Digital Commons Network^™

The Act Of Seeing And Being Seen: Visual Explorations Of Queerness And Memory In Alison Bechdel’S Fun Home, Vanessa Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

In the autobiographical illustrated novel Fun Home, Alison Bechdel uses various art styles and comic techniques to examine her father’s life as a closeted gay man and his tragic suicide, as well as her own childhood and experience with homosexuality. This thesis explores how Bechdel uses the medium of the graphic novel to showcase different visual perspectives and ways of bearing witness to the past, memory, trauma, and interpersonal relationships, showing how they converge to create the story of how one generation’s model of queer identity can impact and shape the next. Bechdel presents multiple points-of-view in her exploration …

The Almost Perfect Scale In Medical Students: Model Confirmation, Measurement Invariance, And Differential Item Functioning By Gender, Elizabeth Hollenback Ellinas

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the factor structure of two common perfectionism scales – the Almost Perfect Scale – Revised (APS-R) and the Short Almost Perfect Scale (SAPS) - in medical students. It was found that both two-factor models hold for them, albeit marginally for the APS-R. Measurement invariance by gender showed that while configural invariance and metric invariance hold, scalar invariance does not, indicating that the means for men and women may not be meaningfully compared by using these scales. Additionally, several items exhibited differential item functioning, most of which are in the Discrepancy scale of the APS-R. Overall, the SAPS …

Intimate Partner Violence In The Rio Grande Valley: The Role Of Culture, Tania Diaz

Theses and Dissertations

Mexican culture along the border towns of the Rio Grande dominates views towards women and men experiencing violence in intimate relationships. However, there is a paucity of empirical studies relating to intimate partner violence in the Rio Grande Valley. This study addresses the dynamics of abusive relationship in a Hispanic community that can be influenced by cultural concepts such as familism and marianismo. The author utilized a mixed methods approach for this study that included a sample of (n = 513) surveys and (n = 13) interviews that were analyzed separately. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to assess …

“Before The World Gets Them”: The Impact Of Racialized Parenting On Black Mothers, Mia Brantley

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the distinct practices Black women implement to protect their children from both actualized and anticipatory experiences of racism, as well as its effects on their mothering experiences, health and well-being, as well as how they manage the emotional and mental toll of their children’s experiences. Race plays an integral role in shaping mothering practices. More specifically, motherwork examines how Black mothers ensure the physical, mental, and emotional survival of their children in the face of micro-and macro-level structures that perpetuate racism and inequality. However, much is left to explore regarding the interconnectedness between Black women’s motherwork, linked …

Understanding Family Dynamics In A Cross-Cultural Sample, Mary Moussa Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

The Circumplex Model of family functioning posits that balanced levels of cohesion and adaptability are associated with positive familial outcomes, whereas extremely high or low levels of these factors are associated with deleterious outcomes. Despite the popularity and utility of this model in Western cultures, there is a dearth of empirical data supporting its use in less Western or more culturally diverse cultures. The current study assessed the Circumplex Model of family functioning, cultural factors, and emerging adult outcomes (e.g., substance use, risky sexual behavior, emotional problems, prosocial behavior) across 18 U.S. sites, China, Nigeria, Switzerland, Iran, Turkey, and the …

Warning! Explicit Material: The Effects Of Adolescent Pornography Use On Risky Sexual Behavior Over Time, Emily Jensen-Schvaneveldt

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the longitudinal effects of adolescent pornography trajectories on risky sexual behavior, as well as predictors of pornography trajectories. Data was taken from Waves V-X of the Flourishing Families Project, which included a sample of 463 families. A zero-inflated Poisson growth mixture model was run to determine class participation and growth trajectories. Findings revealed that gender and religiosity significantly predicted class participation, and class participation significantly predicted risky sexual behavior. While this study did have limitations, this study adds to the previous literature by examining adolescent pornography trajectories over an extended period of time.

Resting State Functional Connectivity In The Default Mode Network: Relationships Between Cannabis Use, Gender, And Cognition In Adolescents And Young Adults, Megan Ritchay

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit substance in the United States, and nearly 1 in 4 young adults are current cannabis users. The psychoactive component of cannabis, THC, is active at cannabinoid receptors, type 1, or CB1 receptors. CB1 receptors play a critical role in neural development, and chronic cannabis use causes desensitization and downregulation of these receptors. Chronic cannabis use is associated with changes in resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) in the default mode network (DMN) in adolescents and young adults, although results are somewhat inconsistent across studies, likely due to differing methodologies. Additionally, cannabis effects appear …

“Mirrors Can Give Us Space To Imagine…” Representations Of Gender And Sexuality In Bbc’S Dracula (2020), Riana S. Slyter

Theses and Dissertations

What follows discusses how BBC’s Dracula uses character representations, scripted dialogue, and narrative to challenge and perpetuate the dominant ideologies of our society. Dracula exposes the tensions in the growing cultural acceptance of, but also increased resistance to, the fluidity of gender and sexuality in contemporary western culture. I contextualize representations of women and queer characters in Dracula with the broader issues of gender and sexuality in our current socio-political environment. Queer horror looks at Dracula as a text that arouses cultural anxieties concerning sexuality, while also attempting to illustrate fear within queer communities and subcultures. In many ways, the …

Joan Rivers: Comedy And Identity On The Road To Fashion Police, Melanie Gaw

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how Joan Rivers’ comedy content and style changed during the first 30 years of her career and how these changes impacted Rivers’ presentation of her identity as a Jewish female comedian. This project focuses on Joan Rivers’ career in two sections: her early career with its reliance on a self-deprecatory style of humor spanning roughly from her first appearance on The Tonight Show in 1965 to the early 1980s, and a transitional period in her career that saw a shift toward a celebrity gossip style of humor during the 1980s. I perform textual analyses of some of …

Cross-National Analysis Of Mothers' Occupational Status In Germany And The United States: Before And After Germany's Work-Family Policy Changes, Paige N. Park

Theses and Dissertations

In many OECD countries, women are underrepresented in the highest status, highest paying positions and overrepresented in the lowest status, lowest paying positions. One potential reason for this inequity is the "motherhood penalty," where women with children face more roadblocks in hiring and promotions. This research investigates occupational segregation among mothers and fathers and analyzes whether gender gaps in occupational status are more extreme for immigrant populations. Using data from the Luxembourg Cross-National Data Center, I compare changes in gender occupational segregation from 2000 to 2016 in Germany and the United States among immigrant and native-born parents. Multinomial logistic regression …

Queering Genre And Joy: Reclaiming And Navigating Queerness Through Hybridity, Rebecca Meier

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout my experience in English education, queer texts and queer interpretations of texts have often been denied to me in favor of upholding more canonical and more cis-heteronormative works and analyses. This delayed my ability to write through my gender, sexuality, and overall queer identity, because I had no literary references to take inspiration from. The ways in which I played with genre and form in my work were discouraged because I was taught that my writing would not be taken seriously in academia if it did not represent the “official” literary canon. By melding together memoir, theory, poetry, and …

Framing Of Female Leading Roles In Drama Series On Video Streaming Platforms, Manatalah Soliman

Theses and Dissertations

This comparative study examines the female-centered drama series aired on VOD services from three different genres. While several studies have established the stereotypical representation of women in the drama series, most research has focused on individual countries. The significance of this study relies upon the fact that the series is from VOD services, notably Netflix and Shahid VIP. The study bridges a gap in the literature by adopting a comparative perspective to analyze gender portrayals from six drama series, three from each country, from three genres. The contemporary drama genre included Valeria from Spain and Leh Laa?! Why Not?! from …

Living With And Through Artificially Intelligent Virtual Personal Assistants: Subservience, Simultaneity And Surveillance In Late-Capitalist Cairo, Habiba Ahmed Elsayed

Theses and Dissertations

The global technological field has witnessed a computing shift - from focusing on human-device use to focusing on human-device ambient and social interaction. This shift is notably accompanied by a societal one that increases desire and dependency on everyday smart technologies powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. One of such growing AI-enabled technologies is the virtual personal assistant (VPA). In this project, I draw on my filed-work with my four interlocuters in Cairo with their respective VPAs, Siri and Alexa. In analyzing my experiences and observations, I focus on three main themes: subservience, simultaneity and surveillance. Examining the role …

The Eternal And The Transitory: Exoticism, Otherness, And Commodity In Giovanni Boldini's La Zingara, Brandon Esposto Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Giovanni Boldini's La Zingara is an image fraught with mystery. As a lesser-known artist, scholarship on him and this painting is sparse. This thesis details the innovations that Boldini exhibited as an artist working in nineteenth-century France, using the lenses of feminist and Marxist art historical readings for a new interpretation of this piece. Participating in the oppressive systems of capitalism, sexism, and prejudice, Giovanni Boldini created the image of La Zingara for personal gain. Painting a subject from a marginalized community, the Romani, Boldini benefitted from those systems. He "others"his Italian heritage and modern art developments to construct a …

The Impact Of Global Crises On Women: The Case Of Covid-19 In Egypt, Nour A. Dokhan

Theses and Dissertations

Any global crisis is expected to affect every human being, but for women it is always twice as hard. In the case of Covid-19, women are more affected across every domain, from social protection to health, simply because if their gender. This research explores the impact of Covid-19 on women, both economically and socially, with the focus on the case of Egypt. It explores the systematic gender inequalities in the economic, social, and health spheres using cases from previous crises, and how this gender inequality and vulnerability has resulted in much worse consequences of Covid-19 than that of men. The …

Facing The Past: Engendering The Study Of Iron Age Celtic Human Imagery In Continental Europe, Christopher Ray Allen

Theses and Dissertations

Iconography is an important tool in understanding the past because it may express apeople’s understanding of the world through representations of stories or figures, including human beings. The continental early Iron Age Celts left behind no written sources but did leave iconographic representations of humans in the form of full bodies as well as heads. How the Celts saw their world and how they perceived and gendered other humans or anthropomorphic beings can be partially accessed via these representations. This thesis examines a representative sample of statues and figures from Iberia, Gaul, and Central Europe from an intersectional perspective focused …

Archaeological Representation In Speculative Fiction: The Image Of The Archaeologist In Star Wars, Karissa A. Annis

Theses and Dissertations

The public presentation of archaeology in various media, especially fictional representations in print, film, TV, and video games, is a complex and slippery subject that has been an issue since the field’s inception. This thesis compares analyses of popular representations of archaeology in conventional media such as feature films to new examples of such representations that have not yet been studied. The focus of the analysis is how archaeology and archaeologists are represented in the Star Wars franchise in products that were published or released on or after 2014. These texts and images are analyzed through the multiple lenses of …

Increasing Transgender-Inclusive Behaviors Via Self-Monitoring, Abigail Kaylyn Petronelli

Theses and Dissertations

Within behavior analysis there is an increasing demand for research to create inclusive organizational cultures. To create a culture of inclusion, it is necessary to engage in inclusive behaviors towards individuals of varying race, gender, and sexual orientation. Despite the rising social demand and call for diversity in research, there are still few studies which apply an intervention to improve inclusive behaviors. One target of inclusive behaviors is proper pronoun use towards individuals who are transgender or gender non-conforming (TGNC). To date, there is only one published article regarding TGNC topics, which explored a TGNC-inclusive tool (Leland & Stockwell, 2019). …

"No Pain, Just Tricky To Manipulate": Sylvia Plath Across Genres, Juliana Jones

Theses and Dissertations

In 1953, Sylvia Plath broke her leg while skiing. This event permeated her writing across genres, retold at least eight times, each with a unique perspective based on the genre and her intended audience. While she told the story non-fictionally in her journals, she also adapted the story for letters to her mother and friends and fictionalized the event in short stories and The Bell Jar. This thesis will examine 8 versions of the same event – critically examining how the culture and gender expectations of the 1950s and 1960s influenced her writing depending on her audience. This examination of …

Keats And Shelley: A Pursuit Towards Progressivism, Serenah Minasian

Theses and Dissertations

An analyzation of the poems, letters, and works of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a perspective focusing on the history of sexuality, breaking gender binaries, and pushing towards progressivism. This thesis proves how John Keats is both an effeminate man who displays exemplary ways of breaking gender expectations but also a man who possess misogynistic tendencies. Also, this thesis analyzes Percy Shelley’s use of gender expectations and how he breaks them with the use of his characters. Studying these two British Romantics shows how these two cisgender, straight, white men provide an ability to push back on their …

The Challenges Of Transport And Egyptian Women’S Participation In The Job Market, Radwa Abo Shady

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to explore the effect of transportation on development in general and as a barrier to women’s contribution to the labor market in particular. A survey using a mixed method was filled online by working women in Egypt about their trip and perception about the transport problems. A framework was created to describe the relationship between different factors affecting women’s options. The findings suggested that transport parameters have an impact on the freedom of transport and eventually the final decision to join the labor market. The findings match the literature that transport should be gender-sensitive to empower women …

Transgressive Migrations: Gender Roles, Space, And Place In American Novels, 1900-1999, Selena Gail Larkin

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine how gender roles combine with changes in space and place to affect women protagonists in twentieth-century American literature. I argue that as these characters migrate, the (self-)perception of their identities shift. Particularly, their outward performances as well as their internal awareness change. My analysis concentrates on the novel genre because of specific characteristics—plot, characterization, and narration. The chosen literary works on which I focus are The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Quicksand (1928), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), The Dollmaker (1954), and Under the Feet of Jesus (1996).

Concepts that I …

“What Can There Be But Witchcraft?”: History, Women, And Witches In Sylvia Townsend Warner’S Lolly Willowes And Graham Swift’S Waterland, Thomas Bedenbaugh

Theses and Dissertations

The ambiguous relationship between history, women and witchcraft in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes and Graham Swift’s Waterland foregrounds the constructedness of historical narratives while also recuperating women’s marginalized positions within history. Both novels link historical narratives with the received ideas upon which norms of gender, sexuality, and the nation are constructed. In recognizing this, both authors challenge the monolithic male gaze of history, revealing it to be a story which, totalizing as it may be, is not in fact “natural.” While many women in both novels are configured as haunting figures - women who confuse the boundary separation presence …

Ordinary Power: Frontier Sentimentalism And Cultural Perceptions Of Gender In The Nineteenth-Century West, Erin Elizabeth Hastings

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will examine nineteenth-century women and their primary role in the cultural formation of frontier sentimentalism. White, middle class women primarily moved west with their husbands and families, initially to the Midwest in the early nineteenth century, and were continuing to settle in the Great Plains and further west by the end of the century. The first generation of women who migrated west were the pioneers of frontier sentimentalism, but it prevailed in successive generations of westering women. This thesis will argue that in the formation of their own form of sentimentalism, nineteenth-century women were at the heart of …

Egyptian Women’S Agriculture Contribution; Assessment Of The Gender Gap For Sustainable Development, Noha El Khorazaty

Theses and Dissertations

Women’s contribution to the agriculture sector in developing countries is undeniable, yet they do not have equal access to the resources and opportunities they need to be more productive. Sustainable development entails inclusive and effective management of natural resources, this entails gender equity in agriculture. Bridging the gender gap in agriculture far exceeds the benefits of the individual. According to the latest estimates bridging the yield gap in agricultural productivity could possibly decrease the numbers of undernourished people in the world by around 100 – 140 million people. Sustainable agriculture development and gender equity necessitate policy interventions targeting the gender …

Gendered Entrepreneurship Contextualization In Egypt: An Empirical Study On Policies For Women Entrepreneurship Empowerment, Sarah El-Fiky

Theses and Dissertations

The proportion of women entrepreneurs has increased dramatically over the past decade, not just in the developed world but also in developing countries. This led to a significant increase in the governments’ attention towards designing and implementing female-focused policies to allocate adequate resources for empowering women entrepreneurs in Egypt. This paper examines one main question: How does the Egyptian government empower women entrepreneurs through key policy interventions? This is only possible through testing the proposed research hypotheses and investigating Egypt’s publicized policies and governmental interventions. Based on a gender-lens perspective, this research tries to close the gaps in previous research …

A Study Of The Effectiveness Of Ixl Math Online Software On Student Achievement In An Urban Middle School, Shawn M. Donnelly,

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of IXL Math online software in raising student achievement on the New York State Math exam, with special focus on effects by student gender, ethnicity and disability status. The study includes an analysis of the relationship between scale scores and time spent using the IXL system, number of problems attempted, and skills mastered. This study is significant because national, state and local measures indicate no measurable improvement in math achievement with an alarming percentage of students scoring below proficient levels. Further, past studies examined teacher perception or student motivation regarding …

The Effect Of Parenting Styles On Depression Among College Students, Manpreet Kaur

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers, during the past few decades have found there to be an association between parenting styles and levels of depression in children, adolescents, and adults. In the current study, the effects of parenting styles on depression among college students was targeted. This current study predicted that: 1. Females will show greater levels of depression than males. 2. Asians will show increased levels of depression. 3. Participants with authoritarian parents will exhibit significantly higher levels of depression as compared to authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved parenting styles. In addition to these, additional exploratory analyses were also conducted. Two hundred eighty-eight college undergraduates …

Mental Illness And Femininity In Late Nineteenth-Early Twentieth Century Anglo-American Literature, Bianca Cristina Basone

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempts to prove that the diagnosing and treatment of mental illness in Victorian Anglo-American literature was heavily gendered and therefore misogynistic. To do so, four characters will be studied: Lady Audley in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, the unnamed female narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and Septimus Warren Smith in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Using the first three characters I intend to show that women during the nineteenth century were diagnosed as mentally ill because they did not partake in social gender norms, deviating by doing something …