The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the experiences of high-ability, Black, female college freshmen when preparing for college to identify influences from various family, school, and community environments. Using a theoretical framework, which incorporates both Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory in an orientational manner as a guide to examine literature related to the multiple identities and experiences potentially shared by the participants and to generate the interview questions to collect data and explore their experiences as broadly as possible. To explore these experiences, the researcher conducted in-depth individual interviews of ten Black female freshmen and two focus groups of six of those ten freshmen who are high ability and from low-income households. The participants answered questions to learn more about experiences that influenced their processes preparing for college. These perspectives may help inform the development of interventions, programs, counseling practices aimed at helping students with shared identities. Findings from this qualitative research study revealed that intrinsic and extrinsic motivating experiences and relationships across multiple contexts within the participants’ lives have contributed to their process of preparing for college. Nine themes emerged from the participants’ responses: (1) navigating the “crooked room”: perceptions of self; (2) prophetic excellence: family and friends support and expectations, (3) it takes a village: community culture and resources, (4) from chaperone to mentor: exploring the depth of K-12 educational interactions and opportunities, (5) preparing for a home away from home: college exploration and preparation, (6) demystifying the process: I don’t know what I do or don’t need to know, (7) calibrating to fit and understand new environments, (8) and still I rise: acknowledgement of systemic issues, and (9) hindsight 20/20: if I knew then what I know now. Implications for practice and future research are included.

The purpose of this study was to provide a holistic and historically contextualized approach to the ways that we understand race and identity online. Specifically, I analyze the underlying logics of social network sites—understood as empowerment, influence, and entertainment/reprieve—as they foster automated connectivity. By pulling from José van Dijck’s (2013) understanding of connective media and André Brock’s (2016) Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA), this dissertation examines the functionalities of online connectivity to reveal how social network sites are significantly shaped by racialized and gendered users as well as their resistance strategies online. Guiding this study are the overall research questions, which asks, how do social network sites, and the logic of connectivity that undergirds them, shape race, resistance, and identities? Secondly, in what ways are racialized users changing the landscape of digital media through long-existing practices of resistance strategies and embodiment? In order to approach these overarching questions, I provide the foundational literatures in which I intervene in chapter one. As a pre-history of social media, chapter two explores the resistance tactics and media interventions that black publics have utilized throughout each major time period in the U.S. Through this analysis, I demonstrate how the creation of a black public was sustained toward a racial sociality and a race public opinion that can be found in reimagined ways online. Through the case study #GrowingUpBlack, chapter three investigates the underlying sensibilities of social network sites— empowerment, influence, and entertainment/reprieve— and their relationship to contemporary race and resistance. In this chapter, I argue for specific ways that racialized resistance shapes and is shaped by the logics of social network sites. Lastly, chapter four breaks apart the notion of a singular approach to racial resistance and connectivity by examining the ways that intersectional resistance circumvents and re-writes social media’s logics. Through focus groups with 20 African-American women, chapter four connects the underlying sensibilities of social network sites alongside intersectional resistance strategies in order to demonstrate the continuities of race and media as well as resistance discourses’ influence on online communication. Toward a Raced Connective Media hopes to make an intervention in the digital media and critical race field by surveying and analyzing media platforms as connective wholes rather than fractured parts regarding the relationship between media, race, and resistance.

Esta tesis utiliza la interseccionalidad como lente para hacer un análisis de los textos culturales y activistas para explicar cómo se manifiestan las ideas feministas en estos dos períodos cruciales de avance del feminismo en España: el primer cuarto del siglo veinte y las primeras décadas del siglo veintiuno. La interseccionalidad sirve como una prisma de análisis que permite entender los sistemas hegemónicos de poder. Esta tesis analiza ejemplos de textos y demandas que ilustran las preocupaciones y aparatos ideológicos que sustentan diferentes aproximaciones al feminismo en estas dos épocas. Un interés específico, en especial en la segunda parte, es el diálogo teórico y político del feminismo interseccional con el feminismo blanco y hegemónico en términos de exclusión de las comunidades marginadas. El objetivo al hacerlo es elevar las voces de las identidades marginadas que de otro modo se silencian por el discurso contemporáneo que no contempla sus experiencias.

This medical anthropology dissertation is an intersectional study of the illness experiences of African-American women living with the chronic autoimmune syndrome systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), commonly known as lupus. Research was conducted in Memphis, Tennessee from 2013 to 2015, with the aim of examining the healthcare resources available to working poor and working class women using public sector healthcare programs to meet their primary care needs. This project focuses on resources available through Tennessee’s privatized public sector healthcare system, TennCare, during the first phases of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). A critical medical anthropological analysis is used to examine chronically ill women’s survival strategies regarding their daily health and well-being. The objectives of this research were to: 1) understand what factors contribute to poor women’s ability to access healthcare resources, 2) explore how shared illness experiences act as a form of community building, and 3) document how communities of color use illness narratives as a way to address institutionalized racism in the United States. The research areas included: the limits of biomedical objectivity; diagnostic timeline in relation to self-reported medical history; effects of the relationship between socio-economic circumstance and access to consistent healthcare resources, including primary and acute care, as well as access to pharmaceutical interventions; and the role of non-medical support networks, including personal support networks, illness specific support groups, and faith based organizations. Qualitative methods were used to collect data. Methods included: participant observation in support groups, personal homes, and faith based organizations, semi-structured group interviews, and open-ended individual interviews. Fifty-one women living with clinically diagnosed lupus or undiagnosed lupus-like symptoms participated in individual interviews. Additionally twenty-one healthcare workers, including social workers, Medicaid caseworkers, and clinic support staff were interviewed in order to contextualize current state and local health programs and proposed changes to federal and state healthcare policy.

This research explored the intersectionality of race, class, and gender within the sources of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) underlying the socialization messages influencing African American women’s doctoral attainment beliefs. Twenty African American female/woman doctoral achievers completed an online survey, consisting of open-ended and multiple-choice response items, designed to identify and explore the sources of self-efficacy influencing African American women’s doctoral attainment beliefs. Eleven participants participated in focus interviews to expand upon and clarify initial survey responses. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and tenets of critical race theory (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; McCoy & Rodricks, 2015) were used to analyze the sources of self-efficacy and the intersectionality of race, class, and gender within the socialization messages identified by participants as influencing their doctoral attainment beliefs. Among the sources of self-efficacy, participants frequently described vicarious experiences (co-op and internship opportunities) and social persuasions from family, friends, and faculty as influencing doctoral attainment beliefs. The following themes were identified as salient in shaping African American women’s doctoral attainment beliefs: 1) a voice at the table; 2) faith; and 3) experiential knowledge and support. Findings from this study illuminate the salience of doctoral attainment beliefs to African American women’s doctoral pursuit and attainment. Recommendations and implications for African American women’s doctoral program retentionand completion are discussed.

There is a lack of equitable representation of women of color in upper-leadership roles on college campuses. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how women of color who serve as Chief Student Affairs Officers (CSAO), navigated both their racial and gender identities in their professional role, how they were prepared for this identity navigation throughout their career, and how they mentor younger professional women of color. Women of color CSAOs only make up about 4% of the population, so it was important to learn from their experiences in order to improve as a field. A qualitative study using a phenomenological approach, and Intersectionality as the theoretical framework, was conducted amongst women of color who serve as CSAOs at predominantly white, four-year colleges or universities. The theoretical framework was applied to illuminate the structural, political, and representational aspects of intersectionality that were experienced by the participants. The findings from this study illuminated the practices in the higher education and student affairs workplace that impact the racial and gendered experiences of women of color who serve as CSAOs. The results can and should be utilized to create more equitable workplace practices and policies for institutions of higher education. Overall, this study sought to add to the small body of research on women of color Chief Student Affairs Officers by continuing the much-needed conversation about the intersection of navigating both race and gender in a white and male dominated workplace.

Race- and gender-related contextual factors influence Black women’s sexual behaviors, attitudes, and outcomes. Contextual factors of Black women’s sexual behaviors include stereotypes, microaggressions, ethnic identity, and self-concept. Little to no research has examined race- and gender-specific microaggressions (i.e., gendered racial microaggressions; GRM) impact on Black women's sexual health. Responsively, using an intersectional approach, this study hypothesized that ethnic identity’s influence on the relationship between GRM and sexual behavior (i.e., condom use, lifetime sexual partners) is conditional on self-conceptualization moderated effect on ethnic identity and sexual behavior. Participants included 124 unmarried Black women, recruited from mTurk, a southeastern university and community. Moderated moderation analyses revealed the relationship between GRM and number of lifetime sexual partners is conditionally based on one's level of ethnic identity and self-conceptualization. Findings could potentially enhance existing HIV interventions by increasing awareness of GRM and implementing coping strategies to combat GRM’s effect on sexual behaviors.

Working toward a personal definition of womanhood while progressing with my research in feminist discourse, I frame biographical events alongside the intricate use of language surrounding feminist theory. Experimenting with material specificities that speak to my personal narratives and cultural significance, my work seeks to address the interlacing operations of subjectivity expanding on the intersection of class, gender and race.

Puerto Rican women experience increased risk of bio-psychosocial challenges due to their ethnicity. This phenomenological study examined Puerto Rican HIV-positive women's perceptions of intimate partner violence (IPV), which consists of physical, sexual, verbal, and psychological abuse. Although HIV-positive status and IPV have been a focus of previous research, specific research examining the phenomenological experiences of HIV-positive Puerto Rican women who experienced IPV has not been studied. The basis of the study was feminist intersectionality theory, which supported the process used to explore and understand the essence of the participants' experiences. Feminist intersectionality theory examines intersecting social systems including gender, ethnicity, and cultural influences in assessing the lived experiences of the participants. Purposive sampling was used to recruit six participants. Data collection consisted of in-depth, audio-recorded interviews, and data were analyzed by transcribing interviews to explore common themes. Some of the themes that evolved from the research findings are traumatic experiences, feelings about the abuse, reaction to the abuse, trust issues, cultural influences, and positive life changes. The results of this research study provided valuable information of the participants' lived experiences. This research may provide domestic violence specialists, health care providers, law enforcement providers, public advocates, and government agencies with explanation and understanding of the unique challenges Puerto Rican women face. This research has the potential to impact social change in improving IPV screening, offering bi-lingual and bi-cultural service providers, and educating individuals in the helping profession of the impact of IPV.

In Los Angeles County, California, approximately 2,245 victims of child sex trafficking were identified between 1997 and 2012. Several authors believed that poverty was linked to child sex trafficking because it increased the vulnerability of victims. The purpose of this nonexperimental, correlational study was to explore the question of how poverty was related to child sex trafficking in Los Angeles County, California. Intersectionality from the third wave of feminist theory was used as the theoretical underpinning of this study. Using data from the United States Census Bureau and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, information was collected on 97 counties in the southwestern portion of the United States that had a minimum population of 100,000 people and at least 1 arrest of a minor for prostitution between the years of 1997 and 2012. Analysis of the nonnormal data through a Friedman test indicated that differences in the medians existed in the levels of the child sex trafficking variable, but follow up tests did not reveal the sources of the differences. Kendall's W test results indicated a lack of concordance, and Spearman's correlation did not indicate that a monotonic relationship existed between the variables when tested by year, except for 1998. These results failed to provide the evidence needed to reject the null hypothesis. The relationship between poverty and child sex trafficking at the county level could not be measured by income and through a portion of the victim population. Differing measurements of poverty, varying levels of analysis, and diverse applications of intersectionality may yield different results. Ultimately, this study was a first step, rather than a final step, in creating positive social change through increased knowledge and more effective policies against sex trafficking.