Digital Commons Network^™

Afrissippi, Peter Muvunyi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Guelel Kumba, a Senegalese Fulani griot, chef, and musician currently residing in Oxford, Mississippi, incorporates West African cuisine and music into his daily life in the South. This profile study asks: How does Kumba's performances and cooking translate Fulani heritage into Mississippi's blues and soul-food scenes? The research employed observation, secondary sources, purposeful semi-structured interviews, and a documentary.

Kumba views tradition as an arsenal, preserving its essential rhythms and flavors while reworking family recipes and tunes to suit local tastes. Customers can eat, listen, and interact their way into shared history at his food truck and …

Kenyon College Course Catalog 2025-2026

Kenyon College Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Feeling Foreign / Foreign Feeling: Affect In Southeast Asian Diasporic Short Story Collections, Francys Aerin Fortes

Theses and Dissertations

Affect studies have long been saturated with scholarship investigating the fluidity of emotions, though a larger turn in the field now prioritizes the felt experiences of marginalized peoples. Sianne Ngai’s work is one part of this turn that seeks to unpack the effects of oppressive systemic forces on Black, Brown, and queer bodies. Sianne Ngai reexamined the nature of emotions in her seminal text Ugly Feelings (2005), particularly concerned with how negative feelings are disproportionately felt by marginalized bodies as a result of conditions of obstructed agency, systems of power, and wage labor capitalism. Drawing from Ngai’s writing, this thesis …

Political Communication In A Multicultural Metropolis: Chinese Ethnic Media And The 2023 Toronto Mayoral By-Election, Dongwei Lin

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Chinese are the second largest visible minority group in Canada and the most frequently reported ethnic or cultural origin in Toronto. Mandarin and Cantonese are, respectively, the largest and third largest non-official languages in Toronto. However, little research exists on the role of the Chinese ethnic community in Toronto municipal politics, especially the role of Chinese ethnic media in Toronto municipal elections.

The key argument of this thesis is that “Chinese ethnic media represent complementary public sphere(s) for informing and engaging Chinese Canadians in local political participation and discussion.” Through the 2023 Toronto Mayoral By-Election case study, this thesis examines …

Diaspora Politics And A Rising China: Ambivalent Ties Amid Geopolitical Changes, Jiaqi M. Liu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Over the past decade, the rise of China on the global stage has witnessed the emergence of members of the Chinese diaspora as new meso-level actors in mediating Sino-Western relations. As part of China’s burgeoning “public diplomacy” around the globe, Chinese migrants organize cultural events to establish grassroots and semi-official exchanges between China and the West. This chapter provides a state-of-the-art examination of so-called “diasporic public diplomacy” whereby the Chinese diaspora plays an increasingly important role in promoting China’s soft power abroad. Based on long-term fieldwork in a prominent emigrant community, I analyse how Chinese national policies envision two specific …

Fluctuating “Indianness” Or “Belonging” : Singapore Indian Dancers And Their Encounter With Southeast Asia At Ramayana Festival, Yoshiaki Takemura

Asian Review

This article investigates the dynamic relationship between cultural heritage and regional identity among the Indian diaspora in Singapore, specifically focusing on the experiences of classical Indian dancers. Historically, the process of “Indianization” deeply influenced the cultural landscape of Southeast Asia, evidenced by the regional prominence of the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Using the context of a regional Ramayana Festival, this paper analyzes how Singaporean Indian dancers, while performing art forms rooted in the Indian subcontinent, negotiate their identity when confronted with diverse Southeast Asian interpretations of the same epic narrative.The study argues that this encounter forces a …

Subdued Voices And Marginalized Lives: Reading R. K. Narayan’S Waiting For The Mahatma Through Feminist Standpoint Theory, D. Sundar Singh, S. Pressila Daissy, Roland Rencewigg P.

Journal of International Women's Studies

Standpoint feminism, based in second-wave feminist theory, insists that knowledge is situated in the social world and contends that marginalized groups, through their experiences of oppression and struggle, hold experiential understandings of power relations. This paper examines R. K. Narayan’s complex depiction of a young woman actively involved in India’s freedom struggle in his novel, Waiting for the Mahatma (1955/2004), through the lens of Sandra Harding’s feminist standpoint theory. The novel’s central character, Bharati, through her varied trajectories of resistance and accommodation within patriarchal structures, illustrates marginalized women’s understandings and their mirroring of social inequalities and power relations that are …

Lineation To Liberation: The Transformative Power Of Poetic Rhetoric, Amber Rae Alvarez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project explores the transformative power of poetic rhetoric and examines how poetry as a form of expressive art serves as a means of reclamation in the aftermath of encounters with the American criminal justice system. I contend that poetry provides a space where folks can reimagine (and reclaim) their identities, asserting their agency in empowering and authentic ways. Taking a Cultural Studies and Critical Prison Studies informed approach, this project engages the concept of lineation to liberation to conduct a close reading analysis of artist (Reginald) Dwayne Betts’ poetry. Betts’ work not only provides a powerful example of how …

Homelessness And Uncertain Belonging Of The Bhutanese Nepali Diaspora, Ramji Timalsina

Critical Humanities

Bhutanese Nepali Diaspora is a classic example of Nepali transnational community. Started centuries ago, it was massively developed in the 19^th and 20^th centuries before it was dispersed in the 21^st century. Living in Bhutan as an agricultural and free-of-cost-labour community for the Bhutanese regime, they always believed that Nepali culture, language and king were their own. When Bhutan brought the ‘one culture, one nation’ policy in the 1980s, about a hundred thousand Bhutanese Nepalis were expelled and they returned to Nepal with the belief that Nepal as their ancestor’s land would accept them. But, as the …

The Contingencies Of Chinese Diasporic Identities In Charlson Ong’S Speculative Fiction, Joseph Ching Velasco

Kritika Kultura

Charlson Ong’s award-winning novel An Embarrassment of Riches (2000) creatively narrates the history of the Chinese diaspora as an overdetermined event in the Southeast Asian Region. The novel explores the politics of belonging, displacement, identity, and territory through a/n (re)imagined nation built primarily on Philippine historical and cultural contingencies. This essay seeks to explore the junctures and vicissitudes of the Chinese diaspora in the region through the following questions: How is hybridity manifested by selected characters and other cultural elements in the narrative? Second, how do the perceptions of homeland, marked by ambivalence and contradiction, operate in the narrative? And …

Zainichi, Mobility, And Jeju Island: On The Representation Of Island In The Novels Of Kim Sok-Pom And Lee Yangji, Myungsim Yang

Kritika Kultura

During the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), about a quarter of Jeju residents moved to Japan to escape their hardships, as Jeju Island’s industry was inferior to the inland area. In light of this, about 60% of Osaka Zainichi Koreans are deemed from Jeju Island. Against this backdrop, the meaning and symbol of Jeju Island, respectively, are well embodied in novels written by Jeju people who moved to Japan. For them (i.e., Koreans living in Japan), Jeju Island is not only their homeland but also a place where they have painful memories. In addition, Jeju Island means their own identities itself …

Moments Of Truth And Lyrical Musings On Goa's Traumatic Process Of Decolonization: A Reading Of Surya And Monsoon By Vimala Devi, Cielo G. Festino

Kritika Kultura

The aim of this paper is to analyze in counterpoint a selection of short stories from Monsoon and poems from Surya, both collections written by Vimala Devi, in light of theories concerning the intersection of trauma, narrative, and the postcolonial. This approach permits an understanding of effects produced by colonialism such as dispossession, forced migration, diaspora, segregation, racism, and political violence (Craps and Buelens 3). My analysis is carried out from a culture-bound perspective (3), which considers each case of colonial and postcolonial trauma not only as having its own singularities, but also as producing effects on the colonized cultures …

Postcolonial Pharmakon: Traumatic Transmission In Tony Perez's Cubao-Kalaw Kalaw-Cubao, Ryan Ku

Kritika Kultura

Tracing Tony Perez’s Filipino modernism in Cubao–Kalaw Kalaw–Cubao to trauma, this article considers whether the novel’s processing of psychic trauma also amounts to the processing of national trauma. Seemingly positing representation as the means of traumatic processing, Perez, in distinguishing the unconscious transmission of the traumatic event from the conscious narration of its aftereffects, in fact premises representation on deconstruction. Consisting in the displaced and deferred repetition, or writing, of trauma, this process is facilitated in the novel by three discursive practices—Catholicism, psychotherapy, and creative writing—that are derived from the colonial history of the Philippines. Rather than corresponding to the …

Mapping The Sea Islands Culture In Paule Marshall's Praisesong For The Widow, Ashma Shamail

Kritika Kultura

The Sea Islands off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina function as a vital bridge between African Americans and their African ancestry, retaining a unique African culture that had been forgotten in the mainland communities. The Gullah/Geechee people, the inhabitants of the Sea Islands, are the most distinctive group of African Americans, who maintained a separate creole language and are unique from any other subset of African Americans. Paule Marshall’s vision of the Sea Islands in her 1983 novel Praisesong for the Widow illustrates the mythical landscape as a place for excavating and forging cultural as well as historical …

The Alien, The Citizen, And The Triumphant Capitalist, Gloria G. Gonzales

Kritika Kultura

This paper examines notions of the “alien” and the “citizen” or the outsider and insider based on the Chinese Filipino experience as portrayed in Charlson Ong’s novel Banyaga: The Song of War (2006). Although the Chinese have lived in the Philippine archipelago since the twelfth century, they have always been considered banyaga (alien or foreigner) by Filipino “natives.” I argue that the marginalization of the Chinese has led them to specialization in trade and commerce, which in turn has steered them, paradoxically, towards exceptionalism. As such, I correlate Ong’s banyaga with Georg Simmel’s concept of the stranger and argue that …

Days Of Yore, Days Of Change, Wai Chew Sim, Chuah Guat Eng

Kritika Kultura

No abstract provided.

“Know What I’M Sayin’?”: Advocating Hip-Hop As A Primary Source For Historical Scholarship, Christopher Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rap, hip-hop’s most characteristic element, evolved from cultural practices combining in New York and spread across the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century. This thesis argues in favor of the use of rap as primary source material in future historical research. Authenticity has always surrounded hip-hop, making rap a window into artists’ perspectives. Storytelling traditions in rap’s roots allow for fiction’s use as a tool to discuss reality in lyrics. To demonstrate rap’s strengths as a primary source, the thesis examines Let’s Get Free, dead prez’s 2000 debut album. The song “They Schools” is dissected section-by-section …

Hellenic Cohesion: A Historic Approach To Transnationalism, Particularism, And Cosmopolitanism In The Greek Immigrant Communities Of Wyoming, Patrick Michael Pace

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Greek immigration to the United States began slowly in the late nineteenth century but found its stride by the second decade of the twentieth century. Behind the incrementally increasing numbers of Greeks emigrating from Greece was an economic collapse related to a mismanaged agricultural industry, leading mostly young men to pursue economic reward abroad in support of families and villages back home. Most early Greek migrants anticipated an eventual return home; however, many moved beyond simple sojourning into permanent settlement for a variety of reasons, including the establishment of proprietorships, the building of families, and nativist driven anti-immigrant legislation. For …

Cultural Linguistics And Identity Negotiation Within The Singaporean Chinese Diaspora In Hwee Hwee Tan's Mammon Inc., Hanwen Wang, Halimah Mohamed Ali

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study explores the representation of Singaporean Chinese diasporic identity in Hwee Hwee Tan’s novel Mammon Inc. with the help of cultural linguistics. This article seeks to analyze how the novel contributes to understanding diasporic identity and cultural negotiation, with a focus on how the portrayal of the main character reshapes the delicate equilibrium between traditional values and global capitalist pressures. Drawing on Farzad Sharifian’s cultural conceptualization framework and Gary B. Palmer’s ethnosemantic analysis, this study focuses on cultural schemas and metaphors in the novel. We identify passages in Mammon Inc. that illustrate themes of identity negotiation, cultural displacement, and …

Kamala Harris As Durga: United States Presidential Elections And The Goddess In The Imagination Of Hindu Diaspora, Anisha Saxena

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The Hindu diaspora in the United States has been one of the most educated and highest earning immigrant groups. They exert considerable influence in the arenas of culture, economy and recently politics. They are attempting to institutionalize Hinduism and “educate” Americans about the religion through creation of lobby groups and the use of social media. Motivated by these recent developments, the article examines the processes of creation, reimagination, and consumption of images of the South Asian goddess in the public sphere, and how these images are perceived by the Hindu diaspora.

Kenyon Collegian - September 26, 2024

The Kenyon Collegian

No abstract provided.

Teaching Challenged Books Through A Lens Of Censorship, Liz Shanks

Virginia English Journal

In recent years, book challenging and banning has taken hold of America. In the process, many books with diverse authors, perspectives, and valuable themes are getting silenced and removed from the classroom. Students everywhere have a right to see themselves within literature, as well as reflections of experiences they may be unaware of. This article researches the statistics surrounding book challenging, and offers an educational path towards inclusive teaching through a Lens of Censorship.

Irsh 382.01: Rockin' Rebels - Rhetorics Of Irish Music From Traditional To Punk, Erin C. Wecker

University of Montana Course Syllabi, 2021-2025

No abstract provided.

All Men Are Brothers: Pearl S. Buck’S Translation Of Shui Hu Zhuan And Its Effects On Her Writing Career, Zhihui Sophia Geng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “All Men Are Brothers: Pearl S. Buck’s Translation of Shui Hu Zhuan and its Effects on Her Writing Career,” Zhihui Sophia Geng focuses on Pulitzer Prize winner and Noble Laureate Pearl Sydenstricker Buck’s All Men Are Brothers, her translation of the classical Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan. She examines the reception of her translation and analyzes the significance of All Men Are Brothers to Buck’s literary career. By providing the first complete translation of Shui Hu Zhuan to an English-speaking audience, Buck made a significant cultural contribution to the United States and English-speaking cultural spheres. The …

Summary Report Of Discussions At The Ana Forum 2024, Berkeley, Ca “How Can The North American Nepali Diaspora Contribute To Nepal’S Economic Development?”,, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

The ANA 2024 annual convention, organized on ANA’s 42nd founding anniversary, was held in the San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley and Oakland) in California, where hundreds of ANA members and friends had gathered. The convention consisted of several forums, sessions, and cultural programs. As always, the convention included a Nepal-related forum “How Can the North American Nepali Diaspora Contribute to Nepal’s Economic Development?” The Forum took place from 1:30-2:30 pm on Saturday July 20, 2024. Four panelists, including the moderator, spoke at the forum. About 45-50 individuals attended the session. Guest panelist, Dr. Minendra Rijal sent a message as he …

Kanopy On An Academic Campus, Ashley Eaton, Reagan Stearns, Hassna Ramadan

Alabama Libraries

This article describes the collaborative process involved in selecting the streaming service Kanopy as a learning resource for in-person and distance instruction in a university setting. The process of implementing the service, as well as the service’s special features that aided in that process are outlined. This article discusses how Kanopy has been used for marketing library resources and outreach to our academic community. Moving forward, strategies will be employed to transition our patronage’s sentiment of Kanopy from a resource for entertainment, to a research tool as well.

Contemporary Caribbean-American Literature: Identity Struggle For Caribbean Diasporic Subjects In American Racial And Cultural Contexts, Samirah Munahi Almutairi

English Theses & Dissertations

This study includes six contemporary literary texts (novels and short stories) that offer exemplary representations of identification process of the Caribbean diaspora situated within American context. The texts included in this study are: Disposable People by Ezekel Alan (2012), Now Lila Knows by Elizabeth Nunez (2022), Brother, I’M Dying by Edwidge Danticat (2007), “Cheap, Fast, Filling” in Ayiti by Roxane Gay (2011), Dominicana by Angie Cruz (2019), and “Light-Skinned Girls and Kelly Rowlands” in How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs (2018). By studying representations of identity formation throughout the Caribbean-American literature, a postcolonial analysis integrated with cultural studies …

Umsl Bulletin 2024-2025, University Of Missouri-St. Louis

Bulletins

This is the pdf version of the 2024-2025 University Bulletin and Course Catalog

Basque Identity In The 21st Century: Up Close No One Is Normal, Julieta Gaztañaga

BOGA: Basque Studies Consortium Journal

A dynamic conception of identity is not about asserting traits or searching for primordial essences but about the processes and contexts of its dynamic and living production including its social futures. Looking forward to contributing to Basque Studies this article offers an analysis of the complexities of contemporary reconfigurations of identification processes by focusing on the problem of Basque identity in the 21st century. I propose an approach not linked to the "Homeland/Diaspora" model but rather to a form of multifaceted and trans-local dynamics that arises from interaction with multiple places and contexts of cultural production and collective identification. The …

Propelling Separatism Into Transnational Spaces: A Critical Analysis On The Pro-Ltte Tamil Diaspora In Canada, D.G.Niruka Sanjeewani

Journal of Terrorism Studies

Despite being less discussed, the transnational spaces of diaspora communities are often used by terror groups to achieve their ideological and political targets. Their projection of separatist claims in association with terrorist groups threatens not only the territorial control of the home state but also the security and immigration policies of the host state. Linked to these scopes, pro-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) diaspora in Canada serving as a case study in this paper to illustrate the dissemination of its separatist ideologies. In addition, this paper also analyses the current rhetoric of the Tamil diaspora for ‘federalism’ that has …