Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Sociology Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Sociology

Roots Of Prejudice: The Influence That Western Standards Of Secularism Have On The Perceived (In)Compatability Of Islam With The Western World, Rula Issa Dec 2017

Roots Of Prejudice: The Influence That Western Standards Of Secularism Have On The Perceived (In)Compatability Of Islam With The Western World, Rula Issa

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

The increase in Muslims entering Western nations in the last few years has sparked a rise in Islamophobia as well as controversy about the role of secularism in the modern nation-state when it is used to justify prejudice and discrimination against Muslims. Most of the literature on Islamophobia focuses on Western Europe. This study examines the relationship between Islamophobia and secularism in the United States. The United States frames secularization as separation of church and state. Analyzing data from the 2011 Pluralism-Immigration-&-Civic-Integration survey that samples 2450 people 18 and older reveals that controlling for age and being Roman Catholic, the …


Gettysburg Social Sciences Review Fall 2017 Dec 2017

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review Fall 2017

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

No abstract provided.


Harriet Jacobs And Toni Morrison: A Tradition Of Narrative Resistance, Allyson L. Molloy Aug 2017

Harriet Jacobs And Toni Morrison: A Tradition Of Narrative Resistance, Allyson L. Molloy

Theses and Dissertations

This article considers historical constructions of power and the narrative as a mode of resistance. Working in different centuries, under extremely disparate circumstances, Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Toni Morrison in her novel The Bluest Eye, utilize specific narrative strategies to challenge and question institutionalized power which is evidenced through their deliberate employment of narrative strategies not only to challenge the institution of slavery or the hegemonic ideal, but also to question the racial and gender oppression systemic to those institutions of power.


Race, The Condition Of Neo-Liberalism, Vikash Singh Jul 2017

Race, The Condition Of Neo-Liberalism, Vikash Singh

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article addresses the social and historical relation between Chicago School neo-liberalism and contemporary racism, and its connections with the formations of racism in classical liberalism and its colonial character. I show the pragmatic and discursive operations of neo-racism in the context of this shift to a neo-liberal discourse, drawing particularly on Michel Foucault’s seminars, Society Must be Defended, and Birth of Bio-politics. Insofar as “race” cannot be understood as a discrete category outside its social, economic, moral, and political embeddedness in liberalism, I argue that methodological individualism and expectations of high-specialization constrain the theorization of race in U.S. scholarship. …


Black Models Matter: Challenging The Racism Of Aesthetics And The Facade Of Inclusion In The Fashion Industry, Scarlett L. Newman Jun 2017

Black Models Matter: Challenging The Racism Of Aesthetics And The Facade Of Inclusion In The Fashion Industry, Scarlett L. Newman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The global fashion market is expanding every day, but often, the global fashion runways do not reflect that reality. On average, black models make up for six percent of models used on the runway during the fashion month calendar. This small percentage is also mirrored in advertisements and editorials featured in popular fashion magazines. In the 1970s, black models were met with great opportunities, and that success trickled down into the 1980s and the 1990s. As the 90s came to a close, top designers opted for an aesthetic that ultimately excluded models of color, but black models beared the brunt …


Korean Soil, Japanese Faces, American Empire: Repatriation And The Korean War Experiences Of Japanese Laborers And Japanese American Soldiers, Jaclyn S. Knitter May 2017

Korean Soil, Japanese Faces, American Empire: Repatriation And The Korean War Experiences Of Japanese Laborers And Japanese American Soldiers, Jaclyn S. Knitter

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper compares the Korean War experiences of two ethnically Japanese groups that served the US military on the Korean Peninsula – second-generation Japanese American (Nisei) soldiers in the US Military Intelligence Service (MIS) and Japanese laborers – to demonstrate the salience of citizenship in the post-1945 Asia Pacific. In particular, this research addresses the question, “how did the politics of repatriation differentiate the experiences of Japanese Americans from those of Japanese nationals, both serving the US military during the Korean War?” This service ranged from (Nisei) American repatriation interrogators of Korean and Chinese civilians, to prisoners of war (POWs), …


All Men Created Equal: Flannery O'Connor Responds Communism, Nina Hefner May 2017

All Men Created Equal: Flannery O'Connor Responds Communism, Nina Hefner

English Class Publications

From her mother’s farm, Andalusia in Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery O’Connor found her writing inspiration by observing the ways of the South. Naturally, a pervasive motif in her works is racism. For instance, in “Revelation” Ruby Turpin spends a good portion of the short story thanking God that she is neither white trash nor black. In her essay “Aligning the Psychological with the Theological: Doubling and Race in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction,” Doreen Fowler points out that “[Ruby’s] insistence on setting racial boundaries has been an attempt to distinguish a white, superior identity” (81), equality with African Americans being Ruby Turpin’s ultimate …


Creating A Multiracial Lesson Plan, Clayton Davis May 2017

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 …


Color-Blind Stancetaking In Racialized Discourse, Abigail Christine Tobias-Lauerman May 2017

Color-Blind Stancetaking In Racialized Discourse, Abigail Christine Tobias-Lauerman

Masters Theses

In this thesis, I examine how language constructs and constrains racialized discourse in post-Jim Crow contemporary America. Drawing on rhetorical and sociolinguistic work set forth by Booth, Shotwell, Bonilla-Silva, Omi and Winant, and others, it is apparent that racial organization— and racial identities and categorization— in the US is reliant upon specific markers that signify racial meaning. Such markers are assimilated into wider, unconscious discourse through what Shotwell and Booth describe as seemingly inherent— yet ultimately constructed— matters of “common sense,” and are expressed through evaluative stance acts. I explore the origins and construction of these markers and the relationship …


Ideology, Race, And The Death Penalty: "Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics" In Advocacy Research, Anthony Walsh, Virginia Hatch Jan 2017

Ideology, Race, And The Death Penalty: "Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics" In Advocacy Research, Anthony Walsh, Virginia Hatch

Journal of Ideology

We use the literature on race in death penalty to illustrate the hold that ideology has on researchers and journalists alike when a social issue is charged with emotional content. We note particularly how statistical evidence become misinterpreted in ways that support a particular ideology, either because of innumeracy or because—subconsciously or otherwise—one’s ideology precludes a critical analysis. We note that because white defendants are now proportionately more likely to receive the death penalty and to be executed than black defendants that the argument has shifted from a defendant-based to a victim-based one. We examine studies based on identical data …


Variations In The Marital Attitudes And Marital Status Of Black And White Americans: An Intersectional Approach, Stacey Ellen Coleman Jan 2017

Variations In The Marital Attitudes And Marital Status Of Black And White Americans: An Intersectional Approach, Stacey Ellen Coleman

Wayne State University Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to assess the unique socio-demographic positions of Black and White Americans related to variations in marital attitudes and marital status and differences in sex. The study was guided by two research aims: 1.) to assess whether socio-demographic factors were related to racial variations in marital attitudes of Blacks and Whites and if the relationships differ by race and sex and 2.) to assess whether socio-demographic factors were differentially associated with marital status of Black and White Americans and if they varied by race and sex. The study drew on individual-level, nationally representative, cross-sectional, 2010 …


Salvation Through Community And Protest, Hannah K. Griggs Jan 2017

Salvation Through Community And Protest, Hannah K. Griggs

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

This essay examines the theodicies of Nancy Pineda-Madrid, Kelly Brown Douglas, and Dorothee Soelle to strategize ways for Christians to combat rising threats to marginalized communities. Synthesizing the arguments of these three feminist Christians, I argue that only a theodicy of protest succeeds in accounting for structural injustice caused by kyriarchal relationships. As Christians come to terms with America’s current political situation, I call for a reimagining of Anselm’s salvation narrative. My protest theodicy theorizes a new Christian narrative that strives to alleviate this-worldly suffering in order to produce salvation through radical community, by “signifyin’” to disrupt power, and using …