Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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
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Item A CASE STUDY OF RED BULL’S USE OF SPORTING EVENTS IN THE NEOLIBERAL URBAN ENVIORNMENT(2024) Weber, Emilio; Andrews, David L.; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project critically examines the ways in which city space and place are mobilized for capital interests through an examination of the global sports and energy drinks brand, Red Bull, and specifically its urban-based event strategies. The events such as the ones Red Bull hosts, alongside other spectacular urban projects have been prominent endeavors in which the lived experience of space has been reformulated by those who wield power and influence in the city. Informed by the contextual forces and logics of neoliberal urbanism, Red Bull strategically deploys the physical and symbolic reformulation of cities as an important aspect of its brand marketing strategy. The company, alongside local entities, impact the physical environment of the urban areas they occupy for the events. In addition, representations of places are presented and altered. These alterations of urban space and place have included an increased focus on spectacular consumption sites and experiences, in addition to the policing and surveillance of such spaces. Furthermore, this thesis offers analytical insight into the ways Red Bull’s urban strategizing is both and product and producer of the normalized neoliberal fabric that has come to envelope the contemporary US city: ultimately reproducing urban spaces which promote private profit and continue or exacerbate the inequalities felt in cities. Drawing from a range of interdisciplinary scholarship, I examine the relationship between, and impact of, sporting events hosted within the context of neoliberal cities. Deploying theoretical frameworks based in urban studies, neoliberalism, and critical geography informs the literature review and my research. This literature includes, but is not restricted to, physical cultural studies, urban studies, the sociology of sport, and event literature. Additionally, I utilize a case study method to examine the nature of the events within the urban and sport context they take place in. Completing field research and participant observation at three Red Bull sporting events, hosted in three distinct locales in June 2023, August 2023, and February 2024, I focus on the composition, meaning, affect, and experience of urban space, as created by the event itself, alongside marketing and promotional strategies of the company and cities in relation to these events. The research findings are divided into two empirical chapters, focused on the material and symbolic impacts upon urban space and place, respectively. I posit these findings as a normalized occupation of urban space, following the logics of neoliberalism and the event/content production of Red Bull. In conforming to neoliberal capitalist ideas focused on commercialized spectacle, these events simultaneously work to normalize this corporate use of urban space.Item LOCAL RESISTANCE AND RECOVERY IN THE NEOLIBERAL ERA: A CASE STUDY OF THE 1993 NAVAL BASE CLOSURE IN CHARLESTON, SC(2024) Verkouw, Clay Stephen; Chung, Patrick; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission transformed military base communities throughout the United States from 1988-2005. This work offers an account of military base closure from the local level, tracing the origins, resistance, impacts, and recovery in Charleston, South Carolina. A neoliberal turn in domestic politics resulted in the closure of hundreds of military bases, like the Charleston Naval Shipyard. Despite significant local resistance, the BRAC Commission shuttered the shipyard, ending decades of military investment and thousands of stable government jobs in the Charleston region. Yet, Charleston leaders took important steps in the post-closure years to maintain the traditions of military Keynesianism in Charleston, leading to a very successful economic recovery from the naval base closure crisis. This case study seeks to complicate existing narratives of U.S. military industry resilience, post-Cold War base closure, and military privatization benefits through a local history of a transformative period in Charleston.Item “LABOR HAS A LONG MEMORY”: TRANSFORMATIONS IN CAPITALISM AND LABOR ORGANIZING IN CENTRAL APPALACHIA, 1977-2019(2019) Heim, David; Freund, David; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1989 the UMWA went on strike against Pittston Coal. In response to declining union power and corporate anti-unionism, the UMWA embraced community members and women as participants in its striking strategy. Although sometimes reluctant to do so, the union accepted the involvement of non-miners in non-violent demonstrations and civil disobedience, and was successful because of the strategic shift. The victory against Pittston Coal in 1989 suggests that scholars cannot rule industrial unions as sites of resistance to capitalism after 1982. The union’s acceptance of community organizing in 1989 also suggests a link between the strategies and success of the Pittston Strike and more recent organizing victories in West Virginia—the West Virginia Teachers’ Strikes. More recent labor militancy in Appalachia has also built off of legacies of resistance dating back to events like the Paint Creek Mine War and the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1912 and 1921.Item Freedom from the Market: Antagonistic Disruptions of Neoliberal Capitalism(2017) Slosarski, Yvonne Wanda; Maddux, Kristy; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The 2016 U.S. presidential election showcased prominent rejections of the existing political and economic order, as many voters channeled frustrations over rising inequality and instability into support for candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, who acknowledged the widespread economic struggles of the market globalization age. This recent electoral example is one of many global rejections of free market expansion, a phenomenon that my dissertation examines. While rhetorical scholars have addressed the growing prominence of the free market and its logics, my project examines how people have resisted what is often called neoliberalism. Taking an approach to rhetoric derived from theories of articulation, in this project, I define neoliberalism as a hegemonic articulation that strings together four governing principles: freedom as primary, economics as natural, the individual as rational actor, and the free market as pure. The project examines three activist discourses that challenged neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s and that continue to resonate today: the 1986 U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Economic Justice for All pastoral letter, the Kathy Lee Gifford sweatshop scandal of 1996, and Seattle’s 1999 World Trade Organization protests. With each case, I demonstrate how neoliberal discourses themselves fostered tensions and how people exploited these tensions to challenge neoliberal hegemony; following theories of articulation, I call these challenges “antagonisms.” This project suggests that we should understand activist moments as “antagonistic disruptions” that that interrupt hegemonic discourses and evoke the possibility of their demise. Taken together, these case studies offer three major lessons for scholars and activists. First, the project suggests that powerful discourses—like neoliberalism—are comprised of necessary tensions, and that scholars can identify those tensions and that activists can exploit them. Second, the dissertation teaches scholars and activists that existing discourses and previous antagonisms enable people to challenge powerful discourses. Thus, scholars and activists learn that antagonisms are disruptive when they participate in legible frames of reference. Third, the cases suggest that the more multi-modal and frequent the antagonistic engagement, the more forceful the disruption. This project then, recommends that scholars study multi-modal recurrence and that activists strive for multi-modal consistency.Item #Shebelieves, But Does She? Examining The Impact Of The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s Empowerment Campaign On The White Woman Millennial(2017) Brice, Julie Elizabeth; Andrews, David L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 2015, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) launched the #SheBelieves campaign encouraging young women to continue believing in their goals and dreams (“WNT Launches #SheBelieves Initiative,” n.d.). #SheBelieves is thus an examplar of a promotional discourse which utilizes ideas of female empowerment in a manner that contributes to the constitution of the postfeminine, neoliberal, millennial subject identified by numerous scholars (Genz, 2009; McRobbie, 2009; Rottenberg, 2014). However, much of this scholarship ignores the fluid, and oftentimes contradictory, nature of subjectivity, and fails to acknowledge complexity of the 21st century woman’s lived experiences (Blackman, 2008; Weedon, 2004). Therefore, this thesis uses semi-structured small group interviews to answer to what extent, and in what ways have young white women experienced, and been interpellated by, the empowerment rhetoric and idealized postfeminine-neoliberal, millennial subjectivity, embedded within U.S. National Women’s Soccer #SheBelieves campaign? The results are mixed: women did exhibit elements of postfeminist and neoliberal sensibilities with regards to their personal engagement with U.S. Women’s National Soccer; yet, the women also showed significant resistance, and thereby considerable agency, to aspects of the #SheBelieves discourse.Item Multiraciality Enters the University: Mixed Race Identity and Knowledge Production in Higher Education(2016) Allen, Aaron; Hanhardt, Christina; Struna, Nancy L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Multiraciality Enters the University: Mixed Race Identity and Knowledge Production in Higher Education,” explores how the category of “mixed race” has underpinned university politics in California, through student organizing, admissions debates, and the development of a new field of study. By treating the concept of privatization as central to both multiraciality and the neoliberal university, this project asks how and in what capacity has the discourses of multiracialism and the growing recognition of mixed race student populations shaped administrative, social, and academic debates at the state’s flagship universities—the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles. This project argues that the mixed race population symbolizing so-called “post-racial societies” is fundamentally attached to the concept of self-authorship, which can work to challenge the rights and resources for college students of color. Through a close reading of texts, including archival materials, policy and media debates, and interviews, I assert that the contemporary deployment of mixed race within the US academy represents a particularly post-civil rights development, undergirded by a genealogy of U.S. liberal individualism. This project ultimately reveals the pressing need to rethink ways to disrupt institutionalized racism in the new millennium.Item Fitness Philanthropy, Failed States, and Physical Cultural Fissures: The Problem of Addressing "Urban" Youth in Baltimore(2014) Mower, Ronald Lee; Andrews, David L; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Situated within a severely polarized Baltimore City, this dissertation explores the increasing role of voluntary organizations in addressing health disparities and various "crises" commonly associated with the "urban" environment (juvenile delinquency, crime, poverty, and ill-health). Given renowned cultural geographer, David Harvey's (2001) proclamation that Baltimore is a city "emblematic of the processes that have moulded cities under US capitalism" (p. 7), the rise of privatized voluntarism reflects a distinct shifting of responsibility inherent to neoliberalization processes. The failures of the state in providing adequate public resources for physical activity and health for example, has resulted in more private citizens deploying their educational and professional expertise, wealth and spare time, and creative ambitions to intervene in ways they deem most appropriate. Amidst an effort to map the broad structures of racial and class inequality shaping Baltimore's divisive environments, the specific focus of this project entailed a close ethnographic engagement with one non-profit organization that sought to reform the health and fitness lifestyles of "at-risk" and underserved African American youth between 2008 and 2012. As a participant observer, I examined the everyday operation of fitness pedagogies, disciplinary structures, and power relations between wealthy, white philanthropists and middle class fitness professionals ("faculty"), and the underserved working class black youth ("students") they attempted to instruct about fitness and health. Employing what Wolcott (2008) defined as the ethnographic methods of experiencing and inquiring, I observed and spoke with people concerning their perceptions of fitness and health, and their experiences within the program. I also examined programmatic documents from several fitness-based non-profit organizations across Baltimore. Issues of white privilege, philanthropic intent, colormuteness, and the normalization of neoliberal healthism emerged as key findings. As an embodied participant, I also encountered scenarios that challenged my habitual ability to cross the racial and class boundaries typified by the positionalities and lived experience of faculty and students. Having been reared in, and routinely experienced, such divisions in my own life, the performative politics of embodiment became an important point of analysis to make sense of my cultural "betweenness" (England, 1994), and the role that self-reflexive writing practices played during fieldwork.