Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Chronic Inequities: Environmental & Structural Racism During Covid-19 And Hurricane Laura Disaster Recovery, Tomeka M. Robinson, Sabrina Singh

Critical Disaster Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the realities of systemic health inequities within the United States. While the virus has severely impacted the entire country, people of color bear the brunt of this pandemic, from surges of COVID-19 cases in their communities to spikes in unemployment rates. Simultaneously, citizens are dealing with the impacts of natural disasters such as hurricanes along the Gulf Coast. The common denominator concerning these two stressors is that they can be exacerbated by institutional racism. This can be seen in the case of a small city in Southwest Louisiana, namely, Lake Charles, which has become a …

Book Review: The Shaming State: How The U.S. Treats Citizens In Need, Steve Matthewman

Critical Disaster Studies

Salman’s book centers two different constituencies, in two different locations, in the 2010s, who have been impacted by two different disasters. The first group are Iraqi refugees who have been resettled in Wayne County, Michigan. Trying to start again over half a world away, they are trapped in the transit lounge of life, never able to move on, never able to properly belong. They found a state in recession, the automobile industry collapsing, the city of Detroit bankrupt. Their particular county had higher unemployment than the state’s average and a poor median income as well. Economically speaking, ‘Michigan fared worse …

Bridging Biological Systems With Social Behavior, Conservation, Decision Making, And Well-Being Through Hybrid Mathematical Modeling, Maggie Renee Sullens

Doctoral Dissertations

Mathematical modeling can achieve otherwise inaccessible insights into bio-logical questions. We use ODE (ordinary differential equations) and Game Theory models to demonstrate the breadth and power of these models by studying three very different biological questions, involving socio-behavioral and socio-economic systems, conservation biology, policy and decision making, and organismal homeostasis.

We adapt techniques from Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) epidemiological models to examine the mental well-being of a community facing the collapse of the industry on which it’s economically dependent. We consider the case study of a fishing community facing the extinction of its primary harvest species. Using an ODE framework with a …

The Opposite Of Subaltern Agency Is Not Agency, It’S Listening: Self-Guided Anti-Racism Investigation For Aspiring White Anti-Racists, Lauren Elaine Specht

Doctoral Dissertations

This research project examines the rhetorical relationship between oppressed and privileged communities, first to look at how oppressed communities can have more success in their outreach to change privileged points of view, then to examine that “success” of social advocacy is as bound up in the listener’s ability to hear as it is in the speaker’s ability to persuade and that the oppressed community is already using the most successful rhetorical tools available—privileged audiences are just not participating. To complete the first process, I used textual analysis to understand how an oppressed rhetor—represented by Toni Morrison—thinks of privileged perspectives in …

La Exploración Del Acceso Equitativo A La Atención Médica Para Los Hispanohablantes, Lauren Elizabeth Mcreynolds

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Interrogating Households In Anticipation Of Disasters: The Feminization Of Preparedness, Chika Watanabe, Celie Hanson

Critical Disaster Studies

It is now a maxim among scholars and policy-makers alike that disaster preparedness needs to involve community-based approaches in order to be effective. These include preparedness strategies in the household. But how do disaster preparedness policies and public discourses define “the household” in the first place? In this article, we explore how particular gendered notions of the household are reproduced in disaster preparedness policies and activities in Japan and the UK. Drawing on historical and cross-cultural analyses, we suggest that household preparedness efforts place the burden of labor on people coded as women—a phenomenon we call “the feminization of preparedness.” …

Domestic Violence Exposure And Legal System Involvement Experiences Of Young Adults: A Retrospective, Intersectional, Qualitative Study, Amie Kahovec

Doctoral Dissertations

Youth perspectives are missing from our understanding of the intersections between childhood interparental domestic violence exposure (CEDV) legal system interactions (e.g., law enforcement). To address this empirical and practical gap, this study applies intersectionality, theoretically and methodologically, to inform recruitment, data collection, and analysis of semi-structured interviews with 10 young adults with CEDV and subsequent legal system interactions. Intersectional multilevel analysis will guide the examination of how interlocking oppressive systems at multiple levels inform CEDV and legal system interaction experiences to inform empirically grounded recommendations for legal system providers, centering the needs and experiences of youth from historically and contemporarily …

Greenwashing “Brown Gold”: A Critical Analysis Of Anaerobic Digesters And California’S Neoliberal Environmental Programs In Wisconsin’S Dairyland, Sarah Emily D'Onofrio

Doctoral Dissertations

Large dairy farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), have turned to anaerobic digesters as the industry is increasingly pressured to find ways to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. Digesters are machines that turn animal waste from CAFOs into electricity and fuel which are then sold as “credits” in California’s market based climate change mitigation programs such as cap and trade and the low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) program. However, this dissertation not only challenges the assertion that digesters are “green,” but also that these programs are doing what they claim to do in a deregulated and re-regulated …

Ruinous Natures: The Approach Of Social Timespace, Thomas Frederick Bechtold

Doctoral Dissertations

This Dissertation advances across three areas: first, a theory of social timespace that borrows from critical social theories, post-ontological systems theory, and literary critique; second, it proposes a revisioning of sociological ‘methods’ by an historical reproachment: how sociology is a method among others for the study of society and culture, what are called variously the social sciences, and how sociology also has a method of its own developed in the work of the first sociological institutions in the United States, Germany, and France, that is parallel to linguistic structuralism in the same historical period and has mostly been advanced outside …

A Feminist Ethnography Of Care In The Infant/Toddler Classroom, Chesley Anne Sorrells

Doctoral Dissertations

In the neoliberal context of the Global North, early care and education (ECE) is a conceptually dichotomized and stratified field, with ‘care’ widely considered to be separate from - and lesser than - ‘education.’ Feminist perspectives challenge this dichotomization by reconceptualizing care as foundational to education, centering the historically feminized ideals of emotion, relationality, and interdependence. This three-part qualitative dissertation presents the findings of an 8-month feminist ethnography of care practices in one infant/toddler classroom. Participant observation and semi-structured teacher interviews were used to explore the following research questions: 1) What are teachers’ lived experiences of care in this early …

One Step At A Time; Union Organizing In The Public Sector South, Daniel Urquieta

Masters Theses

In October of 2000, a coalition of students and workers started a public sector labor union for higher education employees known as United Campus Workers at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. As a public sector union in Tennessee, United Campus Workers lacks the right to collectively bargain. By conducting interviews with union-related personnel and reflecting on my own time as a member, this paper explains the way the labor union has still won campaigns for higher pay and policy changes at UT-Knoxville within its legal context, and what union members and staff organizers make of their experiences. I conclude …

Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development: A Theoretical Reflection On Applied Work, Darcy A. Ayers

Masters Theses

This capstone is a “theoretically and experientially informed report” of the work I began as an AmeriCorps VISTA member in August 2021 and now do as Program Director for SEEED (Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development), a small Black-led nonprofit working to address racialized generational poverty in the communities of East Knoxville. The report serves as a record and reflection of my experience doing front-line anti-poverty work, primarily directing the flagship Career Readiness Program (CRP). I begin this report with a short recounting of the history of Knoxville’s urban development through a Black geographies lens and continue with a review of …

Where’S My Favorite Dictator? An Analysis Of The American Empire In Post-Revolution Egypt, Jeremy Alan Brill Booth

Masters Theses

In 2011, Egypt became the epicenter of a regional wave of uprisings demanding an end to corruption, inequality, and undemocratic governance. The Egyptian revolution marked the hopeful beginning of a democratization process. However, in 2013 a military coup by General Abdel Fatah El-Sisi deposed the elected president and ended Egypt’s democratic experiment (DeSmet 2021). Despite the deterioration in U.S.-Egypt relations during the Obama administration and the erosion of political freedoms and economic stability over the last decade, the Trump administration enthusiastically embraced El-Sisi’s regime. Did Trump's claim that El-Sisi was his “favorite dictator” signal a profound shift in American policy? …

Love On The Spectrum: Djuna Barnes’S Case Against Categorization In Nightwood, Kaitlyn A. Alford

Masters Theses

Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood is a challenging and beautiful text that continues to confound readers almost 100 years after its original publication. Though the text is often read as a “lesbian” novel, I consider the possibilities available when we read this text instead with a more open queerness in mind. By looking at the novel’s treatment of image, time, history, gender, sexuality, and identity, a new way of reading is revealed which rejects moves of taxonomization and categorization. This thesis explores how Barnes challenges dominant modes of representation and understanding, not to be a simple contrarian, but to present a new …

Segmenting The Thin Blue Line: An Ethnographic Content Analysis Of Myth And Ritual In Contemporary U.S. Police Film, Alexandra Szmutko

Doctoral Dissertations

The continued ills of mass incarceration, combined with the more recent rash of police-caused killings of people of color, make it clear that the U.S. criminal justice system is experiencing a period of profound crisis related to policing. This dissertation aims to interrogate the cultural ideologies supporting the existing policing enterprise in the U.S. To do this, the study first examines the foundational myths that shape prevailing cultural perceptions of the police and their social role. Ethnographic content analysis methodology is then utilized to identify both the presence and the subversion of these myths and their attendant rituals in a …

Indoctrination Into Hate: The Development Of Racial Neuroses Resulting From Racist Socialization Under White Supremacy, Aliya Kathryn Benabderrazak

Haslam Scholars Projects

Racial-ethnic socialization is critical to our unique and individual conceptualization of reality. This socialization occurs explicitly and implicitly across the lifespan and has significant implications for one’s behavior, social relationships, and ideological beliefs. Two of the most notable and impactful spheres in which racial-ethnic socialization occurs are within the family unit and schooling contexts. The treatment and teachings within these two spaces shape our social and psychological development. The first part of my project considers the neurosis of Whiteness as a psychological consequence of racist socialization within school settings and primarily White communities—as a macro example of the family unit—to …

Book Review: Under The Weather: Reimagining Mobility In The Climate Crisis., Raymond Murphy

Critical Disaster Studies

Under the Weather: Reimagining Mobility in the Climate Crisis is an insightful, important book that reports on a fine-grained investigation Sodero made of the consequences and response to the disasters resulting from Hurricane Juan in Nova Scotia in 2003 and Hurricane Igor in Newfoundland in 2010, with comparisons to Hurricane Sandy in New York, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the 1998 ice storm in northeastern North America and the Icelandic ash cloud. One original feature is the focus on mobility, how indispensable it is in modern societies, how it is disrupted by extreme weather, and …

Faith Influences On Health Of Rural Appalachian Older Adults In East Tennessee: An Ethnonursing Study, Karina Elizabeth Strange

Doctoral Dissertations

As the U.S. older adult population increases and diversifies, healthcare providers need innovative, cost-effective, and culturally congruent approaches to gerontological nursing care. Decades of multidisciplinary evidence demonstrate that spirituality enhances older adult holistic health. However, although research about spirituality and nursing has become more culturally diverse, little is known about spirituality-health linkages of rural Appalachian older adults (RAOAs). This knowledge gap is significant because Appalachia leads the country in mortality related to chronic comorbidities such as heart disease, cancer, and depression. Given age, poverty, limited transportation, and health provider shortage areas, RAOAs experience severe health disparities. Moreover, spirituality is an …

Purpose In Place: Discerning And Forefronting Forgotten Landscapes Using The Methodological Lens Of Augmented Reality, Lindy Westenhoff

Doctoral Dissertations

Augmented reality (AR) is an under-studied tool that deserves more academic attention and gaze. By using the built landscape as its point of orientation, but providing a virtual interface with which to engage, the augmented landscape serves as a departure of the traditional digital-physical divide. This realm raises questions regarding purpose and intention, but also has its own limitations and issues with dynamic, complex spaces that change frequently. Each chapter of this dissertation stands alone as a “part” – they connect, however, through the use of this technology to answer questions unique to their spaces.

Part 1 explores the relationship …

The Pride Ban On Police: Experiences Of Lgbtq+ With Policing In New York, Alista G. Brawner

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

A Field Guide To Foodways And Foraging In Southern Appalachia, Aeryn Lorraine Longuevan

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Examining Housing Experiences Among International Students At The University Of Tennessee, Knoxville (Utk), Rosemary Achentisa Ayelazuno

Masters Theses

As more students from across the world enrol in higher education to take advantage of the opportunities it offers, schools and universities are starting to address a problem that an increasing number of their students are experiencing, namely housing insecurity. With an increase in the number of students due to growing interest in higher education institutions, student housing has become a significant area of concern. More overseas graduate students are pursuing their degrees without regular access to their housing needs due to a lack of inexpensive and accessible housing, high tuition prices, and insufficient financial help. To better understand the …

Who Gave You Permission To Rearrange Me? Certainly Not Me: Examining The Racialized Nature Of Beauty Vis-A-Vis Colorism, Skin Bleaching, And Life Chance, Natasha P. Ellis

Doctoral Dissertations

Critical Race and legal scholars approach colorism as a mainstay of white supremacy. Scholars evaluate geographical consolidations of whiteness by examining white supremacy’s role in the formation of colorism and the relationship between how race leverages and regulates beauty. Colorism, also known as light supremacy, shadeism, pigmentocracy, shade stratification, and skin tone bias operate as racialized systems that stratify on the basis of complexion. Skin tone bias is a gendered, intra-racial prejudicial system implemented during slavery that prioritized whiteness. This dissertation examines how historically induced entities of racism and colonization racialize beauty and reinforce whiteness as a form of capital. …

Chilean Cinema In The 21st Century World (Review), James L. Richie Iv

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Intersectionality In Evaluating The Surveillance And Protest Politics Of The Movement For Black Lives (M4bl), Shaneda L. Destine

Sociology Publications and Other Works

This study analyzes the political challenges presented to Black women and queer activists affiliated with Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL). BLM is a Black liberation global network that developed in 2013 and expanded into M4BL in 2016 to include more grassroots organizations. Social movement scholars have not centered the intersectional goals of this Black women-led M4BL or confronted the white (back-) lash of the Trump’s administration’s Department of Justice’s use of federal law to further cis-heteropatriarchal white supremacy. The Movement began and developed due to the social media and protests in Ferguson, MO. However, …

For The Poor, It Was Just Friday: The Implicit Focus On Middle-Class Habitus In Conceptualizing Disaster, Amy Sorensen, Shelley Koch

Critical Disaster Studies

The importance of the academic study of disaster is in its potential application to policy and practice in times of dire circumstance and human suffering. In this paper, we situate the Covid-19 pandemic as an exemplar for an exploration of “disaster” using a framework that connects sociological theory and critical disaster studies. We use a Bourdieusian approach to situate the re-stabilization of the middle class habitus as implicitly central to disaster mitigation strategies. This theoretical approach illuminates the disconnect between critical disaster studies and on-the-ground disaster recovery approaches. It is this disconnect that leads to the disparate impact of disaster …

Mining Public Opinion On Covid-19 Vaccines Using Unstructured Social Media Data, Chad Aaron Melton

Doctoral Dissertations

The emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), and the necessary separation of populations led to an unprecedented number of new social media users seeking information related to the pandemic. Nowadays, with an estimated 4.5 billion users worldwide, social media data offer an opportunity for near real-time analysis of large bodies of text related to disease outbreaks and vaccination. This study investigated and compared public discourse related to COVID-19 vaccines expressed on two popular social media platforms, Reddit and Twitter. Approximately 9.5 million Tweets and 70 thousand Reddit comments were analyzed from dates January 1, 2020, to March 1, 2022, and …

Genealogy Tells: Informing Health And Aging Policies Using East Tennessean Older Women's Family Histories, Perceptions, And Experiences Of Health Inequity, Heather Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

Older women face unique health inequities challenges. This study aims to provide an understanding of older women’s perceptions and situated experiences regarding the gendered health inequities they face and the social determinants (SDH) thereof. It examines how these health inequities are situated in older women’s genealogical (familial) and geographical health and mortality outcomes histories and how their perceptions and experiences of health inequities and their familial mortality outcomes histories are characterized by the geopolitical and social norms in which they live. The purpose of this project is to present policy and decision-makers with insights about and recommendations from older women …

Ambivalent Sexism And Condom Use Self-Efficacy Amongst Men Who Bottom: A Serial Mediation Model, Elliott Nolan Devore

Doctoral Dissertations

The effects of gendered power dynamics between men and women during sexual encounters are well documented in the literature. Specifically, internalizing sexist beliefs about masculine dominance and feminine submission is related to worse sexual health outcomes. Less is known, however, about gendered power dynamics between men having sex. Those who engage in anal sex as the receptive partner (i.e., bottom) are feminized and shamed in various cultures, viewed as submissive, and may have internalized sexist beliefs and, thus, sexual role prejudice. Consequently, bottoms may feel less sexual autonomy, which influences their condom use self-efficacy. This is important given that bottoms …

A Phenomenological Exploration Of The Lived Experiences Of Second-Year African American Male Students On Predominantly White Campuses Through Critical Race Theory, Craig S. Pickett Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

Title: A Phenomenological Exploration of the Lived Experiences of Second-Year African American Male Students on Predominantly White Campuses through the Lens of Critical Race Theory

Abstract:

The critical nature of the first year has pushed thousands of colleges and universities across the United States to create intentional programs specifically for first-year students. Less understood are the experiences of students during their second year – a different and, at times, even more challenging period. Second-year students face a myriad of issues, including achieving competence, desiring autonomy, establishing identity, and developing purpose, with many experiencing a phenomenon called the sophomore slump. …