acase@tulane.edu / This thesis addresses the relationship between self and other within Rastafari culture in Guyana. Heirs of a tradition of resistance against the dichotomous, hierarchical approach to nature and humanity embodied by European colonialism, Rastas in Guyana have conceptualized the individual self as an integral aspect of a divine, universal whole comprising the natural world and its diverse, interdependent constituents. This has involved the transcendence of conceptual dichotomies between self and other, humanity and divinity, physical and spiritual worlds, and people of different gender and ethnic identities. The transcendence of these conceptual divisions has supported the development of socially nonviolent and ecologically sustainable communities tied to soil, charting a course for global communities seeking to mitigate social and environmental crises. The transcendence of conceptual dichotomy is symbolized in this thesis by the “desert trod”—the journey of the Israelites of the Old Testament from captivity to the promised land. I argue that by closing the conceptual distance between self and other, Rastas have moved toward a promised land defined by social nonviolence and ecological sustainability. / 1 / Erin Lierl

Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, three American astronomical observatories in Arizona and Hawai'i were transformed from scientific research facilities into mountains of controversy. This dissertation examines the histories of conflict between Native, environmentalist, and astronomy communities over telescope construction at Kitt Peak, Mauna Kea, and Mt. Graham from the mid-1970s to the present. I situate each history of conflict within shifting social, cultural, political, and environmental tensions by drawing upon narrative as a category of analysis. Astronomers, environmentalist groups, and the Native communities of the Tohono O'odham Nation, the San Carlos Apaches, and Native Hawaiians deployed competing cultural constructions of the mountains--as an ideal observing site, a "pristine" ecosystem, or a spiritual temple--and these narratives played a pivotal role in the making of contested landscapes in postwar American astronomy. / History of Science

Stories exist throughout S’olh Téméxw, the traditional territory of the Stó:lõ people in the Lower Fraser Valley of British Columbia, of subterranean tunnels connecting disparate locations. These stories, recounted in archival records and by contemporary Stó:lõ community members, provide a gateway into Stó:lõ spiritual connections to place. Through the tunnels, I will explore the complexities of a subterraneous spiritual geography – what is significant about the tunnel stories and what they can say about the way that Stó:lõ people relate to the place world of the valley. Central to this thesis is ideas of imagining and re-imagining space. Through the exploration of the tunnel stories, and the complex and often cross-cultural research relationships that they are recounted in, I hope to show that the connections the tunnels provide can bring distant places, both physical and mental, together in a social imagination. This thesis focuses on the relationships that the tunnel narratives describe – relationships between people and places, researchers and storytellers, physical and metaphysical landscapes, and cultural ways of imagining the space of the valley.