Anthropology Commons^™

Egypt, Farha Ghannam

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Genetic Diversity Of North American Captive-Born Gorillas (Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla), Noah D. Simmons, Ronald S. Wagner, Joseph G. Lorenz

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) are designated as critically endangered and wild populations are dramatically declining as a result of habitat destruction, fragmentation, diseases (e.g., Ebola) and the illegal bushmeat trade. As wild populations continue to decline, the genetic management of the North American captive western lowland gorilla population will be an important component of the long‐term conservation of the species. We genotyped 26 individuals from the North American captive gorilla collection at 11 autosomal microsatellite loci in order to compare levels of genetic diversity to wild populations, investigate genetic signatures of a population bottleneck and identify …

The Effects Of Migration On Gender Norms And Relations: The Post-Repatriation Experience In Bor, South Sudan, Marybeth Chrostowsky

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

My dissertation research was a 14-month ethnographic study of the post-repatriation experience of forced migrants in South Sudan. It was designed to determine if alterations to gender norms and relations that refugees experienced during asylum differed as a function of the asylum environments and if these modifications remained intact upon the refugees’ return. The forced migrants in my sample, the Dinka of Bor from South Sudan, encountered two different asylum environments and experiences: Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya and Khartoum, in northern Sudan. After 10-15 years in asylum, these forced Dinka Bor migrants returned to South Sudan. I compared …

Soldiers Of Science--Agents Of Culture: American Archaeologists In The Office Of Strategic Services (Oss), Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

"Scientificity" and appeals to political independence are invaluable tools when institutions such as the American School of Classical Studies at Athens attempt to maintain professional autonomy. Nonetheless, the cooperation of scientists and scholars with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), among them archaeologists affiliated with the American School, suggests a constitutive affinity between political and cultural leadership. This relationship is here mapped in historical terms, while, at the same time, sociological categorizations of knowledge and its employment are used in order to situate archaeologists in their broader social and political context and to evaluate their work not merely as agents …

From Mounds To Maps To Models: Visualizing Ancient Architecture Across Landscapes, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Since the onset of settlement pattern studies in the 1950s, landscape mapping projects have become an archaeological mainstay. Remote sensing technologies such as lidar, photogrammetry, and SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) steadily reveal new archaeological sites. For landscape archaeology, the detection and mapping of small architectural complexes and households offers important data to contextualize larger (often already known) sites and perform regional analyses. However, because the majority of sites remain unexcavated, analysis is limited, and yet Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and 3D Visualization are expanding the possible uses for older and newly-acquired data on unexcavated mounds. This paper describes a GIS …

The Origins Of The Artists: A Lithic Analysis Of A Habitation Site Associated With The Jeffers Petroglyphs, Kevin W. Reider

Departmental Honors Projects

The Jeffers Petroglyphs is one of the most important ancient American Indian rock art sites in the Midwest. The site is unique with over 5,000 individual petroglyphs created over a 9,000-11,000 year span. There have been important studies and interpretations of the petroglyphs, but a large gap of information exists concerning the archaeological sites of those who helped create the petroglyphs. An analysis of the lithic (stone) raw materials found in a habitation site surrounding the Jeffers Petroglyphs was performed in order to help fill in this gap surrounding the origins of the petroglyph creators. The lithic assemblage analyzed was …

More Than Duffle Bag Medicine: An Ethnographic Analysis Of A Student Movement For Global Health, Julie A. Christensen

Honors Papers

Student activism around global health is occurring with visibility and fervor in the United States collegiate setting. Over the past two years, I have traveled across the US and Vietnam to immerse myself in the life of a nonprofit organization called GlobeMed. A largely student-led organization, GlobeMed partners each chapter with its own unique community health organization. My thesis is an ethnographic study that draws from narratives of young people, analyzes the organizational structure, and provides a broad contextualization of GlobeMed. First, I explore the history and development of GlobeMed. I then present life histories of young people involved in …

Reconsidering The Puebloan Languages In A Southwestern Areal Context, Michael Sklar Everdell

Honors Papers

Areal linguistics is the study of diffused linguistic features across different languages which are geographically contiguous and culturally connected. My research attempts to standardize definitions for the vocabulary surrounding linguistic diffusion which will apply cross-areally. I also examine these definitions within the case study of the Pueblo and Southwest regions of North America. These areas have been culturally linked, but no agreement has been made as to whether or not these make up a linguistic area with sub-areas or are both part of a much larger area including the Great Basin, southern Plains, and southern Californian languages.

No Peace In The House: Witchcraft Accusations As An "Old Woman's Problem" In Ghana, Alexandra Crampton

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

In Ghana, older women may be marginalized, abused, and even killed as witches. Media accounts imply this is common practice, mainly through stories of “witches camps” to which the accused may flee. Anthropological literature on aging and on witchcraft, however, suggests that this focus exaggerates and misinterprets the problem. This article presents a literature review and exploratory data on elder advocacy and rights intervention on behalf of accused witches in Ghana to help answer the question of how witchcraft accusations become an older woman’s problem in the context of aging and elder advocacy work. The ineffectiveness of rights based and …

Experiments To Measure The Effects Of Timber Harvesting Equipment On Surface Lithic Scatters, Douglas J. Baughman

All Master's Theses

The importance of cultural resource preservation cannot be overstated; however local economies are at least as important. Due to conservative archaeological site protection practices in Region 5 of the United States Forest Service, the economy of Northeastern California is being adversely affected. In an attempt to help the Forest Service make more informed management decisions and improve the Northeastern California economy, I undertook experiments on the effects of timber harvesting on lithic scatters on Modoc National Forest. The experiments involved placement of 225 glass tiles (proxy lithics) in each of three plots subject to vehicle traffic and log dragging by …

Archaeological Survey And Limited Testing At The Lincoln Trail Site (9bn17), Bryan County, Georgia, Ryan O. Sipe

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The Lincoln Trail site (9BN17) is an Irene phase (AD 1300-1580) village located in southeastern Bryan County, Georgia within the Richmond Hill Wildlife Management Area (WMA). Prior surface survey (ca. 1973, 2010) indicated an extensive artifact scatter and complex of shell middens in a marsh-edge environment, yet little was known of the site’s nature and no subsurface survey was conducted. 9BN17 was selected as a case study for a broad research query to identify the structure of mainland Irene phase polities and the role that this site played within one. The site was systematically shovel tested, revealing numerous middens, and …

More Studies In Rio Grande Valley History, Milo Kearney, Anthony K. Knopp, Antonio Zavaleta

Studies in Rio Grande Valley Regional History Series

Matamoros' love song to Brownsville : a poem / Milo Kearney -- Con un pie en cada lado : origins of El Rancho San Lorenzo de las Minas / Mary Jo Galindo -- The rise of banking in Matamoros and Brownsville / Louis Benavides -- The daily Brownsville ranchero / Norman C. Delaney -- Maximilian's bed in Brownsville / Don Clifford -- The U.S. consulate in Matamoros and instability in Matamoros and Brownsville in 1870 / César García -- The Lightbournes of the Point Isabel lighthouse / Antonio N. Zavaleta -- Movie theaters for Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley, …

Shifting Local Ecologies: Biocultural Interactions And Ecuadorian Public Health, Sabrina Bradford

Honors Theses

Though biology is considered universal, this thesis argues against the assumption of the universal applications of biomedicine in favor of a biocultural approach, emphasizing shifting local ecologies in an increasingly globalized world. This research investigated Ecuadorian health within an ecological context in coordination with an international public health internship that was completed through the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and the Ecuadorian Ministerio de Salud Pública. Throughout this thesis, examples are provided demonstrating that globalization, though appearing as a homogenous process on the international level, creates heterogeneous effects on the local scale. To explain the mechanisms and implications of these …

Claiming Space, Redefining Politics: Urban Protest And Grassroots Power In Bolivia, Carwil Bjork-James

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the role of space-claiming protests by primarily left grassroots social movements in Bolivia's current political transformation. Space claiming includes mass protests that physically control or symbolically claim urban space through occupations of plazas and roads, sit-ins, blockades, and other measures. As a theoretical construct, space claiming brings together tactics of collective action and meanings of public spaces, and looks at the consequences of their interaction. This dissertation is based on ethnographic engagement and oral interviews with protest participants and their state interlocutors during twelve months of fieldwork and archival research. By using detailed ethnographic evidence--of social life …

Clothing Tells Important Story For Anthropologist, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Ethnography On The Road: Infrastructural Vision And The Unruly Present In Contemporary Dakar, Caroline Melly

Anthropology: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Taboo Lexeme Conditioning And Obscenities In American English, Alexander Werny

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Taboo Lexeme Conditioning refers to the neurological, psychological, and sociological conditioning required during lexical acquisition for a native speaker to treat or experience certain lexemes as highly taboo. Taboo words differentiate both neurologically from non-emotional or non-taboo lexemes, and lexically person to person, in at least 4 ways: 1) they exhibit high activity in the emotional and moral processing structures of the limbic system, and can activate, or be uttered, independently of cortical structures involved in propositional language processing; 2) they generally receive a high amount of negative emotional response during lexical acquisition and subsequent usage, which affects how they …

Eat Until You're Full: The Pursuit Of Autonomy And Health Through The Adoption Of Organic Agriculture In Mae Ta, Thailand, Erin Jean Plews-Ogan

Senior Independent Study Theses

This research explores the role that farmers' concerns about health and community autonomy play in the emergence of an organic agriculture movement in the village of Mae Ta in northern Thailand. In the midst of the push for export-oriented and urban-centered development, many rural people have migrated to urban areas for work or adopted contract farming of chemical-intensive cash crops. Yet farmers in Mae Ta chose a unique alternative: sufficiency-based organic polyculture. Why take on such a risk without solid policy and market support for organic agriculture in Thailand? I investigated these questions through six weeks of participant observation and …

Jane Eyre And Her Transatlantic Literary Descendants: The Heroic Female Bildungsroman And Constructions Of National Identity, Abigail Ruth Heiniger

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

JANE EYRE AND HER TRANSATLANTIC LITERARY DESCENDANTS: THE HEROIC FEMALE BILDUNGSROMAN AND CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

by

ABIGAIL RUTH HEINIGER

May 2013

Advisor: Dr. Anca Vlasopolos

Major: English

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation examines the role of fairy tales and fairy lore across the arc of Charlotte Brontë's career from Jane Eyre (1847) to Villette (1853) in order to demonstrate the evolution of the heroic female bildungsroman in Brontë's work. This distinctive narrative paradigm, the heroic female bildungsroman, is incorporated into a perpetual search for a mythology to define womanhood, which ripples out from Jane Eyre's literary descendants …

Tyranny And Terror: The Failure Of Athenian Democracy And The Reign Of The Thirty Tyrants, Lucas D. Lecaire

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.