirement to always …

Mission In Evolving Cultures: Constructively Managing Music-Related Conflict In Cross-Cultural Church Planting Contexts, David R. Dunaetz

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

The choice of music, an essential element of worship and church life, must be addressed in cross-cultural church planting contexts. As cultures evolve, church planters are faced with choices about musical styles that may lead to interpersonal conflicts within the church. The purpose of this study is to empirically examine factors that may enable cross-cultural church planters to constructively manage music-related conflicts when they arise. Members of church plants, like all people, have various goals when entering into such conflicts. They are concerned about the content of the conflict (i.e., the musical style) and thus have content goals. They are …

Dissociative Anonymity: Performative Photography And The Use Of Uncanny Disguise, Catherine G. Poole

Scripps Senior Theses

In my thesis project, I aim to explore the ways in which we can perform parts of our identity by hiding the body through the use of performative disguises. These characters transgress the boundaries between societal norms and abject interactions. In these costumes, I hope to find whether or not the multiple facets of our identities can be distilled into one character--whether the self can be shifted into another character for a constructive narrative.

Grotesque Depictions And Seduction: Exotification Of Asian/American Women, Mabelle Bong

Scripps Senior Theses

My senior art project is an exploration of contemporary representations of women of Asian descent in the United States, specifically looking at issues of body image, sexuality, and exotification. I will examine the lack of representation of Asian women in America in media and art, specifically painting and mixed media. Ultimately, I will elucidate on why I chose this topic and used certain techniques and materials to explore the contemporary features and symbolic representations of Asian women in America.

Whose Identity? An Argument For Granting Authority Of Identity To The Individual, Demetrius A. Lalanne

CMC Senior Theses

Who are you? And did you have any say in choosing who you are? Identity is a complicated issue, it is both individualistic and necessarily relies on your environment and peers. I believe that as it stands, your identity may be a result of both solitary and societal thinking. However, I think that society and government act as the sole authenticators of an individual’s identity. I do not believe this is how an individual’s life ought to be treated. Thus, I am arguing in this thesis that the individual has the capacity to choose their own identity, and that society …

Exploring How J. David Velleman’S Theory Of Mutual Interpretability Affects Our Personal Identity And Self-Understanding, Felipe A.Z. Peterson

CMC Senior Theses

How do we understand ourselves? How do we relate with others? How do we build communities? These are some questions David Velleman’s theory of mutual interpretability appears to answer. In Foundations For Moral Relativism, Velleman argues that self-understanding is interlinked with one’s ability to understand others; in other words, with one’s ability to be mutually interpretable. However, being mutually interpretable requires that a person share some set of beliefs or a perceptional framework with another person that would allow the two to interact successfully with one another. Thus, communities are simply a collection of individuals whose shared beliefs …

Buscando La Identidad Nacional Española En La Novela Castilla, Amy Brownstein

Pitzer Senior Theses

Esta tesina examina cómo la novela Castilla, escrita por José Martínez Ruiz (Azorín) ilustra la búsqueda de una identidad española al principio del siglo XX, empleando las teorías freudianas de la melancólica, las teorías de Henri Bergson sobre el índole del tiempo y las aproximaciones al fenómeno de la modernidad. En el año 1898, España perdió su posición imperial y esta novela explora el estado de la sociedad española en consecuencia de este cambio. Por examinar las tradiciones españolas y la literatura del Siglo de Oro desde la perspectiva de la modernidad, Azorín revela una identidad española esencial que …