Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Investigating The Relational Element Of Trust In Teacher-Principal Relationships: An Autoethnographic Case Study, Angela Bradley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This autoethnographic case study was designed to investigate the relational aspect of trust, a characteristic of servant leadership, in the teacher-principal relationship. This trusting bond is an often overlooked, foundational element of a school’s success. I examined the role that trust plays in enhancing a school’s culture and how trust is established and maintained among one principal and teachers under my supervision. In addition, as researcher, I sought to uncover specific indicators that trust was present on a school campus. Finally, I sought to examine trust’s effects on collaboration and organizational commitment.

Through weekly reflections, I sought to examine my …

The Body And The Bedroom: Life And Death At The Shrines Of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Katie Berchak-Irby

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

How do we define “sacred space”? I suggest that sacred spaces are not sacred for reasons geographers have traditionally accepted - due to connections to a religion’s creation myth, holy person, or event. Instead, places are made sacred by the negotiations of the sacred made there by visitors – mostly women – who visit scared spaces. Through ethnographic and autoethnographic research at the shrines of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Washington Heights, New York City, New York and Cabrini High School, New Orleans, Louisiana, I explore what makes shrines sacred for the women who visit them and how they use …

Glue Sticks And Gaffs: Disassembling The Drag Queening Body, Ray Siebenkittel

LSU Master's Theses

Drag queening men, typically gay men who perform femininities for entertainment, use makeup, padding, injections and other tools to change their bodies for performance. I focus on the backstage activities of drag performers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, rather than conventional observations from the audience, to explore the negotiation, construction and implications of these bodies, both physically and discursively. Through autoethnographic accounts and participating in my own drag performance, I highlight the often unseen, less frequently discussed aspects of drag queening in order to lessen the distance between the efforts of performers and the stage. Drag queening men’s bodies are a …

Designing Irishness: Ethnicity, Heritage, And Imagined Connection To Place Through Language, Thomas James Sullivan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In North America, those who are descended from "old world" immigrant groups—for example Germans, Greeks, Italians, Poles, and Irish—are thought to be assimilated or acculturated into the mainstream American culture. Since the late 1970s, however, sociologists have observed how a number of white ethnics, particularly those descended from third- and fourth-generation (and beyond) immigrants, continue to maintain a link to an ethnic group. This phenomenon—labeled symbolic or optional ethnicity—is now seen as a latter-stage development in the larger process of assimilation and ethnic-group identification. In this dissertation I show how the meaning of Irish identity has evolved in North America …

Moving Over Mountains: A Woman On The Appalachian Trail, Jessica Susan Matthews

LSU Master's Theses

This project examines the experience of a woman on the Appalachian Trail. It is my aim in undertaking this project to evaluate my own personal experiences in order to explore the way the Appalachian Trail is conceptualized as a space, and then experienced as a place. My own experiences will be connected to and contrasted by experiences I have with other hikers. It is through my own experiences and those of others that I hope to highlight the ways that spaces and mobilities are gendered in our society and the ways that those expectations are usurped. The wilderness might be …