Reimagining Nicaragua’s Volcanto Tradition through the Music of Perrozompopo

Volcanto music is a specific label for Nicaraguan testimonial music, coined after the 1979 left-wing triumph of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN, or Sandinistas). This protest music, with its roots in the Latin American Nueva Canción genre, has evolved over the years from folkloric and rural music with socially committed lyrics to one with hybrid sounds and global influences. Ramón Mejía, better known as Perrozompopo, is one of Nicaragua’s most celebrated contemporary singer-songwriters who has continued the volcanto tradition with his hybrid compilations. As the nephew of Carlos Mejía Godoy, Nicaragua’s most influential composer of volcanto music, Perrozompopo has social and musical advantages because he will always be associated with the volcanto tradition; however, his focus on urban spaces and contemporary social problems somewhat distances his songs from the more traditional protest music steeped in rural folklore. His alternative urban rock style and socially committed lyrics, therefore, encourage listeners to reimagine the volcanto tradition. By drawing on Josh Kun’s theoretical concept of audiotopia, this article argues that Perrozompopo infuses Nicaraguan volcanto music with global sounds, creating a hybrid musical style with audio(u)topian longings for a more just society

The Power of the Voice: Listening to Mexican and Central American Immigrant Experiences (1997-2010)

This dissertation examines representations of immigrant experiences in Mexican and Central American cultural texts at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. By examining immigrant experiences through the lenses of testimonial writing, fictional narrative, documentary film, and popular music, this project offers perspectives from multiple interpretive fields and dialogues with recent scholarship on mobility, transnationalism, and border studies. This multi-genre and cultural studies approach allows me to focus on a diverse group of writers and artists who either tell their own immigrant stories or create experience-based narratives by listening to the subaltern and challenging more canonical systems of representation. All of the texts examined here dialogue with Latin America's testimonial tradition, in that they give testimony, often personal and eye-witness accounts, to explore the many social, cultural, political, and individual facets of migration. Moreover, the narratives discussed here use discursive strategies of orality to emphasize the power of voice and, by showcasing immigrant voices, provide a social space for imagining alternative communities that expose "contact zones" in the Americas. Each chapter focuses on a different country and genre to show the convergences and divergences between representations of immigrant experiences. I also discuss reader and audience responses to the different texts by examining reviews and criticisms to better understand the impact of these representations. Chapter 1 draws on debates about testimonio and introduces the theme of orality by looking at the self-representations of Mexican immigrant experiences in the United States in Ramón Tianguis Pérez's Diario de un mojado (2003), J.M. Servín's Por amor al dólar (2006), and Alberto López Fernández's Los perros de Cook Inlet (1998). Chapter 2 examines an aesthetic of orality in postwar fictional narratives about Salvadoran immigrant experiences through close readings of Horacio Castellanos Moya's El asco (1997), Mario Bencastro's Odisea del Norte (1999), and Claudia Hernández's short story "La han despedido de nuevo" from her collection Olvida uno (2005). Chapter 3 focuses on the performance of affect and orality in four documentaries about Nicaraguan experiences in Costa Rica, thus presenting different perspectives on the less studied phenomenon of intra-regional migration. Chapter 4 ties together the histories, encounters, and communities discussed in the previous chapters by listening to transnational musical representations of Mexican, Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan immigrant experiences. The influence of the Mexican corrido and Latin America's nueva canción are considered in my analysis of the music, lyrics, and audiences of a variety of artists, including the Mexican norteño ensemble Los Tigres del Norte, the Salvadoran group Tex Bronco, and the Nicaraguan singer-songwriter Flor Urbina. Finally, my conclusion sets the stage for future work on representations of immigrant experiences to better understand the movements and migrations that continue to foster encounters between different cultures throughout the Americas and the world

Compositional Analysis of Pottery from Middle Woodland Waukesha Phase Sites in Southeastern Wisconsin and Havana Hopewell Related Sites in Northeastern and Northwestern Illinois

This thesis provides a compositional analysis of a selected sample of Middle Woodland ceramic sherds from sites in southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. The analysis compares the ceramic pastes from Middle Woodland pottery from nine different archaeological sites. These sites include the Peterson, Finch, Alberts, and Crab Apple Point sites in Wisconsin, the Sloan, Albany Village, Blythe, DeWitte/Liphardt Habitation sites in northwestern Illinois, and the Kautz site in northeastern Illinois. The analysis includes a review of available documentation, as well as descriptions and characterizations of sherds utilizing an attribute-based analysis of metric, morphological, and petrographic data. In southeastern Wisconsin, the Middle Woodland occupation is poorly understood, and sites with Middle Woodland components have been suggested to be part of the Waukesha phase. Haas’s (2019b) recent work at the Finch site has been the first detailed examination of the Waukesha phase since Salzer’s (n.d.) seminal study (Goldstein 1992). Although the phase is considered to represent some degree of interaction with Illinois Havana-Hopewell (Jeske 2006; Mason 2001; Salzer 1986), direct evidence of such interaction is lacking. This analysis provides a comparative dataset to be used in future comparisons of Waukesha Phase ceramics. The results of the petrographic analysis suggest an overall homogeneity of paste composition between the samples selected for this thesis. Statistical analysis of the data was unable to identify specific samples or recipes by region. The results of this project suggest that paste recipes may have been widely shared between people in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois and may indicate existing relationships within groups in the study region

Synthesis of flavonoids and flavonoid-based designed multiple ligands for hypertension

The flavonoids, a family of compounds found in nature, possess a wealth of established health benefits. In this research, a library of novel flavonoid compounds was synthesised for therapeutic evaluation. A particular focus was the attachment of 3ʹ,4ʹ-dihydroxyflavonol, an antioxidant and antihypertensive flavonoid, to other known antihypertensives, to provide dual action compounds for the treatment of hypertension

Patterns of Victimization of School-Aged Children with Autism in the Rural Southern United States

Individuals with disabilities experience victimization at rates higher than their typically-functioning peers. Because they are often perceived as unreliable reporters, the likelihood that victimizations of individuals with disabilities are reported is low. Data regarding the lived victimization experiences of individuals with specific disabilities are scant. Grounded in the rational choice theory and Cohen and Felson’s routine activity theory, this qualitative study investigated the victimization experiences of school-aged children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the rural Southern US. This study involved 21 public school students between the ages of 12 and 17 who were interviewed using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire, second revision. Multiple themes were extricated from interview data through descriptive coding. Students with autism are most likely to be victimized in areas that are unstructured and have inadequate supervision. When a weapon was used during victimization, it was most often a weapon of opportunity, and types of victimization most experienced by students involved chasing, grabbing, or being forced to do something they did not want to do. This study identified fear of punishment and embarrassment as the most considerable barriers to self-reporting victimizations to appropriate authorities. This study’s results can be used by families, educators, and service providers to assist in supporting change for individuals with autism that are at risk for experiencing victimization. Study data may have a positive social impact by preventing victimization through the identification of potential victims, providing situational intervention in high risk areas, and supporting intervention in situations involving victimization for individuals with autis

Archeota, Spring 2019

This is the Spring 2019 issue of Archeota, the official publication of SJSU SAASC. Archeota is a platform for students to contribute to the archival conversation. It is written BY students, FOR students. It provides substantive content on archival concerns and issues, and promotes career development in the field of archival studies. Archeota upholds the core values of the archival profession. It is a semiannual publication of the Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists at the San Jose State University School of Information.https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/saasc_archeota/1009/thumbnail.jp

Associations between major chain fast-food outlet availability and change in body mass index: a longitudinal observational study of women from Victoria, Australia

Objectives The residential neighbourhood fast-food environment has the potential to lead to increased levels of obesity by providing opportunities for residents to consume energy-dense products. This longitudinal study aimed to examine whether change in body mass index (BMI) differed dependent on major chain fast-food outlet availability among women residing in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Setting Eighty disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Victoria, Australia. Participants Sample of 882 women aged 18–46 years at baseline (wave I: 2007/2008) who remained at the same residential location at all three waves (wave II: 2010/2011; wave III: 2012/2013) of the Resilience for Eating and Activity Despite Inequality study. Primary outcome BMI based on self-reported height and weight at each wave. Results There was no evidence of an interaction between time and the number of major chain fast-food outlets within 2 (p=0.88), 3 (p=0.66) or 5 km (p=0.24) in the multilevel models of BMI. Furthermore, there was no evidence of an interaction between time and change in availability at any distance and BMI. Conclusions Change in BMI was not found to differ by residential major chain fast-food outlet availability among Victorian women residing in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. It may be that exposure to fast-food outlets around other locations regularly visited influence change in BMI. Future research needs to consider what environments are the key sources for accessing and consuming fast food and how these relate to BMI and obesity risk