Geography Commons^™

Emal, Emal, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Emal was a gate security guard in the Afghan army and a supplier for American forces at the airport. Before leaving Afghanistan, Emal was kidnapped by Daesh, beaten, thrown into a pile of bodies, and left for dead. He woke up weeks later in hospital with adent in his skull, brain damage, and mental/emotional problems. When he was able, Emal fled with his wife and six kids, but they travelled with smugglers in separate cars and got separated. Iran police deported his wife and children back to Afghanistan. Emal continued on and eventually made his way to Oinofyta refugee camp …

Fawad And Zakeela, Fawad, Zakeela, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Fawad and his wife, Zakeela, have three children. Zakeela was a beautician, and Fawad was a singer in the Baghlan district in Afghanistan. The music he produced was not in accordance with the strict restrictions of the Taliban. They threatened his life and assaulted him many times, so he decided to leave with his family to Kabul. Fawad’s day job was as an FM radio producer; at night, he moonlighted as a singer and musician. He produced music for ceremonies and weddings, often performing for the women’s part, which the Taliban did not accept. Eventually, his life was again threatened, …

Faroosh And Elina, Faroosh, Elina, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Faroosh was a cameraman for a private television program in Afghanistan working on a documentary about the Taliban. When he and his crew were discovered, the Taliban attacked them and he and his wife fled to Turkey, walking 12 hours to get there. Upon arrival the police arrested and harassed them. Turkey was not a safe place. After several suicide bombings in the area, they decided to move on to Greece, where they are in a refugee camp without any progress in their situation. They have no money to move forward and no ability to work and the economic situation …

Straight Time And Scandal: Travesti Urban Politics In São Paulo, Brazil, Christine L. Woodward

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

São Paulo, Brazil is currently pursuing a project of creative urbanism. Though city rhetoric insists this project is rooted in tolerance of sexual diversity, I suggest that city policy effectively perpetuates normative conceptions of family and respectability. Using data gathered through a series of qualitative interviews with transgender and travesti individuals living in São Paulo, I argue that the straight time of São Paulo’s creative urbanism generates exclusionary temporalities and spatialities in the city that render travestis out of time and out of place. Furthermore, I argue that travestis use their capacity to enact shame through scandals to generate temporalities …

Spaces Of Solidarity: Negotiations Of Difference And Whiteness Among Activists In The Arizona/Sonora Borderlands, Carrie Mott

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Interpersonal conflict poses a serious threat to social justice activism. In the context of multi-racial solidarity activism in southern Arizona, conflicts are often born of the challenges accompanying differentials in social privilege due to differences in race and ethnicity relative to white supremacist settler colonialism. We can see these tensions topologically through the very different relationships white, Latin@, Chican@, and indigenous activists have to on-going processes of white supremacy. This dissertation explores the factors contributing to successes and failures of multi-racial activist ventures in the context of the Arizona/Sonora borderlands, particularly the challenges of negotiating social difference among communities of …

The Working Lives And Spatial Practice Of Digital Media Developers In San Francisco, Daniel G. Cockayne

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

In this dissertation I examine work practices in the 21st Century, looking in particular at how categories such as labor and value are changing in the context of technological shifts and the valorization of entrepreneurial work. I take the example of digital media workers in San Francisco to show how work is changing in relation to correlative changes in the capitalist mode of production and the devaluation of labor under neoliberal models of reason. This approach interrogates how attachments toward work are produced and reproduced to ask why work has become such a naturalized and unquestionable category in everyday life. …

Impermeable Assemblages: Flooding, Urban Infrastructure, And Stormwater Politics In São Paulo, Brazil, Nate Millington

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This project analyzes efforts to remake the relationship between water and city in São Paulo, Brazil. Currently experiencing overlapping problems of flooding, scarcity, and pollution, São Paulo illustrates the challenges of managing water in a contemporary mega-city. This dissertation subsequently considers the city’s water management through an approach that borrows from urban political ecology, social studies of science, and post-colonial urban theory. With an epistemological grounding in these literatures, this project analyzes ongoing conversations about water management in São Paulo, and focuses on how water is encountered and engaged with in the landscape by engineers, artists, and activists. This project …

Unaccompanied Children Migration, Ronald Alvarado

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

The way people view immigration has changed over the past few years. Children fleeing to the United States without their parents has been a huge issue lately. Unaccompanied children are kids younger than 18 who are sent alone, in this case to the United States. These kids migrate because of the extreme violence that occurs in their home countries.

Statistics prove that children in their home countries are exposed to much violence. Most are coming from the northern triangle of Central America. I believe they should have more rights here in the United States, and be treated just the same …

Model Lessons Geography Of Southern Iberia Institute - Portugal And Spain, Jack Davis, Jeff Salvati, Tabitha M. Richards, Denise Harrington, Jordan Kasler, Amanda Mattei, Heidi Wilson, Luke Ovgard, Karen Kraemer

Instructional Materials

Model Lessons Geography of Southern Iberia Institute - Portugal and Spain to use with The Student Atlas of Oregon.

Socio-Spatial Mobilities In An Immigrant Gateway City: Analyzing Latina\O Experiences In East Boston, Mitchell Beam Snider

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation analyzes the ways in which Latino migrants in East Boston represent their material and imagined socio-spatial mobilities in the city. It considers the ways in which participants discuss the relationship of their mobilities to experiences of social exclusion and inclusion as well as feelings of belonging. The first empirical chapter specifically analyses how participants’ motility—or capacities for being mobile—interfaced with their experiences (or lack thereof) of onward migration. It finds that there is a complex relationship between onward migration and participants' motility. The second empirical chapter considers how participants represented encounters with others in the city as emotional …

“The Land Is Our Family And The Water Is Our Bloodline”: The Dispossession And Preservation Of Heirs’ Property In The Gullah-Geechee Communities Of Lowcountry South Carolina, Brian Grabbatin

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Heirs’ property is land that is collectively inherited by family members when an ancestor dies without a will. The complexity and ambiguity of rights among family members makes these parcels legally vulnerable to dispossession. This form of land tenure is found across the United States, but is particularly prevalent in southern African American communities, where educational inequities and distrust of law led to a reliance on extralegal practices of inheritance. This dissertation investigates the dispossession and preservation of heirs’ property in the Gullah-Geechee communities of Lowcountry South Carolina.

This investigation of heirs’ property is rooted in the interdisciplinary literature on …

A Plural And Uneven World: Queer Migrations And The Politics Of Race And Sexuality In Sydney, Australia, Derek Ruez

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation examines how the geographies of sexuality and race shape queer migrants’ experiences of settlement and citizenship in Sydney, Australia. Against a backdrop of economic shifts in the Asia Pacific and Australia's long history of racialized exclusion, I conducted 43 in-depth interviews with queer migrants and '2nd generation' adult children of migrants who reflect the diversity of Australia's migration streams, including historically important migration from Southern and Eastern Europe and increasingly significant movements from South, Southeast, and East Asia. Through those interviews, I examined participants' migration histories, everyday spatial trajectories in the city, and involvement with queer and ethnic …

3d Tool Evaluation And Workflow For An Ecological Approach To Visualizing Ancient Socio-Environmental Landscapes: A Case Study From Copan, Honduras, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Shona Sanford-Long, Jack Kerby-Miller

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Architectural reconstructions are the centerpieces of ancient landscape visualization. When present, vegetation is relegated to the background, resulting in underutilized plant data—an integral data source for archaeological interpretation—thus limiting the capacity to take advantage of 3D visualization for studying ancient socio-environmental dynamics. Our long-term objective is to develop methods of 3D landscape visualization that have value for examining changes in land use and settlement patterns. To begin to work toward this objective, we have (1) identified 3D tools and techniques for vegetation modeling and landscape visualization, (2) evaluated the pros and cons of these tools, (3) investigated biological and ecological …

Maritime Alpine Cairns In Southeast Alaska: A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study, William J. Hunt Jr., Ralph J. Hartley, Bruce Mccune, Nijmah Ali, Thomas F. Thornton

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This report describes the goals, data recovery methods, data analysis, and conclusions of a pilot project “A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Study of Alpine Cairns, Baranof Island, Southeast Alaska,” funded by the National Science Foundation under Project No. 1230132. The project brought together experts in the disciplines of archaeology (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), lichenology (Oregon State University), and Tlingit oral history (Oxford University) to address questions regarding artificial prehistoric, high altitude cairns. Data were collected in 2013 and 2014. Pedestrian archaeological inventory recorded 50 cairns at 5 sites. Archaeological data includes cairn dimensions, GPS positions, still photographic images, and video documentation. Four cairns …

Ogeechee Riverkeeper Oral Histories, Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections

Finding Aids

This collection consists of oral history interviews of people who grew up living on the Ogeechee River and its watershed. The interviews were conducted from 2016-2017 for Phase I of the Ogeechee Project, but the topics span a broad range of time - including family lore and artifacts from Native American settlement and the Colonial Period through today. Materials include photographs and written documents with audio recordings making the bulk of the collection. Materials were originally collected by c.a.s.e. Consulting Services for the Ogeechee Riverkeeper organization.

Find this collection in the University Libraries' catalog.

Ballot-Box Environmentalism Across The Golden State: How Geography Influences California Voters’ Demand For Environmental Public Goods, William Skyler Lewis

Pomona Senior Theses

In California, voters frequently face ballot propositions dealing directly or indirectly with environmental protection. Records of these votes provide powerful evidence of the character of voters’ demand and willingness-to-pay for environmental public goods (e.g., air quality, watershed ecosystem services, parks and recreation), and have been used in past environmental econometrics research to produce aggregated income and price effect estimates. Using neighborhood-level voting records on seven environmental-related ballot propositions in California between 2002 and 2010, this econometric study investigates the nature of voters’ demand for environmental public goods, focusing on the effect of household income on pro-environment voting. Unlike previous studies, …

Everyday Farm Life In The Moxee Valley 1915-1950: Historical Ethnography, Terri Towner

All Master's Theses

This study collected oral histories of those who lived or worked in the Moxee Valley, within the greater Yakima Valley of Washington State from 1915-1950. It documents and records the historical and cultural processes of farm life and its evolution for people living in this foremost hop-growing region of the United States. The larger goal is to characterize the community and social processes for use as primary source documentation to create historically accurate programs at the Gendron Hop Ranch-Living History Farm near Moxee. Nineteen participants were interviewed. Topics addressed in the study include farming in the Valley, the household, roles …

Geog 140: Human Geography—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio—"Music And The Geography Of Place: Engaging The Geographical Imagination", Katherine Nashleanas

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

The present project uses cooperative learning strategies that requires students in large classes to collaborate in applying intellectually challenging articles on place, space, sacred spaces, tourist places, and commodification of place to the development of a video project linking music to place and landscape. As an extension of their group activity, students are teaching each other how to apply concepts from the assigned articles to their projects in creative ways while engaging in critical thinking and exercising their geographical imagination.

The Western Stemmed Point Tradition: Evolutionary Perspectives On Cultural Change In Projectile Points During The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition, Lindsay D. Scott

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this thesis I analyze the cultural techniques of Paleoindians in North America by examining the diversification and fusion of stemmed projectile point traditions using an evolutionary analysis. The Western Stemmed Point tradition has an extensive regional and temporal distribution throughout the Intermountain West and High Plains during the Paleoindian period. In an effort to determine how stemmed projectile point technologies relate to each other, I applied a phylogenetic approach to construct heritable patterns of projectile point histories. By measuring the physical traits of those points and using a macro-evolutionary theoretical approach, changes in artifact form can be acquired and …

Model Lessons For Math And Geography Activities, Karen Adams, Tyler Sexton, Shawnti Peachey

Instructional Materials

Model Lessons for Math and Geography Activities to use with The Student Atlas of Oregon.

Analysis Of The Geosocial Landscape In The City Of Toronto, Courtney J. Jones

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Microblogging on geosocial platforms is a popular form of online communication where users post information about their daily lives and challenges. Since the launch of Twitter in 2006, information sharing through social media has become a largely unused data repository. Tweets often convey content about the users sentiment as it is happening. As such, Tweets can be viewed as a proxy of public mood. In this thesis, I performed a sentiment analysis of all public geo-located Tweets posted by a variety of Twitter users between September 2013 and October 2014. Each Tweet was processed through a custom algorithm to extract …

Understanding The Influencers Of Second-Hand Apparel Shopping Behavior, Robyn Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Shopping for second-hand apparel is rapidly growing and has become a notable segment of the retail market. The purpose of this study is to determine what influences consumers when shopping second-hand for apparel products in-store and online. According to the existing literature, a number of key factors play significant roles for second-hand apparel shopping consumer decisions. They include: social, costs, trends and environmental influencers. Past research has not concentrated in-depth on the hedonistic and social influences of second-hand apparel shopping, financial factors, and time spent shopping for second-hand apparel. This study has observed the socio-demographic profile of second-hand shoppers, what …

Debt Financed Migration To Consumption Smoothing: Tracing The Link Between Migration And Food Security In Bangladesh, Mohammad Moniruzzaman

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation is primarily focused on migration and food security linkages, more specifically the impact of migrants’ remittances on household food security, and the role of debt in financing migration. Using a multi-methods approach the dissertation focuses on the household level, but also sheds light on the related policy landscape linked to these resource issues. The dissertation consists of seven chapters, with four research finding chapters that are each self-contained and interdisciplinary. Each of these four chapters adds conceptually and empirically to the existing literature on migration and development.

Chapters one and two provide the introduction and literature review. Chapter …

Acculturation And Post-Immigration Changes In Obesity, Physical Activity, And Nutrition: Comparing Hispanics And Asians In The Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada., Michele Vitale Mr., Sean Doherty

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

OBJECTIVES: The acculturation hypothesis speculates that as new immigrants get exposed to more obesogenic environments, they progressively acquire the unhealthy lifestyles of the host society, and their obesity risk gradually increases since time of arrival. However, the consistency of the presumed acculturation effect across immigrant groups and gender, and the reasons behind individual changes in lifestyle behaviors remain unclear. Thus, this study investigated the acculturation hypothesis in the Canadian context by comparing two foreign groups, Hispanics and East/Southeast Asians, which present contrasting post-settlement obesity patterns and behavioral trends.

Methods: A 41-item questionnaire (including open-ended questions) was administered with 100 first-generation …

Which Came First, People Or Pollution? A Review Of Theory And Evidence From Longitudinal Environmental Justice Studies, Paul Mohai, Robin Saha

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

A considerable number of quantitative analyses have been conducted in the past several decades that demonstrate the existence of racial and socioeconomic disparities in the distribution of a wide variety of environmental hazards. The vast majority of these have been cross-sectional, snapshot studies employing data on hazardous facilities and population characteristics at only one point in time. Although some limited hypotheses can be tested with cross-sectional data, fully understanding how present-day disparities come about requires longitudinal analyses that examine the demographic characteristics of sites at the time of facility siting and track demographic changes after siting. Relatively few such studies …

Claudio Perna, Ca. 1970: The Impossibility Of Wholeness, Silvia Benedetti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis identifies two main themes in Claudio Perna’s (1938–1997) work: his use of technology to explore self-representation and his interrogation of mapping as means of knowledge. This study also situates Perna’s conceptual work in relation to his field of human geography, in the specific Venezuelan context.

Coyotes On The Web: Understanding Human-Coyote Interaction And Online Education Using Citizen Science, Zuriel Anne Rasmussen

Dissertations and Theses

Coyote (Canis latrans) numbers are increasing in urban areas, leading to more frequent human-coyote interactions. Rarely, and particularly when coyotes have become habituated to humans, conflicts occur. Effective education about urban coyotes and how to prevent habituation reduces conflict. Citizen science, in the form of online education, can be used to engage and educate city dwellers about urban coyotes. In this research, I explore Portland Metropolitan Area (PMA) residents' baseline experiences with, and attitudes toward, urban coyotes. Next, I investigate citizen science as a tool for education. Using the Portland Urban Coyote Project (PUCP), a citizen science project, as a …

Feeding The South: An Assessment Of Food Availability In Rural Mississippi, Nicole Baiza Lawrence

Master's Theses

The overall goal of this project is to investigate Mississippi’s rural food environment by assessing the food resources available to rural Mississippians. The primary objectives were to identify sample locations in each of the four cultural regions of Mississippi and determine the food resources available to residents of those counties. The intellectual merit of this research lies in its in-depth exploration of food accessibility in rural areas. Though there is a wealth of literature on the topics of urban food access and food deserts, very little research has been done in rural areas. Most studies focus on urban environments which …

Tree Inventory Report: Soma District, Cody Graham, Jeremy Bigelow, Gary Shaw, Andrew Bailey, Katelynn Bisso, David Dunnington, Joshua Emmons, Morgan Farber, Cody Graham, Ryan Guidry, Max Joyner, Roger Klingelhoffer, Jonathan Newman, Nicholas Scarpelli, Geoffrey Duh

Asset Mapping: Community Geography Project

The SOMA tree inventory project was taken on by a group of fourteen students as a senior capstone at Portland State University, in September of 2015. Many of us came to this class with GiS background, however, there are others representing the diverse collection of studies offered at PSU, such as film, communication, and general sciences. Capstone courses are PSU’s requirement for all seniors that allow each student to take part in helping those in the surrounding community, by providing a benefit to organizations in need of a large group of volunteers. Our capstone course was designed to impart the …

Creando Las Estrellas: Determining The Quality Of The Dominican And Cuban Player Development Systems, Samuel C. Hearn

Honors Theses

Recently, there has been a huge rise in the number of Cuban ballplayers, or peloteros, as the baseball playing Latinos are known. Why do Major League Baseball (MLB) teams go to such lengths to sign Cubans, when a heavy presence already exists in Cuba’s Caribbean neighbor, the Dominican Republic? Through the comparison educational systems, statistics of each country’s elite players, and comparative accounts of the Dominican and Cuban player development systems, the contrast between the two systems is evident. Though the Dominican system creates a large return in the investment MLB teams make in the country, the socialized sport system …