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Contributors To This Issue

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Little Denmark In Nebraska, David Hendee

The Bridge

No charming Old World architecture. No Main Street decorated with Danish flags flapping in the breeze. No annual ethnic festival celebrating Danish roots. And it can’t be found on a map. But a small cluster of farms and ranches carved out of the prairie by Danish immigrants in sparsely settled western Nebraska in the late nineteenth century has maintained its identity as “Little Denmark” long after the homesteaders and their families assimilated into American culture. This obscure and remote Little Denmark was founded, flourished, and faded in the shadows of other Nebraska communities with vibrant Danish populations and institutions— Blair, …

Class And Urban Public Space Consumption: A Typology In Isfahan, Iran, Kamran Rabiei, Shamin Golrokh, Zahra Bahrami

Journal of Urban Culture Research

This paper, adopting an interpretive approach, focuses on the spatiality of class to describe how social class represents itself through public space consumption. The paper presupposes public space consumption as a lived experience by class and explores it through analyzing the narratives of citizens in the city of Isfahan, Iran. According to Bourdieu's notion of social space, four different economic-cultural positions are purposefully selected as under-studied social categories. Cultural (occupation, professional skills and education) and economic attributes (income, house ownership and the neighborhood where they live) are considered for the categorization. Applying a qualitative content analysis, this paper uses semi-structured …

Preservation Of Heritage School Buildings In The Philippines : A Case Study Of The Gabaldon Buildings, Inero Ancho, Mark Ponce San Juan

Journal of Urban Culture Research

This research is an attempt to revisit the Philippines’ Gabaldon school buildings (GSB) in the light of Republic Act 11194. The research offers scrutiny of the law vis-a-vis prospects on practices of preserving and advocating the historical and cultural value of GSB. Using qualitative method of research, this study particularly employs content analysis of RA 11194. The discussion of this paper is clustered into two main sections: The narrative of GSB since its beginning, along with presenting notable details of select edifices which still serving the Philippine education system and an in-depth reading and analysis of RA 11194. It scrutinizes …

Redefining Belonging: Memory And Place-Making For Peruvians Of Chinese And Japanese Descent In The 21st Century, Tiffany Wang , '21

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

The first arrival of Chinese migrants to Peru was documented over 170 years ago; today, third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Peruvians of Chinese and Japanese descent have carved a space for themselves in Peruvian society, celebrating both their Peruvian identity and Chinese or Japanese heritage. My thesis discusses the process of identity formation among third- and fourth-generation Peruvians of Chinese and Japanese descent through retellings of family histories and personal experiences living in Peru and abroad. I center my work on seven people, three who speak to their Japanese heritage and four to their Chinese heritage. I think through how events …

“An Emergency Job Well Done”: Friends Of Freedom Libraries And The Mississippi Freedom Libraries, Suzanne Marie Stauffer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ua12/2/67 Alpha Kappa Alpha, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Book Review: Christopher I. Beckwith. The Tibetan Empire In Central Asia, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia was brought into being by polyglot polymath philologist MacArthur Fellowship recipient and stupefyingly wide-ranging medieval Central Asian civilizations-ist scholar Christopher I. Beckwith as the "first detailed narrative history of the Tibetan Empire in Central Asia written in any language" (vii). By 1993, Princeton University Press had released a 4th printing/1st paperback edition (with a new afterword by Beckwith), suggesting a widening readership for what some might regard as a rarified subject.

Jennifer E. Sessions. By Sword And Plow: France And The Conquest Of Algeria, Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue, And Jacob Tatsitsa. Kamerun! Une Guerre Cachée De La Françafrique (1948-1971), Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue, And Jacob Tatsitsa. La Guerre Du Cameroun: L’Invention De La Françafrique 1948-1971, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

The legacy of the colonial period continues to weigh on France. Recently, President Emmanuel Macron called for the creation of a “Memories and Truth Commission” to lay to rest the lingering questions, bitterness, and controversies surrounding the French occupation of Algeria, the independence war, and the country’s accession to independence. Questions regarding the brutality of French colonial conquests and colonial rule in tropical Africa are also being raised. Immigration from Algeria and other formerly French territories is provoking controversy as is also the fact that France has the largest Muslim population of any European country. Many French citizens, particularly those …

Edgar B. Madsen. The Shoestring Letters: A Tribute To The Immigrant, Inger M. Olsen

The Bridge

Edgar Madsen’s parents, Niels and Signe Madsen, left their home and family in Denmark in 1928 to seek their fortune in the United States. For three decades after their emigration, their only contact with their loved ones back home was through letters, which inspired the name of Edgar B. Madsen’s charming, thought-provoking book, The Shoestring Letters: A Tribute to the Immigrant. After being stored in a thatched roof attic for decades, the letters Niels and Signe sent to their loved ones in Jutland came to light when the family cleared out their grandfather’s house; they made their return journey …

Hegemonizing The Ajat Indu In Sarawak, Malaysia, Andrew Igai Jamu, Premalatha Thiagarajan

Journal of Urban Culture Research

This article discusses the reinvention of women’s dance tradition, Ajat Indu by Sarakup Indu Dayak Sarawak (SIDS), a socio-cultural association established for Sarawak’s Ibans in East Malaysia. SIDS aims to standardize, codify, and refine the dance form for tourism and promoting the culture of Iban. Using the concept of cultural hegemony by Antonio Gramsci, this essay examines the role played by SIDS as the hegemonic organization that governs Ajat Indu to the extent that the institutionalization of Ajat Indu was forced to be accepted by the Iban people as a cultural norm. Although such, there is a form of active …

Markets And The City : Planning Interventions & Markets In Guwahati City, India, Taz Mazinder Barua

Journal of Urban Culture Research

Older cities pre-existing the founding of modern Guwahati city were important trade centers in the Indian eastern region. From the nineteenth century, the colonial regime began reorganizing the spaces in Indian urban centers through town planning schemes. The article investigates how town planning schemes and modern urban planning in Guwahati city changed the forms and locations of the public markets with the city’s outwards expansion. An exploratory approach was taken to review the archival and documentary material available on Guwahati’s public markets, including the publicly available historical maps and master plans to understand the public rationale for the changes. Although …

Just Southern Food: Food Justice For The Mississippi Delta, Christian Tabor Owen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The primary objective of this research is to promote food justice for the Mississippi Delta by investigating facts about the intersections of extreme poverty, food insecurity, and chronic illness in the Mississippi Delta. By exploring relevant literature and highlighting current initiatives, this work looks at the semantics of food justice and related terms, discusses challenges unique to the Mississippi Delta, and broadly characterizes public health models with the greatest potential for food justice advancement in this region. Pivotal to interpreting food justice not only for the Mississippi Delta or the Global South, but for any community, is a clear understanding …

Dramaturgi Sakaiba Dalam Hibridisasi Budaya Minahasa Sulawesi Utara, Tony Tampake, Micchelle Hermanus

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This paper discusses the sakaiba ritual procession in Minahasa which is carried out every year by the Christian community to welcome the New Year. The research was conducted in Taratara village, Tomohon, North Sulawesi. This study focuses on the significance and meaning of the sakaiba ritual procession within the context of the hybridization of contemporary religious culture in Minahasa. By using the theoretical concepts of ritual and dramaturgy, as well as applying the descriptive qualitative methods, this research found that the sakaiba ritual procession is a liminal hinge that allows a peaceful encounter between the ancient Minahasa traditions and the …

Jalan Gender, Jalan Spiritual: Menggali Pembentukan Gender Project Dalam Konteks Pengalaman Keberagamaan Perempuan, Katrin Bandel, Anne Shakka, Gusnita Linda, Yustina Devi Ardhiani

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Using the method of collaborative autoethnography, this study critically reflects on the life stories of three women from different backgrounds by focusing on gender and religion. One of the main aspects that we examined is gender projects, i.e. the projections people make when imagining their future gender roles and identities. As a result of our (self-) observations, we found that, while at first the gender project of those women was formed by the patriarchal gender order of their society, as time progresses, after living through and evaluating a variety of often traumatic experiences, they developed their own gender projects more …

Pengaruh Profesi Tukang Cukur Dalam Transformasi Kampung Peundeuy, Banyuresmi, Garut, Hilyatun Nishlah, Dhita Hapsarani

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Being professional barbers from Garut—known as ASGAR, short for Asli Garut, which means ‘of Garut origin’—has been the main source of income for most men residing in Kampung Peundeuy, Banyuresmi Village, Garut Regency, West Java. The profession is considered so successful in providing financial welfare for the villagers and improving their social status that many of the residents decide to leave the village to expand their business elsewhere, especially in Jakarta and other big cities in West Java. This phenomenon has intensified since the 2000s until the residents finally dub Kampung Peundeuy as a “barber village” in West Java. In …

Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie

Dissertations and Theses

This essay will begin by breaking down Henry Adams’s starting sentence in his autobiography word by word, piece by piece – pondering its meanings and permutations in the context of subsequent chapters of this iconic memoir. The essay will then consider whether Adams’s Education should still be regarded as a classic of American autobiography or seen merely as an irrelevant and out-of-date artifact. In a nation radically transformed since Adams’s time, does the book still deserve its high flung reputation? In other words, which of the images cited above is most relevant to The Education: an image of optimistic youth …

Ostracism And Democracy, Alex Zhang

Faculty Articles

The 2020 Presidential Election featured an unprecedented attempt to undermine our democratic institutions: allegations of voter fraud and litigation about mail-in ballots culminated in a mob storming of the Capitol as Congress certified President Biden’s victory. Former President Trump now faces social-media bans and potential disqualification from future federal office, but his allies have criticized those efforts as the witch-hunt of a cancel culture that is symptomatic of the unique ills of contemporary liberal politics.

This Article defends recent efforts to remove Trump from the public eye, with reference to an ancient Greek electoral mechanism: ostracism. In the world’s first …

Regulatory Competition And State Capacity, Martin W. Sybblis

Faculty Articles

This Article explores an underlying tension in the regulatory competition literature regarding why some jurisdictions are more attractive to firms than others. It pays special attention to offshore financial centers (OFCs). OFCs court the business of nonresidents, offer business friendly regulatory environments, and provide for minimal, if any, taxation on their customers. On the one extreme, OFCs are theorized as merely products of legislative capture— thereby lacking any meaningful agency of their own. On the other hand, OFCs are conceptualized as well-governed jurisdictions that attract investment because of the high quality of their laws and legal institutions—indicating some ability to …

Robert The Bruce Fights For Scottish Independence Once Again: The Influence Of Nationalism And Myth In Scotland's Modern Pursuit Of Independence, Claire Hintz

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Robert the Bruce, King of Scots from 1306-1329, led the Scottish to victory in the Wars of Independence against England. Today, the fight for Scottish Independence is alive and being led by the Scottish National Party (SNP) as they push for a second independence referendum. The first, in 2014, failed with 45% of Scots voting YES and 55% voting NO. Since Brexit, however, support for Scottish independence has consistently risen; polls in 2020 showed sustained majority support for Scottish independence for the first time in recent Scottish history. Nationalism, or the constructed ideology that is politically used to uphold a …

Roundabout - How The United States Government Creates Cyclical Terrorism As It Responds To Domestic And Foreign Terrorism, Sarah Selch Andrews

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

Terrorism is frequently studied as a linear transaction between actors, usually a government and one or more extremists of some sort, be they individuals or groups. The focus in this thesis is on the United States government and international jihadist extremists, specifically Al-Qaeda, a conflict which often is covered in one of two ways: extremist action is the provocation and government policy (up to and including military engagement) is the reaction, or alternatively, foreign policy is the initiating action and what we call "terrorism" is merely a response.

This paper argues that neither approach is sufficient and proposes a model …

Chinese Paradox : Where Are Chinese Monuments?, Alberto Castelli

Journal of Urban Culture Research

The bareness of the Chinese monumental landscape is the result of various factors, the analysis of which deserves an inquiry into Chinese modus vivendi. Daoist imprimatur and its recognition of nature’s superiority is but one. Buddhist sectarianism, Chinese fluid conception of time, Chinese iconoclasm, are phenomena that, largely, have concurred on creating a periodic tabula rasa of cultural heritage. Making sense of this is simply to recognize that artistic representations are not only metaphors for understanding social dynamics, but also a magnifying glass on the relation between people and their past.

Barbara Powers: Witch Or Myth? The Last Case Of Witchcraft In South Carolina, Brandon Smith, Bobbie Jo Wimberly, Courtney Mcdonald

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

Was an elderly woman from the upstate of South Carolina the last to be accused of and put on trial for witchcraft in the United States? In this paper, we investigate claims from an old letter sent to the president of South Carolina College to determine whether or not Barbara Powers was truly accused of witchcraft during a criminal trial. After thoroughly investigating census data, court records, marriage records, and other historical data in the named counties and those surrounding them, we were unable to determine conclusively if the trial was real or fabricated. Despite not knowing if the case …

"To Claim That Greatness For Themselves”: A History Of The Kentucky Horse Park, Emily Elizabeth Libecap

Theses and Dissertations--History

The Kentucky Horse Park describes itself as the world’s only equine theme park. However, the park is not entirely without historical precedent; instead, world’s fairs, amusement parks, and theme parks all form a century-long pedigree chart through which the park can trace its ancestors. The Kentucky Horse Park’s links to these predecessors deepen our understanding of how the park is a reflection of the world around it and the motivations for how and why it was built. From its inception in the late 1960s, to when it opened in 1978, through the present day, the Kentucky Horse Park was and …

A Holy Tug Of War: Us Christians Against The Contras (1970-1990), Mark Maxwell Brown

Theses and Dissertations--History

After the Sandinista revolution of 1979 ousted the longstanding Somoza dynasty of Nicaragua, the small Central American nation became an obsession of US foreign policy as the Reagan administration committed its efforts to deposing the leftist revolutionary government through the funding and training of the Contras, a counter-revolutionary guerrilla group. With the Cold War at a boiling point, continued control and influence over Central America became a pillar of US anticommunist agenda. Uniquely, many of the most ardent critics of the Reagan administration during this period of violent intervention were Christian missionaries. The Sandinistas were able to defeat the Somoza …

Social Scripts And Emotional Communities Revealed In The Paston Letters, Mary Sweeney

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project analyzes the Paston Letters to better understand the emotional communities of an English gentry family in the fifteenth century. The letters examined are exchanged among - John the elder, his two sons, John II and John III, his wife Margaret Paston and their daughter-in-law, Margery Brews Paston. The textual analysis uses historical and sociolinguistic methods, paying particular attention to the language of emotion, such as swear words, words of endearment, and words of expression. The project relies on Melissa Mohr, Geoffrey Hughes, Alexander Bergs, and Barbra Rosenwein. These letters reveal people’s emotions and whether they maintained their emotional …

#Aminext: The Link Between European Colonization And Gender-Based Violence In Contemporary South Africa, Jenna Meredith Pagel

Capstone Showcase

Alarmingly, the female murder rate in South Africa is five times the global average (BBC News 2019). According to data from 2017 and 2018, a woman is murdered every four hours in South Africa (Wilkinson 2019). More than 30 women were killed by their spouses in August 2019, and at least 137 sexual offenses are committed per day in South Africa (Francke 2019).

For this thesis, and in order to understand why South Africa has some of the highest rates of violence against women in the world, I consult a number of scholars who conclude that the overall issue of …

America’S Presidential Crisis Of Legitimacy: How The Electoral College Became Obsolete And How We Can Fix It, Julia Rose Foodman

Scripps Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to critique the current American Presidential electoral system, the Electoral College, and to show what an alternative could potentially mean for the American people. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What are the main arguments for the Electoral College, why are they troubling, and how can we mend American Presidential elections for the greater purposes of political equality, democracy, and freedom? To do so, core arguments made by conservative pundits in favor of the Electoral College are outlined in order to bring attention to their logical, political, and moral inconsistencies. The inequalities …

Maiden Voyagers: Exhibiting The Autonomy Of Travelling Women To Western Australia, 1818-1830, Toni Church

Theses

My thesis appraises critical problems of current museum practice concerning women, particularly interpretations of the physical female form and autonomous behaviours, through a wide-ranging field work study and in-depth analysis of recent Australian museum exhibitions and surveys of international exhibitions online. A working understanding of New Museology and empathetic museum practice was derived from this fieldwork experience and complemented by an academic study of museological theory to formulate future museum best practices. The second part of the thesis critiques written records and other artefacts to investigate autonomous behaviours in the experiences of European women who travelled to Western Australia in …

Drag Magazine: A Study Of Community, Olivia Austin

Departmental Honors Projects

This research aims to understand the trans/drag community and its relationship to political activism and the lesbian and gay community in the 1970s and early 1980s. I aim to answer the following questions: How did Drag perceive the relationship between the gay/lesbian community and the trans/drag community? How did Drag function in the trans/drag community? How did Drag benefit its readers? Transgender individuals and drag queens were at the forefront of activism in the1960s during the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and the Stonewall Inn Riots. Recently, there has been more attention to the critical transgender activism by Marsha P. Johnson and …