Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Religion and gender are two contemporary, heavily influential social identity markers that the media engages with. In India, Bollywood simultaneously interacts with religious and gender identity by producing many movies on Hindu-Muslim inter-religious romantic relationships in the twenty-first century. Bollywood’s Hindu-Muslim romance movies are stories with a central focus on a romantic relationship in which one lover is Hindu and the second is Muslim. The masculinity and femininity of the Hindu and Muslim characters are not accidental; it is meticulously articulated in every movie. This thesis explores two sets of patterns in the movies: themes in love stories and gender identity across the protagonists. It is important to note that representation of religious identity in Bollywood is highly debated with a special emphasis on Muslim identity since they are a religious minority and the political "Other". This thesis acknowledges that the presence of Muslims in Bollywood is complicated and not black and white, but it focuses on the representation of Muslims that is connected romantically with Hindus.

Appearance-related peer victimization has been shown to have strong social, health, and economic consequences on victims. Low body satisfaction has also been associated with higher appearance-related peer victimization prevalence. Preadolescent children are particularly vulnerable to the exposure and effects of appearance-related peer victimization. Research shows gender minorities have been particularly at risk for peer victimization. More studies are needed to adequately capture the appearance-related peer victimization experiences of gender minorities within this vulnerable age group. The current study aimed to explore the prevalence rate of appearance-related peer victimization and associated variables across gender certain and uncertain preadolescents residing in the United States. 5354 children between the ages of 8 and 13 participated in this cross-sectional study. Gender groups were categorized as certain (children reported identifying as boy or girl) and uncertain (children reported being unsure of their gender or other). The sample was racially and ethnically diverse. A two-tailed independent samples t-test was performed for each variable to examine mean differences across gender certain and uncertain groups. Key findings revealed significant mean differences in appearance-related peer victimization [t(139) = 3.21, p < .001, d =.36], body satisfaction [t(211) = 6.32, p <.001, d = .55], body esteem [ t(5352) = 10.77, p = <.001, d = .71], and self-esteem [t(231) = 9.25, p = <.001, d = .73] such that gender uncertain children reported higher mean levels of appearance-related peer victimization; gender uncertain children also reported lower levels of body satisfaction, body esteem, and self-esteem. A correlational analysis indicated that as peer victimization frequency increased all children reported lower body satisfaction, body esteem, and general self-esteem. Body satisfaction and general self-esteem were more strongly positively correlated among gender uncertain children versus gender certain children. However, gender certain children reported stronger positive associations between body esteem and general self-esteem in comparison with gender uncertain children. Gender uncertain children report higher rates of appearance-related peer victimization and lower body satisfaction. Additional studies are needed to replicate and expand research on the appearance-related peer victimization experiences of preadolescent gender minority children and the related effects to body satisfaction.

An exploratory research study conducted to determine the comparing and contrasting views and understandings of masculinity between young adults. Specifically those who identify as Christian compared to those who do not identify as Christian. A survey study was distributed through ASU courses and through social media leading to the results discussing the varying opinions on how masculinity is defined by Religion, Mass Media, and Education. Relationships and comparisons between Christian participants displayed the importance of traditional masculine values, whereas non-Christian participants seemed to have a more open and inclusive understanding of masculinity. Due to this being an exploratory study, much future research is necessary in order to fully expand on the complexities of Christianity, masculinity, and society’s overall understanding of the two.

Using a dataset of ASU students from the 2016-2017 cohort, we interact gender and parent education level to observe gaps in academic achievement. We see a statistically insignificant achievement gap for males across parent education level, but a statistically significant achievement gap for females across parent education level. We also observe dropout gaps among these interaction groups. We see the widest dropout gap being between males across parent education level, with the smallest dropout gap being between females across parent education level. So with males we see an insignificant achievement gap but the widest dropout gap across parent education level, and with females we see a significant achievement gap but the smallest dropout gap across parent education level. What is driving these gaps and causing more similarly performing students to drop out at wider rates? At the aggregate level, we see larger gaps in grade- associated dropout probability across parent education level for males which may be able to explain the larger difference in overall proportions of dropouts between males. However, when predicting dropout probability of the semester with the most first generation and non-first generation dropouts, we see that females have the largest differences across parent education level in grade-associated dropout probability. This suggests that our model may be best suited in using college achievement data to predict overall dropout probabilities, not next-semester dropout probabilities using current semester data. Our findings also suggest that first generation students’ dropout probability is more sensitive to the grades they receive than non-first generation students.