Digital Commons Network^™

Essays On Corruption, Chandan Kumar Jha

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Corruption is a global concern and requires attention because of its detrimental effects on economic growth and development. This dissertation includes three different essays that identify some of the instruments that can be used to fight corruption. The first essay investigates whether women's presence in economic and political arenas can have a significant impact on corruption. It finds evidence that while women's presence in parliament does reduce corruption other measures of female participation in economic activities are shown to have no effect. The second essay shows that internet and Facebook have an adverse effect on corruption. Finally, in a theoretical …

Gender Identity Construction Through Talk About Video Games, Sara M. Cole

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Gender Identity Construction through Talk about Video Games" Sara Cole discusses the construction of gender identity in terms of experiences of digital media and interactive play. Digital literacy expresses, shares, and reaffirms gendered self-identification through experiences of video game play with narratives that either confirm or deny stereotypical biases. In-depth interviews were used to explore the effects of play practices on conceptions of masculinity and personal identity in males who grew up in the 1980s by focusing on a linguistic analysis of the pragmatics of their shared thoughts on play, fantasy, use of digital media, and violence. …

How Toni Morrison's Facebook Page Re(Con)Figures Race And Gender, Beatriz Revelles-Benavente

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "How Toni Morrison's Facebook Page Re(con)figures Race and Gender" Beatriz Revelles-Benavente explores Morrison's Facebook page and comments on it. In 2010, Morrison opened a Facebook page where she received a large amount of comments and created debates and Revelles-Benavente analyses how these comments navigate questions of race and gender. Based on theoretical considerations about issues of race and gender in cyberculture and applied to the narratives posted on Morrison's Facebook page, Revelles-Benavente argues that the problematics of race and gender are relational and the question needs to be centered on the object of study as the relation …

Magic As A Form Of Oppression Towards Women: Gender Ideology In Maleficent (2014), Thalia Shelyndra Wendranirsa

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Previous studies propose that female protagonists in Disney movies are represented based on gender construction that causes oppression towards women, but in 2014, Disney produces Maleficent which offers different characterization and theme opposing the aforementioned gender construction. By focusing on its different female main character and theme, this paper aims to see what kind of oppression occurs and how Disney presents their gender ideology in the movie. The findings reveal that even though Maleficent is portrayed as a powerful woman, she is also oppressed. Her magical power becomes a trigger of her oppression since men consider Maleficent’s power as a …

Representations Of Gender In Young Adult (Ya) Literature, 1960-2010, Maria I. Cipriani

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

This dissertation focuses the lens of queer studies and trauma studies on YA literature published in the United States between 1960 and 2010 to demonstrate that authors embed cultural messages in YA texts. Those messages for YA readers intend to model behavior considered appropriate and teach about normative sex and gender roles. Individuals between the ages of 10 and 20 comprise YA readership, and the means of teaching these readers cultural norms include imagery and cautionary tales. The content of the literature inculcates views of acceptable behaviors with respect to sexuality and gender roles and generally conflates sex and gender. …

Gender, Number, Nouns & Adjectives: A Study Of Grammatical Agreement In Second Language Learners Of Arabic & Spanish, Anne-Marie Marguerite Poulos

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

This thesis investigates the causes of gender and number agreement errors in learners of both Arabic and Spanish as second languages. Data was collected from each of these groups during beginner level language courses at a university. There were a total of eight tests. The first six were adjective selection activities focusing on a specific noun phrase or sentence structure. The last two were written tests, elicited by images, where students had to produce their own nouns and adjectives. The common first language (L1) of the majority of participants is English, which lacks adjective agreement and does not have the …

The Dangers Of Playing House: Celia's Subversive Role In As You Like It, Allison Grant

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Cross-Gender Casting As Feminist Interventions In The Staging Of Early Modern Plays, Gemma Miller

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay explores cross-gender casting of Renaissance canonical texts in modern British theatrical institutions as an act of feminist activism. Reversing early modern all-male theatrical practices, female-male re-gendering can not only interrogate the misogyny immanent in the works themselves, but also expose the ideological structures that continue to collude with these values on the contemporary stage and in society more generally. Through a comparative analysis of all-female productions such as Julius Caesar (dir. by Phyllida Lloyd, Donmar Warehouse, 2012-13) and selective cross-gendering, as exemplified in Edward II, (dir. by Joe Hill-Gibbins, The National Theatre, 2013), I argue that cross-gender …

Community Assistance For Refugees And Gender Roles: What Could Make This C.A.R. Run Better?, Nathan E. Meyer

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Community Assistance for Refugees is a non-profit service organization in downtown Mankato, Minnesota. Secondary migration to southern Minnesota has increased the refugee population as well as the need for research assessing the needs and concerns of refugees. The purpose of this project was two-fold: first to analyze how C.A.R. is able to meet the needs of its clients and second, to investigate ways in which C.A.R. could improve its services. Traditionally female refugees are less educated and less mainstreamed into American society. This research was designed to help all clients, but special attention was paid to the specific needs of …

Embodying Ritual Performance: An Iconographic Analysis Of Burial 38 At The Etowah Site, Amy M. Goldstein

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an iconographic study of Burial 38 from Mound C at the Etowah, a Mississippian mound site in present-day Northwest Georgia. The goal of this study was to gain an understanding of the iconographic meaning of the artifacts in Burial 38 as well as the significance of the arrangement of individuals within the burial and its relationship with Mound C more broadly. Applying theories of relational ontology, performance, and gender, I build on King’s (2010) interpretation of Mound C’s final construction phases as a ritual event that transformed the mound into a sacred center, melded foreign and local …

"I Came To America, Crying": Rebuilding A Life, Redefining The Self—Ethiopian Women Refugees In Denver (Colorado) (2012–2013), Barbara Guglielminotti Valetta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the challenges faced by Ethiopian women in the Denver community to reach harmony within their new social and cultural space and to examine what they feel they have lost and gained in their self-identity as a result of their immigration. Refugees face a multitude of dilemmas when they are compelled to relocate from their home countries to a new, foreign-host society. Ethiopian refugees have been arriving in the US since the 1970s and feel the uprootedness of being away from their homeland. Being uprooted is losing one’s culture and ways of life. …

Transmission: Premium Television Characters Outside Of The Gender Binary, Daniel L. Ketchum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Five fictional characters have emerged on the U.S. premium-pay-cable channels that blur the traditional male-or-female gender divide. The basics of queer theory (sex, gender, orientation, and transgender) and critical/cultural studies (encoding, decoding, and reading a text) are explained as a basis for the analysis of the characters, which seeks to answer the research question: does the premium-pay-cable television format offer truly empathetic non-binary transgender characters that challenge the dominant American ideologies about gender identity and expression? If so, how? If not, why not?

Shane McCutcheon from Showtime’s lesbian melodrama The L Word (2004- 2010), Lafayette Reynolds from HBO’s supernatural drama-comedy …

A Legacy Of Letters: The Construction Of An Aging Masculine Identity, K. Tiffani Baldwin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate the construction of a masculine identity through a qualitative analysis of personal letters written by an aging man over the last two decades of his life (age 68-89). Symbolic interaction and life-span communication are the guiding frameworks behind the development of the research questions and the subsequent analyses. Research question one asks: What themes emerge from the personal letters written by an aging man? The following two themes emerged: a) relationality, and b) age and aging. Research question two asks: What do the metaphors that emerge from personal letters reveal about the …

Gender Representation In Sports Communication, Michelle R. Stiller

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

America's Heroes And Darlings: The Media Portrayal Of Male And Female Athletes During The 2014 Sochi Games, Matthew K. Curtis

Theses and Dissertations

It has been well documented that female athletes receive much less media attention than male athletes, with estimates placing coverage of male athletes at 95% of all sport-related media (Coakley, 1986). While not to that extent, studies focusing on media portrayals of Olympic athletes also confirm that the media dedicates the majority of coverage to male athletes (Duncan, 1990; Duncan & Hasbrook, 1988; Hambrick, Simmons, Greenhalgh, & Greenwell, 2010; Higgs, Weiller, & Martin, 2003; Lee, 1992; Kinnick, 1998; Pfister, 1978). Some evidence suggests that media coverage of female athletes and the recognition of their achievements are slowly increasing (Higgs et …

The Neglected Heavens: Gender And The Cults Of Helios, Selene, And Eos In Bronze Age And Historical Greece, Katherine A. Rea

Classics: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Why is it that the sun and moon held such a small place in cults of the Greeks, and is it that the sun is male and the moon is female in Greek myth? Aristophanes in Peace 406-413 claims that “we sacrifice to you [the Olympians], the barbarians sacrifice to them [the sun and moon]”. But if we look at nearby or related civilizations, the situation is quite different. In Ugaritic, Minoan, and Hittite religion (as well as among other Indo-European speaking people), the sun and other celestial deities have much more prominence. However, while the Greeks acknowledged the divinity …

Neither (Fully) Here Nor There: Negotiation Narratives Of Nashville's Kurdish Youth, Stephen Ross Goddard

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Nashville, Tennessee, is home to nearly fifteen thousand ethnic Kurds. They have come in four distinct groups over the course of two decades to escape the hardship and horror of brutal central government policies, some directed toward their extinction. Many of that number are young people who were infants or toddlers when they were whisked away to the safety of temporary way stations prior to their arrival in the United States. What that means is that these youth have spent the majority of their formative years within the context of the American culture. This thesis is a study of how …

Skill, Trust, And Deployment: Who’S Your Buddy?, Julianne Sutton

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

Whether or not the gender of a potential buddy in hypothetical military scenarios influenced the participant’s decision was assessed. The 25 participants were divided in three groups: one control group, and two experimental groups. The participants were given a role-playing packet with eight scenarios. After each scenario, the participant was asked to choose an option for a buddy to accompany the participant. Four buddy options were given, each ranging in degrees of Relevant Skill or Knowledge, Relevant Experience, and Attitude towards Task. The experimental groups were also given a fourth variable of Gender Identity; where female participants had transgender or …

Narrating Gender: A Feminist Approach To The Narratives Of The Transgender Experience, Jamie K. Lange

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Gender and identity are complex and often ubiquitous in nature. This is a study about gender and identity and the ways in which they manifest through the narratives of five transgender individuals, who all transitioned after the age of 45, who now live as women. This study about the transgender experience adds a significant and important perspective on gender, identity, identification, and the relationship between gender and identity. The most important conclusions are the lengths to which these people go to support gender social constructs, reinforcing the immense strength of the social construction of gender. The idea that social constructs …

Fearless: Josh Griffiths, Joshua M. Griffiths

SURGE

Continually a strong voice for the underrepresented on campus, working with other students and faculty to take initiative in changing campus policy and culture toward the LGBTQ community, and serving as a leader in multiple groups and organizations on campus, Josh Griffiths ’14 fearlessly advocates for members of our campus community, making Gettysburg a more open and welcoming space. [excerpt]

Assuming Identities: Gender, Sexuality, And Performativity In The Silence Of The Lambs, Lynne Stahl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In the introduction to Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick discusses the instability of the ignorance/knowledge binary, which generally equates the latter with power and the former with impotence. She argues that ignorance (or the appearance thereof) can be a tool of power as well, citing as an example the 1986 ruling by the United States Justice Department that employers “may freely fire persons with AIDS” provided that those employers “can claim to be ignorant of the medical fact, quoted in the ruling, that there is no known health danger in the workplace from the disease” (5). That this …

Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn Davis

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

Linguistic uses of ‘sisterhood’ provide a window into disparate understandings of relationality among virtual and actual interlocutors in women’s development across vectors of caste, class, ethnicity and nationality. In this essay, I examine the trope of ‘sisterhood’ as it was employed at a women’s development project in Janakpur, Nepal, in the 1990s. I demonstrate that the use of this common signifier of kinship with culturally disparate “signifieds” created a confusion of meaning, and differential readings of the politics of relationality. In my view, ‘sister,’ as used at this project, was a multivalent, strategically deployed, and divergently interpreted term. In particular, …

The Relationship Of Spiritual Intelligence To Achievement Of Secondary Students, Merial Smartt

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this non-experimental, correlational quantitative research study was to examine the relationship between student achievement and spiritual intelligence while controlling for age and gender in two public and two private schools in a southeastern city. The variable of interest and criterion variable of achievement was measured by the American College Test (ACT). The variable of spiritual intelligence was measured using a 24 question self-report assessment entitled The Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (SISRI-24) by D. King (2008). The SISRI-24 included four subscales, critical existential thinking (CET), personal meaning production (PMP), transcendental awareness (TA), and conscious state expansion (CSE) that …

The Diagnostic Stability Of Developmental Delay And Developmental Language Disorder In Infants And Toddlers, Alexander J. Hinnebusch

Master's Theses

Numerous children are diagnosed with Developmental Delay (DD) and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) each year in the US. There are inconsistent diagnostic definitions for these disorders because individual states determine diagnostic criteria, complicating prevalence and diagnostic stability estimation. In the current study, 37 children received a diagnosis of DD and 21 received a diagnosis of DLD at an initial evaluation as part of participation in a study investigating the early detection of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs), and were seen for a follow-up evaluation. The DD group was significantly more likely to retain this diagnosis at follow-up than the DLD group. …

Gender Differences In Text Messaging, Sara R. Shawcroft

Theses and Dissertations

Text messaging is a significant social phenomenon that merits investigation. Communications theories are well suited to this type of research because text messaging serves as both mediated communication and interpersonal communication. This kind of research can also contribute to a deeper understanding of communication differences between genders. The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether there are gender differences in the use of text messaging and, if so, what the differences are. Participants for the study were recruited via convenience sampling. The sample consisted of 27 participants ages 18--35; 14 were female and 13 were male. Data were collected …

An Indigenous Women Perspective Of Work And Organisation: The Maya Way, Jennifer Manning, J. Miguel Imas, Paul Donnelly

Conference papers

Western literature in management/organisation studies focuses primarily on gender issues that affect inequalities experienced by women at work. Adopting, in some cases, critical and feminist theoretical positions, the gender debate unfolds questions on the prevailing male discourse that is dominant in management and business organisations. Most of these theoretical assumptions tend to influence, subsequently, the way in which we understand the experiences of women in the developing or under-developed world. That is, these theoretical positions occupy a privileged voice upon which to write, describe and analyse the experiences of women in contexts where these Western discourses seem either alien or …

"We're Taking Slut Back": Analyzing Racialized Gender Politics In Chicago's 2012 Slutwalk March, Aphrodite Kocieda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined bodied activism in Chicago's Slutwalk 2012 march, a contemporary movement initiated in Toronto, Canada that publicly challenged the mainstream sentiment that women are responsible for their own rape and victimization. Adopting an intersectional approach, I used textual analysis to discuss photographs posted on the official Chicago Slutwalk website to explore the ways this form of public bodied protest discursively engages women's empowerment from movement feminism as well as third wave and postfeminisms. I additionally analyzed the overall website and its promotional materials for the Slutwalk marches as well as how Chicago's photographic representations privilege the white female …

Exploring The Potential Of Using Explicit Reflective Instruction Through Contextualized And Decontextualized Approaches To Teach First-Grade African American Girls The Practices Of Science, Gayle A. Buck, Valarie L. Akerson, Cassie F. Quigley, Ingrid S. Weiland

Publications

Contemporary science education policy documents call for curriculum and pedagogy that lead to students’ active engagement, over multiple years of school, in scientific practices. This participatory action research study answered the question, “How can we successfully put twenty-three first-grade African American girls attending a gender school in an impoverished school district on the path to learning the practices of scientists”. The Young Children’s Views of Science (YCVOS) (Lederman, 2009) was used to interview these first-graders pre-, mid- and post-instruction during an instructional unit designed in response to many of the pedagogical strategies research has demonstrated to be effective in other …

Go Lala Go!: Globalization, Consumerism, And Gender In Chinese Romantic Comedy, Morgan Southwell Gurr

Theses & ETDs

This thesis deals with the negotiation of Chinese cultural identity through film. This work is motivated by a desire to understand more about Chinese culture and media. In the first chapter, relevant research related to Chinese film in general is examined, focusing on the topics of transnationality, nationality, gender and genre. Recent economic development in China has created challenges to traditional values. Forces including globalism, language, consumerism, and nationalism come into play as affluent Chinese navigate new identities. Media representations of the modern Chinese, particularly affluent Chinese women portray the complex experience of identity and serve as a site for …

Feminine Wiles: Performance And Embodiment By Webcam Models, Michelle W. Patteson

Theses & ETDs

Prior research on emotional labor and constructions of normatively feminine work identities in the service industry exists, but is limited, especially in terms of a focus on sex work. This study explores emotional labor and performances of femininity by webcam models. Surveys were administered to 43 woman-read1 webcam models. The results indicate that webcam models whose performance is influenced by what they think is desired by clientele are likely to perform emphasized femininity at work, controlling for femininity outside of work. This indicates that many models construct their performance based on their generalized knowledge of cisgender male heterosexual desire, given …