American Sign Language As A Foreign Language Equivalent At James Madison University, Abigail E. Compton

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

ASL is increasingly gaining acknowledgment as a foreign language in the university setting. At James Madison University, sign language classes have traditionally been housed within the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. This research makes a case for considering ASL as an equivalent to courses in the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and argues that ASL meets the university standards for the study of a foreign language with regard to fulfilling Bachelor of Arts requirements.

Considering the linguistic history of ASL and the language’s accompanying culture, we will demonstrate the standards for teaching ASL are identical to the …

No Soy De Aquí, Ni Soy De Allá: How Stateless Individuals In The Dominican Republic Construct National Identity, Lindsay Wright

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Resolution 12, a piece of national legislation in the Dominican Republic, retroactively revokes citizenship from individuals whose ancestors came to the country illegally. The resolution was proposed in 2007, signed into law in 2008, and ratified in 2013, rendering a large number of Dominican-born individuals stateless. Using the framework of Communication Theory of Identity (CTI), the researcher analyzed the communication processes and cultural elements stateless individuals utilize to form their national identity. The researcher used a qualitative approach to gather data, which were analyzed using the constant comparative method. Responses from the participants, provided through in-depth individual interviews, indicate that …

Ngo Collaboration In Natural Disaster Response Efforts- A Comparative Case Study Of Earthquakes In Asia, Richelle S. Grogg

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper examines the response of NGOs to natural disasters, specifically in regards to collaboration efforts. The study utilizes a comparative case study methodology of most-similar design to look at three specific disasters- The Kashmir Earthquake, The Sichuan Earthquake, and The Japan Earthquake. Within each of these earthquakes the organizations Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Cross, and Oxfam International’s specific responses will be highlighted. The collaboration efforts will be examined utilizing general questions focusing on willingness to collaborate, commitment, and compatibility of objectives. Ultimately, this study found that all three components seem to be hypotheses worthy of further study.

Student Awareness Of The Daily News-Record, Molly Margaret Jacob

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The Daily News-Record is a local daily newspaper located in Harrisonburg, Virginia, a city with a population of about 52,000. The Daily News-Record's print circulation is 26,000, while its digital circulation is 800. The paper also houses other local publications, such as the Rocktown Weekly, a free weekly publication that covers local news and the local music scene. James Madison University is a mid-sized public university also located in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The researcher wanted to understand JMU student awareness of local news sources, student consumption of news sources, student intention to read the local paper and whether there was a …

The Relationship Between Conflict Resolution Styles In Cross-Gender Sibling Relationships And Romantic Relationships, Kristen M. Friel

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Previous research demonstrates that there are several similarities between sibling relationships and romantic relationships and the former may even impact the latter. Further, research has shown that sibling relationships of mixed-gender dyads more significantly impact later romantic relationships. As conflict is a normative and frequent aspect of both relationships, the purpose of this study was to determine if there is a relationship between a female’s conflict resolution style with her male sibling and her conflict resolution style with her romantic partner, if relational closeness and distance in years between her and her male sibling are moderating factors of her conflict …

Trying To Restrict Her Range: The Backlash In Response To Ree Drummond, “The Pioneer Woman,” And Drummond’S Agency In Constructing And Profiting From A 21st Century Pioneering Persona, Jennifer R. Oskin

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Ree Drummond is the creator of the wildly popular lifestyle blog, thepioneerwoman.com, and star of the Food Network show, “The Pioneer Woman.” This thesis analyzes the rhetorical practices of Ree Drummond, as “The Pioneer Woman,” and how critics’ responses to this constructed persona have taken shape on blogging platforms. To conduct this analysis, I examined a variety of artifacts from Drummond’s public persona including her blog, cookbooks, television episodes, as well as YouTube videos of her public appearances and speaking engagements. I also analyzed the forums in which people respond to “The Pioneer Woman”; this includes op-eds on the …

(Re)Positioning Black: Negotiating Racial Subjectivities In White Discursively Constructed Spaces, Elisa Davidson

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis is both a personal and social inquiry of the experience of Black students at a predominantly white university. Within this inquiry, I extend Nakayama and Krizek's (1995) concept of whiteness as having "no true essence" to conceptualizations of blackness to assert that blackness is “a pattern of negotiation that takes place in conditions generated by specific discursive formations and social relations” (McLaren, 1999, pg. 40) rather than a fixed, essential category. Viewing blackness as encounter means that it is emergent through specific social and discursive conditions that are constantly constructed and negotiated through interactions with whiteness. I approach …

My Body, Our Illness: Negotiating Relational And Identity Tensions Of Living With Mental Illness, Erin E. Casey

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis uses an autoethnographic methodology informed by narrative theory to interrogate my experiences of relational and identity tensions as both a consumer of mental health services and an advocate for the care, autonomy and acceptance of those who identify with concepts of mental illness recovery. In doing so I am using my personal diaries and medical records from the past seven years as archival data to assist me in recovering and reconstructing narratives that represent meaningful truths about these experiences. I also call on heavily what Carolyn Ellis (2004) calls "relational ethics" because I know that while I am …

Exploring The Role Of Networks And Proximity For Communication Satisfaction In An Academic Library, Jennifer A. Keach

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Researchers tie communication satisfaction within organizations to job satisfaction, productivity, and commitment, and yet supporting communication satisfaction remains a challenge for workplaces. This study proposes that network centrality and proximity both are related to communication satisfaction. Further, this study proposes that proximity actions—voluntary actions which increase proximity with co-workers—relate to network centrality. As employees increasingly work at a geographic distance from their co-workers, they increasingly experience proximity barriers to the already difficult task of staying informed through informal communication channels. This study is a mixed methods case study within an academic library.

Findings include the value of mixed methods studies …

Contesting “Obligation”: Memory, Morality, And The (Re)Construction Of Divestment Narratives, Christina Quint

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Leaders in the medical field representing organizations abroad such as the British Medical Association (BMA) and MedAct have called for health care organizations to divest from fossil fuels, on the grounds that it is hypocritical for health care leaders to take the Hippocratic Oath and be implicated in the health impacts for which the burning of fossil fuels is responsible. The emerging discourse highlighting the imperative to divest draws parallels to the health care sector’s leadership in divesting from tobacco in the 1990s on the grounds of its health implications. Even before the current fossil fuel divestment movement and the …

“Knee High To A Grasshopper”: An Exploration Of Appalachian Youth, Family Communication Patterns, And Depression, Cori Howard

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis examined factors related to family communication and the prevalence of depression in Appalachian youth. Two quantitative studies were utilized to gather data. The first study tested the measures on Virginia college students to determine if family communication and depressive symptomology were related. Study two took place in one Virginia high school and one North Carolina high school that were identified to be in the Appalachian region. Utilizing a conformity orientation family communication style was positively correlated with depressive symptomology in both the college sample and in the Appalachian samples.

Achoo! Three Major Us Newspapers Reporting On The Flu Before And After H1n1, Philip A. Harris

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The flu is the most common and also the most preventable health risk and crisis in the United States. This research is a quantitative content analysis of flu coverage appearing in 102 articles from The Washington Post, USA Today, and The New York Times. It examines the differences in the coverage three years before and after the H1N1 pandemic and evaluates them for the use of fundamental constructs in health, risk, and crisis communication theories such as severity, susceptibility, efficacy, excuse, justification, intention, expertise, and trustworthiness. Most significant differences were found between excuse and justification as well as with …

A Tank Full Of Wishful Thinking: Crystallizing The Rhythms Of The Road, Leanna K. Smithberger

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis is a personal exploration of American car culture — the roads the enable it, the everyday actions that sustain it, and the values that justify it. I use a constellation of mobilities, autoethnography, and rhythmanalysis in order to generate a glimpse into the rhythm of our road-centered culture — how it shapes and constrains our lives in mundane and extraordinary ways, why it is largely taken for granted, and why it is so stubbornly persistent. I use a variety of artistic, evocative methods, including narrative, poetry, and music, because I argue that knowing is not enough — we …

Padded Assumptions: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Patriarchal Menstruation Discourse, Kathryn M. Lese

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

In 2015, Rupi Kaur’s photography project featuring a menstruating woman was censored on Instagram, a photo sharing social media platform. The menstruation censorship created a surge in public media discourse about what is and is not appropriate to discuss about menstruation. Menstruation communication is often discrete or invisible in dominant discourse and focuses of medicalization rather than the social norms of “performing menstruation”. This thesis explores menstruation communication in public media discourse and examines how it empowers and disempowers the menstruating female body. Themes including the everyday language of menstruation, patriarchal censorship of women’s bodies, shame and stigma in menstruation …

Discourses Of Madness And Me: Critical Examinations Of Western Discourses Of Madness And Psychiatry, Erin E. Casey

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

This paper is a critical examination of western medical paradigms alongside histories of psychiatry that argues for a culturally situated approach to mental health advocacy that maintains the importance of the physiological foundations of traditional biomedical approaches to disease. In doing so, I examine the discourses of madness, and society’s attempts to control and “fix” what is deemed “mad” through a historical lens. My position and critique utilizes a reflexive narrative process embracing my identities both as a consumer of mental health services and as an advocate for those with mental illnesses.