UMD Theses and Dissertations
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Item GENRES OF MEMORY AND ASIAN/AMERICAN WOMEN’S ACTIVISM(2022) Bramlett, Katie; Enoch, Jessica; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As human rights and racial inequality dominate public discourse, it has become increasingly clear that Americans are invested in conversations of public memory. The removal of confederate monuments and demands for equity in memorialization for people of color underscore the point that who is remembered and how they are honored is important. Further, the growing awareness of violence against Asian/Americans and the hate crime against Asian/American women in Atlanta has emphasized the need to understand the history of violence against Asian/Americans, Asian/American gendered stereotypes, and the Asian/American activists who fight for equal rights. This dissertation examines three distinct memorial genres—a statue, a traveling exhibit, and a documentary—created by Asian/Americans about Asian/American women activists. My interdisciplinary research engages feminist memory studies, Asian/American studies, and cultural rhetorics to investigate how public memory activists leverage the affordances of different memorial genres to recover Asian/American women’s activism. I consider the ways Asian/American women’s memorials contest the past and navigate the politics of memorialization to influence the present. Each chapter considers how memorials not only remember past activism, but also work to reframe current conversations about Asian/American women in more just and equitable frameworks. I claim that my chosen memorials are created by memorial activists and each seek to expand U.S. memory beyond traditional gendered stereotypes that are pervasive in the United States.Item WHAT HAPPENS WHEN STUDENTS KNUCK AND BUCK SYSTEMS OF INJUSTICE? A MULTIMETHOD STUDY EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENT ACTIVISM AND EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING(2022) Smith, Samantha Alyce; Arria, Amelia M; Public and Community Health; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In recent years, college students' declining mental health status has garnered the attention of public health and educational professionals. Mental health is a complex construct influenced by biological, behavioral, social, and environmental factors. One critical dimension of mental health is emotional well-being, representing the positive and negative emotions one experiences. Little research exists regarding the relationship between activism, a possible social influence, and mental health. This multimethod dissertation study focuses on the relationship between college student participation in activism and contemporary social movements, including the Black Lives Matter movement, and different dimensions of emotional well-being, including depressive and anxiety symptoms, level of optimism, and sense of belonging. Framed by the Transactional Theory of Stress and Coping, the qualitative portion of the research involved in-depth interviews among 18 students aged 18-25 who participated in 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. The purpose of these interviews was to examine the short-term impact of protest participation on student emotional well-being and how activism was related to coping. Findings revealed that the sociopolitical climate negatively impacted student emotional well-being, and those associated negative emotions acted as a motivator to participate in protests. Conversely, participating in protests garnered sense of belonging and empowerment. Protest participation appeared to serve as an emotion-focused coping strategy among these students. The quantitative analyses conducted in this dissertation utilized secondary data from the 2019 Wake Forest Well-being Assessment to investigate the motivators (Aim 2) and emotional well-being correlates (Aim 3) of activism participation. For both analyses, two forms of activism were studied – disruptive (e.g., protests) and persuasive tactics (e.g., digital activism). Civic morals identity centrality and discrimination were examined as possible motivators. Multivariate and multinomial logistic regression models developed for Aim 2 held constant other potential confounding variables (i.e., gender, sexual orientation, parental education and race/ethnicity) and revealed positive associations between discrimination experiences and civic moral identity centrality and disruptive activism (p<.001) and persuasive tactics (p<.001). Regression models for Aim 3 that examined the relationship between activism participation and emotional well-being revealed that disruptive activism tactics were positively associated with depressive symptoms (p<.001), anxiety symptoms (p<.001), and sense of belonging (p<.05). A negative association was observed between disruptive activism and optimism (p<.05). All of these associations were robust to the inclusion of demographic covariates. Coping did not appear to moderate any of the relationships observed. Taken together these finding begin to elucidate the nuanced and complex relationship between activism and emotional well-being. Given that a significant proportion of college students studied participated in some form of activism, our understanding of the impact of activism on student emotional well-being is an important area that warrants additional investigation in future studies. The findings of this study can be used to support ongoing intervention development that addresses the mental health needs of college students, specifically those engaged in activism work. Additionally, these findings can be used to support mitigating health disparities that are the result from sociopolitical factors such as racism and discrimination.Item “THE FIGHT IS YOURS”: ALLY ADVOCACY, IDENTITY RECONFIGURATION, AND POLITICAL CHANGE(2019) Howell, William; Parry-Giles, Trevor; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since at least 1990, scholars and activists have used the term “ally” to describe and theorize a distinct sociopolitical role: someone from a majority identity group working to end that group’s oppression of another identity group. While the term is recent, “allies” are present throughout America’s constant struggle to actualize equality and justice. The identity-rooted ideologies that empowered allies disempowered the groups for and with whom they sought justice and equality. But those empowering identities were pieces, more or less salient, of complex intersectional people. Given the shared nature of identity, this process also necessarily pitted allies against those with whom they shared an identity. In this project, I ask two questions about past ally advocacy—questions that are often asked about contemporary ally advocacy. First, in moments of major civil rights reform, how did allies engage their own intersecting identities—especially those ideologically-charged identities with accrued power from generations of marginalizing and oppressing? Second, how did allies engage other identities that were not theirs—especially identities on whose oppression their privilege was built? In asking these two questions—about self-identity and others’ identity—I assemble numerous rhetorical fragments into “ally advocacy.” This bricolage is in recognition of rhetoric’s fragmentary nature, and in response to Michael Calvin McGee’s call to assemble texts for criticism. I intend to demonstrate that ally advocacy is such a text, manifesting (among other contexts) around the women’s suffrage amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the marriage equality movement. I argue that allies rarely engaged the ideologies underlying identity-based inequality in any open, direct, or thorough manner, especially at these moments when those ideologies were optimally vulnerable. I conclude that allies must accept that they marginalize others through identity and its adjacent ideology, and allies must help identity-group peers reconstitute their shared identity in recognition of this. Such reconstituting is necessary for a healthy American democracy but especially so in the late-2010s, as Americans persistently grapple with a political system fractured along identity lines.Item Change Is Sound: Resistance and Activism in Queer Latinx Punk Rock(2019) Dowman, Sarah; Long, Ryan; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Change Is Sound explores the roles punk ethos, discourses, and collectivism play in creating resistant practices within queer US Latinx punk communities since the 1970s. My research engages critically with the fields of contemporary Latinx cultural studies and hemispheric queer studies to elucidate new perspectives on the emerging critical category of Latinx, to challenge stagnant narratives of resistance and activism in queer communities of color in the US, and to provide a framework for how resistant practices are being defined and constructed in the present. Furthermore, my study decenters the “white riot” narrative of punk that excludes and erases diversity by categorizing the subculture as a straight, white, male, suburban, middle-class, youth phenomenon. My study achieves this decentering by focusing on intersectional, transnational, and transgenerational subjectivities represented by the contributions of queer Latinx punk artists. By diversifying the perspectives and experiences represented and highlighting how these artists forge connections to larger histories of resistant practices in queer communities of color in the US and transnationally, I demonstrate how underrepresented populations expand punk’s emancipatory potential. Specifically, my research shows how resistant practices such as performative and activist interventions and the creation of online collective revisionist writings present a foundation from which queer Latinx and other marginalized communities negotiate power, hegemony, and resistance within the contemporary context of precarity and oppression under neoliberalism and capitalist globalization.Item ‘EXPERIENCE THIS LOVE GIVING ENERGY’: PARENTING AS ACTIVISM, AFFECTIVE LABOR, AND THE DEPLOYMENT OF BLACK LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY BALTIMORE(2018) Leathers, Tanesha Anne; Struna, Nancy L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Baltimore City uprising of 2015 was in part a reaction to the death of Freddie Gray, but also a response to the repression of this current neoliberal moment. The city’s Black citizenry is one which is profoundly impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline, abject poverty, entrenched neighborhood violence, police aggression and hyper surveillance, underemployment, family stress, health issues, and a host of other challenges and manifestations of violence. Considering this, how does anyone provide a message of hope and engage Baltimore’s largely Black population? This dissertation is a case study that explores the activism of one Black man in contemporary Baltimore and his manifold approaches to the strong, social and economic headwinds that continue to blow through the city. It discusses his efforts to educate and empower his children, other Black youth, and the greater community; his parenting and “otherfathering” as activism; and his deployment of love—Black love—as an important and powerful intervention in spaces where there is often a dearth of resources, opportunity, and hope. This study also considers the everyday life and struggles of a contemporary African-centered organic intellectual and the affective labor involved in his pursuit of transformative change in his community and others like it. This includes a lack of support both in finances and labor, among other challenges. And lastly, with the featured activist’s intended audience in mind, this work explores the subjectivity of Black youth in Baltimore and discusses them as engaged witnesses, artists, and resisters in the face of pervasive violence.Item An Architecture of Activism: Grassroots Organizing in the Digital Age(2018) Akbar, Wadiah; May, Lindsey M; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis responds to the culture of fear and division that is dominating American society today by asking how architecture can better facilitate debate and dialogue in the digital age. It aims to make a place for the often invisible infrastructure of grassroots organizing, in the public realm of the city. It recognizes that today, the public realms of the digital and physical worlds are intertwined, and the conversations and activities that happen on one, inevitably impact the other. By studying and cross comparing the ways we use physical and digital public spaces, we can pursue a more complete and effective model for the design of public urban places - for people from diverse backgrounds, views, and goals, to regularly meet, and engage in civic and community building activity. The design proposal builds on a sensitive and thorough understanding of the layered history of the city of Baltimore, and offers insights for similar postindustrial, gentrifying, politically active cities.Item Disability, Embodiment, and Resistance: The Rhetorical Strategies of Disability Activitm(2018) Osorio, Ruth Danielle; Enoch, Jessica; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Disability, Embodiment, and Resistance: The Rhetorical Strategies of Disability Activism” argues that disability activists channel their experiences of disability at each stage of organizing and delivering activist rhetoric. This dissertation deepens rhetorical studies’ understanding of activism and citizenship by identifying collective caregiving and embodied difference as sources of activist invention and delivery. For my first chapter, “Disabling Citizenship: The Embodied Rhetorics of the 504 Sit-Ins,” I investigate the 1977 504 sit-ins, when one hundred disability activists occupied a federal building in San Francisco for twenty-four days to demand federal protection from discrimination. Examining personal and news photographs, oral histories, and news articles, I argue that disability activists displayed the civic power of disabled bodies by displaying the disabled body as resistant, connected, and resilient. In Chapter 2, “Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera’s Rhetorical Survival: An Ecological Perspective of Disability Activism,” I examine the disability activism of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, two disabled transgender women of color and prominent activists in 1960’s and 70’s gay rights organizing. I assert that behind-the-scenes survival work and caregiving functioned as critical forces behind their enactment of disability activism within gay liberation. My third chapter, “I Am #ActuallyAutistic, Hear Me Tweet: The Topoi of Autistic Activists on Twitter,” explores the rhetorical implications of contemporary online activism in the autistic community. In my study of almost 2,000 #ActuallyAutistic tweets collected during Autism Awareness month in 2016, I argue that the #ActuallyAutistic activists on Twitter leverage the affordances and constraints of Twitter to challenge dominant, and often dehumanizing, perceptions of autism in popular discourse. For my fourth chapter, “Creating an Accessible Legacy: Professional Writing as Disability Activism within the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC),” conducted interviews with authors of the 2011-2016 CCCC Accessibility Guides, which notes the accessibility challenges and features of the selected conference city and venue. In my examination of these interviews, I argue that the guides’ authors craft and circulate a policy document that ultimately moves CCCC toward greater disability awareness.Item COMMEMORATIVE ACTIVISM: TRACING BLACK NATIONALISM THROUGH CONTEMPORARY CAMPAIGNS TO MEMORIALIZE U.S. SLAVERY, 1991-2017(2018) Fitzmaurice, Megan Irene; Parry-Giles, Shawn J; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While much of current public discourse focuses on the ways that black activists are working to desecrate or destroy racist memorials, there has been less discussion about the ways that lobbying to produce antiracist memorials can also serve as a form of protest. This study engages three case studies wherein black activist groups fought for the construction of slavery memorials in New York City, Philadelphia, and Richmond. These instances of commemorative activism are the focus of this study, wherein activists challenge existing commemorative culture by engaging alternative memorial practices. The underlying premise of this study is that these slavery memorials and the activists’ rhetoric resisted absent and/or distorted memories of slavery in their communities. This study analyzes the debates surrounding these memorials to demonstrate ways that the activists recirculated historical ideologies of black nationalism in their protest rhetoric. Specifically, the activists engaged themes of self-determination, black liberation, black power, and Pan-Africanism as they sought to challenge a commemorative culture rooted in white supremacy. This study accordingly situates commemorative activism as a contemporary strategy of resistance in the ongoing black freedom struggle. The black activists in this study fought to determine the commemorative landscape, liberate their ancestors’ memories from post-slavery containment, recover memories of black resistance from selective amnesia, and advance global solidarity surrounding memories of the slave trade and ongoing anti-black racism. This study also examines ways that the subsequent commemorations represent enduring repositories of black nationalist ideologies, challenging racist cultural attitudes embedded in the memorials’ environment. Through their form and function, these commemorations visualize the continued relevance of self-determination, black liberation, black power, and Pan-Africanism within post-slavery communities. These memorials ultimately reflect the beliefs of the activists who fought for their construction, revealing the radical potential of commemorative activism to challenge racist attitudes, structures, and landscapes.Item BLACK SURVIVAL POLITICS: ORGANIZED MOBILIZATION STRATEGIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES TO END THE HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC(2016) Beadle Holder, Michelle; Collins, Patricia H; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study is to examine organizational patterns of African American activism in response the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Given their political, economic, and social disenfranchisement, African Americans have historically developed protest and survival strategies to respond to the devaluation of their lives, health, and well-being. While Black protest strategies are typically regarded as oppositional and transformative, Black survival strategies have generally been conceptualized as accepting inequality. In the case of HIV/AIDS, African American religious and non-religious organizations were less likely to deploy protest strategies to ensure the survival and well-being of groups most at risk for HIV/AIDS—such as African American gay men and substance abusers. This study employs a multiple qualitative case study analysis of four African American organizations that were among the early mobilizers to respond to HIV/AIDS in Washington D.C. These organizations include two secular or community-based organizations and two Black churches or faith-based organizations. Given the association of HIV/AIDS with sexual sin and social deviance, I postulated that Black community-based organizations would be more responsive to the HIV/AIDS-related needs and interests of African Americans than their religious counterparts. More specifically, I expected that Black churches would be more conservative (i.e. maintain paternalistic heteronormative sexual standards) than the community-based organizations. Yet findings indicate that the Black churches in this study were more similar than different than the community-based organizations in their strategic responses to HIV/AIDS. Both the community-based organizations and Black churches drew upon three main strategies in ways that politicalize the struggle for Black survival—or what I regard as Black survival politics. First, Black survival strategies for HIV/AIDS include coalition building at the intersection of multiple systems of inequality, as well as on the levels of identity and community. Second, Black survival politics include altering aspects of religious norms and practices related to sex and sexuality. Third, Black survival politics relies on the resources of the government to provide HIV/AIDS related programs and initiatives that are, in large part, based on the gains made from collective action.Item Speaking Truth to Power: Spoken Word Poetry as Political Engagement among Young Adults in the Millennial Age(2014) Chepp, Valerie; Hill Collins, Patricia; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Civic and political disengagement is an often-cited distinguishing feature of young Americans today, collectively known as the millennial generation--i.e., those born between 1980 and 2000. Yet, measures of engagement often fail to consider how young people themselves define acting political. This dissertation investigates youth politics through the prism of spoken word performance poetry, an art form assigned social change attributes by its principal practitioners: young urban adults. This study asks: how do contemporary young adults use spoken word poetry to civically and politically engage? Using ethnographic research methods, I followed discourses and practices deployed in the Washington, D.C. spoken word poetry community that centered on social change. I identify three social change processes carried out by these young poets. First, through a process I call speaking truths, poets used spoken word to draw upon their lived experiences--their truths--as a political and moral source of knowledge that guided and legitimated their social change messages. Second, poets healed themselves and others by writing and performing their truths in the form of spoken word therapy narratives, thereby placing their community in a position to do sustainable social justice work. Third, using new school activist approaches, poets leveraged spoken word to advocate for social justice causes, build political networks, and mobilize others into political action. To frame this analysis, I integrate social change scholarship on (1) public sphere civic and political engagement, focusing on young adults, (2) culture and politics, concentrating on art and popular culture, and (3) the role of identity and narrative in social change. I introduce and develop the theoretical concept of creative politics as a way to situate the untraditional ways that young urban adults in Washington, D.C. politically and civically engaged: poets leveraged the unique properties of art as a way to speak truths, individually and collectively heal, and do new school activism. By doing so, poets honored their subjective truths and identities, and at the same time transcended these subjectivities in order to communicate more universal ideas about social justice and change. Specifically, a universal belief in the power of love guided the poets' creative politics.