Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Popular Culture

Retro video game collecting has seen an increase in popularity in the recent decade, however, with the increase in popularity of digital gaming and digital media the retro video game collectors are an endangered subculture of the video gaming industry due to the increase in digital gaming and the disappearance of the physical commodity. This research takes an autoethnographic approach and uses theories such as, Pierre Bourdieu's theories regarding capital and the field, Karl Marx's theory of commodity, and Ray Oldenburg's theory of the Third Place to explain the importance of this subculture and why retro video game collecting is worth researching.

Committee: Kristen Rudisill Ph.D (Committee Chair); Jeremy Wallach Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Epistemology

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Theatre

Over the past decade, especially in the United States, there has been a significant increase in what has commonly come to be known as athlete activism. Examples of this phenomenon include such moments as Colin Kaepernick's anthem protest in the National Football League (NFL) and the campaign for pay equality undertaken by the United States Women's National Team (USWNT). Though these examples, and many others like them, have affected important and tangible social change, there are many in the United States who claim that the practice of sport activism only serves to unnecessarily politicize the realm of sport. Opponents of sport activism often argue that sport should be kept separated from more serious matters such as pressing social and political issues. However, this argument is predicated on the assumption that sport is inherently apolitical or that it somehow exists independently of societal structures, which is demonstrably false. In “Finding Hope at the Arena: A Performance Studies Approach to Sport,” I make use of performance studies frameworks to investigate sport as a meaning-making mode of live performance with utopian potentiality. Using performance scholar Jill Dolan's theorization of the utopian performative as a theoretical framework, I examine several key moments and eras in United States sport history to interrogate the notion that sport is, or ever has been, separate from social and political issues. Through archival and performance analysis methods of research, I interrogate the ways in which sport, as a genre of live performance, produces myriad utopian visions of the country that often serve to uphold or critique the dominant social order. Moreover, I imagine this study as a step towards what I call a model of utopian sport spectatorship. Utopian sport spectatorship facilitates a form of engagement with sport similar to that of a theatrical production. In this model of spectatorship, participants, both those involved in the aspects of athletic c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Angela Ahlgren (Committee Chair); Heidi Nees (Committee Member); Jonathan Chambers (Committee Member); Amilcar Challu (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Performing Arts; Social Structure; Sociology; Theater

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, English

This dissertation examines contradictory representations of the figure of the muscular woman in Victorian fiction and the periodical press. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, writers debated whether the muscular female body should be celebrated as a fresh alternative to the wasp-waisted ideal of female beauty or condemned for its perceived destabilization of established social and aesthetic codes of feminine decorum. Within this debate, commentators advanced competing views about the efficacy of rigorous physical fitness regimens for women, the relationship between muscularity and women's reproductive capacities, and the coherence of female musculature and traditional formulations of womanhood. These conflicting views illuminated wider cultural concerns about national fitness and changing configurations of gender. My project analyzes representations of muscular women in chapters that focus on women's physical fitness commentaries, magazine illustrations, sensation narratives, and New Woman novels in order to demonstrate how muscular women necessitated revisions to Victorian cultural configurations of beauty, motherhood, femininity, and masculinity. The dissertation also explores connections between the muscular woman's unconventional embodiment of physical culture ideals and the “transgressive” forms of the literary genres in which she appeared. I argue that depictions of muscular women in Victorian fiction and the periodical press reveal fissures and contradictions in the gender and sexual ideologies underpinning Victorian physical culture, thus illuminating the muscular woman's versatility as both a fictional character and real-life social conundrum. My project demonstrates how muscular women's bodies could figure as both objects of social construction and agents of social change, as they called into question Victorian cultural understandings of gender, sexuality, and female physicality. The muscular woman's challenge to the boundaries of aesthe (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Athena Vrettos (Advisor); Christopher Flint (Committee Member); Kurt Koenigsberger (Committee Member); Renee Sentilles (Committee Member) Subjects: British and Irish Literature; Gender; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, EDU Physical Activity and Educational Services

The purpose of this study was to analyze high school physical education teachers' attitudes and understandings about culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and teaching African American males within urban high schools. The participants were 40 certified physical education teachers randomly sampled from two large urban high school districts. The research design was descriptive survey (Fraenkel & Wallen, 1990). Data were collected with a demographic questionnaire and a Teachers' Attitudes about African American Male Students survey scale, which was developed and validated for this study. The teachers' demographic data were analyzed descriptively. The scale data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential procedures (Shavelson, 1988). The physical education teachers expressed mostly favorable attitudes about teaching African American male students. However, the teachers' attitudes tended to vary as a function of their gender and ethnic status. For example, the female teachers tended to ascribe greater importance to teaching in a culturally relevant manner than did the male teachers. Moreover, the African American teachers had higher mean scores on the scale's dimensions of culture and communities; establishing social relationships; and the importance of using and understanding CRP than did the White teachers. The findings and implications are discussed regarding the teachers' attitudes and understandings about culturally relevant pedagogy and teaching African American males at urban high schools.

Committee: Samuel Hodge Ph.D (Advisor); Adrienne Dixson Ph.D (Committee Member); Ralph Gardner Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Physical Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2009, English: Composition and Rhetoric

This dissertation analyzes the American Delsarte movement—a largely white, upper- and middle-class women's performance phenomenon from the 1880s to 1905—as well as Delsartists' work in creating what they called the “New Elocution.” Scholars of rhetorical history such as Nan Johnson and Robert Connors have touched on the Delsartists in their research and have begun the work of analyzing women's participation in the American elocutionary movement; nevertheless, extensive turf remains wholly unexplored concerning women's study of oratory in this era, in particular, considering why these women thought it the most vital discipline to study. My research therefore consists largely of a recovery project, bringing archival evidence to light and arguing that in the midst of what elocutionists called this “oratorical Renaissance,” American women were flocking in surprisingly large numbers to the study of expression and elocution—not as a “social grace,” as Leila McKee, one President of a woman's college of oratory put it in 1898, but as a means of “social power.” Turn-of-the-century women believed that this power was theirs for the taking if they knew how to speak with more eloquence and confidence in public; this motive has been overlooked, I argue, as has the means by which women meant to procure oratorical ability—by the study and practice of what I term “rhetorical performance.” This dissertation defines and analyzes the concept of rhetorical performance as it occurred within three different Delsarte-influenced sites: competition in oratorical contests, the demonstration of elocutionary skill via public recitals, and finally the use of rhetorical drama to advance arguments regarding women's rights.

Committee: Dr. Cindy Lewiecki-Wilson PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Dr. Katharine Ronald PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Dr. Katie Johnson PhD (Committee Member); Dr. Charlotte Newman Goldy PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Education History; Rhetoric; Womens Studies