Browsing by Subject "Identity"

Now showing 1 - 10 of 35
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    21st -Century Community Foundations
    (2015-06-08) Carson, Emmett
    Community foundations across the United States are actively thinking through how to engage with donors who have local, national, and international interests. This paper examines how different community foundations are responding to changing definitions of community to meet the needs of their donors and their local communities. It posits that the key characteristic of community foundations compared to other donor advised fund providers is their leadership and civic engagement within and outside of their stated geography. I wrote this paper because increasingly, community foundations are wrestling with this definitional issue, which is becoming a fundamental question to their operations. It’s not going away—it shouldn’t go away—and community foundations have a responsibility to explore and debate what can and will happen as a result.
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    All the Pieces Matter: Fragmentation-as-Agency in the Novels of Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo
    (2013-01-30) Morguson, Alisun; Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Fox, Stephen L.; Henry Anthony, Ronda C.
    The fragmented bodies and lives of postcolonial Caribbean women examined in Caribbean literature beget struggle and psychological ruin. The characters portrayed in novels by postcolonial Caribbean writers Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo are marginalized as “Other” by a Western patriarchal discourse that works to silence them because of their gender, color, class, and sexuality. Marginalization participates in the act of fragmentation of these characters because it challenges their sense of identity. Fragmentation means fractured; in terms of these fictive characters, fragmentation results from multiple traumas, each trauma causing another break in their wholeness. Postcolonial scholars have identified the causes and effects of fragmentation on the postcolonial subject, and they argue one’s need to heal because of it. Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo prove that wholeness is not possible for the postcolonial Caribbean woman, so rather than ruminate on that truth, they examine the journey of the postcolonial Caribbean woman as a way of making meaning of the pieces of her life. This project contends that fragmentation – and the fracture it produces – does not bind these women to negative existences; in fact, the female subjects of Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo locate power in their fragmentation. The texts studied include Danticat’s "Breath, Eyes, Memory" (1994) and "The Farming of Bones" (1999), Cliff’s "Abeng" (1984) and "No Telephone to Heaven" (1987), and Mootoo’s "Cereus Blooms at Night" (1996) and "He Drown She in the Sea" (2005).
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    An:Other
    (2018) Alderson, Nicole; Nordgulen, Eric; Baker, Lesley; Kinsman, Patrick
    Otherness comes in many forms: it is a profound awareness of the metaphorical and physical space between, whether that space is the distance between two people, a person and the world they live in, or the perceived self and the internal self. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas wrote extensively on the notion of the Other throughout his career, and my work is a response to these ideas. For Levinas, the mask was the veil that is put on and becomes motionless and expressionless as whatever within us that makes us recognizable takes leave. Personally, I believe that this mask is not a single one but many diverse and evolving disguises we create, mold, and replace as we travel along the continuum of life. The idea of the mask is the way I choose to represent and recognize the fluidity of my own identity. The mask I display at any given moment, consciously or unconsciously, is dependent upon both situation and company. Through the metaphor of the mask, I explore the intensity of emotion brought on by a questioning of identity and a sense of Otherness. The emotion I'm most interested in during this process is contemplative melancholy. I'm attracted to the sadness and the darkness or the empty searching in people because it's an inherent fact of life and its presence in the world makes me feel alive as it gives me something to contrast the more uplifting or life affirming moments against. In my work I aim to bring to light the pervasiveness of the feelings of Otherness and malaise as deeply relatable truths of human condition.
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    Assessing the Importance and Value of Events for Indianapolis Using Willingness to Pay
    (2023-08) Burke, Michael; Pierce, David; Liu-Lastres, Becky; Sherman, Geoffre
    Having the support of the local community is vital to having events go well. This study is needed to better understand the value of the current events and event types to be able to bring better events to Indy. This study used the contingent valuation to measure the willingness to pay for a variety of events held in Indianapolis and then assessed the difference between them while including identity and quality of life factors as additional variables. An online questionnaire was used to gather responses for all the variables. Event type and sports identity were significant variables impacting the willingness to pay to attend.
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    Biracial Students on Campus: The Question of Identity
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2015-04-17) Smith, Derrian A.; Aponte, Robert
    Although the growing emphasis on celebrating diversity and multiculturalism has brought forth positive recognition to many varying identities, all have not benefitted equally. Lacking a solitary racial anchor, bi- and multi-racial individuals may have difficulty ‘choosing’ a preferred racial identity or ‘conforming’ to others’ preferences. Accordingly, this project examines how and why biracial IUPUI students come to embrace, reject, or alternate among the generally prescribed racial identities. By conducting penetrating interviews of biracial students while immersed in their immediate environment, I will explore their choices, the factors influencing such choices, their satisfaction with their choices, and the choices’ stability. I am especially concerned with whether students feel pressured to embrace one or another identity, and whether the prescribed goes against the students’ instincts or preferences, and to what extent they may alternate among various identities in varying contexts. The ongoing work has begun to provide hints to the ultimate findings ahead. Preliminary results show that 1) subjects feel pressured by the rigidity of historically established racial categories, especially since such pressures are often reinforced by peers, and 2) the context provided by IUPUI’s diverse student body engenders increased confidence in their embracing a “multiracial” identity, despite an abundance of contrary prescriptions. Anticipated conclusions include disconfirmation of the original hypothesis that most biracial IUPUI students maintain a fluid racial identity. Uncertainty and frustration, rather than the confidence to switch identities across varying contexts, appears to characterize student reactions to varying pressures to identify as either black or white. In addition, the more likely identity response, embracing the biracial persona, does seem to work for some, but others may require still more inclusive milieus for truly engaging in more thorough explorations of their identity.
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    Borderline
    (2013-05) Cortez, Susana; Hull, Greg
    My work is a manifestation of emotions concerning personal, social, and political issues that influence the way I perceive life. I manifest my emotions towards these issues in a spontaneous way, through the exploration and interaction with different mediums. I often use temporary materials such as dirt, paper, plaster, and clay slip. These materials assist me in imprinting the work of my hands, the struggle, and the trace of my creative process.
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    Breaking Naming: The Multi-Valency of Being Human
    (2017) Eicher, Stefan; McDaniel, Craig
    Violence, whether physical or psychological, is sustained by the act of 'naming' -- placing people into categories of 'the other' based on a singular difference in socio-economic, ethnic, cultural, or religious identity. Art by its very nature works best when it succeeds in breaking the categories of certainty inherent in naming, disabling the mastery of language and optical assumptions the viewer brings with them to the work. My work seeks to break the 'violence of naming' -- transforming depictions and objects of violence by undermining the ability to fit them easily into pre-existing visual categories. Through the creation of dislocating juxtapositions, visual layering, and the deployment of surrealism my work seeks to change the meaning and substance of oppositional relationships and objects of violence, and in the process explores the multi-valency of human identity and connections between people. At a secondary level, within the context of war, and specifically Western interventions in the Middle-East and Central Asia, my work is also a critique of imperialism and power. "Breaking Naming: The Multi-Valency of Being Human" consists of three large-scale oil & acrylic paintings and two smaller sculptural/interactive installations which collectively serve as my Thesis Exhibition. In the course of this thesis paper I explore my strategies for 'breaking naming' by using specific descriptions of the works as launching points for formal, thematic, and conceptual discussions of the works. In the process I also draw on examples from my research and close with an exploration of the theoretical and metaphysical framework for the pieces.
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    Comparison of International Art Therapy Projects: Purpose, Training, and Practice of Art Therapy in Developing and Transitioning Countries
    (2015) Leeds, Chelsea; Misluk, Eileen
    Around the world, art therapy varies in its definition, training process, purpose, and theoretical approach. Furthermore, there is a limited amount of research on international art therapy projects, particularly in developing and transitioning countries. The variations within the field and the limited amount of research make it challenging for art therapists to engage in international art therapy work. An integrative, systematic literature review was conducted to gain an understanding of varying training processes, purposes, and implementations of art therapy in developing and transitioning countries. Contemporary research articles on international art therapy projects were found and integrated in order to create a guiding framework to inform future art therapy projects in these nations. Overall, twenty countries were included in this literature review. The resulting definition of art therapy provides a guiding framework for future work in these areas. This framework includes a crisis intervention theoretical orientation and community-oriented structure. The art therapy approach is studio art therapy with an emphasis on indigenous art making and sustainable art materials. The guiding framework also promotes the training of local community members to utilize art therapy interventions and stresses the importance of avoiding power dynamics that further marginalize oppressed communities.
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    Connectedness of Existence
    (2014) Ingram, Margaret Elizabeth; Setser, Meredith
    I am drawn to the most human of things, the ordinary everyday experiences that connect us. I seek to remember pieces of life that are easily forgotten or left behind. It is within the constructs of interdependence that my work explores the poetic space of a shared human experience. These connections are made evident through the suggestion of memory, identity and the idea of the viewer as collaborator. I seek to create a narrative in which the viewer becomes aware of change and discovery within the behavior of an individual self. In my most recent work, the idea of the viewer has visually and metaphorically manifested into the act of drawing a circle. The shape of the circle is meant to be representative of the nature of experience within the intricacies of both the enlightened mind as well as the confused mind. It is a mutual circle or a circle of togetherness where the connectedness of our existence becomes indisputable. The circle in the beginning and ending, presence and absence. The viewer, then, becomes a silent collaborator who quietly charges my work as I search for social understanding of both the viewer and myself. In this way the viewer becomes a willing participant as well as the subject.
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    Dance and Identity Politics in Caribbean Literature: Culture, Community, and Commemoration
    (2011-06-03) Tressler, Gretchen E.; Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Kubitschek, Missy Dehn; Shepherd, Susan Carol
    Dance appears often in Anglophone Caribbean literature, usually when a character chooses to celebrate and emphasize her/his freedom from the physical, emotional, and societal constraints that normally keep the body in check. This study examines how a character's political consciousness often emerges in chorus with aesthetic bodily movement and analyzes the symbolic force and political significance of Caribbean dance--both celebratory (as in Carnival) and defensive (as in warrior dances). Furthermore, this study observes how the weight of Western views on dance influences Caribbean transmutations and translations of cultural behavior, ritual acts, and spontaneous movement. The novels studied include Samuel Selvon's "The Lonely Londoners" (1956), Earl Lovelace's "The Dragon Can't Dance" (1979), Paule Marshall's "Praisesong for the Widow" (1983), and Marie-Elena John's "Unburnable" (2006).