Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons^™

Improving Rhode Island’S Health Care System: Lessons From The Cuban Model, Sarah R. Moffitt

Senior Honors Projects

Improving Rhode Island’s health care system: lessons from the Cuban model

Cuba is world renowned for its health care system. In regards to international health crises, Cuba is a leader in sending workers abroad and training doctors from all over the world. Within its own borders, the Cuban model provides free access to all citizens in which every individual has a primary care provider. Cuba boasts high vaccination rates, a long life expectancy, low infant mortality rate, and a population that is one of the healthiest in the western hemisphere.

The purpose of this research project is to evaluate the …

Fealess Friday: Kelsey Chapman, Christina L. Bassler

SURGE

Kelsey Chapman ’15 fearlessly advocates for human rights, peace, and justice, focusing on the Middle East. An economics major and Middle East and Islamic Studies (MEIS) minor, Kelsey is the house leader for the MEIS House, an Arabic PLA, and the founder of Gettysburg’s chapter of J Street U. [excerpt]

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 …

Place Reimagined, Michelle Unger

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This book shows the creative process and final product of my Independent Study Project, conducted in Prague as part of a semester study abroad program. The project started with interviewing four Czech graphic designers who described places in Prague that are especially meaningful to them. After collecting and transcribing their stories related to their places of inspiration, I visited the locations myself and photographed the locations with sensitivity to the details the artists had emphasized as unique to their experience of the place. While at each site, I also photographed elements of the locations that I personally found interesting and …

¿Más Español Por Más Votos? Assessing The Impact Of Spanish Language Electoral Advertisements On Latino Voter Turnout, Alexander C. Ervin

International ResearchScape Journal

After Latino-Americans demonstrated their power in the 2012 presidential election, securing increased minority support at the polls has become a major goal for both main U.S. political parties. A reliable bloc of Latino voters on one’s side could mean more wins, but Latinos have a low voter turnout rate. This paper explores how to increase Latino turnout and argues that the use of the Spanish language in electoral advertising will have a positive effect. By comparing statewide Latino turnout data during the 2002 midterm elections, I find states with a sizable amount of Spanish-language get-out-the-vote messages do see slightly increased …

The Practice Of Testimony And Social Intervention: The Roma In Montpellier, France, Philip Anthony

International ResearchScape Journal

This project was generously funded by the Hoskins Global Scholar Program [https://www.bgsu.edu/international-programs-and-partnerships/education-abroad/scholarships/hoskins-global-scholar-program.html], which made it possible to research the situation of the Roma in Montpellier, France during the spring of 2015. This project challenges some preconceptions targeting this population and explores contemporary responses by the city of Montpellier to integrate the Roma into the mainstream society while also flagging issues that still seek resolution. It is part of the “Hoskins Papers” section of the International ResearchScape Journal.

Religiosity And Social Problems Among Muslim Adolescents In Southern Thailand, Suhaimee Sateemae, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Mahsoom Sateemae

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

Substantial commentary has been written about the historical context of the Malay-Muslim minority in the deep south of Thailand. Much of the recent scholarship on the Malay-Muslim minority of Thailand has focused on the ongoing ethnic insurgency in southern Thailand, the region’s troubled history of annexation, and its relevance to Thailand’s political landscape. However, there is little empirical research on the Malay-Muslim population itself, although it is assumed that expressions of their religious identity are a fundamental aspect of collective identity formation. In an effort to fill this gap, this study explored perceptions of religiosity and risk behavior among Muslim …

Hiroshima And Mass Trauma Today: Treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder In Individuals And Communities, Ashley Martinez

International ResearchScape Journal

At 8:15 am on August 6^th, 1945, the world and the way in which we fight wars changed forever. Immediately following the drop of the Little Boy atomic bomb, the city of Hiroshima was decimated, leaving the surviving citizens to deal with poverty, starvation, loss of loved ones, and utter destruction of their lives. After the bombing, survivors were left with burns, radiation poisoning, and physical scars. Unknown to the survivors of the atomic bombings, or Hibakusha, were the ensuing psychological and emotional damages. In 2014, we know more about traumatic experiences than in 1945. Studies from …

La Isla Del Sol, Courtney K. Blackmer-Raynolds

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Yo fui a la Isla del Sol para realizar un investigación sobre el significado sagrado de la madre tierra en la cultura Aymara. Yo encontré mucha gente que no querían trabajar con migo, pero al final me permitieron filmar el sacrificio ceremonial de una llama. Yo también consiguió algunos entrevistas sobre esta tema, entonces yo decidí enfocar mi estudio en el sacrificio de la llama. Yo quería saber porque sacrificaban una llama. Las respuestas de esta pregunta han salido muy interesantes, y los puede ver en mi video.

I went to the Isla del Sol for research on the sacred …

Utopias Misplaced: The Cost Of Outsourcing Dystopian Poetics To North Korea, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

This is a slightly revised version of the text of a talk that I (Seo-Young Chu) gave as part of the Fall 2014 Franke Lectures in the Humanities at Yale University. I'm sharing the text here to make the lecture more accessible. Topics include: North Korea/the DPRK, the "uncanny body politic," the uncanny valley, "dystopian poetics," what it means to outsource dystopian poetics, the intersection of aesthetics and politics. Authors/artists mentioned include: Thomas Hobbes, Mary Shelley, David Mitchell, Marjane Satrapi, Song Byeok, Sun Mu, Masahiro Mori, Andy Warhol. The talk also discusses the James Bond film Die Another Day.

English In South Asia And Pedagogical Implications, Brittany R. Ehret

Senior Honors Theses

English at present maintains a significant role as a second or foreign language in the region of South Asia as well as globally. In a discussion of this topic, it is important to explore a brief history of the expansion of English and its origins in South Asia. It is also essential to provide a background of South Asian English and its unique linguistic characteristics as well as its use in different contexts of South Asia. The perspectives of linguists and educators who are native to the region of South Asia should be included as much as possible in this …

Science-Fictional North Korea: A Defective History, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Kafkaesque, Orwellian, eerie, surreal, bizarre, grotesque, alien, wacky, fascinating, dystopian, illusive, theatrical, antic, haunting, apocalyptic: these are just a few of the vaguely science-fictional adjectives that are now associated with North Korea. At the same time, North Korea has become an oddly convenient trope for a certain aesthetic – an uncanny opacity; an ominous mystique – that many writers and artists have exploited to generate striking science-fictional effects in texts with little or no connection to North Korean reality. (The 2002 Bond film Die another Day, for example, draws from North Korea’s science-fictional aura to animate North Korean super-villains who …

Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Linguistic uses of ‘sisterhood’ provide a window into disparate understandings of relationality among virtual and actual interlocutors in women’s development across vectors of caste, class, ethnicity and nationality. In this essay, I examine the trope of ‘sisterhood’ as it was employed at a women’s development project in Janakpur, Nepal, in the 1990s. I demonstrate that the use of this common signifier of kinship with culturally disparate ‘signifieds’ created a confusion of meaning, and differential readings of the politics of relationality. In my view, ‘sister,’ as used at this project, was a multivalent, strategically deployed, and divergently interpreted term. In particular, …

My Life Examined & Tweaked, Shana-Kay Smith

Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies

My project is an exploration into my love of poetry. It consists of a collection of twenty-seven poems that I have written and revised over the course of a year. Over that time period, I have worked on approximately forty-five poems, but I chose only twenty seven for my final portfolio. To demonstrate what my writing process is like, I have kept a book (separate and apart from the final portfolio) of all my thoughts, inspirations, drafts and revisions for the poems I write, so that the growth of each can be seen.

The majority of my poems are in …

Cuba's Chords Of Change: Music, Race, Class & Motherhood At The Turn Of The 21st Century, Saundra Marie Amrhein

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an ethnography and biographical study that examines the impact of the immense socioeconomic changes underway in Cuba at the turn of the 21st century and the flexible identity categories through which individuals navigate a social crisis.

The biography and ethnography in this thesis are centered on the life of Violeta Aldama, an aging revolutionary and Afro-Cuban mother who struggles to make ends meet while fighting to steer her son, Brian, through a classical music education and into a music career. Amid growing racial inequalities when many Afro-Cubans are locked out of the most lucrative jobs in the …

Culturally Responsive Methodologies At Work In Education Settings, Mere Berryman, Suzanne Soohoo, Ann Nevin, Te Arani Barrett, Therese Ford, Debora Joy Nodelman, Norma Valenzuela, Anna Wilson

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe culturally responsive methodology as a way to develop researchers. The aim is to illuminate the dimensions of culturally responsive methodology such as cultural and epistemological pluralism, deconstruction of Western colonial traditions of research, and primacy of relationships within culturally responsive dialogic encounters. An overarching question is: “How can we maintain the original integrity of both participants and researchers and their respective cultures and co-construct at the same time something new?”

Design/methodology/approach – Five case study narratives are described in order for readers to understand the range and types of studies …

Human Rights Policy Paper: Rape As A Tactic Of War, Sarah Fitzgerald

Global Studies Student Scholarship

This paper reports on rape used as a tactic of war, outlining the scope of the problem and introducing policy options to address the issue on a global scale. Policy options targeted at relief services include increasing direct aid through funding fistula surgeries, building rural hospitals, and providing skills training for women awaiting surgery. Additional policy options addressing the problem at its root include legislative changes to stop impunity at the International Criminal Court, revising the Convention on Genocide to include sex and gender, utilization of devices such as the Rape aXe, and changing the culture of misogyny through educational …

Taiwanese Willingness To Communicate In English: Can Watching American Television Programs Help?, Yu-Ting Chien

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study explored the relationship between Taiwanese audiences' use of American television programs and their willingness to communicate in English. Taiwanese participants filled out an online survey consisted of questions from uses and gratifications constructs and willingness to communicate constructs. In addition, different subtitle settings were also examined.

Results indicated that participants with high integrative motivation consuming information from American television programs, in addition, the setting of subtitles were associated with perceived communication competence, integrative motivation, language anxiety and social interaction motivation.

Examining The Challenges To The Anti-Human-Trafficking Movement In Russia, Stephen Alexander Barton

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper examines the success of the anti-human trafficking movement in curbing the enslavement and trade of Russians to other parts of the country and world. This paper outlines how and why human trafficking is a major human rights and security issue for Russia and the “destination” countries to which traffickers send their victims. The anti-trafficking movement in Russia, which gained strength in the late 1990s through grassroots organization and international backing, successfully lobbied the Russian government to pass the country’s first anti-trafficking legislation in 2003. This paper analyzes the many challenges this law has faced, while also focusing particularly …

American Zionism And The Evolution Of ‘Pro-Israel’ In U.S. Politics, Samuel Taylor

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This thesis will determine how and to what extent the definition of ‘pro-Israel’ in U.S. mainstream political activism has undergone a change. In light of recent publications and polls indicating that ‘support’ for or ‘connection’ to Israel was waning among college-aged Jewish students in the United States, I decided to examine the potential causes for this attitude shift, and determine how the shift is being reflected in the U.S. relationship with Israel, if at all. To adequately identify changes in the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the definition of ‘pro-Israel’ in the United States, one must first distinguish between, at least, two …

The Hegemony Of English In South African Education, Kelsey E. Figone

Scripps Senior Theses

The South African Constitution recognizes 11 official languages and protects an individual’s right to use their mother-tongue freely. Despite this recognition, the majority of South African schools use English as the language of learning and teaching (LOLT). Learning in English is a struggle for many students who speak indigenous African languages, rather than English, as a mother-tongue, and the educational system is failing its students. This perpetuates inequality between different South African communities in a way that has roots in the divisions of South Africa’s past. An examination of the power of language and South Africa’s experience with colonialism and …

“He Loves Drinking Old Wine From The Jug”: Some Remarks On Alcoholic Beverages In Syriac Literature Based On Secular And Religious Texts, Adam C. Mccollum

HMML Lectures

The history of alcoholic beverages in various cultures, including our own, has often been written. These investigations have looked at viticulture, brewing, distillation, and the economic and religious uses and effects of alcoholic beverages. Syriac literature, being somewhat of an arcane area of interest, has rarely—if ever!—entered into any of the discussions. It is, nevertheless, a corpus with a breadth wide both in size and subject matter, and there is no dearth of references to alcoholic beverages, their preparation, and use. This paper, based on both secular and religious texts in Syriac, most of them composed in a Muslim-majority culture, …

A Study Of Primary Schools In The Elias Piña Province On The Dominican Haitian Border: Immigrant Haitian Access To Education In The Dominican Republic In The 2010 Post-Earthquake Era, Matthew D. Kaye

Mission & Culture Publications

The research question of the study asked "In the post 2010 earthquake, what are the conditions faced by Haitian immigrants in accessing primary public education in the Dominican Republic"? Within the context of primary education, the study takes place in the town of Comendador, the capital of the Elías Piña province in the Dominican Republic. Using a mixed methods approach, incorporating ethnographic methods and database analysis, the study documents the voices of Haitian and Dominican parents, Dominican school personnel, non-governmental organization (NGO) officials and community stakeholders. Within the construct of access, there are six areas of focus: educational policy, curriculum …

Painting Puertorriqueñidad: The Jíbaro As A Symbol Of Creole Nationalism In Puerto Rican Art Before And After 1898, Jeffrey L. Boe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the three decades surrounding the Spanish-American war (1880-1910), three prominent Puerto Rican artists, Francisco Oller (1833-1917), Manuel E. Jordan (1853-1919), and Ramón Frade (1875-1954) created a group of paintings depicting "el jíbaro," the rural Puerto Rican farm worker, in a way that can be appropriately labeled "nationalistic." Using a set of motifs involving clothes, customs, domestic architecture and agricultural practices unique to rural Puerto Rico, they contributed to the imagination of a communal identity for creoles at the turn of the century. ("Creole" here refers to individuals of Spanish heritage, born on the island of Puerto Rico.) …

A Berber In Agadir: Exploring The Urban/Rural Shift In Amazigh Identity, Thiago Lima

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Arab Spring has seen North African and Middle Eastern youth organizing against the status quo and challenging what they perceive as political, economic, and social injustices. In Morocco, while the Arab Spring may not have been as substantial as in neighboring countries, demonstrations are still occurring nearly everyday in major cities like Rabat as individuals protest issues including government transparency, high unemployment, and, for specific interest of this paper, the marginalization of the Amazigh people. The Amazigh, also popularly referred to as Berbers in most Western academia and literature, are regarded as the original inhabitants of Morocco and the …

Building The Foundation For Rhode Island Immigrant Assistance Database: A Brief Study Of The Communication And Collaboration Among Rhode Island Social Service Agencies, Matthew Friedman

Global Studies Student Scholarship

In the state of Rhode Island, numerous non-profit organizations, businesses and state government departments provide a variety of services to the immigrant population. Among these agencies, each has different levels of communication, collaboration and knowledge of the other organizations operating in Rhode Island. Collaborating with the International Institute of Rhode Island, a non-profit immigration agency located in Providence, my initial goal was the creation of the Rhode Island Immigrant Assistance Database (RIIAD), a simple and informative web page detailing the services, mission statement and address of the agencies that assist immigrants. Of the more than seventy organizations invited to the …

Town-Gown Relations At Providence College: Perspectives And Interactions Between Students And The Local Community, Joe Paola

Global Studies Student Scholarship

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and comment on the relationships that exist between Providence College students and the local Smith Hill‐Elmhurst community. In conducting my research I concentrated mainly on the nuanced perceptions that the students and the local residents have of each other. My main interest was to see how the students defined themselves in relation to the outside community, and in discovering how much their relationship is based upon these perceptions. At the same time, I also aimed to find out what the locals’ opinions were on the place of the students; namely, if they …

Cuba Got Health Care Right, And It's About Time We Did The Same: An Analysis Of Primary Care In Cuba And The Possibility Of Universal Primary Care In The United States, Jenna Stroly

Global Studies Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Pinochet Project: A Nation’S Search For Truth Memory Struggles In Post-Pinochet Chile, Christine Mehta

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Chile has fought for 21 years to overcome General Augusto Pinochet’s violent legacy, but moving past the pervasive influence of Pinochet’s 17-year reign is a difficult task, even today. The following work is an investigation on memory, and Chile’s struggle to come to terms with its memory of the dictatorship. The key questions asked are: How do Chileans remember the dictatorship? What does each individual’s memory mean to the collective whole? Why is confronting the past important to Chile’s future?

The investigation is divided into two parts: a journalistic portion in which individual accounts are highlighted, and an academic thesis …

Intrastate Conflict Resolution: Case Studies And Applications For A Globalized World, Michael Kriner

Global Studies Student Scholarship

The nature of conflict around the world has changed since the end of World War II. Since that time, there has been an increase in the number of intrastate conflicts, and these conflicts have become more violent and deadly. Since many of them involve questions of identity, the traditional methods of conflict resolution typically cannot be applied. Many intrastate conflicts also involve third-party interventions which add another dimension to the conflict. This paper will address the changing nature of conflict and the rise of intrastate conflict and resolution by including explorations and analysis of the conflicts in Rwanda and the …