Digital Commons Network^™

Critical Exhibition Methods In Museums, Jaimie Davis Ms

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Art and anthropology are intimately intertwined as art is an extension of culture which falls under the purview of anthropology. Utilizing interdisciplinary methodology that incorporates both anthropology's considerations for culture and art's consideration of aesthetic creates the best possible methodology for exhibition in museums. Art museums have enough aesthetic and could benefit from the considerations an anthropology's school of thought.

Caregiving Automatons: Gender, Care, And Disability In Poland, Michalina Grzelka

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The last few years in Poland have seen the increasing visibility of disabled people and family caregivers who demand the introduction of public policies more responsive to their needs. Such development suggests a shift from deeply rooted gendered ideas about caregiving and the rise of activism of people with disabilities and family caregivers who call for solutions to the neoliberalization of care work. However, despite growing attention to disability and care within anthropology, few studies have focused explicitly on caregiving relations in the context of disability, especially in the formerly socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. This dissertation attempts …

Identifying The Main Causes For Support Of Crime Control Theater Forms, And Understanding How To Correct The Public’S Perception, Erisjames M. Elliott

CMC Senior Theses

Much research has been completed on the forms of crime control theater (CCT), and the impact that the existence of CCT laws have on society. Research on CCT laws has shown that they are definitively unsuccessful in providing the safety they were created to provide. This thesis will utilize completed research to explain the main psychological phenomena holding people back from decreasing their support for CCT laws. It will also describe proven methods of correcting misinformation in order to change the perceptions of people who support crime control theater laws, and provide suggestions for how research should be continued.

Deities’ Rights?, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

A brief commotion arose during the hearings for one of twenty-first-century India’s most widely discussed legal disputes, when a dynamic young attorney suggested that deities, too, had constitutional rights. The suggestion was not absurd. Like a human being or a corporation, Hindu temple deities can participate in litigation, incur financial obligations, and own property. There was nothing to suggest, said the attorney, that the same deity who enjoyed many of the rights and obligations accorded to human persons could not also lay claim to some of their constitutional freedoms. The lone justice to consider this claim blandly and briefly observed …

Reading Legal Ethnographies To Re-Map Legal Pluralism: A Pospisilian Corrective To The Prevailing Dichotomous Description Of Afghanistan’S Legal Order, Tomas Ledvinka, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article explores several ethnographies (both academic and para-academic) of Afghanistan’s traditional justice (jirgas and shuras) in order to illuminate contrasts of their conceptual approaches at different periods of the country’s history. In this genealogy we identify ethnographic observations of the levels at which various sociolegal authorities operate and which often elude standard international ontology. The article takes the legal ethnographies as signposts for a conceptual reframing of the legal situation in the country by drawing upon Pospisil’s legal-anthropological conceptual approach which offers an alternative to generic global legal models based on binary oppositions such as formal–informal, state–non-state or official–traditional. …

"It's Still Easy To Get": An Anthropological Analysis Of Nicotine Activist Efforts And User Perspectives In Central Florida, Saoulkie Bertin

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The absence of federal government consensus on various nicotine policy matters, such as the legality of menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes, gives rise to distinct agendas, policy landscapes, and public attitudes at the state and local levels. As a result, nicotine activist groups and interested stakeholders are actively engaged in shaping the future of nicotine policy and use. This thesis explores the culture of local activist groups in Central Florida to understand how they influence nicotine-related policy change and set the tone for nicotine use in their communities. Drawing on data collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with activist …

Beauty In Sorority Life: An Anthropological Analysis Of Beauty Ideals And Body Modification, Delaney C. Mclinden

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Sororities are social organizations on college campuses categorized by selective membership and exclusive social events for active members. This research focuses on how sorority members' ideas about beauty relate to their appearance management behaviors in order to gauge how sorority culture contributes to their understanding of physical beauty. Ethnographic

data collection took place at a university in the southeastern United States. I conducted 17 semi- structured interviews with members of different sororities and participant observation at sorority

recruitment events. There's a common thread that connects every interview: beauty and appearance carry importance. Sorority culture encourages women to put "effort" into …

Smoke, Air, Fire, Energy (Safe) In Rural California: Critical Reflections On An Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration, Deepti Chatti, Carisse Geronimo, Cassidy Barrientos, Jana Ganion, Malcolm Moncheur, Peter Alstone Phd, Shawn Bourque, Tanya Garcia, Tesfayohanes Yacob

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article provides a synthesis of the interconnected problems of tenuous energy access, wildfires, and exposures to high air pollution in Indigenous communities in rural California through the lens of ongoing collaborative research being carried out by researchers at Cal Poly Humboldt, Schatz Energy Research Center, Karuk Department of Natural Resources, and the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe. The collaboration is funded by the Strategic Growth Council of the state of California, and we hope is the beginning of a longer term relationship between all partners. We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers drawing on energy engineering, air pollution science, and …

Fox Lake – Havanoid Interaction: An Analysis Of Eleanor Site Pottery, Rahman Abdullayev

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Through the analysis of pottery remains found at the Eleanor archaeological site, the study investigates the relationship between the Fox Lake culture and the Havanoid phases. The relationship between the Fox Lake complex of the southwestern prairie area and the Havanoid phases of the eastern woodlands is poorly understood in southern Minnesota. Despite it is potential to provide information about this relationship, the Eleanor site (21NL30) collection was never thoroughly studied after the excavation.

Richard Strachan conducted excavations at the Eleanor site between 1976 and 1978. A total of 124 pottery sherds were examined, with 76 being rim sherds and …

The Yak Is Back: Creating Community On The Digital Bathroom Stall Wall, Georgia Bates

Scripps Senior Theses

Offering access to an expanded world of contacts, activities, and self-expression, the internet has been changing the traditional landscape of the college experience for nearly two decades. The manner in which students interact with the world around them is augmented and transformed by the affordances of digital social networks like Yik Yak, an anonymous, hyperlocal networking app that has found its main market on college campuses. A hybrid ethnographic approach to Yik Yak based on participant observation and in-depth interviews spanned from Fall 2021 to Spring 2023, engaging with concepts of place and affect as they were intertwined with student …

Chinese Material Culture Signatures In Native North America: A Preliminary Study Of National Museum Of The American Indian Online Collections And Plains, Erin Drin Rosenkrance, Erin D. Rosenkrance

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Rosenkrance, Erin, M.A. Autumn 2023, Department Anthropology

Chinese Material Culture Signatures in Native North America:

A Preliminary Study of National Museum of the American Indian Online Collections and Plains cultural heritage

Chairperson: Dr. Kelly Dixon, Anthropology. University of Montana

This research explores and identifies Chinese Material Culture (CMC) incorporated into Plains Tribal Culture Artifacts Collections (PTACs) within the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) online collection. The study seeks to establish the historical context and rationale for this investigation and aims to provide a visual analysis of the identified CMCs, laying the groundwork for future research. Through an exploratory …

Black Women And The Weight Of The World: When The Weight Becomes Too Much To Bear, April R. Edmonds

DSW Capstone Projects

ABSTRACT

Black women’s mental health continues to go largely underrepresented. Black women are seen as having many protective factors such as their faith communities, family and friends, and what others see as strength and resilience. A review of the literature depicts Black women as traditionally being caretakers, nurturers, and depicted as strong (Castelin & White, 2022). Because of this perception, terms such as the Strong Black Woman Schema and the Black Superwoman Phenomena are what many equate Black women with. This scholarship instead shows how associations such as these impact Black women negatively and impose additional stigma and hardship. Research …

Cultural Behaviors And Their Influence On The Proximal Femur: Comparisons Of Postural Behavior, Occupation, And Subsistence-Settlement Between A Pre-Contact And Historic Sample, Joanna Klein

Master's Theses

Little is known archaeologically about the Late Woodland Schroeder Mounds mortuary group from west-central Illinois. As such, bioarchaeological data is at the forefront of archaeological problem-solving for not only the site, but the geographical area as well. Skeletal data such as proximal femur angles and activity markers contribute to the understanding of subsistence-settlement trends and postural behavior of the mortuary complex. Femoral neck version is associated with postural behaviors such as squatting and kneeling. The neck-shaft angle is linked to mobility and settlement patterns. Bicondylar angle was explored to see if behaviors had any affect. Allen’s fossa and Poirier’s facet …

Culinary Globalization In Delhi: Filipino Sushi Chefs As Cultural Intermediaries, Jozon A. Lorenzana

Department of Communication Faculty Publications

Culinary globalization in Indian cities has resulted in new patterns of food consumption and production. Aside from the increasing presence of global franchises such as Costa Coffee, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, local and foreign entrepreneurs have established restaurants that offer various national cuisines. In Delhi, for example, Japanese-themed restaurants cater to the city’s growing appetite for new culinary experiences. So far our knowledge of culinary globalization in Indian cities has focused on consumption: How emerging gastronomic patterns relate to identity formations. The production of cuisines as part of the city’s culinary globalization is rarely explored. In this paper; I …

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

All Under One Roof: An Ethnographic Commons In The Missoula Public Library, Caitlin Ervin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In 2021 the Missoula Public Library opened in a new state-of-the-art building to include a science museum, a research facility, a family resource center, and a media resource center in addition to the library facilities, all providing free and low-cost programs to the public. This establishment, internally dubbed All Under One Roof (AUOR), offers a window into the culture of Missoula and provides the community myriad resources in one, co-located model that has never been seen in the United States. Using ethnographic methods, this study provides insight into AUOR and the significance of its culture house model as the future …

Ancient Migrations In West Mexico: Mtdna Analyses, Patricio Gutiérrez Ruano

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite the mounting evidence that suggests The Aztatlán tradition in West Mexico was a major cosmopolitan region during the Postclassic period (AD 900-1521) with connections to the rest of what is now Mexico, archaeologists have characterized items in West Mexico as culturally distinct from the rest of Mesoamerica. Recently, endogenous, and exogenous material culture has been interpreted as movement and exchange of goods and ideas between subregions and surrounding areas, all of which mention physical contact and trade were involved between Aztatlán and elsewhere. This has included interacting with areas as far as the U.S. Southwest, as well as in …

Editor’S Note, Deepak Shimkhada

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This special issue of Monsoon is dedicated to the studies honoring the goddess traditions in South Asia. The onset of the Monsoon Season in South Asia typically commences in June and continues until late August and early September. The publication of this issue, therefore, has been strategically timed to coincide with that season, which is a vital source of sustenance for millions of individuals in this part of the world. This anthology consisting of five papers—written by scholars with expertise in the field of goddess and women studies—speak unequivocally about the goddesses or women for their strength, beauty, wisdom, and …

Constructing Jain Goddess Padmavātī In Gujarati Literature, Venu Mehta

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Worship of the goddess Padmāvatī emerged more than a thousand years ago. This article explores three songs about her in Gujarati by Paṇḍit Vīrvijayajī (1773-1852). By analyzing the style and form of his work, one learns a great deal about devotional liturgies that commemorate goddess Padmāvatī’s protection of the Jina Pārśvanātha and, in turn, his protection of her.

Women’S Voices From History: Gond Rani Durgawati And Rani Lakshmibhai, Nandini Sengupta, Moupia Basu

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Two strong women are compared and contrasted in this article. Gond Rani Durgawati (1524-1564) led a resistance movement in Jabalpur against the Mughal rule of Akbar. Rani Lakshmibai (1828-1858) organized the people of Jhansi against Sir Hugh Rose, an officer defending the interests of the British East India Company. Both women continue to be remembered for their bravery and their loyalty to the people they ruled.

The Jaina Goddess Padmāvati In Karnataka, Robert Zydenbos

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Stories about Padmāvati played an important role in the founding of the Ganga Dynasty (ca. 350-1000 C.E.) and the Hoysala Dynasty (ca. 950-1350 C.E.) in what is now the modern state of Karnataka. Although not without its critics, goddess worship has been integral to Jainism as practiced in south India for more than a millennium. This article surveys primary and secondary literature written about Padmāvati and describes worship at the main shrine dedicated to her, located in Hombuja in central Karnataka.

Mai Bhago And Amrita Devi Bishnoi: Women Of Strength, Sowmya Ayyar

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Mai Bhago (1670-1720), also known as Bhag Kaur, distinguished herself on the battlefield to defend the Sikh faith. Amrita Devi Bishnoi (d. 1730) is said to have sacrificed her life with 362 others to protect the Khejari trees in the Rajasthan desert. Both women continue to inspire social justice and ecological activism.

An Examination Of Gandhian Economic And Political Thought And Its Relevance To The Empowerment Of Women, Purnima Mehta Bhatt

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) sought to alleviate poverty and empower women. His commitment to nonviolence and the economic ideal of “small is beautiful” continue to inspire grassroots movements around the globe. This article discusses the Chipko movement of northern India, the protection of rain forests in Kerala’s Silent Valley, the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), and Medha Patkar’s valiant though ultimately futile attempt to save the Narmada River from a massive government damming project. The ongoing legacy of these movements can be found in AWAG, the Ahmedabad Women’s Action Group and Women’s Shanti Sena (Peace Force).

Indigenous Stitch-Arts Of India: Tradition And Revival In A Global Age, Punam Madhok

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Stitch art allows for the creative expression and economic support of countless women throughout India. This article examines four notable styles: chikankari, flora and fauna stitched in white thread on fine white cotton, rabari, the stitching of mirrors into colorful cloth, phulkari, resplendent flowery motifs sewn into shawls in Punjab, and kantha, Bengali patch work yielding quilts and seating mats. In addition to describing each technique, this article discusses how women have been economically empowered through this art by such organizations as Self-Help Enterprise (SHE) in Kolkata and Adithi, a women’s cooperative, in Bihar.

A Portrait Of The Leadership Of Women In Early Christianity: An Archaeological Study In Light Of The Historical And Socio-Cultural Contexts, Carina Prestes

Dissertations

Problem

The participation of women in the Early Christian communities is widely accepted. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on what was their role in these communities. Until now the study of women in the Early Christian communities has focused mostly in the writings of some ancient authors and a few biblical texts. These studies have been done mostly by theologians and historians. Such studies rarely take a deep look at the Greco-Roman background and at the historical, socio-cultural contexts. This contextualization can be quite fruitful and should be informed by recent archaeological discoveries of the first centuries of Christianity. Thus, …

Ant 211: Cultural Anthropology Summer -Asynchronous Online Syllabus, Antonia M. Santangelo

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for ANT 211: Cultural Anthropology using Open Educational Resources. This is designed for a summer session, asynchronous online course.

Identities Of Women In Indian Art And History, Nalini Rao

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The stereotypical image of Indian women portrayed in the art of stone sculpture is often interpreted as images of beauty that are sensuous, religious as well depict social life. There are historical reasons for depicting her as such. This paper inquires into the changing depiction and social forces that influenced feminine imagery. This paper examines the portrayal of beauty through idealization of female body which has evolved over the centuries in India. It also aims to understand their changing status and explores issues of feminine identity, status, and empowerment largely in ancient and medieval India. It also provides a brief …

Children Tell Landscape-Lore Among Perceptions Of Place: Relating Ecocultural Digital Stories In A Conscientizing/Decolonizing Exploration, Meredith Jean Bird Miller

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

We know that when children feel a sense-of-relation within local natural environments, they are more prone to feel concern for them, while nurturing well-being and resilience in themselves and in lands/waters they inhabit. Positive environmental behaviors often follow into adulthood. Our human capacities for creating sustainable solutions in response to growing repercussions of global warming and climate change may grow if more children feel a sense of belonging in the wild natural world. As educators, if we listen to and learn from students’ voices about how they engage in nature, we can create pedagogical experiences directly relevant to their lives. …

Reframing Type One Diabetes Care: Everyday Rituals At Bearskin Meadow Camp, Emily Radner

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis focuses on how counselors at Bearskin Meadow Camp approach care as medical and social caregivers to campers with Type One Diabetes (T1D). T1D is a chronic illness that involves constant self-regulation. The counselors, many of whom are past campers and live with T1D themselves, are personally invested in providing care and support to the campers. Their personal motivations as well as the intentional approach to care of Bearskin Meadow shapes camp as a unique space of diabetes care. The care they practice works against some aspects of mainstream biomedical care of T1D, such as the tendency to classify …

Desalination And Development: Locating The Missing Masses In Dakar’S Water Network, Marina Riad

Scripps Senior Theses

The introduction of desalination technology to the water network in Dakar, Senegal marks a monumental change in how state and commercial interests aim to solve systemic problems using novel technologies. Desalination aims to transform the ocean surrounding Dakar into potable water, a vital resource in the growing metropolis. However, this desalination project must integrate itself within a network of social, historical, political, commercial, and ecological influences shaping the role of desalination in urban Dakar. With millions of dollars and an entire ocean mobilized towards solving Dakar’s water problems, it may come as a surprise that this project will only provide …