Social Justice Commons^™

Victim Or Villain: Female Resilience And Agency In The Face Of Trauma In Chimamanda Adichie’S, Purple Hibiscus (2003) And Tsitsi Dangarembga’S, Nervous Conditions (1988), Adaobi Juliet Chukwuma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As long as disparities persist in the way women are treated as compared to their male counterparts, the issue of gender will continue to call forth literary productions. For this reason, female writers are on a mission to dismantle the stereotypes that keep women confined to societal roles. Grounded in a feminist framework, this study focuses on the gender disparity theme in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions. The aim is to examine how these writers represent the trauma of women living in an African patriarchal system. The traumatic experiences of the female characters in both texts …

Their Country: Black Women, Three Chords, And The Truth, Dmetri J. Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Country music has long overlooked and at times outright erased the contributions of people of African descent. The past and present contributions of Black women are particularly ignored. Country music— a racially contested space centered in Nashville, Tennessee— is imbued with themes referencing the “good ole days” that were dangerous times for anyone who was not White, male, cisgender, and heterosexual. The genre has only become slightly more welcoming to those who are not part of the dominant class. And yet, there are Black women who feel called to use country music as their storytelling medium. My research shows …

Negative Psychology Of Anti-Semitism: Fear Of The Uncategorizable, Benjamin Strosberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anti-Semitism is a pervasive global issue, particularly prominent in the United States. Studying and defining anti-Semitism prove remarkably challenging for scholars, leading to inadequate understanding and exclusion from contemporary academic discourse and social justice initiatives. In this dissertation, I made the case that anti-Semitism is hard to categorize, stemming, in part, from the difficulty in categorizing what it is to be Jewish, which seems to be multi-form (a figure of thought, a race, an ethnicity, a religion, a nation, none of the above). In thinking about the difficulty in categorization, I constellated various instances of anti-Jewish practices across historical epochs …

Middle Savannah River: An A/R/Tographic Ecopedagogical Ethnography Experimenting With Rhizomatic Perspectives, Lisa Augustine-Chizmar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is an experiment in perspective. Using the four commonplaces (Schwab, 1978), I practiced letting the Savannah River teach me what there is to know about the water, the land, the people, and the other entities that depend on ki through artistic, ethnographic, and ecopedagogical lenses. The ethnographic findings describe the social actors that depend on ki and give a voice to the River. The a/r/tographic findings display the River on a canvas map through two hundred years using paint, clay, photography, video, abstract acrylics, and fabric. Together, these methods contribute to a unique ecopedagogical journey. This word cloud …

A Frayed Edge: A Qualitative And Poetic Inquiry Analysis Of White Antiracist Protest In 2020, Emily Katt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This multiphasic study explored the narratives of five first-time Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrating during the historic confluence of conflicts in 2020 America. After positioning the liminal 2020 circumstances within an antiracist research lens, the author analyzed, first through grounded theory and then secondarily through poetic inquiry, how these five participants described their protest experiences. The grounded theory phase yielded an overarching theory that first-time protestors experienced a dual process of unsuturing and of calling-out, with three subthemes categorized within each of these two processes. The author moved into analysis with the poetic inquiry phase, crafting poems guided by six …

La Casita Center: An Accompaniment Based Approach To Social Justice And Social Service., Ben Harlan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

La Casita Center is a Louisville based nonprofit organization that accompanies Latinx immigrants in the Louisville Metro area. and that is led and staffed by Latina immigrants. In this thesis, I investigate how employees of this Latinx-immigrant led nonprofit organization, navigate challenges to both administer service and build community using the model of accompaniment. Organizations like La Casita are critically important for Latinx newcomer communities in the United States and as neoliberal and nativist-inspired policiescontinue to oppress and marginalize, La Casita provides a model for what it means to center inclusion, belonging, community, and solidarity. In a global landscape of …

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …

Home/Sick, Elizabeth P. Fontenot

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is a supporting document that discusses the conceptual and technical aspects of the artworks in the accompanying exhibition, HOME/SICK. The work in the exhibition consists of selections from different series of work that are inspired by related subject matter. The content driving the work responds to anecdotal experiences of people living in communities near oil refineries and chemical processing plants and how events at these facilities affect their way of life. Many times, these are communities of color which strive to voice concerns and protect homes from harmful toxins. In one series, original and appropriated imagery serves as …

Corporate Social Advocacy On The Blm Movement: A Content Analysis Of Corporate Responses Via Instagram, Oromidayo Racheal Tunji-Ajayi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Black Lives Matter (BLM) has been a concern in the US since 2013, thereby becoming an increasing interest. Several US corporations’ attention has been drawn to BLM due to its radical strategy on social media to facilitate engagements. Research shows that a company's engagement in activism by taking a stance on socio-political issues often records growth. Also, scholars have focused on corporate responses to BLM through the lenses of the implications or intentions of the brand’s engagement. This study, however, analyzes 236 corporate Instagram BLM posts through the lenses of the attributes of their responses. It is assumed that brand …