Anthropology Commons^™

Assessing The Utility Of The Pmm And Mmc Indices Among Extant Hominoid Genera, Julie A. Strain

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis set out to incorporate extant hominoid genera into an analysis of PMM and MMC to assess utility in phylogeny and predicting known taxonomic groups. Based on previous claims, we expect PMM/pmm and MMC/mmc to perform better than M1/m1 shape and size, our baseline for success, but they do not.

African Seminole Settlement Ecologies Of Early Nineteenth Century Florida, Jordan E. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

For over three centuries prior to the outbreak of the Second Seminole War [1835-1842], peoples of African and Native American descent independently and collectively formed multiple communities throughout what is now Florida. During the early 1990s, several ancestral African Seminole (otherwise known as “Black Seminole”) settlements were identified across Central Peninsular Florida, many of which were founded by self-emancipated Africans commonly referred to as maroons. Previous archaeological research at the African Seminole settlement of Pilaklikaha, or Abraham’s Old Town, has greatly stimulated both scholarly and public interest in tracing the historical trajectories of individual African-Native American communities while remaining attentive …

“Whoz Ya People?”: Defining Lumbee Citizenship And Belonging In The 21St Century, Timothy Blake Hite

Theses and Dissertations

The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina is a state-recognized tribe with an estimated 60,000 citizens. From 2018-2020, the tribe closed their enrollment office so that the tribe could reexamine enrollment policies, particularly the criterion for appropriate contact with the tribal homeland. During this closure, the tribe was continuing its long journey for federal recognition, with a bill passing the U.S. House of Representatives and receiving support from then President Donald Trump and current President Joseph Biden. During the summer of 2021, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork with the tribe’s enrollment department, located in Pembroke, NC, to answer the question of how …

“That Was Denied Thee On Earth”: An Intersectional Bioarchaeology Of Institutionalized Euro-American Women Throughout 19Th And 20Th-Century America, Madeline Maria Atwell

Theses and Dissertations

In the mid 19th-century, American state-supported insane asylums, later renamed state mental hospitals in the 20th-century, were constructed to house and humanely treat individuals perceived to be socially deviant or mentally and physically ill. Women were particularly vulnerable to undue institutionalization because of the prevailing patriarchal gender ideology within medical and colloquial spheres that contributed to the perception that they were biologically pathological. This dissertation interprets the findings of combined archival, historical, and osteological analysis from two U.S. skeletal collections: The Colorado State Insane Asylum (CSIA) Collection and the Hamann-Todd Human Osteological Collection (HT), to examine the embodied, physiological impact …

Inhabiting Suspension: Neoliberalism And The Public Servants In Ismailia's Radio Canal, Mayar Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

To be a public servant in 2021 is to endure many sociopolitical and financial hardships as well as many stereotypes. Between living in dire straits and lacking any motive to work, the public servants and their behavior are almost always rendered indolent. Yet, this ambiguous/all-inclusive category needs to be pinned down, shaped in a sociopolitical landscape in which change is analyzed, documented, and conveyed. In the journey of uncovering what it is like to be working in a service governmental institution, Radio Canal in Ismailia allowed me to delve into a segment of the public servant category in a moment …

“No Masses Without Muslims’ Approval” The Crisis Of Building And Restoring Churches In Egypt: Three Case Studies From El-Minya Governorate, Sara Shaltout

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined the crisis of building and renovating churches in Egypt in the light of the Church-state relation. I focused on three case studies in the El-Minya governorate that includes the largest Christian concentration in the Middle East to shed light on the existing difficulties that face Christians there regarding building a house of worship. The first case study, "church No 1", was demolished due to political conflict between Islamists and the state after the Rabaa massacre in 2013. In comparison, church No 2 asserts that Muslims' approval is a prerequisite for Christians' prayers. In addition to church No …

Transnationalism And Identity: The Dream Of ‘Better Life’ For Egyptian Migrants In The Uae, Aliaa Ellawaty

Theses and Dissertations

In the modern globalized world, there has been a shift in migration studies that now focus on those immigrants from a transnational perspective. Thus, their lives are not detached from the transnational space that is not only about the point of departure and the point of arrival, but it is more related to the interconnections that emerge in the transnational space. This means that individuals are no longer tied to ethnic and cultural diversities, but by the transformations in the sociality of the transnational space. For many years, the United Arab Emirates has been a great attraction for middle-class Egyptians …

The Social World(S) Of The Scooter: Two-Wheeled Mobilities In Cairo And Alexandria, Ahmed El Serougui

Theses and Dissertations

My research project looks at the scooter as a particular type of two-wheeled motorcycle, which has shot into prominence as a specific mode of transportation used by middle class women and men in the past few years and has been notably visible in prominent Egyptian cities. This research is based on a multi-sited ethnography in Alexandria and Cairo, tracing the scooter through the urban landscape in time and space, addressing first questions related to navigating the city in times of pandemic and what kind of theory could be produced from these ordinary cities in such an extraordinary time.

This research …

Making Yourself At Al-Dar: On Islamic Education, Social Imaginations, And Affective Possibilities, Alia Amr Amin Shaddad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the Dar as an alternative space of knowledge, and unravels how its different contexts and rhythms allow us to imagine what that alternative means in the everyday. In order to do so, this thesis unpacks questions of space, time, subjectivity, and potential. I look at the ways in which this Dar is constituted as a space through its relations with other spaces and by engaging questions of temporality. By doing so, this thesis maps this space to make clear what and how it is, and highlights the historical and geographical context it exists in. This also includes …

The Banality Of Corporate Evil, Amina Dessouki

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis critiques the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) through tracing the multiple dynamics between a multinational corporation and a development consultancy working on a recycling project in collaboration with the Zabaleen in Mansheyet Nasser, Egypt. The thesis looks at the ways in which actors negotiate their different positions, the harmonies and discordances that unfold through various agendas coming together, the silences produced, and the ways in which structural violence is intensified under the guise of development. The thesis contrasts the detached efforts of corporate workers and development consultants with the lives of the zabaleen, who live in a …

Politics Of Controlling Birth: C-Section, Use Of Contraception And Obstetrics Violence In Bangladesh, Sadia Sharmin

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the increasing rate of cesarean birth in Bangladesh through the lens of the population control program. Based on three months of data collection, the study explores various politics of the government’s population control program, leading me to argue that cesarean birth is an implicit way of controlling overpopulation in Bangladesh since it limits women’s reproductive choices and thus contributes to population control. Using ethnographic vignettes, I discuss how my research findings point to the government’s disparate population control politics and how this has given rise to various forms of obstetric violence against women. The study also addresses …

Poetry And Possibilities In Contemporary Egypt, Reem Badr

Theses and Dissertations

Egyptian colloquial poetry has historically been conceived of, by practitioners and onlookers alike, as a politically committed, subversive, resistant practice. In this thesis I explore how this poetry, with its complex inheritance, inhabits the realities of post-revolutionary Egypt. Throughout the chapters of this work I trace colloquial poetry in its more traditional forms, as well as in its more novel ones like Egyptian rap/trap, as it grapples with the reduced possibilities in the present. As it reflects and spawns a wider disillusionment with and refusal of politics and claims a reinvention of itself as a private practice, the poetry cannot …

South Sudanese Women In Cairo: The Making And Re-Making Of Life Under Precarious Conditions, Nour Abdulhak

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses how South Sudanese women mobile subjects who choose domestic work as a livelihood navigate life in the city of Cairo. The thesis unpacks how these women’s precarious conditions and different individual and structural factors or policies affect the way they make and re-make their lives in Cairo. While it is common for South Sudanese women to do domestic work in Egypt, this population has been neglected by academia and policy makers. Due to the academic limitations on this topic, interviews with experts were conducted alongside the ethnographic study of these women’s lives to attain the closest depiction …

Meanings Of Mindfulness And Spiritual Awakening: Affliction And Holistic Healing In Contemporary Cairo, Sohayla El Fakahany

Theses and Dissertations

In contemporary Cairo, people turn to various modes of spiritual, alternative, and complementary healing. Some are rooted in formal religious traditions, and others are inspired by a new globalized form of holistic healing such as yoga or meditation. What makes these practices more controversial than spiritual healing practices like el-Zar or el-Hadra is the exchange of money for the promise of healing or foreknowledge. Spiritual healing is often deemed “charlatanistic” by religious exclusivists. This entanglement of the practices with religion creates a threat because it provides an alternative to the modes of religiosity supplied by the main hegemonic Egyptian religious …

Eagle Eye Vs. Gear Jammer, Jessica Danielle Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Where similarities in class struggle have historically operated as a unifying force globally, the American crafted mythos isolates the individual and dehumanizes those that do not fall within the parameters of the cowboy archetype. The national protagonist is turned into a class traitor and an extension of government power.

Fictive Daughters And Sons, Celibate Priests And Nuns: How Religious Tongzhi And Clergy In Taiwan Navigate Familial Obligations, Gavin Fisher

Theses and Dissertations

Great progress for the rights of tongzhi(sexually and gender-nonconforming people) has occurred in Taiwan in the past two decades, culminating in the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2019. However, it is still not uncommon for parents to take their tongzhi son or daughter to see a spirit medium or psychiatrist in an attempt to ‘cure’ them of their same-sex attraction. In Confucian ideology, which is central to the culture of Taiwan, a filial son or daughter is one who marries heterosexually and produces progeny to continue the family line. Tongzhi who do not do so are therefore violating this …

The Inescapable Effects Of Discourse As Knowledge And Power: Refugee Youth’S Resistance To “The System” In Pursuit Of Higher Education, Fallon Puckett

Theses and Dissertations

Employing a Foucauldian inflected analytic framework, I examine how youth resettled in and around Unity, NC, ambivalently managed racializing discourses associated with being ‘refugee’ as they pursued access to higher education (HE). Like many scholars who are drawn to post-structuralist concepts, I understand ‘discourse’ to be a form of knowledge and power, which operates through institutions implicated in advancing forms of self-government. In my video-conferenced interviews with youth they revealed cogent interpretations of the many ways these different U.S. governmental (and some non-governmental) institutions operated in their lives as “the System.” In the particular case of refugee youth, they used …

Journeys Of Middle-Class Syrian Women To And In Berlin: Modes Of Subjectivity, Possibilities And Becoming, Randa Adnan Bashlah

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an invitation to dive into the possibilities that emerge in the multiple stages of displacement journeys of a group of diverse Syrian women from a middle-class background, who happen to live in Berlin today, and learn about the displaced bodies' experiences from a personal scale. By capturing the journeys' nuances and trajectories, this study demonstrates how the mobile subjects interact differently and create different attachments with different power structures in the various modes which emerge through the journeys' different spatial and chronological stages. Looking at how displacement adds layers of complexity to the social's messiness and diversity, …

Privacy And The Digital Divide: Investigating Strategies For Digital Safety By People Of Color, Denavious Hoover

Theses and Dissertations

People of color are becoming increasingly concerned with digital privacy. They are concerned about the obfuscated data collection and sharing practices of major social media plat- forms and the strong entitlement of other users in the online space to their content. This study examines how people of color conceptualize and behave to produce safety in the online space, or, in other words, digital privacy. This study challenges notions that people are not purposeful about privacy in the online space and highlights the voices of people of color, whom are not of- ten included in theorizing or decision making about the …

Dance And Know You Are A Part: The Instrumentality Of Performative Politics And Dance In The Configuration Of Local Social Memory And Afro-Brazilian Identity And Agency In Pelotas, Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil, Triston R. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The arts have been a refuge from perpetual repression and omission, and, a platform for social activism for Afro-descendants in the Americas. In Brazil this is very much the case. With performance serving as a social barometer or a looking glass, dance becomes a source of cultural knowledge, acts as preservative, and negotiates individual mobility within a given context. The Afro-Brazilian dance company, Cia de Dança Daniel Amaro in Pelotas, Brazil grants its members a means of activism and agency to challenge entrenched national narratives and reinterpret local social memory.

Most academic writings about dance or performance in Brazil, focus …

Hunter-Gatherer Behavior At Dorn Levee #1 (38fa608): An Analysis Of Lithic Assemblage Formation At A South Carolina Piedmont Site, Robert Altom Cesarini Lyerly

Theses and Dissertations

The site of Dorn Levee #1 (38FA608) in the South Carolina Piedmont has the potential to provide unique information regarding the behaviors and activities of the hunter-gatherer populations who inhabited it throughout prehistory. The Late and Terminal Archaic Period landscape in the Southeast saw with it many major changes in hunter-gatherer lifeways that had begun initial development in periods prior. The continued use of Dorn Levee #1 suggests that it was highly important for these hunter-gatherers, and an analysis of their mobility patterns and general behaviors through the associated lithic debitage material can assist in illuminating its role within a …

Not Everyone Is Lovin' It: Work, Class And The Everyday In Al Sahel, Salam Ebeid

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores work in one of the “Big” fast food chains in Al Sahel. In this space I study how multinational ideologies/language are manifested within a local context through notions of control, discipline and power. Throughout the various thesis chapters, I try to understand how work functions with/through a specific social apparatus that is linked to work and class. How the relationships between workers unfold within this restaurant. Unpacking notion of Al Sahel Time Zone that studies different perceptions of time through Al Sahel's space. How work is felt on the body, perceived, tricked and understood by the workers …

Relationship Of Posterior Intracranial Venous Structures In Homo Sapiens And Handedness, Brianne Finley

Theses and Dissertations

The transverse sinus spans the endocranial surface of the occipital bone and ultimately transmits deoxygenated blood to the sigmoid sinus and jugular vein en route to the heart. This paired sinus tends to be more defined on either the left or right side in human crania. Left and right dominance, or the use of one side of the body more than the other, leaves traces on the human skeleton. Methods to determine handedness upon examination of various elements of the human skeleton mostly focus on the use of the extremities, while little research exists examining the skull for evidence of …

Place-Making Through Performance: Spoken Word Poetry And The Reclamation Of “Chocolate City”, Tiffany Marquise Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Predominantly situated in an area formerly known as Black Broadway, my research is based on long-term immersion in the District’s network of Spoken Word poetry and poets. Specifically, I focus on two key sites that offer contrasting depictions of open mic culture: Busboys and Poets, a D.C.-based chain located in several well-known neighborhoods undergoing gentrification, and SpitDat D.C., a grassroots (and often displaced) movement known as the area’s longest running open mic series. At these venues, many artists – especially native and long-term residents of the area – illustrate the Black experience along with a fascinating correlation between place, performer, …

Experiences From City Year: A Glimpse Into The Complex Roles Of Racially Diverse Americorps Members And What That Means For The Nonprofit Field, Orsolya Ficsor

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I explore the lived experiences of alumni from City Year, an AmeriCorps education nonprofit dedicated to providing academic and social-emotional interventions to address social inequity in education in disadvantaged schools throughout the U.S. and abroad. Their thoughts and ideas reflect the complexities of working on a diverse team, serving students of color in a nonprofit organization that is limited in its ability to create structural change. Guided by an analysis of historic systems of oppression, whiteness, white saviorism, and the nonprofit industrial complex, I examine how the nonprofit sector operates as a shadow state that is restricted …

Freedom And Food: Transformations And Continuities In Foodways Among The People Who Labored At Stono Plantation, James Island, South Carolina During The Eighteenth, Nineteenth, And Twentieth Centuries, Brandy Kristin Joy

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation compares archaeological assemblages from the Stono Plantation/Dill Farm, James Island, South Carolina between the periods of enslavement and Emancipation. Further comparisons are made with the neighboring Ferguson Road archaeological site and the Smith Plantation archaeological site, Port Royal, South Carolina. These comparisons are made in order to understand how Emancipation impacted the foodways including diet, vessel type and use, and cuisine of Lowcountry residents. Results suggest that while technological innovation and increased globalization enabled a shift in material culture, the overall foodways of the region remained relatively unchanged through time.

Shaftesbury's Atlantis, Andrew Agha

Theses and Dissertations

This research posits that seventeenth century natural philosophy as purported by the Royal Society of London had a major impact on the way the First Earl of Shaftesbury directed the settlement of the English colony Carolina. When Carolina was first settled in 1670, the colonists were ordered by Shaftesbury and his Lords Proprietors of Carolina cohort to test experimental exotic crops like cotton, sugarcane, grapes, olive trees, and indigo, but since those crops did not produce exportable surpluses, they have been labeled as failures. Instead, this study recognizes those failures as integral components to the scientific process of experimentation. That …

The Effects Of Racialization On Skeletal Manifestations Of Disease Among Migrants In Historic St. Louis, Missouri, Kristina M. Zarenko

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the biological effects of racialization on migrants in late nineteenth and early twentieth century St. Louis, Missouri. Racialization is a form of structural violence in which real or perceived physical differences contribute to the creation of hierarchical racial categories along a continuum of whiteness. German and Irish immigrants and African American migrants from the South came to St. Louis in search of economic prosperity and in an attempt to escape poverty, famine, or conflict in their places of origin. However, racialization affected each migrant group’s access to housing and employment as well as their exposure to violence. …

Puruhá Fashion As Aesthetic Sovereignty: Identity Making And Indigenous Dress In Ecuador, Anaïs M. Parada

Theses and Dissertations

Puruhá fashion designers, vendors, and sellers have used their cultural heritage to create an emerging dress market that is both locally productive and nationally disruptive. These entrepreneurs have combined traditional dress with contemporary elements to create a new style that is distinctly recognizable as Puruhá, and thus acts as both a cultural and an individual brand. In a nation-state that offers its Indigenous people tokenism and concessions that don’t otherwise challenge the status of existing governmental and legal systems, having control over one’s own narrative through branding is a revolutionary act. In fact, the fight for economic autonomy against state …

Closing The Achievement Gap: Analysis Of A Reading Academic Intervention In Conjunction With Integrated Social Services., Alejandra E. Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

Educators, legislators, and social activists have long debated the most efficient way to address the high needs of students in Title I middle schools that stem from persistent inequalities in education due to generational poverty and racism. Social activists have proposed integrated social services as a means to remove barriers that prevent students from learning. Providing integrated social services in conjunction with academic reading interventions should efficiently aid in closing the achievement gap that exists from the inequalities in education. This study examines the effectiveness of implementing the Middle School Quality Initiative, a reading and literacy program, in conjunction with …