Digital Commons Network^™

Fashioning The Self: Performance, Identity And Difference, Jessica L. Neumann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project will examine cultural and rhetorical communication studies to determine how these modes of analysis can be compared with interdisciplinary literature to better understand the role fashion plays within everyday performances and the shaping of identity. Criticisms by second-wave feminist scholars have focused on the fashion industry's overarching male influence; in more recent scholarship, feminist academics have often considered an affinity for fashion to be un-feminist and oppressive. I argue that fashion can instead be viewed as a tool for female agency and expressing individuality, rather than just a mode for reinforcing gendered norms. Using feminist rhetorical analysis …

The Moving To The Beat Documentary And Hip-Hop Based Curriculum Guide: Youth Reactions And Resistance, Jennifer Wallin-Ruschman

Dissertations and Theses

Many of the academic and popular treatments of hip-hop overlook the complexity of the phenomenon. Hip-hop is often portrayed solely as a source of corruption and regressive tendencies or, alternatively, as a sort of savior for otherwise marginalized individuals and source of revolutionary power. This thesis situates hip-hop between these poles and draws out its progressive and regressive aspects for analysis. Considering its vast global influence and a growing body of academic literature, hip-hop has been notably understudied in the field of psychology. Alternatively, educational theorists and practitioners have realized the power of hip-hop in revisualizing an emancipatory education that …

The Construction Of Reading Identity In Struggling Middle School Readers, Anna Marie Anatriello Bonafide

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Middle school students bring various identities into the classroom including their reading identities, their self concepts concerning their views of themselves as readers. Using identity and psycho-social and socio-cultural theoretical constructs as a foundation, I conducted phenomenological case studies that focused on middle school remedial readers and the means by which their reading identities are constructed within and outside the institution of school. The study investigated in- school factors which impact student reading identities, including interactions with remedial and classroom teachers, as well as out- of- school factors such as family literacy.

Fantasy, Leisure, And Labor: A Story Of Temple Terrace's Historic Architecture, Rachelle Hostetler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to explore how the community planning and style of housing of Temple Terrace Estates embodies the socio-economic conflicts inherent to the United States in the 1920s. To account for missing narratives, I will approach this research from a critical cultural perspective. I chose this approach as a way to investigate the power dynamics in the city during the time it was known as Temple Terrace Estates Inc. The Estates attracted investors by encouraging northerners to purchase a Mediterranean Revival or Spanish Colonial style villa in conjunction with a parcel of a large orange grove, …

Preservice Teachers' Perceptions Of Their Perspective Transformations: A Case Study, Victoria Caruana

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing a case study approach, this study explored the perspectives of preservice teachers as they relate to working with students with disabilities in inclusive classroom settings. Preservice teachers' perceptions about the extent, if any, their learning experiences during teacher preparation contributed to their perspectives was examined through a sequential exploratory design that employed both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings of this case study of six (6) elementary and secondary preservice teachers indicated that the experiences they had during their final student teaching (internship) were the most meaningful triggers of their perspective transformations. The findings further indicated that four (4) …

Thoughts On Music Ethnography In Urban Indonesia: From Yogyakarta Recordings To Translocal Popular Culture In The Melayu Borderlands, Max Richter

Antropologi Indonesia

Previous studies on Indonesian music focused on cultural heritage and traditional preservation or western-style modern music such as pop and rock music. Both were perceived as separate genre, even modern music often downplayed traditional one. The author argues analysis of hybrid genre like keroncong and dangdut would provide more complicated picture than such dichotomy. He explained long history of cultural exchanges in various parts of Indonesia which showed these two genres influenced each other. As a case study the author presents urban music as main character of urban social lives in Indonesia. This article depicts street music and campursari in …

Dual Consciousness: Identity Construction Among Appalachian Professional Women In Southern Ohio, Rebecca Nicole Roades

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study examined identity construction among a purposeful sample of professional women of Appalachian origin with particular regard to the blending of their cultural heritage in a society in which they are often marginalized. The questions guiding the research were grounded in a conceptual framework encompassing elements of culture, gender, leadership, and identity theories specifically using internal colonization, social cognitive, and social identity theories. They included the following: How do these women identify with their Appalachian heritage? How has their Appalachian heritage influenced real or perceived feelings of marginalization and how has that shaped their identity? Do they perceive themselves …

The Content And Critical Metaphor Analysis Of Illustrated Print Advertisements In China., Chun Jiang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation takes Chinese advertisements as the research subjects to see in what way a quantifiable large number of advertisements with its metaphorical nature and instrumental mission can reflect social cultural change, in specifics, ideology and identity change of China in the last thirty years by combining four methods of research: content analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Conceptual Metaphor Analysis and Pictorial Metaphor Analysis. The dissertation goes through the sign or ad interpretation process of linguistic, semiotic and critical analysis of 300 sample illustrated print advertisements collected from popular and award-winning illustrated print advertisements in Chinese media in the three periods …

Seeking A Spiritual Home For Women : A Comparative Study Of Chen Ran's And Amy Tan's Fictions., Jing He 1979-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With increasing cross-cultural infiltrations and accelerated interflows among people of all nationalities in this globalized world, the focus of comparative literature has experienced a shift from traditional Eurocentric cannons to a broader space incorporating literary works from marginalized cultures in its exploration of both particularities and commonalities. This dissertation aims to address the loss and reconstruction of women's self-identities as reflected in the fictions of contemporary Chinese woman writer Chen Ran and Chinese American woman writer Amy Tan. Drawing ideas from identity theories and postmodern feminist theories, the author compares the major motifs, rhetorical devices and writing strategies of the …

Filmmaker, Lawyer, Indian Chief: The Negotiation Of Identity In An Indigenous Film Festival, William Lempert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since colonial contact, indigenous peoples have been predominantly represented by community outsiders. As a result, native peoples have rarely had a primary, or even collaborative role, in the production of these representations. However, in the last two decades, there has been an unprecedented proliferation of indigenous created films and the festivals that feature them. The Denver Indigenous Arts and Film Festival is an annual festival that exclusively showcases films made by and with indigenous peoples. The festival’s 2009 theme of “Telling Our Stories” emphasized cultural control of representation and the transmission of traditional knowledge.

In this thesis, I show that …

Labor Pains: An Exploration Of The Complex Roles Of Identity, The Body, And Policy In Surrogacy Discourses In India, Jennifer Aimee Sandoval

Communication ETDs

This study applied communication theory about the body, identity, and policy to analysis of the process of surrogacy in India. Using qualitative interview methods and discourse analysis, the study aims to increase understanding of how the process of transnational surrogacy emerges, and the impact it has on participants. Interviews were conducted in Ahmedabad, Anand, and Mumbai with doctors, health officials, surrogates, and activities. The interview data was used to answer four research questions that worked to identify how the process of surrogacy is communicated and enacted, how surrogates bodies are positioned, how surrogates construct their identities, and how policy constructs …

Representation In Kenya, Its Diaspora, And Academia: Colonial Legacies In Constructions Of Knowledge About Kenya's Coast, Jesse Benjamin

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

This paper explores the construction of knowledge in Kenya in the context and aftermath of colonialism and underdevelopment. Those communities that were politically and economically marginalized in Coast Province over the past century were also displaced in terms of academic opportunities, resulting in fewer social science scholars from Mijikenda and other non-Swahili communities in both Kenyan and diaspora universities. Underdevelopment studies in Africa and Kenya are briefly reviewed, and the colonial history of asymmetric social relations at coastal Kenya is traced. Finally, key debates over identity and history are examined within this context and shown to be exacerbated by diasporic …

Imagined Realities, Defying Subjects: Voice, Sexuality And Subversion In African Women's Writing, Sarah Namulondo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The privileging of man in African societies has involved an erasure of identities and subjectivities of many women, holding them to an assumption of female inferiority. To counter the injustice, African women writers have engaged in rhetorical and performative strategies designed to reconstitute the cultural erasure as they try to claim status as individuals. But in the process, various cultural expectations such as their maternal roles act as constant bottlenecks to return them back to their prescribed roles as subordinate beings. This dissertation, “Imagined Realities, Defying Subjects: Voice, Sexuality and Subversion in African Women’s Writing” explores the methodologies of cultural …

The Pedagogy Of Digital Storytelling In The College Classroom, Rachel Raimist, Candance Doerr-Stevens, Walter R. Jacobs

Faculty Publications, Sociology

In the fall of 2008, Rachel Raimist and Walter Jacobs collaboratively designed and taught the course “Digital Storytelling in and with Communities of Color” to 18 undergraduate students from a variety of disciplines. Candance Doerr-Stevens audited the class as a graduate student. This article examines the media making processes of the students in the course, asking how participants used digital storytelling to engage with themselves and the media through content creation that both mimicked and critiqued current media messages. In particular, students used the medium of digital storytelling to build and revise identities for purposes of rememory, reinvention, and cultural …

Kittens In The Oven: Race Relations, Traumatic Memory, And The Search For Identity In Julia Alvarez’S How The García Girls Lost Their Accents, Natalie Carter

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The search for an ever-elusive home is a thread that runs throughout much literature by authors who have immigrated to the United States. Dominican authors are particularly susceptible to this search for a home because “for many Dominicans, home is synonymous with political and/or economic repression and is all too often a point of departure on a journey of survival” (Bonilla 200). This “journey of survival” is a direct reference to the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, who controlled the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961. The pain and trauma that Trujillo inflicted upon virtually everyone associated with the Dominican Republic …

Structuring Liminality: Theorizing The Creation And Maintenance Of The Cuban Exile Identity, Jaclyn Colona, Guillermo J. Grenier

Ethnic Studies Review

In this article, we examine the exilic experience of the Cuban-American community in South Florida through the dual concepts of structure and liminality. We postulate that in the case of this exilic diaspora, specific structures arose to render liminality a persistent element of the Cuban-American identity. The liminal, rather than being a temporal transitory stage, becomes an integral part of the group identity. This paper theorizes and recasts the Cuban-American exile experience in Miami as explicable not only as the story of successful economic and political incorporation, although the literature certainly emphasizes this interpretation, but one consisting of permanent liminality …

Blue Notes From Three Songs: Malleable Artifacts As Related To Evolving Cultural Identity, Lou Lucas

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

A consideration of three State Songs, ΓÇ£My Old Kentucky HomeΓÇ¥ by Stephen Foster, ΓÇ£Carry Me Back to Old VirginnyΓÇ¥ by James A. Bland, and ΓÇ£The Missouri WaltzΓÇ¥ with lyrics by James Royce Shannon. The combination of black dialect and negative stereotypes, with elevation to special status impacting identity, necessitated their alteration. Such change reflects societal response to the Civil Rights Movement, while a pragmatic view suggests these malleable artifacts have functioned, and continue to function, as ΓÇ£blue notes,ΓÇ¥ unsettling elements acting to stimulate discourse, becoming participants in the formation of identity and American cultural change.

Walking On The Wild Side: An Examination Of A Long-Distance Hiking Subculture, Kristi Mcleod Fondren

Theses and Dissertations

A great deal of previous sociological research has examined the social contours of subcultures, focusing either on highly transient subcultures (e.g., among youth) or, conversely, stable institutionalized subcultures (e.g., among professionals). More recent scholarship has examined how leisure subcultures are formed and sustained around a particular interest or activity (e.g., windsurfing). However, little attention has been paid to the role of recreational settings (i.e., specific geographical locales) in the formation of leisure subcultures. Using the Appalachian Trail as a case study, I aim to fill that gap by examining a long-distance hiking subculture. I use ethnographic data collected from long-distance …

Communicating Queer Identities Through Personal Narrative And Intersectional Reflexivity, Richard G. Jones, Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is currently a lack of intersubjective research involving human participants and conceptual frameworks that include queer theory. Queer theory's poststructuralist epistemology tends toward desubjectification, problematizing research that relies on participants' self-reports of lived experience. The author proposes that the interdisciplinary nature of Communication Studies, which is situated within the humanities and social sciences, leaves communication scholars well poised to contribute to ongoing metatheoretical and metamethodological conversations regarding queer theory and intersubjective research, particularly in relation to cultures and identities. To contribute to this scholarly conversation, the author utilizes the deconstructionist lens of queer theory to contextualize communication, employs personal …

"The Boys I Mean Are Not Refined": The Search For Identity In Contemporary American Novels, Jamie Valentine

Theses & ETDs

Many contemporary novelists explore a complex notion of identity. In these texts, characters create and recreate their identities, responding to the forces of their social world. I examine J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1945), Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer (1996) and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) following their young male protagonists in their search for a sense of identity. This thesis first explores the various strategies and tactics employed by the characters in the process of creating their identity: language, the search for community, sexuality, and violence. The success of each of these …

Sumbawan Obstetrics: The Social Construction Of Obstetrical Practice In Rural Indonesia, Vanessa Hildebrand

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

This dissertation examines the ways that the people in the village of Lunyuk, Sumbawa negotiate relationships and identity in their discussions about pregnancy and childbirth. At the center of the analysis are dueling midwives: those with biomedical training: bidan) versus those who use a local indigenous obstetrical knowledge similar to that found in much of Indonesia: dukun bayi). They compete with each other for patients, who are likewise making sense of their position in the world while juggling the pressures from national citizenship, local ethnic membership, Islam, and obstetric knowledge options. Specifically, this dissertation examines how people in this region …

Family Legacies: Constructing Individual And Family Identity Through Intergenerational Storytelling, Blair Thompson, Jody Koenig Kellas, Jordan Soliz, Jason Thompson, Amber Epp, Paul Schrodt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The current study focused on discovering the ways in which the intergenerational transmission of family legacy stories both enables and constrains individual family members’ sense of their own identities. Using semistructured interviews, 17 third-generation family members identified a multitude of both positive and negative family legacies. Both positive and negative legacies were influenced by the storytelling context. Positive legacies portrayed families as hardworking, caring, and cohesive while negative legacies were more idiosyncratic. Individual family members typically responded to their family legacies by embracing the positive and rejecting the negative. However, individuals’ responses also pointed to additional complexities in accepting or …

Identity, Gender, And Language In Synchronous Cybercultures: A Cross-Cultural Study, Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena, Ahmed Idrissi Alami, Gayathri Jayatilleke, Fawda Bouacharine

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

The integration of the Internet into contemporary society worldwide has had a profound impact on the way we communicate, relate to ourselves, and to each other. Different users, depending on various characteristics such as age, gender, education, and sociocultural background, access the Internet for various communication needs such as exchanging emails, making new friends, or engaging in a serious discussion. Whatever the goal, users need to adjust to this new computer-mediated interactive environment, and they do so either in ways that reveal native cultural values, or reflect the creation of new cultural norms and conventions.

Casa Samba: Twenty-One Years Of Amerizilian Identity In New Orleans1, Lauren E. Lastrapes

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Samba drumming and dance traditions work in New Orleans in ways that they do not elsewhere. Casa Samba, a drumming and dance troupe in the tradition of the Brazilian escolas de samba, shows how it works. Integral to this analysis of Casa Samba are the ways in which the group's identity and the identities of its individual members are processual, mutable, and "unfinished, always being remade" (Gilroy 1993:xi). This thesis examines how Casa Samba has situated itself in the New Orleans music scene. This work seeks, through ethnographic interviews with long term members, to identify what makes Casa Samba attractive …

The Future Of Aesthetics In/And Visual Culture Art Education In 21st Century Art Education, Shannon Reibel

Theses and Dissertations

This grounded theory project researches and analyzes publications from 1990-2008 assessing the debate over aesthetics in/and VCAE in 21st century art education. Through a series of visual models, a working theory and its supporting evidence assess this contested subject. Within the context of Modern and Postmodern paradigm conflict, art educators’ debate over aesthetics in/and VCAE fundamentally deals with differing conceptions of identity and freedom. Although commonly sharing the goal of fostering the formation of student identity through the provision and exercise of freedom, art educators’ differing perspectives on identity and freedom result in differing prescriptions for 21st century art education. …

Foreign Citizens: Freedmen, Identity, And Cultural Belonging In The Early Empire, Hayley Steptoe

Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity and Classics

No abstract provided.

Narratives And Sensemaking In The New Corporate University: The Socialization Of First Year Communication Faculty, Andrew F. Herrmann

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I examined what brand new Ph.D.s in Communication experience when they start their first, entry-level, tenure-track assistant professor position at a new university. Through the lens of scocial construction, I review vocational and organizational socialization, individual agency by newcomers, academic socialization processes, and the concept of the academic career in the current climate of university change and transformation. Then, I present the method of research, including the population and sampling method, and rationales for utilizing a narrative approach, interactive interviewing, and autoethnographic writing. After presenting the participants' narratives, I revisit both within- and between-case issues, beginning with socialization from the …

'Bajo Su Sombra': The Narration And Reception Of Colonial Urban Space In Early Nineteenth-Century Havana, Cuba, Paul Barrett Niell

Art & Art History ETDs

In early nineteenth-century Havana, Cuba, a small commemorative monument was erected on the Plaza de Armas to honor the site of the city's founding. Through academic history painting, Neoclassical architecture, and the appropriation of symbolic urban space, this memorial reconstructed the sixteenth-century history of the city for nineteenth-century audiences. This addition to the plaza could be seen as an extension of the Bourbon Reforms, which aimed to modernize the city by introducing public works and pedagogical methods that would make this Cuban colony function more efficiently in the insterests of Spain. However, upon closer examination, the memorial for the plaza …

Creative City And Fields Of Cultural Production: Ethnographic Perspectives Of “The Arts” In Tampa, James Kuzin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Stimulated by the economic theories of Richard Florida (2005), the City of Tampa established the Office of Creative Industries (OCI) to oversee efforts to strengthen the presence and visibility of "the arts." This thesis presents ethnographic research focused on practices, and perspectives among members of the OCI's service population. From July 2006 to July 2007, I conducted fieldwork among a diverse group of stakeholders possessing a unique connection to the aims of the OCI. The central problem addressed in this research looks at the degree to which cultural change occurs from participatory, grass-roots initiatives, rather than ones emanating from "the …

Interpreter Of Maladies: A Rhetorical Practice Transmitting Cultural Knowledge, Taylor Shea

Reason and Respect

This essay will illustrate how Lahiri utilizes her cultural underpinning to creatively juxtapose various elements within her short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, in order to offer a balanced representation of her modern social group, the Indian diaspora within America. Interpreter of Maladies is used as an example of how cultural knowledge may be transmitted through literature-as-rhetoric whether or not an author is conscious of cultural influence.