Exemplary Theses
Every year, Anthropology faculty nominate particularly excellent senior theses for "exemplary thesis" status. These are theses that exemplify the kind of in-depth research, creative use of primary and secondary sources, incisive anthropological analysis, and clear and compelling writing that the Department seeks to produce. Together, they illustrate the wide range of potential areas, topics and methodologies Anthropology seniors can address. See the library's to read these theses online and check out what primary sources they used.
Theologizing Queerness: The Formations and Impacts of Roman Catholic Ontological Fields
Eva Gallardo ('24)
Imagining Digital, Queer Utopias: Queering the Map as Archival World-Making
Reese Schaffer ('24)
Jurisdictional Third Space on the Colville Confederated Tribes Reservation
Kwani-Fawn Marcellay ('23)
Salmon Pluralities: Nch'í Wána Pum, Traditional Fishing, and Indigenous Modernity
Sofie Larsen-Teskey ('23)
Saving Seed: Socio-Ecological Dimensions of Corn Farming in Chiapas, Mexico
Khalil Laltoo ('23)
More than Tomatoes: A Political Ecology of Organic Farming in Taiwan
Sky Ford ('22)
Reconstructing Dinosaurs: Practices, Paleo-ontologies, and Experiencing Prehistory
Gian Gregorio ('22)
Reconfigurations of Indigeneity and Tourism in Yucatán, México
Elena Turner ('22)
Springtime Dwelling: The Poetics of Pacific Northwest Salmon
Jane Calderbank ('21)
Judicial Flogging in Botswana: The Sociality, Language, and Phenomenology of Chiefly Punishment
Cheryl Fok ('21)
Orisha Traditions through YouTube: Virtual Interactions in Enduring Communities
Paul Molamphy ('21)
In Our Hands: How Biologists Negotiate Unpredictability to Make and Share Knowledge
Leila Shokat ('21)
The Thorns of Rose City: Social and Environmental Pollution Discourses in Unhoused Placemaking and Neighborhood Response
Sara Hansen ('20)
Process Without Peace: An Ethnography of Space, Security, and Subjecthood in Belfast
Ruairi O'Mahony ('20)
In the Shadows of the Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur
Laurel Schuster ('20)
Poésie, mon bivouac: Translation, Nationalism, and Poetics in Quebec
Guin Wright ('20)
"We Women Have More Values": Feminist Ethics, Political Corruption, and Practices of Care in an Indigenous Guatemalan Town
Abigail George ('19)
Defining the Nation through Exclusion: Citizenship Law, Embodied Borders, and the Politics of Belonging in the Dominican Republic
Savannah Hugueley ('19)
"This House Has Been Built by Vaginas, Penises Have Done Nothing": Conjugal Disappointment, Agency, and Intimacy in Urban Senegal
Grace McNalley ('18)
Futuristic Globalisms: On the Possibility of Modernity in Imperial Ruins
Jolon Timms ('18)
Labor Relations: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in Cambodia
Natalie Condon ('17)
Negotiating Exclusions: Migrant Domestic Worker Subjectivity and Collective Action in Hong Kong
Maya Kimura ('17)
Vital Reckonings: Cartographic Power, Abyssal Thought, and the Birth of Modern Piracy in Southeast Asia
Stefan Stackhouse ('16)
Communing with the Dead: Spiritualism, Language, and the Construction of Science from 1865-1914
Maddy Adams ('16)
Televising Truth and Reconciliation: Mass Mediation of Irreconcilable Publics in the South Africa Broadcasting Company’s Special Report
Kate Johnson ('16)
Satan on the Skin: Divine and Demonic Mediation in Papua New Guinea's Pentecostal Public Sphere
Rachel Apone ('15)
The Politics of History and Gendered Nationalisms: Contested Memories of Japan's Comfort Women
Rachel Dallal ('14)
Aspirational Sovereignties: Indigeneity and the Law in a Guatemalan Mining Conflict
Samuel Law ('14)
"Here, One More Ingyō!": Being a Surplus Human in Contemporary South Korea
Hoyoung Moon ('14)
Through the Eyes of Immigration: Politics, Entextualization and Bureaucratic Arbitrariness of the U-Nonimmigrant Visa
Amina Rahman ('14)
Intimacy and Assemblage: Israeli Nationhood and the Everyday Violence of Sexuality
Jake Silver ('12)
The Liberalism of Piracy: Ethics, Technology, and Breakdown on a File-sharing Forum
Peter Von der Porten ('11)
Branding Heaven: Commodity, Fantasy and Conceptual Architecture in the Chinese Countryside
Nathaniel Rickert Flagg ('11)
Dancing Identity: The Politics of Performance and Embodiment in the Argentine Tango
Rachel Mercer ('10)
Artifice and Androgyny: David Bowie and the 1970s Glam Rock Counterculture
Athena Abrams ('09)
"It comes up better": Helping Nature Along in the Indigenous Miwok Landscape of the California Sierra
Nevada Judson Daffern ('09)
Gifting Nationhood Through Tourism: Taglit-birthright Israel, Travel, and Contemporary Zionism
Gabriel Gao ('09)
Cognitive Practice and Non-local Being: Pragmatic Activism in a Transcendent American Context
Ian Lowrie ('09)
Organizing Around the Center: Problems, Process, and Place in Portland's Day Labor Center
Genevieve Peterson Roudane ('08)
Going Country: An Examination of Irony and Sincerity through a Portland Country Bar
Hannah Smith ('08)
Keeping Watch from Space: Genocide and Technologies of Witnessing in the Age of Digital Surveillance
Amanda Marjorie Ufheil-Somers ('08)
Experiencing Neoliberalism at the Border: Economic Restructuring and Cultural Change in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
Daniel Peter Denvir ('05)
"It's Not Fake, It's Entertainment": Professional Wrestling and Working-Class Masculinities
Adam Carl Sargent ('05)
Enemies, Allies, Sacrifice and Smoke: Construction of Relational Ontology in the Lakota Sun Dance
Gabriel Tusinski ('04)
Closing Doors and Minds: Processes of Marginalization During the Operation and Aftermath of Sangatte
Anita Hannig ('03)
The Mitzvah of Remembrance: Holocaust Twinning and the Production of Memory
Ariana Paulson ('03)