Date of Award
2025
Degree Type
Restricted to Claremont Colleges Dissertation
Degree Name
Cultural Studies, PhD
Program
School of Arts and Humanities
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Eve Oishi
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
David Luis-Brown
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Paul Faulstich
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2025 Henry Lesperance
Keywords
Chicanx/Latinx Studies, Environmental Studies, Ethnography, Ethnomusicology, Indigeneity, Visual Studies
Subject Categories
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Abstract
This work begins with a research interest in the folklore of the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. The unexpected discovery of an archive at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage initiates an act of return: the repatriation of sound recordings made in 1944 in Desemboque, Sonora, by ethnomusicologist Henrietta Yurchenco. What starts as a general inquiry into cultural memory evolves into a deeper engagement with sound, place, and the enduring presence of ancestral knowledge. In reestablishing a living lineage between past and present, the researcher embarks on an ethnographic journey shaped by collaboration, introspection, and relational meaning-making. Grounded in a decolonial and autoethnographic approach, this ethnographic study challenges extractive models of research by centering reciprocity, community engagement, and the co-creation of knowledge. Central to this process are María Luisa Astorga and Adolfo Burgos, whose work as cultural bearers and scholars provides profound hermeneutical insight into sacred soundscapes and oral traditions rooted in spiritual practice. Ultimately, this research reframes sacred soundscapes through an environmental and collaborative lens, mapping a path of academic, spiritual, and cultural resonance across the landscapes and coastlines of the Sonoran Desert.
ISBN
9798290970264
Recommended Citation
Lesperance, Henry. (2025). Sonora’s Sacred Soundscapes --Sones Sagrados Sonorenses—. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 1000. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/1000.
