The Power of a Small Green Place is an ethnographic case study among the volunteers and urban wilds of Ottawa’s Fletcher Wildlife Garden (FWG). Through the conceptual lens of the geographical concept of place – with its wide range of physical, relational and deeper meaningful considerations – this urban wildlife habitat project emerged as a place of profound significance. Volunteers working to create and maintain the FWG’s diverse habitats benefit from opportunities to engage in physical outdoor activity, establish social connections, make contact with the natural world, find deep personal satisfaction and meaning, and experience healthier and mutually beneficial relations with nature. This case study fills a knowledge gap in geography regarding the significant relationships that can emerge between people and the land they work with, thereby contributing to geography’s “latest turn earthward” examining practices and relationships of cultivation with the land. The case study also contributes to a growing interdisciplinary dialogue on human-nature relations and their implications in the context of future environmental and societal uncertainties.

League of Legends is one of the most popular video games in the world, and yet it is also infamously known as being filled with harassment and failure. Why do I continue to play? In this project, a critical autoethnography is used to illustrate what it is like to play in this male-dominated space as a woman. Using feminist and queer game studies as my theoretical framework, this project investigates three distinct, but interconnected concepts: hegemonic masculinity, weaponized failure, and subversive play. In chapter one, I use Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity to analyze League of Legends. I argue that gameplay elements such as champion selection, communication, and role-play make it difficult to challenge hegemonic masculinity in League of Legends. However, I do acknowledge that it is possible to challenge through playing the role of support properly – by concentrating on teamwork and sacrifice. In chapter two, I use queer video game studies, including key texts by Bonnie Ruberg and Jesper Juul, to consider failure in League of Legends. While queer failure can be fun in single-player video games, I argue that failure in League of Legends can be used as a weapon to intentionally hurt your teammates. Finally, in chapter three I consider my own subversive playstyle. While some academics have argued that woman who play masculine video games using male-coded skills cannot challenge the patriarchy, I argue that embracing my femininity in League of Legends allows me to persevere and push against the patriarchy. I argue that my feminine visibility in the form of my gamertag, SJW Queen, my communication style that emphasizes positivity and mediation, and how I play League of Legends are all examples of subversive gameplay. I bring my femininity into League of Legends uncompromised and I embrace it, rather than try to escape from it.

As a doctoral student, I was asked to teach a course based on emerging technologies and postmodern methods of inquiry in the field of art education. The course was titled Issues and Applications of Technology in Art Education and I developed a method of inquiry called animated autoethnography for pre-service art educators while teaching this course. Through this dissertation, I describe, analyze, interrogate, value, contextualize, reflect on, and artistically react to the autoethnographic animated processes of five pre-service art educators who were enrolled in the course. I interviewed the five participants before and after the creation of their animated autoethnographies and incorporated actor-network theory within the theoretical analysis to study how the insights of my students’ autoethnographies related to my own animations and life narratives. The study also examines animated autoethnography as a method of inquiry that may develop or enhance future teaching practices and encourage empathic connections through researching the self. These selected students created animations that accessed significant life moments, personal struggles, and triumphs, and they exhibited unique representations of self. Pre-service art educators can use self-research to create narrative-based short animations and also use socio-emotional learning to encourage the development of empathy within the classroom. I show diverse student examples, compare them to my own animations, and present a new model of inquiry that encourages the development of self by finding place in chaos, loving the unknown, embracing uncertainty, and turning shame into a celebration of life.

<p>Performing autoethnographic explorations as curriculum development strategies, and using autoethnographic modes (e.g., storytelling) as curriculum, may provide queer multicultural social justice education curriculum workers, and explorers, with opportunities to explore their own multicultural identities (e.g., race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, exceptionality, religion, sexual orientation, and gender), how their identities may intersect with curriculum development, and their stories alongside those of others. In Part One, I tell three (hi)stories highlighting how multicultural education, queer theory, and autoethnography support the practice of identity awareness (of self and others). In Part Two, I share nine explorations developed for this project, along with my performances and reflections of each exploration, which include how <i>performing </i>the explorations impacted their development. Finally, in Part Three, I apply these ideas to my practice of becoming a queer educator. I reflect on some of the tensions I wrestled with, on being aware of myself as a teacher and a student <i>simultaneously</i>, and on my use of language and curriculum development practices. In sum, I advocate for queering autoethnography and using it for curriculum development—thus, simultaneously queering the act of curriculum development—for the purposes of developing identity awareness (of self and others) and of honing queer multicultural social justice education curriculum development practices. During your engagement with this text, I invite the reader to reflect on these practices, perform the explorations, and ponder how these explorations may impact your curriculum development practices. <i>I also encourage you to share your stories.</i> </p>

This Diploma thesis explores the issue of queer femmes' access to sexual healthcare, and specifically focuses on the current situation of accessibility of sexual healthcare centers in Berlin. Written in constructivist paradigm, it is built on intersectional feminist theory, as well as post-colonial and disability studies. By employing autoethnographic research, the author aims to review local sexual healthcare facilities by describing her own experience, supplemented by questionnaires and interviews. Sharing intimate details of her own visits during which the author was tested or treated for sexually transmitted infections, she attempts to "queer" academic practice and present an approachable and highly personal body of work that embraces the researcher's subjectivity and entangled position. Apart from presenting findings of the research, this thesis also aims to offer possible solutions on how to make sexual healthcare more accessible to queer femmes, and includes the author's plans as a sex educator. Keywords: sexual healthcare, STIs, queer femmes, sexual health, autoethnography

<p>This study explores how working moms show resiliency in the age of social media; consumed by the pressures to excel in their careers and in raising their families. Fifteen self-identified working moms are interviewed about their reason(s) for working, their purpose behind their social media usage, the challenges and rewards of being a working mom, their definition and their assumption of society’s definition of what a working mom is, and how they overcome tough days.  The following themes emerge: moms assessing situations, moms adjusting their daily lives, self-scrutiny, money, expectations, the influence on the children, and the gleaning of humor not hate from social media platforms. These themes are supported by participant voices and existing literature to add to research surrounding this important topic. Limitations and future directions are also discussed. </p>

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