Digital Commons Network^™

Contextualizing Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Education Preschools Within The Turkmen Community Of Afghanistan, Carrie Ann Shaver

Theses and Dissertations

The Turkmen Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) Preschool program in Afghanistan provided the ideal environment to research how evidence-based MTB-MLE preschool programs can be implemented in a way that aligns with the cultural and linguistic views of the Turkmen people in Afghanistan such that supervisors, teachers, and the community strive to implement and participate in the program to the fullest extent. Data was triangulated by the use of interviews, participant observation, and MTB-MLE preschool monitoring reports. A qualitative research method was used to gain insights into the perceptions and experiences of supervisors, teachers, and the community on the MTB-MLE program. …

Tidal Translations: Thinking-With Untranslatability In Craig Santos Perez's From Unincorporated Territory, Maryn Gardner

Theses and Dissertations

Craig Santos Perez's poetic series from Unincorporated Territory describes and decries the U.S. militarization, colonization, and environmental degradation of Guam in the Western Pacific through multilingual, excerpted, and series-long poems. Perez's writing style requires slow, careful reading with translations sometimes appearing on the same page, various pages later, or not at all. I describe this kind of elongated translation as slow translation, recalling translation theorist Michael Cronin's "Slow Language" movement. This thesis invites readers, especially multispecies ethnographers, to slow down the translation of nonhuman species and their stories by paying attention to moments of untranslatability in multispecies literature and interactions. …

Communities Of Water: An Examination Of Cooperation And Conflict In Water Management Practices In The Central Peruvian Andes, Sylvie D. Littledale

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores two examples of water management in the highland Peruvian villages, San Pedro de Llancha and San Antonio de Chinchina. One example is of cooperation and union between the two communities. The other is of conflict between the same two villages just 40 years prior. I examine ethnographic and ethnohistorical data from both the collaborative period and the conflictive period of these two communities’ relations over water. The data suggest that, while the outcomes of these two periods were drastically different, the processes through which these communities came into relation with one another were quite similar. Their communal …

Orienting Pacha: Value As Action In The Late Horizon Xauxa-Pachacamac Axis, Ridge C. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

The Andean Late Horizon (ca. AD 1438–1532) was a period of exceptionally rapid and far-reaching cultural change. Over this short span of only a few generations, the Inka ethnic group established an empire that was greater in size than any other pre-colonial American polity. The Inka accomplished their expansion without the use of certain institutions (i.e., a standing army, formal writing system, monetary system, or price-setting markets) that the received anthropological wisdom has long held as being necessary preconditions to imperial expansion. Standard explanations of Late Horizon culture change tend to overemphasize the roles of environmental constraints, social evolution, and …

Enhancing The Opportunities For Adults With Autism To Find Jobs Using A Job-Matching Algorithm, Joseph T. Bills

Theses and Dissertations

Adults with autism face many difficulties when finding employment, such as struggling with interviews and needing accommodating environments for sensory issues. However, autistic adults also have unique skills to contribute to the workplace that companies have recently started to seek after, such as close attention to detail and trustworthiness. To work around these difficulties and help companies find the talent they are looking for we have developed a job-matching system. Our system is based around the stable matching of the Gale-Shapley algorithm to match autistic adults with employers after estimating how both adults with autism and employers would rank the …

Race And Technology In Southern Literature, Civil War To Civil Rights, Kaitlyn Elizabeth Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers the intersection of technology and race in the literature of the American South from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Though narratives about technology in American literature often promise democracy, equality, improvement, and progress, the role of technology in southern literature is more complex and ambivalent. Literature from and about the South from the Civil War to the civil rights era, by Black and white southern authors like Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty reveals technology’s ability to uphold and naturalize southern white supremacy, but also to subvert it. Southern literature traces a pattern …

Mining For Progress: Copper, Conflict, And Corporate Social Responsibility, Fritz Culp

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines how transnational mega-mines efface non-Western ways of knowing and being from the Andes. A growing branch of research is questioning the socio-environmental impacts of mining and the influence of regulatory institutions. Despite remarkable scholarship on the ongoing environmentalism of modern-mining, little critical attention has been given to the industry’s pivot to ‘sustainable’ development and its objectives that remain epistemologically centered on the West. My project addresses these gaps by examining Las Bambas—a large-scale copper mine located in South-Central Peru—and its contrasting objectives that emphasize both environmental ‘conservation’ and the ‘modernization’ of non-Western spaces. Building upon the critical …

Life In The Time Of Covid-19: The Everyday Impacts Of The Pandemic In Amman, Jordan, Patrick Mckenzie

Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic and the responses taken to combat it caused enormous changes to the everyday lives of people around the world. Jordan, in its early success against the virus and with its large refugee population, represents a unique country in which to study these everyday impacts. From May to August of 2021, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Jordanian capital city of Amman while working with the refugee nongovernmental organization the Collateral Repair Project. In this thesis, I explore the COVID-19 Spectacle, examining the ways in which policies and discourses at the national and international scales bled into the …

African Seminole Settlement Ecologies Of Early Nineteenth Century Florida, Jordan E. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

For over three centuries prior to the outbreak of the Second Seminole War [1835-1842], peoples of African and Native American descent independently and collectively formed multiple communities throughout what is now Florida. During the early 1990s, several ancestral African Seminole (otherwise known as “Black Seminole”) settlements were identified across Central Peninsular Florida, many of which were founded by self-emancipated Africans commonly referred to as maroons. Previous archaeological research at the African Seminole settlement of Pilaklikaha, or Abraham’s Old Town, has greatly stimulated both scholarly and public interest in tracing the historical trajectories of individual African-Native American communities while remaining attentive …

The Pursuit Of Good Food: The Alimentary Chronotope In Madame Bovary, Lauren Flinner

Theses and Dissertations

The imagery in Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is crucial to the structure of the novel due to Flaubert’s insistence on observations of le quotidien or daily life. Daily activities, mundane tasks, and precise descriptions take as much precedence within the chapters as the actions of Emma herself, putting focus on the importance of these activities as readers try to discern meaning from their inclusion. One such daily activity that features in many scenes and varies widely is the presence of food within the novel. As Lilian Furst, Jean-Pierre Richard, and Victor Brombert observed in their analyses of Madame Bovary, …

It’S An Old Song, But We’Re Gonna Sing It Again: The Myth Of Orpheus & Eurydice In Modern And Postmodern Theatrical Performance, Tiffani Brooks Hagan

Theses and Dissertations

Since theatre was established as an art form, productions have adapted myths into performance, creating an array of theatrical texts based on the oral practice of storytelling of ancient civilizations. This concept of adaptation, where playwrights draw from stories of the past in new works, has expanded in recent years to include new scholarship regarding the dramaturgy of theatrical adaptations and what it means to adapt a work, whether originally for theatre or not, into a text meant for theatrical performance. One such myth that has captivated audiences since its first recorded utilization has been the myth of Orpheus and …

“Whoz Ya People?”: Defining Lumbee Citizenship And Belonging In The 21St Century, Timothy Blake Hite

Theses and Dissertations

The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina is a state-recognized tribe with an estimated 60,000 citizens. From 2018-2020, the tribe closed their enrollment office so that the tribe could reexamine enrollment policies, particularly the criterion for appropriate contact with the tribal homeland. During this closure, the tribe was continuing its long journey for federal recognition, with a bill passing the U.S. House of Representatives and receiving support from then President Donald Trump and current President Joseph Biden. During the summer of 2021, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork with the tribe’s enrollment department, located in Pembroke, NC, to answer the question of how …

“That Was Denied Thee On Earth”: An Intersectional Bioarchaeology Of Institutionalized Euro-American Women Throughout 19Th And 20Th-Century America, Madeline Maria Atwell

Theses and Dissertations

In the mid 19th-century, American state-supported insane asylums, later renamed state mental hospitals in the 20th-century, were constructed to house and humanely treat individuals perceived to be socially deviant or mentally and physically ill. Women were particularly vulnerable to undue institutionalization because of the prevailing patriarchal gender ideology within medical and colloquial spheres that contributed to the perception that they were biologically pathological. This dissertation interprets the findings of combined archival, historical, and osteological analysis from two U.S. skeletal collections: The Colorado State Insane Asylum (CSIA) Collection and the Hamann-Todd Human Osteological Collection (HT), to examine the embodied, physiological impact …

The Challenges Of Navigating Feminism In Nigeria: A Case For Third Space Feminism, Pearl Osibu

Theses and Dissertations

This project features two parts: a critical portion discussing the feminism landscape in Nigeria, and a creative portion—a work of fiction titled “Glued together”. This abstract only concerns the critical aspect of the work, to which the creative part will only be tangentially related. In Nigeria, the largest country in Africa sited in the Sub-Saharan hemisphere, the very mention of the word, feminism is anathema. There is a lot of resentment towards, and pushback against the very idea. This lack of trust can be linked to certain voiced concerns that feminism is some “white man’s invention from the west” to …

Replicas Of Social Change: Examining Reflections Of Religious Shifts In Japanese Society Through Literary Depictions Of Kitsune Characters, Sophia Pressler

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the roles of female kitsune (fox) characters in Japanese literature in different historical eras: the Heian period (794-1185), the Edo period (1603-1868), the Meiji period in addition to the period before the end of World War II (1868-1945), and the modern day (late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries). The goal of this analysis of kitsune folk tales, legends, and stories is to reunite the ‘folk’ with their folklore - providing evidence of how the content of folk tales, legends, and other stories are shaped by their contexts and thus serve as valuable historical records of the lives …

Ani-Kitu Hwagi Center Places: A Study Of Survivance, Tyler Michael Mantia

Theses and Dissertations

Ani-Kitu Hwagi (Cherokee) settlements across the Southeastern United States have been intensively studied to evaluate how social dynamics, gender roles, and economic disruption came to impact levels of stability and variability within both domestic and public structures or spaces during the seventeenth to eighteenth century. Some studies characterize this period by using the term “Shatter Zone” to describe a historical model for the US Southeast that emphasizes a landscape of disruption characterized by population displacement, widespread disease, increased levels of slavery, and economic disruption. I reorient analyses of archaeological evidence of this timeframe in terms of center places, a conceptual …

A Qualitative Inquiry Of The Body Project On College Campuses In Illinois, Maria Ross

Theses and Dissertations

Negative body image is a social and psychological concern that plagues many young women in the United States and has a strong relationship to the onset of eating disorders. One outcome of past research done on body dissatisfaction and eating concerns has been the implementation of peer-led prevention programs such as The Body Project and More Than Muscles that address negative body image and disordered eating. These programs target the sociocultural factors that contribute to eating and body image issues on college campuses. This study uses interviews supplemented by ethnographic fieldnotes and content analysis to describe and evaluate the implementation …

British Colonial Strategies To Control The Influenza Epidemic Of 1918 To 1919 In Ashanti, Dennis Baffour Awuah

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to examine the strategies and policies that were employed by the British colonial administration to control the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 in Ashanti. I argue that the varying philosophies of both the colonial administration and the Native population in Ashanti on health and medicine influenced the response trajectory to the disease. It also explores the aspects of Indigenous medical practices which are largely concerned with the religion or beliefs of the people. Before the outbreak of influenza, the colonial administration started a campaign to promote Western medicine while antagonizing Indigenous medicine. To an extent, this made the …

Aiming To Please: Navigating Intersectional Realities, Priscilla Kar Yee Lo

Theses and Dissertations

As a product of a Chinese immigrant family in North America, I was perpetually reminded to be practical about my future. But after over a decade as a health care professional, I began to feel dissatisfied with the direction of my life. I turned to creative outlets to find a voice and to explore my identity as a female of colour. To create work as an act of remembrance of the collective intersectional adversity minority women continue to face. I was drawn to glass because it is inherently paradoxical, constantly in a state of fragility and permanency. This mirrors the …

Bombazo Epistemology A Syllabus Of Survival: Dismantling Settler Colonialism's Philosophy In The Stolen Land, Armen Alvarez

Theses and Dissertations

Eurocentric educational philosophy has functioned as an anticipatory regime creating racial, economic, historical, sociopolitical, and intellectual separation and imposing dominant knowledge systems. In 2021, American and Hispanic empires rejected organic movements from scholars and academic activists for embracing a vision of the world outside the boundaries of Eurocentrism. A trend that has shaken the foundations of Eurocentric Academia. More than ever, the Bomba Ceremony has emerged as a tradition that substantiates Puerto Rico's identity, awakening the consciousness of TransIndigenous and Transcolonialism intersubjectivities. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I conceptualize the logic of white supremacy through the lenses of white settler …

Nothing For Us, About Us, Without Us, Dream Action Niu: ( Re ) Formation Of Undocumented And Mixed-Status Students’ Identities Of Resistance, Sandra Watson López

Theses and Dissertations

Undocumented and mixed-status students often find themselves resisting in contested spaces at institutions of higher education. This project focused on how nine Latina leaders, whose advocacy spanned a little over a decade, produced identities of resistance at their predominately white college campus. This study captured the testimonios of the former Latina presidents and leaders of an undocumented student organization named DREAM Action NIU. Braiding together figured worlds, undocumented critical race theory and Nepantla this study observed how las mujeres were agitated to action while residing in the figured world of their student organization. Their interactions in this space led to …

An Other Word For It Is Us, Aca Carle

Theses and Dissertations

I am contemplating language and animacy; their enmeshment with each other and their connective fibers between beings. My art follows from the belief that animacy is inherent in matter and that language is inherent in animacy.

“Only by affirming the animateness of perceived things do we allow our words to emerge directly from the depths of our ongoing reciprocity with the world.” (Abramb 56)

The Cynics' Understanding Of And Contribution To Philosophy, Yossra Hamouda

Theses and Dissertations

The Cynics are an understudied school in the history of philosophy especially, if we compare the amount of literature written on the Cynics to the amount of literature written on Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and other Greek schools like the Epicureans, the Neo-Platonists and even the Stoics. The lack of research interest in the Cynics, both from the side of philosophers and historians, is possibly grounded in a lack of interest in understanding the Cynical conception of philosophy. Unless we take a serious interest in understanding the Cynical conception of philosophy, we risk reducing the Cynics to the historical clowns of …

Inhabiting Suspension: Neoliberalism And The Public Servants In Ismailia's Radio Canal, Mayar Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

To be a public servant in 2021 is to endure many sociopolitical and financial hardships as well as many stereotypes. Between living in dire straits and lacking any motive to work, the public servants and their behavior are almost always rendered indolent. Yet, this ambiguous/all-inclusive category needs to be pinned down, shaped in a sociopolitical landscape in which change is analyzed, documented, and conveyed. In the journey of uncovering what it is like to be working in a service governmental institution, Radio Canal in Ismailia allowed me to delve into a segment of the public servant category in a moment …

“No Masses Without Muslims’ Approval” The Crisis Of Building And Restoring Churches In Egypt: Three Case Studies From El-Minya Governorate, Sara Shaltout

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined the crisis of building and renovating churches in Egypt in the light of the Church-state relation. I focused on three case studies in the El-Minya governorate that includes the largest Christian concentration in the Middle East to shed light on the existing difficulties that face Christians there regarding building a house of worship. The first case study, "church No 1", was demolished due to political conflict between Islamists and the state after the Rabaa massacre in 2013. In comparison, church No 2 asserts that Muslims' approval is a prerequisite for Christians' prayers. In addition to church No …

Transnationalism And Identity: The Dream Of ‘Better Life’ For Egyptian Migrants In The Uae, Aliaa Ellawaty

Theses and Dissertations

In the modern globalized world, there has been a shift in migration studies that now focus on those immigrants from a transnational perspective. Thus, their lives are not detached from the transnational space that is not only about the point of departure and the point of arrival, but it is more related to the interconnections that emerge in the transnational space. This means that individuals are no longer tied to ethnic and cultural diversities, but by the transformations in the sociality of the transnational space. For many years, the United Arab Emirates has been a great attraction for middle-class Egyptians …

The Social World(S) Of The Scooter: Two-Wheeled Mobilities In Cairo And Alexandria, Ahmed El Serougui

Theses and Dissertations

My research project looks at the scooter as a particular type of two-wheeled motorcycle, which has shot into prominence as a specific mode of transportation used by middle class women and men in the past few years and has been notably visible in prominent Egyptian cities. This research is based on a multi-sited ethnography in Alexandria and Cairo, tracing the scooter through the urban landscape in time and space, addressing first questions related to navigating the city in times of pandemic and what kind of theory could be produced from these ordinary cities in such an extraordinary time.

This research …

Unesco, Heritage Preservation, And Photography: Balthazar Korab’S “North Yemen: Land And Buildings” And Mario Cresci’S Matera: Immagini E Documenti, Sarah M. Wolberg

Theses and Dissertations

I explore two architectural photo-essays that engage with (reflecting, rebutting, questioning) the concepts of cultural heritage, particularly with regard to preserving vernacular architecture in cities with UNESCO World Heritage status—Balthazar Korab’s photo-essay “North Yemen: Land and Buildings” (1978–81) and Mario Cresci’s 1975 Italian photobook Matera: Immagini e documenti.

Steve Mcqueen, The Filmmaker, And Kant’S Sensus Communis, Livia Melamed Margon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reflects on the ways in which art reinforces community and reduces political polarity by stimulating shared feelings, namely through Kant's idea of sensus communis. To illustrate its argument, this thesis analyzes the work of Steve McQueen, a politically aware, ethically engaged, and broadly recognized filmmaker and artist.

Afropolitan Manifestations In Contemporary African Art: Mobilizing Achille Mbembe, Petra Frank-Witt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Afropolitanism's conceptual-philosophical grounds and how its principles are mirrored in the arts. Achille Mbembe’s conceptualization is presented as a form of cultural cosmopolitanism, as shared by the artists presented, further distilled as a dynamic, forward-looking, emancipatory ideology that favors Africanness as open-ended signifier rather than overdetermined sign.