Ethnic Studies Commons^™

Mental Heath Experiences Of Transracial Adoptees Of The Global Majority (Black, Indigenous, And People Of Color - Bipoc)., Phebe Brako

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of transracial adoptees of the global majority (BIPOC), focusing on their bicultural identity integration and its impact on mental health. During semi-structured interviews, nine participants shared their stories of navigating cultural and racial dynamics as adoptees in predominantly White adoptive families and communities. The findings revealed six core themes: (1) the Quest for Bicultural Identity Formation, (2) Cultural Integration and Adaptation, (3) Navigating Racial and Cultural Tensions, (4) the Role of Family in Cultural Integration, (5) the Importance of Community and Support Systems, and (6) Mental Health and Therapeutic Experiences, addressing …

Campesino World-Building: Stories Of Migration, Memory, And Care In The Tension Of The Colonial Frame, Chelsea Ríos Gómez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Campesinos, often reduced to the label of “farmworkers”, are too often seen only through the lens of their labor within profit-driven systems. This thesis disrupts that limited narrative by illuminating the rich, expansive nature of vivencias campesinas, ways of being that transcend capitalist measures of value. These vivencias are lived, embodied experiences rooted in campesino lifeways, encompassing cultural, spiritual, and relational practices that nurture and sustain life.

My research is guided by four central questions: (1) In what ways have campesinos in pixley resisted exploitative labor systems, and how can this resistance be understood as a form of care labor? …

Grieving In Doorways: A Critical Autoethnographic Exploration Of Embodied Knowledge Amid Shifting Reality And Radical Possibility, Holly Rae

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis is a critical autoethnographic exploration of embodied knowledge amid shifting reality and radical possibility. Beginning and ending with my own body, I explore how grief, as an embodied companion, offers wisdom and power in moments of profound change. Rooted in a methodology of slowness, rest, walking, and active listening, this work resists the extractive pace of modernity and instead invites building a relationship with grief and discomfort. This research is an experiment in co-creating knowledge with bodies and their intersectionality within systems that would keep us separate from knowing our embodied knowledge. As a location of research for …

Representation In Higher Education: A Closer Look Into Cal Poly Humboldt’S Hsi Designation Through The Courageous Cuentos Retrospective, Audriana Peñaloza

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

When it comes to representation in education, it can be inconsistent. For many students of color, it can either feel like their identity is included in the conversations in the classroom and on campus, or it can feel like an afterthought — especially in higher education. Many colleges in the country are classified as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), Cal Poly Humboldt being one of them. This designation claims that Humboldt has the resources and support systems for all students of color, especially for the Hispanic/Latine population on campus. However, it looks like it is the student population that rise …

Feeling Foreign / Foreign Feeling: Affect In Southeast Asian Diasporic Short Story Collections, Francys Aerin Fortes

Theses and Dissertations

Affect studies have long been saturated with scholarship investigating the fluidity of emotions, though a larger turn in the field now prioritizes the felt experiences of marginalized peoples. Sianne Ngai’s work is one part of this turn that seeks to unpack the effects of oppressive systemic forces on Black, Brown, and queer bodies. Sianne Ngai reexamined the nature of emotions in her seminal text Ugly Feelings (2005), particularly concerned with how negative feelings are disproportionately felt by marginalized bodies as a result of conditions of obstructed agency, systems of power, and wage labor capitalism. Drawing from Ngai’s writing, this thesis …

Creating An Ofrenda, Sara Hinojos

Open Educational Resources

You do not need to be Mexican to celebrate Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). What you need however is a deep and thoughtful cultural understanding of the practice. This lesson plan teaches students what Dia de los Muertos is, the influence of colonialism (past and present), how mainstream media understands the celebration in the U.S., and how local communities honor the celebration. This approach is from a media studies perspective and a particular focus on art, specifically altar making or making an ofrenda. Writer, philosopher, tejana Gloria E. Anzaldúa details that altars are “‘the sanctuary of the …

Yes, Those Are My Biological Parents: Growing Up Multiracial In The United States, Angie Navejas

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

“Multiracial individuals are the fastest growing racial population in the United States” (Atkin & Jackson; 2021:305). Literature highlights how parents transmit culture through racial socialization, however there is a missing piece, the perspective of the children. This study sought to expand the existing literature to include children’s perspectives and how it relates to their multiracial identity formation. Recognizing the complexity of conducting research with children, a survey was administered to adults ranging from the ages of 18 to 35 years old. This resulted in a collection of data from their recollection of experiences and interactions with their parents or caregivers …

Mirrors Of The Reel: Black Women's Identity In American Cinema (2009-2024), Melanie-Penny Harrison

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study investigates whether white supremacy structures, embodied in Hollywood’s predominantly white leadership, drive negative portrayals of Black women in 31 mainstream American films from 2009 to 2024. Employing a mixed-methods approach—quantitative content analysis, qualitative content analysis (QCA), and narrative methodology—I code portrayals for racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, colorism, and internalized racism, classifying them as progressive (e.g., empowered roles), regressive (e.g., subservient stereotypes), or hybrid. Guided by Critical Race Theory and intersectionality, the analysis examines narrative structures, character agency, symbolism, and dialogue to uncover intersectional patterns (e.g., race, gender, class) across three periods: 2009–2013, 2014–2018, and 2019–2024. Across these periods, cultural …

Modernist Transitions: Cultural Encounters Between British And Bangla Modernist Fiction From 1910s To 1950s, Shamika Shabnam

Critical Humanities

A Review of Modernist Transitions: Cultural Encounters between British and Bangla Modernist Fiction from 1910s to 1950s

A Wīnak Perspective On Cosmovisíon Maya And Eco-Justice Education, Arcia Tecun

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

This article responds to questions of relational ethics in Indigenous mobility with a critically conscious approach to cosmovisíon Maya in Soonkahni (Salt Lake Valley). An urban and mobile Mayan positionality, identified as Wīnak, guides an analysis of complex Indigenous experiences, and possibilities found in Eco-Justice. The limits from the prevailing and dominant colonial logics of conservation and environmentalism are re-imagined through Indigenous approaches to ‘Earth Wellbeing’. The application of critically conscious cosmovisíon Maya reveals a simultaneous challenge to systems of power, and to formations of an Indigenous relational ethic that is both locally meaningful and globally relevant. This essay concludes …

Corazón De Maíz Un Tributo A Los Pueblos Mayas, Patricia López

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

English Abstract:

Corazón de Maíz gathers the stories and recipes for traditional Maya cooking in the regions of Huehuetenango, and is designed to promote the survival of the culinary system of the grand-mothers, and the food that they prepared with love for the whole family. This “culinary novel” contains myths, legends, stories of the origin of some foods, cooking tech-niques and methods. The foods prepared in the altiplano region developed from millenary traditions, the Hispanic invasion, the ravages of climate change bringing droughts and plagues that destroy life, and the various consequences and influences of migration. For the Maya, corn …

Revisiting Men Of Maize: Historical Truths, Literary Distortions, And Asturias In Today’S Guatemala, Elaine Elliott

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

In 2024, a renewed appreciation for the Guatemalan Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias is taking place to mark the 50th anniversary of Asturias’ death. This essay examines the historical and literary context of the author’s groundbreaking novel Hombres de maíz (Men of Maize), and the book’s portrayal of indigenous Maya resistance against ladino landowners in Guatemala. Evidence indicates that Asturias obtained his views of ladino – Maya conflict from historic land conflicts in Ilom, Chajul. Asturias distorted the events, but his book inspired a generation of revolutionaries, some of whom organized and fought in the Ixil region and Ilom. …

Book Review: Mayalogue: An Interactionist Theory Of Indigenous Cultures, Arcia Tecun

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Mayalogue: An Interactionist Theory of Indigenous Cultures by Victor Montejo

Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021. 248 pp

Arcia Tecun analyzes and interacts with Montejo’s discussions and logics, resulting in a postcolonial indigenous conversation between reviewer and book author.

Mixed Race Futurity Through Contemporary Archetypes: Mutants, Cyborgs And Dhampirs, Kobe Jackson

Masters Theses

Analysis of Enlightenment philosphes reveals how the contemporary archetypes, mutants, cyborgs and dhampirs may be situated as sources for understanding mixed race positionality. Arranged on a trajectory of hybrid mythology reaching from ancient times into the present day, their contemporary relevance is put into context. Through modern speculative fiction, historical mythology and the theoretical frameworks of sociology, and philosophy, two tropes are revealed to be imposed roles for mixed race people. The first one, the tragic hybrid is a term which references a character specific to the context of American colonial slavery, the tragic mulatto. By reframing the term, tragic …

Book Review: Hojas Sueltas., Emil' Keme

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Hojas sueltas. by Daniel Caño.

Quetzaltenango Guatemala. POE, 2024. 204 pp

ISBN 978-9929-732-17-9.

As an alternative to the standard book review, Maya America has reprinted the prologue to Hojas Sueltas, which was written by Emil’ Keme. Also, this year, Daniel Caño published another new book, Versos improvisados. Daniel can be reached at [email protected].

Document is in Spanish.

Maya America Vol. 6 Iss 2 - Front Matter, Maya America Editors

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Front Matter includes the covers and Introductory Note

Señoritas On And Off The Silver Screen: How Chicana Women Organized For Equality And Challenged The Cultural Prison Of Sexualized Media Representations In The First Half Of The Twentieth-Century, Rossandra Paloma Martinez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research is personal for me due to lived experience and day-to-day situations where I have felt the pressures of unattainable beauty standards and society’s fluid definition of beauty and femininity surrounding Chicana, Latinas, Mexican, and Mexican-American women. What inspired me to pursue these issues and topics was the work of Dr. Vicki Lynn Ruiz in her book From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America. This research focuses on rival and contested images of Chicana, Mexican, Mexican-American and Latina labor advocates and activists from the early twentieth as opposed to sexualized and eroticized packaged caricatures that Hollywood …

Fostering Ruins: The Tales Of Kaum Depok, Yoga Susatyo

Antropologi Indonesia

This study identifies the utilization of Social and Built Capital by the Kaum Depok Community in maintaining community existence amidst social transformation. Previous research on the Kaum Depok and similar ethnic communities found that group self-identity, the role of values-religion-beliefs, architecture, the use of distinctive/local language, and the inclusivity nature of the group significantly contribute to the community's existence. I agree that these aspects impact this ethnic community's existence, however the community capital, particularly social and built capital, plays a crucial role in the effort to preserve the community. This study employs a qualitative approach to classify and analyze community's …

Racing Latinidad, Renee Hudson

English Faculty Books and Book Chapters

This chapter argues that the terms “Latinx” and “latinidad” are messy signifiers that allow us to contend with Latinx’s complicated racial history. While the term Latinx continues to be controversial, and scholars such as Tatiana Flores have examined the case for cancelling latinidad, “Racing Latinidad” points to how latinidad can signify particular political commitments and affinities. Through readings of Manuel Muñoz’s What You See in the Dark (2011) and Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone (2009), this chapter illuminates how excavating racial histories outside the logic of the state is a way to summon a politics to imagine a people. …

Full Issue

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.