Anthropology Commons^™

Good Impressions At Work: Exploring Gendered Labor In The Middle Rio Grande, Nm Ad 1100-1500, William F. Marquardt

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation investigates changes in the gendered division of labor among potters in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico (MRG) between A.D. 1100 and 1500. During this time, diverse groups coalesced into some of the largest communities seen in the region until the industrial era. New architectural, technological, religious, and trade practices emerged to help knit these communities together during a dynamic period of change. Pottery making practices changed alongside other developments transforming from manufacture for local consumption to surplus production for exchange. Previous research on gendered divisions of labor have largely portrayed gendered labor as static rather than …

Who Can Dance If They Want To?: Intersections Of Dance, Gender, And Political Control In Late Archaic And Early Classical Athens, Adeline P. Strickler

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This thesis investigates the evidence for women's public choruses in the polis of Athens and the wider Greek world prior to the 6th century BCE and their decline in Athens following the Kleisthenic reforms of 509/508 BCE. Emphasising analysis of visual sources through Athenian fabric vases in the Beazley archive, and supporting literary evidence, this research seeks to establish a base of evidence for a neglected area of dance and women's research in the classics. Additionally, by analyzing the significance of choral dance in polis social and political life, this research seeks potential reasons for the lack of a culture …

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 …

Sakdiyah Ma’Ruf’S Stand-Up Comedy: Humor And Social Critique In The Digital Age, Fitrizal Rahmadhian, Shuri Mariasih Gietty Tambunan

International Review of Humanities Studies

Stand-up comedy can challenge dominant discourses and dismantle stereotypes. This research focuses on an Indonesian female stand-up comedian, Sakdiyah Ma’ruf. Using textual analysis, the study investigates recorded performances available on YouTube between 2014 and 2025. Sakdiyah addresses critical social issues, including religious fundamentalism, terrorism, sexism, and gender-based violence. The study explores how she constructs her comedic persona through narratives of personal identity and social critique, and how she employs humor to negotiate sensitive topics while remaining acceptable to diverse audiences. Findings reveal that her themes remain consistent across performances, while her humor strategies, including structured narratives, deliberate word choices, and …

Painting Stories And Filming Change, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Contributions to Books

Mithila Art has helped illuminate various aspects of the relationship between gendered Maithil social roles and Maithil women’s narratives in connection with a feminist participatory action research project conducted primarily in 2016-2017 in and around the northern Bihari town of Madhubani. While participatory action research philosophically and methodologically attends to process as much as product, Mithila Art played a role in the process and product of making a documentary film and in our capacity to understand and communicate with varied audiences about shifting Maithil gender norms. The research and filmic project provided insight into the complex relationship among the stories …

Res Historica, Volume 4, Lynneth Miller Renberg Phd, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta

Res Historica

The 2025 journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg, Samuel Sanders, and Julia Ackerman. The cover art for this volume is an open access image.

Beyond Pink And Plastic: A Critical Analysis Of Barbie (2023) Through The Lens Of Gender Performativity, Intersectionality, And Diverse Cultural Perspectives, Nelly K. Abdelwahed

The Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper critically examines Barbie (2023), directed by Greta Gerwig, through the frameworks of Judith Butler’s gender performativity and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality. By analyzing qualitative data from interviews with Egyptian university students, the study explores how the film challenges traditional gender norms while addressing its polarizing reception globally. While Barbie (2023) succeeds in sparking conversations about gender, identity, and societal expectations, its Western-centric narrative limits its resonance with non-Western audiences, particularly in the Middle East. The findings reveal a dichotomy: the film effectively critiques systemic inequalities and empowers women but simultaneously overlooks intersectional and diverse lived experiences. This analysis highlights …

Public Baths & Gender Reconstruction In The Mangkunegaran Region Of Solo, Fiera Saffana, Irmawati Marwoto

International Review of Humanities Studies

The division of gender roles in space is already evident from the layout of traditional Javanese buildings, which reflects a patriarchal culture where men are at a higher level than women. These gender boundaries and norms are also reflected in the spatial form of public bath in Solo. This research uses the archaeological method by Deetz which consists of data collection, data processing, and data interpretation. Explaining by presenting facts based on data obtained in the field, then data processing is carried out by involving analysis of the field data that has been collected. The last stage is the interpretation …

"The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love": Identity Creation, Compartmentalization, And Belonging Among Queer Peace Corps Volunteers, Laura N. Keeran

Theses and Dissertations

The Peace Corps advertises that it accepts anyone, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation; however, recruiters and staff ask volunteers to go back into the closet for their twenty-seven months of service due to the Peace Corps’ safety concerns about their volunteers being out in their host countries. Queer Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) answer the call to serve, accepting that it means they will need to keep their queer identities concealed for two years and three months. I conducted ethnographic interviews with ten people who have served or are currently serving in the Peace Corps and identify under …

Warriors Of Faith Vs Passive Men: Gender Binarism And Performance In Evangelical Christian Masculinity, Alexander Koch

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis examines communications and reflections of self (gendered and religious) in Midwest Evangelical Christian men. The focus was on how these groups perform their gender and religion with each other, and the tactics that were used to reinforce an acceptable notion of masculinity. Drawing upon literature on gender and masculinity studies, feminist philosophy, and hierarchical systems, my project aimed to analyze acceptable gender performance pushed by patriarchal gender norms and evangelical Christian groups. I incorporated multiple settings in my ethnographic study across the Midwest. Methods included semi-structured interviews and participant-observation of men’s conferences and Christian men’s groups, while reflecting …

Sex Work, Antitrafficking, And Mobility, Simanti Dasgupta

Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications

With the HIV/AIDS epidemic gripping the world in the 1990s and the resurgence of the antitrafficking discourse in the 2000s, the sex work/abolitionist debate took center stage. Proponents of sex work uphold the labor and livelihood paradigm based on consent; the abolitionists, on the other hand, dismiss sex work as work to posit prostitution as the paradigmatic example of patriarchal violence toward women. The latter routinely conflate sex work with trafficking, and the former sharply demarcates them. Above all, this debate poses a stubborn ideological divide among feminists with serious policy implications for both the worker and the victim, nationally …

Crafting Lives: Experiences Of Ethiopian Refugees In Cairo, Nayrose S. Abd El-Megid

Theses and Dissertations

There has been an ongoing influx of refugees for years driven by political instability, famine, and prolonged conflicts in the region, leading many individuals to seek sanctuary in other countries. Egypt has become a host country for many years, whether for settlement or transit, for various populations from different nationalities hoping to find refuge. However, amidst this influx, Ethiopian refugees often find themselves overlooked or usually associated on the sidelines with other African nationalities; their stories and struggles are marginalized in broader narratives of displacement. The experience of Ethiopians is heterogeneous and multidimensional in terms of their intersectional identities of …

A Journey To A Black Woman’S (Read Black Girl’S) Joy And Her Story Of Coming Home, Brittany Lauren Brock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an auto/ethnography about the self-actualizing journey of reclaiming storytelling as my native tongue and my journey to joy. Throughout, using my story and the stories of so many others, I not only lay out the wounds (the pain, the loss, then the hope that comes) within the academy and outside in the world but I also use storytelling as a tool of healing—my tool of healing—to show how I wrote myself free.

When Black women (read Black girls) go through The Reckoning (the moment we realize something isn’t right with how we are perceived by others) …

Women’S Routes: Gender, Mobility, And Knowledge Among The Makushi Of Southern Guyana, Lisa Katharina Grund

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Exploring the journeys of some Makushi women, this article highlights the relevance of gender in the question of (im)mobility and female engagements with the world as central to contemporary Makushi life. Departing from the understanding that the category of space has proven crucial in the theoretical groundwork of the Guiana ethnographic area and drawing on the region’s classical ethnographies, it explores everyday practices of movement of the Makushi people who live along the triple frontier of southern Guyana. Rather than disruptive, these in and out journeys—collective or individual—prove to be crucial to the weaving of community. They are also central …

Queer Rural Youth Online: A Digital Ethnography, Joseph R. Burns

Student Research Symposium

This presentation is based on digital ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2023 within Queer subcommunities on the social media sites Reddit and Twitter (now known as X) and data collected from interviews with Queer rural youth members of these communities. The data reveal that social media use directly influences the lives and actions of Queer rural youth, who use the space to build social connections, shape their personal identities, and seek advice pertaining to their in-person lives and decisions. By using these spaces, Queer rural youth build both bonding and bridging social capital, learn to subvert restrictions to their Internet access, …

Can Marketing Transcend Entrenched Gender Biases?, Thinh Nguyen

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Through a feminist lens, Maclaran and Chatzidakis (2022) challenge conventional assumptions about gender, emphasizing its performative nature shaped by social practices rather than inherent traits. This commentary extends analyses of key themes such as gender performativity, the male gaze, and subject-object binaries within marketing. It critiques how marketing strategies reinforce existing power imbalances and systemic biases rooted in historical narratives. The writing also reflects on media interpretations of gender issues through films like 'Turning Red' and 'Barbie'. By contextualizing gendered marketing within broader societal frameworks, this writing contributes to ongoing dialogues in media studies, sociology, and gender studies, highlighting the …

Toils, Troubles, And Travesties Of Representation, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Deniz Atik

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

The History Of Gender-Biased Clinical Testing And Its Effects On Pharmaceutical Drug Efficacy, Kathryn E. Olson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Concerns about potential risks that clinical research could impose to women of childbearing potential have long dictated pharmaceutical clinical trials. In the United States, women were not allowed to participate in clinical trials for decades, which has had major implications on the pharmaceutical industry today. Due to this oversight, men and women are commonly prescribed drugs at the same dosage despite many sex-specific differences in how male/female bodies respond to drugs during exposure. It is now known that female bodies metabolize drugs much slower than male bodies, which means that women who are prescribed drugs at the same rate as …

How Gender Affirming Care Affects The Current Sex Estimation Standards In Forensic Anthropology: A Preliminary Study, Dakota Taylor

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Current sex estimation standards in forensic anthropology are based on individuals whose gender matches their biological/osteological sex, also known as Cisgendered individuals. Recently, transgender individuals have started to become more common in the forensic context due to the increase in hate crimes and violence. This research builds upon past research done on how facial feminization surgery can affect both visual and metric methods, where it was found that forensic anthropologists should rely on the visual methods if they suspect someone to be transgender due to it being more accurate and being able to clearly state the scars left on the …

Not Just Playing With Toys: Enculturation And Identity In A Historic Village In Northeast Pennsylvania, Amarah Karlick

Anthropology and Sociology Student Research

The archaeology of early industrial communities can yield material evidence of the pervasive, interrelated impacts of industrialization on work and domestic life. Archaeologists and historians investigating industrial communities have increasingly pivoted from a focus on great men and firsts in technological development to the local sociocultural contexts and consequences of industrialization. Here, I use the study of toys from Stoddartsville, a milling village in northeast Pennsylvania, to examine the lived experiences of children during the mid-nineteenth century. I suggest that children learned powerful lessons about identity, especially gender, as they played with toys at Stoddartsville. These lessons cemented the social …

Abundant Bodies In Times Of Excess: A Critical Exploration Of Fatness From Cairo To Tokyo, Sarah Aly

Theses and Dissertations

This work is an autoethnographic exploration of the social construction of fatness in contexts of existing and emerging neoliberal state control through the embodied experiences of fat people, following the tradition of ‘fat epistemology’ promoted by the emerging 'critical fat studies' field. It is a comparative study of the experiences of fatness as an unstable embodied category of being, rather than a liminal undesirable state or medical condition, in Cairo, Alexandria, and Tokyo, paying particular attention to the gender, racial, and class dynamics surrounding the construction (and marginalization) of fatness across various spatial and temporal contexts. These experiences are considered …

Viewing The World Through The Prism Of Cross-Cultural Romances: Film Review Of Christmas As Usual (2023) And Further Reflections, Raja Ramanathan

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

No Ela Without Ella: Understanding The Naming And Crafting Of Gendered Subjectivities In Puerto Rico, Carmín Quijano Seda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the beginning of the 20th century, the official metadiscourses about gendered job titles sedimented the idea that names or indexes pointing to women should be interpreted as unskilled, cheap, or even free labor in Puerto Rico (Azize, 1985; Muñiz Mas, 1998; Baerga-Santini, 1999). For this reason, Puerto Rican women organized and fought for equality in work settings. Furthermore, they became more active in politics and the government. Nevertheless, the Estado Libre Asociado (ELA) and local media discourses and interpretations about women’s labor discouraged them from participating in more senior positions (Acevedo Gaud, 2012).

However, this interpretation seemed to have …

Exploring Dress, Gender, And Bodily Capital Through Pre- And Protohistoric Funerary Contexts: Case Studies From Southwestern Europe, Francisco B. Gomes, Catarina Costeira, Anna Maria Desiderio, Arianna Esposito, Giacomo Bardelli

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

While uneven in their scope and reach, studies of dress and dress complements (fibulae, belt buckles, buttons, etc.) have a significant tradition within the broader study of the pre- and protohistory of Mediterranean Europe. Many of these studies, however, have had a strong focus on the typology of the dress complements and ornaments themselves, either as chronological indicators, ethnic markers, or both. In more recent years, however, a shift in research agendas has ushered in the introduction of new perspectives and new ways of thinking about dress and bodily adornment.

This contribution explores one such perspective in particular — namely, …

Textiles, Dress And Politics: A Diachronic Perspective Through The Case Studies Of Ancient Rome And Medieval Iceland, Meghan Korten, Zofia Kaczmarek

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

People dress for more than just aesthetic reasons. Over the centuries, dress became a sign of human civilization, allowing us to identify the origin, gender, and status of the wearer. Textiles and clothing influence our body, posture, movements, and the way we are perceived by society. Textiles are also a tool used by people to further their agenda, that is why they found their place in the political life of many ancient and modern societies.

According to Michel Foucault, power can be understood as a set of activities influencing the life of the other: It provokes, forbids, or permits, but …

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 …

Jean E. Jackson: A Pioneering Ethnographer In The Colombian Amazon, Patience Epps, Danilo Paiva Ramos, Flora Dias Cabalzar

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This essay celebrates the work of Jean E. Jackson, a pioneering female ethnographer who devoted most of her fifty-year career to the Indigenous peoples of Colombia. Her research, represented in an extensive set of publications from the early 1970s to the present, engages with themes of identity, stigma, and social inequality, manifested across a range of contexts. Jackson’s ethnographic contributions include her ground-breaking early work on Indigenous Tukanoan society in the Colombian Vaupés, focusing on the practice of linguistic exogamy (obligatory marriage across language groups) among the Bará people. Later, she expanded her focus to address Indigenous experiences in the …

Interrogating Households In Anticipation Of Disasters: The Feminization Of Preparedness, Chika Watanabe, Celie Hanson

Critical Disaster Studies

It is now a maxim among scholars and policy-makers alike that disaster preparedness needs to involve community-based approaches in order to be effective. These include preparedness strategies in the household. But how do disaster preparedness policies and public discourses define “the household” in the first place? In this article, we explore how particular gendered notions of the household are reproduced in disaster preparedness policies and activities in Japan and the UK. Drawing on historical and cross-cultural analyses, we suggest that household preparedness efforts place the burden of labor on people coded as women—a phenomenon we call “the feminization of preparedness.” …

Gendered Care Work And State Ambivalence: Disaster Recovery And Puerto Rican Displacement In New York City, Lisa Jahn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the politics of disaster recovery and coloniality in New York City, documenting the forms of ambivalent care that characterize institutionalized disaster recovery programs. I examine how Puerto Ricans arriving in New York City post- hurricane María navigate the racialized and inadequately funded recovery aid program supported by the Office of the Mayor of New York City. Following the events of September 11, 2001, New York City faith-based agencies established programs to assist in rescue, relief, and recovery efforts. The New York City Relief Center (NYRC) was first incorporated in 2003 to address all phases of the disaster …

Redrawing The Contours Of Care: Ethical Commitments And Gendered Politics In The Work Of Government Psychological Counsellors In Sri Lanka, Nadia Augustyniak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the last three decades, Sri Lanka has seen a growing popular interest in psychology as a field of professional practice as well as a steady expansion of mental health services. Historically, this shift has been linked to the impacts of political violence (1971, 1987-1989), civil war (1983-2009) as well as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, with local and international trauma and humanitarian interventions shaping recovery and the country’s mental health and psychosocial care infrastructure. More recently, however, psychology and mental health have been increasingly decoupled from the discourse of trauma, entering into everyday life and popular culture through the …