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: Women's Studies
- All Subjects: Rhetoric
- All Subjects: Cultural Anthropology
Description
Belief affects behavior and rhetoric has the potential to bring about action. This paper is a critical content analysis of the ideology and rhetoric of key Islamist intellectuals and the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, as stated on the website http://english.hizbuttahrir.org. The responses of specific Muslim Reformers are also analyzed. The central argument underlying this analysis centers on the notion that such Islamist ideology and its rhetorical delivery could be a significant trigger for the use of violence; interacting with, yet existing independently of, other factors that contribute to violent actions. In this case, a significant aspect of any solution to Islamist rhetoric would require that Muslim Reformers present a compelling counter-narrative to political Islam (Islamism), one that has an imperative to reduce the amount of violence in the region. Rhetoric alone cannot solve the many complicated issues in the region but we must begin somewhere and countering the explicit and implicit calls to violence of political Islamist organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir seems a constructive step.
ContributorsBoyer, Paul Daniel (Author) / Mean, Lindsey (Thesis advisor) / Waldron, Vincent (Committee member) / Carter, Heather (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
ABSTRACT There is a body of literature--albeit largely from the UK and Australia--that examines the ways in which class and gender influence life course, including educational attainment; however, much of this literature offers explanations and analyses for why individuals choose the life course they do. By assuming a cause-effect relationship between class and gender and life course, these studies perpetuate the idea that life can be predicted and controlled. Such an approach implies there is but one way of viewing--or an "official reading" of--the experience of class and gender. This silences other readings. This study goes beneath these "interpretations" and explores the phenomenon of identity and identity making in women who grew up working-class. Included is an investigation into how these women recognize and participate in their own identity making, identifying the interpretations they created and apply to their experience and the ways in which they juxtapose their educative experience. Using semi-structured interview I interviewed 21 women with working-class habitués. The strategy of inquiry that corresponded best to the goal of this project was heuristics, a variant of empathetic phenomenology. Heuristics distinguishes itself by including the life experience of the researcher while still showing how different people may participate in an event in their lives and how these individuals may give it radically different meanings. This has two effects: (1) the researcher recognizes that their own life experience affects their interpretations of these stories and (2) it elucidates the researcher's own life as it relates to identity formation and educational experience. Two, heuristics encourages different ways of presenting findings through a variety of art forms meant to enhance the immediacy and impact of an experience rather than offer any explanation of it. As a result of the research, four themes essential to locating the experience of women who grew up working class were discovered: making, paying attention, taking care, and up. These themes have pedagogic significance as women with working-class habitués navigate from this social space: the downstream effect of which is how and what these women take up as education.
ContributorsDecker, Shannon Irene (Author) / Blumenfeld-Jones, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Richards-Young, Gillian (Committee member) / Sandlin, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Deviant bodies resisting online: examining the intersecting realities of women of color in Xbox Live
Description
Employing qualitative methods and drawing from an intersectional framework which focuses on the multiple identities we all embody, this dissertation focuses on oppressions and resistance strategies employed by women of color in Xbox live, an online gaming community. Ethnographic observations and narrative interviewing reveal that women of color, as deviants within the space, face intersecting oppressions in gaming as in life outside the gaming world. They are linguistically profiled within the space based off of how they sound. They have responded with various strategies to combat the discrimination they experience. Some segregate themselves from the larger gaming population and many refuse to purchase games that depict women in a hyper-sexualized manner or that present people of color stereotypically. For others, the solution is to "sit-in" on games and disrupt game flow by 'player-killing' or engage in other 'griefing' activities. I analyze this behavior in the context of Black feminist consciousness and resistance and uncover that these methods are similar to women who employ resistance strategies for survival within the real world.
ContributorsGray, Kishonna (Author) / Anderson, Lisa M. (Thesis advisor) / Cheong, Pauline (Committee member) / Lim, Merlyna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Historians often characterize first ladies in the Progressive Era as representatives of the last vestiges of Victorian womanhood in an increasingly modern society. This dissertation argues that first ladies negotiated an image of themselves that fulfilled both traditional and modern notions of womanhood. In crafting these images, first ladies constructed images of their celebrity selves that were uniquely modern. Thus, images of first ladies in the Progressive Era show them as modest and feminine but also autonomous, intelligent, and capable. Using the historian Charles Ponce de Leon's research on modern human-interest journalism, I contend that first ladies in the Progressive Era worked with the modern press in a symbiotic relationship. This relationship allowed the press exclusive access to what was, ostensibly, the first lady's private, and therefore authentic, self. By purporting to reveal parts of their private lives in the press, first ladies showed themselves as down-to-earth despite their success and fulfilled by their domestic pursuits despite their compelling public lives. By offering the press exclusive access to their lives, first ladies secured the opportunity to shape specific images of themselves to appeal, as broadly as possible, to their husbands and parties' constituents and the American public. First ladies in the Progressive Era thus acted as political figures by using both public and private, or what historian Catherine Allgor terms, "unofficial spaces" to support and reflect their husbands and parties' political agendas. In examining representations of first ladies in popular magazines and newspapers from 1901 to 1921 in tandem with letters, memoirs, and other personal papers from these women, a clear pattern emerges. Despite personal differences, first ladies in the Progressive Era represented themselves according to a specific formula in the modern press. The images, constructed by first ladies in this time period, reflect shifts in economic, social, and political life in Progressive Era America, which called for women to be independent and intelligent yet still maintain their femininity and domesticity.
ContributorsHorohoe, Jill (Author) / Gullett, Gayle (Thesis advisor) / Longley, Rodney K (Committee member) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
A bilingual, bicultural interpreter and researcher navigates blurry boundaries and intersectionality
Description
A researcher reflects using a close reading of interview transcripts and description to share what happened while participating in multiple roles in a larger ethnographic study of the acculturation process of deaf students in kindergarten classrooms in three countries. The course of this paper will focus on three instances that took place in Japan and America. The analysis of these examples will bring to light the concept of taking on multiple roles, including graduate research assistant, interpreter, cultural mediator, and sociolinguistic consultant within a research project serving to uncover challenging personal and professional dilemmas and crossing boundaries; the dual roles, interpreter and researcher being the primary focus. This analysis results in a brief look at a thought provoking, yet evolving task of the researcher/interpreter. Maintaining multiple roles in the study the researcher is able to potentially identify and contribute "hidden" knowledge that may have been overlooked by other members of the research team. Balancing these different roles become key implications when interpreting practice, ethical boundaries, and participant research at times the lines of separation are blurred.
ContributorsHensley, Jennifer Scarboro (Author) / Tobin, Joseph (Thesis advisor) / Artiles, Alfredo (Committee member) / Horejes, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on Anne Moody's use of the autobiographical genre as an extension of her political activism. Noting consistent values and conventions that govern the writing of political activists, this study asserts that Moody's narrative is best situated in the genre of political autobiography--a term coined by Angela Davis. Using Margo V. Perkins' text as a base to define autobiography as activism, this dissertation illustrates the consistent values that characterize Moody's narrative as political autobiography, resistance literature, and ultimately Black Power literature. Building on the works of Joanne Braxton, Patricia Hill Collins, Angela Davis, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, bell hooks, Margo V. Perkins, Assata Shakur, and Johnny Stover, this project demonstrates the use of Moody's autobiography as a collective form of resistance that is reflective of autobiography as activism. To frame its argument, this study theorizes how one comes into revolutionary consciousness, demonstrating the move toward activism as a process. Drawing on Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson's autobiographical theory that the "narrated I" is distinguished from the "narrating I," this study asserts, as Francoise Lionnet suggests, that the "narrating I" is the vehicle to deliver recollections relevant to the autobiographer's agenda. This study emphasizes that the early version of the self Moody creates is consciously linked to her role as a future activist, ultimately demonstrating her political evolution through the emphatic linking of the personal and political. Most importantly, this dissertation demonstrates that Moody's text represents a continuity--an autobiographical bridge--between representations of the Christian nonviolent civil rights movement and the Black Power movement of the late 1960's. This study argues that Moody's autobiography is ideologically poised at the intersection of civil rights and Black Power; therefore, it serves as both a civil rights autobiography and a Black Power autobiography. Coming of Age in Mississippi offers a unique contribution to the genre of Black Power autobiography for the way it facilitates unprecedented insight into the transition from non-violent civil rights ideology to revolutionary consciousness.
ContributorsFlanagan, Melissa A (Author) / Miller, Keith D. (Thesis advisor) / Stancliff, Michael (Committee member) / Anokye, Duku (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation considers why several characters on the Early Modern Stage choose to remain silent when speech seems warranted. By examining the circumstances and effects of self-silencing on both the character and his/her community, I argue that silencing is an exercise of power that simultaneously subjectifies the silent one and compels the community (textual or theatrical) to ethical self-examination. This argument engages primarily with social philosophers Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Badiou, and Emmanual Levinas, considering their sometimes contradictory ideas about the ontology and representation of the subject and the construction of community. Set alongside the Early Modern plays of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Thomas Kyd, these theories reveal a rich functionality of self-silencing in the contexts of gender relations, aberrant sociality, and ethical crisis. This multi-faceted functionality creates a singular subject, establishes a space for the simultaneous existence of the subject and his/her community, offers an opportunity for empathetic mirroring and/or insight, and thereby leads to social unification. Silence is, in its effects, creative: it engenders empathy and ethical self- and social-reflection.
ContributorsKrouse, Penelope (Author) / Perry, Curtis (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Ayanna T (Thesis advisor) / Fox, Cora V (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Most studies on refugee populations tend to focus on mental health issues and communicable diseases. Yet, reproductive health remains a major aspect of refugee women's health needs. African refugee women in the United States continue to experience some difficulties in accessing reproductive health services despite having health insurance coverage. The purpose of this study was to understand the reproductive health journey of African refugee women resettled in Phoenix, Arizona. This study also explored how African refugee women's pre-migration and post-migration experiences affect their relationships with health care providers. The study was qualitative consisting of field observations at the Refugee Women's Health Clinic (RWHC) in Phoenix, verbally administered demographic questionnaires, and semi-structured one-on-one interviews with twenty African refugee women (between the ages of 18 and 55) and ten health care providers. The findings were divided into three major categories: pre-migration and post migration experiences, reproductive health experiences, and perspectives of health care providers. The themes that emerged from these categories include social isolation, living between two cultures, racial and religious discrimination, language/interpretation issues and lack of continuity of care. Postcolonial feminism, intersectionality, and human rights provided the theoretical frameworks that helped me to analyze the data that emerged from the interviews, questionnaire and fieldnotes. The findings revealed some contrasts from the refugee women's accounts and the accounts of health care providers. While refugee women spoke from their own specific social location leading to more nuanced perspectives, health care providers were more uniform in their responses leading to a rethink of the concept of cultural competency. As I argue in the dissertation and contrary to conventional wisdom, culture per se does not necessarily translate to resistance to the American health care system for many African refugee women. Rather, their utilization (or lack thereof) of health services are better conceived within a broader and complex context that recognizes intersectional factors such as gender, racialization, language, displacement, and class which have a huge impact on the reproductive health seeking patterns of refugee women.
ContributorsJatau, Mary (Author) / Koblitz, Ann Hibner (Thesis advisor) / James, Stanlie (Committee member) / Robillard, Alyssa (Committee member) / Johnson, Crista (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This thesis examines the 1994 Rwandan genocide with a specific emphasis on the rape of Tutsi women as a weapon of genocide. From the perspective of scholarship in trauma studies, an account of the conflict and colonialism leading up to the genocide is offered in order to demonstrate the historical making of the ground of collective trauma in Rwanda. Further, this thesis examines the discursive means of the perpetuation of collective trauma in the form of the Hutu demonization of Tutsi women. Shortcomings in the justice system emerging from the genocide are also discussed as a perpetuation of trauma. Finally, projects of justice and healing among Tutsi women are examined in an account of survival and resiliency. In conclusion, women that survived the genocide have navigated through societal and governmental systems to provide better lives for themselves, their families and the society.
ContributorsArmitage, Rebecca Lainé (Author) / Stancliff, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Casper, Monica (Committee member) / Simmons, William (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The discipline of rhetoric and composition established the Writing Program Administrators Outcomes Statement (WPA OS) to fulfill a general expectation about the skills and knowledge students should be able to demonstrate by the end of first-year composition. Regardless of pedagogy used, academic preparation of the teacher, or preference of particular topics or types of assignments, the WPA OS is versatile. This dissertation employs a problem-solution argument showcasing methods to improve assignments through intentional use of the WPA OS for a fluid conversation throughout first-year composition and a more clear articulation of course goals. This dissertation includes summation, analysis, and synthesis of documents that inform first-year composition curriculum from foundational organizations within the field, including National Council of Teachers of English, Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Writing Project, and Conference on College Composition and Communication. This study uses the WPA OS as a lens to examine and revise writing assignments that aid in students' comprehension of the WPA OS with particular focus on the areas of rhetorical knowledge and critical thinking, reading, and writing. Framing assignment design with theoretically grounded content and the use of common topics throughout first-year composition is one way to operationalize the WPA OS. Using common topics throughout course content presents opportunities for teachers to include detailed scaffolding in assignments that expand students' literate practices and engage students as critical thinkers and writers. This study explores how using the topic of family, a common topic to all students, provides a rich bank of social, historical, and cultural elements for research and writing. The topic of family seamlessly employs multimodal composition, which presents students with opportunities for developing rhetorical knowledge and expanding students' literacies. This dissertation displays evidence of praxis of the WPA OS from assignment development to presentation of student samples. This study recommends the use of common topics and intentional application of the WPA OS to construct assignments that clearly articulate learning goals in first-year composition.
ContributorsRankins-Robertson, Sherry, 1976- (Author) / Roen, Duane H. (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / Lauer, Claire (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011