Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Creative Writing

The Frailty of Fruit is a young adult post-apocalyptic thriller, set in a far future subterranean farming community. The novel follows protagonist Qari Hofler, a reluctant tomato farmer, who must develop a hybrid tomato to earn her family's stewardship or be banished to the Deep Dark. Her 33rd great-grandfather's tomato strain cured violence. But because their cultural understanding of violence didn't include sexual violence, Qari develops an asexually reproductive strain with the naive hope of curing gender. Little does she know, she's not the only one with the seeds of that idea. Told in intertwining narratives, a second protagonist Iona also must race against time to beat Qari at her own hybrid game. But once the two of them find each other, with the help of a humanoid sexbot-turned-scientist named Misty, Qari and Iona realize that finding a place where they could grow together was the point all along. Told in the dystopian tradition of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Frailty of Fruit draws upon themes of reproductive justice, hegemony, posthumanism, and the subaltern. Written in a traditional narrative structure, the novel invents an accessible story with textured social imaginings. It posits a poetic truth that utopias will always become dystopias, that will then become utopias, and so on. Like nature, human social conditions have birth and death cycles. In this way, the novel employs contemporary feminist methodologies which utilize post-structural theories to challenge the notions of stable concepts. The ground, literally and conceptually, is always shifting.

Committee: Reema Rajbanshi Ph.D. (Committee Member); Lawrence Coates Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Literature; Modern Literature

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2020, Anthropology

A multiplicity of actors and social processes have divided Brazil's urban geography into areas of favela versus asfalto, respectively, the periphery and formal areas of the city. Using a conceptual framework of space and place, this research seeks to position the favela of Serrinha, Brazil at the intersection of these processes. Employing ethnographic data gathered over the course of eight weeks of fieldwork in Serrinha, the study first navigates the Brazilian urban dichotomy and locates the favela of Serrinha in the city of Florianopolis. In doing so, it assesses the constructs of place-identity and attachment that Serrinha residents express and engage with. I found that residents actively mobilize social systems and institutions within the neighborhood, emotional bonds to autoconstructed homes, and even their negative experiences of exclusion from Florianopolis to structure a cohesive sense of place. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that Serrinha's existence is constantly being negotiated with other neighborhoods and global processes.

Committee: Smoki Musaraj Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Geography; Regional Studies; Social Research

MSARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Hasty urbanization of non-metropolitan India has followed economic liberalization policies since the 1990s. To attract capital investments, such development has been compliant of globalization. However, agrarian protests and tribal Maoist insurgencies evidence resistance amidst concerns of internal colonialization. For the local building crafts, globalization has brought a `technological civilizing'. Facing technology that competes to replace rather than supplement labor, the resistance of masons and craftsmen has remained unheard, or marginalized. This is a legacy of colonialism. British historians, while glorifying ancient Indian architecture, argued to legitimize imperialism by portraying a decline. To deny the vitality of native architecture under colonialism, it was essential to marginalize the prevailing masons and craftsmen – a strain that later enabled portrayal of architects as professional experts in the modern world. Over the last few decades, members of the Subaltern Studies group, which originated in India, have critiqued post-colonial theory as being a vestige of and hostage to colonialism. Instead, they have prioritized the task of de-colonialization by reclaiming the history for the subaltern. A similar study in architecture is however lacking. This thesis thus proposes to initiate this work through an enquiry anchored on F.S. Growse's, 1883 book, Bulandshahr: Sketches of an Indian district. The book is appropriate, as it argued that architecture in India remained a living art, especially identifying the agency of masons and craftsmen. The colonial government saw the book as advocating for native autonomy. Further prints of the book were prohibited, and its author subsequently transferred. This thesis would focus on situating the architectural subaltern in 19th century India, not as timidly transitioning and transforming, but in dignified confrontation with colonialism. It aims to establish the continued vitality of non-metropolitan In (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Rebecca Williamson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Aarati Kanekar Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2017, Geography

Sub-Saharan Africa has been in the news for its water insecurity in the past few decades. The debates of water insecurity and vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa center on water as an economic good vis. a human right, urbanization, urban water politics, water supply systems, water governance, and climate change. Yet, existing literature has been at best limited within the context of these issues to identify and take cognizance of the specific geographical contexts and locally-based attributes that drive water insecurity and vulnerabilities in the sub-region. This thesis interrogates the geography of urban water security and vulnerabilities in the Accra-Tema City-Region (ATCR) of Ghana through case studies of three localities. Field interviews with 16 institutional respondents and informants, and 36 heads of households, surveys, and mapping of surveyed houses are used. Based on realist epistemology and a content analysis the paper addresses three research questions. First, what is the state of water (in)security and vulnerability within localities with different class status and geographies? Second, why do specific water (in)securities and vulnerabilities present in these geographies with different socio-economic class status? Third, how can water be secured in these different geographies? The thesis produces two significant findings. First, both geography and socio-economic class of households influence household water insecurity and vulnerabilities. Second, centralized and disjointed nature of urban water provision, governance and management make the attainment of water security a difficult development goal. The thesis argues that geography matters in achieving household water security in the city-region, hence, devolving functions in urban water provision is essential for solving water provision problems over local geographic space.

Committee: Ian Yeboah (Advisor); David Prytherch (Committee Member); John Maingi (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography

BA, Oberlin College, 2015, English

This paper examines The Book of Salt as a subaltern project. Binh, the protagonist of the novel, is a figure whose story has been recovered from the margins of history. The first part of the paper examines the oppressive conditions that marginalize him and how he negotiates and subverts those conditions. The second part explores the limits of such subaltern subversion and representation. Through such an examination, I raise critical questions about representing the subaltern subject in the fields of literature and Asian American studies. How can we represent the subaltern, when we cannot represent the subaltern? How do we hear their voice, when the subaltern cannot speak? These paradoxical dilemmas need not preclude Asian American studies scholars from exploring subaltern narratives. Rather, hybrid narratives such as The Book of Salt, when accompanied by a critical examination of their limits, are essential to subverting official narratives and decolonizing the fields of literature and historiography.

Committee: Harrod Suarez Professor (Advisor) Subjects: American Literature; Asian American Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Music

This dissertation examines ''acting in'' as a subaltern tactic though which marginalized Christians from local Oriya villages leverage an ideological and cultural space for practicing and sharing a Christian piety in modern Odisha, India; a region that has experienced significant anti-Christian violence in the past two decades. This research examines the cultural and political work accomplished through two modes of ''acting in'' performances through which specific kinds of performances enable specific kinds of relationships. The first mode of ''acting in'' occurs in the openness of village streets and incorporates highly stylized epic narrative presentations of Christian scriptures realized through song, dance and drama. This ''acting in'' draws on local performance conventions in order to affect a resonance between the audience's experience with similar performances of Hindu epics and the ''acting in'' performances of Christian narratives presented here. This resonance, a domain of experience that Dwight Conquergood calls an ''embodied epistemology'' enables the dramatic presentation of Christian stories - and even the Christians themselves - to be received by villagers as if emanating from a shared past. The political notion of ''acting in'' becomes evident as I demonstrate how the tactics of this first mode of ''acting in'' include a jettisoning of practices deemed foreign. This combination of carefully crafted performance and the absence of foreign cultural markers enables Maranatha Ministries Christians to become accepted in the village - and undifferentiated from their Hindu neighbors. This lack of differentiation produces a functional invisibility to the state and unofficial means of surveillance that might otherwise find it expedient to govern Christians as a distinct social entity. In this way ''acting in'' enables peaceable relations between Maranatha Ministries Christians, their village neighbors, village elders and regional and state authorities (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ryan Skinner (Advisor); Danielle Fosler-Lussier (Committee Member); Maurice Stevens (Committee Member); Udo Will (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethnic Studies; Folklore; Music; Peace Studies; Performing Arts; Religion; Religious History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Spanish and Portuguese

In the past decade, an impetus towards a more globalized field of Hispanic studies has emerged, critiquing the Peninsular/Latin America binary in academic departments and highlighting the need for significant studies of Hispanic Asian and African literatures. Various scholars have been contributing to this call, both in the study of Africa and in Asia, in order to move away from the centrality of the Spanish presence. My research is located in this emerging trend. This project highlights Filipino texts in order to continue building a transoceanic bridge to the Pacific by comparatively placing it alongside Cuban and Puerto Rican texts. This project carries out a transoceanic comparative study of Cuban, Puerto Rican and Filipino nationalist and revolution literatures written during the late nineteenth century, leading up to Spain's loss of its final colonies in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the first few years of U.S. neo-colonization. Using South Asian and Latin American Subaltern Studies as a point of departure, it addresses the gap in Iberian and Latin American studies that ignores the former Spanish colonies in the Pacific Ocean with a decolonial objective in mind. The works studied show the development of a new, regional and national consciousness and reveal the authors' responses to modernization, highlighting the political, cultural, and social tensions of that time period aesthetically and socio-culturally. By employing a transoceanic approach of the Filipino propagandista movement and the Latin American modernista movement, I aim to disrupt coloniality's focus on the Atlantic and allow for the emergence of decolonial thought that considers the inclusion of the formerly marginalized Pacific. Through an analysis of these parallel movements, my overall claim is that, by reading these texts through a transoceanic lens, we see not a mimicry of a European style, but rather an educated, elaborate response to the collapsing empire and to the internatio (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ileana Rodríguez (Advisor) Subjects: Asian Literature; Asian Studies; Caribbean Literature; Caribbean Studies; Language; Latin American History; Latin American Literature; Latin American Studies; Literature; Modern Language

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

It has been well established that communism and socialism played important roles in the historical development of the political cultures of both Palestine and Israel. The Palestine Communist Party was, at one time, the official representative for the Middle East region for the Communist International. What is less known is how a party that had much of its ideology in common with the Jewish and Zionist communities could, by the late 1930's, become so estranged from it and by the end of that decade would cease to function as a coherent body for many years. How could a party that for much of its early existence was predominantly Jewish find itself ostracized and shunned by the larger Zionist community in Palestine? Much of the story lies with the policy of Arabization that the party pursued following the Wailing Wall riots of 1929 but there is still much that is less known such as why did the party pursue such a policy as Arabization? Did the party members understand the implications of the policy of Arabization and the natural outcome of such a policy? How did the party intend to pursue this policy in Palestine despite a lack of an organized working class and basic knowledge of communist ideology among the native population? Perhaps most importantly, how would the party relate to and deal with the three main centers of power in Palestine during the British Mandate including the British Mandate authorities, the Zionist Organization, and the local Arab elites? By building upon the work of the Subaltern Studies Group, I hope to demonstrate that the work of the Palestine Communist Party with the Arab peasantry of Palestine during its early years of existence places this group into the Subaltern realm of politics. It is through the experience of rebellion against the British that these subaltern actors gain their voice and a place in which to express that voice. The Party was among the only organized groups that actively sought out the Arab peasant in outreach and by 1929, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Joseph Zeidan PhD (Committee Chair); Dr. Sabra Webber PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Middle Eastern History

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2008, Creative Writing/Fiction

This thesis, titled 'Five Lines for the Traveler's Phrasebook,' is a collection of five short stories, all of which are centered around the experience of women in developing nations. Because I have dedicated my time in this program not only to the work of writing fiction, but to expanding my knowledge of literary theory through the cross-disciplinary opportunities afforded to me by this program.Therefore, my thesis collection is significantly influenced by the work of multicultural and feminist theory, particularly Gayatri Spivak and her question of whether or not the subaltern can speak. Spivak's chief claim, made in her essay 'Can the Subaltern Speak,' is that the impermeable cultural barrier that exists between East and West make such speaking essentially impossible; the subaltern is not equipped with the tools of Western discourse necessary to 'speak' in a manner which would be comprehensible to the western world, and gaining such rhetorical tools necessitates a Western education that produces a discourse discernable to the West, but no longer representative of the subaltern. As a white woman of a privileged class, my attempts to explore the question of whether the subaltern can speak are, of course, unavoidably tied to my cultural background. Therefore, many of the stories in this collection are told from the perspective of a western protagonist. Those that are not chiefly focus on interpersonal relationships; my goal here has been to express those human experiences which might reasonably be regarded as universal, and allow the experiences of the subaltern to exist within the larger context of the stories.

Committee: Wendell Mayo PhD (Committee Chair); Lawrence Coates PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature