Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2005. / Bibliography: leaves 89-92.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-176). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This thesis explores the work experiences and life histories of a group of Latina migrant women who work in specific sectors of the service industry in Atlanta, Georgia. I focus on janitorial/custodial as well as domestic labor in order to confront the social issue of the continued devaluation and exploitation of feminized wage work. This ethnography reveals how education and English proficiency tie into how migrant labor is viewed in the United States specifically, and asks how Latina migrant women might be able to achieve labor legitimacy in the future. My findings are based on in-depth interviews that I collected from ten Latina migrant women who live and work in the Atlanta metro-area.

Friendship matters. Practical support, caring, moral guidance, enjoyment, improved health and greater life expectancy are but a few of its benefits. Despite living in a stigmatizing social environment where isolation is common among disabled youth, some disabled teens establish strong friendships. A nuanced understanding of these meaningful friendships from the perspective of disabled teens was constructed through this qualitative study. Teens aged 15 to 20 who self-identified as experiencing stigma due to disability were recruited from urban, suburban and rural areas of Nova Scotia, Canada. Each teen was involved in a friendship of at least six months duration and had a close friend (with or without a disability) who was also willing to participate. Seven boys and seven girls, all but one of whom were disabled teens, took part in the study. These seven sets of friends engaged in research interviews and participant observation sessions. Nine adults who witnessed the friendships develop over time were also interviewed. Preliminary coding was completed using Atlas.ti. This was followed by a deeper, critical approach to analysis which generated three inter-connected themes. The first theme outlines how stigma disrupts the friendships of disabled youth though a range of processes (labeling, stereotyping, status loss, separation) that arise from and contribute to ableism discrimination against disabled people. The second theme, finding a balance between adult support and surveillance, emphasizes the crucial role adults play in facilitating the friendships of disabled youth. The final theme, disrupting oppression to create enduring friendship, highlights the strategies used by these disabled teens to make and keep friends in a stigmatizing society. Strategies most often used that appeared to be effective for participants were disrupting norms about friendship, coming out as disabled, connecting through stigma, and choosing self-exclusion. Two strategies horizontal hostility and passing as nondisabled were potentially harmful to disabled youth and in some ways limited friendship opportunities. Ideas to counter the harmful effects of ableism while creating lasting friendships are addressed to disabled teens, to their families, to allies in the education system, and to the broader community.

This study seeks to explore the meaning of diary-keeping for women. In particular, this research is focused on the relationships between the diary and leisure, the diary and performance, and the diary and dominant gender discourse. This study is guided by a feminist, dramaturgical, qualitative, interpretive framework. Unstructured “active” interviews with seven women in a rural, Nova Scotian community were used to create a collaborative process driven by the participants’ experiences as diarists. The phenomenological method was used to analyze the resulting transcripts. By incorporating interviews with diarists into the analysis, and by framing the research within leisure studies, this research addresses two gaps in the existing literature on diaries: the lack of women’s voices in the interpretation of their diaries and the absence of the diary in leisure studies. This study found that the social experience of diary-keeping can reproduce dominant gender discourses; however, findings also demonstrated that women use their diaries to resist the ethic of care, disrupt oppressive dichotomies and take control of the direction of their lives. Furthermore, diaries are meaningful insofar as they allow the diarist to take control of her personal space, time, and life story. Through this space the diarist can perform the story of her life in whatever way she sees fit; she takes her performance to the public, despite the risk of doing so. Therefore, though the diary can act to reproduce traditional notions of femininity, this research found that it can also be a space for women to resist dominant gender discourses.

This thesis analyzes public “nurse-ins” and breastfeeding activism of the past decade, examining public breastfeeding demonstrations as an example of collective rhetoric in which the individual is empowered in its relation to the masses. The author discusses the potential of collective rhetoric to reintroduce feminist activism at a time dominated by postfeminist discourse. Staged nurse-ins force the public to confront realities of the maternal body; however, the self-proclaimed “lactivists” seldom discuss the inseparable sexuality of the breast and the underlying narrative of “natural” and “good” motherhood. Addressing Foucauldian discursive formations, the author acknowledges that even though the resistant discourse cannot exist outside of the dominant discourses that continue to act upon it, collective demonstrations nevertheless hold the power to disrupt public perception of the maternal body.

This study seeks to explore the meaning of diary-keeping for women. In particular, this research is focused on the relationships between the diary and leisure, the diary and performance, and the diary and dominant gender discourse. This study is guided by a feminist, dramaturgical, qualitative, interpretive framework. Unstructured “active” interviews with seven women in a rural, Nova Scotian community were used to create a collaborative process driven by the participants’ experiences as diarists. The phenomenological method was used to analyze the resulting transcripts. By incorporating interviews with diarists into the analysis, and by framing the research within leisure studies, this research addresses two gaps in the existing literature on diaries: the lack of women’s voices in the interpretation of their diaries and the absence of the diary in leisure studies. This study found that the social experience of diary-keeping can reproduce dominant gender discourses; however, findings also demonstrated that women use their diaries to resist the ethic of care, disrupt oppressive dichotomies and take control of the direction of their lives. Furthermore, diaries are meaningful insofar as they allow the diarist to take control of her personal space, time, and life story. Through this space the diarist can perform the story of her life in whatever way she sees fit; she takes her performance to the public, despite the risk of doing so. Therefore, though the diary can act to reproduce traditional notions of femininity, this research found that it can also be a space for women to resist dominant gender discourses.

Thesis (M.A.)--East Carolina University, 2009. / Presented to the faculty of the Department of English. Advisor: Thomas Douglass. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 4, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until June 1, 2012. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 371-443)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until June 1, 2012. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 371-443)