This study examines the relationship between gender roles and habitus in service industry occupations. It draws primarily from the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler. Data includes an exploratory focus group, non-participant observations and interviews with women currently or formerly employed as bartenders, bar backs, servers, or hostesses. The main themes that emerged included how habitus is affected by views of employment, drug and alcohol use, the naturalization of gender roles, and the effect of appearance standards. This study supports previous feminist works that posit that gender as a performance, not a biological trait. Further this performance is used to navigate specific social experiences such as those in a workplace. This paper also comments on current enforcement of Title VII with reference to gender discrimination.

This thesis examines the role of interpretation in legal encounter in Lexington, Kentucky. Through an analysis of legal and interpretation practices, this study seeks to ascertain how these practices may affect non-native or low-proficiency English speakers’ (LLPs) experiences with both federal and local laws and legal spaces. This place-based study involves in-depth qualitative research. Using the methodological framework of feminist geo-jurisprudence, this research contributes to our understanding of 1) the limits of the publicity of legal space and, more specifically, the ways in which language barriers can prevent legal inclusion; 2) local strategies and tactics for dealing with the challenges to meaningful access before the law in terms of language as outlined by Title IV of the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act; 3) the broader implications of language access for immigrants and non-citizens at the intersection of legal discourse and society (discursive legal space). Furthermore, this research addresses the absence and presence of hospitality (Derrida, 2005) from this site of citizenship negotiation, and it addresses the ethics of hospitality behind the work that attempts to resist legal closure and to enforce laws that protect, rather than persecute, those facing language barriers.

This study provided information for policymakers and practitioners by comparing performance of eighth grade students in 2007 on state standardized reading assessments and by the four census-defined regions identified by NAEP. NCLB required states to set their own performance standards and to create their own data collection instruments resulting in increased transparency of student performance data and a lack of uniform accountability systems. The inability of educators, policy-makers, and the general public to make state-by-state comparisons in the area of reading was the catalyst for the study. NAEP data were collected from NCES and state performance data were collected from the USDOE SY 2006-2007 CSPR to determine if a relationship existed between eighth grade students' state scores and NAEP scores in the four census-defined regions. Data were further disaggregated by low socioeconomic students and by nonwhite students. A regression analysis was statistically significant in predicting: a) the state proficient and above scores from the NAEP proficient and above scores, b) the low socioeconomic state proficient and above scores from the NAEP proficient and above scores in the West census-defined region, and c) the nonwhite state proficient and above scores from the NAEP proficient and above scores in all regions. A regression analysis was not statistically significant in predicting low socioeconomic state proficient and above scores from the low socioeconomic NAEP proficient and above scores in the Midwest, South and Northeast regions.