Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Voices In The Borderlands: Reimagining Identity, Cultural Belonging, And Dystopian Spaces In Anzaldúa’S Borderlands And Viramontes’S “The Cariboo Café”, Oralia G. Ramos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) and Helena María Viramontes’ short story “The Cariboo Café” (1985) portray marginalized individuals navigating liminal spaces of identity, oppression, and survival. Borderlands/La Frontera and “The Cariboo Café” show how systematic violence and displacement shatter the self, pushing characters to navigate trauma in a dystopian space. Sonya, Macky, the café owner, and the grieving mother represent Anzaldúa’s concepts of borderland subjectivity, betrayal, and spectral haunting.

Sonya and Macky, two undocumented children, represent Anzaldúa’s borderlands subjects and reside in a state of nepantla, an in-between space of cultural dislocation. The café owner …

Apocalypse As Utopia: The Exorcisms And Memorials Of Las Yeguas Del Apocalipsis And Queer Liberation In Chile, 1987-1997, Nicolas Poblete

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of the queer activist-art collective Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis (1987-1997) and their performance-based resistance to the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990), cultural homophobia, and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Through art actions blending ritual, protest, and queer poetics, the collective redefined public space and national identity, envisioning a utopian queer apocalypse rooted in memory.

Hemispheres Of Faith: Mapping The Global Journey Of An Ivory Rosary Bead At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Mary M. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

Hemispheres of Faith reattributes a carved ivory rosary bead in the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Quito School in 18th-century Ecuador. Through examining the trade history of the Manila Galleons, material analysis, and iconographic study, Hemispheres of Faith challenges the bead's European origins and reveals the object as a product of global exchange, devotional practice, and colonial artistic collaboration within the Spanish Empire.

Deflecting Voyeurism: Elizabeth Keckley’S Indictment Of Capitalism And Rejection Of The Exploitative White Gaze, Laura Steel

Theses and Dissertations

This paper analyzes the ex-slave narrative Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley through a Marxist and Romantic lens as a means to explore the impact of capitalism on Keckley while enslaved, as well as post-slavery. Through the paper, the author argues that Keckley successfully deflects the white voyeuristic gaze by replacing her physical form with clothing that she creates, as a means to both indict capitalism and reclaim ownership over her body. Further, the paper argues that Keckley employs Romanticism to highlight the unnatural capitalist roots and subsequent …

“Take This Job And Shove It”: How Black Women’S Fight For Economic Rights Informed Their Participation In The Broader Social Movements Of The Twentieth Century, Kyndle Diane Lee

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the vital role of Black women in the American labor movement during the twentieth century, emphasizing how their leadership and union participation were central to both labor organizing and the broader fight for human rights. Black women workers navigated and resisted the effects of racism, sexism, and class exploitation in a century marked by industrial expansion, economic upheaval, and major civil rights struggles. Far from passive participants, they emerged as key organizers, negotiators, and strategists in their communities, labor unions, and national movements. Additionally, their work extended beyond their demands for better wages and safer working conditions. …

Fugitive Colors, Natalie Rose Eddings

Theses and Dissertations

My objects are meditations on intertwining themes of labor, rest, and interiority and their shadow sides—power, subjugation and the gaze. I couple materials that have millenia-long histories such as metals, glass, paper and clay with found objects and plat materials to illustrate narratives and exhume memories. Drawn from nature and technologies of land, plant stewardship and the domestic realm, I imagine my sculptures as life supporting vessels or magical enclosures.

Through sculpture, photography and printmaking, I build structures that are space of quiet to be filled with thought, healing and development. Like incubators and seed pods, my work is protective …

Capturing The Realities Of Space And Culture: An Exploration Of Landscape In The House On Mango Street And Woman Hollering Creek, Leanna C. Mendiola

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Capturing the Realities of Space and Culture: An Exploration of Landscape in The House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek (May 2025)

Leanna Carmela Mendiola, B.A., Texas A&M International University; Chair of Committee: Dr. Zachary Hernandez

This thesis explores Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek. Cisneros’s books explore the landscape and culture around her characters as readers piece together the experiences of women. The two novels use architectural elements to examine each book’s protagonists’ community and culture. The thesis argues that Cisneros employs space and place to underscore empowerment and the characters’ journeys …

Countering The Traditional Feminine: The Abject In The Works Of Johanna Hamann, María Evelia Marmolejo, And Regina José Galindo, Sierra Myers

Theses

This thesis explores the ways in which Contemporary Latin American feminist artists have been able to subvert the Western constructed ideas of gender that work to locate the feminine Other as subordinate and inferior. Focusing on the installations and performances by Johanna Hamann, María Evelia Marmolejo, and Regina José Galindo, there is an emphasis on the role of the abject which is used to defamiliarize our established concepts of the traditional feminine in order to allow space for a redefinition and portrayal that excludes a detrimental modern semiology rooted in a zero point epistemology. By analyzing these artists' works in …

Chasqui, Nicole Lachat

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Chasqui is a creative dissertation comprised of a thirteen-page critical introduction and a series of poems which consider varying forms of migration, including that of border crossings. The internalization of displacement through longing and alienation is examined in these poems. The author considers questions of inheritance through an exploration of personal, familial and sociopolitical bonds. Varying forms of violence, including colonial and gendered violence are reflected upon in the work.

Advisor: Kwame Dawes

Dekonstruktion Der Afd: Eine Analyse Der Rechtspopulistischen Deutschen Partei Der„Alternative Für Deutschland”, Elizabeth A. Breckenridge, Elizabeth Breckenridge

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) ist eine rechtsextreme populistische Partei, die innerhalb eines Jahrzehnts rasch an Macht gewonnen hat, insbesondere in den ostdeutschen Bundesländern, aufgrund ihrer Betonung der Nationalisierung, ihrer populistischen Rhetorik und ihrer Anziehungskraft auf Wähler, die Ängste vor Einwanderung und kulturellem Wandel hegen. Die AfD hat es innerhalb von fünf Jahren geschafft, eine starke Wählerschaft zu mobilisieren, 2017 Sitze im Bundestag zu erringen und gilt nun als wichtigste Oppositionspartei zu den etablierten Parteien. Die AfD ist die erste rechte Partei seit 1945, die aufgrund des Aufstiegs rechtspolitischer Ideologien bedeutende Wahlerfolge erzielen konnte. Aufgrund des reaktionären Pendelschwungs nach dem …

Cultural Of Authenticity And Commodification: Analyzing The Aesthetic Waves And Collective Culture In The 2010s And 2020s, Stefanny Leung Yu

Student Theses

The “authentic self” is curated, aestheticized, and most notably, commodified. Digital algorithms, likes, views, and engagement are more than just digital metrics, they are the management of performance. For millions of other users — including the author herself — social media is the locus of personal expression. Most notably, sites like Tumblr, where users in the 2010s posted hazy images or overly filtered graphics along with melancholic song lyrics that match the vibe of the moment, expression was earnest and idealized. Today, social media in the 2020s, new creators like Hannah Neelaman, better known as Ballerina Farm, dress in pastoral …

Kansas City, Kansas, Vida Davidović

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

KANSAS CITY, KANSAS is a thesis that operates in the tradition of expressionist dramaturgy and playwriting, taking up themes of abuse, imperialism, war, trauma, womanhood, Balkan identities, history of the Balkans, as well as the discourses of psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory. The use of different theoretical frameworks related to both international and personal politics, which are shown to be intertwined, suggests a strong relationship between political processes in the Second World Countries that had experienced many occupations throughout their history and the way women in those countries relate to the questions of body, authority, feminity, and interpersonal relationships. The play …

Melanated Reflections Through Testimonios: Centering The Experiences Of African American Women Teachers Turned Leaders And Their Implications On Recruitment, Selection, Hiring, And Retention Of Women Of Color In Leadership Positions, Tanya Rochelle Santos

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2022), during the 2017–2018 academic year, only 7% of all teachers identified as Black or African American, with approximately 76% of that group being women. This qualitative study investigates the lived experiences of African American women educators who have transitioned into leadership roles within P–12 educational settings across the Great Plains Region of the United States. The research explores how their experiences intersect with issues of racial and gender equity, particularly within the broader discourse of social justice in education and educational leadership.

Framed within the theoretical lens of Black Feminist Thought, …

The Politics Of The Black Womb: How Education And Power Reinforce The U.S. Black Maternal Health Crisis, Foluke Akinkunmi

Honors Scholar Theses

This study investigates the alarming maternal mortality rates among Black women in the U.S. today first by exploring the historical exploitation of Black maternal bodies during enslavement and with the rise of professionalized gynecology. It challenges the narrative that attributes these outcomes to individual choices or supposedly inherent biological factors, arguing instead that the devaluing of Black women’s well-being and authoritative knowledge have been constructed along with the United States itself. To advance a constructive response, the paper analyzes curriculum competencies for obstetric and midwifery healthcare providers, surveys of Black women's birthing experiences in the previous 20 years, and interviews …

Race, Sex Work, And Spatial Segregation In Storyville, New Orleans, Paige M. Magoto

All Theses

Storyville, New Orleans, operated as a legalized vice district from 1897 to 1917. This 38-block area facilitated sex work and prostitution “across the color line,” perpetuating and encouraging the practice of white men seeking sexual acts from Black women and women of mixed-race descent. I engage with multiple interacting subsections of historiography within this thesis project. The historiography spans Southern history from the early nineteenth century in the Old Antebellum South until the early twentieth century in the Progressive Era. The broader historiographic dimensions of labor and sexuality were also influential in curating this research project, engaging with the evolving …

The Bones: A Novel-In-Progress, Chris Stark

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

In Memoir And Memory: Us Servicewomen Narrating 21st Century Combat, Kelly A. Taylor

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Over twenty years after the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, much work remains to uncover the stories of US servicewomen. As the collection of oral histories continues and in the absence of letters, postcards, and other mail for analysis, their memoirs provide some of the first glimpses of the ways 21^st century warfare impacted their experiences in the US military. With shifting “front lines,” the prevalence of improvised explosive devices, and the need for new search tactics, women participated in high rates of combat. Nevertheless, the combat exclusion policy remained in place until 2015. …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

Language, Equity, And Power: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Student Conduct Policies At Unl, Mandi Laib

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study conducts a Critical Discourse Analysis of student conduct policies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1977 to 2003 to examine how language reflects and reinforces institutional power structures. Utilizing Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory, this research investigates how conduct policies have historically marginalized Students of Color, LGBTQ+ students, and those facing economic hardship. Through a deductive coding process, themes such as institutional control, surveillance, and punitive framing were identified across four decades of student handbooks. While there are moments where student rights and restorative justice are acknowledged, these are often overshadowed by dominant discourse that prioritizes compliance …

I Have Some Reservations: Examining Whether Federal Rules Of Evidence 413 And 414 Serve Legitimate Purposes Of Punishment For Native American Defendants, Cameryn Gonnella

Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Sex Offenses

This essay will analyze the legitimacy of Federal Rules 413 and 414 as applied to Native American defendants through the lens of the purposes of punishment: rehabilitation, deterrence, retribution, incapacitation, and restitution.

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 100, No. 3, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

Magazine edition of the College Heights Herald for the period February 17 - April 20, 2025.

• Wilborn, Price. You Matter & You Are Not Alone
• Smith, Kane. Peggy Crowe Reflects on Counseling Center in Face of Staff Shortages
• Stafford, Hallie. Help with Horses – New Beginnings Therapeutic Horse Riding
• Hawkins, Kaylee. How a WKU Professor Helps Improve Student Mental Health – Jay Gabbard, National Alliance on Mental Illness Recovery Support Group
• McMahon, Jake. More Than a Coach – Brent Chumbley, Track & Field
• Simpson, Libby. WKU’s American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Brings Mental Health Into the Light
• Hardesty, Emma. Trans …

What Is A Nation? Colonial Legacies, Identity, And Reclaiming In Métisse Autobiographical Narratives – A Case Study Of Sugar And Slate And Garçon Manqué, Thaïs Maëlle Autin

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis examines the question of national belonging in autobiographical narratives of second-generation immigrant métisse women. I study the similar aesthetic manner in which individuals with different regional and cultural influences grapple with concepts of identity, gender, racism, exile, and negotiation, and the way in which the authors anchor themselves in a broader familial and national heritage. I argue that such an enterprise can be understood as part of the alternative heritage wave, based on Andrew Higson’s theory. The texts put in question traditional understandings of nation. Doing so opens the possibility of engaging in a dialogue that expands the …

Woman-To-Woman Marriage In West Africa: A Vanishing Tradition Of Power And Agency, Bright Alozie

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In lieu of an abstract, here is an excerpt: Marriage in west Africa has played a central role in shaping aspects of society, and has evolved over time. While traditional heterosexual unions dominate discussions, a lesser-known but significant practice – woman-to-woman marriage – has existed for centuries. In my research, I examined this institution, which allows a woman to assume the role of a husband by marrying another woman. There’s evidence of woman-to-woman marriage in more than 40 societies across west Africa, including the Igbo of Nigeria, the Frafra of Ghana and the Dahomeans of present-day Benin.

Rupert Raj’S Written Acts Of Activism And Care Throughout The 1980s And 1990s, Mia Jakobsen

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

In researching acts of activism and care in Canadian queer and trans racialized history, I examined how Rupert Raj advocated and cared for other trans individuals through his writing in the 1980s and 1990s. He noticed that there were few publications for trans individuals so he created easily accessible methods to share vital information regarding research and support that would have otherwise been difficult to acquire. Raj’s writings shared vital transgender research, literature, and expertise from across the globe. He provided critical support to and for other trans men through his easily accessible publications and letters, serving as an information …

Issue Cover Art: Homecoming Collage, Rhi N. Soto

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

This piece is a found poem/collage made from different magazine cut-outs glued onto red construction paper. What inspired its creation is the book Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. In this book, Gyasi describes colonialism's over 400-year impact on the continent of Africa, the Indigenous people to those lands, and their ancestors. She does this by writing a historical fiction story of a family that started in what is now considered current-day Ghana, taking place from the mid-1700s to the early 2000s. The family starts with the mother of two sisters, Maame, who leaves her first daughter (Effia) while her village …

Ua19/16/2 Women's Basketball Press Releases, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

Press releases and game statistics for WKU women's basketball team in spring 2025.

Ua19/16/2 Volleyball Press Relations, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

Press releases and game statistics for WKU volleyball team in spring 2025.

Ua19/16/2 Track & Field Press Releases, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

Press releases and game statistics for WKU track teams in spring 2025.

Access To Augustana’S Ascension Chapel: Who Gets To Worship?, Jaycee C. Bythewood

Race, Ethnicity, & Religion

This poster seeks to educate readers about the challenges disabled students would face in attending a service in Augustana College’s Ascension Chapel and how inaccessible this actually is using maps crafted by the author with hand-gathered data.

Ua19/16/2 Tennis Press Releases, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

Press releases and game statistics for WKU tennis teams in spring 2025.