Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“We Need To Figure Out Who We Are”: Reframing Manhood In An Online Discussion Forum, Tomas Sanjuan Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I explore the potential of online communities in negotiating alternative forms of “doing” masculinity. I focus on the /r/bropill which is hosted on Reddit – home to thousands of active discussion forums called subreddits. I argue that the members of /r/bropill subreddit are attempting to redefine what it means to live your life not only as a man but as a “good man.” Using a purposive sample, I analyzed 24 discussions which totaled 1325 posts (n = 1325). I conducted a qualitative textual analysis of the original posts and comments inspired by grounded theory. My findings reveal …

“I’M Still Suffering”: Mental Health Care Among Central African Refugee Populations In The Tampa Bay Area, C. Danee Ruszczyk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An estimated 500 Central African refugee families have been resettled in the Tampa Bay Area since 2002 (RPC, 2022). The cycles of trauma that they have endured place them in vulnerable positions regarding their mental health. Struggling to exist within underfunded social programs that are rigid in their expectations and with the current system of reactive care vs preventative care, the refugees in Tampa are put in a difficult situation of navigating their own health and wellbeing in lieu of having the full support of the United States government and their community. I will discuss how these refugees experience and …

Methadone Patients In Vietnam: Substance Use Patterns, Reasons For Entering Treatment, And Methadone-Related Attitudes, Tram Hoang Huyen Tran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Objectives. Vietnam has high rates of opioid addiction, but methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) only became available in Vietnam in 2008. To date, MMT has expanded nationwide serving about 51,000 patients. As MMT is relatively new in Vietnam, additional research on methadone patients is still needed. This dissertation aims to address two important issues related to MMT that have been understudied: the extent/type of substance use (SU) among MMT patients in Vietnam; and the low utilization of MMT among women.

Methods. This dissertation contains three separate, but related studies. Study 1 systematically reviewed 20 studies and summarized the literature on the …

Deconstructing And Decolonizing Identities Of “Gender” And “Sex” When Viewed As Anti-Black: Black Narratives Outside Of The Binary, Didier Salgado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How is “Reality” experienced in the Black body? Is “Reality” an objective article which is outside of the realm of personal experience? Assigned sex is often assumed an objective biological phenomenon that exists everywhere and in all communities. Gender is often thought about as a socially constructed form of identity which is expressed in various ways. In this thesis, I critically examine the terror of “reality” on the Black body, looking at the ways that Black people who’ve experienced discomfort with gender and sex categories experience the “world” around them. Diving deeply into their own experiences and the meanings they …

The Invisible Victims Of Commercial Sexual Exploitation: Boys And Their Barriers To Access To Services, Amanda L. Connella

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While there has been a large body of research conducted on girl (under the age of 18) victims of commercial sexual exploitation, boy (under the age of 18) victims do not seem to receive the same attention. From the few studies that have been conducted, boys and young male victims of commercial sexual exploitation have been shown to have gender specific barriers that prevent them from getting help, yet not many papers explore this unique problem. Using survey data from key providers that work in programs that serve commercially sexually exploited boys, the present study fills this hole in the …

Gender Differences In College Drinkers: The Role Of Masculine Norms, Jared A. Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Drinking among college students has remained a prominent problem within the United States, with more than 50% of college students drinking alcohol, 30% considered binge drinkers, and 9% considered heavy drinkers (SAMHSA, 2018). Evidence also shows that males are more likely to partake in risky drinking behaviors (e.g., binge drinking or drinking to intoxication) and are at higher risk to be diagnosed with a alcohol use disorder when compared to women (Iwamoto et al. 2014; Grant et al., 2004). Recent findings suggest that adherence to particular masculine norms as a risk factor for problematic alcohol use among men (Mahalik, 2000; …

“Even If You Have Food In Your House, It Will Not Taste Sweet”: Central African Refugees’ Experiences Of Cultural Food Insecurity And Other Overlapping Insecurities In Tampa, Florida, Shaye Soifoine

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, resettled African refugee populations experience food insecurity at rates up to seven times higher than those of the general population. In Tampa, Florida, anthropologists have documented high levels of food insecurity among Central African refugee households since members of this population began to be resettled in the area in 2016. Utilizing an intersectional lens and drawing upon theoretical concepts such as cultural food security, navigational capital, and social reproduction, this thesis examines how Central African refugees, particularly women, experience food (in)security and other overlapping forms of (in)security as they integrate into US systems of structural inequality …

Hello Traitor: An Examination Of Individual Differences In Perceptions Of Technology-Related Incivility, David J. Howard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Workplace incivility is unfortunately common among employees in today’s workplace. The increase in usage of email, texting, smartphones, and social media for interpersonal workplace communication has led to an increase of these mediums being used in an uncivil manner. While there has been a growth of general workplace incivility research conducted in the past two decades, the extant literature lacks sufficient primary studies that examine technology-related workplace incivility. This research project aims to add to the burgeoning literature in the technology-related incivility content domain. First, it examined the prevalence of email incivility reported by workers and found a much lower …

Advice As Metadiscourse: On The Gendering Of Women's Leadership In Advice-Giving Practices, Amaly Santiago

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is about advice as social practice. Specifically, I examine leadership discourse as communicatively constituted and advice-giving as creating a metadiscourse of gendered abilities and leadership asymmetries. In the light of the growing number of initiatives created for women to improve their status as leaders, this project examines leadership, not as a quality, but as discourse: as a communicative dynamic. This is in line with how organizations see leadership when they create leadership programs, for these programs are designed to advise or teach women to be different and better leaders. My purpose is to encourage inclusiveness and contribute to …

Learning To Be Human: Ren 仁, Modernity, And The Philosophers Of China's Hundred Days' Reform, Lucien Mathot Monson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In a period of deep political division, insurrection, opium addiction, foreign conflicts, and economic distress, three intellectuals, Tan Sitong 譚嗣同 (1865-1898), Kang Youwei 康有爲 (1858-1927), and Liang Qichao 梁啓超 (1873-1929), developed philosophical systems to identify the source of China’s problems and to devise solutions. With these philosophical theories, they enacted a political movement to reform Chinese government and society known as the “Hundred Days’ Reform” (wuxubianfa 戊戌變法) of 1898. While scholars like Chang Hao, Wing Sit-chan, and Joseph R. Levenson have all written on all or some of these reformers, they have done so largely from the perspective of Chinese …

¿De Dónde Eres?: Negotiating Identity As Third Culture Kids, Sophia Margulies

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sparked by David C. Pollock's (1988) concept of "third culture kids" (children of government officials and military personnel), this thesis uses autoethnography to examine "white-passing" Latinx identity and gender passing as it relates to individuals who identify as transgender to understand what it means to "pass" within these communication contexts. I situate the study at the intersections of queer, trans, and Latinx theories. Ultimately, I argue that the communicative and identity practices inherent to the liminal spaces in which third culture kids perform create the conditions for performances as transnational subjects. What the contexts of place and home are like, …

Why Are Women Leaving Stem? An Examination Of Workplace Rivalry, Joseph Regina

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Past research on workplace rivalry has framed the construct as a motivating force that is desirable for individuals and organizations. Using social comparison theory as a framework, the potential harmful correlates of rivalry were examined. Specifically, the relationships between the status of having a rival, as well as one’s perception of their relative standing to (i.e. being better or worse than) their rival, and the outcomes of turnover intention, perceived competence, and imposter syndrome were analyzed. Further, to examine how STEM fields may be particularly impacted by these relationships, both job and STEM turnover were measured, and the moderating effect …

Work Motivation In Wealth Management: The Role Of Self Determination Theory, Mark J. Mattia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, we use Self Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000A, Deci & Ryan, 2008) as the underlying theory to help determine the factors that may influence wealth advisors to consider leaving (or being committed) to their positions. Baard et al. (2004) established that Self-determination theory was relevant to motivation in the workplace. This quantitative study utilizes a survey instrument that incorporates many already proven reliable and valid items from Self-determination Theory to better understand the wealth advisor work motivation framework. This topic is important within financial services since positive work motivation has been tied to positive work outcomes …

‘It’S Been A Huge Stress’: An In-Depth, Exploratory Study Of Vaccine Hesitant Parents In Southern California, Mika Kadono

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2015, the US experienced a widespread measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland, California and spread to six other states, Mexico, and Canada. That year, California passed Senate Bill 277 (SB 277), which eliminated the personal belief exemption for vaccinations required for school entry; California became the third state in the country to eliminate nonmedical exemptions. In 2019, Washington, Maine, and New York followed suit eliminating all nonmedical exemptions amid the largest measles outbreak in the US in 25 years. Many countries, including the US, are experiencing a rise in vaccine preventable diseases due, in part, to increasing vaccine hesitancy, …

Mental Health And In-Prison Experiences: Examining Socioeconomic And Sex Differences In The Effect Of Mental Illness On Institutional Misconduct And Disciplinary Segregation, Rachel E. Severson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mental health problems have become a common occurrence in American correctional settings. This occurrence is not equally distributed in terms of gender; incarcerated women have higher rates of mental illness incarcerated men (Bronson & Berzofsky, 2017; James & Glaze, 2006). This phenomenon is problematic as research suggests that American correctional institutions are ill equipped to treat and manage inmates with mental health problems (Arrigo & Bullock, 2008; Bennion, 2015; Clark, 2018). This is also true in women’s prisons as they are often tasked to deal with strict budgetary restrictions and have fewer resources compared to men’s prisons (Holsinger, 2014; Stephan, …

Selling White Masculinity: An Analysis Of Cultural Intermediaries In The Craft Beverage Industry, Erik Tyler Withers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to use the craft beverage industry as a case study in which to investigate how white masculinity is reproduced within consumer spaces. This study explores the roles that cultural intermediaries in the craft beverage industry play in the reproduction and contestation of white masculinity. Cultural intermediaries can be understood as tastemakers who play a large role in assigning value and legitimacy to products, practices and people within consumer industries. Intermediaries such as marketing and advertising firms, industry writers, and critics have been widely studied in the past. However, the day to day interactional work …

Ethnic Identity As A Protective Factor In Early Adolescent Youth Depression: An Investigation Of Differences By Race And Gender, Leah Bonilla

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Adolescent mental illness is a major concern in the Unites States. The adolescent stage is a critical developmental period of physical and mental changes, thus it is important to understand protective factors associated with positive wellbeing. The current study aimed to explore: (a) the associations among race, gender, ethnic identity, and depressive symptoms among eighth grade adolescents, (b) to what extent are there differences in degree of depressive symptoms among youth based on race and gender, and (c) to what extent a strong sense of ethnic identity serves as a protective factor against the development of depression among youth with …

[X]Splaininggender, Race, Class, And Body: Metapragmatic Disputes Of Linguistic Authority And Ideologies On Twitter, Reddit, And Tumblr, Judith C. Bridges

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the language of “citizen sociolinguists,” everyday users of social network sites (SNS) who contribute to the discourses about language on Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr, platforms with distinctive user demographics and technological affordances. The data were collected through keyword searches for mansplain, whitesplain, richsplain and thinsplain, metapragmatic neologisms which are lexical blends of the verb explain and one of four social categories. Disputes of macro-level ideologies are revealed by users’ creative meaning-making strategies and metapragmatic awareness of micro-level texts and utterances. Making use of the linguistic practices of the SNS, as well as the concisely-compacted semantic and pragmatic …

Opening Wounds And Possibilities: A Critical Examination Of Violence And Monstrosity In Horror Tv, Amanda K. Leblanc

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines contemporary horror TV, dissecting the ways it works both to subvert and uphold contemporary social standards about race, gender, class, and ability. This work attends to the moments in horror TV where graphic displays of violence and monstrous characters open up possibilities for innovative and progressive representation of historically marginalized people, as well as those instances that foreclose such potential. Horror TV shows blur the definitions of monster and human, suggesting that humans can be monstrous and that monsters can have humanity. Horror TV is a platform through which we see the coming together of a traditional …

“Neither East Nor West”: Shia Women Negotiating Gender Norms In America, Raheleh Dayerizadeh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With growing hostilities towards the Ummah (Muslim global community and Diaspora) in Western countries and the fear of Sharia laws, the socialization of international human rights norms within religious institutions, makes for a timely case study. Specifically, this dissertation project aims to capture the process of norm transformation at the grassroots level by investigating the religious, cultural, and social encounter between Islam and the West by interviewing Shia women at a local mosque in Florida. Critical constructivism, post-colonial feminism, and qualitative interpretive methods, are used to address the following: how practicing Shia women are navigating between competing liberal gender equality …

As Good As It Gets: Redefining Survival Through Post-Race And Post-Feminism In Apocalyptic Film And Television, Mark R. Mccarthy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Concentrating on six representative media sites, 28 Days Later (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Land of the Dead (2005), Children of Men (2007), Snowpiercer (2013), and one television series The Walking Dead (2010-present), this dissertation examines the strain of post-millennial apocalyptic media emphasizing a neo-liberal form of collaboration as the path to survival. Unlike traditional collaboration, the neo-liberal construction centers on the individual’s responsibility in maintaining harmony through intra-group homogeny. Through close textual analysis, critical race theory, and feminist media studies, this project seeks to understand how post-racial and post-feminist representational strategies elide inequality and ignore tensions surrounding racial …

"Beautifully Awful": A Feminist Ethnography Of Women Veterans' Experiences With Transition From Military Service, Kiersten H. Downs

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As issues of gender inequality in the military are addressed, women will continue to fill jobs traditionally occupied by men, and ultimately take on a greater percentage of leadership responsibility. For these reasons, women will remain the fastest growing population within our active duty forces. An increased need for research, advocacy, and resources for programs and services designed specifically for women veterans is necessary in order to prepare for an upsurge in the numbers of women who will be seeking services in the years to come. This research utilized a feminist ethnographic approach for data collection and analysis. Data was …

Examining Forty Years Of The Social Organization Of Feminisms: Ethnography Of Two Women’S Bookstores In The Us South, Mary Catherine Whitlock

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At the height of their popularity in the 1990s, there were 140 feminist bookstores in the US and Canada (Onosaka 2006). Today, in 2017, there are thirteen left. Feminist bookstores began opening in the 1970s promoting ideas about lesbian separatism, woman only spaces, and nurturing a feminist community. Although many functioned as for-profit stores, many also operated community centers and non-profit organizations. Feminist bookstores provide an excellent site for scholars view decades of social movement organizing merging theory, practice, activism, and academics. As a social movement organization, feminist bookstores as are the quintessential node of academia and activism. Of the …

Black Girl Magic?: Negotiating Emotions And Success In College Bridge Programs, Olivia Ann Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews, this project explores the extent to which race, class, and gender shape the socialization that Black women receive about their emotions and attitudes in a college bridge program. It unpacks the ways that dominant emotion cultures can inform the emotional socialization practices of a college bridge program in ways that resist and reproduce larger cultural narratives about Black women. To operationalize this emotional socialization, I introduce a concept called emotional respectability, which suggests that emotional reactions and demeanor must always align with the larger emotion cultures and goals of institutions such as family and …

“Can You Believe They Think I’M Intimidating?” An Exploration Of Identity In Tall Women, Elizabeth Joy Fuller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States today, there is a dominant cultural narrative telling us that tallness is desirable and enjoyed by those who experience it. Much of the existing research on height correlates tallness with promotions, higher salaries, and general happiness. However, this research does not take into account the limitations of some of the previous research which tends to accept tall people’s vocabulary of motives at face value as the totality of their experience as a tall person. In particular, tall women tend to have much more to say about their lives as tall women than simply that it has …

Terf Wars: Narrative Productions Of Gender And Essentialism In Radical-Feminist (Cyber)Spaces, Jennifer Earles

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation concerns how activists preserve particular feminisms in everyday life, particularly in this postmodern moment as advances in technology create virtual spaces, as feminism experiences generational shifts, and as notions about gender and bodies influence the discursive and political construction of contemporary activism and communities. The particular feminists at the center of this study are self-described radical feminists. While original theories allowed members to question the essentialism of bodies (i.e., sex class), this study focuses on the movement trajectory in which members critique how people assigned male at birth learn masculinity as inextricably tied to the oppression of women …

"What Are We Doing Here? This Is Not Us": A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Last Of Us Remastered, Toria Kwan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Video games are often written off as juvenile or frivolous, but they are actually vehicles of socialization and hegemonic ideologies. Because of this, video games are deserving of research and critique. In video games, women are often underrepresented or hypersexualized, while men can be hypermasculinized. Many times, racial and ethnic portrayals in video games paint the person of color as victims of violence, villains, or sports athletes, while white characters take the role of hero or protagonist. Heterosexuality typically goes unmarked and is considered the default sexuality, and homophobic sentiments and slurs are prevalent in the gaming community. Because game …

From The Panels To The Margins: Identity, Marginalization, And Subversion In Cosplay, Manuel Andres Ramirez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In investigating the ways social actors experience and interact with mass media texts, I examine how cosplay, as a performative practice of identity in relation to popular culture, enables social actors to subvert and reproduce marginalization towards minority status groups. Theoretical arguments apply a constructionist framework in order to examine the participants’ meaning making processes. The study addresses the following research questions: (1) what social function does cosplay serve for participants; (2) how do cosplayers perform race and gender; (3) how do cosplayers resist, negotiate, or reinforce race and gender-based marginalization? Drawing upon qualitative data gathered from observing two large …

“Black Americans And Hiv/Aids In Popular Media” Conforming To The Politics Of Respectability, Alisha Lynn Menzies

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines narratives about racialized gender, sexuality, and class through media images of black Americans with HIV/AIDS. Through textual analysis of media sites featuring HIV/AIDS and blackness (The Announcement, Precious, and Marvelyn Brown’s website, www.marvelynbrown.com), this project analyzes how the politics of respectability—a set of precepts that govern how black men and women can present themselves in public spaces to align with white ideals of gender and sexuality—construct black people in media representations of HIV/AIDS. This work examines how respectability politics deployed in media representations of HIV/AIDS and black Americans reclaim notions of acceptable black sexuality …

Modeling Food Security, Energy, And Climate And Cultural Impacts Of A Process: The Case Study Of Shea Butter In Sub-Saharan Africa, Colleen Claire Naughton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Millions of people in the world, particularly women and people in sub-Saharan Africa, suffer from hunger and poverty. Three of the major 2015-2030 United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to eliminate hunger through food security and sustainable agriculture, eradicate poverty, and achieve gender equality through women’s empowerment. Shea trees and their associated fruit and butter can play a major role in each of these three SDGs for women and their families throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Shea trees are located over a wide expanse stretching more than 5,000 kilometers across over eighteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These trees produce fruit that …