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Sense Of Community And (Third) Place Among Young Adults In Permanent Supportive Housing: A Mixed-Methods Inquiry, Danielle Maude Littman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Unhoused young people have often endured co-occurring experiences of marginalization, including long-term abuse and neglect from systems which have failed to support them. Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) is a formal intervention which seeks to offer stability and support to young people. This three-manuscript dissertation uses community-engaged mixed methods to understand sense of community, sense of place, and third places among young adults in PSH in Grand Junction, Colorado.

The first manuscript used longitudinal mixed methods to understand how PSH residents’ (N = 27) sense of community shifts over 1.5 years of living in PSH. We found that residents’ sense …

Breaking Down Barriers: The Impact Of Segregation On Social Capital And Economic Outcomes, Donyetta A. Bennett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Breaking Down Barriers. Does social capital indirectly affect black/white economic outcomes via entrepreneurial activities? Does the relationship between social capital, entrepreneurship, and black/white economic outcomes change when social capital interacts with segregation? Drawing from Bourdieu's (1986) and Coleman’s (1990) social capital theory and prior scholars' regressive view theories of segregation, I propose that 1) social capital improves entrepreneurial activities and black/white economic outcomes, and 2) segregation’s interaction with social capital has an adverse effect on entrepreneurial activities and black/white economic outcomes. To perform the analysis, data were collected at the county- level from multiple sources and aggregated into one file …

How Practices Drive Persistence: The Transformational Consumption Journey Of Native Americans In Higher Education, Gwen Locklear Almodovar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In an academic environment where many higher education institutions tout their diversity and inclusion statistics, there is a decline in the enrollment of Native American students and a decrease in Native American scholars. The President of the United States, in an October 2021 briefing and with the issuance of an executive order named The White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Native Americans and Strengthening Tribal Colleges and Universities, saw the immediate urgency to understand the systematic causes and implement evidence-based strategies that will improve and increase student enrollment and academic advancement. This research takes …

The Enduring Tradition Of Toxic Masculinity In French Literature, Hailey Caroline Kaim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Toxic masculinity, the modern definition has given a concise explanation to what French literature has been relaying to audiences for centuries. This thesis will explore how toxic masculinity is seen in French literature through five time periods: the Medieval era, 17th, 18th, 20th, and 21st century. Introducing toxic masculinity is provided by a modern definition, biological evidence, and evaluation with society’s definition of masculinity. The Medieval era will investigate two short stories of courtly love that provide readers with classical examples of toxic masculinity that both men and women displayed. Venturing into the 17th and 18th centuries, plays brought the …

Comparison Of Self-Reported Depression And Anxiety Scores Between U.S. Households With And Without Children At Early And Later Stages Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Hanan Mohammed Eissa Jamali

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Parents in particular, are disproportionately affected by the 2019 coronavirus pandemic and the lockdowns that followed. Parents had to find a way to balance work, teaching, and taking care of their kids when schools were forced to close for safety reasons. While changes in parents' mental health have been the subject of a number of studies, there have been no studies comparing the level of depression and anxiety experienced by parents with and without children below the age of 18 years in the United States. Data for this study came from Households Pulse Survey (HPS) (week 2 N = 41,996; …

"It's My Job:" Graduate Student Socialization And Career Choice, Megan Black

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of planning this evaluation is to explore perspectives of graduate student socialization to practitioner careers in students’ fields of study. Socialization in graduate programs refers to the process by which students learn and adapt to the norms and expectations of their anticipated career fields, and the activities within programs that provide related information and practice. Higher education in the United States has been undergoing a long-term change in which full-time, tenured faculty positions are becoming increasingly rare, with many new doctoral graduates relegated to non-tenure track adjunct positions. Also of note is the growing number of doctoral students …

Adolescent Health And Maladaptive Coping: Assessing The Relationship Between Poor Physical Health And Underage Drinking, Shelby Gilbreath

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Adolescents endure various stressors throughout their lives, making them one of the most vulnerable populations in the United States. Among those life stressors are physical health issues, including physical illness and disabilities. Physical health challenges may serve as a strain that fosters deviant behavior, such as underage drinking. However, prior research has failed to investigate this relationship. The current study uses publicly available data from the National Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine the impact of physical health challenges on underage drinking.

Fte2: An Exploration Of Full-Time Employed, Full-Time Enrolled Undergraduate Student Perceptions Regarding The Impact Of Support Systems On Their Ability To Persist, Victoria Lauren Mccord

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Full-time enrolled students participating in full-time employment is a growing trend on college campuses. This dissertation serves to explore the perceptions of full-time employed, full-time enrolled graduate students’ perceptions on the impact of their support systems on their ability to persist. The proposed study utilizes Laura Perna’s Conceptual Model for College Access and Choice (2006), along with Cabrera, Nora, and Castenada’s Integrated Model for Student Retention (1993) to the following research questions: (1) What factors, support systems or resources do students utilize? (2) What formal or informal support systems and/or resources aid in student persistence, if any? This dissertation addresses …

Assessing The Relationship Between School Disengagement And Violence Involvement, Senneca Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social control theory suggests that having strong social bonds to a society prevents individuals from engaging in delinquent acts. Consistent with the main assumption of this theoretical framework, the current study assesses whether having a weak bond to school, specifically, school disengagement, impacts violent behavior among adolescents. The current study also assesses whether gender and race/ethnicity moderate the relationship between school disengagement and violence involvement. Data used in this study were obtained from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescents to Adult Health public-use data (N = 6,045). Results show that school disengagement is a significant predictor of violent behavior among …

International Forum Shopping: An Instrument Of Domestic Signaling, Giorgi Khatiashvili

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation explores the relationship between domestic politics and the choice of international venue for economic sanctions and trade disputes, utilizing the concept of forum shopping. The research argues that forum shopping is not only an outward, but also an inward looking endeavor, shaped by the government’s need to communicate with its domestic audience. The research identifies two main domestic constituencies – the public and economic groups – that influence the government’s behavior with regard to forum shopping. Empirical analysis reveals that when facing pressure from the domestic public, governments tend to choose larger and more legitimate international organizations for …

Code-Switching In The Emotionalnarratives Of Bilingual Speakers Of English And Arabic, Yasmeen Alruwaili

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores code-switching (CS) in the emotional narratives of bilingual speakers of English and Arabic. Exploring the immigrant Arab community in Mississippi, USA contributes to the literature gap and provides valuable insights into the correlation between codeswitching and bilingual identities in various emotional, social, and cultural contexts. This study examines the complex relationship between linguistic choices, cultural identity, and emotional expressions in bilingual contexts, offering cross-linguistic and cross-cultural insights into codeswitching practices. It also seeks to investigate the types of linguistic structures that appear in the narratives of bilingual speakers and the reasons behind their choices.

In order to …

It’S Just A Way Of Life: A Symbolic-Interactionist Approach To Inequalities In The Contemporary American South, Angela Rankin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The contemporary American South is characterized by significant inequalities that are deeply- embedded into the social fabric of the region. These inequalities are dictated by cultural and social dynamics that have shaped the Southern region over time; however, they are reinforced daily through the individual agency of Southern social actors. This thesis aims to analyze Southern inequalities through a symbolic-interactionist focused lens and data collected from semi-structured, qualitative interviews conducted with over 70 White Southerners in two places within the American South- Oxford, MS, and Memphis, TN. In this thesis, I argue that White Southern actors actively use their individual …

Ceremony On The Frontier: An Analysis Of A Thirteenth And Fourteenth Century Multi-Phase Mississippian Structure At The Carter Robinson Site, Lee County, Virginia, Taylor Greene

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Carter Robinson (44LE10, occupied from ca. A.D. 1200-1400) is a Mississippian mound site located on the frontier between the edge of the Mississippian world and the beginning of the Radford culture area in southwestern Virginia. Although several structures have been identified and studied in the past, only one structure has been featured intentional burning and reconstruction throughout the occupation of the site, and is designated as Structure 2. This structure is also unique due to its location at the site, on a small rise about 80-meters east of the mound, a construction area typically reserved for the homes of minor …

Support Experiences Of Beginning Teachers In An Alternate Route Graduate Program In Mississippi, Elizabeth Young Sweeney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Beginning teachers are the group of teachers most at risk of leaving the profession, while research has shown that novice teachers who receive support, such as mentorship or cohort programs, are more likely to continue to teach than those who do not. This study explored supports that beginning teachers in an alternate route graduate program in Mississippi experience and perceive as beneficial. A qualitative research design utilizing a phenomenological approach was used to explore the lived experiences of participants and supports they experience as beginning teachers. Thirteen beginning teachers, each teaching for less than three years, were interviewed using a …

Unsung Heroes: The Jones County Drug Court, Elise Joelle Denoulet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Ellisville, Mississippi, some heroes do not wear capes. The Jones County Drug Court, located in rural Mississippi, fights drug and alcohol addiction daily. This drug court program, led by the tough but compassionate Consuelo Walley, supervises about 70 to 90 participants in their recovery journey. In recent years, this program has grown to be known as one of the most efficient in its region, and I made it my mission to uncover why that is. It turns out staff members are themselves recovering addicts, who utilize their own experience as a way to connect and relate to their participants. …

Structural Violence And Its Effect On Women's Empowerment In The Case Of Bangladesh Garment Workers During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Fowzia Binte Faruque

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis delves into the complex relationship between women's participation in Bangladesh's garment industry, their empowerment, and structural violence against them. Although Bangladesh's patriarchal society perpetuates structural violence against women, the garment sector has also facilitated social and economic empowerment for many. By adopting a gender-focused lens and examining the interplay between structural violence and empowerment, this research aims to explore the socio-economic status of female garment workers in Bangladesh during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020-2022. The study employs a qualitative content analysis, analyzing two national newspapers—The Daily Star and The Financial Express (Bangladesh)—as primary sources.

The findings …

Nursing Faculty Turnover: Recruitment And Retention At Jones College, Alan Luke Hammonds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The nursing profession has been facing a deficit of nurses for many years (Denehy, 2000; Haddad et al., 2023, Mayo, 1944; Schorr, 1980; Theisen & Pelfrey, 1990). Nurses are an essential part of the medical care system. They are responsible for most of the functions associated with healthcare. The schools that train nurses are as much affected by the shortage as the industry itself. With fewer nurses in the medical field from which to draw, nursing schools have had a difficult time maintaining nursing faculty levels to meet the needs of the medical community. With nursing faculty shortages already straining …

The World Wide Web Of Women: A Case In Favor Of Global Feminist Coalitions In The Information Age, Hannah S. Phillips

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to argue that online feminist coalitions can be both locally specific and globally accessible. Postcolonial feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty in her 1984 article “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” argues that there is no real evidence to classify all women as a “Woman” because cultural differences and imbalances of power create a myriad of experiences that cannot be homogenized. However, Mohanty is not arguing that women do not have individual experiences with gender injustice. On the contrary, all women have experiences with gender injustice; these experiences are simply all not the …

Buscando Perdón: Validation And Considerations For A Spanish Translation Of The Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory, Mario David Sobrino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With influences from both cultural norms and commonly held spiritual beliefs, members of the Latinx population are vulnerable to enabling unhealthy interpersonal relationships that primarily benefit others while potentially harming their own wellness. A Spanish translation (called the Inventario del Perdón y Reconciliación [IPR]) for the Forgiveness and Reconciliation Inventory (FRI) was created to identify its validity and reliability as a potential clinical resource for Spanish speaking mental health counseling clients dealing with the emotional difficulties of forgiveness and unjust cultural expectations within their relationships. Factor analysis on the IPR reported comparable yet slightly reduced psychometric properties to the FRI. …

Why And How Do Sports Consumers Engage With Non-Fungible Tokens (Nfts)?, Seomgyun Lee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The advent of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) heralds a new era for digital collections. Based on blockchain items and a tradable market, the National Basketball Association (NBA) Top Shot program, for example, provides several digital assets containing moments of NBA highlights. By the second quarter of 2021, NBA Top Shot had attracted one million consumers and produced more than $800 million in sales. Following its success, several other North American sports leagues entered the NFT sector, such as the National Football League’s All Day and Major League Baseball’s Candy programs. As new and complementary avenues for fan engagement, sport-related NFTs have …

The Champion Of "The Permanent Things:" The Imaginative Conservatism Of Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, And Richard Weaver, Xiang Xu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation deals with the intellectual thought of Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, and Richard Weaver. Renowned today as the prominent thinkers who inaugurated the postwar American conservative intellectual movement, these three thinkers by far have not received enough attention among historians as they deserved.

In my dissertation, by unpacking the central tenets of the conservative thought of the three thinkers, I try to demonstrate that their ideas were not just pertinent to the nascent American conservative movement emerging after the postwar decade, but their intellectual thought are in many ways enduring and timeless, transcending the barren limitations of their own …

Relations Between Parent Coping With The Stress Of Parenting And Symptoms Of Anxiety And Depression, Maxwell Jared Luber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is important to refine understanding of the impact of adolescent behaviors on parents. In particular there is a need to improve understanding of the potential increase in parental distress caused by challenging youth behaviors. Parenting stress may play a critical role in these processes. Various coping strategies have been associated with different psychosocial outcomes, including anxiety and depression. In contrast, less effective coping strategies are linked to a higher likelihood of meeting criteria for mood or anxiety disorders. Gender differences in stress coping between women and men may contribute to women reporting higher levels of psychological distress, depression, and …

Voices From Below: The Politics Of Leprosy Control In Southeastern Nigeria, 1926-1960, Odinakachukwu Kingsley Eze

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Leprosy was an endemic disease in colonial Southeastern Nigeria but became an epidemic between the 1920s and 1940s. Unlike malaria and sleeping sickness, its endemicity did not impede European penetration at the dawn of the twentieth century. However, its spread across Nigeria intensified during colonial rule, with acute prevalence in regions hitherto prone to the disease. Therefore, from the 1920s to 1960, Southeastern Nigeria became the epicenter of British policies tailored towards preventing, curing, and eradicating leprosy disease in Nigeria. Existing research has established the involvement of different actors in this course–including Christian missionaries, colonial officials, specialized agencies, and international …

Classic Maya Subadult Age Estimates From Ambergris Caye, Belize, Nikki Anne Wicox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Maya of the Classic period (300-900 AD) were inhabitants of the coastal island of Ambergris Caye, Belize (Guderjan, 2007). The individuals of this island have been explored through other research, however, one sub-population on the island that has yet to be explored in depth is that of childhood. Children play an integral role in society but are often overlooked as active members based upon the modern cultural norms of childhood, as well as the perceived difficulty of identifying children´s activities in the archaeological record (Ardren, 2015; Ardren & Hutson, 2006; Danforth, 1989; Storey, 1992; Wright, 1997). My research aims to …

A Storyteller's Remove: Place-Noticing In Welty's Disturbed Landscapes, Lucy Gaines

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mississippi author Eudora Welty’s particular attunement to her characters’ place and time earned her canonization among southern authors bound by a peculiar sense of place. Our understanding of place, though, is rapidly evolving, spreading theoretical roots across disciplines and striving to keep up with global environmental change. Adopting frameworks from ecology, sociology, and comparative literature, this work seeks out the common denominators between Welty’s sense of place and our present perspectives, training our eye to notice relationships previously unconsidered. Unmistakable throughlines in Welty’s writing and photography offer fertile grounds for tracing place theory through visual and critical analysis, and find …

Mothers And Daughters: A Reflection On The Cyclical Nature Of Life, Greta Rose Koshenina

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I use nontraditional documentary methods to explore the dynamic relationship between mothers and daughters. This work is an amalgamation of autobiography, memoir, autoethnography, oral history, and photography. While autoethnography inspires me, this is not a traditional sociological study, and I do not seek to come to any ubiquitous conclusions. Rather, I present an artistic approach to the field of documentary. I diverge from traditional oral histories, constructing a cohesive narrative using transcripts from recordings of my mom and me. I sequence experimental Van Dyke Brown prints and more traditional documentary photography with poetic musings on stories of …

Assessing The Accuracy Of Dental Age Estimation Methods In A Native American Pediatric Sample, Cal Matthew Mcgehee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dental age estimation is a common method used to determine the age of juvenile individuals in forensics, medicine, and bio-archaeology. This thesis examines how accurate three dental development methods are in estimating the ages of two Native American sample groups. Further, it will explore how different variables like sex, age, secular (temporal) change, and an individual’s body mass index (BMI) affect dental development rates in the two groups of individuals. The first group consists of 60 Native Americans between the ages of 7 and 21 years of age who received dental work between 1970-1990 by Dr. James Economides of Albuquerque, …

"We Give Them The Most Important Thing Possible. We Give Their Dreary Lives Excitement”: Toward A Theoretical Model Of Narrative Parasocial Engagement, Dominic Delbert Meyers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Video game narratives and characters are some of the most enjoyable and persuasive components of the video game industry. While narratives and character relationships within video games have been examined separately, there is no working model and little research attempting to bridge the connection between narratives and character relationships. This research combines Narrative Paradigm Theory and Parasocial Relationships to understand how narratives and character relationships influence each other in video game environments. This was done through rhetorical field methods, utilizing a focus group and narrative rhetorical analysis on the transcript of the focus group. Results provide a working model coined …

Study Abroad And The Global Public Good: A Developmental Evaluation Of The International Business Major, Sara Barbier Bularzik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Study abroad, for any length of time and in any location, is widely recognized in higher education as a positive educational activity. While individual benefits of study abroad have been explored for decades, recent research has pushed the field to consider benefits for the local and global community. This program evaluation contributes to this line of inquiry by asking international business majors about the influences on their study abroad program choice process and the involvement of the university’s mission to positively impact the public good. Using developmental program evaluation and UNESCO’s global citizenship education theory, this study found that students …

Covenant-Apocalyptic Soteriology: N. T. Wright’S Apocalyptic Jesus In Conversation With The Liberationist Critique Of Atonement, Joseph Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation develops a theory of atonement in accordance with N. T. Wright’s covenant-apocalyptic interpretation of the ministry and message of the historical Jesus. A covenant-apocalyptic atonement theory, in opposition to the trajectory of contemporary soteriology, prioritizes divine causality in the means of salvation, because, as is generally expected from an apocalyptic hermeneutic, it peers behind systems of violence and oppression to the intangible powers that underlie them. Unlike other strands of apocalyptic theology, though, a covenant-apocalyptic soteriology can stand up to a liberationist critique of the escapism and the divine sadism of a certain popular form of Christian soteriology, …