Anthropology Commons^™

Ua12/2/85 Sigma Gamma Rho, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Sigma Gamma Rho sorority.

Ua1c11/127 Stephen Flora Photo Collection, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Photographs donated by WKU alumnus Stephen Flora, taken for class and College Heights Herald.

(Plant)Ing Traditional Roots: Exploring An Impact Of Environmental Shifts On Traditional Phytotherapy Practices In The Cusco Region Of Perú, Nicole Elizabeth Wilmot

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the potential outcomes of environmental shifts on plant-based medical practices in the Cusco region of Peru. Located in the Andes mountain range, at a high elevation, the environment varies immensely, specifically in the various types of native plants in the region. Historically, using plants as natural forms of medicine or healthcare has been deeply rooted in many indigenous communities, traditions, and cultures globally. Environmentally, there have been potential changes and shifts in temperature, water, and soil that affect the nutrition and health of plants to maintain their beneficial properties. Due to various factors, adaptations or shifts to …

Good Enough To Eat: How College Students Are (Re)Forming Their Relationships To Food, Sophia Lewis

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I seek to critically examine how college students at American liberal arts institutions relate to food in their everyday lives and how those relationships to food are formed in a cultural landscape where what and how one eats can carry significant moral implications. Through a series of ethnographic interviews, I found that college students are negotiating a variety of interconnected social influences that have shaped their relationships to food, the most prominent being the ways that their parents taught them to relate to food in childhood and adolescence, cultural conceptions of health, and their own embodied reactions …

Presenting Past People: Storytelling Through Prehistoric Garment Reconstructions, Floor Huisman, Anna Zimmermann, Ronja Lau, Karina Grömer

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

This paper argues that we need to focus on past people (rather than just objects) in our narratives and museum displays to engage museum visitors more effectively. It will demonstrate that we can use a combination of well-researched physical and digital prehistoric garment reconstructions to implement more people-centered approaches also used in living history, which bring the past to life and allow visitors to literally come face-to-face with long-dead people. In this way, visitors can relate to past people on an emotional level, which helps them to learn much more about past life than many traditional displays. After outlining how …

Frontmatter For Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, And Culture Across Millennia, Kerstin Droß-Krüpe, Louise Quillien, Kalliope Sarri

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

Title and copyright pages, Acknowledgments, Contents, Prefaces.

We believe this volume has the potential to contribute to the advancement of European scientific excellence and competitiveness, fostering a deeper understanding of the cultural, technological, and societal significance of textiles and clothing in shaping European identity and heritage through the millenia. We hope that the anthology will find a wide and interested readership, and that it will inspire many new research projects in the field of textile history.

Technical And Technological Analyses Of Excavated Textiles, Christina Margariti, Judith Goris, Petra Linscheid, Agata Ulanowska

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

Textiles are particularly complex and labor-intensive structures, thus their constructive elements, such as fibers and yarns, as well as the final textile products (e.g., threads, cords, fabrics, and applied decoration) reveal a range of important technical, technological, and sociocultural information. In this paper, we discuss the analysis of excavated textiles at two levels:

1) Technical analysis that offers basic information about the qualities of examined textile samples.

2) Technological analysis that provides insights into technology, social relations of production, and the level of craft specialization or production modes.

Both analyses offer new evidence for environmental resources, sustainability, trade, and exchange, …

Investigating Organic Colorants Across Time: Interdisciplinary Insights Into The Use Of Madder, Indigo/Woad, And Weld In Historical Written Sources, Archaeological Textiles, And Ancient Polychromy, Paula Nabais, Cecilie Brøns, Magdalena M. Wozniak

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

Organic dyes have been used from the earliest times to provide color primarily to textiles, but also as a colorant in painting. Such organic dyes could create a wealth of colors, depending on the availability and know-how of resources. These dyes are usually organic in nature, and primarily obtained from different plant sources. Unfortunately, the characterization of natural organic colorants in textiles and artworks is still a challenge. The difficulty of analyzing these materials is sometimes allied to the frequent impossibility of micro-sampling, and the frailty of the objects. Many techniques, such as HPLC (High-Performance Liquid Chromatography) and SERS (Surface-Enhanced …

Towards Textile Narratives: A Cross-Over Perspective On Textile Imagery In Statuary, Iconography, And Literature, Leyre Morgado-Roncal, Juliane Müller, Marisa Kerbizi

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

Textiles and clothing constitute a fundamental element of our cultural past, present, and future. Therefore, they were also represented in many mediums, such as iconographic depictions and literature. Images are a source of visual and mental illustration and are often dependent on the viewer’s perspective. As a result, the representations of textiles convey social constructions and their cultural perception. Their study is the focal point of this article: The ways in which textiles and clothing are described by the imagery shown in Greek and Roman statuary and iconography, as well as in contemporary Albanian literature and mythology.

Representations illustrate the …

Young Romans: Status, Dress, And Gender, Mary Harlow, Lena Larsson Lovén

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

The demographics of the Roman world suggest that it was a world full of children. Demographers argue that in order simply to maintain population levels in a period where life expectancy was very short by modern standards, and infant mortality high, a woman should, on average, have six children, on the assumption that not all would live to adulthood. Despite much research in the last fifty years, children still remain partly invisible in the Roman world. This is primarily because they leave little evidence produced by themselves and are seen through the prism of adult eyes. Inevitably, given the nature …

Narrative And Material Tools Of Resistance: Mobilizing Textile Crafts, Heritage, And Fashion In The Context Of The Invasion Of Ukraine (2022–2023), Magali-An Berthon, Sophia Hayda, Tetiana Krupa, Yuliia Lazorenko, Marie-Louise Nosch

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

In 2022–2024, textile and fashion scholars came together to write an anthology sharing a new vision of European history as seen through textiles, in the COST Action EuroWeb. During this period, the continent was still dealing with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and was then faced with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Contemporary European history will be markedly defined by the ongoing war in Ukraine. One remarkable aspect of this conflict is the way textiles and dress appear daily in a variety of media outlets, mobilized as visual and semiotic means to communicate issues of war …

A Sensory Perspective On High-Ranked Women’S Dress In The 8th To 4th Century Bc In The Mediterranean And Central Europe, Karina Grömer, Susanna Harris, Audrey Gouy, Cecilie Brøns

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

In the late 20th century, the study of western science was dominated by a philosophical approach to evidence as text and meaning. In archaeology, material culture was treated like text, to be read through systems of signs, symbols, and indices put together in syntax. For studies of dress, this was influential in understanding dress as a cognitive system compiled to create identities and meaning. In this approach, textiles, fastenings, hairstyles, and gestures are presented as signs and symbols used to form a statement about identity, to be read by others. There was a focus on the visuality of dress and …

Unveiling Spanish Language Attitudes In A Los Angeles School And A Third-Generation Multigenerational Mexican-American Family, Eric Alvarez

International Journal of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest

This chapter unearths some of the diverse attitudes towards Spanish of a third-generation child in Los Angeles (L.A.), California, her family members, and school personnel. L.A. is a tension-ridden contact zone (Pratt, 1991) where Spanish has traditionally been subjugated and is still a lesser-taught language (LTL) despite decades of research showing that bilingual education positively impacts student attitudes (Potowski & Muñoz-Basols, 2020). Lack of continuity (Caloi & Torregrossa, 2021) in formal instruction and inconsistent heritage Spanish use in the home may entail divergent attitudes towards Spanish, possibly hindering multigenerational transmission. Decades-long turbulent California language policies (CLP) (Macias, 2001) have consistently …

Cultivating Attentiveness To Law In India Through Legal Anthropology, Deepa Das Acevedo, Jahnavi Chamarthi

Faculty Articles

This Article reviews and analyses scholarship at the intersection of anthropology and law. The first half of the Article provides context for understanding the boundaries, animating concerns, and tensions that have characterised the anthropology of law as an area of interdisciplinary inquiry. We focus especially on the subdiscipline’s Anglo-American history and show how a promising early period of engagement dissipated as both anthropologists and legal scholars lost enthusiasm for each others’ insights and methods. Then, we expand our analysis outward. Because legal anthropology belongs within, and is increasingly attentive to, the broader field of law and society scholarship, we explore …

Affective Infrastructure And The Chilean Memorial Museum, Diego Borgsdorf Fuenzalida

Pitzer Senior Theses

The civic-military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) represented a period of unprecedented political violence in Chile — a time in which the government of the socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown in a bloody coup d’etat, army and police forces detained and tortured people suspected of affiliation with leftist activism, and hundreds of thousands of people were exiled from national territory. Post-dictatorship transitional governments have materialized a contested apparatus of institutions with the purpose of memorializing the victims of such violence, principal among them being the memorial museum. Based on ethnographic and collections research as a worker in the Museo …

"Ruskiy Mir" And "Ukrainskyi Svit": Ontological And Anthropological Antagonists, Liudmyla Fylypovych, Oksana Horkusha

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article focuses on a crucial issue of global interest--attempts of the Russian Federation to reformat the world according to the worldview model of the "Ruskiy mir." The paradigm of the "Ruskiy mir" assumes a system of values (ontological, anthropological, theological, and historiographical ideas and behavioral models) programmed by the entire russian history, as defined by russian culture, traditions, and the russian worldview. According to the "Russian worldview," the world should have a different structure, and the global international system should have a different format: Moscow (the Russian Empire and the Russian Federation) should be at the center of the …

Lgbtq+ Heritage In Kittitas County, Washington, Tiernan Vansuetendael

All Master's Theses

We know that LGBTQ+ people lived, loved, worked, and made history in Kittitas County—but you would never know that if you visited a local historical site or museum. LGBTQ+ histories exist, yet they are not always visible within the landscape, and this is particularly true for rural communities like Kittitas County. Meanwhile, representation of marginalized communities within local history can contribute to a sense of belonging, of knowing one’s place and the people who came before. This thesis addresses this gap in LGBTQ+ history by conducting archival and ethnohistorical research for the purposes of documenting LGBTQ+ history. Utilizing input from …

Foodways: An Ethnographic Analysis Of Cwu International Students’ Perception Of The Role Of Culturally Relevant Food In Their Sense Of Belonging, Joy Ihuka

All Master's Theses

International students face unique challenges adjusting to new academic environments, including developing a sense of homesickness and lack of belonging. Studies have shown that consuming culturally relevant food helps international students relieve homesickness, fostering a sense of belonging. Curiously, nonetheless, literature on student belonging rarely focuses on food. Within this gap, this thesis explores the significance of culturally relevant food in fostering a sense of belonging among international students at Central Washington University. Using ethnographic interviews, this research examines how culturally relevant food (including how food is prepared) or lack thereof may influence international students’ perceptions of belonging. This study …

The Unseen River And Infrastructural Silences: The Santa Ana River And The Ontology Of Floods, Cooper Lennon Crane

Pomona Senior Theses

This article discusses the history of land development and infrastructure along the Santa Ana River in Southern California. The river plays a significant role in the landscape of many of Southern California’s cities and urban geographies but has been relatively underdiscussed in literature. This article approaches the river using a combination of historic ethnography and sociocultural theory to unpack the meanings of the infrastructure of the river and its relation to Southern Californians. From these meanings, the article places the river in context with environmental politics, urban development, and water management issues in California today. The article argues that the …

Lingering Presence: (T)Racing Chinese Community In The Borderlands, Reia Li

Pomona Senior Theses

By the mid-1900s, although there were only around 700 Chinese people in Tucson, Arizona, there were over 100 Chinese-owned markets. These small grocery stores were located in Mexican American barrios and served mainly Mexican, Indigenous, and Black people. Starting from these stores and moving to other spaces important to the Chinese community, this work explores race as a spatial process and space as a racialized project. Drawing on anthropology, geography, and Asian/American studies, this thesis (t)races the transformations of Chinese homes, grocery stores, and suburban spaces throughout the 20th century, examining the racial meanings that these places both emerged from …

“Sounds Like” Redemption? On The Musicality Of Species And The Species Of Musicality, Tyler Yamin, Alice Rudge

Faculty Journal Articles

Popular and academic studies of music frequently claim that human musicality arose from the so-called ‘natural world’ of non-human species. And amid the anxieties produced by the Anthropocene, it is thought that the possibility of reconnecting with the natural world through a renewed appreciation of music’s links with nature may usher in a new era of posthuman environmental consciousness, offering repair and redemption. To critique these claims, we trace how notions of ‘musicality’ have been applied to or denied from non-human entities across diverse disciplines since the late nineteenth century. We conclude that such debates reinforce the separation that they …

Cooking In The Past And For The Future In Latin America, Clare A. Sammells

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Fairness Model Of Legal Institutions, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Books and Chapters

If any group is to endure over time, individual frustrations, while inevitable, must be usually experienced as acceptable, or at least tolerable. Failing that, little would prevent the losers in these conflicts from leaving or revolting, which would be cumulatively debilitating to the group. As opposed to holding law’s job to impose order and police infringers, the second approach suggests that finding the balance between group and individual desires is the ‘major difficulty of all law—the problem of really getting a fresh start in relations between litigants after disposition of a trouble-case. This is the problem not only of keeping …

The Impact Of Museum Curation On Community And Identity: Japanese Culture At The Japanese American National Museum And The Huntington Library's Japanese Gardens, Cate Hasler

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores Japanese culture and its representation in two museum sites, the Japanese American National Museum, and the Huntington Library's Japanese Gardens. It examines the history of the sites and the curation of exhibits to determine the impact on Japanese identity and community within the Los Angeles area. Through ethnographic interviews and research, this thesis concludes that museums can be locally embedded cultural processes, where the ideas of identity and community are contested, challenging the authoritative and top-down operations of a museum as a public institution.

Defining The Historical Significance Of Eatonville Memorial Gardens, Caroline Amein

Honors Program Theses

Eatonville, Florida is the first all-Black incorporated town in the United States and the hometown of Zora Neale Hurston. This remarkable town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Eatonville’s historic cemetery, however, is left out. This thesis examines why Eatonville Memorial Gardens was considered ineligible for the National Register and collects data to submit a new nomination. Through ethnographic interviews and archaeological and archival data, this work explores what historic Black cemeteries mean to their communities as well as our shared history. This work also hopes to answer the question of what is lost when a cemetery …

A Growing Dome In The Clouds Of Everest: An Applied Anthropology Project In The High Himalaya, Gary Mark Lesley

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Presented is a novel approach to addressing food insecurity within a remote indigenous community situated in the high Himalaya of Nepal. The village faces challenges in accessing fresh, affordable produce, particularly during harsh winter seasons. This threatens the community's food sovereignty and adversely affects the stability of the Sir Edmund Hillary School, a site of historical and cultural importance. Through the integration of indigenous knowledge and technological advancements, this APP details a strategy to augment local agriculture, drawing on applied anthropological methodologies. The genesis of this project stems from the creative leadership of the school principal and his vision for …

Mediating Authenticity: An Ethnographic Portrait Of Experience At U.S. Popular Music Festivals, Elizabeth Navarra Varnado

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This ethnographic study of U.S. popular music festivals subverts the impression of festivals as strictly ‘presentational’ live music events by utilizing a nuanced approach that is grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, historical analysis, and participant interviews.

Interlocutors, drawn from the author’s personal network of festival attendees, musicians, and promoters, reflect on “particularly positive festival moments,” the social and emotional benefits of festivals, and the corporeality of festival aesthetics. Discourse and published media play a vital role in festival participants’ perception of the festival field and their place within it; therefore, this study draws inspiration from the tripartite focus of iconic festival …

Recovering The Nium Trail: A Journey Through Collaboration And Multidisciplinary Mapping, Crystal West

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study explores and maps an ancient, historic, and contemporary travel corridor that follows the San Joaquin River in the Central Sierra Nevada of California. It is called the Nium or People’s Trail by the North Fork Mono Tribe, the French Trail in historic archives, and the Mammoth Trail on contemporary US Forest Service maps. When I agreed to the request by Chairman Ron Goode of the North Fork Mono Tribe to map the Nium Trail, I was saying yes to a different, more broad and inclusive approach than I had previously taken as an archaeologist documenting archaeological sites and …

Cultivating Legalism From Paper Proofs: Analysing Everyday Forms Of Claim Making By Van Gujjar Pastoralists In Uttarakhand, Mohammad Meer Hamja, Pranav Menon

Socio-Legal Review

Scholarship from South Asia has often highlighted how subaltern peoples partake in social movements as figures of resistance but rarely analyse their techniques of working the law in their favour to negotiate citizenship with the state. Such modes of articulating claims through affective gestures and vernacular legalese foster plural meanings to otherwise rigid legal categories and dogmatic bureaucratic interpretation. This paper draws upon socio-historical and ethnographic accounts of Van Gujjars to highlight how these pastoralists utilise myriad forms of paper proofs and documentary evidence to engage in claim making across the forests of Uttarakhand. Through an articulation of everyday tactics …

Social Determinants Of Health: Evaluation Using Rates Of Vision Screening And Follow-Up Examinations, Madeline Dyer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Vision care is essential to the quality of life of young children, impacting them over the course of their lives. Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) affect the likelihood of a child having access to appropriate care specified by the Bright Futures. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of SDOH on the completion of vision screening and the rate of follow-up with an eye care provider when applicable. In addition, rates of instrument-based vision screening and recommended ophthalmology follow-up were compared with COI, a metric assessing the quality of resources available and the conditions that matter for …