Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Journey To A Black Woman’S (Read Black Girl’S) Joy And Her Story Of Coming Home, Brittany Lauren Brock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an auto/ethnography about the self-actualizing journey of reclaiming storytelling as my native tongue and my journey to joy. Throughout, using my story and the stories of so many others, I not only lay out the wounds (the pain, the loss, then the hope that comes) within the academy and outside in the world but I also use storytelling as a tool of healing—my tool of healing—to show how I wrote myself free.

When Black women (read Black girls) go through The Reckoning (the moment we realize something isn’t right with how we are perceived by others) …

Holocaust Education In Arkansas: An Exploration Of Policy Process And Implementation, Toby Lauren Wagner Klein

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Holocaust was the attempted extermination of the Jewish people--a fact previously considered to be common knowledge. However, recent national surveys find that Arkansas students have the lowest levels of knowledge of the Holocaust in the United States. A recent law mandated the teaching of the Holocaust for 5-12th grade public school students in Arkansas, however, little is known about the policy process and implementation of such a mandate. Given the magnitude of the gaps in the literature on this topic, this dissertation uses a three article format to address specific gaps and make specific contributions to the literature by …

Pathways To Parenthood: Attitudes And Preferences Of Eight Self-Identified Queer Women Living In Tampa Bay, Fl, Emily Noelle Baker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This small-scale ethnographic study looks at the how queer women living in Florida imagine navigating family building decisions under the current climate of policies such as a lack of federal non-discrimination protections and the largely unregulated use of assisted reproductive technologies. Despite the federal legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States in 2015, state and county legislations continue to vary greatly on the extent of support they will provide for LGBTQ families. The goal of this research is to evaluate parenting desire, intentions, and preferences for queer women living in Tampa Bay since the passage of the Marriage Equality …

Whose Sustainability? An Analysis Of A Community Farming Program's Food Justice And Environmental Sustainability Agenda, Sarah Davenport

Honors Undergraduate Theses

As the 1960s Environmental movement has grown, sustainability and justice discourses have come to the fore of the movement. While environmental justice discourse considers the unequal effects of environmental burdens, the language that frames "sustainability" is often socially and politically neutral. This thesis critically examines sustainability initiatives and practices of an urban farming organization in Florida. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in 2017, I explore the extent to which these initiatives incorporate race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class when working to provide sustainably grown food in diverse communities. I argue that the organization's focus on justice for the environment, rather than for …

Reimagining Drugs: An Anthropological Analysis Of U.S. Drug Policy Frameworks And Student Activism, Megan A. Sarmento

Honors Undergraduate Theses

As the repercussions of the nearly 50-year U.S. War on Drugs are revealing themselves to be harmful and life-threatening, especially to lower-class and minority populations, social movements aimed at drug policy reform have been on the rise. While today's generation of college students were raised on abstinence-based discourses, which constantly warned and threatened them about the dangers of drug use, these same students often change their perspective, some as early as high school, when they begin having their own experiences with drugs and engage in more drug-related conversations. As a result, many students become motivated to change drug policy and …

Banking For The Future: An Ethnographic Study On The Local Food Bank, Its Role On Food Justice, And Patron Perception, Edward Fernandez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Food banks are antithetical to the food justice movement because they usually rely on government commodity surplus to alleviate need and promote notions of dependence through the charity model. This research examines Food for People, the only food bank in Humboldt County, within the context of local food security and patron perception using ethnographic observation, surveys, literature review, and interviews to generate data that would allow the food bank to fulfill its mission of ending hunger. Through ethnographic approaches, this thesis focuses on food security, what affects perception and actual food security in the context of food justice and food …

Equal Access, Knowledge, And Empowerment: Promoting Inclusion In Sex Education And Reproductive Health Care For Humboldt County's Spanish Speaking Population, Corinna Irwin

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Humboldt County which was a white, working class economy, has recently seen a growing Latino migrant population, doubling from 6% in the year 2000, to nearly 12% in 2016. [Census 2016] Many of these migrants are undocumented and their command of and comfort with using English ranges from fluent to nearly nothing. Women and children from this population may especially be affected by local policy and systems, due to gender and age disparities. The barriers towards health care services extend when considering sexual and reproductive health, which has wavering support and funding in the current political climate. This ethnography examines …

Arts-Based Education For Social Justice, Samantha Stevens , '15

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

This thesis explores the arts as a potential framework for achieving social justice through the system of education. The author uses her experience as a student-teacher in a charter school with an arts-based social justice framework as a springboard for discussion, identifying points of tension that arise as educators translate social justice theory into practice in today’s schools. Faced with the challenges of oppression and systemic inequality, educators work to transform schools into vehicles for social justice. Some teachers turn to the charter school model in an effort to sculpt environments fit to meet the needs of students form marginalized …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Resisting Criminalization Through Moses House: An Engaged Ethnography, Lance Arney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Neoliberal restructuring of the state has had destructive effects on families and children living in urban poverty, compelling them to adapt to the loss of social welfare and demolition of the public sphere by submitting to new forms of surveillance and disciplining of their individual behavior. A carceral-welfare state apparatus now confines and controls the bodies of expendable laborers in urban spaces, containing their threat to the neoliberal socioeconomic order through criminalization and workfare assistance, resulting in a new symbiosis of prison and ghetto. The resulting structures of punishment, police surveillance, and criminalization primarily surround African Americans living in high …

Movement Against Disaster: An Ethnography Of Post-Katrina Volunteerism In The Lower Ninth Ward Of New Orleans, Louisiana, Patrick W. Huff

Anthropology Theses

This thesis explores the experiences and practices of disaster relief volunteers. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a period of fifty-three days in the summer of 2007 at the post-hurricane Katrina Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. Through innovative practices and a commitment to the principle of “solidarity not charity” volunteers produce not just material aid, but an ideology of social justice. This thesis is also an exercise in engaged scholarship in that the author directly participated in the disaster relief effort as a volunteer.