Anthropology, 1961-2025

This thesis explores how people perform their religious identities, commitments, and ambivalences, taking special interest in the negotiations of queerness and religious belonging and of dance and spiritual practice. I use three methods to consider three sites: 1) rhetorical analysis of digital resources for queer Muslim youth; 2) ethnography of Princeton’s student Christian dance company; 3) autoethnography of my (queer? Muslim?) improvisational dance practice. The first chapter examines how online brochures employ the analytics of social constructivism to argue that queerphobia is man-made whereas queerness is Islamic, overwriting the discursive incompatibility of queerness and Muslimhood with a divine compatibility. The second chapter demonstrates how religious performance is imbricated in and made possible through ‘secular’ social conventions, particularly by exploring how questions of skill surface in an inclusive Christian dance environment. The third chapter looks to my own dance practice to ask how the theories of queer performativity might bear on the practices that constitute religion: if queerness is improvised and enacted through doing and dancing, can the same be said for my queer Muslimhood? Altogether, this thesis proposes and takes a performative approach to study how people ‘do’ their religions and strive to belong.

This thesis examines how Black Division I football players view their virtual portrayals in the recently relaunched NCAA Football 25, amid shifting Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) policies. My research explores links between race, identity, and commodification to analyze how the game’s representations of Blackness disrupt or maintain historical patterns of racial exploitation. The study uses digital ethnography, semi-structured interviews with four Black student-athletes from both FBS and FCS schools, to position sports gaming within broader cultural conversations on race, commodification, and athlete autonomy. Each participant was asked a series of questions about their involvement with video games and spaces. The goal is to explore whether these digital spaces replicate racial stereotypes common in sports media, or enable players to challenge and redefine their identities through avatar embodiment and virtual socialization. My findings show a clear duality: NCAA Football 25 gives athletes pride and agency through detailed digital avatars and chances for compensation via NIL deals, but also sustains structural inequalities by turning Black athletes’ images into commodities within profit-based systems. While these sports games foster bonds similar to real locker-room interactions, they also reflect deeper racial and economic tensions found in college athletics. Ultimately, this thesis highlights tensions between visibility and erasure, empowerment and exploitation, adding to ongoing conversations about racial justice, digital labor, and ethical representation. It emphasizes how digital gaming shapes modern identity politics and the everyday experiences of Black college athletes navigating new digital economies.

Presented herein is a multifaceted analysis of productivity cultures – spaces of shared values and practices where production is foregrounded – as they exist in American society and at Princeton University. This work uses literature analysis and ethnography to define and understand the culture of productivity that exists on Princeton’s campus and how students relate to it, with a focus on why it is something students feel they must, in their words, “survive.” In detailing students’ perspectives on their place at the University, its place in the world, and what it means to move through it, I bring awareness to a phenomenon that goes largely unquestioned due to its ubiquity but impacts every student who engages with it, consciously or otherwise. My analysis demonstrates how Princeton’s context allows it the unique position to affect change on many beyond the current student body, and discusses theoretically and ethnographically supported methods to do so in pursuit of a more sustainable campus culture. This is not a policy recommendation for the institution, but rather a space for communal catharsis, support, and recognition of how truly challenging it is to move through this space, and a way of opening up previously unseen ways forward for students.

In times of war, personal narratives become one of the few things that survivors are left with. The ongoing war in Sudan has been named the worst humanitarian crisis in recorded human history; with millions facing famine, displacement, and unimaginable violence. Despite this, the world stands idle and indifferent to their suffering. This thesis explores the power of storytelling as a tool for resistance, historical preservation, and advocacy. By centering firsthand accounts from displaced Sudanese individuals; it counters the dehumanization– minimizing human lives into statistics and policies– that typically drives war narratives. The study examines storytelling’s role in processing trauma, reclaiming agency, and challenging dominant narratives shaped by governments and media. Through historical contexts, theoretical analysis, and collected testimonies, this work highlights how personal stories shape collective memory, resilience and justice. It aims to ensure that Sudanese voices are neither ignored nor forgotten. In amplifying their stories this work serves as a testament to the idea that storytelling is more than just recounting events- it is a means of reclaiming identity, fostering empathy, and demanding justice. Keywords: storytelling, war, narrative, displacement, agency, humanize, preservation

As refugee and migrant populations find themselves changing environments for the sake of their own health and that of their families, there comes a redidniton od what it means to be well and to be healthy. Through conversations with those who have migrated and now work in health and community service, assisting these communities of need, the concepts of prioritization, survival, and a “basic need” are brought into question as different aspects of wellness intertwine.

Okinawa was famous for being a “Blue Zone,” a locale with a healthy lifestyle and high concentrations of centenarians. However, those born in generations after WWII do not demonstrate a longevity advantage over Japanese people from the mainland as those in previous generations do. Through a combination of ethnographic, database, and media analysis, this thesis reveals underlying social mechanisms which have reinforced behavioral shifts that contribute to Okinawa's decline. A key finding is the concept of the selectively curated, cultural consumer identity which emerged during the US occupation. In the case of Okinawa, the unified Ryukyuan identity which dominates the Okinawan consciousness is actually curated from traditions which have been selectively emphasized through commercial mechanisms. How does the commercial intersection of cultural branding and traditional identities inform the lives of a population?

This thesis examines how climbers learn to become climbers; it argues that climbing is a moral project by tracing the historical, embodied, and emotional dimensions of climbing practices and identity formation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with the Princeton University Climbing Team, I investigate how climbers articulate what it means to be a “good” climber, and by extension, a certain kind of moral self. The first chapter traces the historical development of climbing ethics, highlighting how debates over risk and respectability shaped modern climbing practices. The second chapter analyzes the formation of a climbing habitus by paying attention to climbing’s phenomenological, aesthetic, and normative aspects. This thesis’ final chapter discusses fear as socially mediated and morally significant, and maintains that climbers learn to manage it in ways that affirm their control and legitimacy. More broadly, this thesis situates morality as a practical, enacted project that arises from discourse and embodied practice. As climbing grows in reach and popularity, it is important to examine the motivations and origins of climbing ethics, and how they shape climbers’ senses of self.

This ethnography examines how the medicalization of childbirth in Peru has served as a tool of reproductive governance, regulating Indigenous reproduction through welfare programs and medical surveillance. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of biopower, the study traces how nation-building efforts reinforced biomedical dominance while marginalizing Indigenous epistemologies. Focusing on the case of Ruya, a midwife operating within global wellness circuits, it explores how interdisciplinary models of "traditional" midwifery risk commodifying Indigenous knowledge. Although framed as empowerment, such practices often reproduce colonial structures of control. This work calls for a critical re-centering of Indigenous reproductive sovereignty, recognizing that both overt violence and subtle forms of appropriation threaten the autonomy and futures of Indigenous communities.

Oregon has a storied history of activism shaped by the Timber Wars and radical activist groups like Earth First! In the modern day, more literature is needed to understand how the landscapes of Forest Defense are shifting in line and away from its past. This paper argues that the lingerances of radical activism and the onset of a New Environmentalism each sculpt conceptions and expressions of forest defense work. This paper tracks how they shape practices, social networks, and nature-self relationships of affection and attachment. Conceptualizing Forest Defense as a shifting and complex landscape unified by practices of attachment and shaped by conflicting conceptions of self and work is crucial to mapping a path forward of forest activist and conservationist engagement.

This thesis examines the experiences of Guinean Fulani asylum seekers in Harlem, New York City, with a focus on Afrikana, a community-based migrant advocacy organization. Drawing on ethnographic methods, including participant observation and interviews, it explores how Afrikana responds to the structural vulnerabilities of the U.S. asylum system by providing not only legal and material support, but also culturally relevant care and a sense of community. The study is framed through a social determinants of health (SDH) framework, analyzing how access to resources such as housing, healthcare, legal support, and community networks influences the health and wellbeing of asylum seekers. By situating these experiences within the broader socio-political and historical context of U.S. migration policy, the research emphasizes the intersections of legal status, race, and health, highlighting the ways in which these factors shape migrants' survival and resilience. The findings underscore the importance of relational care, solidarity, and community-building in mitigating the effects of structural inequities. This research contributes to scholarship on migration, public health, and legal precarity, advocating for immigration policies that prioritize human dignity and provide comprehensive support to asylum seekers, beyond the limits of legal status alone.

This thesis explores the shifting landscape of reproductive health care in the United States through an ethnographic lens, focusing on how the individuals most engaged in this field- activists and physicians- navigate, reinterpret, and anticipate change in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Drawing on interviews with those across a wide range of ideological lines, I explore how participants understand their roles within a rapidly changing sociopolitical environment and how these roles are constantly renegotiated in response to legal, cultural, and institutional uncertainty. As opposed to previous literature which has framed abortion as a binary conflict, this research foregrounds the complexity of lived experience and moral understanding across the reproductive health spectrum. Building on anthropological scholarship of care, uncertainty, temporality, and moral subjectivity, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of how reproductive futures are endlessly shaped in the present.

Black people in America have been uniquely subjected to pervasive forms of violence deeply embedded within the systems that govern their lives—violence that has shaped their experiences and defined their very sense of being. This thesis examines the lived realities of Black individuals as they confront systemic violence, focusing particularly on how state-sanctioned harm, such as police brutality, is internalized and transformed. It argues that grief—both Black grief and Black maternal grief—not only responds to systems designed to dehumanize and oppress but also becomes a powerful site of resistance. Grief opens pathways through which Black people actively challenge the structures that seek to subjugate them, reclaiming their humanity in the process. Through an exploration of grassroots memorialization movements in Minnesota, this project investigates how, in the midst of grief, communities cultivate acts of resistance through remembrance. These commemorative practices carve out sacred spaces that honor Black lives and assert their continued presence in the face of systemic erasure. Building on this foundation, the thesis explores how art operates as a form of resistance, examining physical artworks and creative expressions that embody and extend this legacy of defiance. The final section offers reflection and forward-thinking theorization, focusing not only on what it means to preserve Black lives, but also on how to imagine Black futures.

This thesis examines how beauty in Brazil functions as a racialized and gendered form of social capital, shaping who is seen, who belongs, and who advances. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro—including non-participant observation, informal conversations, and semi-structured interviews with young Brazilian women in their 20s from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds—I explore how Eurocentric beauty standards privilege whiteness while marginalizing Black and Indigenous features. I argue that these standards shape women's access to opportunity, social legitimacy, and economic mobility. I take a very narrative, story-telling approach to explain that for the women I interviewed—Camila, Ana Clara, Mariana, Bianca, and Marcela (names changed for anonymity)—beauty is not simply about self-expression; it becomes a strategic and emotional negotiation tied to survival and advancement. Drawing from postcolonial theory and critical social theory, I analyze the works of Frantz Fanon and Pierre Bourdieu to show how beauty standards operate as disciplinary forces that reinforce Brazil’s colonial racial hierarchies. I highlight how my interlocutors wrestle with the prioritization of whiteness across Brazil’s social structures, media, and professional spaces, while also carving out spaces of resistance through community-building, digital activism, and personal storytelling. Ultimately, this thesis reveals how embodied aesthetics are governed by systemic forces of inequality—yet also how beauty becomes a site of creativity, resilience, and political assertion in contemporary Brazil.

This thesis examines the layered constructions of sovereignty, law, and national identity through Scotland’s evolving relationship with England, Britain, and Europe. Drawing from archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, and theoretical frameworks in legal anthropology and postcolonial studies, I trace how landscapes, legal structures, and cultural memory produce competing visions of nationhood within the United Kingdom. I argue that Scotland’s constitutional position reveals a system of nested colonialism—an internal reproduction of imperial hierarchies—while simultaneously offering pathways for nested resistance through strategic affiliations with Europe and cultural reinvention. My analysis builds on E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s theory of segmentary opposition to conceptualize sovereignty not as a fixed possession but as a relational and evolving practice. Ethnographic vignettes, from archival encounters to moments at the Edinburgh Fringe, illustrate how national belonging is enacted, challenged, and reimagined in everyday life. Ultimately, this thesis proposes that Scotland’s constitutional future, and Europe’s broader trajectory, lie not in returning to static notions of sovereignty but in embracing mobility, plurality, and unfinished forms of political belonging.

Keywords: sovereignty, nested colonialism, nationalism, Scotland, legal anthropology, regionalism, cultural reinvention

This thesis examines Hudson Headwaters through an anthropological lens of medical trust due to its unique history, infrastructure, and ways of providing care compared to other U.S. community health centers. Because community health centers serve a significant number of the U.S. population (more than 31 million patients in 2023), my research explores the evolving nature of healthcare over the past fifty years using Hudson Headwaters as a case study (Pillai, Corallo, and Tolbert 2025). Due to Hudson Headwaters’ well-documented series of growth in their historical archives, I was able to detail the provision of women’s healthcare and how methods of care have changed over time from its humble beginnings providing only prenatal services to its current status as the only women’s health provider in the Glens Falls, New York area. Drawing on the oral history of Hudson Headwaters’ creation through qualitative interviews with Hudson Headwaters’ providers and staff, I aim to introduce new interpretations of the barriers that come with living in upstate New York, allowing a more multidimensional understanding of rural women’s experiences that otherwise are rendered invisible. This dissertation emphasizes the simple yet core values of successful caregiving: mutual trust, patient agency, and identifying and responding to a community and an individual’s needs.

Ecotherapy is a form of complementary and alternative medicine that seeks to address multiple dimensions of wellbeing via nature-based interventions. Despite a growing recognition that wellbeing is more than just physical health (Witeska-Mlynarczyk 2015), holistic health practices like ecotherapy remain widely under-researched and under-utilized. This project draws upon ethnographic research with two ecotherapy organizations– one in the United States (Bloom) and one in Japan (Shinanomachi Healing Forest)– to examine how these challenges manifest in practice. The purpose of my research is twofold: 1) to provide a framework of ecotherapy that moves beyond strictly scientific understandings, and 2) to outline potential paths forward for ecotherapy organizations that struggle to gain widespread acceptance and use. Because ecotherapy exists outside of mainstream medicine, I argue that ecotherapy organizations must strategically leverage relationships across multiple levels in order to succeed. These partnerships are rarely simple; they require constant negotiation, creative compromise, and a deep understanding of how to work within–and sometimes around– unwelcoming systems.

In the town of Ridgewell, it’s natural for any boy or girl to pick-up a lacrosse stick at a very young age. This thesis explores how lacrosse within this prosperous suburban town is considered so much more than just an athletic activity. Lacrosse has become synonymous with the town (a “Lacrosse Town”), and over the decades, this sport has contributed to shaping its identity, reinforcing their community values, and successfully bequeathing these societal privileges from one generation to the next. Beginning in the 1st grade, boys and girls alike are enrolled in the lacrosse youth program where they start learning the fundamentals of the game and also begin interacting with other kids their own age and affluent status. This ethnographic study investigates the factors that have elevated the Ridgewell High School boys’ and girls’ lacrosse teams into an enduring dynasty. To reach such a pinnacle in the sport, my thesis will examine the unwavering contributions from experienced coaches, early player enrollment, proactive family involvement, extensive community participation, and also the overwhelming financial support. At the same time, I will introduce other defining attributes and necessary requirements from the players on Ridgewell lacrosse: dedication, camaraderie, character building, and collegiate aspirations. On a macro-scale, this thesis will also take into account the structural inequalities that limit access to the sport from the neighboring minority communities…and thus, preserving its exclusivity to affluent towns such as Ridgewell.

In this thesis, I explore the formation of digital tipping culture in American counter service establishments through an ethnographic study conducted in Princeton, New Jersey. I begin by situating tipping within its broader historical, legal, and economic contexts, tracing how it evolved into a normalized component of the American service economy. Using participant observation, interviews, and classical theoretical frameworks, I examine how digital point-of-sale systems have reconfigured tipping as an economic ritualized interaction shaped by cultural pathways, reciprocity, morality, and social relations. I argue that while tipping appears as a voluntary expression of gratitude, it is structurally embedded in labor relations and shaped by power asymmetries across customers, tipped employees, and managers. By foregrounding the screen as both prompt and agent, I trace how digital infrastructure reshapes the emotional, economic, and symbolic dimensions of tipping. My analysis centers not on the “correct” way to tip, but outlines digital counter service tipping as a culture in formation, where social and moral negotiations occur within everyday transactions – those brief yet loaded moments where people must decide whether and how to tip.

This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of English language education in Jordan, centering the ethical, political, and relational dynamics that emerge when English is taught across cultural and linguistic divides. Based on fieldwork conducted over six months—including interviews, participant observation, and narrative storytelling—I examine how English functions not only as a global language but as a marker of class, cosmopolitanism, and aspiration. Special attention is given to the roles of teachers: Jordanian, Western, and hybrid educators, each navigating distinct expectations and forms of legitimacy. Building on critiques of linguistic imperialism and soft power, I analyze how international programs like Fulbright—often staffed by monolingual native speakers— reproduce symbolic hierarchies even when framed as cultural exchange. I trace how English circulates differently across urban and rural settings, where access, infrastructure, and social capital deeply shape what English can do. Through ethnographic vignettes, personal reflection, and engagement with anthropological theory, this thesis asks what it means to teach English in a postcolonial, Arabic-speaking context—and how such teaching can become a site of mutual learning rather than one-way transmission. Ultimately, this work contributes to broader conversations about language, pedagogy, and the ethics of cross-cultural encounter.