Matching Items (20)
Description
This project examines the intersections between sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration from the point of view of folklore and immigration studies using Sui Sin Far's short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Karen Tei Yamashita's novel Tropic of Orange. Using the lenses of folklore theory and cross-dressing highlights aspects of immigration (and its intersection with gender and race) that are otherwise missed; it is necessary to examine the evolving ways in which fictionalized cross-dressers re-craft and occupy the spaces from which they are barred in order to address and redress questions of immigration today. Incorporating anthropology, history, folkloristics, and gender studies, this project shows that historical forms of cross-dressing and immigration lead to the development of unstable identities and pressures to "re-dress" and return to one's original space. More recent studies about gender, however, reveal a historical change in how cross-dressers negotiate their identities and the space(s) they inhabit. Therefore, it is crucial to inspect cross-dressing and immigration as both historical and contemporary phenomena. While Mrs. Spring Fragrance (published in 1912) represents more conventional ideas of cross-dressing and immigration, Tropic of Orange (published in 1997) offers alternative ways to navigate borders, immigration, and identity by using these concepts more playfully and self-consciously. Although sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration are not the same in every case, there are enough similarities between the two to warrant investigating whether some of the solutions reached by modern cross-dressers and gender-ambiguous people might not also help un/documented immigrants to re-negotiate their status, identities, and spaces in the midst of an unstable and at times hostile environment. In fact, an examination of such intersections can address and redress immigration by changing the perceptions of how, and the contexts in which, people view immigration and borders. Thus, this project contends that it is the combination of folkloristics, gender and immigration studies, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, and Tropic of Orange together that precipitates such a reading.
ContributorsZheng, Ding Ding (Author) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Horan, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
From Frankenstein to District 9: Ecocritical Readings of Classic and Contemporary Fiction and Film demonstrates how American studies methodologies, ecological literary criticism, and environmental justice theory provide both time-tested and new analytical tools for reading texts from transnational perspectives. Recently, American literary scholars have been responding to calls for collective interdisciplinary response to widening social disparities and species collapses caused by climate change in the new epoch recently being termed "the anthropocene." In response, I analyze canonical texts, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in juxtaposition with Neill Blomkamp's South African science fiction thriller District 9 and contemporary US American novels such as Toni Morrison's Sula, William Faulkner's "The Bear" in Go Down, Moses and Richard Power's Generosity and The Echo Maker, to show how writers, filmmakers, and academics have been calling attention to dramatic climate events that consequently challenge the public to rethink the relationships among human beings to other species, and to ecological systems of low predictability, high variability, and frequent extremes. Rather than focusing solely on the "human," I examine how the relationships and livelihoods of multi-species communities shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces. As a whole, this dissertation seeks to make abstract, often intangible global patterns and concepts accessible by providing models for what I call "readings in the anthropocene" or re-readings of classic and contemporary texts and film that offer insights into changing human behavior and suggesting alternative management practices of local and global commons as well as opportunities to imagine how to live in and beyond the anthropocene.
ContributorsTurner, Kyndra (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation examines U. S. American intergenerational witnesses to the Holocaust, particularly how addressees turned addressors maintain an ethical obligation to First Generation witnesses while creating an affective relation to this history for new generations. In response to revisionism and the incommunicability of the Holocaust, a focus on (accurate) First Generation testimony emerged that marginalizes that of intergenerational witnesses. The risk of such a position is that it paralyzes language, locking the addressee into a movement always into the past. Using examples of intergenerational witnesses (moving from close to more distant relationships), this project argues that there is a possibility for ethical intergenerational response. There are two major discussion arcs that the work follows: self-reflexivity and the use of the Banality of Evil as a theme. Self-reflexivity in intergenerational witnessing calls attention to the role of the author as transgenerational witness, an act that does not seek to appropriate the importance or position of the Holocaust survivor because it calls attention to a subjective site in relation to the survivor and the communities of memory created within the text. The other major discussion arc moves from traditional depictions of the Banality of Evil to ones that challenge the audience to consider the way evil is conceptualized after the Holocaust and its implications in contemporary life. In these ways, intergenerational witnesses move from addressee to addressors, continuing to stress the importance of this history through the imperative to pass Holocaust testimony onward into the future.
ContributorsDean, Sarah C (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Reyes, Angelita (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Guided by Alberts, Tracy and Trethewey's (2011) integrated theory of the division of domestic labor, this dissertation examined the influence of domestic labor response threshold (i.e., the point at which one is sufficiently disturbed by a task undone so as to feel compelled to attend to it) on domestic labor performance and domestic labor conflict. Three-hundred-ten heterosexual participants (155 marital dyads; average marriage length of 20 years) completed an online questionnaire about their performance of household labor, household labor conflict, and response thresholds. Response thresholds were assessed using traditional verbal measures as well as two visual (i.e., photographic) measures developed for this investigation. The data were analyzed using three methods of dyadic data analysis: structural equation modeling, repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and actor-partner interdependence models using multilevel modeling. Results indicate that the lower one's response threshold, and the higher one's partner's response threshold, the greater one's contributions to household tasks. Additionally, the lower one's response threshold, and the higher one's partner's response thresholds, the more likely the demand-withdrawal pattern is to emerge in domestic labor conflicts. Finally, mutual avoidance is more likely when one partner perceives that it is less costly to complete domestic work than to engage in conflict about it, or when one partner perceives that domestic labor is not a worthwhile or appropriate conflict topic. Contributions of this investigation include support for the integrated theory of the division of domestic labor, increased understanding of how individual differences (working in concert with actor sex) contribute to domestic labor allocation and conflict, a more sensitive measure of response threshold, and preliminary evidence of the "logics" of avoidance of domestic labor conflict.
ContributorsKnight, Kendra Rebecca (Author) / Alberts, Janet K (Thesis advisor) / Guerrero, Laura K. (Committee member) / Christopher, F. Scott (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation explores South Asian American (SAA) emerging adult daughters' roles as their parents' reluctant confidants and mediators of conflict. Using Petronio's (2002) communication privacy management theory (CPM) as a framework, this dissertation investigates daughters' communicative strategies when engaged in familial roles. Findings from 15 respondent interviews with SAA women between the ages of 18 and 29 reveal daughters' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for role-playing within their families, such as inherent satisfaction and parental expectations, respectively. Additionally, findings highlight daughters' use of coping and thwarting strategies after they become the recipients of their parents' unsolicited private information. Namely, daughters engaged in coping strategies (e.g., giving advice) to help their parents manage private information. Likewise, they enacted thwarting strategies (e.g., erecting territorial markers) to restore boundaries after their parents (the disclosers) violated them. Consequently, serving as parental confidants and mediators contributed to parent-child boundary dissolution and adversely affected daughters' well-being as well as their progression toward adulthood. This study provides theoretical contributions by extending CPM theory regarding reluctant confidants within the contexts of emerging adult child-parent relationships and ethnic minority groups in America. Practically, this study offers emerging adult children insight into how they might renegotiate boundaries when their parents change the relationship by disclosing personal information. Information gleaned from this study provides SAA emerging adult daughters with an understanding of the ramifications of prioritizing their familial roles and being a reluctant confidant, in addition to potential avenues for remediation.
ContributorsNemmers, Geeta Khurana (Author) / Alberts, Janet K (Thesis advisor) / Broome, Benjamin (Committee member) / Christopher, F. Scott (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
More than a decade after the events of September 11, the kinetic conflict between U.S. forces and Islamist extremist groups continues, albeit in a more limited fashion. In the post 9/11 decade there has been increased recognition that factors such as globalization, economic insecurity, regional political unrest, and the rapid advancement and diffusion of communication technologies will continue to influence the nature of international warfare for the foreseeable future. Industrial, interstate wars between sanctioned armies (Kilcullen, 2007; Tatham, 2008) is giving way to asymmetric forms of conflict exemplified by the conflict between the U.S. and its allies, and al Qaeda and ideological affiliates like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Kilcullen, 2004; Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007). This shift has brought counterinsurgency (Petraeus, 2008) tactics to the forefront of policy discussion. A result of this focus on counterinsurgency efforts is increased interest in strategic communication (stratcom) (Nagl, Amos, Sewall, & Petraeus, 2008; Paul, 2009) and the function of narrative (Roberts, 2007) in kinetic conflict (Zalman, 2010). The U.S. has been said to be "losing the battle of narrative" to the extent that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has spoken of the need to "supplant the extremist narrative" (Mullen, 2009). Understanding how narrative functions in ideologically driven organizing (IDO) remains under developed, however. Little empirical research has examined how al Qaeda's use of narrative contributes to organizational success. Drawing on the tradition of narrative in organizational communication scholarship (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002; Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004) this project interrogates al Qaeda's use of narrative from an identity perspective, exploring the ways in which narrative is constitutive of identity at individual and organizational levels. The analysis focuses on public communication produced by al Qaeda, intended for various stakeholder audiences including potential recruits, the broader Muslim community, and adversaries such as the United States and its allies. This project makes practical contributions to U.S. public policy and countering violent extremism (CVE) efforts, offering rigorous empirical examination of the ways in which al Qaeda uses narrative to construct individual and organizational identity. Theoretical contributions are made by extending existing organizational scholarship into a currently under-developed area: ideologically driven conflict.
ContributorsFleischer, Kristin (Author) / Alberts, Janet K (Thesis advisor) / Furlow, Richard (Committee member) / Trethewey, Angela (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This dissertation examines cultural representations that attend to the environmental and socio-economic dynamics of contemporary water crises. It focuses on a growing, transnational body of “hydronarratives” – work by writers, filmmakers, and artists in the United States, Canada, and the postcolonial Global South that stress the historical centrality of water to capitalism. These hydronarratives reveal the uneven impacts of droughts, floods, water contamination, and sea level rise on communities marginalized along lines of race, class, and ethnicity. In doing so, they challenge narratives of “progress” conventionally associated with colonial, imperialist, and neoliberal forms of capitalism dependent on the large-scale extraction of natural resources.
Until recently, there has been little attention paid to the ways in which literary texts and other cultural productions explore the social and ecological dimensions of water resource systems. In its examination of water, this dissertation is methodologically informed by the interdisciplinary field of the energy humanities, which explores oil and other fossil fuels as cultural objects. The hydronarratives examined in this dissertation view water as a cultural object and its extraction and manipulation, as cultural practices. In doing so, they demonstrate the ways in which power, production, and human-induced environmental change intersect to create social and environmental sacrifice zones.
This dissertation takes an interdisciplinary environmental humanities approach, drawing on fields such as indigenous studies, political ecology, energy studies, cultural geography, and economic theory. It seeks to establish a productive convergence between environmental justice studies and what might be termed “Anthropocene studies.” Dominant narratives of the Anthropocene tend to describe the human species as a universalized, undifferentiated whole broadly responsible for the global environmental crisis. However, the hydronarratives examined in this dissertation “decolonize” this narrative by accounting for the ways in which colonialism, capitalism, and other exploitative social systems render certain communities more vulnerable to environmental catastrophe than others.
By attending to these issues through problem water, this dissertation has significant implications for future research in contemporary, transnational American and postcolonial literary studies, the environmental humanities, and the energy humanities. It demonstrates the potential for a focus on representations of resources in literary texts and other cultural productions to better grasp the inequitable distribution of environmental risk, and instances of resilience on a rapidly changing planet.
Until recently, there has been little attention paid to the ways in which literary texts and other cultural productions explore the social and ecological dimensions of water resource systems. In its examination of water, this dissertation is methodologically informed by the interdisciplinary field of the energy humanities, which explores oil and other fossil fuels as cultural objects. The hydronarratives examined in this dissertation view water as a cultural object and its extraction and manipulation, as cultural practices. In doing so, they demonstrate the ways in which power, production, and human-induced environmental change intersect to create social and environmental sacrifice zones.
This dissertation takes an interdisciplinary environmental humanities approach, drawing on fields such as indigenous studies, political ecology, energy studies, cultural geography, and economic theory. It seeks to establish a productive convergence between environmental justice studies and what might be termed “Anthropocene studies.” Dominant narratives of the Anthropocene tend to describe the human species as a universalized, undifferentiated whole broadly responsible for the global environmental crisis. However, the hydronarratives examined in this dissertation “decolonize” this narrative by accounting for the ways in which colonialism, capitalism, and other exploitative social systems render certain communities more vulnerable to environmental catastrophe than others.
By attending to these issues through problem water, this dissertation has significant implications for future research in contemporary, transnational American and postcolonial literary studies, the environmental humanities, and the energy humanities. It demonstrates the potential for a focus on representations of resources in literary texts and other cultural productions to better grasp the inequitable distribution of environmental risk, and instances of resilience on a rapidly changing planet.
ContributorsHenry, Matthew S. (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Broglio, Ronald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
"The Problem of Hope: Literary Tragedy in Mid-Twentieth Century American Fiction" examines Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar through the lens of tragedy. This thesis delves into how conflicts between internal and external identities can create a tragic individual, what kinds of success count toward achievement of the "American Dream," and whether the tragic "common man" is the socially normative one or the socially disenfranchised one. It raises a three-dimensional theoretical approach to American tragedy and, most importantly, considers the significance of tragic hope for American literature. This paper questions the construction of American identities across class, race, and gender according to social scripts. It seeks to uncover what forces these scripts exert on American cultural myths and rereads those myths through tragedy to explore Miller's idea of a noble common man. By moving from Miller to Ellison to Plath, this thesis traces the undercurrents of tragedy through some of the most identity-focused novels of mid-twentieth century American fiction to see how the overarching American narrative changed from 1940 to 1969 as the US underwent significant social changes domestically and image changes abroad. Ultimately, this paper concludes that tragedy in mid-twentieth century American fiction points toward a new idea of American success as a success that occurs beyond social scripts.
ContributorsMedeiros, Amy Marie (Author) / Holbo, Christine (Thesis director) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
International adoption is always changing, influenced by global politics and social norms. This thesis looks specifically at Russian and Eastern European adoption and reasons why parents choose these countries from which to adopt. I then interviewed eight people who had either adopted or been adopted from this region to examine the idea of "culture-keeping" and what factors influence a parent's decision to encourage culture-keeping or not.
ContributorsAllison, Amber Chari (Author) / Bodman, Denise (Thesis director) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Scholarship and the popular press alike assert that, within the workplace and the world, there are distinct generational groups who are hallmarked by fundamental differences. Generational scholarship, undergirded by the priori assumption that generational differences must be managed, has become a well traversed field despite very little empirical evidence to substantiate the claims made about the attitudes, values, and beliefs of these purported generational cohorts. Scholars debate the veracity of generational characteristics, but few have taken critical approaches and noted the absence of theory and meta-discourse in the field. All the while, the over-simplified stereotypes are perpetuatued and employed in making fundamental decisions about the lives and work of the old and the young. In this dissertation, I present a grounded qualitative and phronetic study that offers a framework for a more nuanced approach to generational scholarship. Specifically, I employ qualitative methods and take a phronetic approach to examine young professionals’ (a) sensemaking of generational constructs and (b) identification/disidentification with generational archetypes. This dissertation reveals the ways in which participants made sense of popular generational archetypes as stereotypes or generalizations that exist in broad contexts of media and culture but are unconsidered in the workplace. Further, in the context of work, participants demonstrated very limited identification or disidentification with popular generational archetypes. Despite this, participants created and enacted generational differences in their workplaces based on age and tenure in the industry through the development of emergent archetypes. Methodologically, this dissertation demonstrates the utility of more emic approaches to generational scholarship and evidences the need for situated and needs based approaches. Theoretically, this dissertation demonstrates the utility of sensemaking and identification in generational scholarship. Moreover, the insights gleaned from these frameworks illustrate the need for the critical examinations in the field, and meta-discourse about our assumptions.
ContributorsHitchcock, Steven David (Author) / Alberts, Janet K (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Kathy I (Thesis advisor) / Corley, Kevin G. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016