Anthropology Commons^™

Fashion, Lifestyle, And Symbolic Capital: Identity And Resistance In Eka Kurniawan’S Beauty Is A Wound, Dewi Meyrasyawati, Cysakaren Diva Pratiwi, Nisar Ul-Haq

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This study examines how fashion culture and lifestyle, understood as modes of self presentation, social performance, and everyday practice, operate as tools of identity construction and resistance in Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty Is a Wound. The objective is to reveal how beauty, personal choices, and public perception function as symbolic capital in negotiating gendered power relations, class hierarchies, and political constraints. Using close textual analysis, the research explores how female characters, particularly Dewi Ayu, mobilize appearance, behavior, and life decisions to challenge dominant ideologies and redefine their roles in society. The findings show that fashion culture in the novel extends beyond …

The Negotiated Identities Of Refugee-Background Women During Resettlement, Iuliia Fakhrutdinova

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Refugee-background women experience unique challenges while resettling in the U.S. as they navigate complicated transnational gender roles, education gaps, migration trauma, learning a new language, and literacy in the adaptation process during resettlement, which can derail the productive paths they are on. Therefore, ignoring refugee-background women’s unique experiences and failing to understand their identities prevents our society from doing social justice and creating a space for a smooth adaptation to the new context. Language plays a paramount role in identity formation, as it moves away from the belief that identity is an essential concept. For refugee-background women during resettlement, their …

Narrative Roots - What We Inherit, What We Tell, What We Become: Intergenerational Storytelling, Meaning-Making, And Mental Health, Adam Sholder

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This capstone synthesis explores how the family stories we inherit and the stories we tell across generations shape who we become, with particular attention to their impact on identity and mental health. Drawing on narrative identity theory, reflective practice, and relational understandings of family life, it introduces the Recursive Narrative Integration Model, which positions intergenerational storytelling as both a method of inquiry and a mechanism of meaning-making. Informed by a recursive process of creative and reflective writing, this synthesis approaches storytelling not only as an object of study, but as a lived and generative practice through which experience and narrative …

Postcolonial Identity Formation Of Somali Borderland Identity, Sunny Ngethe

Posters - 2026

Colonial borders in Africa divided long-standing communities, disrupting shared systems of culture, mobility, and identity. Somali populations, spread across Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, present a unique case of transnational identity persistence. Somalis have maintained strong cultural unity despite state-imposed divisions. This study examines how this communities navigate identity across borders shaped by colonialism and post-independence governance. Using qualitative analysis of historical and political content, this study draws on postcolonial theory and border studies to analyze how identity is constructed and maintained across imposed borders.

Ceramics And Trade In Mesoamerica: Identity And Resistance In The Maya Culture, Mason A. Swanson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The region of Mesoamerica has been researched extensively by archaeologists over the past decades. There are numerous cultures and civilizations that occupied Mesoamerica over thousands of years. This paper will focus on the Maya, one of the most researched and examined of the cultures of Mesoamerica. By examining the ceramics and trade of the Maya one can reconstruct how the Maya identity was viewed in the past. Often the Maya are suggested to have experienced a collapse at the end of the Classic period around (AD 900). This, however, is an oversimplification of the events that occurred. The goal of …

New Game Start: Playing With Power, Community And Change In Video Gaming Culture, Jonathan D. Muller

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Video gaming culture has long been a site associated with norms and values of whiteness, masculinity, and neoliberalism, with games, players, and developers all reinforcing these. Recently though, gaming culture has been directly involved with social movements and forms of resistance that are contrary to these norms and values. The typical gamer is no longer a white man, and gaming culture is now acknowledged to include race and gender dynamics that are close to that of the broader population. These communal shifts have both challenged and reinforced existing power structures. This research addresses these shifts and struggles by analyzing how …

Roblox As Open Text: Identity, Meaning, And Ideology Through Eco’S Semiotics, Yuyus Rustandi, Nanang Sutisna

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This study examines Roblox as a digital cultural space that constructs and represents adolescent identity through Umberto Eco's semiotic approach. Roblox functions not only as a game platform but also as an open text comprising visual signs, social symbols, and complex narratives. This studi is based on a literature review from nine prior empirical studies, this research analyzes how avatars, virtual environments, Robux economy, and user communities shape diverse systems of meaning. Findings show that Roblox serves as a site for identity construction, simulation of social values, and reproduction of dominant discourses such as capitalism and gender performance. The study …

Life-Course And Biography Of Things: Minangkabau Women's Headgear, Attari Putri Denendra, Irmawati Marwoto

International Review of Humanities Studies

Like men, objects also have a biography or life-course. Both biographies are intertwined, so when someone experiences a new life phase transition in their life-course, it will cause changes in the objects attached to them. This is also supported by the statement that the identity is performative. The headgear as one of the elements used by Minangkabau women also represents the identity of the wearer. This research was conducted in three stages: (1) data collection in the form of old photos and literature of Minangkabau women with headgear in Batipuh, Fort de Kock, and Payakumbuh, (2) data processing by analysis …

The Representation Of Indonesian National Identity In Syuhada Mosque, Kotabaru, Yogyakarta, Muthia Zahri Mardhiyah, Ali Akbar

International Review of Humanities Studies

This article examines the concept of national identity as embodied by the Syuhada Mosque, located in Kotabaru, Yogyakarta. Completed in 1952, the mosque was established as a monument to the independence of the Republic of Indonesia. This research addresses whether Syuhada Mosque genuinely represents national identity. The study aims to describe the architectural form of Syuhada Mosque and elucidate the representations of national identity embedded within its structure. The research methodology aligns with the framework proposed by Sharer and Ashmore, encompassing formulation, implementation, data collection, data processing, analysis, interpretation, and publication. Based on its historical background, the foundational ideas and …

A Ritual Of Institutions: The State Industrial School In Golden, Colorado And The Shaping Of American Youth, Cyndal Groskopf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the Colorado State Industrial School as a ritualistic institution that influenced boys aged 7 to 19 through Americanization practices between 1881 and 1930. By employing primary documentation, drone imagery, and LiDAR technology, the study examines how cultural and physical activities, along with personal statements, described and maintained the ritualized nature among these incarcerated youth. The findings reveal how institutional routines and activities reinforced narratives of American identity, particularly in relation to themes of personal identity, conformity, and agency. These rituals played a crucial role in institutionalizing cultural ideals and shaping the identities of marginalized youth. The research …

Cultural Continuity And Identity Preservation In Diaspora: The Role Of African Pentecostal Churches In Maintaining Traditions Within African Communities In The United States, Olamide T. Awoyemi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the role of African Pentecostal churches in preserving cultural traditions andshaping identities among African diaspora communities in the United States, focusing specifically on Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) and Pentecost International Worship Centre (PIWC) in Tampa, Florida. Through detailed participant observation and in-depth qualitative interviews, this thesis examines how rituals, religious practices, and community engagement within these churches facilitate cultural continuity and identity negotiation among Nigerian and Ghanaian immigrants. Findings reveal that these religious institutions serve as critical sites for resisting cultural erasure, navigating the complex tensions between maintaining African heritage and adapting to American society, and providing …

Introduction: Mother Tongue As Global Politics, Jessica Chandras, Joshua Babcock

UNF Faculty Research and Scholarship

For racialized speakers living in the wake of colonial modernity, “mother tongues” persist as perilous, precarious terrain. Far from being a straightforward linguistic resource or a totalizing, self-evident identity marker, “mother tongue” is always positioned, partial, and political. As a category, “mother tongue” encompasses projects across disparate sites, histories, and interactional grounds beyond South Asia, where the concept has been most extensively elaborated. Articles in this collection trace the links among collective national identities, individuated personhood, and the denotational codes that get made to refract language-community attentions—not just a group's language, but more essentially, their “mother tongue.” What transformations, investments, …

"La Vida Es Un Carnaval": An Exploration Of Cuban Identity And Nostalgia Through Dance/Movement Therapy - A Community Engagement Project, Maria Fernanda Mendez Mendoza

Expressive Therapies Theses

“La Vida Es Un Carnaval” is a community engagement project and thesis that explores how identity and nostalgic resilience show up through dance/movement therapy with Cuban immigrants living in the United States, specifically Massachusetts. This project brought together six Cuban-born participants, ages 26 to 67, each with their own unique migration stories; from the Rafter Balsero Crisis of 1994, to the “Wet-Foot/Dry-Foot” policy, and family reunification. Through a mix of in-person and online sessions, participants explored their experiences using intermodal activities including dance/movement therapy techniques, conversation, journaling, artwork, and music. Themes of cultural pride, “Cubanía” – Cuban-ness, culture shock, and …

Becoming Sephardic: Historical Consciousness And Emergent Ethnoreligious Identification In New Mexico, Sarah Leiter

Anthropology ETDs

In recent years, an increasing number of Hispanic Catholic New Mexicans have discovered that they descend from Iberian Jewish victims of the Spanish Inquisition. For some, this new information has prompted them to identify as Jewish in various ways. However, many have faced considerable difficulty in gaining recognition of their newfound ethnoreligious ancestry among family members, normative Jewish communities, and the Spanish and Portuguese governments that offered reparative citizenship to Sephardic (Iberian Jewish) descendants. In this ethnographic context, this dissertation explores how shifting understandings of religious identity and ancestral pasts affect identification practices in the present. Drawing on theoretical analyses …

Glotopolítica, Identidad Y Lenguas En México En El Siglo Xxi, Marilyn S. Avalos Huesca

Journal of Maya Heritage

Languages, like human beings, have been adapting to the changes produced worldwide, and with this they have grown in number of speakers or disappeared forever from society. These changes are not given arbitrarily, but are conceived from politics and the State, where what should be the best for the speakers, nationalism and society permeates according to the statutes established by those in power. All this from an ethnocentric point of view, which denigrates what is different, what we do not understand, and therefore, we reject. This article analyzes the presence of languages in Mexico from a point of view related …

Ai-Enhanced Essay Prompt: Exploring Your Identity And Life Experiences, Victor M. Torres-Velez

Open Educational Resources

This assignment, AI-Enhanced Essay Prompt: Exploring Your Identity and Life Experiences, guides students through a reflective writing process that integrates personal narratives with academic concepts related to identity, globalization, and migration. Students will examine how their nationality, ethnicity, race, social class, and gender are shaped by larger cultural and transnational forces. The structured approach encourages students to engage with AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Grammarly) as personalized writing tutors, assisting with brainstorming, organization, clarity, and revision while maintaining their authentic voice.

The essay requires students to build upon previously submitted personal anecdotes, analyze their experiences through course readings (including works …

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.

Indigenous Artists Working With Digital Materials, Luke A. Meeken

Teaching Resource Archive

This is a static PDF version of the online resource found here: https://www.gildedgreen.com/indigital This document contains the five thematic curricular modules from the online resource but does not contain the always-growing online database of contemporary Indigenous digital artists, who can be found at the above link.

This resource includes several thematic modules designed for use by educators of preservice art teachers, which can be adapted for use in graduate and undergraduate level courses (and parts of which will be deployed in my own elementary and secondary methods courses). These could be used in whole or in part, and are designed …

"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 …

Glitched Humanity: A Digital Media Arts Advocacy Project, Shelly Maloney

Teaching Resource Archive

This lesson includes an original sample project and website that directs students towards learning how to utilize digital glitch art to create advocacy or raise awareness for the social, cultural, environmental, or political issue of their choice. It is designed to engage students in critical thinking skills, cross-curricular connections, reflective writing, digital art making, group discussion, and peer review.

Artists can use video and other media sources to explore the self-destructive tendencies of human nature (i.e. violence/war, consumption, and/or carelessness/environmental neglect) or other social, cultural, or political issues using digital manipulation, layered imagery, sound, and video.

Layers Of Identity, Elizabeth Toffel

Teaching Resource Archive

Students explore identity, specifically that identity is layered, shaped by personal experience, cultural background, community ties, and unique traits. Students conduct interviews with peers, reflect on identity components, both individually and collectively, and create a layer artwork on transparent acetate sheets. When stacked the layers visually showcase the layers of the student’s identity and represent how identity is complex, constructed, and always shaped by multiple influences.

Asian American Navigation In Higher Education: Do We Belong At Colby College?, Amanda Rose Alpert

Honors Theses

This thesis explores how Asian American students navigate their belonging at Predominantly White Institutions (PWI), specifically a case study at the higher educational institution Colby College. In understanding how Asian American students navigate the spaces around them, this thesis dives into the history of Asian immigration to the U.S., the Asian American politicized label, and the different diasporas and cultural nuances Asian Americans experience that make up the complicated, diverse, and misunderstood label. Through exploring global racializations of Asian bodies and legacies of Western imperialism and colonialism, this gives a basis of how Asian Americans understand themselves as persons living …

It's Not The Fault Of The Parrot, But Of The One Who Teaches Him To Talk: Understanding Identities And Relationships Of An Educational Ngo In Guatemala, Brittany Rebecca Blomquist

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Guatemala is an economically poor country, with a rich culture that makes it a destination for foreign assistance through non-governmental agencies (NGOs) and tourism. The history of conflict and foreign economic development within the country has created a dichotomy of identities, divided across economic wealth, ethnicity, and urban/rural landscapes. NGOs, their presence as transnational actors, and their organizational identities augment the identities present within the spaces in which NGOs work. Additionally, these identities are fluid and relational. I argue that the identities and relationships that form within the NGO space are reflective of NGO work and development structures. The identities …

The Identity Of A Gymnast: How Health, Wellbeing, And Injury Become Embodied In The Identity Of Collegiate Gymnasts, Skyler M. Yakes

LSU Master's Theses

Gymnastics scholarship has traditionally focused on the physicality of the sport and what the body can and cannot do. This research expands upon gymnastics scholarship by exploring the individual experiences and histories of college gymnasts in the United States through a series of interviews. The goals of this research are to better understand the gymnastics experience and to explore health and wellbeing in gymnastics as it pertains to the formation of a gymnast’s identity. A combined approach using medical anthropology and anthropology of sport serves as a guiding framework for analyzing interview data. Definitions of health and wellbeing change between …

Social Identity And Personhood At An Early Byzantine Cemetery: Late Antique Child Burials At Syedra, Turkiye., Mekenzie Riley Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bioarchaeological studies of children in the past have proliferated in recent years and illustrate the informational depths accessible through investigations of mortality, age, and health and disease. Alongside analyses of childhood stress and mortality, the mortuary treatment of children provides critical insight into the social structures and identity formation processes that individuals or groups are subject to in life. This thesis will investigate the intersections of childhood, gender and sex, space, and mortuary treatment as seen in a Byzantine cemetery comprised primarily of children at the site of Syedra, Türkiye through bioarchaeological and proteomic analysis. Specifically, it seeks to explore …

The Archeology Of Adoption: Tracing The Journey From Birth Through Adoption Using Pre-Adoptive Artifacts, Ellen Reeve

Educational Studies Dissertations

Adults adopted in childhood often face a heightened susceptibility to psychological and behavioral challenges compared with their non-adopted peers. Scholars examining this phenomenon associate various factors, including an adoptee’s sense of self as an individual within a complex adoption background. This qualitative study utilized a material engagement theory to explore birth through adoptive narratives among adults adopted in closed settings during childhood. Through participatory research, participants examined a range of artifacts related to maternal relinquishment, encompassing foster and adoption records, original birth certificates, letters, photographs, birthmarks, clothing, hair, scars, and DNA test results. The study focused on understanding these artifacts’ …

Forging Identity: Learning About Craft Production And Identity Through The Analysis Of Hand-Made Nails, Linda Zuniga

Anthropology and Sociology Student Research

Nails may not seem exciting. After all, their function is self-evident: nails hold things together. On closer examination, however, nails are quite useful. They can help to determine a site’s chronology, reveal variability in commodity consumption, and reflect the economic activities that occurred in an historic village. Here, I present the analysis of nails from Stoddartsville, a 19th century milling village in northeast Pennsylvania. Different blacksmiths introduce subtle variability into the finished form of a nail, yielding differences in attributes such as nail head length, nail head thickness, and number of head facets. I used these attributes to determine 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 …

“It’S Always An Admixture Of So Many Identities”: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Indigenous Kalasha Cultural Identity, Fahad Riaz Choudhry Dr, Karen Jennifer Golden, Miriam Sang-Ah Park

The Qualitative Report

This case study examined how an Indigenous Kalasha participant in northern Pakistan makes sense of his multi-faceted identity. The interpretative phenomenological analysis method was used to analyze data from an in-depth, single person case study. Our selected participant was a 36-year-old male postgraduate student from an Indigenous marginalized tribe, which is an ethnic and religious minority group in the northern Hindukush mountain region of Pakistan. Results are presented in four superordinate themes: (1) Identity: admixture of a number of identities, (2) Changing culture and its psychological impact, (3) Cultural protective factors against psychological problems and (4) Mental health perspective. …

#Getinked: An Anthropological Exploration Of Tattooing And Social Media, Delanee Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to address two inquiries regarding contemporary tattooing. The first goal is to explore how social media has changed the practice of tattooing while the second goal is to examine how tattoos are used to express or explore the differing facets of a person’s identity. Identity theory, social identity theory, semiotics, and the concepts of stigma and deviancy form the theoretical framework which allows one to understand the ways in which tattoos can provide insights into the various aspects of someone’s identity as well as how social media can influence members of the tattoo community. An online survey, …