Ph.D., Antioch University, 2024, Leadership and Change

In higher education, the focus on student success often takes center stage in research and the professor-as-teacher practice. While numerous empirical studies concentrate on the growth and development of undergraduate students, this dissertation delves into professors' relational and felt experiences in positive teaching-learning relationships. Four terminal-degreed professors from four different schools and three different disciplines–education, humanities, and leadership–engaged in photography and were then interviewed. Participants reflected on their photographs and their experiences in a teaching-learning relationship with their students. The present study aimed to illuminate the unspoken language of connection by utilizing interpretive phenomenology and photovoice to uncover professors' relational and felt experiences and how these moments energize and rejuvenate them. Research revealed two overarching themes: generativity and seeing students' humanity; and five group experiential themes: foundational influences, relational proximity, intentional presence, assessment as a learning conversation, and feeling aligned. The theoretical foundation of this dissertation weaved together a diverse array of theories and concepts, including relational cultural theory (RCT), somatics, and embodiment. The insight from the literature combined with the findings from this study offer understanding in how professor-student relationships in higher education can be places of mutual empowerment, empathy, and mattering. By grounding the research framework in human interaction's relational and fluid, alive, and pulsating bodies, this dissertation contributes to a more humanized and inclusive understanding of the intricate relationships that shape higher education. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

Committee: Harriet Schwartz PhD (Committee Chair); Fayth Parks PhD (Committee Member); Celeste Nazeli Snowber PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Academic Guidance Counseling; Adult Education; Aesthetics; Alternative Energy; Behavioral Psychology; Clinical Psychology; Communication; Community College Education; Continuing Education; Counseling Education; Counseling Psychology; Curriculum Development; Education; Education Philosophy; Educational Evaluation; Educational Leadership; Educational Theory; Elementary Education; Ethics; Gender Studies; Higher Education; Higher Education Administration; Management; Middle School Education; Multicultural Education; Music Education; Peace Studies; Personal Relationships; Philosophy; Psychology; Reading Instruction; School Counseling; Science Education; Secondary Education; Social Work; Spirituality; Systems Design; Teacher Education; Teaching; Vocational Education

MA, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

Within Heidegger's work Being and Time, many scholars have argued that Heidegger's account of authenticity undermines elements of his project that were set out in the first division. One common complaint is that Heidegger's account of authenticity undermines his ability to account for Dasein as being-in-the-world. The concern, according to these scholars, is that the establishing normative force of the world gets stripped away through authenticity, which would lead to a worldless subject. My goal is to challenge these interpretations. I argue that authenticity actually brings into focus characteristics of the world like finitude, rather than creating a separation between subject and world. In doing this, I will lay out what exactly an account of authenticity centered on being-in-the-world looks like to show that it doesn't create problems for Heidegger's project.

Committee: Matthew Coate (Advisor); Kim Garchar (Committee Member); Michael Byron (Committee Member); Joanna Trzeciak-Huss (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

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

This dissertation probes into three contemporary fictional stories about dementia, two of which are not traditionally seen as examples of the genre of “illness narratives.” The first of these two (Edwidge Danticat's “Sunrise/Sunset”) is an intergenerational story about a mother and daughter pair, and the second (Alice Munro's “The Bear Came over the Mountain) is a redemption story of a husband whose wife becomes afflicted with dementia. The third story, Lisa Genova's Still Alice is a proper “dementia narrative,” but previous discussions of it have focused on its representation of the progress of Alice's dementia rather than on her exercise of agency. By analyzing the three primary texts in a fashion of literary analysis, I not only contend that narrative resources of focalization, progression, and intersubjectivity can be employed to make moving stories about illnesses such as dementia but demonstrate they can also serve as resources for dementia narrative identities' (re)formation during the illness's progress, with or without the help of other agents. By highlighting the insights into dementia identity offered by these stories—and by literary fiction more generally—this study can benefit specific groups of actual audiences such as professional and family caregivers, patient advocates, and narrative medicine scholars. In this way, the study can enrich critical conversations about dementia within the medical humanities, whether those conversations focus on its nature, its treatment, or its effects on caregivers and loved ones.

Committee: James Phelan (Advisor); Hannibal Hamlin (Committee Member); Angus Fletcher (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Medical Ethics

Psy. D., Antioch University, 2023, Antioch New England: Clinical Psychology

This dissertation consists of a book proposal, including a completed introduction and first chapter, in addition to detailed chapter outlines summarizing the content for the actual book. After framing this project and exploring its inspiration, which includes Freud and his free clinics (Danto, 2005), the first chapter begins with explorations of multiple theories of intersubjectivity and the analytic third, considering how contemporary sociopolitical factors might affect the intersubjective experience. To this end, I demonstrate how race, politics, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the incorporation of telehealth practices affect the intersubjective experience in psychoanalytic/psychodynamic (PA/PD) psychotherapy. I then research and review PA/PD concepts applied to sociopolitical factors. Then, in service of this knowledge, I explore PA and PD activism, which dates back to Freud and continues to this day. These chapters lead toward consideration of the tasks and significance of PA and PD psychotherapy that ventures to consider factors beyond the intrapsychic, and ultimately builds toward an argument for engaged psychoanalytic activism.

Committee: Martha Straus PhD (Committee Chair); Theodore Ellenhorn PhD, ABPP (Committee Member); Gina Pasquale PsyD (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology; Psychology; Psychotherapy; Social Psychology

Psy. D., Antioch University, 2023, Antioch New England: Clinical Psychology

Psychotherapists experience encounters in psychotherapy that present the opportunity for metaphor and imagery to be utilized as methods of intervention that enhance attunement in the therapeutic dyad. Working within imagery, tropes, and metaphor may facilitate experiential processing and integration of information. Metaphor has been used across cultures for many years to describe abstract concepts and to apply deeper meaning to the confines of logical thought. This paper discusses the literature on metaphor as an object of shared language, enhancing the space which minds share in the therapeutic dyad, and posits that metaphor has the ability to enhance intrapsychic levels of processing toward creating neurobiological and cognitive change. I will conduct a comparative analysis of the literature proposed here, resulting in a synthesis of various theories (including cognitive, interpersonal neurobiology, and psychoanalytic) on the use of metaphor and its connection to the intersubjective space. There is a focus on psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, and neurocognitive theories as they apply to metaphor, imagery, and intersubjectivity.

Committee: Theodore Ellenhorn PhD, ABPP (Committee Chair); Barbara Belcher-Timme PsyD (Committee Member); Lisa Akel PsyD (Committee Member) Subjects: Clinical Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Counseling Psychology; Language; Psychobiology; Psychology; Psychotherapy

MA, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

In this thesis, I argue that Merleau Ponty's frequent reference to painting in his philosophy can help us better understand what exactly he means by "intersubjectivity". Creating and experiencing paintings enable us to more directly experience the subjectivity that exists between people and helps us escape from becoming isolated in our own limited perceptions. Finally, I argue that this understanding of intersubjectivity given to us through painting has deep and innate ethical implications, and I close with a brief consideration of what this sort of ethics might look like in practice.

Committee: Gina Zavota (Advisor); John-Michael Warner (Committee Member); Frank Ryan (Committee Member); Michael Byron (Committee Member) Subjects: Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, EDU Teaching and Learning

In a world that is growing increasingly diverse, it is important to understand the ways in which students can come to make sense of, situate, and reconcile perspectives different than their own in English Language Arts classrooms. One approach that researchers (Newell, Bloome & Hirvela, 2015) have suggested may help students engage with multiple perspectives in a meaningful manner is through argumentation and argumentative writing. Argumentative writing as defined by Newell, Bloome, and Hirvela (2015) is a set of social practices that are contextually defined and constructed for the purposes of developing deep understandings of human experiences. It entails the collection and investigation of evidence representing multiple perspectives to inform the construction of a claim, and the support of said claim through warranting. In this dissertation I build upon Newell, Bloome, and Hirvela's (2015) notion of argumentative writing by examining the role that intersubjectivity plays in the argumentative process. To do so, I conducted a year-long ethnographic study of an 11th grade Advanced Placement Composition classroom during the 2017-2018 school year. I analyze a classroom event multiple times, each with a different focus, to investigate the construction of an intersubjective framework through classroom conversation, the ways in which the intersubjective framework was used to construct student understandings of perspectives that are unfamiliar or dissimilar from their own in said classroom conversation, and how the intersubjective framework was constructed. I framed my study using Bakhtin's (2010 a) notion of heteroglossia as well as Rommetviet's (1974) concept of intersubjectivity. I found that the intersubjective framework was comprised of 6 distinct, mutually influential, and intertwined dimensions which served different functions including establishing conditions of engagement, the interpretation of content, interactional structure, and epistemological stance toward (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Bloome PhD (Committee Chair); Caroline Clark PhD (Committee Member); Kay Halasek PhD (Committee Member); George Newell PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Theory; Language Arts

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2016, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Art History

Die Kunst in der Photographie was an early art photography journal published in Berlin from 1897 to 1908. The photographs in its pages are predominantly nostalgic, with landscape and genre scenes that offer sentimentalized or ruralized depictions of contemporary life. This tendency to turn away from industrialization and to embrace a certain rusticity resonates with the Romantic ideals that saw their peak in the early half of the nineteenth century, seeming to imply that Die Kunst in der Photographie fixed a stubborn eye on the past. Yet portrait photographs in the journal reveal a focus on intersubjectivity—an attempt to put the viewer into contact with the distinct personality of the subject—which demonstrates a break from what had become the traditional conventions of photographic portraiture. Rather than emphasizing what the sitter looked like, these portraits display an inwardness of composition, depicting the sitter in shadows and with down-turned eyes. This inwardness cuts against the theatricality, and perhaps pompousness, of contemporaneous photographs that depicted the sitter surrounded by lavish objects, staring back at the viewer. These portraits provide a modern counterpart to the journal's nostalgic landscape and genre scenes. It is this tension between nostalgia and modernity that directs my examination of Die Kunst in der Photographie. While on one hand the journal shows modern characteristics, with stylistic connections to the contemporary Jugendstil movement and a clear interest in the development of photographic portraiture, it shows on the other hand a penchant for nostalgic motifs, with landscape and genre scenes that echo the visual languages of nineteenth century German Romanticism and French Realism. This body of photographs came not from an academic setting, but from the hands of participating camera club members who, ironically, showed a desire for a less mechanized society. Contributors to Die Kunst in der Photographie embraced Romantic (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Morgan Thomas Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Mikiko Hirayama Ph.D. (Committee Member); Valerie Weinstein Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2012, Philosophy

This thesis argues that “person” is not a natural kind—it is not a kind at all. Instead, personhood is a mode of experiencing each other rooted in the structure of our consciousness; personhood is fundamentally relational. I begin with a survey of the prevailing theories of personhood, giving special attention to the history and development of the concept of genetic personhood. Next, I bring insights from developmental psychology, ethnography, and evolutionary anthropology to elucidate the connection between intersubjectivity and personhood. To further develop and support a concept of relational personhood, I combine these insights with a philosophical approach that includes feminist philosophy, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind. With the help of philosophers including Annette Baier, Beata Stawarska, Christine Korsgaard, and Jean-Paul Sartre, I show how the second-person experience is the experience of intersubjectivity, and how it informs our intuition that beings exist that can be wronged. I conclude by examining the implications of a relational understanding of personhood for bioethics, with special attention to questions involving the moral status of human fetuses and non-human animals.

Committee: Madeline Muntersbjorn PhD (Committee Chair); Benjamin Grazzini PhD (Committee Member); Ammon Allred PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethics; Medical Ethics; Philosophy; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Women's Studies

“Care” in relationships between disabled and nondisabled partners is typically constructed as a binary between care-givers and care-receivers. In other words, the disabled partner is represented as only a care-receiver and the nondisabled partner as only a care-giver. This dependency dynamic desexualizes nondisabled/disabled relationships because the care burden is expected to interfere with sexual intimacy. This image of care and sexuality between disabled/nondisabled partners can be found in a variety of fields and discourses that touch the lives of people with disabilities and their partners. For example, in the applied fields (e.g., rehabilitation, medicine, counseling) the assumption that nondisabled partners experience only burden is frequently built into research designs and it is rare for such studies to even measure sexual and marital satisfaction or positive aspects of caregiving. Similarly, contemporary feminist research constructs nondisabled partners as victims of a system that refuses to help caregivers, statistically female. It is true that family caregivers need help, but it is symptomatic of our beliefs about disability in intimate relationships that the disabled partners are erased in much feminist care research. Even in the disability rights movement, care is often downplayed because, in a culture that views care so negatively, it is only a liability to draw attention to personal care needs. Disability rights advocates prefer to emphasize the similarities between disabled and nondisabled people. Thus, contemporary feminist research, the applied fields, popular culture and the disability rights movement—all relatively disparate discourses—engage in a surprisingly coherent, negative image of care in intimate relationships.The voices of people involved in disabled/nondisabled intimate relationships are missing from this picture. This project turns to self-representations of people in disabled/nondisabled intimate relationships to illuminate alternati (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Cynthia Burack PhD (Committee Chair); Brenda Brueggemann PhD (Committee Member); Christine Keating PhD (Committee Member); Mary Thomas PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Womens Studies

MA, Kent State University, 2010, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

Black Gospel and Southern Gospel quartet singing expresses the soul of Christian experience in America, but in ways that reference the distinct cultural and musical heritages of their respective communities. This thesis uses the semiological method demonstrated by Kofi Agawu to identify musical features for analysis from the Black Gospel and Southern Gospel quartet styles. The cultural-factor approach proposed by Joseph H. Kwabena Nketia is applied to key musical features to reveal the uniqueness of African-American and Euro-American communities in four key aspects: musical behavior, the contexts for music making, the perceptions of musicians in the two communities, and the cultural frame of reference that gives rise to the two musical styles. The conclusion of this study is that Black Gospel quartet music is unique because “improvisation” is organized according to the principles of Ensemble Thematic Cycle (ETC) as defined by Meki Nzewi. ETC form in Black Gospel expresses interconnectedness in the community. Southern Gospel quartet music is unique because improvisation is organized according to the principles of tonal harmony as suggested by Douglas Harrison. Improvisation in tonal harmony present in Southern Gospel quartet music expresses self-determinism of the individual.

Committee: Kazadi wa Mukuna PhD (Advisor); Linda B. Walker PhD (Committee Member); Mr. Chas Baker (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; African Studies; American Studies; Cultural Anthropology; Ethnic Studies; European Studies; Folklore; Music; Performing Arts; Philosophy; Religious History

PHD, Kent State University, 2005, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This dissertation examines the interwoven relationships within Moll Flanders and Roxana via the fatal and providential elements in the lives of Defoe's heroines. It explores how Fate and Providence are gendered in fiction and how these forces are embodied through male and female characters that help construct the subjectivity of Defoe's heroines. Each heroine's success results from her ability to relate to others who play feminine and masculine roles. Ultimately, Moll succeeds because she accepts both forces, both sexes, and all the attendant roles, aspects, and functions of these seemingly oppositional groups as part of her life; by contrast, I argue, Roxana fails because she divides everything in her life into mutually exclusive components, not allowing for multiple possibilities. Moll's success and Roxana's failure manifest soteriologically and psychologically. Moll achieves the means to salvation through her conversion story, and Roxana remains a reprobate who does not accept the past. Each heroine's spiritual state is tied directly to how she relates to others. They are situated within the intersubjective mythos that requires the modern subject to be an overinclusive individual who accepts paradoxical possibilities and acknowledges her interrelatedness with other subjects. Because Defoe makes his characters' success dependent upon accepting both Fate and Providence, I use intersubjective psychoanalysis to examine how Moll maintains tension between these supposed opposites and Roxana breaks down this tension. Such analysis reveals the interwoven, often tangled, relationships Defoe's heroines create with others within the fatal matrix of interconnected bonds in their lives along with the less flexible but mutual relationships offered by the Providence figures in their lives. Although Defoe predates the relational school of psychoanalysis by nearly three centuries, the world he creates in Moll Flanders is an intersubjective realm where like subjects enable each ot (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Vera Camden (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, English

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Comparative Studies

This dissertation centers on the role of musical experience in the production and maintenance of intimate, interpersonal relationships. Music acquires meaning in its ability to enable and amplify personal relationships among participants who share musical experience—not only through the semiotic decoding of lyrics and musical sounds that characterizes much music scholarship. Because there is scant language available for describing musical experience without reference to non-sonic elements such as lyrics, communal identity, or performers' personae, this research relies on textual and ethnographic methods to examine how human experiences of musical sound are understood via racialized and gendered discourses of embodiment, intimacy, pleasure, and danger. Specifically, this project consists of textual analyses of music censorship discourse and ethnographic analyses of female musicians and listeners who seek out shared musical experiences in explicitly gendered contexts including a feminist punk movement, a girls' rock music camp, and a long-standing women's music festival. The introductory chapter offers an overview of the scholarship and theory that has influenced this project and sets up the theoretical framework I have developed through my own research. To establish the stakes of this project, the second chapter focuses on discourses of musical danger to reveal a persistent and anxious fascination with music's relationship to the body and intimacy in the American imagination. Subsequent chapters explore how music is deployed precisely for its ability to engage the body, incite pleasure, and enable intimacy. The first of these case studies takes as its subject riot grrrl, a 1990s feminist punk movement, in order to explore how musical intimacy was enabled within the movement through its “Girls to the Front” policy, and how efforts to forge relationships through shared, embodied musical experience served as antidotes to young women's gendered experiences of isolati (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Barry Shank Ph.D. (Advisor); Mary Thomas Ph.D. (Committee Member); Maurice Stevens Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Music; Womens Studies