Digital Commons Network^™

Secondary Educator Approaches To Cemetery-Based Education In Florida, Hillary M. Van Dyke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive case study is to study how teachers utilize cemeteries as a teaching space, specifically for instruction in Black history and for enacting social studies curriculum by examining the curricular and instructional strategies two educators use with historically Black cemeteries as a place of learning for students in west coastal central Florida. Conversations around what to do about the issue of historically Black cemeteries are growing in Florida, including the state dedicating resources to place-based education in cemeteries. Thus, this study is timely. A purposeful sampling strategy was used to select the two educators who …

“You Are Not The Same Person You Were:” On Diagnosis Seeking During A Liminal Period And Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Kaylee A. Appleton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“You are the healthiest looking sick person I’ve ever met”

(Daphne, 62)

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is one of many chronic illnesses considered to be “invisible.” Once the onset of symptoms occurs, the illness can drastically change the dynamic of an individual's life in ways that may not be noticeable to others, even before a chronic illness diagnosis. I discuss how these individuals experience the liminal period of developing symptoms and seeking a diagnosis. Furthermore, I discuss vignettes that exemplifies the occurrence of a liminal state while looking at the current for-profit set-up of healthcare in the United States. Utilizing …

Lgbtq+ Inclusivity In The Implicit And Explicit Social Studies Curriculum: A Descriptive Exploratory Study In Teacher Self-Efficacy, K. B.F. Francis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This descriptive exploratory study describes teacher self-efficacy in providing LGBTQ+ support in the implicit and explicit social studies curriculum in the wake of numerous anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in education in Florida. Four high school social studies teachers from three different Florida public school districts were interviewed to answer three main questions. All participating teachers expressed broad knowledge of their subject matter but could not identify LGBTQ+ inclusivity in their state and district-mandated curriculum. All participants had a great sense of self-efficacy in supporting their LGBTQ+ students but low self-efficacy in educating their colleagues about these issues. All participating teachers expressed a …

Investigating Mobility In The Northern Balkans During The Fifth Millenium Bc Through Strontium Analysis Of Human Tooth Enamel, Aurélien Tafani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates how individual mobility among ancient populations in Romania during the Eneolithic, between 5000 and 4000 BC, may be related to the spread of the material culture known as Kodjadermen-Gumelniţa-Karonovo VI (KGK VI) that extended over most of southern Romania and Bulgaria. This work seeks to combine results on individual mobility with other lines of archaeological evidence to provide a better understanding of the social context and kinship relationships that were in place when these events took place.

Strontium isotopic analyses were performed on 130 individuals from two sites located in the southern Romania: 49 from Sultana and …

Crossing Schools, Language, And Migration Borders: The Experiences Of Latinx And Caribbean Emergent Multilingual Mothers In K-12 Public Schools, Michelle Angelo-Rocha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Anti-immigrant sentiment and "English-only" ideologies have a significant impact on educational policies, practices, and processes. This includes parental engagement, the quality of education and life opportunities offered to immigrant children, and families’ well-being. The purpose of this study was to examine how Latinx and Caribbean mothers in Florida with various immigration statuses (i.e., undocumented, asylum seekers, refugees, international students, and mixed-status) and often with limited financial resources attempt to steward their children through the U.S. educational system. The research question was: How did emergent multilingual immigrant mothers experience the K-12 education system in Florida? The sub-question was: How did schools …

“I Was Doing The Best With What I Had”: Exploring Student Veterans’ Experiences With Community Reintegration, Food Insecurity, And Health Challenges, Jacquelyn N. Heuer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Food insecurity is a concern for many populations, including college students and military veterans. The impacts of food insecurity on student veterans are understudied, especially in relation to community reintegration and health. Employing the theoretical frameworks of structural violence and embodiment, this dissertation explores how community reintegration, food insecurity, diet quality, and health interact and influence one another among post-9/11 student veterans in Florida. In doing so, this dissertation considers how the experiences of student veterans are shaped by social inequities (i.e., structural violence) and how these experiences become embodied, thereby shaping student veterans’ health outcomes.

Utilizing findings from surveys …

Foodways Of The Florida Frontier: Zooarchaeological Analysis Of Gamble Plantation Historic State Park (8ma100), Mary S. Maisel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Gamble Plantation sits on the banks of the Manatee River in Ellenton Florida and has been home to many different occupants since its construction in 1844. Archaeological research at the site has recovered material culture spanning the entire occupation of the estate. One of the most universal aspects of life that these many residents shared is that they all prepared, consumed, and disposed of food and food waste in the same midden on the property. This thesis analyzes the faunal remains recovered from the 2017 and 2018 excavations of Gamble Plantation to identify remains down to a species level, …

Entanglements Of Teenage Food Security Within High School Pantries In Pinellas County, Florida, Karen T. Díaz Serrano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Food insecurity has the ability to shape an individual’s or a family’s everyday life and take emotional, psychological, and physical tolls. Among adolescents, not having access to nutritious food could lead to physical effects during growth and development. Moreover, the stress and anxiety of not knowing where their next meal is coming from and the social stigma associated with being food insecure can have negative effects on mental health. A recent solution to these issues is locating food pantries in high schools. Purpose: This exploratory study examined how high school students in Pinellas County, Florida perceive the use of a …

Clinically Applied Anthropology: A Syndemic Intervention., Jason W. Wilson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation demonstrates that a critical, clinically applied anthropology is possible by testing a hypothesis that a syndemic intervention, and use of a structural vulnerability assessment tool, can achieve improved healthcare outcomes. A critical, clinically applied anthropology integrates social scientists into healthcare delivery, alongside biomedical providers, through the co-creation of new diagnostic and patient care pathways that utilize anthropological methods (ethnographically informed care, syndemics, thematic/mixed methods data analysis) and advance anthropological theory (biomedicine and culture, structural violence, structural competency/vulnerability, ontology, assemblage theory, and entanglements) to decrease healthcare inequities.

Medical anthropology has previously engaged biomedicine and other attempts at a clinical …

The Process Of Government In Clearwater, Florida, Picot Deboisfeuillet Floyd

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Based upon participant observation as city manager, the dissertation examines political processes involved in four episodes relating to the government of the City of Clearwater, Florida: the selection of a site for a branch campus of the University of South Florida, the application of technology assessment techniques to growth issues, attempts to regulate a pornographic movie and supply store, and the arrest of the city attorney. Non-mathematical game theory is used as a model for the analysis, which demonstrates that game-like processual activity takes place in a governmental structure based upon cooperation. Such analysis can have a direct impact on …

Selective Framing And Narrative As Anthropocentric Agents In Yellowstone: America’S Eden, Breanna Lee Hansen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Yellowstone: America’s Eden is but one example of nature documentaries tackling the complexities of nature-culture relationships during the age of the Anthropocene. Yellowstone National Park, the first to be named, is a primary example of how our relationship to the natural world developed through conservation and commodification. Yellowstone: America’s Eden demonstrates how film techniques conceal nature as a human construct through selective framing and narrative. By analyzing editing techniques made in the representation of Yellowstone National Park, this thesis bridges anthropocentrism to nature documentaries. Drawing on interdisciplinary research from media studies, environmental humanities, and anthropology, this thesis analyzes the ways …

Organizing And Communicating Health: A Culture-Centered And Necrocapitalist Inquiry Of Groundwater Contamination In Rural West Bengal, Parameswari Mukherjee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As a discursive point of praxis, this dissertation project seeks to record knowledge from below around the overlaps between health, water and health interventions emerging from rural communities located in North 24 Parganas and Purulia in West Bengal that are disproportionately impacted by water-insecurity. My dissertation also documents how multiple-stakeholders such as local NGOs, international NGOs, non-profits, and donor agencies organize access to safe water and health interventions for the water-insecure communities located in North 24 Parganas and Purulia. The integration of the CCA and necrocapitalism afford theoretical and methodological guidance in this dissertation to help document the localocentric stories …

“I’M Still Suffering”: Mental Health Care Among Central African Refugee Populations In The Tampa Bay Area, C. Danee Ruszczyk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An estimated 500 Central African refugee families have been resettled in the Tampa Bay Area since 2002 (RPC, 2022). The cycles of trauma that they have endured place them in vulnerable positions regarding their mental health. Struggling to exist within underfunded social programs that are rigid in their expectations and with the current system of reactive care vs preventative care, the refugees in Tampa are put in a difficult situation of navigating their own health and wellbeing in lieu of having the full support of the United States government and their community. I will discuss how these refugees experience and …

The Impacts Of Disability Policy And Its Implementation On Deaf University Students: An Applied Anthropological Approach, Tailyn Marie Osorio

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) has provided legal requirement for universities to provide accommodations for all disabled students, including deaf students. The ADA is intentionally vague to allow flexibility for how institutions implement accommodations provisions. This leads to high variability across universities. Using ethnographic data from policy analysis, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with accommodations coordinators and deaf students from a large-public university, this applied anthropological study aims to investigate the impacts of policy and policy practices on the experiences of deaf students while proposing interventions informed by the coordinators and deaf students themselves.

This study is …

The Applicability Of The Postmortem Submersion Interval Estimation Formula For Human Remains Found In Subtropical Aquatic Environments, Kara L. Dicomo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Within the past decade, several attempts have been made to standardize a method for estimating postmortem submersion intervals (PMSI); however, the majority of these studies have focused on data from a temperate climate which cannot be taken as representative of large portions of the globe. Thus, there are large portions of the earth in which the methodology from these studies may not be able to accurately estimate PMSI which has the potential to leave investigators in these other climatic zones at a disadvantage. This presentation presents a case study into the applicability of two Total Body Scoring Systems (TADS) utilized …

Initial Understanding Of Public Stigma Against Childhood Cancer Survivors, Nele Loecher

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As childhood cancer survival rates climb to new records, it is increasingly important to focus on improving the psychological wellbeing of survivors living years beyond their diagnosis. One potential contributor to psychological distress for childhood cancer survivors (CCSs) is stigma. The fear of stigma can lead to CCSs concealing their identity as a CCS, which in turn can strain workplace and intimate relationships, creating a strain on CCSs’ social and work life. Additionally, the internalization of negative stereotypes or rejection of falsely positive stereotypes around cancer can exacerbate psychological distress. To establish what stereotypes and stigma CCS might be contending …

“We Need To Have A Place To Vent And Get Our Frustrations Out”: Addressing The Needs Of Mothering Students In Higher Education Using A Positive Deviance Framework, Melissa León

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the experiences of mothering students at four different colleges using a positive deviance (PD) framework. PD is an approach that seeks to identify positive behavioral patterns that help members of a community overcome structural barriers (Gross, et al. 2017). The Positive Deviance Framework was applied to investigate how some mothering students are successful in college and how their experiences could potentially help new or struggling mothering students. Eleven mothering students were interviewed to determine what interventions could assist mothering students who lack representation in the traditional college environment, a situation that often leads to feelings of isolation. …

Exploring The Risk Narratives Of Transgender People Engaged In Do-It-Yourself Hormone Replacement Therapy, Brianna Rae Cusanno

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzed the risk narratives of transgender people engaged in do-it- yourself hormone replacement therapy. Transgender (trans) people, those whose gender identities and/or expressions defy normative constructions of gender, experience a variety of health inequities as a consequence of systemic oppression within U.S. society. Many of the health inequities observed in trans people can be traced to structural determinants, such as discrimination at home, work, and school that results in housing, food, and social instability. Yet, medical and public health researchers have often attributed trans health inequities to “high risk” behaviors in which trans people engage.

One such behavior …

Geoarchaeology Of Estuarine Seascapes In Tampa Bay, Florida., Kendal R. Jackson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the geological, ecological, and archaeological histories of Tampa Bay, Florida’s largest open-water estuary system. Previous geoscientific and archaeological work has studied the evolution of Florida’s estuaries as ‘pre-anthropogenic’ ecosystems and conceptualized Indigenous maritime societies as mostly passive inhabitants of dynamic ‘natural’ environments. Further, the environmental legacies of more recent, industrial-scale estuary modification attending Florida’s 20th-century population boom have been understudied—leading to popular and scientific confusion about historical conditions. The work composing this dissertation research seeks to reconceptualize Tampa Bay as a complex mosaic of cultural seascapes that have been variously altered and modified by human societies across …

Archaeogaming And The Re-Use Of Digital Archaeological Materials: Generating Serious Games For The Villas Of Roman Sicily, Kaitlyn Kingsland

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With 10 million copies sold and 500 million dollars of revenue, the 11th installment of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (2018), showed how a videogame based on ancient Greek history and archaeology can make a splash in popular culture and that the distant past can become an extinguishable source of infinite engaging gaming narratives. As pedagogic and research counterparts to videogames of this kind, serious games and archaeogames focusing on Greek and Roman civilizations move from different premises, though aspiring to the same level of success. Serious games, created for a primary purpose other than sole entertainment, have …

“You Don’T Seek Help, You Are Just Thankful For The Things The Country Provides For You.” The Emotional Burden Of Growing Up Undocumented In The United States, Melanie Anne Escue

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For over a decade, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has provided more than 800,000 undocumented young adults with the ability to lawfully reside in the United States. Despite the program’s benefits, DACA falls short of offering long-term security and full societal integration. Over the past few years, political and legal attacks on the DACA program (e.g., actions of the former Trump administration, 2017 DACA recission, ongoing court proceedings) have made visible the precarious nature of the program and threatened the futures of young adults protected under the program. While prior studies have found that the growing anti-immigrant …

Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Immigration-Related Stressors, Pregnancy, Birth, And Post-Partum Experiences Of Women Living Along The Us-Mexico Border, Isabela Solis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic coupled with immigration-related stressors had a profound effect on women who lived on the U.S.-Mexico border and their pregnancy, birth, and post-partum experiences. This project focused the experiences of 17 women living in El Paso, Texas and how border closure, economic insecurities, and family separation during the COVID-19 pandemic shaped women’s experiences. This research included interviewing maternal and child health experts to propose recommendations geared towards policy change. Finally, this project highlights the vast complexities that go into the pregnancy, birth, and post-partum period for women living on the U.S.-Mexico border, and how these experiences shape maternal …

“They’Re Still Trying To Wrap Their Head Around Forever”: An Anatomy Of Hope For Spinal Cord Injury Patients, William A. Lucas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation draws on ethnographic data to investigate the nature of spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation in Central Florida, using participant observation and interview data to understand how people with SCI (pwSCI) conceptualize their own disabilities after experiencing such radical alterations in their subjectivities. Using case studies and ethnographic vignettes, it argues that the extreme double binds in which pwSCI find themselves (where they are personally ordinarily disabled and socially extraordinarily novel; and where they are enabled resources to pursue “hopeful” therapy modalities while being designated as hopelessly disabled) is further polarized by the various legislative regimes of truth in …

Transformative Psychedelic Experiences At Music Events: Using Subjective Experience To Explore Chemosocial Assemblages Of Culture, Gabrielle R. Lehigh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clinical interest in psychedelic treatments in the United States started in the 1950s, but anti-drug policy and anti-social sentiments quickly thwarted future research. The last decade has renewed clinical interest in using psychedelics to treat a diversity of mental health ailments. While these studies provide essential protocols, treatments, and therapy models for patients, they are limited in understanding the role of the contextual elements that influence psychedelic experiences and outcomes. This project examines how people use psychedelic substances outside medical settings by studying transformative psychedelic experiences at music events. This inquiry into psychedelic use utilizes an integrated framework of chemoethnography …

The Local Neurologies Of Substance Use Triggers, Breanne I. Casper

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Substance use triggers are largely understood to be embedded in drug use contexts and to be a major precipitator of relapse. Yet, the relationship between triggers and future instances of drug use is not quite clear– particularly in understanding the nuances of when triggers are “triggering” and when they are not. Additionally, there is little ethnographic work that explores how individuals interact with triggers in contexts related to substance use, particularly during periods of active use. This project employs ethnographic and survey research methods to interrogate substance use triggers in the harm reduction context. In doing so, it answers the …

Karl Marx On Human Flourishing And Proletarian Ethics, Sam Badger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will show that Marx’s philosophy contains a notion of human “second nature” centered on the activity of labor with a corresponding class-centered theory of flourishing and emancipation. This notion shares important similarities with that of Aristotle but also differs in significant ways. Second nature for Marx is created and habituated through education and social labor. Moreover, human nature is molded into different forms as history progresses and modes and means of production change. In a class society everyone becomes is alienated from their nature in a way that inhibits their flourishing. This contrasts with an emancipated society, where …

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study Of Cortez, Florida, Karla Ariel Maddox

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Resilience” has often been defined by examining case studies in resilience failures. In contrast, this case study utilizes the oldest, still functional fishing village in Cortez, Florida to rhetorically analyze how organizational communicative practices have worked to ensure its resilience. Situating this conversation within Rhetoric proves valuable since so many attempts to define and utilize “resilience” seek to capitalize on its positive connotation but distort resilience definitions and practice. This dissertation explores three research questions: 1. “What systems and/or structures made our continued existence possible and what ideologies or goals drove their creation?” 2. “What ideologies, perceptions, and/or goals inspired …

English Use In Italian Contexts: A Digital Ethnographic Study Of Language Ideological Discourses, Antonella Gazzardi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Language ideologies are systems of beliefs about languages. Naturalized as “common sense,” they are widespread and significantly influence social, discursive, and linguistic practices. Language ideologies are expressed and circulated in a wide range of media formats, including social media, where lay people and experts alike share their opinions and beliefs. One “language problem” they debate about is the use of English in otherwise Italian contexts that is (mostly) deemed unnecessary (referred to as Italenglish). By applying a citizen sociolinguistic lens (Rymes & Leone, 2014), and by adding an ethnographic component to the critical discourse analysis of digital data (Fairclough, 2013), …

Environmental Justice From The Ground(Water) Up: Coping With Contamination In Tallevast, Florida, Grey W. Caballero

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How do communities living with chronic environmental contamination cope with the social, political, and economic impacts of the contamination? This research employs a community-engaged oral history approach with participant observation and archival research to address this question. We focus on the case of Tallevast, Florida, where the local groundwater has been contaminated with chlorinated solvents for over 60 years and where cleanup is estimated to take another 100 years. In addition to concerns about health and wellness, we find that residents are also concerned about household displacement and the disruption of social networks, failed governance at the local and state …

Early Agricultural Lives: Bioarchaeological Inferences From Neolithic And Early Copper Age Tombs In The Central Po Valley, Italy, Christopher J. Eck Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current project seeks to illuminate the diets of the earliest farming societies in central Northern Italy. Neolithic peoples who first began settling in the Central Po Valley sometime at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth millennium BCE forever changed the landscape from one of expanding sub-continental forests to one of intensive agricultural production and anthropogenic influence. A total of 109 individual burials from 24 separate infrastructure project excavations of 17 sites surrounding the modern city of Mantua, Italy were analyzed utilizing a biochemical approach and a bioarchaeological explanatory theoretical framework based within embodiment and life …