Digital Commons Network^™

Ask Your Doctor About: Prescribing Activism For Eco-Anxiety In Adolescents, Lexi Nutkiewicz

Master's Projects and Capstones

Climate change is an ongoing public health crisis. Efforts to protect future generations' physical and mental health are more urgent than ever. Youth, in particular, are experiencing eco-anxiety, a specific form of anxiety relating to stress or distress caused by environmental changes and one’s knowledge of them due to the climate crisis. This scoping review provides a better understanding of the value of youth climate change activism as a strategy to mitigate eco-anxiety. This review evaluates the current definitions of eco-anxiety, the risk factors for eco-anxiety among adolescents, and considers the benefits and drawbacks of youth activism. To identify relevant …

“And They Wrote It All Down As The Progress Of Man”: Relationships Between Environment, Extractive Industries, And Appalachian Agency, Emma V. Kelly

Masters Theses

The landscape of Central Appalachia has shaped and been shaped by its residents for thousands of years. The advent of industrialized extractive industries greatly shifted the nature and the extent of these processes, with capitalistic domination being asserted over the environment. While this shift towards industrialization was a widespread phenomenon, it undertook a unique trajectory within Appalachia, a region which occupies a distinct position within the national perspective. Although geographically established by the Appalachian Regional Commission, Appalachia is more than a politically defined set of counties: It is an incredibly diverse sociocultural region that exists on varying planes of marginalization …

Visions And Seeds Of Change : Pathways To Defining And Seeking Liberation, Ramon Kentrell Lee

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

From July 2015 to May 2018, the sociopolitical terrain and atmosphere of Albany, New York underwent significant shifts as the levels and types of activism and liberation discourse increased. The shifts were related to national occurrences, such as the development of the Black Lives Matter movement, the state of police brutality and state-sanctioned violence, the campaign and election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United State, and the emergence of the Me Too movement. During this period of change, activists engaged in a series of political struggles for situated identification and empowerment, the emergence of a …

Shopping For A Cause: Social Influencers, Performative Allyship, And The Commodification Of Activism, Emily Mckellar

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Since the early 2010s, social media has been a powerful tool for protestors and activists throughout the world. In times of crisis and political uprisings, users have pulled out their phones and taken to platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and, more recently, Instagram, to capture “the revolution” in real time. Although originally intended for networking purposes, social media has provided people with a digital space to share their stories, disseminate resources, and broadcast live, allowing them to share their efforts with millions.

While social media has helped assemble protests, amplify marginalized voices, and educate the public, it has also become a …

Inheritance, Sam Kealhofer

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I observe the methods modern American poets employ to achieve literary activism in their work. Poets Amiee Nezhukumatathil, Marcus Wicker, and Tracy K. Smith all examine and critique different aspects of American life and culture. Ultimately, I argue that each poet, in their own way, develops a voice that deftly straddles between the personal and public. By doing so, the poets invigorate their work with an authenticity that is crucial in developing an ethos vivacious enough to create a call to action for readers. I will also discuss how I create a similar balance of the personal …

Bay Area Lgbtq+ Millennials: The Newest Generation Leading The Gay Civil Rights Movement, Sara Miyo Hall-Kennedy

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore and describe the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ millennials that influenced their participation in the gay civil rights movement in the Bay Area of California. Another purpose of the study was to explore and describe the recommendations LGBTQ+ millennials have for the future of the national gay civil rights movement.

Methodology: A qualitative analysis of the data from a combination of both social movements and symbolic interactionism theoretical perspectives was conducted. Data for this study was generated through the synthesis and triangulation of the thematic coding of 12 interviews conducted by …

How Grassroots Can Save A Community: Citizen Activism In Environmental Justice Remediation, Jordan Halloran

Honors Program Theses

Environmental justice, according to sociologist Robert Bullard, the father of the movement, “embraces the principle that all people and communities have a right to equal protection and equal enforcement of environment laws and regulations.” He says, “it’s a concept that is rooted in equal protection and equal enforcement.” Typically, minority, low-income, and politically powerless communities are not actually afforded this equal protection and enforcement. As a result, they often must organize together to demand reparations for the pollution of their neighborhood. Plastered over mainstream media, Flint was not the country’s first environmental justice event, and it will not be the …

Social Climatology: An Age Comparison Of Women's Sustained Commitment To Collective Action Against Climate Change, Sara A. Humphers-Ginther

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climate activists urgently emphasize action to prevent catastrophic and apocalyptic-like damage from climate change. The foundation of the institutional change needed to combat climate change is collective action, which I study here through a collective action frame. These frames can gain traction for policy agendas: they are solution- and action-oriented. I interviewed women climate activists to understand how they frame the problems from, causes of, and solutions to climate change, as well as how they urge others to act against climate change. I compared my informants based on age because beliefs, values, and lived experiences are important in how activists …

"Earth Mommas”: The Impact Of Mothers On The American Environmental Justice Movement, Marie Gabrielle Buendia

Environmental Studies

Since the movement’s roots in the mid-twentieth century, mothers have been at the forefront in the pursuit of environmental justice in the United States. Raising their voices while raising their children and the community, they present a strong, effective and formidable force in the landscape of activism and advocacy. A mismanaged environment, years of political disenfranchisement, and persistent gender stratification have interacted throughout the country’s history to specifically position women and mothers – sometimes through force and always out of necessity – as the foundation of the environmental justice movement. For better or for worse, with the skills acquired through …

Connecting Art And Science: An Artist’S Perspective On Environmental Sustainability, Hayley Jean

Environmental Studies Electronic Thesis Collection

In the current climate of environmental precarity, the need to prompt ecological change becomes more than just a job for the scientific community. Looking towards culture and the arts has proven an effective way to begin addressing current environmental issues. Artists use their work to shine light on issues of environmental justice, raise awareness to environmental insecurities and risks, and imagine more sustainable futures. By combining the arts with environmental science, we are able to inspire transdisciplinary learning, thus sparking new ways of imagining and envisioning how we might live in the future. The purpose of this study was to …

Ecocritical Poster Art: Subverting Problematic Symbolic Tropes In Contemporary Environmentalism, Clarissa Mae Libertelli

UVM Patrick Leahy Honors College Senior Theses

This creative thesis is a five-poster series critiquing symbolic tropes in contemporary environmental discourse. After establishing in the literature review symbolism’s important function in culture and society, the problematic history of environmental imagery, the field of ecocriticism, the genre of ecocritical art, and the activist potential of poster art, five examples of problematic symbolic tropes in contemporary environmentalism were selected for further exploration: anti-urbanism, greenwashing, charismatic species, apocalypse and nature as female. Written research pieces on each explain the use of the symbolic trope, why it is problematic, associated imagery, and the opportunity for ecocritical poster art. The final posters …

The Whiteness Of The Elephant In The Room: How White Guilt, White Fragility, And Colorblind Racial Ideology Shape Environmental And Social Justice Activism In Santa Cruz County, Robert Michael Foran

Master's Theses

Using frameworks from critical race theory, social movement theory, and community-based activism, this thesis explores the phenomena of white fragility, white guilt, and colorblind racial ideology and how they impact the ways predominantly white-identified social and environmental justice organizations approach, build, and maintain solidarity with communities of color in Santa Cruz County, California. A qualitative approach was employed to investigate the experiences of white-identified activists and how they attempt to engage in this constantly challenging process. Using twenty-two semi-structured interviews and eight group observations, I explored how white-identified individuals negotiate the transformation from ‘moral passivity’ to meaningful, personal relationships with …

Homeward Bound: The Struggle Senior Dogs Face To Find Their Fur-Ever Homes, An Exhibition Proposal, Natalia Chavez

Master's Projects and Capstones

For this capstone project, I created a proposal for an exhibition centering around animal rights that focuses on the rights of senior dogs in United States animal shelters. Homeward Bound: The Struggle Senior Dogs Face to Find Their Fur-Ever Homes intends to raise awareness of the difficulties senior dogs face in being adopted from animal shelters, while promoting individuals to be active and engaged participants in actions to support the needs of senior shelter dogs.

Senior dogs have the highest probability of euthanasia in shelters.[1] Shelters and rescue organizations provide much needed assistance to senior dogs, supporting their …

Star Power, Pandemics, And Politics: The Role Of Cultural Elites In Global Health Security, Holly Lynne Swayne

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Celebrities have historically served a variety of roles in society ranging from the inspirational to the cautionary, utilizing their platforms of visibility to promote themselves, their work, as well as their social and political causes. This study focuses on celebrities as activists engaging with global health issues, with particular attention to the form this engagement takes, the publicity it receives in the mass media, and the types of global health issues that receive the most celebrity attention. An interdisciplinary approach drawing from theories of power, social movement theory, agenda-setting, and cultural studies is used to achieve greater understanding of underlying …

The Invisible Crisis: Framing The Remediation Of Milwaukee's Lead Laterals, Isabella Rieke

Theses and Dissertations

When Milwaukee’s municipal water system was developed in 1874, one-half-inch lead pipes were used to convey water from the mains in the street to a customer’s home; the City has since acknowledged that nearly 100,000 such lead pipes are still in use today, a revelation which has opened for debate whether or not these pipes pose a galvanizing public health risk with far-reaching policy and infrastructure implications. This study explores the community response to Milwaukee’s lead laterals through the efforts of the Freshwater for Life Action Coalition (FLAC). How do Milwaukeeans understand the risks posed by the lead laterals? In …

Prisons, Policing, And Pollution: Toward An Abolitionist Framework Within Environmental Justice, Ki'amber Thompson

Pomona Senior Theses

Environmental Justice defines the environment as the spaces where we live, work, and play. The Environmental Justice (EJ) Movement has traditionally used this definition to organize against toxics in communities. However, within EJ work, prisons or policing have often not been centralized or discussed. This means that the approximately 2.2 million people in prison are excluded from the conversation and movement. Additionally, communities and activists are identifying police and prisons as toxics in their communities, but an analysis of policing and prisons is largely missing in EJ scholarship. This thesis explores the intersection between prisons, policing, and pollution. It outlines …

Red Skies: The Impact Of Environmental Protests In The People's Republic Of China, 2004-2016, Porter Lyons

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

How do increases in environmental protests in China impact increases in the implementation of environmental policies? Environmental protests in China are gaining traction. By examining these protests, this study analyzes forty-one protests and their impact on government enforcement of environmental regulations. Stratifying this study according to five areas (Beijing, Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangsu, and Sichuan), patterns began to emerge according to each area. Employing a framework William Gamson introduced (2009), this study analyzes the outcomes of environmental contention, including the use of co-optation and preemptive measures. It finds that the success or failure of a protest has much to do with …

Legacies Of Industrial Contamination: Voices Of Resistance In White Lake, Michigan, Elizabeth A. Revord

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This research presents a case study of resistance to contamination from three large chemical plants by activists in the communities of Montague and Whitehall located on White Lake, Michigan. Although clean-up efforts have met state and federal guidelines for brownfield and Superfund sites, the people and community of White Lake have continued to be vigilant regarding environmental protection and harbor many concerns regarding their future and redevelopment of sites that are likely still contaminated.

The connection to place and sense of community that the residents of White Lake honor is the foundation of their resistance. Using data collected from semi-structured …

From Food To Food Justice: Pathways And Narratives Of Young Food Activists In New York City, Amy Kwan

Dissertations and Theses

With a rise in obesity and other non-communicable, diet-related health problems and the persistence of food insecurity among many vulnerable populations, the involvement of young people in the current, burgeoning food-justice movement has the potential to bring forth transformative changes to our food system and thus improve population health. While much is known about the outcomes of providing opportunities for young people to be actively and civically engaged in their communities, there is a lack of research on the pathways, narratives, and experiences that bring young people into food justice activism.

Through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 25 young food activists …

Before Me, After Me, Through Me: Stories Of Food And Community In Eastern Kentucky, Abigail Myers Huggins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This text contextualizes and presents twenty-three oral history interviews conducted in eastern Kentucky during the summer of 2016 as a part of a Master of Arts thesis in southern studies. The interviews were conducted with people specifically connected to food, farming, and community activism in and near Letcher County, Kentucky. The interviews explore such topics as: past and present food traditions, seed saving, gardening, farming, food preservation, herbalism, local food systems, food access, youth, theater arts, lgbtq+ advocacy, and appalachian identity. This document complements an online collection of oral history excerpts created as an audio documentary portion of the overall …

Environmental Justice In Remediation: Tools For Community Empowerment, Chihiro Tamefusa

Pomona Senior Theses

Exide Technologies finally closed its secondary lead-battery recycling plant on March 12, 2015. The community of primarily Hispanics around the facility had to fight many years to have the polluting facility shut down. Because government agencies, whose job is to protect citizens from polluters, were not regulating the facility properly, residents are not sure if they can trust the agencies to carry out remediation effectively and efficiently either. In this paper I explore the environmental justice issues associated with environmental remediation and what community members can do to make sure that their neighborhood is cleaned up properly. Through interviews with …

Predictors Of Likeliness To Engage In Radical Animal Rights And Environmental Activism, Patsy Mckenzie

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Radical animal rights and environmental activism is considered domestic terrorism under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Traditional models of terrorism purport that there is a path to radicalization that is influenced by an individual's sense of identity and ideological beliefs. Using collective identity theory and cognitive experiential self-theory as the framework, the purpose of this quantitative study was to examine whether social identity, cognitive processing mode, and ideological beliefs were predictors for engagement in radical animal rights and environmental activism. The Three Factor Model of Social Identity Scale, the Rational Experiential Inventory, and the Activism Orientation Scale were used to …

Place, Space, And Family: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Resistance Rhetoric Of Judy Bonds, Alex K. Davenport

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis examines the ways that rhetorics of resistance can operate in contemporary social conditions. I do this specifically by examining the rhetoric of Judy Bonds, an environmental justice activist who opposed mountaintop removal (MTR) mining in Appalachia. I utilize a qualitative rhetorical approach to examine 34 instances of Bonds’ discourse as well as my own autoethnographic reflections focused on my work with Mountain Justice, a regional anti-MTR activist organization. Pairing the constant comparative method with principles of ideological criticism, informed by theories of place, voice, memory, and narrative, forms this qualitative rhetorical approach. The postmodern turn allows for the …

Engaging Metis: Exploring An African Woman's Negotiation Of Change, Ruby Pappoe

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

African women’s emerging visibility as social and political actors has received a lot of attention in the past two decades. Scholars have explored women’s political movements and sociocultural activism from various perspectives to expose their contributions to social change. Although this scholarship has expanded to incorporate multiple voices as well as expose the contemporary strategies of resistance women engage in to overcome difficult challenges, there seems to be little research on ordinary women as they also confront their daily challenges in hope of improving their situations. This research takes up this gap by exploring a Ghanaian woman’s resistance in the …

Dibe' Bikee' Deya: Following Sheep In Coal Country, Caitlin A. Piserchia

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Black Mesa is a mineral-rich area of the Navajo and Hopi Nations in Arizona; it is both the locus of the historic so-called Hopi-Navajo land conflict and the coal mines that have helped make possible the electricity usage of Las Vegas. It is also a case study in cultural change and resistance in response to pressures of industrialization and capitalism. In an interdisciplinary, creative nonfiction writing project, I am looking in particular at the pressures on sheepherding as livelihood in Black Mesa. I will examine how sheepherding has changed since the advent of the Black Mesa and Kayenta coal mines. …

Deconstructing Systemic Oppression Through Teaching Community Organizing: A Students-Teaching-Students Course, Francesca A. Hall

UVM Patrick Leahy Honors College Senior Theses

Community organizing has been an essential component of every significant social movement in United State’s history. Often, community organizers receive no formal training and instead gain the skills and knowledge necessary to become effective organizers through experience and trial and error. Through the analysis of a 14-student students-teaching-students course developed and co-taught by myself and another UVM undergraduate in the fall of 2014, my research aims to discover if it is possible to teach, within a hierarchical university setting, how to community organize for the purpose of deconstructing systemic oppression. Using emergent pedagogy, such as non-hierarchical co-teaching through class discussions, …

Radical Housewife Activism: Subverting The Toxic Public/Private Binary, Emma Foehringer Merchant

Pomona Senior Theses

Since the 1960s, the modern environmental movement, though generally liberal in nature, has historically excluded a variety of serious and influential groups. This thesis concentrates on the movement of working-class housewives who emerged into popular American consciousness in the seventies and eighties with their increasingly radical campaigns against toxic contamination in their respective communities. These women represent a group who exhibited the convergence of cultural influences where domesticity and environmentalism met in the middle of American society, and the increasing focus on public health in the environmental movement framed the fight undertaken by women who identified as “housewives.” These women, …

Fossil Fuel Divestment: The Power And Promise Of A Student Movement For Climate Justice, Jessica Grady-Benson

Pitzer Senior Theses

In the face of dire threats posed by anthropogenic climate change, a growing international Movement for Fossil Fuel Divestment has emerged to challenge the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry. Building off a history of college and university divestment campaigns, students are spearheading the movement to rid their institutions’ endowments of investments in the top 200 companies with the largest reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas. Highlighting perspectives from within the movement and drawing from literature in social movement theory and Climate Justice, I explore three crucial components of the student Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement: Climate …

The Brave Heart Society: An Oral History Of An Indigenous Women's Society, Brook Spotted Eagle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study examines the Brave Heart Society and the ways in which Brave Heart women collectively approaches trauma-healing outside of the programmatic structures of federally funded tribal systems. National statistics speak to the contemporary struggles impacting most US Indigenous populations in the present-day. Such struggles are residual symptoms rooted in a long history of domination and US imperialism. These data indicate that most tribes have not fully recovered from federally imposed systems of deprivation. Within the context of the Ihanktonwan Dakota community in southeastern South Dakota, the nuanced ways in which trauma impedes development and community wellness is both realized …

Critical Ee At Osbg: A Case Study In Addressing Environmental Action Through Critical Education, Donovon Keith Ceaser

LSU Master's Theses

Within environmental education the promotion of environmental activism is still considered contentious despite being a major goal since its inception. While some argue on simply raising awareness a growing number believe an action component is necessary to produce citizens capable of addressing environmental issues. Critical environmental education (Critical EE) is one method of integrating action into an educational program that teaches students to better understand the social and natural environment through an integrative participatory teaching-learning culture which allows students to construct contextual value-laden knowledge. This study uses data gathered from six months of participant observation at Our School at Blair …