Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons^™

Materiality Of Traumatic Experience And The Limits Of Representation In Hassan Bani Ameri’S Gonjeshkha Behesht Ra Mifahmand (Sparrows Understand Heaven), Maryam Ghodrati

Emerson Authors, Researchers, & Creators

This paper examines the materialization of trauma as both a narrative and embodied phenomenon in Hassan Bani Ameri’s 2006 novel, Gonjeshkha Behesht ra Mifahmand, using contemporary narrative and trauma theory. The postmodernist narrative, told from the perspective of a photojournalist, reconstructs events surrounding the death of a celebrated Iran-Iraq War commander. I argue that traumatic truths resist full integration into conventional frameworks of understanding, evident in the novel’s non-linear, fragmented narrative and its shift from visual realism to confessional surrealism in an ending that challenges traditional storytelling and historical documentation. By vividly simulating the sensory processing of traumatic memories, the …

#35 Understanding In Lao, Victoria Gill

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This piece is a celebration, an interpretation, and translation of Lao words and of the Lao language as poetry. This poem dissects and discuss the differences between how the word "understand" is conceptualized and embodied in the Lao language versus English. Further, it shows how in Lao, there are even deeper nuances between what it means "to know" versus "to understand" in Lao.

Heteropoesia: Basil Bunting’S Translation Of Obayd Zākānī’S Mush-O Gorbeh, Emadeddin Naghipour

Languages and Cultures Publications

This article studies the role of ‘selving’ and creative interpretation in literary translation. Specifically, it analyzes one of Basil Bunting’s successful translations of Obayd Zākānī’s Mush-o Gorbeh, a picturesque and catchy poem in rhyme and rhythm, laden with animal characters, which was considered to be both a masterpiece of children’s literature and a very important political satire. Bunting, a translator of Persian classical poems into English, had both political and poetic missions as a spy and an up-and-coming poet. This study turns to the theories of translation by Steiner, Benjamin, and Bassnett, among others, to show the challenges of translating …

Research Reimagined: The Dissertation-To-Book Journey And Building A Scholar-To-Author Presence, Seema Kumar

Master's Projects

This capstone project, completed for a second master's degree after a Ph.D., discusses aspects of transforming the doctoral dissertation on digital versus manual mediums in fashion design into a research monograph book proposal for academic publication. It reflects on a publisher's requirements and the process, including de-thesizing the dissertation, planning the book's structure, rewriting sample chapters to improve flow and readability, and creating a table of contents that demonstrates the work's development into a publishable book rather than a dissertation. Another part of the project includes developing an author platform through blog posts and platforms such as Substack, preparing the …

Rescued From Oblivion: Antoni Benaiges And Transgressive Pedagogy In El Maestro Que Prometió El Mar (Font, 2023), Parker Lawson

Funded Scholarship

Patricia Font’s historical drama, El maestro que prometió el mar (2023), focuses on the pedagogy of Antoni Benaiges (1903–1936), a Republican educator who served for two years at a school in rural Burgos prior to being assassinated just days after the Nationalist uprising in July 1936. Focused also on the efforts to recuperate the legacy of Benaiges, whose body was deposited in a mass grave and has never been identified, the film employs a dual timeline narrative, telling interconnected stories in the past and the present to shed light on pre-Civil War education and contemporary discourses and practices of historical …

Adaptation For Whom? Understanding The Impacts Of Dyke Policies On Small-Scale Farmers In Ca Mau Province Of Vietnam, Nguyen Minh Quang, Nguyen Van Minh, Nguyen Vo Chau Ngan, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Low-lying deltas worldwide are extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise. As the risks of climate-induced flooding become increasingly clear, the thirst for infrastructure-driven adaptation increases. This highlights a patent need to understand the impacts of engineering adaptation solutions, especially those targeting built structures such as dykes and sluices, on farmers from a bottom-up, farmer-centred perspective. The study addresses this call by examining cases where dyke policies, while successful in some dimensions, have undermined small-scale farmer livelihoods in Ca Mau ― Vietnam’s southernmost rural province. It identifies areas in need of attention and adds empirical data related to this group of farmers. …

Identifying Intangible And Biocultural Heritage Elements Toward Environmental Understanding: Engaging Stakeholders Through Art, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Grounded in a case study in Barbuda in the Caribbean, this research examines sustainability from the perspective of what arts and heritage can contribute to community engagement and local and broader understandings about the environment. This article documents a growing body of literature recognizing the role of arts and culture, including local knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), in climate change endeavors. Art and TEK present expansive world views. Contextual information situates research done on the island of Barbuda pre- and post-Hurricane Irma. Visual arts workshops engaged community members in mixed methods research. Results documented cultural elements, particularly intangible and …

Literary Portraits Of World War I Tirailleurs Sénégalais: Lucie Cousturier's Des Inconnus Chez Moi (1920), And Raymond Escholier's Mahmadou Fofana (1928), Kathy Comfort

World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

The literary depictions of the tirailleurs s & eacute;n & eacute;galais, the West African French colonial troops who fought in World War I, in novels published during the conflict and in the interwar years were often little more than racist caricatures. Two works from the interwar period, Lucie Cousturier's Des Inconnus chez moi (1920) and Raymond Escholier's Mahmadou Fofana (1928), based on the friendships the respective authors established with West African troops during the Great War, provide a counterpoint to the degrading portrayals of the tirailleurs. Cousturier, a painter, taught French to soldiers at the hivernage camp next to her …

The Analysis Of The Shonen Protagonist And Aragoto Warrior: The Eternal Strength Of Boyhood, Ethan J. Mcentyre

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is a breakdown of various visual and narrative elements of Kabuki and Anime, using the example of Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura, and One Piece. There is a broad overview of both Kabuki and Anime discussing their various tropes and styles. Following this introduction is a three-part breakdown of One Piece and its similarities to Kabuki theatre, with Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura as the reference point for specific examples.

The three-part comparison is structured by first discussing surface level similarities and potential coincidences unique to these two stories in conversation with each other, by looking at a few specific …

Jcu 211 Syllabus, Asako Tochika

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for the Japanese Food Culture course. Taught as a COIL/study abroad course in the summer.

Resisting Neoliberalism: Testimonios Of Language Teachers As Social Activists, David Martinez-Prieto

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This study examines the testimonios of Mexican language teachers who experienced the violent and institutional imposition of neoliberal policies at the main university at the state of Puebla. Through the analysis of testimonios, language teachers narrated their own trajectories to resist the implementation of the neoliberal policies, such as the restriction of teaching freedom for educators, the elimination of the right to free education for students, and the current subjugation educators experience at the site of study. Based on the Foucauldian concepts of sovereign and institutional power, along with governmentality, this article analyzes the activism of language teachers, and …

Decolonizing Educational Research: Pláticas As Sites Of Reciprocity, Vulnerability, And Reflexivity, Miryam Espinosa-Dulanto

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Singing Hunger In Protest Music: Nasboi’S “Hunger Games” And Post-Election Realities In Nigeria’S “Emilokan” Era, Omotayo Jemiluyi, Abubakar Tajudeen

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

This article examines “Hunger Games” (2024), a protest song by Nigerian artiste and skit maker Nasboi, as an indictment of the economic hardship, political repression, and widespread disillusionment that have characterized Nigeria’s 2023 post-election landscape under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s “Emilokan” administration. Situating the song within Nigeria’s long-standing tradition of politically conscious music, from the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti to the contemporary commentaries of Falz and Burna Boy, the study critically dissects how “Hunger Games” reflects collective frustration and subversively positions popular music as resistance. The analysis of the study demonstrates that Nasboi’s aesthetic strategy—combining satire with repetition—renders individual hardship …

Minority In Baroque Trumpet Repertoire: Minor-Key Literature For Baroque Trumpet, Wing Heng Victor Yuen

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The repertoire for trumpet in the Baroque era is overwhelmingly in major keys for obvious reasons. As natural trumpet is limited by design to play the notes of the harmonic series, most players have little access to sonorities outside the major scale and arpeggios within the series without the help of technical innovations such as the slide, and much later, vent-holes. Baroque trumpet makers built valveless natural trumpets, which are limited by design to play the notes of the harmonic series. Since the fundamental physics limit the musical notes available to the natural trumpet, minor key is not an essentially …

Audism And Its Effects Within The Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Community, Angela Peterson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

“Audism and its Effects within the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community” takes a closer look at the history and growth of the Deaf community, highlighting key struggles in Deaf education, the emergence and recognition of American Sign Language (ASL), and powerful movements such as Deaf President Now. From there, the paper explores the concept of audism—discrimination against those who are deaf or hard of hearing—and how it continues to affect the lives of Deaf individuals through harmful misconceptions, limited control over accessibility, and barriers within politics, law, and medicine. Alongside the broader struggles of the Deaf community, the paper …

From Conscientious French Canadian To Enterprising American: Making Memory & Measuring Social Mobility Of French Canadians 1880-1940, Brooke S. Schwaderer

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis studies the social mobility of French-Canadian immigrants to the Keweenaw Peninsula 1880-1940 and memory among their descendants to explain how French-Canadian culture in the Keweenaw faded over time. Oral histories were conducted to gain an understanding of the current French-Canadian culture in the Keweenaw, understand how the current generation perceives changes in culture over time, and provide possible explanations for why French-Canadians thrived in the Keweenaw. Tax records from the Michigan Technological University Archives and social mobility scores, mother tongue, and homeownership information from the United States census was analyzed to measure language loss, and the social mobility …

Unveiling Trauma And Seeking Justice: Exploring Mass Atrocities Against Tamils Through The Lens Of Religion, Culture, And Global Justice, Arrabe Vigneswaran

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This paper examines the mass atrocities committed against the Tamil population in Sri Lanka, analyzing them through the interconnected lenses of religion, culture, and global justice. It explores how Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism, codified through legal and constitutional mechanisms such as the Sinhala Only Act and state-sponsored cultural erasure, facilitated the systemic marginalization, displacement, and dehumanization of Tamils. The study investigates the legal, political, and cultural underpinnings of these acts ranging from war crimes and ethnic cleansing to potential genocide while assessing the reluctance of both domestic and international actors to enforce meaningful accountability. Drawing on hybrid court models, transitional justice theories, …

Navigating Big Data In Cyber Archaeology: An Updated Four-Field Approach Applied To San Miceli, Jared Wilson

Dissertations

Problem

This dissertation examines the evolving role of digital technologies in archaeological research, focusing on the management and interpretation of extensive digital datasets generated by modern excavations. Drawing on six years of comprehensive fieldwork at San Miceli, Sicily, this study critically evaluates and updates the established four-field methodology proposed by Levy et al. (2012), encompassing acquisition, analysis, dissemination, and curation. While traditional archaeological documentation methods rely heavily on analog techniques, these approaches increasingly fall short due to the rapid expansion and complexity of digital data.

Method

To address this gap, the dissertation refines and expands the current methodological framework by …

Transformation Of Buddhist Musical Practices From The 7th-13th Centuries As A Response To Political And Social Disorder In Medieval India, Stephan I. Duran

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article gives an account of the development of Buddhist musical practices on the Indian subcontinent from their earliest, datable instances, to the disappearance of Buddhist institutions from India proper, demonstrating the persistence of descendant traditions of Sanskrit Buddhist chant and song in contemporary Japanese, Tibetan, and Newar esoteric Buddhist communities. It is argued that the Buddhist musical theory and praxis of these three cultural spheres both preserve features of ancient and medieval Indian Buddhist music and sonically illustrate the transition from political and social order to de-centralized social organization, a shift that took place between the 7^th and …

Cultural Immersion And Practices: Ellie Mannette’S Steel Pan Building Processes In Morgantown, West Virginia., Timothy Clark Friedhaber

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Ellie Mannette, among others, was one of the first builders of the modern steel pan. Born and raised in Trinidad, Mannette started building steel pans at a young age. Eventually, he gained employment with the United States Naval Steel Band, which opened opportunities for him to grow in his field. Through these opportunities and connections, Mannette arrived in the United States permanently in 1967. In the later part of his life, he moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where he continued building, teaching his building processes, and tuning steel pans. The study aims to serve as an aid for other scholars …