In this thesis I explore women's engagement with body, weight and eating from a socio-cultural perspective. I discuss the limitations of current research on body dissatisfaction and propose that women's negative appraisal of their body needs to be understood as an active engagement with their social context. Research that focuses on the interaction of ethnic/cultural differences and body dissatisfaction seeks to clarify the interrelationship between femininity, gender and culture and suggests that women's dissatisfaction with their body is linked to levels of global Westernisation. My criticism of this research is that it conceptualises culture and social knowledge in a simplistic way. I propose social representations theory and the principles of dialogicality as an alternative research paradigm and argue that such an approach can overcome the dichotomy of individual and social, inner and outer. In order to explore the interaction of the subjective with the social in relation to the negative and positive appraisal of the body an interview study was conducted in two distinct cultural contexts. In depth interviews were conducted with 14 women in the UK and 12 women in Tobago, WI. The thema recognition/disrespect was used as an interpretative frame. The results show that the meanings that were assigned to the body interlinked with socially enacted representations of self, other and femininity. While the thema recognition/disrespect could be seen to be problematised through contradictory conditions of worth in the UK, it was the notion of 'disrespect' in interrelation with representations of others that was foregrounded in women's reflections in Tobago. In both research locations women negotiated constraining or contradictory demands of femininity and 're-presented' themselves through the construction of alternative identities.

This study examines how experiences with art promote healthy cultural identities of self and others, and focuses on the potentially mutual benefits to Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) and youth living in developing countries. As a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) and current elementary art teacher, I combine personal insight with multicultural art education discourse to create a curriculum intended for PCVs to implement during their service. In order to gain relevant feedback on the curriculum's theoretical basis and potential usefulness, I conduct a focus group composed of six RPCVs whose primary or secondary Peace Corps project involved art education or youth development. While examining the critical relationship between the curriculum's meta-narrative, frame narrative, and task narrative, in addition to the unpredictable circumstances Peace Corps service inevitably entails, research findings expose the complex nature of cross-cultural pedagogy. In order to achieve the curriculum's intended goals, implications include emphasizing the PCV's dual role as the facilitator and participant.

A dearth of research exists to explain the disproportionately high level of academic achievement by Asian-Americans. Little attempt has been made to investigate indepth the relationship of several proposed factors to Asian achievement. The purpose of this study was to explore differences between Asian-Americans and Caucasian-Americans in cognitive ability, language proficiency, and achievement in reading, mathematics, and general knowledge. Forty-six Asian-Americans and forty-six Caucasian-Americans from the norming sample for the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery-Revised (WJ-R) (1989) were matched on the basis of school, gender, and number of years of school attendance. Broad Cognitive Ability scores of the WJ-R as well as scores from the WJ-R Tests of Achievement were then used to compare aptitude and achievement of each member of the two groups. No significant differences in Cognitive Ability were then used to compare aptitude and achievement of each member of the two groups. No significant differences in Cognitive Ability were found between Asian-Americans and Caucasian-Americans. There were also no significant differences found between the two groups in language proficiency or reading achievement. Significant differences did exist in mathematics and knowledge achievement but the superiority of Asian-Americans in those two areas could not be attributed to community socio-economic status (S.E.S.), school curriculum, or aptitude. Implications for future research on achievement indicate the need to refocus, not upon school curriculum and socio-economic status, but rather upon home process variables.

The concept of realism in visual representation has been defined and deployed largely within the domain of the Western artistic canon. In the field of art history, the term is often used in ways that depend on implicit, culturally coded assumptions about its connection with the formal markers of optical-naturalism. The Persianate tradition of pictorial representation by contrast, has been traditionally characterized in modern scholarship as stylized and decorative, with little acknowledgment of an interest in realism in its own visual language. Furthermore, normative Euro-centric attitudes have perpetuated the assumption that an engagement with realism entered Persianate artistic practices with the advent of Europeanizing modes of depiction in Safavid and Mughal spheres of production around the late sixteenth-century. This dissertation explores the topic of realism from the perspective of Persianate visual culture. In so doing, it proposes to refine our understanding of the concept in terms that accommodate the varied artistic production of cultures that laid claims to cultivating representational realism in their own primary sources. The first chapter draws on multi-disciplinary discussions to challenge art historical treatments of pictorial realism as a style, in favor of a functional definition of the concept as an emergent quality rooted in formal strategies that activate particular patterns of mirror-response in their audiences. The second and third chapters reject the principle of evaluating the realism of Persianate representations according to their degree of proximity to European models. The second chapter discusses the structural conditions of change in visual habitus in cases of inter-cultural encounter between foreign modes of representation and the resulting works of aesthetic hybridity. The third chapter presents material evidence of early modern Safavid and Mughal albums as discourses of aesthetic heterogeneity. The fourth chapter explores the local Persianate roots of realism, including the changes these realism strategies underwent in the early modern period. The fifth and final chapter develops case studies of two seventeenth-century Mughal and Safavid drawings, which cultivate representational enlivenment in depicting harrowing moments of death. The discussion delves in greater detail into the particular patterns of realism developed in the seventeenth-century Persianate visual culture. / History of Art and Architecture

My goals for this study were to use Structure Equation Modeling (SEM) to: propose a conceptual model based on theoretical frameworks of student motivation variables, use of cognitive strategies, and use of self-regulation strategies affecting student academic performance; statistically examine each of the structural relationships among the above variables on student achievement; and, test for cultural differences between American and Korean community college students on the measurement model, factor means, and structure model. These SEM results provided support for four research hypotheses: (a) Students’ reported motivational variable scores had significantly positive effects on students’ reported use of self-regulation strategies for both the American and Korean community college students; (b) Students’ reported motivational variable scores had significantly positive effects on students’ reported use of cognitive strategies for both the American and Korean community college students; (c) Students’ reported motivational variable scores significantly positively predicted students’ academic achievement for both the American and Korean community college students; (d) Students’ reported use of cognitive strategies was positively related to students’ reported use of self-regulation strategies for both the American and Korean community college students. However, these results did not provide statistical support for the four research hypotheses; (e) Students’ reported use of cognitive strategies did not significantly predict students’ academic achievement in the overall model for both the American and Korean community college students; (f) Student’s reported use of learning skills strategies did not significantly predict students’ academic achievement in the overall model for both American and Korean community college students. Based on the results of the current study, many future studies can be suggested. First of all, future studies need to have various measurements to assess student academic achievement. GPA is only one measure for students’ academic achievement or success. Future research should consider alternative measurements such as peer or teacher evaluation, students’ satisfaction, problem-solving ability in the context of the course student are taking, ability to transfer and so on. If research includes more alternative measurements to measure student success, research may avoid the limitation of using only GPA as student success. / text

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / abstract / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

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