This thesis is an IRB-exempt oral history focused on the non-profit Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center (CMLC) in Corvallis, Oregon. The CMLC, formerly on 9th Street, was known to many community members as the Yellow House. The Yellow House was a dedicated community-based space where people of all cultures could come...
This project discusses the topic of personal names and the cultures of different
peoples and their particularities, specifically in Vietnam and Denmark. The first part of
this paper gives a brief history of naming traditions (mostly relating to Western European
traditions). The second part of the paper compares two families...
Microfinance, or the technique of lending small amounts of money to the world's poor for productive activities, has emerged as a dominant approach to poverty alleviation among international development organizations. However, consensus does not yet exist as to the best mechanism for delivery of loans. While most organizations simply offer...
Carnival celebrations in Santiago de Cuba transform large swaths of the city for an anticipated week of festivities, during which Afro-Cuban dancers and musicians are center stage, performing a complicated statement of prescribed cultural ideology, historic acts of agency, and nationalism. A particularly revealing celebration, carnival can be understood as...
This study explores how multispecies social networks influence small farmers' perceptions of and responses to climate change across Oregon. Local food sovereignty and food system resilience depend on a robust local food system in which small farms play a critical role. To maintain their viability, small farmers must adapt to...
Changing demographics in Oregon, accompanied by a rising Latino population, serve to dispel myths that we live in homogeneous, monolithic communities. Migration studies indicate migration is reshaping communities, contributing to ethnic diversity thus challenging our notion of identity and culture. Through the medium of oral histories and ethnography, this study...
In this qualitative case study, the implementation of a student-centered model of teaching, “Design Thinking, is explored to understand the difficulties learners experience when studying a foreign language in formal learning environments. This study suggests that excessive concentration on factors of grammar, translation, pronunciation, vocabulary, and lack of speech activity...
Religious histories have always appropriated pre-existing symbol systems of religion into newer forms, often with the goal in mind to acculturate a population into a new cultural setting to reach a desired status quo of society. The problem with acculturation theory is that it is filled with teleological and quantitative...