Digital Commons Network^™

Pregnancy And Fertility Amongst Women With The Mthfr C677t Polymorphism: An Anthropological Review, Caroline A. Maclean

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Effects of the MTHFR C677T allele on reproduction include multiple complications. The frequency of births with neural tube defects, Down Syndrome, or recurrent pregnancy loss of CC, CT, and TT mothers was measured using data collected from existing literature. Total participants n=2605 (n=1111 cases, n=1494 controls). Results show that folic acid supplementation did not prevent the incidence of NTD pregnancy in CT women. Furthermore, CT women are more fecund overall, producing more pregnancies than CC and TT women. While CT case women did have higher incidences of RPL, NTD pregnancy and DS pregnancy, this is due to the overall greater …

Identifying Skeletal Puberty Stages In A Modern Sample From The United States, Jordan T. Wright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Investigating the onset and progression of puberty can provide insight and evidence for social changes regarding the transition to adulthood. There are also many social factors that can lead to variation in the timing of the onset and progression of puberty. Methods created by Mary Lewis and Fiona Shapland for assessing changes in skeletal development associated with pubertal timing were applied to computerized tomography scans (n=400) from the New Mexico Decedent Image Database and recorded in an attempt to identify adolescent growth trends in a modern skeletal sample from the United States. This is a novel study using the methods …

Agenda And Supplementary Materials, University Of South Florida St. Petersburg Campus Board Orientation, April 7, 2021, University Of South Florida St. Petersburg Campus Board

Campus Board Agendas, Minutes, and Supporting Documents

The agenda and supplementary materials for the University of South Florida St. Petersburg Campus Board orientation held on April 7, 2021.

Listening To Women: Using A Mixed-Methods Approach To Understanding Women’S Desires And Experience During Childbirth, Nicole Loraine Falk Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is based on evolutionary medicine and applied anthropological research where the narratives and biology of modern women are used to inform evolutionary theory, specifically obligate midwifery, and modern birth practices. Improvements to the US maternity care systems are needed as rates of maternal mortality and morbidity are continually higher than rates in other technologically advanced nations. Additionally, women birthing under the technocratic model of care, as is predominant in the US, report trauma and post-traumatic stress disorders due to their birthing experience, and more women are experiencing postpartum depression. Thus, I seek to use an evolutionary medicine perspective …

How Race Is Made In Everyday Life: Food, Eating, And Dietary Acculturation Among Black And White Migrants In Florida, U.S., Laura Kihlstrom

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how race impacts everyday food decisions and experiences among Black and White migrants in Florida, United States. The study is rooted in scholarship on food and immigration, which asserts that dietary acculturation or the “Americanization” of diets adversely affects the overall health status of migrant populations in the U.S. To date, the majority of this literature has focused on the experiences of Latinx migrants and has not centered race in its analysis. Building on participant observation and semi-structured interviews (n=49) completed over a period of 13 months in the Tampa and Miami Metropolitan areas among Ethiopian and …

Forum, Volume 45, No. 1, Spring 2021, Florida Humanities, Jacki Levine

FORUM: The Magazine of Florida Humanities

Contents: Water: The Elemental Link to Florida's Identity -- Understanding Our Times, with Help from the Humanities -- Visions of Florida, through a Watery Lens -- What's New at Florida Humanities -- Makeshift Freedom -- Virtually Navigating the New Normal -- "Talking" in Your Living Room -- Written in Water -- Water as Our Life Story -- Water as Our Way of Life -- Water as a Natural Bridge -- Water as a Divider -- Water as Freedom -- Water as Inspiration -- Water as We Look to the Future -- State of Wonder --

Psychological Casualties As A Source Of Friction During War And A Mediator Of Coerced Peace Efforts, Karl Umbrasas

Journal of Strategic Security

The United States homeland does not enjoy sanctuary in the twenty-first century geopolitical environment. Near-peer rivals, such as China and Russia, have capabilities that can impact the United States homeland during a high-end war. Adversaries’ aerospace capabilities have the potential to cause large volumes of psychological casualties among the United States population. Psychological casualties during a high-end war could serve as the basis for a mass call to end a war due to the altered information processing seen among traumatized people. Such a call to end a war could result in unfavorable peace settlements. The United States homeland must improve …

Investigation Of Hurricane Irma Deposits, Big Pine Key, Florida, Youzhu Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Few paleotempestological studies have focused on coastal sinkholes, a common feature in Florida, which can receive and preserve storm overwash sediments. The major goal of this research is to improve our understanding of the characteristic signatures of storm sediments in sinkholes thereby determining reliability of these environments as proxies for hurricanes. Hurricane Irma as a Category 5 storm provides an excellent case study for characterizing storm deposits in sinkholes on Big Pine Key. I cored at four sinkholes along a 350 m transect normal to the shoreline. Core sediments were characterized using physical description, short-lived radioisotope dating, sediment grain size …

Cannabis Capitalism In Colorado: An Ethnography Of Il/Legal Production And Consumption, Lia Berman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coloradans have changed their fundamental views on illegal substances since the decriminalization of cannabis in Colorado. Since the legalization of medical cannabis in 2014, state-sold dispensary cannabis products have straddled the line between legal and illegal network systems in a hybridized “il/legal” market system, a term designed to be ambiguous of the formal and informal economies that it represents (Nordstrom 2007, xxvii). The cannabis commodity chain has proved both familiar and strange when it comes to its production, consumption, and distribution of a federally illegal substance. Colorado’s history as a pioneer in culture and legislature has been repeated with cannabis …

Educational Experiences Of Congolese Refugees In West-Central Florida High Schools, Michaela J. Inks

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since 2016, refugees from the Congo Wars (RFCWs) have been one of the largestpopulations of refugees resettled in the United States. High-school aged RFCW students are, however, dropping out of Florida public high schools are alarmingly high rates. This study uses ethnographic methods such as interviews and participant observation to investigate educational challenges experienced by RFCW youth. This study has three objectives: to learn more about refugees with discontinuous education and the barriers to graduating from public high schools after resettlement; to better understand Tampa bay area programs that serve culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students; and to use ethnographic …

The Communicative Constitution Of Environment: Land, Weather, Climate, Leanna K. Smithberger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My project examines the communicative constitution of environment: how we mediate environment in discursive practice, and arrange chaotic and complex timeplaces into organized relationships of agents and objects which act and are acted upon. Climate scholars across disciplines are calling for a paradigm shift in how we understand, study, inhabit, and relate to Earth’s varied environments. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how communication practices do the work of constituting the environment as we know it, and therefore conclude with the hopeful suggestion that these same practices can be used to do the work of a paradigm shift — that is, …

Aspiring To “Make It Work”: Defining Resilience And Agency Amongst Hispanic Youth Living In Low-Income Neighborhoods, Sara Arias-Steele

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored how Hispanic youth (ages 13-21 years) living in low-income neighborhoods of Florida defined resiliency and expressed agency navigating personal challenges and neighborhood adversity in pursuit of success. From the standpoint of the participants, this study focused on how youths: 1) judge the quality of life in their neighborhoods and the opportunities available for them, 2) identify personal aspirations for themselves and 3) identify what resilient factors allowed them to face the challenges and barriers of their daily lives to pursue this aspiration. This study takes into account the structural barriers that create inequities to examine how personal …

Of Body And Mind: Bioarchaeological Analysis Of Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Century Anatomization And Institutionalization In Siena, Italy, Jacqueline M. Berger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Institutional bioarchaeology is a growing sub-field within bioarchaeology, particularly social bioarchaeology as informed by the biocultural approach. However, the majority of studies in this vein have primarily addressed English-speaking contexts, to include analyses of institutional assemblages preserved archaeologically, and anatomical collections. The present study examines of the Siena Craniological Collection (SCC) - located in Siena, Italy. The collection was assembled between 1862-1931, and originally contained remains of 1,122 patients from both the general and mental hospitals in operation in Siena during this period (Brasili-Gualandi & Gualdi-Russo, 1989a). In addition to demographic analysis of the Siena Craniological Collection as a whole, …

Peminist Performance In/As Filipina Feminist Praxis: Collaging Stand-Up Comedy And The Narrative Points In Between, Christina-Marie A. Magalona

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project documents the interdependent effort between performers, authors, and texts, through re/theorizing the role of the personal narrator in autoperformance as both an individual, and a part of a political collective. Through a scripted and staged performance, studied as the data, I critically engage with representations of first-generation women of color via comediennes (Ali Wong and Cristela Alonzo) and their personal narratives, and dialogically consider moments of dis/identification as a Filipina American.

Rooted in performance in/and communication studies, the overarching method employed is conspicuous aesthetic performance, via a scripted and staged narrative performance. I join performance and other methods …

Reframing The Gothic: Race, Gender, & Disability In Multiethnic Literature, Ashely B. Tisdale

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is about the exploitation and disposability of disabled bodies. I am interested in understanding how some bodies are vulnerable to systems of exploitation by virtue of their race, gender, and disabilities. Chapter one interrogates Alejandro Morales’s The Rag Doll Plagues, where ill and disabled female characters are disposed of during the protagonists’ journey toward national progress. Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in The Trees is the subject of chapter two. In this novel, ill, elderly characters of color are experimented on as their sovereign island is mined by pharmaceutical corporations. Chapter three discusses how James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods portrays …

Book Review Of Eating Nafta: Trade, Food Policies, And The Destruction Of Mexico By Alyshia Gálvez, Laura Kihlstrom

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

This is a book review of the book 'Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico' by Alyshia Gálvez.

Transmission And Erosion Of Local Knowledge Practices In A Fishing Village In South India, Dalibandhu Pukkalla Mr, Sharma Bv Prof

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Fishermen acquire knowledge through kin or other members of the community in an informal way, as well as through personal experience. The knowledge thus acquired is viewed as an asset, but the dangers of its erosion are well understood by the fisher communities. This study documents local knowledge based on the experience, observation, and experimentation of the Jalari fishing community in South India. We focus on wave/ocean colors, sea currents, reading the weather, and availability of fishes in different seasons. Cultural transmission and factors potentially influencing the sustenance and erosion of knowledge practices are briefly considered.

Ethnic Heterogeneity Of Knowledge On Termites And Human Consumption In Southern Cameroon, Sevilor Kekeunou 75278164, Koche Moustapha, Christian Landry Djuideu Tchouamou, Mercy Bih Loh Achu, Barthelemy Ngameni, Constant Anatole Pieme, Joseph Lebel Tamesse

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Termites are both pests and non-conventional food resources in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many are reluctant to eat them, and the reasons for this rejection are poorly known. This study examined level of knowledge, and acceptance by members of the 10 main ethnic groups of southern Cameroon. Most respondents (86 percent) were aware of termites as food with sixteen vernacular names in the study areas. Acceptance among ethnic groups for consumption varied between 96 percent and 8 percent of people in a group. Barriers included being raised to not eat termites, not having many opportunities to eat termites, and dislike of the …

Participatory Mapping With High-Resolution Satellite Imagery: A Mixed Method Assessment Of Land Degradation And Rehabilitation In Northern Burkina Faso, Colin Thor West, Elisabeth Kago Ilboudo Nébié, Aaron J. Moody

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Sahelian West Africa is a region that has high population densities and that has frequent severe droughts and enormous pressure on natural resources. Because of these challenges, it is the place where the term desertification was originally coined. Recently, however, experts have identified large zones of greening where the amount of vegetation exceeds what one would expect based on rainfall alone. This pattern is well documented, but its mechanisms remain poorly understood. This research employs participatory mapping linked with high-resolution satellite imagery to better understand the human role behind regional vegetation trends. Through a case study of three communities in …

Crow's Nest, March 29, 2021, Crow's Nest Staff

Crow's Nest

The March 29, 2021, issue of the Crow's Nest.

Making Change In The Nickel City: Food Banking And Food Insecurity In Buffalo, Ny During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Sarah E. Bradley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In March 2020, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began to spread across the United States. The pandemic disrupted the food system in an unprecedented fashion, exacerbating existing inequalities and contributing to increased rates of food insecurity and charitable food use. This research project considers the food system of Buffalo, New York and seeks to capture the way in which both food insecure households and the food pantries that serve them adapted to the pandemic. Using data from 75 client surveys, 52 qualitative semi-structured interviews with food pantry staff and clients, and 15 participatory GIS mapping interviews, this mixed-methods project describes …

Crow's Nest, March 22, 2021, Crow's Nest Staff

Crow's Nest

The March 22, 2021, issue of the Crow's Nest.

Analyses Of Woodland Check-Stamped Ceramics In Northwest Florida, John D. Blackburn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research compares prehistoric check-stamped ceramics from two northwest Florida sites, Sunstroke (8Li217) and Roy Whitfield (8Gu52), to investigate change through time in pottery manufacture of this ubiquitous type from the Early to Late Woodland Periods, about 100-1000 C.E. These sites are about 60 km apart and connected by waterways in the middle and lower Apalachicola valley drainage system. The Roy Whitfield site is considered Early Woodland based on other diagnostic pottery types, and the Sunstroke site has been radiocarbon-dated to the Late Woodland Period. Check-stamping is a common form of ceramic surface treatment across the Woodland Period and beyond, …

Tourism, Education, And Identity Making: Agency And Representation Of Indigenous Communities In Public Sites Within Florida., Timothy R. Lomberk Ii

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

National parks have a history of complex relations with Native communities beginning with the advent of the National Park Service to representation of Native histories in the present. I will focus on two specific cases located within Florida, utilizing the lens of authorized heritage to show challenges of representation; and the range of ways that representation has been addressed and are currently being addressed with respect to Native communities in Florida. I utilize ethnohistorical and ethnographic methods to explore issues of representation in public spaces; such as museums and national parks. I am interested in critical representations of Native American …

Seasonality, Labor Organization, And Monumental Constructions: An Otolith Study From Florida’S Crystal River Site (8ci1) And Roberts Island Shell Mound Complex (8ci40 And 41), Elizabeth Anne Southard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent decades, archaeological research has provided evidence that some mounds in the southeastern United States were constructed in short episodes. A large work force would have been required to accomplish these monumental projects. Shell mounds, in particular, provide an opportune type of architecture to investigate whether seasonal aggregations of laborers gathered at sites to engage in large-scale work projects because these mounds are constructed of aquatic resources that leave signatures for what time of the year they were caught or harvested. This study investigates whether the residents of the Crystal River site (8CI1) and Roberts Island (8CI40 and 41) …

The Distribution In Native Populations From Mexico And Central America Of The C677t Variant In The Mthfr Gene, Lucio A. Reyes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Objectives: To explore evolutionary hypotheses for the high frequencies of a substitution in the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene, in Mexican and Central American Indigenous populations.

Materials and methods: We obtained allele frequencies for the C677T variant in the MTHFR gene and ecological information for 37 indigenous samples from Mexico and Central America. We calculated Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium and computed Fst statistics. We computed correlations between the samples' allele frequencies and ecological and geochemical variables.

Results: Many of the samples have extremely high frequencies of the T allele (q̄ = 0.62, median = 0.66). In this region, the frequency of the T …

Crow's Nest, March 15, 2021, Crow's Nest Staff

Crow's Nest

The March 15, 2021, issue of the Crow's Nest.

Politics Vs. The Environment: The Spatial Distributions Of Mississippian Mound Centers In Tampa Bay, Adam J. Sax

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Safety Harbor culture that resided in West-Central Florida during the Mississippian period (~1000-1500 CE) was distant from the Mississippian heartland but built similar platform mound complexes and exhibited social hierarchies despite practicing an estuarine lifestyle that likely did not rely on extensive agriculture. To determine whether this coastal culture exhibited similar spatial patterns of platform mound centers to traditional inland cultures, GIS spatial analyses including distance matrices, density analyses, and least cost analyses (LCA) were performed within the Safety Harbor geographical nexus of Tampa Bay. The results were able to detect temporal changes in settlement patterns and estimate the …

Our Story, Our Homeland, Our Legacy: Settlement Patterns Of The Geechee At Sapelo Island Georgia, From 1860 To 1950, Colette D. Witcher

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Gullah Geechee are descendants of enslaved Africans who worked on the island coastal plantations of Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Northern Florida. The Gullah Geechee are known for having retained African cultural connections and practices in the United States through intergenerational knowledge transmission. On Sapelo Island, Georgia, during their 250 years on the island a least 15 historic communities have been acknowledged as representative of their distinct presence on the island. Hog Hammock which was established in 1878, is the last intact Gullah Geechee owned community, due to forced abandonment of the other communities during the early 1950s. …

Eating And Body Image Disorders In The Time Of Covid19: An Anthropological Inquiry Into The Pandemic’S Effects On The Bodies, Theresa A. Stoddard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lifestyle changes are impacting the experiences of self-identifying women and females with body image disorders (BIDs) and/or eating disorders (EDs), focusing on the mental, physical, and emotional health of participants. Using surveys, person-centered semi-structured interviews, and autoethnography, I collected qualitative and quantitative data regarding the challenges, triumphs, hopes, and fears of participants regarding their EDs/BIDs during the pandemic and situated their experiences within their sociocultural context. Drawing on anthropological and psychological theory, I examine the data through the lenses of Scheper-Hughes’s and Lock’s “The Three Bodies” (the body politic, body …