Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

This thesis is a piece of creative nonfiction detailing the narrator's experience as a Black, Latinx, queer, nonbinary person. The essays in this collection cover community, music writing, friendship narratives, and psychedelic drug exploration.

Committee: Michelle Herman Professor (Advisor); Elissa Washuta Professor (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Theatre and Film

In Toward the Horizon: Contemporary Queer Theatre as Utopic Activism, I pursue two intersecting goals. First, I offer close readings of theatrical representations of queerness that expand beyond the shallow representations of the not-so-distant past, including the trope of the gay best friend (G.B.F.) and so-called “homosexual problem plays.” Second, I engage with dramaturgies of theatre for social change, reading those dramaturgical possibilities into scripted drama in support of my argument that contemporary queer theatre creates utopic activist potential within viewing and/or reading audiences. Over five chapters, I explicate and critically consider queer theatrical works that deploy dramaturgies and pedagogies of theatre for social change, including Bull in a China Shop by Bryna Turner, Significant Other by Joshua Harmon, Choir Boy by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Scissoring by Christina Quintana, Log Cabin by Jordan Harrison, The Prom by Chad Beguelin and Matthew Sklar, A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson, and The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez. I build upon the queer theory legacies of Jose Esteban Munoz and his conceptualizing of utopia on the horizon, and Jill Dolan's notion of utopic performatives, to argue that these pieces hold the potential to lead audiences towards what I term “utopic activism.” Utopic activism concerns the potential to create change through the application of pedagogies and dramaturgies of theatre for social change to scripted drama, and in turn prompt audiences toward envisioning, embracing, and enacting a better future. Individual chapters draw on a variety of critical modes of investigation including history, historiography, and historicization, empathy, relationships and friendships, and genre conventions to investigate the ways queer theatre creates meaning. My study finds queer representation in contemporary theatre is steadily changing and consistently embracing more complex and affirming visions of queerness. Indeed, while there (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jonathan Chambers PhD (Advisor); Mieses Nermis DMA (Other); Ahlgren Angela PhD (Committee Member); Nees Heidi PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Glbt Studies; Theater; Theater Studies

Master of Science in Mathematics, Youngstown State University, 2020, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

The goal of this study was to investigate the results found previously regarding the CAMP (Character and Merit Project) study. The CAMP study's focus was investigating character development in young adolescents. A survey was created by modifying questions utilized to determine character levels in teens and young adults. The data were collected over a two-and-a-half-year period from Cub Scouts and non-Cub Scouts. At each wave an average score was calculated for different character attributes. The seven that this study focused on were Obedience, Religious Reverence, Kindness, Thriftiness, Trustworthiness, Helpfulness, and Cheerfulness. These attributes were selected because they are part of the Scout Law. We examined the impact of involvement in Cub Scouts, the relationship of the participants parents/guardians, the race of the participants parents/guardians, the relationship of the participant to their parent/guardian, and wave on these character attributes utilizing a linear mixed effects model. We also examined the variation between the sites where the participants were associated, as well as the variation between participants. This study found that the trajectories for Cub Scouts and non-Cub Scouts were significantly different in the development of certain character attributes over time. The findings in this study were similar, but not identical to the findings in the original study. There was a difference in the number of Cub Scouts and non-Cub Scouts in this study which has been addressed in the analysis of the data. More research is needed in order to fully understand the impacts of different variables on character development in adolescents.

Committee: G. Jay Kerns PhD (Advisor); Lucy Kerns PhD (Committee Member); Nguyet Nguyen PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Mathematics

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2019, Art History (Fine Arts)

This paper visually analyzes the anime Yuri!!! on Ice (2016), directed by Sayo Yamamoto, in moments that target interaction from the fujoshi fan-group. In the first chapter, the concept of moe is used to analyze character traits and the beginnings of character relationships. The second chapter analyzes scenes of ambiguous and suggestive animation, which inspires fujoshi to create images of the characters (Victor and Yuri as well as Yurio and Otabek) as romantically involved. The third chapter analyzes moments depicted within the credit scenes of the anime that further promote the romantic involvement of the characters. This paper concludes that fujoshi participation was purposefully encouraged by the anime creators.

Committee: Andrea Frohne Dr. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Art History

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2018, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Visibility and invisibility are long-standing tropes in the African-American literary tradition. Frequently they are presented in satiric language. I argue that Paul Beatty's Mann Booker Award-winning novel The Sellout now holds an important role in this tradition. Specifically, The Sellout hearkens specifically to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and to Paul Beatty's earlier novel The White Boy Shuffle. Further, The Sellout exposes the ongoing presence and function of racism in an America that has elected its first African-American president, Barack Obama, and that now claims to be "post-racial," even as its spectral reproduction and commodification of blackness persist. By analyzing the four primary male characters, I show that the novel concludes that America is not yet ready for true multicultural heterogeneity because neither white America nor black America has truly reconciled itself with America's historical and continuing racism, and I show that the novel's solution is an anti-racist philosophy of "Unmitigated Blackness."

Committee: Frederick Karem (Committee Chair); Julie Burrell (Committee Member); Adam Sonstegard (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; Literature

Bachelor of Arts, University of Toledo, 2018, English

Shyam Selvadurai's novel, Funny Boy (1994), challenged the conceived sentiments of queerness in Sri Lanka, providing the kindling for an open conversation about alternative modes of sexuality in a culture that resisted such conversations. In this essay, I argue that the protagonist, Arjie, achieves sexual awakening through his active literary imagination, alliances with other marginalized characters, and manipulation of public and private spaces—all of which prevent him from being shamed into heteronormative behavior. Despite living in a society that labels queer people simply “funny” out of fear that articulating queerness would legitimize it, Arjie is not only able to withstand the oppressive shame culture, but actively resists it. I take special emphasis on reclaiming the loose term “queer” (applying Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's open definition of the term), as critics tend to read Arjie as a homosexual; I find this view of the novel counterintuitive, as Selvadurai emphasizes the lack of definition throughout the novel. In presenting “queer” as an alternative to “homosexual”, I offer the joint argument that Arjie's queering of physical and metaphysical spaces allows him to transcend the boundaries other characters grapple with, and thus not only survive but thrive in a family governed by shame and adherence to patriarchal doctrine. Reading through a queer perspective also allows for analysis that identifies other, previously unexplored, “funny” aspects of the novel such as how Selvadurai subverts genre-specific expectations of the bildungsroman and disrupts the format of the traditional novel by dividing it into six distinct stories.

Committee: Parama Sarkar PhD (Advisor); Melissa Gregory PhD (Committee Chair); Skai Stelzer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Asian Studies; Canadian Literature; Gender; Gender Studies; Literature; South Asian Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, American Culture Studies

The following thesis seeks to contribute to contemporary masculinities scholarship by exploring the recent deployment, on and among 20th and 21st century MIC telecommunications, of the myth of the lost boy. It begins with a close look at the origin of the myth of the lost boy, a form first authored as a revision to modernity's myth of the boy by New Imperialists who sought to justify the long term occupation of colonial territories and protectorates and thus shifted, away from an earlier model of domestic masculinity that pressed forward towards an exhaustive known, rational, and developed; and towards a model of masculinity that was restricted to a Bakhtinian adventure time of serial story, homosocial partnership, and performances of primal boyhood. After a subsequent exploration of the medium and mandates of MIC synergy, that utilizes Marshall McLuhan's science of medium, this thesis offers that a late 20th and early 21st century community among such Futurama discovers, within the lost boy 2.0 it embraces, a configuration of masculinity that can remasculinize Futurama's dogma of networked node. While the myth of the lost boy is often popularly proposed to be problematic, detached, and disordered, my research suggests that the myth is instead a restorative configuration that discovers the model of network within Futurama to be inspired by an organic, empowered masculine affection: far from lost, the lost boy of 2017 is the heart of labor, kinship, narrative, and life. The myth of the lost boy 2.0 offers the 21st century a masculinity that naturalizes the radical and new of MIC telecommunications by discovering the form of network within a man.

Committee: Becca Cragin Dr. (Committee Chair); Jeremy Wallach Dr. (Committee Member); Esther Clinton Dr. (Committee Member); Jeffrey Brown Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; British and Irish Literature; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Information Technology; Literature; Modern Literature; Motion Pictures; Web Studies; Womens Studies

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2016, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

There are critical reviews regarding Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin that discuss many controversial topics in the novel. Of these reviews, most critics limit their arguments to the taboo topics of American school shootings and Eva's character as an ostensibly ambivalent mother. Unfortunately, there is little academic criticism on Shriver's most recognized novel and, among such analyses, two of Shriver's most crucial depictions are overlooked. Firstly, readers must acknowledge the impact that contemporary American society has on females and mothers. This novel shows how much a culture relies on societal “rules” that govern human expectations. Secondly, Shriver's character of Celia is often overlooked. Without taking Celia into account, Eva cannot be fully analyzed as a mother. Eva's character can be defined as a conventional and unconventional female. We should also recognize Celia's importance, as well as the significance of each child's reaction when identifying Eva's conventional and unconventional mothering tactics. As I demonstrate, Eva is not an ambivalent mother, even though society labels her as such. Shriver suggests that how a person mothers a particular child is influenced by that individual child's reaction to that style of mothering. Kevin responds more agreeably to Eva's unconventional mothering, while Celia flourishes with Eva's conventional mothering. For Shriver, contemporary society defines and critiques our expectations for gender and motherhood. Since Shriver's protagonist is both a female and a mother, Shriver suggests that the character of Eva must endure more scrutiny from society. Ultimately, Shriver depicts a society that makes us do, say, and think the absurd, like condemning a mother for her teenager's murderous acts.

Committee: Rachel Carnell PhD (Committee Chair); Adam Sonstegard PhD (Committee Member); James Marino PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Families and Family Life; Gender Studies; Literature; Womens Studies

Bachelor of Arts, University of Toledo, 2016, English

Nelson George's notion of the "post-soul aesthetic"--defined as the artistic vision of black artists who come of age after the Civil Rights and Black Power/Arts Movements of the 1960s and 70s--provides many African American writers and scholars with a vehicle for critically examining contemporary African American literature and culture. In his 1996 debut novel "The White Boy Shuffle," poet Paul Beatty parodies and examines many spheres of contemporary black culture, among them the facade of "white" multiculturalism, the queerness of black masculinity, and the globalization of black popular culture. I argue that the formal structure of the novel replicates Beatty's exploration and subversion of post-soul discourses on blackness. By simultaneously rejecting yet working within the category of "post-soul," "The White Boy Shuffle" evinces a post-soul sensibility that maintains the fluidity and playfulness inherent to the post-soul generation, illustrating Greg Tate's definition of post-soul as the "African American equivalent to postmodernism." Through the protagonist Gunnar Kaufman, a young black poet, I believe that the novel's form prioritizes poetry, which disrupts the fictional genre. Also, by employing particular racial nomenclature and consistent querying from Gunnar which satirizes past racial discourses, the novel signifies on the timeline of "America's never-ending discussion of race" and brings them forward for the post-soul generation to examine.

Committee: Melissa Gregory PhD (Committee Chair); Kimberly Mack PhD (Advisor); Parama Sarkar PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; American Literature; Literature

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2015, English

This thesis explores the spectrum of female representation and feminine experience in Helen Oyeyemi's Boy, Snow, Bird, a postmodern fairy tale retelling of “Snow White.” Within the novel, Oyeyemi creates several female characters that represent various feminine experiences. The image of the mirror enables me to navigate these characters and their stories. As each character searches for her identity within the constraints of patriarchal oppression, she develops a voice through the act of storytelling. I contend that the novel, as a postmodern fairy tale, engages in social-resistance as it uses the mirror to expose and confront patriarchal constructions of women.

Committee: Tereza Szeghi Dr. (Committee Chair); Kara Getrost Dr. (Committee Member); Bryan Bardine Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2014, English (Arts and Sciences)

These poems are the culmination of an experiment toward understanding how certain celestial phenomena influence our inner and outer lives in an abundance of ways that simply go undetected by the senses. In an effort to both understand the inner life's relation to the outer, the poems undertake the project (through a dream-like tone, crafted to convey the speaker's journey of rediscovering senses) of understanding the relationship of humans and the world, perspective and self. Split between the concepts of refraction and reflection, The Boy with the Aluminum Hat is a metaphor, a voice-piece to vocalize both the paranoia of never understanding our lives and the desire to know the truth of existence. Both sections collide with the anxiety of living in the world on a daily basis. Simultaneously, the poems illustrate the body's relation to this world that it is rooted to and from which it is occasionally uprooted.

Committee: Halliday Mark (Advisor) Subjects: American Literature; Earth; Electromagnetics; Personality

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, ED Teaching and Learning (Columbus campus)

This study of science education in the Boy Scouts of America focused on males with Boy Scout experience. The mixed-methods study topics included: merit badge standards compared with National Science Education Standards, Scout responses to open-ended survey questions, the learning styles of Scouts, a quantitative assessment of science content knowledge acquisition using the Geology merit badge, and a qualitative analysis of interview responses of Scouts, Scout leaders, and scientists who were Scouts. The merit badge requirements of the 121 current merit badges were mapped onto the National Science Education Standards: 103 badges (85.12%) had at least one requirement meeting the National Science Education Standards. In 2007, Scouts earned 1,628,500 merit badges with at least one science requirement, including 72,279 Environmental Science merit badges. “Camping” was the “favorite thing about Scouts” for 54.4% of the boys who completed the survey. When combined with other outdoor activities, what 72.5% of the boys liked best about Boy Scouts involved outdoor activity. The learning styles of Scouts tend to include tactile and/or visual elements. Scouts were more global and integrated than analytical in their thinking patterns; they also had a significant intake element in their learning style. Earning a Geology merit badge at any location resulted in a significant gain of content knowledge; the combined treatment groups for all location types had a 9.13% gain in content knowledge. The amount of content knowledge acquired through the merit badge program varied with location; boys earning the Geology merit badge at summer camp or working as a troop with a merit badge counselor tended to acquire more geology content knowledge than boys earning the merit badge at a one-day event. Boys retained the content knowledge learned while earning the merit badge. Scientists, Scout leaders, and Scouts felt that Scouts learned science through participation in the Boy Scout program (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Barbara Thomson PhD (Advisor); John Harder PhD (Committee Member); David Haury PhD (Committee Member); Garry McKenzie PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Curricula; Education; Gender; Geology; Science Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2007, American Culture Studies/Popular Culture

This study examines the folklore produced by the Boy Scout summer camp staff members at Camp Lakota during the summers of 2002 and 2003, including songs, skits, and stories performed both in front of campers as well as “behind the scenes.” I argue that this particular subgroup within the Boy Scouts of America orders and passes on a particular constellation of masculinities to the younger Scouts through folklore while the staff are simultaneously attempting to pass as masculine themselves. The complexities of this situation—trying to pass on what one has not fully acquired, and thus must only pass as—result in an ordering of masculinities which includes performances of what I call taking a pass on received masculinities. The way that summer camp staff members cope with their precarious situation is by becoming tradition creators and bearers, that is, by acquiescing to their position in the hegemonizing process. It is my contention that hegemonic hetero-patriarchal masculinity is maintained by partially ordered subjects who engage in rather complex passings with various masculinities.

Committee: Joe Austin (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Science in Education, University of Akron, 2010, Educational Foundations-Social/Philosophical Foundations of Education

This paper is about males and the pressure they face to establish and maintain hegemonic masculinity.

Committee: Sandra Spickard Prettyman Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: