PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2024, College-Conservatory of Music: Music (Musicology)

Pleasure gardens first came to prominence in early eighteenth-century London as venues where visitors from diverse social strata could promenade about the walks, enjoy entertainments, and see and be seen. In an issue of his Review of the State of the British Nation dated 25 June 1709, Daniel Defoe distinguishes seven social classes in England, including a group he describes as “the middle sort . . . who live the best, and consume the most . . . and with whom the general wealth of this nation is found.” Recognizing the potential to profit from the newfound wealth of the “middle sort” (and adjacent, similarly centralized socioeconomic groups), entrepreneurs marketed new leisure activities to them, including trips to London's three chief pleasure gardens: Marybone (also spelled Marylebone), Ranelagh, and Vauxhall. Although garden refreshments were notoriously overpriced, the cost of admission was relatively modest, enabling even those from the poorer classes to attend at least occasionally. At the other end of the social spectrum, the attendance of royal family members enhanced the prestige of the gardens. Music presided over the pleasure garden experience, facilitating exchanges amongst the classes and providing unprecedented opportunities for social emulation: the process whereby the “middle sort” could imitate their social superiors, and could themselves be admired and imitated. This dissertation examines the complex function(s) of music, musicians, and performance in London's three leading pleasure gardens—focusing primarily on their eighteenth-century heyday—and the intersections of these elements with the progression of capitalism and the commercialization of leisure. Through this examination, it reveals the pleasure gardens as apt stages for the social transgression, subversion, and emulation performed by garden visitors, and provides a more nuanced understanding of the role(s) that music, musical works, and musicians played in such performances.

Committee: Stephen Meyer Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Christopher Segall Ph.D. (Committee Member); Amanda Eubanks Winkler M.A. Ph (Committee Member); Scott Linford Ph.D. (Committee Member); Angela Swift Ph.D. D (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Media and Communication

Understanding both gender and fandom as performative can help to identify and describe ways in which fans and fandom become gendered, influences of patriarchy on fandom, and how gendered hierarchies form. With an eye toward performativity, this dissertation explores gendering of fans and fandom through social and cultural forces, pressures within fandom, and influences from texts around which fandoms are built. Additionally, the dissertation examines the ways fandom spaces themselves become gendered and sometimes contested. Using theoretical frameworks of Judith Butler's theory of performativity, Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze, and Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital, this dissertation explores the Star Wars fandom as a gendered and contested space through the following research questions: RQ1: How is language used in Star Wars fan communities to uphold and perpetuate patriarchy and its associated phenomena of sexism and misogyny? RQ2: How is language used in Star Wars fan communities to resist patriarchy and its associated phenomena of sexism and misogyny? The dissertation employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to study textual interactions of Star Wars fans at the Jedi Council Forums. It follows James Paul Gee's methodological approach to CDA, which highlights discourse in the interest of social justice, how sentence-level analysis can reveal writers' use of language, and Gee's seven building tasks for language use: Significance, practices, identities, relationships, politics, connections, and sign systems and knowledge. Because fandom is growing increasingly mainstream, this dissertation foregrounds women's stories and experiences to explain ways in which women audiences interact with and participate in media they consume and argues for future research in a political economy approach to understanding women audience members in creation of media and its subsequent marketing. It highlights an intersectional approach that considers how factors s (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lara Martin Lengel Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Lisa Handyside Ph.D. (Other); Ellen Gorsevski Ph.D. (Committee Member); Lisa Hanasono Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Ethics; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Language; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Multimedia Communications; Sociology; Web Studies; Womens Studies

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

In an age of both religious revival and upheaval, Emily Dickinson was not concerned in showing how Christian or un-Christian she was in her poetry, but her affections focused on the rationalization and deconstruction of religious beliefs in the nineteenth century. Previous studies vary from claiming Dickinson as a devoted saint to her as a blasphemous woman poet rebelling against a patriarchal God. She was determined to scrutinize God and the assumptions surrounding religious beliefs of her time in search of a line of inquiry that includes doubt and uncertainty. The problem with defining Dickinson as a religious poet (or not) derails readers from unravelling and appreciating the way Dickinson's poems create a dialectic approach to perceiving the world. She is not a theologian who argues about faith. Rather, Dickinson uses the performativity of roles such as the rejected and rejecting outcasts, passive supplicant, and the playful warrior to present the paradoxical tensions of faith. By challenging rigid religious belief that shun the unknown and uncertainty, Dickinson concerns herself with the validity, methods, and scope of belief to expose the dangers of homogenous ideology and religious rhetoric which limits the possibilities of knowledge. I argue that Dickinson's process of determining aspects of Christian beliefs—the tension between her need for rationalized epistemology and her longing for faith in God—point toward her resilience in seeking the truth of things. Dickinson is concerned with a system of belief which is both epistemological and faith based. By tracing Dickinson's treatment of the unknown through a paradoxical framework of belief and unbelief, especially the way she embraces and discards both scientific methods and conventional aspects of faith—often seen as necessary and essential—reveal a line of inquiry which is multifocal and erratic. She wants to “tell all the truth and tell it slant.”

Committee: Thomas Scanlan (Advisor); Paul Jones (Committee Member); Mark Halliday (Committee Member) Subjects: Bible; Biblical Studies; Literature

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2019, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Although scholars have examined Mrs. Dalloway extensively in terms of gender performance, few critics of The Great Gatsby have explored Gatsby's masculinity through gender studies. Using Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, I argue that Mrs. Dalloway and Gatsby represent both actors and directors rehearsing a new gendered identity of the twentieth century. Through their roles as staged performers, I emphasize how seemingly minute tasks connect to larger social and political stakes of memory, celebrity status, and reappraisals of gender identity. I further assert that while both Mrs. Dalloway and Nick Carraway experience revelations and heightened imagination through death, neither achieve non- heteronormative gender identities. Still, Virginia Woolf and F. Scott Fitzgerald draw upon their own image of the artist to playfully tease a new hybrid-femininity and masculinity of self-invention beyond the gilded cage.

Committee: Frederick Karem, Ph.D (Committee Chair); Rachel Carnell, Ph.D (Committee Member); Adam Sonstegard, Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Comparative; Comparative Literature; Gender Studies; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

This study explores the phenomenon of gender-bending cosplay (GBC) through its material culture using costuming (the acts of making and wearing artifacts and the artifacts themselves) to examine the motivations/interests/expectations of women who participate. GBC embraces the shifting, or bending, of the identified gender and/or biological sex of a fictional character to match the gender identity and/or biological sex of the player. This study concentrates on self-identified women adapting male characters to female versions of the same characters. The principal approach of the research design is Practice as Research (PaR) from an Art-Based Research (ABR) paradigm. Research methods include costuming, performance, ethnography, narrative inquiry, interviewing, participant observation, and discourse analysis. The worlds of text and image are melded in the amphibious, mixed-methods design and presentations of this study. GBC involves creating and using material culture, the artifacts of a culture/community. It becomes a creative outlet for many who may not otherwise be making art. When material culture can be worn, an interactive embodied performance can be experienced between the maker and the player, the player and the artifacts, the player and the audience, the player and fellow players, the player and cultural texts. This performance simultaneously emphasizes and challenges gender binaries, gender roles, and expectations. It is a performance of culture. The communities of play collaborate to interpret and reinterpret the performance and the material culture. They tell and share stories that uncover insights into the phenomenon, society, and culture.

Committee: Shari Savage PhD (Committee Chair); Jennifer Schlueter PhD (Committee Member); Christine Morris PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2018, Art History (Fine Arts)

This research's intention is to define and classify what art games are and how these three particular games rely on the audience to activate the artworks, thus making the audience's interactions essential to complete the artworks. Technology has always impacted the art world and shaped the media that artists experiment with and use. Today, there are many artists who use games as their method for conveying their ideas and messages. This paper will examine how three artists use gaming structures to critique historical and social topics through the audience's interactions with the artworks' gaming structures. The three case studies about Pippin Barr's The Artist is Present, Tale of Tales' The Path and Wafaa Bilal's performance Domestic Tension will examine how these artworks exemplify and use the elements of the particular genre of games, art games. Through looking at research done on digital space and the case studies this paper will address how these artworks create a shift from the focus of the artwork being on the creator or artist to how the interactions and performance of the audience complete the works.

Committee: Jennie Klein (Advisor); Mark Franz (Committee Member); Lee Marion (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

This dissertation is an instrumental case study and philosophical inquiry that explores YouTube beauty vlogs. My methods are rooted in the epistemology of interpretive qualitative research; I also draw on the writing and data-gathering techniques pioneered by New Journalists in the 1960s and 1970s and on case study methodologies. For the case study aspect of this research I spent approximately 30 hours observing and interviewing Kristin Gehm, a YouTube beauty vlogger based in Northeastern Wisconsin. I then interviewed five additional beauty vloggers and one makeup artist connected to Kristin through their work on YouTube. My data collection also included analyzing approximately 200 YouTube beauty vlogs themselves, and the content of the vlogs' comment sections. The case study revealed just how contradictory the terms “social” and “media” are. Never before have individuals from all over the world been able to connect regularly, bonding over shared interests and the creation of innovative content. But as YouTube has grown so have options for monetizing one's vlogging, turning what was once a medium for intimate social interaction into a platform to launch a (potentially) lucrative career. In this contradictory space many traditional social boundaries are blurred, like the boundary separating social and commercial behavior. Many viewers of beauty vlogs aren't sure if they're friends with vloggers, or simply customers of their YouTube channels. I also saw YouTube users re-negotiating the gender norms (a particular set of social boundaries) that dictate who can beautify to make themselves look classically glamorous. Intrigued by this boundary, I launched a philosophical inquiry. The philosophical inquiry is rooted in Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity and Virginia Postrel's theory of glamour. My chief finding for this inquiry is that by being, for example, black, older than 40, a man, or plus-size, some beauty vloggers regularly defy gender norms. Fu (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Shari Savage Dr. (Advisor); Jennifer Richardson Dr. (Committee Member); Christine Ballengee Morris Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education; Communication; Education; Mass Communications

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Educational Studies

Teacher turnover is widely understood to be one of the most pressing challenges facing the American elementary and secondary education system. Studies indicate mid-career teacher attrition is a growing phenomenon in the United States. The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of mid-career teachers with an aim toward understanding the factors that encourage them to stay in the profession and those that repel them from it. Using a qualitative research design, I employed a life history approach from a naturalistic inquiry and constructivist paradigm. I interviewed eight mid-career teachers, four who currently teach and four who left teaching at mid-career. Findings indicate there is a range of factors that influence teacher's career decisions. Some of these factors are particular to the individual and some are particular to the profession. While experience mitigates some of the challenges of being a beginning teacher, adverse working conditions present ongoing barriers to satisfaction. The mid-career teachers in this study who continued in the profession developed strategies to confront these barriers. Relationships are the key sustaining force for the participants in this study. For some, a sustaining force is their faith. Policies could better support teachers, so they could rely less on themselves, their families, their colleagues and their faith, and more on institutional and organizational structures. Further, education policy to stem mid-career teacher attrition needs to respond to the objective professional aspects of the job and not the personal ones. We will never be able to eliminate an individual's preference to stay or leave teaching, nor would we want to, but we can make schools and the profession more desirable places to work for teachers in the system and those considering becoming a part of it.

Committee: Belinda Gimbert (Advisor); Antoinette Errante (Advisor); Ann Allen (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Education Policy; Educational Leadership

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Theatre

According to an April 2016 study published by the Kinsey Institute, one in five Americans has, at some point, been in a consensual nonmonogamous relationship. Consensual nonmonogamy, which includes polyamory, swinging, open relationships, and friends with benefits situations, is a relationship style wherein individuals have multiple romantic and/or sexual relationships with the knowing consent of everyone involved. This type of relationship has increased in both popularity and visibility in the fifty years since open marriages first entered the public sphere, and has veritably exploded in the last ten years. Popular culture and academia alike is rapidly expanding in its discussion and acceptance of nonmonogamous relationships between consenting adults. In this thesis, I use concepts of performativity and performance as a metaphor for social action to examine the ways that individuals in nonmonogamous relationships perform "relationship" to one another and to the outside world. Using ethnographic and autoethnographic research methods, I draw upon the lived experiences of people in nonmonogamous relationships to study the effects that these relationships have on individuals and on the larger culture. I first study impression management to examine the ways in which people in nonmonogamous relationships choose to conceal and portray certain aspects of their experiences. Following that, I discuss performances of “polynormativity” and examine the ways in which nonmonogamous relationships adhere to, alter, or reject the so-called “life script” wherein individuals are expected to “settle down,” usually with marriage and children. Finally, I use performance as metaphor to study the ways in which power and privilege affect jealousy within nonmonogamous relationships. With this study, I aim to expand existing scholarship in the growing fields of both performance studies and sexuality studies. By using performance studies to examine nontraditional intimate relationships, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lesa Lockford PhD (Advisor); Angela Ahlgren PhD (Committee Member); Margaret McCubbin MFA (Committee Member) Subjects: Performing Arts; Personal Relationships; Theater

Master of Humanities (MHum), Wright State University, 2017, Humanities

This thesis is a survey of contemporary horror films from the perspective of fundamentalist American audiences. Using Judith Butler's work on gender performativity and religious studies scholarship as framework, I investigate how five visual texts perpetuate patriarchal family structures. The five texts I explore are The Last Exorcism (2010), The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Witch: A New England Folk Tale (2015), and The Exorcist television series (2016). In each chapter, I analyze a key family member per patriarchal norms, and how violations of these norms contribute to the family's supernatural crisis. The figures I analyze for each text is The Weak Father, The Bad Mother, and The Unstable Daughter. The texts' shared, repetitious message implies that societal order can be (re)established once individuals adhere to fundamentalist patriarchal standards, reinforcing many scholars' conclusions that fundamentalist Christianity continues to be a pervasive, dominant force in American culture.

Committee: Hope Jennings Ph.D. (Advisor); Christine Junker Ph.D. (Committee Member); Andrea Harris M.A. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Film Studies; Gender Studies; Glbt Studies; Motion Pictures; Religion; Womens Studies

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Contemporary Music

The vocalizing pianist is a genre in which the pianist speaks, sings, and/or acts while playing the piano. Because of the presence of the voice, the audience perceives the performer's sex and gender not only visually, but also aurally as part of performance. The voice connects the audience to the performer intimately, revealing the normative conceptions and gender ideologies inscribed on the performer's body. Because the vocalizing pianist compositions specify neither the performer's gender nor the voice type, cross-gender, cross-identity performance have been freely undertaken without an established performance practice. Although such gendered performances are common in vocal genres, pianists are now entering this unfamiliar field with the emergence of the vocalizing pianist genre. As a step toward an interpretive performance practice, this document investigates the role of the performer's voice, body, and gender, by reading the genre through the lens of feminism. Feminist theories such as gender performativity and l'ecriture feminine are introduced and applied to case studies of selected compositions: Amy Beth Kirsten's (speak to me), Brian Ferneyhough's Opus Contra Naturam, and Stuart Saunders Smith's Lazarus. Using the concept of the Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, the author also explores the performer-centric interpretative practice that emphasizes the centrality of gender in musical performance. This project articulates the importance of performer's gender as an integral element of vocalizing pianist performance and demonstrates how understanding the gendered aspect of a composition adds greater depth and nuance to the performer's interpretation.

Committee: Thomas Rosenkranz (Advisor); Nora Engebretsen (Committee Member); Mikel Kuehn (Committee Member); Sidra Lawrence (Committee Member); Mihai Staic (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Music; Performing Arts

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Theatre and Film

From the earliest performances of the act of cooking while gathered around a fire, humans have layered meaning onto the embodiment of cooking. The performance of self and community illustrate ways in which cooking has moved through generations and shaped roles and identities related to cooking. In this thesis, I examine the act of cooking as it expands from social performances to artful performances through the development of cooking in mediated spaces, specifically televised cooking shows ranging from early programs in the 1950s and 1960s to the Netflix series Chef's Table (2015-2017). Chapter One provides a foundation to the overarching argument by establishing cooking as a social performance as well as a performance of identity and community that spans domestic spaces. This leads into Chapter Two, where I discuss early cooking shows in the 1950s and 1960s and the legitimized identity of “chef” as opposed to the domestic, social performances of the home cook. Chapter Three explores the types of audiences involved in cooking shows and the effect of viewership preferences for the Food Network offerings, which encouraged more competitive and entertainment-based programs. Finally, Chapter Four provides an analysis of artful performances of cooking within Chef's Table through close readings that illuminate the spectacle, aesthetics, storytelling, innovative techniques, and the cinematic use of the camera. This analysis reveals that the act of cooking can be positioned as both social and artful performance, and suggests opportunities for further study of ways these areas can overlap within contemporary programs and media culture.

Committee: Cynthia Baron Ph.D. (Advisor); Lesa Lockford Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2016, American Culture Studies

This dissertation studies the cultural significance of Canadian-American singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright's (b. 1973) album All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (Decca, 2010). Lulu was written, recorded, and toured in the years surrounding the illness and eventual death of his mother, beloved Quebecoise singer/songwriter Kate McGarrigle. The album, performed as a classical song cycle, stands out amongst Wainwright's musical catalogue as a hybrid composition that mixes classical and popular musical forms and styles. More than merely a collection of songs about death, loss, and personal suffering, Lulu is a vehicle that enabled him to grieve through music. I argue that Wainwright's performativity, as well as the music itself, can be understood as queer, or as that which transgresses traditional or expected boundaries. In this sense, Wainwright's artistic identity and musical trajectory resemble a rhizome, extending in multiple directions and continually expanding to create new paths and outcomes. Instances of queerness reveal themselves in the genre hybridity of the Lulu song cycle, the emotional vulnerability of Wainwright's vocal performance, the deconstruction of gender norms in live performance, and the circulation of affect within the performance space. In this study, I examine the song cycle form, Wainwright's musical score and vocal performance, live performance videos, and fan reactions to live performances in order to identify meaningful moments where Wainwright's musical and performative decisions queer audience expectations. While these musical moments contribute to the already rich and varied lineage of the gay male artist in both classical and popular music, I argue that Wainwright's queer performativity and nontraditional musical choices speak to larger issues important to American culture in the contemporary moment. These issues include the visibility of male public mourning and the healing power of artistic expression in the face of traumatic loss.

Committee: Jeremy Wallach PhD (Advisor); Kimberly Coates PhD (Committee Member); Katherine Meizel PhD (Committee Member); Christian Coons PhD (Other) Subjects: American Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Glbt Studies; Music; Performing Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, EDU Teaching and Learning

This qualitative study addresses the research problem of understanding and theorizing the construction of social identity among adolescents in the current context of globalization and transnationalism. To address the question, the study focused on five young men in Innsbruck, Austria, who were self-described “hip hoppers.” Hip hop is more than a musical style; it is a complex, diverse, and sometimes contradictory social and cultural movement and ideology that is both global and local. It lies at the nexus of globalization and transnationalism, playing itself out in diverse ways in local settings globally. The theoretical perspective of the study emphasized the variability and contextual embeddedness of social identities as part of the performativity of identity (a theory espoused by Butler). This theoretical perspective argues that social identity is multiple and iterative, meaning that participants are continually enacting and modifying their social identities as their contexts change over time and space. Social identity is, according to this study, socially constructed and governed by the relationships and environments in which the participants function. The sociolinguistic principles guiding this study are analyzed derived from microethnographic discourse analysis. The spoken linguistic codes performed by the participants and the literacy practices these codes enable the subject to not only their own social constructions, but those given to their practical cultural environments. Language is viewed as a code through which the participants can communicate their hip hop affinities and an inclusion in a hip hop community. The methodologies and research methods employed in this study are compatible with the principles and practices of ethnographic and sociolinguistic research as are the values placed on individual's experience and agency in various contexts and how they are revealed to the researcher. The logic of inquiry for the study was informed overall by (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Bloome PhD (Committee Chair); Sarah Gallo PhD (Committee Member); Alan Hirvela PhD (Committee Member); Jan Nespor PhD (Committee Member); Cynthia Selfe PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2016, English/Literature

Today, the concept of passing for trans* individuals is often reduced down to a good/bad dichotomy. Passing can be used for safety and can reaffirm a trans* individuals' identity. However, passing can be seen as deceptive or hiding one's true identity. The history of passing contributes to this supposed deception: since passing as a different race or sexual orientation signifies a performance, some believe passing for trans* individuals means passing as a man or woman. Because of this assumption, I use the phrase "passing as cisgender" to challenge the idea that a cis person is real and a trans* person is unreal. Using Judith Butler's notion of gender performativity as a basis, this project attempts to break down the concept of a real gender by examining trans* characters who can pass as cisgender. I analyze three different texts--Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, Jackie Kay's Trumpet, and Janet Mock's Redefining Realness--and their trans* character's relation to passing as cisgender. In the first chapter, I refute the typical analyses of Middlesex and explain how Cal uses passing as cis as a strategy for obtaining agency. In the second chapter, I examine how the "double narrative" of passing provides Joss Moody with an alternative narrative, but the medical and legal communities within Trumpet attempt to rewrite this alternative narrative. In the final chapter, I argue that Janet Mock, who can pass as cisgender, chooses not to pass as cis and shares her story. This provides an alternative to passing, even though this is only available for a small group of trans* individuals. All of these chapters reveal that passing is much more complex than its standard notions.

Committee: Kimberly Coates (Advisor); Bill Albertini (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Gender; Gender Studies; Glbt Studies; Literature; Philosophy; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2016, English

In this project, I undertake a queer Marxist reading of the television series Orphan Black. Specifically, I investigate the portrayal of women and queer characters in order to discover the conflicting dominant and oppositional ideologies circulating in the series. Doing so allows me to reveal cultural anxieties that haunt the series even as it challenges normative power relations. I argue that while Orphan Black's narrative subverts traditional gender roles, critiques heteronormativity, and offers sexually fluid characters, the series still reifies the traditionally ideal Western female body: thin, attractive, legibly gendered, and fertile. I draw on Antonio Gramsci's theory of ideology and hegemony, Heidi Hartman's analysis of Marxism and feminism, and Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity to unpack the series' non-normative depiction of gender and its simultaneous reliance on a stable gender binary. I frame my argument with Todd Gitlin's understanding of hegemony's ability to domesticate radical ideas in television. I argue that Orphan Black imagines spaces and scenarios that offer the potential to liberate women from heteronormative expectations and limit patriarchy's harm. The series privileges a queer female collective and envisions a world where women have freedom from normative conceptions of gender and sexuality. Nevertheless, as I will explain throughout this project, these narrative freedoms come at a cost, as the series domesticates the radical ideas it presents. The series' amalgamation of cultural influences becomes apparent through its inconsistent messages about women's bodies and autonomy. In the series' critique of patriarchal institutions and ideas, it fixates on a specific female body and biological kinship.

Committee: Bill Albertini (Advisor); Kimberly Coates (Committee Member) Subjects: Canadian Studies; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Literature; Mass Media; Philosophy; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2015, American Culture Studies

This dissertation analyzes three historical romance novels—Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress by Theresa Romain (2015), The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran (2008) and The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan (2013)—to understand how postracial rhetoric is being contested and confirmed in a genre where the reader is promised an “emotionally just” ending. In historical romance novels, this “emotionally just” ending often involves a re-writing of history where institutional systems (often patriarchy) are made progressive and more hospitable to oppressed groups through the power of romantic love (RWA “About the Romance Genre”). I argue that depictions of interracial relationships in twenty-first century historical romance novels written by American authors for a primarily American audience helps to illustrate both the problem of postracial thinking and the complexities and contradictions of postracial thinking by rewriting both history and historical stereotypes. The inclusion of interracial relationships that seriously analyze issues of racial identity within the course of the narrative helps to trouble the dominance of the postracial narrative for readers of romance, 83% of whom are white according to a survey conducted by The Nielsen Company for the Romance Writers of America (“The Romance Book Buyer” 11).

Committee: Jolie Sheffer PhD (Advisor); Pamela Regis PhD (Committee Member); Sridevi Menon PhD (Committee Member); Lisa Hanasono PhD (Committee Member); Kara Joyner PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Ethnic Studies; Gender Studies; Literature; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2015, American Culture Studies

Popular perceptions of the woman driver have long relied upon two persistent stereotypes. The original woman driver stereotype – which depicted the feminine driver as passive, inept, and overly cautious – was developed during the post World War I era in an effort to limit women's mobility. In the decades following World War II, as a means to distinguish women's driving experience from that of men, the woman driver was reconfigured into an individual who called upon the automobile to reaffirm her culturally approved gender identity as caretaker and consumer. Despite women's growing influence as auto owners and drivers in the twenty-first century, the ubiquity of these stereotypes ensures that the female motorist will continue to be regarded in a limited and often negative way. This project examines three alternative constructions of the woman driver to expose the fallacy of current representations as well as to suggest infinite new possibilities for women behind the wheel. Looking at women who drive chick cars, classic muscle cars, and pickup trucks through the lenses of material culture theory and gender performativity, this investigation considers how three groups of women challenge historical and societal directives in order to create a legitimate and empowering place for themselves as drivers in the hegemonic masculine climate of American car culture. Moving away from historical analysis and representation, it focuses on the automotive experiences of real women through participant observation at automotive events, online observation of various car groups, as well as in-depth interviews with over 100 female motorists. This method of inquiry not only reveals the speciousness of existing stereotypes, but also demonstrates how three populations of driving women have successfully reconfigured, reclaimed, and reimagined the “woman driver” category to make it their own.

Committee: Susana Peña PhD (Committee Chair); Catherine Cassara PhD (Other); Ellen Berry PhD (Committee Member); Vikki Krane PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Gender; Transportation; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2014, Educational Leadership

This case study dissertation uses the tenets of pragmatism as defined by Cherryholmes (1999) to examine student writing in a business writing course wherein the curriculum was specifically designed using poststructural performativity theory with the intent of providing the students with a learning experience that would allow them to examine, challenge, and reframe their own identities as students and businesspeople. The study considers the consequences of thinking that resulted from a business writing curriculum that had been redesigned from a structural, case-based model, to a poststructural, experiential learning based model. The case consists of the formal and informal writing done by students taking the course over the four semesters in which the curriculum was used. Each semester, students were placed into groups and were challenged to develop a non-profit business, activist group or student organization that would improve their community. The work done to create those organizations became the subject material for the formal writing assignments the students created in the process of learning to become business writers. Discourse analysis of student writing was conducted as part of the pragmatic process of reflecting on, analyzing, and improving curriculum. The analysis uncovered ways in which various binaries, such as “student/businessperson” and “classroom/real-world,” were challenged within the curriculum, as well as the fluidity of student identity and their access to agency and power. Implications for the construction and improvement of experiential and pragmatic curricula were developed based on these findings.

Committee: Thomas Poetter PhD (Committee Chair); Kathleen Knight Abowitz PhD (Committee Member); Richard Quantz PhD (Committee Member); Katharine Ronald PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Education; Curriculum Development; Education; Educational Theory; Higher Education; Pedagogy

Bachelor of Arts, University of Toledo, 2014, English

As the British Empire collapsed, the postwar call to rebuild England brought an influx of immigrants to London whose effects upon the social fabric of society could not have been fully predicted. The question of English identity in contemporary fiction has become an increasingly urgent question as reflected in Zadie Smith’s NW (2012). I analyze the character of Keisha/Natalie to argue that she is representative of contemporary London, both of whom are in the midst of an identity crisis. To support this claim, I argue that the treatment of this character reflects London’s history of decolonization, immigration, and loss of power. London’s cultural fragmentation in turn shapes Smith’s depiction of Keisha/Natalie. During the course of this essay I employ Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to elucidate these two separate selves; one self mirrors a traditional Englishness and the other a conflicted multicultural representation within the demographics of socioeconomic status, race, and gender, reflecting a sense of unhomeliness as experienced by minorities in contemporary London. The minority search for an authentic self and place is evidenced by the inclusion postcolonial scholars in this essay. Their critical scholarship aids in the analysis Keisha/Natalie who, I argue, complicates traditional representations of Englishness to recover notions self within a cosmopolitan London. Ultimately, I hope that this essay will further the conversation regarding ever changing human face of London and the way in which the minority experience enriches the cultural fabric of England, evidenced by literature regarding identity politics offered by young English novelists such as Zadie Smith.

Committee: Melissa Gregory (Advisor); Parama Sarkar (Advisor) Subjects: Literature