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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Queering Storytelling: Challenging Normative Storytelling Methodology And Building A Queer Approach To Documentary Filmmaking, Ruben Schneiderman May 2024

Queering Storytelling: Challenging Normative Storytelling Methodology And Building A Queer Approach To Documentary Filmmaking, Ruben Schneiderman

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Honors Projects

As representations of queer people on screen grow, so too has the violence for queer folks at the margins. This project looks at four documentaries that cover key moments in LGBTQ history to see how filmmaking methodologies and choices can further the harms of institutional violence. Key themes include homonormative and assimilationist representations in film, the formation of a reductive cultural memory of queer politics, and the obscuring of the global crises of AIDS. Through an analysis of these films, I argue for the formation of queer documentary methodologies that are grounded in the ideas put forward by queer theorists …


Making The Revolution: The Young Lords And The Creation Of A New Puerto Rican Identity, Jaylynn M. Rodriguez May 2023

Making The Revolution: The Young Lords And The Creation Of A New Puerto Rican Identity, Jaylynn M. Rodriguez

Sociology Honors Projects

In this paper, I provide a critique of the Young Lords by dissecting how the Young Lords shifted Puerto Rican identity from an assimilationist perspective to a politicized and decolonial one. Through understanding Puerto Rico (and consequently, Puerto Ricans) as an extension of what Anibal Quijano calls the 'coloniality of power’, I argue that the Young Lord’s develop a dichotomy between good vs. bad Puerto Ricans, where good Puerto Ricans are affirmed and legitimized as genuine Puerto Ricans, while bad Puerto Ricans are discredited and excluded from the movement. I identify four archetypes to show how the Young Lords divided …


How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill Apr 2018

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.


Social Media And The Transformation Of The Humanitarian Narrative: A Comparative Analysis Of Humanitarian Discourse In Libya 2011 And Bosnia 1994, Ellen Noble Apr 2013

Social Media And The Transformation Of The Humanitarian Narrative: A Comparative Analysis Of Humanitarian Discourse In Libya 2011 And Bosnia 1994, Ellen Noble

Political Science Honors Projects

Within humanitarian discourse, there is a prevailing narrative: the powerful liberal heroes are saving the helpless, weak victims. However, the beginning of the 21st century marks the expansion of the digital revolution throughout lesser-developed states. Growing access to the Internet has enabled aid recipients to communicate with the outside world, giving them an unprecedented opportunity to reshape discourses surrounding humanitarianism. Through a comparative discourse analysis of Libyan Tweets, 1994 newspaper reports on Bosnia, and 2011 newspaper reports on Libya, this paper analyzes whether aid recipient discourse can resist the dominant humanitarian narrative and if that resistance can influence dominant …


Deciphering A Duality: Understanding Conflicting Standards In Sex & Violence Censorship In U.S. Obscenity Law, Rushabh P. Bhakta May 2012

Deciphering A Duality: Understanding Conflicting Standards In Sex & Violence Censorship In U.S. Obscenity Law, Rushabh P. Bhakta

Political Science Honors Projects

This research examines the division in US obscenity law that enables strict sex censorship while overlooking violence. By investigating the social and legal development of obscenity in US culture, I argue that the contemporary duality in obscenity censorship standards arose from a family of forces consisting of faith, economy, and identity in early American history. While sexuality ingrained itself in American culture as a commodity in need of regulation, violence was decentralized from the state and proliferated. This phenomenon led to a prioritization of suppressing sexual speech over violent speech. This paper traces the emergence this duality and its source.


With Heart-Strings Attached: Funding Decisions As Identity Work In Nonprofit Organizations, Jonathan L. Cole Apr 2012

With Heart-Strings Attached: Funding Decisions As Identity Work In Nonprofit Organizations, Jonathan L. Cole

Sociology Honors Projects

Resource dependency theory states that nonprofit organizations’ acceptance of public monies is acceptance of government control. Through detailed grants, government agencies can enact their priorities through willing or unwilling nonprofit organizations that need government grants to survive. To complicate the extant literature on nonprofit autonomy, this study uses an expansion of Viviana Zelizer’s connected lives theory (2005) to ask, How do nonprofits select sources of funding for specific services in reference to their relationship with granting agencies? Using qualitative interview methods the study concludes that nonprofits are agents in relationships with government grant agencies, and that nonprofits use funding decisions …


Language In The Name Of National Security: The Transformation Of Arabic Language Instruction In U.S. Institutions Of Higher Education, Evelyn Daugherty Jun 2011

Language In The Name Of National Security: The Transformation Of Arabic Language Instruction In U.S. Institutions Of Higher Education, Evelyn Daugherty

Sociology Honors Projects

Government designation of Arabic as a “strategic language” following WWII transformed Arabic language instruction in U.S. institutions of higher education. Funding from the government created a shift away from teaching students to read and translate classical Arabic for academic purposes and toward teaching modern varieties of the language for communication. I employ a three-pronged institutional analysis that takes into account the role of government, the role of professional associations, and the role of individual instructors in the redefinition of norms governing Arabic language instruction during the past seventy years. I find that coercive pressure stemming from government interest affected Arabic …


A Rock Strikes Back: Women's Struggles For Equality In The Development Of The South African Constitution, Thuto Seabe Thipe May 2010

A Rock Strikes Back: Women's Struggles For Equality In The Development Of The South African Constitution, Thuto Seabe Thipe

Political Science Honors Projects

In 1991, South African women’s organisations formed the Women's National Coalition (WNC) to identify and advocate for women's primary needs in the post-apartheid Constitution. The outcome of this advocacy was South Africa’s adoption, in 1996, of one of the most comprehensive protections of gender and sexuality rights of any national constitution. I argue that the WNC became a key actor in the development of the Constitution by drawing from a tradition of women’s organising in South Africa that emphasised women’s legitimacy in and value to public politics. The WNC rejected masculinist framings of politics and instead demanded that political structures …


The Violences Of Capitalism: Privatization And Land Tenure In Uganda, Minnesota, And Mexico, Nicole S. Kligerman May 2010

The Violences Of Capitalism: Privatization And Land Tenure In Uganda, Minnesota, And Mexico, Nicole S. Kligerman

Latin American Studies Honors Projects

This project analyzes the relationship between land privatization and violence in societies that previously employed non-capitalist land tenure systems. Exploring the cases of the Dakota in Minnesota, the Acholi in Northern Uganda, and indigenous communities in southern Mexico, I examine how the state forcibly incorporated collective land systems into capitalism through a combination of physical, structural, and intra-community violences. This results in the disintegration of previous means of agricultural production and the accompanying community-based cultural systems. Communities resist this process, however, as they battle for natural resource sovereignty and sustainable peace in their homelands.


Beyond Corporatism And Liberalism: State And Civil Society In Cooperation In Nicaragua, Hannah Pallmeyer Jan 2009

Beyond Corporatism And Liberalism: State And Civil Society In Cooperation In Nicaragua, Hannah Pallmeyer

Hispanic Studies Honors Projects

The Nicaraguan state has historically attempted to control Nicaraguan civil society using corporatist and liberal-democratic frameworks. This has created a difficult organizing environment for civil society organizations to struggle for social change. In this thesis, I argue that civil society organizations, operating in 2008 in a corporatist or liberal framework, were less effective in achieving national social change than organizations that worked cooperatively with the state, yet maintained some autonomy. This hypothesis is developed using the case study of three water rights organizations, and is further tested using the case of corporatist-structured Citizen Power Councils, created in 2007.