Digital Commons Network^™

Becoming The Best Mom Or The Best Doctor? Gender Inequality And Medical Students’ Specialty Choice, Casey L. Lawson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In anticipation of an expected national shortage of primary care physicians, 24 medical students from the East Tennessee State University Quillen College of Medicine were selected through a snowball sample and participated in in-depth interviews. A major aim of the study was to explore the social and economic factors influencing students’ specialty choice and career interests. Students’ perceptions of “rural” environments, student debt, professional obligations, specialties, and preceptorship experiences were analyzed. Students’ gender heavily influenced their feelings about choosing a medical specialty, as did their stereotypes of physicians in particular medical fields. The thesis concludes with recommendations for challenging negative …

Representations Of Women In Casta Paintings Of Colonial Mexico, Lacie Ellen Glover

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Representations of Women in Casta Paintings of Colonial Mexico explores the power relations between men and women represented in casta paintings of the eighteenth century. I provide an overview of the genre of casta painting and its relation to the sistema de castas, the social arrangement based on lineages intended to sustain the power of the Spanish elite. I examine how casta scenes reinforce the authority of the Spanish male. The social construction of gender, separate spheres of men and women, and the notion of "true womanhood" are recurrent themes. I argue that casta scenes reinforced the expected norms of …

The Organic Beauty Industry: A Gendered Economic Review, Brianna D. Connelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organic beauty has grown to a $6 billion dollar industry supplying consumers with products that align with unique social consumption preferences. This thesis explores the historical economic perspective of the traditional beauty industry and the development of the organic beauty industry. Capitalism influenced the traditional beauty industry during the pursuit for profits that lead to jeopardizing customer and environmental safety. Consumers responded to this behavior by founding an organic beauty industry that not only considered social issues, but negated gendered beauty standards in the process. Organic product efficacy has emerged as an issue that must be dealt with by regulation …

What Types Of Social Integration Matter? Race And Adolescent Suicide Ideation, Tijuana Lashae Jefferson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Adolescent suicide is a major health problem in the U.S. Despite increasing research on this topic, current literature has failed to examine fully the intersection of race and suicide ideation. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines how various forms of social integration serve to protect black and white adolescents from suicide. Overall, I find that there are important differences and similarities between black and white youth in terms of how social integration works as a protective factor. Family caring protects white youth and black boys from having thoughts of suicide. One major difference between black …

Language Arts Achievement Of Fourth Grade Students With Regard To Gender, Ethnicity, And Socioeconomic Status, Paula C. Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to see if a difference exists in the language arts proficiency levels of 2,080 fourth grade students with regard to gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status from 2010 through 2012 on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. Specifically, this study considered the possibility that a difference existed in language arts proficiency levels between males and females.

A quantitative study was used to find differences in the language arts proficiency levels from 2010 through 2012 for males and females in the fourth grade in an upper East Tennessee urban school system. A quasi-experimental design was selected because preexisting data …

Dirty Slut : An Exploration Of Margaret In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing., Lauren Ashlee Street 1987-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the past eleven years, my process as an actor has been influenced by my education in theatre, personal experiences, and changing views on literary figures and socio-political issues. Through the lens of a minor Shakespearean character, I examine my current process and relationship to the playwright and director and analyze the implications of my onstage representation of sexually active women. My views on gender politics prompt me to scrutinize the script, and I discover a tiny detail that confirms my character is innocent of the betrayal of her mistress and reaffirms my confidence in Shakespeare’s abilities as a writer. …

Literacy And Identity In Popular And Participatory Culture., Laura A. Detmering

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines two contemporary television series (Modern Family and Community) and fan communities dedicated to those series. It then discusses a project developed within an upper-division English course at the University of Louisville, in which students created, reflected upon, and analyzed their own television show fan communities throughout the course. The first chapter reviews recent literature about literacy, identity, fandom, and popular culture, as well as describes the methods utilized within this dissertation project. Analyzing these television series and fans' and critics' responses to them, this dissertation argues that online communities provide a ripe space for community-building, as well …

From A Northern Home To A Southern School: Cultural Imperialists Or Just Stubborn Yankees, Janel Janiczek Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the cultural influences on the lives of northern teachers in southern schools. During the 1860s, white, northern, middle-class women traveled to southern homes to begin and maintain schools for the recently freed slaves. Each woman carried with her an independent set of cultural systems that predetermined her perspective for educating the African American students. Furthermore, the northern relief agencies, Freedmen's Bureau agents, southern white citizens, and southern freedmen all had their own opinions for the education of the students. Although much time has elapsed between the 1860s and 2013, the same topics …

The Moral Oppression Of The Teaching Profession: Learning To Transcend, Rebecca Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is both descriptive and philosophical, and at its core, it justifies the need for social foundations of education courses and programs in the university setting. It begins by analyzing the meaning of oppression and the part knowledge plays in confining the individual. The analysis then draws upon Patricia Hill Collins' theory of intersecting oppressions to get at the complexities and restrictions of working in the public schooling institution. It works through the ways in which sexist, classist, and racist practices afflict everyone in the institution through the bureaucratic mechanism and collateral oppression. The four components that make up …

Gender Dynamics From The Arab World: An Intercultural Service Encounter, Marryam Khan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Arab countries strive toward the modernization and feminization of the Arab culture; however, some of these countries (i.e., Saudi Arabia) are culturally and legally governed by "sharia law", and have maintained cultural norms regarding segregation of the sexes. In order to have a better understanding of the Arab travelers to the U.S., this research focuses on the gender dynamics between the service providers and Arab customers during a service encounter. Specifically, this research examines how the same and opposite genders of service-provider and customer influence Arab customers’ emotional response (comfort), consequently their service encounter evaluation (satisfaction), and behavioral intentions (feedback …

I Play To Beat The Machine: Masculinity And The Video Game Industry In The United States, Anne Mcdivitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the video game industry within the United States from the first game that was created in 1958 until the shift to Japanese dominance of the industry in 1985, and how white, middle class masculinity was reflected through the sphere of video gaming. The first section examines the projections of white, middle class masculinity in U.S. culture and how that affected the types of video games that the developers created. The second section examines reflections of this masculine culture that surrounded video gaming in the 1970s and 1980s in the developers, gamers, and the media, while demonstrating how …

The Insignificance Of Feature Frequency In Classifying Gender Of Twitter Tweets, Amanda Marie Kroft

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2011, Internet users spent almost 23% of their time on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Twitter alone was estimated to have over 200 million active users. With social media being such a popular online pastime, a tremendous amount of information becomes available from the posts that users put on social media sites. This information has the potential to reveal details about the social media users, such as the relationship between characteristics of the users and what they post. This relationship is a hot research topic and one of the most frequently studied characteristic is the gender …

The Implications Of A High Academic Ability Learning Environment On Third Grade Gifted Students' Academic Achievement In Florida Public Schools, Julie Cady

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this two year study was to investigate the implications of a high academic ability learning environment on the achievement scores of third grade gifted students who attended the Florida Brevard County Public School System. Learning environment was defined by the students’ academic ability level, whether high academic ability or heterogeneous academic ability, and for this study was the independent variable. Academic achievement, as measured by the 2011 and the 2012 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test® 2.0 (FCAT 2.0) Mathematics and Reading Developmental Scale Scores (DSS), was the dependent variable. Other student data such as gender and socioeconomic status …

The Influence Of Gender And Alcohol Use On Depressive Symptoms Among Men And Women, Elizabeth Anne Peters

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the extent to which gender influences self-reported prototypical and masculine-specific symptoms of depression in men and women and whether or not alcohol mediates this relationship. Secondly, this study evaluated the effectiveness of the Denver Comprehensive Depression Inventory (DCDI), in measuring prototypical and masculine-specific depressive symptoms in clinical and non-clinical samples of men and women.

This paper summarizes the literature on gender differences in depression and the assessment of depression and gender, and outlines the current research on masculine-specific depression. It is argued that current assessment instruments identify prototypical symptoms of depression, as outlined in the DSM-IV-TR, but …

Butch, Femme, Dyke, Or Lipstick, Aren't All Lesbians The Same?: An Exploration Of Labels And "Looks" Among Lesbians In The U.S. South, Danielle Kerr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploratory qualitative sociological analysis of gender, sexuality, and race among "out" lesbians in the U.S. south. In this thesis, I explore the following questions: (1) what labels are self-identified lesbians in the south using and/or applying to themselves, and how do they use them? (2) how do they talk about and experience their dress as a part of their identity? (3) how are lesbians doing gender and sexuality in both private and professional environments? (4) how does southern location influence lesbians' conceptualization of their gender and sexuality? This research expands current understandings in the literature regarding …

A Room Of One's Own, Revisited: An Existential-Hermeneutic Study Of Female Solitude, Karin Arndt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study presents an existential-hermeneutic analysis of nine women's first-person accounts of extended periods of solitude. The accounts were analyzed along the five existential dimensions of spatiality, temporality, embodiment, language, and co-existentiality, producing a rich portrait of the women's lived experience of solitude. One of the first-person accounts was provided by the author of the study, who underwent three solitary retreats in the interest of this project, adding an autoethnographic component to the work. Theory from the existential-phenomenological, monastic, ecopsychological, and feminist literatures was applied to the data, enabling us to interpret the significance of the shifts the women experienced …

Tense Collaborations And Exchange Interrupted: Gendered Participation In Ecological Agriculture Projects In Post-Neoliberal(?) Bolivia, Jenny J. Cockburn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Bolivian development NGO's effort to increase the scope and value of ecological agriculture, agrobiodiversity and food sovereignty in its work with marginalized farming communities in Norte de Potosí, shares these concerns with the Bolivian State. Yet tensions run high between applying neoliberal frameworks to 'empower' farmers and resisting neoliberal approaches to strengthen Bolivia's sovereignty vis-à-vis the global North. Despite a significant backlash, neoliberalism continues to complicate sustainable development, participatory ideals and local/scientific knowledges, by both facilitating and challenging efforts toward collaboration. This becomes most clear when examined through the lens of gender. To analyze this process, the conceptual framework …

Showcasing Self: An Intersectional Analysis Of Body Type Presentation In Online Daters, Andrew Latinsky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using data collected from the online dating site Match.com, this paper performs a content analysis examining the relationships between race, gender, and sexuality as both independent variables and as intersections on impression management strategies in online dating. Impression management strategies form a foundational core of how people interact with others in social situations. This analysis focuses on impression management strategies by examining how people advertise their body type in a public arena. Analysis also draws upon the types of bodies these people desire in an ideal date, as a second method of looking at the norms surrounding the ideal body …

The Inclusion Of Women's History In The Secondary Social Studies Classroom, Cicely Scheiner-Fisher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The author examined the motivation for why, and methods of how, some secondary social studies teachers incorporate women’s voices into the traditional history framework. A multi-layered qualitative methodology was employed for this study using survey, case study, and phenomenological approaches, including interviews and classroom observations of participants. The researcher discovered the percentage of teachers who claim to incorporate women’s history/perspectives into their lessons; how teachers incorporate women’s history/perspectives into their lessons; and, the factors that contribute to teachers including women’s history/perspectives into their classes.

Visuo-Spatial Abilities In Remote Perception: A Meta-Analysis Of Empirical Work, Thomas Fincannon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Meta-analysis was used to investigate the relationship between visuo-spatial ability and performance in remote environments. In order to be included, each study needed to examine the relationship between the use of an ego-centric perspective and various dimensions of performance (i.e., identification, localization, navigation, and mission completion time). The moderator analysis investigated relationships involving: (a) visuo-spatial construct with an emphasis on Carroll’s (1993) visualization (VZ) factor; (b) performance outcome (i.e., identification, localization, navigation, and mission completion time); (c) autonomy to support mission performance; (d) task type (i.e., navigation vs. reconnaissance); and (e) experimental testbed (i.e., physical vs. virtual environments). The process …

Interracial Lesbian And Gay Couples: Navigating Private And Public Experiences, Anne Bubriski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the private and public experiences of Black/White interracial lesbian and gay couples. Drawing from the theoretical frameworks of critical race theory and intersectional feminism, this research focuses on how the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality influence relationship experiences and family processes in both private and public spaces for interracial same-sex couples. This study is based on 19 in-depth interviews with individuals in Black/White lesbian and gay relationships. Participants’ stories highlight intersectionality in terms of the ways interracial lesbian and gay couples navigate these interpersonal and public spaces. Participant experiences suggest that the dichotomy of private/public is …