Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Political Science

In discussing the intersection between business and politics, Robert Dahl claimed that there is "no dearth of important and even urgent questions." This dissertation tackles one such question: How do economic firm intervention in the development of the state influence modern outcomes? I argue that when institutions are in transition, firms and state actors both face uncertainty, and as a result, they enter an arrangement in which the state actor consistently provides the firm with public resources in return for patronage. I define this as state capture. Across my three papers, I find that when we focus on the role of firms in political development, there are widespread and long-term consequences for the state and local populations when the state is captured. Across all three of these papers, I explore these ramifications in Appalachia Kentucky. State capture is not a novel concept, but its usage is uneven and unclear, and there is no cohesive intellectual conversation. The first paper ameliorates this by taking this literature and synthesizing a concept from which we can derive clearer implications. I use Kentucky and the Appalachian coal region to explore this concept. I collect archival data to test one observable implication of the concept---lack of democratic commitment and non-competitive elections. I find the inverse of what I expect to observe, elections in Appalachia Kentucky, for the locally elected sheriff and tax commissioner are more competitive than my theory predicts. I discuss this finding considering my concept and argue that this represents a need for understanding how economic firms can influence political outcomes. The second paper applies the conceptualization of state capture more deeply to the case of Appalachia Kentucky, to create a model to better understand the region's persistent economic underdevelopment. I argue that compared to previous Appalachian development models, understanding the region's local politics as captured is empiric (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Amanda Robinson (Committee Chair); Jan Pierskalla (Committee Member); Janet Box-Steffensmeier (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2019, Communication Studies (Communication)

I began this dissertation with two goals in mind: 1) to understand how queer Appalachians negotiate their intersectional identities to reframe our understanding of queers, Appalachians, queers in Appalachia, and queer Appalachians, and 2) to investigate the types of social support available to queer Appalachians as well as their awareness of and perceived access to these resources. Using grounded theory and an engaged scholarship approach, I examine how queer Appalachians in/from Central Appalachia negotiate their queer and Appalachian identities, and how they experience outlets of and access to social support. Drawing on 14 semi-structured interviews with individuals who self-identify as queer and live in or are from Central Appalachia, I explore how individuals navigate their identities and utilize various forms of social support. I utilized a constant comparative method to analyze the data (Charmaz, 2004) and report the findings in three chapters. First, I situate negotiations of a queer identity, and the identity itself, along a continuum between the public and the private where several contexts and factors influence identity negotiations. Then, I offer a participant-produced definition of “Appalachian” and describe identity negotiations within this definition. Finally, I highlight the ways in which queer Appalachians are resilient in a seemingly unsupportive region and I detail three major needs for queers in/from Central Appalachia. To conclude this project, I use the communication theory of identity (CTI) as a sensitizing framework and propose an extension to the theory. At a time when national conversations about Appalachians are abuzz, I strive to contribute new voices and queer narratives.

Committee: Brittany Peterson (Advisor); Amy Chadwick (Committee Co-Chair); Angela Hosek (Committee Member); Risa Whitson (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Arts and Sciences: Communication

This qualitative study seeks to gain insight into the lived experiences of urban Appalachian women, shedding light on the intricate web of their intersectional identities and the strategies they employ to navigate the identity gaps they encounter. Through a series of 12 in-depth interviews, this research uncovers three important strategies that urban Appalachian women employ in communicating their multifaceted identities and responding to the challenges associated with them. The results found that urban Appalachian women utilize the following strategies when communicating their intersectional identities and responding to identity gaps they experience: (1) calibration of Appalachian Identity through standpoints, (2) (re)framing meaning through identity and (3) seeking connections and shaping relationships.

Committee: Shaunak Sastry Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Ronald Jackson II Ph.D. (Committee Member); Omotayo Banjo Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

MFA, Kent State University, 2017, College of the Arts / School of Art

I Am Not Abandoning You, but You Have Changed was my Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition that used my lived experiences related to my gender and sexuality. By visually exploring my sense of identity(s) and place that utilizes narrative formats and the creation of personas to portray these lived experiences. Viewers would also become immersed within the environment and landscape created within the gallery space to project their own lived experiences to create a dialogue between the two. The works within I Am Not Abandoning You, but You Have Changed were created from processes and materials within printmedia and drawing.

Committee: Taryn McMahon (Advisor); Michael Loderstedt (Committee Member); Darice Polo (Committee Member); John-Michael Warner (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

EdD, University of Cincinnati, 2002, Education : Literacy

By combining theory and practice, this dissertation chronicles the story of a participatory action research (PAR) project that the author conducted in collaboration with eleven urban Appalachian girls. Rooted in the work of Freire (1970), PAR engages local people in a process of identifying and investigating local issues, or "thematic concerns" (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988), to enact change for emancipatory purposes. In this PAR project, the girls identified girl-writing practices, i.e. writing letters, as a thematic concern for investigation. After dialoguing about writing and related issues, the girls conducted their investigation by interviewing their sisters, mothers, and female friends and cousins. Themes of place, identity, class and writing emerged from subsequent analysis and dialogues. These dialogues, in turn, led to action as the girls began to confront class-specific stereotypes connected to place. To expand on these themes and issues, the author weaves her own history as an urban Appalachian girl into the story of this project. Drawing on the fields of literacy, language, and geography, the author utilizes the girls' stories, her own story and the story of this PAR project as she reflects on issues of place, identity, class and writing.

Committee: Dr. Deborah Hicks (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Language and Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, EDU Teaching and Learning

Abstract This paper centers on three adolescents from rural Appalachia who highlight the complex ways in which adolescents negotiate circulating dominant discourses regarding Appalachian identity. The data is drawn from a year-long critical ethnographic teacher-researcher study in a senior English class located within a rural Appalachian high school. The research objective was to investigate how the students and the teacher socially position themselves, others, the local Appalachian community and communities outside of the region through literacy and language practices in the context of the English class. Data analysis indicates that the adolescents in this study constructed local definitions and identity positionings that complicated the dominant discourses of what it means to be from Appalachia. Central to this work was their reflexive positioning as holding epistemic privilege to describe Appalachian communities and to critique non-Appalachian's assertion of authority in constructing Appalachia. Appalachian and Appalachian-heritage students' experiences with language marginalization and monitoring of peers' language variation were significant in defining insider and outsider positions. This study suggests that centering the literacy practices of the English classroom on affords an examination of local and dominant discourses of Appalachian identity supports adolescents' critical understanding of these available discourses, and their positioning relative to the discourses.

Committee: Caroline Clark PhD (Advisor); Mollie Blackburn PhD (Committee Member); Valerie Kinloch PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2009, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

Appalachians are typically represented in visual culture as homogenized: white and poor. For the rest of the country tuned into to American visual culture, Appalachia is nothing more than America's backwoods country, crawling with hillbillies, peopled by incestuous families, and stocked with slovenly welfare abusers. In the spirit of recent Appalachian scholarship's reclamation of Appalachian heterogeneity via challenges to what scholars have referred to as the “Appalachian Myth,” this study examines the rhetoric of Appalachian stereotypes in visual culture, observes scenarios in which they construct external and internal “others,” and theorizes the ways in which images promote prejudice, classism, and gender disparities and deny the existence of richly diverse cultural traditions within the region. The visual ephemera covered in this project are not studied or organized as artifacts in an historical taxonomy. Instead, they are understood as subjects within a visual grammatical system. This system establishes boundaries between Appalachia and America. Thus, the subjects and materials studied – Jesco White: The Dancing Outlaw, media coverage of the 2006 Sago mine disaster, Jessica Lynch and Lynddie England, Hillbilly Days, Redneck Games, and The Descent – care treated as iconic phrases within a larger visual etymology or taxonomy of identity. By treating images as grammatical rhetorics and situating them within the context of contemporary feminist and visual studies theories, this dissertation offers a new theoretical framework to study the construction of identity through the deployment and rhetoric of imagery.

Committee: William Condee PhD (Committee Chair); Marina Peterson PhD (Committee Member); Charles Buchanan PhD (Committee Member); Jennie Klein PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History

BA, Oberlin College, 2010, Ethnomusicology

The analytical trope of "hybridity" has a troubled past in the social sciences. The careless adoption of scientific terminology without adaptation to cultural contexts can result in dangerous consequences for ethnomusicology. This paper challenges, and ultimately accepts, the efficacy of "hybridity" as a model for musical contact. Mindful of essentialization, post-colonial situations, and the perils of over-generalization, ethnomusicology holds sophisticated tools for examining local understandings of hybridity and the role that fusions play in shaping identities. Approaching musics from internal perspectives returns agency to musicians and listeners, liberating the local experience from the cloaking paradigm of "hybridity" as a strict and predictable function of globalization. This paper examines Tunisian conceptions of musical hybridity through two case studies: the French Jazz-inspired Tunisian ‘oud musician, Anouar Brahem, and the Arab-Appalachian band, "Kantara." Internal and external discourses of "Hybridity" suit the Tunisian soundscape. I demonstrate how intentionally hybrid musical projects (fusion and ma'luf in particular) inform and are informed by Tunisian cultural histories and identities. Describing "Tunisianness" is complex in a sovereign state only fifty-four years old and conquered by successive kingdoms, from the Phoenicians to the French. In Tunisia national identity thrives on inclusion and cultural layering. Pride and "authenticity" are often located in explicitly hybrid expressions, including music. Although anxieties of purism, preservation, and standardization have curbed some musical innovation, Tunisians connect deeply with fusion, hybrid musics that, for many, exemplify what it means to be Tunisian.

Committee: Jennifer Fraser PhD (Advisor); Charles McGuire PhD (Committee Chair); Alyson Jones PhD (Committee Member); Amy Margaris PhD (Committee Member); Zeinab Abul-Magd PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Middle Eastern History; Music

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2013, Communication Studies (Communication)

This study articulates the connections between material and symbolic conditions of work and identity construction through recognizing the effects of language, discursive practices of work, and societal discourses on microentrepreneurialism in Southeastern Appalachian Ohio. Microentrepreneur identity is understood as a communicative construction drawing upon material, relational, and reflective dimensions in interaction over time. The situated discursive work practices of microentrepreneurialism in Southeastern Appalachian Ohio constructs the ontological conditions for a microentrepreneur identity in the region. This study views microentrepreneurialism as both a discourse and a practice that draws upon U.S. societal discourses and allows for participation in the socio-economic structure of U.S. society. The theoretical framework relies on an interpretive modernist conception of a moderate form of social constructionism informed by American pragmatism. Using Southeastern Appalachian Ohio as the site of research, this study applies a grounded theory methodology in the analysis of textual data and participant interviews. Findings show that the construction of a microentrepreneur identity has a positive impact on the work lives of microentrepreneurs and the local economy. Using the three dimensions of identity, participants socially constructed a microentrepreneurial identity through identification with aspects of the material world in Southeastern Appalachian Ohio, through collaborative work practices in relationships with other microentrepreneurs, and by reflecting on one colonizing aspect of how to succeed as a microentrepreneur. Implications of this study are discussed, along with limitations and future directions for research.

Committee: Raymie McKerrow (Committee Chair); Claudia Hale (Committee Member); Anita James (Committee Member); DeLysa Burnier (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Entrepreneurship