African Languages and Societies Commons^™

The Hagadah Of Pesah In Amazigh Tradition, J. G. A. Saviranta

Akseli Saviranta

This document examines the text of the Hagadah of the Jewish festivity of Pesah as celebrated by the North African Amazighs of Tinghir in Morocco. Its beginning presents an overview of the history and the cultures of the Amazigh, Jewish, and Judeo-Amazigh communities in North Africa. The celebration of Pesah, as a milestone in Jewish creed and history, is studied within the North African context and with particular attention to the local Hagadah translations. Among these translations, the Judeo-Amazigh text of Tinghir represents one of the few if not the only known text in existence in a Judeo-Amazigh language. A …

Nonstandard Languages: The Outcasts Of The Language Revitalization Movement, Whitney Snowden

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis compares the failures of the creolization movement with the success of the language revitalization movement and seeks to determine which elements are missing from the former to make it as successful as the latter. Education policy, identity, and language ideology are all examined as contributors to the future success of creole inclusivity in education and society, as well as the potential benefits such a movement would include. Specifically examined are Siegel’s research on creole education and Armstrong’s work on language ideology.

Life Is Calling ... How Far Will You Go ... Back In The Closet? Identity Negotiation And Management Among Queer, Peace Corps Volunteers, Kate Elizabeth Slisz

Theses and Dissertations

There is little to no research surrounding the experiences of queer, foreign-aid workers. To address this gap, a study was conducted to explore how compulsory heterosexuality affects the social construction of sexuality in societies where queer, foreign-aid workers serve and how this influences their identity negotiation and management processes. Participants consisted of ten self-identified queer, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), as well as, the researcher herself who also identifies as queer. Data was gathered through both semi-structured interviews and autoethnographic research. Meaning structuring through narratives was used to analyze the data. Analysis revealed that strategies of silencing, counterfeiting, and lying …

Fearless Friday: Beau Charles, Christina L. Bassler

SURGE

In this week’s Fearless Friday, SURGE would like to feature the wonderful Beau Charles ’17!

Beau Charles is currently a junior at Gettysburg and is majoring in English while minoring in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies. They’re originally from nearby Lancaster, Pennsylvania. [excerpt]

The Language Ecology Of Sierra Leone, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many of Sierra Leone’s indigenous languages are robust and enjoy some support on the national level. Mende and Temne, for example, receive government support in terms of materials having been created for developing literacy in those languages. Other Sierra Leone languages receive support in nearby countries, e.g., Mandingo (Malinké) and Kisi in Guinea. Three languages in Sierra Leone, however, receive no such support and will likely disappear in a generation, namely, the three South Atlantic languages Mani (Bullom So), Kim (Krim) and Bom (Bum). A fourth language belonging to the same group, Sherbro, the subject of an upcoming investigation, has …

George Washington Carver And The Ancient Egyptian Connection, Jon Adkins

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal

No abstract provided.

Wearing Memories: Clothing And The Global Lives Of Mourning In Swaziland, Casey Golomski

Anthropology

This article situates a cultural phenomenon of women’s memory work through clothing in Swaziland. It explores clothing as both action and object of everyday, personalized practice that constitutes psychosocial well-being and material proximities between the living and the dead, namely, in how clothing of the deceased is privately possessed and ritually manipulated by the bereaved. While human and spiritual self-other relations are produced through clothing and its material efficacy, current global ideologies of immaterial mortuary ritual associated with Pentecostalism have emerged as contraries to this local, intersubjective grief work. This article describes how such contrarian ideologies paper over existing global …

Tacit Cultural Knowledge: An Instrumental Qualitative Case Study Of Mixed Methods Research In South Africa, Debra Rena Miller

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Notwithstanding the dramatic expansion of mixed methods research, research methodologies, methods, and findings are culturally situated. Problematically, studies conducted outside the global north often embrace canonical methodologies aimed at understanding concepts more explicit than tacit. Learning about the needs of researchers and participants in South Africa may bring to light taken-for-granted assumptions in Anglo-American orientations of mixed methods. Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore aspects of tacit cultural knowledge that contextualize mixed methods research in South Africa.

In-person interviews among South African professors as well as a corpus of books, sections, journal articles, and theses informed the …

App Newsletter 6, Riccardo Pelizzo

Riccardo Pelizzo

In the sixth of the newsletter of African Politics and Policy we discuss the costs of instability, the renovation of Togolese hotels, and the relationship between corruption, trust and legislatures.

The Costs Of Party System Change: The Case Of Tanzania, Riccardo Pelizzo, Abel Kinyondo, Zim Nwokora

riccardo pelizzo

Pelizzo, Kinyondo and Nwokora argue that party system changes and increases in party system changeability have generally been associated with a worsening democratic quality.

Black Like Me? A Narrative Study Of Non-Anglophone Black U.S. Immigrant Selves In The Making, Yvanne Joseph

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished discriminatory national origin quotas that favored European immigrants. The U.S. has since experienced steady flows of immigrants of color. These diverse groups have brought their racial, social, cultural and historical experiences, which adds greater complexity to the existing Black/White and ingroup/outgroup models that shape group relations, and psychological theorizing about identity. This dissertation focuses specifically on the smaller, less visible, yet growing segments of these immigrant populations. It presents a study of the lives of ten individual immigrants of African descent originating from a non-Anglophone country within Africa, Latin America …

The Spark That Lit The Flame: The Creation, Deployment, And Deconstruction Of The Story Of Mohammed Bouazizi And The Arab Spring, Elizabeth Ann Cummings

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The story of Mohammed Bouazizi is credited with being the "spark that lit the flame," first of the Tunisian Revolution, then the Arab Spring as a whole, creating a domino effect that brought down the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan and Yemeni leaders, and threatened to topple still more. In this thesis I explore the narrative structure of the Tunisian revolution, how the story of Mohammed Bouazizi represented that structure and how the narrative sparked the Arab Spring. I also ask how narrative is created and what role social media played in allowing this particular story to become a part of the …

Reflections Of Globalization: A Case Study Of Informal Food Vendors In Southern Ghana, Arianna J. King

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the context of rapid urbanization, globalization, market liberalization, and growing flexibility of labor in the post-Fordist era, urban environments have seen economic opportunities and employment in the formal sector become increasingly less available to the vast majority of urban dwellers in both high-income and low-income countries. The intersectional forces of globalization, and neoliberalization have contributed to the ever-growing role of informal economic opportunities in providing the necessary income to fulfill household needs for individuals throughout the world and have also influenced social, cultural, and spatial organization of informal sector workers. Using a case study and ethnographic information from several …

Sexual And Gender Based Violence (Sgbv) In Post- Conflict Northern Uganda, Emily Thomesen

Senior Honors Projects

There is a sweet odor of earth and mangos as the sun rises over the fields of rice and pineapples. The silence of the morning is broken by the rising voices of women congregating together to worship as their little children dance to the music of their mothers’ voices. In the center of the African safari a refugee has been established for these mothers struggling under the weight of war and poverty. They learn the skills they need to provide food for their families, and counseled through the trauma of their pasts. Seven years ago this land was site of …

Citizenship Without Borders: Understanding Empathy And Domestic Direct Service As Powerful Approaches To Making Global Connections That Matter, Courtney Tielking

Honors College Theses

By unraveling a case study on Georgia Southern University's Alternative Break program, this research examines the relationship between empathy and globalization. Alternative Breaks are week-long trips, during University holidays, which facilitate and encourage direct service, immersion in a specific social issue, and guided reflection sessions. Four active Alternative Break participants and advisors were interviewed to outline accurately and depict their experience with culture-based Alternative Break trips. Their stories demonstrate an alternative to traveling abroad in order to achieve a sense of global citizenship. The research suggests that through empathy and direct service, one can become a global citizen without ever …

Orphans’ Hope: An Evaluation Of Residential Orphan Care In Malawi Africa, Emily B. Johnston

Selected Honors Theses

It is estimated that over 7 million orphans are institutionalized worldwide (sos-usa.org). Research has shown that while orphanages are often able to meet physical needs better than alternative forms of care, orphanage life can be harmful for the wellbeing of a child. This study evaluated orphan care at one institution in Malawi, Africa, to determine the effectiveness of care and suggest interventions that could position the children for success. Through interviews with caretakers and administrators, it was found that residential care in Malawi could be an effective form of care. The greatest needs were consistent behavioral intervention and sexual activity …

Education, Crystal C. Gray

Eddie Mabry Diversity Award

Education is a spoken word poem that explores many aspects of the African American struggle within (self-knowledge). It starts with an African American college student who is disappointed with the lack of courses about her culture. Most curricula in the United States tend to be from a Eurocentric perspective, leaving out a multitude of information about people of color. All groups of people of color have unique experiences, however, African Americans have the most known (or perhaps I should say, unknown) history. The standard explanation of their existence is often limited to the start of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, when …

Youth Narratives Of The Conflict In Northern Uganda, Ellen Eichelberger

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Narratives are an essential method of communication that create windows into human experiences. Narratives are also responsible for generating the societies in which they are told, or are shaped indelibly by the societies generated by more powerful narratives. In a post-conflict environment where society has been destroyed by decades of violence, the power of narratives to influence society is heightened. Such a postconflict environment is that of northern Uganda, as it emerges from the violence of the war between the LRA and the UPDF. Due to the heightened powers of narratives, it is necessary to give attention to what those …

Transnational Education Systems In Morocco: How Language Of Instruction Shapes Identity, Sarah Robertson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The North African country of Morocco boasts a rich history of linguistic diversity, which was further compounded with the introduction of the French language under the protectorate in 1912. Through a complicated mix of Fus’ha (Modern Standard Arabic), Darija (Moroccan Dialectical Arabic), French (historically the language of the protectorate), and most recently, the introduction of English, the system of education with respect to linguistic instruction is left in a bind. The divide between the public schools, private schools, traditional Arabic schools, and well-­‐ established French schools only grows, as the Moroccan Education system hurts for change. If language shapes education, …

By The Time You Read This, We’Ll All Be Dead: The Failures Of History And Institutions Regarding The 2013-2015 West African Ebola Pandemic., George Denkey

Senior Theses and Projects

Abstract

The 2013 – 2015 Ebola pandemic had a devastating impact on the countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, with a few regional and global sparks as a result of the 25,178 cases and 10,445 deaths that the epidemic has so far brought upon the three most affected nations by April First 2015. The epidemic has collapsed healthcare systems, economies, and the very social fabric of life within the subregion itself. In the light of this tragic epidemic, one question stands out above all, “How and why did this happen?” The medical literature around Ebola is sound and due …

Fearless Friday: Justina Molokwu, Christina L. Bassler

SURGE

Justina Molokwu ’17 has been fearlessly involved on campus in her first two years at Gettysburg contributing to the College’s goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion. A Psychology and Organization and Management Studies double major and a writing minor, the list of Molokwu’s extracurricular involvement is impressive: Diaspora House house leader, Diversity Peer Educator, Vice President of GASA, and Career Development Liaison for BSU. In addition, she works at the Den, with Residence Life, for the Psychology Department, with the Women’s Center, and is a member of the Gettysburg Cheerleading squad. [excerpt]

Busy Intersections: A Framework For Revitalization, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Slides from a presentation given to the 4^th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC4), University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii. 26 Feb – 1 Mar., 2015.

Creating Knowledge, Volume 8, 2015

Creating Knowledge

Dear reader,

I am delighted to introduce this eighth volume of Creating Knowledge: The LAS Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship. This volume features 19 essays and 14 art works, representing advanced coursework produced in twenty different departments and programs during the 2014-2015 academic year. Several of the essays have been honored with department awards and several draw on research supported by undergraduate research grants. Many were originally written in senior capstone seminars, research-intensive seminars, and independent studies, and many were presented in some form at one of the numerous conferences and showcases sponsored by departments and programs throughout the year. All …

A Functionalist Theory Of Oversight, Riccardo Pelizzo, Abel Kinyondo, Aminu Umar

riccardo pelizzo

The literature on oversight provides various approaches that have been used to measure oversight effectiveness. They include inferring oversight from the quality of governance, equating it with the presence of oversight activities as well as equating it with oversight capacity. However all these approaches are problematic as they wrongly consider oversight to be unidimensional. As a result they tend to produce measures that are too general and vague to provide a meaningful assessment of oversight effectiveness. It is in this context that this paper identifies the structural elements of oversight and goes on to contend that since oversight is a …

Glocal English: The Changing Face And Forms Of Nigerian English In A Global World, Farooq A. Kperogi

Farooq A. Kperogi

Glocal English compares the usage patterns and stylistic conventions of the world’s two dominant native varieties of English (British and American English) with Nigerian English, which ranks as the English world’s fastest-growing non-native variety courtesy of the unrelenting ubiquity of the Nigerian (English-language) movie industry in Africa and the Black Atlantic Diaspora. Using contemporary examples from the mass media and the author’s rich experiential data, the book isolates the peculiar structural, grammatical, and stylistic characteristics of Nigerian English and shows its similarities as well as its often humorous differences with British and American English. Although Nigerian English forms the backdrop …

The Expectation Of Emotional Strength And Its Impact On African American Women's Weight, Necole L. Rivers

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

African American (AA) women have the highest rates of obesity and weight-related diseases of any other cultural group in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between acceptance of the Strong Black Woman (SBW) cultural construct and the following weight-related health factors: body mass index (BMI), high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes mellitus (DM). The hypothesis was that a positive relationship exists between accepting the SBW persona and weight-related health factors. The theory of womanism was used to guide this study. Convenience sampling was used to recruit 127 AA women to participant in an …

La Lutte Pour L'Azawad: Mnla Public Relations Responses To Conflict In Northern Mali, 2011-2014, Sean Neil Curtis

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis examines the Internet public relations content of Mali's Tuareg rebel group, the Mouvement National de la Liberation de L'Azawad (MNLA). Content analysis grounded in speech act securitization theory is applied to the 259 posts on the MNLA's primary French language website in order to determine if MNLA website posts correlate with the events occurring in the northern Mali conflict. The data reveals that various characteristics of MNLA statements do correlate with events in the conflict. What the MNLA says provides important insight into the organization and the conflict itself. The identified correlations allow for MNLA rhetoric and activity …

Threads And Stitches Of Peace- Understanding What Makes Ghana An Oasis Of Peace?, Hippolyt Akow Saamwan Pul

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

Ghana is considered an oasis of peace despite having the same mix of ethno-political competitions for state power and resources; north-south horizontal inequalities; ethno-regional concentrations of Christians and Muslims; highly ethnicised elections; a natural resource dependent economy; and a politically polarized public sphere, among others, that have plunged other countries in Africa into violent and often protracted national conflicts. Use of the conflict paradigm to explain Africa's conflicts glosses over positive deviance cases such as Ghana. This study used the peace paradigm in a mixed method, grounded theory research to examine Ghana's apparent exceptionalism in staving off violent national conflicts. …

Review Of Jon Stratton And Nabeel Zuberi's Black Popular Music In Britain Since 1945 (2014), Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

A review of Jon Stratton and Nabeel Zuberi's book Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945.

Exploring The Viability Of Establishing A Children’S Grief Camp In South Africa, Joann Borer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The death of a loved one is an inevitable and unavoidable phase of life that everyone must experience. A variety of thoughts and feelings follow the death a close friend or relative. It is crucial to address the thoughts and feelings associated with the death so that individuals can grief in a healthy manner. Those living in South Africa are most likely going to experience the death of a loved one since South Africa has such a high mortality rate. Through a qualitative study, this paper explores the death system and culture in South Africa. In addition, the organizations and …