Communication

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2223

Browse

Start date: 2010Subject: search.filters.subject.Women's studies

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Paradox of Expertise: U.S. Abortion Law from 1973-2022
    (2023) Farhat, Aya H; Parry-Giles, Shawn; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In the last fifty years, abortion rights in the United States have gone from being criminalized in most states, to being legal on a federal level, to being regulated through individual state legislatures. In 1973, the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade granted fecund persons a federal right to abortion for the first time in this nation’s history. To do so, the Supreme Court conceived of abortion rights within a rhetoric of expertise. The Court relied on legal, medical, and personal conceptions of expertise as knowledge, procedure, and deference to ground abortion rights in a precedent of privacy tied to the trimester framework. Since its codification, multiple cases at the Supreme Court and lower court levels have challenged the precedent established in Roe. These challenges have worked to both protect and constrict fecund persons’ abortion rights to various degrees. Each of these post-Roe cases have reconfigured the triangulation of expertise to make sense of abortion rights in their particular political and temporal moments. For instance, the landmark abortion case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) sought to reinforce the precedent in Roe by clarifying its legal and medical inconsistencies with the undue burden standard. Thirty years later, the Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) decided such inconsistencies warranted returning the abortion decision back to the states. The ability for abortion rights to undergo such a significant shift legally exposes the rhetorical paradox of expertise. The last fifty years of abortion law indicates the inability of legal and medical knowledge and procedures to consistency define the boundaries of legal abortion. But it also shows how the Court has deferred to these expert institutions time and time again to first expand, and then constrict, fecund persons’ personal expertise over the abortion decision. The Paradox of Expertise explores the complex triangulation of expertise in abortion law through an analysis of three pivotal U.S. Supreme Court cases: Roe (1973), Casey (1992), and Dobbs (2022). In each of these cases, the justices interpreted this triangulation in differential ways to shift the boundaries of legal abortion. In Chapter One, I explore how Roe read the legal-medical history of abortion to authorize the trimester framework and regulate fecund persons’ abortion rights and expertise. By regulating abortion through the trimester framework, the Court entangled legal, medical, and personal expertise in a complex web that ultimately privileged legal and medical expertise throughout a fecund person’s pregnancy. In Chapter Two, I analyze Casey to show how the Court responded to the ambiguities presented by the trimester framework. In Casey, the Court reinterpreted the precedent in Roe to affirm abortion rights under an undue burden standard. Because the Court failed to define this standard in a consistent manner, future courts continued to battle over the ambiguities of abortion law. In Chapter Three, I examine the decision in Dobbs to show how such legal battles over expertise allowed the Court to reinterpret abortion history and warrant returning the abortion issue back to the states. But because the Dobbs Court failed to clarify the past inconsistencies in abortion law, state legislators, medical physicians, and fecund persons struggle to make sense of the legal, medical, and personal barriers to abortion access in the present moment. Today, the current landscape of abortion politics is still mired in the paradox of expertise that foreshadows the long road ahead for pro-abortion advocates and those seeking abortion access and care.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    PATHOLOGICAL PREGNANCIES: THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S ASSAULT ON MIGRANT WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND HOW BROWN WOMEN ACTIVISTS SPOKE BACK TO POWER
    (2022) de Saint Felix, Skye; Parry-Giles, Shawn J.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Abortion and immigration are two polarizing political issues in the United States. These issues were made more contentious under the Trump administration (2017-2021) that tapped into cultural and historical memories of abortion as a pathological practice. Situated at the intersection of abortion and immigration rights, migrant women’s reproduction was treated as something to be monitored and controlled to preserve white patriarchal interests. The Trump administration capitalized on the racist and sexist tenets inherent to rhetorical pathology to construct an enemy in migrant women that only his administration was qualified to neutralize through deportation, arrest, and extreme legislation. Rhetorical pathology, in the context of anti-abortion and anti-migrant policies, resulted in contradictory commitments. For instance, the Trump administration and his supporters at once humanized the fetus, but dehumanized Brown women and children by blocking them from entering the country and accessing basic needs. Administrative officials also argued that their anti-abortion platform prevented racial genocide by saving Black and Brown babies while they treated them as enemy threats to be purged from the country. I ultimately argue that white supremacy and patriarchy are unifying ideologies in rhetorical pathology that help these contradictions “make sense” for Trump supporters and anti-abortion groups. In Chapter One, I examine the Trump administration’s efforts to force birth and block paths to citizenship for migrant girls by studying the case of Jane Doe and the abuses she faced in the Office of Refugee Resettlement Custody (ORR). In Chapter Two, I investigate how white supremacists and misogynists co-opted progressive rhetoric to undermine its force by analyzing Trump’s policies that heavily regulated migrant women’s reproduction. Such cruel and unconscionable actions included reinstating (and expanding) the Global Gag Rule and passing “conscience” legislation that allows healthcare providers to discriminate against healthcare they deem “immoral” like abortion care or emergency contraceptives. In this chapter, we also see how conservatives inverted progressive frames like “Black Lives Matter” to argue that “Babies Lives Matter” to fulfill an anti-choice agenda and describe themselves as abolitionists and saviors of Brown children. In Chapter Three, I show the ways in which Brown women activists reappropriated the rhetorical power that conservatives mimicked to justify their inhumane policies. Activist women reclaimed their rhetorical power of definition, shared stories of both horror and community uplift, and used rhetorical secrecy to combat rhetorical pathologizations. Legislation in support of migrant women emphasized healing and care to undermine the rhetorics of pathology. This project ultimately exposes how rhetorical pathology operates in order to neutralize its power and center the voices and experiences of migrant women in abortion and immigration debates.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Gold Star Pilgrimages: Tracing Maternal Citizenship Through the Great War Era, 1914-1933
    (2019) Lucas, Melissa Anne; Parry-Giles, Shawn J.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    From 1930-1933, the U.S. government funded Gold Star Pilgrimages—two-week voyages for Gold Star mothers to military graveyards in Europe where their sons were buried. These Pilgrimages emerged after a decade of public deliberation over the responsibilities of American mothers to motivate sacrifice during war and commemorate death at war’s end. The political rhetoric surrounding the Pilgrimages often valorized white, biological, and patriotic Gold Star mothers as the most authentic ideals of women’s citizenship, condemned women who challenged the patriotism of maternal sacrifice, and marginalized African American mothers through segregationist practices. This project analyzes how Pilgrimage rhetoric constructed American Gold Star mothers as models of citizenship and how this ideal empowered and limited women’s political engagement and identity during an era of war, social protest, and suffrage. The chapters specifically trace how public discourse before and during the Pilgrimages defined, challenged, and reinterpreted maternal citizenship throughout the Great War era. In this study, I analyze three case studies that shaped Gold Star rhetoric and in turn conceptions of maternal citizenship from 1914 to 1933. Prior to American entry into the Great War, women’s peace and preparedness organizations publicly clashed over meanings of maternal responsibility (Chapter 1). After the war and women’s enfranchisement, Pilgrimage advocates and government officials debated Gold Star Pilgrimages through a series of congressional hearings. In the process, they exalted the Gold Star mother over more progressive forms of women’s citizenship (Chapter 2). After the government announced its decision to segregate the Pilgrimages, many prospective African American Gold Star Pilgrims publicly justified their decision to accept or boycott the Pilgrimages as a performance of maternal citizenship (Chapter 3). The Pilgrimages debates ultimately illustrate how war commemoration can function to exalt and discipline performances of maternal citizenship. The contemporary rhetoric of Gold Star mothers continues to spark public debate about what it means to authentically embody the Gold Star ideal. This project challenges the notion that the Great War has been “forgotten” in U.S. public memory by highlighting the enduring rhetorical legacies of Gold Star Pilgrimages in contemporary political discourse.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    INVENTING AND DELIVERING THE WOMAN CITIZEN: SUSAN B. ANTHONY’S EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEAKING AS A PERFORMANCE OF CITIZENSHIP IN SERVICE OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE
    (2017) Styer, Meridith Irene; Maddux, Kristy; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Susan B. Anthony became the face of the woman suffrage movement as she traveled across the country speaking and organizing. Anthony began speaking extemporaneously in 1857 and embraced the conversational and immediate performance that remained her dominant practice through her public career. This project examines how Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking functioned as a performance of citizenship in service of her arguments for women’s rights and woman suffrage during three periods of the nineteenth century. My research suggests both theoretical and methodological challenges of studying nineteenth-century extemporaneous rhetoric. I also discuss the problems associated with extemporaneous speaking in a movement for social change and engage the theoretical bounds of how citizenship can be performed rhetorically when liberal and republican citizenship status are denied based on an individual’s identity. The first period includes Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking within the social and religious upheaval of the Burned-over District of Upstate New York before and during the Civil War (1849-1864). My analysis suggests that Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking used a millennial and prophetic invention and delivery that derived from what I call the genre of Burned-over District rhetorical culture. Drawing upon this tradition allowed Anthony to speak persuasively to Burned-over District audiences but rendered her message inaccessible to the policy makers in Albany and Washington D.C. The second case examines Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking during Reconstruction (1865-1874). Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking functioned as a performance of citizenship that both constituted women as equal citizens and provided the impetus for national-level politicians and state legislatures to codify the cultural assumptions of male-gendered citizenship into policy language that excluded women from democratic citizenship rights. The third case examines how Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking functioned as a performance of “character citizenship” during the final years of her professional career in the context of the Gilded Age (1875-1906). Character citizenship manifested in that era as a way to define who was or could be a good American through the lens of gendered, middle-class, white, Protestant values. Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking functioned to frame her as a laudable woman of character who was a respectable authority on the topic of woman suffrage.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    A Feminist Affective Turn for Public Relations: Mothers, Passionate Publics, and the Childhood Vaccine Debate
    (2016) Kennedy, Amanda Kae; Toth, Elizabeth L; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This project proposes a feminist intervention in how affect and publics are theorized in public relations research. Drawing from extant literature, I argue that public relations theories of affect and publics have been apolitical and lack depth and context (Leitch & Motion, 2010a). Using the context of the online childhood vaccine debate, I illustrate several theories and concepts of the new feminist affective turn, as well as postmodern theories of affect, relevant to public relations research: (a) Public Feelings, “ugly” feelings, agency, and community (Cvetkovich, 2012; Ngai, 2007); (b) passionate politics (Mouffe, 2014); (c) postmodern assemblages, biopower, and body politics (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988; Foucault, 1984); (d) affective facts and logics of future threats (Massumi, 2010); and (e) affective ethics (Bertleson & Murphie, 2010). Scholarship in the areas of public relations, risk, feminist and postmodern affect theory, and the vaccine debate provided theoretical grounding for this project. My research questions asked: How is feminist affect theory embodied by mothers in the vaccine debate? How do mothers understand risks as affective facts in the vaccine debate (if at all)? What affective logics are used by mothers in the vaccine debate (if any)? And, What are sources of knowledge for mothers in the vaccine debate? Multi-sited online ethnographic methods were used to explore how feminist affect theory contributes to public relations research, including 29 one-on-one in-depth interviews with mothers of young children and participant observation of 15 online discussions about vaccines on parenting websites BabyCenter.com, TheBump.com, and WhatToExpect.com. I used snowball sampling to recruit interview participants and grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to analyze interview and online data. Results show that feminist affect theory contributes to theoretical and practical knowledge in public relations by politicizing and contextualizing understandings of publics and elucidating how affective facts and logics inform publics’ knowledge and choices, specifically in the context of risk. I also found evidence of suppression of dissent (Martin, 2015) and academic bias in vaccine debate research, which resulted in cultures of silence. Further areas of study included how specific contexts such as motherhood and issues of privilege and access affect publics’ experiences, knowledges, and choices.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    WOMEN'S VOICES: INTEGRATING DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS THEORY WITH SOCIAL MARKETING TO UNDERSTAND WOMEN'S HEALTH
    (2012) Sundstrom, Beth Lee; Aldoory, Linda; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Women's health serves as a marker for societal health and wellness. Women champion access to health care services for their children and families. The mother-child dyad provides a unique view of the duality of women's reproductive health. Particularly in the time period following the birth of a child, the health of mother and baby remain inextricably linked. This study focused on biological mothers of newborns. The purpose of this study was to explore how biological mothers of newborns made meaning of health. A secondary purpose of this study was to explore how women made meaning of current social marketing campaigns targeting their health. The theoretical goal of this study was to elaborate conceptual opportunities for the integration of diffusion of innovations theory within a social marketing framework. Literature regarding social marketing, diffusion of innovations theory, and women's health contributed to this study. The literature review suggested the potential to apply diffusion of innovations theory to a social marketing framework in order to better understand women's health and the health of their families. A qualitative research methodology was used to collect and analyze data. Specifically, 44 in-depth interviews with mothers of newborns provided insight into how these women made meaning of their health. Analytical techniques from the grounded theory approach were used to analyze these data. A feminist research perspective situated this study as praxis-oriented audience research to uncover new mother's health needs within a social marketing framework. Themes emerged regarding social marketing, diffusion of innovations theory, and women's health. Findings suggested that these mothers of newborns embody and challenge the mother-child dyad in various ways, resist the biomedical paradigm, and envision new ways to interact in their social networks. This study contributes to the social marketing scholarly body of knowledge by developing the application of diffusion of innovations as a particularly relevant and useful theory. Results indicate that diffusion of innovations theory offers an audience segmentation opportunity based on innovativeness and adopter categories. Findings suggest opportunities to apply diffusion of innovations theory within a social marketing framework to better understand women's health and the health of their families.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Situating Organizational Participation, Discourse, and Development at Two Key Global Maternal Health Conferences: A Critical-Cultural Analysis
    (2012) Hobler, Mara R.; Aldoory, Linda; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation studied discourse produced by development organizations for and about the global maternal health problem (GMH). Discourse analysis was conducted to answer two research questions: How did distinctive organizations engage in the Women Deliver and Global Maternal Health conferences; and how did the organizations represent the problem of GMH at the conferences (Carvalho, 2008)? This analytic inductive study considered distinctions between GMH organizations and examined how organizations exhibited constitutive (reified) understandings. The global development community has sharpened its focus on GMH due to the lack of progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. Goal five (reduction of maternal mortality), is the farthest behind. Estimates suggest that 1,000 women currently die during pregnancy and childbirth daily (WHO, 2011). Correspondingly, organizations have publically expressed renewed commitments. Organizational (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004), postmodern scholars (Holtzhausen & Voto, 2002), and critical global public relations scholars (Curtin & Gaither, 2007; L'Etang, 2005, 2010) claim that meaning production occurs through hegemonic public relations. The purpose of this dissertation was to extend the field's understanding of manifestations of organizational power and discursive meanings. In total, 72 units of data were analyzed from a purposive sample of six organizations. Codes were assigned 1603 times and reduced using Charmaz's (2006) emergent coding scheme. For validity, member check discussions were conducted with eight individuals. Findings revealed that advocacy was woven into meanings at the conferences; seen through organizational identity, speaker identity, and conceptual identities. Organizations sought recognition and legitimacy, and agreement with other organizations. Power and hierarchy undermined messages of accountability, integrity, and rights. Significantly, development discourse was univocal, as suggested by symbolic representations of organizational roles and identity constructions. Discursive themes of policy, progress, health, and measurement regulated representations. However, divergent meanings did create contradictions between understandings. Consistent with theory, meanings were fluid and unfixed, but had historical and political significance. This dissertation met the need for public relations theorists to embrace the circuit of culture as a means of capturing discrete meanings. The study also offers a three-dimensional model to accommodate interactions by multiple consumers of communication patterns and articulations.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    "BUT I'M JUST A LITTLE VOICE:" EXPLORING FACTORS THAT AFFECT RURAL WOMEN'S MEANING MAKING OF EMPOWERMENT AND HEALTH
    (2011) Austin, Lucinda; Aldoory, Linda; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This research study explores how empowerment can be incorporated as an element of health communication campaigns to positively affect rural women's everyday health activities. This study questions how rural women make meaning of empowerment and health, the factors that affect rural women's empowerment, and how health communication campaigns may bolster individual and community empowerment. Building from multiple theoretical--including empowerment theory, the situational theory of publics, the theory of planned behavior, the social cognitive theory, and a socio-ecological perspective--this study explores empowerment as a critical link in health communication and public relations theory. Dimensions of individual empowerment such as self-efficacy and perceived behavioral control were explored in more depth, as were other factors that affected empowerment, including social support, religiosity, and involvement as a construct of the situational theory of publics. This study employed a qualitative research method to explore empowerment through these rural women's lived experiences. Research was conducted through 41 qualitative, in-depth interviews with women residing in a small rural community; 15 of these women also participated in photovoice as a research method. Findings from this research demonstrate the importance of multi-level and multi-faceted socio-ecological approaches to health communication campaigns, involving communication at many levels such as the individual, organizational, and community levels. As findings from this research highlight, rural women's notions of empowerment may be impacted by their community and social interactions, their religious involvement, and their experiences with personal and family health problems. Physical and structural factors in women's lives also left them with feelings of powerlessness in certain health situations, suggesting the need for health communication campaigns to also address larger changes in structure and policy. Based upon the research findings and the prior literature, a model is proposed to aid in understanding of the factors that influence women's feelings of empowerment.