Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Objects In The Sunset, Iskander Guetta

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

This research explores everyday design practices in the Maghreb shaped by economic, political, and ecological struggles amid transnational debates on decolonizing design. To do so, it looks at objects in, through and with the sunset. Taking المغرب — the place where the sun sets — as a conceptual lens, Objects in the Sunset illuminates the savoir-faire born from dispossession, scarcity, and epistemic violence. Working across different scales of the built environment — infrastructures, spaces, objects, and materials — it shifts design away from Eurocentric conceptions: from rationalization to resourcefulness, homogeneity to heterogeneity, optimization to adaptation, disposability to repair, and universal …

The Geography Of Race: A Spatial Analysis Of Free People Of Color In The City Of Charleston (1790-1861), Alexandra Ullman

All Theses

In Charleston, South Carolina, for all but one year from 1790 to 1860, the enslaved and free Black population outnumbered that of the white. Through manumission, the process of an enslaved person gaining their freedom, the free Black population grew substantially and reached a peak in South Carolina during the nineteenth century. This large community of free people of color (FPOC), shifted the social climate by upsetting the balance of white power, thus increasing racial conflict, tension, and legislation that aimed to control the movement of FPOC.

Despite FPOC comprising a significant portion of the total population of Charleston, there …

A Raced Theology Of The Human Person: An Expanded Theological Anthropology, Cary W. Dabney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on race as a critical, yet largely unaddressed, topic in Catholic theological anthropology. In Catholic colleges and universities that are recognized as members of the Cardinal Newman Society, theological concerns about race are deemed irrelevant for theological education in the faith and are altogether absent from the theology of the human person. As a result, this collection of institutions treats race as a specialty within pastoral theology, one that is significant to groups, but not a part of the fundamental theology of the human person. This ‘un-raced’ theological anthropology results in the institution’s inability to respond effectively …

Doin' Time: Entertainment And Exploitation At Decommissioned Prison Museums In The United States, Jessi Robbins

Master's Theses

This thesis aims to explore how decommissioned prison museums in the US, such as Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary (BMSP), shape societal attitudes and understanding of the carceral system as a whole and the presence of systemic racism within by addressing three questions: (1) What histories do prison museums tell, and which are erased?, (2) How do objects displayed in prison museums reflect past and present racial attitudes toward the incarcerated?, and (3) Does visiting or working at a prison museum affect individual attitudes regarding the US carceral system? Grounded in James Scott’s (1992) concept of “hidden transcripts” and Michel Foucault’s …

Everything But Wrestling: How Women Wrestlers Perform Dominance, Lauren Gherman

Anthropology Honors Papers

Women’s wrestling continues to grow at the high school level, with more young girls joining the sport each year. Yet, as more women join wrestling, a heavily masculine sport, questions about gender preintimation on women’s teams arise. This study asks three questions about the role of gender on women’s teams: 1) Does an individual’s gender identity, in a heavily gendered sport like wrestling, factor into the development of team culture? 2) What, if any, forms of gendered socialization emerge as women enter wrestling? 3) In what way are women socialized because of their gender? Data was gathered via interviews, in …

Reproductive Justice: People Matter! History Matters! Places Matter!, Jazmin L. High

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Research has established that racial disparities in contraceptive use exist in the United States with African American women being more likely than white women to report using a contraceptive method associated with lower efficacy or no contraception at all. Several factors have been suggested to explain low uptake of highly effective forms of contraception and disparities including cost, systemic racism, negative attitudes, and cultural mistrust stemming from the history of medical racism. However, the lived experiences of rural African American Southern women are underrepresented in contraceptive research. Utilizing mixed methods, this study explores the contraceptive experiences of 14 rural African …

Living Color: Aesthetic Surfaces And Political Life In Brazil, Samuel E. Novacich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about the manipulation of appearances – of both the human body and the built environment – in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Focused on Afro-aesthetic makeup and tanning practices as well as urban renewal projects, this ethnographic study reveals how the making over of both the skin and the urban landscape shape social inequalities and contribute to productions of race, gender, and national belonging. While some of the aesthetic technologies examined herein may be characterized as “bottom up” – or as the self-fashioning tactics of marginalized Afro-Brazilians – others constitute “top down” infrastructural interventions led by the state …

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 …

Language Play And Racial Dysphemism In The Marrakchi Language Space, Spencer Fausel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study seeks to divulge the meaning and popular usage of two phonetically similar yet reportedly distinct dysphemisms spoken and understood in the Marrakchi dialect of Moroccan Arabic (Darija). Darija speakers across the North African lingua-space use the term "qlawi" to denote testicles. In Morocco, speakers utter "qlawi" to express negation or pejorative notions of being, the term commonly wielded to disparage or vituperate a frustrating person or object—drawing connections to the subaltern, the lowly, the destitute, the stupid, the possessionless, and potentially to the racialized (non)object. The word itself can stand as a syntactic substitute for “nothing” in certain …

Dancing In The Heart Of The Empire, Talisa Feliciano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dancing in the Heart of the Empire is an urban ethnography of public transit space in New York City. The work is based on five years of research on the trains of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) subway system. This work primarily focuses on Black and brown youth dancers who perform on the subways. Combining participant observation, archival research, digital social media research, and interviews, the dissertation identifies dancing as a form of resistance to the racialized structure of the train space and New York City. Public transportation is the heartbeat of the city. It is a contested site of …

Politics Of Belonging: Being Armenian In Turkey And Lebanon, Pinar Ertekin

Theses and Dissertations

An estimated two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire before the beginning of World War I, and almost all of them were annihilated or displaced during the genocide of 1915. My work revolves around the meaning of the Armenian Genocide to Armenians living in Turkey and Lebanon. I focused on what it feels like to be an Armenian living as a Turkish citizen in a state and nation that had perpetuated and then consistently denied the genocide of their ancestors, and I examined how Armenians in Turkey experience their everyday lives, the challenges they encounter as well as their …

Anth201: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Fall 2023), James Tolleson

Open Educational Resources

Cultural anthropology emerged to study the differences among human beings (and between human and non-human beings). This course will cover the foundations of the discipline, including a critical perspective on anthropology’s ties to European colonialism and the rise of global capitalism. Students will come away with an understanding of how cultural anthropologists study culture, defined as “a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared. Together, they form an all-encompassing, integrated whole that binds people together and shapes their worldview and lifeways” (Brown, McIlwraith & Tubelle de González 2020, 6). We will also pay close attention to …

“Nails Done, Hair Done, Everything Did!”: Consumption And The Creation Of Black Feminine Selves, Simone Reid

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how race and gender shape the meaning that Black women associate with their beauty consumption practices and spending. Much of the existing feminist scholarship on beauty has been postfeminist, privileging the concept of agency and empowerment over structural realities. However, the materialist feminist frame has more utility to address how beauty operates within the lives of Black women as a form of distinct gendered racial oppression. The concept of aesthetic capital emerges from the materialist feminist perspective and suggests that beauty demands the investment of considerable economic resources and can deliver economic returns. Despite this, aesthetic capital …

A Race-Police Regime: Nypd Technology And Urban Governance In New York City, Elliott Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation draws on three years of ethnographic and archival research to explore the relationship between technology, policing and race at the NYPD. In focusing on the ways problems are constructed and police power enacted, I explore the more-than-human entanglements in the production of race and the governance of cities under racial capitalism. My overarching claim is that urban governance works through contentious techno-political arrangements I call race-police regimes, which sanction and elicit race by enacting forms of exclusion and belonging. Racial capitalism in New York City, I argue, is governed through a technocratic mode of policing which leverages …

George Floyd In Papua: Image-Events And The Art Of Resonance, Karen Strassler

Publications and Research

This article offers an introduction to the “image-event” as both concept and method through a focus on the circulation of images around the killing of George Floyd. It examines how these images reverberated and resonated in West Papua, a restive region of Indonesia that has been the site of a long-standing separatist movement. It critically examines a celebratory media discourse that sees the US-based Black Lives Matter movement as expanding outward to spark similar movements elsewhere, a logic that reiterates long-standing colonialist narratives that figure places like Papua as backwaters belatedly receiving and imitatively taking up ideas that flow from …

Refusing Rehabilitation: Outlaw Epistemologies And The Carceral-Therapeutic State In Nyc, Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During an historic re-articulation of incarceration in New York City, Refusing Rehabilitation: Outlaw Epistemologies and the Carceral-Therapeutic State explores how gender, race, and class have been transformed at the intersection of criminal legal system reform and the overdose crisis. I take up how multiracial groups of criminalized women—thrown together by the state, not by choice—refuse forms of state control and violence, and imagine together alternative “outlaw” horizons of justice, healing, drug use, and escape from carceral-therapeutic capture. Countering the individualizing mandate of rehabilitation, women in rehab articulate visions of healing grounded in interdependence, collective safety, and an end to structural …

Environmental Repercussions Of The Strange Fruit: The Implications Of Our Enslavement On Modern Black Experiences With Nature, Indya Woodfolk

Honors Theses

When I was nine years old my dad often took me hiking at “Rosaryville State Park” in Maryland. Sometimes we would ride bikes, other times we would walk the trail and become mesmerized by the sounds and sights of nature. We would run down the path, play iSpy, or tell stories and sing songs. The trail led to an open field with acres of land in the distance. The only presence there was my dad, the trees, and me. We would take out our 7/11 sandwiches, sit on the ground, and enjoy our time together. It wasn't until I was …

Can Joy Be Racialized? Analyzing How Ghanaians Conceptualize Joy, Zakiyyah (Zaza) Jones

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The racialization of joy is one’s own experience of joy being tied to their racial, and ethnic identity. Inspired by the concept of Black joy, which is an example of the racialization of joy, this paper aims to understand how Ghanaian university students conceptualize joy and whether they would consider their experience of joy to be influenced by their racial/ethnic identity. 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS). In addition, photography was used as a methodology to capture images of Black people experiencing joy …

Constructing 'Child Safety': Policy, Practice, And Marginalized Families In Florida's Child Welfare System, Melissa Hope Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

‘Child safety’ has become a central concept of the modern child welfare system, an institution whose purpose is to protect children from abuse and neglect. What safety means and how it is best accomplished, however, are highly contested and characterized by definitional ambiguity, inconsistent bureaucratic interpretation, and operational variability. Situating this research within the anthropology of the state, the purpose of the current study is to develop a deeper understanding of the ways in which the state enacts power in matters of the family and childrearing through the child welfare system, casting a critical lens on the strategies used in …

Contributors To Reduced Life Expectancy Among Native Americans In The Four Corners States, Olusola A. Omisakin, Hyojun Park, Max T. Roberts, Eric N. Reither

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Student Research

To assess trends in life expectancy and the contribution of specific causes of death to Native American-White longevity gaps in the Four Corners states, we used death records from the National Center for Health Statistics and population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau from 1999–2017 to generate period life tables and decompose racial gaps in life expectancy. Native American-White life expectancy gaps narrowed between 2001 and 2012 but widened thereafter, reaching 4.92 years among males and 2.06 years among females in 2015. The life expectancy disadvantage among Native American males was primarily attributable to motor vehicle accidents (0.96 years), liver …

“Here Come The Crackers!”: An Ethnohistorical Case Study Of Local Heritage Discourses And Cultural Reproduction At A Florida Living History Museum, Blair Bordelon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project explores the complex roles of power and heritage in the reproduction ofcultural and ethnic identities in the context of a local living history museum called Cracker Country. Throughout this thesis, I demonstrate how discourses of Florida heritage are constructed, reproduced, or contested in various ways among all the museum’s different communities of stakeholders. Using Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s (1995) theory of historical silences and expanding on Laurajane Smith’s (2006) notion of the Authorized Heritage Discourse, I explore the ways that heritage “works” at a local level, and the multitude of meanings it can hold within particular communities. I analyze the …

Myth, Power, And Justice: The Danger Of A Single Story, Christen H. Clougherty

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

If we hear only a single story about a group, we risk a critical misunderstanding. In this session, learn to critically analyze assumptions of single stories and dominant narratives about community partners. Engage in hands-on activities to explore this issue as it relates to race, poverty, and social justice. Leave with classroom activities to take back to your classroom.

A Fat Imposter: The Embodied Intersection Between Race, Body Type And Fatness In Margaret Cho’S Comedy, Julia Cox

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Margaret Cho is a comedic goddess who, in her mockery, serves flaming hot social commentary about race, body image, and fatness. Within this thesis, I used critical discourse analysis to understand how Margaret Cho embodies Asianness, whiteness, and the body types and images prescribed respectively. While working on data analysis, I came across a common media trope of fat women: the use of indexically Southern (United States), Appalachian, and Working class indexicals in speech and lexical items. I connected the ideologies surrounding Southern and Appalachian language to the inequalities that fat women face. This voicing had not previously been written …

Nonsovereign Racecraft: How Colonialism, Debt, And Disaster Are Transforming Puerto Rican Racial Subjectivities, Isar Godreau, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

Using the concept of “racecraft” to describe the state production of racial subjectivities, we argue that this process has been increasingly compromised in Puerto Rico by a lack of sovereignty and by the current socioeconomic crisis. We argue that the state-sponsored idea that Puerto Rican white and mixed-race identities operate separately from the US racial framework is receding. Based on the unconventional use of an open-ended question for racial identification in a survey administered to over one thousand Puerto Ricans, we found: a reluctance to identify racially, an awareness of a normative “whiteness” that excludes Puerto Ricans, and a tendency …

Reimagining Care: Surviving And Thriving Among Lgbtq African Americans In Birmingham, Alabama, Stacie Lynn Hatfield

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation draws on fieldwork with Black LGBTQ identifying individuals and communities in Birmingham, Alabama conducted from 2015-2019 as part of a project that reimagines theories of care. Informed by scholars of Black and feminist studies, I conceive of forms of care as negotiations of survival and tactics of thriving that are worked out in everyday practices and discourses among LGBTQ African Americans. I show how histories of racial inequality and centuries of resistance, surviving, and thriving among communities of African descent intersect with LGBTQ politics, space, and identity to create strategies and places of individual and community care. My …

Beyond Choice: An Intersectional Analysis Of Identity And Labor In Online Sex Work, Shawna F. Felkins

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

This intersectional project seeks to understand the complex labor, social lives, and community building of online sex workers. Building on the work of foundational sex work researchers, this project utilizes in-depth interviews, a survey, social media posts, and published writing and research from online sex workers to understand how marginalization and identity impacts participation and success in online sex work. Providing analysis on how race, gender, class, and ability intersect in the digital sexual marketplace, this project critiques the rise of neoliberal feminism in sex work spaces that stems from the centering of white and otherwise privileged sex workers using …

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

Theses and Dissertations

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

Small Towns And Mining Camps: An Analysis Of Chinese Diasporic Communities In 19th-Century Oregon, Jocelyn Lee

Graduate Masters Theses

Chinese Diaspora archaeology has focused historically on urban contexts or in-depth case studies, with minimal comparative studies. To expand such research, this thesis is a multisited analysis in Oregon using archaeological assemblages from the Jacksonville Chinese Quarter and four remote Chinese mining camps, museum material collection from a Chinese store in John Day, and store ledgers written in Chinese and English dating to the late-19th century. By situating the research in the framework of race, this thesis seeks to understand the ways that race and racialization impacted market access and affected consumption choices for Chinese immigrants in different classes. Chinese …

Dios En Carne: Rastafari And The Embodiment Of Spiritual Blackness In Puerto Rico, Omar Ramadan-Santiago

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation, I examine how the Rastafari community in Puerto Rico constructs, reshapes, imagines and embodies blackness as a personal, political, and ideological identity. I argue that my interlocutors refuse non-black privilege and choose blackness, an act that is understood as identification not with subjugation but with power. I consider their identification with blackness and enactment of this identity as a performance. My analysis, based on 22 months of ethnographic research, and utilizing ethnography, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews, explores how my interlocutors claim blackness as a spiritual identity. In doing so, they demonstrate the metaphysical nature of race …

School Optimism: Fast Life And Slow Debt In The Financialized University, Mark Alan Porter Webb

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the past two decades, educational debt has quickly transformed US colleges and universities into spaces of cruel optimism: the higher education that students desire is all too often an obstacle to their flourishing. This study maps the contours of the white, middle-class attachment to the college dream, paying particular attention to the moments when the optimism surrounding higher education turns cruel. As this optimism wanes in the face of mounting educational debt, students deploy a myriad of fast life strategies—a flurry of actions that include work, activism, protest, leaving school and/or satirical critique—with the hope of mitigating the impact …