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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- All Subjects: Gender
- Creators: Leong, Karen J
Description
This project analyzes contemporary U.S. mental health discourse as an assemblage that constantly renegotiates the normative subject through the production and regulation of intersectional mentally ill subjects. It uses feminist disability and biopolitical theoretical frameworks to explore how media discourses of mental illness reveal the regulation of mentally ill subjects in relationship to intersections of gender, sexuality, and race. These discourses constitute a biopolitical technology that genders, racializes, and regulates mental illness. This regulation not only reveals the cultural boundaries around who is designated as “mentally ill” (and how they are designated as such), but it also demonstrates how mental illness is normalized when attached to certain bodies in specific contexts, yet perceived as a threat to the social body when attached to other bodies in other contexts.
In order to explore this assemblage, this project is organized around four foundational questions: How is mental illness produced, surveilled, and differentially regulated as a social formation within medicine and policy? How does media reproduce and renegotiate these medical and political mental health discourses? How do these mental health discourses intersect with gender, race, and sexuality? How does our assemblage of cultural, medical, and political discourse produce, observe, and regulate intersectional mentally ill subjects in relationship to shifting ideals of normative subjecthood?
This project answers these questions over the course of several case studies, each of which explores a set of thematically linked texts as a window into understanding how mental illness operates intersectionally and biopolitically in cultural discourses and social institutions. The first section establishes a broad theoretical framework for articulating how discourses of gender and sexuality are central to the production of mental illness in the United States today. The second section explores how this intersection of gender, sexuality, and mental illness is observed and regulated through social institutions like the workplace, the nation-state, and the carceral system. The final section explores emergent discourses of mental illness that move us away from centering individual mentally healthy subjects as idealized entities and toward understanding mental and emotional well-being as a collective social enterprise.
In order to explore this assemblage, this project is organized around four foundational questions: How is mental illness produced, surveilled, and differentially regulated as a social formation within medicine and policy? How does media reproduce and renegotiate these medical and political mental health discourses? How do these mental health discourses intersect with gender, race, and sexuality? How does our assemblage of cultural, medical, and political discourse produce, observe, and regulate intersectional mentally ill subjects in relationship to shifting ideals of normative subjecthood?
This project answers these questions over the course of several case studies, each of which explores a set of thematically linked texts as a window into understanding how mental illness operates intersectionally and biopolitically in cultural discourses and social institutions. The first section establishes a broad theoretical framework for articulating how discourses of gender and sexuality are central to the production of mental illness in the United States today. The second section explores how this intersection of gender, sexuality, and mental illness is observed and regulated through social institutions like the workplace, the nation-state, and the carceral system. The final section explores emergent discourses of mental illness that move us away from centering individual mentally healthy subjects as idealized entities and toward understanding mental and emotional well-being as a collective social enterprise.
ContributorsHerson, Kellie (Author) / Leong, Karen J (Thesis advisor) / Mallot, J. Edward (Committee member) / Kuo, Karen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
WHO estimates that 830 women die every day due to maternal health complications. The disparities in maternal health are unevenly distributed between wealthy and poor nations. Ethiopia has one of the highest mortality rates in the world. Existing high maternal mortality rates worldwide and in Ethiopia indicate the shortcomings of maternal health interventions currently underway. Understanding the socio-cultural, economic and political factors that influence maternal health outcomes locally while simultaneously examining how global reproductive and development programs and policies shape and influence the reproductive needs and knowledge of women is important. Employing feminist and African indigenous methodologies, in this research I explore maternal health issues in Ethiopia in two of the largest regions of the nation, namely Oromia and Amhara, more specifically in Seden Sodo and Mecha districts. Using qualitative interviews and focus group discussions, I examined the various socio-cultural, political and economic factors that influence maternal health outcomes, assessing how gender, class, education, marriage and other social factors shape women's health outcomes of pregnancy and childbirth. I also explored how global and local development and reproductive health policies impact women's maternal health needs and how these needs are addressed in current implementation strategies of the Ethiopian health system. Recognizing women's social and collective existence in indigenous African communities and the new reproductive health paradigm post-ICPD, I addressed the role of men in maternal health experience. I argue that global and local development and reproductive policies and their implementation are complex. While comprehensive descriptions of national and maternal health policies on paper and gender-sensitive implementation strategies point toward the beginning of a favorable future in maternal health service provision, the global economic policies, population control ideas, modernization/development narratives that the nation employs that focus on biomedical solutions without due emphasis to socio-cultural aspects have a detrimental effect on maternal health services provision. I advocate for the need to understand and include social determinants in policies and implementation in addition to legal enforcement and biomedical solutions. I also argue for alternative perspectives on masculinities and the role of men in maternal health to improve maternal health service provision.
ContributorsTeshome, Yamrot Girma (Author) / Koblitz, Ann Hibner (Thesis advisor) / Leong, Karen J (Committee member) / Anderson, Lisa M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017