ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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Description
Forget You’re Female focuses on stories of women pursuing engineering degrees and women in the field of engineering. The main character, Samantha (Sam), comes from a family of engineers and is unsure whether she wants to study engineering in college. In Opening-Decision, a university admissions counselor insists that Sam enters the engineering program. Sam expresses excitement for the degree in Engineer. However, she faces discrimination and microaggressions in First Class and Peers. These experiences lead her to seek a professor’s advice in Forget You’re Female. Jack’s Song explores the moment when a male student discovers overt sexism in a public part of the engineering building. Finally, in Graduation, Sam completes the degree and reflects on her experiences and potential longevity in the engineering field.
There are some staging instructions written into the score, however, lighting instructions are the only required element. Extras and props are optional but help convey the scene of each song. Projecting relevant footage or written descriptors is recommended in place of extras and props. If no extras are available, then spoken lines (male) need to be recorded and played back as indicated in the score.
ContributorsBush, Zachary Warren (Author) / Rockmaker, Jody (Thesis advisor) / Caslor, Jason (Committee member) / Temple, Alex (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Women’s contributions to agriculture are an essential factor in achieving food security in developing countries. In rice production, women’s involvement is usually limited to their labor participation. Differences in gender roles within the household hinder women from accessing productive resources and services compared to their male counterparts, leading to a gender gap in rice productivity. With the steady growth of rice productivity experienced in eastern India, it is essential to reduce the gender gap by providing women equal access to resources. However, there is little information on how the gender gap can be addressed between married couples in a patriarchal family structure like India. This dissertation analyzes the potential impact on rice productivity and input use when the spouse (wife) in the household has given access to resources (e.g., rice variety and credit). The first chapter analyzes the impact of a married couple’s decision-making strategy in choosing rice varieties on rice productivity and input use using an endogenous switching regression. The second chapter estimates the effect of access to financial services on technical efficiency using a stochastic production frontier framework. The last chapter evaluates how joint decision-making strategy influences the inverse relationship between farm size and rice productivity following a yield approach and quantile regression.
The findings show that joint decision-making strategy choice leads to a higher rice yield and fertilizer usage while lower labor requirements. Regarding spouse access to financial resources, results show a significant difference in technological and managerial gaps. However, that households with access have a lower predicted rice yield than households without access. The last chapter shows that joint decision-making in the family still left the inverse relationship unchanged in examining the inverse relationship.
The dissertation provides two significant implications. First, results provide evidence of gender-differentiated preferences for rice variety within the household that can affect rice productivity and input use. Second, the spouse’s access to credit does not necessarily lead to an increase in rice productivity. Thus, determining the primary purpose of why households avail financial services would be essential in analyzing its impact on productivity to avoid misleading results.
ContributorsMalabayabas, Maria Luz Lazaro (Author) / Mishra, Ashok K (Thesis advisor) / Englin, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Manfredo, Mark (Committee member) / Aggarwal, Rimjhim (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
After continuous transnational migrations to Spain in the last few decades, a second generation of migrants has begun to experience an identity struggle as a result of the tensions between their culture of origin and the prevailing local customs and values. As such, this places them in what is called a third space. Considering the concept of imagined communities as advanced by Benedict Anderson, this dissertation contextualizes the testimonies of women from three migrant origin communities –Morocco, Equatorial Guinea, and China– to understand their way of inclusion and belonging.The study explores the works of Najat El Hachmi, Laila Karrouch, Miriam Hatibi, Lucia Mbomio, Carolina Nve Díaz San Francisco, Desiree Bela-Lobedde and Quan Zhou Wu. It includes fictional narrative, documentary, graphic novel and journalism. The discourse by Moroccan origin authors relates the discrimination that they experience to the tension between the dominant culture and the intersectional feminism with which they identify. Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory enriches the understanding and helps to define the ongoing generational trauma, afropessimism, of women of Equatoguinean origin as a result of their experiences of colonialism and racism. Finally, Chinese-Spanish women write of discrimination in their close circles as a result of being heritage speakers, and also by being subjugated to their male counterparties in the family hierarchy.
ContributorsBeltran de Heredia Carmona, Edurne (Author) / Garcia Fernandez, Carlos Javier CJGF (Thesis advisor) / Hernandez, Manuel de Jesus MH (Committee member) / Horan, Elizabeth EH (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This dissertation presents a new tool for analysis of the way difficult experiences
or phenomena influence the process for constructing self-identity in the performance of everyday life. This concept, refraction, emerged as part of a grounded theory methods analysis of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Itacaré, Bahia, Brazil from January to July 2014. The work here contributes to the field of performance studies as a possibility for examining how affective responses to difficult experiences contribute to a shift in perspective and subsequently shifts in the performance of self in everyday life. This research was conducted with critical and reflexive autoethnographic methods in order to hold the research accountable for the ways subject position influences the research. In this case the most salient theme that emerged from these autoethnographic methods was an unpacking of unacknowledged tourist privilege in this setting. The resulting work-in-progress
performance will offer ways for spectators to question their own assumptions
regarding tourist privilege in Brazil, and in so-called developing countries in similar
tropical climates. An additional contribution to the field of performance-based research that resulted from this dissertation is the articulation of a dynamic locus of creativity wherein rigorous established qualitative research methods complement creative practices in conjunction with a spectrum of tacit knowledge and theoretical sensitivities. This juncture becomes the theoretical space where creativity in research can be articulated in ways that are legible to both artists and researchers.
or phenomena influence the process for constructing self-identity in the performance of everyday life. This concept, refraction, emerged as part of a grounded theory methods analysis of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Itacaré, Bahia, Brazil from January to July 2014. The work here contributes to the field of performance studies as a possibility for examining how affective responses to difficult experiences contribute to a shift in perspective and subsequently shifts in the performance of self in everyday life. This research was conducted with critical and reflexive autoethnographic methods in order to hold the research accountable for the ways subject position influences the research. In this case the most salient theme that emerged from these autoethnographic methods was an unpacking of unacknowledged tourist privilege in this setting. The resulting work-in-progress
performance will offer ways for spectators to question their own assumptions
regarding tourist privilege in Brazil, and in so-called developing countries in similar
tropical climates. An additional contribution to the field of performance-based research that resulted from this dissertation is the articulation of a dynamic locus of creativity wherein rigorous established qualitative research methods complement creative practices in conjunction with a spectrum of tacit knowledge and theoretical sensitivities. This juncture becomes the theoretical space where creativity in research can be articulated in ways that are legible to both artists and researchers.
ContributorsPorter, Laurelann (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Underiner, Tamara (Thesis advisor) / Mcelroy, Isis (Committee member) / Gomez, Alan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation explores the relationship between motherhood and power in seventeenth-century England. While historians have traditionally researched the role of mothers within the family unit, this study explores the more public and discursive roles of motherhood. It argues that the various threads of discourse surrounding maternity betray a common desire to circumscribe and condemn maternal authority, as this authority was threatening to masculinity and patriarchal rule. It finds that maternity was frequently cited as harmful and dangerous; household conduct books condemned the passionate and irrational nature of maternal love and its deleterious effects upon both mother and child. Furthermore, various images of ‘unnatural motherhood’ reveal larger concerns over social disorder. Sensationalistic infanticide and monstrous birth stories in cheap print display contemporary fears of lascivious, scolding, and unregulated women who were subversive to patriarchal authority and thus threatened the social status quo. The female reproductive body similarly threatened masculinity; an analysis of midwifery manuals show that contemporary authors had to reconcile women’s reproductive power with what they believed to be an inferior corporeal body. This study ends with a discussion of the representation of mothers in published funeral sermons as these mothers were textually crafted to serve as examples of ‘good mothering,’ offering a striking comparison to the ‘unnatural mothers’ presented in other sources. Motherhood in seventeenth-century England, then, involved a great deal more than the relationship between mother and child. It was a cultural site in which power was contested, and a site in which authors expressed anxiety over the irrational female mind and the unregulated, sexual female body.
ContributorsWiedenbeck, Ashley Erin (Author) / Warnicke, Retha M. (Thesis advisor) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Wright, Johnson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Small fires in Black American women’s literature have been briefly and disconnectedly studied by numerous scholars. No scholar thus far, however, has aggregated the multitudinous symbolic presentations of small fire in Black American women’s literature. This thesis performs a literary criticism of several texts written by several Black American female authors, all of which contain deliberate uses of small fire. The conclusive product is a revelation of the way small fire functions within Black American women’s literature to imitate the cycle of the legendary phoenix—birth, flight, self-combustion, and rebirth—and to catalyze the multi-generational uplift that exists for Black American women who indefatigably create personal, domestic, and community renewal, and who undauntedly combat systems of racial, sexual, economic, and patriarchal oppression.
ContributorsBrooks, Jeremy David (Author) / Brown, Lois (Thesis advisor) / Clarke, Deborah (Committee member) / Free, Melissa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
White women are and have historically been an integral part of White supremacy. Yet their role in the movement remains understudied, especially as it pertains to deradicalization. As such, in the current investigation I focused on women’s roles and experiences in White supremacist deradicalization. My dissertation comprised two studies: Study One, which explored the experiences of women who left White supremacist groups and became anti-hate activists, and Study Two, which sought to understand the experiences of women who facilitated the disengagement and deradicalization of White supremacists. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as a methodological framework, I identified significant themes from the experiences of women who left their hate groups and became anti-hate activists, as well as from the experiences of women who facilitated hate group exit. I found that for women who left their hate groups and became anti-hate activists, hate group exit was a gendered experience, psychological transformations were common, and loving and supportive connections facilitated the exit process. For women who facilitated hate group exit, they identified love and compassion as driving forces while also feeling emotionally burdened due to lack of external support. These findings can help guide the development of preventative and rehabilitative interventions as well as further integrate women into White supremacist prevention and deradicalization interventionist roles.
ContributorsLiguori, Jackson Beach (Author) / Spanierman, Lisa B. (Thesis advisor) / Capielo Rosario, Cristalís (Committee member) / Warner, Cheryl B. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
ABSTRACT There has been a significant increase in the number of female leaders in the Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon in recent years. This seems to contradict traditional notions of the place of women in Arab societies. Traditionally, women in these societies are considered to be not as capable as men. And yet, a considerable number of the leaders in the Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon tend to be women. This qualitative research is therefore aimed at examining the circumstances that have produced these female leaders. To achieve the purpose of the research, interviews and open-ended questions were administered to residents of various refugee camps in Lebanon. The results of this qualitative study indicate that while attitudes and perceptions of the role of women in Arab societies have not changed radically, certain factors have created the space for women to rise to leadership positions. Some of these include specific gendered restrictions on refugees by the Lebanese government that reduces men’s mobility and public presence. For instance, the immigration and refugee requirements are stricter for men than for women. As women step up to fill the administrative gaps in their refugee camps, they have demonstrated a type of leadership that overtly builds on their traits as mothers and thus generate trust in refugee camps. The research contributes to knowledge by directing attention to the patterns and strategies of effective leadership for women in societies that traditionally marginalize women or other minority groups.Keywords: refugee camps, communities, women, female leadership, Arab women
ContributorsAlzhouri, Yassar Ziad (Author) / Akpan-Obong, Patience (Thesis advisor) / Klagge, Jay (Committee member) / P. Trinh, Mai (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
There has been an ever-increasing demand in the United States to produce educated science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals. Because more women and minority students have begun their higher educational preparation at community colleges, these institutions have been uniquely positioned to support these students and increase the number of STEM graduates. Nevertheless, to attain this commendable goal, community college staff and faculty members will need to redouble their efforts to provide active and sustained programs and interventions to support and assure student persistence in STEM fields.
To address the problem of practice, the researcher engaged in a variety of validating practices to influence women and minority students’ intent to persist in a STEM degree. Thirteen, first-year women and minority students participated in the study. Validation theory (Rendón, 1994) provided a framework to inform the intervention and forms of validation. The validating practices included two advising visits and intentional email communications to students in their first semester at community college.
A mixed methods approach was employed to examine two objectives: (a) the types of validation students experienced in their first semester and (b) the influence of validating advising practices on intention to persist in STEM. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen, n.d.) guided study efforts in relation to the second objective. Data gathered included survey data, interviews, email communications, and researcher journal entries. Results suggested students experienced academic and interpersonal validation by in-class and out-of-class validating agents. Although not all experiences were validating, students were validated to a greater extent by their academic advisor. Because of validating advising practices, students in this study developed confidence in their ability to be capable college students. Students also felt motivated and expressed intentions to persist toward a STEM degree.
The discussion focuses on explaining outcomes of the four research questions by connecting to the extant literature. In addition, limitations of the study are presented. Finally, implications for practice, implications for future research, and lessons learned are also shared.
To address the problem of practice, the researcher engaged in a variety of validating practices to influence women and minority students’ intent to persist in a STEM degree. Thirteen, first-year women and minority students participated in the study. Validation theory (Rendón, 1994) provided a framework to inform the intervention and forms of validation. The validating practices included two advising visits and intentional email communications to students in their first semester at community college.
A mixed methods approach was employed to examine two objectives: (a) the types of validation students experienced in their first semester and (b) the influence of validating advising practices on intention to persist in STEM. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen, n.d.) guided study efforts in relation to the second objective. Data gathered included survey data, interviews, email communications, and researcher journal entries. Results suggested students experienced academic and interpersonal validation by in-class and out-of-class validating agents. Although not all experiences were validating, students were validated to a greater extent by their academic advisor. Because of validating advising practices, students in this study developed confidence in their ability to be capable college students. Students also felt motivated and expressed intentions to persist toward a STEM degree.
The discussion focuses on explaining outcomes of the four research questions by connecting to the extant literature. In addition, limitations of the study are presented. Finally, implications for practice, implications for future research, and lessons learned are also shared.
ContributorsSanchez, Nuria Maria (Author) / Buss, Ray (Thesis advisor) / Sampson, Carrie (Committee member) / Lara, Ernest (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020