In her 2016 article “Beyond Rights as Recognition, Black Twitter and Posthuman Coalitional Possibilities,” Pritha Prasad argues that the hashtag, one of the decade’s most omnipresent features of digital communication, functions as “a performative composing medium that not only demands relationality” and “call[s] for the recognition of both the Black...
The sudden and unexpected death of a seemingly healthy infant sets in motion a number of linked processes with potentially complex and far-reaching ramifications. While individuals, families and communities grapple with the shock and heartbreak associated with the loss of a young life, a chain of multidisciplinary investigative responsibilities is...
Recent demographic studies have revealed a greater diversity in settlement patterns among Mexican immigrant families resulting in rapidly climbing populations of immigrants in new areas of the country, particularly in rural areas, while growth in established destinations has slowed. Host communities play an important role in families' acculturation processes and...
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of the most widely read novels written by an Oregonian. A mute Native American, a boisterous Irish white man, and numerous African Americans working behind the scenes of the narrative all converge in this struggle for autonomy. Little to no...
This thesis examines the characterization of the femme fatale and the implications of this trope for late-Victorian gender and sexuality in the ghost stories of female aesthete Vernon Lee. In her treatment of the femme fatale figure, Lee both reinforces and complicates the image of the sexualized, often bestialized woman...
This research explores the experiences of Iraqi women during and after the 2003 U.S.-led war (2003-2011). The aim of the project was to provide an occasion for a group of Iraqi women to give voice to their lived experiences of war and to document these voices, adding their subjective perspectives...
In the months preceding the 2016 presidential election and during the Trump presidency, rhetoric, composition, and communications scholars expressed an urgent concern about the threat that Trump and his political affiliates posed to the status of truth in political life (McComiskey; Rice; Harsin; Cloud). However, the conversations surrounding the discipline’s...
Critical consciousness (CC) and hopeful future expectations (HFE) are believed to promote positive development in youth who face structural inequalities (Callina et al., 2014; Heberle et al., 2020; Mcwhirter & McWhirter, 2008). Although both CC and HFE hold promise for enhancing the positive development of oppressed youth, gaps in the...
This dissertation aims to provide a comprehensive portrayal of doula care in the lives of pregnant and parenting adolescent mothers. The purpose of this research was to examine the relationships between psychosocial stress, social support, institutionalized constraints, and their impacts on health and well-being among adolescent mothers in the Northwestern...
This project examines the portrayal of the life and times of Kaiserin Elisabeth von Österreich (Empress Elisabeth of Austria) in the popular Austrian musical "Elisabeth das Musical" (Elisabeth the Musical), written by Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay. "Elisabeth" was first performed in Vienna in 1992 and has since become the...