Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

How Palestinian Aid Organizations Adapt To The Possibility Of Further Annexation And Rights Abuses In The Wake Of "The Deal Of The Century", Nadia L. Wiggins

Capstone Collection

This research explores the question, “To what extent has the ‘Deal of the Century’ impacted Palestinian aid organizations, and how might it impact them in the future?” The significance of this question lies in the fact that the “Deal of the Century” claims to solve one of the longest and most complex conflicts, yet it has not been sufficiently analyzed from a Palestinian perspective nor a humanitarian perspective. Furthermore, by presenting scholarly critiques of the deal and aid worker’s concerns, my hope is that an American audience may be convinced of the complicity of our government in devising a failed …

When Leaders Surrender Their Divine Lineage: The Loss Of Cosmic Connection Between Maya Local Lords And Their Supernatural Deities, Amy S. Peterson

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

The Maya who lived during the Classic Period (200 CE to 900 CE) went through many changes in their daily lives. In the Late Classic Period (600 to 900 CE), social, political and economic stressors caused even more change to their routines, leading to the “collapse” around 800-900 CE. Current hypotheses for this collapse included warfare, environmental factors, human degradation of landscapes, as well as internal and external influences. I hypothesize that in the Early Classic (200 to 600 CE), rulership of local communities by Maya lords, or ajawob, related mainly to their connection to a pantheon of supernatural …

Padre Pio, Pandemic Saint: The Effects Of The Spanish Flu And Covid-19 On Pilgrimage And Devotion To The World’S Most Popular Saint, Michael A. Di Giovine

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

In the Catholic world, pilgrimages and other devotional rituals are often undertaken to foster healing and well-being. Thus, shrines dedicated to saints are particularly relevant in times of pandemic. Pilgrimage to the shrines associated with 20th century Italian stigmatic, St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, known as one of the Catholic world’s most popular saints, is particularly informed by this notion, as Pio is understood as a healing saint thanks to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy that marked his ministry during his lifetime, as well as belief in the miraculous nature of his relics. Pio’s hometown of Pietrelcina and …

Table Of Contents, Antonio Medina-Rivera, Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

Radna: The Holy Shrine Of The Multinational Banat Region (Romania), Erika Vass

Journal of Global Catholicism

Radna is the sacral heart of the Banat region in Romania. The shrine has united the Catholics for centuries in veneration of Virgin Mary regardless of their nationality and native language. Roman Catholic Bulgarians, Croatians (called Krashovani), Hungarians, Germans, Roma, Romanians, and Slovakians venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary together, but believers of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Church also visit the sacred venue. Until the borders changed after the First World War, a great number of pilgrims had visited Radna every year from the region of the Great Hungarian Plain. The pilgrimage may be considered a rite of passage connecting …

Breaching Boundaries: Homogenizing The Dichotomy Between The Sacred And Profane In Csíksomlyó, Zsofia Lovei

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines how a Marian shrine in Csíksomlyó, Transylvania acts as a Foucauldian heterotopia for Magyar speaking individuals, residing in the Carpathian Basin, and beyond in the diaspora most especially during the annual Pentecost pilgrimage. Following introductory remarks on the site and my stance, I turn to methodology, and Hungarian scholarship on the topic. Afterwards, I provide a “thick description” of fieldwork I conducted on-site in May of 2015. I then turn to various theoretical ties, which I support with emic analysis. Lastly, I turn to ideas of heterotopias, and provide a brief formal analysis. My main incentive is …

Overview And Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Current Efforts In Sustaining Peranakan Chinese Music In Melaka, Zin Guan Goh

Student Works (2020-2029)

Peranakan Chinese (Straits-born Chinese) music such as dondang sayang may not be a familiar folk music to the modernized Malaysian community, however, there are associations and organisations that thrived on to sustain the musical culture in Melaka. In the advanced influence of popular culture and modernity, efforts of sustaining local culture and Peranakan Chinese music becomes more challenging. Thus, this study aims to investigate the various efforts put on in sustaining the musical culture and its consequences in terms of authenticity in present Melaka. The past literatures reveal scholarship on Peranakan Chinese music in Malaysia came to a halt in …

Paper House: The Revolution, The Disappeared, And The Historicity Of Lebanon, Elsa Saade

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will be an attempt to reenact events in relation to the disappeared and the Lebanese civil war, with the help of newspaper cuts, oral history, theories on historical writing, memories, and books on Lebanon. As a prospective historian, the writer will be tapping into the internal event of thought processes and meaning of the past, as advised by R. G. Collingwood in The Idea of History. (Collingwood, 1946 ) That critical inquiry will only be at the service of understanding the present from the lens of a self-reflecting inquisitor that has faced many silences in a past …

German Immigration And Its Ties To Landscape Change In Nebraska, Lindsey Labrie

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This thesis uses a multidimensional approach to frame the different waves of German immigration within the context of land use change in Nebraska. By recounting the historical challenges and struggles Germans faced in their homelands, this thesis provides similarities between historical immigration patterns throughout the state. Observing the timing of these movements of people paints a clearer picture of how these immigrants might have helped change the farming and cultural landscapes of Nebraska. Knowing and recognizing historical immigration in Nebraska cultivates a deeper appreciation for the current relations between immigrants and Nebraska’s physical landscape.

The Interwoven Existences Of Official Catholicism And Magical Practice In The Lived Religiosity Of A Transylvanian Hungarian Village, Cecília Sándor

Journal of Global Catholicism

During the last five years I have been doing field research in a Transylvanian Hungarian village, Sânsimion (Hu: Csíkszentsimon). I present my research on this religiously homogenous, Catholic community’s worldview. Based on interviews conducted with members of the village’s various age groups, I map religious and magical knowledge passed down through the generations, using the theoretical frame of collective memory and religious transmission. Second, I highlight two different but coexisting “constructions of reality” in this rural community. By “constructions of reality,” I mean interpretations of reality expressed in narrative discourses and local magical practices that are closely and inextricably interwoven …

Rockin' The Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices, Kinga Povedak

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article focuses on the unique dimensions of lived or vernacular Catholicism through the analysis of contemporary congregational music in Hungary. Looking at the musical lives of Hungarian Roman Catholics from the late 1960s to contemporary times can provide us with new understandings of the theological contents and aesthetics, as well as the vernacular religiosity of the community. Christian popular music appeared behind the Iron Curtain relatively early, in 1967 when the first “beat mass” was created and introduced at Budapest. The early Christian popular music sounded astonishingly similar to the songs of the American Folk Mass Movement of the …

Longings, Letters And Prayers: Visitor's Books At Hungarian Marian Shrines, Krisztina Frauhammer

Journal of Global Catholicism

The following study seeks to show the flow of contemporary rituals associated with pilgrimage shrines. I will consider how visitor’s books placed on display at shrine churches are being utilized in the modern context by pilgrims and tourists alike. Requests, words of thanksgiving, and testimony are coupled with an honest, reflexive style that lends to the formation of these individualized prayers. These prayers are original, specific and peculiar as they follow patterns that are informal in nature. These prayers allow pilgrims to initiate contact with the Transcendent through the act and practice of writing. An idiosyncratic form of sacred communication …

Introduction: Consumer Contexts And Divine Presences In Hungarian Catholicism, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

Introduction to Hungarian Catholicism: Living Faith Across Diverse Social and Intellectual Contexts, highlighting both the specific contributions of the articles to the study of Hungarian Catholicism and situating them within the broad sweep of Hungarian and Catholic Studies.

2020 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2020 IGGAD Conference: Without Borders: Tracing the Cultural, Archival, and Political African Diaspora.

2020 Mlk Keynote Address: Michelle Alexander Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Michelle Alexander, Rosanne Somerson, Matthew Shenoda

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

2020 MLK Series Keynote Michelle Alexander brings audiences profoundly necessary and meaningful insights on the practice of mass incarceration that plagues the US justice system, as well as eye-opening conversation on how we can end racial caste in America. Lecture Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 5:30pm, RISD Auditorium, 17 Canal Walk, Providence, RI.

In her acclaimed bestseller The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Alexander peels back the curtain on systemic racism in the US prison system in a work that the New York Review of Books describes as "striking in the intelligence of her …

Criminalization Of Young Black Males, Useni Eugene Perkins

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the historical, social, cultural and political factors that contribute to the criminalization of a disproportionate number of young Black males. In doing so, it provides greater clarity for the reasons we are “walking in circles” to find a solution to why these youth are facing a future that is indisputably bleak. In framing this pronouncement, it will show how these factors have been institutionalized to create a system of racial oppression that targets young Black males to be both its victims and victimizers. As the result of this system, many young Black males are portrayed in …

The New Debt Peonage In The Era Of Mass Incarceration, Timothy Black, Lacey Caporale

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

In 1867, Congress passed legislation that forbid the practices of debt peonage. However, the law was circumvented after the period of Reconstruction in the south and debt peonage became central to the expansion of southern agriculture through sharecropping and industrialization through convict leasing, practices that forced debtors into new forms of coerced labor. Debt peonage was presumable ended in the 1940s by the Justice Department. But was it? The era of mass incarceration has institutionalized a new form of debt peonage through which racialized poverty is governed, mechanisms of social control are reconstituted, and freedom is circumscribed. In this paper, …

Introduction, Antonio Medina-Rivera, Lee F. Wilberschied Ph.D.

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

Introduction Project 400: Our Lived Experience, Ronnie A. Dunn

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

No abstract provided.

Handing Down The Heritage: Preserving Irish Diasporic Identities In The Festival City Of Montana, Margaret Mary Walsh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Butte, Montana is a tough, historic industrial town in western Montana known for its mining, its Irish, and strangely, its festivals. The city boasts countless parades and community events each year for a variety of holidays as well as for showcases of traditions and ethnic pride. Three celebrations in particular, St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, and An Rí Rá, attract visitors from all over the country – and world – who seek to experience the enthusiasm and splendor of these celebrations. So, what can these popular celebrations in Montana’s Festival City, Butte, reveal about the Irish community living there? …

Book Review: Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey Into The Heart Of America, Keith Morton

eJournal of Public Affairs

Book review of James and Deborah Fallows, Our towns: a 100,000 mile journey into the heart of America

“Tell Me, Bambi Or Yogi Ever Hunt You Back?” The Windigo Myth: A Metaphor For Imperialism And Mental Illness, Christine Carlough

Senior Capstone Theses

The Canadian indigenous myth of the windigo, originating from Algonquian-speaking tribes of the subarctic Northeast like Ojibwe and Cree, is a manifestation for a multitude of fears. This myth originated hundreds of years ago in order to explain the horror and lack of understanding of a mental illness, which would later be known as Windigo Psychosis. Windigo Psychosis is a culture-bound syndrome for an insatiable desire to consume human flesh. A culture-bound syndrome is recognizable and unique only within a specific society or culture, so in other words, Windigo Psychosis is specific to this area in Canada due to a …

Queen Nanny, A Case Study For Cultural Heritage Tourism: The Archaeology Of Memory And Identity, Lacy Risner

Liberal Arts Capstones

This research project is intended to provide a foundation of knowledge of the Maroon culture in Jamaica, through the legends of one of their most prominent founders, Queen Nanny, as an aid for those who want to educate themselves before approaching community leaders about tourism development. Documentation of Queen Nanny’s life is contested and shrouded in mystery. Yet, that is part of what makes her memory so powerful. The various roles that Queen Nanny is associated with feature her adamant pursuit of an independent life for herself and her Maroons. Whether she is catching bullets or teaching the Maroons how …

The Promises And Perils Of Radio As A Medium Of Faith In A Q’Eqchi’-Maya Catholic Community, Eric Hoenes Del Pinal

Journal of Global Catholicism

Because their parish is large, dispersed, and overwhelmingly rural, FM radio is one of the few reliable means through which the Q’eqchi’-Maya Catholics of San Felipe in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, can communicate with each other en masse. Yet, because it is a one-way medium, it is also impossible to gauge how its intended audience is responding, or if is even there to receive broadcasted messages. Drawing on ethnographic material collected in 2005 (on the use of radio broadcasting to call together ritual participants) and 2016 (on an ultimately failed attempt to launch a radio station to serve rural parishioners), …

Introduction: Mediating Catholicisms: Studies In Aesthetics, Authority, And Identity, Eric Hoenes Del Pinal, Marc Roscoe Loustau, Kristin Norget

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Overview & Acknowledgements, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Archive And Repertoire Of The Esala Perahera Performance In Sri Lanka, Hashintha Jayasinghe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the archive and the repertoire of the Esala Perahera in Sri Lanka and charts the ideological and cultural implications of the performance. The archival analysis begins with the interrogation of the historical chronicles and the recorded history of the performance in the Sinhala and English texts. Thereafter, travel literature and the dissemination of cultural knowledge on the Perahera are discussed. The study of the repertoire and the photographic archive explores key performances in the Esala Perahera in 2016 and 2017. Postcolonial theory, theories on cultural anthropology, and performance theory are used to analyze the archive and the …

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Sarah Adcock

Graduate School of Art Theses

I view my creative process as alchemy, the transformation of materials through experimentation. I use wax as a material that transcends its historical use as a sculptural process for casting and instead, use it for its transmutable qualities to inform content. Because of its plasticity and duality as fragile and resilient, wax is symbolically submissive and assertive. By applying heat, wax can be molded and formed into new shapes. Once it cools, wax reverts back to its natural state; solid and impermeable. I use objects to explore desires of origin and life. Transitional objects, the first “me not me” possession …

Cultural Heritage Preservation In The Context Of Climate Change Adaptation Or Relocation: Barbuda As A Case Study, Martha B. Lerski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This case study introduces an arts camp methodology of engaging communities in identifying their key cultural heritage features, thus serving as a meta study. It presents original research based on field studies on the climate-vulnerable Caribbean island of Barbuda during 2017 and 2018. Its Valued Cultural Elements survey, enabling precise identification of key tangible and intangible art forms and biocultural practices, may serve as a basis for further studies. Such approaches may facilitate future research or planning as climate-vulnerable communities harness Local or Indigenous Knowledge for purposes of biocultural heritage preservation, or towards adaptation or relocation. I report on findings …