Brown, Susan Love

This thesis analyzes the creative strategies of African American female artists used to recreate the visual narrative of black female bodies in Western Art. Four artists are examined: Emma Amos, Adrian Piper, Alison Saar, and Simone Leigh. Emma Amos uses acrylics and textiles to address the strategies used by white male artists in the portrayal of black female bodies. Adrian Piper centers her performance piece on stereotypes to question racial stereotypes directed at black women. Alison Saar examines Topsy, a character from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, who regains agency from slavery tropes. Simone Leigh interprets Harriet Jacobs autobiographical experience by using utilitarian objects and architecture to contest the ideologies of slavery. The perspectives of these artists are critical to understanding how they view themselves through their own lenses as opposed to those of the dominant white culture, addressing the origins of ideologies surrounding black female bodies. Examination of each artist's work shows that the black women’s lived experiences are not monolithic or stereotypical.

Unitarian Universalism is a modern religion with a long history of reformation rooted in Christianity. My ethnography examines one of the Unitarian Universalist fellowships located in South Florida. The research examines the role of the church in American lives and the significance of the religious experience among liberals and humanists. American religions have been the focus of social scientists for the past forty years. This study shed light on how modernity affects the trajectory of religion in the United States. This is a holistic approach viewed of one of the American religions through a socio economic and political lens. Unitarian Universalism is comprehended through themes of individual narratives. Unitarian Universalist narratives present the religious experience a heterogeneous group might share. The story of Unitarian Universalists explains how religion is attached socially and culturally to believers. My research offers an alternative narrative for people who represent a minority among traditional and world religions.

Through a close analysis of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series and Veronica
Roth’s Divergent series, it will be shown that these two-current young adult dystopian
book-film crossovers pose several relevant parallels to contemporary real-world
problems. By deciphering a pattern on what garners their popularity, and most
importantly analyzing the aspect of why they reached such levels of recognition, we can
then begin to close in on just how important these two series are in representing the 21st
century young American mindset. Taking into the equation also, how the overall-arching
genre of dystopia has evolved with the times and has now adapted to reflect
contemporary anxieties and fears. Looking into several elements such as a newfound
desire for strong female roles, persuasive antagonists that are inspired by realistic
historical precedents, and an unsettling desensitization towards violence and gore, we can
then see that the successful equation of The Hunger Games and Divergent series reflects
mainstream interests evocatively and effectively. It is not just an intervention into the encompassing utopian/dystopian tradition, but into today’s
sociology.

The employment of metaphors in drawing meaning from our experiences is an
indispensable ingredient in most patient narratives. More specifically, they are essential
to the conceptual system we reference to understand and respond to the disruptions
brought upon by chronic illness. Through an analysis of patient narratives penned by a
group of contemporary American authors, this study identifies trends in how patients can
use metaphor to “bridge” the gap between their lives pre and post diagnosis, a process
that in many cases presents vulnerability as a viable remedy for alleviating the alienation
and diminished self-image so often impacting the lives of patients with lifelong disorders.

This thesis is a memoir of the women in my family and their relationship to
motherhood, both adoptive and biological. The primary source of this work is
memory and is contextualized within the Caribbean culture. The process of
interpreting these memories relies on narrative, cultural, and life history theory that
disarticulate ideas of motherhood found in North America from those in the
Caribbean. The beginning chapters are a personal memoir of motherhood while the
end chapters are analyses of the theoretical foundations of what I have explored. In
the last chapter, I reflect upon the personal process of writing memoir. There is no
equivalent study of the perception of the adoptive mother versus the biological
mother in the Caribbean. These stories of my family contribute to our understanding
of motherhood in the lives of women of color in the Americas, many of which have
been missing from history's larger narrative.

The Kentucky Shakers were distinct from those of Ohio and the Northeastern
United States because they were products of the cultural environment of the Upper
South. The variation originated in the country's settlement and migration patterns.
People with similar cultural backgrounds tended to concentrate and migrate together.
As the western frontier expanded, settlers with more socio-cultural commonalities
tended to migrate in similar patterns and maintain a sense of cultural cohesion in the
newly opened westward frontier. We can observe the similarities between the
Kentucky Shakers of the Pleasant Hill and South Union villages and their Southern
neighbors by analyzing cultural commonalities. Examples of cultural indicators
examined for evidence of regional variation include: folkways, organizational and
leadership patterns, foodways and political environments. Material culture, including
architecture, furniture, clothing and textiles are also considered in the regional comparison between Kentucky's Shakers and the remainder of the sect. The Kentucky
Shakers were in a very unique environment, as no other Shaker settlements were
situated in a slavery territory. Their geographical locale, in a strategically critical
border area during the Civil War, caused the Kentucky communities to endure
significant hardships not experienced by other villages during the War Between the
States. In many ways the Shakers of Kentucky had more in common with their
neighbors of the Upper South than they did with the other members of their sect in Ohio
and the Northeastern states. These differences with the remainder of the sect caused
considerable problems for the Kentucky Shakers. The cultural variations of the
Kentuckians were also sources of rich uniqueness that made the Southern Shakers
perhaps the most fascinating adherents to the religious movement.

Second-generation Guatemalan Maya children and adolescents who were born in
Palm Beach County had to balance two cultures. As children of Guatemalan Maya
parents, these youths belonged to Guatemalan Maya households--but many of their other
roles in the United States, particularly their roles as students, involved the wider American
culture. As such, they endured many of the same acculturation challenges that first
generation immigrants do. They often had to choose between fulfilling student roles,
family roles, and contrasting cultural beliefs and values, and negotiate shifting cultural,
familial, community, and gender dynamics. My primary research interest was to
understand how home, community, and cultural roles and identities affected students'
school experiences and how their student identities and school experiences affected their
home lives.
1 found that second-generation Guatemalan Maya faced maJor obstacles as
students such as poverty, language barriers, and rigid grading standards and views of knowledge that educational institutions adhere to. In addition, because of the extreme
persecution against indigenous Maya in Guatemala. most of the students' parents
received little fonnal education; thus, they were often unable to help their children with
homework. Further, Maya also have adopted cautious views of fonnal education
because of the tendencies of mainstream curriculums to devalue an indigenous lifestyle.
Maya beliefs about the usefulness of a Western education also influenced students'
perceptions of school. Moreover, most Maya immigrants came to the United States
poor, and often had to work several jobs and long hours to financially support their
families. Poverty was the primary factor that created hardships in students' lives.
Families faced challenges of poverty by staying interdependent and working
together to maintain the household. Thus, Guatemalan Maya children were expected to
fulfill Maya adult roles, which varied for women and men, and contribute to the
household by doing chores. Students' responsibilities at home diverted time and energy
away from school, but these roles also gave students a greater understanding of adult
roles and responsibilities. Thus, Guatemalan-Maya students gave family, home,
community, and adult Maya roles priority while giving school identities and roles
second priority.

This project examines the explanatory style of Colombians, the habitual way in
which they explain the good and bad events that occur in their lives, and its relationship
to life satisfaction. Two hundred and twenty Colombians completed a life satisfaction
question, the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), and demographic questions.
Simple means, correlations, and a multiple regression analysis were used to assess the
results. The results of the ASQ were also compared to two previously conducted studies:
a comparison of American and Chinese national levels of explanatory style and a study
conducted on a non-clinical sample of American adults. The results of this study showed
that the mean of Colombian overall explanatory style is more optimistic than the mean
overall explanatory style for participants in both the United States and mainland China.
There are no correlations between individual responses of life satisfaction and
explanatory style for the full sample; however, national means for explanatory style seem
to correlate with national means of life satisfaction. The multiple regression analysis showed that when taking explanatory style, gender, age, stratum, income, education,
occupation, and city into account, the only factors that are statistically significant are
occupation and city. More specifically, the results show that those Colombians who Jive
in Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, and Medillfn will tend to have higher levels of life
satisfaction than those who live in Bogota, and those who are unemployed will tend to
have a lower level of life satisfaction than those who work.

The body in anthropo logy represents more than a phys ical endpoint of human evolution. It is both
the template for cultural imprint, and a symbol that communicates cultural information. ln the context of
the Renaissance as an ethnographic e ntity, th e status of women is examined through two kinds of images:
anatomic and fine art.
Although the Renaissance is generally heralded as a boundary between medieval superstition and
humanism, with its improvement in the quality of life, few scholars have examined if that change applied
to women. Using Kelly-Gadol's thesis that women did not have a renaissance in the Renaissance, this
thesis wiII show their restricted status through the lens of anthropology of the body. Witch persecutions,
sumptuary laws and curious metal appurtenances to restrict the body support this view.
Kuhn's paradigm theory and Turner's work on IIminality are relevant with regard to unequal
male-female status. When normal science is presented with new information that is anomalous, a period of
denial ensues. Thus, the domain of authority was challenged by observation and created conflict along
with discovery. The most drastic of these raged between female sexuality versus reproduction.

Lolita fashion is a small youth fashion that originated in Japan but is inspired by
historical western clothing. The clothing is not sexual in nature. Most studies look at the
style in Japan, but the fashion has also found popularity overseas. This paper takes an
ethnographic approach to studying the Lolita community in the United States by
comparing two regional communities, Houston and South Florida. The research found
that the largest difference between the two groups was size and community involvement,
with Houston as the larger group and the smaller South Florida group being more
concerned with group activity. The study found that compared to the strong subversive
element of the wearers in Japan, the United States community at large appears to be
motivated by Lolita as a creative outlet. There was no support of the idea that aging
played a role in what kind of Lolita fashion was worn.