Digital Commons Network^™

Gender, Power And Identity In An African-American Church, Catherine Douillet

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines gender relations and gender symbolism in a small African-American Christian church in North East Portland. The study is based on ethnographic research in the church, from February 1995 to July 1995, and from February 1996 to June 1996, during which time I participated in Sunday services, religious activities outside of the service, and the social networks of some female church members. One section of this thesis describes my personal relationships to my fieldwork, not only to situate my position as a White female in an African-American church, but also to look at how my research questions relate …

The Concept Of Trustworthiness: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between Japanese And U.S. Business People, Masami Nishishiba

Dissertations and Theses

Since trust has been reported as an important component in both Japanese and U.S. organizations, the indication of lack of trust between Japanese and U.S. employees in Japanese subsidiaries is of great concern to management. If one wants to improve the level of trust between Japanese and U.S. employees, one must explore the reasons why they sometimes do not trust each other. Since there may be cultural differences between the two groups in the concept of trustworthiness, the first step is to examine whether Japanese and U.S. employees share the same notion of what constitutes a trustworthy person. Therefore, the …

Lewis And Clark At Fort Clatsop: A Winter Of Environmental Discomfort And Cultural Misunderstandings, Kirk Alan Garrison

Dissertations and Theses

Members of the Lewis and Clark expedition did not like the 1805-1806 winter they spent at Fort Clatsop near the mouth of the Columbia River among the Lower Chinookan Indians, for two reasons. First, the environment west of the Rocky Mountains was unlike anything they had ever experienced or imagined, and it had such a powerful effect on the whites as to negatively influence their attitudes regarding the western landscape, and to prejudice the explorers against the peoples living in that environment.

Second, the cultures of the Lower Chinook Indians and the whites were so different that often neither group …

Opening Doors: Culture Learning And Conversational Narratives With First Generation Hmong Refugee Women, Lucy Vincent Kimbro

Dissertations and Theses

The life experiences of two first generation Hmong refugee women form the basis of this study. Through loosely structured but guided interviews, memories of their lives in Laos and in refugee camps in Thailand, as well as their perspectives, feelings, and opinions about current aspects of their lives, the effects of American culture on their family; and their engagement in the language and culture learning process are explored.

An examination of the involvement of Hmong women in research and ethnographic accounts concerning Hmong culture, history, and experience, show that Hmong women's perspectives have often been overlooked or disregarded. One purpose …

Images Of Women In Abdelhak Serhane's Le Soliel Des Obscurs, Wendy Grace Cook

Dissertations and Theses

Current trends in North African francophone literature include a movement towards the exploration of alienation and exile, most often in the form of novels written about Maghrebian immigrants in Europe. Yet this alienation exists within the North African context as well, and it is possible to feel alienated and exiled, as well as marginalized, within one's homeland. This question is explored by Moroccan francophone author Abdelhak Serhane in his novel, Le Soleil des obscurs, which is the focus of this study.

The purpose of the research is to examine the four principle female characters in the novel and relate …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet April 1997, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The April 1997 Monthly packet includes the April agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held March 1997.

Annual Faculty Senate Minutes October 1997 - June 1998, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Annual Compilations of the Faculty Senate Minutes (Minutes Only)

Minutes of the Faculty Senate for October 1997 to June 1998.

Bulletin: General Catalog Issue 1997-1998, Portland State University

Bulletin & Curriculum Change Documents

No abstract provided.

An Ethnographic Study Of Chinese Adolescent Identity In Taipei, Taiwan : Franchise Hangouts, Jui-Fang Ruby Chen

Dissertations and Theses

One of the discriminating changes that Taiwan is experiencing is a shift in young people's view of "self," manifested in and through their daily activities within its cultural context (Yang, 1981). The question arises, how do Taiwan's adolescents shape their view of "self' within this contemporary context at the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures? This thesis examined on how Chinese adolescent identity was constituted symbolically in and through their speech practices within a public social context, a typical Westernized dining place--McDonald's, a U.S. fast food restaurant, and how such a locale both served and made sense by these urban …

"Blame It On Intake” : A Critical Ethnography Of The Negotiation Of Access To Shelter Services In A Shelter For Homeless And Battered Women, Kathleen Marie Drew

Dissertations and Theses

Even though the number of homeless women has increased among a population viewed as typically male (Merves 1992), there is still little research focused on women. This study investigated the communicative practices in and through which gendered identity was constructed, negotiated and performed at a point of rupture when the norms for judging a "good woman:"--that is woman as wife, as mother, and as homemaker appear to have been violated. The negotiation of access into an urban shelter for homeless and/or battered women provided a rich site for the study. The research was grounded in the assumptions of symbolic interaction …

Sexual Intercourse : A Feminist Reading Of Strip Joint Discourse, Regina Marie Howard Yaroch

Dissertations and Theses

The discursively-constructed stereotype of stripper plays an important role in the ideology that sustains our system of sexual relations. This construction also interacts with and constrains the lived reality of actual women who earn their living in the stripping industry. This research attempts to examine this interaction by exploring the discourse that is generated by stripping industry participants. A long interview transcript is analyzed as a text to develop a feminist reading that focuses on the socio-cultural forces that make a particular story possible as well as necessary to tell. This story emerges, through the first-person account of a dancer-informant, …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet December 1996, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The December 1996 Monthly packet includes the December agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held November 1996.

Thinking About Cities: The Central Tradition In U.S. Urban History, Carl Abbott

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Urban history in United States in the last 150 years has been concerned with two central questions. Historians of three generations focused on the process of urbanization and the problem of civic order in the cities. The historians of recent times emphasize on community formation as the determinant of economic growth and its general effect. Earlier scholars discussed the creation of communities and institutions and the correlation between urban and national development. Thus, interaction between city and citizen is a viable theme of urban history.

Wearing A Dead Man's Jacket: State Symbols In Troubled Places, Michele Ruth Gamburd

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A village rumor concerning the attempted theft of a uniform from the corpse of a Sri Lankan army soldier supplies the subject matter for this paper. In May 1993, soon after the assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa, a spectacular local funeral for a Low Country Sinhalese soldier killed in the civil war near Trincomalee provided a space for the display of state symbols, the voicing of patriotic rhetoric, and the exhibition of the precision and discipline of the national army. Military pageantry legitimated the use of force by the government, while the funeral ritual as a whole produced a catharsis …

Jacob And Wilhelm Grimm's Fairy Tales And Children, Cornelia Marianne Seigneur

Dissertations and Theses

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm prided themselves on the notion that their collection of fairy tales, the Kinder-und Hausmärchen, was poetry from the Volk. Through their collection they sought to preserve the culture of a Germany disrupted by Napoleon.

Although the Grimm brothers did not originally set out to write children's literature, it became a natural progression for their fairy tales to be used for children.

The Grimms were certain that their fairy tales should be read to children. They saw the naturalness in their tales, thereby claiming that the Kinder-und Hausmärchen would be a good "Erziehungsbuch." As people …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet April 1996, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The April 1996 Monthly packet includes the April agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held March 1996.

Social Stratification Within A Protohistoric Plankhouse Of The Pacific Northwest Coast: Use-Wear And Spatial Distribution Analysis Of Chipped Lithic Artifacts, Cameron Mcpherson Smith

Dissertations and Theses

The spatial distribution of chipped lithic artifacts excavated at site 35C05, a Chinookan plankhouse of the protohistoric period, was observed to test the hypothesis that a gradient of material culture -- reflecting social status -- should be evident within the plankhouse, ranging from the highest to the lowest social rank. Prior to the spatial analysis, use-wear analysis was used to evaluate the classificatory labels used to describe the assemblage by a previous researcher. The use-wear analysis largely confirmed the functional classification of chipped lithic artifacts used by the previous researcher. The spatial analyses revealed that while most tool types were …

Bulletin: General Catalog Issue 1996-1997, Portland State University

Bulletin & Curriculum Change Documents

No abstract provided.

Early Holocene Occupation At The West Lost River Site, Klamath County, Oregon, Douglas C. Wilson, John L. Fagan, Dorothy E. Freidel, Susan M. Colby

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Excavations at the West Lost River Site (35KL972) provide new insights on early Holocene occupation of southwestern Oregon. The article focuses on the artifacts and specimens recovered from the site.

Clinging To Life: Varecia Variegata Rubra And The Masoala Coastal Forests, Natalie Vasey

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The article describes the authors field study from October 1993 to February 1995 in Madagascar, surveying coastal and riverine forests, villages, and watersheds, studying the ecology and behavior of Varecia varuegata rubra, the red ruffed lemur, and Lemur fulvus albifrons, the white fronted lemur.

Wapato For The People : An Ecological Approach To Understanding The Native American Use Of Sagittaria Latifolia On The Lower Columbia River, Melissa Cole Darby

Dissertations and Theses

Sagittaria latifolia Willd. was an important root food and trade commodity for the Indians who lived along the Lower Columbia River in early historic times. This plant was prolific in the extensive wetlands of the Lower Columbia from about the great Cascades to the Kalama River. The tubers of this plant were called "wapato" in Chinook Jargon, the local trade language. The wetlands, and this plant that grew there, occupied a vast extent of the Lower Columbia territory; so much so that this valley was named 'Wapato Valley' by Lewis and Clark in 1805. This thesis will provide pertinent information …

Where Have All The Ideophones Gone? The Death Of A Word Category In Zulu, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The first step in the discussion is to demonstrate that ideophones constitute a word class, a relatively uncontroversial claim for Southern Bantu. The second is to show that native speakers of Zulu do not share equal knowledge of ideophones and how this knowledge correlates with social factors. Measured knowledge of ideophones is evaluated against the social factors of age, sex, education, residence patterns, and rusticity, a parameter to be elaborated below. The conclusion is that just as for pidgins and creoles (Childs 1994) the knowledge and use of ideophones serves as a reliable barometer for language typing and language change, …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet December 1995, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The December 1995 Monthly packet includes the December agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held November 1995.

Sri Lanka's "Army Of Housemaids": Control Of Remittances And Gender Transformations, Michele Ruth Gamburd

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

When the mass labor migration of women to the Middle East began in the early 1980's, many Sri Lankan social scientists predicted a revolution in gender equality and a greater participation by women in political and economic decision-making as a result of employment abroad. Noting that gender rarely correlates in predictable ways with social change, and questioning the dominant teleological ideology that change always happens for the better, this paper looks at relations between female migrants in a coastal village in the Southwest and the people responsible for spending and saving the money they remit to the village. Several case …

1995 Commencement Program, Thomas Erlich

Commencement Archives 1990-99

The program for the Portland State University Spring Commencement ceremony on June 10, 1995.

Thomas Ehrlich, LL.B., delivered the commencement address; Monroe M Sweetland, B.A. and John Eliot Allen, Ph.D., received Presidential Citations from PSU President Judith Ramaley.

The Effect Of The Ideology Of Motherhood On Women, Shari A. Burke

Dissertations and Theses

The ideology of motherhood in the United States makes it seem as though motherhood is a natural role for women. The ideology holds mothers solely responsible for the well being of their children. Combined with the ideology of blaming the victim, the ideology of motherhood causes a great deal of guilt in women as mothers cannot possibly live up to the unrealistic expectations set up in the culture.

In this study, I have used two case studies to illustrate the impact of the ideology of motherhood on the lives of these particular women. Utilizing the theories of Michel Foucault and …

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet May 1995, Portland State University Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Monthly Packets

The May 1995 Monthly packet includes the May agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held April 1995.

Illegal Homeless Camping In Portland: Field Analysis And Advocacy Planning, Chris Bernhardt, Doug Glancy, Doug Layne, Jeff Salvon

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Homelessness is a major problem in Portland. Many people here cannot afford housing of any kind. Although the total number of homeless people in the city is not known, an estimated 14,000 Multnomah County residents spent time in homeless shelters during some part of 1993.

The goal of our group, which came together in November of 1994 in Portland State University's Planning Workshop, was to find ways to "improve the lives of homeless campers." Our lives were improved as well. We got to know interesting people, we had new experiences, we got to impress our friends with our knowledge of …

Viking 1995, Portland State University

The Viking (Yearbooks)

Portland State University 1995 yearbook

Archaeology And The Maroon Heritage In Jamaica, E. Kofi Agorsah

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Of all the fascinating aspects of Jamaican history, the Maroon Melement appears to be the only one that weaves through the whole period, including the present day. Referring to themselves as 'True blu chankofi piti bo," some Maroons of Moore Town in the parish of Portland claim that, with the exception of the freedom fighters of South Africa, they are the only living genuine and most honourable freedom fighters worthy of the name.