The purpose of this study was to assess practitioners’ views of service needs for juveniles involved with the justice system. In the United States, every year there are thousands of youth committed to detention institutions for delinquent acts. As a result, children as young as nine years of age up until adulthood have a difficult time integrating back into the community. In many instances, youth who have been involved with the justice system have a greater likelihood of recidivism due to their inability to adapt to their environment. Further, when youth enter the system, many times they are not receiving the adequate services necessary to decrease recidivism and in turn are faced with multiple encounters with the justice system and with untreated concerns and additional needs. This study used a qualitative design, conducting face to face interviews with ten justice involved youth practitioners. Participants were asked to explore areas such as, service utilization, recidivism rates, effectiveness of treatment, and barriers to service utilization. The results identified mental health and substance abuse treatment services as the most important needs of justice involved youth. Themes that emerged as important factors to the utilization of treatment services were meaningful relationships, parental support, and mentorship. This study found inadequacies with the process of assessing needs and services within the juvenile justice system. The results suggest a need for better treatment services and competent practitioners to reduce the likelihood of recidivism.

Human trafficking and slavery are horrific crimes that require strict penalties for perpetrators and effective protections for survivors, but these crimes are in part facilitated by a system of laws and norms that effectively marginalize certain populations--the "unskilled" migrant. In this thesis I aim to reexamine and reinterpret the problem of human trafficking and slavery in a way that highlights the background conditions to the problem. I argue that the framework used as a conceptual foundation for addressing the problem limits the scope of responsibility. Specifically, the framework fails to acknowledge structural contributing factors I show to be relevant: law, policy, and norms impacting immigration and migrant labor. I assert that the limited scope of responsibility, which focuses heavily on direct perpetrators of the crime, leaves largely unexamined the role of social-structural processes in contributing to the problem. I use the United States as a case study in order to provide a targeted analysis of social-structural processes that contribute to the problem. In this examination of the United States, I focus on agricultural and domestic slavery. In conclusion, I attempt to build a new conceptual framework that calls attention to social-structural processes and includes this understanding in assigning responsibility for the problem. I assert that anti-trafficking efforts must account for the role of social-structural processes and that these contributing factors must be adequately addressed and incorporated into the framework for prevention.

African American children are disproportionately over-represented in the child welfare system. Many of these children linger in the system and experience disconnection from their biological families, communities, cultural beliefs, values, and practices. Familial socialization and cultural exposure are essential to developing a positive ethnic identity and self-concept. For African American female adolescents, hair and hair care are critical areas for such socialization and support. This qualitative study explored the hair and hair care perceptions and experiences of African American female adolescents in foster care. The goal was to examine hair and hair's connection to, and influence on, sense of self and self-esteem for African American female adolescents in foster care. Eleven African American female adolescents participated in individual interviews, and grounded theory was used to analyze the data. Four major themes emerged: hair care, perception of hair and identity as an African American female, societal influences on self-awareness, and influence of the foster care system. Results from the study indicated African American female adolescents in foster care identify hair as important. Participants noted hair is connected to appearance and shapes who they are and how they view themselves as African American females. Participants addressed the complexity of hair and politics associated with hair. The findings further emphasized the role of racial socialization and the importance of a supportive hair care environment. Participants also discussed their awareness of societal influences on their perception of African American women. They offered recommendations for improving the hair care experiences of African American children in foster care, for supporting positive development of identity and self-esteem, and for implementing standards of practice that will ensure these youths' cultural needs are addressed in the child welfare system.

This thesis explores the complexities of race relations in the nineteenth century American West. The groups considered here are African Americans, Anglo Americans, Chinese, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans. In recent decades historians of the West have begun to tell the narratives of racial minorities. This study adopts the aims of these scholars through a new lens--music. Ultimately, this thesis argues that historians can use music, both individual songs and broader conceptions about music, to understand the complex and contradictory race relations of the nineteenth century west. Proceeding thematically, the first chapter explores the ways Anglo Americans used music to exert their dominance and defend their superiority over minorities. The second chapter examines the ways racial minorities used music to counter Anglo American dominance and exercise their own agency. The final chapter considers the ways in which music fostered peaceful and cooperative relationships between races. Following each chapter is a short interlude which discusses the musical innovations that occurred when the groups encountered the musical heritage of one another. This study demonstrates that music is an underutilized resource for historical analysis. It helps make comprehensible the complicated relations between races. By demonstrating the relevance of music to the history of race relations, this thesis also suggests that music as a historical subject is ripe for further analysis.

THROUGH THE FIGURE OF FICTIONAL CHARACTER KATNISS EVERDEEN, THIS DISSERTATION STUDIES HOW THE FILM INDUSTRY SIMULTANEOUSLY ENTRENCHES AND DISRUPTS GENDER, SEXUAL, AND RACIAL NORMATIVITIES. THE PROJECT USES TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND PARTICIPANT RESEARCH TO ANALYZE HOW THE FILMS AND NOVELS OF THE HUNGER GAMES SAGA ENCAPSULATE BOTH DOMINANT AND ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS RELATED TO FEMININITY, MASCULINITY, WOMANHOOD, AND MOTHERHOOD. IT ALSO EXPLORES IF AND HOW THE FEMALE HEROINE CAN BE READ AS FEMINIST AND PRODUCES A SENSE OF EMPOWERMENT. I CONCLUDE THAT ALTHOUGH THE INDUSTRY IS PRODUCING NEW MODELS OF WOMANHOOD THAT CHALLENGE TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES, IT STILL PERPETUATES ROMANTIC IDEALS AND IDEALIZES THE HETEROSEXUAL NUCLEAR FAMILY AS THE ULTIMATE PATH TO FULFILLMENT FOR WOMEN. THE RESULTS OF THE PARTICIPANT RESEARCH SHOW THAT WHILE YOUNG WOMEN ARE CRITICAL OF CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE SAGA, OVERALL THEY VALUE HAVING STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS IN FICTION TO WHOM THEY CAN RELATE.

The Black community and the gay community have historically experienced marginalization from society, public and private institutions, federal government agencies, and law enforcement. Black gay male leadership is not a conversation within leadership academia. This phenomenological study focuses on understanding the lived experiences and leadership among Black gay men who are leaders in Los Angeles County. This study found that the lived experiences such as oppression, mentorship, community involvement, and advocacy have influenced their leadership development and leadership identity. This study identifies how Black gay men define leadership, based off their lived experiences. It also identifies themes of leadership development for Black gay men. The results have implications for future research and leadership development among Black gay men. Understanding lived experiences of Black gay male leaders and their leadership development can help identify what core foundations/topics could be included in professional development aimed at building leadership development among young Black gay men.

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.