Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Narrative Policy Framework And Feminist Critical Policy Analysis Of The Welfare Reform Acts, And The Higher Education Of Single Welfare Mothers, Evelyn Jean Mangin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractScholars approached poverty through welfare reform by focusing on reductions in caseloads, timing out of benefits, and who was and not deserving of a four-year college degree. There is limited research regarding the power of narratives during the policy process and their influences on the language in welfare public laws. This qualitative study addressed the gap in the literature and policy analysis research by comparing and analyzing the welfare narratives and language used by policymakers and political actors from four presidential administrations: Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump, between 1996-2018. This study employed the narrative policy framework (NPF), a theory …

Assisted Living Transitions: Experiences Of Family Members Of Older African American Women, Carol A. Shaw Burns

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractLong-term care, also known as aging services, is evolving to meet the needs of the aging population in the United States, which is increasingly ethnically and racially diverse. The objective of this qualitative multiple case study was to understand how immediate family members experienced the transition of older African American women as they moved into assisted living facilities. Black feminist theory provided a theoretical framework. Narrative interview data were collected from four adult children family caregivers who facilitated the move. Three themes emerged from the content analysis: (a) Transition is not planned in advance and does not happen until a …

Body Appreciation As A Means To Protect Social Media Users From Body Dissatisfaction, Jennifer Yurchisin, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Kim K. P. Johnson, Haesung Whang

Publications and Research

When young adult women and men are exposed to idealized images in traditional media outlets, they often experience body dissatisfaction. As the use of social media increases, so do the opportunities for appearance-based comparisons. Individuals who are heavy users of social networking sites also tend to exhibit body dissatisfaction. Body appreciation is a personal characteristic that seems to counteract the negative influence traditional media exposure, and it may have a similar effect for social media exposure. The purpose of our research was to investigate the impact of body appreciation on the relationship between social network sites usage and body dissatisfaction …

Night Of Awakening: Strength And Empowerment In The Young Adult Fiction Genre, Shelby Ann Davis

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Young Adult Fantasy genre is often written off as a useless, or immature form of writing. However, there are studies that prove that this specific genre is not only engaging, but it is also empowering for young readers. By writing toward adolescent readers, authors are able to promote various ways in which their characters adjust or interact with their surroundings, which also influences their readers’ self and social awareness. By representing feminist perspectives and depicting the effects of trauma, YA literature fosters progressive social change and conveys the importance of mental health. In writing my own novel, The Night …

Making The Violin Fashionable: Gender And Virtuosity In The Life Of Camilla Urso, Maeve Nagel-Frazel, Petra Meyer Frazier, Antonia Banducci

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

In the late nineteenth century, the violinist Camilla Urso (1840-1902) was widely recognized as the preeminent female violinist in the United States. As a nationally famous celebrity, Urso became a pedagogue and role model to subsequent generations of female violinists. Both the wide-ranging geographic spread of Urso’s career and her direct advocacy for women violinists played a pivotal role in changing cultural ideals of violin performance from a militant and masculine bravura tradition into a fashionable pursuit for young women. A classmate of HenrykWieniawski (1835-1880) and a concert rival of the Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull (1810-1880), Urso’s career rested on …

A Tale Of Two Trans Men: Transmasculine Identity And Trauma In Two Fairy-Tale Retellings, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Transgender identities in fairy tale retellings are rare, but can reveal much about gender fluidity. Helen Oyeyemi’s novel Boy, Snow, Bird conflates transgender identities with mirrored falsehoods and fairytale spells, pathologizing a trauma victim who turns out to also become an abuser, while Gabriel Vidrine’s novella “A Pair of Raven Wings” depicts a queer transgender man with dignity, making it clear that the trauma he suffers is at the hands of bigots rather than being an invention of a sick mind or the cause of his transition. Pairing these fairy-tale retellings illuminates the topic of gender fluidity in fairy tales …

Building The Fat Girl Table: Excavating Cultural Memory Of Queer Fat Activism In The ‘90s, Rose Gelfand

Scripps Senior Theses

When we recount the histories of social movements, there is a tendency to imagine either a steady, linear march towards progress or a slow descent from radical ideas into complacency. The feminist movement gets painted in waves, progressing from white to intersectional, while in the LGBTQ+ rights movement the contrast of the Stonewall Riots & ACT UP with late 2010s focus on gay marriage and the corporatization of Pride is understood as a watering down and betrayal of the movement’s origins. Cultural memory is a constant process of construction and revision, and of course the truth of movements’ trajectories are …

Mothers Behind Cameras: Mother-Artist, Mother-Child Dyads In Sally Mann’S Immediate Family And Elinor Carucci’S Mother, Hayley A. Pierpont

Scripps Senior Theses

Women, particularly mothers, are often made invisible within narratives of their own family and domestic spaces, despite their role as creators and maintainers of those spaces. This perpetuation of invisibility is threaded throughout the history of artistic practices, (photography especially). Contemporary mother-artists Sally Mann and Elinor Carucci confront and unapologetically reflect their singular experience(s) with motherhood through their photography, which addresses the symbiotic dyads of mother-child and mother-artist. This thesis focuses on an analysis of four images: Mann’s The Wet Bed and Lee’s Dirty Hands, and Carucci’s Trying to Protect Emanuelle and I Will Protect You. In both …

The Intersection Between Black Hair And The Environment: Hair As A Site For Environmental Justice And Sustainability, Dafina Matiku

Scripps Senior Theses

Currently, we are facing several global crises that include but are not limited to climate change, food insecurity, pollution of the body and environment, as well as racial, gender, and class inequities. This thesis seeks to understand how the natural hair movement, which strives to omit toxic chemicals while embracing textured hair, can be a tool of reconnecting to nature. As humans we are intrinsically part of ecosystems and nature, we must find our niche in it instead of occupying and destroying our environment entirely. The methodology includes compiling a small array of experiences that show the nuance of hair …

Are We Doing Enough?: A Look At Current Issues Affecting Lgbtq Students At The University Of Kentucky, Colton Barton

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

This paper takes a look at the culture surrounding the LGBTQ community at the University of Kentucky and the university’s efforts to make the campus more safe and inclusive for LGBTQ students. The resources offered by the Office of LGBTQ* Resources are analyzed as well as the current infrastructure in place to determine whether or not the University of Kentucky is doing enough. Various solutions are provided including the addition of a course in the UK Core, the inclusion of an event centered on diversity during freshman orientations, and the construction of gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender and gender-nonconforming students. Interviews …

The Lineage Of Abby Benson (1801/02 - 1866), Of Sharon, Litchfield County, Connecticut, Charles H. Smith

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Among the individuals I researched in compiling my “Charles H. Smith: A Direct- Line Ancestry, Since Colonial Times” (published online in 2020) was one Abby (aka Abi, Aby, Abbey, Abigail) Benson, of Sharon and Kent, Litchfield County, Connecticut. Abby, who married Chester Fowler (1800-1878) about 1823 (based on the date of birth of their first child William in 1824), is one of my third great-grandmothers. As of 2020 I was unable to identify Abby’s parents, though she has always been listed as a Benson. There were other Bensons in the immediate area, though historically the family had roots extending back …

Soar: A Holistic Approach To Supporting Survivors, Sabrina Glass

West Chester University Master’s Theses

In this thesis, I address the systemic issue of sexual violence and rape culture that affect students on college campuses at an alarming rate. By utilizing critical action research, I propose the creation of the Department of Survivor Outreach and Response (SOAR), a holistic and collaborative department that focuses on supporting and advocating for survivors of sexual violence while also conducting prevention and education initiatives. I emphasize the importance of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality (1993), encourage the use of the Social Change Model of Leadership (Astin & Astin, 1996), and empathy within leadership. SOAR is designed to ensure sexual …

Who Contrives The Moment? On Cyberfeminist Dating, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

Really Fake takes up story, poetry, and other human logics of care, intelligence, and dignity to explore sociotechnological and politico-aesthetic emergences in a world where information overload has become a new ontology of not-knowing.

Risk Factors For Workplace Sexual Harassment In Female Truck Drivers, Kimberly Marie Riddle

Theses and Dissertations--Nursing

Sexual harassment is one of the most common forms of workplace violence in the United States. Sexual harassment is defined as unwanted verbal and physical behaviors of a sexual nature (e.g., physical advances, requests for sexual favors, inappropriate sexist or sexual comments or jokes, pornography, or other unwanted conduct) that creates an uncomfortable working environment or interferes with the employee’s job responsibilities. In general, it is estimated that nearly one in every two women have experienced sexual harassment at the workplace over their lifetime. In male-dominated occupations, such as truck driving, law enforcement, firefighting, and construction, females may have a …

Perspectives On Consciousness-Raising: A Modernist Intersectional Feminist Agenda, Ariana Cacoulidis

MA Theses

My thesis objective is to extend women's understanding of the impalpable second-wave feminist term, "consciousness-raising," and its applications through curating a fictitious exhibition. My fabricated exhibition "Great Women Artists: Consciousness-Raising among Intersectional Feminists" will juxtapose the works of iconic feminist artists who practiced consciousness-raising with emerging and iconic female artists to advocate consciousnessraising's applicability for practicing women artists. Curating "Great Women Artists" will support the idea of raising a female class consciousness via mass consciousness-raising. I will utilize the voices of iconic second-wave feminists, such as Kathie Sarachild, who have discussed consciousness-raising’s impacts and supported the founding female class consciousness …

Contemporary Textiles: Unraveling White Feminist Discourse, Meredith Friedman

MA Theses

In recent decades, attention to textile art has flourished. The growth of contemporary studies committed to revising fiber’s hierarchical categorization represents a discursive turn heavily weighted within feminist inquiry. The interrelation between textile techniques and constructs of femininity and domesticity was at the base of a robust interdisciplinary field of feminist theory developing around the 1970s in the US. Often referred to as the second wave of feminism, this era experienced scholars and artists proposing the medium’s capacity to counter the elusive genre’s marginalization and, by extension, presenting textile’s ability to subvert notions of gender difference. This analysis aims to …

Why Be A Great Women Artist When You Could Be Spectacular: The Study Of Women Old Masters In The Art History Canon Through Art Market Bias, Zoë Mahler

MA Theses

It has been 50 years since the publication of Linda Nochlin’s renowned 1971
/="/">essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” On the 50th anniversary, the question remains the same. Questioning the woman artist’s place in the art world has become nuanced, and the restraints women experienced, as highlighted by Nochlin, still have validity today. By exploring the last 20 years of the art market and the perception of the woman’s place in the art world, it is clear progress has been made in certain respects, especially regarding Women Old Masters. The canon of art history and the …

Va Ser Homosexual, Chopin?, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

A hores d’ara, el més sorprenent de tot és que l’homosexualitat de Chopin sigui notícia. Però no hi ha dubte que ho és, i molt. El darrer rebombori l’ha aflamat un documental radiofònic suís de dues hores de durada del pianista i escriptor Moritz Weber en el qual compila i escenifica fragments de cartes homoeròtiques del compositor polonès. (Vegeu, al final d’aquest escrit, algunes referències a la web).

“Which Of The People Here Would Suspect That So Much Is Going On In The Mind Of A Teenage Girl?”: Adolescent Resilience In The Holocaust Diaries Of Anne Frank And Renia Spiegel, Jenna Marie Walmer

West Chester University Master’s Theses

In this qualitative archival diary study, Holocaust-era diaries were explored for evidence of the resilience of adolescent girls. Adolescent-themed passages were selected from the posthumously published diaries of Anne Frank and Renia Speigel, who kept private diaries while under the constant threat of war and genocide. To explore how the everyday affairs of adolescent development may contribute to resilience in the face of trauma, I used thematic analysis to determine the prevalence and emotional valence of four themes of adolescence: evolving social-relationships, emotional fluctuation, cognitive-identity changes, and physical changes. The emotional valence of the adolescent-themed diary passages was more likely …

Queer Arab American Experiences: Navigating Cross Cultural Expectations Of Gender And Sexuality, Gabriela Mansour

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The understanding of the experiences of queer Arab Americans and the ways in which they navigate cross cultural expectations of gender and sexuality is limited in the anthropology or social sciences scholarship. The available scholarship focuses primarily on queerness in juxtaposition to Islam, which is not relatable to all Arab Americans as they are a religiously diverse group. Through an intersectional approach, this research, conducted from April 2020 to May 2021, explores the lived experiences of queer Arab Americans from across the United States (U.S.) while seeking to identify potential commonalities that could encompass a more general queer Arab American …

Teaching Trauma In Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, Kat Shuman

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Using Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, this thesis outlines how to ethically and effectively teach literature that deals with trauma. My personal teaching philosophy as well as the current pedagogy surrounding trauma literature preface a detailed syllabus, lesson plans, assessments, and activities that would be useful in teaching a course centered around literature that deals with trauma. This thesis highlights the merits of teaching trauma fiction in the literature classroom.

A Fat Imposter: The Embodied Intersection Between Race, Body Type And Fatness In Margaret Cho’S Comedy, Julia Cox

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Margaret Cho is a comedic goddess who, in her mockery, serves flaming hot social commentary about race, body image, and fatness. Within this thesis, I used critical discourse analysis to understand how Margaret Cho embodies Asianness, whiteness, and the body types and images prescribed respectively. While working on data analysis, I came across a common media trope of fat women: the use of indexically Southern (United States), Appalachian, and Working class indexicals in speech and lexical items. I connected the ideologies surrounding Southern and Appalachian language to the inequalities that fat women face. This voicing had not previously been written …

Beyond "Viuda De": Practical Approaches To Promoting Mexican Books Printed At Women-Owned Businesses, Taylor Leigh, Colleen Barrett

Library Presentations

Women print shop owners have existed for much longer than most people realize; the first examples in Mexico date to the seventeenth century. Unfortunately, these texts are not always clearly described in a way that is findable beyond searching “viuda de.” Though many title-pages describe their businesses in terms of being a widow of their husband, these business owners deserve credit for their entrepreneurial efforts and should be findable in their own right. This poster would highlight the strategies and steps taken by a Hispanic Studies Librarian and a Rare Books Librarian to better promote these types of works held …

Una Deconstrucción Espacial: Movimiento Maricas Bolivia Y La Resistencia Indígena Cuir, Cooper J. Bussberg

Honors Theses

El legado (neo)colonial ha intentado borrar las experiencias Indígenas cuir en Abiayala. Sin embargo, existen cambios a esta historia. Grupos activistas se están adaptando a retos distintos por medios diferentes. Movimiento Maricas Bolivia es una organización activista de La Paz, Bolivia que ejerce activismo en su canal de YouTube donde publican varios videos informativos alrededor del tema Indígena cuir. En este proyecto, yo aplico una perspectiva teórica trans- Indígena hemisférica para aproximar a un entendimiento mejor de la resistencia Indígena cuir de Movimiento Maricas Bolivia. Utilizo varios críticos de los estudios Indígenas de varios sitios de Abiayala para promover la …

“Yes, My Career Would End”: How The Existence Of Illicit Digital Media May Inhibit Women From Participating In Politics, Esther Afrakoma Appiah Dwaah

Masters Theses

The challenges faced by women in their quest to be equal participants with men in politics is not hidden. This study set out to examine how women may be restrained from rising to the highest offices in politics amidst fear of their existing nude contents that exist digitally. The body and sexuality of women have countlessly been employed as a tool to keep them out of political participation. Relying on data gathered through interviews with twenty four respondents, the study confirmed that women who have their illicit digital media in existence are less likely to take lead roles in politics …

The Impact Of The Therapeutic Relationship On Transgender Clients’ Perceptions Of Their Therapist, Aaron Brockie

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between therapist practices, the therapeutic relationship and their impact on how transgender clients feel about their therapist. Previous research on therapist practices and the therapeutic relationship has looked into how these variables influence lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients’ feelings about their therapist, but as of yet, the dynamic has not been analyzed for transgender clients. Given the disproportionate prevalence for severe mental health issues in the transgender community, it is urgent that barriers to adequate and meaningful therapy outcomes be identified and addressed. Seventy eight participants were recruited from social …

Ua12/2/67 Alpha Kappa Alpha, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Ua1c11/109 Linda Johnson Photo Collection, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Photographs removed from athletic scrapbooks.

• 1987 WKU Athletics Scrapbook, D7003
• 1968-1985 WKU Athletics Scrapbook, D7004
• 1985-1987 WKU Athletics Scrapbook, D7005

Ua88 Wku Women's Alliance, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Unprocessed records created by the WKU Women's Alliance.

Arab American Women In Engineering: How Did Their Culture Influence Their Achievement?, Iktimal Bia Hamed

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This body of research examined the Arab American culture and its impact on women who studied the male-dominated major of engineering. Through a qualitative approach, women born and raised in an Arab American home unpacked their experiences since childhood that made them who they are today. The 10 female Arab American participants shared how they made it through and successfully completed their major in engineering. This study focused on engineering, since there has been little to no growth in women who major in this male-dominated subject. This research examined how the participants’ parents, extended family, friends, community, and both K-12 …