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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Lgbtq+ Divergent Paths In Utah: Identity And Space-Making Practices In Queer And Religious Spaces, Taliah C. Mortensen Oct 2022

Lgbtq+ Divergent Paths In Utah: Identity And Space-Making Practices In Queer And Religious Spaces, Taliah C. Mortensen

Masters Theses

This research explores the unique and divergent experiences of LGBTQ+ young adults as they engage in identity and space-making practices at the intersection of gender/sexuality and religion. Utilizing queer theorists’ conceptualization of identity as a form of embodied and spatial labor, I critique the approach of existing scholarship that constructs LGBTQ+ and religious identities as incompatible or at least in need of reconciliation. Based on thirteen semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ young adults in Utah, my research makes visible how vulnerability and risk impact the strategies that LGBTQ+ young adults employ to navigate their identities and make space. It shows that …


Asian American Heritage Seeking: Personal Narrative Performances Of Ancestral Return, Porntip Israsena Twishime Jul 2018

Asian American Heritage Seeking: Personal Narrative Performances Of Ancestral Return, Porntip Israsena Twishime

Masters Theses

Asian American belongings, migration patterns, and transnational identities are largely constructed in the United States as static, unidirectional, and invisible. Asian Americans complicate these constructions through the practice of ancestral return. In this thesis, “ancestral return” is constituted through one’s participation in a university study abroad program to a specific place to where one traces her heritage. I use “return” not necessarily to account for a form of reverse migration; rather “return” here names the multiple, sometimes contradictory kinds of return, including “return” to a place that one has not yet been. This project examines how Asian American identities are …


Infants' Agent Individuation: It's What's On The Inside That Counts, Hernando Taborda Jul 2015

Infants' Agent Individuation: It's What's On The Inside That Counts, Hernando Taborda

Masters Theses

Developmental studies have revealed that preschool-aged children believe that an agent’s internal properties are more important than its external properties for determining its identity over time. The current study examined the developmental origins of this understanding using a manual-search individuation task with 13-month-old infants. Subjects observed semi-transparent objects that looked and behaved like animate agents placed into box that they could reach but not see into. Across trials infants observed objects with either the same- or different-colored insides placed into the box. We found that infants used internal property differences more than external property differences to determine how many agents …


Beauty Through Control: Forming Pro-Anorexic Identities In Digital Spaces, Kay A.S. Mccurley Nov 2014

Beauty Through Control: Forming Pro-Anorexic Identities In Digital Spaces, Kay A.S. Mccurley

Masters Theses

Pro-anorexia is a complex, multi-layered phenomenon that exists only online. The women who participate in these websites are learning to negotiate how to manage an identity that is normalized within the group but stigmatized within larger society. Using an open-ended survey, distributed online directly to pro-ana website users, I aim to illustrate pro-anorexic experience. After a brief demographic sketch of typical pro-anorexic spaces, I examine pro-anorexia in depth by asking three primary research questions: 1) how do pro-anorexics craft their online identities within the community; 2) how do individuals interact with one another in a highly contested and heavily policed …