Tag: HURF

Zanzibari Perceptions of Acquired Immunity and Rebound Malaria

Presenter: Ava Minu-Sepehr – Anthropology

Faculty Mentor(s): Melissa Graboyes, Karl Reasoner

Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel—HURF

This work-in-progress talk presents initial findings from 38 Swahili-English interviews conducted with Zanzibaris about the history of malaria and their understandings of rebound malaria and the biomedical concept of acquired immunity. Over the past century, periods of intense malarial interventions in Zanzibar reduced malaria tremendously, while subsequent withdrawals led to dangerous rebound epidemics. This project weaves together contemporary interview data and historical context to present “vernacular knowledge” about malaria. “Vernacular knowledge” captures different and fluid forms of thinking, knowing, and meaning-making using local language, recognizing the impact of foreign. I will report initial findings from this research, as we complete coding of the interview transcripts using a modified grounded theory approach. Salient themes across oral interviews include danger, education, and responsibility, as well as the role of the environment and foreign funding in discussions about malaria. Our research demonstrates that Zanzibari’s don’t share the same biomedical framings of “rebound malaria” and “acquired immunity,” but that their understandings vary based on age, gender, and expertise with malaria. This research challenges what types of knowledge are valued and disseminated, and allows us to ask how the work of decolonizing diverse knowledge can be performed. This project is part of a larger NSF grant led by Professor Graboyes on the history of malaria in Africa.

Legal Reasonability and The ‘Gay Panic’ Defense

Presenter: Kelly Keith − English

Faculty Mentor(s): Dr. José Cortez, Dr. Faith Barter

Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel—HURF

On May 13th, 2021, Senate Bill 704 was passed in Oregon. The bill banned the use of the ‘Gay Panic’ defense, an affirmative defense that could reduce a murder charge to manslaughter if the defendant was found to commit murder under “extreme emotional disturbance” onset by the victim’s perceived homosexuality. The Gay Panic defense reinforces anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric that those who identify as LGBTQ+ deserve less legal and social protection than those who identify as heterosexual. The defense is still permitted in 33 states.

In criminal proceedings, a defendant’s culpability is assessed by a legal fiction known as the Reasonable Person Standard (RPS) which establishes a supposedly objective standard of behavior based upon how a hypothetical person would exercise conduct in a given situation. Thus, if the RPS is founded on a fictive approach to reasonability, how does reasonability itself, as a discursive practice exemplified in the RPS, produce legal practices that affect LGBTQ+ in Oregon? I explore State v. Hayse through archival, ethnographic, and historiographic research methods in order to consider how the RPS functions within the case. I propose a full abolition of the ‘Gay Panic’ defense federally, a reassessment of the RPS through patterned jury instruction, and the necessity of revealing previously hidden narratives to provide the framework of how the law has historically understood the dignity, legal personhood, and liberty of People of Color, Women, and LGBTQ+ folk.

Constructing Belonging: An In-Depth Analysis of the Oregon Sanctuary Movement

Presenter: Alexis Han − Global Studies

Faculty Mentor(s): Kristin Yarris

Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel—HURF

In the 1980s, churches in Oregon and across the nation declared themselves as sanctuaries for Central Americans fleeing civil conflict. This marked the start of the sanctuary movement, a religious and political campaign to assist migrants seeking safety in the United States. The movement made its way into the political sphere in 1987 when Oregon became the first state to pass a sanctuary policy, limiting the use of local law enforcement to apprehend undocumented immigrants. Decades later, the Oregon legislature solidified these protections in 2021 with the passage of the Sanctuary Promise Act. In researching the many dimensions of the Oregon sanctuary movement, my research project takes a multi-disciplinary approach to answer these research questions: How has the Oregon sanctuary movement evolved from its origins in faith-based activism? And how does Oregon’s sanctuary policy and the work of sanctuary and immigrants’ rights activists intersect to cultivate belonging for undocumented people? I engaged in a multi-method study by thematically analyzing interviews with Oregon sanctuary activists and analyzing the Sanctuary Promise Act through analysis of the bill’s text and contextualizing its provisions with interviews from community advocates and submitted public testimonies. These analyses show the resiliency and adaptability of the Oregon sanctuary movement as a community-powered campaign that responds to the needs of undocumented Oregonians in order to cultivate belonging.

A Literary Analysis of the History of Migration Through The Bracero Program

Presenter(s): Jonah Gomez Cabrera — Art

Faculty Mentor(s): Julie Wiese

Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel— HURF

The Bracero Program was a guest worker program that was held under a bilateral agreement between the United States and Mexico to resolve labor shortages during World War II between 1942 and 1964 Mexico desired a program that would boost their modernization movement which involved industrialization and proving their morality and social values through an international lens. Mexico’s goals to fortify a greater relationship with the United States held influence on modern migration habits that would be recorded as employed and documented through Bracero Contract, leaving amidst their contract, or arriving in the North undocumented altogether. My research explores these migration alternatives through literary analysis in the form of archival government documents from Mexican consuls, US government officials, and braceros to further understand their story and involvement that influenced the actions of Bracero workers to choose either to stay in the program or leave. Through the exploration of individual bracero workers’ and migrants’ experiences and stories through a humanistic aspect, it helps us analyze how these cases are still historically relevant to modern migration methods, vocabulary, ideas, as well as its current problems.

Ethnohistory of Indigenous Transculturation and Resistance in the Sibundoy Valley of Colombia

Presenter(s): Rowan Glass — Anthropology

Faculty Mentor(s): Reuben Zahler, Maria Fernanda Escallón

Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel—HURF

This paper interprets Indigenous culture change and resistance in the ethnohistory of the Sibundoy Valley of southwest Colombia. Drawing on historical, ethnographic, and theoretical sources, I trace these processes as they have developed in the valley from colonial period to the present, focusing on the twentieth century. Previous histories of the Sibundoy Valley have emphasized the complementary roles of the Catholic Church and the Colombian state as history-makers in this frontier zone, where the colonial logics of these agents were forcibly imposed on the Indigenous communities they encountered there. While recognizing the importance of Church and state as historical actors in this region, this paper finds that Foucault’s claim that “where there is power, there is resistance” aptly applies to the ethnohistory of the Sibundoy Valley. Although the effects of colonial power on the Indigenous communities of the valley are clear, in all cultural domains in which culture change has occurred it has been countered by practices of resistance which have operated to maintain Indigenous cultural integrity. The historical continuity of such practices demonstrates that the Indigenous communities in question have not been passive subjects of colonial power, but rather active agents in negotiating and resisting it. This paper interprets Sibundoy Valley ethnohistory to position the valley’s Indigenous communities at center stage, as the protagonists and makers of their own history.

Affect and New French Extremity: Aesthetics of Traumatic Memory

Presenter(s): Lisa Deluc — Cinema Studies

Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel—HURF

This thesis hopes to highlight how a particular film phenomenon in early twenty-first century France demonstrates the concepts of traumatic affect eloquently through its aesthetic and formal tendencies. Commonly known as New French Extremity, this phenomenon touched on transgressive subjects in extreme and often viscerally challenging ways. This work into New French Extremity hopes to bring about a broader understanding of how art communicates traumatic memory through formal elements of storytelling. Ultimately this research seeks to better understand how bodily experience is affectively contagious and how cinema facilitates this communication through formal and aesthetic means.

Gender Diversity and Deviation in Medieval Scandinavia

Presenter: Miles Berry − Anthropology

Faculty Mentor(s): Gantt Gurley

(In-Person) Oral Panel—HURF

There is a trope in the medieval Scandinavian literary tradition that bends the gendered actions and presentations of its characters in a way that changes their social standing within their stories. Unfortunately, homophobia and transphobia within academia have been precedent for decades and have caused the overlook of queer characters in such medieval literature. In my research, I attempt to contradict the notions that queer people did not exist in medieval Scandinavia and posit that some queer medieval individuals even held high places in society because of their identities. This paper finds evidence of what moderns consider gender diversity and deviation within medieval Scandinavian life, using both literature and archaeology. I inspect the Poetic and Prose Eddas, selected Icelandic Family Sagas, and archaeological burials that were deemed exceptional or diversionary from gendered expectations. These findings are based on both modern queer theory and a scale created by Carol Clover to analyze societal standing in Icelandic Family Sagas.