Digital Commons Network^™

Sneakily Feminist: A Gilmore Girls Analysis, Katelen Pick

Honors Program Theses and Projects

According to Symphony Advance Media, the 2016 reboot, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, pulled in an average of five million viewers among the 18-49-year-old age demographic in its first three days on Netflix ('Gilmore Girls' Early Ratings). The original series, broadcast on the WB Network (2000-2007) was nested into the everyday life of women in American society. It included a mother/daughter duo that problematized what it meant to be a feminist during its initial run. This project considers: How Gilmore Girls might be understood as a feminist intervention in 21st century US television? Prior research into the show …

A Study On Linking Korean Wave And Corporate Image On Country Image, Perceived Quality, Sang Mook Kim, Joo Nam Kim, Min Jae Park

Asia Marketing Journal

This study examines the linkage between Korean wave, corporate image and country image, perceived quality of products made in the country. To close a gap lacking empirical studies on impacts of corporate image to country image and to further understand impacts of Korean wave, this study conducts survey over Chinese consumers to test the effects of corporate image, Korean wave to the country image, and verify on its effects to perceived quality of the products made in the country. The results show that both corporate image and Korean wave influences to form positive country image of Korea, and perceived quality …

An American Student’S Transformed View Of French Culture, Julie Kessler

Honors Projects

The goal of this project is to compare American stereotypes of French culture to a student’s interactions with French culture during a yearlong education abroad program at Ècole de Management Strasbourg in Strasbourg, France, to see which commonly accepted stereotypes deserve to be dispelled, and explain those which may be acceptable from a more informed perspective.

Life Course Outcomes For Juveniles: Contact With The Criminal Justice System As A Turning Point, Dominique Tauffner

Honors Projects

This research investigated the life course outcomes of respondents who have been arrested during adolescence. Although the creation of the juvenile justice system is relatively recent, only existing for 119 years, there is a need for data on the impact this system has on society. The pre-existing knowledge and literature on juvenile delinquency and the criminal justice system often fails to capture longitudinal data. Most scholars on this issue will discuss the immediate effects of things like incarceration and placement or what influences delinquency, ignoring the long-term consequences or life outcomes of those that have been arrested prior to 18. …

Emerging Discourses Of Gender And Women In The National Park Service: An Ecofeminist Analysis Of Ranger Newsletter From 1979 To 1999, Emily Sapp

Honors Projects

The key focus of this research is based in ecofeminism, the worldview that the oppression of women is connected to the oppression of nature. This research studies the National Park Service, through the Association of National Park Ranger’s newsletter/magazine Ranger. The study attempts to answer the questions how do issues about gender equality emerge throughout the history of the National Park Service, as looking through the newsletter Ranger? How do ideas of femininity and masculinity emerge and are represented in Ranger throughout time? The study is significant in that it is representative of the NPS, and by revealing …

Hip-Hop In Africa : Prophets Of The City And Dustyfoot Philosophers, Msia Kibona Clark

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Throughout Africa, artists use hip-hop both to describe their lives and to create shared spaces for uncensored social commentary, feminist challenges to patriarchy, and resistance against state institutions, while at the same time engaging with the global hip-hop community. In Hip-Hop in Africa, Msia Kibona Clark examines some of Africa’s biggest hip-hop scenes and shows how hip-hop helps us understand specifically African narratives of social, political, and economic realities.

Clark looks at the use of hip-hop in protest, both as a means of articulating social problems and as a tool for mobilizing listeners around those problems. She also details the …

Wòlak-Waliké Jaman; Exploring Contemporary Walikan In Public Space, Nurenzia Yannuar

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

This article describes the current use of Walikan, a youth language in Malang, Indonesia. Unlike any previously described youth registers in Indonesia, Walikan has been around since as early as the 1940s and has continuously reinvented itself ever since. As will be shown, the speakers of Walikan have certain strategies to keep the practice alive. In addition to the use of Walikan in face-to-face communication, they also use Walikan in songs, local TV news, local newspaper columns as well as in public signs. The analysis focuses on how a youth language which began as an oral practice has been maintained …

Deliberating Public Policy Issues With Adolescents: Classroom Dynamics And Sociocultural Considerations, Margaret S. Crocco, Avner Segall, Anne-Lise S. Halvorsen, Rebecca J. Jacobsen

Democracy & Education

Classroom discussion and deliberation have been widely touted in the research literature as a centerpiece of high quality civic education. Empirical studies, however, of such processes are relatively few. In a public policy deliberation on immigration conducted in three Midwestern high schools during the academic year 2015–16, the authors found that analysis of a set of deliberations on the subject of immigration policy in the United States reveals the ways in which sociocultural identity aspects of the settings and participants influenced the processes and dynamics of these classroom events. Reflecting upon this analysis suggests a set of factors that reveal …

The Implementation Of Religious Literacy Curricula In American Public Schools, Natalie Lemay

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Religious literacy is defined as a basic level of knowledge and understanding of major world religions and beliefs. Most of the literature on the subject agrees that students benefit from exposure to other religions, both civically and mentally. The Religious Freedom Institute of the Newseum has created a curriculum in order to bring nonpartisan religious education back into public schools with the goal of increasing tolerance for communities of different faiths. The curriculum, titled the Georgia 3Rs project, is being piloted in Georgia, a predominantly Christian evangelical state. In my thesis, I study the effectiveness of prior examples of religious …

Stem (Voice): The Panvocalism Of White Male Bodies And Masculinities In The South African Defense Force, 1957-1990, Keegan Medrano

Madison Historical Review

The South African Defense Force (SADF) created in 1957 represented another attempt by the National Party government in South Africa to assert the supremacy of Afrikaner culture. The SADF, however, offered not only a concentrated location to condition and reinforce narratives of white supremacist and apartheid ideology, but importantly, existed as a space for white men to participate in, which could unite their developing masculinities infused with militaristically mobilized white supremacist ideologies. The SADF became a cauldron of venerated white masculinities that offered conscripts the opportunity to exercise their body, representing white and the white nation’s vitality and virility, and …

Fantasy Versus Reality: A Twenty-First Century Film Series To Explore How The Absurdity Of Alternate Realities Affects The Individual In The Audience, Courtney Wunderwald

University of Montana Conference on Undergraduate Research (UMCUR)

The purpose of this study is to understand how film viewers contextualize on-screen alternate realities with their personal perspectives, and if that is accurately represented by scholarly film critique. I then compared my findings with filmmaker interviews, which discuss their reasons for including specific imagery, symbols, and characters to evoke certain emotions or reactions from their audiences. My project aspired to offer a method that might redefine how viewers reflect on films and to open a discussion to gather data from audiences before assuming their reactions to film critique. I was always fascinated by the power of cinema, particularly how …

A Pathway To Psychological Difficulty: Perceived Chronic Social Adversity And Its Symptomatic Reactions, Cody Ding, Jingqiu Zhang, Dong Yang

Education Sciences and Professional Programs Faculty Works

In this paper, we attempt to predict and explain psychological maladjustment or difficulty. Specifically, we discuss the concept of perceived chronic social adversity, and we expect that such perceived chronic social adversity may potentially lead to chronic stress responses. Accordingly, we propose the symptomatic reactions of perceived chronic social adversity. We put forward a set of hypotheses regarding the relationships between perceived chronic social adversity and those chronic stress responses, and we further hypothesize a mediating role of individualized negative essentialism brought by perceived chronical social adversity. Resilience and individual differences in the ability to cope with perceived adversity are …

A Pathway To Psychological Difficulty: Perceived Chronic Social Adversity And Its Symptomatic Reactions, Cody Ding, Jingqiu Zhang, Dong Yang

Education Sciences and Professional Programs Faculty Works

In this paper, we attempt to predict and explain psychological maladjustment or difficulty. Specifically, we discuss the concept of perceived chronic social adversity, and we expect that such perceived chronic social adversity may potentially lead to chronic stress responses. Accordingly, we propose the symptomatic reactions of perceived chronic social adversity. We put forward a set of hypotheses regarding the relationships between perceived chronic social adversity and those chronic stress responses, and we further hypothesize a mediating role of individualized negative essentialism brought by perceived chronical social adversity. Resilience and individual differences in the ability to cope with perceived adversity are …

Intercultural Communication In The U.S. And Japan, Annelise Wilp

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to compare two groups: Japanese students studying or who have studied at American universities, and Americans who are studying or have studied at Japanese universities. The inclusionary criteria were American students who had studied at a Japanese university and Japanese students who had studied at an American university. Exclusionary criteria were those who did not meet the criteria above. Prospective participants were invited to participate through Facebook and email. Interviews were conducted either faceto- face at the Bernhard Center at Western Michigan University, or by telephone. Prospective participants were informed of the purpose of …

Subverting The Systems: Strength In Victimhood Through Malcom X'S Anti-Jeremiad, Carmen Sherlock

2018 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award

The jeremiad is a rhetorical strategy found in countless fields—including the speeches of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.—which laments a society’s current situation and calls for a return to the essentially good principles upon which it was founded. Some scholars have argued that the rhetoric of Malcolm X employs this strategy; however, through an analysis of his speech The Ballot or the Bullet, I argue that it in fact does the opposite: he uses the anti-jeremiad, a rhetorical pattern that fundamentally renounces the dominant ideals of, in this case, the twentieth-century United States. I reach this conclusion from …

The Image Of Omani Teachers As Viewed By Segments Of Society: An Analytical Descriptive Study, Abdullah Ambusaidi

Journal of Educational and Psychological Studies

This study aimed to identify the image of Omani teachers as viewed by other segments of society. The study sample consisted of 1196 members of Omani society from different sectors of the following Omani governorates: Muscat, Al-Dakhlyha, North Al-Sharqyia, South Al-Sharqyia, North Batinah, and South Batinah in academic year 2014/2015. To gather the data, a questionnaire consisting of 32 items and two open ended questions was used. The validity of the instrument was checked by a panel of experts. The reliability of the questionnaire was checked for internal consistency using Cronbach's alpha (a = 0.93). The overall results showed a …

Partners In Research And In Life, Sarah Asp Olson

Frontiers

Married Communication Studies professors team up to understand race, expression and what it means to belong.

Homeless And Marginally Housed Veteran Perspectives On Participating In A Photo-Elicitation Research Study, Keri L. Rodriguez, Daniel O. Hedayati, Lauren M. Broyles, Melissa E. Wieland, Michael A. Mitchell, James W. Conley, Shaddy K. Saba, Adam J. Gordon

Patient Experience Journal

Photo-elicitation interviewing (PEI) seems a valuable tool for engaging marginalized populations in research despite documented challenges. Given limited data on acceptability of PEI among homeless and marginally housed Veterans, this evaluation aimed to characterize their research experience. Veterans took photographs about health, health behaviors, and health care which facilitated semi-structured interviews. Their research study experience was assessed via a modified Reactions to Research Participation Questionnaire-Revised (RRPQ-R), along with additional survey and open-ended questions. Of the 20 participants who consented and participated, 16 (80%) completed the exit surveys. Most participants (>88%) indicated favorable experiences and limited drawbacks. Respondents disagreed that …

Parasocial Romantic Relationships, Romantic Beliefs, And Relationship Outcomes In Usa Adolescents: Rehearsing Love Or Setting Oneself Up To Fail?, Riva Tukachinsky, Sybilla M. Dorros

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

The study examines the associations between adolescents’ emotional and physical aspects of parasocial romantic relationships with media figures, idealized romantic beliefs, perceptions of a current dating partner, and relationship satisfaction. A two-study design included concurrent data from 153 adolescents ages 13–17 (55.6% female), and retrospective data from 274 college students ages 18–22 (79.8% female). Across both samples, emotional involvement in a PSRR was related to more idealized romantic beliefs. The intensity of emotional involvement with the media figure during adolescence was associated with lower relationship satisfaction and less favorable perceptions of a current romantic partner in college students. However, there …

Gone From Our Home, But Not From Our Hearts: Nineteenth Century Epitaphs In Selected Florida Rural Cemeteries, Maureen J. Patrick

Sunland Tribune

No abstract provided.

Imaging The Woman Through Tanzanian Women’S Maxims, Shani Omari, Fikeni E. M. K. Senkoro

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women’s maxims, as well as other forms of oral literature in Tanzania, are a popular genre. They are verbal arts that can be self-addressed or addressed to a fellow woman among womenfolk. This paper intends to examine the role of these maxims in imaging women in Tanzania. This study was prompted by the findings of previous studies regarding the portrayal of women in Kiswahili literature where, generally, women are depicted as inferior beings compared to men, partly due to the fact that most authors are men. Hence, we found it imperative to investigate women’s maxims that are created and uttered …

The Pedagogy Of Difference: Co-Producing Feminist Consciousness Across Borders, Patricia Mohammed

Journal of International Women's Studies

How has a movement built on the consciousness of sisterhood become so fragmented between the end of the 20th and into the second decade of the 21st century? As different political tendencies, widely varying economic conditions and cultural dissimilarities emerged in global struggles to achieve diverse visions of women’s and gender equality, the current feminist movement appears to be characterized by chasms between the east, west, north and south rather than viewed as a movement whose basic tenets are parallel across racial, geographic and social barriers. By looking at lived examples of confrontations, and through a deliberate process of self-reflexive …

Wwe: Redefining Working-Class Womanhood Through Commodified Feminism, Janice M. Sikon

The University Honors Program

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is the largest professional wrestling promotion in the world (Bajaj & Banerjee, 2016). Their programs air in 20 languages in over 180 countries, and in the United States approximately 11 million people watch their programs each week (“FAQ,” n.d.). These programs include six hours of televised weekly events and 16 annual pay-per-view events (“WWE Reports,” 2017). In the first quarter of 2017 the company grossed $188.4 million (“WWE Reports,” 2017). They have close ties with the current presidential administration, as Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon was the CEO of the company from 1980 to 2009 (Reuters, …

Book Reviews, Arden C. Autry Phd, Edward E. Decker Jr, Christopher G. Foster, Robert W. Graves, Daniel D. Isgrigg, Jeffrey S. Lamp, Wonsuk Ma, Peter A. Reynolds, James B. Shelton, Andrew R. Williams

Spiritus: ORU Journal of Theology

No abstract provided.

A Historical And Hermeneutical Approach To The Vice-Lists: A Pauline Perspective, Mark Hall

Spiritus: ORU Journal of Theology

The subject of homosexuality is controversial in the Church, even among Pentecostals; consequently, there has arisen a need for a historical and hermeneutical examination of the topic, especially in the Pauline corpus. The vice-lists of ancient literature along with the ones in the Pauline epistles provide insight into the apostle’s understanding of their purpose and function. Of the ones where Paul lists sexual sins, three specifically mention homosexuality: Romans 1:26–27, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, and 1 Timothy 1:9–10. Th is article discusses Paul’s understanding of the connection between homosexuality and idolatry and provides an in-depth analysis of the Greek words μαλακοί …

Forum: Feminism In German Studies, Elizabeth Loentz, Monika Shafi, Faye Stewart, Tiffany Florvil, Kerry Wallach, Beverly Weber, Hester Baer, Carrie Smith, Maria Stehle

German Studies Faculty Publications

From Professor Wallach's contribution entitled "Jews and Gender":

To consider Jews and gender within German Studies is to explore the evolution of German‐Jewish Studies with respect to feminist and gender studies. At times this involves looking beyond German Studies to other scholarship in Jewish gender studies, an interdisciplinary subfield in its own right. Over the past few decades, the focus on gender within German‐Jewish Studies has experienced several shifts in line with broader trends: an initial focus on the history of Jewish women and feminist movements gradually expanded to encompass the study of gender identity, masculinity, and sexuality. Historical and …

The Rider (2018-04-23), Jesus Sanchez

The Rider Archives

Vol.3 No.27

Research On Communicative Practices In An Alternative Classroom, Maria Alice Bonilha

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies communications in an alternative classroom in the United States. Using an ethnographic approach and drawing from conversation analysis, the study describes the school’s model of education and analyzes students’ classroom initiations, particularly those in which students responded to the teacher’s question with a question.

Game Of Thrones And The Background Behind Westeros, Arianna Taite

Academic Festival

The history of how Westeros came to be and how it affected audiences everywhere.

Advanced Seminar Final Paper - Friends, Ilaria Deangelis

Academic Festival

Television has an incredible way of bringing people together through TV shows and movies that allow us to separate ourselves from our real lives and spend a half hour to two hours invested in someone else's world, be it fictional or non-fictional content. However, by diving into what goes beyond the things that we see on the screen is what allows us to become truly knowledgeable about media theory, and a large part of understanding media theory revolves around how production teams work to create successful works that remain relevant and impactful for years. This paper presents a full case …