Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Gnosticism, Transformation, And The Role Of The Feminine In The Gnostic Mass Of The Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (E.G.C.), Ellen P. Randolph

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Gnostic Mass of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (E.G.C.) suggests a heterosexual gender binary in which the female Priestess seated on the altar as the sexual and fertile image of the divine feminine is directed by the male Priest’s activity, desire and speech. The apparent contradiction between the empowered individual and the polarized gender role was examined by comparing the ritual symbolism of the feminine with the interpretations of four Priestesses and three Priests (three pairs plus one). Findings suggest that the Priestess’ role in the Gnostic Mass is associated with channeling, receptivity, womb, cup, and fertility, while the Priest’s …

"For A Future Tomorrow": The Figured Worlds Of Schoolgirls In Kono, Sierra Leone, Jordene Hale

Doctoral Dissertations

Current research in Sub-Sahara Africa suggests that young women face challenges in accessing and completing schooling, due among other things to gender related school based violence (Bruce & Hallman, 2008; Dunne, Humphreys, & Leach, 2006; Lloyd, Kaufman, & Hewett, 2000). These studies, while valuable in providing documentation on school enrollment and school leaving, do not explore the motivational framework where young women remain in school. The purpose of this dissertation is to trace how schoolgirls’ identities or “figured worlds” (Gee, 2011) are co-constructed in particular contexts by the same cohort of schoolgirls, their teachers, households, and communities through an ethnographic …

Community Assistance For Refugees And Gender Roles: What Could Make This C.A.R. Run Better?, Nathan E. Meyer

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Community Assistance for Refugees is a non-profit service organization in downtown Mankato, Minnesota. Secondary migration to southern Minnesota has increased the refugee population as well as the need for research assessing the needs and concerns of refugees. The purpose of this project was two-fold: first to analyze how C.A.R. is able to meet the needs of its clients and second, to investigate ways in which C.A.R. could improve its services. Traditionally female refugees are less educated and less mainstreamed into American society. This research was designed to help all clients, but special attention was paid to the specific needs of …

"I Came To America, Crying": Rebuilding A Life, Redefining The Self—Ethiopian Women Refugees In Denver (Colorado) (2012–2013), Barbara Guglielminotti Valetta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the challenges faced by Ethiopian women in the Denver community to reach harmony within their new social and cultural space and to examine what they feel they have lost and gained in their self-identity as a result of their immigration. Refugees face a multitude of dilemmas when they are compelled to relocate from their home countries to a new, foreign-host society. Ethiopian refugees have been arriving in the US since the 1970s and feel the uprootedness of being away from their homeland. Being uprooted is losing one’s culture and ways of life. …

Neither (Fully) Here Nor There: Negotiation Narratives Of Nashville's Kurdish Youth, Stephen Ross Goddard

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Nashville, Tennessee, is home to nearly fifteen thousand ethnic Kurds. They have come in four distinct groups over the course of two decades to escape the hardship and horror of brutal central government policies, some directed toward their extinction. Many of that number are young people who were infants or toddlers when they were whisked away to the safety of temporary way stations prior to their arrival in the United States. What that means is that these youth have spent the majority of their formative years within the context of the American culture. This thesis is a study of how …

We Work, We Eat Together: Anti-Authoritarian Mutual Aid Politics In New York City, 2004-2013, David Spataro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New York City's neoliberal restructuring has fundamentally transformed the city's labor market and privatized many important aspects of a once robust municipal welfare system. In this research I examine one radical response to these changes: anti-authoritarian mutual aid groups that blend Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture with direct action politics. These are projects where activists attempt to build strong communities of resistance by organizing collective forms of social reproduction. I find that these projects are a threat to neoliberal urbanization because they reorganize reproduction beyond the household scale while simultaneously criticizing the social relations of capitalism as the root of household insecurity. …

Gender In Motion: Negotiating Bengali Social Statuses Across Time And Territories, Mayurakshi Chaudhuri

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hindu Indian Bengalis as an ethno-linguistic and transnational group have negotiated their social locations historically, contemporaneously, and transnationally. In this dissertation, I examine and argue how transnational migration is the most recent in a long line of Bengali strategies to negotiate their social location vis-à-vis other populations in India. Since the early years of the nineteenth century, in Bengal specifically, a series of socio-political dynamics have reshaped and reconstituted Bengali social status. These dynamics can be observed across various geographic scales - national, regional, and local -- and have continued to inform their contemporary gender relations. En route to this …

Warmikuna Juyayay! Ecuadorian And Latin American Indigenous Women Gaining Spaces In Ethnic Politics, Maria S. Moreno Parra

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This research utilizes an agency framework to examine the complexities of the participation of indigenous women in local, national, and global spaces of activism. By examining the connections between processes of globalization of indigenous and women’s rights, development agendas, local politics, and gender dynamics in indigenous organizations, this research highlights the connection of ethnicity, gender, and power in an indigenous organization of Cotacachi, Ecuador, and for Ecuadorian and Latin American indigenous leaders and professionals working in national and global arenas.

Four interconnected topics are explored: (1) the understanding of indigenous women’s participation in the history of their organization within a …

Judging Emotion In Reason: The Effect Of Emotion In The Anglo-American Legal System, Diana B. Kontsevaia

Diana Kontsevaia

The social construction of emotion shapes communities’ definitions of what is “appropriate” to feel in a given situation. The social construction of emotion is especially salient and imperative to understand in the context of the current Anglo-American legal system. In this system, the perceived cognitive separation between emotion and reason is accepted as commonly held understanding for evaluating people’s behavior, which prescribes a set of expectations that in certain cases comes forth in gendered terms. This study in cognitive anthropology explores how perceptions of the human cognitive mechanism affect how people are treated even in the allegedly most rational parts …

Cutting A Thousandsticks Of Tobacco Makes A Boy A Man: Traditionalized Performances Of Masculinity In Occupational Contexts, Ann Ferrell, Pauline Greenhill, Editor, Diane Tye, Editor

Folk Studies & Anthropology Faculty Book Gallery

In Unsettling Assumptions, editors Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye examine how tradition and gender come together to unsettle assumptions about culture and its study.

Contributors explore the intersections of traditional expressive culture and sex/gender systems to question, investigate, or upset concepts like family, ethics, and authenticity. Individual essays consider myriad topics such as Thanksgiving turkeys, rockabilly and bar fights, Chinese tales of female ghosts, selkie stories, a noisy Mennonite New Year's celebration, the Distaff Gospels, Kentucky tobacco farmers, international adoptions, and more.

In Unsettling Assumptions, folkloric forms express but also counteract negative aspects of culture like misogyny, homophobia, …

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, …

Discourses Of Menstruation: Public And Private Formations Of Female Identity, Emily G. Matteson

Scripps Senior Theses

Menstruation is a biological process, but it is also laden with cultrual meanings that produce society's understandings of both the body and "womanhood." The experiences of those who menstruate both reveal and inform the ways that culture mediates the relationships between biology, the body, sex, and gender. This study examines the ways that students at Scripps College, a women's college in Claremont, CA, understand and experience menstruation as part of living in an environment where the majority of students identify as female. Through ethnographic interviews, I demonstrate the ways that students use menstruation to re-envision distinctions between public and private …

Transnational Marriage: Modern Imaginings, Relational Realignments, And Persistent Inequalities, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

In the context of shifting cultural anchors as well as unstable global economic conditions, new practices of intimacy and sexuality may become tactics in an individual’s negotiation of conflicting desires and potentials. This article offers reflection on the interface between global forces, powerful transcultural narratives, and state policies, on the one hand, and local, even individual, constructions and tactics in regard to sexuality, marriage, migration, and work, on the other. The article focuses on the life trajectory of Gudiya, an ambitious young Hindu woman who started out life with little social capital and few economic resources in a dusty corner …

Refugee Protection And Assistance : Locating Gender In Refugee Policies, Programs, And Experiences, Mwaka Nachilongo

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

REFUGEE PROTECTION AND ASSISTANCE: LOCATING GENDER IN