Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Exploring Coping Mediators Between Heterosexist Oppression And Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms Among Gay, Lesbian, And Bisexual Persons, Kyle M. Bandermann

Doctoral Dissertations

Recently, scholars have begun to advocate that categories of traumatic events be expanded to include experiences that do not meet the traditional diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as oppression. Our study builds on this work by examining experiences with two kinds of heterosexist oppression, one that meets the traditional diagnostic criteria for PTSD (i.e., sexual orientation-based hate crime victimization) and one that does not (i.e., heterosexist discrimination), as predictors of PTSD symptoms in a sample of 427 gay, lesbian and bisexual persons who responded to an online survey. In addition, we examined the mediating roles of coping …

Southie Versus Roxbury: Crime, Welfare, And The Racialized Gubernatorial Politics Of Massachusetts In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Daniel T. Kirsch

Doctoral Dissertations

Racial and ethnic divisions at the national level and their effects on politics take on an abstract character when not discussing specific communities. To obtain a reliable, consistent, and potentially reliable measure of a relationship, demographic information and voting behaviors at the small community, submetropolitan level must be examined in high-turnout, same-office elections over a protracted period, ideally in a polity with a penchant for racial tolerance. The political language of Boston has been mired in racialization since at least the Civil Rights era, particularly since the Boston anti-segregation busing crisis of the 1970s. While previous research has focused on …

Antigone Claimed, "I Am A Stranger": Democracy, Membership And Unauthorized Immigration, Andres Fabian Henao Castro

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation offers a new framework through which to theorize contemporary democratic practices by attending to the political agency of unauthorized immigrants. I argue that unauthorized immigrants themselves, by claiming their own ambiguous legal condition as a legitimate basis for public speech, are able to open up the boundaries of political membership and to render the foundations of democracy contingent, that is to say, they are able to reopen the question about who counts as a member of the demos. I develop this argument by way of a close reading of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone[1], which allows me to …

The Colonial Legacies Of “Fiesta Island”: A Critical Study Of Live-Music Events Production In Puerto Rico, Anilyn Diaz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the historical relationship between the state and national culture in Puerto Rico as seen through the case of the entertainment industry, specifically live-music events production. The dissertation is located within two bodies of literature: critical post-colonial cultural studies of cultural industries and cultural policy, and cultural approaches to scholarship on collective action and state-civil society relationships in neoliberal contexts. The research design includes archival work and analysis of organizational material, supported by a cultural ethnography approach to semi-structured informant interviews and group interviews. The interviews focus on the historical development, cultural legacies, and practices of the entertainment …

The Centrality Of Disagreement, Brian T. Connor

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation brings the philosophical writings of Jacques Rancière to sociology through the examination of women’s suffrage in the US from the late 18^th through mid 19^th century. The issue of equality takes center stage here, as Rancière’s politics is based on the alteration of symbolic categories of equal and unequal. The result is a sociological theory of politics that claims disagreement, not consensus, must be at the base of any democratic politics that broadly seeks equality. Women’s limited suffrage in New Jersey from 1776-1807, and the build up and proclamation of equality at the Seneca Falls Convention …

Cultivating Communities Of Practice To Develop Local Preparedness For Climate Change, Konda Reddy Chavva

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this research was to study the effectiveness of field facilitators’ (FFs) community of practice in improving ways in which FFs and farmers communicate and work together to strengthen farmers’ climate change preparedness through identifying locally suitable adaptation strategies in drought-prone districts of Andhra Pradesh State in India. In development initiatives like the one studied, FFs are often the key liaison person with each community—farmers in this case. FFs interact regularly with farmers, with whom they establish and sustain critical relationships over time. Further, they take the lead in building farmers’ capacities by contextualizing technical information that professionals …

Navigating Paid Work And Parenthood: New Parents’ Long-Term Employment Pathways In The United States, Irene Boeckmann

Doctoral Dissertations

Mothers have contributed disproportionately to women’s rising employment rates in the United States, and contemporary fathers spend more time caring for children compared to previous generations of men. Still, parenthood continues to shape women’s and men’s employment participation patterns in profoundly gendered ways. Changes and continuities in aggregate labor market participation patterns raise questions with regard to the variation in mothers’ and fathers’ employment participation, and in the ways in which different-sex couples organize engagement in paid work after they become parents. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this dissertation examine the variation in new parents’ long-term …

Conversations With The Community: An Ethnography Of Two Case Studies Highlighting Community-Research Partnerships In Springfield, Ma, Vanessa Martinez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is both qualitative and collaborative. It emphasizes the participant observation and ethnographic documentation of two community-researcher partnerships on community-level health interventions in Springfield, MA. Drawing upon critical theories and reflexive methods, I explore and analyze the process of building and sustaining researcher-community partnerships in an era of limited funding. Two Springfield, MA-based projects – one on healthy cooking/eating, and the other on contingency management – serve as case studies to provide a concrete picture of the complex relationships of researcher-community collaborations. I use ethnographic storytelling to provide a multi-dimensional look at two different community-research partnerships on health disparities …

Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma In U.S. War Fiction, Ruth A.H. Lahti

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the need to "world" our literary histories of U.S. war fiction, arguing that a transnational approach to this genre remaps on an enlarged scale the ethical implications of 20th and 21st century war writing. This study turns to representations of the human body to differently apprehend the ethical struggles of war fiction, thereby rethinking psychological and nationalist models of war trauma and developing a new method of reading the literature of war. To lay the ground for this analysis, I argue that the dominance of trauma theory in critical work on U.S. war fiction privileges the "authentic" …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Understanding Health Issues Among Adolescent Females In A Northeast Province Of Afghanistan, Amina Davlatshoeva

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to develop a deeper understanding of the health issues facing adolescent females (ages 18-21) in rural, northeastern Afghanistan. Incorporating participant observations, in-depth interviews, and narrative inquiries, this study seeks to illustrate adolescent females’ perspectives on health issues. To achieve this goal, ten adolescent females were interviewed in rural, northeastern Afghanistan during 2010. The participants were between 18- and 21-years old. The one-on-one interviews were conducted in a multiple-response format and were structured around three research questions:

• How does a young female’s understanding of health issues shape her identity in northeastern Afghanistan?
• In what ways …

Developing Spatial Reasoning Skills In General Chemistry Students, Deborah L. Carlisle

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of organic chemistry requires the understanding and use of spatial relationships, which can be challenging for many students. Prior research has shown that there is a need to develop students’ spatial reasoning skills. To that end, this study implemented guided activities designed to strengthen students’ spatial skills, with the aim of preparing students for organic chemistry and other future STEM courses. Students, taking the second semester of a two-semester general chemistry course, engaged in these activities. This study followed a quasi experimental design, in which the experimental (n = 209) and the control group (n = 212) were …

Examining The Process Of Identification In The Mathematics Classroom And The Role Of Students’ Academic Communities, Richard J. Robinson

Doctoral Dissertations

The primary purpose of this research was to provide insight into the identities students develop as they interact in a high school mathematics classroom. A normative divide developed which eventually split the classroom into two distinct academic factions: those who resisted the emerging local definition of what it meant to do mathematics and those who did not resist (i.e. complied or identified). A secondary purpose of this research was to understand the role of students’ academic communities in mathematics identity development. Student narratives helped uncover mathematical spaces outside the classroom that each developed their own unique definition of what it …

Five Dimensions Of Emerging Adulthood: A Comparison Between Students, Nonstudents, And College Graduates, Jennifer Renée Zorotovich

Doctoral Dissertations

U.S. census data suggests that young people today are entering marriage (U. S. Census Bureau, 2011) and parenthood (U. S. Census Bureau, 2012) later than young people in previous decades. Delayed trajectories have led researchers to reconsider the nature of development from adolescence to adulthood and has given way to the construct of emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2000a). Although this construct has been largely embraced by contemporary scholars, questions remain about the universality of emerging adulthood and whether or not it accurately captures the experiences of young people who do not pursue postsecondary education as well as those who have transitioned …

Peace Under Pressure: Portraits Of Christian Leadership In College Basketball Coaches, Charles Henry Wilson Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

NCAA Division I college basketball coaching is a high-stakes, high-reward profession. This study is based on three premises: (a) there is increasing pressure on college basketball coaches to win immediately and win consistently; (b) coaches are expected to maintain their integrity; (c) the pressure to win immediately and win consistently can influence some coaches to compromise their integrity. Given that context, the purpose of this study was to investigate and illuminate the lived experience of Christian head men’s and women’s basketball coaches at public, NCAA Division I institutions. This study was guided by two guiding research questions: (a) What is …

La Supervivencia Del Acompañado: Reflexiones Y Debates Sociológicos En Cuatro Novelas De Benito Pérez Galdós, Mariana Roxana Segovia

Doctoral Dissertations

Using the novel as a forum for debate, Galdós presents a whole array of intellectual themes that were of great interest in the latter part of the 1800s. One of the areas the famed Spanish novelist paid more attention to is that of sociology. This dissertation deals precisely with Galdós’s interest and participation in discussions about sociological matters -- for instance, social darwinism, anomie, and anarchy-- being carried out in Spain’s intellectual circles in his time. The term galdosismo social is introduced to refer to Galdós’s literary articulation of his sociological reflections about the formation of different communities structured inside …

Uncovering Latino Sex Trafficking In A New Destination Area: A Case Study, Lauren Kimberlee Copley

Doctoral Dissertations

The phenomenon of sex trafficking has gained significant public attention in the past few decades. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 was passed by the United States’ Congress to provide increased federal penalties and victim services to address what was perceived as a growing social and crime problem. Research has shown that law informs the way that sex trafficking is dealt with in the criminal justice and social service systems and the ways that the crime, victims, and offenders are constructed in these processes. We know very little about how sex trafficking works on the ground in specific cases, …

Agent Of Harm And Good Corporate Citizen? The Case Of Tyson Foods, Jennifer Lindmar Schally

Doctoral Dissertations

Industrial agriculture inflicts major harms on nonhuman animals, the environment and human health. How do agribusinesses culturally legitimize their harmful practices? Utilizing critical discourse analysis, I clarify the ways in which one large agribusiness, Tyson Foods, disguises their actions while at the same time presents the image of a benign, good corporate citizen. The discourses employed by Tyson gain legitimacy by drawing on and aligning with larger cultural discourses that are often taken for granted. This research, situated at the intersection of green and cultural criminologies, makes a contribution to these as well as to the burgeoning social harm approach …

Communities Of Abundance: Sociality, Sustainability, And The Solidarity Economies Of Local Food-Related Business Networks In Knoxville, Tennessee, Tony Nathan Vanwinkle

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the socio-economic and eco-political dimensions of contemporary localist food movements in Knoxville, Tennessee. More specifically, it explores the implications of the mutualistic and networked socio-economies (solidarity and/or community economies) of such movement expressions as they are experienced, embodied, and understood among the small-scale, independent food-related business owners who often serve as the interpellators of such movements. This study is likewise concerned with ways in which movement actors are actively shaping/creating place (via the processes of emplacement), and relatedly, the way place—as an entity possessive of its own accretions of environmental, historical, cultural, economic, and political identities—shapes actors, …

The Role Of Family In Wellbeing And Quality Of Life Among Palestinian Adults, Carolyn Reagh Spellings

Doctoral Dissertations

The family domain has been inadequately included in general discussions of wellbeing and quality of life. The omission of family influences from these discussions is particularly unfortunate given that families are the primary institution in which individuals come to know themselves in relation to others and their environment. Adequate attention to family is all the more important when studying political conflict given the span of forces associated with political conflict that might tax families. This dissertation used data from a recent project designed to understand the nature of wellbeing/ quality of life among Palestinians, focusing particularly on the role of …