Anthropology Commons^™

The Lion's Share: The Secret Land Grab Of Drake's Circumnavigation, Melissa Cole Darby

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Francis Drake’s journey around the world between 1577 and 1580 is renowned as one of the most famous voyages in history. The circumnavigation was a great achievement for England, but the official story Queen Elizabeth and her Privy Council maintained for nine years was that Drake was a pirate, and that the treasure he captured on the voyage would be returned to Spain. Upon his return, information about the voyage and his route were suppressed and the crew was sworn to secrecy: they were not to reveal where they travelled on ‘pain of death’. Here I present the case that …

Khirbat Khuwweikha (Kafr Kanna): Hiding Complexes From The Roman And Early Byzantine Periods In The Jewish Galilee, Yinon Shivtiel, Dror Barshad, Dina Avshalom-Gorni, Nili Ahipaz, Ruthy Lewis-Bloom, Yonatan Adler, Ram Bouchnick, Yarden Pagelson, Uri Berger

Qadum: Journal of Excavation Reports from Israel

Decades of research on Roman-period hiding complexes in the Galilee have identified 85 such complexes to date. Like the hiding complexes found in Judea, they were used as places of refuge during periods of distress under Roman rule in the country. Extensive archaeological excavations conducted in the hiding complex at Khirbat Khuwweikha, near Kafr Kanna and northwest of Nazareth, have yielded impressive finds, including pottery, glassware, metal items, coins, an ostracon and bones. Such a large quantity of diagnostic finds is rare in Galilean hiding complexes, and the assemblage attests to the use of the complex by Jews during three …

La Maquiladora De Sueños Is Where The “American Dream” Ends: The Socio-Cultural Impact Of Hai(T)Ijuanenses In The United States-México Borderlands, Pedro Aleman Perfecto

Master's Theses

Historically, Tijuana has been the destination for migrants who have been left out from the United States, Mexico, and the rest of the world. The city is at the epicenter of globalization where many transit, leave, and arrive. Sometimes considered a “third country” due to its binational and bicultural identity with its sister city, San Diego, California. The growing number of Haitian refugees that arrived in Tijuana in the mid 2010s to seek asylum in the United States overwhelmed the city’s infrastructure and left the Haitian community vulnerable, yet it created new opportunities and reshaped new identities in the region. …

The Feather Of The Quill: How Folklore Shapes Human Relationships With Wildlife, Taylor Breeanne Nelson

Master's Theses

This thesis examines how folklore and cultural phenomena shape human relationships with wildlife, arguing that the stories a society tells about animals are not merely reflective of its values but are constitutive of them. Drawing on narrative research methods sourced from literature and academic journals and interviews with academics, conservationists, and community members, this project examines the role of animal folklore.

I discuss how narratives around wildlife evolved alongside the development of the United States, arguing that the beginnings of mainstream American conservation not only displaced existing communities but also erased the sophisticated human-animal relationships their traditions had long sustained. …

Kicau Kericau: The Chirps And Warbles Of A Bird-Human Story, Airien Ludin

Masters Theses

This thesis tells the tale of bird-human relationships and what it means to live alongside one another, subverting the hierarchical view of humans as above birds inherited from colonial history. It asks how the practice of illustration can function as a site of Two-Eyed Seeing, where scientific and local knowledge are held together as an entangled narrative. It also examines how mendongeng (storytelling), as I have experienced it within Indonesian culture and everyday contexts, can help us understand birds as a companion species with their own agency.

This project takes two forms: first, a picture book titled Sun Bird …

Tùn-Scene And A-Futurism: Biomythography, Opacity, And Posthuman Imagination, Minglu Du

Masters Theses

Grounded in the author’s position as a Chinese feminist, this thesis examines how East Asian women, as well as East Asian-coded femininity more broadly, are objectified and othered within futurist visual culture in the age of artificial intelligence. Through an engagement with ornamentalism, techno-Orientalism, and posthumanism1 , it argues that the persistent figure of the feminized humanoid cyborg continues to reproduce colonial and patriarchal structures of desire, rendering marginalized bodies as fetishized and violable surfaces. In response, the thesis develops Tùn-Scene, a biomythographic artistic framework and the first experiment in what the author provisionally names A-Futurism. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …

Jadughar: The House Of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah

Masters Theses

Jadughar or the House of Magic is what people call a 'museum' in parts of South Asia. The practice of museum making, at its origin, is the act of collecting, preserving, interpreting and representing a culture’s tangible and intangible heritage to make it accessible to diverse audiences. Since the early 19th century such practices have been performed at various kala bhandars (art centers) in India, without the need of a formal or institutional organisation. The British introduced the model of a ‘museum’ in South Asia, with the aim of not only preserving ethnographic collections, but also showcasing their power and …

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; …

Reading Exercise (You Are The Hero): Dedicated To The Providence River Under The Mall, 02.17.2026, Deborah Fischer

Masters Theses

This play uses the performative potential of guilt, forgiveness, and self-help techniques as a catalyst for a new dynamic, one in which the pursuit of a false narrative, along with the structures it generates, becomes more real than reality itself. It employs “bad acting” and the practice of cold reading to stage a series of acts that function as an entry point into one’s own psyche, leveraging the peripheral space around familiar actions to allow chance, free will, and the experience of “real time” to temporarily come into effect. PLAYER 1: The bad actor is the most utopian one. CLOWN: …

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 …

The Autonomy Plan In Morocco: Legal Foundations, Political Dimensions And Prospects For Resolving The Sahara Conflict, Limam Boussif, Jalila Ait Soudane

Journal of Maya Heritage

Summary: The territorial conflict over the Sahara is one of the most enduring territorial disputes in international relations, involving issues of sovereignty, self-determination, and regional stability. In this context, Morocco’s 2007 Autonomy Plan is presented as a negotiated framework of self-government under Moroccan sovereignty.

This article analyzes the evolution and consolidation of the Autonomy Plan using a conceptual approach based on self-determination, territorial governance, and conflict resolution theories. It shows that the initiative has progressively evolved from a national proposal into an internationally recognized framework, particularly through growing diplomatic support and developments within the United Nations Security Council, including Resolution …

Les Grands Chantiers De La Transition Énergétique Au Maroc: Le Cas De Dakhla-Oued Eddahab Entre Réalisations, Facteurs De Réussite Et Perspectives, Limam Boussif, Jalila Ait Soudane

Journal of Maya Heritage

Résumé: Cet article examine la dynamique de la transition énergétique au Maroc à travers une analyse descriptive et analytique du cas de Dakhla-Oued Eddahab. Dans un contexte marqué par l’accélération des politiques de décarbonation à l’échelle mondiale, le Maroc s’impose comme un acteur stratégique en matière de développement des énergies renouvelables et de l’hydrogène vert. L’étude met en lumière les principaux chantiers structurants engagés dans la région de Dakhla, notamment le développement des énergies éolienne et solaire, les projets de production d’hydrogène vert, le dessalement de l’eau de mer, ainsi que la réalisation du port Dakhla Atlantique. L’analyse montre que …

God’S Design For Human Nature: Paul’S Biblical-Theological Use Of Creation Theology In Romans 1:18–32, Eunsoo (Daniel) Seo

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The world in which the Apostle Paul ministered was not a theological vacuum, but a sophisticated marketplace of competing worldviews and diverse moral frameworks. Within the specific milieu of first-century Rome, the cultural forces of Stoic philosophy, Roman imperial ideology, and pagan polytheism created an environment where complex expressions of human nature and sexuality emerged. Dominant Roman social stratifications often celebrated or normalized same-sex relations and blurred the distinctions of the created order. Paul found himself proclaiming a message of a Sovereign Creator in a society that had been conditioned for centuries to view the human nature through the lens …

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 …

Assessing Legacy Collections: Analyzing The Preservation, Recovery, And Interpretive Value Of Archaeobotanical Remains From Site 15le70 (Pine Crest Rockshelter), Lee County, Kentucky, Jennifer Carroll

Graduate Final Projects

This paper uses the archaeobotanical assemblage from Site 15Le70, a multi-excavated and extensively looted rockshelter in eastern Kentucky, while opening new lines of inquiry into gendered labor and practice during the Archaic-Woodland transition. Because legacy collections are often dispersed across institutions and/or research projects, the materials from any single site may be fragmented, as was the case for 15Le70. Such collections can be overlooked, yet this investigation into 15Le70’s archaeobotanical assemblage demonstrates that partial or scattered datasets can yield meaningful results and hold the potential to fill gaps in the archaeological record left by looting.

In this study, a small …

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 …

Impairment And Disability In Mesoamerica: Bioarchaeological Evaluation And Interpretation Of The Maya Of Palenque, Dayanira Lopez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The application of disability theory to the past is of growing interest among bioarchaeologists, both nationally and internationally. However, its application poses greater challenges when considering ancient contexts, such as Mesoamerica. Nonetheless, engagement with disability studies has led to the development of various theoretical frameworks in bioarchaeology, including dis/ability. This model views physical impairment as a fluid state that may exhibit adaptability and resilience rather than a biological deficit. Importantly, it views ability on a spectrum and does not make assumptions about social and cultural perceptions of ability where there is a lack of contextual data. Thus, it is a …

A Technical Analysis Of Ground Stone From The Group Iv Neighborhood At Palenque, Mexico, Alexandra Castillo Espinoza

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Ground stone tools (manos and metates used to grind food) are among the most recovered yet least studied artifacts in Classic Period Maya archaeology. Their consistent association with women's domestic labor has contributed to their analytical neglect, producing a gap in what is known about daily food production, household organization, and the lives of the people most responsible for both. This thesis addresses that gap through a technical analysis of 211 ground stone artifacts recovered from the Group IV neighborhood at Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, by the Proyecto Regional de Palenque (PREP) between 2016 and 2025. It is the first systematic …

Automation, Migration, And Development: Geography Of Job Precarity In South Asia And North Africa, Keshav Bhattarai, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

This article examines how accelerating automation and the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in advanced economies reshape labor markets across the Global South through interconnected channels of production, migration, and remittances. Drawing on the theories and practices of economic geography, labor economics, and development studies, the analysis conceptualizes automation as a transnational shock that contracts demand for migrant labor while simultaneously amplifying employment precarity in labor-surplus economies. The article advances a geographically grounded framework linking technology adoption in core industries with labor displacement, youth unemployment, and urban labor saturation in South Asia and North Africa. It further highlights the macroeconomic …

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 …