Digital Commons Network^™

[2024 Honorable Mention] Hasta Que El Cuerpo Aguante, Brisa Rosiles

Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

The focus of this project revolves around a critical examination of the alarming occurrences of heat stroke-related deaths among field workers in California, with a specific emphasis on cases documented in the Salinas Valley. The core of my artistic expression lies in a digital painting that captures the reality of a laborer enduring the devastating effects of heat stroke in the agricultural fields.

Inciting Peace From The Inside Out, Stephen G. Adubato, Ebere Bosco Amakwe, Katherine Hinic, Sarita Maldjian, Forrest Pritchett, Jon Radwan, Nicholas Sooy, Chad Thralls

Conferences

Violence and war can be incited, and so can peace. This volume shares select addresses and responses from Seton Hall University’s 2/7/23 conference “Inciting Peace From The Inside Out.” A multi-disciplinary range of scholars each addresses how reconciliation processes grow from spiritual dynamics. Multiple religious traditions teach contemplative praxes that prioritize and nurture personal reflection oriented toward peace. Social conflicts divide, so engaging them with a partisan orientation only serves to escalate harmful rifts. In contrast, bringing personal awareness and sensitivity, spiritual balance, and holistic integral perspective to conflict can transcend divisions and work toward unity. This volume is supported …

Amazigh Orality In Contemporary Production, Jas Editorial Staff

Journal of Amazigh Studies

N/A

Trends And Shifts: Migration, Reverse Missions, And African Catholic Priests In Iowa City, Usa, Kefas Lamak

Journal of Global Catholicism

This study uses ethnographic research to examine the work and self-conception of African-trained priests in a city in the American state of Iowa. This phenomenon is part of a broader trend and shift as African-trained priests take up positions as pastors and missionaries throughout Europe and America. The article argues that the movement of African priests to the West in recent years should be understood as “reverse mission” because of its similarities to Western missionary activity in third world countries in earlier historical periods. This study mainly focuses on Iowa City, where the researcher interviewed five African priests serving in …

“I Tell Them Generics, But Not The Specifics”: Exploring Tensions Underlying Familial Support For First-Generation Latinx Undergraduate Students, Stephany Cuevas

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Families continue to play an essential role in the experiences of first-generation Latinx undergraduate students and can serve as powerful partners to support student retention and socioemotional wellbeing. This qualitative phenomenological study uses the notion of emerging adulthood to explore how first-generation Latinx undergraduate students (n = 16) conceptualize their families’ role in their college education. Specifically, this study shows that while students describe feeling supported by their families, they also experience distinct and unique tensions tied to this support, which students associate with their first-generation student status. These tensions include (1) the family’s unfamiliarity with college culture; (2) bidirectional …

Half Dawn, Catherine Ashley

Masters Theses

By presenting these words on paper, I have given entry into a microcosm of recent research, questions, and creative explorations. There is potential for disconnection when trying to turn your head inside out and present it in a way that feels beautiful for other people. I’m trusting the moments of authenticity I’ve found in my wandering. Segue. Relationship. Gesture. Illusion. My musings all stem from notions of temporality. Time dances on the farthest ends of both immensity and desolation. I’ve spent stretches of time asking the people, texts, and experiments around me to define time in a way that I …

Usa Archaeology Museum Newsletter - June 2024, Archaeology Museum

Archaeology Museum Newsletters

In this edition of the museum's newsletter:

• Document the Historic Plateau/Africatown Cemetery?
• Giving to the Archaeology Museum

Placemaking And Placewashing In Manhattan's Chinatown: Capitalist Vs. Community Interests, Mary Chu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the late 1890s, there have been internal and external placemakers in Manhattan’s Chinatown. They take the form of city government, real estate developers, and community organizations vying for space, and seeking to define what this neighborhood should be, for whom it should serve, and how it should look. Sometimes these would-be placemakers operate with neoliberal goals and overt orientalist and/or racist views. They push those narratives through via media representations and as a tactic to attract tourism, but with little regard for how it affects the community. In this work, I examine connections between historic ideas of placemaking and …

Historical And Contemporary Representation Of Kava By Members Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Sione M. U. H. Funaki

Pacific Studies

In Oceania, kava, which is made from the root or stump of the kava shrub, is associated with traditional values such as sacrifice, loyalty, commitment, and chiefliness; it is especially linked with the importance of nurturing vā relationships with fonua—land and people (Kaʻili 2017: 74–75; Tomlinson 2020: 71, 74–75). Kava has also been demonized and mischaracterized since the early nineteenth century as a harmful substance detrimental to the spirit and physical body. The conflicting realities of kava as virtue and vice are expressly displayed in the relationship between kava and the Christian church. Specifically, this paper examines the dynamics between …

Vol. 47 No. 1 (2024): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 47, No 1-Jun 2024 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

Autonomy And Creativity In ‘Epeli Hau‘Ofa And The Lo‘Au University Philosophy Of Education For Thinking, Siosiua F. P. Lafitani (LoʻAu VavangakitupuʻA)

Pacific Studies

The spirit of autonomy and creativity in Epeli Hau‘ofa’s writings that relate to the

philosophy of the Lo‘au University of education for thinking is explored here.

For Hau‘ofa, the spirit of free thinking aids Moanan (Pacific people) to redefine

their identity in Moana (Oceania) and worldwide. The philosophy of education

for thinking is applied here to highlight that a degree of autonomy and creativ-

ity can be planted and grown in Moana. Free thinking ought to be central to

research projects that strive for autonomy and creativity if twenty-first century

Moanan people want their intellectualism to be a permanent …

Vol. 47 No. 1 (2024): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The

Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young

University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lā ‘ie, Hawai‘i 96762, but

responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone.

Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center

for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian

and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded

by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in

meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teach-

ing, …

Displaced Ukrainian Writers After 2014, A Postcolonial Perspective, Sophie Ivanka Shields

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This paper analyzes post-2014 Ukrainian displacement literature from a postcolonial perspective. I argue that Ukrainian writers, displaced with the 2014 invasion of Eastern Ukraine and/or 2022 full-scale invasion by Russia, transform literature into a tool of cultural resistance against Russia, forging a postcolonial Ukrainian identity in their works that unites those displaced since 2014. I particularly focus on two long-form works by displaced writers: the novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love (2019) by Volodymyr Rafeyenko, who was displaced in 2014 from Donetsk to Kyiv and again in 2022 to Pittsburgh, USA on the City of Asylum Exiled Writer and …

A Case Study In Vacillant Literary Analysis: Nella Larsen's Passing (1929), Sara Casten

University Honors Theses

For the last 95 years, Nella Larsen's Passing has been a topic of discussion within the literary and scholarly communities. First considered Larsen's folly, her second novella Passing had struggled to received a compliment from critics and was quickly lost to readers until her work was rediscovered in the early 1970s. However, unbound by the restrictive literary trope of the era, scholars now wonder if Larsen's Passing had been a misinterpreted masterpiece. This thesis outlines the initial interpretations of critics and modern understanding of scholars in order to highlight the influences of outside influences when reading a written work from …

Building The Body, Jasmine Flowers

Masters Theses

Bodies and space co-produce each other and the process of co-production originates racializing and gendering work.

The concept, thesis, and subsequent design are informed by the historical context around the House for Josephine Baker by Adolf Loos. Presented here is the culmination of research which grounds itself in the relationship between Primitivism and Modernism, theory on the body and flesh, architectural graphic standards, spectacle, gaze, surveillance, hypervisibility, invisibility, implications of privacy versus publicity, expressions of Blackness and its place in femmehood (a neologism that expands “womanhood” to be trans-inclusive), all of which directly engage in co-production.

This co-production changes how …

Remade Radical: Design Artifacts Of A Third World Future, Yasmine Hassan

Masters Theses

Remade Radical draws inspiration from the existing practices of informal making and reuse prevalent in Black and brown immigrant and working-class communities in order to reimagine maker culture and the field of industrial design as a whole. These improvisational practices–known by a number of different names across the globe, including jua kali (Kenya), gambiarra (Brazil), jugaad (India), and even hood engineering (United States)–are oftentimes viewed as inevitable byproducts of waste and artifacts of besiegement from the world’s wealthiest nations. Yet within these practices lies a tangible counterpoint to the material excess and rampant consumption made possible through the continued exploitation …

The Irreducible Otherness Of Desi And Desire In Singapore’S Gurdwaras: Moral Boundary-Making In The Shadows Of A Multicultural Society, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This article considers the emergence of new multiculturalisms taking root in Asia by exploring how value-based frameworks and moral judgements are deployed to create new lines of difference within co-ethnic communities. These frameworks and judgements cause multiculturalism to become a more subjective, and thus splintered construct that is increasingly decoupled from state discourse. Further, it considers how religious spaces are typically associated with the performance of morally “right” attitudes and behaviours, and therefore provide fertile yet underexplored sites through which multicultural subjectivities are formed and enacted. It illustrates these theoretical ideas through an empirical examination of how moral boundary-making within …

Parent Strategies For Antiracist Parenting In Families Of Multiracial And Asian Descent, Matlida Tavares

Doctoral Dissertations

The Pew Research Center’s analysis of United States census data depicts and increasing number of individuals identifying as more than one race. From 2010 to 2020, the population had nearly doubled to 13.5 million. This is particularly evident in states with large populations of Asian American communities such as California, where nearly two million people identify as multiracial and people identifying as both White and Asian making up the largest portion of the 61% increase the state saw since 2010 (Henderson, 2022). Despite claims that an increase in multiracial individuals signifies an end of racism, multiracial children, navigating complex ethnic …

The Realm That I Am: An Interdisciplinary Memoir On Identity And Healing, Maria Rowen Flores

University Honors Theses

This thesis is an interdisciplinary exploration into identity, self, and meaning-making. Engaging queer studies, Chicano/a Studies, narrative therapy, creative nonfiction, and visual arts, this project is both a collage and self-portrait in two parts. Part one uses the ideas of philosophers Gloria Anzaldúa, María Lugones, Jack Halberstam, and Judith Butler to explore identity formation in the author’s family and social contexts. Part two follows the experience of having C-PTSD and uses memoir and creative writing to explore the narrative therapeutic mode. Both sections explore themes of identity, social isolation, relationships, failure, mental illness, trauma, and addiction. The work is underscored …

Discourse Analysis Of Ethnonyms For Black Italians On Youtube, Kaithlyn Massiah

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There have been various studies on the intersection of race and national identity for the African diaspora, but there has not been many on how language is used to evoke a stance on identity. This project focuses on the how ethnonyms, or names given to an ethnic group, are assigned to Black Italians in online discourse on YouTube. In this research, comments were analyzed from two YouTube videos that comprise of Black Italians who discuss their identity and the ethnonyms they prefer. ZERO is the first Netflix Italian series that centers the Black Italian experience. In the videos “Black [Italian] …

Determining Factors For Improved Uptake Of Harm Reduction Services In The United States: A Study Of Inclusive, Culturally Sensitive Messaging, Lauretta Ekanem Omale

Dissertations

Harm reduction refers to public health policies and programs aimed at decreasing the adverse consequences associated with drug use. While harm reduction services (e.g., syringe exchange programs) can mitigate health risks, marginalized groups face barriers to service access and utilization, partially due to ineffective messaging approaches that fail to align with cultural values and experiences. A one-size-fits-all approach to messaging can negatively impact service utilization, health outcomes, and health disparities. Ineffective communication can lead to poor adherence to treatment, poorer health outcomes, and increased adverse events.

Culturally insensitive communication contributes to stigma, mistrust, and lack of perceived relevance, discouraging service …

Community Policing And Meta-Stereotypes: Improving Citizenry-Police Relations In A Large, Multicultural Urban Area, Through A Participatory Action Research Community Safety Workshop, Cornelius Darnell Davis

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

The Term Policing and its surrounding themes are complex and deserve adequate attention. Since the early 1900’s, citizenry and police have had mistrustful relationships. Over the span of three eras, both positive and negative citizenry-police relations have been highlighted. In more recent years, the timely capturing of videos of over-policing and excessive use of deadly force incidents (mainly in BIPOC communities) have exacerbated negative citizenry-police relations, resulting in the lack of procedural justice and police legitimacy. Excessive policing and the seemingly constant deaths of unarmed African Americans undoubtedly contribute to the lack of confidence in police to effectively ensure all …

The Creation Of An African American Jewish Culinary Tradition: Michael Twitty And The Passover Seder As A Vehicle For Remembering Trauma And Celebrating Survival, Samira Mehta

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

The Exodus of the Israelites has long held meaning for African American Christians, as noted by scholars of African American religious history. Jewish studies scholars, meanwhile, have written about both Passover and Jewish relationships to the Exodus. Michael Twitty, public historian, James Beard award-winning author, and memoirist, has fused an identity for himself by drawing on the foodways of both traditions to remember and memorialize the trauma of both traditions While Twitty uses food to create meaning in the context of holidays, his memoirs, Kosher Soul and The Cooking Gene, explore how the food of trauma, poverty, and resilience provide …

Du Undergraduate Showcase Abstracts: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, August Alexander, Kevin Summers, E. Paige Lloyd, Alyssa Aragon, Lauren Wols, Erica Larson, Colton Arciniaga, Lily Baeza, Ellie Barnett-Cashman, Sidney Barbier, Maverick Bartholomew, Ryan Bell, Trevor Briggs, Amanda Brown, Cory Marchi, Maddy Pontius, Jennifer Gallagher, Claire Kwok, Channing Bullock, Alex Mccollister, Kim Gorgens, Daniela Chavez, Yamilet Espinoza Nuñez, Giovanni Valladares Giron, William Christensen, Olivia Kachulis, Daniel Cierasynski, Brandon Cohen, Spenser Dobbs, Lindsay Goolsby, Noah Craver, Nyah Cubbison, Liam Doherty, Nicole Doris, Yan Qin, Alexander Nguyen, Lily Harmon, Shubh Todi, Naichen Zhao, Noah Fagello, Stacia Fritz, Paola Gascot-Chinea, Alex Volkova, Janelyn Geronimo, Elsie Harrington, Shane Simmons, Clarice Hise, Laura Moreno Palmer, Henry Xu, Yesu Leela Pasupula, Emily Fisher, Zachary Hogan, Colin Kleckner, Alyssa Knaus, Erin Kubat, Sam Werkema, Katie Lamberton, Lilliya Larson, Allie Leary, Vanessa Leon-Gamez, James H. Gallagher, E. Dale Broder, Robin M. Tinghitella, Emma Loeber, Alina Mali, Ixchel Marquez, Lauren Mcgrath, Ella Matthews, Grace Naegelen, Audrey Ng, Megan Lucyshyn, Rachel Brough, Alexandra Norman, Joe Ontiveros Rodriguez, Ben Dossett, Ori Miller, Janamejay Sharma, Christopher Reardon, Vincent Pandey, Regan Parish, Ren Pratt, Alisha Pravasi, Sanchari Das, Cari Reichel, Emma Robson, Victoria Rockwell, Jayce Rumsey, Steven Said, Norah Schroder, Alaina Smith, Shannon Murphy, Shujan A. Sharafeldeen, Stanley M. Kanai, James T. Nichols, David E. Clouthier, Macalia R. Augustus, Daniel Silva Rios, Scott Simpson, Anna Sparling, Chase Spurbeck, Kimberly Chiew, Christine Stadnik-Poteroba, Jacqueline Stephenson, Evelyn Stovin, Mia Supan, Lauren Tapper, Will Thrush, Anna Vogt, Michaela Walheim, Jon Weber, Hunter Whitehouse, Kansas Wood, Hayley Sayre, Lydia Mccann, Maread Mclaughlin, Kelly Krumrie, Olivia Wuttke

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Abstracts from the DU Undergraduate Research Showcase.

Against The Current: Omaha Women's Experiences With Education, Land, And The Law, Andrea Huebner

History Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

Of the 10,000 students who attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 123 of them were members of the Omaha Nation. Of those 123, 42 were girls between 11 and 23. Focusing the study on the 42 girls from the same cultural group, who had the shared experience of attending Carlisle allows for an in-depth analysis of how gender, race, age, and culture influenced the experienced assimilation tactics used in education, land, and legal systems. Historian David Wallace Adams states that the reformers thought the “Indian problem” could be solved through “education, land, and law.” This thesis examines the Omaha girls who …

Marvelous Ordinariness: Re-Engaging With Realism’S Social Function, Miranda Ochoa Natera

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Against Romanticism, European literary realism of the 19th century aimed to provide an objective representation of reality through mimesis that could capture the truth in an objective way. Yet, its positivist approach severely narrowed down the complexity of truth, reality, and the mundane by wrongfully drawing the universal from the particular. A new way of engaging with realist literature from any time period, called Marvelous Ordinariness, rearranges this triad in ways that expand our understanding of our own and other realities portrayed. Using Alejo Carpentier’s description of “lo real maravilloso,” Marvelous Ordinariness unfolds in three layers that resemble Carl Jung’s …

Supporting South Korea’S Aging Population: How Ai And Iot Acceptance Connects The Young And Old, Bobby Im

Master's Projects and Capstones

In 2024, South Korea surpassed every other nation by becoming the country with the lowest fertility rate (below 0.7%). Population decline will hinder future ability to care for their aging population and although the government and private corporations are investing millions of dollars on developing Artificial Intelligence-Internet of Things (AI-IoT) devices to support the aging, the acceptance levels and the amount of family support required is undervalued. By examining AI-IoT’s current use and role in South Korea’s public health system this paper shows how intergenerational support helps optimize existing procedures and equipment, increases the level of acceptance and use, and …

Playing With International Students From Asia: An Exploration Of Cultural Commonalities And Differences In Developmental Transformations (Dvt), Hazuki Okamoto

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Asian international students in the United States face a multitude of challenges such as language barriers, differences in cultural norms and behaviors, and identity confusion while navigating a foreign landscape. Developmental Transformations (DvT), a form of drama therapy, may apply to these challenges by enabling participants to explore different identities and express themselves creatively beyond the language barrier. This community engagement project was designed for Asian international students to be seen and heard by utilizing DvT. Within an in-person workshop, five participants played with their shared stories, and explored international and cultural roles in group DvT. Key takeaways from the …

The Perpetual Foreigner: Modeling Cycles Of Asian American Discrimination, Philip Min

Honors Projects

Through an Asian American perspective catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this research investigates the concept of the state of the perpetual foreigner for Asian Americans and the subsequent cycling of race-related tensions. To define the state of foreignness for Asian Americans, this is understood first through Kim’s model of Racial Triangulation, which intends to model the relationships of racial groups in the United States – namely between Black, White, and Asians – through concepts of civic ostracization and relative valorization that relate directly to foreignness and hierarchy. This is then further expanded upon through the creation of a separate model, …

Knowledge Production And The Unthinkable: Weaving Stories Of Art, Gender, And Land, Christin Huntsman

Master's Theses

Colonialism is deeply and violently embedded in Western knowledge formation—dominant power structures produce epistemes that uphold and perpetuate colonial narratives. This kind of knowledge production forecloses other possibilities. Western discourse of truth becomes universalized to the point that other worldviews, other knowledges that do not conform to hegemonic norms, are suppressed or silenced. This thesis examines three areas of hegemony and erasure: art, gender, and land. First, the history of art clearly marks a delineation between Western elitist artistic masterpieces and non-Western ethnographic artifacts. Eurocentrism of art in the academy determines what counts as art and how art is categorized. …