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 “THIS WILL NOT KILL US:” A REFLECTIVE EXPLORATION OF HOW BLACK WOMEN DOCTORAL STUDENTS AND ALUMNAE STRIVED FOR HOLISTIC MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLNESS(2024) Stone, Joakina; Kelly, Bridget T; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this qualitative research study was to develop a better understanding of the factors that influenced the holistic mental health and wellness of Black women doctoral students and recent alumnae during their doctoral journey. Although research is emerging on the wellness of graduate students, there is limited literature on Black women doctoral students’ wellness. From 2020 to 2023 there were national events involving Black women that underscored the necessity to understand and prioritize the holistic wellness of Black women doctoral students (e.g. Black women in higher education leaving their high-ranking positions and Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles taking a break from their respective sports and citing mental health as a factor). Using narrative inquiry as a methodological approach, and a conceptual framework comprised of Black feminist thought (Collins, 1986, 1989) and Hettler’s (1980, 1984) six dimensions of wellness, the experiences of nine Black women doctoral students and recent alumnae (who were no more than six-months post-graduation) were explored. This research sought to understand the strategies Black women doctoral students and recent alumnae used to manage and maintain their holistic mental health and wellness. The specific research questions that guided this study are: (1) How do Black women doctoral students and recent alumnae at Research 1 (R1) or Research 2 (R2) institutions in the mid-Atlantic region describe their mental health and wellness while pursuing their doctoral degree? (2) What contributed to and interfered with the holistic mental health and wellness of Black women doctoral students and recent alumnae during their doctoral programs?Co-narrators (participants of the study) participated in two semi-structured interviews, each ranging from 60 to 90 minutes in length. Data collection also included co-narrators submitting memes or gifs that represented their mental health and wellness during their doctoral journey. There were several themes that emerged from the data. First, the visual data revealed that co-narrators experienced exhaustion, anguish, fluctuation between joy and stress, and the need to keep moving forward despite what was happening around them. The images submitted served as a visual representation for the overall experiences of the women in the study and enhanced the understanding of the factors that contributed to or interfered with the holistic mental health and wellness of Black women doctoral students (i.e., Research Question 2). The additional findings that emerged from study are as follows: (a) “Wellness for Your Whole Body:” Co-Narrators Definitions of Holistic Mental Health and Wellness; (b) Factors that Contributed to Holistic Wellness, including the subthemes “They Needed the Sisterhood:” The Importance of Community with Other Black Women, and “Finding Those Pockets:” Intentionally Choosing Wellness in the PhD Journey; (c) Positive and Negative Contributing Factors to Holistic Mental Health and Wellness, which included the subthemes “All Skin Folk Ain’t Kinfolk:” Interactions with Challenging Black Faculty and Administrators, and “My Advisor . . . Was Super Supportive:” How Relationships with Black Faculty and Non-Black Faculty and Administrators of Color Can Influence Wellness; (e) Detractors From Holistic Mental Health and Wellness, which included the subthemes “The PhD Program Is Good About . . .Letting You Know You Don’t Belong:” Impostorism and Lack of Belonging in the Academy and “What Is the Benefit of . . . Being Productive, If You’re Literally Killing Yourself?”: Negotiating Wellness to Finish the PhD. The study concluded with implications for practice and research, followed by a letter from the author directly addressing Black women doctoral students.Item EXPLORING BLACK WOMEN’S HESA DOCTORAL EXPERIENCES AT HWIS: AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT USING CRITICAL NARRATIVE INQUIRY(2023) Clarke, Ashley Hixson; Kelly, Dr. Bridget T.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to explore Black women’s experiences in higher education and student affairs (HESA) doctoral programs at historically white institutions (HWIs). More specifically, this study explored how Black women connected their HESA doctoral experiences with their social media engagement. Limited literature has captured Black women doctoral students’ experiences in the academy broadly, and there exists even less for Black doctoral students in HESA. Nascent research highlighted Black women’s colleges experiences, undergraduate and graduate students (master and doctoral), with strategies for navigating HWIs. One strategy for navigating HWIs is through community building with other Black women. Through digital technology, such as social media, community building has a wide reach to connect with other women, and other Black women college students. As such, social media was explored to understand how Black women college students connected their education to social media engagement. Employing digital Black feminism as the theoretical framework, this study contributed new knowledge for understanding how Black women connected their HESA doctoral experiences and social media engagement. This study complicated notions of agency and authenticity in Black women’s HESA doctoral programs and their social media engagement. Additionally, this study highlighted the complexities in how Black women doctoral students are socialized in the academy, specifically in HESA graduate programs at HWIs. Using critical narrative inquiry, eight Black women HESA doctoral students engaged alongside the primary researcher for an individual interview and a collective co-analysis. The interviews were guided by a co-constructive protocol where the co-researchers provided their input on topics to discuss individually. The co-researchers also met for a 1-hour co-analysis process as a collective group to share their insights on the findings. The findings revealed the following themes and subthemes: (a) Censorship at the HWI, followed by the subthemes of Researcher Socialization in the Academy and Reconciliation with HWIs; (b) Censorship on Social Media, followed by the subtheme of Scholar Tensions on Social Media; and (c) Presence of Doctoral Experiences when Engaging on Social Media. The findings illuminated how Black women doctoral students named their socialization process in their HESA doctoral program, how they navigated multiple spaces, and the advantageous ways they used social media as HESA doctoral students.Item "If I Am Free My Child Belongs to Me": Black Motherhood and Mothering in the Era of Emancipation(2022) Wicks-Allen, Jessica Lynn; Rowland, Leslie S; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Black women’s reproduction was foundational to Atlantic slave societies because it produced future laborers and profits for slaveholders. Although the commodification of bondwomen’s children generated grief, loss, and violence, enslaved women constructed individual and collective practices of motherhood that challenged that commodification. As emancipation reconfigured the social order, black women’s and children’s bodies and labor acquired dramatically new meanings. From the standpoint of former slaveholders, black women’s reproductive capacity and offspring were no longer assets but encumbrances. Meanwhile, emancipation meant that freedwomen could exercise parental rights that had previously been denied. These shifts raise questions about how motherhood and childrearing informed black women’s transition from slavery to freedom in the U.S. South. The dissertation argues that black women’s identities as mothers profoundly affected how they experienced and negotiated freedom. Black mothers sought to exercise self-determination by defining motherhood on their own terms, gaining control over their reproduction, and rearing their children as they saw fit. To achieve these ends, they demanded remunerative employment, custody of their children, protection from violence, child support, education for their progeny, and personal dignity. Reconstituting family and protecting the welfare of their children animated formerly enslaved women’s pursuit and definition of freedom. Whereas formerly enslaved women’s reproductive capacity and children had been assets under slavery, in freedom they became undesirable to employers, generating a whole new set of constraints for black mothers, who, as a result, faced employment discrimination and poverty. In response to these circumstances, newly freed mothers developed a politics of mutual vulnerability that stressed collectivity rather than individualism. If motherhood engendered vulnerability, the embrace of relationality served as a source of black maternal empowerment. While building on previous scholarship that has examined emancipation through the lens of gender, the dissertation deploys a more specific social location—motherhood—to bring black women’s politics into sharper focus, emphasizing the ways in which ex-slave women made and remade freedom through kinship and care work. In so doing, it also reveals that motherhood remained a site of black subjugation, albeit in new ways.Item “STARTED FROM THE BOTTOM, NOW WE’RE…WHERE?”” A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF STRESS AND COPING AMONG HIGHLY EDUCATED BLACK WOMEN(2021) Ellick, Kecia Lurie; Lewin, Amy B; Roy, Kevin M; Family Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Rationale: Black women suffer disproportionate rates of stress-related diseases including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, maternal mortality, and depression. Education is promoted as a protective factor against these outcomes. An increasing number of Black women are leveraging advanced degrees to secure leadership positions in education, law, science, and technology. Yet, highly educated, middle-class Black women experience the same deleterious health outcomes, at the same rates, as Black women living in poverty. This suggests that neither education nor its correlates protect Black women from harmful outcomes. It further suggests that, for Black women, the cost of social mobility afforded by advanced education may result in diminishing returns by reproducing and reinforcing social inequalities that inform and exacerbate negative experiences.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of highly educated Black women during their prime work, partnering, and reproductive years. This study examined the strategies that highly educated Black women employed to cope with stressors perceived while navigating, negotiating, and performing multiple roles, social identities, and responsibilities in their personal and professional lives. Methods: Data was collected from a sample of Black, middle-class women living in Georgia, ages 28 - 49, with doctorate degrees (n = 24, Mage = 40.2) via in-person, semi-structured interviews. Following a constructivist grounded theory approach, a triadic scheme of open, axial, and selective coding will be performed to uncover emergent themes from women’s narratives. Findings: Evaluation of the data revealed three central themes that serve as the main findings of this study and answer the study questions about how highly educated Black women experience and cope with stress: 1) redefining of the strong Black woman, 2) prioritization of self-care practices and, 3) unapologetic authenticity. Discussion: This study explored the heterogeneity of Black women and contributes to the body literature focused on the interactive effects of race, gender, and class. It provides empirical data on the ways in which Black women experience, perceive, and respond to stress and highlights the ways in which Black women take proactive approaches to protect their health and well-being.Item Exploring complexity in well-being: A mixed methods examination of the Black women’s well-being paradox(2021) Ford, Tiffany N; Graham, Carol; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores the complexity of Black women’s well-being and policy experience along the income distribution. This dissertation consists of three separate but related essays. Chapter 1 argues for the active inclusion of intersectionality theory in social and economic policy work. I rely on the literature to draw clear links between the intersectionality theoretical framework, the study of subjective well-being, and the development of equitable public policy to support well-being. In chapter 2, I explore an intracategorical complexity approach to intersectionality, focusing on unpacking the layers of difference among Black middle-class women and investigating how they relate to well-being. Using qualitative focus group data, I uncover the key factors shaping well-being for 22 Black middle-class women in Wichita, KS and Las Vegas, NV and discuss what a policy agenda might look like to support their well-being. Results of this transformative exploratory sequential mixed methods design suggested health, money, and social support, like friendships, family, and romantic partnerships, were core determinants of well-being for Black middle-class women. Quantitatively, Black middle-class women’s well-being and determinants differed significantly by their level of education and by a combination of their parenthood and marital status. This work revealed that structural oppression may be influencing Black middle-class women’s well-being by the shaping of the distribution of their determinants of well-being. In chapter 3, I focus on subjective well-being at the intersection of race, gender, and class through an intentional focus on Black women in different income classes. Relying on Gallup Daily data from 2010-2016, I explore both intracategorical and intercategorical complexity, comparing well-being and its determinants within race-gender and across it. This work reveals a paradox of well-being for Black women: in every income class, Black women are more optimistic and less stressed than white people, despite having less of the objective factors known to contribute to that well-being. I offer potential explanations for this paradox. Through an intentional focus on Black women, this work takes an early step in unpacking the relationship between policy-relevant objective factors (like financial security surrounding food and healthcare access and relative health status) and subjective well-being in the lives of an American public imbued with racial and gender diversity. The overall results of this study illustrate the importance of qualitative and mixed methods inquiry into the economic, health, and social position of Black women in the U.S. in order to yield further lessons for policies that could benefit this group.Item HIDDEN FIGURES: AN EXAMINATION OF THE CAREER TRAJECTORIES OF BLACK WOMEN IN SENIOR ADMINISTRATIVE POSITIONS(2020) Staples, Candice L; Griffin, Kimberly A; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyze and examine the career development of Black women in senior academic administrative positions. Although every senior administrator does not aspire to become a college president, there is a traditional pathway for those who reach the presidency. Women are underrepresented in college presidencies, but Black women in particular are underrepresented as presidents of predominately White research institutions. The theoretical frameworks guiding this study are Black Feminist Thought and Community Cultural Wealth, which both provide a better understanding of the diversity within Black female experiences and the unique capital they cultivate to proceed through the academy. Narrative inquiry was the methodology selected to conduct this nationwide study of 15 Black women who had the career titles of a chair, dean, or provost. Each participant was interviewed once for approximately 90 minutes in a semi-structured format. The transcribed interviews were hand-coded to highlight the emerging themes: participants were recruited into administration, the significance of faculty rank and the department chair position, support was largely found outside of the participants’ institution. Participants acquired capital through their parents, partners, and sister circles (friends). The women were able to leverage their capital to help mitigate some of the obstacles and to influence their career decisions.Item "That Chart Ain't For Us": An Examination of Black Women's Understandings of BMI, Health, and Physical Activity(2019) Thompson, Tori; Jette, Shannon; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Significantly, black women have the highest rates of being overweight or obese compared to other groups in the United States, with 60% being classified as obese per the BMI (CDC, 2017). However, there is currently a lack of scholarship which examines black women’s perceptions of the BMI, and how/if those perceptions influence their attitudes toward health and physical activity. In this project, I take a Foucauldian approach to analyze data collected from eight semi-structured interviews with black women who self- identify as obese and who are physically active. Findings suggest that black women find the BMI to be irrelevant to their health and well-being, and do not attribute their engagement in physical activity to their BMI. Instead, their reasons for partaking in physical activity are due to their individual experiences understandings of health and black female identity. These results have the potential to inform healthcare policies, physician practice, and public health interventions that target communities of color.