Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2020, Communication and Development Studies (International Studies)

In April 2015, more than one thousand people died while crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe. The large numbers of people losing their lives turned this issue into a highly mediatized topic, which received the label “crisis.” These numbers became the center of a political and media debate in which displaced people were predominantly underrepresented and misrepresented. This thesis is an ethnographic account that attempts to paint a more humanistic picture of the so-called “European refugee crisis.” The work is composed of seven intimate ethnographies that bring into relief the powerful life stories of particular people who are generally left out of official and media reports about contemporary migration from the Global South to the Global North. By focusing on the personal stories of these seven individuals, this thesis sheds light on the social, historical, economic, and political dimensions of the contemporary “European Refugee Crisis” without losing sight of the people most affected by it. This is both possible and necessary because these intimate stories of the particular illustrate the macro histories of violence, colonialism, and capitalism that have resulted in the unprecedented global flows of people in the twenty-first century.

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2020, Anthropology

Lima, Peru is home to a complex history and current political climate. Out of this history and political atmosphere, various responses to government authority have been voiced via creative media. This thesis examines one such response: political, punk fanzines. This study aims to engage with how everyday, working class people in Lima express dissatisfaction with political structures that affect their lives on a day to day basis, including police violence, the exploitation of the market economy, government corruption, censorship, and economic and gender inequality. Through the medium of these politically self-aware fanzines, small photocopied booklets of 20-40 pages, we are able to see these responses as well as analyze them. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Lima during the summer of 2018. This study is in conversation with fields of ethnographic literature pertaining to the city as more than context, informal literature, DIY (do-it-yourself), and counterculture movements. The communal spirit of fanzine creation contests constraints imposed by the market economy and state authority, as participants seek spaces for collaboration and to express emotion and empower themselves through this self-expression. Participants may be using fanzines as a platform for their own voice, but also as a safe, shared space for their own spirit. Ultimately, my thesis will demonstrate how fanzines at once provide an extremely accessible platform for Limenos to express dissatisfaction and anger, and also, as a community of artists, provide liberation from the everyday constraints of an urban atmosphere.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This study explores the dance characteristics and aesthetics likely employed in Venid, venid deydades, a performance piece from mid-eighteenth-century Cusco, Peru. This seminary opera by Fray Esteban Ponce de Leon was composed and performed in the Seminary of San Antonio Abad to honor its rector, who was named Bishop of Paraguay. The music and libretto for the work are extant in the Seminary's archive, yet its choreography is unknown--a common condition that impedes the understanding of dance in its historical context. This study unites diverse textual and embodied resources to re-create dances consistent with the opera's style. Theoretically, this study analyzes the task of early dance reconstruction using Diana Taylor's conception of the archive--historical textual material--and of the repertoire--unwritten embodied information that societies pass down over time. The methodological aim of the study is to provide an explained model for the process of historically informed early dance reconstruction; thus, a minuet and contradanza are reconstructed in Chapter Five. Such reconstructions inform historical performance and provide a way to investigate dance history. This understudied opera emanates from a vibrant era of varied performance genres in Peru's culturally diverse colonial period. It reflects the powerful, official world of elite Spanish and criollo ecclesiastical circles. This investigation thus examines European Baroque dance and its archive and repertoire, as Bourbon-era tastes in Peru reflected the Spanish and continental affinity for Italian music and French dance. The research considers the roles of archive and repertoire in this dance style's preservation and in its loss from practice, both in Europe and in Peru. This study makes use of a historical and ethnographic methodology to guide the researcher in re-animating dances of the past. As such, it connects and interprets remains through historical and aesthetic analysis (includin (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2014, Sociology

This dissertation addresses the practice of informal social control in neighborhood settings by integrating extant theory with constructs from outside the mainstream of criminology. Empirical support comes from an ethnographic project conducted over a period of five years in an urban neighborhood setting. Detailed knowledge of this local context is used to frame informal social control as produced and enacted by residents in ways that both reflect and create the larger neighborhood social and cultural dynamics. Specifically, three ethnographic accounts are offered as separate papers to provide different lenses on the neighborhood dynamics. Each account can also be read as demonstrating the variability of ethnographic methodology. Taken together, these empirical papers not only report findings, but also illustrate various aspects of the unfolding process of constructivist grounded theory-building. For example, the first paper highlights how a serendipitous finding gave shape to further data analysis, illustrating the nature of “emergent” findings in grounded theory analysis. The second paper reports findings from more advanced stages of analysis and demonstrates the preliminary stages of theory construction. Finally, the last paper emphasizes the reflexive nature of ethnographic (re)presentation by presenting “findings” in the form of an evocative autoethnography. The dissertation contributes to the criminology scholarship by introducing theoretical constructs that have heretofore not been connected directly to practices of informal social control. Moreover, this dissertation is also a statement in support of the integration of more “first-person ethnography” (Venkatesh 2013) into the core of criminology. Future work will continue to build on current scholarship to provide a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between individuals and communities.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, Art Education

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of child labor in India. The child participants of this study work in the brick making industry in a small village in west-central India. The descriptive outcome of the study will be presented in the form of an ethnographic film and an accompanying written report. This study hopes to accomplish three goals. First, to describe the lived life experiences of the working children; second, to develop an indigenous theory of visual representation by collaborating with the children in the making of the film and by eliciting their reactions to the methods and technology of film making; and third, to discover indigenous ways in which the ideals proclaimed in the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child are understood by comparing the lived life experience of the children to the United Nations charter. The study is conducted with the acknowledgement of globalization as the de facto condition of our world and the study is philosophically allied with goals of international human development. The underlying theme of this dissertation is to situate the artist and art educator within the discourse of the globalization debate with a concrete example of how artistic approaches can be employed for meaningful engagement with global social issues. Findings of the study are based upon a conceptually complete and edited rough cut of the proposed film. The final production of the film will be completed in the near future.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2009, Mass Communication (Communication)

In the 1990s, the liberalization of the media industry in African countries such as Kenya was faced with the challenge of continuing to provide much-needed information to the African population. One segment of particular interest in Kenya was the rural audience that makes up 80% of the country's population. This is a research on the role of radio in rural listeners' everyday lives within a liberalized media environment. Using the media ethnography method, I examined the radio consumption habits of rural people of the Kieni West Division, Nyeri District, Kenya. How do they choose content from the stations that are available? What type of content do they seek and how does this relate to their daily lives? Data was collected using interviewing, focus-group discussions and observation methods. In addition, documents relating to radio broadcasting in Kenya were analyzed. This research found that radio is the most important and accessible medium in Kieni West and that vernacular radio stations are the most preferred ones. Kieni West listeners use radio to obtain information about what is happening locally and beyond. They use radio to access information on health and agriculture. In addition, listeners rely on radio for social interactions, civic engagement, and as a platform where they can take some of their problems and seek solutions. This research concludes that media liberalization and commercialization of radio in Kenya has led to a number of outcomes to rural listeners. These include emergence of a competitive radio industry that provides multiple outlets and a wide variety of content from which people can choose. Secondly, the rise of vernacular radio stations has provided access to broadcasting in various local languages which allows for diverse content to a wide section of the population. Vernacular stations demonstrate sensitivity to the needs of rural audiences and therefore higher acceptance.

Ed.D., Antioch University, 2024, Education

The purpose of this research dissertation was to investigate and explore consciousness in millennial African American men. This study defined consciousness in the form of self-concept or self-conceptualization, the image we have of ourselves (Akbar, 1991; McLeod 2008). The research question under investigation is, How do African American college men define identity, masculinity, and self-concept under the umbrella of consciousness? This study also examines the relation to environmental factors which include type of schooling, household dynamics, high school mentorship, and college readiness. Investigative approaches also include asking questions regarding socio-economic status, academic achievement, and success. This research also included the sub question of, “How do African American men explain factors of identity as it relates to race, identity, masculinity, aggression, and overall existence”? The researcher utilized a qualitative approach. Participants for this study included African American men between the ages of 18–25 years old. The researcher conducted a convenience sampling of students at an Historically Black College or University (HBCU). The researcher initiated collection in phases. Phase I administration was a general survey given to 30 African American men who attended the selected university. This survey was constructed with the use of Google Forms and contained general background information questions: household income, type of schooling, and parental status. Phase II consisted of five individual interviews with students who iv reported less likely to have a strong identity score based on the Nigrescence model (Cross, 1991). Phase III was the conduction of the video ethnography which included video footage of participants answering in-depth questions surrounding identity and self-consciousness. Thematic analysis and findings included: the significance of single mothers, high-school mentorship pertaining to leadership programs, and the choice of HBC (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2024, English

A combination of literary criticism and ethnography, this thesis explores emerging adult women and their relationships with food. Pulling from three novels (Margeret Atwood's "The Edible Woman," Chelsea Summers' "A Certain Hunger," and Claire Kohda's "Woman, Eating") and three interviews with woman-identifying Ohio University students, an analysis of eating habits, body, and identity is conducted. This analysis is divided into three thematically-based sections: "Restriction," "Indulgence," and "Creation," which describe and investigate the various ways emerging adult women consume.

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

Despite ongoing geopolitical concerns and influence of big data companies, this research focuses on the everyday practices on TikTok that reveal different aspects of the platform's use. This research explores the impact of TikTok on the lives of Bhutanese-Nepali women residing in Central Ohio. Through six ethnographic interviews with Bhutanese-Nepali women – who use TikTok to showcase their–everyday domestic practices – this study reveals how TikTok practices facilitate (digital) placemaking, fostering a sense of belonging for relocated refugees living in the suburbs. By contextualizing the history of displacement from Bhutan to Nepal and the US, and mapping relocation patterns from urban areas to suburbs, I illustrate how these recent movements can traced within online practices of Bhutanese-Nepali refugees. While acknowledging the potential risks of manipulation and public scrutiny associated with sharing content on a public platform, Bhutanese-Nepali women demonstrate adeptness in navigating and leveraging the algorithm, showcasing their agency and resilience both online and offline.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

The contemporary glass world is a place of diverse making that ranges from fine art to design to craft. Artists in the field fluctuate from formally educated with MFAs to individuals who are self-taught, trained through various apprenticeships and/or piecemeal educational experiences. How glass artists define success in their field, and how they chart a potential trajectory towards it, are questions that seem as though they should have clear answers. However, as the number of graduates from art programs increases, as well as the cost to start and sustain a career in the field, there is precariousness about how to maintain a successful practice. Additionally, the glass profession remains male dominated even though more females currently graduate from higher education programs throughout the US. This study focuses on female glass artists from emerging to established in their careers through qualitative interviews with 27 participants, and 7 participant observations, to reflect on the challenges and successes they have experienced and to provide a survey of the field at a time that women are seeking parity. Their stories and experiences are cross referenced with descriptive quantitative data gathered from the institutions they have interacted with as artists, students, educators, and/or administrators. The analysis and interpretation of the collected data summarizes emergent themes, and focuses on core challenges, and successes that participants encountered, while highlighting strategies that participants employ persist in the field. Utilizing portraiture methodology with narrative analysis and auto-ethnographic inclusions throughout, I provide a critical survey of the field, how female glass artists are currently working within its limitations, and how they define success.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Geography

Paper 1. Midwest aquaculture This research surveys aquaculture activities in the Midwest region across public and private domains. The resulting work demonstrates the scope and scale of activities involving the rearing of aquatic organisms. Midwest aquaculture is facing an investment problem, where public fisheries are underfunded, and private growth cannot meet rising demand for edible fish and other aquatic organisms. Paper 2. Fishing typologies The landscape of aquaculture is a result of the places emergent from human-nonhuman interactions and the spaces subsequently allocated to different relationships. The focus of this paper is to review ways that fishery management practices in the Midwest generalize about and differentiate human-animal relationships. I discuss angler demographics and present an auto-ethnography of animal encounters through fishing. I explore the making of the game designation for fish, consequences for other nongame fish, and promising place making for nongame fish species by some anglers. This work is critical of the assumptions in categorization given the fluid typology of human and nonhuman subjects. Furthermore, attention is paid to the inherently political and relational nature of animals. These critiques are not merely discursive or theoretical, as angler views shape management practices with material consequences from stocking decisions to the culling of others. Paper 3. Killing the nuisance This paper draws on a case study of species management programs in the Midwest to highlight the role of death in human/nonhuman boundary making. Research methods involve long-term immersion in the field, participant observation, interviews at hatcheries and public fishing areas, and environmental publication collection. First, I analyze control and killing practices in current federal policy for nuisance double-crested cormorant depredation and historic conflicts in aquatic systems between cormorants and fish. Second, I demonstrate (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, Communication Studies (Communication)

Master narratives of substance use and recovery in Appalachia have been largely dictated and stigmatized by outside entities, leaving little room for the complexity and nuance of the individual voices of those most intimately familiar with the topic. This dissertation explores the individual and collective stories that create the narrative of Wisdom River, a women's transitional recovery house in Appalachian Ohio, in an effort to elevate the lived realities of those experiencing substance use disorder (SUD) and recovery in Appalachia. By centering these stories, the overarching goal of this research is to move away from homogenized, stigmatizing narratives of substance use and recovery in Appalachia and toward a new narrative that honors localized knowledge and creates space for new definitions of success in SUD and recovery organizing. Data for this dissertation were created through intentional participant observation at Wisdom River (attending weekly dinners, driving residents to and from work, participating in recovery events) and through semi-structured interviews with nine members of the organization. I also engaged autoethnographic methods to explore my own role in this narrative as the child of a parent with SUD. The research questions that guided this dissertation are rooted in narrative and identity: What narratives are at play in the narrative ecology of Wisdom River, and how do those connected to Wisdom River narratively construct their identities? As participants shared their stories with me, they explored pieces of their own narratives and identities that reify, complicate, and rebut their understandings of master narratives of SUD and recovery. By confronting master narratives of what it means to experience SUD and recovery, who deserves access to safe and dignified recovery spaces, and what it looks like to be successful in recovery, Wisdom River employs what I identify as a narrative feminist approach to 12 Step recovery. While I remain committed t (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

The problem addressed in this critical autoethnographic study concerns the lack of higher education opportunities for musicians in the state of Sonora, Mexico and the ways in which that impacts music educators from the region. In particular, I look at the different paths music teachers take to follow their vocation by critically examining my privileged music education story. I base this critical lens on a framework of capital to understand the types of resources and forms of capital that are needed to study music professionally in Sonora. This study is presented through stories and poems that reflect the realities of my music education journey as well as the stories of this study's participants. The primary research question was: What factors, including social class, impact the availability and accessibility of resources and professional development opportunities for music educators in Sonora, Mexico? To collect my data, I employed individual/personal and what I call “collective” forms of data collection through journaling/creative writing and interactive focus groups. The creative writing I engaged with included letter-writing, poems, and vignettes. I did some of my personal writing before and after conducting the interactive interviews to constantly reflect and embody the practice of meaning-making. This study included 19 participants who are active music educators in Sonora and who were assigned to three focus groups. Upon completion of the nine interview sessions (three per group), I began to engage with the collected data by relistening to interviews, reading Spanish transcriptions and thinking about the possibilities for selecting and translating such stories. After identifying important moments in participants' narratives, I reread my selections to identify different forms of capital that were represented. The four forms of capital with which I framed my analyses are economic, social, cultural, and human capital, which I based on literature by Becker (1964), (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, EDU Teaching and Learning

Though Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training (DEI) has proliferated, facilitators still seek effective tools to support the growth of anti-racist consciousness in participants. An avenue with great promise around these needs is how shared reflexive vulnerability can promote the growth of this consciousness. Using the tools of microethnographic discourse analysis, an anti-racist book club at a large midwestern public school district was observed. Participants in this book club languaged and co-constructed ideas about their own anti-racist consciousness, and discussed how to promote change in their community in relation to anti-racism. Patterns occurred in (a) the ways facilitators modeled and promoted vulnerability, (b) the boundaries white teachers created around themselves while constructing their identities and responsibilities, (c) the assumptions participants had about institutional responses and cultural solutions, and (d) the challenges and opportunities participants identified as they tried to disrupt oppressive patterns in their schools. These findings reveal the effectiveness of shared reflexive vulnerability at creating spaces where educators can develop critical consciousness around issues of race and inequity. The other patterns made visible in the vulnerable space suggest important insights into how educators build boundaries based on race, grapple with institutional power and their relationship to it, and what hurdles and breakthroughs these conversations can illuminate.

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2023, Curriculum and Instruction

Although researchers have studied the impact of teacher evaluation laws on teachers and administrators, we know very little about how administrators, who assume most of the responsibility for implementing the state-mandated teacher evaluation system, proceed in making use of the evaluation tool their district uses for its performance evaluation system for teachers. Using an ethnographic approach, this multiple-case study seeks to gain a more comprehensive understanding of these complexities by examining the practices of three assistant principals from the same southeast Michigan school district. Major findings triangulated using multiple data sources including reflective journaling, questionnaires, interviews, artifacts, and focus groups, revealed administrators face substantial challenges implementing the state-mandated teacher evaluation system. Nonetheless, they persist, developing innovative solutions (e.g., tools) to help them implement the system with fidelity and engage in continuous cycles of self-improvement, which leads to increased self-efficacy.

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2023, Educational Administration

This study utilizes an intersectional ecological systems theory to explore social support network formation amongst Black women cancer patients and survivors though the use of critical ethnography. Critical ethnography is employed to discover the lived experiences of this demographic as it impacts the unique needs they require in a culturally responsive support program. Black emancipatory action research is utilized as a framework to propose an intervention aimed at improving the mental well-being and increasing the social support experienced by this demographic. Results indicate that shared community reflective of their cultural experience, an open conduit of information, and kinship with individuals who have shared a similar burden of critical illness, are key elements necessary in providing a culturally responsive intervention.

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2023, Anthropology

Using the life histories of four students from the Ohio University LGBT Center, it explores the intersections of identity and community. By exploring their personal, lived-experiences, I show how integral community is in the formation of identity, how people's intersecting identities influence the ways they move through the world, and roles digital media plays in the social worlds of queer young adults. To do, I explore themes of self-acceptance, intersectionality, mediatization, community involvement, political engagement, and space.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation is a conglomerate of three distinct, yet related, studies each exploring the question: How do the gendered experiences of a man elementary school teacher as well as portrayals of fictional men teachers in middle-grade novels contribute to the conceptualization of the gendered identities and masculinities of men who teach in the predominantly female environment of an elementary school? The first study is a content analysis of 85 middle-grade school stories using gender theory to analyze the gendered identities of 357 fictional teachers across the text set. In this analysis, I found that 40.34% of these 357 fictional teachers were constructed as men, with no transgender or nonbinary teachers in the text set. Over 90% of the teachers were constructed as White, and when they had an identified sexuality, they were most likely to be heterosexual, with only four teachers constructed as homosexual. Men teachers were most likely to be portrayed teaching P.E. or after-school classes. The teaching roles they were most likely to be shown performing included the delivery of content, the disciplining of students, and the daily management of the classroom. They were more likely than women teachers to be portrayed as fun and to give their students life advice. The second study in the dissertation is another content analysis with a much smaller text set, this time comprised of 10 middle-grade books. In this second analysis, I employ masculinity theory to examine various patterns of masculinity in the portrayals of 10 fictional teachers, each constructed as a man. In this analysis, I found that most of the fictional men teachers were constructed as successfully navigating between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities. At the same time, half of the teachers also operate to an extent within marginalized masculinities, two as gay men, two as Latinx men, and one as a Black man. These portrayals promote some gendered stereotypes of men teachers, specifically portra (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Art

Burial Sites is a project that considers the ways in which life and death are entangled in cemeteries, graveyards, memorial gardens, columbariums, burial mounds, necropolises, and all other landscapes of the dead. This text accompanies a multivolume book of photographs taken in burial sites between 2012 and 2020 throughout 15 countries. Responding to these images, the text weaves together personal narratives, unanswered questions, and theoretical citations from multiple disciplines. For the author, burial sites become spaces that hold a vast amount of knowledge discovered through the senses, acts of wandering, close observation, and the development of local relationships. Specific spreads referenced within the photobook are not included in this document, but documentation of the project's installation is included in the appendix.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, EDU Teaching and Learning

Although studies in higher education have paid attention to the complexities of learning disciplinary language and discourse, little attention has been given to learning professional discourse in a second language (L2). Recent studies on language socialization have addressed this gap by focusing on L2 students' emerging communicative competence in disciplines. However, these studies have primarily paid attention to language and considered the role of embodied actions and objects peripheral in employing the field-specific practices. This dissertation aims to complement this prior research on disciplinary socialization and professional vision by incorporating those two lines of inquiry. This study addresses the following questions: (1) How does an instructor use imagination to engage novice students in disciplinary discourse? And (2) how do L2 students change how they use disciplinary discourse practices and spatial repertoires to construct their telling over time? Taking a language socialization approach, this semester-long video-enabled ethnographic study focuses on desk critiques, or repetitive one-on-one instructional conversations about student design, in a college architectural design studio as a locus of one's learning and socialization. I recruited two instructors and two L2 international students as the focal participants for this study and video recorded all desk crit interactions between a focal instructor and student. To address the first research question, I mapped a desk crit using an advice-giving activity frame to understand how a desk crit is organized and how both parties mutually oriented each other within a crit. Within the schematized desk crit interaction with seven steps, I identified two steps, identifying a student's design problems and offering advice to address the issues, when an instructor (Mr. J) embedded an imagined scenario in telling their design narrative to co-construct perception with their students. Then, using multimodal intera (open full item for complete abstract)