Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item TRACING TRANSCOLONIAL INTIMACIES: RELATIONAL RESISTANCE THROUGH THE OCCUPATION OF JAPAN (1945-1952)(2024) Itoh, Megu; Woods, Carly S.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tracing Transcolonial Intimacies seeks to respond to the central question, “how can we work together across difference?” by exploring rhetorical strategies that bring people together across the divisions of coloniality. I enact a relational approach to rhetorical studies, to decenter individual subjectivity and to spotlight resistant relationalities. I combine this with a transcolonial framework, which grapples with the multiple vectors of coloniality. Such orientations enable the theorization of transcolonial intimacies, or mutual recognitions of humanity which bring the Other into the self. This project thus illuminates transcolonial intimacies as a form of resistant relationality obfuscated by colonial hegemonies. I am particularly invested in locating and analyzing transcolonial intimacies through the Occupation of Japan (1945-1952), a period defined by the collision between the Japanese and US empires, and the subsequent rupture of the Japanese empire. The three case studies thus seek to understand how Japanese civilians and Americans involved with the Occupation found opportunities to connect across three themes: race, gender, and foodways. These transcolonial intimacies reverberate, existing within a lineage of solidarities that draw from the past and extend into the future. To reckon with such relations of resistance, which move across time and space, I trace fragmented texts and artifacts situated in archives across national and cultural borders. Chapter 1 foregrounds relationships between Black American men soldiers and Japanese women civilians during a time of anti-fraternization and shared segregation under global white supremacy. Themes from the early twentieth century, such as the world color line and Black internationalism, regained relevance and functioned to reimagine Black American-Japanese solidarities. Chapter 2 examines how American women working for the Occupation and Japanese women union leaders collaborated on the adoption of menstruation leave. I argue that menstruation leave served dual purposes of liberation and containment, and also interrogate the story of menstruation leave as it is told through Mead Smith Karras, an economist for the Occupation administration. Chapter 3 illuminates how the total war period and the Occupation forced Japanese people to adapt their foodways for survival. I shed light on American participation within this process, including consumption of the Other and the uncomfortable reckonings that ensue. The dissertation concludes by following reverberations of transcolonial intimacies into the present, with an acknowledgment of what dehumanizes and divides, but also with an invitation to turn towards what humanizes and connects.Item Food on the Move: Gendered Representation, Cultural Sustainability, and Culinary Practices of Gullah Women(2015) White, Katie M.; Bolles, Augusta Lynn; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Food on the Move: Gendered Representation, Cultural Sustainability, and Culinary Practices of Gullah Women connects Gullah women and foodways with processes of migration, cultural heritage, sustainability, and memory. Drawing on women’s studies, history, anthropology, literature, film, and food studies, this interdisciplinary project looks at the preparation and presentation of food as an integral part of a sustained Gullah culture. Using Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust alongside contemporary imaginaries of the senses, the work discusses how movement of peoples into and out of the Sea Islands of South Carolina complicates the relationship between the sensory, particularly taste, memory and home. Most importantly, through food-centered stories combined with analyses of cookbooks and other culinary notations, this dissertation examines the vital role women have played in maintaining Gullah culinary history and the dissemination and sustenance of Gullah culture. It enhances not only our understanding of Gullah culture but also of the processes of social and cultural changes necessary to sustain it. This work argues that the Gullah Geechee National Heritage Corridor is a critical site for cultural sustainability particularly in regard to food. Food becomes a site for mapping the traditions, pressures, changes, adaptations, and resistances within a particular racial-ethnic community as it encounters dominant cultures, as well as a site of creativity, pleasure, and survival.Item `Fried chicken belongs to all of us': The Zooarchaeology of Enslaved Foodways on the Long Green, Wye House (18TA314), Talbot County, Maryland(2014) Tang, Amanda; Leone, Mark P; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project analyzes the zooarchaeological remains excavated from three slave quarters, located on the Long Green of the Wye House Plantation (18TA314). The zooarchaeological data used dates from about 1650 until 1865. The dissertation focuses on how the late 18th century - archaeologically c. 1770 - was a period of immense change at Wye House and this caused coinciding changes in food consumption. Faunal data is combined with historical and archaeological information to assess the validity of utilizing African-American food patterns. The dissertation interrogates the role of archaeologists in reifying racism and in the reproduction of inferior histories for African-Americans based on dominant narratives. The research incorporates the consideration of other social, political, historical, and economic variables to assess the development of local and regional cuisines. This dissertation evaluates why designations of Soul Food and African-American foodways emerged, how this cuisine compares to Southern Cooking, and the ideologies behind keeping the two cuisines separate.Item NEGOTIATED TASTES: A STUDY OF THE AMERICANIZATION OF SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS BY SOCIAL WORKERS, REFORMERS AND NUTRITIONAL SCIENTISTS.(2014) Fronk-Giordano, Catharine Annemarie; Freund, David; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis aims to prove that the efforts of settlement workers, immigrant aid organization workers, home economists, reformers and nutritional scientists to Americanize the foodways of the southern and eastern European immigrants between the 1890s and the 1920s was not a systematic and homogenous enterprise motivated by a single idea and driven by a single goal, but a far more nuanced and contested process in which social workers with various backgrounds and beliefs mediated between American identity, science and immigrant food culture. Far outnumbered by the new immigrants, the social workers concentrated on alleviating immediate needs of the poor in the industrial centers, focusing on increasing their buying power and improving the nutritional value of their diets. Servicing all immigrants as well as Americans, the social workers often adapted their teachings to respect the immigrant food cultures and tastes, some even praising ethnic cuisines over the American diet.