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The Impact Of Dubai’S Architectural Wonders On The Daily Indigenous Performance In Light Of Cultural Modernity: A Comparative Case Study Between Burj Khalifa And Burj Al-Arab, Zulfat S. Al Kassim

Theses

In order to decrease the reliance on oil and create more economic opportunities, the UAE has witnessed a development boom over the last few decades in an effort to promote tourism. Dubai specifically has purposefully undergone dramatic architectural evolutions with the aim of transforming the city into a tourist hub and a global attraction. Over the last few years, iconic buildings including Burj Al Arab and Burj Khalifa have been built at different times to become prominent landmarks that promote the city’s global image and combine traditional/local elements in such a way as to form completely new unrecognizable forms i.e. …

Every(Day) Identities In Forensics: Performing Identities Within The Constraints Of Intercollegiate Forensics, Julie Louceil Germain Walker

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Goffman's (1959) dramaturgical theory of identity provides a framework for making sense of complicated, mundane identity performances. Through in-depth interviews and focus groups conducted with intercollegiate forensic co-culture members, the current research builds on Goffman's dramaturgical theory of identity. Crystallization-based analysis showed identity performances are situated within one another like Russian matroyshka (nesting) dolls. Co-cultural expectations produce multi-level professionalism expectations, and overlapping co-cultures mean individuals manage conflicting conventions. Implications are offered for the forensics community, other co-cultures, and identity scholars.

Illustrations Of Nepantleras: Bridge Making Potential In Ana Castillo's So Far From God And The Guardians, Amanda Patrick

All Master's Theses

Chicana literature to date has extensively illustrated the process of identity construction—the development of mestiza consciousness—as the means through which Mexican American females may thwart the agents of oppressive patriarchal authority in their lives. While this highly theoretical and politicized literature has contributed greatly to discussions of identity, agency, and the subjective self, many Chicana authors and activists express concerns regarding the fate of the Chicana/o collective. Some consider the relationship between feminist Chicanas and their more traditional families and communities to be irreconcilable. Using the theories of Gloria Anzaldúa, I argue that the novels So Far from God and …

Dystopian Identities: Exhuming The World Of Zombies Through The Camera's Eye: A Documentary, Julie Kimble

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This research seeks to understand how engagement in zombie media culture helps its participants to navigate their everyday fears, develop identity, and form meaningful communities through this interaction. Curriculum studies enables us to see that knowledge is fluid and we often learn more from our interaction with our world outside of the expected sites of education—like schools. Media and pop culture provide a place for this knowledge to begin. Participants in zombie culture invest themselves and connect in ways that transcend entertainment and seem to become sites of transformation. Standardization and testing have become the driving force in education, creating …

Effects Of Acculturation Gap And Attachment Style On South Asian Adolescent Well-Being, Malliga Delaney Delaney

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

South Asian (SA) adolescents experience the added challenges of identity development and coping as a minority population of color in a predominantly White host culture. Adolescent attachment style (AS) with their parents, along with an acculturation gap (AG) with their parents, can either add to or alleviate their struggles. A matched acculturation style and secure AS with their parents were hypothesized to result in higher ethnic identity and adaptive coping. The Brief COPE, Multiethnic Identity Measure, Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment, and the Bicultural Inquiry Questionnaire were used to measure the independent (AG and AS) and dependent variables (identity …

Global Homesickness In William Gibson’S Blue Ant Trilogy, Sean Scanlan

Publications and Research

This article explores theories of home, homesickness, and identity instability as they occur in William Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy, which consists of three novels: Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007), and Zero History (2010). In order to clarify this collision and underscore the importance of cultural and aesthetic codes of uneven globalization, this article offers a character study focused through the place-based intensities of global homesickness. Each character has a strained relationship with home: Cayce Pollard only feels at home while reading and writing in an online film forum; Hollis Henry wonders if she might be considered homeless, even though …

Ukuo And Täbotü Between The Piaroa Of The Matavén Rainforest In The Colombian Orinoquia, Nelsa De La Hoz

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

The Crisis Of Identity In Post-Revolutionary Cuban Film: A Sociological Analysis Of Strawberry And Chocolate, Andrew Zachary Shultz

Kaleidoscope

This paper analyzes Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío´s Strawberry and Chocolate (1993) from the sociological perspective of film as a cultural text informed by the political, historical, and social world in which it is produced. A symbolic interactionist/cultural studies model is used as a guide for the interpretive and qualitative methods utilized in approaching the film. Of particular interest to the sociological analysis of the film is the changing political context of the Cuban Revolution during the “special period” of the early 1990s, the use of stereotypes in the characterization of the actors, and finally its representation of …

Hmong Culture Club As A Place Of Belonging: The Cultivation Of Hmong Students’ Cultural And Political Identities, Bic Ngo

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

In this article, I draw on a year-long ethnographic study of an after school “Hmong Culture Club” to illuminate the ways in which it provides students with a place of belonging. I reveal the ways in which Hmong students in this setting take up ideologies of multiculturalism in response to a sense of the “loss” of Hmong culture. I explore the ways in which the Hmong Club provided Hmong students with a place to belong that simultaneously cultivated their cultural and political identities. Ultimately, I suggest that school extracurricular cultural clubs may provide insights to subtractive schooling (Valenzuela, 1999) as …

Writing Oneself As A Writer: Intellectual Identity And Moral Agency In Contemporary Chinese Novels, Fang-Yu Li

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The discussion of “identity” in current scholarship on modern Chinese literature is mostly centered on the political dynamics between national, cultural, and gender identity. Contemporary Chinese language novels from late 1990s to the present, however, seem to show a sense of confusion and disorientation towards one’s existence in the rapidly changing society. Among the works that address individual’s existential crisis, self-reflexive novels are particularly intriguing as they reveal a strong sense of self-doubt on part of the author, and in particular, towards one’s role as a writer in contemporary society. This dissertation investigates this sense of self-doubt by examining closely …

Oru Cultural Rojak, Bungkus, Please! Negotiating Hybridity In Everyday Moments, Karthiga Devi Veeramani

Research Papers

In this research report, I analyze my diaspora lived experiences to understand how I experience post-colonial diaspora hybridity as a subject position and as a mode of resistance. I use Pathak’s (2013) post-colonial autoethnography as my methodology to present my narratives about my experiences of hybridity. I use memory recollection as my data and analyze specific memories of mine to learn how my border crossings and transnational movements shape the way I experience hybridity. I specifically write about moments in which essentialist cultural identities were imposed upon me. I analyze how I understand my hybridity in relation to such essentialist …

Locals Only!: Understanding Localism In San Luis Obispo Surfing, Matthew Alan Khachadoorian

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

A Culture In Change: The Development Of Masculinity Through P.G. Wodehouse's Psmith Series, Allison Thompson

Masters Theses

P. G. Wodehouse offers a serious and sustained critique of English society using the game of cricket as he follows the lives of two memorable characters, Mike Jackson and Rupert Psmith. Yet Wodehouse has frequently been accused of existing as too innocent of a bystander to understand the underpinnings of society, let alone to offer a critique. For example, Christopher Hitchens in a review of a Wodehouse biography by Robert McCrum states, "Wodehouse was a rather beefy, hearty chap, with a lifelong interest in the sporting subculture of the English boarding school and a highly developed instinct for the main …

Stand Strong, Stand Proud: Alternative And Pariah Femininities In San Diego's Punk Rock Community, Steve Moog

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since its inception nearly 40 years ago, punk rock has often been understood as a Social space for rebellion and resistance to dominant cultural norms. As such, punk rock culture becomes fertile ground for explorations of subversive constructions of genders. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the San Diego punk rock community, this thesis unpacks the construction, embodiment and enactment of alternative and pariah forms of femininities and examines their impact on gender dynamics within the scene. Ultimately, this thesis argues that (1) the San Diego punk rock community is a space where alternative and pariah femininities can be embodied …

Postcolonial Theory, John C. Hawley

English

Rather than agreeing to any one meaning or referent, most critics these days speak of ‘post-colonialisms’ to refer principally to ‘historical, social and economic material conditions’ and at other times to ‘historically-situated imaginative products’ and ‘aesthetic practices: representations, discourses and values’ (McLeod 2000: 254). Arising from subaltern studies, its theorists embrace hybridity, indict alterity, analyze colonial discourse, and employ strategic essentialism to promote identity politics. Under its influence, a strain of self-interrogation has for decades run as an undercurrent through much of anthropology and archaeology. Topics including looting, repatriation, stewardship, and the transformation of disciplinary identity are now persistent tropes …

"Breaking Up, And Moving Westward": The Search For Identity In Post-Colonial America, 1787-1828, Bethany Harding

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation approaches the early national United States as a post-colonial state, and draws new connections between the country’s westward development and Americans’ ability to detach from their colonial past. At the conclusion of the American Revolution in 1783, the new United States became the first nation built on the ruins of a British colonial foundation; its citizens faced the colossal task of forging an independent national consciousness without being able to draw clear racial or ethnic lines of distinction between themselves and the former mother country. White Americans of the founding generation occupied a unique and tenuous position: in …

Intersecting Communities, Interwoven Identities: Questioning Boundaries, Testing Bridges, And Forging A Queer Latinidad In The U.S. Southwest, Holly R. Cashman

Languages, Literatures & Cultures

This contribution to the special issue on ‘Languages in Contact, Cultures in Conflict: English and Spanish in the USA’ aims to investigate the concept of queer latinidad in Phoenix, Arizona in an attempt to understand how queer Latin@s in Phoenix see themselves in relation to Latino communities, queer communities, and a queer Latino community. While questioning received notions of ‘community,’ we look at how queer latinidad is constructed or rejected by queer Latinas/os in Phoenix at the dawn of the twenty-first century precisely as national attention has been focused on the state of Arizona, and how this negotiation might blur …

Number 1 - Resistance Is Fruitful: Bijagos Of Guinea-Bissau, Brandon D. Lundy

Peace and Conflict Management Working Papers Series

Drawing on both ethnographic and historical accounts, this paper describes how ethnic identification patterns of belonging are fashioned out of localized, national, regional, and global processes of both engagement and protectionism. The Bijagos of Guinea-Bissau have maintained a sense of group cohesion during periods of contact, conflict, and resistance. This paper argues that the contemporary local-global interplay is fostering a new moment of rupture in time and space for the Bijagos. The Bijagos, oft footnoted in the accounts of Bissau-Guinean culture and history, are actively contributing to the social dialogue of resistance against the homogenizing effects of globalization. How do …

Performing Blackness In A Mulatto Society: Negotiating Racial Identity Through Music In The Dominican Republic, Angelina Maria Tallaj-García

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation analyzes Dominican racial and ethnic identity through an examination of music and music cultures. Previous studies of Dominican identity have focused primarily on the racialized invention of the Dominican nation as white, or non-black, often centering on the building of Dominican identity in (sometimes violent) opposition to the Haitian nation and to Haitian racial identity. I argue that although Dominicans have not developed an explicit verbal discourse of black affirmation, blackness (albeit a contextually contingent articulation) is embedded in popular conceptions of dominicanidad ("Dominicanness") and is enacted through music. My dissertation explores ways in which popular notions of …

The Impact Of Autobiographical And Vicarious Events On Narrative Identity, Kendall Michelle Soucie

Wayne State University Dissertations

The primary aim of this dissertation was to elucidate the process by which we incorporate the life events of others (vicarious events) into our own lives and, by extension, into our own sense of identity. It was hypothesized that vicarious events from within a person's social network can be as germane to identity development as autobiographical events if the vicarious event involves someone with whom the person is socially-close rather than socially-distant and is an event in which the self was more proximal (shared events) than distal (witnessed or hearsay). The extent to which age, gender, dispositional empathy, and the …

What Is The Nature Of Appalachian Identity?, Elizabeth Trout

Communication Studies Student Scholarship

Personal identity affects the way one views themselves, and the world around them. This in turn affects the way that they interact with others, and how they communicate. The Appalachian region in the United States impresses on its people a strong, undeniable identity that sets them apart from others. This identity is influenced by region and sense of place, race and language. The Appalachian identity is unique and complex in nature.

Ethnicity, Tribalism And Racism: A Global Challenge For The Christian Church And Its Mission, Boubakar Sanou

Journal of Applied Christian Leadership

"Ethnic, tribal, and racial differences have been successfully used either to build up or tear down communities and neighborhoods. the purpose of this paper is to explore issues related to ethnicity, tribalism, and racism and the consequent challenge they pose to the christian church in general. Because mission always involves the crossing of ethnic and cultural boundaries, it is important that the issues related to ethnicity, tribalism, and racism be addressed and put into the biblical perspective."

Way Of The Butterfly: A Journey Towards Transformation Through Self-Portraits In-Between, Masami Koshikawa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It has not been easy for me to talk about myself or describe my feelings or thoughts. Coming from Japan, a collective society, we typically are not raised to do so. Throughout the MFA program at UCF, I have shared my feelings and thoughts through my work. It is important to discuss and inform others of our cultural similarities and differences so that we may gain a better understanding of each other. This process has helped me grow not only on an artistic level, but also on a personal level. My journey towards integration has led me to a meaningful …

The Scottish Pipe Band In North America: Tradition, Transformation, And Transnational Identity, Erin F. Walker

Theses and Dissertations--Music

For Scots and non-Scots alike, the sounds of the bagpipes and the pipe band serve as a cultural metaphor for Scottish identity: the skirl of the pipes, the crisp sound of the snare drums, and the unique lilt of the music conjure an imagined Scotland of fierce, kilted clansmen and rugged, picturesque Highland scenery. This nearly global association appears to have been constructed on a series of transformations of cultural practices within Scotland itself, as well as throughout greater Britain and the lands of the Scottish diaspora, that began with the early “kiltophiles” in the late eighteenth century. …

Negotiating The Interconnections Of Sociality, Identity, Fan Activism And Connectivity Within The Twilight Community, Amy A. O’Brien

Theses and Dissertations

In my dissertation, “Negotiating the Interconnections of Sociality, Identity, Fan Activism and Connectivity within the Twilight Community”, I examine the ways in which women employed a shared interest in a cultural text to establish meaningful social relationships with other fans. Rather than focusing solely on consumptive pleasure, these fans of the Twilight series utilized the intense popularity of the franchise to engage in charitable activities. Through these common threads of identity, community, virtual technologies, and charity, I contend that the Twilight fandom represents a new form of fan community, which is trending upward and creating an impact beyond the traditional …

Polycultural Interactions: Fuzzy Identity, Xi Lu

Theses and Dissertations

“Robin D.G. Kelley coined the term polyculturalism as an alternative to multiculturalism, ‘since the latter often implies that cultures are fixed, discrete entities that exist side by side—a kind of zoological approach to culture.’ ”

Polyculturalism assumes the whole world’s cultures are interactive and fluid instead of independent and static, and individuals’ relationship to cultures are complex and cannot be categorized. Yet an individual constitutes multiple cultures, and individual identity embraces the various forms of culture in all aspects of one’s life.

My research examines how polyculturalism affects aspects of communications among people who hold a multiplicity of voices. It …

Seeing Success: Biographies Of Low-Income Students, Julia M. Morrice

Master's Theses

The purpose of this narrative ethnographic study was to explore the success stories and lived experiences of six low-income students, utilizing an asset-based approach and attention to cultural wealth. Low-income students are less likely to attend college, and those that do are less likely to complete a degree. There is presently a lack of asset-based research that explores the successes of low-income students. A semi-structured interview protocol yielded biographical narratives of low-income students, which included discussions about identity and provided insight into the cultural wealth possessed by low-income students. In an effort to better understand the use of visual methodologies …

Queer Hybridity And Performance In The Multimedia Texts Of Arroyo And Lozada, Ed Chamberlain

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Queer Hybridity and Performance in the Multimedia Texts of Arroyo and Lozada" Ed Chamberlain examines the unconventional writing of Puerto Rican writers Rane Arroyo and Ángel Lozada. Arroyo and Lozada craft texts which can be interpreted as performances and these performative texts blend internet-based writings with more traditional genres including the novel and poetry. Arroyo's and Lozada's stylistic approaches exhibit a queer sensibility which resembles the way in which Latina/o queer people construct and perform their cultural identities. Chamberlain argues that these queer performances suggest we can neither create nor identify absolute truth in matters of identity …

Bibimbap: Identity Construction In Korean Third Culture Kids During Higher Education, Megan I. Beard

Theses and Dissertations

Amidst increasing interconnectedness and transmigration of the 21st century, a number of families are leaving South Korea for business, work, or education; their children are raised as Third Culture Kids (TCKs)—children who accompany their parents abroad. This study used the lens of cultural globalization to examine how Korean TCKs used their life experiences to inform their identity construction, especially during higher education. Participants were Korean students and recent alumni from universities in Korea, the United States, and abroad who had spent at least three childhood years living outside Korea with their families. Data were collected through a series of unstructured …

Who Is A Jew?: Reflections On History, Religion, And Culture, Leonard Greenspoon

Studies in Jewish Civilization

Jewish identity is a perennial concern, as Jews seek to define the major features and categories of those who “belong,” while at the same time draw distinctions between individuals and groups on the “inside” and those on the “outside.” From a variety of perspectives, scholarly as well as confessional, there is intense interest among non-Jewish and Jewish commentators alike in the basic question, “Who is a Jew?”

This collection of articles draws diverse historical, cultural, and religious insights from scholars who represent a wide range of academic and theological disciplines. Some of the authors directly address the issue of Jewish …