Digital Commons Network^™

Heteronormativity And Fair Housing: Comparing Housing Opportunities Among Cisgender And Transgender Women, Joseph E. Lara

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the American housing market, gender norms regulate access to safe and stable dwellings. When looking for a home, transgender communities, plagued by multiple vulnerabilities and politicized by conservative politicians, endure vastly different experiences than their cisgender counterparts. Despite an ongoing housing crisis, civil rights laws have widened homeownership opportunities for cisgender women, but transgender women face multiple obstacles to owning a home. How have gender norms influenced the housing market, and how have socially embedded heterosexism and cisgenderism benefited cisgender women over transgender women? This manuscript explores the cultural norms regulating the creation and access to housing, the history …

Altruistic Imperialism: The Co-Optation Of Mutual Aid By The Nonprofit Industrial Complex, Kelly T. Waltz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis assesses the role of the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC) in neoliberalism’s material destruction of global community development and its exploitation of human benevolence. An examination of the institutionalization of high-profile social movements such as BLM and #MeToo demonstrates that the nonprofit industrial complex is built upon a misappropriation of feminist and liberation ideologies and practices, an insidious weaponization of our collectivist tendencies, and the systematic subjugation of mutual aid networks originally created and operated independent of systems of capital. The systemic and conceptual limitations of mainstream methods and the criteria by which nonprofit organizations’ effectiveness is evaluated are …

From The Outside Looking In: Transmasculine Narrative Identity, Experiences, And Larger Narratives On Social Media, Micah Roldan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Narrative identity development is an essential process in how individuals perceive themselves and the world around them. Often, narrative identity is studied in cisgender heterosexual individuals and applied to others without the acknowledgment of individuals that fall outside of these categories. Drawing upon existing literature and autoethnography, this thesis aims to meaningfully bridge this gap by studying the narrative identity development of transmasculine individuals through the lens of social media. This thesis proposes that the use of social media to share gender transition journeys has created a new digital trans and queer narrative for users and viewers. This narrative is …

Interviews And Perspectives Among Community Members Working With Undocumented Female Border Crossers In The States Along The United States-Mexico Border, Melissa M. Frasco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In order to discuss immigration in the context of the United States, we must dispel the myth that immigration is monolithic. Therefore, when we discuss national identity, gender equality, policy, employment rates, and countless other ordinary topics, we are discussing immigration, as it is embedded in our history and our future. The goal of my research is to delineate the experiences of violence that female border crossers undergo in the process of crossing into the United States via the southernmost border. The data collection process involved four semi-structured interviews to collect oral histories from workers at community-based organizations. These organizations …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

A Blackgirl Artivisionary Mosaic: Art-Based Participatory Refusals To School Punishment, Tyese A. Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study participants were co-research partners and engaged in a Project Based Learning six-week summer project in an urban northeastern metropolis community-based non-profit where they received stipends for participation. This dissertation explored how Blackgirls (aged 14 -21) express their experiences with disparate school punishment through community-based participatory artmaking. We called the photos, poems, collages, sculptures, storyboards, digital art, visual art, songs, spoken word, and videos Artivisions (art I vision). In the Jam Sessions, a subset of the partners we called curators discussed the pieces, shared their experiences, and offered insight into Blackgirls’ responses, coping skills, and decision-making regarding school punishment. …

Evocative Visualization Of Void And Fluidity, Tomiko Karino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the last few years alone, we have seen a significant increase in a demand for inclusion and diversity in every sector in our society. While there are numerous data visualization projects that point out and raise concerns about the lack of diversity, they often merely illustrate the disparity. By using the permanent collection data of the Museum of Modern Art, this capstone project explores ways to creatively visualize gender disparity among the artists in the museum’s collection and questions what makes evocative visualizations that make an impression on the audience. It examines how to create visualizations that not only …

Conservative And Cultural Clashes With Comprehensive Sexuality Education, Bryan Z. Anderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes the multifaceted debate over the use of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in United States public schools, while also emphasizing the ways in which withholding CSE is a strategy to uphold the white supremacist patriarchy. The work begins by historically framing the evolution of sexuality education through the United States’ history. This leads to the current discourse around CSE and the ways in which it is the optimal support for American youth today. After setting this foundation, the thesis looks at conservative figures and groups who are seeking to prevent public school adoption of CSE standards, as well …

Navigating Families, Negotiating Identities: Asian-White Mixed Family Experiences, Hayden Daeshin Ju

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how White and second-generation Asian American heterosexual couples negotiate race, ethnicity, and gender as they come together and form families. While Asian-White intermarriage is often theorized as an endpoint of assimilation, this research concerns itself with the ways in which race plays a central role in shaping various domains of family life among mixed couples. Drawing on 62 semi-structured interviews with White and second-generation Asian American individuals, I find that race and gender jointly shape how the couples navigate household divisions of labor, in-law relationships, naming decisions, and transmitting ethnicity to children. By revealing the ongoing processes …

From Prostitution To Sex Trafficking: Dilemmas Of Victim Service Workers Helping Chinese Immigrant Women At The Courts, Yen-Chiao Liao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study aims to explore the policy ambivalence towards commercial sex trade, resulted by prostitution laws and anti-trafficking policies in the United States. It focuses on Chinese immigrant women and those who served them in the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts (the HTICs) in New York City. Specifically, it investigates the process of Chinese immigrant women becoming potential “victims” of sex trafficking from the perspectives of the service workers, the social workers and the public defenders. Though research on human trafficking seems to be exploding for the past decades since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000, …

Fathers Are Fathers Are Fathers: How Sociocultural Context And Sexual Orientation Influence The Gendering Of Children, Sarah M. Frantz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Though the body of literature on gay father-headed families indicates there is no significant differences on measures of gender normativity and well-being between children raised with two dads and their peers raised by heterosexual parents, there is a proliferation of anti-LGBTQ+ policies throughout the United States aimed at limiting this community’s rights and silencing their lived experiences. Given that sociocultural and political environments vary greatly state-to-state, it is important to see how the specific context in which fathers live may impact their differential parenting of sons and daughters, their gender beliefs, and the way they feel they would navigate gender …

Brave New Wombs: Hysterectomy, Gender, And Stratified Reproduction, Andréa Becker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hysterectomy is the most common gynecological surgery worldwide and approximately one third of people assigned female at birth in the U.S. will have their uterus removed by the age of 65. Despite the high prevalence, sociologists have neglected to examine this procedure amid broader systems of gender, health, and race inequality. Over 90% of hysterectomies are deemed “elective,” including for chronic reproductive illness or as gender affirming care for trans and nonbinary individuals. Given the various reasons for a hysterectomy, and the incidence of this procedure across gender identities, an analysis of hysterectomy experiences allows for a rich investigation into …

"Queering" Age-Friendly New York City, Austin G. Oswald

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background and aims: The global population is aging and becoming more culturally diverse. As such, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers are expected to think critically about strategies to improve the quality of life of people as they age. In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Age-Friendly Cities movement to improve the well-being and meaningful engagement of older adults living in the community. New York City (NYC) was the first city in the world to be designated “age-friendly” by the WHO, and is possibly viewed as a model for other cities to emulate. Few empirical studies have examined the age-friendly …

Exploring The Boundaries Of Queerness From Academia To Activism, Jillian M. (Silvia) Miranda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper gives a literature review that uses texts at the intersection of queerness, blackness, and/or criminality to explore the ways in which Queer Studies can be useful in the classroom (within critical race theory, quare theory) and on the streets in the fight for black lives.

Desde El Fuego Que En Mí Arde: Performance, Literatura Y Cine Afro-Latinoamericano Producidos Por Mujeres Afrodescendientes En Perú, Cuba Y Brasil (1960–2000), Elena Ekatherina Chavez Goycochea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines different films, literary, and performance art pieces created by contemporary afro-descendant women from Peru, Cuba, and Brazil after the sixties with emphasis on the most relevant works of Conceição Evaristo, Sara Gómez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Lucía Charún-Illescas. I focus my research on the crucial role these artists played in the cultural identity formation of Latin America when inserting ‘race’ as a category of socio-political analysis and cultural production. How did their films, performances, and texts challenge national narratives and imaginaries after 1960? Although in the sixties, women improved their civil rights in different countries, the ‘mujer …

Counterstories Of Black High School Students And Graduates Of Nyc Independent Schools: A Narrative Case Study, Kahdeidra M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public youth resistance movements in 2019 and 2020 exposed the entrenchment of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and classism across New York City independent schools (NYCIS). In order to support the imminent need for schools to provide effective diversity, inclusion, and equity supports that address broad issues of school climate, relationships, and pedagogy, there is a need to better understand the specific, hyperlocal experiences of Black/African Descendant (BAD) students, who occupy several unique, unexplored spaces in educational research. The following four research questions helped to conceptualize the experiences that support and hinder the academic success and long term well-being of BAD students …

Standing Trans Before The Law, Kyla Bender-Baird

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the 1960s, trans people in the United States began asserting their rights, petitioning courts for name changes, updating sex markers on birth certificates and other identity documents, and confirming whether their marriages were legal. However, it was not until the mid-2000s that courts began recognizing trans discrimination claims. While trans people enjoyed numerous legal inroads under the Obama administration, within its first two years, the Trump administration had effectively reversed these legal gains. Being vulnerable to the political winds contributes to a feeling of legal precarity, which, in turn, shapes how trans people think about and approach the law. …

Progress Narratives In Trans Internationalism: Surveying A Collected Archive Of The Global Trans Movement, 2008–2018, Flora P. Wolpert Checknoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Trans liberation as a global movement began to be documented in public reports in the mid-2000s. Gathered together from their first decade (2008-2018), publications produced by three trans INGOs—Transgender Europe (TGEU), the Asia Pacific Trans Network (APTN), and Global Action for Trans* Equality (GATE)—demonstrate the cultivation of a global trans imaginary and materialize records of a coalescing struggle. The publications depict tensions between an evolving global trans imaginary and the construction of a rights deserving trans population in the development sector. The seeking of international action and resources has compelled the unification of messaging through rhetoric and data aggregation across …

The One-Armed Viewer: Voyeurism And Masturbation In Nudist Imagery And Film Spectatorship, Benjamin Eleanor Adam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nudist magazines and newsletters were among the first commercial, legal, and widely-available images of nudity which circulated in the late Comstock Era. To evade censorship, producers developed framing strategies that obscured the sexualized nature of these images, even as they also enabled the viewing practices their sales relied upon. This dissertation traces these framing strategies as they evolved through nudist still-imagery, camp films, and nudie cuties, and considers the evolution of spectatorial pleasures associated with Russ Meyer's early nudie cuties.

Precarious Empowerments: Sexual Labor In The Coffee Shops Of Santiago, Chile, Pilar Ortiz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Precarious Empowerments analyzes sexual labor in ‘tinted cafes,’ spaces hidden from public view where women dance for their male clients and clandestinely perform sexual services. Drawing from an embodied ethnographic account of the everyday lives of five coffee shops that fit into the lower status ‘tinted cafes’ where sexual labor is common, this thesis examines sex workers’ experiences at the intersection of class, racial, and gender hierarchies. From an intersectional perspective, my study examines how inequalities based on class, gender, race, nationality, and body capital are reproduced and contested by sex workers. Based on the multiple facets of the precariousness …

Legitimizing Violence At The European Border: Gendered Misrepresentations At Sea And The Vulnerable Other, Michela Demelas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis highlights a temporal and spatial gap in the feminist literature about migrants' journeys throughout the Mediterranean, and investigates the gendered dynamics acting upon the encounter between the European border and racialized bodies at sea. The Mediterranean sea’s material features allow Europe to approach migration as a humanitarian crisis coming from outside, which discharges its responsibility for the deaths. Yet, essentialistic views represent the feminized Other as vulnerable and needing to be saved from the male Other and the sea. Such views shape the Western narratives around concrete rescue procedures and border authorities behaviors. The encounter between the border …

Learning To Fail? Student Experiences In Remedial Mathematics In Community Colleges, Margaret P. Fay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Referral to remedial coursework in mathematics is a significant barrier to degree attainment for community college students, which in turn has serious consequences for their employment and earning prospects. Students are placed into remediation when they are deemed unprepared to engage in college-level coursework, most often based on a score on a placement test. Nationally, 59% of community college students are placed into remedial math courses. Of these, only 49% complete remediation and gain access to college-level coursework. Because a college-level math course is often a degree requirement, many students who fail to complete remedial math courses are forced to …

And Ain’T I A Man: An Examination Of Violence Against African-American Men By Caucasian Men In The United States, Bryan L. Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Various scholars, particularly feminist scholars of color, have examined the experiences of women in the realm of violence perpetrated by men, particularly Caucasian/white men against women of color. Critical Race Theory has proven beneficial to discussing violence perpetrated by Caucasian men in the United States against various communities of color broadly. Using these two premises, this thesis seeks to bring into the conversation the subjugation of men of color by white men. By looking at classical theories concerning the dualities that people of color encounter and struggle with along with womanist theories of feminism, this thesis seeks to spark a …

An Analysis Of Women And Terrorism: Perpetrators, Victims, Both?, Elizabeth Lauren Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will analyze women’s participation in terrorism under groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It will research the use of violence within terrorist organizations, perpetrated by female participants. What leads women to join groups like the Islamic State? There will be an analysis of the factors that attract women to joining terrorist organizations, in addition to the practices of recruitment that aid in their radicalization. There is a misconception that women who join the Islamic State lack education, which is seen as the sole reasoning for their radicalization or involvement. In reality, several reasons exist leading to their …

“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how audiences engage with U.S. Latinx media representations through the practice of critical media literacy. I interrogate how media consumers construct critical media literacy through interacting with U.S. Latinx figures on digital media platforms, particularly on the social-media app, Twitter, and the user-generated video content platform, YouTube. Throughout this thesis, I argue that users on these platforms who engage with U.S. Latinx pop culture figures, like Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar (Cardi B), read, digest, and comprehend a variety of multimedia images, texts, or videos, and that this engagement becomes an accessible form of critical media literacy, …

Raising Haiti: The Transmission Of Ethnic Culture Across Generations, Vadricka Y. Etienne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Raising Haiti” analyzes how ethnicity structures the romantic and familial lives of second-generation Haitian Americans living in Miami, FL to explore the continuance of ethnic culture into the third generation. Drawing on forty-one interviews and ten months of ethnographic fieldwork, I investigate the (re)construction and inculcation of Haitian cultural heritage via childrearing practices. I argue that Haitian American families negotiate the transmission of ethnic heritage, within a context of global anti-black racism, poor relationship with their proximal hosts, and the social value of ethnicity in multicultural Miami, through an understanding of the precarity of Haitian ethnicity. Without concerted effort through …

Cracks In The Bathroom Stall: A Discourse Analysis On Transgender Bathroom Usage At Garden Spot High School, Kirsten D. Corneilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, high schools across the country have seen the concern around transgender students using gendered facilities, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, come to the forefront. Often, dissenters raise worries of privacy and of “catering to a minority,” no matter what decision is reached. At Garden Spot High School in New Holland, Pennsylvania, the site of this research, one such concern has led to a district-wide decision to eliminate gendered facilities and move to single-use facilities, in the name of preserving student privacy. Through the examination of historical precedent and discourse analysis, this paper examines how transgender surveillance …

Going Viral: Youth And Sexual Assault In The Digital Age, Anna Gjika

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the growing phenomenon of using digital media technologies to capture and perpetuate sexual abuse. Focusing on instances of high-profile juvenile sexual assault, I use case studies, interviews, focus groups, and thematic media analysis to investigate (a) how crime, gender, status and technology intersect for young people growing up digital, and (b) the ways technology intersections with sexual abuse to create new forms of crime, new ways to victimize and perpetuate harm, as well as new opportunities to investigate and address sexual violence both through the criminal justice system and in the public. I argue that young people …

The Freddie Gray Uprising: Persistence And Desistance Narratives Of Community-Engaged Returning Citizens, Maurice Vann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explored how selected returning citizens in Baltimore who experienced the Freddie Gray Uprising of 2015 quelled community violence, stopped looting, and cleaned up the community in the aftermath made meaning of their experiences of the unrest. The central purpose of this study was to collect and analyze the life stories of returning citizens in Baltimore who experienced the Uprising. These men who had been incarcerated for between 5 and 20 years responded to government officials who called on them to quell violence in their neighborhoods that stemmed from the in-custody homicide of Freddie Gray.

The informants provided narratives …

Restoring Solidarity: "Accountability" In Radical Leftist Subcultures, Sarah M. Hanks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In radical left activist subcultures, ‘accountability processes’ are a form of DIY transformative justice dealing with abuse and sexual assault, focusing on the needs of the ‘survivor’ and transformation of the ‘perpetrator.’ Within activism identifying abuse is particularly difficult because it means acknowledging abuse by a person considered politically virtuous. The specifics of a process are situational and provisional. The overwhelming pattern is male identified people abusing female identified, gender non-binary, and transgender people. My research examines why activists are developing processes to address problems and whether or not they are successful.

Within the subculture, the topic is important enough …