Anthropology Commons^™

From Planned To Lived: Street-Level Transformation And The Production Of Urban Space In New Cairo, Seba Abouyoussef

Theses and Dissertations

Egypt's new cities program has produced four generations of satellite developments, yet none have been systematically evaluated for how they perform once inhabited. Each is planned as a prototype — functionally zoned, automobile-oriented, image-driven — with little regard for the social, cultural, and behavioral dynamics that will shape it. This thesis examines the gap between the planned city and the lived city by tracing how three streets in New Cairo transformed over a fifteen-year period (2010–2025) through everyday use, stakeholder interaction, and pivotal trigger events.

The research follows a qualitative, multi-phase methodology — combining historical and physical mapping, behavioral observation, …

Circulating Futures: Infrastructure, Value, And The Making Of Contemporary Egypt, Yasmine Abdeldayem

Theses and Dissertations

Since 2014, Egypt has undertaken an unprecedented expansion of its road network as part of a broader project of territorial development and national renewal. Roads are presented in this project as the connective infrastructure through which new cities, investment zones, and desert territories are brought into circulation. Yet their developmental effects are often difficult to discern: infrastructure is rapidly built but unevenly maintained, while projects justified in terms of mobility, growth, and public benefit can produce dispossession, exclusion, and new forms of risk. This thesis argues that roads cannot be understood solely through the developmental outcomes they are intended to …

Topographies Of Being: World-Making And Ontological Formation In Modern Saint Catherine, South Sinai, Ahmad Mahana

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploration of the ecological and sociological processes involved in the production of the socionatural space of the contemporary town and natural protectorate of Saint Catherine, South Sinai. Revered by all Abrahamic religions as the site of the Great Theophany, the town has perpetually been considered an area of immense spiritual and natural significance. In recent decades, however, the town has undergone a series of modernizing campaigns that have not only threatened the region’s natural environment and indigenous lifeways but have also jeopardized the plurality of its extant lifeworlds. By relying on a variety of ethnographic methods, …

The Game Within: An Anthropological Approach To Games And Play, Nehal Maged Mohamed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is based on an eighteen-month ethnography of El Ghawasa, an Egyptian play-based organization that designs educational games, tools, and services. Claiming that El Ghawasa, with its ethos of play, seeks to create an alternative to the capitalist corporate structure. Through tracking how this organization navigates ruptures, negotiates constraints, and experiments with different practices and internal restructuring, I explore the possibilities and limitations of El Ghawasa, while attempting to resist absorption by the very system it opposes. I ask: when the rules keep changing (while the logic of the capitalist corporate structure remains the same), and the boundaries of …

The Case For The Exclusion Of Exclusion: Intellectual Property, Masculine Legal Reason, And The Ethics Of Care, Ragya Shoukry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that current legal ideals of objectivity and neutrality are historically gendered and inseparable from the development of capitalist property relations and imperial expansion. It traces origins that begin with early modern witch hunts and Francis Bacon’s empiricism, where a new “scientific rationality” emerges alongside intensified patriarchal violence. The thesis then examines John Locke’s labour-based justification of property and the figure of the rational individual, showing how this framework legitimizes enclosure, dispossession and colonial appropriation under the guise of improvement and development. Building on this foundation, the analysis turns to moral psychology and how its allegedly universal stage …

Fishing, Butchery And Smoking: Salmonids In Northeastern Iceland, Quinn Matthew Habedank

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the ethnoecology of Northern Iceland from 1880-1920 via the zooarchaeology of salmonid remains. Based on the identification of salmonid bones retrieved from Hofstaðir, the people living at the farm likely engaged in small-scale production of transportable fish products based on locally available wild resources.

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.

Journeys Of Emancipation, Struggle, Or Both? Accounts From Professional Egyptian Migrant Women In Germany, Adam Eddouss

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the migration experiences of a group of professional Egyptian migrant women living in Germany. By employing a qualitative approach, primarily through semi-structured interviews, and guided by migration literature, this research attempts to move away from the oversimplistic approach that migration is an ‘either or’ reality. Mainstream migration scholarship, specifically that focusing on migrant women, tends to focus on depicting migration within an emancipation-struggle binary, presenting migrant women either as victims or as heroines. This work, antithetically, describes how migrant women experiences can be complex, highlighting, both instances of strength and struggle. Grounded in the words of the …

An Ethnographic Exploration Of The Lived Experiences With Gynecologic Cancers, Norma Naser Aldeen

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This thesis stays close to conversations with nine women who spoke about living with and through gynecologic cancers, from moments of finding out, through treatment, and into what follows. These encounters unfolded primarily through digitally mediated exchanges across Baalbek, Beirut, and other translocal settings shaped by distance and movement. Rather than approaching illness as a bounded biomedical event, this thesis attends to how gynecologic cancer is narrated as something that lingers—pressing into everyday life through bodily sensations, altered rhythms, and ongoing recalibrations of care, responsibility, and what remains possible.

Across these encounters, care rarely appears as a stable system …

Groove Goes The Distance: An Initial Inquiry Into Jazz Music In Egypt, Farida Gohar

Theses and Dissertations

Jazz music has been a historically contentious site of social, cultural, and political signification. From the violent subjugation that characterized its origins and aspirational freedom that animated its practice, to its transformation into a distinctly “American” music instrumentalized by the US State Department to counter Soviet influence, jazz’s capacity for the inscription of meaning is vast and regularly cause for debate. The particular configuration of jazz music in Egypt is no less complicated although seldom studied. This thesis ventures an initial mapping of the dynamics and negotiations that historically defined the initiation of “Egyptian” jazz, as well as the ones …

The Effect Of The Socioeconomic Variety In Greater Cairo On Transport Mode Choices, Rafik Yanni

Theses and Dissertations

In the last decade, Egypt has experienced a noticeable upgrade in its infrastructure investment, implementing a lot of transport projects, especially in the Greater Cairo region. In a city with over 20 million residents, variations lie in socioeconomic elements like income, age, gender, and neighborhood, which shape people’s choice of mobility modes based on their culture and lifestyle. The questions then become: whom are these new projects targeting? What are the barriers to using these services? And is there any willingness to change commuting habits if conditions changed? This thesis investigates how the socioeconomic variety in Greater Cairo metropolitan region …

Airbnb And The End Of The Local, Nadia Beyersdorf

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how second-home ownership and self-catered tourism reshape community life in Tenby, Wales. While gentrification research often focuses on permanent displacement, less attention has been given to the movement of temporary residents that erodes local culture, social ties, and transforms everyday relationships in coastal towns.

Applicability Of Cementochronology To Estimate Season-Of-Death In Humans: Insights From Modern Documented Collections, Olga Ibarra-Sanchez

Theses and Dissertations

Dental cementum is characterized by lifelong deposition of alternating opaque annuli in fall/winter and translucent bands in spring/summer. This study aims to test the applicability of cementochronology to estimate season-of-death, by observing the properties of the last layer, with direct implications for forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology. The sample includes canine teeth from 146 adults (84 males, 62 females), age-at-death ranging from 20-97 years (mean=61.7 years, SD=18.6 years), from two contemporary skeletal collections. Of these individuals, 78 (53.4%) died in spring/summer and 68 (46.6%) died in fall/winter. Overall accuracy was low at 64.4% (94/146). Accuracy was higher for spring/summer deaths 100.0% …

Behind The Gens: A Bioarchaeological Study Of Kinship Structure And Social Change In Iron Age Latium, Italy, Andrea Noemí Acosta Caballero

Theses and Dissertations

The cemetery of Osteria dell’Osa is the only completely published Iron Age cemetery from Latium. Its research legacy continues as dietary, mobility, and biological affinity patterns were reconstructed through carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium isotope analyses and biodistance analysis using bone and dental samples for this dissertation project. The main hypotheses tested are:

a) The diet of people buried at Osteria dell’Osa during the Iron Age likely consisted of mostly grains like wheat and barley, which may yield low carbon isotope signatures;

b) The protein consumption of the diet of people at Osteria dell’Osa was mainly composed of terrestrial protein …

Addressing Climate Vulnerability And Policy Gaps Of Heat Waves In Upper Egypt: The Case Study Of Al-A’Qaab Village In Aswan, Eman Abdullah

Theses and Dissertations

Heatwaves are currently one of the most dangerous climate hazards globally. Egypt is experiencing an increase in the intensity and frequency of heatwaves, which affects health, economy, infrastructure, and the ecological system. Upper Egypt is one of the most vulnerable regions in Egypt to rising temperatures, particularly in Aswan Governorate. The risks of heat waves are increasing vulnerability among vulnerable groups, such as women and low-income individuals. However, there is a clear gap in protection policies against heat waves, along with a lack of studies examining the effects of heat waves on individuals in Aswan. Accordingly, this thesis aims to …

The Automation Of Aesthetics: Artificial Intelligence And Commercial Artists In North Brooklyn, Devin Sudweeks

Theses and Dissertations

Corporate elites expect generative AI to replace commercial artists but overlook their social and aesthetic expertise. This ethnographic study explores how Brooklyn-based commercial artists narrate their value amid automation, emphasizing embodied presence in cultural scenes, visual language, style, and authenticity, skills not easily mechanized but vital to aesthetic economies.

Editing Japan: Pornography Commentary As Postcolonial Revenge In China's Digital Sphere, Yichi Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how Chinese male audiences reconstruct postcolonial masculinity through the consumption and reinterpretation of Japanese pornography. By analyzing commentary videos produced by "Team Strawberry," I argue that this phenomenon constitutes a symbolic revenge against Japan's historical dominance. Through degrading Japanese female performers and mocking Japanese culture and male actors, Chinese viewers invert colonial hierarchies, transforming sexual consumption into a nationalist project. However, this mimicry of colonial violence ultimately reinforces patriarchal structures rather than subverting them, while also framing nationalism through sexual conquest that mimics collective historical trauma. The re-editing and mocking of Japanese pornography by Chinese content creators …

A Spatial Examination Of Colonial Anglican Landscapes In The South Carolina Lowcountry, Madeleine Paige Blaze

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project will focus on the early colonial landscape of the South Carolina Lowcountry to analyze the placement of Anglican churches that were built between 1700 and 1730. My research will expand on previous analysis of the Anglican landscape to incorporate additional components that will aid in a better understanding of regional organization. To do so, I will incorporate a landscape archaeology theoretical frame that will allow my research questions to be explored. This project will also include GIS analysis to examine spatial visualizations, navigation paths, and colonial relationships to understand the Church’s early interactions with and on the …

The Craft Of Tally: Tracing Marketability And Economic Sustainability Of Crafts, Mariam Mabrouk

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the marketability and economic sustainability of the Tally craft in Gezeirit

Shandaweel, Sohag, Egypt, with a focus on how the craft navigates the tension between cultural

preservation and economic adaptation. Tally, a traditional form of embroidery, has deep cultural

roots in Egypt but faces significant challenges due to global market dynamics, shifting consumer

preferences, and systemic institutional neglect. Through an ethnographic case study, this research

investigates how artisans, institutions, and market forces interact to shape the craft's future. The

study examines the role of cultural perceptions, innovation, and institutional support in fostering

or hindering Tally's economic viability. …

Ways Of Living And Knowing, Reem El Hassan Mohamed

Theses and Dissertations

After decades of sedentarization, the Muzeina tribe in South Sinai now has new generations born into sedentary lifestyles, never experiencing nomadism like their ancestors once did. This shift has impacted their knowledge system, traditionally shaped by interactions and kinship with nature. Exposure to social media is influencing younger generations' ways of living, raising the older generations’ concerns about their Bedouin identity. Despite being one of the largest tribes in South Sinai, the Muzeina are rarely represented in literature.

This ethnography explores the impact of sedentarization and contextual developments on the Muzeina's knowledge system, inherited from their ancestors. Muzeina’s relationship, and …

Redefining Roles In Displacement: The Asylum Journey Of Sudanese Women In Faisal, Cairo, Majeda Abdin Mahasneh

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how Sudanese refugee women, who arrived in Faisal, Cairo, after April 2023 experience gender-based violence (GBV). The research investigates the types of GBV these women encountered during their journey from Sudan to Cairo, how their gender roles changed in the asylum context, and their vision for the future regarding safety and support. A qualitative approach was employed, using in-depth interviews with four Sudanese refugee women, complemented by field notes and observations made during visits to the Faisal neighborhood. The analysis focused on the personal stories shared by the women, highlighting the various forms of violence they experienced, …

Searching For Enslavement In Viking Age Iceland: An Exploration Of Making The “Invisible” Visible, Caitlin Moore

Theses and Dissertations

Enslavement was almost certainly a reality in Viking Age Iceland. However, the fields of Norse Studies and archaeology have traditionally used different lines of evidence to explore enslavement, and for archaeologists, the phenomenon has been left underexplored, and sometimes considered "invisible." While Norse Studies relies primarily on written texts, such as sagas and poems, archaeology focuses more on material remains, including burials and shackles. In Iceland, the archaeological evidence is more subtle - houses with annexes or pit houses, as well as signs of intensive farming and weaving, for example. The presence of any one of these could be otherwise …

Intersections: Gastro-Politics Aesthetic And Contemporary Chinese Art, Fan Du

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how contemporary Chinese artists use food as a medium to explore ritual, trade, politics, and cultural identity. Centering on The Note of Food, an exhibition I curated, it draws on Arjun Appadurai’s concept of gastro-politics and Lu Xun’s nalaizhuyi (“grabbing doctrine”) to analyze how artists strategically appropriate cultural resources amid tensions between East and West, and tradition and modernity. Merging curatorial practice with food and visual anthropology, the project uses exhibition-making as both method and object of inquiry. As a native anthropologist working as both curator and researcher, I propose a model of curatorial anthropology that …

Fugitive Colors, Natalie Rose Eddings

Theses and Dissertations

My objects are meditations on intertwining themes of labor, rest, and interiority and their shadow sides—power, subjugation and the gaze. I couple materials that have millenia-long histories such as metals, glass, paper and clay with found objects and plat materials to illustrate narratives and exhume memories. Drawn from nature and technologies of land, plant stewardship and the domestic realm, I imagine my sculptures as life supporting vessels or magical enclosures.

Through sculpture, photography and printmaking, I build structures that are space of quiet to be filled with thought, healing and development. Like incubators and seed pods, my work is protective …

Of Grave Importance: A Collaborative Approach To Archaeological Research On The Cooper River Cemetery, Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, Angelina Towery-Tomasura

Theses and Dissertations

Land dispossession and displacement is a challenge being faced by the Gullah community in Lowcountry South Carolina. Land dispossession due to a phenomenon known as coastal capitalism, or, the increased interest in coastal property, on Daufuskie Island served as an impetus for Miss Sallie Ann Robinson, a Gullah, Daufuskie native, to reach out to academic communities to assist in the preservation of spaces including cemeteries. This led to the ongoing collaborative archaeology project on the Cooper River Cemetery to record information about burials and investigate the presence of those without any headstone markers. The Cooper River Cemetery is one of …

Navigating Trauma: A Linguistic Exploration Of Bilingual Trauma Expressions, Amira Mahmoud Othman

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between language, trauma, and emotional expression among bilingual Arabic-English speakers, focusing on code-switching patterns and euphemisms, and more broadly the emotional roles of native and non-native languages in trauma narratives. Through qualitative interviews with 20 Egyptian participants, the research reveals that code-switching serves as both a linguistic and emotional tool, allowing speakers to navigate trauma by creating distance or engaging more intimately. Such codeswitching patterns include the integration of English content words within Arabic structures, morphosyntactic innovations, and gender agreement applications, reflecting the creative adaptability of bilingual speakers in emotionally charged contexts, in line with …

“I Remember It...I Feel It” Place’S Intangible Identity: Explorations Through The Lens Of Micro-Phenomenology- Case Study Of Al-Sultan Hassan Complex, Sarah Mohamed El Zoheiry

Theses and Dissertations

In today’s contemporary architecture, the growing of anonymous and interchangeable spaces has diminished the distinctive character of the place, its individuality and experiential signification, fostering placelessness. This research argues that the framework of reconsidering place’s atmosphere offers a pathway to reconnect people with places through emotional, sensory, and embodied encounters. This research investigates the phenomenology of place, focusing on the atmosphere as an intangible identity that transcends physical attributes and engages people's senses and feelings. By exploring the Al-Sultan Hassan complex, the study deepens the understanding of the transcendental quality of the atmosphere, it’s unfolding over time, and it’s associated …

Serious Music With Bea Witkin: An Upper West Side Audio Walk, Megan Hattie Stahl

Theses and Dissertations

Serious Music with Bea Witkin is a site-specific audio walk on New York City’s Upper West Side produced by Megan Hattie Stahl. This immersive, musical documentary explores and extends the life and work of composer Beatrice Witkin (1916-1990). Across four stationary chapters and three walking interludes, participants follow a one-mile route from Riverside Park to Straus Park by way of Witkin’s longtime residence on West End Avenue. Through guided narration, archival music, interviews and recordings of contemporary musicians sight-reading a 1985 string quartet piece by Witkin, Serious Music invites listeners to consider where music begins and ends.

Witkin, who graduated …

Art As Resistance: Challenging Colonial Legacies Through The Eyes Of South Asian Diasporic Women, Sofina Tanni

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how South Asian diasporic women artists in New York utilize art to resist colonial legacies and express their multifaceted identities. Through ethnographic research, it highlights how themes of nostalgia, preservation, community, and activism shape their work, fostering collective resistance and transformative decolonial pathways.