Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
12 results
Search Results
Item Developing Methods and Theories for Modeling Student Leadership and Students' Experiences of Academic Support(2024) Dalka, Robert Paul; Turpen, Chandra; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation brings together two research strands that study: (a) the ways in which physics and STEM students contribute to growing capacity for institutional change within collaborative teams and (b) the support structures of graduate programs through an innovative methodology grounded in network science. The first research strand is explored within two different team environments, one of a student-centric interinstitutional team and a second of departmental change teams. Across both of these contexts, I identify how by engaging in an interaction-based agency, students are able to jointly define their own roles and the projects they pursue. In comparing across these contexts, we identify how students navigate different leadership structures and how this can support or limit student contributions in these teams. A central contribution of this work is a model for cultivating capacity for change through shared leadership and relational agency. This model captures how capacity can be built in different domains tied to the activity systems of the work. We show how this model can help practitioners and facilitators better partner with students as well as how researchers can use this model to capture how students contribute to the work of the team. The second research strand focuses on developing and applying an innovative methodology for network analysis of Likert-style surveys. This methodology generates a meaningful network based on survey item response similarity. I show how researchers can use modular analysis of the network to identify larger themes built from the connections of particular aspects. Additionally, I apply this methodology to provide a unique interpretation of responses to the Aspects of Student Experience Scale instrument for well-defined demographic groups to show how thematic clusters identified in the full data set re-emerge or change for different groups of respondents. These results are important for practitioners who seek to make targeted changes to their physics graduate programs in hopes of seeing particular benefits for particular groups. This dissertation opens up lines for future work within both strands. The model for building capacity for change draws attention to the mediating processes that emerge on a team and in students’ interactions with others. This model can be developed further to include additional constructs and leadership structures, as well as explore the relevance to other academic contexts. For quantitative researchers, the network analysis for Likert-style surveys methodology is widely applicable and provides a new way to investigate the wide range of phenomena assessed by Likert-style surveys.Item DIGITAL PLACE-MAKING AND PLATFORM POLITICS: HOW USERS TRANSFORMED AND RECODED THEIR LIVES ONLINE IN THE WAKE OF COVID-19(2024) Phipps, Elizabeth Brooke; Pfister, Damien S.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Digital Place-making and Platform Politics: How Users Transformed and Recoded their Lives Online in the Wake of COVID-19 examines the political & cultural turmoil at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, where daily life for millions around the world shifted to digital platforms. Digital users turned to the unique affordances of these platforms for civic activism through what I term “digital place-making,” the rhetorical activity involved in cultivating digital places through specific technologies and practices. Drawing from an ecological rhetorical approach and an understanding of digital experiences as transplatform, Digital Place-making and Platform Politics utilizes a methodology that incorporates rhetorical space & place theory, textual analysis, visual analysis, digital ethnographic work, and “in situ” field work to capture the overlapping and simultaneous nature of place-making for digital users. How does digital place-making impact the relations between users, platforms, and political culture? To render digital place-making as a concept, this dissertation navigates through three case studies between 2020-2022. The first chapter looks at the video game platform Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and how users experiencing lockdown conditions in 2020 repurposed the platform as a site for political expression. This first study establishes the foundational relationship between infrastructure, user practices, and their engagement with broader political discourse through place-making. The second chapter builds upon this role of infrastructure and user practice creating place by looking at how the platform Twitch trains streamers on their platform to create places for community, and then how streamers leveraged these places for resistance and activism on the platform itself throughout 2021-2022. This second study illuminates the way rhetorical place is constructed through both discourse and infrastructure, and how digital place possesses vulnerabilities unique to the condition of digitality. The third chapter addresses Epic Games’ fraught commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1963 March on Washington, held in 2021 on the popular video game platform Fortnite. This final study serves as a capstone illustration of the unique vulnerabilities that digital place-making poses for public memory and political discourse.Item Re-Inscribing Subculture: Commodification and Boundary Work in American Traditional Tattooing(2018) Strohecker, David Paul; Moghadam, Linda; Falk, William; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This auto-ethnographic research explores the debate surrounding the analytical utility of the concept of subculture. Utilizing interview data collected from 58 tattoo artists and collectors, I address fundamental concerns regarding the concept, examine its historical development, and defend a refined notion of subculture as coined by Hodkinson (2002) in his study of Goth. Utilizing the four characteristics of subcultural “substance”, I showcase how American traditional tattooing is the premier example of this concept. In exploring this debate, I examine the role of the subcultural commodification process in the construction of new, field-dependent identities such as the tribal entrepreneur Goulding and Saren (2007) outline in their study of Goth. Using a general theory of subcultural commodification, I propose a new figure emergent from this process, that of the “traditionalist”, an inward-looking role adopted by many who resist the commodification process. The traditionalist seeks to defend their field-dependent identities as subculturalists at the core of these groupings. Utilizing the notion of tradition, these individuals construct new forms of subcultural capital (Thornton 1996) that position themselves outside of and away from the mainstream. In a nod to Durkheim (1912), I discuss how the sacred and the profane are used to label insiders and outsiders through the use of aesthetic judgments. This role positioning process is essential for the preservation of subculture at the level of lived experience. My research shows how traditionalists employ boundary work (Lamont and Molnar 2002) in their defense of their subcultural identities. They strategically deploy the symbolic boundaries of the sacred and the profane in order to police the social boundaries of this community.Item Sexuality, Gender, and the Performance of Wrestling Fan Culture(2017) Krenek, Jessica Lloyd; Carpenter, Faedra C; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on fan culture in the world of professional wrestling, specifically the perspectives and experiences of female and AFAB (assigned female at birth) non-binary fans . The project explores broader themes about empowerment, female sexuality, and representation through the lens of fans of American professional wrestling, particularly World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). The dissertation looks at the performance of self and the performance of fandom on social media sites (such as Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram), during “live” wrestling events, as well as through fan fiction and other artistic expressions. In so doing, I explore various ideas about the ways that fans behave, interact, and connect with one another in a frequently male-dominated forum in order to grapple with larger questions about gender and performance in American society and history. I argue that non-male fans attempt to refigure the image of wrestling fan culture to include their own voices and their own presence through the use of social media and other virtual methods of connection and community-building.Item Alternative Imaginaries, Gothic Temporalities: An Ethnography of the Cultural Construction of Aging in the Goth Subculture(2016) Bush, Leah J.; Paoletti, Jo B.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This ethnographic thesis examines the cultural construction of aging in the Goth subculture in Baltimore, Maryland. Formed in Britain in the late 1970s, Goth retains a relatively high number of Elder Goths who participate in the subculture beyond their youth. By combining interdisciplinary analyses of Goth in the American imaginary with the lived experience of Goths over 40 in everyday life and the nightclub, I argue that participation in the Goth subculture presents an alternative to being aged by culture. Elder Goths subvert constructions of age-appropriate normativity by creating individualized “Gothic temporalities” to navigate through the challenges of adulthood and imagine their futures. This thesis underscores the importance of reconceptualizing aging as a lifespan project. Deconstructing age categories moves authority away from structural forces which support ageism and places power in the hands of individual agents.Item "Tell Me Your Diamonds" Story Bearing in African American Women's Life History Narratives(2014) Smith, Shanna Louise; Williams-Forson, Psyche; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1994, a week prior to the release of her family memoir The Sweeter the Juice, African American writer, Shirley Haizlip was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The episode, "Denying my Race," unveiled the ways some members of Haizlip's bi-racial family sought to pass for white, while others lived successful lives as African Americans. During the publicized reunion, members of both sides of the racial coin worked toward coming to terms with their identities. In telling this story, Haizlip took on the role of the female story bearer, the writer of the family narrative who is positioned two or more generations beyond the story she tells. What does it mean to be a living archive, a black woman who carries the mantle of an uneasy familial past and makes it her body of work? What does it mean to investigate a wound in the family that is representative of larger cultural injuries that occurred during pivotal moments in black history? How can deeply entrenched cultural wounds open dialogue, establish common ground, and create spaces for empathy and understanding across race, gender, sexuality, and class? Each of the women, about whom I am writing in this dissertation, helps to address these questions. A'Lelia Bundles, Shirlee Haizlip, and (Carole) Ione have all been afforded the opportunity to labor with their fingers to corroborate the oral narratives handed to them. The fruit of their labor are their life histories: On Her Own Ground, The Sweeter the Juice, and Pride of Family, respectively. The titles signal familial pasts that intersect with the complexities of gender and labor, race and racial passing, class and privilege. Using personal life histories like that of Haizlip, Bundles, Ione and others I seek to better understand the ways in which women writers can foster more generative understandings of African American life histories and the ways in which they are situated as sites for social change.Item Place as Common and Un-Common Wealth: A Relational Ethnographic Analysis of the Conceptual Landscapes of Place Amidst the Shifting and Marginalized Grounds of Letcher County, Kentucky and Southeast Washington, D.C.(2014) Crase, Kirsten Lee; Caughey, John L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents a relational ethnographic analysis of how people in two marginalized places that are undergoing significant disruptive change understand the idea of place. The rural eastern Kentucky coalfields community of Letcher County and the urban neighborhood of Southeast Washington, D.C. share in having been structurally and discursively marginalized, both historically and in the present; they also share in having residents who are disadvantaged through the interplay of race, class, geography, and other factors. Both places currently face significant shifts in their social, economic, and structural landscapes. The disruptive shift facing Letcher County is the intensification of mountaintop removal coal mining methods that threaten ecological well-being and inflame longstanding local tensions over livelihood, identity, and the future of the community. The disruptive shift facing Southeast D.C. is increasing levels of redevelopment, as associated with the beginnings of gentrification in the community, and the heightening of longstanding tendencies toward displacement among the community's most marginalized residents. This study uses interviewing and participant observation to bring the flexibility of ethnography to bear on the complexities and subtleties of how people understand place. The focus of my study is a series of in-depth interviews with four key research participant residents in each community, interpreting their articulations in terms of the relationship between place, marginalization, and change. This study also makes use of a relational approach, juxtaposing and interlacing explorations of both places. There are many differences in the disruptive changes facing these places and in their general characteristics as communities--Letcher County is a rural, overwhelmingly white community and Southeast D.C. is an urban, overwhelmingly African American community. I argue, however, that broad and foundational resemblances exist between how residents of the two communities think and feel about place in relation to marginalization and change. I conclude that my research participants in Letcher County and Southeast D.C. share broadly similar understandings of what constitutes local well-being, or common wealth, and I demonstrate those parallels by elucidating my participants' conceptual landscapes of place.Item "Pushed Out" and Pulled In: Girls of Color, the Criminal Justice System, and Neoliberalism's Double-Bind(2013) White, Elise M.; Corbin Sies, Mary; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This ethnography of court-involved girls in New York City argues that the last three decades have been a period of accelerating transformation of the juvenile and criminal justice systems, and of their encroachment into the lives of urban, low-income girls of color. These processes are inextricably related to a broader set of economic and cultural changes referred to as neoliberalism. Shifts in the material conditions in these girls' communities, largely through the withdrawal of public interest in favor of competition and efficiency, have been accompanied by an ideological framework that instructs girls to be "independent," entrepreneurial, and individually accountable. This discourse of "empowerment" masks important unexamined assumptions imported from previous juridical, sociological, and criminological constructions of girls as deviant: first, that the appropriate epistemological foundations for the study of girls lie outside them; and second, that girls are discrete variables--sites of pathology or victimization, but not of agency or critical capacity. Rather than reduce these girls to a set of pathologies or present them as individual actors making "bad choices," I ground my analysis in girls' narratives and analytic frameworks, tracing the cultural and economic inflections of neoliberalization in their family, community, and institutional lives. I explore the physical and psychic violence being perpetrated against court-involved girls on a daily basis. For these young women of color, the net result of neoliberalization in New York City is a series of double-binds: pairings of violent or threatening message and context that directly contradict one another, and where to acknowledge the disjunction itself provokes further, punitive violence. These double-binds underlie and perpetuate the system of penality and punishment. While a discursive legacy of individual pathology still colors the construction of these girls in the cultural dreamwork, I argue that it is the system itself that has become pathological, contributing in essential ways to the production of girls as delinquent and deviant. This dissertation explores this production, alongside girls' methods of coping, resisting, and sometimes perpetuating, neoliberal narratives. It concludes with recommendations arising from the dramatic re-envisioning of urban girls of color as civic actors and central members of our communities.Item An Exploration into North Indian Classical Music: Raga, Alif Laila, and Improvisation.(2012) Cohoon, Michaela K.; Witzleben, J. Lawrence; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis explores three themes: North Indian classical music, the individual Alif Laila, and the philosophical connection each has to improvisation. The process that was followed to analyze the interactions between raga in the North Indian classical tradition and one well-known musician's path within that tradition bridges theory with individual insight. Alif Laila is the individual at the center of the study. As a prominent professional sitarist living in the Washington, D.C. region, her input is analyzed placing focus on individuality within the life of a traditionally trained musician living and teaching in a Western context. Her expression in traditional sharing of musical knowledge from teacher to student, in raga performance and in musical philosophy expand upon the new generation of teacher/performers who translate their craft in order to continue their tradition of North Indian classical music. Improvisation, both as a social and musical design, extends the scholarly research and personalized ethnography to complete the thesis.Item Our Musical School: Ethnographic Methods and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Elementary General Music(2011) Strab, Emily Theresa; Witzleben, John Lawrence; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study has uncovered the complexities of childhood musical culture in a rural public school in Maryland with a diverse student population. Through daily interaction with her students, the researcher learned about their particular culture, including musical preferences, practices of music consumption and expression, and how students conceptualize music. The breadth and depth of knowledge the investigator was able to discover through participant observation during teaching duties demonstrates the usefulness of ethnographic methods in learning about students' musical culture for classroom music teachers. The use of this information proved to be productive in developing culturally relevant lessons that students responded to positively. In conclusion, the researcher found that pursuing an ethnographic project in order to create a culturally relevant pedagogy for her students was a worthwhile undertaking as an elementary general music educator.