Mainstream local food systems focus on environmental and individual health, but labor is out of sight and out of mind. We begin with a story that introduces the immigrant in the room, the locavore’s blind spots, and the need to move beyond mainstream environmentalism and embrace social justice. In the...
Contemporary spiritual tourism impacts many stakeholders including environmental ecosystems, tourists, tourist operators, and community members. Increasingly, in the era of the Anthropocene, there is a need for ethical guidance to inform spiritual tourism so as to mitigate social injustice and environmental degradation. This research project investigates the potential for the...
This thesis comprises a collection of six short stories written and developed in
the Creative Writing program at Oregon State University and particularly in fiction
workshops with Dr. Tracy Daugherty and Marjorie Sandor. These stories explore the
human condition, and human connections, in contemporary society. The characters
here are ordinary...
Scenes from the Tarot is a novella that explores the desire to control time. The narrator, Truth Aiken, spurred by fear of her own death, recounts the story of her sister Beauty's death and its effects on Truth's highly unusual family. Proceeding backwards through time, Truth describes her tumultuous relationships...
This thesis explores the metaphor of hospice nurses as "midwives to the dying" by
applying philosophical inquiry to the field of hospice. I focus on the history of the
movements, their professional approaches to caregiving, and the core commitments of
both the modern midwifery and hospice movements. Although focused on...
Around the globe, an array of alternative agrifood movements has emerged largely in response to the ecological and socio-economic threat caused by industrialized agricultural processes. From organic agriculture, to Slow Food, Locavore, and the Food Sovereignty movement, people around the world are reasserting their right to healthy and culturally appropriate...
This thesis on online communities for sex buyers seeks to understand questions such as “what can we learn from online communities for sex buyers?” We explore these issues with the framework of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis and through the use of qualitative research of both the review boards at Punternet...
A prevalent belief during the Victorian age was that the world was divided between inferior beings governed by passion and superior reasoning beings. On the political level, this idea separated inferior passion-driven natives from superior reasoning Europeans. This division contributed to the maintenance and expansion of imperialist rule in distant...
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...
The purpose of this thesis is to understand the experiences that Nahua children, in rural Mexico, have as they attend schools that are primarily influenced by formal Western education in relation to their own ways of learning and knowing. This research took place over the course of three months within...