Digital Commons Network^™

Autopathography And Identity In Head Above Water: Reflections On Illness By Shahd Alshammari, Reham M. Samir

Pharmacy

Disability/illness is an enigma that we experience but whose implications we have not fully fathomed. One's sense of self is impacted by disability/ illness. Autopathographies gave people with disability/ chronic illness a chance to share their life with a disability or a chronic illness, which also reflects on identity. Moreover, identity is influenced by social stigma as well as gender. This paper examines the impact of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) on the life and sense of self of the Kuwaiti writer and scholar, Shahd Alshammari's The paper also analyzes the relation between disability, gender and race drawing attention to the impact …

A Teleoisrael And The Μυστήριον Of Mercy: The Identity Of Πᾶς Ἰσραήλ And The Apocalyptic Realignment Of God’S Covenant People In Romans 9–11, James Matthew Nowotny

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation explores the meaning of Paul's assertion in Romans 11:26 that "all Israel will be saved," situating it within the broader theological and literary context of Romans 9–11. The study addresses the complex question of Israel’s identity in Paul’s writings, arguing that Paul envisions a future eschatological salvation for ethnic Israel that coheres with God’s covenantal promises while incorporating Gentile believers into the redemptive plan through union with Christ. Utilizing exegetical analysis, intertextual engagement with the Old Testament, and investigation of Second Temple Jewish conceptions of Israel, the study proposes a nuanced model termed TeleoIsrael—a theological construct reflecting the …

Learning English On The Border: Identities, Investment, And Imagined Futures In El Paso, Texas, Jennifer Lyn Mansour

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative study explores how adult English language learners living along the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas experience language learning, identity formation, and social positioning within a bilingual community. Drawing on Norton's (1995, 2013) theoretical frameworks of identity, investment, and imagined communities, the research investigates three central questions: (1) How does the relationship between English learners and the social world of a bilingual community on the U.S.-Mexico border impact their ideas about their possibilities for the future? (2) How does the use of English construct worlds that are different from those constructed in their first languages, and do learners …

Life-Course And Biography Of Things: Minangkabau Women's Headgear, Attari Putri Denendra, Irmawati Marwoto

International Review of Humanities Studies

Like men, objects also have a biography or life-course. Both biographies are intertwined, so when someone experiences a new life phase transition in their life-course, it will cause changes in the objects attached to them. This is also supported by the statement that the identity is performative. The headgear as one of the elements used by Minangkabau women also represents the identity of the wearer. This research was conducted in three stages: (1) data collection in the form of old photos and literature of Minangkabau women with headgear in Batipuh, Fort de Kock, and Payakumbuh, (2) data processing by analysis …

The Representation Of Indonesian National Identity In Syuhada Mosque, Kotabaru, Yogyakarta, Muthia Zahri Mardhiyah, Ali Akbar

International Review of Humanities Studies

This article examines the concept of national identity as embodied by the Syuhada Mosque, located in Kotabaru, Yogyakarta. Completed in 1952, the mosque was established as a monument to the independence of the Republic of Indonesia. This research addresses whether Syuhada Mosque genuinely represents national identity. The study aims to describe the architectural form of Syuhada Mosque and elucidate the representations of national identity embedded within its structure. The research methodology aligns with the framework proposed by Sharer and Ashmore, encompassing formulation, implementation, data collection, data processing, analysis, interpretation, and publication. Based on its historical background, the foundational ideas and …

Imagined Communities In The Orient: Mapping New Definitions Of Moroccan Spatiality Through Western Travelogues, Abdelaaziz El Bakkali

Homage to Alexander von Humboldt: Travels to and from Spain Throughout the Centuries / Homenaje a Alexander von Humboldt: Viajes hacia y desde España de todos los siglos

The portrayal of Morocco as an exotic location has often been related to the tradition of European Orientalism. From Daniel Defoe to Edith Wharton, the Western presence in Morocco has long been identified by means of several encounters, which has become a central attempt to identify and analyze the country as Oriental. Many of these encounters have resulted in diverse representations that have primarily framed Western ideas about the Oriental world. Morocco, which was identified as an international itinerary of early travelogues about North Africa, has long been a place of Western cultural anthropology and ethnographic surveys. In addressing new …

A Ritual Of Institutions: The State Industrial School In Golden, Colorado And The Shaping Of American Youth, Cyndal Groskopf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the Colorado State Industrial School as a ritualistic institution that influenced boys aged 7 to 19 through Americanization practices between 1881 and 1930. By employing primary documentation, drone imagery, and LiDAR technology, the study examines how cultural and physical activities, along with personal statements, described and maintained the ritualized nature among these incarcerated youth. The findings reveal how institutional routines and activities reinforced narratives of American identity, particularly in relation to themes of personal identity, conformity, and agency. These rituals played a crucial role in institutionalizing cultural ideals and shaping the identities of marginalized youth. The research …

Movement As Metamorphosis: An Examination Of Transformative Learning In Dance, Whitney Egstad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the arts-based methodology of Educational Criticism and Connoisseurship (Uhrmacher, Moroye, & Flinders, 2017) to examine the curriculum and pedagogy of a Colorado-based dance studio, this qualitative dissertation explores how transformative learning (TL) unfolds within the context of adult dance education. Grounded in Mezirow’s (1991) theory of transformative learning, the study investigates how dance becomes a medium for personal transformation, identity reconstruction, and emotional healing. Data collection included six hours of interviews with instructors and students and twelve hours of class observations, focusing on how adult learners experience curriculum not just as technical instruction, but as an embodied, relational journey …

The Idea Of Ethiopia: Heritage Tourism In The Land Of Origins, Hosaena T. Tilahun

Geography Undergraduate Senior Theses

Hosaena Tilahun's "The Idea of Ethiopia" explores how heritage tourism in Addis Ababa cultivates Ethiopian patriotism and exceptionalism. Through an in-depth, close reading of the National Museum of Ethiopia, Unity Park, and the Oromo Cultural Center, supplemented by observations at the Red Terror Memorial Museum and Dergue Prison, Tilahun examines how heritage sites shape the political memory of national resistance, revolution, and Black internationalist thought. Tilahun discovers omissions of Menelik II's role in the Red Sea Slave network, encountering museum and archival silences about the internal conquest of peoples peripheral to the northern Abyssinian empire. As these heritage site renovations …

Cultural Continuity And Identity Preservation In Diaspora: The Role Of African Pentecostal Churches In Maintaining Traditions Within African Communities In The United States, Olamide T. Awoyemi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the role of African Pentecostal churches in preserving cultural traditions andshaping identities among African diaspora communities in the United States, focusing specifically on Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) and Pentecost International Worship Centre (PIWC) in Tampa, Florida. Through detailed participant observation and in-depth qualitative interviews, this thesis examines how rituals, religious practices, and community engagement within these churches facilitate cultural continuity and identity negotiation among Nigerian and Ghanaian immigrants. Findings reveal that these religious institutions serve as critical sites for resisting cultural erasure, navigating the complex tensions between maintaining African heritage and adapting to American society, and providing …

Transforming The Law School Matrix, Susan L. Brooks

The Journal of Law Teaching and Learning

No abstract provided.

School Principals’ Perceptions Of Hiring School Counselors, Wendy Carol Vaughn

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

School principals are the primary hiring authorities in U.S. K-12 public schools when employing school counselors. Despite the expansion and diversification of schools’ qualifications, characteristics, and roles, there is a gap in knowledge about principals’ hiring perspectives, priorities, and specific criteria. These elements provide vital information for school counseling educational programs and organizational advocacy for hiring school counselors based on current standards and qualifications. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to understand the perceptions of school principals regarding the hiring of school counselors. Targeting the research question “What are the perceptions of principals interviewing and hiring school counselors …

Introduction: Mother Tongue As Global Politics, Jessica Chandras, Joshua Babcock

UNF Faculty Research and Scholarship

For racialized speakers living in the wake of colonial modernity, “mother tongues” persist as perilous, precarious terrain. Far from being a straightforward linguistic resource or a totalizing, self-evident identity marker, “mother tongue” is always positioned, partial, and political. As a category, “mother tongue” encompasses projects across disparate sites, histories, and interactional grounds beyond South Asia, where the concept has been most extensively elaborated. Articles in this collection trace the links among collective national identities, individuated personhood, and the denotational codes that get made to refract language-community attentions—not just a group's language, but more essentially, their “mother tongue.” What transformations, investments, …

“I’M Not Belgian, I’M European”: Ontological Security, Common Security & Defense Policy, And Evolving Identity Dynamics Within The European Union, Madeleine Bamford

Senior Theses

Identity dynamics worldwide continue to impact global integration and defense policy. This study aims to fill a gap in scholarship: how political science research can zoom in on the individual and produce effective research at the singular level through ontological security theory. Drawing on Eurobarometer studies and social media comments, this study delineates the evolution of European identity dynamics from 1975 to 2024. The study considers how the idea of ‘Home,’ the othering of outside peoples, and perceived physical security contribute to the constituent perception of defense policy. Furthermore, this study examines various European Union policies that have impacted collective …

"La Vida Es Un Carnaval": An Exploration Of Cuban Identity And Nostalgia Through Dance/Movement Therapy - A Community Engagement Project, Maria Fernanda Mendez Mendoza

Expressive Therapies Theses

“La Vida Es Un Carnaval” is a community engagement project and thesis that explores how identity and nostalgic resilience show up through dance/movement therapy with Cuban immigrants living in the United States, specifically Massachusetts. This project brought together six Cuban-born participants, ages 26 to 67, each with their own unique migration stories; from the Rafter Balsero Crisis of 1994, to the “Wet-Foot/Dry-Foot” policy, and family reunification. Through a mix of in-person and online sessions, participants explored their experiences using intermodal activities including dance/movement therapy techniques, conversation, journaling, artwork, and music. Themes of cultural pride, “Cubanía” – Cuban-ness, culture shock, and …

Becoming Sephardic: Historical Consciousness And Emergent Ethnoreligious Identification In New Mexico, Sarah Leiter

Anthropology ETDs

In recent years, an increasing number of Hispanic Catholic New Mexicans have discovered that they descend from Iberian Jewish victims of the Spanish Inquisition. For some, this new information has prompted them to identify as Jewish in various ways. However, many have faced considerable difficulty in gaining recognition of their newfound ethnoreligious ancestry among family members, normative Jewish communities, and the Spanish and Portuguese governments that offered reparative citizenship to Sephardic (Iberian Jewish) descendants. In this ethnographic context, this dissertation explores how shifting understandings of religious identity and ancestral pasts affect identification practices in the present. Drawing on theoretical analyses …

Transnational Teachers On Both Sides Of The U.S.-Mexico Border: Exploring Their Identities And Conocimiento. A Phenomenological Study With A Comparative Stance, Isaac Frausto Hernandez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The transnationalism phenomenon is at the core of an increasingly globalized world. This phenomenological study with a comparative stance explores the lived experiences and perspectives of teachers with a transnational migration background with regards to how they [re]construct their identities and conocimiento. It compares and contrasts the histories and insights from participants in the borderlands with those from the heart of Mexico. Specifically, this study contributes to the under-explored body of literature which has taken a comparative stance in looking at transnationalism in education on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Data derived from migration memory maps and in-depth, phenomenological …

Shame, Identity And Reconciliation With Christ, Michele D. Corgiat

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the impact of reconciliation with Christ on shame narratives and identity. Although shame and identity has been extensively researched, the added theological construct of reconciliation with Christ makes this research unique. This phenomenological study explored the impact of reconciliation with Christ on shame narratives and identity. Sixteen participants, ages 20 to 75 years, who professed to have reconciled with Christ through faith and repentance, were selected and interviewed. Each participant was interviewed three times over a four-week period using a transcendental phenomenological method. Data were collected and analyzed using reflexive thematic …

Educating Indians, Learning ‘Indianness’: Navigating Pluralistic Educational Infrastructures In Diasporic Singapore, Emma Grimley, Orlando Woods, Lily Kong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper advances the idea of ‘educational infrastructures’ to explore the slippages created by national education frameworks and the everyday ways in which citizen-subjects learn to be part of an ethno-cultural community. In doing so, we tease apart the differences between education as a top-down process of citizen-making and learning as a poly-directional assemblage of behaviours and influences that permeate the socio-spatial landscapes of ethnic belonging. We illustrate these theoretical arguments through an analysis of Singapore’s diasporic Indian community and the collapse of linguistically and culturally complex community backgrounds under the Mother Tongue policy. This leads to a pluralisation of …

Adopted Children, Michael Galobardi, Lisa K. Lashley, Charles J. Golden

Essays in Developmental Psychology

Views about the manner and nature of human development have changed across time (Psyking.net 2016). Some of these views have been religious (e.g., creationism) and some of these views have been more biological (e.g., preformationism).  Regardless of the focus of the view, how we believe human beings develop has a profound effect on our expectations for those beings.  One early view of human development from a biological perspective was Preformationism.  This is explained as, “A notion that was widespread among pioneer biologists in the 18th century was that the fetus, and hence the adult organism that develops from it, is …

Pathway Out Of Homelessness, Budwa (Bud) Sous

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This phenomenological case study aims to understand the homeless individuals' relational Transformational Experience (TE) and their choice to complete the transitional pathway journey from homelessness at a faith-based shelter. Developed in 1938 by John Dewy, TE has become a comprehensive and complex framework that describes how learners interpret, confirm, and give meaning to their experiences. As a result, this study's framework uses a hermeneutic and relational approach to explore and highlight relational barriers the homeless faced following their transition out of a Midwest homeless shelter. However, research has not adequately recognized how a restored relationship contributes to cognitive and behavioral …

Church As Community: Religiosity And Queer Identity Among Emerging Adults In Adventist Higher Education, Chris N. Ngugi

Honors Theses

How do LGBTQ+ or “queer”-identifying emerging adults attending Seventh-day Adventist Christian institutions of higher education in the United States relate to their religiosity or relationship with religion? Within certain religious contexts (Avishai, 2020; Chiongbian et al., 2023; Lockett et al., 2023), including within the Seventh-day Adventist church (Pew Research Center, 2014), an individual’s LGBTQ+ identity may seem incongruent with commonly held stigmas, norms, doctrines, and beliefs maintained by religious group members and officials. LGBTQ+ identity and religiosity in such contexts are often described through “conflict” and “beyond conflict” theories, principally Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Identity Integration Theory (Rêgo-Moreira et al., …

I Lost My Grandmother’S Hanbok: A Thematic Series Of Paintings Exploring Of The Loss Of Culture In A Mixed-Race Korean American Home, Cadance G. Thompson

Honors Theses

Mixed-race individuals feel conflicted at their place in American society. They fit in with their cultural heritage, but also their American heritage. This creates a split where they may identify more with one or the other. This may be due to the lack of diversity where they live, the desire to fit in, or lack of participating in their own culture. This series of paintings explores the self-identification of me, a mixed-race Korean and White woman from Appalachia. The acrylic paintings explore themes of self-identification and cultural heritage with the goal of determining which group I identify with more. The …

Glotopolítica, Identidad Y Lenguas En México En El Siglo Xxi, Marilyn S. Avalos Huesca

Journal of Maya Heritage

Languages, like human beings, have been adapting to the changes produced worldwide, and with this they have grown in number of speakers or disappeared forever from society. These changes are not given arbitrarily, but are conceived from politics and the State, where what should be the best for the speakers, nationalism and society permeates according to the statutes established by those in power. All this from an ethnocentric point of view, which denigrates what is different, what we do not understand, and therefore, we reject. This article analyzes the presence of languages in Mexico from a point of view related …

Ai-Enhanced Essay Prompt: Exploring Your Identity And Life Experiences, Victor M. Torres-Velez

Open Educational Resources

This assignment, AI-Enhanced Essay Prompt: Exploring Your Identity and Life Experiences, guides students through a reflective writing process that integrates personal narratives with academic concepts related to identity, globalization, and migration. Students will examine how their nationality, ethnicity, race, social class, and gender are shaped by larger cultural and transnational forces. The structured approach encourages students to engage with AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Grammarly) as personalized writing tutors, assisting with brainstorming, organization, clarity, and revision while maintaining their authentic voice.

The essay requires students to build upon previously submitted personal anecdotes, analyze their experiences through course readings (including works …

Art As Resistance: Challenging Colonial Legacies Through The Eyes Of South Asian Diasporic Women, Sofina Tanni

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how South Asian diasporic women artists in New York utilize art to resist colonial legacies and express their multifaceted identities. Through ethnographic research, it highlights how themes of nostalgia, preservation, community, and activism shape their work, fostering collective resistance and transformative decolonial pathways.

Indigenous Artists Working With Digital Materials, Luke A. Meeken

Teaching Resource Archive

This is a static PDF version of the online resource found here: https://www.gildedgreen.com/indigital This document contains the five thematic curricular modules from the online resource but does not contain the always-growing online database of contemporary Indigenous digital artists, who can be found at the above link.

This resource includes several thematic modules designed for use by educators of preservice art teachers, which can be adapted for use in graduate and undergraduate level courses (and parts of which will be deployed in my own elementary and secondary methods courses). These could be used in whole or in part, and are designed …

The Mystical City Of God: The Angels And Anthropological Identity, Depicted Through Mary, Gilbert Perez

Obsculta

A quick reflection on the mystical experiences of Maria of Jesus of Ágreda. Focusing on the importance of Angelology within greater Catholic thought by highlighting its deep relationship with Mary, the Mother of God. Moving from a slow understanding of knowledge concerning God, multiple excerpts from the text cover varying aspects of human identity by investigating the knowledge concerning the angels. Culminating in Mary, and how she becomes an adored creation that reveal human and angelic anthropology.

"The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love": Identity Creation, Compartmentalization, And Belonging Among Queer Peace Corps Volunteers, Laura N. Keeran

Theses and Dissertations

The Peace Corps advertises that it accepts anyone, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation; however, recruiters and staff ask volunteers to go back into the closet for their twenty-seven months of service due to the Peace Corps’ safety concerns about their volunteers being out in their host countries. Queer Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) answer the call to serve, accepting that it means they will need to keep their queer identities concealed for two years and three months. I conducted ethnographic interviews with ten people who have served or are currently serving in the Peace Corps and identify under …

Boba Tea Shops And Identity: Exploration Of Boba Shops Among College Students In Greater Orlando, Naydelin Karime Trejo Vega

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

This thesis explores the cultural and social significance of boba tea shops among college students aged 18 to 26 in Greater Orlando. Although many people view boba tea as a trendy drink, this study treats it as a meaningful part of some students’ daily lives, identity formation, and sense of belonging. Through a multi-method approach that includes participant observation, surveys, and semi-structured interviews, I examine what motivates college students to purchase boba tea and how boba shops impact their identity and sense of belonging. I conducted fieldwork at three different boba tea shops in Greater Orlando—two franchises and one locally …