UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Lifted Up or Feet on the Ground? How Leader Emotional Balancing Moderates the Effect of Developmental Feedback on Employee Learning(2022) Guo, Siyan; Seo, Myeong-Gu; Business and Management: Management & Organization; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Leaders expect their developmental feedback to help employees develop skills and improve performance, yet the effect of developmental feedback on learning remains unclear. In this dissertation, the concept of developmental feedback (DFB) is extended to include two dimensions, gap identification and gap elimination. I focus on the affective mechanisms underlying the DFB – learning relationship and identify trade-offs in each of the DFB dimensions. I argue that while gap elimination elicits employee positive affect (PA) that facilitates learning via increased learning self-efficacy, it undermines learning via PA and decreased learning need recognition. In addition, gap identification induces employee negative affect (NA) that works in the opposite way. Emotional balancing, or leaders’ dynamic engagement in both affect improving and affect worsening behaviors, is proposed to attenuate the negative mechanisms. I conducted a pilot study in the field to develop measures for the two DFB dimensions, followed by a three-wave, multisource field study to test my theoretical model at the between-person level, and a daily dairy field study to test the model at the within-person level. The findings largely support my proposed model. The results indicate that gap identification positively predicts employee NA, while gap elimination predicts PA. Gap identification is positively associated with learning via employee learning need recognition, but negatively predicts learning via employee NA and learning self-efficacy. I also find that gap elimination positively predicts learning through PA and improved employee self-efficacy in learning. Importantly, the results demonstrate the beneficial effects of emotional balancing, which significantly moderates the effects of PA and NA. Taken together, these findings indicate that receiving DFB is a highly emotional experience that creates a tension between feeling uplifted and keeping feet on the ground, and leaders can use emotional balancing to manage employee affect to achieve better learning outcomes.Item Becoming Your Labor: Identity, Production, and the "Affects of Labor"(2021) Benitez, Molly; Hanhardt, Christina; Padios, Jan; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Becoming Your Labor: Identity, Production, and the’ Affects of Labor’,” analyzes the role work plays in our lives by focusing on how Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC) and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer (LGBTQ+) trades workers navigate their identity in the workplace and beyond. This project draws on autoethnographic and ethnographic research with LGBTQ+ identified trades workers over a span of six years plus select historical evidence. Bringing together feminist and queer of color critique, affect theory, and theories of work, this dissertation considers what I call the ‘affects of labor’ – the visceral and active consequences of our working environments that metabolize through our bodies and produce our identities, relationships, and communities. “Becoming Your Labor” focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ trades workers in the Pacific Northwest. While focusing on LGBTQ+ and QTBIPoC trades workers, this research emphasizes how the experiences and lessons of a precise group of workers has much to teach us about larger systems of power shape labor, identity, and community. Individual chapters address how workplace culture is created through history, affects, and bodies; how workers implement various strategies for survival; and how these strategies have consequences for workers, their families, and communities. Chapter one delves into the racist and patriarchal foundation of the trades and the culture of abuse, violence, and toxic masculinity, these foundations have fostered. Here I define the ‘affects of labor.’ In chapter 2 my co-creators speak about how they navigate the affects of their labor at work, specifically harassment, bullying, and fear, and the strategies they enact such as ‘wearing a mask,’ changing their physical appearance, and trying to hang with ‘the boys.’ Chapter three addresses what happens when the “affects of labor” that come home with us. In this chapter trades workers describe how their work has had impacts on their home lives due to depression, violence, and addiction. Chapter four pivots from a focus on the “negative” ‘affects of labor’ to their liberatory potential centering on the experiences of workers employed at Repair Revolution, an LGBTQ+ owned and operated automotive repair shop. The project makes two critical interventions: it traces an alternate genealogy for affect theory through feminist and women of color critique; and it offers the ‘affects of labor’ as a new framework to think through how affects do more than stick to, move, or push, but actually produce and reproduce bodies and identities. In an era in which discussions of workplace power and culture have entered the mainstream – from the “Me Too” movement to the popular claim that the problem of police violence rests on “a few bad apples” – this dissertation aims to offer new understandings of the consequences of work and urges us to think more critically about the dialectical process in which workers, their families, and communities are produced by labor.Item Black Gay and Bisexual Men, Internet Access, Memory, and Visual Culture(2021) Jiles, Robert De Von; Bruce, La Marr J; Farman, Jason; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Drawing from the fields of visual culture, black queer studies, black feminist theory, internet studies, and affect theory, “Black Gay and Bisexual Men, Internet Access, Memory, and Visual Culture” focuses on black gay and bisexual men who have internet access to create, view, and circulate visual representations about their own experiences and how they challenge, subvert, and reify negative and one-dimensional representations about their lived experiences. The cultural objects analyzed in the dissertation include two episodes from playwright and screenwriter Donja R. Love’s independent scripted web series Modern Day Black Gay and Darius Clark Monroe’s short film Slow. Both cultural objects were released for online viewing and can be accessed for free. As Black queer visual culture, Slow and MDBG trouble a racial and heteronormative visual field that renders black gay and bisexual men as excess. Tapping into affects such as desire, intimacy, love and pleasure, Love and Monroe use memory in the cultural objects to create visual images from the excess. In turn, the cultural objects stimulate black gay and bisexual viewers’ memories, and activate affective encounters occur Slow and MDBG use visual images to interrogate and reinscribe notions about black sexuality, black masculinity, black family and community, black love, same-sex romance, and black religion. This dissertation investigates the relationship between artists, the art objects, and the viewers and look for meaning in their creation, representation and interpretations of gay online hookup culture, gender and sexual stereotypes, and conservative homophobic Christian beliefs and practices. In addition to a textual analysis of the cultural objects, methods in the dissertation include interviews, self-ethnography, several small group screenings of the cultural objects by black gay and bisexual male participants, and group discussions following the screenings about the participants' interpretations of the material and how their experiences relate to the cultural texts.Item BETWEEN F* WORDS: RURAL & GAY LIBERATIONIST REFRAINS IN THE SOUTHEAST, 1970-1981(2017) Ezell, Samuel Jason; Hanhardt, Christina; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Between F* Words is an affective history of how gay liberationism persisted through its intersections with back-to-the-land movements in the 1970s Southeast. In telling an affective history, I show how liberationism is best understood as more than a reasoned political choice; rather, it crucially involves specific ways of viewing and feeling in an increasingly globalized world. Specifically, its politics complemented critiques of a divisive system with lateral strategies for staying connected. By tracing gay liberationist networks from rural Ozark and Appalachian sites to cities like New Orleans and Atlanta, I prioritize a regional analytic which, unlike models predicated on the urban “gay ghetto,” hinges on rural-urban connection. This project, then, sets gay liberation both within everyday life and in unexpected places as a way to imagine expanded LGBT political cultural maps. Employing analysis of oral history interviews, newly available archival materials, and the print culture of RFD (a rural gay serial published in the Southeast from 1978-2009), Between F* Words is a description of the subject formations of Southeastern gay liberationist collectives who felt the word gay no longer represented their political cultures. Using Felix Guattari’s concept of the refrain, I read the words and images of those in the culture to characterize the orientational, emotional, psychic, and corporeal dimensions of improvised subjectivities like the faggot, sissie, gentle man, and Radical Faerie. At the same time, I show how these regional refrains emerged in contrast to similar West Coast ones. Their Southeastern networks were acutely aware of their proximity to the fomenting Moral Majority which would become a conservative cornerstone of the Reagan-era national political economy. Galvanized by the racism, sexism, and homophobia at the heart of the conservative political culture which they saw taking root in the Jim Crow geography around them, these gay liberationist subjectivities were shaped by regional forces. Between F* Words draws upon this history not only to propose the regional as a crucial scale for any radical analysis responsive to economic development schemes but also to imagine radical LGBTQ political subjectivities to be affectively formed within the daily experience of such divisive regional development.Item Psychopathic Traits, Affect, and Cocaine Use-Related Outcomes(2014) Long, Katherine; Lejuez, Carl W; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Substance abuse and associated public health and economic consequences represent a pervasive and costly problem. Among inner-city substance users, crack/cocaine is the most common drug of choice and is associated with health compromising behaviors. Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) are more prevalent, severe, and difficult to treat among individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). Psychopathy is a construct which is related to but distinct from ASPD, and the relation between primary psychopathic traits and substance use is not well understood. The present laboratory experimental study of cocaine use-related outcomes in the context of mood inductions among cocaine users found that primary psychopathic traits were negatively associated with attentional bias for cocaine-related cues but not associated with self-reported craving. Assignment to the negative affect manipulation was related to greater attentional bias but not to craving. The interaction between mood condition and primary psychopathic traits was not a significant predictor of either outcome.Item Explanatory Cohrence in the Context of the Second Law of Thermodynamics(2014) Geller, Benjamin David; Redish, Edward F; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines how undergraduate life science students experience interdisciplinary connections between introductory physics, chemistry, and biology - what the connections look like, how we foster them, and the affect that stems from them. It is about the gaps students experience between their introductory biology, chemistry, and physics coursework, and how we can draw upon students' resources for bridging them. Rather than looking at connections between physics, chemistry, and biology in the abstract, we ground this thesis in the conceptual context of the second law of thermodynamics, a rich domain for interdisciplinary investigation. Near the end of the thesis, we present an interdisciplinary second law curricular thread that leverages the resources our students have for crossing disciplinary boundaries in this context. Our hope is that other instructors will be convinced to embrace a more interdisciplinary treatment of the second law. The context of our study is NEXUS/Physics, a novel introductory physics course for life science students. We unpack the resources that NEXUS/Physics students have for thinking about entropy and spontaneity. We argue that an approach to the second law that emphasizes the interplay of energy and entropy in determining spontaneity (one that involves a central role for free energy) is one that draws on students' resources from biology and chemistry in particularly effective ways. We identify three ways in which students in NEXUS/Physics have meaningfully crossed disciplinary boundaries in the context of the second law: (1) by unpacking biochemical heuristics in terms of underlying physical interactions, (2) by locating both biochemical and physical concepts within a mathematical bridging expression, and (3) by coordinating functional and mechanistic explanations for the same biological phenomenon. These classes form a basis that spans the space of interdisciplinary connections that we have observed. In moments when interdisciplinary gaps are bridged, our students sometimes exhibit positive affect. We look at the source of this affect and how it interacts with disciplinary identity and epistemology. In doing so, we hope to suggest ways of inviting life science students to participate in physics and to see physics as a central tool for making sense of the biological world.Item In the Mood? Therapist Affect and Psychotherapy Process(2014) Chui, Tsz-Yeung Harold; Hill, Clara E; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Therapist effects have been increasingly recognized as an important contributor of psychotherapy process and outcome. Most therapist factors studied so far, however, have been trait factors. Little is known about state factors. Given the emotional nature of psychotherapy, therapist affective states seem relevant. In particular, how does therapist affect change in sessions? What predict therapist affect change, and how is therapist affect related to psychotherapy process and outcome? Data involved 1,172 sessions of 15 therapists and 51 clients at a psychodynamically-oriented psychotherapy clinic. Therapists and clients rated pre-session affect and post-session affect, as well as post-session working alliance, session quality, and real relationship. Participants also wrote down their affect changes, and attributions to these changes, at the end of each session. Quantitative data were analyzed using multilevel modeling. Qualitative data were analyzed using Consensual Qualitative Research. Therapists qualitatively reported affect changes in 67% of sessions, with equal amounts of increases in positive and negative affect. Therapists most frequently attributed their increase in positive affect to being able to collaborate with clients, and their increase in negative affect to having difficult clients. Therapist pre- to post-session change in affect was related to client pre-session affect and client pre- to post-session change in affect. After controlling for therapist change in affect from pre- to post-session, higher therapist pre-session positive affect was associated with better client-rated working alliance and session quality, whereas higher therapist pre-session negative affect was associated with poorer client-rated session quality. Increase in therapist positive affect from pre- to post-session was related to better client-rated session quality and therapist-rated working alliance, session quality, and real relationship, whereas increase in therapist negative affect was related to poorer client-rated real relationship and therapist-rated working alliance, session quality, and real relationship. Thus, therapist affect played a role in therapist functioning and contributed to psychotherapy process and outcome.Item Cycling the City: Locating Cycling in the Continued (Re)Structuring of North American Cities(2014) Rick, Oliver James Collard; Andrews, David L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Bicycling is a growing mobility practice within contemporary U.S. cities that has multiple effects on the formation of the urban as “We are surrounded by cycling” (Horton et al, 2007, p. 1). This project investigates how cycling has shaped the city by analyzing the role that the governance and practice of cycling currently plays in the political, economic, social, spatial, and affective re-formation of the urban. Through the use of a combination of methods, working at various levels of analysis, the aim is to locate the impact of cycling policies and practices on the structural, discursive, and embodied dimensions of contemporary urban (re)structuring. It is an analysis of macro political processes, the formation of cycling communities, and the experiential dimension of riding in the city. Latham & McCormack (2010) state “cities are constantly generating new forms of collective life, novel ways of being together” (p.55). Thus, this project interrogates the various ways in which cycling impacts upon cities, and influences their (re)formation in potentially “historically unprecedented ways” (Wachsmuth et al, 2011, p. 741). Through studying cycling in Boston, Baltimore, and Washington DC this project provides a multi-sited analysis of how cycling is positioned within U.S. cities currently, as well as the complex and diverse processes that inform the contemporary organization of these urban spaces. U.S. cities currently exist within a broad “climate of cuts, austerity and state retrenchment” (Newman, 2013, p. 1) that has defined current patterns of urban governance. I have researched the ways in which cycling has underpinned and simultaneously challenged these broad shifts toward neoliberal governance. Cycling is both drawn into “marketing of urban “culture” and history by entrepreneurial governance” (Cherot and Murray, 2002, p. 432), but also underpins cities as entities that “defy efforts to be classified into types, reduced to essential characteristics, and fixed by boundaries (intellectual or otherwise)” (Prytherch, 2002, p. 772). As such this project investigates this simultaneously overlapping and contradictory impact of cycling on the city, mapping the multiple locations of cycling within the perpetual (re)formation of the urban.Item Impact of Self-efficacy, Outcome Expectations and Affect on Requesting Job Accommodations among Individuals with Disabilities(2011) Dong, Shengli; MacDonald-Wilson, Kim L; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)High unemployment rates and low job retention rates are challenges still faced by persons with disabilities. Despite empirical evidence showing the positive impact of requesting and using job accommodations on job retention and career development (Ellison, Russinova, MacDonald-Wilson, & Lyass, 2003; McNulty, 2007), the request and use of job accommodations is low among persons with disabilities (Allaire, 2001; Hutton, 2006). The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of factors that contributed to decisions for requesting job accommodations. Specifically, the researcher focused on the impact of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and affect (feelings and emotions) on decisions about requesting job accommodations through the framework of Social Cognitive Career Theory using structural equation modeling (SEM). The proposed accommodation model fits the data well in that eight out of nine hypotheses were confirmed. Self-efficacy, outcome expectation, and affect were found to have direct structural relationships with requesting accommodations. Furthermore, self-efficacy mediated the relationship between positive affect and intention to request accommodations; outcome expectation mediated the relationship between self-efficacy and intention to request accommodations. The researcher also explored the extent to which job accommodation-specific variables not associated with the Social Cognitive Career Theory predicted job accommodation over and above the variables in the proposed accommodation request model (self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and affect) through a hierarchical regression analysis. The three variables in the proposed model were found to account for 50.2% of the variance in intention to request accommodations; the accommodation-specific variables were found to account for an additional 7.7% of the variance.Item White Guilt: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Emergent Racisms in the Contemporary United States(2010) Grzanka, Patrick Ryan; Parks, Sheri L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)White guilt is a culturally and historically contingent emotion rooted in White people's recognition of unearned privileges and collective and/or individual roles in the perpetuation of racism. Situated within the context of neoliberal multiculturalism, this interdisciplinary dissertation investigates contemporary manifestations of White guilt in popular discourse and the lived experiences of young White adults in the United States. As a form of identity-based affect, White guilt may aid in the development of antiracist White people; however, because White guilt retains a focus on the White subject, it may offer limited potential to transform social relationships and systems of inequity. Three interrelated studies compose the methodological work of this project and undertake the task of empirically grounding White guilt so that we may better understand its forms, limits and consequences. The first study interrogates journalists' coverage of three moments of controversy in the early 21st century: Anderson Cooper's "emotional" reporting during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Don Imus-Rutgers University basketball scandal and Isaiah Washington's firing from Grey's Anatomy after allegedly calling a co-star a "faggot." Reporting on these episodes illustrates how multiculturalism manages and defers racial guilt and shame while simultaneously eliding the intersections of identity that structure experience. The second study is the creation and initial validation of a survey-based measure of White guilt (the Test of White Guilt and Shame or "TOWGAS"), which attempts to reconcile several limitations of extant research on racial affect - namely, the persistent conflation of guilt and shame. The third study centralizes the intersectionality of White people's experiences through in-depth interviews with 10 White college students. A modified grounded theory approach is used to explore how gender, sexuality and race together influence how these White people a) perceive Imus, Washington and Cooper and b) conceptualize their own Whiteness and the feelings associated with racism and inequality. Finally, the concept of "emergent racisms" is posited as a critical, working framework with which to investigate White racial affect. This theoretical approach emphasizes the complex interactions between identity, affect, attitudes and context (i.e., situation) that co-constitute the phenomenology of White guilt and shame.