Digital Commons Network^™

Toddy, Tea, And Tapioca: Food, Famine, And The Moral Reordering Of Public Space In Malabar (Kerala), 1900- 1965, Mallory Rose Cerkleski

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

This paper examines how public food and drink spaces in early twentieth-century Malabar functioned as critical infrastructures of everyday subsistence as well as sociability. It argues that toddy shops, beyond sites of intoxication, might have provided low-cost nutrition, informal credit, and cross-caste interaction for segments of the labouring poor. Colonial excise policies and temperance movements progressively narrowed these spaces, contributing to the rise of tea shops aligned with reformist ideals of respectable public consumption. While tea shops fostered political discussion and vernacular modernity, they could have been less reliable as nutritional buffers, especially during the food crises of the 1940s. …

The Pub “Crisis” And The Future Of Alcohol-Related “Third Spaces”: A Cross-National Survey, Perry Share

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Across a range of countries, pubs and cognate drinking venues are shrinking in number and being reimagined in function. This paper examines the contemporary “pub crisis” in Ireland, Britain, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and Australia, drawing on academic, policy, media and industry materials gathered during late 2025 and early 2026. It argues that, despite different national histories and drinking cultures, similar pressures recur: rising costs, labour shortages, changing alcohol consumption, weakened after-work drinking norms, and redevelopment pressures, with rural and peripheral areas often most exposed. The paper treats pubs not simply as licensed businesses, but as contested forms …

Does Modernisation Of Traditional Dishes Lead To Their Destruction? The Case Of Baklava, Banu Özden

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

The modernisation of traditional dishes presents a tension between culinary creativity and the preservation of cultural heritage. Using baklava as a single case study, this paper investigates whether such modernisation leads to the destruction of traditional foodways. Drawing on a qualitative study with seven Turkish chefs, the research finds that innovation does not inherently threaten baklava’s identity. Instead, preservation depends on maintaining the dish’s essential technique—multiple layers of paper-thin pastry—while allowing flexibility in presentation and narrative framing. Participants agreed that baklava’s strong cultural foundation renders it resilient against fusion experiments and deconstructed forms, provided its core qualities remain intact. However, …

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 …

A European Narrative Of Redemption And Hope In The Wine Sector: Fra I Monti – A Case Study, Francesco D'Ausilio

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

The paper focuses on the story of the Fra i Monti winery in Terelle, a small village located in Italy's Comino Valley, in the province of Frosinone, about 110 km southeast of Rome. This is a paradigmatic territory of agricultural Italy, where between the early 1950s and the mid-1970s, industrialisation and urbanisation shaped the figure of the “metal- mezzadro,” half factory worker and half farmer in the fields, leading to the progressive abandonment of the countryside because it did not offer a secure salary and to the relentless disappearance of farming and wine-making traditions. The paper addresses the theme of …

Revisiting The Siyez Case: Can We Take A Lesson From Its Exploitation, Learn From The Sorgül Wheat Project, And Hope For A Better Future For Ancient Wheat Landraces?, Aylin Öney Tan, Ebru Baybara Demir

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Revisiting the siyez case: Can we take a lesson from its exploitation, learn from the Sorgül Wheat Project, and hope for the better in future? Türkiye is home to the earliest varieties of wheat, some of which are still cultivated or grow wild in remote landscapes of Anatolia. Siyez (Triticum monococcum) has been a staple crop for thousands of years. However, over time, other wheat varieties took over, dominating the market with their higher yield. Siyez was no longer considered commercially valuable and was only grown by peasants for their own consumption or as livestock feed. However, a few decades …

Hospitality In Crisis: Deciphering Food Insecurity Among Migrants From A Derridean Perspective, Alexandra Constantinescu, Naz Ali

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Food insecurity faced by disadvantaged groups of migrants (i.e., voluntary migrants living in low-income households and forced migrants – namely asylum seekers) undermines the nature of hospitality, creating conditions of inhospitableness associated with hunger, injustice, insecurity, and poverty. This study presents a critical interpretation of hospitality in crisis by concentrating on food insecurity resulting from government and non-government food policies in England, that are inhospitable towards forced migrants – contributing to an area of enquiry with limited research in food and hospitality studies. The study draws on the teachings of Jacques Derrida, particularly his philosophical perspective on (in)hospitality/hostipitality, with conceptualisations …

Food In Dinneen’S Foclóir Gaedhilge Agus Béarla, John D. Mulcahy

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Inspired by the work of the late Manchán Magan, this paper examines Irish food and hospitality through the lens of historical lexicography using the 1927 edition of Fr Patrick Dinneen’s Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla as a linguistic “time capsule”. By examining Irish words connected with everyday eating, the paper traces how these words embody resilience, reciprocity, and hope in the face of recurring crises such as famine, emigration, and political upheaval. The paper also draws attention to roles associated with food provision and banqueting, underlining the long-standing importance of hospitality in Irish society. This approach uncovers how hospitality was understood …

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.

Oral Tradition And Literary Innovation In An Epigraphic Oracle: Claros And Caesarea Trocetta During The Antonine Plague, Ryo Nagao

New England Classical Journal

During the Antonine Plague, the Lydian community of Caesarea Trocetta consulted the oracle of Apollo at Claros and inscribed its response, which was exceptional in form and language. This paper argues that Claros drew on performative literature and oracular traditions to provide an authoritative and innovative response that mediated the distress of the client community. Polymetry, diction, and intertexts with Pausanias and Statius combine to enhance both the aesthetic and religious function of the text. This analysis contributes to the study of epigraphy as literature, the mechanisms of oracular institutions, and civic responses to pandemic.

Review Of William Aylward, Jacques Des Courtils, Bonna D. Wescoat (Eds.). 2025. Architectural Networks In The North Aegean: Thasos, Samothrace, And The Formation Of Hellenistic Design. Madison, Wi: University Of Wisconsin Press. Pp. Xi, 307. Hardcover. (Isbn 9780299350109) $119.95., Asja Müller

New England Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

"The Appearance Of The Confederate Flag In These Seas:" The Css Sumter, Neutrality, And The International Dimensions Of The American Civil War, John Macisaac Coleman

History Undergraduate Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

My Mother The Mountain, Ricky Vasan

Masters Theses

Teach me How to Write a Love Song

I catch a glimpse of my mother sitting on her bed in her bedroom from the bathroom mirror. What a rare occurrence! One I am not fortunate enough to witness as often as I would like. A moment that I know —even before it has occurred—will one day become my dearest desire for wanting to turn back time. This moment is a mirage. Once I return to my senses, after the passing of a twelve-hour lag, it will already be too late.

This is the place where I wish to work from. …

Landscape Repositories: Mapping Post-Mining Narratives In Asbestos, Qc Val-Des-Sources, Qc, Rasha Lama

Masters Theses

Landscape Repositories: Mapping Social Narratives in Asbestos, QC Val-des-Sources, QC proposes the ‘landscape repository’ as a tool for landscape literacy and cultural legitimacy that integrates histories, geographies, and social narratives to inform grounded and place-based post-mining futures.

Val-des-Sources, Québec (formerly Asbestos, QC) is a place whose extraction legacies and material histories are deeply interwoven into its contemporary economy and cultural landscape. The centre of town is the Jeffrey Mine, once the world’s largest open-pit asbestos mine that is deep enough to hide the Eiffel Tower entirely. Ceased in 2012, the 130-year-old Jeffrey Mine and sixty-one other Québec asbestos sites once …

Echándole Ganas: Pláticas Of Belonging + Resistance In Art + Design, Itzanya Bravo

Masters Theses

This thesis centers the experiences of Mexican American students, alumni, faculty, and community-based artists navigating art and design higher education in the United States. Grounded in the question ¿Dónde está la gente latina?—where are the Latino people?—this research examines how representation and culturally sustaining practices shape Mexican American students' sense of belonging and creative agency in a country with systems built on white supremacy

Using pláticas as the primary methodology—a relational, conversational approach rooted in community and storytelling traditions—alongside autohistoria-teoría and Chicana Feminist Epistemology, this study draws on eight in-depth pláticas with Mexican American creatives across art + design higher …

Studio Archeology: Uncovering Pedagogical Potential In Artist Spaces, Julia I. Ambros

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates artist studios and their potential for pedagogical application, focusing specifically on grounding the abstract act of making an inspiring studio in the identification and analysis of tangible creative methods used by artists in their studios. This project combines the thinking of four authors–Eisner (1979); Sullivan (2005); Sjöholm (2014); and Bennett (2010)–into a theoretical framework that characterizes the studio space as an art practice research site that reflects the artist’s values, provides readable evidence of thinking and making processes, and influences the future trajectory of one’s art-making. Treating the studio space like an archaeological dig, this project conducted …

A Thesis By An Art Student Trying To Find Meaning In Simulation Games, Yichuan Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores a strange question: what happens if meaning is no longer written by an author, but emerges from the behavior of a system itself?

Beginning with observations of the Providence River and inspired by Conway’s Game of Life, information theory, and artificial life research, the project investigates simulation as a space where language, memory, and collective meaning can evolve without central control. Rather than treating video games as vehicles for storytelling, this research approaches them as dynamic systems capable of generating unpredictable forms of organization and perception.

The thesis proposes a closed spherical computational world populated by simple …

Commodity Beyond Price: A Visible Database Of Free Objects, Yifei Cai

Masters Theses

This thesis explores how value is constructed and circulated outside of traditional monetary exchange systems. During two years of living in Providence, I collected hundreds of "free objects." For each item, I wrote a brief description detailing its physical characteristics, provenance, or emotional significance, and measure it according to four parameters: price, cost, weight, and value. Of these, "value" is subjectively defined by memories, emotional attachments, and it presented as relational equivalencies established within the collection itself.

It presented as an open-ended archive, this project functions simultaneously as an installation, an exchange system, and a visual database. The thesis proposes …

The Right To Withdraw: Soft Boundaries And Material Refuge In The Workplace, Zhihao (Sky) Xing

Masters Theses

Traditionally, architecture has provided physical protection through solid structures and defined boundaries, while modern interior spaces have evolved further to serve function, efficiency, and the operational needs of society. These include open-plan offices, art school studios, and other public spaces like libraries. Although physical rigidity and operational efficiency have been well served by the modern built environment, the psychological experiences of those within it remain largely overlooked - a lack of privacy, emotional support, and space for emotional withdrawal.

This research explores why contemporary workplaces often expose individuals to sensory overload and why people often retreat to stairwells, restrooms, or …

Sites Of Departure, Kevin Tomas

Masters Theses

At all scales of human history, there exists a record: The story of how things came to be. An infinity of interconnected traces that thread the intimate and the immense into a single fabric.

Beginning from distinct points of entry, Sites of Departure explores the axes of resolution and scale in documentation, asking what becomes visible when the instruments of the dominant record are set aside. Moving between recovery and confrontation, the work questions the structures that produce our understanding, while creating new documents for future interpretation—all against the reality that to make a claim, is to claim some truth. …

Re-Assembly, Tonia Zhang

Masters Theses

Graphic design is bound by invisible defaults — software suites, standardized formats, and interfaces optimized for speed, profit, and frictionless output. Re-Assembly treats these standardized technologies not as neutral scaffolding, but as the primary material for critical inquiry. By dissecting this “default” infrastructure, the work exposes the logic of extraction and control baked into our templates and grids. Through a practice of subverting and rebuilding these everyday systems, design is pushed to operate under decentralized and open terms. This repositioning rejects the role of the designer as a surface technician, instead defining them as an active agent and an architect …

Productive Armature, Gabriel Ofem Peter

Masters Theses

What if water was all you had, what if your only source of survival was a body of water? I shudder to think that some people get to be put in this situation in the world we live in. As I understand the importance of water to survival, it is obvious that water can be the only lifeline of survival for a community. This is the experience for residents of Makoko, Lagos. Their survival depends on the Lagos Lagoon, a large body of water flowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. This research looks beyond the surface of what this community …

Chronos | Kairos: Exploring Time Through Experimental Comics And Artist’S Books, Rhea Pradeep

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how the reading experience of comics changes when they are presented in various artist’s book formats, particularly through the lens of time and space. This project encourages the practice of close reading, arguing that the physical form of a book is not only a container for the content, but also plays a part in its meaning-making. It shifts the narrative pace, perception of time and reader engagement. Research in this paper is heavily influenced by scholars like Johanna Drucker, Scott McCloud and Will Eisner. This interdisciplinary, practice-led research combines narrative analysis of experimental comics, close reading of …

Resistant Silence Engraved Trauma, Silence In Domestic Spaces, & Acts Of Resistance, Priyanka Kumar

Masters Theses

This thesis argues that silence surrounding trauma within domestic spaces is not merely an absence of speech or a condition of voicelessness, but it functions as an act of resistance. Focusing on domestic abuse within patriarchal structures, this research examines the ways trauma is embodied, negotiated, and concealed in everyday life. Central in this inquiry is the figure of the “sole witness” to abuse, those who live in close proximity to violence, endure its aftermath and negotiate survival through subtle and often unseen acts of resistance.

I am not attempting to define trauma, but the thesis explores the traces trauma …

Human After All, Ritu Mantri

Masters Theses

human

0. a being, relating to, or belonging to a person or to people.

1. an organism whose behaviour is structured by survival, instinct, and the immediate conditions of its environment.

2. a primate capable of thinking in abstractions. It makes marks, builds tools, and uses language to reflect on itself and the world around it.

3. a maker that increasingly constructs systems as a mirror of itself to store memory, meaning, and perception beyond the limits of its body.

4. an entity whose intelligence is increasingly indistinguishable from the tools and technological infrastructures it has built.

5. a superhuman …

Finding The Estuary, Rhea Hu

Masters Theses

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American Paradise, Virginia Hanusik

Masters Theses

The following is a collection of stories and ideas about the making of our physical and emotional worlds, along with their fracturing, deconstruction, and degradation within the American industrial landscape.  It suggests the value of the unknown and the grace of mistakes, emotional and material friction, and the hiccups that come with learning.

For American Paradise, I’m bringing my interest in landscape extraction, and the people and families within them, to my own autobiography. In this work I turn to where I grew up, the people that brought me there, my connection to manual labor, and the use of specific …

Archives Of The Future, Ka Oskar Ly

Masters Theses

Archives Of The Future is a practice-based thesis that invokes the archive and the future as simultaneous.

This research insists on the recentering of HMong Indigeneity and its own rooted traditions of HMong Queerness and HMong Feminism as ancestral knowledge systems.

They are the medicine. To recover their cosmological capacity is to traverse centuries of systematic eradication by empires and patriarchy.

I treat artistic making, community encounter, memory, and materials as equally valid ways of knowing and as collaborators. Field research from 2020 to 2026 moves through kinship and artisan teachings. It spans Southeast Asia, France, the United States, and …