Colorado College Anthropology Majors' Senior Capstones    2016 - 2021
	To view full capstone go to Tutt Library Digital CC:   https://digitalccbeta.coloradocollege.edu/thesis-capstones
Year	Last name	First name	Title	Abstract
2021	Bai	Tianyi	Ethnicity and Religion: The Hui in Zhengzhou	This project examines Chinese secularism and the minzu (ethnicity/nationality) framework. In tracing the genealogy of Chinese secularism through three figures, Kang Youwei, Chen Duxiu, and Mao Zedong, I argued that it is deeply intertwined with generations of indigenous efforts for national independence, in which religion was reified as a state component and consequently produced as a new regime of state surveillance. Chinese secularism aims to make modern, national subjects as well as regulate religious subjects. I also argued that the minzu framework is a modality of secularism that is meant to manage difference, which produces the only minzu majority, the Han as normalized Chinese subjects described in civilizational terms in contrast to all other minzu minorities. In this way, I position the Hui group in Zhengzhou in this context of Chinese secularism and minzu framework and conducted online interviews with seven Hui interlocutors to examine the effects of these state-directed projects. In the conversations with seven Hui individuals, I argued that the Hui’s internal heterogeneity shows the limitation of and the homogenizing powers of the minzu framework, which makes the Huis’ difference salient from the Han and produces the Hui’s marginalization as an effect. In addition, in my interlocutors’ discourses, religion, especially Islam, is characterized as backward, peripheral, and addictive, which have led many young, urban Huis to detach themselves from their supposed religious and ethnic identity and to eliminate their differences from the Han.
2021	Chen	Angelina	Making New Citizens: Theater, Liminality, and Political Awakening of Migrant Children in Shenzhen, China
2021	Cusanello	Victoria	A Review of Evolutionary Medicine: Evolutionary Insights into Female Reproductive Healthcare
2021	Fixico	Tyrien	The Integrity of the Sacred: Intersections of Self-Commodification and Identity Reclamation in American Indian Fashion.
2021	Gaspar	Monique	Maya Q’anjob’al or Akateko?  Conversations on the Continuity of Maya Languages	The focus for this research project will be tracing the roots of Maya language revitalization efforts in Guatemala and in the United States. Despite existing efforts to revitalize Maya languages, I question how formal processes to institutionalize a language may be more detrimental than productive to its usage and maintenance. In my research, I use intimate ethnographic and auto-ethnographic methods to provide a different perspective of the language/dialect debate for the Q’anjob’al and Akateko languages specifically. I discuss how ideologies impact the continuity of these particular languages which share commonalities with other Indigenous linguistic communities.
2021	Lechini	Julieta	"Derechos de Piso": The Roofless Path Towards the Uruguayan Citizenship
2021	Sharma	Ankita	The Effects of the Presence of Carers on Spider Monkeys in Wildlife Rehabilitation Spaces	Nineteen endangered Geoffrey’s Spider Monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) are currently housed at Wildtracks, a wildlife rehabilitation center in Sarteneja, Belize. As spider monkey reintroduction programs have so far been unsuccessful, assessing whether prolonged human care is detrimental to their release prospects is important. To understand the influence of care-giving on natural behaviors, I examined whether having human carers in proximity to the monkeys at and around feeding times was affecting the monkeys’ behavior. I hypothesized that the presence of humans would decrease spider monkey social and self-directed behaviors while increasing the frequency and intensity of their interactions with carers. For the study, I performed a group scan over forty-five-minute intervals for three hours each day over 32 days and recorded the monkeys' behavior and the intensity of their interactions with humans according to a 5-point scale. I examined relationships between intensity and frequency of interaction, percent of life spent in care, time spent at Wildtracks, age, and sex. Results suggest that an increased time spent in rehabilitation care has minimal impact on whether monkeys solicit greater or more intense periods of interaction with humans. However, in looking at monkeys’ behavioral changes around humans, affiliative behaviors with other monkeys and self-directed behaviors decreased. This trend, however, is less prominent in later life stages. This may indicate that age serves as one mitigating factor for how much a monkey is disrupted by caretakers. This research can aid in understanding best practice in human and primate interaction in wildlife rehabilitation spaces.
2021	Story	Sydney	Decolonizing Native Spaces: An In-Depth Examination of Native and Indigenous Space Creation as it Pertains to Native Hawaiian Identity
2021	Tafaro	Olivia
2021	Tejeda-Barillas	Lily	The Complexities and Challenges of Honduran Archaeology
2020	Adamska	Ula	A Diachronic Look at the Linguistic Landscape of San Luis Valley, Colorado	The present research paper is an exercise in the critical linguistic landscape studies and focuses on the town of San Luis in southern Colorado. The town, said to be the oldest town in Colorado, is located in the San Luis Valley (that includes south-central Colorado and northern New Mexico), which has a unique historical and cultural heritage. This region was inhabited by various Native American groups, then settled by the Spanish and Mexicans, and later explored by Anglo-Americans during the “gold rush” period. For centuries the San Luis Valley has been a borderland where people, cultures, and languages mix. Today it is not uncommon to hear people speaking Spanish on the streets, and for many it was their first language. However, unlike some other Spanish-speakers in the contemporary US, this population represents the pre-twentieth century immigration and has a long history of living in the area and therefore transforming the landscape. This multicultural and multilingual context make it an ideal situation to study the changing dynamics of language use and comparing the languages found in public spaces with the history of the region, as the study of linguistic landscape requires an examination of cultural heritage (Gorter 2006:88). The linguistic hegemony of English in the US and the marginalized status of the Spanish language problematize the assumptions of the linguistic landscape studies, and the unique heritage of San Luis makes an interesting linguistic landscape research case study.
2020	Alba	Caroline	New Mexicans and Their College Decisions: Why Are So Many Students Staying In-state?	In New Mexico, there is a disproportionate amount of college-bound, high school seniors staying in-state for college. This research paper, along with the research question of ‘Why are so many students staying in-state?’, is an attempt at better understanding this multifaceted question. For this investigation, I went back and visited my home town of Albuquerque where I conducted interviews with ten New Mexicans that have particular experience to this in-state phenomenon (four high school college counselors and six past and present New Mexican high school students). From these interviews, I learned that the main influencing factors of whether a student stays in-state or out-of-state are: economic factors, social factors, and cultural factors. Although these may seem like rather obvious influencing factors, it is the strong cultural factors that makes this phenomenon unique to New Mexico. Throughout this paper I posit that the significant cultural values of the Hispanic population in New Mexico gives further contextualization and understanding to this in-state trend that is evident in New Mexico. In this work, I call on the theories of cultural and social reproduction, as well the concepts of habitus and capital to further understand this research question.
2020	Birndorf	Josh	Tangled Transmissions: The Differentiation of Historic Telegraph and Telephone Lines Through the Analysis of Material Culture	Colorado telephone and telegraph systems, have, in many cases, been underutilized for archaeological site interpretations. These features are often recorded as transmission lines with few attempts at differentiation and little information being gleaned from associated artifacts. This paper provides a brief history of entry of the telephone and telegraph into Colorado and examines three primary pieces of material culture associated with these features: wires, poles, and insulators. These artifacts have the potential to provide limited temporal information, distinguish under what circumstances the line was established and, on a limited basis, differentiate between telegraph and telephone lines.
2021	Carlson	Emily C.	Humanistic Death Rituals in Central Colorado	With medical and technological advancements arising at the turn of the 19th century, the life process has become routinized, essentially allowing each stage of life to become systemized. The demystification of the life stages parallels the systemization and commercialization of death culture. This ethnographic research explores the disconnection from death in modern America, observing how members of the community in central Colorado are returning to familial, pre-industrialized death rituals, and are speaking openly about grief, anxieties and legalities surrounding death. These transitions contribute to the positive death movement that counteracts the commercialization of funerary rites and the medicalization of death processes.
2020	Desmarais	Elisabeth	Geographic Representations of Substance Abuse Treatment Options in Colorado Springs, CO: Anthropological Questions for Biomedical Interventions	Addiction is linked to high rates of death and disability in the United States. It is a burden on our individual and collective health as well as our health care system. Though we should begin by attending to socioecological problems and risk factors, the treatment system is an important part of care. I intended to research the accessibility of substance abuse treatment options in Colorado Springs, CO and how access informed behavior through the lens of human ecology. I gathered location data for treatment options using the Google search engine and created maps using QGIS. The first map depicts mutual-aid groups and inpatient rehabilitation clinics. While a more complex model including spaciotemporal aspects is necessary to analyze location accessibility, the geographic representation allowed for a broad discussion of spread, quantity, and shifting landscapes. I focused on the recent sphere of opioid substitution therapies, a map of buprenorphine/naloxone providers and methadone clinics. Then posed questions for buprenorphine/naloxone care as an office-based treatment to study the clinical space as part of the social whole. Medical anthropology is particularly well-suited to question claims of decreasing stigmatization while increasing access and autonomy, but especially the general claim of improving health.
2020	Friedman	Cara	Seafood Foodways and the Maritime Industry in Malibu, California	Los Angeles has been a revered food hub for generations. Unlike most major cities in the U.S. which expanded outwards from a single epicenter (ie. downtown), Los Angeles developed outwards from a series of peripheries. Far more than Downtown, these distinct neighborhoods contributed significantly to the physical pattern of development in Los Angeles (Gabbert 2015).  Malibu, California is one of the most physically secluded fragments of the greater Los Angeles area, a city notorious for standardizing discontinuity and dis-integration (Coquery-Vidrovitch 2000, 1686). Each separate neighborhood, together creating Los Angeles, is characterized by a unique but dynamic identity. Among these observable identities is food.  This paper focuses on seafood foodways, domestically as well as globally, through the lens of Malibu Seafood Market and Patio Cafe (Malibu Seafood), a popular seafood restaurant and market which has been apart of Malibu since the early 1970’s. I will present the cultural history of Malibu Seafood Market and Patio Cafe to produce an understanding of the social, cultural, and economic factors affecting seafood foodways. What makes Malibu Seafood continue to be successful regardless of changes in it’s cultural and environmental surroundings?  What is the current global model of seafood production and consumption? Will this model be as resilient to global change as Malibu Seafood Market and Patio Cafe has been to local change?
2020	Hedges	David	Local Regenerative Agriculture: A Theory of Counter-Hegemony Fit for the Anthropocene	This is an anthropological study of Local regenerative agriculture in Colorado based on the interviews that I collected at twenty farms over the period of five weeks in the summer of 2019. It is grounded in theory that surrounds and contributes to the sustainability and environmentalism discourses in anthropology. I argue that the group of farmers doing Local regenerative agriculture are engaged in a political and cultural dialectic, anarchist in orientation, that challenges the authority of the hegemonic way of inhabiting the world (revealing its contradictions) and that is a site for the development of a post-capitalist social order. By situating the farm in the center of the community, extending social relations beyond the transaction of commodity, and building cross-species sociality through the regeneration of ecosystems, Local regenerative farmers are pioneering subjectivities appropriate to the social and ecological conditions of the Anthropocene. Those farmers practicing Local regenerative agriculture are engaged in a form of activism, a praxis of theories about environment, culture, and how things should and should not be. Honor Pledge
2020	Nicholson	Madeline	National Indigenous Space: An Organizational Ethnography of the ICWA Law Center	For my senior capstone project I will conduct an in-depth ethnography of Chinese-American adoptive families with an analysis of the kinning strategies of Anglo-American parents and grandparents of female Chinese adoptees, I plan for this project to result in a 25-35 page academic style paper. The project will combine ethnography, survey, and archival research in an effort to engage multiple methodologies and ensure an interdisciplinary product. My project will frame the immigration of Chinese American women through the lens of adoption as “quiet migration”. Through this project I aim to construct an analysis of kinning and enculturation in white American adoptive families with an emphasis on the grandmother’s role and involvement in Chinese-American adoptive families, applying the Grandmother Hypothesis to a study of enculturation and intergenerational parental investment. Using interview I will construct an ethnography of grandparental and parenting kinning strategies among Anglo-American mothers and grandmothers of Chinese adoptees. Additionally, I will interview and survey female Chinese adoptees on the development of their national, racial, and gendered identity. In an effort to contextualize the contemporary influx of Chinese adoption by American families in relationship to the Page Law Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 I plan to visit the National Archives in Seattle, WA to construct a comparative analysis on gendered and racialized discourses of the immigration of Chinese women in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
2020	Paradiso	Emma	Historic Dendroarchaeology on the Front Range: The Historic Cabins of the Manitou Experimental Forest, Woodland Park, Colorado	Historic sites and artifacts appear all across the landscape of the western frontier. When encountered, these sites often cause us to wonder who they belong to or where they came from. This paper indulges this shared human desire to understand our surroundings by investigating two historic cabin sites in the Manitou Experimental Forest, near Woodland Park, Colorado. Through the use of dendrochronology, artifact analysis, and historic documentary research, this paper uncovers who lived in these cabins, what they were doing, and why they were there. Previously, the dominant narrative history of this area featured primarily prominent wealthy figures who developed the land. This work contributes to the historic narrative of the region by providing evidence about the lives of the everyday people who were part of the settlement of the area in the late 1800s.
2020	Pardee	Hannah	I’m Also the River, I’m Also the Trees: Personifying the Earth in Response to Climate Change in Crestone, Colorado	This paper discusses the use of the phrase “Mother Earth” by four individuals in Crestone, Colorado who are all members of the spiritual community there. I examine how this language demonstrates a relationship to the Earth that differs from a mainstream U.S. American one, and how this is significant in the moment of climate change. I suggest that the phrase “Mother Earth” is different than past uses of that same phrase because it activates and the Earth, allowing each person to create their own relationship that is two sided, with both the Earth and the human being communicating, giving, and receiving. This is important at this moment because this relationship shows not just how human beings are trying to change the Earth to suit us but how human beings are trying to change their culture to suit the Earth. Upon
2020	Patrick	Shelby	An Investigation of the Stone Huts (5SH4041) near Crestone, Colorado	Outside of Crestone, Colorado, a group of stone huts have been the subject of local lore for many years. Despite the speculation surrounding the structures, there has been no conclusive determination of their function or origin. Theories as to the huts’ purpose have ranged from ovens to storage units to ceremonial structures. Thoughts on who constructed the stone huts are just as varied. While some local community members believe the huts to be of Native American origin, others have suggested that they are associated with the mining or railroad industry boom that occurred in the San Luis Valley. Examination of historical documents, associated artifacts, analysis of the huts’ architecture, and interviews with local community members aided in evaluating the evidence in support of these various interpretations. Ultimately, the interpretation with the most supporting evidence is that the Crestone huts were associated with the 1901 railroad line running from Moffat to Cottonwood that passes through Crestone and by the Crestone huts (5SH4041).
2020	Perutz	Alex	Microfinance Approaches in Haiti: Fonkozè’s Model To Eradicate Poverty	On the January 12th, 2010 a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Haitian government estimates the disaster took the lives of over 220,000 people. Haiti’s microfinance balance sheet recorded an increase of 192% (in nominal terms) between 2012 and 2017 (USAID 2018). Billions of dollars have been put into microfinance in Haiti. As many critique microfinance as a strategy that throws money at a problem without building the foundations for success, new models of microfinance organizations have emerged which focuse on “handrail programs” to provide the skills and abilities to do far more with the loan itself. This paper argues that Fonkozè’s lending model should be learnt and understood by all microfinance organizations (MFI’s) globally to help borrowers elevate themselves from poverty across the board.
2020	Serling	Willa	HealthRight International’s Use of Cultural Relativism and Cross-Cultural Communication to Foster Change	In this project, I examine how one International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO), HealthRight International, employs cultural relativism and cross-cultural communication to foster change. Through conducting interviews with staff in the U.S., Ukraine, Kenya, and Uganda, I explored how HealthRight’s partnership model works with relation to international power dynamics. Based upon my empirical data, I argue that INGOs in the global public health field are not representative of all people involved, and HealthRight mitigates many of these problems, but challenges remain, including how communication technology can perpetuate neocolonial relations. HealthRight’s partnership model attempts to resist the neocolonial power structure within the global public health field, but their use of communication technology ironically perpetuates this inequitable dynamic. The way in which HealthRight staff utilize communication technology can reinforce the top-down mentality that many INGOs adhere to. Through this paper, I critically analyze the case study of HealthRight and their role in global public health.
2020	Whalen	Fiona	Rural Education in the Chimborazo Province, Ecuador: Foreign Aid and School Curriculum	Education in rural communities is vital to growth and prosperity, particularly in aspects such as local health, economy, and livelihoods. In developing countries, education in rural communities is even more important. This study aims to address rural education in Ecuador’s Chimborazo province (Figure 1) by looking at the positive impacts a school can have on an indigenous community, while on the other hand, noting potential drawbacks of a school being built through foreign aid. Foreign aid implemented through a variety of projects indeed can have a large amount of long-term disadvantages and while this can be the case in building schools projects, generally these foreign aid built schools have more advantages than disadvantages.
2020	Wilkinson	Madison	Insights into Sustainable Land Management, Gender Equality, and Conservation Easement Designations	This article is an interview based analysis of a Southern Colorado, Female Cattle Rancher, Betsy Brown, specifically focuses on three elements of her life: her experience with sustainable land management practices, her experience with gender equality within the cattle ranching profession, and her insight into conservation easement designations. The conclusions of the study are that Betsy Brown heavily invests in sustainable land management curriculum as it pertains to how she manages her own ranching activity and states that her relationship to gender equality in her workplace as well as in her home stem from land management principles. Betsy Brown connects holistic management principles she has invested in to explain her approval and personal endorsement of conservation easement land designations. These narrative conclusions are analyzed under the lenses of cultural ecology and Marxist-feminism theory to position Betsy Brown’s personal history within academic discussions on sustainability, gender equality, and conservation.
2019	Axelrod	Ella	The Dead Man’s Cave Gulch Box: Strategies for Historic Caches	Historical Archaeology is a discipline informed by research in the archaeological and documentary record. However, the details of the research process for historical assemblages are not often documented in a way that can be applied to other cases. This paper discusses the methodological and research strategies used in the study of the Dead Man’s Cave Gulch (DMCG) cache. Little has been written on historic caches and further documentation is merited. Beginning with presenting the context of research strategies in historic archaeology and previous research on caches, this paper will outline resources available for researchers, including resources in the state of Colorado. Finally, it will present the results of the DMCG cache study.
2019	Chen	Yingru	Migrant Workers in Precarity:Transitioning into a Post-Socialist and Neoliberalist Environment in Shenzhen, China	In 1979, when Deng Xiaoping circled Shenzhen out on a map, and claimed it to be a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), a new era had arrived. That year, after the Eleventh Plenum of the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the central government and the Guangdong government decided to upgrade a small fishing town to the city named Shenzhen. In 1980, the special economic zone was set up.  From that day on, Shenzhen became at the same time the vanguard and the core of the Chinese attempt to transition from the planned economy to the market economy.  However, these introduced market forces were never to overtake, or upend the established political order in China, but to blend in swiftly, for it has “never threatened the socialist cultural imaginary or indeed the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party” (O’Donnell et al. 2017: 15-16).
2019	Conwell	Breanna	The “Transferability” of Food: Exploring Food as a Vector for the Exchange of Cross-Cultural Relationships and Life Histories at the Colorado College	Food is so often seen as a tool or vehicle of bringing people together, no matter how different they seem to be. While that narrative is not inherently wrong on the surface level, what that narrative perpetuates is the further silencing of communities who, through the intersections of privileges including race, class, and gender, do not on an individual basis have the privilege to fit into broader, socially accepted culinary narratives. This thesis works to delve deeper into those often unspoken nuances of our culinary connections, and through dissection of the “transferability” narrative, parses out and explains how direct/indirect avoidance of these topics commits further violences to those communities whose choices were not theirs to makeoriginally. Arguing for the space that these conversations deserve, this research presents through interviews with students at Colorado College that food as a vehicle for critical discovery is often stifled at the hands of food insecurity, the sincere act of being insecure of the food produced and enjoyed by individual means. To work through these insecurities, and to have these conversations, would offer change unfathomable in regards to what we even understand culinary narratives to be, and help to provide a semblance of culinary justice to all people, of the past, present, and future.
2019	Dervarics	Audrey	Settling The Seasoning Debate: A Discrepency Between The Skeletal And Historical Record In 17th Century Maryland
2019	Feng	Yuxuan	Transformation from Socialism to Post-Socialism in China’s Industrial Rustbelt: The Past, Present, and Future as a Möbius Loop	The everyday life of Chinese workers has been significantly influenced by the reform of state-owned enterprises, the fundamental social transformation from socialism to post-socialism.  This capstone project investigates the local ramifications of reform of state-owned enterprises in the lives of laid-off workers at Inguta, an industrialized city in China’s northern rustbelt.  Employing the ethnography of historicity and autoethnography, the author collected and analyzed workers’ narratives of privatization, resistance, gender regime, and occupational diseases, and argues that the social transformation that happened at Inguta was a cut along the middle line of a Möbius strip: rather than disjoining the old and the new, it generated a new Möbius helix, on which the past, the present, and the future are inextricably intertwined. The Möbius loop emerged during the privatization period and the socialist and post-socialist time were twisted together into a loop by the present nostalgia towards the collective past. Moreover, such Möbius loop was solidified by the gender regime and extended by immobilizing workers' painful bodies.
2019	Hightower	Trevor	Colorado College Campus Reflexivity
2019	Mills	Nikki	Archaeologist-Private Collector Collaborations: A Student Perspective	Archaeology weaves together the story of us, humankind, through our collective traces across the landscape. But it has not been until recently that scholars in the field are tuning into the wider us and incorporating the voices of those beyond the academic community to aide in this storytelling. Working to include the voices of descendent communities, researchers have found ways to blend archaeological practices with traditional indigenous knowledge to push archaeology beyond perceived boundaries of research methods (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2010: 329). This project centers on another long excluded and highly stigmatized voice––that of the private collector––and how to blend that voice into the archaeological record. Research regarding such archaeologist-private collector collaborations has grown in the past decade, culminating in the creation of the “Professional Archaeologists, Avocational Archaeologists, and Responsible Artifact Collectors Relationships Task Force (2015-2018)” and the recently published “Society for American Archaeology Statement on Collaboration with Responsible and Responsive Stewards of the Past” (Pitblado et al. 2018 and SAA 2018). The Task Force, comprised of a range of stakeholders, spent three years investigating the archaeologist-collector relationship to determine how such projects could occur within the Society for American Archaeology’s (SAA) professional ethics (Pitblado et al. 2018: 14). The culminating Statement urges professional archaeologists to work with private collectors, with the caveat that they are “responsible and responsive stewards of the past”, i.e. those who have collected or collect legally (Society for American Archaeology 2018). Much of the argument in favor of these collaborations comes from work by Bonnie Pitblado (2014), the Chair of the Task Force, who has written on the immense benefits of working with private collectors. Similarly, Michael J. Shott (2017), informal co-Chair to the Task Force, has argued for the inclusion of collectors for their abundance of regional knowledge compared to the knowledge of a professional. However, as this paper will demonstrate through the story of one private collecting couple, there are problems with looking to collectors simply as sources of useful materials or knowledge rather than partners. Actively seeking research methods that value and incorporate these partners into the academic discourse will create more sustainable collaboration and protect the future of the material record.
2019	Pray	Sophia	De-Mystifying the Gender-Based Violence Discourse A Linguistic Analysis of Public Reception to Historically Prominent Male Perpetrators	This senior thesis project explores the interrelated nature of gendered privilege and Gender-Based Violence through the lens of three historically significant cases from the past century: the William F. Slocum controversy on the Colorado College campus in 1917, the Thomas Clarence (v. Anita Hill) congressional hearing in 1991, and the Brett Kavanaugh (v. Christine Ford) congressional hearing in 2018. An examination of both public official and general public reactions to these three cases at the time of their occurrence, with a focus on characterizations of the three men involved, show a simultaneous upholding of a successful, powerful yet innocent male trope and an outbreak of new confrontations of such male privilege through the emergence of new media. Specifically, themes of misrecognition and narrative authenticity are addressed through an interdisciplinary perspective that draws on feminist, media studies, and linguistic anthropological theory.
2019	Zhao	Ziyu (Zilong)	Making and Remaking Shangrila: The Confrontation and Negotiation between Tibetan Cultural Preservation and State-Sponsored Tourism	Since 1999, the central policy of “Open Up the West” has introduced state-sponsored tourism and global commercial market into Shangrila, a regionally peripheral and economically marginal county in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, China. Over the decades, the political economy of state-sponsored tourism and globalization have brought along external aggressions of commercialism and modern mode of production and thus caused tremendous socio-cultural changes in Shangrila’s landscape. In my research, the major social difficulties caused by external aggressions include the emphasis on economic growth over cultural preservation, inequity, and transformation of traditional social structure. In response to these negative socio-cultural changes, Tibetan cultural preservation in Shangrila organizes itself into a form of sustainable development that reacts against and negotiates with the overarching structure of state-sponsored tourism in order to guarantee both preservation of traditional culture and local society’s incorporation into modernity. In details, local preservation activists utilize tourism as a niche, in which modern technology is introduced and traditional social structure is preserved. By doing this, they also intend to convey correct representations of Tibetan culture to the general public, enhance tourists’ and locals’ appreciation of Tibetan culture, and improve locals’ economic and social well-being.
2018	Alvardo	Audriana	A Comparative Study: Tucson, AZ and Colorado Springs, CO Discrimination of Intersectional Identities	Discrimination comes in many forms especially amongst intersectional identifying people. This study focuses on the different types of discrimination that native Spanish-speaking women workers face often in Tucson, Arizona and Colorado Springs. This comparative study discusses and explores the idea of how distance from the U.S./Mexico Border plays a role in the types of discrimination these women face. Some common types of discrimination encountered include: racism, colorism, sexism, classism, and discrimination based on language fluency and/or pronunciation. Distance plays a large factor in shaping political and social cultures of Tucson, Arizona and Colorado Springs. The results show that Tucson, Arizona due to its closeness to the Border, there are many more Spanish-speakers and there are clear legal policies that particularly target Spanish-speaking populations. Meanwhile in Colorado Springs, there are lower percentages of Spanish-speaking populations therefore the discrimination can be much stronger since some people may not be accustomed to hearing Spanish being spoken, or sometimes not as strong as in Tucson because there are not as many laws directly targeted towards these populations since Colorado Springs is further from the Border. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist because it is clear that social culture and media both target Spanish-speaking populations more often than laws in Colorado Springs. To point out, both cities’ social and political cultures strongly impact the types of discrimination these women face in this study.
2018	Apodaca	Brianna	Religious Foods of Advent and Lent in the San Luis Valley, Colorado	This project studies the influence and role of religion and food in the San Luis Valley, Colorado, particularly based on the complex histories and the impacts on the people of this region. The focus is on two specific religious observances, Advent and Lent. This paper looks at the effects of culture change and religious syncretism that can be seen from the time of first human habitation to now in modern day. The author uses personal experiences being from the San Luis Valley, Colorado, as well discussing the experiences of family members that have lived in the San Luis Valley for many generations. This project demonstrates the impacts of history on religious food customs, particularly Advent and Lent, experienced by the people of the San Luis Valley, Colorado
2018	Asfari	Rayan	Colonial Legacies: Exploring the Root Causes of Overgrazing in the Central Kenyan Rangelands of Laikipia	do not publish
2018	Frederiksen	Rowan	When Words Fail: A Study of Language, Gender, and American Stereotypes	This project looks at the gendered stereotypes that are projected on to males and females in the United States and how these stereotypes affect our language and speech. Students at Colorado Colle participated in a series of activities, free-listing and pile-sorting, to gather data on the association of everyday terms to masculinity and femininity. A common trend that appeared among the participants was the acknowledgement of gendered terms and the discomfort that came with this acknowledgement. This trend supports the gendered language that has been created within American society and the idea of toughness vs. passiveness in males and females respectively.
2018	Hegg	Caitlin	The Commodification and Appropriation of Ethnomedicine: Examining Ecuador’s Indigenous Medicinal Traditions through the Lens of the Indigenous Revitalization Movement	The western world has traditionally seen biomedicine, or western medicine, as the only valid form of medicine and healing. Vaccines and antibiotics have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and are often pointed to as the best way to help developing nations avoid diseases such as cholera or malaria and further their development and westernization (World Health Organization 2017). However, many of these nations have their own regional histories of traditional medicinal practice and healing. The adoption of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) by 143 member states in 2007 has helped to strengthen the indigenous movement in Ecuador and to affirm the rights of indigenous peoples to economic development and security and the maintenance of their traditions, languages, and cultural practices (Carrie et. al 2015). The addition of Sumak Kawsay, or the principle of harmonious living, to the 2008 revision of the Ecuadorian constitution has also furthered these rights and the indigenous revitalization movement (Larrea Maldonado 2011). One of the traditions being revived and made more visible and publicly accepted is indigenous medicine, also known as ethnomedicine.
2018	Loper	Ayla	The Value of Incorporating Anthropology into Chronic Illness Treatment in the United States with an Analysis of Heart Disease	The United States spends more money than any other high-income country on healthcare but has poorer outcomes in key healthcare measures. Integrating holistic anthropological theories and tools such as ethnography or evolutionary approaches can help medical practitioners deliver more effective care when faced with pressures and difficulties that occur when operating in the United States healthcare system. This incorporation of anthropology with biomedical care is specifically pertinent to chronic disease treatment. Here, I suggest anthropological theories and tools to improve the treatment of chronic illnesses. At the end of the theoretical discussion, I examine these issues with a focus on heart disease. Heart disease treatment in the United States is an example of a disease that could benefit greatly from the employment of an anthropological lens. I found that heart disease treatment in the United States does not cater treatment to individual cases or consider a variety of factors, even though heart disease commonly involves lifestyle factors.
2018	Mintz	Rachel	Reframing Palestine: Misconceptions and American Jewish-Muslim Solidarity	This project studies the impact of discourse surrounding the Israeli occupation of Palestine on American Jewish-Muslim solidarity efforts. The author uses a Muslim-Jewish dialogue that took place between 2001 and 2014, the Muslim-Jewish Bridge Building Group (MJBBG), as a case study, conducting interviews with former participants and facilitators. The data demonstrates that the entanglement of Jewish and Muslim religious identities with the political Palestinian is an impediment to addressing the root cause of Jewish-Muslim tension in the United States. The author suggests that this problematic reframing be addressed at the beginning of American Muslim-Jewish solidarity efforts in order to dispel misplaced tension and dismantle the xenophobic project of equating Islam and Palestinians, Jews and Zionists.
2018	Stansel	Samuel	The Slate Pencil: A Case for Behavioral Theory and the Life History Model in Historical Archaeology	In the archaeology of schoolhouses, slate pencils are a commonly found artifact. In archaeological reports they are, however, usually only mentioned in passing as evidence of educational activity or merely as another point of data (e.g., Gibb and Beisaw 2000; Peña 1992; Bigelow and Nagel 1987; Catts, Cunningham, and Custer 1983; Beisaw and Baxter 2017; Scura Trovato 2016). This lack of work constitutes a significant gap in the archaeological literature, and more work to address specific schoolhouse artifacts such as slate pencils has been advocated for by some archaeologists (Beisaw 2009, 65; Rotman 2009, 75). Slate pencils can provide us with basic temporal frames, economic indicators, and behavioral correlates which could be useful in understanding and interpreting the past. In this paper I will both compile and discuss the history, manufacturing, and use of slate pencils, and will propose how slate pencils may be used to help interpret the archaeological record. Any analytical or diagnostic information, be it temporal, geographical, economic, or otherwise, to be gained from these artifacts will benefit the greater archaeological community in future schoolhouse excavations.
2018	Wuerth	Kendra	An Intellectual History of Women Anthropologists: Background, Methods, Ethnography
2017	Baker	Elizabeth R.	The Language and Linguistics of Donald Trump: Condoning and Promoting Rape Culture Through Words	This project looks at the intersection of linguistics and social power in relation to rape culture, exploring these concepts in the context of President Donald Trump. Trump’s language in speeches, videos, and social media was analyzed for linguistic tactics that contribute to the continuation of rape-condoning attitudes. Several pervasive trends appear, such as deflection/denial of blame, “gaslighting,” and treatment of sexual assault as unimportant. These trends demonstrate how seemingly inoffensive language is critical to the continuation of rape culture.
2017	Dinkin	Leslie	Exploring the Influence of the 2016 Presidential Election on Social Identity in Liberal Arts College Students	Throughout the 2016 presidential election, our new president, Donald Trump, attacked every social group, but his own. I hypothesized this type of pointed rhetoric would influence individuals’ self assurance. Through an anonymous survey, I found that four in five Colorado College students indeed shifted in how they self-identify pre- and post-election. Despite students’ fear, disillusionment and outrage resulting from Trump’s attacks, however, several students still managed to find power within their more marginalized identities. Given the tumultuous nature of the election, my study is indicative of a broader national movement in terms of how college student’s responded to the election
2017	Kautz	Emily	Traditional Foodways of the Colville Confederated Tribes	At eight-years-old, I sat with my family and tribal members of the Colville Confederated Tribes, eating roast camas bulbs and smoked salmon at a potlatch on the Columbia River. My mother was working closely with the tribal members of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation at the time as the community liaison with the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. I remember the sights and smells, the roasting pit, the laughing voices. A love of the Northwest and interest in indigenous foods and cultures sparked my interest to return to the Colville Confederated Tribes fourteen years later as a senior anthropology major at Colorado College. I came to explore the traditional foodways of the indigenous people of the Northwest Plateau, whose history is tied to cultural practices of foraging and harvesting, and whose ways of life have been threatened by imposed Western culture and colonization. For my senior thesis, I studied the traditional foodways of the Colville Confederated Tribes, and how food restoration movements and youth programs are working to combat ongoing colonial oppression and environmental exploitation. I also assisted with the creation of an indigenous foodways lesson plan which is a part of a larger tribal curriculum. The tribal curriculum focused specifically on the Colville Confederated Tribes, and will reach forty school districts and approximately 50,000 K-12 students in Washington State.
2017	Mulhern	Morgan	Capitalizing on Community: A Critical Discourse on the Neoliberal Management of Diabetes and Inequity	I have taken up the difficult task in this dissertation of ethnographically weaving together many strands of theory, practice, and analysis into a coherent narrative about type II diabetes and racial/ethnic disparity to answer the questions: What is the experience like for community health workers for Hispanic and Latina women living in Colorado Springs, CO, and how does their clientele reflect disparate social histories? Further, how can Colorado Springs as a community better understand and strategically address public health efforts? The literature offered in this paper positions a single disease at the intersection of several historical moments and scales of analysis. This work is not meant to be a metanarrative on the phenomenon, but rather a composite picture of public health framings of type II diabetes at a localized level to prompt collaboration to create an integrated system of health.
2017	Riggio	Nina	“I’m Houseless Not Homeless”: Blighted Communities, Gentrification, and the South Nevada Redevelopment Project in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 2016-2017	This study looks at the gentrification process from several different angles, with a focus on the street people of South Nevada Avenue, in Colorado Springs Colorado in 2016 and 2017.  This analysis includes the houseless and motel-going subcultures. Examining the importance of autonomy, freedom, and independence within this subculture will help to highlight issues of positive and negative processes of redevelopment. With a focus on the importance of kinship and social relationships within the subculture and processes by which these are destroyed I argue that developmental process and urban renewal projects need to consider these structures and relationships and the importance of fostering them for successful social rehabilitation purposes.  These diverse and multi-faceted subcultures in this area is exactly what gentrification aims at producing after the process has taken place.
2017	Towne	Kimberly	The Internet's Effect on Language Evolution, People's Reactions, and Why One Should and Shouldn’t Care at the Same Time	The evolution of english and language online, and the criticisms of the changes that have happened, along with examples from other time periods that language has changed, can inform us about the relationships between the critics and the users of internet language, and about quick culture shifts. The internet has changed the way that people communicate with each other, both locally, within friend groups and in physical communities, and internationally. The convenience of instant  communication between two people, or multiple peoples separated by distance, and sometimes dialects, has accelerated the process of word borrowing and creation of culture by increasing the interconnectedness people across the globe. As it stands right now, a group of friends may consist of someone living in Australia, someone from Brazil, and someone from Russia. The farther you go back in history, the slower information exchange happened, and this was mostly an effect of the slowness of letters, newspapers, and before even that, word of mouth traveling town to town on the lips of merchants and other people traversing the roads. This increase in audience size also invites increased criticism, because there is a platform to voice opinions on, and the ability to voice those opinions in an understandable way. and an increase in how easy it is to find criticism with tag systems and google searches. The criticism itself is based on perceived notions that the fast changes mean that language itself is falling apart, or at least being replaced by something new, leaving the old ways to be forgotten. I would like to put forward the view, supported by linguistic analysis, that the process of evolution in language, towards a more nuanced system of communication that gets ideas and concepts across to others in a quicker way than previously, is natural, and a process that has been changing languages all over the globe for as long as people have been able to communicate with each other.
2017	Vernon	Claire	A Search for Food Sovereignty: Neoliberalism in Alternative Food Movements in Colorado Springs	Access to nutritional foods as well as the limited consumption of such foods are problems that continue to exist in the United States despite many programs dedicated to promoting healthful nutrition and eradicating food insecurity. This paper analyzes contributing factors to these issues and presents ways in which they could be addressed through alternative programs managed by and for the local communities most affected. It advocates for food sovereignty and critiques the neoliberal regime that currently dictates the food system in America through a case study of a community ran grocery program in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Nongovernment domestic food aid fills a niche not met by federal programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. However, the community based food movements can still fall victim to issues that affect the food system at large. Alternatives and potential ways that the programs can avoid these pitfalls are offered.
2017	Williamson	Maya	What’s in it for Women? : A Case Study of Akb48 and the Japanese Idol Experience	In this paper, I aim to address the questions: “how can the young women who perform in Japanese idol groups take actions to negotiate empowerment within the constraints to whichthey are subject?” and, “what do they have to gain form the idol experience?” This studybegan with an initial trip to Japan to conduct a study on the Japanese phenomenon of kawaii,but the research presented in this paper was in large part conducted through extensiveobservation of online websites, forums, and blogs – also known as cyberethnography.  Following a review of what it means to be an idol, and how Japanese culture supports the idol industry, I outline the most common critiques of the idol experience put forth by critics, journalists, and bloggers. I then present the limitations of these critiques, thereby offering an exploration of empowerment theories through the anthropological lenses of gender, power, and cultural relativism, and demonstrating the dangers that come with accepting empowerment as an absolute. In conclusion, I suggest that young, female idols can begin to achieve empowerment by exercising choice and determining their image and representation through small acts of rebellion and individuality.
2016	Brownell	Josephine	Cultivating the Identity and Values of Northern Vermont	This study examines if a rural sense of place influences northern Vermonters to become interested in conserving the natural landscapes, and whether this conservation contributes to the preservation of Vermont’s unique culture and identity.  My research engages in the discussion of whether land conservation is a beneficial method of protecting the land, culture, and history for the greater population of Vermont.  In analyzing this topic, I will tie in a few key theoretical concepts from existing research to explain this social phenomenon and will provide unique perspectives from interviews conducted with community members in Vermont.  I draw mostly from two theories within the ecological approach, political ecology and cultural ecology, as well as broad ideas from the field of human ecology.  Additionally, I will unpack the theory that I developed in response to my research on this topic: the “rural place-driven attachment theory”.
2016	Gao	Jiumei	Contemporary Racial Formation in China: Interactions Between Africans and Local Chinese in Guangzhou, China	In the 19th century, China encountered the first group of European colonialists and other foreigners. Nationalism, including views on different races, started to form. In the 20th century, ideas of racial categories and how Chinese people belong to the more superior “Yellow race” continued to develop and triggered national pride and rebellion against colonialists. During the Mao-era, nationalism was temporarily replaced with communism, but soon came back after Mao died in 1976. In the 1980s when China opened its market, people of the world, especially of the developing countries, were driven to China for its massive economic opportunities. As a result, Chinese people started to practice ideas of nationalism in their daily interactions with foreigners. This study took an ethnographic approach in order to examine the practice of nationalism in daily life among Chinese residents in Guangzhou, which has the largest African population throughout the country. The study included an explicit review of the historical development of China’s nationalism, along with a one-month ethnographic field research project that utilized interviews with 22 Chinese and 14 Africans in areas with higher concentration of Africans in Guangzhou. The results show that racism against Africans is commonly expressed among the Chinese participants. I found that their rationale of anti-African racism mostly originates from the structure of China’s nationalism that has been building since the 19th century.
2016	Harty	Erin L.	Expectations and Community Establishment in a Temporary Place: Research Conducted at Roskilde Music Festival	How can an individual’s expectations shape their experience and the actions of those around them?  How do people establish trustworthy bonds in a week?  In the spring of 2014, I never imagined that the short survey I was conducting on music festivals would lead to a much larger research project that would lead overseas in search of answers.  As a result, the major field site of my study became Roskilde Music Festival in Roskilde, Denmark during the summer of 2015.  The overall goal was to better understand community-building and the formation of reciprocal relationships in temporary places.  Music festivals are an ideal venue to observe these behaviors because of their organization and the nature of them.  They are usually multi-day annual events, which fosters new relationships as well as the continued development previously existing friends to strengthen.  Further, due specifically to the annual nature of most festivals, these relationships are then able to be developed and refined over a set amount of time one year to the next.
2016	Klockenbrink	Stephanie	Neoliberalism in Practice:  Examining the Multiplicities of Neoliberalism in  Islam’s Moral Economy	Islam’s moral economy is frequently posited in academic and popular literature as ‘counter’ or ‘alternative’ to neoliberal ideologies.  However, despite having some contradictory values, I argue that neoliberalism is neither monolithic in form nor universal in effect and can be integrated with Islam’s moral economy taking different discourses based on geographical and cultural contexts.  Through this paper I attribute the successful incorporation of neoliberal ideologies and Islamic values to an evolutionary theory known as the cost-signaling theory.  By analyzing and comparing Christopher Taylor’s, “New Islamic Charities in North India: Re-Thinking Islam’s ‘Moral Economy’ to Sarah Thiam’s, “Disappearing Perpetrators:  Why Alleged Traffickers of Qur’anic School Students in Senegal and Mali Never Get Charged with Crimes” I demonstrate the ability for neoliberalism to operate within a religious framework that often seems to contradict neoliberalism in practice.
2016	Novy	Morgan	Refugee Resettlement: A Case Study and the Challenges of Non-profit Bureaucracy	The primary purpose of refugee resettlement agencies is to assist refugee integration into the new society. However the structure of refugee resettlement in the United States is hierarchical and bureaucratic, which often results in agencies applying a Western, capitalist definition to what it means to be self-sufficient and successful. This can be problematic for it is difficult to measure success when individuals have different cultural goals and cultural resources. This project seeks to find out how the structure and bureaucratic nature of a refugee resettlement agency affects the resettlement process. The goal of this research project is to understand the process behind resettlement and successful refugee integration into American society. In order to understand the phenomena of administrative control and cultural misunderstandings, this project examined two theories: (1) the theory of resilience and (2) the theory on power and bureaucracy and their effects on society. The bureaucratic structure and organization of the refugee resettlement agency has limitations. Two themes emerged from the interviews with staff members. The first is barriers to communication, which include between staff and administration, staff and refugees, and staff and local community. The second is equating self-sufficiency to success.
2016	Tilden	Hannah	The Impact of Twilight Tourism on Economic Stability and Identity Development in Forks, Washington	This research addresses how the introduction and consequential decrease in the popularity of the film and book series, the Twilight saga has impacted the cultural identity and economic security of residents living in Forks, Washington. The Twilight saga is a series of popular young adult novels first published in 2005, which were then adapted to film, about vampires and werewolves (Meyer 2005). This research will be framed within larger conversations of tourism, pop culture, and representation, and will take an ethnographic approach to creating a multi-vocal representation of Forks. In doing so, it contests, at least in part, the existing single narrative of the town created by author Stephenie Meyer. The ethnographic approach will include participant observation and interviews, as well as collecting economic data on the town to inform an understanding of economic security over the last decade. The research will contribute to the anthropological discourse on tourism, cultural representation, and cultural identity, and will give the people of Forks the opportunity to create their own representation of their community.
2016	Welsh	Flora	Generational and Situational Poverty: Influences on Nutritional Practices and Behaviors	Americans are increasingly developing diseases related to poor nutritional and physical practices that are associated with, “the [rise in] consumption of refined grains, added sugars, added fats, snack, beverages, fast foods, and eating way from home” (Drewnowski 2009:36). Along with poor nutrition, a sedentary lifestyle contributes to these nutritional diseases. While poor eating habits transcend socioeconomic lines, health research has exhibited a clear relationship between those in the lower economic status and poor quality in diet. One of the dominant conclusions in nutritional studies is the existence of a positive correlation between these variables: poor quality diet, physical exercise and lower socioeconomic status (Bhattacharya et al. 2003; Cordain et al, 2005; Drewnowski 2009; Macena 2010; Pelto and Pelto 1983). While physical exercise is crucial in establishing and maintaining over all good health, this study focuses on the poor nutritional patterns amongst the poor in the United States and provides a theoretical interpretation for understanding poor nutritional statuses among poor people (Macena 2010).
2016	Yin	Shanchuan	Food Culture, Social Distinction, and Value System in Chinese Society: An Ethnographic Research based on Fieldwork in Sichuan Province	There is an old Chinese saying, “food is the first necessity of the people.” Food culture is a reflection of Chinese culture and it has developed with China’s massive changes in modern history. Food practices have been linked to economic, social, and cultural status for centuries (Elias 2000; Goody 1982; Johnston and Baumann 2007). One of the many social functions of food, and the modes in which it is consumed, is to serve as a form of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984). Thus my research focuses on discovering the relationships between food culture, value system, economic growth, and social distinction in Chinese society, and aims to explore the development of one nation from the dietary change. I am interested in the concept of value not only in its economic sense, but also in the cultural sense, as well as the relationships in between. It seems that people use these terms such as “culture” and “value” very often in their everyday life, but the more you dig into the concepts the more complicated things become. Anthropologist David Graeber (2013) noted that “cultures, when first conceived, were thus imagined first and foremost as fields for the pursuit of certain forms of value.” It is the value that shaped humans into creatures whose very perceptions and sensibilities were attuned to that pursuit. One common understanding of value is that it refers to the ways in which people choose to represent the meaning or importance of an idea, an action, or a place in particular societies.