Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2015, Film (Fine Arts)

This thesis studies the cinematic representation of transnational women workers in contemporary American and European fiction films including Bread and Roses (2000), Dirt (2003), Spanglish (2004), and Amreeka (2009). The research considers this representation as it articulates issues in the current state of global migration, immigration laws, and women's reproductive labor. Since the early 2000s, the growing numbers of women from the so-called `developing' countries have been immigrating, alone or with their children, to `developed' countries. Most often they are destined for employment in low-wage service jobs. This process, termed as the “feminization of migration” in the United Nations study (2006), has been addressed by filmmakers such as Ken Loach, Gregory Nava, Nancy Savoca and many others who have made films centered on the immigrant women protagonists. I argue that the cinematic impulse to portray the lives of underrepresented women and to appropriate their marginalized point-of-view signals a necessary turn to a transnational subjectivity determined by contemporary global economic and power relations.

BA, Oberlin College, 2018, History

Between 1942 and 1964, the U.S. and Mexico made a series of labor agreements collectively referred to as the Bracero Program. The Mexican men, Braceros, contracted through this program worked temporarily in agriculture and industry across the U.S. This paper examines the lives of ten women in the Mexican state of Michoacan whose male family members worked as Braceros. The mens' absences disrupted the family in an economic sense, requiring women to take on labor that was non-traditional for women at the time, as well as in a social sense, as the stability and respectability of their household came into doubt in the eyes of their village. Women recognized that the social consequences that could come from this disruption of the patriarchal family structure posed a real threat to their family's economic survival. Thus, while they transgressed certain patriarchal boundaries by taking on new and nontraditional types of work, they also performed the ideological labor of justifying their situation. The women narrated the Braceros' absences and mitigated against ensuing social consequences by employing Catholic gender ideologies that had developed in the region. In other words, as a method of survival, women met the Bracero Program's disruption of the rural peasant family structure with the reinscription of traditional gender values.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

In this qualitative dissertation study, I will develop a theoretical framing that can be used for a deep and contextualized exploration of the experiences and narratives of Black transnational women within and outside of educational spaces. Positing that these experiences and narratives are shaped by settler colonialism/colonialism, racism, and heteropatriarchy, the goal of this study is to better understand Black transnational women's narratives, stories, and experiences as connected to their languages, identities, and literacy practices. Doing so allows me to theorize their narratives, stories, and experiences by considering the complexities of anti-black racism, heterosexism, and colonialism both in their home countries and in the United States. In the hopes of contributing to the emerging body of work on the anticolonialism in knowledge production and education (Emeagwali & Dei, 2014; Kempf, 2009), as well as the notion of transnational identities and ways of being, meaning, as occupying multiple spaces simultaneously (Miron, 2014), this study is guided by the following research questions: (1) What lessons about the construction of race and gender can be learned from Black transnational/immigrant women? (2) What larger contexts impact the lives, identities, and educational experiences of Black transnational women (3) What hopes, fears, and/or goals drive the educational pursuits of Black transnational women? (4) What specific struggles do these women face when trying to access sites of formal education? Based on these questions, I will draw on Black and transnational feminist theories, critical literacy studies, and anti-and decolonial theories to explore the ways in which the English language, spoken and written, can be used to facilitate social justice for Black transnational women. To explore these questions, I conducted a series of conversational, in-depth interviews with each of the 7 adult immigrant women (ages 25-35) in this study. Each women self-id (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Sociology

Why do some nations suffer significantly higher rates of terrorism and guerrilla attacks? How important are the social, economic, and political opportunities and grievances stemming from international rent dependency? Drawing on the longstanding “greed vs. grievance” debate about the origins of civil war and related arguments about the political economy of rentier states and the “resource curse,” this dissertation examines the importance of multiple forms of international rents on two forms of political violence: (1) terrorist attacks on civilians; and (2) guerrilla attacks on the state and its personnel. Specifically, this dissertation analyzes the relative importance and mediating political mechanisms associated with five types of international rents: (1) exports of oil and natural gas; (2) economic aid and assistance; (3) military aid; (4) worker remittances; and (5) tourist revenues. Using cross-sectional pooled time series techniques with zero-inflated negative binomial regression applied to a global cross-national dataset for 193 countries from 1971-2008, I examine how multiple dimensions of rentier states and various associated social, political and economic structures affect annual counts of terrorist and guerrilla attacks. The major findings of the study is that international oil and gas exports increase terror and guerrilla attacks, the latter effect largely mediated by economic and political factors. Additionally, nations with state-controlled oil and gas industries are more likely to suffer guerrilla attacks, while nations with privately controlled oil and gas industries are less likely to experience attacks. International military aid has an inverted U-shaped relationship with terrorism but does not affect guerrilla warfare, while economic aid and assistance affects neither. International tourism shows an inverted U-shaped relationship with terror and guerrilla attacks, suggesting that, at lower levels of dependency, political grievances lead to violen (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2005, Telecommunications (Communication)

This dissertation explores the crucial relationship between contemporary processes of international migration and mediated communication processes and practices across the transnational social space, specifically in the case of the Salvadoran immigrant community in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. In this dissertation, I aim to articulate the theoretical frameworks of transnational studies, diasporic media studies and structuration theory for understanding the local and transnational dynamics of production, circulation and appropriation of mediated texts and the configuration of collective identity representations through local and transnational Spanish-language media. Based on a media ethnography approach, which includes seventy in-depth interviews, one focus group and participant observation developed during twelve weeks of fieldwork, I analyze a sample of Salvadoran radio and television transnational programs, discuss some alternatives forms of communication and cultural expression, evaluate the diasporic uses of the Internet and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), and the formation of new hybrid identities among Salvadoran immigrants articulated through the sociocultural mediations of soccer, religion, popular music and the construct of an ethnic market. I conclude that structuration theory provides important sensitizing devices for mass communication research, especially for analyzing the dynamic of agents and structures in the practices of communication and the levels of signification, domination and legitimation in the structuration of communicative processes in society. Likewise, I emphasize the role of transnational media programs as a central mechanism of deterritorialization and reterritorialization for sociocultural ethnic roots, collective identity representations and mediated reunifications of transmigrant families. Similarly, I propose that the development of the Spanish-language media in the United States and the increasing (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, American Culture Studies

The study focuses on the shifting socioeconomic and cultural practices of street vending in Solo City, Indonesia, in response to structuring the global economy and culture. The dissertation seeks to answer the research questions: (1) How did street vending socioeconomic and cultural practices shift in Solo City from the 1980s to the early 2020s? (2) How has the changing cultural landscape of Solo City changed from the 1980s to the early 2020s concerning street vending? (3) How does American global cultural influence affect Solo City's spatiotemporal cultural landscape from the 1980s to the early 2020s? (4) How does Solo City negotiate with American global cultural influence in everyday-life cultural street vending practices from the 1980s to the early 2020s? I employ Burawoy's extended case method in this qualitative transnational American studies project by immersing myself into the field to delve within the context of the study and collect primary data from fieldwork—field observation and interviews—and personal narratives. The secondary data are artifacts, such as historical archives, statistical data, regulations, spatial mapping, news, social media posts, and so on, concerning street vending in Solo over time. I view the diffusion process of the global norm as friction (Tsing, 2005) between aspirations within global connections. Therefore, the study critically examines stories of the continuous reproduction of habitus (Bourdieu, 2013) as represented by shifting practices of sociocultural and political-economic activities committed by stakeholders and actors in street vending in Solo. The findings demonstrate that street vending socioeconomic and cultural practices in Solo City persist despite the shifting values affected by the modern capitalist economy. Street vendors constantly negotiate with local, national, and global structuring in such spatiotemporal politics, whether through formalization or strategizing the spatiotemporal gaps of left-over space and tem (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2024, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

Kurdish cinema represents a vital transnational and global art form that bridges the Kurdish community, uniting a stateless people through cultural expression. This dissertation explores common narrative threads of Kurdish cinema relating to identity, statelessness, trauma, and women's issues, despite the differences between Kurds of various nationalities in both the ancestral Kurdistan region and the diaspora. The first chapter examines how these artworks confront issues of identity, exile, and homeland. The second interrogates depictions of individual and collective trauma in Kurdish cinema, especially generational trauma resulting from racism, conflict, and displacement. Chapter 3 analyzes Kurdish cinema from a comparative perspective through the lens of Indigenous studies, examining how Kurdish cinema confronts settler-colonial oppression. The fourth and final chapter addresses the portrayal of Kurdish women's issues in Kurdish cinema, contrasting how male and female directors represent these issues and emphasizing the vital contributions of Kurdish women filmmakers especially with regard to telling Kurdish women's stories. Ultimately this work positions Kurdish cinema as a powerful artistic movement spanning national and international boundaries driven by the efforts of a distinct filmmaking community united in the desire to represent Kurdish identity and culture through cinematic storytelling.

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

This dissertation seeks to unearth the inherent complexity of relations among evangelical missionaries, their filial churches, Catholics, and secular actors in the context of Protestantism's precipitous rise in Brazil between the 1910s and 1960s. It argues that American Protestant missionaries proved to be crucial agents of cultural change who successfully imparted to their Brazilian believers facets of their anti-Communist, paternalistic, and intermittently apolitical ideologies over the course of several systems of government, including two dictatorships. Crucially, this dissertation situates missionaries as intersectional, transnational, and non-state actors within the larger framework of U.S.-Brazilian religiopolitics, cultural transfusion, and the construction of gender, economic, and racial norms. Although far from passive recipients of American evangelical ideas, Brazil's newly-converted Protestants embraced U.S. missionaries' thought to a considerable extent, thereby cementing the incisive cultural change that American missionaries had sought to foster in Brazil. In doing so, Brazilian church workers and leaders refashioned U.S. norms of evangelicalism while also increasingly advocating for the nationalization (indigenization) of evangelical denominations. Basing itself on four case studies of U.S.-founded or influenced evangelical churches, this dissertation unravels the many contradictions and complications inherent to U.S. missionary work in Brazil. These factors include Brazilian evangelicals' wavering between apoliticism and political activism, a vying for influence with the Catholic Church, the legacy of Jim Crow and its consequences to mission work in Brazil, as well as a series of intra-church disputes that ultimately resulted in the nationalization (indigenization) of each church. At the core of the evangelical experience between the 1910s and 1960s stood an identitarian quest to gain legitimacy among Brazil's secular and religious authoritie (open full item for complete abstract)

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

Historically and in the present, immigration looms large in the American consciousness. Today, we find ourselves in a challenging moment, struggling with political polarization alongside key questions about the causes and consequences of immigration. In this contemporary context, I explore the views that Americans hold about immigration, which may in turn impact immigrant integration. I then explore how first, second, and third-generation immigrants experience national and transnational social ties with attention to their health impacts. Broadly speaking, my dissertation seeks to understand how proximity to the immigrant experience is an important marker of group change. Since a large number of Americans are immigrants or have parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents who are or were immigrants, understanding variability in the ideas or stereotypes that Americans hold with respect to contemporary immigration is crucial to understanding how today's immigrants will be incorporated into the fabric of American life. To that end, I collect and analyze original survey data through the American Population Panel (APP) to first examine variability by generation in how Americans view immigrants in today's climate (Chapter Two). I find that generation is an important predictor of views towards immigration, but generation matters less for how individuals perceive diversity. Next, I use the commentary associated with my original APP survey to understand the thought processes and ideas that respondents invoke when presenting their views of immigration (Chapter Three). I find that oftentimes respondents cannot separate immigration from illegality, with politics, nationalism, and mistrust combining to create archetypes that respondents superimpose on immigrants broadly. Last, I conduct interviews with first, second, and third-generation immigrants in order to characterize the social ties that immigrants hold, how these ties inform their experiences in both the U.S. and in t (open full item for complete abstract)

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

The question this paper addresses is whether or not the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) and the State of Ohio are in violation of the Great Lakes Compact for allowing unapproved water to be depleted from the Great Lakes Basin Watershed. This project used two distinct study designs: a legal analysis of the Great Lakes Compact was conducted to interpret the binational agreement as written. Additionally, secondary data analysis was used to extract, extrapolate, aggregate, analyze and then interpret data from the ODNR to investigate whether or not this accord has indeed been violated by examining the quantities of water used to drill and stimulate oil and gas wells in Ohio permitted after December of 2008 when the Compact went into effect. 450 wells were found to have been permitted in the Lake Erie Watershed between December of 2008 and December of 2021. This study has shown that the use of injection wells as a means of disposal for hydraulic fracturing wastewater originally derived from the Lake Erie Watershed is in violation of the spirit of the Great Lakes Compact. There are potentially implications for future litigation to address this violation pending further research.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, English

Material Modernism: Nature, Resources, and Aesthetics, asks how natural resources, from their extraction, refinement, and consumption, influence modernist aesthetics. How might directing our attention to the paper shortages in the British Commonwealth in the 1940s enliven perceptions of the debates over modernist aesthetics and nationhood in little magazines like Horizon and BIM, which circulated across the Atlantic? How do we answer for the ubiquity of rubber in the fiction of classic modernists like Joseph Conrad and James Joyce as well as its influence on the career of British Consulate turned Irish revolutionary, Roger Casement? What does the linking of character development to the development of land in Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing and Sam Selvon's A Brighter Sun tell us about futures cultivated through land dispossession? These questions indicate important links between the transnational networks that constructed twentieth century geopolitics and transnational modernism. Modernist literary projects circulated within systems that often seemed surprisingly boundless, yet systems of imperialism and histories of over extraction were the inciting conditions for their existence. Therefore, when read together, transnational modernism and the influence of natural resources enliven our understanding of past patterns of thinking and shed light on our current moment of extreme extraction and climate crisis.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, History

This dissertation aims to reclaim the significance and innovations of female home scientists in India's development from 1947 until 1972. Historiographies of India's development in the post-independence period have largely overlooked how gendered projects, such as the establishment of home science programs in new Indian agricultural universities, were directed by professional women. To discover the ways and to what extent home scientists played an essential role in India's modernization projects, this study investigates the transnational interactions of U.S. home economists and Indian women who earned advanced degrees in home economics subjects in the United States during the Cold War. Analyzing archival material, personal collections, oral history interviews, online subscription databases, and open-access repositories, this dissertation recovers the voices and lived experiences of these professional women. Additionally, this process uncovered a rich collection of first-person narratives. Over one hundred and twenty-five theses and dissertations written by Indian home scientists during the first three decades after Independence, collectively and individually, illustrate their pioneering leadership. The significance of this research is that it reveals home scientists' personal and professional renegotiations, setbacks, triumphs, and transnational connections with philanthropic organizations, government officials, and U.S. home economists as they collaborated and led nation-building projects.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 0, History

My dissertation, “Squaring the Hexagon: Alsace, Algeria and French National Belonging, 1830-1962,” challenges the traditional boundaries between French and African history. I investigate the connections between Alsace and Algeria, two places where the French state struggled to establish sovereignty over inhabitants who spoke, lived, and worshipped in decidedly distinct ways from the rest of France. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, French politicians, government officials, and military commanders viewed their missions of making Alsace and Algeria French — and turning Alsatians and Algerians into Frenchmen — in markedly similar terms, often adapting policies from one region to the other. This entangled history of Alsace and Algeria complicates our understanding of the nature of colonies and regions, revealing the deep connections between empire-building and nation-building.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, History

“Made for America” examines how Japanese consumer goods entered the post-World War II American market and how they have expanded the scope of U.S.-Japanese relations. In the immediate postwar period, the United States designated Japan as the centerpiece of its Cold War strategy in Asia and sought build an export-centric Japanese economy. Doing so required improving the quality of Japanese products, invoking the cooperation of transpacific networks of government officials, businessmen, and experts to transfer American technical and management knowledge into Japan. The Japanese camera and automobile industries successfully broke into the American market by establishing programs to guarantee the technical legitimacy of their products and engaging with American consumers through market research and advertising. In the process, Japan's consumer goods adapted to American consumers' needs and helped shape American perceptions of postwar Japan as a modern, technologically advanced ally. However, by the 1970s these Japanese exported goods became emblems of American industrial struggle in an era characterized by energy crises, environmental regulations, and economic stagflation. Some Americans responded with calls to enact trade restrictions to limit Japanese imports. Others, in cooperation with the Japanese government and businesses, sought to adapt Japanese management and manufacturing methods into American contexts. These efforts reflect how Japan's postwar consumer good exports created new avenues of engagement that expanded the scope of U.S.-Japanese relations.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2021, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This dissertation offers a close examination of the treatment and influence of mandatory hijab in contemporary Transnational Iranian Cinema. Through a detailed analysis of three Iranian films, this project investigates how Iranian filmmakers address the social ramifications of mandatory hijab laws in their work. In addition, this dissertation seeks to analyze the impact of abiding by said laws on film production and narrative cinematic storytelling in Iran. These films are: Hush! Girls Don't Scream (Derakhshandeh, 2013), Offside (Panahi, 2006), and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Amirpour, 2013)

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2021, Sociology

This dissertation contributes to the growing academic interest in the second-generation transmigrants and their parental homelands connections and transnational identities. It focuses on the children of Arab immigrants from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. This dissertation aims to uncover what transnationalism looks like in this population and what factors facilitate or discourage transnationalism. Moreover, this study is particularly interested in exploring the influence discrimination has on this population's transnational connections and identities. Based on 64 semi-structured interviews with second-generation Arab Americans, this research finds that second-generation Arab Americans are transnationally active in social and cultural domains but not in political and economic domains. This study also coins the term “Transnational Projects,” which are composed of transnational ways of being, ways of belonging, and the tools of transnational engagement. This study find that the strength of second-generations' transnational projects is shaped by three transnational social fields: parental homes, marital homes, and religious organizations. Finally, this study also finds that experiences of discrimination affect Christian and Muslim Arab Americans' transnational projects differently. For Christians, experiences of discrimination are dismissed and do not affect transnational projects. While, for Muslims experiences of discrimination provoke reactive transnationalism within their mosques.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

Origin Stories traces the emergence and political potential of a slow aesthetic in contemporary transnational cinemas of the hemispheric Americas in the new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Starting from the vantage point of the global South, this dissertation examines five major filmmakers associated with slowness: Lucrecia Martel (Argentina), Alfonso Cuaron (Hollywood/Mexico), Natalia Almada (US/Mexico), Kelly Reichardt (US), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand). Slowness in cinema has popularly and academically been theorized from an aesthetic or national perspective since Matthew Flanagan first coined the term “slow cinema.” However, to theorize slowness as a global aesthetic flattens the political textures of cinemas that arise from marginalized markets with their own film histories. The recent steady growth in international co-production, as well as historical movement of film within and between markets, also indicate that national definitions are increasingly inapplicable to transnational cinemas. Latin American cinema is an example of historical and current transnational production as films circulate between nations in the home market and internationally on the film festival circuit, as well as cultivating a unique character outside Hollywood's cultural dominance. Looking at slow cinema from its geopolitical context reveals the critique of current and past global systems that contribute to iniquity including the erasure of Black and Indigenous peoples from Latinx histories and identities, entrenched racial hierarchies of coloniality, and how these structures inflect and reflect attitudes toward the natural world. Expanding the hemispheric Americas to the Asia Pacific, another site of conquest and US imperial ideation, experimental film translates the personal to the political in an intimate portraiture of human and natural ecologies. Bringing together cinema studies, decolonial, and Indigenous studies approaches, this dissertation charts the intersect (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2021, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

While scholars who investigate the works of African diasporic authors Edwidge Danticat, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Claudia Rankine acknowledge the importance between form and audience in their works, critics have either yet to fully recognize how and/or for what purpose each author implements specific techniques. Paying close attention to what I propose are formal affective strategies in Danticat's Everything Inside, Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck, and Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, allows us to see how each author infuses experimental forms that are strategically bound to how their future readers will react to their texts with the hope that these reactions will prove more socially and politically moving than just moving—as in readers simply turning the page. Black diasporic women authors, including Danticat, Adichie, and Rankine, destabilize traditional literary paradigms and invent new formal affective strategies in their works. Upon closer consideration, these strategies not only help expose the continuous exclusivity of the American Dream and contemporary problems associated with the enduring patriarchal hegemony, but by engaging the audience with commonly felt affects, reconfigure future possibilities for intersectional solidarity through the very conflicts and difficulties their writings explore and formally embody.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Spanish and Portuguese

Within Mexico City a community has formed known as Little L.A.. This community came to exist as United States call centers in Mexico employed English speaking repatriated Mexicans. Repatriated in that individuals were either deported by force, some returned by choice, some were US citizens who came back with family members or loved ones. A call was made for those who identified as bilingual to participate in a medical interpreting course in conjunction with The Ohio State University, a non-profit organization for repatriated people - Nuevo Commencements, and the local Mexico City government. All participants were of Mexican decent, various citizenship status, all had lived in the United States. While the objective began to train bilingual bicultural people as medical interpreters, the intensive course was forced to shift its focus slightly to look at language ideologies and language variety and language validity. While all participants had self-identified as bilingual, the language insecurity that comes from labeling in the US as English Language Learners, or as having been labeled in Mexico as not real Spanish speakers while having had their US identity stripped, of having their Mexicanidad questioned, had created a feeling of linguistic inferiority. Language was used in the community as a tool of prescriptive superiority to argue “incomplete acquisition” and not belonging, and in turn the medical interpreting course had to confront these ideologies as part of understanding the value repatriated people brought to interpretation. The cultural knowledge that is understood as a bicultural person is not one learns in a classroom, the ideologies of language registrars, the identifying of language varieties and the understanding that perhaps their Spanish was different in that it was US Spanish and that in itself was a valid language variety. That perhaps their English was different, it was US English and that they possessed the ability to navigate US English that was b (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2020, Applied Behavioral Science: Criminal Justice and Social Problems

Transnational commercial surrogacy brought billions of dollars from the United States to the Indian economy. During this time, beginning in 2002, this practice was and continues to be scrutinized by scholars from various academic fields. In this study the researcher analyzes how the emergence of transnational commercial surrogacy in India was portrayed in US media through multiple outlets including newswires, magazines, transcripts, and web publications. In this qualitative study, the researcher performed purposive sampling to locate articles within the Nexis Uni database between the dates of January 1, 2006 and January 1, 2015. Using flexible coding, and qualitative content analysis the researcher coded thirty news items. Four themes emerged including: law, money made in a certain period of time (with subthemes of globalization and exploitation), surrogate health, and intended parents desperation for children. Additionally, the researcher contextualizes transnational commercial surrogacy within Postcolonial Feminist critiques—specifically those arguing that the practice retrenches colonial thinking and practices. This study recommends that, should transnational commercial surrogacy become legal again in India, Indian lawmakers ensure surrogates ensure surrogates health and personal freedoms while performing this labor. Also, this study recommends that Indian surrogates are paid fees comparable to their Western counterparts.