Digital Commons Network^™

Moving Social Spaces: Public Transportation, Material Differences, And The Power Of Mobile Communities In Chicago, Gwendolyn Purifoye

Dissertations

Urban research on stratification in the public terrain has focused on how intentional and unintentional physical arrangements and social conventions limit and enable particular kinds of stratification processes and interactions. This prior research primarily focuses on static places such as plazas, restaurants, sidewalks and train stations and does not give adequate attention to the impact of mobility. As one of the few places where people of different social classes and ethno-racial backgrounds encounter each other, public mobile spaces are sites of the replication of civility and incivility among people of different race, gender, and class positions, and sites of its …

Some Of My Best Dolls Are Black: Colorblind Rhetoric In Online Collecting Communities, Rebecca Joan West

Dissertations

While dolls are beloved play objects, they have also been the subject of social critique for many years. From the generic "baby" to the sexualized Barbie, they have been alternately praised and vilified for their role in forming the behaviors and identities of the children who play with them. However, such criticism overlooks a key component of doll play: the element of the adults who purchase the dolls, for children as well as for themselves, and the ways in which such toys are used to express engagement with larger social structures.

My research focuses on the American Girl Dolls Collection, …