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 “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 The Affective Consequences of Conforming to Gender Stereotypes(2016) Venaglia, Rachel; Lemay, Edward P.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)It was of primary interest to examine the affective consequences of conformity to gender stereotypes, and to assess if feelings of social approval and authenticity mediate the relationship between conformity and affect. Therefore, we utilized an Electronic Momentary Assessment methodology to capture University of Maryland students’ engagement in gender stereotypical behavior, and their emotional and social experiences during their daily social interactions. Counter to expectations, we found that regardless of one’s own gender, enacting gender prescriptions enhanced feelings of authenticity and feelings of social approval, and enacting proscriptions reduced feelings of authenticity and feelings of social approval. Enacting prescriptions predicted more positive affect and enacting proscriptions predicted a more negative affective experience. Feelings of authenticity and feelings of social approval independently predicted feelings of more positive affect. Overall, our findings suggest that irrespective of gender, engaging in desirable stereotypes has a number of social, personal, and emotional benefits.Item Fractured Front: Gender, Authenticity, and the Remaking of the American Left after World War Two(2012) Larocco, Christina G.; Muncy, Robyn; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is a study of one long&ndashterm, inherently gendered effect of the Cold War. In the immediate aftermath of World War Two, as the emerging Cold War empowered a long&ndashstanding anti&ndashcommunist strain in U.S. political culture, many artists and intellectuals feared the massification of human beings communism allegedly produced. One of the tools they developed to combat this specter of massification was the discourse of authenticity. Authenticity was predicated on the belief that useful analyses of the world came only from individual thought, experience, and emotion&mdashnot existing political theories or overarching explanations. The artists and intellectuals who developed this theory argued that the expression of this individual truth was the best way to combat and prevent totalitarianism. Authenticity continued to be important to the white, left&ndashleaning social movements of the 1960s. Through them, it fed into the identity politics of the 1970s and 1980s. I thus draw a straight line between Cold War anti&ndashtotalitarianism and identity politics. I explore this phenomenon in a range of cultural, intellectual, and political realms, including the anti&ndashtotalitarian thought of Frankfurt School intellectuals, the Method acting of Lee Strasberg, the Beat writing of Jack Kerouac, and the New Left politics of Students for a Democratic Society. In each arena, I trace two key patterns. The first is the gendering of authenticity. The men who dominated these fields often insisted that women were too deeply tied to the conformist &ldquomass&rdquo to be truly authentic. Women like Method actress and teacher Stella Adler, liberal feminist Betty Friedan, Beat writer Joyce Glassman Johnson, and the women's liberationists who broke off from SDS had to fight to be included in this culture. I document their attempts to do so. Second, I argue that the connection between 1950s culture and 1960s New Left activism went far beyond a shared gender politics. The discourse of authenticity also granted special authority to the artist, who was imagined as the figure best equipped to resist the forces of massification. This belief had far-reaching effects on the relationship between cultural production and left politics, precluding the appearance of a 1930s&ndashstyle &ldquocultural front&rdquo.Item Participatory Music Making and Affinity in Washington, DC Irish Sessions(2011) Flynn, Erin Michele; Witzleben, J. Lawrence; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Washington, DC metropolitan area hosts a vibrant Irish music scene. Like those in many Irish sessions found throughout the world, the District's network of musicians plays traditional dance tunes at local Irish pubs. This research, centered on ten weekly Irish sessions, explores how DC participants navigate authenticity and develop their skills within a social community. Musicians of varying skill levels perform together and include both those of Irish descent and those with no Irish heritage. Issues such as degrees of strictness with regard to tunes played, instruments permitted, and session etiquette demonstrate each session's unique characteristics. This thesis discusses the influence of participatory music making and affinity, since Irish session musicians perform primarily for themselves. Based on field research through participant-observation and interviews, and expanding upon recent discussions of tradition and imagination in sessions worldwide, I analyze Irish sessions in DC in terms of participatory music making and socializing.Item Attachment style, relationship satisfaction, intimacy, loneliness, gender role beliefs, and the expression of authentic self in romantic relationships(2008-05-28) Downing, Vanessa Lynn; Fassinger, Ruth; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study sought to explore the possible facilitators and inhibitors of the expression of authentic self in heterosexual romantic relationships, and specifically, to increase understanding about the possible influence of gender role attitudes. Additionally, the study sought to assess the factor structure of the Authenticity in Relationships Scale (AIRS; Lopez & Rice, 2006)--initially normed on a college population--in a sample of post-college adults involved in a range of romantic attachments. A non-experimental field survey explored how variables of interest related to each other in a sample 241 male and female heterosexuals between the ages of 25 and 38. Analyses revealed strong associations between authenticity and attachment style, relationship satisfaction, intimacy, loneliness, and egalitarianism. Findings also included significant differences in regards to authenticity, relationship satisfaction, intimacy, and loneliness among participants depending on relationship type. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that Lopez & Rice's two-factor solution did not hold for this non-college sample, and suggested a one-factor solution for the AIRS. Implications of the study and suggestions for future research building upon the findings are discussed.Item World Music and International Development: Ethnography of Globalization(2006-05-11) Morgan, Melanie Josephine; Dueck, Jonathan; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)How are theories of globalization understood and employed by individuals working in world music and international development? Using a world music CD and concert project created by a Washington D.C.-based non-profit, this paper explores power relationships in world music and international development through aesthetics, authenticity, and hegemony. An ethnographic approach emphasizes the roles of individuals, providing a "bottom-up" approach to studying globalization. The non-profit Sustainable Environments for Health and Shelter (SEH+S) combines recording industry concepts for world music with organizational goals to achieve a distinct and practical organizational identity. Power relationships with musicians are also determined through a combination of organizational goals and individual musicians' motivation and knowledge. SEH+S administrators, producers and musicians both challenge and validate theories of globalization in their interpretations of world music and international development.Item Roger Fry's Concept of Authenticity: the Associative Gauguin Contrasted with the Contemplative Cézanne(2005-05-04) Stotland, Irina D.; Hargrove, June; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis analyses the role of Paul Gauguin in the writings of Roger Fry. Fry follows a nineteenth-century opposition of Gauguin as associative artist to Paul Cézanne as contemplative artist. Fry's binary structure influenced the later English language art criticism on Gauguin. Fry, as his nineteenth-century sources, considered aesthetic experience to be a reflection of the artist's inner self. To Fry, Cézanne's paintings mirrored an instinctual, semi-conscious and contemplative artist. In Fry's view, Gauguin could not sustain passivity before nature and destroyed the disinterestedness of beholding by enacting associations with the outside world. The perception of Gauguin's inner self as weak and the consequent affectation, subjectivism, and associativity, allowed Fry to find Gauguin inauthentic. To Fry, through disinterested contemplation, Cézanne achieved significance of forms and enabled a beholder's creation of meaning exclusively from them. For Fry, as a formalist, this factor was decisive in choosing Cézanne over Gauguin