Showing 1 - 2 of 2 Items

Date: 2023-01-01

Creator: Miki Rierson

Access: Open access

In this project I work to recover influential yet often erased Asian American female immigrant chefs and food authors from the mid-twentieth century to the present, situating their contributions in a deep-rooted tradition of diasporic women who used cooking as a means of communal agency and care. Immigrant Asian cookbook authors and chefs have long faced internal criticisms from their own diasporic communities of either inauthenticity or engaging in “food pornography,” to use writer Frank Chin’s term—a line of criticism that Lisa Lau has elaborated on as “re-Orientalism.”Though these criticisms should not eclipse the works themselves, I discuss and counter them in my project because they reflect broader challenges faced particularly by Asian female diasporic authors even today. , I seek to address a broader scholarly gap through my project. Presently, much important work exists on the legacies of historical trauma and violence on marginalized communities, work that highlights the insidious ways violence manifests in academia, pop culture, and everyday lives. This project is a personal pursuit to focus on the healing and beautiful aspects of diasporic community and identity, an ode to the parts of us that are not defined by the pain and suffering but that seek self-affirmation beyond them.

Date: 2024-01-01

Creator: Katharine Kurtz

Access: Open access

This thesis explores the gentrification of Munjoy Hill, a neighborhood on the northeast end of Portland, Maine from 1990-2024. Once the industrial hub of the city filled with factories and an industrial shipping port in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Munjoy Hill is now the most desirable neighborhood in the city with expensive, high-end condos, water views, ocean access, and hip restaurants and breweries. I argue that Munjoy Hill’s industrial past and strong connection to the local environment has made it unique, however the recent gentrification also makes Munjoy Hill a place that resembles, gentrified neighborhoods in cities around the country. This thesis studies Munjoy Hill’s change through three lenses: environment, housing, and food and drink. In the environment chapter I argue that the Hill’s natural beauty and connection to Maine’s scenic coastline primed it for gentrification once the area deindustrialized in the 1990s. In the housing chapter I explore the dramatic increase in housing prices and three ways residents are attempting to control the changes: affordable housing development, zoning, and historic designation. In my final chapter I analyze the role of new food establishments in transforming the Hill’s culture and cementing it as a neighborhood that feels, in part, like gentrified neighborhoods around the country.