Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2014, Communication Studies (Communication)

Indoor tanning is a 5 billion dollar a year industry. The individuals and organizations who are a part of the indoor tanning industry promote indoor tanning as a healthy natural activity. However, in the medical community, indoor tanning is recognized as dangerous, a leading cause of melanoma and other skin cancers. These conflicting organizational narratives are part of a larger national conversation regarding the practice of indoor tanning. Both sides in these debates seek to inform and influence public policy and personal behaviors. This is an examination of tanning stories, from the meta-level organizational narratives, to the meso-level narratives of influential individuals and political advocates, and the micro-level narratives of tanners who became melanoma patients. Melanoma rates are rising and so are the number of cases diagnosed in young women who have a history of indoor tanning. Using physician and patient interviews, I examine the use of narratives at every level, to support or change beliefs about the benefits and dangers of indoor tanning, to impact legislation, and to influence behavioral choices. Using patient stories, it is possible to consider the role of narratives in health decisions and rationalizations. Ultimately, it is apparent that positive applications of narrative in medicine support relational processes, and becomes a means to identity change.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2023, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation examined media rhetoric in the Los Angeles Times about 51 murdered marginalized women in the “Southside Slayer” serial killer cases. The “Southside Slayer” was five different Black men who did not fit the profile of a serial killer and were able to continue murdering women from 1983 to 2007. The victims and/or killers were all associated at one point with the “Southside Slayer” moniker and/or task force, even though some of the killers were later given different nicknames in the press. The goal of this study was to identify harmful narratives against marginalized women victims, and how they were perpetuated through the Los Angeles Times. Through qualitative archival research and a feminist social constructionist lens, language and word/phrase choices in 126 articles from the Los Angeles Times dating from 1985 to 2020 were examined for the use of synecdoche, derogatory language, and negatively connotative language when referring to the fifty-one women. In addition, use of the victims' names, use of the killers' names, and use of killer-friendly language were examined. Using critical discourse analysis and grounded theory, harmful narratives and dehumanization of the women were perpetuated through the underuse of victims' names combined with overused combinations of synecdoche, derogatory, and/or negatively connotative words/phrases. Digital media of today was also examined, and perpetuation or disruption of the harmful narratives and dehumanization varied.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, Art

For my MFA thesis exhibition in 2021, I created seven narrative driven prints that were displayed on a hand painted wall mural which acts as the framework or backdrop for a small field of corn stalks. These works and this paper examine the relationship between crops and humans through both visual and oral storytelling as well as the hopeful nature of my work as I continue to reflect upon what it means to engage in a practice of regenerative making and active listening. I explore the use of myself and my twin brother as a character who are each able to view the world through the others lens, color as a form of strengthening connection between the human and non-human figures, and the agency of materials who have equal value in our shared landscape. My inquiry into this relationship is bolstered through the arguments made by political and agricultural ecologists like Jane Bennett, Michael Pollan, Bill Mollison, and Robin Wall Kimmerer whose work speaks to the tethers that bind materials, persons, and all organic matter under one roof.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2017, American Culture Studies

Forum-based role-playing games are a rich, yet barely researched subset of textbased digital gaming. They are a form of storytelling where narratives are created through acts of play by multiple people in an online space, combining collaboration and improvisation. This dissertation acts as a pilot study for exploring these games in their full complexity at the intersection of play, narrative, and fandom. Building on theories of interactivity, digital storytelling, and fan fiction studies, it highlights forum games' most unique features, and proves that they are is in no way liminal or secondary to more popular forms of role-playing. The research is based on data drawn from a large sample of forums of various genres. One hundred sites were explored through close textual analysis in order to outline their most common features. The second phase of the project consisted of nine months of participant observation on select forums, in order to gain a better understanding of how their rules and practices influence the emergent narratives. Participants from various sites contributed their own interpretations of forum gaming through a series of ethnographic interviews. This did not only allow agency to the observed communities to voice their thoughts and explain their practices, but also spoke directly to the key research question of why people are drawn to forum gaming. The main drawing power of forum games is their focus on creative, collaborative writing. Players interested in writing with others in a playful setting, and engaging with their favorite popular culture texts through composition, are drawn to these sites because of the narrative freedom they offer compared to other gaming platforms. In addition, their narratives born from play are consciously, intentionally, and enthusiastically multimodal. Multimodality offers a wide range of creative opportunities for telling stories in a digital space, and it also has connections to older, oral forms of (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, English

I examine the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN), an open-access archives of personal stories about literacy. Examining the DALN's structure, implicit values, and contents, I argue that the DALN is both a queer and queering resource for composition studies, and may help expand understandings of literacy, expertise, and the relevancy of the personal and openness in composition classrooms and research. In this context, queerness is not about sexuality or gender but a heuristic: a way to critically question the traditional frameworks and epistemologies used to interpret and explore the world. My overarching research questions are: 1. What might the DALN (as a classroom and research resource) and queerness (as an epistemological and ontological concept) offer to the discipline of composition studies? 2. To what degree does the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives reflect and/or push against the epistemology and ontology of different conceptions of archives? 3. How have composition teacher-scholars positioned/used the personal, literacy narratives, and archives within composition scholarship, and how might they use the DALN to push against conventional approaches/understandings of archives and personal narratives in classrooms? 4. Does the queer nature of the DALN shape or manifest itself in teachers' perceptions of the DALN and how teachers use and discuss the DALN in their classrooms? If so, how and why, and if not, why? I argue that the DALN simultaneously embraces and resists dominant binary values (restriction/openness; academic/personal; expert-direction/self-direction) that shape the fields of archival and composition studies and may be used to queer and expand composition classrooms, providing richer understandings of archives, personal literacy narratives, and queerness. The DALN both reflects and resists archival values and practices originating in archival studies, queering understandings of what an archives can be, look like, an (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2014, Communication

Romantic love and intimate partner relationships are themes that dominate popular music. As cultivation theory suggests, music cultivates attitudes and beliefs regarding romantic love and relationships modeled by the narratives evident in music. Women are particularly drawn to popular music and, thus, romantic love narratives. However, what happens when a real-life romantic love narrative is afflicted by abuse? What do such narratives cultivate in regards to the acceptance of intimate partner violence (IPV)? Research on battering and battered women raised awareness about battering. Lenore Walker's The Battered Woman published in 1979, perhaps the most comprehensive research to date regarding IPV, revealed the common dynamics of an abusive relationship and introduced the Cycle of Violence (COV), a repetitive cycle consisting of three phases. As such, a narrative analysis of top 1980's love songs was conducted to first, identify common narratives of romantic love between intimate partners present in the lyrics and then examine these narratives through narratives of abuse, including the COV. It was determined the song narratives depicted particular phases of love: courtship, honeymoon, love's decline and love's end; featured mythical ideals: Cupid's Arrow, love saves; love is forever; and one and only love and the themes self-control, conflict/blame, hanging on and moving on. These narratives examined through a narrative of abuse, which were guided by a cultivation theoretical perspective, symbolically annihilated the notion of sexual abuse, affirmed myths regarding IPV, as well as learned helplessness, isolation, and other battering behaviors within the COV, normalized stalking and blaming, legitimized dark romance and fairytale narratives commonly referenced by women and encouraged male dominance in the relationships. Overall, the narratives of love emboldened battering behaviors and batterers' manipulations of love.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Comparative Studies

My dissertation explores the narratives of incarceration that have emerged in the pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial eras in Kenya. Rather than embark on the almost impossible task of examining all forms of prison narratives, this study concentrates mainly on the fiction and non-fiction writing of prisoners of conscience or political prisoners. Political repression has been a recurrent motif in Kenya since pre-colonial but particularly in the colonial and postcolonial times. Victims of state terror have consistently added to the long list of the literature of prison that invites scholarly investigation. Focusing on memory, truth telling, the I-pronoun, and trauma, the study analyzes the relationship between self-exploration and narration of confinement. I show that oral narratives inaugurated the narrativization of incarceration in Kenya during the pre-colonial era and continued to serve as the oxygen ventilating written prison narratives in succeeding periods. In this regard I argue that there are Kenyan oral texts that exemplify what may be termed oral prison narratives. The study identifies the connection between written and oral tales of incarceration by unearthing the extent to which oral tales are variously appropriated to capture incarceration as individual or collective lived experience whether in a literal or symbolic sense. The study is based on the assumption that there is a relationship between narrating one's prison experience and the process of self-exploration or self-discovery. Also, the study assumes that there is a relationship between the prison context and the text; and that the prisoner's individual experience may embody the collective experience of those in same or similar circumstances and may go beyond the prison walls, encompassing the lived experience of those outside prison as well, especially in times of pervasive political intolerance and repression. Although my method is fundamentally literary-critical, the study spans across a wi (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2008, Speech Communication

Families construct stories to validate milestones such as a marriage proposal or the birth of a child, and these stories heavily influence family members' identities. But what happens when an essential narrative is incomplete, or "broken," as is the case with birth stories in adoptive families? Adoptees are disconnected partially or entirely from those involved in their birth stories, so adoptive families must create adoption entrance narratives to fill the birth story void. These stories explain the concept of adoption to the child and establish an adoptee's place in the family and in the world, thereby potentially yielding much influence over adoptees' self concepts. Drawing from theoretical frameworks of narrative theory and symbolic interactionism, this study seeks to discover themes emergent from adoption entrance narratives, and then analyze the relationship between these themes and adoptees' self concepts.

Ed.D., Antioch University, 2024, Education

The teaching profession has historically been defined by an “overwhelming presence of whiteness” (Sleeter, 2001, p. 101), leading to experiences from Black, Indigenous and Teachers of Color (BITOC) often being neglected and undervalued. This action-oriented research project employed poetic inquiry techniques to capture the full experiences of BITOC participants speaking their stories in their voices through poetry. The centering of BITOC experiences is crucial to shifting the paradigm from mere survival and retention towards what aspects of the BITOC experiences support them to flourish and thrive in private/independent schools. This study examined poetry as a generative practice for building community, healing, self-reflection, and providing affirmations for BITOC in their independent school settings. Critical race theory (CRT) served as the theoretical framework of this study, specifically the centering of the counter-narratives of BITOC. Their stories are centered and amplified as integral sources of knowledge and experience, while exploring an embodied and generative practice to support their thriving. This study seeks to contribute towards an equitable and inclusive teaching profession which embraces and acknowledges BITOC experiences. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https:// etd.ohiolink.edu).

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Design

This master's thesis used a research-through-design approach to determine how themed elements & interactive microcontroller consoles could improve the sense of presence in immersive experiences. The hypothesis was that removing handheld controllers and allowing people to touch and feel the environment they were seeing in a virtual reality headset would allow them to natively explore and engage with contextual interactive elements. The final product, Project Orbweaver, was an exciting multi-disciplinary immersive experience that transported players to a cosmic environment beyond our solar system. The experience was comprised of four elements interacting in unique ways to deliver an exciting virtual reality attraction. The first element was the virtual environment & VR component, tasked with immersing players in the teleporter and space station scenes. The second element was the microcontroller interaction system featuring three interactive stations with minigames for the player to complete. The third element was the theming and preshow that immersed players in the story. Finally, the fourth element was the live interaction between the player and experience facilitator; Everybody that came through the experience got slightly unique dialogue and conversation based on how they approached the minigames on the interactive stations. This thesis serves as a documentation of the development process while also presenting a framework that can be used to create similar experiences.

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

Fighting false information, propaganda, open lies, rumors, misinformation, and disinformation by attacking it directly and challenging it is the dominant strategy for dealing with false beliefs (Lazer et al., 2018; Maseri et al., 2020; Van Bavel et al., 2021), and it is an important one. Refuting falsity is crucial. At the same time, there are instances when fighting false information does not work (Ardevol-Abreu et al., 2020; McIntyre, 2018; Van Bavel et al., 2021). One of the reasons is that it denies another's worldview, belief systems, and, as a result, their identity and even right to exist. Searching for alternative strategies for dealing with falsity, this study used qualitative research methodology and conducted three focus group discussions. My research findings show that identifying and framing a narrative behind falsity shifts the dynamic from facts to interaction, from fighting to beginning relationships to that narrative, and potentially people who stand for it, consciously or unconsciously. It allows one to find a belief system and a worldview of the other, and to engage and interact with it. Thus, there is a shift from finding who is telling the truth or lies to providing space for various belief systems and worldviews to interact with each other. Making this shift changes the power dynamic and empowers human beings to stop being simply victims of falsity and gain agency. My research also shows that there is a high need for talent and skills to hold polarities and different narratives, allowing them to co-exist and not deny each other, facilitating unpredictable and unimaginable ways to interact with each other, and bring more flow into communication instead of distancing even further. Finding narratives behind falsity and holding the opposite stories allow one to see falsity as not just an absolute evil, but potentially meaningful, transforming it into an opportunity for community-building processes and for people to work on differe (open full item for complete abstract)

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

The portrayal of gay characters on television has expanded, yet often oversimplifies their experiences. Gay individuals face unique challenges accessing sexual health information due to cultural barriers, exacerbating health disparities. This study investigates how narratives featuring gay protagonists discussing sexual health with a medical provider influence gay viewers' intentions. Drawing on social cognitive theory and the entertainment overcoming resistance model, it explores narrative impacts on sexual health promotion among gay audiences. Findings suggest exposure to such narratives did not significantly affect intentions to discuss sexual health with a medical provider, but increased self-efficacy emerged as a predictor. This underscores the importance of considering factors like self-efficacy in interventions. The study provides insights for designing tailored interventions and advancing sexual health outcomes among gay men.

Bachelor of Science of Communication Studies (BSC), Ohio University, 2024, Communication Studies

College students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are frequent targets of stigma. Stigmatizing attitudes toward can lead to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and thoughts of self-harm. To help find a potential solution, this study analyzed the effect of narrative and empathy messages on the stigmatization of college students with autism. Several college students with autism were interviewed to identify common ways that stigma has affected their lives on campus. I then used the data collected from the interviews to draft six messages: 2 non-narrative messages, 2 narrative messages without empathy, and 2 narrative messages with empathy. In the next phase of the study, over 100 college students were recruited and asked to read one of the six messages. After reading the message, they took a survey to measure how the message affected their feelings of empathy and attitudes toward college students with autism. Compared to non-narrative messages, narrative messages had a more positive effect on the audience's view of autistic college students. However, the narrative with empathy messages had no significant benefit over the narrative without empathy messages. Future studies should generate a larger and more diverse sample as well as a more balanced ratio of messages analyzed.

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2024, Educational Administration

Past and current research has explored the link between the “blackness” of a person's name and socioeconomic outcomes in American society. Black-sounding names were shown to influence employment prospects, access to credit markets, and choice of housing among other opportunities. While education research had identified a relationship between teachers' perceptions of students with distinctively Black names and perceived academic potential, it had yet to examine how targeted students perceive and internalize nameism, a portmanteau of name and racism, in predominantly white learning environments. A qualitative study examined nameism and its influence on students' selfconceptions and learning experiences. Using a phenomenological gaze to study participants' experiences, the results revealed mixed, contradictory views on Blacksounding names within the sample. Study participants expressed feeling compelled to maintain varying situational identities to avoid name-identity threats expressed through implicit bias and microaggressions. Participatory action research was used to construct a multimodal, evidence-based intervention to address nameism as a problem of practice in classrooms where experiences with nameism are most likely to occur.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, English

Didacticism in Contemporary Illness Narratives: Dialogue, Subjectivity, Justice arises from my observation of a surprising discrepancy: some of the most powerful contemporary illness narratives have didactic purposes (that is, they seek to impart moral lessons), yet the dominant theoretical approaches to illness narratives denigrate didacticism. In response to this gap between practice and theory, my dissertation emphasizes practice as it explores how authors from Audre Lorde to Philip Roth have made their didactic purposes integral to the power of their narratives. More specifically, my response to the gap provides an interpretive and a theoretical intervention. At the interpretive level, the dissertation offers readings of several didactic illness narratives across genres demonstrating how these texts offer valuable perspectives on illness. I then build on these readings to call for a pluralization of methods used to understand illness narratives in general and didactic illness narratives in particular. In other words, I address how conversations about the nature and functions of illness narratives must change so as to account for the appeal and effects of didactic ones. Each chapter explores narratives that illuminate the titular themes: dialogue, subjectivity, and justice. I read the narratives through the lens of rhetorical narrative theory, which asks how authors mobilize resources to represent specific illness experiences and to engage audiences affectively and ethically as their narratives elaborate and communicate a moral lesson. For example, my chapter on justice focuses on The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde examining how she complicates the traditional authority of the cancer writer by imparting moral lessons that require readers to understand cancer diagnoses as simultaneously an individual experience and communal crises. ii My interventions have multiple purposes: they analyze a popular and evolving corpus; they examine the inter (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1951, History

BA, Oberlin College, 2022, Comparative American Studies

This thesis constructs a history of the changing role of survivors' narratives in anti-sexual violence zines from the 1990s to the early 2020s. I argue that zines are a window to the changing politics of the American anti-sexual violence movement. Through this lens, I find that the role of survivors' narratives in zines has complexly changed and ultimately diminished over time. I examine how and posit why this change occurred in zines and the anti-sexual violence movement. Among other reasons, I find that both have followed the traditional arc of social movements, which chronologically involves emergence, coalescence, institutionalization, and decline. There are complicated consequences of zines' transition from helping survivors heal to providing impersonal education and the paralleled progression of the anti-sexual violence movement. Ultimately, I advise that there must always be space for survivors' narratives in anti-sexual violence efforts because of their benefits to survivors' healing and the movement's progress.

PHD, Kent State University, 2022, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Health Sciences

The purpose of this study was to examine cultural narratives of human reproduction in children's literature. The research was conducted in two parts. The first was a content analysis of children's picture books to determine what cultural narratives about reproduction are included within these stories. Additionally, a checklist adapted from Symons and Manna (1992) was utilized to facilitate an evaluation of the sex-positive and health-positive nature of these stories. Questions from the checklist were formatted into a 5-point Likert scale (0-4) to assess the quality of the books as educational teaching tools. The study found that five main reproductive narratives are told within contemporary children's picture books: the prevailing narrative, the traditional narrative, the non-traditional narrative, the least common narrative, and the absent / invisible narrative. The issue with many books in the study does not stem from the fact that they encourage reproduction. Rather, the concern is the lack of rational explanation or justification for engaging in the behavior. In addition to the narratives, many children's books about reproduction are written by unqualified authors and can present messages that are both sex and health negative. The books are marketed as educational literature on reproduction, yet many of the books fail to teach about reproduction at the basic level. Future research can use the results of this study to examine the unintended consequences of projecting a false narrative of reproduction.

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2022, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

With more people receiving a breast cancer diagnosis, more patients look to stories and literature for models of themselves. They seek catharsis, new identities, ways to grieve, find camaraderie with other patients, and connect themselves to the larger world. Sometimes they read the works of others, such as Audre Lorde, to feel less isolated. At other times, they tell or write their own stories as a way to educate, connect, commemorate, or express. Some patients, such as Lorde and the author, find it difficult to separate their cancers from societal problems at-large. The following thesis looks at how and why mastectomy stories are needed. It also shows how traditional theories of illness narrative fall short of representing many mastectomy patients' experiences. Additionally, the thesis illustrates how pink ribbons, ubiquitous symbols of breast cancer marketing, simultaneously create and suppress dialogue about the unique struggles of living in a mastectomized body.

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Arts and Sciences: Psychology

Civic participation is fundamental for individuals who want to contribute to their communities. Research has demonstrated that individuals who participate in civic involvement have a higher sense of wellbeing and experience other positive outcomes. However, there is limited research exploring refugees experience with civic participation in their resettled communities. Using a CBPR approach this research aims to understand what changes refugees want to see in their respective communities and the ways they would like to participate to enact them. A community partnership was formed to engage in research with refugee co-researchers. Working together with the community partners, 291 refugee community members from the Cincinnati area participated in the study. Participants were asked what adjustments they wanted to see in their communities and in what ways they would want to be involved in their communities. Participants' responses indicate a strong desire to see change in their community and to be involved in the implementation. The list of areas they identify related to desired change included transportation systems, ability to express their culture, availability of programs and education, and desire for support and to spend time with others. Participants also want to be involved in changes in their community through volunteering and participation in programs. The results of this study showcase the desire of refugees to be involved in their communities and their need for support, information, and gathering spaces that facilitate and encourage their civic immersion.