Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Archiving The Lumad Schools Of Mindanao, Ryan Cezar Alcarde, Michelle Mikiko Pagaran, Victoria Nolasco

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

During the Duterte administration, Indigenous communities in Mindanao, striving to protect their ancestral lands from destructive logging, mining, and agro-industrial plantations, were subjected to attacks by military and paramilitary groups. This resulted in the enforced shutdown of 215 Lumad schools, whose ecocritical pedagogy molded Indigenous children into land protectors and environmental stewards. In response, the Mindanao Climate Justice Resource Facility (MCJRF) and former Lumad school volunteer teachers and students, Indigenous leaders, and supporters launched the “Lumad School Memory Project” in 2023. This research and archiving initiative aims to document the rich educational practices of the forcibly closed Lumad schools, ensuring …

Unveiling Marginalised Voices: Female Indentured Labourer’S Narratives In Island Literature, Arifah Arum Candra Hayuningsih

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This study examines the lives of female indentured labourers from Java and India, as portrayed in Liliane Saintomer's La Bayou de Nouméa à Jakarta (2016) and Gaiutra Bahadur's Coolie Woman (2013). Both authors, grandchildren of the central characters, offer personal and historical insights. The research explores how these novels enhance our understanding of the complex identities and lived experiences of female indentured labourers in colonial contexts. It investigates memory as a site of resistance, reclaiming silenced narratives and addressing the shared struggles of Javanese and Indian women in plantation life.

The Curious Case Of Japanese Denim, Aaron Francis Ward

Japanese Society and Culture

From its humble beginnings as wholly utilitarian workwear in the 19^th century, to its modern rise to high-fashion, the ubiquity of denim, particularly in the form of jeans, has had a fascinating journey in its little-over-150-year history (Beazley, 2015). Of note has been the recent rise in popularity of Japanese denim. Since the end of the Second World War, Japan seems to have had an insatiable demand for Americana (Marx, 2023). Yet, if considered in the sociohistorical context of Japanese-American relations, this ought to be highly improbable. The current paper examines the sociological nature of Japanese denim from semiotic …

Role Of Classroom Openness In Digital Literacy And Online Civic Engagement Among Filipino High School Students, Ma. Glenda Wui, Jessica Sandra R. Claudio, Jie Zhang, Carl Russel R. Reyes, Rosselle Trishia Reyes, Enrique Niño P. Leviste

Sociology & Anthropology Department Faculty Publications

The recent prominence of social media use necessitates new approaches in forming citizenship practices among the youth, the primary users of these platforms. While schools play a critical role in instilling civic values, dispositions, and skills among young people, it is equally important to examine the role digital literacy plays in facilitating civic engagement. Digital literacy pertains to technical skills in using social media, obtaining knowledge and information on social media, and communicating or expressing opinions on social media. The current study examined the relationship of classroom openness to online civic engagement with digital literacy as a mediating variable. The …

Protegiendo La Antártida En El Antropoceno: Bioseguridad Como ‘Ritual’ Turístico, Clare A. Sammells, Vuochnea Taing

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

No abstract provided.

“We Will Tend To It”: The Reconstruction Of The Wimauma, Florida’S Bethune Area Through Archival Research And Oral Histories, Alanah Cooper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on heritage preservation efforts led by Wimauma community members interested in preserving the history and heritage of Wimauma’s Bethune Area—a historically African American community. This study aims to challenge the dominant narratives of Wimauma that erase/silence the tangible and intangible legacy of the Bethune Area. By collecting and drawing upon oral histories from community residents; engaging in participant observations; conducting archival research, my thesis will strive to construct an expanded narrative of Wimauma to include the history and heritage of the Bethune Area and the everyday lives of underrepresented people and families who helped shape Wimauma. This …

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 …

"Insanity" As An American Empire: The Canton Insane Asylum For American Indians, 1902-1934, Thanh Chi Nguyen

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This graduate thesis involves a retelling of the history of the now defunct Canton Insane Asylum, built in the early 20th century located in Canton, South Dakota. It was America’s first federal psychiatric facility dedicated exclusively for American Indians. The Canton Insane Asylum for American Indians is a touchstone whose microhistory reflects larger political and economic sentiments in both the state of South Dakota and in the United States writ large. Conceiving South Dakota, as first and foremost a white settler society erected on land forcibly wrested from American Indian people, the asylum played an important economic development role and …

Casar Public Lecture: From Coolidge To Trump: A Century Of Racial Politics In America, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar

Performances, Events, and Presentations

Dr. Gallagher's talk examined how various immigration policies in the United States have been shaped by the general public's attitudes regarding the race and ethnicity of those immigrating to the U.S. His talk explores the past and present social pressures that have led to both expansive and restrictive immigration policies.

Speaker: CASAR Guest speaker: Dr.Charles Gallagher ,Professor of Sociology from La Salle University, Philadelphia, USA.

Lecture 1: Date: Wednesday, Feb. 26th, 2025 Time: 7-9 pm Venue: Room 602 - Hill House building - AUC Downtown Tahrir Campus

Lecture 2: Date: Thursday, Feb. 27th, 2025 Time: 1-2 pm Venue: GAPP Executive …

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 …

A Benjaminian Rumination Of Grasses And Tomatoes In Contemporary Anatolian Film, Ceren Izci

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis interprets the intersection of history, ecology, and politics through two contemporary Anatolian films: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses and Murat Fıratoğlu’s One of These Days When Hemme Dies. We focus on the films’ portrayal of social relations and relationships to other living beings through interpreting the temporal layers and historical tensions present in the plots of the films. We introduce the paper by pondering over the question of whether these films are political. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s concepts of “first nature” and “second nature”, the first chapter introduces the philosophical framework for understanding the connection between …

Serious Music With Bea Witkin: An Upper West Side Audio Walk, Megan Hattie Stahl

Theses and Dissertations

Serious Music with Bea Witkin is a site-specific audio walk on New York City’s Upper West Side produced by Megan Hattie Stahl. This immersive, musical documentary explores and extends the life and work of composer Beatrice Witkin (1916-1990). Across four stationary chapters and three walking interludes, participants follow a one-mile route from Riverside Park to Straus Park by way of Witkin’s longtime residence on West End Avenue. Through guided narration, archival music, interviews and recordings of contemporary musicians sight-reading a 1985 string quartet piece by Witkin, Serious Music invites listeners to consider where music begins and ends.

Witkin, who graduated …

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.

Down The Bay Oral History Project Newsletter - Winter 2025, Center For Archaeological Studies, Mccall Library

Down the Bay Oral History Project Newsletter

Public newsletter sharing information about progress and discoveries during the Down The Bay Project.

Precipitation, Perceptions, And Participation: An Analysis Of Individual Perceptions Of Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority's Cloud Seeding Pilot Program And Suggestions For Public Outreach And Communications, Rachel A. Rowlee

Pitzer Senior Theses

Cloud seeding is a form of weather modification intended to increase the amount of precipitation by introducing a seeding agent. The Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (SAWPA) has implemented a four-year cloud seeding pilot program utilizing silver iodide as a seeding agent during rain storm events. Over the last year, SAWPA received various feedback, much of which exists in the social media realm. This research consists of open-ended interviews with water resource managers, SAWPA employees, and individuals expressing disapproval of the program on social media and Instagram comment analyses. Interview and comment analyses are put into conversation with the theory …

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.

Military Forensic Archaeology: The Process And Recovery Of U.S. Missing-In-Action (Mia) Service Personnel, William Belcher, Luann Wandsnider, Ella N. Axelrod, Finn Kennison, Alicia Lawson

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The United States (U.S.) Department of Defense's (DoD) Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is the largest skeletal identification laboratory in the world and receives several hundred cases per year for identification related to Missing-in- Action (MIA) U.S. service members. While there are various sources for these accessions, by far the largest source is through unilateral or bilateral (done in cooperation with another governmental entity or nongovernmental organization) as well as public-private partnership excavations. While the DPAA-style military forensic archaeology follows archaeological principles and recording standards, the work is goal-oriented, evidence/trace-driven, and time-constrained— a common occurrence with cultural resource management sites …

40 Years Passing By In (A) “Heartbeat”, Christopher Janney

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article outlines the forty-year history go Christopher Janney’s iconic performance work “HeartBeat.” Trained as an architect and jazz musician, Janney combines these two disciplines to create large interactive light/sound installations and performances. On the one hand, he attempts to make architecture more like music, more “alive” using real-time sensing devices as on his “Harmonic Convergence” installation on the Miami International Airport. On the other hand, he attempts to make music more like architecture, more physical more visual. In his “HeartBeat” performance, a dancer wears a heartbeat device that amplifies his/her heartbeat in “real time.” Over this pulse, live musicians …

Yoga Sūtra Book Four And The Yogabindu, Christopher Key Chapple

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

Four themes from the fourth pāda of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra are examined here: karma (IV:2-13), individuality (IV:16), humility (IV:20-22), and freedom (IV:29-34). Affirmations and variant interpretations of these four are provided from Haribhadra Virahāṅka’s Yogabindu, most likely composed a century or two later.

Collective Karma: From The Yogasūtra To Taylor Swift, Zoë Slatoff

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

The Indian knowledge traditions speak at length about karma, which is divided into three categories—accumulated (saṃcita), ripe (prārabdha), and future (kriyamāṇa). While much is said about our individual karma and how it affects our repeated reincarnation in cyclic existence, how does this affect others and how do others affect us? In other words, as this paper explores, what is our reciprocal and collective karma?

Painting Liberation: A Visual Ontology Of The Interplay Of Mind And Consciousness In Book Four Of The Yoga Sūtras, Melissa Townsend

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This presentation explores how artistic practice can illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of mind, consciousness, and liberation as articulated in Book Four of the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. Through a series of paintings that visually translate these sūtras, I propose that art offers a unique, experiential means of engaging with the complex relationship between citta (mind) and puruṣa (consciousness).

The paintings function as a form of “visual ontology,” inviting viewers to engage with abstract philosophical concepts in a sensory, tangible way. By depicting the interplay between the mutable processes of the mind and the unchanging awareness of consciousness, these …

Islamic Themes In Us Hip-Hop Culture, Anders Ackfeldt

Music & Performance in Muslim Contexts

Explores how Islam is produced in American hip-hop culture by both Muslims and non-Muslims

Islam has been a part of hip-hop culture since it sprang from New York’s street culture in the 1970s. Today hip-hop has evolved into a global artform with a diversity of Muslim Islamic discourses expressed. Using tools from the field of social semiotics, this book examines how Islamic themes feature in US hip-hop culture, maintaining a particular awareness that both Muslims as well as non-Muslims participate in their production.

Anders Ackfeldt analyses a collection of lyrics, sounds and images to show how Islamic themes are featured …

Silent Testimonies: The Global Evolution Of Grave Marker Art And Meaning, Erik Culley

Bakerman Student Research Awards

Grave markers are more than simple memorials; they are meaningful cultural objects that reflect how societies understand death, identity, belief, class, and community values. The size, material, decoration, and inscriptions of gravestones change over time in response to economic conditions, religious beliefs, social structures, and consumer culture. By studying grave markers across different regions and historical periods—such as early modern Europe, nineteenth-century Germany, and immigrant cemeteries in Australia—archaeologists can trace broader cultural transformations. Research shows that the rise of external grave markers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was closely tied to increased material consumption and a growing emphasis on …

Reassessing The Role Of Polynesian Rats (Rattus Exulans) In Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Deforestation: Faunal Evidence And Ecological Modeling, Terry L. Hunt, Carl P. Lipo

Anthropology Datasets

The role of introduced Polynesian rats (Rattus exulans) in the deforestation of Rapa Nui remains a contentious issue. Several critics, including Mieth and Bork (2010), argue that rats played a negligible role compared to human impacts. We address the role of rats through three lines of evidence: (1) a response to rats-are-neglible arguments, including problematic continental analogies and misunderstandings of seed predation impacts; (2) analysis of rat remains from Anakena excavations (1986-2005) showing that rats decreased by 93% over time, contradicting claims they served as a “fallback food” following resource depletion; and (3) ecological modeling demonstrating that introduced …

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 …

Audit Culture And A Nonprofit In Northern Illinois, Onyenum Ruth Udoh

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Audit culture has become a defining feature of nonprofit life, shaping how organizations balance accountability to donors with responsibility to their communities. While existing scholarship often highlights large or international NGOs, less is known about how small and mid-sized nonprofits in the United States experience these pressures. This study focused on nonprofit in DeKalb County, Illinois, to examine how audits, donor restrictions, and accountability demands influence nonprofit practices, priorities, and relationships with their communities. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and organizational anthropology, I conducted eight weeks of participant observation and semi-structured interviews with seven staff across leadership, finance, program, and administrative …

Identifying Intangible And Biocultural Heritage Elements Toward Environmental Understanding: Engaging Stakeholders Through Art, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Grounded in a case study in Barbuda in the Caribbean, this research examines sustainability from the perspective of what arts and heritage can contribute to community engagement and local and broader understandings about the environment. This article documents a growing body of literature recognizing the role of arts and culture, including local knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), in climate change endeavors. Art and TEK present expansive world views. Contextual information situates research done on the island of Barbuda pre- and post-Hurricane Irma. Visual arts workshops engaged community members in mixed methods research. Results documented cultural elements, particularly intangible and …

A Critical Approach To Analyzing And Addressing Worldview-Based Cultural Conflict Between Indigenous Peoples And Western Science In Education And Research, Deborah H. Williams

Sabbatical Projects

Intercultural conflict exists in science education and research, I argue as a result of differences between the Western scientific worldview and the Indigenous worldview. Native Americans are the most underrepresented group in STEM, and this has been the case, in my personal experience for over two decades. Western science is not universal or acultural, Indigenous peoples have their own ways of knowing founded on different philosophical assumptions and recognizing metaphysical phenomena and explanations that are rejected by Western science and the positivist/post-positivist paradigm. Through the power of colonial privilege, scientists, science departments, and science disciplines have been able to erect …

A Content Analysis Of Doubt: How Latter-Day Saints Interact Online When One Of Their Own Seeks Answers, Leilani Naomi Mascio, Ronald Smith

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

This content analysis examines how members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) interact with doubting members in online forums, focusing on Facebook and Reddit. Analyzing 1,115 comments from four public posts (August 2024–January 2025), six emergent themes characterize these interactions: (1) normalizing doubt, (2) thought-terminating clichés, (3) bringing back to the fold, (4) hierarchical escalation, (5) attributing doubt to Satan, and (6) emotional reasoning. Findings reveal that LDS members overwhelmingly dominate these discussions, employing doctrinal language, personal narratives, and appeals to authority to reintegrate doubters. Notably, non-member interference was rare, suggesting moderated or self-selected engagement. The …