Anthropology Commons^™

Como Lobos, David Andrew Place

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In a world of conflict, Storm Crow, a Comanche warrior, leads a war party making its way through Mexico and Texas, stealing horses, abducting children, and wreaking chaos as he seeks spiritual and magical power, increasing his notoriety and prowess as a warrior. During one raid, Storm Crow abducts a white child, six-year-old Wade Vance. When Wade tries to escape, Storm Crow attempts to shoot him. When Storm Crow's gun fails twice, he realizes that the boy is not meant to die and adopts him, renaming Wade, "Broken Gun," in praise of the perceived magical intervention, the gun misfiring twice, …

Pilgrimage To Bawakaraeng Mountain Among The Bugis- Makassar In Indonesia: A Contestation Between Islamic Identity And Local Tradition, Mustaqim Pabbajah, Irwan Abdullah, Hasse Jubba, M.Taufiq Hidayat Pabbajah, Zainal Said

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This study discusses the contestation of Islamic identity and local traditions of the Bugis-Makassar people in socio-religious life. Tradition contains a belief with form and practices that can still be traced to the present. In this case, the identity of the hajj pilgrimage attached to Muslims has been adapted to the Bawakaraeng Hajj community in the South Sulawesi region. The current research employed a qualitative descriptive approach and field-based data collection techniques by conducting observations and interviews with key informants about the Bawakaraeng community. It was found that the Bugis-Makassar practice of carrying out a series of rituals on the …

Embodied Injustices: Covid-19, Race, And Epigenetics, Maria Encinosa

Showcase of Osprey Advancements in Research and Scholarship (SOARS)

Digital Projects Showcase Exhibitor Award Although historical and even modern accounts of race assume significant biological differences between racial groups, race has little biological meaning. Nonetheless, the social construct of race has real consequences. Racial identity defines boundaries of community and impacts the experiences of individuals, including how people live and die during a pandemic. COVID-19 has disproportionately affected minority communities in the United States, triggering many explanations for racial disparities in health. Through an analysis of sources spanning from popular media to traditional academic journals, I analyze the potential for epigenetic research to serve as a missing link that …

La Llorona, Picante Pero Sabroso: The Mexican Horror Legend As A Story Of Survival And A Reclamation Of The Monster, Camille Maria Acosta

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

For centuries, the relationship between Mexico and its infatuation with scary stories has been profoundly complex, but why? Perhaps it is the easiest way to communicate a Mexican culture, although proud and resilient, riddled with haunting narratives. For myself personally, the Mexican horror narrative La Llorona has served as a lens for conversation and communication that is unique and important.

In this thesis, I explore how Mexicans and Mexican Americans alike use the legend of La Llorona as a unique form of communication through personifying what truly haunts us. From using the narrative as a tool for entertainment, cautionary tales, …

A Widened Angle Of View: Teaching Theology And Racial Embodiment, Mara Brecht

Journal of Global Catholicism

Today’s undergraduate students are digital natives, shaped by constant access to information and countless experiences of encountering the world through the convenience of a screen. The ostensible comfort students have with difference gives way to a paradox, and one that’s made especially apparent in the theology classroom: Students are comfortable with seeing difference and particularity at a distance, but not adept at locating difference and particularity “at home.” I contend that Catholics & Cultures can help students from the dominant culture—namely, white students who comprise the vast majority of Catholic college students—destabilize their notion of the Catholic tradition as tightly …

Crises Beyond Nationalities, J P. Linstroth

Peace and Conflict Studies Journal Conference

The aim of my presentation titled, Crises Beyond Nationalities, is to discuss the topics of “immigration and racism”, “nationalism and terrorism”, “genocide”, “racial trauma”, “biology, neuroscience, and humanity”, and “empathy, love, and peace” so as not only to theorize about these complex issues but to point to ways forward with some progressive thinking. If the topics of “racism and immigration” are isolated without discussing their broader associations such as with nationalism and violence, or in the most extreme with genocide, then the arguments are not broad enough. As an anthropologist and peace activist, it is important to analyze such …

Variations On Hunting And Care: Ownership, Kinship And Other Interspecific Relationships In The Eastern Amazon, Uirá Garcia

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article is based on fieldwork among the Guajá people, a small indigenous group of Tupí-Guaraní speakers inhabiting the eastern portion of Brazil’s Amazon region. Aiming for an ethnographic definition of kinship, this article engages in issues related to the figure of the “owner/masterin the Amazon, proposing a dialogue with a seldom discussed aspect of this subject—namely, its relation to conjugality. I argue that relationships included in the universe of “familiarity” and “mastery” are not only coextensive with the field of kinship; they also reveal a very particular conception of humanity. The process of Awá-Guajá kinship, where the spouse is …

Framing The Border: Liminality In The Network Narratives Of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Muhammad Muzammal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores liminality conveyed as displacement before death in the network narrative films of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu. Due to their depiction of existential crises and possibly fatal scenarios of several characters in different countries and regions, these network narrative films are colloquially referred to as the “Death Trilogy.” Therefore, rearranging the many strands of death-related abstractions and notions in these films around liminality becomes a jumping-off point to explore deeper layers of these works. Through interdisciplinary yet markedly film studies excavations, this thesis projects the liminal spaces of Iñárritu’s films onto border spaces. With borders considered as sites of …

Remembering Together: Native Boarding School Stories On Display, Lydia Nancy Wood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent scholarship on Native American boarding schools has focused on drawing out the complexities of boarding school history and emphasizing the plurality of experiences of students. This thesis examines how Native American boarding school stories have been displayed using two current museum exhibits: “Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories” at the Heard Museum, and the Phoenix Indian School Visitors Center, a small gallery in one of the remaining school buildings. For this analysis I interviewed key players in both current exhibits and did close readings of the exhibits themselves, in conjunction with archival research about two model schoolhouse …

Ua68/14 Newsletter, Wku Folk Studies & Anthropology

WKU Administration Documents

Newsletter created by and about WKU Folk Studies & Anthropology.

• Applegate, Darlene. From the Department Head & Anthropology Program Director
• Ferrell, Ann. From the Folk Studies Program Director
• Student Profiles - Georgia Dassler, Camille Acosta
• Student Profiles - Azadeh Najafian, Corbin Pike
• Student Profiles - James Skaggs, Jordan Mansfield
• Student Projects
• This Year's Graduates
• Department Events & Activities
• Faculty/Staff News - Tim Frandy, Darlene Applegate, Ann Ferrell
• Faculty/Staff News - Gwynn Henderson, Erika Brady, Jean-Luc Houle, Kate Hudepohl, David Pollack, Justin Carlson
• Kentucky Folklife Program
• Kentucky Archaeological Survey
• Alumni Updates

What Moves You?: Georges Didi-Huberman’S Arts Of Passage And Pittsburgh Stories Of Migration, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

Contemporary art historian, critic, and theorist Georges Didi-Huberman thinks of images not as static objects, but as movements, passages, and gestures of memory and/or desire. For the French “historian of passing images,” as he has been called, “all images are migrants. Images are migrations. They are never simply local” (D2017). His book, Passer, quoi qu'il en coûte ("To Pass at Any Price"), co-written with the Greek poet and director Niki Giannari, takes on precisely the visual dynamics of passages, passengers, and passageways in the context of contemporary migration flows. In April 2018, only several months after the launching of the …

A Fat Imposter: The Embodied Intersection Between Race, Body Type And Fatness In Margaret Cho’S Comedy, Julia Cox

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Margaret Cho is a comedic goddess who, in her mockery, serves flaming hot social commentary about race, body image, and fatness. Within this thesis, I used critical discourse analysis to understand how Margaret Cho embodies Asianness, whiteness, and the body types and images prescribed respectively. While working on data analysis, I came across a common media trope of fat women: the use of indexically Southern (United States), Appalachian, and Working class indexicals in speech and lexical items. I connected the ideologies surrounding Southern and Appalachian language to the inequalities that fat women face. This voicing had not previously been written …

Ua12/2/67 Alpha Kappa Alpha, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

(Im)Mutable Race?, Deepa Das Acevedo

Faculty Articles

Courts rarely question the racial identity claims made by parties litigating employment discrimination disputes. But what if this kind of identity claim is itself at the core of a dispute? A recent cluster of “reverse passing” scandals featured individuals—Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug among them—who were born white, yet who were revealed to have lived as members of Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color (BIPOC) communities. These incidents suggest that courts will soon have to make determinations of racial identity as a threshold matter in disputes over employment discrimination and contract termination. More specifically, courts will have to decide whether …

Her Story: Ecuadorian Women In New York City, Benjamin Chambers

Capstones

My Capstone Project is an 80-photo reportage about women of Ecuadorian origin living in New York City, including text and video elements. The project is broken down into a general introduction; four photo stories each with captions and story text; and two videos. The project is entitled:

HER STORY: ECUADORIAN WOMEN IN NEW YORK CITY

https://www.chambersphotojournalist.com/capstone/

Mismatches: Museums, Anthropology And Amazonia, Anne-Christine Taylor

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Over the past decades, museums, particularly the large Euro-American ethnographic ones, have had trouble developing adequate presentations of Amazonian cultural productions. To some extent, this failure can be seen as a side effect of a more general trend—namely, the widening rift between museums and the discipline of anthropology. However, I will argue that the mismatch between the museum context and Amazonian indigenous peoples and cultures also draws on the former’s difficulty in understanding and adhering to the idea of museums, as opposed to other Western technologies of visualization and transmission. The aim of this conference, drawing both on my experience …

How Palestinian Aid Organizations Adapt To The Possibility Of Further Annexation And Rights Abuses In The Wake Of "The Deal Of The Century", Nadia L. Wiggins

Capstone Collection

This research explores the question, “To what extent has the ‘Deal of the Century’ impacted Palestinian aid organizations, and how might it impact them in the future?” The significance of this question lies in the fact that the “Deal of the Century” claims to solve one of the longest and most complex conflicts, yet it has not been sufficiently analyzed from a Palestinian perspective nor a humanitarian perspective. Furthermore, by presenting scholarly critiques of the deal and aid worker’s concerns, my hope is that an American audience may be convinced of the complicity of our government in devising a failed …

Vol. 43 No. 2 (2020): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 43, No 2-Dec 2020 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

Naming The Cook Islands: Articulation Theory And ‘Akapapa‘Anga, Emma Ngakuraevaru Powell

Pacific Studies

The Cook Islands has existed as a formal polity for roughly one hundred years. There is no antecedent Māori name for this nation. Referencing the explorer Captain James Cook, it has been the nation’s primary identifier since the late nineteenth century despite the nation comprising fifteen islands and various and distinct cultural genealogies prior to European arrival. In this article, I ask how might we effectively describe the formation of the Cook Islands’ national identity and understand its name given its underlying genealogical and cultural diversity. In asking this question, I consider the utility of cultural studies’ articulation theory for …

“Taiwan’S Ally Tuvalu To Soon Become A Water World”: Language, Place, And Taiwan’S Popular Discourse On Tuvalu, Jess Marinaccio

Pacific Studies

Carol Farbotko has argued that the “islands of Tuvalu, largely absent from Eurocentric imaginings of the Pacific region, have become meaningful spaces in cosmopolitan discourses only as they disappear” (Farbotko 2010, Wishful Sinking: Disappearing Islands, Climate Refugees and Cosmopolitan Experimentation; Asia Pacific Viewpoint 51 (1): 47–60). Similarly, although Tuvalu is more present in Taiwan because it is one of Taiwan’s few diplomatic allies, Tuvalu has also become more significant in Taiwanese discourse with increased coverage of climate change. However, whereas in the West, Tuvalu and climate change are mainly linked to (often self-serving) environmentalist narratives, in Taiwan, Tuvalu and climate …

The Chinese In California: Archaeology And Railroads At The Turn Of The Century, Evelyn Hildebrand

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Research on Chinese sites in California have focused on ethnicity, ethnic relations, and the material expression of ethnicity all of which are key issues in overseas Chinese archaeology. Chinatown sites produced data that helped define Chinese culture and experience in historical California. One railroad construction work camp site identified in 2016 located in the Cajon Pass in the late 1800’s offers the potential for insight into the lives of the workers. Chinese occupation in San Bernardino is not well understood, and the site may offer information on the culture, traditions, and integrations of the workers. Thousands of Chinese men left …

A Response To Marinaccio’S “Language, Place, And Taiwan’S Popular Discourse On Tuvalu”, Niuone Eliuta

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Love Of Place: Toward A Critical Pacific Studies Pedagogy, Emalani Case

Pacific Studies

Growing up in Hawaiʻi, I was raised with aloha ʻāina. Loosely defined as “love of place,” aloha ʻāina is a way of being in and with the world. It is built on relationship and stewardship. In this article, I will use aloha ʻāina to reflect on my role as a Pacific studies teacher and on what responsibilities educators may have to confront our common challenge and most dire threat: the destruction of the natural environment. I will articulate “love of place” to a critical Pacific studies pedagogy, one that addresses environmental issues, contributes to the well-being of the Pacific (people, …

Redefining Gendered Spaces: The Case Of The Indofijian Female Qawwal, Vicky V. Shandil

Pacific Studies

Qawwali, an IndoFijian musical performance, links directly to first generation Indian indentured laborers brought to Fiji by British colonizers between 1874 and 1916. The form of qawwali considered in this paper is performed as a challenge between two vocalists both assisted by musical ensembles, respectively. Firstly, this paper describes IndoFijian qawwali and its connections to South Asia and then pays attention to IndoFijian identity because the female qawwal’s ethnic identity precedes her performance-based identity. Through Qawwali female performers created a new public identity, that of a female qawwal. This transpired through the inclusion of females on a stage traditionally exclusive …

Vol. 43 No. 2 (2020): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Visualizing A Post-Apocalypse: Notes On New Ayoreo Cinema, Lucas Bessire, Bernard Belisário

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This essay describes one recent Ayoreo film and its production in order to reflect on the wider significance of lowland South American Indigenous cinema and analyses of it today. Informed by the authors’ roles in the collaborative editing of the film Ujirei, the article details how one Ayoreo filmmaker cinematically visualizes a unique aesthetic response to the aftermath of pandemic upheavals and world-ending violence – a response that pointedly exceeds any prescriptive or structuralist approach to lowland Indigenous cinema. In order to better grasp the subjective, conceptual and political implications of this project, the essay aims to craft an analytic …

The Video Camera Spoiled My Ethnography: A Critical Approach, Katherine Gregory

Publications and Research

As videography and other media technologies are normalized in the field of qualitative methods for the purpose of data collection, there is a growing need to discuss the benefits and limitations of these data collection tools. This article chronicles an ethnographic video study focused on the experiences of Muslim adults living in the Netherlands, and why the author opted to end the project. Issues focus on reckoning with the imperial gaze of the camera, performative behavior of participants before the camera and interdisciplinary tensions the researcher faced from conflicting trainings as a qualitative methodologist and media practitioner.

Ishi And The California Indian Genocide As Developmental Mass Violence, Robert K. Hitchcock, Charles A. Flowerday

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Ishi represents a form of sentimental folk reductionism. But he can be a teaching tool for the California Indian Genocide, John Sutter also. His mill was where gold was discovered – setting off a frenzied settlement in which Indians were legally enslaved and slaughtered, finally ending a decade after the Emancipation Proclamation. They had already experienced wholesale devastation under Spanish and Mexican colonization. The mission system itself was inhumane and genocidal. It codified enslavement and trafficking of Indians as economically useful and morally purposeful. Mexican administration paid lip service to Indian emancipation but exploited them ruthlessly as peons. The California …

A New Twist On The “Un-African” Script: Representing Gay And Lesbian African Weddings In Democratic South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This essay examines the media coverage surrounding two African weddings of lesbian and gay couples in South Africa, as a lens onto the evolving cultural politics of black queerness in that country. Two decades after South Africa launched a world-leading legal framework for LGBTI protections, I argue that these media representations depict the growing inclusion of black LGBTIQ people as a process of bridging the supposed “gap” between homosexuality and African culture. This new “bridging the gap” script seemingly rejects the older, dominant script portraying homosexuality as intrinsically “un-African.” But I argue that it instead reproduces the “un-African” script in …

Home Sweet Home, Adam Black

Indian Head Rock Project

An article published in the Portsmouth Daily Times on September 22, 2020 on the relocation of Indian Head Rock to South Shore Rotary Park.