Showing 1 - 10 of 14 Items

Date: 2022-01-01

Creator: Jacqueline Boben

Access: Open access

Extreme sports, like skateboarding, whitewater kayaking, and skiing, have historically been male-dominated. As women’s participation in these sports grows, my research asks: how do women navigate sports spaces and cultures that have for so long been defined by men? To answer this question, I draw on ethnographic research on communities of skateboarders, whitewater kayakers and skiers conducted during the summer of 2021 in Bozeman, Montana. I found that the specific landscapes where these extreme sports take place are often conceptualized by participants as more masculine spaces. Within these spaces and communities, women participants often leverage gender performances associated with masculinity to gain entry into these male-dominated communities. Performing in more masculine ways mitigates feelings of hypervisibility, while also helping to build connections to established members of the community. More than simply fitting in, women find that these gendered performances also help them to build competence in the sport. At the same time, women are transforming skateboarding, whitewater kayaking, and skiing through their participation by creating opportunities for more dynamic and fluid gender performances.

Date: 2024-01-01

Creator: Matthew Cesar Audi

Access: Open access

Since the late 1800s, people have immigrated to the United states from Lebanon and Syria, and the community’s racial and ethnic position within the United States has been contested ever since. Previous research emphasizes that while people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are legally classified as “white” on the U.S. Census. However, many people from the region do not identify as white, and they often face discrimination or threats of violence. For people of Arab and Christian backgrounds this is further complicated because they are a part of the majority through their religion, but part of a minority through their ethnic background. In addition, media depictions of MENAs tend to be homogenizing and stereotypical. This thesis attempts to fill a gap in literature on Christian Lebanese American identities by conducting ethnographic interviews with Lebanese-Americans from a variety of generations. It pulls from theories of diaspora and race, emphasizing the importance of context and migration trajectories when understanding Lebanese American identities. My findings demonstrate wide-ranging diversity in how Christian Lebanese-Americans understand and articulate identity due to three major factors: divergent migrant pathways in multiple countries, generational difference given changing racial politics in the U.S., and generational difference given the impacts of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East upon young Lebanese-Americans.

Date: 2023-01-01

Creator: Meghan Gonzalez

Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2022-01-01

Creator: Julia Elisabeth Perillo

Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2024-01-01

Creator: Lillyana Browder

Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

• Restriction End Date: 2025-06-01

Date: 2020-01-01

Creator: Emma D. Kellogg

Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2021-01-01

Creator: Tam Phan

Access: Open access

“Twitter Revolutions” in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, and Moldova illustrate social media’s capacity to mobilize citizens in uprooting systems of injustice. As non-democratic regimes, these “Twitter Revolutions” offer insight into how Twitter’s microblogging, hashtags, and global user connections help broker relations between activists hoping to challenge the government. However, this thesis focuses on the democratic regime of the US and how Twitter plays a role in aiding the prison abolition movement in their effort to dismantle carceral networks that inflict racial and political violence on Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color. The thesis outlines how, under the US’ classification as a democracy, the US utilizes infrastructural power to coerce American citizens into accepting carceral networks of violence as essential institutions to maintain civil society. The following sections explain the abolitionist movement’s history of attempting to dismantle the discrete formal and informal institutions of political violence, and includes the complicating development of liberal-progressive reformism that attempts to co-opt the goals of the abolition movement. The thesis focuses on the Twitter hashtag #PrisonAbolition in 2020 to explore how American Twitter users perceive the US carceral state and the prison abolition movement. The research concludes that #PrisonAbolition does not currently possess the capacity to evolve into the social mobilization seen in the “Twitter Revolutions” of non-democratic regimes because the US’ infrastructural power effectively engrained into the minds of Americans that prisons protect civil society. However, the tweets still show a promising development as American Twitter users become more engaged in abolitionist conversations.

Date: 2019-05-01

Creator: Carlos Manuel Holguin

Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community

Date: 2015-05-01

Creator: Katharine Herman

Access: Open access

This project compares the interaction between the government and the population in both Peru and Sri Lanka through the 20th century, focusing on the provision of care (services, benefits, and recognition as provided by the governing apparatus) as a locus for their most meaningful interaction. The provision of care can be seen as a form of communication established in certain practices, symbols, and discourses. Moreover, the provision of care works to reorient the subject population into a more beneficial relationship with the state–notably one of increased dependence and trust. Through the elaboration of what care is and how it functions, a care ideology is established creating a terrain through which the politics of the governed and the governing alike can be legitimized. Care ideology can then be considered a further articulation of the state idea, creating a dialogue about how governance can or should be affected within a certain context. These case studies then illustrate the terrain over which both of these governing bodies work. In Sri Lanka, the governing apparatus provides a means for citizens to live a symbolically meaningful life through paddy farming. In Peru, the governing apparatus provides access to the state through civil infrastructure like roads and education. Through care, material goods become invested with meaning and the state idea becomes materialized. Care is a then substantial project undertaken by the state to ensure its own reproduction and further widen the possibilities for the state project to be effected through its own citizens.

Date: 2021-01-01

Creator: Lowell Ruck

Access: Open access

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 21st 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 individual, familial, and communal experiences and from past, present, and future conceptions of authentic tradition in their roles as cultural mediators. Ultimately, it suggests that players of French Canadian traditional music interact with this tradition in diverse ways, and that in doing so, they help to maintain the vibrancy of Franco-American cultural practices. La culture franco-américaine est reconnue de plus en plus comme partie intégrante de l’héritage du Maine et de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et attire maintenant l’attention académique. Mais même si beaucoup d’érudits et de promoteurs culturels ciblent la langue française dans leur travail sur ce sujet, peu d’études ont considéré la position de la musique traditionnelle dans les communautés franco-américaines du XXIe siècle. Cette thèse se concentre sur la musique traditionnelle canadienne-française de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et sur les façons dont les musiciens conceptualisent l’authenticité et la tradition dans leur art. En utilisant des entrevues ethnographiques, elle illumine comment les musiciens tirent des expériences individuelles, familiales et communautaires et des idées du passé, du présent et de l’avenir dans leurs rôles comme médiateurs culturels. Finalement, elle suggère que les joueurs de la musique traditionnelle canadienne-française interagissent avec cette tradition de plusieurs façons, et ce faisant, aident à maintenir la brillance des pratiques culturelles franco-américaines.