Ethnic Studies Commons^™

Severe Constraints, Radical Possibilities: Reimagining Critical Pedagogy In The First-Year Writing Class, Elia Benjamin Newsom

Wayne State University Dissertations

Critical pedagogues often bring political questions into the classroom and seek to disassemble the very paternalistic, repressive nature of education itself. However, while these scholars and the texts they write are well-intentioned, the possibility of achieving political goals in a first-year writing class are severely constrained by forces within and outside an instructor's control: committees, composition directors, university administration, state & federal governments, economic & social conditions, etc. That said, looking at the material history of writing studies, there have been moments of radical possibility, opportunities to fundamentally change the status quo for the better. In this dissertation, I argue …

Militarized Foodways: The Connection Between The Militarization Of American SāMoa And Chronic Health Conditions Experienced By Sāmoans In The U.S., Marina Aina

Pomona Senior Theses

American militarism and imperialism in Oceania led to the partitioning of Sāmoa, transforming Eastern Sāmoa into an unincorporated American territory, one that persists to this day. Sāmoans living in the United States continue to face numerous chronic health illnesses to this day. Both of these statements are true, but how are they related to one another? This thesis proposes “militarized foodways” as a way to bridge the gap and understand how those two statements are connected to one another. Militarized foodways refers to how the cultural, social, and economic practices concerning production and consumption of food have taken a military …

Engl 157: Great Works Of Global Literature, Scott R. Kapuscinski

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for a general education course bringing together celebrated texts by Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head, and Marjane Satrapi. Survey of perspectives beginning during the "scramble for Africa" via Conrad, through postcolonial writers Achebe and Head, and finally making a connection via dehumanization to Orientalism and undoing monocultural presumptions in the near East through Satrapi's Persepolis.

Frewayni's Garden: Preserving Tigrayan Culture During A Period Of Ethnocide, Gabrielle F. Tesfaye

Theses and Dissertations

The recent and ongoing genocidal war in Tigray, Ethiopia, has witnessed the destruction and looting of countless historical religious sites, ancient manuscripts, and artifacts, leaving Tigray’s remaining cultural heritage extremely vulnerable. Such cultural loss erases a shared understanding across generations, robbing them of their history and identity. My work contributes to the safeguarding of Tigray’s cultural heritage and collective memory, informed by literature on cultural preservation efforts in post-war societies, and a series of interviews with Tigrayans in the diaspora and in Ethiopia.

The outcome of this thesis is embodied in a series of distinct jebenas, traditional Tigrayan clay coffee …

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

Ancient Migrations In West Mexico: Mtdna Analyses, Patricio Gutiérrez Ruano

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite the mounting evidence that suggests The Aztatlán tradition in West Mexico was a major cosmopolitan region during the Postclassic period (AD 900-1521) with connections to the rest of what is now Mexico, archaeologists have characterized items in West Mexico as culturally distinct from the rest of Mesoamerica. Recently, endogenous, and exogenous material culture has been interpreted as movement and exchange of goods and ideas between subregions and surrounding areas, all of which mention physical contact and trade were involved between Aztatlán and elsewhere. This has included interacting with areas as far as the U.S. Southwest, as well as in …

The Forgotten Minority—The Experiences Of Somali-Jareer Bantu Students In Higher Education: “I Don’T Even Exist At This Institution. I’M Barely Recognized As A Human Being”., Arli Mohamed

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how students of Somali-Jareer Bantu descent experience education, particularly how they navigate higher education in the United States and how they make meaning of their experiences. Grounded in a descriptive phenomenological approach, the design method includes semi-structured individual and focus group interviews, with a holistic interpretative phenomenological analysis as a method of data analysis. This study utilizes descriptive phenomenology to investigate how Somali-Jareer Bantu students experience higher education in the U.S. and make meaning of their multiple identities as they navigate higher education environments. Using this methodological approach, the following questions guide …

Muele Las Palabras Con Canela: How Queer Xicanx Writing Practices Reclaim Indigeneity, Karen Zurita

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

My thesis project is a multi-genre story in itself, dedicated to my community. By using Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Luz Calvo and Catriona Rueda Esquibel’s Decolonize Your Diet, I emphasize the importance of Xicanx writing needing to reflect their Indigenous identity by intertwining the spiritual and physical in their writing practices. In the process of creating this thesis project I was able to heal my own writing and have it shapeshift into creating a summer poetry class for high school students in the Humboldt County Area. In all, I found these writing practices to be crucial …

Children Tell Landscape-Lore Among Perceptions Of Place: Relating Ecocultural Digital Stories In A Conscientizing/Decolonizing Exploration, Meredith Jean Bird Miller

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

We know that when children feel a sense-of-relation within local natural environments, they are more prone to feel concern for them, while nurturing well-being and resilience in themselves and in lands/waters they inhabit. Positive environmental behaviors often follow into adulthood. Our human capacities for creating sustainable solutions in response to growing repercussions of global warming and climate change may grow if more children feel a sense of belonging in the wild natural world. As educators, if we listen to and learn from students’ voices about how they engage in nature, we can create pedagogical experiences directly relevant to their lives. …

"The Power To Heal And Cure": Adaptations Of Western Therapy By American Indian And Alaska Native Therapists, Calleaghn B. Kinnamon

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The legacy of colonialism has created a modern-day reality where Indigenous populations of the United States (US) experience mental, physical, and emotional distress at disproportionately higher rates than other cultural groups in the country. Increased distress translates to an increased need for supportive services. Because the field of Western Psychology is based in colonialistic EuroWestern worldviews which positions that worldview as superior, Indigenous clients and communities have often experienced further harm in their encounters with mental health services. In recent decades, there has been increasing attention to adapting research, training, academic and clinical work in ways that are culturally appropriate …

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 18 No 1. 2023, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

Articles

Urban Youth on the Margins: Inequality in China’s Sent Down Youth Movement by Sanjiao Tang

Chinese Firms in the Belt and Road Initiative: A Cross-Sectoral Study of BRI Activities in Kenya by Yabo Wu

Book Review

W. Puck Brecher. Animal Care in Japanese Tradition: A Short History by James Stone Lunde

Northeastern Pennsylvania's Forgotten Labor Massacre: Analysis Pf The English Language Record Of The Lattimer Massacre, Jamie C. Costello

Graduate Masters Theses

The Lattimer Massacre occurred on September 10, 1897, in a small anthracite mining town in northeastern Pennsylvania. The bloody conflict erupted when an unarmed group of mostly Eastern European immigrant mine workers lethally clashed with militantly armed sheriff’s deputies who acted on behalf of private coal companies. Nineteen strikers died at the scene and dozens more were horrifically wounded. Despite the outraged shock of the community clamoring for justice which led to a murder trial that made international headlines, the Lattimer Massacre faded from local and national memory in the following decades. A combination of lingering nativist prejudice curated by …

Raj Karega Khalsa! - The Evolution Of The Sikh Identity, Vineet Mehmi

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Generally, religion has served as a method of creating a unique identity and history for many groups across history. This concept is especially true for the Sikh community, to the point that they have carved their own niche across the different places they inhabit in the world, whether that be their homeland of Panjab or their extensive population in places like Canada or the United Kingdom. However, this expansion and development of their culture did not come without a cost, formed through countless battles, martyrdom, and revolutions. Chardi Kala, a foundational idea in Sikhi that refers to eternal optimism even …

Lewis Walker Institute Annual Report 2022, Lewis Walker Institute For The Study Of Race And Ethnic Relations

Lewis Walker Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnic Relations Newsletters

The Lewis Walker Institute .....

Untangling The Evolution Of Body-Part Terminology In Pano: Conservative Versus Innovative Traits In Body-Part Lexicalization, Roberto Zariquiey, Javier Vera, Simon J. Greenhill, Pilar Valenzuela, Russell J. Gray, Johann-Mattis List

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

Although language-family specific traits which do not find direct counterparts outside a given language family are usually ignored in quantitative phylogenetic studies, scholars have made ample use of them in qualitative investigations, revealing their potential for identifying language relationships. An example of such a family specific trait are body-part expressions in Pano languages, which are often lexicalized forms, composed of bound roots (also called body-part prefixes in the literature) and non-productive derivative morphemes (called here body-part formatives). We use various statistical methods to demonstrate that whereas body-part roots are generally conservative, body-part formatives exhibit diverse chronologies and are often the …

The Yellow Qipao, Feibi Wang

Honors Projects

This is a creative project centered around the pre-production of a short film about queer Asian American Christianity and the research that went into it. The synopsis of the script written for the short film is a life in the day of Aspen. Aspen prepares for church and is indecisive of the clothes they want to wear, because they are gender non-conforming. They come out to their mom and there is conflict. My research going into this project consists of researching media representation of queerness, Asian American identity, and Christianity, and how the three identities intersect in Aspen’s life and …

Viaje Por Las Ruinas De Una Antigua Civilización En Yucatán: Alfred Tozzer Y Chichén, 1902, José Luis Escalona Victoria

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

El trabajo muestra las condiciones para visitar las ruinas de una ciudad antigua ubicadas en la finca Chichén, en la península de Yucatán, en 1902. A pesar de que en esa época se habían ampliado las posibilidades de trasladar productos y personas y de visitar la península, gracias al transporte de vapor por agua y tierra, aún faltarían otros cambios (servicios turísticos) para modificar la forma de pasear por lo que se volvería uno de los sitios arqueológicos más visitados en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Las notas de campo de uno de los antropólogos que estaban en ese …

Prince Jaguar, Ismael Briceño Mukul

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

“Prince Jaguar” is an original poem by Ismael Briceño Mukul, a well-known Maya poet and scholar. This poem in English has been translated from the Yucatec Maya that also appears in this issue of Maya America.

Ritualidad Y Nuevas Tecnologías Entre Los Mayas: El Hetzmek En La Migración, El Trabajo Y El Turismo, Cristina Oehmichan Bazán, Consepción Escalona Hernández

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

En las últimas décadas las comunidades mayas de la península de Yucatán, México, han estado involucradas en procesos de cambio derivados de la globalización y la transformación económica y social. La migración, la incorporación masiva al trabajo asalariado y la expansión turística en sus territorios son algunos de los procesos más visibles y materiales del cambio. Hay, sin embargo, otras prácticas que tienen que ver tanto con los imaginarios y con la relación con nuevos actantes (Latour, 2005). Las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) constituyen un actante que vasculariza el cambio sociocultural, cuya importancia se expresa …

Introducción: Turismo En Las Tierras De Los Mayas, Cristina Oehmichen

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

Spanish Introductory Note