Digital Commons Network^™

Art/Place Making In A Settler Colonial Context: A Critical Place Inquiry On The Haldimand Tract/Kitchener-Waterloo From A White Settler Perspective, Haley Sheppard

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Although critical place scholars implicate artists in settler colonial processes of placemaking, there is little information on how white settler artists (WSAs) might use their creative practice to support practices of accountability and solidarity with Indigenous resurgence. This research responds to this gap by investigating the creative practices of WSAs located on the Haldimand Tract/in Kitchener-Waterloo (KW), and how they might approach critical, contextual practices in their creative work. A critical place inquiry was combined with ethnographic research principles and a transformative critical research paradigm. Six WSAs participated in mobile interviews, which took place in a location significant to them. …

Unveiling Trauma And Seeking Justice: Exploring Mass Atrocities Against Tamils Through The Lens Of Religion, Culture, And Global Justice, Arrabe Vigneswaran

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This paper examines the mass atrocities committed against the Tamil population in Sri Lanka, analyzing them through the interconnected lenses of religion, culture, and global justice. It explores how Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism, codified through legal and constitutional mechanisms such as the Sinhala Only Act and state-sponsored cultural erasure, facilitated the systemic marginalization, displacement, and dehumanization of Tamils. The study investigates the legal, political, and cultural underpinnings of these acts ranging from war crimes and ethnic cleansing to potential genocide while assessing the reluctance of both domestic and international actors to enforce meaningful accountability. Drawing on hybrid court models, transitional justice theories, …

Liner Notes On Black Trans Girlhood: Afrofuturist Affect & Black Popular Music As A Praxis Of Self-Fashioning, Shawn J. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Liner Notes on Black Trans Girlhood: Afrofuturist Affect & Black Popular Music as a Praxis of Self-Fashioning interprets Black musical performance in identity-making, with a focus on how music and Black trans identity intersect and informs Black trans girlhood. As such, Black trans girls render ourselves legible, i.e. understood without shame or judgment, by constructing our identities through the music by Black women we listen and dance to, or watch and sing. These musical connections affirm the possibilities of Black femme expression. This expression of Black femininity is due to what I call an Afrofuturist affect, by which I refer …

Cultural Model Of Indigenous Custom Marriage, Maria G. Stapleton

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines and documents the tradition of Indigenous Custom Marriage (ICM) practiced in a semi-rural community in central Mexico. The arrival of Spaniards to Mesoamerica during the sixteenth century brought new forms of marriage to the region, those of the Christian religion and of the Spanish crown’s laws. While these new forms slowly gained acceptance, the traditional pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican form of getting married has endured over the intervening centuries up through the present. This traditional form of marriage is not monolithic, but shows variation across the diverse ethnic groups, communities, and geographic regions of Mesoamerica. The community studied, Tlanalapa, …

Pedagogical Idealism, Race, And The Specter Of Africa In Josefina Aldecoa’S Historia De Una Maestra And Donato Ndongo’S Las Tinieblas De Tu Memoria Negra, Parker Lawson

Funded Scholarship

This article examines two contemporary Spanish novels, Josefina Aldecoa’s Historia de una maestra (1990) and Donato Ndongo’s Las tinieblas de tu memoria negra (1987), to assess the status of pedagogical idealism and experimentation with particular attention to Equatorial Guinea. Where previous scholarly attention to Aldecoa’s novel focuses on the protagonist’s credentials as a progressive pedagogue, this article draws attention to Gabriela’s etapa guineana to argue that the text cripples under the weight of postcolonial analysis as regards race, religion, class, and language. Drawing the novel into comparison with Ndongo’s text, the article argues that Spanish colonial pedagogy flattened, or sought …

The Masa That Holds Us: Indigenous Epistemologies And The Food We Share, Necahual Gamboa

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The U.S. higher education system is built on histories and infrastructures of colonization, white supremacy, and western imperialism. Among many of the institutions produced from a history of domination and genocide, the systems of higher education need to shift their focus to decolonial frameworks including Indigenous epistemologies (ways of knowing and being) in order to work toward true reparations between these imperial systems and the Indigenous people they have displaced and disregarded. This project brings these systems into question, but also uses art, prose, and storytelling to better align with what it means or what it could look like to …

Rhythm Against Poethics, Jayvyn Dacas

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis stages an auto-poetic ethnography that listens to, and moves with, the anterior spaces of Black life. Those murmurs, hums, musical hesitations, and infrastructural vibrations that refuse capture by dominant epistemic regimes. Drawing from Ramon Amaro’s reading of Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick and Alexander Weheliye’s reflections on sound, Fred Moten’s insights on displacement, and Tendayi Sithole’s attention to the phonographic, the project situates music production as method and unworlding. Through engagements with the 808, sampling, sound systems, and embodied listening across Florida. Spaces like the warehouse, the party, record stores, and community become the work of Black voices, and …

An Ethnography Of Love Jihad: The Governance Of Interfaith Marriages In Times Of Hindutva, Snehal Sharma

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

My doctoral research focuses on the violations of human and citizenship rights of women and religiously marginalized communities (based on religious differences) in the backdrop of right-wing movements in India. I assess the Hindu nationalist propaganda named “love jihad” to demonstrate the way it weaponizes religious exogamy. This propaganda legitimizes violence against Indian religious minorities and women as it claims that marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men are acts of terrorism against Hindus with the sole aim of increasing the Muslim population using Hindu women's bodies. I have used ethnographic research methods to explore the legal process of interfaith …

Loving-Learning-Leading-Living: A Scholarly Personal Narrative Of A Black Gay Father, Russell E. Thornhill

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation examines the roles, challenges, and contributions of a Black Gay father, a demographic largely absent from academic discourse. While literature explores themes of the church, LGBTQ+ identities, and social justice, there remains a critical gap addressing the lived experiences of a Black Gay father. This study fills that void by elevating narratives as community activists, family leaders, and clergy members, acknowledging their transformative impact within familial and societal structures. The methodology used is the Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN). It allows for in-depth, reflective engagement with personal experiences in conversation with scholars while situating them within broader sociocultural, theological, …

Co-Becoming Our Way From Ecocide To The Pluriverse, Jupong Lin Ph.D.

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Coloniality/modernity is dying. Rising temperatures over land and sea, the extreme weather of the past decade, rising sea levels, arctic ice loss, and mass extinction are just a few indicators that the world has moved far beyond climate change to climate catastrophe. My arts-informed research takes the view that climate catastrophe, perhaps more accurately described as “collective trauma,” is part of the prevailing story and worldview of modernity, defined by patterns of domination, conquest, extractivism, and capitalism. East Asian and Indigenous worldviews share an emphasis on relationality with the world of nonhuman beings and animist traditions that do not …

A Critical Narrative Inquiry Into The Experiences Of Latino Male Graduate International Students Attending A Pwi, Cesar Miguel Castellon Gort

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This qualitative study examines how Latino male international graduate students navigate identity, belonging, and exclusion within U.S. higher education. Although international enrollment has increased, the experiences of this student population remain largely invisible in research and institutional practice. Guided by Intersectionality and Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), this study investigates how intersecting dimensions of race, language, age, gender, and immigration status shape these students’ academic and social experiences. Using a critical narrative methodology, data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and identity web exercises with four participants. Employing story chaining to link individual narratives, four central themes emerged: 1) Racialized and …

“Hard To Rememeber, Then Hard To Forget:” A Qualitative Exploration Into The Attitudes And Lived Experiences Of Black People With Black Names, Destin L. Mizelle

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Naming practices within the Black American community are vibrant and deeply rooted in cultural traditions and shared values. Much like other ethnic groups, these names tell stories, reflect heritage, and connect individuals to their community, making each choice meaningful and significant. However, due to the systemic effects of anti-Blackness, Black Americans often have a complex relationship with their names. While previous research has primarily utilized quantitative methodologies focusing on the negative associations and consequences of having a Black name, this study aims to amplify the voices of Black people who possess Black names. Using reflexive thematic analysis, this qualitative study …

New Chronology For Neolithic Cultures In The Lake Eyasi Basin, Northern Tanzania, Musa Said Mwitondi, Pastory Magayane Bushozi

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

There have been several studies on Neolithic Cultures in the Serengeti National. The recovered archaeological materials include domestic and wild fauna remains, potsherds and lithic artefacts, ochre, and stone enclosures, dating between 7200 and 4900 BP. In the East African Rift System (EARS), conventional ages for Neolithic Cultures are inferred from the most extensively researched Neolithic sites in Kenya, where the oldest Nderit ware, cattle and caprine in the Lake Turkana Basin, northern Kenya, date ca. 5200 BP. Studies on the Neolithic of EARS have been structured to fit into the migration or diffusion models that consider the spread of …

Smallpox Outbreaks And Immunization Policies In Tanzania From The Late Nineteenth Century To The First World War, Lorne Larson

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

An estimated 300 million people died globally from smallpox in the 20th century alone. There was very much a North/South divide in the existence of the disease in that period, with countries across South America, Africa and Asia recording the majority of cases. In 1966 the World Health Organization launched an intensive effort to finally eliminate the disease. The last known endemic case of smallpox was reported in Somalia in 1977, and that outbreak was promptly contained. In 1980 smallpox was declared eradicated – the only infectious disease affecting humans to achieve this distinction. This remains among the most notable …

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 …

African Women Custodians: Teaching, Toponymy And Tacit Reverie In Heritage Education, Tokie Laotan-Brown

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper investigates the critical role of women in African cultures as guardians of cultural heritage. It explores their central function in transmitting traditional ecological knowledge and practices across generations through established pedagogical methods, toponymic knowledge systems (place-names within cultural landscapes), and the cultivation of tacit knowledge. The paper emphasizes the significance of women's contributions to environmental education, often overlooked or undervalued within Western scientific paradigms. This marginalization restricts access to resources and participation in decision-making processes. It argues for the integration of traditional knowledge systems, informed by women's expertise, into formal education and pedagogy. This inclusion serves to validate …

“Kematz'ib' Para Gritar” Innovative Technologies In Revitalizing The Mayan Languages: Empowering Youth Through Poetry - A Narrative Study, Héctor De Jesús Palala Martínez

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation explores innovative approaches to preserving and revitalizing the linguistic and cultural heritage of Mayan-speaking youth of Guatemalan descent in rural Nebraska. It delves into the intersection of technology, artistic expression, and cultural practices, emphasizing the revitalization of Mayan languages in Abya Yala (the Americas), particularly emphasizing the Guatemalan and the Mayan diasporas in Nebraska.

The research investigates the roles of digital humanities, culture-based education, and poetic expressions in language preservation/revitalization efforts among Mayan youth and unaccompanied minors in transnational educational settings. Central to the study is an academic initiative for transnational Mayan high school students integrating poetry and …

Vavanga, Vavalo, And Fakakaukau With Vā-Tā, Siosiua F.P. Lafitani

Pacific Studies

This article addresses the profound cognitive and cultural significance of vavanga (contemplation) and vavalo (contemplation), which are contempla- tive frameworks deeply rooted in the concept of vā (space) within Tongan language and culture. These frameworks serve as gateways to expansive cogni- tive exploration, stretching the boundaries of imagination and contemplation. Fakakaukau (thinking), double or dual actor (named because it bridges the realms of cognition and practicality), uses instrumental concepts such as fifili (inquisitiveness) and fekeli (meticulous exploration) to navigate the landscapes of inquiry. Throughout this exploration, a critical distinction emerges between tā as tempo and the cognitive concepts of contemplation …

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 …

Urban Japanese, Rural American: How Regionality Shaped Nisei Girlhood In Prewar America, Lauren Reiko Yanase

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores Nisei girls' racial and cultural identity formation in the American West before their forced removal to the World War II Japanese American mass incarceration camps. Japanese American history has long been dominated by male narratives, from labor histories of the 1880's first-generation Issei to the American patriotism of the 1930's second-generation Nisei. Japanese American women are generally considered through generational categories, promulgating a linear story of American progress. I argue that regionality is the main factor that shaped Nisei girls' self-identity, employing transcribed interviews with Nisei women born 1924-1929 as primary sources to write narrative histories differentiated …

Guns, Glass, And Metal And The Applications Of Traditional Technology In The 19th Century Southern Platte, Aaron Toussaint

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I investigate how Indigenous communities of the North American Central Plains navigated settler-colonialism by adapting traditional hunting technology. To frame this I ask, how and why traditional technology was favored over introduced firearm technology? I investigate this by examining archaeological collections from Fort Vasquez and the Coffin's Buffalo Kill Site, ethnographic history of the Central Plains, Indigenous ledger art, and interviewing a ledger artist. This study uses a multifaceted theoretical approach to connect hybrid projectile point artifacts, with Indigenous historic documentation, to recognize Indigenous agency in the 19th century. This thesis counters historic narratives of the 19th …

The Meanings Of The Hospital De San Lázaro In Seventeenth-Century Manila, Francis Galasi

Journal of Global Catholicism

The Hospital de San Lázaro was a specialized health facility in the early modern Philippines, dedicated to the care of lepers and sufferers of other contagious diseases. While it was established for this specific purpose, its role in colonial society varied. This versatility reflected the distinct priorities and commitments of the groups pulled into its orbit, as each charged San Lázaro with a unique meaning. This article explores how and why these groups—the indigenous Filipinos, the Spanish residents and the Discalced Franciscans—understood San Lázaro in their own way. It highlights the ability of fixed institutions, such as a hospital, to …

Modern Tools, Ancient Skills: An Attempted Dialogue Between Ai, Design And Traditional Craft, Paolo Cardini, Juan C. Noguera

Tradition Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education

This study explores the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in traditional craft practices, focusing on Guatemalan artisans. The research investigates how machine learning, specifically generative AI platforms like OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney, can bridge the gap between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design methods. Guatemalan artisans were trained to use these AI tools to generate design ideas, which were then translated into three-dimensional bronze door knockers. The study analyzes the impact of AI on the artisans' workflow, creativity, and business, highlighting both the challenges and benefits. Results indicate that AI can streamline the design process and inspire new creative directions, …

Gender, Age, Class And Racial Stereotypes, And Power Relations In Television Ads: 2011-13 Vs 2021-22, Thomas D. Clark, Julie Stewart

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article demonstrates how faculty and DEI experts can use resources included in this paper to highlight how a range of stereotypes are created and reinforced in television ads, and it identifies several topics for future analysis. To understand how depictions of gender, class, age, and race intersect in 8 television ads featuring the relationship between the race of individuals depicted in romantic and platonic relationships this article examines 4 pairs of commercials from 2011-2013 and 2021-2022. Drawing on concepts of intercategorical complexity, it describes product, setting, characters and relationships to help gain a deeper understanding of how various stereotypes …

Tendencias Fonéticas Y Aspectos Gramaticales Del Español Hablado En El Sáhara, Mustapha Ouzir

Journal of Maya Heritage

Este estudio analiza las tendencias fonéticas y los aspectos morfosintácticos del español hablado en el Sáhara, una región marcada por su historia colonial como territorio español. Mediante una metodología cualitativa, que incluye observación libre, conversaciones grupales y pruebas fonológicas, se investigan las características lingüísticas de los hablantes saharauis, cuya lengua materna es el hassanía. Los hallazgos revelan una interferencia fonética significativa, como la neutralización vocálica, la reducción de diptongos y la influencia del español canario. También se identifican desviaciones morfosintácticas respecto al español estándar, incluyendo problemas de concordancia gramatical, tiempos verbales y uso de preposiciones. Estos fenómenos reflejan el impacto …

Unmasking Male Voices In Woman Hollering Creek: Contributions To Pedagogy And Masculinity Studies, Ramón Javier Guerra, Joan Latchaw

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In teaching Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek to undergraduates, we have developed a sociocultural and historical framework, beginning with the theoretical work of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands and the concept of transfrontera feminism. With incidents of seduction and sexual abuse of women, spousal abuse, and patriarchal family structures, the collection of stories strongly indicates the oppressive representation of machismo. Scholars and teachers have drawn important critiques of Cisneros’s work based on destructive sociocultural forces on women. However, in rereading the text with an intended focus on the representations of male characters, we have surmised that Cisneros structured the stories in the …

Volume 17 - Issue 1: La Créole - A Journal Of Creole History & Genealogy, Emily M. Goldsmith, Alan Rosenberg, Charles Rosenberg, Kathryn Coleman Labat, Phebe A. Hayes Ph.D, Debora Lemelle Donato, Barbara Ricard Landix, Pat Marant Schexnayder, Sakinah A. Davis Dma, Ingrid R. Stanley

La Créole - A Journal of Creole History & Genealogy

The Louisiana Creole Research Association, Inc., known as LA Creole, was founded on August 21, 2004 as a New Orleans-based, non-profit family research and educational organization. Its purpose is to assist Creoles of Color in researching their ancestry, to educate the general public about Creole history and culture, and to celebrate the contributions and legacy of a unique, sometimes forgotten people. La Créole, the Association’s journal is published annually.

Eastern Imaginaries, Erika Quinn

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Orientalist tropes shaped Western ideas about the East in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries through travelogues and fiction, and have persisted into the twenty-first. One central set -piece of these stereotypes is the imaginary Eastern European country, “Ruritania.” The advantages and drawbacks of such an imagined place are explored more thoroughly through two recent pieces of pop culture, Wes Anderson’s film “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, and China Miéville’s novel The City and the City. While Anderson’s film entertains and sustains Orientalist stereotypes, Miéville’s novel demands the reader go deeper to empathize with characters and grapple with key issues about …

The Diyinii Of Naachid: Diné Rhetoric As Ritual, Edward L. Karshner

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Rhetoric is far more than a theory of communication or the antiquated ancestor of freshman composition courses. As a system, rhetoric is the process that directs, on the one hand, individual experiences with the world and structures, and on the other, the stories cultures tell about themselves. These foundational narratives (myths) reveal a culture’s metaphysical understanding of the nature of reality, the psychological understanding of human nature, and the epistemological notion of what can be known. Using the Diné Bahané, this paper will explore Diné rhetoric as naachid, an inclusive, outward-directed communication model of problem solving which functions …

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. …