Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Anthropophagi In New-York And Other Voyagers, Maria Lepowsky

Pacific Studies

This chapter continues the exploration of maritime cultures of contact by following the post-shipwreck adventures of voyagers in the Pacific in the nineteenth century. The chapter also examines the literary and cultural afterlives of Pacific travel narratives, particularly those of Benjamin Morrell and Thomas Jacobs, whose depictions of islanders influenced canonical works by Poe and Melville. These narratives reveal the contradictory perceptions American sailors held of Pacific peoples—ranging from “cannibal savages” to noble and intelligent individuals—and the enduring tropes of the “noble savage” and “civilized native.” By tracing these voyages and representations, the chapter highlights the early emergence of a …

Imagining The Marshall Islands, Laurence M. Carucci

Pacific Studies

As anthropologists have developed a more critical eye, earlier assumptions about the privileged position of anthropological texts have been dismissed as elitist, self-serving, and paternalistic. Perhaps James Clifford was the first to recognize the limitations of such possessiveness toward these imagined others, but his call for a broader view has been taken up by many in the field. Here, I consider the images of three interlopers, none of them anthropologists, as they each, in separate historical contexts and different positional circumstances, come to imagine Marshall Islanders as certain types of others. A consideration of these accounts reveals a good deal …

Oh, Those Poor Islanders And Threats To An Idyllic Life On A Beautiful Island!, Juliana Flinn

Pacific Studies

This essay examines the representation of Pollap, a Micronesian atoll, in popular media and internet sources, highlighting the contrast between anthropological perspectives and public portrayals. While scholars emphasize indigenous agency and the adaptive use of external influences, popular media—ranging from Peace Corps blogs to disaster reports—often depict islanders through romanticized or victimized lenses. These portrayals reflect more about Western cultural fantasies and assumptions than about the lived realities of Pollapese people. Romantic narratives emphasize idyllic simplicity and harmony with nature, while disaster coverage frames islanders as helpless and dependent on external aid. Notably absent are accounts of local responses or …

Vol. 38 No. 1/2 (2015): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

From Romance To Reality: An Epilogue, Niko Besnier

Pacific Studies

This epilogue reflects on the political nature of representation, particularly in the context of the Pacific Islands, where images and narratives have long been shaped by colonial encounters and global media. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples—from Enlightenment-era voyages to modern climate change discourse—the essay highlights how Pacific Islanders have both been subjects of external representations and active participants in shaping their own identities.

Vol. 38 No. 1/2 (2015): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 38, No 1/2-Aug 2015 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

Reclaiming Paradise: Cinema And Hawaiian Nationhood, Judith Schachter

Pacific Studies

This essay explores the enduring power of the “paradise” trope in cinematic portrayals of Hawai‘i and its evolving role in articulating Native Hawaiian nationhood. While Western media has long romanticized Hawai‘i through idyllic imagery of natural beauty and sensuality, contemporary indigenous filmmakers have begun to reclaim and repurpose these visual conventions. Rather than marking a shift from fantasy to realism, these films strategically reframe romantic imagery to assert cultural autonomy, political sovereignty, and a renewed relationship to the land (‘āina). Through analysis of both outsider and insider productions, the essay reveals how visual narratives critique colonial histories and resist hegemonic …

From Colonial Pomp To Tourism Reality: Commodification And Cannibalization Of The Fijian Firewalking Ceremony, Guido Carlo Pigliasco

Pacific Studies

In 1935 the rite [firewalking] was performed before two members of the British Medical Association. The eminent doctors examined the men carefully before and after the ceremony. . . . The men of Mbengga [sic], not knowing of these learned disputations, unconcernedly carry on the strange custom of their ancestors (Luis Marden, National Geographic, October 1958: 560–61).

The Fijians had another way of disposing of the bodies. They ate them. . . . This was a culture devoted to killing, and when there wasn’t an enemy around to meet their needs, chiefs took to killing the commoners among them …

Guide To Resources On The Caribbean And West Indies, Katharine Salzmann

Moorland Spingarn Research Center Publications

No abstract provided.

The Black Presence In Antiquity: A Selected Bibliography, Leida I. Torres, Andrea Only

Moorland Spingarn Research Center Publications

No abstract provided.

The Black Renaissance: A Bibliography Of Selected Sources At Howard University, Jean Currie Church, Karen L. Jefferson

Moorland Spingarn Research Center Publications

No abstract provided.

The Olmecs A Selected Bibliography, Marva Belt, Catherleen T. Washington

Moorland Spingarn Research Center Publications

No abstract provided.

The Layers Of Memory At Sachsenhausen: From The Gdr To Contemporary Germany, Barry J. Bookheimer Jr.

Honors Theses

Sachsenhausen is the site of a traumatic and complex history in the twentieth century. Since 1933, Sachsenhausen has taken on many diverse forms: a Nazi concentration camp, a Soviet Special Camp, an East German National Memorial, and after German reunification, a memory site in contemporary Germany. This work examines the contrast between the centralized, nationalist narrative of the GDR, and the current “decentralized” concept at the site in post-communist Germany. Unlike many other memory sites where previous narratives are minimized, obscured, or even destroyed; Sachsenhausen exhibits relics from all eras of its history, conceptualized in this thesis as “layers of …

The Cycles Of American Drug Policy, David T. Courtwright

History Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Creative Collaboration On A Creativity Book, Jane Harvey

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Based on existing roles as writer and designer, two Master’s students partnered on one project. This project was dually about the creative product and creative process. The final product result is a book on creativity, but much of the project learning was about collaboration during the creative process itself. The project included the creation of written and visual content and a production-ready book layout on the subject of creativity. This paper describes the process followed to create a fast reading, jargon-free book with a special academic end section.

Concordia Seminary Magazine | Summer 2015, Jeffrey Kloha

Concordia Seminary Magazine

Sent to Serve

Unaffiliated Lay Vincentians’ Understanding And Engagement With The Vincentian Mission: Focus Group Findings, Patricia Wittberg, Mary Gautier

Mission and Ministry Publications

In November 2014, the Office of Mission and Values of DePaul University commissioned CARA to conduct a series of focus groups that would explore more deeply some of the key findings from a 2014 CARA survey entitled “Unaffiliated Lay Vincentians’ Informal Engagement with the Vincentian Mission.”

Believing In "Inner Truth": The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion In Nazi Propaganda, 1933-1945, Randall L. Bytwerk

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Although most leading Nazis realized that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a spurious document, they found it useful in promoting belief in the international Jewish conspiracy of which they were already convinced. Authorship and other details were irrelevant, they averred, if the book expressed "inner truth."

Things You Can't See, Alan Ellis Purdie

Dissertations

The following is a collection of short fiction exploring the human-dog relationship. The stories work to evade the sentimentality generally associated with fiction wherein pets or animals are featured, depicting instead the dramatic complications the canine has upon human relationship and interaction.

Masters thesis: http://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/228/

What Is Buddhist Law?, Rebecca Redwood French

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Finding Tuwaqachi, And Other Essays, Cory G. Ferrer

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis is a collection in four parts, divided by genre with the exception of the titular essay series, Finding Tuwaqachi. Insecurity, affirmation, and our need to connection emerge as the primary themes of this work. The essay series, Finding Tuwaqachi, takes a close look at intentional community and center for alternative therapy located in southern Michigan during the 1970s, by examining several lives caught up in this project. Part two of this collection comprises a series of lyric essays which explore the need to be heard, as well as the ultimate fallibility of our attempts to understand and …

If I Disappear, Sofie Ellen Harsha

All NMU Master's Theses

This collection of interconnected essays explores the author’s personal obsession with two separate disappearances—that of Amelia Earhart, famous aviator who disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937, and that of 19-year-old Danielle Wright and the crew of The Nina, a sailing vessel that went missing on the Tasman Sea in the summer of 2013. As the author sifts through the remnants of these disappearances, the collection begins to uncover the realities of what it means to disappear—all the many ways a person can, both willingly and unwillingly. The essays explore what it means to be lost, what it means to …

Yardbirds, Joshua A. Brewer

All NMU Master's Theses

Novel-length fictions, when at their best, deeply complicate themes, characters, events or situations using the form’s lengthy narrative arc. Yardbirds aims to employ the long narrative arc to engage a fictional west Arkansas mountain community, Ink, and the contemporary post-mill economy evoked. Yardbirds attempts to disorient the traditional notion of point-of-view to recognize the multifaceted power of the land. This work features a multi-racial, bilingual and multicultural community which confronts the longstanding black-white binary that has dominated literary depictions of the American South. This work aims to disrupt that notion—the South as monolith—by presenting bioregional communities as central to individuals’ …

Return And Recovery: The Influence Of Place On Blues Murder Ballads And Laguna Ceremony Cycles, Tyler J. Dettloff

All NMU Master's Theses

The relationships between place, narrative, memory, and identity are integral in many oral traditions. This project considers place as actively shaping Sterling’s identity in Laguna author Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead and R.L. Burnside’s rendition of the popular murder ballad “Stack O’Lee and Billy Lyons.” Ethical and personal views of land and place offers a method for individual and cultural survivance. Comparing these two separate “return and recovery” narratives offer a clear illustration of how land impacts identity.

Sterling’s home in Laguna Pueblo falls victim to the extraction industry and bares a scar that results in Sterling’s …

Ancient Magic And Modern Accessories: Developments In The Omamori Phenomenon, Eric Teixeira Mendes

Masters Theses

This thesis offers an examination of modern Japanese amulets, called omamori, distributed by Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines throughout Japan. As amulets, these objects are meant to be carried by a person at all times in which they wish to receive the benefits that an omamori is said to offer. In modern times, in addition to being a religious object, these amulets have become accessories for cell-phones, bags, purses, and automobiles. Said to protect people from accidents, disease, loneliness, failure, computer viruses, among many other things, these objects are one of the few material aspects of religion that are a …

Religious Consumption: Inside The Minds Of Apple And Catholic Devotees, Yi-Chia Wu

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Cult-like phenomena have been researched widely in the fields of marketing, religion, sociology, and---more recently---in the field of neuroscience, where the exploration between individuals and brands through these lenses begins to offer glimpses into the relationship between brands and their devotees. Religion, a multidimensional influence on human behavior and decision-making, has been under-researched in the marketing discipline due to the sensitivity of religious topics and difficulties in measuring the impact of so potentially broad a field as "religion". This research narrows the topic and begins filling in the gap in the religion-brand relationship and explores what constitutes a cult-like allegiance …

The Capacity To Be Content: Aspirations And Young Adult Catholics In Singapore, Jayeel Cornelio

Development Studies Faculty Publications

Drawing from interviews with young adult Catholics in Singapore, this article discusses aspirations in terms of the capacity to be content. For my informants, the capacity to be content has three aspects: the pursuit of happiness, the questioning of Singapore’s incessant drive for economic growth, and the neglect of those left-behind. Taken collectively, these nuances show that the aspirations of young adult Catholics are effectively a moral critique of the social and economic state of affairs in the city-state. The capacity to be content also informs these young adults’ decision to be involved in welfare activities or even be employed …

Tracing Appalachian Musical History Through Fiction: Representations Of Appalachian Music In Selected Works By Mildred Haun And Lee Smith, John C. Goad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research seeks to compare and contrast fictional Appalachian writings by Lee Smith and Mildred Haun to contemporary historical sources in an attempt to trace the development of Appalachian music between the mid-nineteenth century and the late twentieth century. The thesis examines two novels by Lee Smith (The Devil’s Dream and Oral History) and the collection The Hawk’s Done Gone by Mildred Haun, which includes a short novel and several short stories. Contemporary primary sources and scholarly secondary sources were used to compare the fictional works’ depictions of Appalachian music to their historical counterparts. Also included within the …

Media Representation Of Islam And Muslims In Southern Appalachia, Saundra K. Reynolds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern Appalachian attitudes about the religion of Islam and Muslim adherents are influenced largely by mass media's representations. With more than 80% of Appalachia’s population following Protestant Christianity, exposure to Islam in daily life is limited. Media outlets offer the greatest exposure to information about the religion and its adherents. This thesis examined the region's media representation of Islam and Muslims to determine what images are most often portrayed. Research following a twoyear span of reporting in Southern Appalachia studied substance, word frequency, imagery, and editing used in articles that focused on Islam and Muslims. Through the use of content …

Lost, Beat, Blank: The Punk Unconscious In Subversive And Transgressive Cultural Productions, Joel R. West

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Although punk was not used as a signifying term for a subculture or its cultural production until the 1970s, the punk spirit can be identified within cultural texts that precede the term. A punk aesthetics includes rejection of societal norms, class-consciousness, and spontaneity, or a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach that is antagonistic toward the modes of production. In this thesis, I claim and develop a concept I call the punk unconscious; in the texts I examine, punk aesthetics can be found just below the surface through the employment of specific theoretical frameworks, namely Fredric Jameson’s political unconscious and Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogic …