Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …

What Street Harassment Means, Madison Davis

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper is exploratory research into how college-age women understand their experiences of street harassment. Street harassment is a normative experience for women living in patriarchal cultures, and is an intrusive experience faced regularly in public life. Women told their experiences as part of a narrative that changed over time as they aged from teens into college. Their experiences were not confined to the street, but experienced across public life, and women often carry the weight of harassment in silence. Women resign to the ongoing reality of harassment, and their experiences did not exist in a vacuum but a larger …

How Scholarship Programs Facilitate First-Generation College Students’ Involvement, Maria C. Restrepo Chavez

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

As a first-generation college student, I am interested in the on-campus involvement and experiences of other first-generation college students. First-generation college students are those whose parents did not receive a university degree and tend to come from low-income families. This project explores programs designed to support and enrich the experiences of such students. The Centennial Scholars Program at James Madison University and the Presidential Scholarship Initiative at Virginia Tech aim to increase the socio-economic diversity on each campus. These programs provide students with full funding for four years, mentorship, professional development and social benefits, among others. In turn, students become …

The Roles Of Race And Empathy On Contagious Yawning, Daroon M. Jalil

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Social Psychologists often consider race to be a marker of in-group or out-group status. When looking at race, implicit bias can take forms that are more subtle than outwards racism. Two research questions were asked in this study to better understand the psychology behind racial issues. The first question was if the number of contagious yawns (CY) a person experiences depends on the race of the stimuli being viewed. Contagiously yawning more to in-group members is a phenomena seen in chimpanzees, but has not been studied in humans in a racial context. Black and white males and females were recruited …

Queer University: An Ethnographic Case Study Of The Trans Student Experience Of College Campus Space, Madeline Johnson

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Operating from the premise that physical space becomes a gendered reality through social interaction, this study examines the social formation of self for gender nonconforming college students. Through ethnographic observations of an LGBTQ+ student organization and interviews with self-identified trans students, this research highlights the negotiation of campus space from a queer participant perspective. First, I present the trans student description of cisnormative space, the process of queering space through forming a queer community, and the experience of perceived safe space. This study finds that students experience all on-campus space as pervasively and fundamentally cisnormative, but upon the erasure of …

Teaching Hate In The Name Of Good, Constance A. Dorn

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Hate groups are often portrayed as the province of men. Yet wives have not only supported their husbands in these groups, they have had their own organizations. These groups proclaim that their goal is not the propagation of hate, but some higher purpose, such as protecting America from that which is un-American. The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) sought to preserve the memory of the Confederacy, through memorials, parades, and the teaching of catechisms to the children ensuring that the right history was conveyed. Among many things, the children were taught to hate Northerners. Later during the 1920s, many …

Playing With Others: The Community, Motivations, And Social Structures Of The Harrisonburg-Rockingham Concert Band, Sarah E. Wilson

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore motivations for participation, how social structures influence the adult non-professional members of the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Concert Band (HRCB), and identify the characteristics of community present in the band. The following questions framed the investigation within an interpretative phenomenological approach:

1. What motivates the band members to participate in the HRCB?
2. How do the institutional social structures influence the sense of belonging, development of social capital, and socialization of band members?
3. What characteristics of community are present within the HRCB?

Data was collected from long-term researcher observation and one-on-one semi-structured interviews with each participant. …

The Role Of Refugee Women Narratives In The U.S. Resettlement Process, Alys N. Sink

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Within resettlement scholarship, there exists a distinct absence of direct narratives by refugee women about their resettlement experiences within the United States. This absence of voice has even been noted by refugee women representatives during a 2013 UNHCR dialogue stating that: “We call for a model in which the State, the municipalities, NGOs and refugees work together to learn from each other, hear the voices from the grassroots and together develop comprehensive, coordinated and long-term responses” (Speaking for Ourselves: Hearing Refugee Voices, A Journey Towards Empowerment). This study delves into this absence of voice locally, investigating the ways in which …

Unboxing Magic: An Exploratory Ethnography Of A Collectible Card Game Discourse Community, Rodolfo Barrett

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This exploratory ethnography hopes to turn communication scholars’ attention to tabletop gaming communities and genres by presenting relevant theory and a pilot study on the community of Magic: The Gathering, the world’s most popular collectable card game. By approaching Magic’s gameplay as discursive action and its fandom as a discourse community, this thesis applies a critical genre lens to inclusivity issues in Magic as a microcosm of “geek” or gamer subcultures. A body of qualitative and quantitative data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with Magic players and ethnographic observations of both local weekly tournaments (Friday Night Magic events) in …

The Stories We Tell, Abigail A. Hoekstra

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure tells the story of Dorothy Allison as she comes to terms with her past and strives to move beyond it, to be empowered and embodied by it. In this short memoir, Allison explores the relationship she has with her mother and how that relationship has influenced her individuality and character, whose complacency has restricted Allison. Allison breaks away from the stories she has been told to tell a new story of abuse and disembodiment in which she finds love, and in turn, embodiment; the unification of her body and spirit. Story-telling and …

Addressing Islamophobia In Greene County, Virginia, Kayla Barker

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper provides a summary of a day-long seminar organized in a rural community following another local seminar endorsed by the community’s Sheriff concerning the “Muslim Threat.” The Sheriff’s event was held just days before the 2016 U.S. presidential election. During the campaign and in the aftermath of the election, many politicians employed anti-Muslim rhetoric. This seemed to bring to the surface many Islamophobic opinions of elected officials and their electorates which were grounded in fear and misinformation.

A report published by the Pew Research Center states, “Older Americans and those with relatively low levels of educational attainment…tend to be …