Anthropology Commons^™

The Ever-Changing Immigration Experience: An Oral History On The Impacts Of Immigration For Connecticut Latine Residents / Una Experiencia En Cambio Constante: Una Historia Oral De Los Impactos De La Inmigración Por Habitantes Latines En Connecticut, Sam S. Arevalo-Hoefer

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper is an oral history study focused on Latine immigration experiences in Connecticut from six different individuals sharing their stories and perspectives on the immigration process. I focus on the act of testimony as a source of grassroots knowledge and attempt to spread this notion of community wisdom further through the creation of zines (small-batch, self-published, non-commercial shortform magazines) as a means of making information more accessible and reaching a larger audience on a local level.

I use oral histories as a method of research that can achieve a deeper, more human understanding of how macro level political decisions …

41.82379°N, 71.38497°W, Xiaotong Cai

Masters Theses

I, Xiaotong Cai, have known an abandoned bridge was lifted and stuck at 64-degree from 1976. I have walked and bent down towards it for over 60 times, each paralleling a journal entry. The visits and 27,351 words (up until May 5th) are the living proof: observation, encounters, correspondence, collectively and personally. It’s been nine months since it emerged in flux. Two flesh. A moving outsider and a still bridge. How can an Unused giant activate a human body? Who is the attractor and intervener?

Here, my solution is to conduct a series of small gestures. I say, interpreting without …

I Believe, Rusudan Dushuashvili

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how products become believable and desirable through the stories that surround them, and how design enables the continuous cycle of desire that defines consumption. Drawing on  the underlying structures of myth-making, identity, and belonging that allow consumer culture to function, it argues that consumer culture operates through the same instruments older systems of belief have always used — narrative, ritual, sacred objects, and shared language — and that design is what makes the story stick to the object.

“I Believe” is an archive of objects collected from contemporary consumer culture. Half are products found in the marketplace; …

Archives Of The Future, Ka Oskar Ly

Masters Theses

Archives Of The Future is a practice-based thesis that invokes the archive and the future as simultaneous.

This research insists on the recentering of HMong Indigeneity and its own rooted traditions of HMong Queerness and HMong Feminism as ancestral knowledge systems.

They are the medicine. To recover their cosmological capacity is to traverse centuries of systematic eradication by empires and patriarchy.

I treat artistic making, community encounter, memory, and materials as equally valid ways of knowing and as collaborators. Field research from 2020 to 2026 moves through kinship and artisan teachings. It spans Southeast Asia, France, the United States, and …

Just Between Us (And Everyone We Tell...), Deborah Khodanovich

Masters Theses

Graphic designers are often obsessed with a broader public. The desire to be seen, to be heard, to have our work reach the broadest audience possible—these are goals deeply ingrained in our discipline. But why? Just Between Us (and everyone we tell…) challenges us to abandon this fixation, proposing instead that graphic design should concern itself with the private—the intimate, the local, the unseen.

This is where gossip comes in. Gossip is the language of the invisible, a form of sharing, and a means of knowledge-production and preservation that has historically been dismissed as frivolous, immoral, and—most egregious of all—associated …

Tuning The Neighborhood: Purifying People, Places, And Environments In Suburban Kolkata, Sourav Saha

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In modern science, disciplines such as physics, mechanical and civil engineering, seismology, and acoustics have conceptualized vibration as a quantifiable mechanical phenomenon, measured through the metrics of frequency, amplitude, and resonance. In contrast, scholarship in anthropology, musicology, and sound studies has approached vibration as a socio-historical, cultural, and political phenomenon. This article examines how vibration (spandan) operates as a metaphysical, sensory, and ethico-affective force that mediates relations among people, places, and environments. Focusing on the practice of satsang adhibesan (devotional congregation), the article demonstrates how members of the Deoghar-Satsang community participate in sonic rituals of prayer, silent chanting, meditation, sacred …

Who Gets To Be Taken Seriously? Three Atypical Scholars Navigate Doctoral Education At The Intersections Of Race, Neurodivergence, And Veteran Identity, Sr. Richard De La Garza

Dissertations

As a first-generation, neurodivergent, Mexican American/Chicano veteran, I entered the University of San Diego's doctoral program having had experiences that most institutional intake processes would label as risk factors. The Findings chapter of this dissertation begins by describing those experiences—not as a confession, but as the foundation for a systematic inquiry into how doctoral legitimacy is produced, withheld, and defended. The description of my life experiences is followed by a discussion of the doctoral journeys of two other study participants who also were atypical doctoral candidates.

The central argument being advanced is this: What higher education calls "fit," "rigor," and …

Reframing Digital Ethnography As Research-Creation: A Review Of Exploring Digital Ethnography, Luis Miguel Dos Santos

The Qualitative Report

This review of Exploring Digital Ethnography: From Principles to Practice (Underberg-Goode & Otañez, 2025) argues that the book redefines digital ethnography as research-creation. This edited book not only explores social worlds through digital worlds, but it also shows how the design and production of multimodal creations establish how ethnographic knowledge is created and shared. Discoveries and guidelines are discussed, including examples of ethnographic comics, interactive autoethnographic narratives, participatory digital heritage designs, activist photography of bidi labor, organic theater, worldbuilding pedagogy, and collaborative smartphone storytelling with sexual minorities seeking asylum. This edited book shows how digital methods can allow deliberation (reflection, …

The Impact Of Covid-19 On Longevity Trends And Disparities Among Native Americans And Whites In The Four Corners States, Ashley M. Lenarz, Hyojun Park, Max T. Roberts, Anwesha Pan, Erin Trouth Hofmann, Eric N. Reither

Sociology and Anthropology Student Research

Prior research has shown suboptimal health and longevity among Native Americans in the Four Corners region of the United States, which encompasses Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. Our study (1) investigates how life expectancy trends and disparities changed among non-Hispanic Native Americans and Whites in the Four Corners States (FCS) during the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) examines the extent to which longevity changes are directly attributable to COVID-19, relative to other causes of death. Data sources include mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Life expectancy at birth for …

Towards Critical Agency: A Case Study Of Japanese Peacebuilding And Development In The Bangsamoro, Hana Soma

Master in Public Policy Theses

Asking “In what ways have anthropological methods been part of Japan's peacebuilding and development interventions in the Bangsamoro?”, this research hopes to make a contribution to the study of anthropology and development and their practical application by exploring the possibilities of the role of an anthropological approach in making sense of modern-day development programs, particularly through the case study of Japan’s peacebuilding-through-development efforts in the Bangsamoro. After outlining the research question as well as the design and methodology used to answer it and an overview of the histories of dispossession and the Japanese relationship to Mindanao, the essay …

A Rarer Earth: The Many States Of Peat In Central Kalimantan, Layna Chen Ms.

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Peat currently occupies a central place within climate discourse, with Indonesia’s peatlands as a key site of concern since the late twentieth century. Yet this contemporary understanding is historically unstable. Over the last two centuries, what we commonly consider peat has been repeatedly redefined by scientific and bureaucratic institutions. Within popular media, peat has circulated as a low-grade fuel, an infertile swampland, an agricultural soil awaiting rehabilitation, and a hydrological body requiring remediation. Tropical peatland fires, once treated as a scientific improbability, have become a recurring environmental crisis. This history of shifting definitions suggests that ‘peat’ is not a stable …

Inherited By “Merit”: What Caste Carries Across The Indian American Diaspora, Aarushi V. Jaiswal

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

This project traces the rhetorical formation termed “meritocratic nationalism,” a political vocabulary that makes national belonging conditional on moralized merit, converting structural advantage into the language of individual character. Meritocratic nationalism is traced across three political figures whose rhetoric represents successive moments in a single ideological trajectory. Reading Narendra Modi’s 2014 and 2018 Independence Day addresses and his 2014 Madison Square Garden speech to the Indian American diaspora as the formation’s originating texts, this project argues that Modi’s recurring moral tetrad of conduct, values, traditions, and ability translated the structurally concentrated advantages of India’s upper-caste professional class into a universalist …

Migrant Mobility Across Necropolitical Territories Of Violence: Los Zetas/Cartel Del Noreste, Alondra Danixa Gonzalez

Senior Theses

This thesis examines migrant mobility across northeastern Mexico as a process shaped by organized crime and necropolitical violence, with a focus on the evolution of Los Zetas and their successor, Cartel del Noreste [CDN]. Based on Achille Mbembe's concept of necropolitics, along with Sayak Valencia's theory of gore capitalism and Melissa W. Wright's notion of disposable bodies, this paper identifies cartel-controlled border regions as necropolitical spaces where migrants are exposed to death and exploitation. Using a qualitative, testimony-based methodology, this paper incorporates three first-person family narratives of border crossing alongside documented cases of mass violence in Tamaulipas and Coahuila, including …

The Co-Existing Of Religious And Secular Systems: An Ethnographical Study Of The Kalvária V Topoľčanoch And Religious Community In Topoľčany, Slovakia, Ruzena Zatko

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

During the communist era in Slovakia from 1948 to 1989, religion was forced into the private sphere and then re-entered into the public sphere when the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) collapsed in 1989. This research aims to answer how the communist state and religious community interacted during communism and how a democratic state and religious community interacted post-communism. This paper focuses on how people preserved their religion, how secularization was rejected, and how religion re-entered the public sphere after communism ended. To answer these questions, I conducted oral interviews, primarily with the townspeople of Topoľčany, Slovakia, and this includes …

Creating Space For The Public In Anthropology, Madison Joseph, Grace Tucker

2026 Symposium

This ongoing collaborative research project between Grace Tucker and Madison Joseph aims to evaluate an overlooked gap of knowledge and linguistic understanding concerning how anthropological findings are presented to both disciplinary experts and the general public. We will examine ways to improve public anthropology through improving our understanding of how to utilize everyday speech and specialist jargon simultaneously in the field. This project will include an extensive literature review of educational barriers and language use in anthropological research to identify solutions to remedy accessibility to, and dissemination of, these findings. We argue that museums and libraries are designed with the …

Becoming Mandan: The Collaborative Life History Of Robert O’Brien, Douglas D. Meigs

Sociology and Anthropology Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

This thesis examines how separation from—and later discovery of—an Indigenous family and culture shapes ethnic identity formation. Grounded in Charles Horton Cooley’s theory of the looking-glass self, it uses collaborative life history methodology to analyze the process of Indigenous identity formation experienced by Robert O’Brien, a Native American orphan who discovered his Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara (MHA) heritage as an adult. Drawing on two decades of reflexive research, unstructured interviews, participant observation, and archival documents, the case study shows how O’Brien’s sense of identity developed in response to shifting and often contradictory social mirrors.

Living Archaeology: A Comparative Perspective On How Archaeologists Can Study And Document The Present, Alia S. Moran

Honors Capstones

Archaeology has long remained a social science that has tended to exclude sustained consideration of contemporary societies in the analysis of material culture. In recent decades, approaches such as ethnoarchaeology and the archaeology of the contemporary have expanded the field to include the study of present-day societies through material culture. Inspired by my involvement in the Thais in Illinois Project, which focused on documenting the Thai American immigrant experience in the greater Chicago area to produce an oral history collection, alongside other goals, this thesis intends to further explore how archaeological practice can be used to understand everyday issues in …

Objects In The Sunset, Iskander Guetta

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

This research explores everyday design practices in the Maghreb shaped by economic, political, and ecological struggles amid transnational debates on decolonizing design. To do so, it looks at objects in, through and with the sunset. Taking المغرب — the place where the sun sets — as a conceptual lens, Objects in the Sunset illuminates the savoir-faire born from dispossession, scarcity, and epistemic violence. Working across different scales of the built environment — infrastructures, spaces, objects, and materials — it shifts design away from Eurocentric conceptions: from rationalization to resourcefulness, homogeneity to heterogeneity, optimization to adaptation, disposability to repair, and universal …

Examining Organizational Factors Contributing To Burnout In Community College Employees: An Anthropological Perspective, Jesse N. Blue

Leadership Education Capstones

Organizational culture and systemic inequities remain under-researched factors driving the mental and physical deterioration of community college employees. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe and interpret the lived experiences of job-related burnout among community college employees. This qualitative short-term ethnography was conducted at Big Rock College, a rural community college in central Arkansas. The sample consisted of six volunteer participants across administrative, faculty, and staff roles. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews conducted via Zoom®. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and triangulated with institutional document analysis. Findings indicated that 84% of participants experienced varying degrees of burnout, driven by …

Bound To Status: A Comparative Study Of Public And Private College Libraries, Lilianna Fujita

Anthropology

This ethnographic study compares student culture and behavior at two upstate New York universities — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), a private STEM-focused institution, and the University at Albany (UAlbany), a public research university. Through two rounds of participant observation conducted in each school's library and three semi-structured student interviews, the author examines how institutional type, admissions selectivity, campus environment, and resource allocation shape student social dynamics, gender experiences, and overall well-being. The author argues that differences in student behavior reflect not only individual student dispositions but broader institutional decisions about who is admitted and what social infrastructure is supported.

Cultural Authenticity And Commercialization: The Journey Of Southwest Indigenous Jewelry, Kaytlin M. Dwyer

Anthropology Undergraduate Honors Theses

Introduction Today, Southwest Indigenous jewelry exists at the intersection of cultural expression and commercial exchange. Drawing on interviews with Native artists, this study focuses on the lived experiences of those who design, produce, market, and curate Indigenous jewelry to argue that authenticity is not defined by visual appearance alone, but by the cultural knowledge, community relationships, and generational practices embedded in each piece. As Native silversmiths navigate increasing pressures from mass production, appropriation, and global markets, they actively work to maintain both artistic integrity and cultural authenticity. At the same time, this paper explores the tension between appreciation and appropriation. …

The Effectiveness Of Utilizing An Arts-Integrated Approach With Students With Ieps In Grades K–5 Self-Contained Classrooms And Why An Arts-Integrated Approach Is Not Widely Implemented In The United States, Alexandra Leff

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines arts integration as an approach for K–5 students with IEPs. Drawing on research from Western and non-Western and data from two programs, it shows gains in academic achievement and social-emotional learning. Despite cultural and systemic barriers, findings support expanding arts integration through teacher training and policy reform.

Sonic Rupture And Embodied Politics:
Reconfiguring The Aesthetic Regime In The Syrian Uprising, Lynn Shabani

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that the Syrian uprising of 2011 emerged as a sonic and embodied rupture within an authoritarian aesthetic regime that had long governed public sensibility. Through chants, song, and coordinated movement, political agency took form as collective, affective practice, transforming vernacular repertoires into infrastructures of mobilization, audibility, and resistance.

Fascism Usa: Class And Identity Politics In The Age Of Trump, Marc Edelman

Publications and Research

This essay argues that Trump’s triumph in the 2024 presidential contest represents the consolidation of an oligarchical authoritarian project, backed by a multi-class and (surprisingly, for some) multi-racial electorate. It brought intensified state and freelance attacks on immigrants, labor unions, women, LGBTQ+ people, journalists, civil servants, assorted “political enemies,” and other groups that the MAGA movement targets. It is institutionalizing authoritarian governance structures in ways that will be exceedingly difficult to undo. The paper first addresses the experience of growing up in the shadow of fascism. It analyzes various sectors that supported Trump and the impacts of inflation, incumbency, economic …

Addressing Low Vaccination Rates In Lewis County, New York: A Community-Based Participatory Research Study, Samantha Carter

Anthropology

Low rates of on-time human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination continue to remain a significant public health concern, particularly in rural communities, one being Lewis County NY, which reports the lowest rate of vaccination in the state.  This study, through Upstate Medical University, uses a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) model in efforts to examine barriers to HPV vaccination and identifying community-driven solutions formulated by committee members from within the community.  A steering committee composed of researchers and community members, who were also co-researchers, worked collaboratively to develop and distribute surveys to healthcare providers, dentists, and parents.  Responses revealed that while many parents …

The Geography Of Race: A Spatial Analysis Of Free People Of Color In The City Of Charleston (1790-1861), Alexandra Ullman

All Theses

In Charleston, South Carolina, for all but one year from 1790 to 1860, the enslaved and free Black population outnumbered that of the white. Through manumission, the process of an enslaved person gaining their freedom, the free Black population grew substantially and reached a peak in South Carolina during the nineteenth century. This large community of free people of color (FPOC), shifted the social climate by upsetting the balance of white power, thus increasing racial conflict, tension, and legislation that aimed to control the movement of FPOC.

Despite FPOC comprising a significant portion of the total population of Charleston, there …

Toward An Anthropology Of The Expressive Individual: Reformational Insights Into Emotions, The Heart, And Christian Formation, Isaac Kantola

Senior Honors Theses

Contemporary Western culture is increasingly defined by what theologians and sociologists call “expressive individualism,” driven by an “ethic of authenticity” in which one’s emotions and desires are seen as the primary arbiter of identity and meaning. Responding to this cultural movement, the Church has appropriated the language of desire, happiness, and the affective in its preaching, ministry, and apologetic endeavors. Figures such as John Piper, James K.A. Smith, and Timothy Keller have each, in their own way, sought to contextualize the faith so it may be better understood by a culture obsessed with their longings and therapeutic self-concern. While these …

House Of Ill-Fame: A Historical, Cartographic, And Archaeological Study On The Spatial Evolution Of Commercial Sex Work In New Orleans, 1875 – 1925, Austin Roebuck

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the historic spatiality of commercial sex‑work in New Orleans by analyzing targeted addresses associated with the trade across three census years. Using the establishment and closure of Storyville (1897–1917) as a temporal frame, it compares demographic patterns in dwellings labeled as “houses of ill fame” in 1880, 1900, and 1920 to trace changes in household composition and social identity. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, newspapers, and city directories contextualize these patterns within three ten‑year intervals (1875–1885, 1895–1905, 1915–1925), revealing how sex‑work spaces were regulated, represented, and embedded in the urban landscape. The study also incorporates an archaeological assemblage …

Intersectionality And Belonging: Higher Education Mathematics, Ashley Natalie

Mathematics and Statistics

Students with intersecting marginalized identities (such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, disability, or first-generation background) often face unique challenges in advanced mathematics that affect confidence, participation, amounting to a sense of belonging. These experiences remain underrepresented in mathematics education research. This qualitative, narrative-based study examines how these students experience classroom dynamics and belonging in upper-level mathematics courses. Semi-structured interviews will be analyzed thematically to identify patterns related to identity, classroom culture, instructor behavior, and peer interactions. Findings aim to highlight barriers and supportive practices, informing more inclusive teaching strategies and equitable learning environments in advanced mathematics.

Intersectionality And Belonging: Higher Education Mathematics, Ashley Williams

Mathematics and Statistics

Students with intersecting marginalized identities (such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, disability, or first-generation background) often face unique challenges in advanced mathematics that affect confidence, participation, amounting to a sense of belonging. These experiences remain underrepresented in mathematics education research. This qualitative, narrative-based study examines how these students experience classroom dynamics and belonging in upper-level mathematics courses. Semi-structured interviews will be analyzed thematically to identify patterns related to identity, classroom culture, instructor behavior, and peer interactions. Findings aim to highlight barriers and supportive practices, informing more inclusive teaching strategies and equitable learning environments in advanced mathematics.