Ethnic Studies Commons^™

Ethnic Power Dominance In A Resource-Rich Sub Saharan African State: An Analysis Of Violent Conflict Accelerators And The Mitigating Influence Of Civil Society In Nigeria, Victor O. Fakoya

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My dissertation research explores the impacts of ethno-regional power dominance, trust, and violent conflict in a resources-rich multiethnic, sub-Saharan African state. This dissertation examines the impact that ethnic power dominance has on the relationship between conflict and civil society in a resource rich sub-Saharan African (SSA) nation examined. Relying upon intra-state case study analysis of the socio-political climate in Nigeria, I argue that distrust in the national government, when motivated by ethno-regional cleavages has an accelerating influence on the incidence of conflict. Using cross-national survey data in conjunction with field interview data, this research finds that in the regions where …

A Bridge Between Earth & Sky: How The Natural World Shaped The Civilizations Of Ancient And Early-Modern Persia, Sophia Cabana

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project seeks to investigate the ways in which nature shaped the culture of ancient Persia through technology, architecture, agriculture, and art. Furthermore, this project investigates how the symbols and mentalities of ancient Persia were carried forward into the early-modern period. Achaemenid Persia and Babylon are studied as societies which influenced one another and combined to create the foundation of Persian culture as it is currently understood, which then combined in later centuries with other Middle Eastern and Central Asian cultural movements to produce the Safavid and Mughal Empires. The Safavids and Mughals imitated and revived Persian culture in order …

“Tell Me, Bambi Or Yogi Ever Hunt You Back?” The Windigo Myth: A Metaphor For Imperialism And Mental Illness, Christine Carlough

Senior Capstone Theses

The Canadian indigenous myth of the windigo, originating from Algonquian-speaking tribes of the subarctic Northeast like Ojibwe and Cree, is a manifestation for a multitude of fears. This myth originated hundreds of years ago in order to explain the horror and lack of understanding of a mental illness, which would later be known as Windigo Psychosis. Windigo Psychosis is a culture-bound syndrome for an insatiable desire to consume human flesh. A culture-bound syndrome is recognizable and unique only within a specific society or culture, so in other words, Windigo Psychosis is specific to this area in Canada due to a …

“Where Are You From?”: Using Critical Race Theory To Analyze Graphic Novel Counter-Stories Of The Racial Microaggressions Experienced By Two Angry Asian Girls, Talitha Angelica Acaylar Trazo, Woohee Kim

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

This article uses critical race theory (CRT) to analyze two stories about racial microaggressions from Where Are You From?: Short stories about being Asian in America, the graphic novel written and illustrated by Talitha Angelica Acaylar Trazo in fulfillment of her undergraduate honors thesis. Where Are You From? visually historicizes the counter-stories of 48 Asian and Asian American students at a predominantly-white undergraduate institution. In this article, we examine these microaggressions in relation to institutional and structural racism and the intersections of race, gender, and power dynamics between white faculty and Asian female students. Furthermore, we propose …

Chattel House Series, Rena King

I2

No abstract provided.

Roots, Reva Dixit

I2

No abstract provided.

Eve, Mariama L. Dodd

I2

No abstract provided.

Venus Rising, Mariama L. Dodd

I2

No abstract provided.

Firm Roots, Noah J. Campbell

I2

No abstract provided.

Shiwonhada, Betty Kim

I2

No abstract provided.

Radicals Have Conquered The American University, Jasmine Collins

I2

No abstract provided.

Honey, Honey, Cia N. Gladden

I2

No abstract provided.

Red And Blue, Cia N. Gladden

I2

No abstract provided.

Untitled Poem, Mary L. Alvarez

I2

No abstract provided.

We Cool, Samuel M. Migwi

I2

No abstract provided.

All Smiles, Zoe F. Chen

I2

No abstract provided.

Roots, Zoe F. Chen

I2

No abstract provided.

Papercut, Zoe F. Chen

I2

No abstract provided.

Chinatown, Zoe F. Chen

I2

No abstract provided.

Tangerine, Karen Zheng

I2

No abstract provided.

Roswell, New Mexico And The Dead Futures Of Latinx Speculative Fictions, Renee Hudson

English Faculty Articles and Research

With the predominance of Chicanxs in Latinx speculative fictions as the impetus behind this cluster, I want to consider how Latinxs are represented in popular culture, especially when the creators of such Latinx characters are not Latinxs themselves. Turning to popular representations, I contend, acts as a litmus test for how Latinx issues are widely perceived as well as how these concerns are perpetuated within popular media. The Roswell reboot, Roswell, New Mexico offers one such instance as both the showrunner, Carina Adly MacKenzie, and Melinda Metz, the author of Roswell High, the show on which the series is …

Imagining The Futures Of Latinx Speculative Fictions, Renee Hudson

English Faculty Articles and Research

"To combat the speculative fictions Trump conjures into reality, we must look to more liberatory forms of speculative fiction, especially ones that imagine a future for Latinxs at a time when such futures seem to be foreclosed by the concentration camps proliferating within the borders of the United States. At the same time, we must interrogate how our speculative imaginaries are, at times, limited by the contradictions of latinidad. Latinidad presumably names a shared, collective identity based on Latin American origins that seem to supersede differences in race, religion, and class (among other identitarian categories). However, a number of scholars …

Unveiling Identities: A Cultural Study Of The Portrayal Of Leading Women In Zhang Yimou Films, Patrick Mcguire

Dissertations

It is imperative to recognize the ongoing collaborations of filmmakers from different countries. Film director Zhang Yimou, cited in this work, has reached out beyond his Chinese borders in recruiting both cast and crew on many of his latest features. But the field of film studies appears to have limited their investigations of such cross-cultural analyses, in particular the subjective analysis of the female lead character in film. Subjective and culturally wired as such, researchers bring forth conscious observations from their socialized unconscious minds.

This textual analysis begins with a comparison of two Chinese films, particularly observing their similar female …

Recovery After The Rupture: Linking Colonial Histories Of Displacement With Affective Objects And Memories, Aarzoo Singh

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

The notion of home and belonging, specifically in the context of South Asian postcolonial diasporas, is connected to past traumas of colonization and displacement. This paper addresses how trauma, displacement, and colonialism can be understood through and with material culture, and how familial objects and items emit and/ or carry within them, emotional narratives. I turn to the affective currency that emit and are transferred on and down from objects, by diasporic subjects, to access the possible reclamation of otherwise silenced narratives within colonial and postcolonial histories. By following the events of the Partition of India in 1947 as a …

An Untold History: Intergenerational Trauma & The Armenian Genocide, Erik Anderson

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The plan for my project is to do a video documentary in which I interview trauma victims and survivors and discuss their instances and some of the practices that allowed them to overcome this difficult time. More specifically I am going to focus on the theme of inter-generational trauma and the effects that genocides and mass killings can have on people and their offspring. Being. That I am the great-grandson and 4th Generation descendant of an Armenian genocide survivor I hope to interview my grandmother and talk with her about the experiences of what it was like being the daughter …

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Jorge Baron, Maria Kolby-Wolfe, Kristen Smith Dayley, Twila Bird, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Program has been around for 35 years, started in 1984 specifically to help Central American refugees during the mid-1980s, when they were fleeing civil wars. A pro-bono group of attorneys performing "direct legal representation", helping low income community members who are navigating different aspects of the immigration system. NWIRP also engages in "systemic advocacy" which attempts to change systems and policies revolving around asylum and immigration rights.

Emergent Masculinities : Gendered Power And Social Change In The Biafran Atlantic Age, Ndubueze L. Mbah

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

In Emergent Masculinities, Ndubueze L. Mbah argues that the Bight of Biafra region’s Atlanticization—or the interaction between regional processes and Atlantic forces such as the slave trade, colonialism, and Christianization—between 1750 and 1920 transformed gender into the primary mode of social differentiation in the region. He incorporates over 250 oral narratives of men and women across a range of social roles and professions with material culture practices, performance traditions, slave ship data, colonial records, and more to reveal how Africans channeled the socioeconomic forces of the Atlantic world through their local ideologies and practices. The gendered struggles over the means …

Handcuffing The Vote: Diluting Minority Voting Power Through Prison Gerrymandering And Felon Disenfranchisement, Rebecca Harrison Stevens, Meagan Taylor Harding, Joaquin Gonzalez, Emily Eby

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

For the purposes of legislative redistricting, Texas counts prison populations at the address of the prison in which they are incarcerated at the time of the census, rather than their home prior to incarceration—regardless of whether the prisoners themselves maintain a residence in their home communities and intend to return home after incarceration. This deprives those home communities of full representation in the redistricting process. Combined with Texas’s felon disenfranchisement laws, this also results in arbitrarily bolstering the representational power of some Texans on the backs of other Texans who themselves are unable to vote. All of this takes place …

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

Latino Education In Texas: A History Of Systematic Recycling Discrimination, Albert H. Kauffman

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming