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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Contemporary Environmental Art: The Multidimensional Relationship Between Black Communities And The American Landscape, Sophia Perkins Apr 2023

Contemporary Environmental Art: The Multidimensional Relationship Between Black Communities And The American Landscape, Sophia Perkins

Honors Theses

Contemporary environmental art can be inspired by personal experience and reflections between the artist and their surroundings. Black women have a unique interaction with and relation to their environment. I would like to unpack the relationships between Black women and the environment by exploring a few different artists’ work, and by dissecting the effects race and gender have on one’s view of the natural world. I have studied the work of four artists: Torkwase Dyson, Allison Jane Hamilton, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Calida Garcia Rawles. Environmentally, I have a specific interest in bodies of water / Black waterways because of …


Balancing Act: When Gender And Media Collide In Sports, Kimberly Friedman Mar 2021

Balancing Act: When Gender And Media Collide In Sports, Kimberly Friedman

LSU Master's Theses

Women’s Gymnastics is one of the most popular events at the Summer Olympic Games and media coverage of the team provides a unique perspective on women’s athletics, as gymnastics is traditionally considered a feminine sport. Utilizing a discourse analysis, this thesis examines the newspaper coverage received by the team in the last 25 years. This thesis explores the narratives regarding gender within the coverage and additionally explores how abuse narratives were discussed in news media throughout theses years. This research shows that how female gymnasts are discussed is growing in type of coverage received, meaning that how female gymnastics is …


Night Of The Witch: Alternative Spirituality, Identity And Media, Andreana Tarleton Apr 2020

Night Of The Witch: Alternative Spirituality, Identity And Media, Andreana Tarleton

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis works to understand the relationships witches and conjurors have with the film and television depictions of them. Employing the method of film critique, I argue that the witch stands as a cultural symbol in the US of women and femmes with power, and that their stories serve as lessons to these populations about what it means to be an acceptable woman or femme, while simultaneously creating and perpetuating stereotypes of magic practitioners. Then, using the combination of hashtag ethnography, in-person and video interviewing and internet surveys, I argue that #witchblr and #witchesofcolor, as well as the space of …


The Choreo-Story Workshops: Devising Body Narratives, Montana J. Smith Mar 2020

The Choreo-Story Workshops: Devising Body Narratives, Montana J. Smith

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This multi-methodological project analyzes the utility of the proposed performance method, the Choreo-Story, within the field of Performance Studies. The Choreo-Story is a movement-based performance method, mode of devising, and performance product. It is a performance tool that can be used to understand how embodiment and dance help individuals make sense of the many identities they perform. This method highlights the body as both a text and tool for storytelling. To analyze the Choreo-Story method, I use Kenneth Burke’s Dramatistic Approach to examine three performance acts that occurred in the HopKins Black Box theatre between 2016 and 2018: my …


Long-Term Impact Of Welfare Reform: Biopsychosocial Barriers To Successful Transition Away From Welfare Reliance Among Rural Women In Louisiana, Jake Jerome Guidry Mar 2020

Long-Term Impact Of Welfare Reform: Biopsychosocial Barriers To Successful Transition Away From Welfare Reliance Among Rural Women In Louisiana, Jake Jerome Guidry

LSU Master's Theses

The discussion regarding government benefits and reliance on welfare benefits is one that takes place in arenas of policymaking and academia alike. These discussions often focus on poverty that exists in densely populated metropolitan areas, resulting in a scarcity of research regarding unique characteristics of rural poverty. Eighty-four rural Louisiana women participated in a longitudinal study of the impacts of welfare reform in their lives. Twenty years later, two (N = 2) rural Louisiana women, each former welfare recipients, participated in an in-depth qualitative case study examining their transition away from welfare programs. Data show that neither woman was …


Ageism And Embodied Stereotypes: A Study Of Adult Learners In Community College At Midlife, Marla Jane Erwin Jan 2020

Ageism And Embodied Stereotypes: A Study Of Adult Learners In Community College At Midlife, Marla Jane Erwin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Adult students are generally classified as a single group for study, yet developmental psychologists recognize separate developmental periods during adulthood that suggest adult students at midlife may experience development within higher education differently that younger adult students, in part due to ageism expressed at individual, institutional and internalized levels. This project applies the concept of lifespan developmental periods to distinguish students at midlife as a focus of inquiry using a mixed method design. Twenty-nine faculty and 205 students responded to the Relating to Older People Evalution (ROPE; Cherry & Palmore, 2008) to assess self-reports of both positive and negative ageist …


"La Llorona": Evolución, Ideología Y Uso En El Mundo Hispano, Raquel Sáenz-Llano Mar 2019

"La Llorona": Evolución, Ideología Y Uso En El Mundo Hispano, Raquel Sáenz-Llano

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis studies the evolution, ideology and use of the myth of La Llorona through time in the Hispanic World. Considering this myth as one of the most known traditional narratives of the American continent, I begin by providing visual, ethnohistorical and ethnographical insights of weeping in Mesoamerica and South America and the specific mention of a weeping woman in some Spanish chronicles to say how western values were stablished in “the new continent” through this legend. I suggest that during the postcolonialism the legend did not tell anymore about a mother that cries and search a place for their …


An Archive Of Pain: In Queer Suicide's Cultural Wake, Evan Schares Mar 2019

An Archive Of Pain: In Queer Suicide's Cultural Wake, Evan Schares

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue that queer death is a chief site of political struggle over gender, race, and sexuality in contemporary culture. I consider myriad archives in the aftermath of three queer suicides, an aggregate of discourses I call cultural wakes, to examine how white affective investments circulate around the forces of racism, sexism, and citizenship. I place in situ the trauma of queer pain and loss against the global backdrop of public emotionality.


Producing "Fabulous": Commodification And Ethnicity In Hair Braiding Salons, Sylviane Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword Nov 2017

Producing "Fabulous": Commodification And Ethnicity In Hair Braiding Salons, Sylviane Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Black women wearing fabulous braids are a striking feature of the Afro-diasporic cultural landscape. However, the braiders and salon owners who enable this aesthetic engineering are seldom acknowledged. This dissertation investigates the experience and role of Caribbean and West and Central African women in the hair braiding industry, a rapidly growing business in the U.S. I address the complexity of these women’s multiple social roles and the multiple consciousness (King, 1988) associated with their demographic characteristics (color, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and immigrant status). The commonalities between the braiders and their mostly African American customers contrast vividly with their perception of …