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Older Women’S Stories Of Covid-19 Loss: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Through Photography, Anne Walker
Older Women’S Stories Of Covid-19 Loss: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Through Photography, Anne Walker
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The diverse array of challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult to assess the full impact of this global health crisis. More than 300,000 older Americans died, leaving a nation of grieving survivors in their absence. This profound loss of life will undoubtedly inform the field’s understanding of grief and grieving for many years to come. Pre-pandemic, older women in the United States understood grief to be part of their life stage; COVID-19 amplified the grief experience through both cumulative losses and the isolation particular to the novel coronavirus response. However, few qualitative studies explore older women’s grief, …
Fatty Fatty Two-By-Four—Can’T Get Through The Dressing Room Door?: An Examination Of Excess As Queer Failure, Miranda Dottie Olzman
Fatty Fatty Two-By-Four—Can’T Get Through The Dressing Room Door?: An Examination Of Excess As Queer Failure, Miranda Dottie Olzman
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Failure and fat are not linear. It is taught, learned, reminded, and internalized. Our bodies have memories that are built through repeated moments. And for me, failure has been a part of my body’s map since I was born. This project is the culmination of many failures. In this dissertation, I am examining queer failure in multiple contexts including body size, as well as religion to create a corpulent critique. I do this by examining the lineage of queer failure as well as queer temporality as it is linked to failure (Edelman; Muñoz; Halberstam; Love) with fat queer bodies serving …
Julia De Burgos, Embodied Excess, And (Un)Silenced Memory: A Decolonial Feminist Analysis Of Performances Of Resistance, Sara Johanna Baugh
Julia De Burgos, Embodied Excess, And (Un)Silenced Memory: A Decolonial Feminist Analysis Of Performances Of Resistance, Sara Johanna Baugh
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
My dissertation makes an argument for a decolonial move in rhetorical memory studies to more ethically account for the ways in which colonized women in the Global South, like Puerto Rican poet and revolutionary Julia de Burgos, have resisted the trauma colonization has systemically wrought against gendered, raced, and classed bodies. Building from a decolonization methodology, and theoretically situating my argument in Chicana, Latina, and decolonial feminisms, I argue Burgos's poetry both bears faithful witness to the violence of US imperial rule and articulates the dangers of a Puerto Rican nationalist movement built on a Spanish colonial foundation. Approaching Burgos …
"Femme Fatales Of Faith": Queer And "Deviant" Performances Of Femme Within Western Protestant Culture, Kelsey Waninger Minnick
"Femme Fatales Of Faith": Queer And "Deviant" Performances Of Femme Within Western Protestant Culture, Kelsey Waninger Minnick
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Women and queer folk are changing the religious landscape of Christianity in America, and the scope of visibility for these figures and their apostolic endeavors is widening as more and more Christians are seeking out communities rooted in doctrines of love and connection rather than exclusion and hegemonic piety. Thinking on this phenomenon, this dissertation focuses on the intersectional dilemmas of faith practice and rhetorical discourse with Western Christianity, particularly as it revolves around those female pastors and clergy - considered "dangerous" by many within the church - who are advocating for a more inclusionary church space. By conducting a …
Girl Of Color-Power: Resisting The Neoliberal Girl Power Agent, Raisa Fernanda Alvarado
Girl Of Color-Power: Resisting The Neoliberal Girl Power Agent, Raisa Fernanda Alvarado
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Girl power is a complex and multi-dimensional phrase. It is a term that celebrates the positive development of girls' self-esteem, while simultaneously recognizing the shifting social positioning of girlhood in the late twentieth century. It is a call to re-write girls' passivity but simultaneously a discourse that encourages consumerism via entertainment, artifacts, and merchandise. A social movement, a catch phrase, a motto: girl power is a representative caricature of evolving conceptualizations of girlhood. This dissertation is critical of the homogeneity implicit in girl power as its hailing disproportionately centers white, middle and upper class girls. As such, this project examines …
Whither The Gender Of Get Out: A Critique Of The Cinematic (Im)Possibilities Of The Black Political Imagination, Daelena Tinnin
Whither The Gender Of Get Out: A Critique Of The Cinematic (Im)Possibilities Of The Black Political Imagination, Daelena Tinnin
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis investigates the entanglements of spatialized racial-sexual violence, conceptualizations of black female subjectivity, questions of the limitations and excesses of media representations and the socioeconomic, cultural and spatiotemptoral relations that make black images visible and (im) possible as they are situated in the cinematic black political imagination. Through a materialist media analysis of the 2017 film Get Out, I argue that the film and its articulation of the afterlife of slavery fails to account for gender by tangentially engaging black women in its dissection of race and racism. I contend that black women are the absent presence in …
The Whiteness Project Of Gentrification: The Battle Over Los Angeles' Eastside, Jaime Guzmán
The Whiteness Project Of Gentrification: The Battle Over Los Angeles' Eastside, Jaime Guzmán
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
For many years, the city of Los Angeles has declared war on communities of color. In the past decade, former communities of color like Echo Park, Silver Lake, and Highland Park have all been converted into predominantly white, affluent neighborhoods. In essence, working-class people of colors' neighborhoods are being uplifted in order to welcome a much more affluent population to town. The newest target of Los Angeles' gentrification for the past couple of years has been the greater Eastside. In this project I present my critical intervention of gentrification as a whiteness project. This critical intervention argues that gentrification …
Discourses Of Deception: (Re)Examining America's War On Drugs, Benjamin Steven Boyce
Discourses Of Deception: (Re)Examining America's War On Drugs, Benjamin Steven Boyce
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
America's war on drugs is a failed experiment that has caused more damage than it will ever prevent. From its original design to its contemporary manifestations, the war on drugs is a conflict that remains firmly rooted in white supremacy. In contemporary Western societies, the rhetoric of both political leaders and mass-mediated narratives becomes the raw material of subjective reality. Since the war on drugs began nearly a century ago, the spectacle of mass media has been consistently utilized by white political elites as a vehicle of misinformation - as a well-oiled machine for spreading the false social narrative that …
Using Dialogue To Interrupt Legacies Of Exclusion, Incite Hope, Invite Change, And Increase Levels Of Awareness At Predominantly White Institutions With Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Rhetoric, Amanda Meise
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation questions how a predominantly white institution (PWI) could infuse dialogue to aid the implementation of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and invite institutional change. There has been an increased spotlight on racial tensions permeating predominantly white campuses with DEI initiatives; higher education scholars have identified several factors that prevent institutions from fostering inclusive spaces. This research addresses three specific hurdles for PWIs implementing DEI initiatives: (1) social amnesia characterized by romanticized versions of history; (2) a discontinuity between professed values and the goals of DEI initiatives with policy, structure, and experience; and (3) low awareness of privilege …
Through My Mother's Eyes: The Lifelong Journey Of Raising Children With And Without Disabilities, Lucie P. Lawrence
Through My Mother's Eyes: The Lifelong Journey Of Raising Children With And Without Disabilities, Lucie P. Lawrence
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Through the use of narrative, this study sought to document the life-altering journey of 32 mothers raising children at various stages of development and with a variety of disabilities. The main questions guiding this research study consider the lived experiences of mothers raising children with and without disabilities; what these mothers reveal about the journey with their children; how these mothers define motherhood; and how their definition of motherhood differs for each of their children. To address the research questions and capture the narratives of participants, a two-pronged qualitative methodology was applied, using diaries compiled by participants and in-depth interviews …
Communicating Queer Identities Through Personal Narrative And Intersectional Reflexivity, Richard G. Jones, Jr.
Communicating Queer Identities Through Personal Narrative And Intersectional Reflexivity, Richard G. Jones, Jr.
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
There is currently a lack of intersubjective research involving human participants and conceptual frameworks that include queer theory. Queer theory's poststructuralist epistemology tends toward desubjectification, problematizing research that relies on participants' self-reports of lived experience. The author proposes that the interdisciplinary nature of Communication Studies, which is situated within the humanities and social sciences, leaves communication scholars well poised to contribute to ongoing metatheoretical and metamethodological conversations regarding queer theory and intersubjective research, particularly in relation to cultures and identities. To contribute to this scholarly conversation, the author utilizes the deconstructionist lens of queer theory to contextualize communication, employs personal …