Education Commons^™

Toward A Cultural Rhetorics Praxis Of Care For Digital Storytelling Projects About Reproductive Justice, Danielle Marie Koepke

Theses and Dissertations

Recent events have drawn national attention to the fight for reproductive rights. However, Black women, Indigenous women, Women of Color, and LGBTQ+ people have long been fighting for reproductive justice, which connects reproductive rights to issues like immigration rights, fair wages, housing, quality education, and safe neighborhoods. There has also been a shift towards reproductive justice scholarship in rhetoric and writing studies. This dissertation focuses on the efforts and experiences of the Promotores de Salud, Latinx health promoters working for reproductive justice in Wisconsin. By constellating rhetorics of reproductive justice, cultural rhetorics, and queer and feminist scholarship, this dissertation builds …

Autoethnography Of Laughter: Transforming Identity By Teaching Composition And Linguistics Through Humor, Olya Cochran

Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation is a story composed of humorous and humor-related experiences, lived by me as an immigrant student and instructor. I reflect on how those experiences influenced the transformation and performance of my teaching identity and shaped my humor-based pedagogy for Composition and Introductory Linguistics courses. The work is considering the effects of humor on my linguistic and cultural competences as well as my teaching practice. Along with that, the work provides an overview of scholarship on humor in education and the ways practicing academics utilize humor in their teaching and teaching identities. To reflect on how and why …

From Small Beginnings To Large-Scale Harm: On Demagoguery And Misogyny In The Classroom And Writing Center, Shannon Roberson

Theses and Dissertations

My project is grounded in the rhetorical concept of aretê—excellence or virtue—as it relates to education and educational spaces within demagogic and misogynist cultural forces. The problems of demagoguery and misogyny stem from small-scale perpetuation of agonistic norms that go unaddressed in U.S. culture, a culture that is deeply identity-driven. These forces persist on social media platforms and within patriarchal systems of education.

For my project, I suggest rhetorical media literacy education of small-scale demagoguery moments on social media as a way to bring awareness to larger-scale events. On a micro-scale, social media influencers cultivate behaviors that mimic demagogic …

Thinking With Things: Reimagining The Object Lesson As A Feminist Pedagogical Device In The Humanities Classroom, Krista Grensavitch

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I continue nascent discussions of incorporating material culture in humanities classrooms in higher education. Primarily, this conversation stems from the material turn in the discipline of history, and in the humanities, more generally. It responds to calls that students in higher education must acquire the modes of thinking particular to practitioners within their discipline. My contribution sits at the intersection of material culture theory, feminist pedagogy, and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), and is a work of feminist praxis.

I centralize my own teaching practice and draw extensively from my experiences developing curricula and facilitating …

Her-Story: Black, Middle-School Girls Exploring Their Intersectional Identities, Crystal Latanya Edwards

Theses and Dissertations

While intra-racial-group comparisons have lead scholars to argue that Black girls are succeeding academically and therefore require less explicit focus in educational research, there is little literature that focuses on the ways that Black girls’ experiences in formal educational spaces shape their emotional wellbeing and sense of intersectional identity—specifically, from their own perspectives (Paul, 2003; Townsend, Thomas, Neilands, and Jackson, 2010). In recognizing this relative invisibility, my research redirects focus to obstacles that typically go relatively unnoticed and unaddressed. Utilizing focus groups and diary/follow-up interviews as methods, I explore the subjective experience of Black girls within the educational context. Placing …

Exploring The Leadership Experiences Of Minority Women In A Black Greek Letter Sorority, Ashley Nichole Jennings

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological research study was designed to explore and reveal the lived experiences of minority women in Black Greek Letter Sororities and their understanding of sorority membership and leadership development following graduation. Data collection was completed using two qualitative streams: online questionnaire and one-on-one interviews. This study will contribute to the discussion of leadership development for Black Greek Letter Sorority members. More specifically, this study focused on the role that a Black sorority has in developing minority female leaders as they matriculate and develop within higher education and simultaneously in the sisterhood. This research study provided suggestions on opportunities …

Perceptions Of Contributions Of Business Coaches To Female Entrepreneurial Success, Tracy I. Timberlake

Theses and Dissertations

Although coaching has seen tremendous growth and success, it is still regarded as controversial because there is no governing body that oversees coaches or the coaching industry. In this manner, the industry has not achieved uniformity, therefore is under much scrutiny with regards to the validity of the industry as a whole. With female entrepreneurship on the rise, many industry personnel are hiring business coaches to teach them the business building skills they need to start their solo ventures. This study aimed to understand the perceptions of the one-on-one business coaching experience from the perspective of the client. Because there …

Talkin' Back And Shifting Black; Black Motherhood, Identity Development And Doctoral Study, Amber Tucker

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how the context of doctoral study within predominantly white and elite research institutions in the Midwest facilitates identity development among Black doctoral women student parents. This phenomenological study employed Black feminist epistemologies as both a methodological underpinning and interpretive lens to examine how seven Black women doctoral student parents negotiate and made meaning of their intersectional identities.

The six key findings that emerged from this study were: (1) negotiating intersectionality as trauma in childhood; (2) negotiating microaggressions related to invisibility/hypervisibility; (3) negotiating structural macroaggressions as violence; (4) hidden costs of negotiating …

Forgotten Feminine Foundations: Content Analysis Of Secondary World History Textbooks' Inclusion Of Female Agency In The Rise Of Judaism, Christianity, And Islam, Erica M. Southworth

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated women’s agency in the emergence accounts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in nine twenty-first century United States’ world history textbooks through a feminist lens. The collected data were analyzed via critical discourse analysis and content analysis to determine if traditional patterns of female marginalization in content and imagery existed. The quantitative and qualitative findings in both text and imagery indicated that all textbooks in this sample supported a traditional content structure on both an individual and collective whole basis. This study then concluded that these gender-imbalanced accounts of world religions may serve as an avenue in which …

Sex-Crazed And Bloodthirsty: The Misrepresentation Of Female Nazis In American Popular Culture, Catherine L. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Nazisploitation trope of the Ilsa-type within its political, social, and cultural context. A product of the 1950s men's adventure magazines, the Ilsa-type continues to be a familiar and popular character within American pop culture. Popularized through the 1970s torture porn, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, the character has since influenced mainstream film, fashion, and various other popular culture outlets. This thesis discusses why such an ahistorical figure has seized hold of public imagination, how she has developed in the decades since her first appearance, and why she matters. A work of feminist historical scholarship, this thesis …

The Career Development Of Latina Women Achieving The Position Of Public High School Principal, Consuelo A. Palacio

Theses and Dissertations

For this qualitative study, I used the lens of the Social Cognitive Career Theory to investigate the lived experiences of Latina women navigating their career paths into the roles of public high school principals. Latina women are underrepresented and in some states they are not represented at all. Few Latina women have secured the position of high school principal in public education; however for those who have, it is unclear how they attained the position. It was significant to learn about the factors that have lead to the representation of Latina women who serve as high school principals. The representation …

Female High School Principals In Rural Midwestern School Districts: Their Lived Experiences In Leadership, Ellen M. Bartling

Theses and Dissertations

This study was explored the leadership experiences of female principals of rural high schools in a Midwestern state. The study sought to describe the leadership styles used by these principals to make changes within their schools. Qualitative methodology was used, and four female rural high school principals were interviewed during a series of four hour-long sessions. Transcripts of these interviews were then reviewed and themes identified.

The findings of the study revealed that the principals received informal mentorship and ongoing professional support and that the rural community required them to serve as community role models, effective communicators, and change agents …

Active Latter-Day Saint Working Mothers: Their Effect On Their Daughters' Future Plans, Nissa C. Bengtson Allred

Theses and Dissertations

This research looks at the effect employed active LDS mothers have on their daughters' future plans for education, career, marriage, and children. Mothers' educational level, type of employment, and daughters' attachment to the LDS church were taken into consideration. It was found that a majority of daughters are definite in their plans for education, career, marriage, and children regardless of the employment status of their mother. Daughters of employed LDS mothers are more definite in their plans for a career than daughters of unemployed LDS mothers. No effect was found for mothers' employment on daughters' future plans for college, marriage, …