Digital Commons Network^™

Children Past Curfew: Surveillance, Resistance, And Childhood In Philippine Martial Law Children's Literature, Krisna Marie T. Balolong

Children's Literature (MA) Theses

This paper examines how two Philippine children's books depict state surveillance and its effects on a child's perspective of family, authority figures, and childhood. Through analysis of Augie Rivera's Isang Harding Papel and Sandra Nicole Roldan's At the School Gate, this project makes a connection between children's literature and surveillance studies, offering new framework to engage with children’s literature depicting authoritarian regimes and state violence, especially in cases where children were targets of their governments. Each book is examined by their representations of state surveillance during the Martial Law era of the Philippines, as well as each characters’ individual …

From Voice To Noise: Accented Speech, Constructed Languages, And Subtitling Practices As Markers Of Difference, Alice Alonso Limongi

Course Work

This monograph explores three main strategies of vocal exotification in Anglophone film: representations of accented speech, inclusion of constructed languages, and non-subtitling of snippets of other languages. Using Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding framework, I approach these practices as rhetorical devices that both construct and are constructed by the complexity of our social landscapes. Portrayals of accented speech, constructed languages, and subtitling practices form a gradient of abstraction, where the denotative meaning of words gradually loses importance to the sonic characteristics of the voice. Combining broader cultural scholarship from Edward Said, sound studies writings on power and language from Nina Sun Eidsheim …

Helena María Viramontes’ Under The Feet Of Jesus And Sandra Cisneros’ The House On Mango Street: An Exploratory Analysis Of Female Friendship In The Chicana Feminist Bildungsroman, Patrice Donnelly

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This exploratory analysis examines female friendships presented in two mid-twentieth century Chicana feminist Bildungsroman, each between a Chicana protagonist and a female friend as foil. One friendship in Under the Feet of Jesus, by Helena María Viramontes, is interracial; the other, in The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, is Chicana. Both friendships interrogate the boundaries within mainstream feminism, particularly its monolithic views and complicity with power. Each friendship offers a Chicana feminist perspective centering family and cultural community. The theoretical foundation includes classical and contemporary understandings of Bildungsroman as literary form, Toni Morrison’s American Africanism, …

Rediscovering The Hidden Nan Yumiao (Mysterious Rain), Katherine E. Nettles

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis explores complex themes of becoming, belonging, and how they shape identity through the perspective of transracial adoption. The investigation draws from personal experiences, cultural texts, and nature vs. nurture research. Combining self-reflection with scholarly sources allows for a broader picture of adoption trauma rather than a fixed bias. The author's research considers the circumstances surrounding adoption, including birth parents giving their child up due to social, economic, legal, or political constraints. This thesis examines finding a place of belonging in public, in community, in family, and in society. This concept of belonging has different meanings based on people's …

Representation Of Indigenous Spiritualities In The Ontario Grade 11 World Religions Curriculum: A Discourse And Textual Analysis, Katelin A. Chavez

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

From Deference To Dialogue: How International Gtas From High Power Distance Cultures Adapt To U.S. Classroom Dynamics, Deborah Akua Afi Appiah

Theses and Dissertations

International graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) from high power distance cultures play a significant role in undergraduate education at U.S. universities, yet they face challenges that go well beyond language proficiency. Coming from educational backgrounds where teacher authority is unquestioned and hierarchical, these GTAs must navigate American classrooms that operate on fundamentally different assumptions, where authority is earned rather than assumed, informality is the norm, and students expect to question, negotiate, and be personally known by their instructors. The present study examined how eighteen (18) international GTAs from seven (7) high power distance countries perceived and adapted to these differences while …

Reawakening Waⁿdat: Community Research & Reclamation, Darcy Allred

Theses and Dissertations

The Wyandot(te) have undergone language dormancy due to settler colonial impacts of warfare, refugee relocation, forced removals, and U.S. assimilation projects. One of the most pressing priorities among our people today is reawakening our ancestral language, Waⁿdat. The common follow-up question is: how? Through the conduit of Waⁿdat language reclamation, this project grapples with the above question in collaboration with the Wyandot(te) community, and in adherence to the tribal sovereignty of the Wyandotte Nation. The project engages with diasporic perspectives, community-based pedagogy design, and tribally specific research protocols and policies. The living collective knowledgebase with which I engage in this …

Family, Stability, Mentors & Money: Student Definitions Of Success, Arturo Caldera

CMC Senior Theses

This research takes a deep dive into the factors shaping marginalized communities’ educational experiences, particularly for low-income Latino students from migrant backgrounds navigating public schooling spaces. Across sixteen qualitative interviews, participant narratives reveal how a systemic lack of resources at the institutional, interpersonal, and structural levels undermines the quality of support students receive and shapes their academic trajectories. Grounded in student-centered practices and informed by scholarship in multicultural education, Chicanx/Latinx studies, feminism, and psychology, this study contributes to ongoing efforts to move beyond deficit-based frameworks and instead recognize the cultural wealth, knowledge, and resilience students bring from their homes and …

Chapter 7: Symmetries Of Cloth And Corn In The Ancient Americas: Pattern Generation, Botany, And The Maize Matrix In Mexico And Peru, Lois Martin

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Discusses pattern generation, botany, and the maize matrix in Mexico and Peru.

“Twist But Don’T Break:” Constellating Past And Present Barriers In Black Queer Multimodal Publishing That Shift Text Into Subtext; Addressing Acceptance Into Queer Creative Communities And The Void Of Black Voices Within, Kae Ann Dennert-Frederick

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

What does it look like to reframe our understanding of intersectional work? Looking at multimodality I will walk through the multiple frameworks by asking how Black Queer publishing of Young Adult fiction uses visuals to describe what cannot be said and what choices are made to show community structure and language, while also having to adapt for publication standards. I have researched this by looking into examples of Queer publishing (any representation of queerness in a form of publishing—in the text and sometimes in the authors' identity), as well as authors’ use of visuals to say what cannot be said …

Modernism’S Wild Child: The Interplay Of Modernist And Children’S Literature, Rachel Riffel

All Master's Theses

Within literary criticism, American and British modernism are often characterized by the disillusioned writers and creators who established an elitist literary community during the early 20^th century. This period is also distinguished by the Harlem Renaissance highlighting Black art, culture, and writing. Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps are well-known for contributing core texts to modernism and the Harlem Renaissance that expressed existential themes and developed experimental techniques. What many readers don’t know, however, is that these authors and many other contemporaries wrote stories and poetry for children. In this thesis, I explore the children’s …

More Than Meets The Eye: Operation Blue Star & Us-India’S Deadly Exchange, Jannat Verma

Scripps Senior Theses

Operation Blue Star is often memorialized as an independent action carried out by India's Congress Party. While such an understanding is not entirely historically inaccurate, it fails to account for the role played by US influence in the operation. An examination of CIA files and America's involvement in the subcontinent during the Cold War calls for a re-interpretation of Operation Blue Star, not as a solo campaign, but rather as a product of counterinsurgent and deadly exchange between the US and India.

Recipes And Resources: Food As A Decolonial Tool For The 1.5 Generation, Reyna Guadalupe Silva Carrillo

Scripps Senior Theses

Food is more than just nourishment for the 1.5-generation, people who come to the United States as children and now navigate between cultures; it is a language of memory, resistance, and survival across borders. This project raises an important question: how do 1.5-generation students navigate identity, belonging, and survival through food, and how can a zine serve as a medium for sharing community knowledge? My project argues that food is an important way 1.5-generation students use language to remember, resist, and survive across borders. Using pláticas, an informal conversation-based approach, this project focuses on the experience of 1.5-generation students at …

Performing Brazilian Identity: The Cultural Politics Of Carmen Miranda, Nicole M. Pineiro Serrano

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This honors undergraduate thesis examines how Carmen Miranda’s performances shaped Brazilian national identity in both Brazilian cinema and Hollywood in the mid-twentieth century. Through film analysis, historical research, and cultural theory, the study examines Miranda’s public persona and the symbolic significance of the Baiana costume, with respect to Brazil’s Estado Novo regime, and Hollywood’s own depictions of Latin America. Overall, it argues that Miranda’s image functioned as a site of cultural negotiation, where Brazilian cultural expression met Hollywood’s exoticizing portrayals, but the encounter did not always stay as a fixed stereotype. The study also examines the tensions between authenticity, commodification, …

¡Salud! Sacrificing The Sacred Sip: A Critical Analysis Of The Impact Of The Spiritual Conquest On Alcohol Traditions In Central México, Elizabeth Vilchis

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

By thoroughly investigating the available primary sources, this thesis will convey the importance of the Mesoamerican inebriating drink pulque in both the ethos and mythos of ancient Nahua society, examining how the ritual use of pulque became problematic in the eyes of the Spaniards, by investigating the cultural and ideological contradictions or double standards that enabled the tensions, struggles, and violence with which the Spanish colonial regime repressed the ritual use of pulque. This thesis compares the Nahua ethos and mythos of pulque to the Christian ethos and mythos of wine, highlighting the parallels perceived by Spaniards in Central México …

Chapter 6: Snakeskin And Corn Markings: The Dotted-Diamond-Grid Pattern In The U.S. Southwest, Laurie D. Webster, Kelley A. Hays-Gilpin

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Discusses Southwestern tie-dye and its Mesoamerican and Andean connections.

Black Ecological Care: Conservation, Environmental Justice, And Sovereignty In Baltimore, Maryland, Alexandria Nicole Casteel

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Dominant traditions of urban planning, municipal policy, and environmental science register Black urban spaces through a vocabulary of pathology, as sites of ecological deficit, contamination, and social decay. This dissertation investigates how Black communities in U.S. cities attend to the environment in ways that address legacies of environmental and social injustice while opening pathways toward different environmental futures. I gather these practices under the analytic of Black ecological care, which captures the generative labor of making and maintaining livable worlds within, alongside, and beyond histories of harm. I develop the analytic across twenty-nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2021 and …

Beyonce´, The Womanist Entertainer: Womanism, Anti-Racism And Cultural Pride In Beyonce´ Knowles Carter’S Music, Nena Carpenter

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This research explores the latter portion of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s career and her distinguishing herself as a womanist/feminist icon. Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has been regarded as a popular music icon since her days as the lead singer in the R&B group Destiny's Child. The group’s music, including songs like "Say My Name" and "Independent Women", have often been recognized by cultural critics as empowerment anthems for women and girls. When Beyoncé performed at the Video Music Awards in 2014, the sample of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 Ted Talk on feminism in her song "Flawless" precipitated a more focused discourse about the authenticity …

A Content Analysis Of Black Women's Race And Gender Depiction In American History Textbooks, Le'marqunita De'sharay Lowe

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Using a race and gender analytical lens, this research study examined how Black women were depicted in four secondary Advanced Placement Pearson’s history textbooks. Content analysis was the methodology to collect data from Pearson’s Advanced Placement history textbooks. Captions and images were analyzed to observe the patterns and themes that displayed the intersection between Black women's race and gender depiction. The interdisciplinary fields of history and education allowed an in-depth analysis of race and gender to be conducted throughout this research study. Two research questions were answered throughout this study. What do captions and images teach about the race and …

Digital Griots Playing Lottery Tickets: A Study Of Hip Hop And Social Transformation In Ghana's #Fixthecountry Movement, Jaime M. Kowlessar

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

On June 28, 2021, activist Ibrahim Mohammed (Macho Kaaka) was murdered in Ejura, Ghana, after using social media to criticize government failures. When protesters demanding justice were shot by security forces, politically engaged Ghanaian hip hop artists refused silence, contributing to Ghana’s #FixTheCountry movement—the nation’s largest youth mobilization in a generation. Yet scholarly debates about how hip hop contributes to social change remain unresolved, divided between those celebrating its activist potential and those critiquing its limitations. This dissertation introduces the lottery ticket theory as an alternative framework for understanding cultural activism’s relationship to political transformation. Rather than asking whether hip …

White Fear/Black Apprehension, Volume 2: An Analysis Of The Racialized Targeting Of African Americans In The Educational System, In The Southern U.S. States, Circa 1865–1965, Christopher Donell Gipson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

For African Americans, the legacy of racial oppression extends across centuries, from the transatlantic slave trade and enslavement to the persistence of institutionalized racism, White supremacy, racial violence, and structural inequality within the United States. These racialized systems are reproduced intergenerationally through social institutions, education, media, political discourse, historical narratives, and cultural representations that repeatedly normalize negative constructions of Africans and African Americans. Such representations operate on conscious and subconscious levels, shaping social attitudes, institutional practices, and perceptions of racial difference. As argued in White Fear / Black Apprehension: An Analysis of White European American Racism and Mob Violence Through …

Racial Resentment, Immigration Attitudes, And The Politics Of State Immigrant Policy Adoption In The United States, Cindy Osei Agyemang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Immigration remains one of the most contested public policy issues in the United States, and racial attitudes have become increasingly important in shaping public opinion and political debate. While prior research has shown a strong relationship between racial resentment and restrictive immigration attitudes, less is known about whether these attitudes extend to legislative discourse and the adoption of immigrant-inclusive state policies. This dissertation addresses that gap by examining the relationship between racial resentment and immigration politics across three levels of analysis: public opinion, legislative discourse, and state policy adoption. Using a mixed-methods research design, the study combines quantitative and qualitative …

Faik Tagirov And Tatar Constructivism: The Making Of A New Tatar Book, Miriam Akhmetshin

Scripps Senior Theses

Working in the style of constructivism, Faik Tagirov primarily designed book covers for Tatar agitational literature in the 1920s. Studying at VKhUTEMAS and working for numerous publishing houses, Tagirov participated in several domestic and international exhibitions with well-known artists like Aleksandr Rodchenko and El Lissitzky. Tagirov utilized photomontage, geometricism, and unique typographical designs to create potent materials for a Tatar population. Current scholarship fails to adequately acknowledge the diverse influences impacting the work of non-Russian artists such as Tagirov. Using visual and iconographic analysis, I argue for an approach that recognizes Tagirov's work as syncretic in nature, utilizing both indigenous …

Entre Dos Mundos: A First-Generation Cuban American's Journey Through Identity And Memory, Alessandra M. Gonzalez

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

ENTRE DOS MUNDOS (translated as “between two worlds”) explores the complexities of growing up as the eldest daughter in a Cuban American immigrant family and the tensions of navigating life between cultures. Set in Miami, the collection blends lyrical and prose poetry to examine cultural identity, diaspora, intergenerational memory, and the emotional landscape of young adulthood. Through personal narrative and historical context, ENTRE DOS MUNDOS traces the speaker’s coming-of-age amid the inherited stories of her family’s escape from Cuba and the lingering effects of displacement. The section “Yo” focuses on the psychological challenges of adolescence and early adulthood, reflecting on …

Women In Santa Eulalia, Guatemala Through The Concepts Of Rootedness, Community, And Migration., Helen Hobson

Maya America: Journal of Essays, Commentary, and Analysis

This essay explores the experiences of Maya Q’anjob’al women in the villages of Santa Eulalia in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Women from eleven communities participated in group interviews during the four months I spent conducting fieldwork in 2024, thus building upon my findings from 2022 and 2023. Questions focused on their daily lives, their connections to people and places, strategies for generating income, and the impact of migration on their lives and the community. Two broad themes emerged from the interviews. The first relates to their relationships to the land and community, and how this rootedness supports a wholistic (Indigenous) sense of …

Kalunga Crossings: Waterscapes Of Terror And "Teachment" In The African Atlantic World, Dianne M. Stewart, Tracey E. Hucks, Solimar Otero

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In this article, we think alongside historian of religions Charles H. Long to analyze the relationship between water and empire, explore theoretical approaches to water and modernity, and probe the significance of water in Africana ecologies and spiritual cultures, highlighting its suggestive contributions to restorative epistemologies of ecological co-habitation. Our investigation advances an Africana religious framework of “waterscapes of terror and ‘teachment’” that centers diaspora bodies of water as loci for analyzing history, materiality, and ecological regard. Teachment is an anti-colonial linguistic irruption, an all-encompassing term for Africana pedagogies and epistemologies that defy antiblack and anti-African colonial instruction. Examining how …

A World Between Worlds: The Hidden Disconnect Of Chinese Autistic Individuals, Joy Lu

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This paper examines the complex challenges faced by Chinese autistic individuals navigating both Western autism communities and broader Chinese cultural contexts. Drawing on personal experience, community observation, and cultural analysis, it explores how language barriers, cultural stigma, and differing values create a unique form of disconnection for the Chinese autistic community. This paper argues that current neurodiversity discourse is dominated by Western frameworks that often fail to account for this disconnect, resulting in the exclusion of entire groups. By centring Chinese perspectives, it calls for a more culturally responsive approach to autism advocacy: one that bridges linguistic, cultural, and historical …

Quien Soy Sin Mi Idioma Nativo?: The Loss Of The Spanish Language And Its Effects On Identity, Wilzaid L. Santiago-Maldonado

Honors Program Theses and Research Projects

Language is a mechanism of cultural preservation. The history of language has two parts: 1. the technical aspects and 2. how it is diffused and/or becomes extinct. According to the U.S. Census Data, the Hispanic population has grown immensely over the past several decades, particularly from 1980-2020. Even so, there has been significant loss of the Spanish language. The researcher examined this phenomenon in two phases. First, 14 peer-reviewed articles published between 2008-2024 were assessed to determine emerging themes. Results showed that articles cited “the lack of knowledge/use” of Spanish and the “language/cultural dominance.” Second, the researcher conducted four focus …

From Ghorer Golpo To Global Voices: Digital Storytelling As A Decolonial Pedagogy For English Language Learning In Bangladesh, Tamanna Sharmin Kabir

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

From Ghorer Golpo to Global Voices: Digital Storytelling as a Decolonial Pedagogy for English Language Learning in Bangladesh highlights how Digital Storytelling operates as a culturally sustaining and technologically supported approach within Bangladeshi undergraduate English education. Informed by my own navigation of Western and South Asian narrative traditions, the study responds to a longstanding challenge in English instruction: exam-focused, Eurocentric pedagogies often marginalize learners’ cultural identities and lived experiences. The research investigates how participants engaged with Digital Storytelling as a multimodal, technology-enhanced practice that supports language development, identity expression, and intercultural communication.

The study employed an arts-informed case study design …

Mountain Communities During A Time Of War: A Case Study Of The Hutsul Region In The Carpathian Mountains Of Ukraine, Pavlo Rybaruk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the ethno-ecological technologies employed by the Hutsul people within the highland agrarian economy of the Carpathian Mountains. Over centuries, the Hutsuls have developed ethno-ecological technologies that maintain ecological integrity while supporting community livelihoods.

The study addresses three primary research questions: What are the most important ethno-ecological technologies of the Hutsul highland economy? How might these traditional ethno-ecological practices be applied to economic, agricultural, and tourism development in the Hutsul region? How might these traditional ethno-ecological practices be combined with contemporary approaches to encourage sustainable development in the region?

The research explores the devastating impact of the Russian …