Folklore Theses and Dissertations
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Browsing Folklore Theses and Dissertations by Author "Gilman, Lisa"
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Item Open Access An' if it Harm the Least: Nature-Centered Belief in the U.S. Military(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Knott, Emily; Gilman, LisaThis thesis is the result of my work with the Military Nature-Centered community. The first thing is does it examine some of the distinctive features of the population, such as its history, sense of community, magical consciousness. It then presents the military Nature-Centered community as an emergent tradition.Item Open Access Folk Networks, Cyberfeminism, and Information Activism in the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Series(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06) Wyer, Sarah; Gilman, LisaThis thesis explores how the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon event impacts the people who coordinate and participate in it. I review museum catalogs to determine institutional representation of women artists, and then examine the Edit-a-thon as a vernacular event on two levels: national and local. The founders have a shared vision of combating perceived barriers to participation in editing Wikipedia, but their larger goal is to address the biases in Wikipedia’s content. My interviews with organizers of the local Eugene, Oregon, edit-a-thon revealed that the network connections possible via the Internet platform of the event did not supersede the importance of face-to-face interaction and vernacular expression during the editing process. The results of my fieldwork found a clear ideological connection to the national event through the more localized satellite edit-a-thons. Both events pursue the consciousness-raising goal of information activism and the construction of a community that advocates for women’s visibility online.Item Open Access Its a Dog's Life: Contemplating the Human-Animal Relationship through Dog Adoption Narratives(University of Oregon, 2017-05-01) Silvestrini, Nicole; Gilman, LisaDog adoption is a popular way for people to find pets in the United States. With dog adoption comes dog adoption narratives, ideologically about the dog, told by humans for humans. Dog adoption narratives, a genre of personal experience narrative, enact a series of formalized conventions that reveal societal binaries, tensions, and anxieties in the interspecies relationship. Using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, I highlight the way these narratives are performed, organized, and interpreted. By comparing the adoption narratives of two different groups, people who regularly visit dog parks and people who do dog rehabilitation work, I argue that these narratives yield insight about the way humans perceive dogs in the United States within the context of how humans themselves want to be perceived by other humans. Dogs become a form of cultural capital and dog adoption narratives a reflection of cultural attitudes towards, and informed interactions with, the human-dog relationship.Item Open Access “Just Because I’m a Fisherman, Don’t Assume You Know Who I Am”: Fisherpoetry and the Construction of Masculinity(University of Oregon, 2018-09-06) McMullen, Bradford; Gilman, LisaThis thesis examines the ways in which masculinity is constructed and performed by commercial fisherman poets. Focusing on the writings of cisgender male poets, this thesis examines the ways in which competence and credibility are developed as the highest standards of masculinity, how discussions of the environment contribute to the development of masculinities, and how the relationships depicted in fisherpoetry mirror real-world relationships and develop standards of multiple masculinities.Item Open Access Lacing Skates and Unlacing Corsets: Gender Play and Multiple Femininities in Roller Derby and Neo-Burlesque(University of Oregon, 2017-05-01) Helweg-Larsen, Jules; Gilman, LisaLacing Skates and Unlacing Corsets: Gender Play and Multiple Femininities in Roller Derby and Neo-Burlesque. Contemporary roller derby and neo-burlesque, as an athletic sport and a framed staged performance respectively, each provide a space that encourages gender play through interactions between participants and audience and the role of physical body. In this thesis, I discuss how each activity allows for a multiplicity of feminine identities and commentary by performers on the social and cultural expectations of women. Drawing on performance theory, ritual theory, and gender studies, along with fieldwork, I explore how this commentary comes from participants simultaneously critiquing and embracing those expectations in their performances through costuming, use of the body, and the presence of an audience who interpret the events.Item Open Access Performance, Politics, and Identity in African Dance Communities in the United States(University of Oregon, 2012) Sandri, Sarah; Sandri, Sarah; Gilman, LisaThis thesis investigates the representation of African dance in the United States, particularly through African dance classes and public performances. It chronicles the motivations that catalyze participation for students and instructors and studies the effects of practice on Americans' understanding of Africa as an imagined place. My findings are based on ethnographic field research in community dance classes and dance troupes in Eugene, Oregon and southern New Hampshire and Vermont from 2009-2012. The project details dance practices produced for the stage in West Africa that are reinterpreted and re-produced in American dance class settings and then subsequently retranslated for the stage by Americans. It illustrates how West African griot culture, economic realities, and audience demand influence transnational dance instruction and suggests alternative ways of understanding concepts of representation, agency, and authorship. Further, it explores how American dance students apply narratives about African dance they learn in class to forge new communities that provide fulfillment absent in their daily lives. Ultimately, the thesis demonstrates how intersections between personal and social histories and performance and performativity in African dance communities in the United States can both reaffirm and disrupt official discourses about race, ethnicity, and artistic expression.Item Open Access Values, Ideologies, and the Emergent Tradition of Urban Chicken-Keeping in Eugene, Oregon(University of Oregon, 2016-02-23) Lewis, Mical; Gilman, LisaThis thesis examines the expressive culture of urban chicken-keepers in Eugene, Oregon in an attempt to explain why this practice has become so popular in recent years as well as to understand what role it plays in their lives. Data for this project were gathered using ethnographic fieldwork methods such as participant observation in “real life” and in social media outlets, semi-structured interviews with participants encountered at The Eugene Backyard Farmer, and a 54-question anonymous online survey of people who frequented the shop’s social media outlets. Based on an analysis of those data, this thesis contends that this group of people is using urban chicken-keeping as a way to intentionally reframe the future in a more positive light and that this can be seen in the articulation of their values and ideologies and through the way that they are traditionalizing urban chicken-keeping.Item Open Access Walking into History: Holocaust History and Memory on the March of the Living(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Cutz, Vanessa; Gilman, LisaThis thesis is an ethnography of how children of Holocaust survivors interacted and connected with the March of the Living and Holocaust sites in Poland. This work explores how considering individual perspectives allows one to understand how the March works in complicated and nuanced ways to intensify connections with relatives and Jewish identity. In three chapters this work situates the experiences of four participants within theories of place-making and post-memory to consider methods they used to connect with Holocaust sites and what effect that connection had on their sense of identity.Item Open Access Words Carried in with the Tide: Boundaries of Gender in FisherPoetry(University of Oregon, 2016-02-23) Meyer, Julianne; Gilman, LisaThe FisherPoets Gathering is an annual event where expressive art performed exposes the explicit and implicit gender dynamics of the occupation of commercial fishing. Through these performances, women tackle gender issues that bridge the gap between the fishing industry and the event. Through performance and interactions with fellow female FisherPoets, the women validate themselves as fishermen and comment on the behavior of their male colleagues. These performance-based expressive art forms enable them to address the fishing industry’s gender power dynamics and begin to make social change.