Leaving Church, Learning Love: Experiences of Queer Women in Purity Culture

Evangelical Christian purity culture is a sexual ethic that emphasizes gender conformity, modest dress for girls and women, and the importance of maintaining “purity” or “virginity” until heterosexual marriage.

Challenging Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Exploring Perspectives of Latino Migrant Adolescents in U.S. Agriculture

The foundational motivations of physiological and safety needs remain pertinent to the Latino farmworker adolescent population. We suggest a revision of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to account for cultural differences and family upbringings that can be inclusive of ethnic minority adolescents.

All Mixed Up: Multiracial Identity & Existential Isolation

With a growing population of this marginalized group, it is important for research to foster understanding of the challenges multiracials may face as a result of their unique experiences by understanding the mechanisms underlying “otherness” can we create tools to navigate obstacles and improve their well-being.

The Burqa Ban: A Discourse on Post-Secular Religious Freedom

What—if any—authority does the government have to intervene in the affairs of private individuals? This question lies at the heart of the following discourse on the appropriate limits on a government’s right to regulate. Using France’s 2011 Burqa Ban as a framework, this paper evaluates several competing theories on these limits and their relative significance. Though none of these theories can fully capture the complexity of this subject, they provide invaluable insight into the various postulates used to justify state control over private behavior.

Christmas Holiday: Queering Family in 20th Century Southern Missouri

An obituary in The Southeast Missourian lists Elaine “Tommie” Davis as the business partner of Mary Jane “Miss Jane” Barnett for over forty years (Elaine Davis Obituary). However, the family albums of the two tell a richer story, they were life partners as well as business partners, a radical act in mid-century America, and perhaps…

The Concept of Death in Early African Societies

All cultures of the world find explanations for death and the afterlife. In the Christian faith, when believers of Jesus Christ and his Holy Father perish, they will have everlasting life in Heaven. In the Hindu faith, it is believed that when one dies, he or she will resurrect into a new form.

Giving Voice to Violence and Void

Irish-American masculine identity has a nebulous and bloody history. Its development began in the 1840s in Ireland and has its roots in colonialism – a story that, in itself, could fill a book-shelf. Despite this challenge, Martin Scorsese does an admirable job of exploring this dynamic in his film The Departed.

Classic Hollywood Cinema as Propaganda

Photography was the first use of pictorial proof as documentation of scientific analysis starting in the late 1800s. There was a sudden trust from viewers when they were presented with an image of presumed objective nature, emphasizing the ideology of “I’ll believe it when I see it.”​

Twins in West African Culture and Society of the Iron Age

Twins had unique roles in many West African cultures in the Iron Age, a period in spanning from the first millennium to the 19th century. The Igbo speaking-people of southeast Nigeria, for example, feared the birth of twins.

In the Water, Everyone is Equal

The conflict has been raging for over half a century. Israel and Palestine are like two brothers; brothers that are sprung out of the same core and host religions and nations that share the same origins. But in spite of these commonalities, the dispute is still ongoing, with no promise of a near-end resolve.