Community-Based Research Commons^™

On An Unshakeable Foundation: An Archaeological Investigation Of The Postemancipation Black Community Of Bass Street, The Church They Built, And The Lasting Identity They Formed In Nashville, Tennessee, Clélie Elizabeth Cottle Peacock

Master's Theses

The Bass Street Community lived along the northern base of St. Cloud Hill in Nashville, just below the Civil War-era Union fortification, Fort Negley. The fort was built and defended by conscripted free, enslaved, and self-emancipated Black/African Americans and soldiers from the U.S. Colored Troops; some of whom stayed, built residences, founded a church, and established a shared community identity. The objects they left behind reflect a time of transition in the postemancipation urban South.

The former Bass Street Community enclave is a subset of the Fort Negley archaeological site (40DV189). My thesis examines artifacts from the Bass Street Baptist …

Houses Built For Gods: Articulations Of Urban Hokora In Kyoto, Steele Engelmann

Anthropology Undergraduate Honors Theses

Amidst the urban landscape of Kyoto, Japan, there are thousands of hokora, small neighborhood shrines. This study uses social theories of pilgrimage and space to examine the articulation of hokora, community, and personal desire. As sites of local pilgrimage, hokora form networks of communal, but also individual, aspirations across the urban spiritual landscape of the city. This thesis argues that communities are connected to the larger social structures of Kyoto through hokora. As such, neighborhoods are reproduced and displayed through their hokora’s entanglements with the urban, social, and religious landscapes of Kyoto. Therefore, this study deploys an ethnographic approach to …

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

Liquid Border, Yingfan Jia

Masters Theses

A River is a mighty and constantly-evolving force, leaving behind an intricately designed and constantly changing system. Not just a river, the Rio Grande stretches all the way from Colorado before intersecting with the US-Mexico Border in southern Texas - a point where the powerful forces of nature now merge with a clearly-defined political boundary. The outcome of this is a unique ecological niche, which may often go unnoticed despite its distinctiveness.

Texas is famous for its farms and ranches, and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas was once an agricultural hub. However, urbanization and the depletion of water …

Hearts + Minds Knowledge Round Up: Co-Creating Civic Connections For Indigenous And Black Young People In Peel, Esrah Akasha, Shamas Berantuo, Alex Hansen, Yasmin Hashi, Michella Mark, Fallon Melander, Abigail Salole

Hearts + Minds

This knowledge round-up addresses the question: What ought to be prioritized by non-profit organizations for meaningful civic connections for Indigenous and Black young people? The answer to this question is our Hearts + Minds theory of change mapped out in this paper.

Contextualizing The 2019 “Chile Despertó” Movement: The Impact Of Historical Relational Processes On Mobilization And Repression, Tanya Leon

International Studies (MA) Theses

To expand our theoretical and empirical understanding of mobilization and repression in Latin America, this thesis asks three critical questions. Are economic indicators sufficient predictors of social movement emergence in Latin America? What other factors contribute to large-scale mobilization in Latin America? How do government’s respond to large-scale Latin American social movements? Specifically, when, and why do democratic governments choose to employ repression against social movements? Accordingly, I construct a quantitative model to test the correlation between rise in protest and worsened economic conditions. I apply it to a comprehensive dataset of political events in multiple South American countries throughout …

Promoting Labour Migrant Health Equity Through Action On The Structural Determinants: A Systematic Review, Mireille Evagora-Campbell, Aysha Zahidie, Kent Buse, Fauziah Rabbani, Sarah Hawkes

Community Health Sciences

Background: Labour migrants, who represent over sixty per cent of international migrants globally, frequently have poorer health status than the population of host countries. These health inequities are determined in a large part by structural drivers including political, commercial, economic, normative and social factors, including living and working conditions. Achieving health equity for migrant workers requires structural-level interventions to address these determinants.
Methods: We undertook a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature designed to answer the question "what is the evidence for the effectiveness of interventions to address the structural determinants of health for labour migrants?" using the Ovid Medline electronic …

Archiving Feminist Truth In Trump’S Wake Of Lies, Julie Shayne

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article is about an assignment I do in one of my Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies social movement classes. I revised the assignment the first time teaching the class after Trump lost the 2020 election. For the assignment, students work in groups to research local feminist and gender justice organizations and deposit all of their original materials – recordings, photos, flyers, etc. – into a digital, open access archive I co-created several years ago with librarians and staff on my campus. In 2021 I had my students do the “post-Trump” edition where they researched local organizations about how their …

An Intergenerational Photo Exploration Of Self Care Actions In Self-Identifying Strong Black Women, Vanessa Patrice Goodar

Dissertations

The current study sought to expand upon the Giscombé Superwoman Schema (2010) specifically exploring the role of vulnerability resistance and help obligation as potential barriers to changing comprehensive self-care health commitments in self-identifying Strong Black Women (SBW). The Superwoman Schema characteristics of vulnerability resistance and help obligation along with socio-economic factors of income, religious affiliation and marital status were assessed in the project using a visual-ethnography approach to Photo Voice methods and five intergenerational focus groups of SBW's born between 1946 and 2002. The collective self-care knowledge of these eighteen participants was analyzed using a participatory action research discussion framework …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Mapping Renewal: How An Unexpected Interdisciplinary Collaboration Transformed A Digital Humanities Project, Elise Tanner, Geoffrey Joseph

Digital Initiatives Symposium

Funded by a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Foundations Grant, the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture’s “Mapping Renewal” pilot project focused on creating access to and providing spatial context to archival materials related to racial segregation and urban renewal in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, from 1954-1989. An unplanned interdisciplinary collaboration with the UA Little Rock Arkansas Economic Development Institute (AEDI) has proven to be an invaluable partnership. One team member from each department will demonstrate the Mapping Renewal website and discuss how the collaborative process has changed and shaped …

Jigs, Reels, And “Realness”: An Investigation Of Ideas Of Authenticity And Tradition In New England French Canadian Music, Lowell Ruck

Honors Projects

Franco-American culture is increasingly recognized as an integral part of the heritage of Maine and New England, and has attracted growing academic attention in recent years. But while many scholars and cultural promoters focus on the French language in their work on this subject, few studies have considered the position of traditional music in Franco-American communities in the 21^st century. This thesis examines French Canadian traditional music as it is played in New England and the ways in which musicians think about authenticity and tradition in their art. Using material from ethnographic interviews, it illuminates how musicians draw from …

"Sometimes You Have To Be The Leader": A Minnesota Oral History On Fighting Sexual Exploitation, Trudee Able-Peterson

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Prostitution survivor Trudee Able-Peterson used oral histories to research and document the efforts of women and men to respond to the sexual exploitation of women and children in Minnesota. Her findings illustrate the leadership needed to overcome centuries of commercial sexual exploitation to obtain a beginning societal response. Respondents indicated the importance of their interaction with pioneer leaders in other locales. Their comments also illustrate the many issues and challenges still facing the community.

"Baby Factories": Exploitation Of Women In Southern Nigeria, Jacinta Chiamaka Nwaka, Akachi Odoemene

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Despite the writings of feminist thinkers and efforts of other advocates of feminism to change the dominant narratives on women, exploitation of women is a fact that has remained endemic in various parts of the world, and particularly in Africa. Nigeria is one of those countries in Africa where women are largely exposed to varying degrees of exploitation. This paper examines the development and proliferation of baby-selling centers in southern Nigeria and its impacts on and implication for women in Nigeria. It demonstrates how an attempt to give protection to unwed pregnant girls has metamorphosed into “baby harvesting” and selling …

The Justice System Is Criminal, Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony

2020 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

The ‘Meanings’ And ‘Enactments’ Of Science And Technology: Ant-Mobilities’ Analysis Of Two Cases, Farrukh Chishtie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this work I study two cases involving practices of science and technology in the backdrop of related and recent curricular reforms in both settings. The first case study is based on the 2005 South Asian earthquake in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan which led to massive losses including large scale injuries and disabilities. This led to reforms at many levels ranging from disaster management to action plans on disability, including educational reforms in rehabilitation sciences. Local efforts to deal with this disaster led to innovative approaches such as the formation of a Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) model by a local NGO, which …

Quantitative Historical Analysis Uncovers A Single Dimension Of Complexity That Structures Global Variation In Human Social Organization, Peter Turchin, Thomas E. Currie, Harvey Whitehouse, Pieter François, Kevin Feeney, Daniel Mullins, Daniel Hoyer, Christina Collins, Stephanie Grohmann, Patrick Savage, Gavin Mendel-Gleason, Edward Turner, Agathe Dupeyron, Enrico Cioni, Jenny Reddish, Jill Levine, Greine Jordan, Eva Brandl, Alice Williams, Rudolf Cesaretti, Marta Krueger, Alessandro Ceccarelli, Joe Figliulo-Rosswurm, Po-Ju Tuan, Peter Peregrine, Arkadiusz Marciniak, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Nikolay Kradin, Andrey Korotayev, Alessio Palmisano, David Baker, Julye Bidmead, Peter Bol, David Christian, Connie Cook, Alan Covey, Gary Feinman, Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Axel Kristinsson, John Miksic, Ruth Mostern, Camero Petrie, Peter Rudiak-Gould, Barend Ter Haar, Vesna Wallace, Victor Mair, Liye Xie, John Baines, Elizabeth Bridges, Joseph Manning, Bruce Lockhart, Amy Bogaard, Charles Spencer

Religious Studies Faculty Articles and Research

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information …

The Intersection Of Culture And Activism In The Filipino Community In Soma, Ericka J. Martynovych

Master's Theses

My research analyzes the intersection between culture and activism, through oral histories with participants and organizers of SoMa Pilipinas, the Filipino cultural heritage district in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco. I analyzed the impact of the establishment of the Filipino cultural heritage district on the Filipino community in the South of Market neighborhood. I examined what motivates members of this community to be politically active by organizing and attending protests and rallies, speaking at Planning Commission hearings at City Hall, attending planning meetings for SoMa Pilipinas, building relationships across organizations and fields, and providing resources for community …

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?: Food Inequlaity And Black Americans, Christina Foster

Capstone Collection

Food insecurity is an issue that plagues many people throughout the world. It only requires a brief search on the United Nation’s (U.N.) World Hunger Map to determine that this is indeed a worldwide crisis. Conversely, within the United States, the issue of hunger is often treated as “minimal” in comparison to other countries. A deeper inquiry into hunger within the U.S. reveals an even more disturbing connection: the role of white supremacy and systemic racism in regard to hunger. Academic research pertaining to food access is quite recent. Be that as it may, it is of no surprise that …

Delta Narratives: Saving The Historical And Cultural Heritage Of The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Steve Boilard, Robert Benedetti, Margit Aramburu, Gregg Camfield, Philip Garone, Jennifer Helzer, Reuben Smith, William Swagerty, Marcia Eymann, Tod Ruhstaller, David Stuart, Leigh Johnsen, Dylan Mcdonald, Michael J. Wurtz, Blake Roberts, Margo Lentz-Meyer

College of the Pacific Faculty Reports

From August 2014 through July 2015, the Delta Narratives project, on contract to the Delta Protection Commission, addressed two questions. First, in what ways does the historical experience of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta contribute to an understanding of key themes in regional and American history? Second, how might Delta stories gain wider appreciation within the region, throughout Northern California, and among people in the rest of California and beyond?

Scholars on the project team documented ways the history of the Delta illustrates trends in land management and reclamation, technological shifts in transportation and agriculture, the impact of ethnicity and labor …

Witnesses To Revolution, Colleen Cassingham

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My documentary follows two families 4 years after the Tunisian Revolution. All members in the Daly family from Sidi Bouzid participated in the revolution, and the Laroussi family in La Goulette had two brothers martyred on January 14^th, 2011. The film explores the effects of the revolution – emotional, economic, and social – on all the various family members. As we get glimpses into the daily life of two main characters, we see that reactions to the revolution are diverse, although the notion of the ‘Tunisian exception’ is held up to scrutiny by the overwhelmingly negative reactions to …

A Resistance, Remembered? Remembrance, Commemoration And The Parallel System In Prishtina, Kosovo, Conner Gordon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Though the 1999 war that liberated Kosovo from Serbian control is over fifteen years in the past, memories of the 1990s still remain in a state of chaos. This paper approaches the development of these collective memories through interviews with Prishtina residents about the memories and legacy of Ibrahim Rugova’s parallel structures in the 1990s. Though they draw from similar narratives as memories of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s armed resistance, memories of the nonviolent resistance play a vastly different and largely underrepresented role in current Kosovar Albanian public discourse. Through competing deployments of resistance memories, disproportionate memorialization of Kosovo’s violent …

The Closure Of New Orleans' Charity Hospital After Hurricane Katrina: A Case Of Disaster Capitalism, Kenneth Brad Ott

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Amidst the worst disaster to impact a major U.S. city in one hundred years, New Orleans’ main trauma and safety net medical center, the Reverend Avery C. Alexander Charity Hospital, was permanently closed. Charity’s administrative operator, Louisiana State University (LSU), ordered an end to its attempted reopening by its workers and U.S. military personnel in the weeks following the August 29, 2005 storm. Drawing upon rigorous review of literature and an exhaustive analysis of primary and secondary data, this case study found that Charity Hospital was closed as a result of disaster capitalism. LSU, backed by Louisiana state officials, …

Study Guide For United In Anger: A History Of Act Up, Matt Brim

Open Educational Resources

The United in Anger Study Guide facilitates classroom and activist engagement with Jim Hubbard’s 2012 documentary, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. The Study Guide contains discussion sections, projects and exercises, and resources for further research about the activism of the New York chapter of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). The Study Guide is a free, interactive, multimedia resource for understanding the legacy of ACT UP, the film’s role in preserving that legacy, and its meaning for viewers' lives.

Addressing The Learning Needs At Occupy Dc, Andrew J. Batcher

Capstone Collection

The purpose of this paper is to examine how learning can help the Occupy movement in Washington DC. It explores three questions. What are the learning needs of the movement? What educational content can help meet those needs? And how can education be practiced in a way that most effectively addresses the learning needs within the real world circumstances of the movement? Research methods include participant observation, surveys, interviews, focus groups, literature review, and primary document review. Data was coded into 11 outcome oriented learning needs and 3 educational orientations which are geared towards meeting those needs. This paper is …

Remember The Fillmore: The Lingering History Of Urban Renewal In Black San Francisco, Christina Jackson, Nikki Jones

Africana Studies Faculty Publications

In the summer of 2008, I moved to San Francisco, California. I lived in the city for three months. As a researcher, my objective was to learn more about Mayor Gavin Newsome’s African-American Out-Migration Task Force. The Task Force convened in 2007 and met eight times from August to December. In 2009, the Mayor's office released a final report on the Redevelopment Agency's website that summarized the history of blacks in the city and outlined several recommendations for reversing their flight. The final report found that the political, economic, and social conditions of African-Americans are disproportionately more dire than any …

Preservation Ethics In The Case Of Nebraska’S Nationally Registered Historic Properties, Darren Michael Adams

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation focuses on the National Register of Historic Places and considers the geographical implications of valuing particular historic sites over others. Certain historical sites will either gain or lose desirability from one era to the next, this dissertation identifies and explains three unique preservation ethical eras, and it maps the sites which were selected during those eras. These eras are the Settlement Era (1966 – 1975), the Commercial Architecture Era (1976 – 1991), and the Progressive Planning Era (1992 – 2010). The findings show that transformations in the program included an early phase when state authorities listed historical resources …

Eastside Landmark: A History Of The East Los Angeles Community Union, 1968-1993, John Chávez

eBooks

"Established in 1968 to improve conditions in the barrio of East Los Angeles, the East Los Angeles Community Union has had a pronounced impact on the area, providing social services, helping increase political representation, and, most notably, promoting economic development, particularly through extensive real estate dealings. The history of TELACU is especially significant because it has provided a model for community development in other Mexican-American neighborhoods throughout the Southwest (including Oakland, California; San Antonio, Texas; Embudo, New Mexico; and Phoenix, Arizona).

TELACU and other ethnic community development corporations also offer a successfully tested general model of cooperative economic development for …

Education And Community Development Among Nineteenth-Century Irish And Contemporary Cambodians In Lowell, Massachusetts, Peter N. Kiang

New England Journal of Public Policy

As cities undergo dramatic demographic changes, schools become important sites of conflict between the interests of established and emerging communities. This article presents a case study of Lowell, Massachusetts, where the second largest Irish community in the country resided during the 1850s, and which is now home to the second largest Cambodian community in the United States. Analysis of nineteenth-century Irish community dynamics, particularly in relation to issues of public education in Lowell, reveals the significance of religious institutions and middle-class entrepreneurs in the process of immigrant community development and highlights important relationships to ethnicity, electoral politics, and economic development. …

York County Multiethnic Heritage Project Collection - Accession 186, York County Multiethnic Heritage Project

Manuscript Collection

The York County Multiethnic Heritage project, administered by Dr. Joyce Pettigrew Berman of Winthrop’s English faculty, was made possible by a $38,000 grant from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare of the U.S. government. The purpose of the project was to study the total contributions of ethnic groups to the total cultural heritage of York County School District No. 3, the York County Nature Museum and the city of Rock Hill Recreation Department. The project, which began in July 1976, and ended June 30, 1977, focused on ethnic groups in the area: Southern Appalachian, African-American and Native American. The …