Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Fight The Dead, Fear The Living: Post-Apocalyptic Narratives Of Fear, Governance And Social Control, Samantha Lynn Kolpin

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Post-apocalyptic narratives and themes have become increasingly popular in film, television and graphic novels. By imagining a society without the state, post-apocalyptic narratives are able to explore concerns about current forms of governance and social control. The post-apocalyptic narrative is particularly relevant in a post-9/11 society where public concerns about security and governance are prominent. In this study, I examined the potential allegorical function of the zombie narrative found in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. Specifically, this project involves an ethnographic content analysis of issues 1-100 of The Walking Dead graphic novel series. Analysis focused on the allegorical purposes of …

Policing Diversity With Diversity: Exploring Organizational Rhetoric, Myth, And Minority Police Officers' Perceptions And Experiences, Justin K. Szeto

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Police services are responding to the current realities of diversity. Specifically, police services attempt to adopt diversity policies, initiatives, and practices as a way to reflect community representation. The present study examines how minority police officers’ perceive and experience organizational diversity. While diversity is a broad term encompassing such variables as race, sex and sexual orientation, the present study focuses primarily on racial diversity. Through in-depth interviews with 12 Canadian police officers and 1 diversity trainer, as well as descriptive statistical data pertaining to the last 15 years of recruitment trends, the perceptions held by participants suggest that police services …

A Heart-Based Sufi Mindfulness Spiritual Practice Employing Self-Journeying, Faruk Arslan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Spiritual Psychology is the study and practice of the art and science of the human evolution of consciousness. The heart occupies an important place in Sufism and is considered to contain the divine spark that leads to spiritual realization. Fethullah Gülen’s action-oriented Sufi methods described in his book series “The Emerald Hills of the Heart” provides the basis for a heart-based therapeutic intervention through self-journeying, which is the objective of this thesis. These self-purification and mindfulness-related transpersonal methods generate a form of treatment that is culturally sensitive. Through my reflections in this research, I transformed my personal experiences into …

Pro-Anorexia/Bulimia Interactions Online: Problematizing Complex Cultural Phenomena, Nicole D. Schott

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In the West, and increasingly globally, individuals, particularly women, are fixated on weight loss, driven by the goal of achieving a culturally-desired, and aggressively marketed, "skinny" female physique. There are online forums where individuals refer to themselves or their eating disorders as "pro-ana" and "pro-mia". Individuals who post on these sites both align with, and challenge, what medical and mental health professionals define as serious mental health problems that result in severe, sometimes fatal, medical complications. This thesis specifically focuses on interactions with, and within, the pro-ana/mia culture on the social media websites Tumblr and YouTube. Over sixteen months, and …

Juror Perceptions Of Eyewitness Identification Evidence, Timothy G. Wykes

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Jurors rely on eyewitness testimony in deciding a defendant’s guilt or innocence. Archival analyses of hundreds of post-conviction DNA exonerations have identified eyewitness misidentification as the highest individual factor contributing to wrongful convictions (Innocence Project, 2014). Internationally, criminal justice systems have employed procedural safeguards (PSs) to educate juries on factors affecting eyewitness identification accuracy. Two such safeguards include the introduction of eyewitness expert testimony during trial proceedings and the reading of cautionary instructions by a presiding judge. In an independent factorial design, this research sought to examine the effects of a model judicial caution drafted by the Ontario Judicial Council …

Youth's Comprehension Of Environmental Justice Across Multiple Countries, Alexa L. Stovold

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Global climate change is an issue of environmental justice, because neither contributions toward the causes nor its consequences are equally distributed across and within countries (Roberts, 2001). Given the importance of framing climate change as an environmental justice issue, the present study sought to understand how youth conceptualize and engage with environmental justice across multiple countries. Youth are an important target population for engagement, because they often are active agents of social change by challenging the status-quo, and becoming civically engaged (Blythe & Harré, 2012; De Vreede, Warner & Pitter, 2014; United Nations, 2004).

The current research is a secondary …