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Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Appalachia

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Navigating Place And Gender: A Multicontextual Critical Narrative Inquiry Of Rural Trans* Student Experiences, Jessie Lynn O'Quinn Jan 2023

Navigating Place And Gender: A Multicontextual Critical Narrative Inquiry Of Rural Trans* Student Experiences, Jessie Lynn O'Quinn

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The purpose of this critical narrative study was to understand how rural West Virginia trans* students navigate cultural norms of their rural home communities and higher education contexts. An essential part of this critical narrative was to provide rural trans* students with an avenue to share their unique experiences and give them a platform to share their voices. The resulting narratives suggested that the normative tensions rural trans* college students experience across contexts stemmed from negative regional experiences that reinforced traditional gender norms. Negative home contexts and experiences forced students to feel like they had to build walls and distance …


Reckoning With Privilege In Appalachia And Higher Education: A Project Of Critical Consciousness, Sarah Powell Jan 2022

Reckoning With Privilege In Appalachia And Higher Education: A Project Of Critical Consciousness, Sarah Powell

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation sought to interrogate the ways in which White, rural students from West Virginia conceptualized diversity before, during, and since their transition to a large PWI in their home state. Using Critical Whiteness Studies and intersectionality as driving theory, student participants and I engaged in deconstruction of privilege through individual and culture circle conversations. Then, participants engaged in self-reflection using codes established in Critical Whiteness (White normativity, White complicity, epistemologies of ignorance) as well as participant-drive codes that reflected other forms of identity-based power. Three waves of reflection demonstrate the participants’ continued cycle of praxis (reflection, action, repeat) and …