Digital Commons Network^™

Domestic Shakespeares In The Antebellum United States, Daniel G. Lauby

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines how early nineteenth-century female novelists developed a new mode of adapting Shakespeare, what I am calling “domestic Shakespeares,” that cite, reference, and rearrange plays based on women’s experiences in and of the home. I focus on popular women authors whose novels appeared between 1827 and 1862, a time when identity was especially apparent in the geographical formation of the United States. These women novelists used allusions to and adaptations of Shakespeare in their works to express their frustrations with conventional paradigms of womanhood and related disciplinary systems, such as coverture, that limited women’s citizenship. “Domestic Shakespeares,” I …

Reproductive Journeys Of Indo-Caribbean Women From Trinidad And Tobago And Guyana To New York, Tannuja Devi Rozario

Doctoral Dissertations

Given the lack of support by the U.S. federal government for reproductive health, this dissertation examines a puzzle: why are Indo-Caribbean women from Guyana and Trinidad journeying to New York for reproductive health care? I focus on a global community in Queens, New York, to unravel this puzzle. I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 82 Indo-Caribbean women and participant observations in women empowerment groups hosted by activists in New York. Each chapter in this dissertation focuses on various motivations and negotiations during reproductive journeys. First, this dissertation finds that social networks and grassroots organizations in New York facilitated reproductive journeys …

Embodiment And Gendered Subjectivity In Ukrainian Women’S Film, Poetry, And Prose During Perestroika (1985-1991), Sandra J. Russell

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I look to Ukrainian women’s literary and filmic contributions in the final Soviet years of perestroika to recontextualize and reconsider feminist and gendered epistemologies in Eastern Europe. I view the last Soviet Ukrainian filmmakers, writers, and artists as groundbreaking in their conceptualization a new, more “liberal” vision of nation, especially through their increasingly open and subversive critiques of the Soviet state. I locate perestroika as a powerful moment in Ukraine’s histories of resistance to the weaponization of colonialist and imperialist mythologies, past and present. For women in particular, the stakes of this shifting articulation of nation became …

Productive Women: Gender, Sex, And Labor In The Digital Cultural Economy, Kavita Nayar-Jablonka

Doctoral Dissertations

Explicit sex and sexuality have come to figure more prominently in mainstream media and popular culture in recent years, sparking public concern and scholarly debate on how the “sexualization” of culture particularly affects women. Against this backdrop and amidst digitally reconfigured circuits of media production and consumption, ordinary women participate in, and potentially profit from, the commodification of sexual interactions and relationships. This study compares women’s practices in cultures of cam modeling and sugar dating in order to better understand their meanings and contexts. Whether performed in tandem with romantic dating scripts and roles, as is common in sugar dating, …

Essays On Anti-Discrimination Legislation Enforcement And Sex-Based Discrimination In U.S. Labor Markets, Carly Mccann

Doctoral Dissertations

This project focuses on gender and anti-discrimination legislation enforcement in U.S. labor markets. In this dissertation, I examine the efficacy of existing legal and political institutions in place to redress employer sex discrimination. This work provides new understandings of sex discrimination by focusing on the experiences of pregnant workers, an understudied population that continues to lack adequate workplace protections. My research utilizes new administrative data containing formal charges of discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to provide new insights into the workplace experiences of pregnant workers as well as employer responses to anti-discrimination enforcement. Chapter 1 analyzes …

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Dyslexia Risk, The Simple View Of Reading, And The Tests Of Dyslexia Probability Index, Virginia Marie Jacobs Mcclurg

Doctoral Dissertations

One hundred eighteen participants identified as having dyslexia were matched on grade, gender, race/ethnicity, SES, and geographic location with examinees from the standardization sample of the Tests of Dyslexia (TOD; Mather et al., in press) in order to determine the relationship between two theoretical operationalizations of dyslexia: the Simple View of Reading (SVR; D X C = R) and the Dyslexia Probability Index (DPI) from the TOD; in addition, the relative power of the SVR and DPI to predict dyslexia status was examined. Additional analyses were conducted on a larger, non-matched sample (n = 1475) to determine the extent to …

Defining Black Masculinities: Intersectional Analyses Of Gender, Race And Sexuality In Caribbean And Latin American Literature, 1955 To Present, Jerry Eugene Scruggs Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of my dissertation is to define and construct parameters for analyzing the Afro-descendant male experience in four specific texts: Mi compadre el General Sol [General Sun, My Brother] (1955), Adire y el tiempo roto [Adire and Broken Time] (1967), Sortilégio II: mistério negro de Zumbi redivivo [Sorcery 2: Black Mystery of Resurrected Zumbí] (1979), and Negro: Este color que me queda bonito [Black: This Color Looks Good on Me] (2013). Black masculinities are distinct and this study sets five parameters: 1) Sexual Prowess, 2) Contentious relationship with the White woman, 3) Violence and Toxic Masculinity, 4) Emotive Numbness, …

“Test Run Or One And Done”: Gender Differences In Lgbtq+ Hookup Experiences, Della Burke

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores queer individuals’ participation within hookup culture, the goals and motivations of those taking part in queer hookup encounters, and the ways queer individuals make sense of their hookup experiences. I analyze data from 24 semi-structured qualitative in-person and online interviews to examine LGBTQ+-identified individuals’ experiences with queer hookup encounters. This dissertation offers several major contributions to the scholarship of LGBTQ+ hookup experiences. First, I find that participants talk about three discrete levels of intimacy: noncommittal hookups, “catching feelings,” and third, “real relationships” or emotional connections. Second, both men and women define hookups as noncommittal sexual encounters, but …

Alt-Education: Gender, Language, And Education Across The Right, Catherine Tebaldi

Doctoral Dissertations

I explore the ideologies of gender, language and education in conservative, Christian Nationalist, and White nationalist mothers groups. I draw on my own family history, as well as on two years of blended ethnographic research in online right wing communities and one year of fieldwork in New Orleans, Louisiana, to look at homeschooling, online schools, and public teachers’ social, linguistic, and educational practices -- what I call Alt-Education. Alt-education is of course a play on alt-right, and refers to the far-right ideology; but it also refers to an alternative to mainstream education, and to education through a broader range of …

By The Numbers: How Academic Capitalism Shapes Graduate Student Experiences Of Work And Training In Material Sciences, Timothy Sacco

Doctoral Dissertations

The neoliberal reorganization of higher education has reshaped the research and education missions of university science. Much of the scholarship examining this shift focuses on faculty experiences. This dissertation centers the experiences of student scientists to explore: (1) how entrepreneurial universities manage marginal academic knowledge workers, including students, through processes that shift responsibility onto individual workers; (2) how universities use mechanisms like internships and Individual Development Plans to shift educational responsibilities onto students; and (3) how performances of masculinity in commercial spaces of university science contribute to durable gender inequalities among students under academic capitalism. Longitudinal qualitative methods were employed …

Neighborhood Disorder And Adolescent Psychological Distress: Effects Of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Social Support, And Self Concept, Jean Bessette

Doctoral Dissertations

Sociological research on mental health is often guided by the stress process framework. A key tenet of this paradigm is the proposition that both exposure and vulnerability to social stressors arise from one’s placement in the social structure; those with lower social status face greater exposure and/or greater vulnerability to stressors that detrimentally impact their psychological wellbeing. A consequential social stressor is the neighborhood context in which one resides. Past research has suggested a disadvantageous effect of greater neighborhood physical and social disorder on youth mental health. This research employs the stress process framework to examine how the effects of …

Three Essays On Labor And Marriage Markets: Farm Crisis And Rural-To-Urban Migration In The United States, 1920-1940, Jennifer Withrow

Doctoral Dissertations

Race and gender create differential responses to, and outcomes of, economic crisis. In this dissertation, I study the intersection of race and gender in the context of steep declines in farm commodity prices during the U.S. farm crisis of the 1920s and 1930s. Against this backdrop, women altered their marriage timing, increased their labor force participation, and migrated off-farm. Previous quantitative studies of this period typically omitted women due to challenges linking women from one historical census to the next after marriage. I create new datasets following women over both decades and draw on archival sources to explore the impact …

Bitten By The Demon Of Cinema: An Examination Of Women-Made Horror, Erica Tortolani

Doctoral Dissertations

Moving away from a discussion of horror films directed by men, “Bitten by the Demon of Cinema” those films—and, where appropriate, works across media, like on television, the Internet, and in the visual arts—created by women. As I explore in this dissertation, women-made horror has narrative, thematic, and stylistic qualities that borrow from the genre at large but are then transformed into a class of films all of their own. While seemingly diverse, they share enough commonalities to constitute a new mode of filmmaking altogether. The films and filmmakers that I have chosen in this dissertation are cases in point …

Care Work In Chile’S Segregated Cities, Manuel Garcia

Doctoral Dissertations

This project combines diverse theoretical and methodological tools to examine the relationship between space and care work in Chile. The chapters are stand-alone articles that come together to tell a single story. The social production of urban space has marginalized thousands of female caregivers from the labor market as Chile’s care system unravels. I argue that community caregiving could simultaneously improve the conditions of caregivers and dependents. Chapter 1 examines the role of residential segregation in reproducing Chile’s meager female labor market participation rates. I use spatial and econometric analysis to show that the social forces that segregate Santiago create …

Experiences Of Uc Santa Barbara Female Alumni Exposed To A Gender-Based Mass Shooting, Erin G. Carpenter

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past five decades, mass shootings have emerged as a highly politicized, social problem that generates considerable public sentiment and media attention (Elsass et al., 2014; Rocque & Duwe, 2018; Shultz et al., 2014). Moreover, the increase in mass shootings carried out on or near college campuses have led researchers to focus more intently on the predictors and consequences that characterize these types of attacks (Boykin & Orcutt, 2018; Elsass et al., 2014; Fox & Savage, 2009). One college mass shooting that has received limited empirical attention is the 2014 mass shooting that occurred in Isla Vista, a town …

Family Dimensions Of Unequal College Experiences: Students’ Talk Of Self And College In Relation To Family Resources And Relationships, Michael Carl Ide

Doctoral Dissertations

The “college experience” is normatively presented as enacting independence, often while financially relying on parents. This view normalizes white, middle-class models of college and family. The three interrelated papers comprising this dissertation investigate race, class, and gender differences and inequalities at college through the lens of students’ talk of family. These inductive, qualitative studies draw on semi-structured intensive interviews with undergraduates to explore divergent ways they make sense of college, family, and their self-development. Analyses highlight the multifaceted, and sometimes contradictory meanings participants attach to themes commonly presented as simple and objective (i.e. “paying for college,” “independence,” and “adulthood”). Findings …

Masculine Norms And Readiness For Change Among Men In Substance Abuse Treatment, Renee Mikorski

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine adherence to traditional masculine norms as they relate to readiness for change among 137 men in inpatient substance abuse treatment. We hypothesized that, when examined concurrently, the masculine norms of winning, emotional control, risk-taking, violence, power over women, playboy, self-reliance, primary of work, and heterosexual self-presentation would each have significant, negative, and unique links to readiness for change. That is, the more men adhere to these masculine norms the more likely they would be at lower levels of readiness for change in substance abuse treatment and recovery. Results of the multiple regression …

Criminalizing Childhood: The Politics Of Violence At Delhi's Urban Margins, Ragini Saira Malhotra

Doctoral Dissertations

The intensification of neoliberal economic reforms and new patterns of middle-class consumption in India have coincided with rising levels of urban inequality and poverty. Yet India’s capital, Delhi, positions itself as a “world-class city,” invoking neoliberal state aspirations to justify widespread violence against communities living and working in state-contested spaces. While much has been written about the reproduction of urban inequality and poverty in India, this body of scholarship under-emphasizes mechanisms of social control and violence, specifically, criminalization by the state.
To understand these dynamics, children’s experiences are particularly important given their age-based potential and vulnerabilities. To give visibility to …

Writing Against History: Feminist Baroque Narratives In Interwar Atlantic Modernism, Annaliese Hoehling

Doctoral Dissertations

In the decades following the end of the Great War, paranoia and panic about survival and sovereign control were driven by unprecedented death tolls from war, disease, and economic disaster as well as by revolutionary agitation around the globe. This fear was channeled into policing gender, sexuality, and race; and the parameters of white, middle-class womanhood were weaponized for social control in the transatlantic imaginary. In this study, I identify two rhetorical-political figures that helped to shape this imagination: Surplus Women and Trafficked Women. In my analysis of the literature, these figures help to contrast domestic scenes, on one hand, …

Warping The Wall: Representations Of Gender In American Ninja Warrior, Samuel Paul Winemiller

Doctoral Dissertations

The television series American Ninja Warrior (ANW) is unique amongst televised sport, both as an example of the emerging ninja obstacle course racing genre, and as a sport in which athletes of all genders compete on the same courses. By featuring a gender-integrated sport, ANW offers different possibilities for the mediated representation of gender than do televised gender-segregated sports. Such mediated representations of gender are further complicated by shifts in contemporary discourse about gender politics and performance (Gee, 2014; Gill, 2007a) Given these considerations, the purpose of this study was to explore the communicated meanings about athletes' gender in ANW.I …

Bullying Trends In The United States And An Analysis Of The Impact Of Prevention Programs On Bullying Subtypes And Gender, Reeve Kennedy

Doctoral Dissertations

This three-article dissertation presents three standalone articles that address bullying trends over time within the United States (US), gaps in bullying prevention program outcomes (both within the US and internationally), and the role of study and methodological features on the findings. The first article used meta-regression to establish trends in different types of bullying involvement from 1998 to 2017, identified factors that help explain variation in bullying trends, and determined differences in those trends by gender and grade. The second article used meta-analysis to examine the effectiveness of bullying prevention programs on three subtypes of traditional bullying victimization: physical, relational, …

The Use Of Intergroup Dialogue To Address Sexism In Stem Fields: A Qualitative Investigation, Brittany White

Doctoral Dissertations

The study examined the experiences of eight participants who partook in an intergroup dialogue (IGD) on gender and sexism in STEM, and the learning that resulted from this experience. Participants consisted of upper-level undergraduate students (junior and senior class rankings) as well as graduate students who were currently obtaining degrees in STEM fields. The study sought to understand how IGD members construct meaning of their experiences as those experiences relate to their understanding of interpersonal and systemic sexism in STEM. Grounded theory was used to code the data and generate categories that were organized into a conceptual framework which centered …

Queering Kinship: Lgbtq Parents And The Creation Of Real Utopias, Laura V. Heston

Doctoral Dissertations

Parenting in queer families calls into question some of our most fundamental assumptions: that parents are biologically related to their children, that only women give birth, that all fathers are men, that families push away friendships and communities based in anything other than “blood” ties, and that parenting is life-long. In this dissertation, presented through five in-depth family case studies and a series of analytic chapters based on fifty semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ adults in families with children I discuss gay sperm donors, gestational fathers, non-binary foster parents, transwomen dads, queer adopters of kids from queer birth parents, trans step-dads, …

Motherhood Wage Penalty Across Life Course And Cohorts, Misun Lim

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the connections between changing family structures and economic inequalities in the United States. While previous research shows that motherhood lowers women’s earnings, few studies explore how wage penalties for motherhood change over women’s lives. Moreover, most research examines only the baby boomer cohort; consequentially, little is known about how millennials experience this wage penalty and how such burdens of motherhood have changed across cohorts. This study investigates whether and how the motherhood wage penalty changes both across women’s life course and cohorts with these questions: (1) Does the motherhood penalty change over women’s lives? (2) What are …

What Stepmothers Can Teach Us About Contemporary Family Life, The Institution Of Motherhood, And The Reproduction Of Gender Inequality, Melissa Day

Doctoral Dissertations

A substantial amount of scholarly attention has been dedicated to understanding changes in the institution of family and, within the context of these changes, how the institution of motherhood continues to play a central role in reproducing gender inequalities for women in society. Through two distinct, but interrelated papers, this dissertation examines stepmothers’ experiences in the family with the goal of expanding our understanding of the reach of the institution of motherhood into the lives of all women. The first paper draws on 33 semi- structured, in-depth interviews with stepmothers. From these data, my findings are two-fold. First, I find …

Navigating The Path To Presence: Ideology, Politics, And The Campaign For Gender Balanced Boards And Commissions In Iowa, Ezra Joseph Temko

Doctoral Dissertations

From 1986 through 1988, Iowa adopted and strengthened a gender balance law that required men and women be equally represented on state boards and commissions. In 2009, Iowa extended this law to also require its counties, municipalities, and school districts to gender balance their boards and commissions. Iowa’s law remains unique in the United States. Through archival research and interviews, my research investigates how advocates navigated the ideological landscape associated with this policy issue. My research unveils the mechanisms that substantially deradicalized gender balance in Iowa, enabling its passage and shifting Iowans’ perceptions of gender, governance, and affirmative action—disembedding gender …

African-American Christian Female Missionaries In Nyasaland, Congo, And Liberia: Perpetuation And Resistance At The Intersections Of Blackness, Gender, Disability, And Christianity, Karen Yvette Dace

Doctoral Dissertations

Events are taking place in the United States today regarding blackness, gender, disability, and Christianity, and the perceived place of those with black and brown bodies. Current efforts have focused on blackness and gender, blackness and disability, gender and disability, and disability and Christianity; but there has not been concerted efforts focusing on the historical intersections of blackness, gender, disability, and Christianity and how these intersections help in understanding the contemporary black social movement and the climate in which we now live.

The purpose of this qualitative study sought to understand the narratives of Christian mission agencies and how African-American …

Gender, Class, Caste And Health Status Of Abandoned Elderly Women In Bangalore, South India, Olya Clark

Doctoral Dissertations

The research study centers on issues of health, quality of life, and access to health care among abandoned elderly women in Bangalore, India, specifically focusing on interrelationship of class, caste, structural factors and health. Despite increasing feminization of India’s older population, elderly women’s abandonment and its health consequences has received little attention in existing research literature. The study seeks to explain the causes of elderly female abandonment and concomitant social and health consequences, by examining how their life experiences are shaped, sustained and changed by their class, caste, and gender positions. Elderly abandonment is not unique to India but exists …

Complicating Gender: Gender Inequality In Education And Employment, Skylar Davidson

Doctoral Dissertations

Sociologists have always acknowledged the complexity of gender, but despite acknowledging this complexity, much sociological research does not put this knowledge into practice; indeed, a great deal of research focuses on distinctions between men and women with regard to some other variable, reinforcing a narrow and binary understanding of gender. This tendency has two limitations: (1) it does not recognize the variability in men's and women's expression of masculinity and femininity; and (2) it does not recognize gender identities other than those of cisgender man and cisgender woman (i.e., transgender people). This study mitigates this limitation through telling a story …

Cultural Values And Romantic Relationship Satisfaction In Mexican Adolescents: The Moderating Effects Of Parental Psychological Control And Gender, Alexander Reid

Doctoral Dissertations

Guided by a developmental contextual (Chen & Rubin, 2011; Ford & Lerner, 1992) and Collins’s (2003) five-feature framework on adolescent romantic relationships, the goal of this study was to examine whether perceived mothers’ and fathers’ psychological control and gender moderated the associations between cultural values (i.e., machismo, caballerismo, views of female virginity) and romantic relationship satisfaction in Mexican adolescents. Self-report survey data collected from 214 adolescents (M = 14.59 years old; 50.5% girls) from two public schools in Mexico reported on their age, gender, endorsement of cultural values (i.e., machismo, caballerismo, views of female virginity), perceived parental psychological control, …