Digital Commons Network^™

An Examination Of Child Abuse Disclosures In Mississippi: The Effects Of Child And Interviewer Characteristics, Morgan Colley

Theses and Dissertations

Each year, hundreds of thousands of children fall victim to child abuse in the United States, most often perpetrated by a parent or legal guardian (Children’s Bureau – An Office of the Administration for Children and Families, 2015). The current project used secondary data from a Children’s Advocacy Center to explore abuse disclosure rates in forensic interviews. The three main objectives of this project were as follows: 1) to determine whether children with certain demographic characteristics (i.e., race, gender, and age) were more likely to disclose abuse, 2) to determine whether interviewers with certain demographic characteristics (i.e., race and age) …

Exploring Student Use Of Social Networking Services (Sns) Surrounding Moral Development, Gender, Campus Crime, Safety, & The Clery Act: A Mixed Methods Study, Haley Baum

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed methods study was to explore college students' use of social networking services (SNS); examining how and why they communicate about campus safety information. This study took place at Stockton University, a regional state institution in NJ. Undergraduate students took part in an online quantitative questionnaire and then follow up face-to-face qualitative interviews with a section of the questionnaire participants. Focus was placed on how and why students communicate crime and safety information to discuss how this may relate to their moral development and decision-making. Using Kohlberg and Gilligan as a guide to understand …

Engendering Landscape: A Gendered Analysis Of Migration To The Buffer Zone Of Carara National Park, Costa Rica, Jessica Ann Arends

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses gender as a lens of analysis for understanding the motivations of internal migrants in their decision to move to the 10 kilometer buffer zone of Carara National Park in Costa Rica. The thesis is in reaction to Wittemyer et al.’s (2008) article that statistically demonstrates that population levels at the borders of study selected national parks and protected areas across Africa and Latin America are growing due to in-migration. The study is composed of 30 interviews with Costa Rican migrants who live in three communities inside Carara’s buffer zone. This study used cultural consensus analysis and semi-structured …

"Don't Be Such A Girl, I'M Only Joking!" Post-Alternative Comedy, British Panel Shows, And Masculine Spaces, Lindsay Anne Weber

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the gender disparity in British panel shows. In February 2014 the BBC’s Director of Television enforced a quota stating panel shows needed to include one woman per episode. This quota did not fully address the ways in which the gender imbalance was created. This thesis argues that the gender imbalance stems from post-feminist sensibilities and masculine-centric trends in British comedy and culture. This work demonstrates this through a discourse analysis of the opinions expressed about panel shows by the British popular press and media personalities from 2002 to 2017. The discourse analysis exposes patterns where British producers …

"But She's Snow White, She Would N'T Hurt Anybody": A Critical Analysis Of Gender And Power In Once Upon A Time, Mackenzie Mahler

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines gender performance and its relation to power in the television series Once Upon a Time (OUAT). On the surface, OUAT is a television show that constantly challenges the culturally-ingrained gender norms often found in fairy tales, as it creates new storylines for traditional fairy tales. This warrants a deeper examination of the series to understand if and how it is subverting these typical gender norms. To fully understand how gender operates in OUAT, I examined how gender affects and is affected by hegemony in the show and how this relates to our cultural understanding of gender and …

Which Activities Count? Gender And Socioeconomic Differences In The Conceptualization Of Physical Activity: The Role Of Leisure, Housework And Dependent Care, And Paid Work, Rachel N. Cusatis

Theses and Dissertations

Survey research on the overall health and physical activity of the United States has relied on self-reports from questions that ask about leisure-only activity. Leisure activity patterns are known to be plagued by social forces that inhibit access and opportunity for women, compared to men, and for lower-socioeconomic individuals, compared to higher-socioeconomic individuals, making the further unpacking of leisure and other time use patterns imperative. To address this, the objective of this dissertation is to assess the different pathways individuals take to engage in health-benefiting physical activity and investigate the reliability and validity of physical activity survey questions as they …

Effect Of Speaker Age And Dialect On Listener Perceptions Of Personality, Brittni Elizabeth Bergstrom

Theses and Dissertations

The association between dialect and perceived personality traits has been studied for a number of years. The purpose of this study was to examine how the dialect, the gender of both the speaker and the listener, and the perceived age of the speaker affected the listeners' perception of the speaker's personality. The spontaneous speech samples were drawn from existing corpora. There were 48 speakers, 24 New Zealanders and 24 Utahns. Each dialect group was stratified into three age groups (young, middle, older), and within each age group there were an equal number of males and females. The listener group included …

Decoding Darkmatter, Crystal J. Waterton

Theses and Dissertations

Decoding DarkMatter is a documentary film about two Asian transgender poetry performance artists: Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian. It documents their journey from Stanford University to their first large theater production; It Gets Bitter, at Joe’s Pub in New York City.

Out Of The Shadows: Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, And The Will To Persist, Juella Baltonado

Theses and Dissertations

Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn are known most commonly for their associations with their male counterparts, and often have their identities and accomplishments overshadowed by these men. This thesis shines a light on these women, uncovering the struggles with gender, agency, and societal expectations.

'Mother Bring The Henna': Kına Gecesi And Fragmented Imaginations Of The Nation-State, Alexandra Catrina Vieux Frankel

Theses and Dissertations

This research articulates kına gecesi (henna night) as a critical site for the production and reproduction of gendered politics in Turkey. Kına gecesi, as a women’s pre-wedding ritual, is situated at the margins of civil wedding ceremonies, and thereby intersects with wedding’s politicization in pronatalist discourses. Tropes of fertility in this ritual in concert with its proximity to marriage show it to be salient to biological, cultural, and national reproduction. I argue that women’s discourses on kına gecesi engender frangemented imaginations of the nation-state. This notion of fragmentation follows Dipesh Chakrabarty’s understanding of “provincializing” which advocates direct translation of experience …

Examining The Processes Of Social Construction On Decision-Making In Domestic Violence Probation Review Hearings, Danielle M. Romain

Theses and Dissertations

In domestic violence courts, judges and other court actors are often trained on one particular model of understanding domestic violence: the Duluth model of violence as power and control. There are, however, different theories and discourses about the causes and nature of domestic violence. Further, specialized domestic violence courts, which have become more prevalent since the 1990s, employ a problem-solving approach to domestic violence, focusing on offender accountability, rehabilitation, and victim safety. Whether these courts reduce violence and increase safety is less clear. Further, limited research exists on how offenders are processed through these courts, including post-sentencing decision-making. Given the …

The Cycle Of Exclusion In Local Print News: How News Content Reflects And Reinforces Patriarchy, Emily Wright

Theses and Dissertations

Print news has been relied upon as a source of information for centuries. Despite recent strides towards gender equality, women are persistently marginalized in news content and newsrooms. This thesis analyzed over 950 staff-written Milwaukee Journal Sentinel stories and conducted 19 interviews with both men and women staff reporters and editors to examine how patriarchy might infiltrate local print news. I analyzed how women and men authors, sources and subjects are included or excluded from the news. Furthermore, this thesis examines the gendered division of labor within the newsroom.

The Role Of The Speech-Language Pathologist When Working With Clients Who Are Transgender: A Guide Of Gender Identity And Cultural Competency, Brett Welch

Theses and Dissertations

It is within the scope of practice of a speech-language pathologist to work with a client who is transgender for voice. However, regardless of the setting, a speech-language pathologist is likely to encounter a person who is transgender on their caseload. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association mandates that all of its members be culturally competent when working with clients from different cultural backgrounds, including those from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community.

This thesis pulls from sociological, linguistic, and queer theory literature to provide an in-depth understanding of identity, gender, and transgender identity formation. With this nuanced understanding of …

Identity Politics, State Standards, And On The Ground Realities: A Critical Policy Analysis Of Teaching/Learning Gender/Sexuality In A Virginia Elementary School, Stefanie Hudson

Theses and Dissertations

Even though America has seen an increase in the level of acceptance for people who identify as LGBTQ and/or gender non-conforming, certain aspects within society continue to hinder their rights, especially within public education. Specifically, there are insufficiencies regarding content of and attitudes toward including LGBTQ issues in teaching and leadership training programs. Add to that, the deficits in most Family Life Education (FLE) programs in elementary schools as they lack adequate coverage of developmentally appropriate teaching and learning about gender and sexuality. Taken together, it remains questionable whether the needs of LGBTQ and/or gender non-conforming children can truly be …

Learning To Question The World: Navigating Critical Discourse Around Gender And Racial Inequities And Injustices In A Second And Third Grade Classroom, Christopher L. Hass

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study, situated within a critical theory frame (Friere, 1970; Grant, Brown, & Brown, 2016; hooks, 1994; Kincheloe, 2008), explored the ways elementary students engaged in and constructed meaning from critical classroom discussions exploring inequities and injustices as related to gender and race. The questions guiding the study were: (1) How do my students construct meaning during class discussions regarding issues of equity and injustice around gender and race?, (2) What role do I play in constructing, shaping, and maintaining opportunities for students to create meaning during these discussions?, and (3) What tensions do my students encounter when engaging …

The Perceptions Of Students On A Cooperative, Gamebased Learning Latin Curriculum: An Action Research Study, Jason Dean Blackburn

Theses and Dissertations

This action research study describes the impact of Operation LAPIS, a cooperative gamebased Latin 1 curriculum, upon student perceptions in a large suburban high school in South Carolina. The game served as an introduction to Latin grammar, vocabulary, and the daily life of a Roman teenager for 15 Latin 1 students who participated in the study. Syntax, vocabulary acquisition, and cultural studies are essential standards-based elements of learning Latin. Students were surveyed regarding their opinions on the game’s approach to grammar, vocabulary, Roman daily life, and game-based learning in general. These surveys produced a quantitative data set that allowed the …

Women Self Actualization: A Narrative Of A Performative Gender Constitution, Hala A. Gabr

Theses and Dissertations

In a traditional Middle Eastern society, men and women have been confined within society’s gender definitions. Those imposed social constructs condition men differently from women by dictating expected behaviors, establishing a hierarchy of gender positioning and enforcing definitions that limit abilities and potential.

Based on postmodernist philosopher, feminist and social theorist, Simone de Beauvoir and postmodernist American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, gender is not an inborn role, but rather created through stylized repetition of acts informed by society, named performative acts. For de Beauvoir and Butler, gender can never be a stable identity (Butler 1988).

Informed by Butler’s …

Towards Gender Inclusive Representation In The Theatre: The Actor And The Spectator, Jeanette Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

This piece of writing is aimed at theatre practitioners who might not have a background in feminist critical theory. Its main function is to help these practitioners to aware of how they might- in the theatre- propagate gender stereotypes. It provides thorough and accessible explanations of the concepts central to feminist critical theory. It argues that in order to create a truly inclusive theatre, the spectator and the actor must be resistant towards gender-based oppression.