Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ploy : An Immigrant Daughter's Archival Survival Strategy, Porntip Israsena Twishime

Doctoral Dissertations

Transnational human migration is commonly conceptualized as the moment a person crosses national borders. In “PLOY : An Immigrant Daughter’s Archival Survival Strategy,” I advance a framework of migration in which migration is an ongoing embodied and relational process, one that continues after a person crosses national borders. This framework maintains that migration exists as a meaningful concept because of the social, political, cultural, and historical contexts that gives this type of mobility meaning. I use a performative novel methodology to construct and represent this argument; a performative novel methodology uses fiction and the novel as a performative text …

Emerging Adults’ Experiences As Receivers Of Sexually Transmitted Infection Disclosures From Sexual Partners: A Three-Part Examination, Kayley D. Mcmahan

Doctoral Dissertations

Each year in the United States, over 20 million cases of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are diagnosed, mostly among those in the developmental period of emerging adulthood (ages 18-29). Research on STI disclosure to romantic and sexual partners has increased over the last two decades, but this research has (a) generally lacked a developmental and theoretical focus, (b) not examined disclosure recipients, and (c) not been systematically and critically synthesized. To address these limitations, I conducted a three-part examination. First, I systematically reviewed the STI disclosure literature and summarized findings, critical limitations, and future research and intervention directions. Next, I …

Becoming A Mom: Intersectionality And Fashion Consumption For Millennial Latinas And The Role Of Social Media Influencers, Leslie M. Cuevas

Doctoral Dissertations

When it comes to motherhood for women of color, the topic of women empowerment is scarce, and the media mostly portrays Latinas through traditional ethnic stereotypes. The advent of social media has presented women the opportunity to engage in identity formation as they exercise empowerment in choices and self-monitoring online. A good example of this transition in power involves fashion influencers who use their personal influence to change the meaning of motherhood, making it more accessible and realistic to women in general. However, a lack of diversity remains within the influencer industry as white women are the majority. Drawing upon …

Property, Postsocialism, And Post-Yugoslav Identity: A Feminist Communication Performance Ethnography, Jennifer Zenovich

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes how women in the postsocialist former Yugoslavia perform gender in the transition from socialism to capitalism by considering their material and symbolic relationships to property. Using performance ethnography to theorize the relational, embodied, and discursive ways in which identity has been mobilized in the former Yugoslavia, the central question is how insights from the postsocialist world can critique notions of the individual as well as global capital. Through the prism of postsocialist and postcolonial feminist theory and performance studies, I focus on three contexts: women’s feminized labor as sustaining the tourism industry in Montenegro, my rape and …

Brooklyn Bedroom: An Ethnodrama On Female Sexuality, Third World Feminism And Performance Ethnography, Ayshia Stephenson

Doctoral Dissertations

Brooklyn Bedroom is a performance that interrogates societal perceptions of race and sexuality. I have utilized the writing of the performance as my method; the performance is an act of Third World feminist resistance and liberation. Storytelling is the type of research preferred by many black female playwrights. A type of qualitative inquiry, ethnodramatic work forms a bridge between individual stories and social issues affecting society with the goal of socio-political change. The source of reality for this ethnodrama is the Rose family, their history was a catalyst for the writing of Brooklyn Bedroom. I have explored their stories to …

I Look To The Ground Beneath My Feet: An Insurgent Performance (Auto)Ethnography, Timothy M. L. Sutton

Doctoral Dissertations

This is a methodological dissertation written as a performance text within a performance paradigm. I use performance (auto)ethnography to turn the researchers’ gaze back on Western systems of knowledge creation. My approach is based on Diversi & Moreira’s (2009, 2016) betweener autoethnographies. While drawing on performance theory, I employ performance principally as my method (Spry, 2011). Within this performance paradigm, (auto)ethnography is a critically reflexive methodology that demands a commitment to embodiment in an ethical symbiosis with representation. This work is located at the intersection of the political, the performative and the pedagogical (Denzin, 2003a). From this center, I turn …

Verbal -S Productions In The Structured Writing Samples Of Variable Aae-Speaking Fourth-Grade Students With And Without Language Impairment, Jacklyn High Felton

Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers in speech-language pathology and ethnolinguistics have worked to gain knowledge about typical and atypical language patterns of African American children who are identified as African American English (AAE) dialect speakers. Much progress had been made, but limitations in this field of knowledge have persisted, especially for AA children who demonstrate variable use of AAE, presumably through the process of assimilation in the school setting. Therefore, more information is needed to provide diagnostic markers for deviations in typical language development for variable AAE-MAE speakers. Prior empirical research has found that third- and fourth-grade AAE-speaking children with typical language development overtly …

Women, Convergent Film Criticism, And The Cinephilia Of Feminist Interruptions, Rachel L. Thibault

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways in which female film critics practice film criticism in the convergent age. In original research drawn from ethnographic interviews with eight female film critics and bloggers as well as textual, historical, and reception analyses of criticism, this dissertation argues that women who write film criticism in the convergent era are not only writing from a space of marginalization based on the patriarchal dominance of the film industry, but also face a series of obstacles through gendered and discursive conflicts that are unique to writing online and which do not exert the same impact on male …

A Soulful Egg Can Break A Rock: A Case Study Of A South Korean Social Movement Leader's Rhetoric, Eunsook Sul

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation introduces and analyzes Ven. Hyemoon’s rhetoric emanating from his leadership of the civic group, the Committee for the Return of Korean Cultural Property in South Korea. On the surface, he seems focused on retrieving cultural artifacts, pillaged by the Japanese colonial invasion. His work, upon deeper analysis, emerges to be about regaining a Korean cultural and national identity that is historically grounded, civically engaged and morally reflective. This study is informed by multiple theories (i.e., framing, narrative, social semiotics, critical geography, rhetoric, and social movement) to examine aspects of a phenomenon in depth – involving nationalism, social movement, …

Signs Of Wildness: Codes Of The “Primitive” In Masculine Commodity Culture, Matthew P. Ferrari

Doctoral Dissertations

This project broadly examines articulations of the “primitive” emerging from various sites of popular cultural production, considering their operation within the wider “semioscape”– defined by Thurlow and Aiello (2007) as “the globalizing circulation of symbols, sign-systems, and meaning-making practices.” Taking my lead from Kurusawa (2002, 2004), Torgovnik (1991, 1998), Chow (1995), and Di Leonardo (1998), who have demonstrated the importance of the “primitive” as an interpretive discourse, I add to this body of thought by extending its scope into the realm of popular media and cultural production, examining cases within film, television, advertising, sports, and associated lifestyle commodities. I pose …

Drawing The Primetime Color Line: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Interracial Marriages In Television Sitcoms, Jodi Lynn Rightler-Mcdaniels

Doctoral Dissertations

Changes throughout history, particularly those surrounding race relations in the U.S., frequently have a direct effect on personal social experience and the current structure of society. Although public discourse often emphasizes the rhetoric of racial progression, subtle racism abounds – both in society and in media – masked under the façade of equality. This is especially true when examining race relations between Blacks and Whites, particularly those involved in intimate heterosexual interracial relationships, as they have traditionally been viewed as negative, dangerous, and threatening to the status quo.

Television representations are often socially and culturally rooted with real issues, hence …

Peeking Out: A Textual Analysis Of Heteronormative Images In Prime-Time Television, D. Renee Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation traces lesbian portrayals on network television from the 1960s through the 1990s. A focus on episodic dramas and situation comedies reveals a concise representation of the mediated lesbian image. Building on existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender images on television, this work focuses exclusively on the lesbian image broadcast free of charge over the air during prime-time on commercial networks in the United States. Using a postmodern feminist framework, this textual analysis examines the images and texts portraying lesbian characters in episodic dramas and situation comedies. Furthermore, applying a semiotic lens to the analysis dissects the …