Theses and Dissertations
Booklets – M.A. Recipients & Ph.D. Graduates
2021-22 Theses, Reports, and Dissertations
Master’s Theses & Reports
Emilia Rose Ørsted Holmbeck, MA
Contextualizing PTSD as Diagnosis and Intervention: Situating Trauma and the Subjective Experience of Suffering in Locally Meaningful Worlds
Co-Chairs: Douglas W. Hollan & Linda Garro
Jewell Ruth-Ella Humphrey, MA
Harboring History: A Maritime Archaeological Analysis of an 18th Century Shipwreck in Coral Bay, St. Jan
Co-Chairs: Stephen Acabado & Justin Dunnavant
Lillian Kohn, MA
Public Mourning, Online Spaces: Virtual Memorialization and Binational Grief in Israel-Palestine
Chair: Susan Slyomovics
NaaKoshie Awurama Mills, MA
Par for the Corps: Black Diplomats and Race in U.S. Foreign Policy
Chair: Laurie Hart
Abdullah Puckett, MA
Decarceration and Social Justice Activism in South Central LA
Chair: Philippe Bourgois
Matthew James Schneider, MA
Against Accountability: Policing and Public Knowledge in Los Angeles
Chair: Hannah Appel
Doğa Tekin, MA
Claiming Big Sur: How Places Enter Semiosis
Co-Chairs: Erin Debenport & Paul V. Kroskrity
Kimberly Tanya Zhu, MA
Genomic Features Underlying Andean High-Altitude Adaptive Hemoglobin Levels
Chair: Abigail Bigham
Doctoral Dissertations
Brittany Nicole Florkiewicz, PhD
Properties of Facial Signaling in Captive Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
Chair: Brooke Scelza
Yanina Gori, PhD
Re/mediating Revolution: Cultivating Solidarity in a Cuban Queer Community
Co-Chairs: Hannah Appel & C. Jason Throop
Jananie Kalyanaraman, PhD
Window seats: Making connection through transport and mobility in Bengaluru city, India
Chair: Akhil Gupta
Eva Rose Melstrom, PhD
The Gate of Weeping: Ethiopian Women Returning from Domestic Work in the Arab States of the Persian Gulf
Co-Chairs: Douglas W. Hollan & C. Jason Throop
Zachary Mondesire, PhD
Region-craft: An Ethnography of South Sudan’s Transnational Intelligentsia
Chair: Hannah Appel
Lauren Textor, PhD
Deserving Abandonment: Governing Pain and Addiction across U.S. Opioid Landscapes
Co-Chairs: Philippe Bourgois & Laurie Hart
2020-21 Theses and Dissertations
Master’s Theses
Sara Isabel Castro Font, MA
Hipsters, Drunks, Tourists, and Locals: Calle Loíza as a Site of Ideological Contestation
Co-Chairs: Erin Debenport & Paul V. Kroskrity
Lilit Ghazaryan, MA
Speak Beautifully – Language Policies and Practices in Public Kindergartens in Armenia
Chair: Erica Cartmill
Nicco Amedeo La Mattina, MA
“Giving the Meaning” as a Social Practice on Pantelleria: The Metasemantics of Atttunement
Chair: Alessandro Duranti
Alessandra May Laurer Rosen, MA
Semiotic Labors of Personalization: Modernization and Access in an American Yoga School
Co-Chairs: Erin Debenport & Paul V. Kroskrity
Danielle Leigh Steinberg, MA
A robust tool kit: first report of tool use in crested capuchin monkeys (Sapajus robustus)
Chair: Jessica Lynch
Jessie Serene Stoolman, MA
Writing Letters and Reading against the Grain of Anthropology’s Past
Chair: Aomar Boum
Donghyoun We, MA
Food and Restaurants: A Review of the Literature and Exploratory Observations of Restaurant Pivots in LA in the Time of COVID-19
Chair: Akhil Gupta
Madeleine Louise Zoeller, MA
Eye See You: Investigating Predictors of the Evil Eye
Chair: Joseph Manson
Doctoral Dissertations
Farzad Amoozegar-Fassaie, PhD
The Pursuit of Happiness and the Other: Being a Syrian Refugee Child in America
Co-Chairs: Alessandro Duranti & C. Jason Throop
Theresa Hill Arriola, PhD
Securing Nature: Militarism, Indigeneity and the Environment in the Northern Mariana Islands
Chair: Jessica Cattelino
Yael Assor, PhD
Objectivity as a Bureaucratic Virtue: The Lived Experience of Objectivity in an Israeli Medical Bureaucracy
Chair: C. Jason Throop
Amanda Jean Bailey, PhD
Alluvial Hope: The Transformative Practices of Placemaking at a Montana Tribal College
Co-Chairs: Paul V. Kroskrity & Cheryl Mattingly
Hannah Addaline Carlan, PhD
Producing Prosperity: Language and the Labor of Development in India’s Western Himalayas
Chair: Alessandro Duranti
Alejandro Suleman Erut, PhD
Lying: an anthropological approach
Chair: H. Clark Barrett
Nafis Aziz Hasan, PhD
Techno-politics of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) – Investigating Practices and Social Relations in Indian Public Bureaucracies
Chair: Akhil Gupta
Tanya Ruth Matthan, PhD
The Monsoon and the Market: Economies of Risk in Rural India
Chair: Akhil Gupta
Agatha Evangeline Palma, PhD
The Migrant, The Mediterranean, and the Tourist: Figures of Belonging in Post-Austerity Palermo
Co-Chairs: Aomar Boum & Laurie Kain Hart
Sonya Rao, PhD
Privatizing Language Work: Interpreters and Access in Los Angeles Immigration Court
Chair: Paul V. Kroskrity
Alexander Malcolm Thomson, PhD
Mesologues: An Ethnobibliographic Study of Cultural and Lingual Politics in Contemporary Brittany
Co-Chairs: Laurie Kain Hart & Paul V. Kroskrity
2019-20 Theses, Reports, and Dissertations
Master’s Theses & Reports
Ulises Espinoza, MA
Intuitions on Ownership Among the Achuar of Southeastern Ecuador
Chair: H. Clark Barrett
Eden Franz, MA
Cultural and Interspecific Symbiosis at Salemi, Sicily: Exploring Colonial and Human-Animal Interactions Through Faunal Analysis
Chair: Monica L. Smith
Joelle Julien, MA
Haitian Migration to Tijuana, Mexico: Black Migrants and the Political Economy of Race and Migration
Chair: Jemima Pierre
Eric Andrew Sinski, MA
Imagined Communities: Patriotic Sentiment Among Chinese Students Abroad in the Era of Xi Jinping
Chair: Yunxiang Yan
Sasha Lutz Winkler, MA
The Development of Sex Differences in Play in Wild White-Faced Capuchins
Chair: Erica Cartmill
Doctoral Dissertations
Katelyn Jo Bishop, PhD
Ritual Practice, Ceremonial Organization, and the Value and Use of Birds in Prehispanic Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 800-1150 CE
Co-Chairs: Richard Lesure & Gregson Schachner
Molly Josette Bloom, PhD
Thick Sociality: Community, Disability, and Language in Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation
Chair: Norma Mendoza-Denton
Courtney Evelyn Cecale, PhD
Scientific Governance and the Cultural Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in the Peruvian Andes
Chair: Jessica Cattelino
Amy Marie Garey, PhD
The People’s Laughter: War, Comedy, and the Soviet Legacy
Chair: Nancy E. Levine
Kotrina Kajokaite, PhD
Social relationships in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus): Insights from new modeling approaches
Chair: Susan Perry
Matthew Richard McCoy, PhD
Unsettling Futures: Morality, Time, and Death in a Divided Belfast Community
Chair: C. Jason Throop
Dalila Isoke Ozier, PhD
City of Magic: Aesthetic Value in the Los Angeles Magic Scene
Chair: Sherry B. Ortner
Mindy Gayle Steinberg, PhD
Legal Status and the Everyday Lives of Mexican-Origin Youth in Los Angeles: Family, Gratitude, and the High School Transition
Chair: Thomas S. Weisner
Christopher Shawn Stephan, PhD
“Focus on the Users”: Empathy, Anticipation, and Perspective-Taking in Healthcare Architecture
Chair: C. Jason Throop
Anoush Tamar Suni, PhD
Palimpsests of Violence: Ruination and the Politics of Memory in Anatolia
Chair: Susan Slyomovics
Gwyneth Ursula Jean Talley, PhD
Gunpowder Women: Gender, Kinship & Horses in Moroccan Equestrian Performance
Co-Chairs: Nancy E. Levine & Susan Slyomovics