Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2023, Foundations of Education

The proliferation of educational technology currently marketed by textbook publishers reflects the neoliberal influence in higher education that emphasizes automated, standardized delivery and skills-based curriculum. Inclusive access programs are publisher developed digital packages that include access to digital course materials at a lower cost to the student, claiming to provide equitable access despite evidence that a digital divide still exists. This embedded single-case study is a critical analysis of the decision-making power of faculty and administrators as it relates to the adoption of inclusive access programs at a community college. The purpose is to explore if the adoption of inclusive access contributes to inequality in the form of digital structural violence. Hegemony is used as the theoretical framework. Data collection methods include student and faculty focus groups, faculty and administrator interviews, and faculty and student surveys. Findings indicate that while faculty members do hold some hegemonic power, the greater hegemonic force belongs to publishers and bookstores. Student data shows an appreciation for the lower cost and immediate access, but they prefer printed textbooks for academic reading. The data also suggests the possibility that inclusive access contributes to digital structural violence, but further research is needed.

Committee: Edward Janak (Committee Chair); Vicki Dagostino (Committee Member); Christine Fox (Committee Member); R. William Ayres (Committee Member) Subjects: Community Colleges; Education; Educational Sociology; Higher Education; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2013, American Culture Studies

Madness as a Way of Life examines T.V. Reed's concept of politerature as a means to read fiction with a mind towards its utilization in social justice movements for the mentally ill. Through the lens of the Freudian uncanny, Johan Galtung's three-tiered systems of violence, and Gaston Bachelard's conception of spatiality, this dissertation examines four novels as case studies for a new way of reading the literature of madness. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House unveils the accusation of female madness that lay at the heart of a woman's dissatisfaction with domestic space in the 1950s, while Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island offers a more complicated illustration of both post-traumatic stress syndrome and post-partum depression. Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and Curtis White's America Magic Mountain challenge our socially-accepted dichotomy of reason and madness whereby their antagonists give up success in favor of isolation and illness. While these texts span chronology and geography, each can be read in a way that allows us to become more empathetic to the mentally ill and reduce stigma in order to effect change. This project begins with an introduction to several social justice movements for the mentally ill, as well as a summary of the movement over time. The case studies that follow illustrate how the uncanny and the spatial may effect the psyche and how forms of direct, structural, and cultural violence work together in order to create madness where it may not have existed at all or where it is considered a detriment when it is merely another way of living. The madhouses in the texts examined herein, and the novels from which they come, offer a way to teach us how to enact change on behalf of a community who still suffers from discrimination today.

Committee: Ellen Berry (Advisor); Francisco Cabanillas (Committee Member); Ellen Gorsevski (Committee Member); William Albertini (Committee Chair) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Architecture; Germanic Literature; Literature; Medical Ethics; Peace Studies; Psychology