Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Swipe For More: Digital Sex Education, The Emergence Of Femtech And The Neoliberal Subject In Cairo, Egypt, Marisa Breathwaite

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I approach digital sex education in Cairo, Egypt and how it is navigated by Cairo’s urban elite. The way digital sex education in Cairo is consumed via social media and online courses is touted as “new” by popular media coverage. The content, products and services boast the first of their kind by the creators of the platforms themselves. That middle and upper class Cairene women are talking about sex online and consuming digital sex education content, in visible public forums, is portrayed as a completely novel phenomenon—in other words, platforms like Cairo’s first femtech company, Motherbeing, are …

Moving Through The Violence: Yemeni Migrants And The Reconstruction Of Lifeworlds In Cairo, Jonathan Hearn

Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s thesis is based on an ethnographic study, following the lives of a small number of Yemeni people rebuilding their lives in Cairo. Their displacement is the consequence of many factors not least the outbreak of war in 2014. In response to this, I ask: In the midst of ongoing conflict, how do Yemeni migrants go about reconstructing their lifeworlds in Cairo? That is, to ask how are Yemeni migrants in Cairo responding to the violent disruption of their social realities and what sense are they making of the consequences. The reorganisation of social realities disrupted by conflict means …

Barley As A Human Companion Species - Exploring The Relationship Between Barley And North Atlantic Peoples: 4000 Bc – Ad 1200, Chloe Combs

Theses and Dissertations

Barley (Hordeum vulgare) is an ancient cereal crop originating in the Fertile Crescent approximately 12,000 years ago and is presently one of the most important cereal crops globally. Barley has a long and complex history. This thesis aims to explore one dimension of this history through the lens of human companion species using archaeobotanical data collected from the islands of the North Atlantic from the Neolithic (4,000 BC) to the Norse period (AD 1200).

The School Of SharīʿA Judges: SharīʿA Courts’ Reform And Legal Modernization In Egypt (1907-1927), Yamen Nouh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studied the history of the school of sharīʿa judges (1907-1927) as an essential episode of the reform of Sharīʿa courts in Egypt in the early 20th century. The thesis studied the school in connection with the broader context of legal modernization of the Egyptian legal system. The study explored the institutional, pedagogical, and legal aspects of the reform that the school advocated. The study analyzed the impact of the school’s pedagogy on the practice of the Islamic judiciary and the theoretical conception of Sharīʿa. The study used a significant yet understudied historical source: the judicial press. A comparative …

Imagery In Nasca Cross-Knit Looped Textiles From The Milwaukee Public Museum, Katherine A. Cianciola

Theses and Dissertations

Textiles associated with the Nasca culture (0-650 C.E.) from Peru’s South Coast have been recognized for their complex and colorful ecological, anthropomorphic, and geometric imagery. Little, however, has been written about their three-dimensional cross-knit looping and embroidery. Cross-knit looping produced three-dimensional figures that were part of an elaborate border on clothing and a style specifically associated with the Nasca (Sawyer 1997:24, 27, 41, 97, 131-132, 136 for example). This thesis focuses on Nasca textiles primarily from the Malcolm K. Whyte (Accession Numbers: 18046 and 20517) collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) and includes three-dimensional cross-knit looping of ecological and …

Squaring The Circle: Talking About Accessibility At Discovery World, Ariel Butler

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, museums have made a concerted effort to consider accessibility and the needs of the broader community in their programming. This thesis analyzes how Discovery World, a science and technology museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, can better accommodate diverse learning styles and disabilities in their 2023 Summer Camp program through a case study of implementation. The thesis analyzes the impact of the plan to improve accessibility and inclusivity in the classroom for children in grades 1-8, focusing on how staff conceptualize the ideal setup and aims to provide valuable insights to enhance inclusivity and accessibility in informal educational settings. …

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 …

“Artifacts Of Stone And Pottery”: An Analysis Of The Linn Site (Ias U-28) Collection At The Milwaukee Public Museum, Anastasia Tesfaye Demaio

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on an understudied archaeological collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) from the Linn Site (IAS U-28) in southern Illinois, acquired in the 1930s. Using archaeological methods and archival research, the research aims to characterize the collection's physical attributes and temporal and period affiliations and to contextualize it. This is accomplished through detailed analyses of ceramics and other materials, as well as comparison with other collections from the Linn Site, demonstrating the value of collections-based research. The significance of the research lies in utilizing unstudied materials as archaeological sites disappear. The research highlights ethical tensions and interpersonal …

Ghost Town Living: Presenting The Past On Youtube, Alannah Ray

Theses and Dissertations

Cerro Gordo is a privately-owned historic mining town in California, and the YouTube channel Ghost Town Living, with over 1.6 million followers, documents the current owner's goal of preserving and restoring the town for visitation. This thesis explores how Cerro Gordo and Ghost Town Living can be understood together through the lenses of museology, digital anthropology, and archaeology. Based on a site visit, analysis of digital media, and interviews with staff and people connected to the site, I explore the intersection between heritage sites and social media, and more widely, changing perceptions of American heritage, including who has the right …

Deconstructing Decapitation In Late Roman Gloucestershire And Oxfordshire, Uk, Shaheen M. Christie

Theses and Dissertations

The Roman conquest in Britain (AD 43) led to significant changes in indigenous settlements and agricultural systems, population diversity, social organization, economic activities, and funerary traditions. Archaeological investigations of burials from the first to fifth centuries AD in Britain have revealed a complex array of burial treatments and attitudes toward the dead, including decapitation burials, which are the most common form of differential burial represented in this period. Traditional interpretations of these burials have included infanticide, punitive execution, trophy taking, fear of the dead, and veneration practices. This project investigates a sample of decapitation burials from Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire dating …

Navigating Complexity Of Serving Displaced Communities: A Study Of Yemeni Community-Based Organizations In Egypt, Alya Mohammed Al-Mahdi

Theses and Dissertations

Forced displacement is a global crisis that poses challenges for nations like Egypt. Despite international NGO support, escalating displaced individuals have overwhelmed existing capacities. Refugee Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) have emerged as a natural response from the communities themselves to bridge the gap between the state and NGOs and the refugee community. However, CBOs in Egypt face challenges that impact their operation and continuity. Through qualitative research, this study aims to explore the experience of the Yemeni CBOs. Through interviews with seven people from six CBOs conducted through field visits and online calls, this research uncovers the dynamics of Yemeni CBOs …

Structure V-1: A Mississippian Mica Workshop In Kershaw County, South Carolina, John Mclellan Dodge

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reanalyzes the pottery assemblage of Structure V-1 at the Mulberry site (38KE12). Because Structure V-1 was originally hypothesized to be evidence of a late seventeenth century occupation at the Mulberry site, the framework I use for this research focuses on identifying evidence of community coalescence after Mulberry’s initial occupation ended. However, new evidence from both the pottery and radiocarbon analysis conclusively dates the structure to around the sixteenth century Mulberry I phase. With that new date in mind, I explore the role mica craft production within Structure V-1 might have had in linking the community at Mulberry to …

A User Needs Assessment For Snowvision/World Engraved, Sam Toren Mcdorman

Theses and Dissertations

Paddle stamped pottery has a long history in what we now call the southeastern United States. From 100-800 CE, intricate curvilinear designs were carved into paddles and impressed in ceramic vessels in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Called Swift Creek Complicated Stamped, this type has been long recognized by archaeologists for its uniqueness. Artists Bettye J. Broyles and Frankie Snow reconstructed hundreds of paddle designs from sherds and modern archaeologists use these designs to study the movements and connections of the people who made the pottery. The Snowvision team has developed a machine learning computer vision algorithm to …

A Paleoethnobotanical Comparison Of Mortuary And Village Langford Tradition Sites In Northern Illinois, Tania Lee Milosavljevic

Theses and Dissertations

Archaeologists working in northern Illinois have conducted research on Langford Tradition (ca AD 1100-1450) sites for more than a century. The last 40 years have seen increasing methodological sophistication providing for a relatively nuanced understanding of food technology and resource use. Paleoethnobotany has provided one way to observe the diversity of plant use among Langford site occupants. Using standard paleoethnobotanical practices, plant macroremain from the Robinson Reserve Site (11CK2) are analyzed. The results of the plant macroremain analysis are then compared to existing floral data from the Washington Irving Site (11K52). This research investigates whether site functionality is distinguishable between …

Life Styles, Death Styles, And Posthumous Portraiture: Elite Female Burials In Iron Age Europe, Emily Ryan Stanton

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the grave good assemblages in 222 burial contexts from HallstattD (c. 600-400 BCE) tumulus cemeteries in west-central Europe to test the hypothesis that certain combinations of grave goods were associated with particular categories of persons based on an intersectional marking of gender, status, age and social role. The primary data set consists of high-status graves – male, female, ungendered/pre-gendered subadults, and those of indeterminate gender – in the Heuneburg interaction sphere in southwest Germany. The results of this analysis are compared to a secondary data set of comparable burials from other west-central European locations, to determine whether …

The First Peoples Of The Lower Rio Grande Valley Of Texas And Northern Mexico: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Defining The Paleoindian Period, Starr Elena Hein

Theses and Dissertations

The archaeological record of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas and northern Mexico is poorly understood. There are few excavated sites at which Paleoindian cultural materials have been found, and in these cases the context is uncertain. In order to better understand the Paleoindian period, projectile points that reside in private collections are documented, and the time period they are assigned to, based on absolute dating from surrounding regions, is used to cross-date local materials. This is limited by the lack of named typology for Upper Paleolithic materials in the Americas. Clovis is well represented in the Lower Rio …

Narrating & Living With Loss: Towards An Ethnography Of Grief, Fayrouz Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

Through this paper, I seek to approach grief through how it is lived, the nexus between loss, and the sought-for physical abstractions through memory, objects, and materials to live with/despite such a loss. This paper is a phenomenological and ethnographic research project on the curatory rituals and practices that individuals employ in keeping lost loved ones alive in their everyday. I explore grief through a multidisciplinary and multimodal conceptualization rather than simply through cultural and social practices such as burial and mortuary rituals. The research follows the grief narratives of different individuals in Egypt in inquiring about the objects, memories, …

Privacy Perceptions Transformation In Cairo’S Home Designs - A Case Study: Gated Communities, Yasmine Esmat

Theses and Dissertations

The infrastructure of gated communities in Egypt’s New Cairo and 6th of October cities have become the new normal. The streets bordered by fences, walls, and the occasional gate, formed when two or more gated communities face each other, dominate the urban landscape today (Kostenwein, 2021). Nowadays, it is highly common to see billboards advertising new gated communities everywhere on the roads and bridges. Gated communities offer various privileges, and one of them is privacy. Taking Cairo city with its several gated communities as a case study, the research focuses on the transformation of privacy perception for Cairo’s home designs …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Choosing To Come Back: Second-Generation Egyptians Returning As Social Change Agents, Hajar Khalil

Theses and Dissertations

Research has found that upon visiting their parents’ homeland, second-generation immigrants were able to gain a better understanding of where they came from, allowing them to reflect upon their own lives in respect to their family history (Marschall, 2017). Some researchers call this journey the ‘self-awakening’ or ‘searching-self’ journey (Christou, 2003). The aim of this research is to understand the process of second-generation Egyptians return journey to their parent(s)’ homeland in order to create social change. The two main questions posed are: 1) How do second-generation Egyptians construct their narrative identity, and 2) How do they conceptualize themselves as social …

The Silent Grave: A Geophysical Investigation Of The Brush Arbor Cemetery In Starkville, Mississippi, Kathryn Cassidy Jean Rayburn

Theses and Dissertations

The Brush Arbor Cemetery is an early-to-late 19th century Black cemetery that was also the meeting place of one of the first Black church congregations in Starkville, Mississippi. The cemetery has suffered greatly from structural violence and degradation. Utilizing Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), this research has revealed important information about the Brush Arbor Cemetery. The results of the GPR survey suggest there are 54 potential unmarked burials in addition to 35 marked burials. The Viewshed analysis suggests that the likely meeting place of the church congregation is in complete view of the white Odd Fellows Cemetery directly across the street. …

Diasporic Women’S Mutability In South Asian Postcolonial Literature, Tasnim S. Halim

Theses and Dissertations

Though Western scholarship tends to homogenize South Asian experiences, researchers and novelists shed light on different classes of South Asian postcolonial and migratory women who experience mutability, or the internal and external changes as a trauma response after British colonial rule ended and the 1947 Partition abruptly fractured national identity. Though this mutability has positive and negative transformative qualities, it also allows women characters the power to remove themselves from cycles of oppression, work towards healing, and transforming their physical bodies from sites of repressed trauma to sites of expression and agency. What binds them is not only their physical …

Blacklash: Phenomenological Hermeneutics In Black Dance, Darvejon A. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

The horrors inflicted on Black bodies, souls, and spirits in the United States during the transatlantic slave trade, the Jim Crow era, and the current era (2023) have a lasting legacy of trauma metabolized through the body and transmuted generationally. Jones uses this data to contextualize the work of Black dance artists as hermeneutic phenomena in which the Black dance artist is a hermeneut tasked with delivering a message of the Black body/spirit complex: “I AM HUMAN. DO NOT KILL ME.” This paper examines how Black dance artists frequently petition for their survival — incessantly subjugated to the interpreter’s empathy, …

Visibility And Intervisibility: A Viewshed Analysis Of The Oneota Component Of The Lake Koshkonong Locality, Rebekah Joy Gansemer

Theses and Dissertations

This research was conducted to analyze the visual relationship between Oneota village sites, Late Woodland habitations, and mound sites during a period of time that saw all of these groups living contemporaneously on Lake Koshkonong. My research seeks to not only understand what and who Oneota sites could see on the landscape, but also who might have been able to see them. This research adds to the discussion of Lake Koshkonong Oneota relationships with contemporaneous groups during the 11th-15th centuries.This study focuses on four sites within the Lake Koshkonong Locality that date to the Oneota period: Crescent Bay Hunt Club …

Nepantla – Examining The Sacred Middle Ground Of Syncretism, Jose Luis Garcia Iii

Theses and Dissertations

As a result of historical traumas caused by the Spanish invasion of Mexico, the autonomy of its Indigenous peoples has been replaced by a Eurocentric identifier based on a colonial language and theologies. Because of the vastness surrounding the Nahua pantheon, Spanish and Church officials relied on guided syncretism as means of correcting their methodologies in converting Mexico’s Indigenous population. This thesis examines syncretism as a process of religious mixing and its residual cultural changes that affected Mexico’s Indigenous populations. This ethnographic research argues that syncretism as an overarching, universalized term is insufficient to describe this process in the Chalma …

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 …

Monitoring Welfare In Captive Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes) Using Individual Positional Behavior And Substrate Use Profiles, Joseph Lara

Theses and Dissertations

The welfare of captive chimpanzees partly depends on the structural features present in their enclosure. An individual’s manner of expressing positional behaviors depends on these environmental characteristics and may be reflective of their physical and mental health. This thesis seeks to further the scientific understanding of the relationships between positional behavior, substrate use and captive chimpanzee welfare. In pursuit of this goal, I designed and installed a novel vertical climbing aid onto a climbable platform structure within an enclosure at the chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimp Haven, in an effort to encourage mobility and vertical space use in the enclosure’s residents. Additionally, …

The Role Of Fake And Fraudulent Objects Within The Museum Context: A Case Study Of Tiwanaku Ceramics In The Milwaukee Public Museum Collection, Armando Manresa

Theses and Dissertations

During the 20th century thousands, if not millions, of fake and fraudulent artifacts made their way into museum collections around the world through purchases, donations, and museum exchanges. The growth in Pre-Columbian collections, in particular, was precipitated by the many archaeological discoveries during that time as well as the continued looting of known and unrecorded sites across Latin America. As authentic items flooded the collectors’ market and from there into art and natural history museums, a mass-scale industry in fake and fraudulent artifacts arose to meet the demand. These items were primarily created for tourists, but some artists became so …

The Dehumanizing Violence Index: An Old World/New World Comparison Of Overkill In Archaeological Contexts, Paul Moriarity

Theses and Dissertations

THE DEHUMANIZING VIOLENCE INDEX: AN OLD WORLD/NEW WORLD COMPARISON OF OVERKILL IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXTS

Paul J. Moriarity

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2023Under the Supervision of Professor Bettina Arnold

Extreme forms of violent behavior appear in various cultural contexts throughout human history. This study compares so-called “overkill” sites from the late Central European Neolithic and the Pueblo Period of the American Southwest to develop a systematic approach to distinguishing between the levels of violence exhibited in overkill assemblages, compare and define possible motivations and choices for extreme violent behavior, and determine whether the purposeful use of extreme violence in temporally and …

Entangled Conquest: A Study Of Cultural Hybridization And Change In Norman Ireland, Sean Mcconnel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis employs entanglement theory and new geophysical macro-analytical methods to

examine the spread of Norman culture in late medieval Ireland. The traditional theories of

Anglo-Norman conquest by mass migration, by military conquest, and by political conquest are

reviewed and compared to a more nuanced theory of Normanization, which suggests that

genetically Irish people, who spoke Irish, practiced Irish law, and pursued Irish interests were

primarily responsible for what is considered "Norman" material culture on the Island. This

dissertation presents the idea that adherence to the English king was a necessary and expedient

action on the part of Irish lords …