Research has shown that being a female athlete in a male-dominated sports world is an oppressive burden, yet the experiences of being a black female athlete have been largely ignored. To combat this lack of attention, this paper invokes communication and feminist theorist Bell Hook's concept of moving black women from margin to center to reveal the intersectional oppression of gender and racial narratives that they face in sports. By outlining the difference between white and black femininity and studying media portrayals of popular black female athletes such as Venus and Serena Williams and others, it becomes obvious how black women are typecast into certain social and athletic roles. This research also includes an auto-ethnographic component of my own experience as a black female lacrosse player at the NCAA Division I level. This component functions as a point of comparison and contrast of the ideas and concepts I discuss. Lastly, I offer recommendations and suggestions as to how to empower young black female athletes and retain them in a variety of sports. The goal of my thesis is to place special attention onto black women in an area which there is an extreme lack of representation. My own empirical research has led me to the conclusion that not only is such a discussion important, but it is absolutely necessary. If we are to fight back against hegemonic social structures such as racism and gender roles in the sports world, we must first understand what we are up against. My thesis gives us a glimpse into our imposing opponents, and I hope that future research continues this trend so that black female athletes like myself may one day be considered an athlete in the same sense that our white peers are.

This project highlights the first generation student's point of view on the college experience, emphasizing the ways in which students believe ASU can better serve them. First generation students face a unique set of circumstances and attitudes through their first gen status. Oftentimes this intersects with many areas within and outside of college life. Through a means of surveying first generation students on campus, this research draws patterns across first generation student experiences, giving direction for how ASU can begin to better cater towards first generation co

Through three generations of Iranian Jewish women's; my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, this qualitative study aims to shine a light on the complexities of their identities. This is done through a re-telling of their histories and an analysis of their views regarding gender, juxtaposed against the sociocultural and political shifts taking place in Iran. Through interviewing the women in my family, I was able to offer them a voice and highlight the importance regarding their harrowing life stories that had been previously overlooked by the world. There will be a purposeful intertwining of their individual stories with those in a larger context of Iranian Jewish history, and the history of Iranian Jewish women. By the end of this thesis, I hope the reader will have a more in-depth understanding of Iranian Jewish women and their relationship to their gender and sexual identities. More generally, I hope that the intriguing and unprecedented intertwining of Iran with Judaism and the unstable historical nature of this association are more widely known and identified.