Over the past few decades, scholars of fan studies have been engaged with questions of capital and consumerism in fandom— with writers such as Henry Jenkins and his canonical Textual Poachers investigating the ways in which fan-production can challenge or critique existing capit…
This document presents a study of the origins and role of non-pitched, percussion-based samples in the history and development of the hip-hop genre. The survey presents an historical synopsis of hip-hop’s origins including the infrastructure of the genre, the DJ forefathers, and…
An urgent agenda for human-computer interaction is to prioritize inclusiveness. Within that agenda, researchers are devoting attention to subculture practices that operate outside of the HCI mainstream to counter prevailing, sometimes harmful, mainstream viewpoints. However, by …
This thesis investigates the iconography used by specific groups of modern Pagan women in the contemporary United States to represent the feminine divine, the meanings attributed to them by women and by broader communities, and the values these images and meanings reinforce. Thr…
This thesis examines how select participants came to be involved in DiY punk culture, what they do in it, and how, if they do, they exit from the culture. Underpinning this will be an ethnographic examination of how the ethics of punk informs their views of remaining authentic a…
This study shows how U.S. Christian Hardcore and Muslim 'Taqwacore' (taqwa means 'god consciousness' in Arabic) youth fuse traditional religions and punk rock music outside of religious institutions. It is part of a new cultural turn in the sociological study of religion that re…
This research is a qualitative investigation of how baby boomers (born 1946 to 1964) who self-identify as increasing in Christian religiosity from a place of no faith or nominal faith have done so as they enter early old age (age 65 to 80) in the rural American context. The qual…
This thesis focuses on the skateboarding industry in China as both a youth subculture and a cultural industry. I am investigating the transition between the two and examining how the emerging skateboarding industry operates through detailed analysis of the feelings, motivations …
On July 25, 1950, an American infantry unit killed a large number of refugees near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri. On December 12, 1948, a British patrol killed twenty-five civilians near the Malayan village of Batang Kali. On March 16, 1993, members of the Canadian Airbo…
This project develops a social history of a Muslim American punk rock subculture, The Taqwacores. This social history examines the social context in the United States that has facilitated the emergence of Taqwacore, specifically the cultural, political, and social influences in …