Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Weaving Social Change(S) Or Changes Of Weaving? The Ethnographic Study Of Andean Textiles In Cusco And Bolivia, Cristian Terry

Artl@s Bulletin

Through a comparative and multi-sited ethnography in Cusco (Peru) and Bolivia, the article shows how, by mobilizing Andean textiles, local actors are weaving social change(s) while also changing the way of weaving. These two ideas are interwoven: 1) Andean textiles contribute to local population to weave social change(s) by bringing alternative economic opportunities; 2) weaving practices are changing, since new fashionable, industrial, and “hybrid” production has been created and adapted to an urban-oriented/tourist-oriented market which provides money to make the social change(s) possible.

Book Review: Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey Into The Heart Of America, Keith Morton

eJournal of Public Affairs

Book review of James and Deborah Fallows, Our towns: a 100,000 mile journey into the heart of America

Super, Brown And Queer, Carolyn Adams

Capstones

In response to policy seeking to turn back time for marginalized communities, characters and creators - standing at their intersections - are springing into action to change lives in their worlds and ours. Carolyn Adams explores the circumstances surrounding contemporary mainstream representation of women of color and queer superheroes on the big screen and bookshelves alike.

link to capstone: https://www.carolyn-adams.com/writing-updates/capstone

Affect And Manhattan’S West Side Piers, Ricardo J. Millhouse

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Derek P. McCormack (2010) argues, "Affect, is like an atmosphere: it might not be visible, but at any given point it might be sensed ... Emotion, in turn, can be understood as the sociocultural expression of this felt intensity" (643). This paper puts McCormack (2010) and Ben Anderson (2009) into conversation to think through the ways in which atmosphere in relation to affective and emotive life has been conceptualized. I center the affective atmospheres that happen with queer bodies that make New York's west side piers queerly affective. I use "queer bodies" to signal the dis-identification with heteronormativity or binaristic …

Amjambo Africa! (December 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

New American Leaders .............p. 2

Ladder to the Moon Conference p. 3

Appeal from 350 Maine .............p. 3

Asylum Seekers & Work Permits p. 4

Palaver Strings ............................ p. 9

Ikirenga Cy'Intore .................... p. 11

New Deal for New Americans Act .............p. 13

Coffee by Design Supports Arts ..........................p. 18

DACEP & ILAP in Lewiston...... p. 18

Mid Coast New Mainers Group ............................................... p. 19

Housing Scams ......................... p. 19

Metal Storytellers: Reflections Of War Culture In Silverplate B-29 Nose Art From The 509th Composite Group, Terri Wesemann

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Most people are familiar with the Enola Gay—the B-29 that dropped Little Boy, the first atomic bomb, over the city of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Less known are the fifteen Silverplate B-29 airplanes that trained for the mission, that were named and later adorned with nose art. However, in recorded history, the atomic mission overshadowed the occupational folklore of this group. Because the abundance of planes were scrapped in the decade after World War II and most WWII veterans have passed on, all that remains of their occupational folklore are photographs, oral and written histories, some books, …

American And Iraqi Prose Fiction Of The Iraq War: Traumas Of The Self, Traumas Of The Nation, Ghyath Manhel Alkinani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

War is so omnipresent in our contemporary world that the story of war is too important to be left to fiction writers to frame and give meaning for. This dissertation provides an analysis of two dominant patterns in contemporary Iraqi and American prose fictional representations of the Iraq War: the individualistic trauma hero narrative and the nationalistic, collective narrative. I argue that the trauma hero myth that dominates American representations of the Iraq War psychologizes and de-politicizes war experience alienating the victim of trauma by decontextualizing their experience and negating the Other. On the other hand, the sweeping nationalistic narrative …

The Anonymous Web In Adichie’S Americanah, Michelle Jude Gibeault

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Adichie’s Americanah is a novel that elevates anonymous blogging into black cultural performance. The novel follows a young Nigerian, Ifemelu, who arrives in the United States on a student visa and depicts her stressful confrontation with racism in post-slavery America. Through beginning a blog, Ifemelu voices her experiences as a black woman and immigrant in ways that renew the concerns of James Baldwin, an author whom she studies closely. Like Baldwin, her style blends humor and techniques of persuasion that trace to traditional oral folklore. Ifemelu’s success rests partly on Adichie’s construction of her as a character of good ethos, …

Through The Words Of Those Who Have Experienced It: Reading The Whitney Plantation Along Neoslave Narratives, Sarah Payne

Study the South

Recent representations of slavery, however well intentioned, have provoked discussions about who should represent black pain and oppression and what purpose such representations serve. Also evoking such questions are contemporary plantation tours, most of which are white-centered, “moonlight and magnolia” recreations. There have been efforts to represent slavery more accurately at plantations such as Oak Alley, and most notably, the Whitney Plantation, which opened in 2014 in Wallace, Louisiana.

This essay asks how our understanding of the Whitney Plantation, as a representation of slavery, a public history project, and an example of dark tourism, might be affected by reading the …

Amjambo Africa! (November 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Palaver Strings.........................Page 2

Elections ..................................Page 3

Asylum Seeker Update..........Page 3

Mainers Prepare for Winter Page 13

Namory Keita .......................Page 19

Written In Black, White, And Red: An Exploration Of Civilizer Theology In American History, Jeremy Mcginniss

Master's Theses

This paper proposes an extended definition and discusses examples of civilizer theology within the perceptions and practices of white Protestant American Christianity faith traditions. Civilizer theology is defined as a self-referential, self-fulfilling framework actively shaping the expectations, behaviors and practices of societal norms driving cultural practices. Examples are selected as guided by three significant and interdependent dispositions characterizing civilizer theology: cultural decay/moral decline, authority, and violence. This paper hypothesizes theological interpretation, application and exegesis, mediated by the three dispositions, are deliberately applied to support socio-economic, cultural and political ends with the goal of maintaining power structures benefiting a particular group.

How U.S. Government Policy Documents Are Addressing The Increasing National Security Implications Of Artificial Intelligence, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Artificial intelligence is affecting many areas of our lives and governmental policy. National security is one arena in which artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important and controversial role. U.S. Government and military agencies are producing a steadily expanding corpus of publicly available literature on this topic. This literature documents how these agencies have this topic's national security implications historically and currently while also addressing potentially emerging national security issues where artificial intelligence will intersect with national security. This presentation demonstrates examples of the growing variety of publicly available national security artificial intelligence literature while also addressing the implications of …

Western-Constructed Narratives Of Hawai’I, Megan Medeiros

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

Amjambo Africa! (October 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This issue...

Lewiston ..................................Page 2

Mana Abdi

Lewiston High School

Lewiston Adult Education

African Gala.............................Page 9

Candidates Talk Issues ...Page 10/11

Making Evangelicals Great Again? American Evangelicals In The Age Of Trump, Brantley W. Gasaway

Faculty Journal Articles

This article analyzes the ways in which American evangelical Christians have responded to the presidential campaign and presidential administration of Donald Trump, with a particular focus on the faction of politically progressive evangelicals. While over 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump and over 70% continue to support his presidency, progressive evangelicals have vociferously opposed him. This article summarizes the proposals, protests, and petitions of progressive evangelicals with respect to four broad issues: racial justice, immigration, healthcare, and economic policies. Though some conservative and moderate evangelicals have also criticized Trump’s personal behavior and politics, numerous factors hinder their potential partnerships …

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

Bibliography On Suffering, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Domestic Trauma And Imperial Pessimism: The Crisis At Home In Charles Dickens’S Dombey And Son, Katherine E. Ostdiek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In “Domestic Trauma and Imperial Pessimism: The Crisis At Home in Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son,” Katherine Ostdiek discusses Dickens’s representation of violence, grief, and recovery within the Victorian home as a pre-Freudian example of trauma. This comparison not only demonstrates the importance of trauma studies in the nineteenth-century, but more importantly, it thematically focuses empathy for the traumatized on the home. In this novel, Dickens dismisses topics related to the financial and social crises of mid-century Britain in favor of domestic themes that emphasize an idealized structure of the Victorian family. Through her use of trauma theory and …

Suffering And Climate Change Narratives, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Suffering and Climate Change Narratives" Simon C. Estok begins with a brief survey of definitional issues involved with the term “suffering” and argues that there has been a relative lack of theoretical attention to suffering in climate change narratives, whether literary or within mainstream media. Estok shows that suffering, far from being singular, is a multivalent concept that is gendered, classed, raced, and, perhaps above all, pliable. It has social functions. One of the primary reasons for the failure of climate change narratives to effect real changes, Estok argues, is that they often carry the functions of …

The Punctum In History: Representing The M(Other)’S Death In Peter Handke’S A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, Hivren Demir Atay

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article aims to discuss how Handke’s autobiographical narrative, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (1972), stages the writer’s literary project through a neutral account of his mother’s suicide. Telling the story of his mother, who witnessed the Second World War and the nazi regime, Handke narrates the traumatic history of an Austrian town along with his own suffering. Concentrating on his attempt at a distanced language and his questioning of history as an objective fact, the article suggests that Handke’s perception of death and mourning parallels his understanding of the acts of writing and reading. Drawing particularly on Barthes’s concept …

The Different Representation Of Suffering In The Two Versions Of The Vegetarian, Young-Hyun Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “The Different Representation of Suffering in the two versions of The Vegetarian” the author examines how different the representation of suffering in the original and translated versions of The Vegetarian and explores the reasons for this difference. The author in particular refers to representative episodes which the translator’s strategy distorts even the central concepts of suffering in the original work. Her translated version results in critical misrepresentation of suffering and violence in the original version.

Introduction To Suffering, Endurance, Understanding: New Discourses Within Philosophy And Literature, Douglas S. Berman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Literature is generally seen as depicting the lives of human subjects through their unique narratives. And that, while its endpoint may be universal, it is typically grounded in the specificity of a human being (or, occasionally, an animal). Philosophy is tasked with providing the foundational cognitive tools to grasp the meaning of experience for the whole. In Hegelian terms, it unfolds the history of the concept. Yet, as George Steiner, Jacques Derrida, and other recent authors have shown, both philosophy – along with its agonistic cousin, religion -- evoke literary themes, rhetorics, and struggles. Over the past fifty years, Continental …

Amjambo Africa! (September 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue... Maine’s Way of Life................Page 9

ILAP Statement ....................Page 16

Runaway: A History Of Postwar New York In Four Factories, Andy Battle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At midcentury, New York City was among the preeminent manufacturing centers in the United States. Within a generation, this manufacturing economy suffered an extraordinary collapse. Beginning in the 1950s, workers and their unions began to use the term “runaway” to describe factories that pulled up stakes in New York and set them back down in other climes. This dissertation explores the deindustrialization of New York City through case studies of “runaway” plants, or factories that left New York for the American South or abroad between the years 1945 and 1975.

In general, the manufacturers that remained in New York at …

Infinity Wars: Post 9/11 Superhero Films And American Empire, Peter J. Bruno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the last two decades, superhero films have accounted for some of the most popular and financially lucrative films of all time. This thesis analyzes some of the aesthetic and ideological dimensions of various superhero films following their post 9/11 boom. Beginning with America’s response to the events of 9/11 and a subsequent retreat into a Manichean world of good versus evil, I introduce the term “empirical reality” in order to account for the ways daily American life is shielded from the worst effects of U.S. foreign policy. On screen this manifests by perpetuating the myth of the “clean war” …

Cyborgs For Environmental Justice: East Asian American Stories From The 1991 People Of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, Lisa Ng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this paper is threefold: to serve as an oral history archive of the East Asian American experience at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to analyze the role of East Asian Americans in the Environmental Justice Movement (EJM), and to fill an ideological and political vacuum that exists in East Asian American communities. This work analyses the experiences of East Asian Americans who were present at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit--an event scholars have attributed to igniting the EJM. The paper argues that East Asian Americans act as “Cyborgs”—both as their ascribed …

On The Margins, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Words As Weapons And Wisdom, Barbara Paige

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement were two seminal eras in American history. The Renaissance also referred to as the New Negro Movement was a literary artistic, and cultural movement, centered in Harlem in which writers produced large bastions of literary works. African descended people began to identify with their African past and intellectuals adopted Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist methodologies to overcome oppression. Their efforts laid a foundation for the Civil Rights movement. The Black Arts Movement, an era of intense literary artistic activism begun with the assassination of Malcolm X. Artist/intellectuals responded to a more hostile environment …

Amjambo Africa! (August 2019), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Welcome Feast........................Page 8

My Life as a Refugee ............Page 11 by Veronica Kaluta

Wedding of Irene Yao & Romeo Adji....................Page 13

Licentious Legends: A Folklore Podcast, Alexandra L. Haynes

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Licentious Legends was created out of a need to both understand and educate about sexual contemporary legends; not just what they are and what defines them, but the effect that they have on those who experience them. The purpose of this podcast is not to shame, but to take what has been found and educate about the joys and dangers of these legends. These legends range from the everyday (such as "The Hook"), to legends about a young man killing himself with a plunger. In an effort to gather as many examples as they could, Faye interviewed several of their …