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Narrative Roots - What We Inherit, What We Tell, What We Become: Intergenerational Storytelling, Meaning-Making, And Mental Health, Adam Sholder

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This capstone synthesis explores how the family stories we inherit and the stories we tell across generations shape who we become, with particular attention to their impact on identity and mental health. Drawing on narrative identity theory, reflective practice, and relational understandings of family life, it introduces the Recursive Narrative Integration Model, which positions intergenerational storytelling as both a method of inquiry and a mechanism of meaning-making. Informed by a recursive process of creative and reflective writing, this synthesis approaches storytelling not only as an object of study, but as a lived and generative practice through which experience and narrative …

Critical Geopolitics And The Reconstruction Of Meaning: A Discourse Analysis Of The 'Terrorism' Label Applied To Hamas By Western Hegemony, Cahaya Mulyani Sakti, M.Hamdan Basyar

Journal of Terrorism Studies

The emergence of Hamas in 1987 cannot be separated from the configuration of modern colonialism and the continuity of occupation that shaped the political reality. Hamas’s early phase was rooted in socio-religious activities through education and community empowerment programs, before evolving into armed resistance against the occupation. The labeling of Hamas as a “terrorist” organization began in the mid-1990s in U.S. legal documents, which subsequently generated debate and gave rise to counter-narratives. This study employs the frameworks of critical geopolitics (Ó Tuathail & Agnew) and the Discourse-Historical Approach (Wodak) to analyze the labeling of Hamas as “terrorist” by Western hegemony. …

Arts On The Point: Boston's First Public Sculpture Park, Isabella Slonka

Honors College Theses

Led by the conviction that “a public campus needs public art,” Professor Paul Tucker founded UMass Boston’s Arts on the Point (AoP) sculpture park in 1997. Large-scale works by world-class contemporary artists including Sol LeWitt, Dennis Oppenheim, Luis Jiménez, Sheila Pepe, and Mark di Suvero were made accessible to students, served as teaching aids and attracted those outside of UMB to Columbia Point. AoP’s use of long term loans made the landscape itself a rotating gallery.

Consideration of the “personality” of the campus was essential in the selection of works. Site visits with artists were conducted to ensure that their …

Making Kinship With Plants And The Multiple Meanings Of Care In Amazonian Indigenous Gardens, Ana Gabriela Morim De Lima

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This paper focuses on the bonds of kinship and care between humans, cultivated plants, and other-than-human beings in Indigenous gardens, myths, rituals, and shamanism, across Lowland South America. Drawing on Krahô ethnography and a review of ethnological literature, it highlights the contributions of Americanist ethnology to wider debates about multispecies relation, particularly with regard to vegetal agency. By exploring the ambivalent meanings of care- such as “caring,” “raising,” and “nurturing,” as well as “being careful,” “having respect,” and “taking precautions”- I examine how kinship relations between humans and their cultivated plants are made through care and unmade through its absence …

Working Out Your Self-Image: Strength, Self-Esteem, And Human Flourishing, Kingston K. Christie

Honors Projects

This project integrates empirical research in exercise science with theological anthropology to examine the psychological effects of resistance training and the meaning of strength within a Christian framework of human dignity and flourishing. The empirical component investigated the effects of a four-week progressive resistance training intervention on global self-esteem and physical self-concept among undergraduate university students with moderate-to-low baseline self-esteem. Eleven participants (N = 11; 20.15 ± 1.52 yrs) completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and Physical Self-Description Questionnaire Short Form (PSDQ-S) before and after the intervention, with muscular strength assessed via submaximal testing across the squat, bench press, deadlift, …

Making Noise Through Law: Indigenous Legal Mobilisation Against A Power Plant In “French” Guiana, Pierre Auzerau

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In so-called “French” Guiana, or Guyane, the Kali’na village of Atopo Wipi has fought for years against a hydrogen power plant being built on their land. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2024 in Guyane and Western Europe, where I collaborated with various stakeholders to support Atopo Wipi’s resistance to the power plant, my research focuses on the legal dimensions of the Kali’na’s struggle to protect their land. Specifically, this article examines how the Kali’na navigated different normative frameworks, including international human rights standards and French law, to fight the project. Through this analysis, I show how the …

“Ese Dia Que Se Va El Patron An Hecho Fiesta”.* Historicities Of Successful Resistance Against Hacienda Bosses Among The Kukama (Peru, 1933-1945), Arno R. Holl

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This paper analyzes two cases of resistance by Kukama workers within the debt slavery system of habilitación in the Peruvian Amazon during the first half of the twentieth century. It discusses the similarities and differences between the two cases, and positions the workers and their accounts of events and agency within the historical, social and cosmological framework of the time and region. Through the examples studied here, the hierarchies, power dynamics, spirituality, lifestyles, traditions, and cultural changes that shaped Kukama communities at the time become visible from an emic perspective. The paper places special emphasis on how historical events are …

Dr. Kacey Grauer Faculty Spotlight, Katelyn Trimble

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

An interview with Dr. Kacey Grauer of the University of Denver's Department of Anthropology.

Du Undergraduate Showcase Abstracts: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Sophia Wismar, Henry Staats, Allison Metzler, Chloe Puckett, Rachel Levine, Christa Kilpatrick, Scott Wolf, Joe Walsh, Grace Doolittle, John Engebreston, Zoe Lopez, Christopher Aaby, Audrey Duff, Timothy Sisk, Katelyn Lamberton, Angela Narayan, Gilkah Argueta, Habiba Samir, Girena Tesfazghi, Genet Kenore, Sinit Tesfamariam, Effley Brooks, Abi Newell, Megan Doherty, Natalie Baer, Lexi Blood, Talya Riciputi, Jessica Jimenez, Devin Hernandez, Lynn Clark, Taj Kumar, Sunil Kumar, Allen Rutman, Mira Pronobis, Tess Carson, Anna Sher, Frankie Stroud, Tamra Pearson D'Estree, Alyssa Wilson, Emily Melnick, Jenalee Doom, Yihang Gao, Gwendolyn Geiger, Noah Gettle, Scott Nichols, Clare Ayoub, Cara Dienno, Sunny Walker, Zoe Hansen, Maya Wheeler, Addison Rice, Patrick Martin, Sanjana Acharya, Daniel Mcintosh, Amanda Mckellips, Calli Cain, Justin Blake, Peter Sokol-Hessner, Natalie Miller, Max Weisbuch, Sophia Dellota, John Macikas, Charlotte Snow, Mark Siemens, Zoe Lynch, Alex Huffman, Prachi Shah, Jason Roney, Halcyon Levi, Nicole Herzog, Andrea Koly, Daniel Linseman, Annie London, Xi Yang, Avery Zwisler, Jane Smith, Chaz Contag, Michael Kerwin, Lucy Rand, Grace Schroeder, Michelle Rozenman, Nissa Tapper, Guiming Zhang, Mateo Mazariego-Halpern, Keith Meyer, Julie Do, Dakota Park-Ozee, Travis Herink, Kara Neu, Jonathan Plomin, Eve-Odine Duchaufour, Debbie Gale Mitchell, Tennyson Anderson-Stricklin, Lily Treitz, Samantha Rosenberger, Sierra Griffith, Finley Joseph, Daniel Sampson, Emmy Davis, Skyler Kasnoff, Evon Lopez, Vivian Nguyen, Cassy Young, Franklin Sellner, Martin Tobon, Ila Graham, Zach Billings, Holden Hedit, Decatur Boland, Paul Kosempel, Cory Chandler, Jay Mahoney, Sam Dragan, Susan Dagget, Yarrow Ator, Heidi Vuletich, Owen Weber, Andrew Kloeppel, Petersen Gray, Mandi Schaeffer-Fry, Razleen Bassra, Bryanna Rodriguez, Christina Blue, Taubie Sanders, Rachel Epstein, Luke Milburn, Camryn Evans, Ezra Martinez, Mary Westwood, Gabri Notov, Robin Tinghitella, Lilou Cabrol, Eli Barbour, Juliet Mendik, Selma Myers, Zac Wise, Noah Fahlin, Michelle Knowles, Abigail Hopper, Michael Greenberger, Romi Laclair, Sarah Watamura, Sabrina Efroymson, Casey Barker, Sydney Seltzer, Bryn Yehle, Jennifer Hoffman, Sara Garcia, Ryuka Nagamine, Trevor Briggs, Remy Le Boeuf, Elena Krone, Eileen Farrell, Regan O'Rourke, Elena Roel, Greg Mortimer, Ali Ayoub, Stefani Langehennig, Caitlin Turk, Logan Scmid, Stefan Chavez-Norgaard, Karen Kim, Tatiana Peccedi, Courtney Cassidy, John Sebesta, Rhianna Lewis, Janice Bening-Lacek, Vivian Lawless, Mckenna Hanson, Jeffrey Amidon, Riya Joshi, Ram Ambre, Brady Worrell, Perrin Schneider, Ali Azadani, Brooke Agulnek, Lyndsie Salvagio, Elise Siemanowki, Yan Qin, Andre Allen, Melodie Nguyen, Megan Livengood, Abby Reams, Saffron Hartreeve, Bri Wylie, Sarah Brookman, Mariah Loiacono, Green Russo, Abhia Lodhi, Gabrielle Welsh, Nika Spehar, Shahked Levin, Evrim Baykal, Kimberly Chiew, Jocelyn Torres, Kailey Hicks, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Audrey Bellows, Akam Chahal, Madeline Tepper, Shannon Murphy, Alexa Fonseca, Deborah Han, Cassandra Perez, Oluwatoyin Alaba, Julia Roncoroni, Vy Nguyen, Nana Burn, Sarah Sasse, Rubin Tuder, Anthony Gerber, Nancy Lorenzon, Christine Vohwinkel, Camryn Gunter, Tristan Weber, Sam Rommel, Brian Michel, Muskan Fatima, Alannah Oleson, Kira Frey, Edward Garrido, Beckett Morris, Kerstin Haring, Drew Middleton, Abigail Walpert, Liam Dee, Gabby Ishaw, Cole Carnes, Maddie Weiser, Claire Fox, Valeriia Vlasenko, Kateri Mcrae, Riley Smith, Abigail Templin, Kushani Rajapaksha

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Abstracts from the DU Undergraduate Research Showcase.

Environmental Ethics And The (Dis)Continuity Of Meaning In Experience And Nature, Harrison S. Jackson

Dewey Studies

No abstract provided.

Food, Crisis And Hope: Three Conflicts, Three Approaches, Johanna Mendelson Forman, Michael Shaikh, Joan Nathan, Yeheniia Yemshenetska, Andrea Borghini

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Plenary Session: Food, Crisis and Hope: Three Conflicts, Three Approaches

Panel hosted by Johanna Mendelson Forman

Michael Shaikh - "Saving Cuisine Is the Same As Saving a People"

Joan Nathan - "The Edible DNA: Jewish Food as a Bond through Crisis and War"

Johanna Mendelson Forman and Yevheniia Yemshenetska - "Hope and Crisis in War: Ukraine’s Deployment of Food as Soft Power during Conflict"

Andrea Borghini - "Food in Times of Crisis: A Leadership Perspective"

Bonding Through Boucherie: Strengthening Social Ties Through Butchery, Evelyn Lambeth

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

“La boucherie de quartier” is a Cajun phrase referring to a neighbourhood pig slaughter. One such annual event, the Lâche Pas Boucherie in southern Louisiana, brings multiple generations and many traditions together with the goal of sharing and celebrating music, food and culture. Boudin, crackling, andouille sausage, and hogshead cheese are but a few of the unique offerings from this melting pot of shared flavours. I was born and raised in southern Louisiana but rarely appreciated the novelty of Cajun cuisine until I moved to Australia. The flavours and spices of my former home add a certain piquancy that is …

The Taste Of Resilience In Bread, Beer And Ashes At Tell Bazi (Syria), Marie Hopwood

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Nuances of ancient life choices do not leave traces that can be excavated and quantified. Even with written language, not all thoughts made it to tablet, and not all tablets survive. What archaeologists can see from millennia past are points of intense change, sometimes resulting from crisis. People cope with crisis through traditions and rituals designed to help them transition through the upheaval and loss into a new future when happiness can be found. Around 1350BCE the people of Tell Bazi (Syria) faced annihilation likely from the Hittites who left a swath of ravaged towns and displaced populations in their …

Tables Of Power: Ritualised Feasting And Political Negotiation In Irish History, Elizabeth Waters, Elaine Mahon

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

This paper examines feasting in two specific contexts: the sagas of the early Irish medieval period, and the diplomatic history of the Irish state. Far from being decorative or incidental, feasting is shown to be a system of commensal politics that converts uncertainty into opportunity as well as symbolic capital. In the examples explored, the shared meal is shown to be not just a convivial gathering but a means through which authority is demonstrated, crises negotiated or averted, and relationships renewed.

Chronicles Of Despair And Hope: Food Wars On The Frontline Of Motherhood, Gemma M. Carney

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

In this paper I use first-person literary accounts of the hope and despair experienced by women when feeding infants and young children. In Soldier Sailor, Claire Kilroy offers a vivid depiction of attempts to get healthy and nutritious food into an evasive toddler. In her memoir, Making Babies: stumbling into motherhood, Anne Enright dedicates two whole pages to the word “haNang.” The word portrays endless crying of her breast-fed baby if she ate anything other than brown rice. These visceral depictions of mothers’ experiences of feeding children raise interesting questions for gastronomic studies. Some of our most treasured childhood food …

What My Grandma Ate, What My Grandma Wrote: Culinary Memory, Migration, And Changing Foodways In A Cretan–Turkish Household, Sedef Özgönül Donuktan

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

This paper explores the difference between daily eating habits (what is “eaten”) and handwritten recipe notebooks (what is “written”) within a Cretan-Turkish kinship network influenced by migration and resettlement. By combining oral history interviews with five women and analysing 242 notebook recipes, the study shows that these handwritten books are not just passive records of daily meals. Instead, they serve as selective domestic archives shaped by a “festive bias,” standardisation, and social value. The research indicates that while routine meals (such as stews) depend on embodied, unrecorded knowledge, the notebooks mainly contain special dough recipes using modern industrial ingredients like …

Where Art Meets The Table: Food, Art, And Culture At The Intersection Of Crisis And Hope, Ciza Zoya

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Food is more than sustenance; it is a carrier of memory, identity, and power, shaping both belonging and exclusion. In contemporary art, food has emerged as a critical medium through which these tensions can be explored. This paper argues that food- based art operates at the intersection of crisis and hope, revealing how everyday practices of cooking, sharing, and eating both reflect social hierarchies and create possibilities for connection. Drawing on anthropological perspectives, contemporary art theory, and the author’s own artistic practice, the paper examines how food functions as a social structure shaped by gender, class, caste, and colonial histories. …

“Can You Describe It?”: A Teacher-Researcher’S Reflections On Crisis And Hope, Christy Shields-Argelès

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Drawing on experiences as a Franco-American food anthropologist and enseignant-chercheur, this paper reflects on crisis and hope through two encounters: Jenny, a novice anthropology student navigating culture shock in a Parisian café, and René, a newly retired Comté farmer learning descriptive tasting on a sensory panel, the jury terroir. Reframing crisis as a threshold – a liminal space of encounter between different systems of meaning – the paper proposes thick description as a methodology for dwelling productively within such moments. Hope, in turn, is understood not as naïve optimism, but as the opening of new perceptual and relational perspectives …

“...Coco Puffs For Dinner?”: Exploring Factors Influencing Meal Patterns, Food Choices, And Solo Dining Experiences Of International Students In Dublin Through Photovoice And Photo Elicitation, Disha Naik

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Moving abroad to study is, for many international students, a moment of crisis. Established routines are broken, familiar foodways are left behind, and the daily challenges of cultural adaptation, social isolation along with limited resources affect their food choices. Studies have shed light on the effects of cultural adaptation on foodways among international students (Sergile 2023). While some focus on solo dining experiences, this study focuses on factors that influence meal patterns, food choices, and solo dining experiences in international students in Dublin. Using a blend of two visual qualitative methods; photovoice and photo elicitation interviews, the study engaged with …

Dgs Programme 2026, Dgs Committee

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

This is the full and final Programme for the DGS 2026 - Food and Crisis/Hope, as well as the Map of Producers who furnished the delicious food and drink we serve at lunch over the two days of the event.

To Be Closer, Sarah Moschel Miller

LSU Master's Theses

to be closer explores the intersection of yearning and unease. This series of works uses the visual language of the body and its thresholds to explore how each of us builds interpersonal relationships and understandings of self. Pulling from abjection theory, the abject comes from the internal becoming external, the crossing of a bodily or personal threshold. My sculptures, vessels, and prints translate the visual language of the border of the body into a discussion of emotional ones. to be closer uses these corporeal thresholds and the language of the uncanny as vehicles to discuss the crossing of emotional …

Khirbat Khuwweikha (Kafr Kanna): Hiding Complexes From The Roman And Early Byzantine Periods In The Jewish Galilee, Yinon Shivtiel, Dror Barshad, Dina Avshalom-Gorni, Nili Ahipaz, Ruthy Lewis-Bloom, Yonatan Adler, Ram Bouchnick, Yarden Pagelson, Uri Berger

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

Decades of research on Roman-period hiding complexes in the Galilee have identified 85 such complexes to date. Like the hiding complexes found in Judea, they were used as places of refuge during periods of distress under Roman rule in the country. Extensive archaeological excavations conducted in the hiding complex at Khirbat Khuwweikha, near Kafr Kanna and northwest of Nazareth, have yielded impressive finds, including pottery, glassware, metal items, coins, an ostracon and bones. Such a large quantity of diagnostic finds is rare in Galilean hiding complexes, and the assemblage attests to the use of the complex by Jews during three …

La Maquiladora De Sueños Is Where The “American Dream” Ends: The Socio-Cultural Impact Of Hai(T)Ijuanenses In The United States-México Borderlands, Pedro Aleman Perfecto

Master's Theses

Historically, Tijuana has been the destination for migrants who have been left out from the United States, Mexico, and the rest of the world. The city is at the epicenter of globalization where many transit, leave, and arrive. Sometimes considered a “third country” due to its binational and bicultural identity with its sister city, San Diego, California. The growing number of Haitian refugees that arrived in Tijuana in the mid 2010s to seek asylum in the United States overwhelmed the city’s infrastructure and left the Haitian community vulnerable, yet it created new opportunities and reshaped new identities in the region. …

Cyberspatial Cartographies: Mapping Digital Nationhood Within The California-Punjabi Diaspora., Saihajpratap Singh Bajwa

Master's Theses

This research investigates the phenomenon of digital nationhood, the idea that a new form of community is actively produced through interactions taking place within digital social networks and forums. These spaces function as more than repositories of information or cultural archives; they are living ecosystems in which identity is constructed through mutual encounters among members of a diaspora, where shared references, meanings, and concepts proliferate across multiplex networks. The central questions animating this inquiry are: can a nation exist without a territory, and are these encounters producing what we might conceive of as a digital nation?

The Punjabi people serve …

Kicau Kericau: The Chirps And Warbles Of A Bird-Human Story, Airien Ludin

Masters Theses

This thesis tells the tale of bird-human relationships and what it means to live alongside one another, subverting the hierarchical view of humans as above birds inherited from colonial history. It asks how the practice of illustration can function as a site of Two-Eyed Seeing, where scientific and local knowledge are held together as an entangled narrative. It also examines how mendongeng (storytelling), as I have experienced it within Indonesian culture and everyday contexts, can help us understand birds as a companion species with their own agency.

This project takes two forms: first, a picture book titled Sun Bird …

Tùn-Scene And A-Futurism: Biomythography, Opacity, And Posthuman Imagination, Minglu Du

Masters Theses

Grounded in the author’s position as a Chinese feminist, this thesis examines how East Asian women, as well as East Asian-coded femininity more broadly, are objectified and othered within futurist visual culture in the age of artificial intelligence. Through an engagement with ornamentalism, techno-Orientalism, and posthumanism1 , it argues that the persistent figure of the feminized humanoid cyborg continues to reproduce colonial and patriarchal structures of desire, rendering marginalized bodies as fetishized and violable surfaces. In response, the thesis develops Tùn-Scene, a biomythographic artistic framework and the first experiment in what the author provisionally names A-Futurism. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …

Jadughar: The House Of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah

Masters Theses

Jadughar or the House of Magic is what people call a 'museum' in parts of South Asia. The practice of museum making, at its origin, is the act of collecting, preserving, interpreting and representing a culture’s tangible and intangible heritage to make it accessible to diverse audiences. Since the early 19th century such practices have been performed at various kala bhandars (art centers) in India, without the need of a formal or institutional organisation. The British introduced the model of a ‘museum’ in South Asia, with the aim of not only preserving ethnographic collections, but also showcasing their power and …

The Ever-Changing Immigration Experience: An Oral History On The Impacts Of Immigration For Connecticut Latine Residents / Una Experiencia En Cambio Constante: Una Historia Oral De Los Impactos De La Inmigración Por Habitantes Latines En Connecticut, Sam S. Arevalo-Hoefer

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper is an oral history study focused on Latine immigration experiences in Connecticut from six different individuals sharing their stories and perspectives on the immigration process. I focus on the act of testimony as a source of grassroots knowledge and attempt to spread this notion of community wisdom further through the creation of zines (small-batch, self-published, non-commercial shortform magazines) as a means of making information more accessible and reaching a larger audience on a local level.

I use oral histories as a method of research that can achieve a deeper, more human understanding of how macro level political decisions …

41.82379°N, 71.38497°W, Xiaotong Cai

Masters Theses

I, Xiaotong Cai, have known an abandoned bridge was lifted and stuck at 64-degree from 1976. I have walked and bent down towards it for over 60 times, each paralleling a journal entry. The visits and 27,351 words (up until May 5th) are the living proof: observation, encounters, correspondence, collectively and personally. It’s been nine months since it emerged in flux. Two flesh. A moving outsider and a still bridge. How can an Unused giant activate a human body? Who is the attractor and intervener?

Here, my solution is to conduct a series of small gestures. I say, interpreting without …

Her Body Broken: Wrestling And Reconciling With Judges 19 Through A Feminist Lens, Elisabeth Edmonds

Honors Projects

Nestled within the story of Israel in the Christian Old Testament, lies the events of Judges 19 - one of the most violent, disturbing, and traumatic stories of the Christian sacred text. Employing a feminist lens, this paper engages with Judges 19 in three sections by 1) discussing the events of Judges 19, 2) overviewing general Christian responses to the text historically, and 3) featuring specific ideological responses to Judges 19 (feminist theology, intertextual and structural biblical responses, and reconciliation studies). By highlighting a wide array of responses and ideological readings of Judges 19, this paper defends a holistic approach …