Discourses about pornography have grown since the diffusion of print communication and the first erotic representations. In the 80s, the so-called sex wars involved intense debates about pornography s liberating or objectifying nature, while in the 90s, the emergence of porn studies offered a more balanced and contextualized analysis of pornography, highlighting the need for researchers to also focus on the audience s understanding of the experience. Although the majority of research in this field has focused on adults, much of the concern relates to children. To date, however, most of the research relating to children has focused on effects and on potential harm. Audience researchers in Cultural Studies have examined how children understand representations of sex, love and romance, but only in relation to mainstream media. Yet when it comes to pornography in particular, the discussion is to a great extent based on adults assumptions about what is potentially harmful for children. My aim is to approach children s use and interpretation of sexual content in the media through an audience reception approach. In a sense, this brackets off the question of possible risk or harm, in favour of focusing on the nature of the experience itself. My research is based on interviews conducted with young adults (18-22 years old) thinking retrospectively about their experiences with sexual content in childhood and early teenage life. Despite the number of disadvantages this approach may have, this thesis aims to focus on how participants themselves report and account for their actual experiences. Using a basic thematic coding, I consider the self-reported nature and context of young people s experiences. Next, I focus on the discourses used to interpret and contextualize their experiences. Finally, through a narrative approach I examine their constructions of identities in talking about sexuality. In these ways, this thesis wishes to offer new insights into the topic through an audience reception approach that until now has been largely missing from the academic agenda.

published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

I argue that the ways in which members of the youth generation in Cairo, Egypt consume Arabic-language popular music, and the aesthetic criteria by which they evaluate the worth of various songs and singers, constitute a key component, along with corresponding criteria of political, racial, gendered, and cultural authenticity of Egyptian subjectivity, of a new form of Egyptian gendered national subjectivity in postcolonial modernity. These aesthetic and authenticating criteria are fundamentally interrelated, as one’s consumer preferences within genres of Egyptian popular music are often taken as indicative of the nature of one’s Egyptian subjectivity. For previous generations in postcolonial Egypt, discriminating taste for high modernist aesthetics in popular music, especially the singer Umm Kulthūm, comprised an aspect of desirable cultural modernity and authenticity. This aesthetic has been superseded among contemporary youth by an emphasis on direct emotional evocation as an index of authenticity. Correspondingly, youth in Cairo have come to judge the authenticity of their Egyptian subjectivity against the political subjectivity of their elders’ generations, and the authenticity of their gendered, racial, and cultural subjectivities against those of the West and those of other Arab countries, most particularly Lebanon. / text

The rapid telescoping of the need to communicate cross-culturally in an ever widening range of contexts sets the basic circumstances for this study. Private and public sector interviewing become more important as cultural and cross-cultural factors emerge in coventuring enterprises. Standard interviewing programs and procedures do not usually focus on cross-cultural variables. A model is necessary through which to orchestrate the interview in a generic form and into which substantive illustrations for cross-cultural interviews can be placed. The Cube model designed by Dr. T. Frank Saunders, in his Double Think book, was adapted to this purpose and provides a comprehensive and exhaustive format for this study. The advent of CD ROM, high storage and easy retrieval computer technology, makes the design presented here an effective and efficient system for the collection and collation of demographic and ethnographic data. The Cube model and procedures set forth in this study should facilitate the data collection and development of an interview manual for cross-cultural interviewing.

This dissertation examines the intersections among discourses of feminism, transgender studies, queer theory, film studies, and social activist practice. I address the question of how transphobia as a set of beliefs and behaviors is illustrated in four late-twentieth-century films, three produced in America and one originally released in Australia but later acquiring a significant following in this country. I define transphobia as the "fear of a transgendered person and the hatred, discrimination, intolerance, and prejudice that this fear brings" (Laframboise 2002) and transgender as a broad term that can apply to persons, behaviors, and filmic images, a "self-conscious politicization of identity that activates an investigation of gender relations within different s socio-spatial regimes" (Brooks 1) and "clearly disrupt[s] hegemonic notions of a stable trinity between sex, gender and sexuality" (Jennings and Lomine 146).I provide brief histories of feminist and queer theories to illustrate these fields' insufficiency in accounting for transgender experience and trace the establishment of transgender studies as an explicit field of study. Then, I examine works by transgender studies theorists and activists to explain the progression of thought that led to these writers' call for abolition of the binary gender system. In the following chapter, I trace the theoretical moves from a feminist theory of film to a queer theory approach to film, again pointing out the limited perspective that explicitly feminist analysis of film has frequently offered. Finally, I demonstrate the ways in which each film conforms to and/or defies heteronormative ideals of gender and sexuality and upholds the binary gender system. I suggest that ongoing efforts in transgender and other kinds of social activism might eventually bring about a postgenderist society wherein gender "roles" are no longer forced upon individuals, but may be adopted (or refused) by choice. To this end, I outline six criteria of what I term a positive film portrayal of transgender and explain how each film either meets or fails to meet these criteria, which generally focus on the degree to which the films allow their protagonists to maintain a gender identity that violates binary norms on a continual basis.

No description available.

No description available.

Early adolescence (e.g., 10-14 years old) is a time during which health habits and behaviors first develop that carry over into adulthood. This age range is also a time when changes are often first observed in typical sleep patterns, such as a delay in bedtimes, decreased total sleep times, and increased sleep problems. Electronic media and social networking have become essential to adolescent interpersonal communication and are negatively associated with adolescent sleep. Room and/or bed sharing practices and having a parent-set bedtime are still common in this age range, though no study has examined the relationship between these culturally influenced practices and the sleep of racially/ethnically diverse early adolescents. The current study examined if differences exist between 1272 Caucasian, Hispanic/Latino, and African American early adolescents (ages 10-14 years) on self-reported bedtime, SOL, TST, and sleep efficiency, and whether these differences persist when taking into account presence of electronic media in the bedroom (i.e., TV, videogame console, computer, cellphone), media use at bedtime (i.e., watching TV, playing video/computer games, social networking, texting), room sharing, and parent-set bedtimes. Preliminary results showed that females reported worse sleep than males (i.e., longer sleep onset latency, shorter TST, and lower sleep efficiency, with a trend for having a later bedtime), and that African Americans and Hispanics reported later bedtimes than Caucasians, Hispanics reported shorter sleep onset latency and longer sleep efficiency than Caucasians, and African Americans reported shorter total sleep time than Caucasians. Presence of any type of media in the bedroom or use of any type of electronic media at bedtime was associated with later bedtimes and shorter total sleep times, but not with SOL or sleep efficiency. Parent-set bedtimes were associated with earlier bedtimes, longer sleep onset latency, longer TST, and lower sleep efficiency. After controlling for significant bedtime factors, only the main effects for TST became non-significant, while the interaction became significant. Hispanic females reported shorter TST than Hispanic males, African American females reported shorter TST compared to Caucasian females, and Caucasian males reported shorter TST compared to Hispanic males. Intervention strategies such as parent education and sleep education in schools targeting the bedtime behaviors and sleeping habits of adolescents are discussed.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur projektet Kulturkompis konstrueras inom ramarna för integrationstänkande och kulturupplevelser. Både utifrån de deltagandes perspektiv och upplevelser men också utifrån verksamhetens interna syn och arbete. Bland annat fokuserar studien på hur maktpositioner, föreställningar och normer produceras och reproduceras. Uppsatsen bygger på fem stycken kvalitativa intervjuer. Frågeställningarna jag sökt svar på är vilka normer om integration, kultur och gemenskap som kommer till uttryck i projektet. Analysen har utgått från konstruktivistiska perspektiv och begrepp som kultur, makt och klass.