History Commons^™

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques Of Citizenship Politics In Northeast India, Samarth Vachhrajani

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques of Citizenship Politics in Northeast India studies the spatial and legal instruments through which Hindu Nationalism and its political front, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), operates in Northeast India. I document the means through which authoritarian power has been introduced into a democratic structure of governance. Emphasizing the role of architecture and spatial knowledge, I attend to how the violence of disenfranchisement and dispossession is legitimized under the force of law.

For this, Chapter 1, entitled 'Legislating Containment,' turns to the legal instrument of citizenship and studies the Goalpara detention center and multi-purpose criminal …

Houses Built For Gods: Articulations Of Urban Hokora In Kyoto, Steele Engelmann

Anthropology Undergraduate Honors Theses

Amidst the urban landscape of Kyoto, Japan, there are thousands of hokora, small neighborhood shrines. This study uses social theories of pilgrimage and space to examine the articulation of hokora, community, and personal desire. As sites of local pilgrimage, hokora form networks of communal, but also individual, aspirations across the urban spiritual landscape of the city. This thesis argues that communities are connected to the larger social structures of Kyoto through hokora. As such, neighborhoods are reproduced and displayed through their hokora’s entanglements with the urban, social, and religious landscapes of Kyoto. Therefore, this study deploys an ethnographic approach to …

Pompeiian Mill-Bakeries: Spatial Organization And Social Interaction, Madeleine Rubin

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines bread production and the daily lives of those who worked in mill-bakeries during the first century CE. Bread was the staple food across the ancient Mediterranean; however, there is little textual evidence about those who produced the bread that fed the Roman Empire. The most significant body of evidence relating to the lives of mill-bakers is the archaeological remains of mill-bakeries from the city of Pompeii, preserved by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. This thesis analyzes the spatial organization of bread production within these mill-bakeries and applies the methodologies of spatial syntax – a …

Georgia Ghosts: History, Folklore, And The Roots Of The Southern Gothic, Katherine M. Mcdowell

Master's Projects

There is something quintessentially human about ghost stories, yet particular regions tend to be more powerfully associated with haunted folktales than others. One of the regions is the southeastern United States. In fact, these oral traditions appear to have influenced the area's best-known literary subgenre: the Southern Gothic.

Why is the South considered haunted? Are there particular qualities in historical events that make them more likely to engender ghost stories? What makes the South's folkloric spirits so powerful that they appear even in modern literature? Most of all, what connects the region's history and folklore with the Southern Gothic? By …

Accounting For The Gift: Theology And Ethics In Accounting, Daniel Sebastian

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Accounting is often assumed to be a neutral presentation of the facts of economic activities and actions. Its double-entry system means that it is always in balance and comports to the rigor of mathematical formulas, and it is taken to be a matter of empirical counting that lends it certainty as well. The dissertation argues that this description of accounting is inadequate. Accounting is better seen as a political tool and technology for producing trust that can help resolve social conflicts. As such, accounting is not value-neutral but carries within it a particular sociality that has moral implications. These moral …

Culturally And Socially Responsive Teacher Professional Learning At The American Museum Of Natural History, Jessica Correa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project consists of a series of professional learning sessions to support teachers in their implementation of Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education (CR-SE) using the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) as a resource and case study. Through the lens of Historically Responsive Literacy, the series also seeks to reestablish social science as a critical element of natural history for teachers. This series can help teachers see the museum as not only a place to explore life and physical science, but also a place to explore identity, social/emotional development, cultural studies and American History. The project includes resources and directions for …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

The Implications Of Waste Streams At Camp Au Train, Timothy J. Maze

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Archaeological remains from Camp Au Train provide an opportunity to understand sanitation methods during its use as a Civilian Conservation Corps camp and later used to house German Prisoners of War during World War II. Seven refuse features from this camp were excavated and their contents linked to functional locations within the camp in order to reconstruct waste streams across the site and to observe how military aspects of sanitation were implemented by an organization infamous for its emphasis on cleanliness, order, and hygiene. While the importance of sanitation is often mentioned by historians and archaeologists in research of these …

The Unseen River And Infrastructural Silences: The Santa Ana River And The Ontology Of Floods, Cooper Lennon Crane

Pomona Senior Theses

This article discusses the history of land development and infrastructure along the Santa Ana River in Southern California. The river plays a significant role in the landscape of many of Southern California’s cities and urban geographies but has been relatively underdiscussed in literature. This article approaches the river using a combination of historic ethnography and sociocultural theory to unpack the meanings of the infrastructure of the river and its relation to Southern Californians. From these meanings, the article places the river in context with environmental politics, urban development, and water management issues in California today. The article argues that the …