The study collected occupational data from the 99 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I membership institutions head athletic directors. The purpose of this study was to identify common professional preparation and occupational characteristics among NCAA Division I athletic directors. Through issuing an electronic survey, the current study identified common characteristics and themes among Division I athletic directors specifically within the socio-demographical background, educational background, professional experience and career progression, and career and job satisfaction. The study also provided demographic information about the participant’s institutional athletic department. The necessity of this study is not due directly to the current lack of current literature and research within the collegiate administration, rather in reference to literature examining the athletic administration occupational field. The study provides an occupational framework in regards to the career progression, training, and characteristics of NCAA Division I athletic director career field. The study’s purpose was to examine the career growth of NCAA Division I athletic directors, as well as evaluate the demographic and socio-demographics characteristics of the NCAA Division I athletic director. The research and data collected from the study’s participants provided the author the opportunity to create a profile of the athletic administration career field and more specifically, the detailed qualities sought in a NCAA Division I athletic director. The results from the study are beneficial to aspiring persons that wish to work in the field of collegiate athletics administration by correlating common occupational framework for educational requirements, professional experience and years necessary to gather the appropriate experience and also to identify an overview of the job and career satisfaction common among current NCAA Division I athletic directors. In doing so, the study utilized homosocial reproduction as its theoretical framework. The study’s results concluded that the field of athletic administration, and specifically NCAA Division I athletic directors are disproportionally white males (89% white, 90% male), and further examined the educational and professional background characteristics and experiences which lead to this occupational characteristic.

This thesis emerged from my emotional, tactile, and intellectual access to the actress, Yamaguchi Yoshiko (a.k.a. Ri Kōran or Li Xianglan), who embodied the cultural hybridity of Manchuria and represented a ‘modern girl’ on screen. I analyze four wartime melodrama-adventure films, in which she co-starred with Japanese actors: Song of the White Orchid (Byakuran no uta, 1939), China Nights (Shina no Yoru, 1940), Vow in the Desert (Nessa no chikai, 1940), and Suzhou Nights (Soshū no yoru, 1941). The formation of domesticity played an integral part in the making of modern nation-states. Intertexualizing with the discursive formation of the ie (house/family) between the mid 19th and mid 20th centuries, I first demonstrate that Japanese film subjects are made to embody the imagined Imperial nation through gendered performances in Song of the White Orchid. The interior and exterior are constructed to mirror the notion of imperial nation and the Asian ‘other’. Next, I extend the analytical framework to the three films, China Nights, Vow in the Desert, and Suzhou Nights, which employ films’ specific locations for different operations of gendered and ethnicized positioning. I also pay attention to some of the climaxes, which unconventionally present psychological dramas outdoors and action scenes indoors. Especially, my interest in this part of analysis is in interrelating metaphors of bodily boundary and national border. As delineating the signification of body and nation, I situate the relay of the gaze in the simultaneous blurring of bodily boundary and national communities that coincides with melodramatic highlights located outdoors. In order to shape a Japanese imperial subject, the films symbolically negotiate with three levels of power dynamics: the establishment of a national identity, the mimicry of the West, and the significance of China in Japanese imperial modernity. The delineation of cinematic space and subject positioning in Ri Kōran’s films reveals that Chinese, Japanese and the West are constituted as shifting positions that respectively represent past/obstructions, present/a mobile agency, and future/the envisioned goal. Ri Kōran attracts spectators’ gaze and mediates multiple locations to identify with, while Japanese male protagonists embody the gaze by making his corporeality absent.

This study examines geographic patterns and geographic factors of residential burglary at the Nashville, TN area for a twenty year period at five year interval starting in 1988. The purpose of this study is to identify what geographic factors have impacted on residential burglary rates, and if there were changes in the geographic patterns of residential burglary over the study period. Several criminological theories guide this study, with the most prominent being Social Disorganization Theory and Routine Activities Theory. Both of these theories focus on the relationships of place and crime. A number of spatial analysis methods are hence adopted to analyze residential burglary rates at block group level for each of the study year. Spatial autocorrelation approaches, particularly Global and Local Moran's I statistics, are utilized to detect the hotspots of residential burglary. To understand the underlying geographic factors of residential burglary, both OLS and GWR regression analyses are conducted to examine the relationships between residential burglary rates and various geographic factors, such as Percentages of Minorities, Singles, Vacant Housing Units, Renter Occupied Housing Units, and Persons below Poverty Line. The findings indicate that residential burglaries exhibit clustered patterns by forming various hotspots around the study area, especially in the central city and over time these hotspots tended to move in a northeasterly direction during the study period of 1988-2008. Overall, four of the five geographic factors under examination show positive correlations with the rate of residential burglary at block group level. Percentages of Vacant Housing Units and Persons below Poverty Line (both are indicators of neighbor economic well-being) are the strong indicators of crime, while Percentages of Minorities (ethnic heterogeneity indictor) and Renter Occupied Housing Units (residential turnover indictor) only show modest correlation in a less degree. Counter-intuitively, Percentage of Singles (another indicator of residential turnover) is in fact a deterrent of residential burglary; however, the reason for this deterrence is not entirely clear.

Since the start of the 20th century, the Black Middle Class (BMC) has been a creation of both direct and indirect government policy and action. More importantly, had it not been for government action directed towards blacks, the BMC that is visible today would not exist. During the time period of the great migration, blacks prospered from increased economic demand along with policy targeted both directly and indirectly at employing millions of blacks. During the 1960’s and 70’s, the BMC became a viable entity with civil rights laws that forced black men and women into higher education institutions as well as public and private employment. The policy implemented during this time sought to end discrimination by making it illegal and tightly monitoring it. As a result, the BMC saw accelerated growth in both educational attainment and wage. However, this immediate progress was brought to a standstill starting with a wave of conservatism sparked and led by the election of Ronald Reagan. Since that time, the BMC has made gains both educationally and economically, but the growth has been much less apparent. Also, many in the BMC have sought careers in the public sector due to discrimination that may exist because of a lack of governmental regulation and oversight in the private sector. There are many perils that face the BMC today, but most importantly the threat to massive reductions in the public sector federally and locally.

In this thesis, I explore Latino masculinities and contest their uniformity through transforming an oral history conducted with my father into a collection of short stories. Following storytelling traditions of Latino/Mexican culture, I converted an oral history interviews with my dad into a collection of short stories. From these short stories I extracted themes relating to the micro and macro manifestations of gender policing. Drawing from Judith Butler's Theory of performativity and Gloria Anzaldua's theory of Borderland identities, I rethink masculinity and offer Jose Esteban Munoz's theory of disidentification. With these theories in conversation, I analyze the themes of the short stories I present. In Chapter One, I investigate the potential of verguenza and respeto, or shame and respect, to complicate masculinity. In Chapter Two, I critically analyze my father's interaction with INS officials during his interview to become a U.S. resident. In these two sets of stories, I use disidentification to uncover the third space relationship with masculinity. I see this relationship at the intersections of race, class, gender and ability, the identities which come together to leave my father in the borderlands. Ultimately, I complicate masculinity through these analyses, offering a space for a nonoppressive masculinity.

This thesis emerged from my emotional, tactile, and intellectual access to the actress, Yamaguchi Yoshiko (a.k.a. Ri Kōran or Li Xianglan), who embodied the cultural hybridity of Manchuria and represented a ‘modern girl’ on screen. I analyze four wartime melodrama-adventure films, in which she co-starred with Japanese actors: Song of the White Orchid (Byakuran no uta, 1939), China Nights (Shina no Yoru, 1940), Vow in the Desert (Nessa no chikai, 1940), and Suzhou Nights (Soshū no yoru, 1941). The formation of domesticity played an integral part in the making of modern nation-states. Intertexualizing with the discursive formation of the ie (house/family) between the mid 19th and mid 20th centuries, I first demonstrate that Japanese film subjects are made to embody the imagined Imperial nation through gendered performances in Song of the White Orchid. The interior and exterior are constructed to mirror the notion of imperial nation and the Asian ‘other’. Next, I extend the analytical framework to the three films, China Nights, Vow in the Desert, and Suzhou Nights, which employ films’ specific locations for different operations of gendered and ethnicized positioning. I also pay attention to some of the climaxes, which unconventionally present psychological dramas outdoors and action scenes indoors. Especially, my interest in this part of analysis is in interrelating metaphors of bodily boundary and national border. As delineating the signification of body and nation, I situate the relay of the gaze in the simultaneous blurring of bodily boundary and national communities that coincides with melodramatic highlights located outdoors. In order to shape a Japanese imperial subject, the films symbolically negotiate with three levels of power dynamics: the establishment of a national identity, the mimicry of the West, and the significance of China in Japanese imperial modernity. The delineation of cinematic space and subject positioning in Ri Kōran’s films reveals that Chinese, Japanese and the West are constituted as shifting positions that respectively represent past/obstructions, present/a mobile agency, and future/the envisioned goal. Ri Kōran attracts spectators’ gaze and mediates multiple locations to identify with, while Japanese male protagonists embody the gaze by making his corporeality absent.

In this dissertation I systematically examine African-American and Latino legislator behavior in a legislative setting. The project specifically examines whether and how minority legislators represent and influence African American and Latino policy interests during the legislative process. I perform an analysis of minority legislator participation rates on bills and develop an original measure of substantive representation using patterns in legislative speech of state representatives’ language during committee hearings. I build on existing theory in the representation literature and offer new hypotheses for expanding the scope of how substantive representation is defined and investigated, namely through an empirical investigation of the link between deliberation and descriptive representation. Second, I collect an original data set and develop an original measure of substantive representation to test these hypotheses with participation rates and a linguistic frame based content analysis approach of minority and non-minority representatives’ language on bills for racial perspectives during state legislative committee hearings on several policy issue areas including, but not limited to education, healthcare, and immigration. Third, I offer a critical test of hypotheses to test whether African American and Latino representatives’ (1) participate more when the legislation is deemed minority interest in comparison to their non-minority counterparts? (2) their behavior (or deliberation style) is different from non-minority legislators? (3) impact the deliberation style of non-minority legislators? The analysis draws on original data collected through committee hearing tapes and online video archives of Texas committee hearings in multiple policy areas, and the findings indicate that minority legislators do indeed provide a voice for minority constituents, providing more minority interest language on minority interest bills in comparison to their non-minority colleagues, especially when the legislation is threatening to minority populations. These results support the argument that minority legislators do indeed substantively represent minority constituents at levels greater than non-minority representatives during the legislative process.

In this dissertation I systematically examine African-American and Latino legislator behavior in a legislative setting. The project specifically examines whether and how minority legislators represent and influence African American and Latino policy interests during the legislative process. I perform an analysis of minority legislator participation rates on bills and develop an original measure of substantive representation using patterns in legislative speech of state representatives’ language during committee hearings. I build on existing theory in the representation literature and offer new hypotheses for expanding the scope of how substantive representation is defined and investigated, namely through an empirical investigation of the link between deliberation and descriptive representation. Second, I collect an original data set and develop an original measure of substantive representation to test these hypotheses with participation rates and a linguistic frame based content analysis approach of minority and non-minority representatives’ language on bills for racial perspectives during state legislative committee hearings on several policy issue areas including, but not limited to education, healthcare, and immigration. Third, I offer a critical test of hypotheses to test whether African American and Latino representatives’ (1) participate more when the legislation is deemed minority interest in comparison to their non-minority counterparts? (2) their behavior (or deliberation style) is different from non-minority legislators? (3) impact the deliberation style of non-minority legislators? The analysis draws on original data collected through committee hearing tapes and online video archives of Texas committee hearings in multiple policy areas, and the findings indicate that minority legislators do indeed provide a voice for minority constituents, providing more minority interest language on minority interest bills in comparison to their non-minority colleagues, especially when the legislation is threatening to minority populations. These results support the argument that minority legislators do indeed substantively represent minority constituents at levels greater than non-minority representatives during the legislative process.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The intersection of Asian American identity and illicit substance use is greatly understudied in psychological literature, especially with matters of mental health and drug use being stigmatized by Asian cultural norms. However, with an increasingly alarming number of fatal drug overdoses by Asian Americans at electronic dance music (EDM) events, attention must be drawn to the needs of this unique population. The present study characterizes this community by drawing from data of 1,290 Asian American young adults who participate in the EDM scene. This study also hypothesizes the impact of acculturative stress and feelings of social belonging on MDMA usage patterns. Analysis reveals a population of largely East and Southeast Asian, 2nd generation, college-educated young adults with strikingly high usage rates of MDMA, an illicit drug linked to the EDM scene. Multiple regression models were created that could predict MDMA use through various measures related to acculturative stress and social belonging. Findings revealed the significant impact of acculturation, acculturative stress, mental health, peer relationships, and desires for social belonging on this population’s MDMA usage patterns, providing an important platform from which future research may launch much-needed additional studies of Asian American young adults and illicit drug use.