Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

How Patriotic Are Albanians? The Comparative Study Of Patriotic Attitudes In Albania And The Albanian Diaspora, Anxhela Spahiu

Master's Theses

In today’s post-modern digital world, patriotism may not be as prevalent as in the past. In this thesis, my principal aim is to investigate to what extent Albanians, a nationality to which I belong, identify with a patriotic attitude toward Albania. I chose to focus not only on Albanians who live in the diaspora, like myself, but also on Albanians who live in Albania. I believe that to understand national pride to its fullest, you must study the attitudes of those who live in the country of origin as well as of those who live in the diaspora. Many people …

Afro-Latinx Transnational Identities: Adults In The San Francisco Bay And Los Angeles Area, Koby Heramil

Master's Theses

This paper examines the identity construction of Afro-Latinas/os/x in the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles Area. Marginalized communities predominately Black and Latina/ o/x concentrated are at the epicenter of disenfranchisement caused by the globalization of neoliberalism. Neoliberal reforms to education restrain the various nuances of pluralistic teaching, focusing only on the performance of standardized tests thus pressuring schools to center their interest in securing funding. This has greater implications for low-income communities of color where multicultural pedagogy is limited. More importantly, this association of neoliberalism reforms to education affects Afro-Latinx individuals, because they are maligned in the conversation about …

An Examination Of Music Majors' Perceived Barriers To Complying With An Exercise Program, Matthew William Seitz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focused on a mixed-methods exploration of the barriers and motivation to exercise in a sample of music majors at a large southeastern university. Due to dietary concerns and other obstacles to engaging in regular exercise, musicians are at a greater dietary and cardiovascular risk than the general population. Previous research has revealed music majors, in general, do not identify as exercisers. This comes with its obvious health risks. Self-determination theory and exercise identity literature posits individuals who more strongly identify as exercisers and who are more intrinsically motivated to exercise will workout more often and more consistently than …

Activism, Not Passivism: Identity, Experience, And Emotion, Victoria Hallie Rose Webb

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Identities And Persistence Of Family Farm Operators, Parker T. Arnold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the identities of family farm operators and the challenges to maintaining viable farm operations in today’s agricultural economy. Employing a grounded qualitative approach, the author conducted 18 in-depth interviews with principal farm operators from Iowa and Tennessee. Using the insights of farmers from geographically different agricultural regions, this study notes how preserving family histories, socialization processes, and farming as a moral career inform operators’ understandings of themselves and the work they do. The analysis also focuses on how family farm operators contend with a globalized agricultural economy and the moral and ethical concerns of managing a …

Identity And Belonging: Documentation Status And Mexican-Origin Children: A Systematic Review, Alicia Bauers

Master of Social Work Clinical Research Papers

There is a growing body of literature on the ways in which legal status affects the lives of undocumented Mexican immigrants, yet very little is known about how their status impacts the well-being of their children. This systematic review was conducted to answer the research question, “According to the literature, how do the children of undocumented Mexican immigrants describe the impact of parental documentation status on their identity and sense of belonging?” Studies utilizing qualitative methods were emphasized to gain insight directly from the voices of the children themselves. Results from the review included perspectives from the 1.5 generation, second-generation …

An Exploration Of Dementia Friendly Communities From The Perspective Of Persons Living With Dementia, Catherine Hebert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The growing global prevalence of dementia coupled with a shift in public perception from a hopeless disease to the possibility of living well with dementia has led to the formation of dementia friendly communities (DFC). DFCs are a new phenomenon in the United States, with a gap in knowledge on input from people living with dementia (PLWD). This study investigated DFCs from the perspective of PLWD in Western North Carolina, with the following research questions:

1. How are interactions and relationships experienced by persons living with dementia in the community?
2. How is community engagement experienced by PLWD?
3. To what extent and …

Hunting For (Dis)Connections In Northern Ontario: "Nature," Wild Meat, And Community In Hearst, Daphné Gagnon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis follows a group of hunters in the town of Hearst in Northern Ontario, as they move through space—from the town, to the hunting ground, and back to the home. The analysis presented draws on research that took place over a six-month period during the summer and fall of 2016 and involved a combination of library research, participant observation, 28 interviews, and numerous informal conversations. The analysis presented explores how hunting in Hearst is linked to 1) a sense of place and community membership, 2) local knowledge of, and attachment to, the surrounding “natural” environment and the regional fauna, …

”Not Just Based On Land”: A Study On The Ethnic Tibetan Community In Toronto, Diyin Deng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Tibetan identity first emerged as “resistance” (Winland 2002; Scott 1990). The united pan-Tibetan identity did not originally resonate with the diverse group of ethnic minorities living on the Tibetan plateau until post-Chinese occupation. Then, all the groups saw the mutual benefit of adopting the united Tibetan identity against what they perceived as a greater threat to their culture and values. As such the initial Tibetan identity that is projected internationally was harnessed as a “weapon”(Bauman and Vecchi 2004:74) against homogenizing Chinese citizenship and was intimately intertwined with activism.

My research focuses on the formation of diasporic Tibetan identities within …

The Richness Of Food: A Zooarchaeological Analysis Of Huaca Santa Clara And Huaca Gallinazo, North Coast Of Peru, Arwen M. Johns

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis is a zooarchaeological study examining the entangled nature of human-animal relations within processes of food production, preparation, and consumption at Huaca Santa Clara and Huaca Gallinazo in the Virú Valley, North Coast of Peru. It assesses how the consumption of animal products influenced social differentiation and identities during early state development in the Early Intermediate Period (200B.C.E – 800 C.E.). This thesis takes a social zooarchaeological approach and utilizes the framework of relational ontology to emphasize the social and symbolic roles of animals. Faunal remains suggest that individuals at Huaca Santa Clara had comparatively equal access to animal …

Tracing Trajectories In A Community Of Practice Through Podcasts, Richard W. Mansikka

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to understand how humor works in expert-novice identity construction in podcasts. I employ a Community of Practice (Lave and Wenger, 1989) framework to examine the social hierarchy among the participants of a regular podcast. I am particularly concerned with uncovering how novice members construct themselves and are constructed by expert members through humor, as well as how expert members socialize novice members to participate in the kinds of humor practices that index membership in the Community of Practice (CoP).

Rooster Teeth is an internet-based entertainment production company. They produce a weekly podcast which they …

Genealogy Of The Concept Of "Hate Crime": The Cultural Implications Of Legal Innovation And Social Change, Roslyn Myers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The term "hate crime" is new to legislative and public discourse, as well as legal and social science scholarship. A decade after the concept of a "hate crime" was introduced in Congress, the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA), to punish criminal actors who target victims because of their characteristics (race, color ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, gender, gender identity, or disability). Using relevant archival sources, this project uses genealogical qualitative methods to examine the interplay of cultural elements manifested in this provocative term, which reflect dominance and subjugation among social groups (In- and Out-Groups) …

"I Am Not A Hijra": Transgender Women Claiming Citizenship In South India, Liz Mount

Dissertations - ALL

Through an 18-month ethnographic study conducted with hijras (gender non-conforming people assigned male at birth), newly emerging transwomen, and Dosti, a large NGO in Bangalore, India, this dissertation argues that transgender women claim citizenship by drawing distinct borders between themselves and hijras and positioning hijras as undeserving of the rights of citizenship, thus bolstering their own citizenship claims. This exploration of gender non-conforming people’s citizenship claims in the global South responds to a call for queer studies scholars to consider how citizenship operates among sexual and gender variant people in global South contexts (Richardson 2017). While the identity rubric of …

Language As Function Or Fashion? Multilingual Identity Formation Through Korean Language Learning, Hannah C. Cho

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research examines identity in relation to the Korean language learning experiences of non-Korean and ethnic Korean learners. Based on participant observation and interviews done in Toronto and an international online survey, I use a language-ideological perspective to look at why and how people choose to learn (or not learn) a particular language. Specifically, I analyze how nationalist, functionalist and cosmopolitan language ideologies position learners in various ways and in turn, affect their sense of ethnic, cultural and other forms of identity. I show how these ideologies are interrelated and have different effects on how the identities of non-Koreans and …

Native Roots And Foreign Grafts: The Spiritual Quest Of Uchimura Kanzō, Christopher Andrew Born

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Between 1875 and 1890, Japanese academics, writers, legal experts, and intellectuals discussed and debated a host of new ideas and programs in the rapidly-expanding national media. Of great consequence were the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education and the Meiji Constitution. The first sought to establish a strong nativist basis for a Japanese identity under the aegis of an imperial hegemon. The second sought to create a structure for modern citizenship based on Western notions of law and social contract. These seemingly antithetical documents came to symbolize the problematical status of the individual in Meiji Japan. They would become the touchstone …

Identity Through Clothing: Argentinian Vs. American Women, Magali Farfan

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

According to Roach-Higgins, Eicher, and Johnson (1995), “individuals acquire identity through social, physical, and biological settings” (pg.12). When acquiring identity, culture plays a vital role. Because of numerous influences on identity, a conflict exists for those who identify with more than one culture. This study focuses specifically on the problems of women who identify both as Argentinian and American. The purpose of this creative project was to create an outfit that could be worn by an Argentinian/American woman in the presence of family and friends, regardless of culture, and not feel that she is disregarding societal norms of either culture. …

Hypermasculine, Antifeminine: The Role Of Masculine Identity In Relational Aggression Among Gay Men, Daniel Locke Deason

Dissertations

Relational aggression is a form of aggression that targets a victim’s relationships or sense of inclusion. Depression, social ostracism, anxiety, and poor psychological adjustment are some of the negative correlates that have been identified in child and adolescent victims of relational aggression. For older adolescents and emerging adults, similar negative correlates have been found. Despite the efforts to identify these correlates, little research has been conducted on relational aggression among minority groups. The present study addressed relational aggression among college-aged gay-identifying men through the lens of Exclusively Masculine Identity Theory (EMIT), which was developed to account for anti-gay attitudes among …

Intensifiers And The Construction Of Identity In New Mexican English, Frances Jones

Linguistics ETDs

In traditional sociolinguistic analyses, one or more linguistic variables are examined in terms of their correlation with broad social categories, such as gender or ethnicity. If a correlation is found, it can be argued that the variable is indexical of the speaker’s membership within the relevant social category (Labov 1972, 2001; Mesthrie et al 2000; Tagliamonte 2005, 2008). The use of intensifiers in English is one linguistic variable which has been extensively analyzed in terms of its variation in multiple populations, with noted differences in intensifier use between male and female speakers, older and younger speakers, and speakers in different …

Becoming Ghosts: The Public Veiling Of Puerto Ricans In New York City, Samantha Pina Saghera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years Puerto Ricans in New York City have become difficult to locate in the public realm. This is a paradox given that Puerto Ricans make up the largest Hispanic subgroup in the larger metropolitan region. This study examines how, when, and why Puerto Ricans became publicly invisible in New York City.

Demographic, media-based, political, and cultural changes have all contributed to the decline in Puerto Rican ethnic visibility. The consequence is that although Puerto Ricans continue to be racialized (as evidenced by their socioeconomic indicators), their racialization cannot be seen in the public realm. Instead, Hispanic characteristics are …

Hawaiian History: The Dispossession Of Native Hawaiians' Identity, And Their Struggle For Sovereignty, Megan Medeiros

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In Hawaiian History: The Dispossession of Native Hawaiians’ Identity and Their Struggle for Sovereignty, three of the Western constructed narratives of Hawai’i are identified and juxtaposed with Hawai’i’s historical facts taken primarily from the late 1800s through the mid 1900s. These Western narratives contribute to an identity crisis experienced by Native Hawaiians during a time when their culture was almost lost, due to the colonial powers assimilating Hawai’i to America. An account of the historical events of the Kingdom of Hawai’i is then reviewed, which includes the diplomatic moves of the Hawaiian monarchs, the changes in the statuses of the …

Food And Negotiation Of Identity Among The Russian Immigrant Community Of Brighton Beach, Elena Starkova

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the construction of ethnic identity among Russian immigrants in New York, by examining how it has been negotiated and articulated through foods, including traditional and non-native foods as a vehicle for their shifting identities and for reaffirming their position and participation in mainstream American society.

How Native American Rappers Communicate And Create A Modern Identity, Hannah J. Berge

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Current research concerning identity and Native Americans is sparse outside the realm of expressly Native American scholarship. While most conversations about identity and Native Americans focuses on historical and political aspects, many sources do not explore alternative avenues of contemporary identity creation. This thesis uses Kenneth Burke’s pentad to analyze the lyrics for “AbOriginal” by Frank Waln. The pentad is used to analyze each line of the rap. A new term, alter-agent, is used to identify agents who the agent either associates with or who the agent views as hindering his progress. There is then a count of the number …

Sacred Shame: Integrating Spirituality And Sexuality, Alyssa J. Haggerty

Master of Social Work Clinical Research Papers

Literature shows that many LGBTQ individuals believe that they must deny or hide their sexual identities and conform to a hetero-dominant lifestyle that often results in shame, denial of self, depression, anxiety, isolation, addiction, and abandonment of spirituality. This qualitative research study explored how LGBTQ individuals raised in non-affirming Christian traditions integrated their spiritual and sexual identities by in-person interviews with seven participants. Findings support previous research, and although the researcher was well aware of the nuances of this topic, an unexpected finding related to the complexity of gender identity and sexual orientation also surfaced. Practice implications include development of …

Somos España: Building A New Spanish Identity, Lakelyn Taylor

Honors Theses

Establishing an identity is inherent to all individuals and communities. Sometimes creating an identity must be taken a step further by reconstructing a pre-existing identity in exchange for a more favorable one. Spain is currently undergoing a process to reconstruct part of their identity from being a nation with a lazy culture to one that is more progressive. Some Spanish rhetoricians perceive the best way to change Spain’s identity is to eliminate the tradition of siesta time. This study examines the rhetoric that agents utilize in order to create an audience that will help to rhetorically construct Spain’s new identity. …

Creating A Multiracial Lesson Plan, Clayton Davis

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The purpose of this project is to teach students about multiracial identity issues. Multiracial populations in the U.S. continue to grow and it’s important for educators to address the needs of these students. A 5-E multiracial literature lesson plan was created for second grade that incorporates KWL and Text-to-World teaching strategies. A second grade class were read two children’s picture books, each featuring a biracial protagonist, and were asked to discuss and evaluate the content and commonalities of these stories. Students recorded what they learned in this lesson in their KWL’s. The results reveal that some students understood the problems …

Supporting Women Veterans: Transitioning From Military Life To University Life, Kristen M. Zellers

Undergraduate Theses

Many researchers have analyzed the various adversities that women servicemembers/veterans face in the military, upon reintegration into society, and upon transition into a university setting. These researchers suggest that women veterans experience an identity crisis throughout those three stages of their military career and future plans (Baechtold & DeSawal, 2009; Heineman, 2016; Women Warriors, 2011). What the research lacks is a more in-depth analysis of the women’s experiences and a look into how prevalent identity crises are among female veterans. The present study analyzed these ideas. Student women veterans (N = 9) from three different universities in the Mid-Western …

Impact Of Cybvervetting On Job Seekers' Social Media Use And Identity Creation, Courtney Powers

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Social media has become an integral part of connecting with others and sharing personal information. As more individuals use social media to express themselves, organizations have begun using these same sites to make hiring decisions in a process called cybervetting. Although some researchers suggest that cybervetting has consequences for self-expression, currently little research has explored how cybervetting impacts job seekers’ social media use and identity creation. Accordingly, this study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to explore how cybervetting impacts job seekers’ social media use and online identity creation. By surveying job-seeking social media users, this study measures the relationships between …

The Sin Of Skin: Color And ‘Other’ In The Greco-Roman World, Grace Gill

Senior Theses and Projects

Many Scholars have denied the presence of racial categorizing in European Antiquity. Though there was no institutionalized system of ‘racial oppression’ like we are familiar with in today’s society, I contend that there are cultural precursors of ‘race’ in the Greco-Roman world, otherwise known as ‘proto-race’. All societies have means to categorize people and put them into hierarchies - this is a major focus in the field of sociology. I propose that color-symbolic language was used to make distinctions amongst and between people; further that by analyzing the context within which these ‘color- words’ were referenced, it illuminates the importance …

Drama For Social Justice: Embodying Identity And Emotion In Elt, Riah Werner

MA TESOL Collection

In this thesis, the author makes the case that drama is a powerful tool for language acquisition because it develops and engages embodiment, emotion and identity, important aspects of learning and communication that are often neglected in traditional language classrooms. The thesis establishes a theoretical foundation for the use of drama in the social justice-oriented language classroom, reviews research on drama for language learning and describes common drama techniques. The author connects the theories of embodied cognition and multiliteracies to an intersectional model of identity and argues that drama helps students re-examine the way society positions them based on their …

Open Mic: A Documentary Film Exploring Humorous Narratives, Ryan T. Cashman

Theses and Dissertations

This documentary investigates hardship and identity through humor. The film shadows the lives of three individuals who are all going through a watershed experience with their identities ranging from changes in their family dynamics, gender, or environment. Participants will be writing and performing a stand-up routine in front of a live audience that focuses on a story about their identity. The film underscores how, or if, the sender’s use of humor helps them cope or achieve closure. The film does not explore the audience’s reaction to humor. Using in-depth interviews with each comic, the film centers around the sender, highlighting …