Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Bioethics

This paper examines the impact consumerist healthcare is having on Catholic Health Ministries, particularly in the language that is adopted and integrated by its leadership into their organizational culture. It shows that while the broader consumerist culture has shaped healthcare in the United States, such an influence is notable in Catholic healthcare, which comprises a significant portion of the healthcare sector in the United States. It shows that while Catholic hospitals and systems proclaim themselves to be ministries rooted in the theological tradition and spirituality of the Catholic Church, they utilize language and have practices that are informed by consumer culture, which runs counter to said theological tradition. Thus, by adopting consumerist language and practices, Catholic health ministries risk losing their capacity to remain genuinely Catholic. By exploring this risk, this paper will offer a caution to Catholic health ministries and proposes that formation, as a deliberate exposure of leaders and team members within Catholic healthcare to Catholic theology, is a means by which Catholic healthcare ministries can cultivate a culture, rooted in the spirituality of their founding orders, that will preserve their missional identity as the healthcare sector becomes increasingly consumeristic.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Comparative Studies

This dissertation theorizes the concept of enchantment, articulating it as an orientation towards affects, embodied experiences, and material cultures. The experience of enchantment is amplified by confusing space and time, calling forth social fantasies, and attuning oneself to the natural world. Enchantment is also a potent energizing force, capable of transforming the world around it, whether by arranging subjects and relationships in ways that produce and maintain antiblackness, orientalism, and misogyny, or offering life-giving possibilities that resist the harm of hegemonic forces. Enchantment informs grotesque and fantastical representations of racialized subjects and encourages sustained investment in consumer practices that are never satisfied. Yet enchantment also resides in moments of respite, wonder, and nostalgia for subaltern people. This dissertation aligns the life-giving possibilities of enchantment with creative practice and expression, demonstrating how imagination and fantasy allow the formation of new and more expansive worlds where marginalized peoples can thrive. Yet even while engaging in liberative artistic praxis, subjects must often negotiate dominant capitalist and colonial logics that inform the materials and practices of their world-making.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, American Culture Studies

The purpose of this dissertation is threefold. First, to investigate settings where audiences participated in the 2020 U.S. presidential election debates by organizing or attending debate watch parties. Second, to explore why these parties became meaningful for audiences. Third, to explore how the setting of these parties organized the sense-making for audiences of the debates. While no prior research on debate watch parties currently exists, they have become popular over the last five U.S. presidential elections and are significant in that they involve facets of political communication and political engagement not typically paired in American political culture: political consumerism, activism, sports spectatorship, and political cynicism. An ethnographic narrative excavation of debate watch parties—compiled from participant observations collected from my own field notes, open-ended surveys, and postmodern interviews—reveals six roles that audiences performed as they participated in these events: Marketeers, Public Seekers, Activists, Hosts, Antagonists, and Reluctant Partiers. I investigate how the setting organized these roles, comparing parties held in physically built bars and in online, virtual platforms, finding that both settings allowed for the construction of participatory civic identities amongst audiences. I evaluate how public interactions at debate watch parties in virtual environments mimicked the public interactions at parties hosted in bars, and particularly how political brand cultures crept into online environments. This leads to a discussion of how these audiences demonstrated the concept of creative narrative appropriation, particularly in the blending of electoral spectatorship with sports spectatorship. This underscores the stress and unease amongst audiences towards electoral politics, and how debate watch parties provided attendees and organizers with a safe social setting in which to publicly cope with these concerns.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, History

As the human population surges today toward 8 billion, the struggle to ensure necessary food, water, and public health has never been more intense. My dissertation unveils the interlinked origins of British and American environmentalism from 1900 to 1975, which developed as a debate between advocates of “natural” versus “artificial” solutions to the question of nutrition and health. My project explores the “green” or organic movement that resisted intensive, chemical-based farming practices, fluoridation and chlorination of public water, pasteurization of milk products, artificial baby formula, and other processed or manufactured foods. My work answers the question of why women make up approximately 75% of the participants in the environmental movement today. It traces the origins of “green” behavior and “green identities” to these early debates over the utility of scientifically “modern” food and health mandates versus natural and traditional practices. I argue that gender and family structures were fundamental to these early debates as proponents of both “natural” and “artificial” sides focused on children's health as their primary litmus test to legitimize success in food and health practices. In doing so, both the organic movement and the technocratic movement levied an enormous level of anxiety on mothers as the primary household consumers and caregivers to make the right decisions for their children's health and future. My dissertation is the first to analyze these gender and family dimensions and to demonstrate the transnational connection and mutual influences between the US and UK. It also reminds us that the environmental movement began decades before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and was not initially divided politically between left and right (as it came to be after the 1970s) but rather developed from the argument over whether “natural” or “artificial” approaches would produce the healthiest food and water for families.

Master of Science in Criminal Justice (MSCJ), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Criminal Justice

The undergraduate major of criminal justice may be succumbing to effects of student-consumer attitudes, especially considering that criminal justice as an academic study does not currently benefit from the rigors associated with accreditation. Many students are selecting universities with lower costs of attendance and in locations of the country with lower costs of living with the rising costs of higher education. Criminal justice education may also be associated with the CSI-effect. Popular entertainment such as television shows like CSI has shown aspects of the criminal justice system to have more dramatized expectations from the general public. With an expected undergraduate enrollment drop-off by the middle of this decade, it may be likely that criminal justice education is already shifting its curriculum to mirror false expectations of the criminal justice system by way of the CSI-effect. Criminal justice as an academic study can appeal to consumeristic students with consumer-style courses. Although there is some previous research on criminal justice education, studies on the existence of consumerism in criminal justice education are lacking. The current study is an exploratory analysis of the existence of consumer-style courses in criminal justice education and explores 2,957 individual courses from 119 undergraduate degree-earning institutions. Results show that consumer-style courses do exist, but currently in small numbers. More traditional, content based, and standardized courses on the other hand, exist in high numbers, accounting for over half the sample size. Implications for both results are discussed in the manuscript.

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2019, Leadership and Change

The purpose of this study was to assess the degree to which servant leadership characteristics are exhibited in medical group practices, and the degree to which servant leadership characteristics correlated with measures of empathic care. This study featured an explanatory mixed methods research design embedded in appreciative inquiry. A total of 189 mid-level practitioners consisting of nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and practice mangers responded to a 32-item scale survey that featured a six-point Likert scale to measure servant leadership items and a 10-point continuous scale to assess measures of empathic care. The servant leadership items were based on the seven pillars of servant leadership. Data analyses included assessing means, standard deviations, and percentage distributions for servant leadership statements and empathic care statements. Additionally, bivariate correlation analysis and standard multiple regression analysis were conducted to assess the degree of influence of servant leadership characteristics on measures of empathic care. Findings from this study identified Pillar 1 (Persons of Character) as the servant leadership pillar most strongly exhibited in the medical group practices. Furthermore, Pillar 5 (Has Foresight) was the strongest correlate of reported empathic care within medical group practices as well as team members' proclivity to practice servant leadership behaviors with patients more than with each other. The study also found that clinicians and non-clinicians significantly differed in their endorsement of all of the servant leadership pillars except Pillar 1 (Persons of Character). The findings of this dissertation point to strategies for promoting an environment of empathic care, and team building and organizational development and training in the medical group practices. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, h (open full item for complete abstract)

MA, Kent State University, 2018, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

Norman Rockwell was a renowned illustrator and chronicler of American life for more than half a century, documenting the pulse of American life during pivotal times in twentieth century history. During his long and celebrated career, he navigated a wide array of business relationships through which he took direction from his clients, yet simultaneously inserted his own individualistic perceptions of society capturing change through subtle imagery and minute details. This thesis will illuminate three such relationships in order to dissect how the interplay of client to artist negotiations and communications influenced the tenor and content of the images Rockwell created and the direction of his career. For Rockwell's magazine covers, The Saturday Evening Post in particular, the artist was expected to adhere to strict parameters of imagery designed to sell magazines to middle class consumers and business people who in the view of the publisher, epitomized American Exceptionalism and represented achievers in their quest for the American Dream. For his advertising clients, content and messaging were heavily influenced by trends in consumerism, connections of consumerism to democracy, and the science of advertising, coupled with Rockwell's own observations of societal trends. Finally, Rockwell's longtime association with Famous Artists Schools placed the artist and his exceptional talent in the midst of an expansive international business teaching art to those who had time to spare and sought the rewards of the American Dream. Famous Artists Schools also provided Rockwell with structure for his multifaceted career that served to ground his family with benefits and consistency. Rockwell was certainly influenced by the clients he served, but also through insertion of his own perceptions, came to influence the direction of American life. Late in life, Rockwell was able to loosen the constraints placed upon him by his client relationships, working for Look and was fina (open full item for complete abstract)

PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

This dissertation plumbs reactions to Lincoln beyond a strictly political lens, contending that a consumer imaginary facilitated the traction Lincoln's western manhood gained in the urban northeast in 1848, 1860, and 1861. Borrowing from Charles Taylor's theory of the social imaginary, a consumer imaginary highlights the pursuit of novelty in collective practices and values. The perceived divide between the bucolic West and urban East, divided by the Allegheny Mountains in popular mid-nineteenth century discourse, informed ideas of manhood. Urban northeasterners, characterized by an urbane mentality along the northern Atlantic seaboard, reveled in Lincoln's personification of western life. Popular urban entertainment, notably P.T. Barnum's exhibits, and advances in print culture predisposed audiences to view Lincoln's western manhood as striking for its association with feral virility. In these urban milieus, a consumer imaginary served as the mind's eye, a filter through which Lincoln's western manhood was animated and consumed. This dissertation is divided into five chapters with an epilogue. Chapters one and two explore how audiences perceived Lincoln's western manhood as amusing during his speaking tours of New England and New York City in 1848 and 1860. Lincoln's appearance and manner of speech verified him as an authentic stump speaker—complete with eccentric body motion, jokes, and yarns. Chapter three concerns how Lincoln was portrayal by urban northeast media. Chapter four probes how spectacles and talisman associated with Lincoln fed a burgeoning appetite for the novelty of his western manhood. The final chapter centers on the perception of Lincoln's western association as a celebrity in 1861. Consumer capitalism, flourishing cities, the proliferation of inexpensive print likenesses, and the onset of celebrity culture all set the foundation for a consumer imaginary that grew increasingly intense as the century unfolded.

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

The practice of skin bleaching or chemically lightening of skin has become a worldwide concern particularly in the past three decades. In Africa, these practices are increasingly becoming problematic due to the circumstances surrounding the procedure and the underlying health risks. Despite these threats, skin bleaching and other body augmentation procedures remain prevalent around the world. This thesis uses a multi-pronged approach in examining the concept of skin bleaching and body image politics in Kenya. I argue that colonial legacies, globalization, increase in the use of technology, and the digitization of Kenya television broadcasting has had a great impact on the spread and shift of cultures in Kenya resulting to such practices. I will also look at the role of a commercial spaces within a city in enabling and providing access to such practices to middle and lower class citizens. Additionally, this study aims at addressing the importance of decolonizing Kenyans concerning issues surrounding beauty and body image.

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2017, Sociology

With colleges and universities functioning more as businesses, students have been conceptualized as consumers and customers of the “products” and services “sold” by higher education institutions. Anecdotally, a considerable amount of college students have consumer-orientations. This rise in student consumerism has not only transformed student ideologies regarding the purpose of higher education, but its negatively impacting student behavior and learning processes inside the classroom. However, empirical studies have yet to support the suggested prevalence of student consumerism. Additionally, no study has attempted to understand student consumerism at the social psychological level. Using an electronic survey administered to undergraduate students at a public university, this pilot study shows that student-consumer orientations are moderate at best, and many students do not agree with certain beliefs or behaviors that are attributed to consumer-orientations. At the social psychological level, multiple regression results indicated student consumer attitudes are significantly associated with social exchanges or activities involving academic costs. Furthermore, the results suggested that males find academic activities or exchanges more costly than females, and males also find putting off academic work for non-academic social exchanges or activities more rewarding than females. In using a social psychological perspective on student consumerism, this pilot study will contribute to future research that explores students educational decision-making processes.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2016, Theology

This dissertation examines the social magisterium of Pope Leo XIII as it is developed in the aftermath of the French Revolution and during the nationalizing process of the liberal Italian state. The thesis of the dissertation is that Leo XIII provides Catholic social teaching with a proper vision of human relationship as a mode of analogical participation in the Lord's goodness. In his own historical context, Leo's analogical vision of social relations is developed in tension with the nation-state's proposal of political citizenship as the social relation that relativizes every other relation – most especially one's ecclesial relation. In our own context, Leo's analogical vision of social relations stands in tension with the late-modern proposal of consumerism as the social reality that relativizes every other relation – including one's matrimonial, familial, social, and ecclesial relations.

BA, Oberlin College, 2015, English

Journalists often write about the death of various print and media forms—deaths that have yet to occur, but which we continually anticipate in deference to a tacit law which discards the past as a “useless encumbrance” of outmoded styles of consumption. But is that encumbrance necessarily useless? In this paper, I argue that George Gissing's New Grub Street (1891), which narrates the deaths of two realist novelists and has been called an “epitaph for Victorian fiction,” lives out its own virtual death to good purpose. I discuss how Gissing uses the realist novel's transitional or partially exhausted state to conserve social possibilities excluded by consumer society and the newer, less novelistic commodities that circulate within it. I examine theories of consumerism, exploitation, and Realism in the 19th century novel to articulate how a surplus of meaning can so reside in a consumable object.

Undergraduate Honors Program, Malone University, 2015, Honors Thesis

This thesis is an analysis of the effects of consumerism on Christianity. In the United States of America, we consume in an attempt to fill our desires by making material items absolute goods. We look for fulfillment through the process of consuming because advertisers promise fulfillment and happiness, but those feelings never last. This thesis explores four aspects of consumerism and builds a definition of consumerism throughout these four chapters. Each chapter also includes a response as to how Christians can respond to consumerism and how they are called to living differently than consumerism calls us to live. As Christians, we must focus on our ultimate fulfillment coming from God who created us to be in relationship with him. The goal of this thesis was to explore how consumerism can be problematic for Christians but discover how Christians can honor God while still functioning as consumers in the United States.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2013, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Health Education

Background: Health reform promotes wise consumption of health care services and engagement in health behaviors as a way to improve public health and control health care costs. This study operationalized this concept through Employer Facilitated Health Consumerism (EFHC). EFHC was measured by the incentive tier reached by an employee in a comprehensive workplace health and wellness program. This study utilized Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) in conceptualizing environmental, personal, and behavioral factors that may have an influence on EFHC. Research Questions: Is the level of EFHC related to demographics, program participation, or selected environmental, personal, and behavioral factors? The researcher also wanted to determine the level of agreement between quantitative survey results related to levels of EFHC and qualitative focus group findings concentrated on reasons for program participation. Methods: Quantitative data were collected using a valid and reliable electronic survey in addition to pre-existing data made available by the employer. Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to look for differences between groups in the ordinal dependent variable and Spearman's correlations coefficients were run to look for associations between independent variables and the dependent variable. A multinomial logistic regression model was generated to establish how several independent variables were able to influence the odds to reaching a high level of EFHC. Multiple focus groups were conducted on-site to gather qualitative information. Group discussions were recorded and transcribed, and narratives were analyzed using constant comparison analysis. Results: Overall, eighteen independent variables were paired with EFHC in bivariate analyses. Gender, completing a physical, previously earning a program award, and behavioral capability and self-control were shown to have the strongest influence on the dependent variable. These statistical findings persisted in multivaria (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2013, English

This thesis project examines the notion of "consumer citizenship" as defined by cultural theorist Nestor Garcia Canclini and the ways in which it is illustrated or enacted within the cultural products (texts, music, etc.) of Asian Americans in the twentieth and twenty-first century. More specifically, this project explores the ways in which Asian Americans create a space for themselves in contemporary society through the production and consumption of material and cultural goods. This analysis demonstrates how this "consumer citizenship" can be limiting for minority groups, while at the same time enabling them to craft alternative subjectivities in reaction to conventional consumer culture. In addition, this project analyzes Asian American texts in conjunction with those produced by members of other minority groups, such as Latino/as, in order to demonstrate moments of coalitional possibility within the realm of consumer citizenship.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Arts and Sciences : History

Selling Brand America: The Advertising Council and the ‘Invisible Hand' of Free Enterprise, 1941-1961 explores the relationship between American advertisers and the federal government. Since the 1940's, American advertising companies have worked closely with – the United States government; major broadcasters such as ABC, CBS, and NBC; popular magazines such as Reader's Digest, Time and Life; market research and psychological testing organizations such as the AC Nielsen, the Gallup poll, and the Psychological Corporation; and brand name corporations such as Coca-Cola, Ford, Kodak, Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, General Electric, General Foods, and General Motors – to persuade public opinion at home and abroad. Since its inception as the War Advertising Council in 1941, the Advertising Council, known in the twenty-first Century as the Ad Council, has coordinated public service campaigns and brought government agencies together with the media and brand name corporations. Originally, intent on making sure advertising remained a vital part of capitalism, education, the media, politics, and religion, the Advertising Council helped these organizations pursue an economic and political strategy in which the United States led the world in a geo-political order based on the consumption of advertised brand name goods. These early evangelists of the system called the system free enterprise. To them the term meant a system in which government and business worked together to stimulate the mass consumption of brand name goods using advertising across all major media.

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

Post-war socioeconomic shifts have reconfigured the built environment to complex networks of private, commodified zones masquerading as public space. These spaces are inextricably linked to marketing strategies, financial gains, sustained economic growth. Here, actual uses and potential new uses of space are forcefully suppressed. This is evidenced by the War on Graffiti.Graffiti causes no structural damage; because it disrupts the image of space it is fought and suppressed. An investigation into its constructs might unveil a complex political infrastructure which implicates society, consumerism, and architecture. Thus, the goal of this thesis is to investigate the disconnect between mediated use of space built from image and the actual use of space built from need, to establish a methodology that translates the politics of graffiti from visual/graphic to spatial/occupiable. The found paradigms will be applied to three designs: a rural cycling lane, privacy shells in suburbia, and an urban workplace.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Art Education

This doctoral study concerns itself with how primarily White, suburban, middle-class Art Education pre-service students are prepared in academia to teach in urban/inner-city schools. As a researcher, student-teaching supervisor, Cooperating teacher, and public school Art Educator, the author examines the shifting demographics of public education in an attempt to investigate alternative practices to mitigate problematic issues in the current teacher education model. Drawing heavily on the works of the Critical Geographer Doreen Massey, the author suggests that if “space is seen as being and time as becoming” (2005, p. 29), then a focus on becoming art teacher advances a temporal epistemology. He questions how a shift to a spatial paradigm with an ontological emphasis could allow PSS to focus on being an art teacher instead of becoming one. This particular study investigates the site observations of four undergraduate students at the Ohio State University that requested and/or agreed to be placed in an urban/inner-city school during their Winter Quarter in 2012. During the 12-week study, the participants collected visual and narrative data of their travels to, entrance into, and occupancy of the school and the surrounding area. Employing the use of hand-held media and ethnographic methods, participants were encouraged to document their experiences and engage in reflexive practices throughout the process. The participants used Google Maps to map out their trajectory to the site as a means of critically examining their positionality in relation to the school. Participants created a visual representation of their learning to disseminate with their peers in a formal presentation at the conclusion of the study.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, Human Ecology: Fashion and Retail Studies

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is no longer an entirely voluntary option for retailers. Instead, retailers have been under increasing pressure from various stakeholders and extraneous parties (e.g., the government) to embrace it. The biggest challenge facing retailers today is not whether or not to implement CSR practices, but how. Acknowledging research gaps and practical significance, this dissertation highlights how retailers can reap the benefits from their commitment to CSR within a spillover effect context. It proposes a conceptual framework based upon the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) and the Expectancy-Value theory (Fishbein & Ajzen 1975) to systematically demonstrate an underlying mechanism of spillover effects and an asymmetrical negativity bias created by CSR communication messages. Specifically, two essays examine: 1) whether or not (and to what extent) CSR communication messages influence consumers' perceptions about a retailer, 2) whether or not the perceptions about the retailer are spilled over onto the evaluation of the retailers' private brands (CSR-PBs, essay one) and loyalty programs (CSR-LPs, essay two) that convey the retailer's CSR orientation, 3) whether or not the spillover effects differ depending on the valence of CSR communication messages, and finally 4) whether or not a consumer characteristic, ethical consumerism, creates differential effects on cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to the retailers' CSR-PBs and CSR-LPs. To test the proposed model within CSR-PB and CSR-LP contexts, two web-based experiments were performed with university employees (essay one) and with general US consumers (essay two). The results supported that positive and negative information about a retailer's CSR influenced consumers' beliefs/attitudes toward the retailer, but the strength of the impact was greater among consumers who learned of the negative information. Next, the results showed that beliefs an (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, French and Italian

Since the late nineteenth century, France has been confronted with the rapid instauration of consumerism and its society has been shaped by the tension between the political ideal of everyone under one roof and the consumerist ideal of everything under one roof. This study investigates representations of modern shopping sites (department stores and large format retailers such as supermarkets and hypermarkets) and elucidates how representations of retail stores in literature and other textual media have been constructed based on the opposing polarities of lieux de memoire, intentionally defined as places of identity, of social relations, and of tangible history, and non-lieux, described as unconcerned with identity, non-relational, and ahistorical. This dichotomy, I claim, is the product of a fundamental conflict between a nostalgic view of a nationalistic past and an unavoidable adoption of the modern. Focusing on the diachronic dimension of French retail and building on McNair's wheel of retailing, I theorize the model of the cultural wheel of retailing in order to illuminate how and why the same type of store is constructed as either a site of memory or a non-place at different time periods. Then, shifting my attention to the post-1945 period, I analyze the emergence and spread of large format retailers by successively focusing on each of the five meaning-making loci of culture: production, consumption, regulation, identity, and representation. With these insights in mind, I move to the investigation of six postwar French novels (Christiane Rochefort's Les Stances a Sophie, Georges Perec's Les Choses, Simone de Beauvoir's Les Belles images, J.M.G. Le Clezio's Les Geants, Frederic Beigbeder's 99 Francs, and Jean-Christophe Rufin's Globalia) and identify the presence in them of a chronotope of dystopic consumption, a sub-surface combinational scheme that manifests itself through the presence of six synergetic themes: shopping, the happiness myth, advertising, good (open full item for complete abstract)