Counseling, Higher Education & Special Education Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2757
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Item THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF OPENLY GAY UNDERGRADUATE MEN INVOLVED IN ELECTED STUDENT GOVERNMENT: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL QUEERING(2020) Goodman, Michael Anthony; Hultgren, Francine; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This is a study at the intersection of sexuality and student involvement in higher education. Exploring the lived experiences of openly gay undergraduate men involved in elected student government, this study enlists a phenomenological queering that unconceals and reveals that which is otherwise hidden in elected student leadership. Eight men were selected for participation in this study, and all identified as openly gay before and after their election to undergraduate student government. These men come from varying U.S. geographies and positions, and conversations and themes were rendered through the methodological approach of hermeneutic phenomenology. Four major themes came from multiple participant conversations and journals. First, these men understood coming out and being out as deeply related to visibility and their work as leaders. They are more than just gay, and at the same time, they just so happen to be gay. Additionally, participants displayed independent ways of being within their outness. For example, some represented a palatable kind of being gay, and some navigated deep religious dissonance and other tensions within the (queer) margins. Re(-)presentation was also a major theme, as participants were advocates for their peers, and were “called” to this work of leadership. Finally, these men were leaders through their identities, and engaged in undergraduate student government as something that was bigger than them, but better because of them. This includes their call to leadership and student government, the political nature of this work, and a desire for things to be better. From this study, insights were gleaned that capture the nuances of this intersection of sexuality and student involvement in higher education. Specifically, this study is a calling to better understand what it means to live and work alongside students who hold these dual identities (out and elected in student government, and within student affairs). This includes a queering of student government and phenomenology, as well as a queering of van Manen’s (1997) existentials of lived space (spatiality), lived body (corporeality), lived time (temporality), and lived relationship to others (sociality).Item The Poetics of Bodily Being: The Lived Experience of Breastfeeding an Infant "Out of Reach" in the NICU(2013) Sampson-Kelly, Christy A.; Hultgren, Francine; Lieber, Joan; Special Education; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Babies born preterm (<37 weeks gestation) and at very low birth weight (VLBW, <1500 grams, 3.3 pounds) reside "out of reach" from their mothers in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) during the very beginnings of life. As the evidence of breast milk versus formula for infants within this vulnerable population is well established, multiple initiatives call for the provision of breast milk, and NICU professionals are subsequently making efforts to increase numbers of breastfed infants. However, there is a gap in the scholarly literature that brings forth mothers' voices relative to this unique breastfeeding experience. These voices are imperative to making a greater understanding of this phenomenon. This hermeneutic phenomenological study asks the question: What is the lived experience of providing breast milk for one's child who lives in a NICU? My exploration draws upon the writings of several philosophers including Levinas, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Derrida that relate to the phenomenon and discover how the phenomenon is made visible through them. The wondrous writings of poets are interlaced throughout my journeying, reverberating the deep meaning that lies beneath the surface of things. Max van Manen's depiction of hermeneutic phenomenology provides the methodological structure for the study, which is uncovered through the multiple, individual conversations with and journal entries of ten mothers who share this human experience. As meaning unfolds, breastfeeding emerges centrally, as a remedy and offering a way to transcend the dis-eases of self-blame, dis-place-ment, and dis-member-ment underwent as part of mothering in the NICU. Reflecting on these dis-eases, calls for the offering of pedagogical insights of more welcoming and less judgment in supporting mothers in doing the work of mothering, taking on a view of breast milk as more than pure resource, and the importance of nurturing the nurses. Attending to these stories may help NICU professionals to imagine an environed NICU, were mothers, too, are cared for in their journey to self-forgiveness, em-place-ment, and re-member-ment, amid the strange and wondrous terrain of their beginnings.