Master of Education (MEd), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Curriculum and Teaching

While Asian American social studies scholars have explored issues related to curriculum and Asian American students' and teachers' needs (An, 2020, 2022; Gao, 2020; Rodriguez, 2019), none have yet examined Asian American adoptees. Asian American adoptees' racial and ethnic identity development journeys are qualitatively different from those of their non-adopted Asian American peers (Baden et al., 2012), so culturally responsive social studies instruction might look different for them than it would for their non-adopted peers. To begin to fill the gap, this study explored the central research question, “How do Asian American adoptees perceive the relationship between their social studies experiences and their own racial and ethnic identity development?” It also explored two sub-questions: 1) “How do Asian American adoptees identify with their own ethnic groups?” and 2) “How do Asian American adoptees identify with a broader Asian American racial identity?” This study operated from three theoretical frameworks: Baden et al.'s reculturation (2012), Phinney's three-stage ethnic identity formation (1989, 1993), and culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy (Gay, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Using an instrumental case study that also drew on phenomenology, this study utilized data from semi-structured interviews with five participants, all Asian American adoptees. Findings suggested that social studies' role in the participants' racial and ethnic identity development journeys was minimal. Overall, the participants experienced social studies instruction that presented a narrow picture of Asian American history and reinforced the master narrative. To be more fulfilling to their ethnic and racial identities, participants wanted more instructional time to be spent on Asian and Asian American history, lessons taught on their birth countries' histories and cultures, and lessons that expanded outside of token, conflict-based events. Participants conceptualized connecti (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2023, Leadership and Change

Of the roughly 3.5 million public school teachers in the United States, approximately 80% are White. In contrast, about 51.7% of the nation's students are African American, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian. This mismatch is expected to grow as the number of BIPOC students in our nation's public schools continues to increase. Studies have shown that strong positive relationships are essential for learning, but often, the relationships between White teachers and BIPOC students are strained at best, leading to poorer learning outcomes. The purpose of this Constructivist Grounded Theory study was to explore an understudied question: How do White teachers who have been deemed exemplary by educators and parents of Color perceive their relationships and experiences with BIPOC students in an educational system and a society that often marginalizes them? Open-ended interviews were conducted with 19 middle and high school teachers in Massachusetts. Dimensional analysis revealed Being-and-Becoming Across Difference as the core dimension. Five primary dimensions were identified: Reflecting, Relating, Embodying Humility, Affirming Culture, and Holding Hope. Results of this study suggest that significant changes are needed in the recruitment and hiring of White teachers and that pre-service and in-service professional development must support White teachers in far more robust and sustaining ways than currently exist. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA, https://aura.antioch.edu/, and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This dissertation explores the role of African media in shaping Africa's image through both the analysis of newspapers over the course of the 2014 Ebola crisis and an exploration of African films. This methodology redeploys aspects of Africa's (in)visibility in global politics and discourse on representation in geopolitics. Placing African film and media organizations at the center of analysis in this study is vital, as they add diversity of voices to the conversation about Africa's image in the media. The dissertation looks at how Africa is framed as perpetually “in crisis.” Specifically, the research engages analysis of African film and media depictions under the premise of crises to advance Africa's visual culture and representation. I am interested in exploring how coverage of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in The Inquirer, a major English newspaper in Liberia, compares with that in the New York Times coverage of the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Likewise, I explore how African cinema frames and represents crisis through three films – Xala (Ousmane Sembene, 1975); Pumzi (Wanuri Kahiu, 2009); and Les Saignantes (Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2005). I argue that African films speak to the possibility of positive anticipated outcomes ignored by western scholars, and, therefore, possess the agency to decolonize minds. For instance, Pumzi and Les Saignantes offer an outlook on Africa's challenges and possibilities through newly imagined futures. Precisely, the selected films first address Africa's crisis in relation to the political, economic, and environmental struggle as well as gender discourses and, second, offer a prescription of development and progress. How do African filmmakers and media personnel, through their various creative works, reconstruct Africa's global identity? Finally, I advance that this research gives voice to how Africa frames crisis. This dissertation interrogates an unbalanced global power structure that has been typically Eurocentric. Taking an opposing pos (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Media and Communication

The conceptualization of feminism and rise of feminist individuals and groups in Ghana have evolved within the Fourth Republic era (from 1992 to the present), leading to growing misunderstanding about the nature, role, and scope of the feminist activism in Ghana. This thesis examines how individuals who uphold feminist thought and practice, and gender equity nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Ghana use social media to advocate for women's and children's health and well-being, women's participation in politics and media, and elimination of crises, including rape culture and gender-based violence (GBV). The thesis analyzes how Ghanaian feminists and gender equity NGOs contribute to principles of UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5): Gender Equality and ascertains how social media is used for gender equity advocacy efforts. In-depth interviews with self-identified Ghanaian feminists and leaders of gender equity NGOs were conducted. Interview data was analyzed using grounded theory. The result of Research Question (RQ1), on how Ghanaian feminist activism has evolved, indicates growing acceptance of feminism during the latter half of the current Republic era. Findings for RQ2, on how feminist and gender equity NGOs use digital platforms to advocate for Ghanaian women and children, indicate digital platforms are used for training women on leadership and entrepreneurship, defending themselves and their children against GBV, and amplifying women's and children's interests. Findings for RQ3, on how Ghanaian feminists and NGOs contribute to UN SDG 5, reveal productive efforts to educate on gender equity, collaborate with women celebrities to take leadership roles on gender equality to broader publics, and advocate for women's representation in Ghanaian institutions. Finally, RQ4, on roles Ghanaian social media play in amplifying Ghanaian feminists, digital platforms are vital to enable collaboration, support change in public policies negatively affecting women, an (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2023, Educational Leadership

This research is for mothers of Black children and the white teachers who teach our children. The teacher demographics in K-12 education is overwhelmingly white yet the students are not. What happens when teachers with unexplored bias are placed in classrooms with excited and eager Black children? If the story we are told as parents and society is that education is the vehicle to success, then the hope is that the driver of the vehicle is committed to delivering success to our children. Personal experience led one Mom to believe that education has the potential to be harmful if white teachers do not have a clear understanding of Black culture and identity. This learning should take place prior to teachers being placed in classrooms with students of color, specifically Black children. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain an understanding of how white teachers thought about the Black students who sat in their classroom spaces and how might their behaviors connect to their white racial identity. Using Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies as the Theorical Frameworks, this exploratory study provides insight into the experiences of three white teachers who are currently working in K-12 along with one Teacher Educator who works in an undergraduate program where he works to prepare teacher candidates. Through conversations with the four respondents, three areas came to light: 1) Better information on and practice with classroom management techniques are needed in teacher education programs; 2) the complicated view that teachers and schools are places that save and change lives; and 3) white teachers need spaces to understand their own white identities. This study offers implications for practice for teacher educators, teacher candidates, policymakers, school administrators, and families. If teacher education programs and school administrators can provide spaces for white teachers to navigate and interrogate whiteness, then they can do (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2023, American Culture Studies

In 2020, people across the world began to live nearly all their lives online thanks to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Social media allowed people in quarantine and isolation to safely interact no matter where in the world they were. For some, however, this way of online existence had been happening for years. Fans of all sorts of media texts and media objects had flocked to digital realms for years as a way of finding others who felt the same way they did. Some fans choose to use their social media platform of choice to put forward a digital fan identity that fore fronted their role as a fan rather than any aspect of their offline identity. This work looks at the ways that specific social media platforms can impact the ways that fan communities form and how these communities can have impact on the sociopolitical views that users are exposed to. Using the sociopolitical touchstone of the Black Lives Matter movement in May and June 2020, this project utilizes a mixed-methods analysis of digital conversations across Twitter, TikTok,and Instagram. In comparing the three platforms it becomes clear that the unique affordances of each platform combine with unique dynamics of each fan group to privilege the voices and beliefs of socially acceptable fans. It also becomes clear that the distinctive affordances of each platform have the ability to shape offline interactions and sociopolitical ideals in different ways. We can see here just a glimpse into how the online can shape the offline in ways that have growing implications for our understanding of the social and political world.

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

Focused on alternate universes where you can get your car taxidermied, where you can be reincarnated as your neighbor's golden retriever, and where you have conversations with loved ones you've meant to all your life (but couldn't), In This Universe is a collection of branching what-ifs and cosmic could've-beens, a multiverse-jumping selection of short speculative personal essays, lyrical essays, and braided essays that challenges genre conventions and questions the idea of whether a single universe even exists that can accommodate multiple ways of being. Though it deals with many different subject matters, there is always the presence of an alternate universes working as a sort of metaphor for future-thinking and alternate ways of being. Written with the intention of providing a space for folks who don't see themselves as valid in this world, or who can't imagine possibilities for themselves in this world, In This Universe looks to reimagine embodiment and to reshape spaces and ways of being, so that we might discover for ourselves far grander, perhaps far stranger, and mostly hidden possible realities.

MS, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Geography

Art forms create representations of peoples and places. It can expressively convey their culture and identity. Many scholars have described culture and identity as processes rather than ‘things', and these processes are affected by forces from within and outside a community. Tanzania's unique and complex political and social history provide a space to analyze the effect of these forces on the representation of a community's cultural identity. Production companies, creatives, and those in power influence identity and how the Tanzanian culture is portrayed globally and globally. Questions that investigate who is being represented, how they are being represented, who the representation is for, and who is doing the representing, are key. A qualitative discourse analysis was used to examine the images from ten Tanzanian music videos from the BonogFlava genre. Questions regarding power structures and history were used as the starting points to analyze the music videos. Subaltern and post-colonial studies provided foundational theories and methods in analyzing cultural identity and national culture of a post-colonial Tanzania. Images presented in the selected music videos present a classed, heteronormative, and masculine Tanzanian culture. This thesis is not meant to present the absolute truth about cultural representations in Tanzanian music videos, but instead provide a perspective on how to qualitatively research cultural identity in visual media while maintaining a reflexive position.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Communication

People often utilize video games as laboratories for experiential experimentation (Jansz, 2005). Dating simulators, an increasingly popular type of simulative game, are environments well-suited to engaging with self-concepts related to romantic experience. Horror dating simulators, a hybrid subgenre of dating simulators and horror video games, are environments in which the player engages with these themes in a purposefully frightful context. In Study 1 (n = 18), I conducted qualitative interviews to gain insight into user motivations for exposure to fear evoking narratives with central themes of romance. In Study 2 (n = 643), I investigated relationships between narrative, aesthetic presentation, and anticipated outcomes of exposure as they pertain to media genre schema. This includes investigation of how these factors impact users' affective forecasting with horror, dating simulator, and horror dating simulator video games. Implications for media research and schema literature are discussed.

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Music Ethnomusicology

This thesis is an exploration of the sounds of the queer side of TikTok. TikTok is a social media platform, driven by user-generated audio-visual content that is delivered through the “For You” page's individually curated algorithm. As such, TikTok is uniquely situated as a social media network that inadvertently creates online communities situated around not only common interests but the trends and sounds that accompany them. Within TikTok's queer community, sounds present avenues for exploring and performing gendered and sexual identities as well as developing preexisting queer-coded communications. These sounds also serve as opportunities to raise issues of gender identity, race, and inclusivity within the LGBTQ+ community. This work is centered on case studies of TikTok sounds and their accompanying trends, each supporting a critical analysis of queer TikTok spaces as indicative of a need for intersectionality within the queer community.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2022, History

Hockey holds a central place in Canadian national identity. Despite the traditional dominance of Canadian teams in the pre-war and immediately post-war years, European nations such as the USSR, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia developed their hockey programs quickly in the post-war years, challenging Canadian dominance, and thus jeopardizing, in the eyes of Canadians, one of the most central aspects of their national culture. This loss of hockey supremacy compounded an already challenging period in which Canadians struggled to define what it meant to be Canadian in the US-led Cold War world. This thesis examines the Canadian cultural dynamics of Canadian participation in international hockey competitions during the 1960s and 1970s. These tournaments and exhibition tours played against foreign teams were commonly detailed by the Canadian press using no uncertain terms to express their contempt for their opponents. This thesis suggests the public focus on international hockey during this period reflects the uncertainty of Canadian culture and politics at home. Faced with trouble defining Canadian national identity in the Cold War world, Canadians looked to their national sport as a means of reaffirming their identity, rooted in northern masculine toughness and “Canadianness.” This work uses sports periodicals from the period between 1955 and 1975, to assess the shifting attitudes towards Canadian hockey in international competitions, and how Canadians viewed themselves in relation to the wider Cold War world when confronted with a domestic cultural crisis. This work expands on the diligent work of scholars of Canadian culture and those in the expanding subfield of hockey studies by providing a look at the thoughts of Canadians, and how their attitudes towards hockey reflect their attitudes towards Canadian culture.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2022, American Culture Studies

Since its inception in 2007, the microblogging platform Tumblr has grown from its modest roots as a social media website founded on short form, user-generated content into a hub for diverse subcommunities and unique experiences. Scholars have been keen to note the breadth of Tumblr users' worldviews and knowledgebases, and to identify the significance of its practices and emergent cultures. This thesis intends to expand upon such research and create a substantive theory of Tumblr which recognizes the platform's relevance according to users, and in connection with current scholarly understandings. It situates Tumblr as a key online platform in the creation of identity, community, and meaning for its users, one which has proven to be influential in present understandings of how people gather and interact in virtual spaces. Using constructivist grounded theory (CGT) methodology and the lens of social constructionism, this thesis seeks to analyze the lived experiences of users of Tumblr to theorize how their time on the platform have shaped who they are, how they engage with others, and how they navigate the world around them online and offline. Additionally, this thesis looks to suggest what the practices of Tumblr have contributed to users' understandings of community and identity, as well as to provide suggestions for future scholars.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Media and Communication

This project examined traditional gendered discourses surrounding the ends and means of sexuality, the emerging role of digital sexual technologies in purported sexual empowerment, and the socio-material aspects which revolve around these technologies, sexual medias, and sexual discourses. Combining critical feminist insights with media ecology, this project explored happenings within the sociosexually violent pre- and present-COVID-19 United States ecology, documenting novel and rigorous contributions in our increasingly algorithmic world. This study of the U.S. context critiques foundational constructs created by Enlightenment decisionmakers who rationalized colonial rhetorics and logics built into each preceding iteration of capitalisms from industrialism into neoliberalism since national origin. As such, it extends critiques of mechanistic models of the human body and sexual communications and situates them within the vastly uncriminalized sexual violences, as well as insufficient sexual education standards. Theoretically, I argue that a mechanization of humans has occurred, been pushed to its extreme, and is flipping into a humanization of objects. To demonstrate this, I critical feminist rhetorically analyzed 75 biomimetic sextech advertisements from the brand Lora DiCarlo, contextualizing them in salient discourses within 428 present-COVID-19 TikTok videos, investigating: “What rhetorical themes occur within advertisements for biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers in the late-stage present-COVID-19 neoliberal U.S. landscape?” “How have biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers effected how their sexual experiences are created and maintained in the sociosexual U.S. landscape?” and “How are biomimetic sextech changing vulva-havers sexual sense-making, experiences, and relations within the sexually violent late-stage capitalist present-COVID-19 U.S. landscape?” Using a feminist eye, this brings to media ecology a contextualization (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Political Science

In discussing the intersection between business and politics, Robert Dahl claimed that there is "no dearth of important and even urgent questions." This dissertation tackles one such question: How do economic firm intervention in the development of the state influence modern outcomes? I argue that when institutions are in transition, firms and state actors both face uncertainty, and as a result, they enter an arrangement in which the state actor consistently provides the firm with public resources in return for patronage. I define this as state capture. Across my three papers, I find that when we focus on the role of firms in political development, there are widespread and long-term consequences for the state and local populations when the state is captured. Across all three of these papers, I explore these ramifications in Appalachia Kentucky. State capture is not a novel concept, but its usage is uneven and unclear, and there is no cohesive intellectual conversation. The first paper ameliorates this by taking this literature and synthesizing a concept from which we can derive clearer implications. I use Kentucky and the Appalachian coal region to explore this concept. I collect archival data to test one observable implication of the concept---lack of democratic commitment and non-competitive elections. I find the inverse of what I expect to observe, elections in Appalachia Kentucky, for the locally elected sheriff and tax commissioner are more competitive than my theory predicts. I discuss this finding considering my concept and argue that this represents a need for understanding how economic firms can influence political outcomes. The second paper applies the conceptualization of state capture more deeply to the case of Appalachia Kentucky, to create a model to better understand the region's persistent economic underdevelopment. I argue that compared to previous Appalachian development models, understanding the region's local politics as captured is empiric (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Teaching and Learning

Rural communities face concentrated poverty, geographic isolation, and infrastructural challenges that constitute a myriad of complex issues like low population density and growth, dependence on stagnating and narrow employment sectors, and limited access to crucial resources like healthcare and transportation. Even more pressing, rural children are more likely to be poor than nonrural, or even the overall population, of US children and are at greater risk for health and mental health problems with less access to sufficient healthcare. These concerns compound when we consider that schools often serve as central sites of community connection, development, and well-being in rural and small-town communities, yet they struggle due to uniquely situated issues, including a lack of representation in scholarly research, a lack of funding and support from federal policies and initiatives, mandated standardized curriculum that doesn't fit the context of the community or needs of the students, fewer curriculum options, lower teacher expectations, and a lack of educational technology, difficulty in retaining qualified teachers, and the out-migration of a young workforce. A wide range of scholarship has been employed to examine these issues and provide recommendations, but examination of whiteness, racism, and class difference among white rural folks, especially inquiry that centers youth voices, is sorely missing from the conversation about rural communities' and schools' issues, concerns, strengths, and possibilities. Here, I explore how youth can offer a uniquely situated insight into these conversations as they navigate life-worlds that include substantial culture and identity work as well as interaction with both adults and other youth. I conducted a year-and-a-half long ethnography in a small, public high school in a rural community in the Midwest, seeking to explore the ways in which youth engage in cultural and identity work in their social and school life-worlds. Thi (open full item for complete abstract)

PHD, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Migrants are often oppressed groups, and non-migrants often poorly understand the challenges they face, even if they empathize. The two main problems this project seeks to address are, first, migrants' ability to maintain and/or revise a secure identity, and second, host-culture members' lack of understanding of and prejudice toward migrants. This dissertation described the challenges that migrants experience premigration, during migration, and postmigration, and explained how these experiences impact their identities. The analysis of the migrant characters' identities in Lalami's Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears demonstrated that migrants suffer from unmet autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs due to migration challenges. Moreover, the analysis investigated the problem of how migrants can redirect the identity crisis pathways of separation, marginalization, and assimilation towards integration (the secure pathway). By applying the skills of identity revision, migrants can achieve a viable and a fulfilling identity. Providing an understanding of migrants' identity needs and challenges will help the host country create more welcoming environments, replete with resources necessary for migrants to develop and maintain their new identities. In addition, the analysis of the two novels promotes the understanding of migrants' cultural and non-cultural identity challenges. Awareness of migrant identity issues should contribute to host countries' cross-cultural competency and therefore lower prejudice, intolerance, and xenophobia against migrants. It is my hope that this study will be of benefit to migrants and to both sending and receiving countries and their members. It should also be of interest to scholars and educators in the fields of migration studies, identity theory, and world literature.

BS, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Anthropology

In a world of countless identities, people often face challenges when forming their own. These identities are enriched and influenced by many sources. When forming one's identity, some people face the challenge of belonging to several groups that overlap. One such example is the Latin@ communities and the LGBTQ+ communities. These intersecting identities are elaborately intertwined and require a lens that examines this overlap. The theory of intersectionality is the primary lens used in this thesis. The goal of this research is to answer the question: How do Latin@ people who belong within the LGBTQ+ community negotiate their intersecting identities?

MFIS, Kent State University, 2020, College of the Arts / School of Fashion

Afrofuturism is a cultural and aesthetic movement within the African Diaspora that draws on the present and historical experiences of Black people and reimagines a future filtered through a Black cultural lens. There has been a growing number of fashion creatives and enthusiasts throughout the African Diaspora who are adopting this aesthetic in order to celebrate Black culture and identity. However, the role of Africa in Afrofuturism continues to be debated as many believe the term to be inherently centered on Black American experiences and cultures and not necessarily on the African experience. The purpose of this research is to explore the connection between Afrofuturism, fashion, and cultural identity in the African Diaspora. A qualitative approach using interviews and an arts-based creative online collage exercise was used to uncover the role and signification of cultural identity in the Afrofuturistic expressions of West Africans in Africa, West Africans living in America (Diasporic Africans) and African Americans. Because fashion has been likened to a form of symbolic language, this study also aims to uncover the “codes” involved in each group's communication of their cultural identities. Through the data gathered, a 3- look capsule collection was created to represent a visual summary of the views of each group on Afrofuturistic fashion expressions.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Geography

User-generated data are the key to access and engagement in the modern digital ecosystem, shaping not only the ways we interact with platforms and applications but increasingly how we move through the physical world as well. The scope and magnitude of what data enables is matched only by the diversity and complexity of ways that internet users can generate it. Thus, the data-driven shaping, coercion, and regulation of behaviors by the digital traces of individuals movements and actions is a key component of algorithmic governance, within which race acts as a determining factor of differentiation and intensity. To that end, examining how Black people are surveilled, coerced, and quantified within digital ecosystems prefigures how engagement is eventually shaped for all users, and in many cases serves as impetus to enroll non-Black individuals into regimes of control requires a reckoning with the foundational influence of anti-Blackness on the internet. It is not enough to look at the data and formulate hypotheses about what actions could have produced it, if we do not understand those behaviors as rooted in an individual's awareness of their specific context and identity. The secretive, “black box” nature of these algorithms means that users know little, if anything, about how they function, their outputs, their priorities, or their inaccuracies. Yet how individuals perceive their own position within digital ecosystems, and conceive of what responses are available to them, are widely divergent. To discern how individuals perceive their ability to exert control over their data and privacy, it is necessary to first understand how user engagement with digital platforms relies on asymmetries in experience, knowledge, and access in order to facilitate the production and collection of user data.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, English (Arts and Sciences)

The subject of my dissertation is a neglected area of Food Studies themed composition courses: women's relationships with food and the subsequent connection to food and body image, self-esteem, and overall health. Knowing how to eat and having positive relationships with food are a problem for many people, especially women. And my research for the project is situated in this tension. My methodology uses a feminist theoretical lens for a textual, rhetorical, and critical discourse analysis of: (1) the genre of cooking shows, and (2) popular diets. I further conduct a comparative discourse analysis of the two to gain insight about the ways in which women might navigate the tensions between expectations to cook as a service to others, while following diets to achieve or maintain thinness. The results of my analyses provide the basis for an upper-level Feminist Food Studies composition class, with the goal to teach writing concepts through critical analyses of artifacts (in this case, cooking shows), and through research (researching and analyzing diets), designed for any student who might take the course to evaluate the concepts therein based on her own life experiences. Additionally, beyond the immediacy of students, my research seeks to provide an alternative to toxic gendered expectations attached to food. This approach to understanding the rhetoric of women's relationships with food can additionally aid in re-examining the limitations of diagnosing and treating eating disorders as a mental illness by identifying and understanding them as potential byproducts of toxic grand narratives surrounding food consumption and societal pressures of thinness.