Thesis (PH.D.) -- Syracuse University, 2004. / "Publication number AAT 3160398."

<p> The negative statistics pertaining to American Indian women education should cause concern for everyone. The data reflect that American Indian women graduate high school behind all other demographic categories. In contrast, all participants of this study graduated high school and ascended to various levels of higher education. This paradox lends itself to further investigation despite opposing views of some scholars who believe there is nothing more to add. This research explored the existence of a correlation between culture and education for American Indian women who served in the pow wow princess role. Members of the American Indian women were called-upon for their cultural insights and tacit knowledge that is unknown to many outsiders. Interviewing pow wow princesses and exploring the role they fulfilled as a pow wow princess within the American Indian community produced information and data that was used to analyze the existence of a correlation between positive educational outcomes of American Indian women who have served in the pow wow princess role. This research helped to create a better understanding and essence of the pow wow princess role from the perspective of American Indian women who served in this role and being able to apply gained knowledge to other areas of the American Indian body of research. The design of this research employed a qualitative mixed methods approach that was used to conduct field research and gather data through administering the American Indian Enculturation Scale survey designed by Winderowd, Montgomery, Stumblingbear, Harless, and Hicks (2008) and conducting personal interviews with a questionnaire developed by the researcher that triangulated the selected instruments with theories contained within the body of research. The findings of this study suggest there is a correlation between the pow wow princess role and positive educational outcomes of American Indian women serving in this role. These findings support and add to the existing body of research.</p>

<p> Within a framework of intersectionality, this thesis explores the multidimensional experiences women of color have in abusive same-sex relationships. It also explores the tremendous influence those experiences have on their lives. Although intimate partner violence (IPV) in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community has become increasingly visible within the past two decades, media and scholarship continue to focus on heterosexual incidents of domestic violence. Relying on the powerful narratives of four women of color who are IPV survivors, I examine social constructs such as familial violence, homophobia, racism, and poverty, that contribute to lesbian intimate partner violence. I also present reasons for and consequences of staying in an abusive relationship. The findings of this study indicate that intimate partner violence is a symptom of oppression for socially marginalized lesbians of color and not a source.</p><p>

Prostitution occupies a significant place in academic research. It has been analysed from a range of disciplines including sociology and anthropology, women’s studies, criminology and law, and medicine and health services. Much of the recent scholarship in Australia concerning prostitution has focussed on the relationship between sex work and sexually transmissable diseases, and on the decriminalisation of prostitution. Despite the considerable number of studies into prostitution, there has been only limited consideration in Australia of prostitution as a form of waged labour. Some feminist theorists, writing from an historical perspective, have examined the concepts of sex and work and the way in which these are reproduced within the practice of prostitution.

<p> Protracted conflict and development in South Sudan: A feminist analysis of women&rsquo;s subjugation in the making of a nation argues that international interventions in South Sudan from the period of British colonization to present day South Sudan perpetuate and [re]inscribe formations of women&rsquo;s oppression and agency. Foreign presence affects identity constructions, conflict, and governance. I demonstrate how international interventions, militarization, and protracted conflict, compromise women&rsquo;s rights, health, and self-determination as they permeate understandings of gender, sex, reproduction, and security. I integrate an analysis of customary and civil law to establish how the expression and implementation of law and rights inform relationships to women&rsquo;s freedom and justice. Further, I investigate techniques the United Nations and NGOs used to influence cultural shifts that reproduce structural inequities based on gender, body, class, and nation. Foregrounding power, politics, and local knowledges, my ethnography is a practice of emancipatory anthropology to excavate techniques and procedures of normalizing gender, reproductive and sexual health, and biopolitical governance (Foucault 2008, 4). Informed by an ethnography of United Nations and NGO staff, I argue that international interventions in South Sudan introduce formations of biopolitical governance mediated by donor-driven, development agendas, by superimposing relationships to sex, gender, reproduction, and health, which are both culturally contested and unsustainable.</p><p>