Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

I Cannot Tell Your Lie: Alternate And Dominant Narratives Of Slavery At Mount Vernon, Virginia, Chelsea Elise Hansen

Honors Projects

This project explores divergent narratives of slavery at the Mount Vernon plantation in Virginia. Employees construct the dominant history from “hard” evidence. However, descendants of people enslaved at Mount Vernon tell alternate oral narratives that complicate the dominant story. First, I recount seven descendant ancestry narratives. Next, I analyze the West Ford debate, when Ford descendants and staff contested an enslaved Ford ancestor’s paternity. Lastly, I deconstruct the politics over building a monument in the slave burial ground. The common thread is that Mount Vernon embodies a struggle between an institution and descendants over how to remember a fragmented ...

Pedagogía De Hablantes De Herencia: Implicaciones Para El Entrenamiento De Instructores Al Nivel Universitario, Lina M. Reznicek-Parrado

Theses, Dissertations, Student Research: Modern Languages and Literatures

This study researches the differences in pedagogical needs between learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language (FL learners) and learners of Spanish as a Heritage Language (HL learners) at the university level. By using the UNL Modern Languages and Literatures Department as an illustrative case and based on an analysis of the Heritage Language student profile in the context of the United States, this study seeks to explore arguments in favor of providing training for university-level instructors of Spanish that responds to the specific pedagogical needs of Heritage Language Learners.

The relevancy of this study is not only based on ...

Science Fiction And The Myth Of Trajectory Evolution, Jocelyn D. Pickreign

The Macalester Review

Stephen Jay Gould first proposed the idea of “iconographies of progress.” Today, one of the most prominent forms of progress iconography is the science fiction story. Science fiction as a genre frequently portrays evolution as a linear trajectory of increasing complexity, and in doing so, furthers a worldview that is not unlike the pre-Darwin understanding of human beings as both the center and the pinnacle of the natural world.

A Turkish Spring Even If Different From The Arab Spring, Ahmed E. Souaiaia

Ahmed E SOUAIAIA

The wide-spreading protest movement in Turkey is bringing up the irresistible analogy: Taksim Square is for Turkey what Tahrir Square is for Egypt. Considering that Tahrir Square events were the extension of the protest movement that started it all from Tunisia, it follows that the turmoil in Turkey is similar to the so-called Arab Spring. But most observers and media analysts are dismissing Taksim Square movement arguing that Turkey’s uprising is not similar to the Arab Spring because Erdoğan and his party are democratically elected and that Erdoğan has governed over a period of unprecedented economic prosperity.

Cultivating Change: Women's Involvement In A Brazilian Seaweed Collective, Wren Brennan

Honors Projects

Increased tourism, depleted wild fish populations, and land reassignment have caused socio-environmental changes in a Brazilian artisanal fishing community. This paper examines the implementation of a seaweed cultivation project and the causes behind dwindling local support and management of the project. I argue that the success of the seaweed project hinges on women’s increasing involvement as participants and leaders. The project has improved the availability and value of communal resources and lessened habitually gendered labor divisions; as a result, women have begun to elevate their social status and shift the community’s main livelihood from fishing to sustainable aquaculture ...

The Railroad's Effect On Racial And Gendered Consumption Practice In Nacogdoches County, East Texas: A Case Study Of Melrose, Tx, Evadney Cooper

Undergraduate Research Conference

This project is an in depth look on the disproportionate lifestyles of black and white households during Nineteenth Century East Texas, from women's shopping records

Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School, 2003 - 2013, Stephen W. Silliman

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School began in 2003 as a cooperative effort between Anthropology Professor Stephen Silliman and the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, a Native American community in southeastern Connecticut. It uses a six-credit summer archaeological field course to achieve four objectives set within a model of community-engaged scholarship.

Review: Barbara L. Voss And Elenor Conlin Cassella, Editors. The Archaeology Of Colonialism: Intimate Encounters And Sexual Effects., John P. Mccarthy

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

No abstract

The Spirits Are My Neighbors: Women And The Rab Cult In Dakar, Senegal, Rachel Mueller

Honors Projects

The spirit world is alive and real in Senegal. From jealous lover spirits to benevolent protector spirits, these otherworldly beings have a direct impact on the daily lives of many Senegalese. In this study, I focus on the rab spirit. I argue that the spirit world is a tangible reality in Senegal. Focusing on the Lébou ethnic group, I examine the rab cult as one dimension of the spirit world, and look specifically at its relationship to gender. Analysis of the cult establishes the continued significance of this traditional African religion in the face of a globalizing society. Additionally, it ...

Conflicting Discourses Of Participatory Postdevelopment In Community-Led Total Sanitation, Shaina M. Pomerantz Kasper

Honors Projects

The development community perceives the current “sanitation crisis” to be remedied with water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives. While the participatory process of Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) incorporates community involvement, it still imposes globalized sanitation norms and a dominant external worldview. Using discourse analysis of the CLTS handbook, I argue that CLTS structurally advocates for continuing local hierarchies, promotes external technologies, enforces the power of outside development facilitation, and creates a new sanitation paradigm. Communities continue to resist sanitation development such as CLTS because of its top-down structure. I conclude by offering policy recommendations to improve the CLTS process.

Beyond Hippies And Rabbit Food: The Social Effects Of Vegetarianism And Veganism, Anna Lindquist

Honors Program Theses

Depending on the actors involved and the environment, vegetarians and vegans may either be met with acceptance, tolerance, or hostility when they divulge their dietary practices. By interviewing vegetarians and vegans about these social interactions, this study has sought to conceptualize the subjects’ treatment as well as their feelings and actions. Throughout the study ethnographic methods have been used, as well as identity and social deviance theory, and historical information about the evolution of vegetarianism. All this has led to a better understanding of how vegetarians and vegans balance their alternative lifestyle with mainstream social norms.

Beyond Hippies And Rabbit Food: The Social Effects Of Vegetarianism And Veganism, Anna Lindquist

Comparative Sociology Theses

Depending on the actors involved and the environment, vegetarians and vegans may either be met with acceptance, tolerance, or hostility when they divulge their dietary practices. By interviewing vegetarians and vegans about these social interactions, this study has sought to conceptualize the subjects’ treatment as well as their feelings and actions. Throughout the study ethnographic methods have been used, as well as identity and social deviance theory, and historical information about the evolution of vegetarianism. All this has led to a better understanding of how vegetarians and vegans balance their alternative lifestyle with mainstream social norms.

Humanitarianism And The "National Order Of Things": Examining The Routinized Refugee Response In Eastern Cameroon, Angela Butel

Honors Projects

Despite growing academic interest in refugees and international humanitarian responses, the influx of refugees from the Central African Republic into eastern Cameroon, ongoing since 2005, has received little attention in scholarship or even in popular media. Though we know much about what can go wrong in large-scale, politicized refugee crises, less is known about how the refugee response works in more “everyday” refugee situations to effectively address the needs of refugees and their host communities. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted among humanitarian NGOs during a semester in Cameroon, I examine the implications for the host country of the routinized response ...

Revenge, Guilt, And Greed: Feast Scenes And Political Order In Shakespearian Society, Ashley Vanderweele

Academic Symposium of Undergraduate Scholarship

Feasts are a time of community unity, a time of imposed order even if chaos abounds. Feasts can be for celebratory reasons, they can be of a religious nature, and as Samuel Pepys points out, they can help mend rifts among people at odds with one another. Even when feasts have celebratory or religious purposes, they may also involve political matters. A monarch, for example, may host a feast to celebrate his wedding, but, while celebrating the joyous royal union, the guests are also celebrating the political union of two kingdoms. Many times a king marries to strengthen his kingdom ...

Proxy Citizenship And Transnational Advocacy: Colombian Activists From Putumayo To Washington, Dc, Winifred Tate

Faculty Scholarship

Proxy citizenship is the mechanism through which certain rights of citizenship—the ability to make claims for redress to a state—are conferred on activists through relationships with NGOs. Focusing on advocacy from within the policy process, U.S. and Colombian NGOs channeled political legitimacy and rights of access to Colombians, whose claims emerge from the experience of governance as articulated through testimony. This process, and its roots within the shared history of the Putumayo region of Colombia and Washington, DC, reveals emerging practices of citizenship claims and transnational political participation.

Post-Conflict Development In Northern Uganda: The Importance Of Holistically Addressing Sexual And Gender-Based Violence, Hannah E. Durick

University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects

No abstract provided.

Native American Projectile Points: What Stories Can They Tell Us?, Katelyn S. Scott

Honors Projects

Native American Projectile Points are ubiquitous throughout the United States and have been an important icon of indigenous peoples of North America and their past. This paper explores what projectile points can tell us about the people who made and used them, the history of collecting projectile points, and the challenges associated with projectile point research and collection management. The focus of this research is a collection of Native American projectile points in the Tate Archives and Special Collections in The Ames Library at Illinois Wesleyan University. In addition, the paper also describes the process used to catalog the collection ...

From The Philippines To The Field Museum: A Study Of Ilongot (Bugkalot) Personal Adornment, Sarah E. Carlson

Honors Projects

Abstract: The Philippine Collection at The Field Museum contains over 10,000 objects, including hundreds of objects of personal adornment. As an intern at The Field Museum in the summer of 2012, I got to experience the collection first-hand and began examining six ornaments from the Ilongot peoples of the Philippines. At the beginning of the 20^th century, the Ilongot wore ornaments to visually communicate social meaning about themselves, their villages, and their relationships. The Ilongot were a headhunting society with fearsome warriors who beheaded their enemies. These hunters wore delicately crafted earrings and headdresses to mark their masculinity ...

Oral History Curation In An Academic Library, Barbara Lewis, Mary Beth Isaacson, Kimberly Nordon, Alexandra Curran

Special & Digital Collections Faculty and Staff Publications

This four-person roundtable will discuss the different methods and applications that are currently being used by the University of South Florida’s (USF) Oral History Program to curate, present, and promote oral histories. This program, which is based out of the USF Tampa Library, has explored several different delivery models, both traditional and nontraditional. We will examine the digital platforms used by the oral history program, Omeka, LibGuides, and an internally developed media player, and their accessibility and usability for research and teaching. These two platforms provide different structural and organizational models, thus allowing for different levels of curation. In ...

Singing To The Spirits: Cultural And Spiritual Traditions Embodied In The Native American Gourd Dance, Alicia M. Gummess

Honors Projects

In this paper, I provide a brief overview of the history and practice of the Native American Gourd Dance, a traditional ceremony integrating music and dance practiced by Gourd Dance societies in Southern Oklahoma. I examine the reasons behind its popularity and spread to other regions of North America, including the Southwest and the Northern Plains. Gourd Dance performances usually occur in the context of larger ceremonial gatherings called pow wows, in which Native American communities hold dances to celebrate their values and practice their religious beliefs and cultural traditions. Pow wows feature many traditional and more modern Native American ...