Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Celebrating Hmong: A Minute Ethnography Of Hmong Americans In Minneapolis, Madison Baczuk

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

The Hmong people are a culture that originated in Southern China. However, many Hmong people fled to the U.S (among other nations) with the conclusion of the Vietnam war. Like other Asian cultures, the Hmong people are collectivist and give priority to family members of greater age and of the male gender. The Hmong celebrate birth, marriage, and death through sacred rituals and traditions that honor their ancestors. The Hmong language is in danger of extinction due to globalization. Yet, globalization also brings the general public greater knowledge and exposure to the wonderful culture of the Hmong people.

An Ethnographic Co-Design Approach To Promoting Diversity In The Games Industry, Florence Chee, Larissa Hjorth, Hugh Davies

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Workplace diversity and inclusion are recognised as integral to the internal and public-facing success of organizations. The games industry worldwide has been notably slow to embrace reforms to bring diverse work cultures into practice. Not only does the industry rank very low in the diversity of its corporate profile but a series of high-profile controversies have underscored major problems with attaining and retaining individual staff and achieving overall corporate diversity. In recent years, a number of games media outlets, organizations and game companies have sought to ameliorate internal social and cultural problems by attempting to facilitate cultural change in the …

Ethnography Of Reading Comic Books, Azadeh Najafian

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis explores why adults read comic books. This research used the ethnographic method and interviewing eleven people, four women, seven male, as its primary source. Based on information and common themes gathered from interviews, I built this thesis into one introduction, three body chapters, and a conclusion.

In the first chapter, I argued that comics could function the same as myths and explained this function and related examples under the “mythic effect” name. In the second chapter, I discussed how my informants use reading comics as a means to escape their everyday lives and how sometimes this escapism carries …

Free Battered Texas Women: Survivor-Advocates Organizing At The Crossroads Of Gendered Violence, Disability, And Incarceration, Cathy Marston Phd

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

This article recaps my symposium presentation, where I argue that feminist organizing strategies are central to healing our society and creating restorative justice from my perspective as a survivor of occupational injury, battering, and criminalization for self-defense. This includes the creation of Free Battered Texas Women. We prefer to think of ourselves as survivor-advocates who use a variety of tactics to empower ourselves, incarcerated battered women, and citizens. These strategies include pedagogy; poetry and other written forms; art; and legislative advocacy. I blend this grassroots activism with feminist disability theory, radical feminist theory, feminist ethnography, and feminist criminology.

Superdiversity In Music Education, Brent C. Talbot

Sunderman Conservatory of Music Faculty Publications

Globalization has changed the social, cultural, and linguistic diversity in societies all over the world (Blommaert, J & Rampton, B. Diversities, 13(2), 1–22 (2011)). As new technologies have rapidly developed alongside increased forms of transnational flow, so have new forms of language, art, music, communication, and expression. This rapid and varied blending of cultures, ideas, and modes of communication is what Vertovec (2007) describes as super-diversity—diversity within diversity. In this narrative, I explore the theoretical and methodological pluralism that has aided my research in diverse settings, drawing from post-structuralism, critical theory, sociolinguistics, complexity theory, and discourse analysis—specifically Scollon and Scollon’s …

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 …

Ethnolinguistic Convergence And Divergence Within Dyadic Communication, Anna E. Pitman

Honors College Research

This study investigated just one dependent variable within communication: ethnicity. Ethnicity often influences language. The study examined interethnic communication behaviors through the lens of the Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), as influenced by one of its offshoots, Ethnolinguistic Identity Theory (ELIT). Communication within CAT is given one of three labels—convergence, divergence, and maintenance. The study included four students at Harding University: two African American females, one Hispanic American female, and one Caucasian American female. The primary participant, an African American woman, had a recorded 20 minute conversation with each of the other three participants. Discussion questions provided were formulated to create …

Talk About Race In The Undergraduate Classroom: A Discourse Analysis, Leighnah L. Perkins

Media and Communication Studies Summer Fellows

As researchers have noted, many people are afraid to talk about race (Alexander, 2010; Miller & Harris, 2005). Given the race-related events and tragedies occurring in the U.S. today, people need to find ways to move past this fear in order to work together to solve societal problems. Harris (2003) suggested that the undergraduate classroom is a key place to engage in discussions about race. This research project examined the ways that college students talk about race and race-related problems in the classroom. The data collected for this project included observations and audio recordings of three sections of a seminar …

Friendship As Method, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

“Friendship as Method,” appendix of the book In Solidarity: Friendship, Family, and Activism Beyond Gay and Straight (Routledge 2015), overviews the author's approach to and philosophy of research. She defines friendship, posits it as a kind of fieldwork, and lays the methodological foundations of friendship as method. After arguing that friendship as method involves researching with the practices, at the pace, and in the natural contexts of friendship, the author describes this approach’s strengths and considerations for both researcher and participants. To learn more, visit the book's website: http://www.insolidaritybook.com.

Remembering A Cool September, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This ethnographic short story chronicles the author’s emotional journey following September 11, 2001. After weeks of disconnection, she encounters a display of patriotism by two gay male friends, provoking her to process what it means to be both patriotic and gay in contemporary U.S. culture.

Father's Blessing: Ethnographic Drama, Poetry, And Prose, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Following interpretivist traditions focusing on how individuals make sense of and make meaning from their lived experience, the author, a heterosexual woman, travels with a gay male friend/participant to visit his estranged father, a retired Air Force pilot and elder in the Mormon Church. The work attempts to show the dialogic construction, negotiation, and transformation of identities and relationships.

Passings, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The author, a heterosexual woman, and Gordon Bernstein, a gay man, have been friends and research collaborators since 1995. In 2004, the author accompanied Gordon on a trip to his hometown of Philadelphia to conduct fieldwork and interview family members. This project ethnographically explored personal and relational opportunities and challenges associated with coming out in a family system defined by avoidant communication, hegemonic masculinity, and terminal illness.

Revisiting Don/Ovan, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

In this piece, the author, a heterosexual woman, travels to her hometown of Lake City, MN to reconnect with Donovan Marshall, a gay man she last saw in 1986. "Revisiting Don/ovan" explores opportunities and challenges of coming out, leaving, and returning to live in a small town.

State Of Unions: Politics And Poetics Of Performance, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

At the 2005 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, the author delivered a poem and slide show, “The State of Unions: Activism (and In-Activism) in Decision 2004.” The performance processed the election in the context of her research community, a network of gay male friends—marginalized by sexual orientation but privileged by sex, gender expression, race, class, and education. Audience members offered mixed responses, some praising its provocative content, others criticizing the author’s position and tone, which some perceived as hostile, even as “gay bashing.”

Doing Laundry, Megan Getter

Megan Getter

Using Goffman’s theory on the presentational self, my study explores everyday performances in a laundromat. I take a critical interpretative approach to understand the performances of gender and class in the laundromat. I conducted ethnographic observations as a full member and include autoethnographic observations to enrich the findings. The laundromat is a unique space where gender and class are neutralized people are performing a private chore in a public space. This study fills a gap in public space and ethnographic literature devoid of laundromats.

The Shanti Sena “Peace Center” And The Non-Policing Of An Anarchist Temporary Autonomous Zone: Rainbow Family Peacekeeping Strategies, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

This article utilizes ethnographic methods and government documents to examine the self-policing and peacekeeping strategies of the Rainbow Family, a nonviolent acephalous intentional community that holds massive weeklong gatherings around the globe. It is a case study that examines the efficacy of these methods, comparing them to those traditional police agencies employ under similar conditions. It contextualizes these strategies by examining other utopian and anarchist communities and movements such as Critical Mass bike rides. This study demonstrates how smiling, chanting, listening, social pressure, and social capital all play into forming a more effective and less violent approach toward peacekeeping.

Decolonizing Texts: A Performance Autoethnography, Hari Stephen Kumar

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

I write performance autoethnography as a methodological project committed to evoking embodied and lived experience in academic texts, using performance writing to decolonize academic knowledge production. Through a fragmented itinerary across continents and ethnicities, across religions and languages, across academic and vocational careers, I speak from the everyday spaces in between supposedly stable cultural identities involving race, ethnicity, class, gendered norms, to name a few. I write against colonizing practices which police the racist, sexist, and xenophobic cultural politics that produce and validate particular identities. I write from the intersections of my own living experiences within and against those cultural …

Weirdos Riot, Media Gets It Wrong, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Michael I. Niman is concerned by media treatment of a hippie riot that never happened

Men Kissing, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The author, a heterosexual woman, uses the theme of men kissing to show relational dynamics in her fieldwork community, a network of gay male friends. Political implications of public same-sex kissing also are discussed. At the time the events described in "Men Kissing" occurred (1997) and for six more years, it was not legal for persons of the same sex to be intimate in Florida and 13 other states.

Between Gay And Straight-1 Before, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

In chapter 1, “Before,” of the book Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation (AltaMira Press, 2001), I story the absences, silences, and stereotypes surrounding same-sex orientation when I came of age in the 1980s and early 90s.

Introduction To Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation [Book], Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This chapter sets a personal, academic, and cultural context for the author's PhD dissertation research (1994-98), an ethnographic and interview study of a network of gay male friends in Tampa, Florida.

Contact (Chapter 2 Of The Book Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation"), Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

“Contact” is chapter 2 of the book Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation (AltaMira Press, 2001). The timeframe portrayed extends from June 1994 to September 1995. It opens with my boyfriend Doug meeting David Holland, who would become our first gay male friend. David and his partner Chris introduce us to gay spaces around Tampa. Also in this chapter, Doug begins his four-year tenure with The Cove, a team in the predominantly gay Suncoast Softball league.

Tales From The (Softball) Field (Chapter 3 Of The Book Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation), Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

“Tales from the (Softball) Field” is chapter 3 of the book Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation (AltaMira Press, 2001). “Tales” marks the beginning of my academic journey into this community. It’s the fall of 1995, and I’m taking a graduate class on qualitative methods. Unexpectedly, the softball field emerges as a fieldwork site. As I become immersed in team members’ lives and stories, I begin exploring how to “work the hyphen” (Fine, 1994) between gay and straight, to practice research (and friendship) with and for my friends/participants.

Negotiating Academic And Personal Selves (Chapter 4 Of The Book Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation), Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

“Negotiating Academic and Personal Selves” is Chapter 4 of the book Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation (AltaMira Press, 2001). Here I show how my relationships with the gay men of my research community alter how I position myself in graduate courses, how I practice research, how I write, and how I teach my classes. As a student, I delve into new projects on sexual orientation and identity; as an instructor, I alter course reading lists, assignments, and activities. This chapter also moves through my increasingly problematic encounters with associates who identify as heterosexual. My new consciousness …

Defending Life: Epilogue To Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation [Book], Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

In the epilogue, “Defending Life,” the project comes full circle. The setting is the oral defense of my PhD dissertation. About a dozen of the men I befriended and wrote about—most of whom have read the document—are in attendance. My academic and research communities offer personal and scholarly responses to my work. We talk through the disbelief and pain surrounding Matthew Shepard’s death just four days before, and we try to direct ourselves toward a future of greater harmony and justice.

Life Projects (Chapter 5 Of The Book Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation), Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

“Life Projects” is Chapter 5 of the book Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation (AltaMira Press, 2001). The timeframe spans from the fall of 1996 to January 1997. I’m taking a course on life history, and I ask a member of my research community, Gordon Bernstein, to participate in my project. During our interviews, Gordon teaches me about the ongoing process of coming out—to oneself, to other gay men, and to coworkers, friends, and family. Later, I grapple with elements of this network of gay male friends that can be unsettling, especially for women. I bemoan its …

Talking Through Meaning (Chapter 7 Of The Book Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation), Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Chapter 7 provides a dialogic analysis of my PhD dissertation research (1994-98) on a network of gay male friends in Tampa, Florida. The chapter is based on a conversation my husband Doug and I had while I was trying to compose a more conventional conclusion on gay-straight friendship and friendship as method. We discuss my project’s academic, personal, interpersonal, and cultural implications.

Homeward (Chapter 6 Of The Book Between Gay And Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation), Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

“Homeward” is Chapter 6 of the book Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship Across Sexual Orientation (AltaMira Press, 2001). Here I present events that took place during the spring 1997 semester and that summer. An issue that comes to the forefront is the binary (gay-straight) construction of sexual orientation and identity. I ask what it means to say, “I’m straight,” or “I’m gay,” and what options and experiences such a claim opens up and closes off. By exploring an attraction between myself and one of my participants, I question the popular wisdom that friendships between straight women and gay men …