College of Arts & Humanities
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1611
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item Alumni Perspectives on their Membership in an Intergenerational Participatory Design Team(2018) McNally, Brenna; Druin, Allison; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Participatory Design (PD) gives technology users an active role in the design of the technologies they are meant to use. PD methods have been adapted for research with children to facilitate the creation of technologies that better meet children’s desires and expectations. While the benefits HCI practitioners receive from working with children in PD can include developing more child-centric interfaces and finding surprising new innovations, research is less clear on the participants’ perceptions of their experience—such as how they perceive matters that affect them or what personal gains intergenerational PD team participants may receive from their participation. Investigating the retrospective perspectives of adult and child members of intergenerational PD teams may enable researchers to improve or develop practices that are better aligned with participant expectations. Recent work has begun to look into the gains adults perceive from their participation on traditional PD projects, and has begun to observe gains to children during their participation on PD teams. However, the retrospective perspectives of adult and child alumni who were members of intergenerational PD teams have yet to be investigated. To understand how alumni of intergenerational PD teams perceive matters that affected their membership, I conducted anonymous, online surveys and follow-up interviews with three distinct participant groups from an intergenerational PD team: child design partner alumni, parents of child alumni, and adult design partner alumni. Outcomes include new understandings of 1) the perspectives of child design partner alumni with regard to the ethics of their previous participation, 2) the gains child design partners experience and attribute to their PD team participation from the perspectives of both child alumni and their parents, and 3) the gains that adult design partners experience and attribute to their PD team participation and their perspectives on membership. Throughout these findings participants describe how participation in intergenerational PD impacted their desire and perceived ability to pursue new goals and activities throughout their lives through the development of new skills, competencies, and mindsets. From these findings, I then synthesize ten recommendations toward the goal of making intergenerational PD better support the people who are involved in it.Item Life Uncharted: Parenting Transgender, Gender-Creative, and Gay Children(2016) Vooris, Jessica Ann; King, Katie; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Gender non-conformity is often seen as an indication of a future queer sexuality, but children are thought to be too young to actually be gay or trans. Life Uncharted: Parenting Transgender, Gender-creative, and Gay Children seeks to answer questions about what it means to be a "transgender," "gender-creative," or "gay" child, and examines the experiences of families who parent against the norm, raising children who break assumptions about the body, gender, identity and desire. Drawing from media analysis, ethnography of parent blogs and family gender conferences, along with interviews with 28 families, I argue that these parents engage in "anticipation work" as they manage anxiety and uncertainty about their children's behavior, attempt to predict and manage their children's futures, and explain their decisions to others. While television documentaries offer simple narratives that often reify binary expectations of gender, and explain that transgender children are "trapped in the wrong body," my ethnographic research and interviews shows that defining a transgender or gender-creative or gay child is more complex and it is not always clear how to separate gender expression, identity, and sexuality. As children socially transition at younger ages, when memory is just beginning to form, their relationships to the body and the notion of being "transgender" is in flux. Parents emphasize being comfortable with ambiguity, listening to children and LGBTQ adults, and accepting that it’s not always possible to know what the future brings. These children’s lives are unfolding and in process, changing our notions of childhood, queerness and transness.Item Children's Music in the Southern Baptist Convention: An Ethnographic Study of Four Churches in Maryland Examining the Effects of Doctrine and Local Church Autonomy on Children's Music(2011) Diab, Melak Victoria; Provine, Robert C; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest Protestant denomination and the largest group of Baptists in the United States. Furthermore, LifeWay Christian Resources, the Southern Baptist publishing house, is the largest Christian publisher in the United States, producing various literature and media resources, including music material for children. However, the autonomous nature of the local Baptist church gives it absolute freedom to choose programs and materials apart from the Southern Baptist National Convention and LifeWay. This study examines the dynamics of the relationship between the National Convention and the local church as it pertains to children's music. The study looks at the theological and organizational framework on the national level and the local church level and how they affect children and children's music in an autonomous local church setting. The study reveals that all resources and programs related to children on the local church and national convention level, such as children's choir and Vacation Bible School, and Sunday school, are directed towards teaching the children about the two most fundamental concepts of the faith, these are conversion (how to become a Christian) and worship (how to commune with God). The SBC curriculum for children is undergirded by Howard Gardener's theory of multiple intelligences, and makes extensive use of creative movement and American Sign Language to capture children's attention. However, the nature of local church autonomy gives each church the freedom to tailor SBC curriculum to its specific needs or to choose a curriculum from another denomination altogether.Item The Enculturative Function of Toys and Games in Ancient Greece and Rome(2008) Layne, Jaime Marie; Holum, Kenneth G; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Title of Thesis: THE ENCULTURATIVE FUNCTION OF TOYS AND GAMES IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME Jaime Marie Layne, Master of Arts, 2008 Thesis directed by: Professor Kenneth G. Holum Department of History The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the enculturative function of children's toys and games in ancient Greece and Rome. Children's play has been shown to affect their development on many different levels including cognitive, behavioral, and psychological. Play is also one method through which cultures work to enculturate children. Enculturation is the process by which cultural values and behaviors are transmitted from adults to children. In chapter 1, I review the historical background of study of enculturation. In chapter 2, I discuss the evidence for ancient Greek and Roman children's toys and games. In chapter 3, I examine the contribution toys and games made to the enculturation of children in ancient Greece and Rome. I conclude that, while children's entertainment was not the only method of enculturation used in ancient Greece and Rome, it was one important part of the network of cultural institutions focused on this process.