Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Examining The Notion Of The Boundary Object In Information Systems: The Transdisciplinary Oeuvre Of Cognitive Science, Laura Elien Ridenour

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the transdisciplinary area of cognitive science, and was framed around the sociological notion of the boundary object. Harmonizing theoretical and technical approaches, methods introduced in this work moved beyond qualitative study practices traditional to boundary object theory work to a mixed-methods data-driven approach. Bibliometric Web of Science data, enriched with National Science Foundation (NSF) journal classifications, formed the foundation from which a seed-and-expand dataset were created from journals containing the string cogni* and their cited articles for the years 2006-2016. This two-tiered dataset allowed for the analysis of boundary-spanning interdisciplinary concepts, as identified by noun phrases, and …

Reproductive Rights In Puerto Rico: Sterilization, Contraception, And Reproductive Violence, María Estrella Sotomayor

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS IN PUERTO RICO: STERILIZATION, CONTRACEPTION, AND REPRODUCTIVE VIOLENCE

by

María E. Sotomayor

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2020

Under the Supervision of Professor Merry Wiesner-Hanks

Since the middle of the twentieth century, Puerto Rico has had the highest, or nearly the highest, rate of sterilization in the world. The reasons for this have been examined from many perspectives, but how this has affected Puerto Rican women has rarely been discussed nor have their voices been heard. This study focuses on the long-term effects of female sterilization on Puerto Rican women, and their perception about their options for contraceptive …

Maternal Healthcare Experiences Of African American Women In Milwaukee : A Relational Dialectics Perspective, Comfort Tosin Adebayo

Theses and Dissertations

Black women are experiencing pregnancy-related complications at a significantly higher rate than women of other races in the U.S., as Black women are three to four times likely to die from pregnancy-related complications compared to non-Hispanic White women (CDC, 2019a). I applied relational dialectics theory (Baxter, 2011), a critical communication theory, to examine dominant and marginalized discourses that are present in women’s talk about maternal care. I conducted interviews with 31 African American women living in Milwaukee county, Wisconsin. Women narrated their pregnancy stories, noting how they constructed meaning through the interactions they had with healthcare providers. Through a contrapuntal …

'Would You Say You Had Sex If...' Rhetorical Meaning-Making Within Intimate Encounters And Their Discourses At The Macro, Meso, And Micro Levels, Megan Orcholski

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advances a deeper understanding of the rhetoric of intimate encounters by analyzing meaning-making practices at the intersections of sex, sexuality, and sexualized violence at the macro, meso, and micro levels. The object of my analysis is discourse about sex, sexuality, and sexualized violence, but this analysis also has implications on understandings of how corporeal rhetorics, or communicative meaning within bodies, are operating in moments of intimate encounters. Throughout my chapters, I interrogate how normative scripts around sex are constructed, disseminated, and perpetuated, how these normative assumptions impact intimate encounters and their connected public discourses, and how these normative …

Digital Mediation Of Dissent: The Stories Of Unveiled Women From Turkey, Atinc Gurcay

Theses and Dissertations

This research project studies the digital mediation of the politics of communication and everyday life by examining the tweets of Turkish women who voiced their dissent regarding veiling practices during the #10YearChallenge trend in 2019. Like so many places, the question of veiling is central to the politicization of women's bodies in Turkey. The politicization of women’s bodies, in turn, is central to competing secular and conservative visions of the modern Turkish nation-state. By examining the digital dissent in relation to these competing national projects, I map the historical context of modernization and its impact on the contemporary discussion of …

"They're Protecting Whiteness And Their Fragility Is Showing": How Feminist Praxis Disrupts White Supremacy In Neoliberal Predominately White Institutions", Christina Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

Predominately white institutions (PWIs) embody white policies, culture, and ways of educating that disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). This research addresses the ways in which feminist praxis disrupts white supremist violence in PWIs. Literature highlights the ways in which white supremacy is disguised through the language of diversity, how the university community is able to build community despite barriers in the university, and how each primary player (faculty, staff, and students) navigate institutional violence. This research draws on ten interviews with faculty, staff, and students at a public and private PWI in an urban Midwestern city. Although …

“Being Cute And Hella Gay:" Pokémon Reborn, Fan Labor, And Queering The Pokémon World, David Peter Kocik

Theses and Dissertations

Created in 2012, Pokémon Reborn is a fan game made by and for queer fans of the Pokémon franchise. Featuring an LGBTQ+ development team and multiple queer characters, from pansexual Rival Cain to gender non-binary Gym Leader Adrienn, Pokémon Reborn articulates queer desires in a franchise and gaming industry notorious for ignoring and dehumanizing queer individuals. While most research on independent queer game development focuses on how creators subvert heteronormative gameplay elements, Pokémon Reborn challenges dominant industry practices through its queer characters and stories. The fan game incorporates LGBTQ+ lived experiences and queer temporalities in its narrative, queering the traditional …

The Business Of The Girl: Celebrity And The Professionalization Of Girlhood In Early Twenty-First Century Media Culture, Jessica Elizabeth Johnston

Theses and Dissertations

The achieving “can-do” girl, who thrives in her personal, academic, and aspirational endeavors, emerged in response to self-help crisis literature of the 1990s urging mothers to manage their daughters’ low self-esteem. However, even as media industries have adopted the successful girl subject in popular film, television, and digital marketing campaigns, public conversations of tween and teenage girls still identify rising levels of anxiety and self-doubt that diminish girls’ confidence well into adulthood. Responding to what critics call the “confidence gap,” girl culture of the twenty-first century has organized itself around the affordances of social media and digital celebrity in the …

Ethiopian Art: Christian Narratives From The Kebra Nagast, Morgan Ellsworth

Theses and Dissertations

King Ezana declared Christianity as Ethiopia’s state religion in 330 C.E. Ethiopia was the first country to mint a coin with the symbol of a cross. The Christian religion was established as a political move to strengthen economic ties with the Mediterranean world. Christianity has been used to keep Ethiopia independent. The Ethiopian artworks discussed here depict themes based on Christian narratives with multiple groupings of similar motifs and identical religious iconography. The Ethiopian art market still creates these motifs today to spread a repeated political message of the country’s pride, history, and represent their rulers’ legitimacy. I explore these …

“Noah Fires An Arrow!” The Rise Of Narrative Mechanics In Tabletop Role-Playing Games 1979-1989 And The Importance Of Archiving The Human Element, Cameron Jp Fontaine

Theses and Dissertations

Tabletop role-playing games (TRPG) emerged out of the war gaming and science fiction subcultures in the mid-1970s. During the latter half of the 1970s these games shifted away from their combat focused wargaming roots to forge their own identity separate from miniature wargaming. In the 1980s the industry expanded rapidly and many of the new games focused their efforts on crafting narrative rather than combat based mechanics. It was this focus on narrative mechanics and unique settings which enabled the industry to both directly and indirectly engage with the socio political and cultural movements of the 1980s in Reagan’s America. …

Claim, Consume, Curate: Placing Value On Functional Art, Heather Rose Sheets Hanlon

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is the written portion of the thesis requirements for University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Art History, Museums and Curatorial program. It corresponds with the other component, a museum-style exhibition in the Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery, as its catalog. The catalog and exhibition together address the factors of change in decorative art reception since the modern era and how museum institutions can continue to broaden the conditioned meanings of such art in a dynamic, responsive way.

These changes and suggestions are illustrated through objects and their display in the exhibition vignettes “The Home,” “The Boutique,” “The Museum,” and “Storing Stuff.” …

Lost And Found In The Map Library: Ena L. Yonge And The History Of Map Librarianship, Georgia Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the history of map librarianship and gender through an analysis of the career of Ena L. Yonge, a pioneering map librarian who worked at the American Geographical Society from 1917 to 1962. The thesis examines the decline of the ideal of the “gentleman librarian” in relation to the feminization of the library profession in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. With a focus on Yonge, the thesis examines changing relationship between the AGS, the U.S. government, and larger world events, including World War I and World War II. Yonge’s career spanned a transformation in the profession …

Conceptualizing Psychological Performance Enhancement In A Music Domain, Jessica Lynn Ford

Theses and Dissertations

Contrary to sport, the study of performance enhancement in music is at an earlier stage of development in its research, practice, and performer acceptance (Pecen, Collins, & MacNamara, 2016). In the absence of music performance enhancement research, practitioners frequently utilize sport as a template to inform both research and applied practice with musicians to optimize performance (Hays, 2002, 2012). While sport provides an evidence-based framework for studying performance enhancement, musicians have unique performance considerations that differ from athletes (Pecen et al., 2016), and these divergences in domains are not well understood. Using the McLeroy framework (McLeroy, Bibeau, Steckler, & Glanz, …

Redistributing Resources: Henry Maier, The Wisconsin Alliance Of Cities, And The Movement To Modify Wisconsin's State Shared Revenues, Samantha J. Fleischman

Theses and Dissertations

During the 1960s, the City of Milwaukee was enduring fiscal distress. Mayor of Milwaukee, Henry Maier, turned to the State of Wisconsin to modify the state shared revenues formula as a method to increase funding for central cities. Maier created the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities, which was comprised of mayors throughout the state, in order to gain the support needed to pass formula changes through legislation. This thesis examines how the Alliance of Cities was able to modify the state shared revenues formula. Although the Alliance faced rejection from the state legislature, two factors enabled a reform. First, the Alliance …