Background: Approximately one in three Swedish people will receive a cancer diagnosis. Cancer primarily affects the elderly but also young people suffer. Young people are in a period of life that could put a strain of the ordinary when they are faced with choices and new challenges. The basic sense of security in everyday life is not so obvious and many suffer from, for example, stress and the feeling of being inadequate in relation to the requirements. It is relevant that the nurses can put themselves into what it is like to be young and afflicted with cancer, with the pressures of life itself and what the disease represents. For the nurse, it is important to try to understand what quality of life, crisis and management means, because it often is crucial for young patients with cancer. Aim: The aim is to increase the understanding of how the young people with cancer handle to live with a fatal disease. Methods: A literature review based on ten qualitative scientific articles. The articles were selected through a systematic literature search in the databases CINAHL, Pubmed and ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source. The analysis of the articles was made through comparison of the similarities and differences. Results: In the results three different themes emerged: Being normal, Having access to support and To find a positive or accepting attitude. The result illustrates the most common strategies used by young people to handle living with cancer. There are also a number of subthemes presented attached to these themes which clarifies different aspects of the strategies. Discussion: The discussion clarifies the meaning of the result's main themes. What might it mean to live normally? Barriers to support and management was The lack of information evidencing how important it was to get information, but also how this was one of the shortcomings in health care. The need for support to patient and familyreveals that support from family is not only important for the patient but also something that can sometimes burst from the family side. Age adjustment in health care is discussed as a more age-appropriate care could be beneficial for young people. Although The attitude’s importance addressed in the sense of how important it is to stay positive and how hope can get a person to live longer.

Since the success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the young adult text has functioned as a potential gold mine both in publishing and in commercial film. Within the YA realm, a trend has surfaced which features a formulaic narrative located within a dystopian society. This research closely analyzes two popular works of the YA dystopian boom, The Hunger Games and the Divergent series, in order to outline the vast appeal of such a trend. Once examined, it becomes evident that the trend is one consistently tied to neoliberal ideals of individual achievement. Using neoliberalism as a lens of investigation, broader connections to youth culture within the contemporary cultural landscape are revealed. Investigating two mainstream favorites of the young adult dystopia has uncovered the notion of individualism that feeds the logic of consumer capitalism. Exploring a range of topics from the role of romance to government intervention, this work highlights the ways in which the trend reinforces the importance of the individual and her freedoms.

The purpose of this study was to investigate if there is a difference in the way male and female authors of contemporary realistic fiction for young adults portray decision making by their male or female protagonists. Questions asked in the study were: (1) Do female writers of contemporary young adult realistic fiction employ an ethic of justice or an ethic of care for male protagonists involved in moral decision making? (2) Do female writers of contemporary young adult realistic fiction employ an ethic of justice or an ethic of care for female protagonists involved in moral decision making? (3) Do male writers of contemporary young adult realistic fiction employ an ethic of justice or an ethic of care for male protagonists involved in moral decision making? and (4) Do male writers of contemporary young adult realistic fiction employ an ethic of justice or an ethic of care for female protagonists involved in moral decision making? Content analysis was used as the method of collecting data. The sample consisted of 194 novels written from 1989 to 1998, 53 of which contained a moral dilemma. A discussion of the novels included examples of moral dilemmas, alternative solutions, dilemma resolutions, and resolutions based upon care or justice. Analysis of the data revealed: (1) Female writers employ an ethic of care and an ethic of justice for male protagonists involved in moral decision making. (2) Female writers prefer an ethic of care for female protagonists involved in moral decision making. (3) Male writers prefer an ethic of justice for male protagonists involved in moral decision making. (4) Male writers prefer an ethic of justice for female protagonists involved in moral decision making.

To determine the influence of television commercials about toys and cereals on young children, forty-four children, ranging in age from four to seven years, were interviewed. The mothers of these children completed a questionnaire about their children's television viewing habits. The hypotheses examined the following areas: children's demands for advertised products, children's preferences and dislikes for commercials, the extent of parental yielding to children's requests, and parental discussion of television commercials. The data were analyzed by computing percentages, and it revealed several trends. The more television children watched, the more they demanded advertised products. Parents' discussion of television advertisements affected the extent of parental yielding and the extent of children's demand for advertised products. This study supports findings reported in the related literature that television commercials affect young children's behavior.

Night of no Exile is a collection of poems preceded by a critical article entitled "‘Exile seems both a blessing and a curse': A Blissful Reading of Li-Young Lee's Poetry." That article discusses Lee's quest to achieve communication, truth, and transcendence through poetic language and concludes that he finally reaches his goal through a leap from narrative poetry to lyricism. The "exile" alluded to in the title of the article is not only geographic, but also interioran exile due to the natural limitations of all languages, and which can be bridged only in linguistic ways. Lee's solution to that problem (lyricism) turns his poetry into what Roland Barthes would call "a text of bliss," a text that manages to deeply destabilize language, while simultaneously achieving a new kind of meaning. In the main body of the manuscript, the first section contains short love lyrics. The second section, "Night of no Exile," is an attempt at the demanding genre of the longer lyric poem. The third section uses short lyrics to explore various topics, such as discovering one's identity, friendship and solidarity between women, family history, and childhood memories. Finally, the last section includes poems, four of them longer, attempting to combine narrative and lyric impulses in a way not unlike Li-Young Lee's experimentation with those two genres.

The objective of the dissertation is to examine Young-Jo Lee's (b. 1943) musical language as exhibited in his piano composition, Variations on the theme of Baugogae. Subjects of discussion include Lee's use of direct and indirect musical borrowings from past European composers and traditional Korean folk idioms. Also included are a biographical sketch of the composer and historical overview of modern Korean composers. This dissertation investigates Lee's effort to synthesize traditional Korean music and Western music in one art form and ultimately, to create his own musical language.

In this two-manuscript dissertation, framed through queer and minority stress theories, I focus on heteronormative pressures and their impact on sexual identity fluidity and health of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth and young adults. Heteronormativity, or the expectation to meet heterosexual norms in relationships, may be stressful for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth and be linked to poorer health. In particular, I focus on bisexual young people because bisexual people can enter into either same- or different-gender relationships; these young people could experience pressure from family members and religious communities to conform to heterosexual norms, resulting in sexual identity transitions that could explain health differences between sexual minority groups. In the first manuscript, I conducted life history narratives interviews with 14 racially and ethnically diverse youth and young adults between the ages of 18-24 on how LGB youth make sense of expectations to conform to heterosexual norms and how their experiences vary based on youths’ characteristics. In the second manuscript, I used structural equation modeling analysis of one of the largest community samples of LGB youth and young adults between the ages of 15-21 in the U.S. to examine youths' current and future relationship desires in a broader system of heteronormative expectations and how these expectations operate as mechanisms to influence the mental health of sexual minority youth. Qualitative results from the first manuscript show that for many youth and youth adults, gender and sexuality intersect to influence their experiences of heteronormativity: Gender and sexuality were conflated for gay men who stated that their gender nonconformity meant that family members already knew their sexuality before they came out as gay. Many bisexual women described their experiences being gender conforming in which they struggled to legitimize their sexuality to others because they were feminine. Though gay and lesbian identities were present in discussions of gender, an expression of gender that signaled and was named as bisexuality was fundamentally missing in the interviews. That is, participants did not describe a gender presentation that would indicate someone attracted to more than one gender. Participants consistently considered childbearing, but not marriage, to be highly desirable. Latino participants discussed heteronormativity through the racialized lens of machismo. However, religion was a greater source of pressure to conform to heterosexuality for Latino participants than were racial communities. My quantitative results from the second manuscript showed that gay men, lesbian women, and bisexual men are more likely to desire same-gender marriages later in life compared to bisexual women, who are more likely to desire different-gender marriages. Participants who desired different-gender marriage were more likely to identify as a different sexual identity over time. However, neither relationship desires nor sexual identity transitions related to depressive symptoms. The findings of this manuscript suggest that initial transition to a sexual minority identity may be the most vulnerable time for youth. After this initial transition, lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth may be inoculated to stress related to identity transitions, even in the context of heteronormativity. This research informs queer and minority stress theories: Gender, sexuality, and family norms intersect to structure how youth understand heteronormativity and predicts whether youth maintain their sexual identity, but such norms might not be stressors that influence health after youth first identify as LGB.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

This project builds upon the author's multi-year critical ethnographic study of urban immigrant students and their trajectories into STEM (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics) from high school through their transition to college. At its core, this study investigates the paths of over three dozen newcomer immigrant English language learner students in high-poverty urban neighborhoods who are not generally considered “legitimate contenders” for Bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields on the basis of such characteristics as test scores, high school and prior preparation, and age. The students are followed through their high school experiences, their transition to college, and through their current progress in college, with explicit attention paid to key mediating experiences and relationships in and especially outside of the classroom that were associated with their toward persistence and success. Thick description and analysis of the students and their experiences, among those who persisted as well as the minority who switched out of STEM majors, helps to demonstrate a proof-of-concept of these students’ ability to succeed while painting a comprehensive picture of their march forward to degrees in STEM fields against a backdrop of economic, linguistic, and other barriers to entry and success. Using a framework of social and capital and resilience theories, this work has uncovered a number of themes and factors that will help educators to better understand the evolution of these traditionally marginalized students' STEM-related interests, skills, and career plans. The findings center around students’ exposure to research internships and other STEM enrichment and outreach experiences, long-term mentoring and other key relationships, and integration of STEM and college access efforts in setting them up for a successful transition to college, as well as an emphasis on the importance of students’ calling upon their own resilience and other strengths and prior experiences. The results provide novel insights and recommendations for improving access and persistence in STEM among students in areas of concentrated poverty who are also struggling with mastering a new language and a host of other challenges.

Orientador: Maria Sylvia Simões Bueno. / Banca: Raimunda Abu Gebran / Banca: Iraída Marques Barreiro / Resumo: O presente trabalho objetiva verificar contradições e ambigüidades na definição do protagonismo juvenil e o uso desse conceito forma de adaptação dos jovens à excludente ordem social capitalista atual. As diretrizes educacionais, como a Reforma do Ensino Médio, explicitam o culto ao Protagonismo como via promissora para dar conta tanto de uma urgência social quanto das angústias pessoais dos jovens, de forma a transferir a responsabilidade de superação de tais questões aos próprios jovens, por esforços individuais, potencialização da resiliência e realização de ações sociais solidárias. Nessa perspectiva, o conceito adquire um valor político-ideológico voltado para a despolitização da juventude em relação às causas macro sociais da pobreza. A conceituação de Protagonismo Juvenil é um grande desafio para a produção científica, visto as divergências e ambigüidades que o permeiam, tais como perspectivas diferenciadas de cidadania, participação, responsabilidade social, entre outras. A metodologia do trabalho consiste em pesquisa bibliográfica e pesquisa de campo, com uso de questionários e grupos de diálogos, compostos por alunos do ensino médio de uma escola do município de Umuarama-PR. Sua análise revelou que ambigüidades conceituais, sendo que os jovens em muitas falas associam o protagonismo juvenil à ações de caráter social e voluntário. No entanto, revela, também, a expressão de uma busca de autonomia e a necessidade de ser concebido como sujeito social. O resultado desta pesquisa sugere que o protagonismo juvenil seja desvelado pelos pesquisadores de forma crítica, principalmente no que se refere à sua ambiguidade conceitual. / Abstract: This work aims to very contradictions and ambiguities in the definition of Young leadership and use this concept means to adapt to the exclusion of Young social order today. The educational guidelines, and the Reformo f Secundary Education, explain the Cult of prominence as a promissing way to account for both na urgent social and the personal anguish of Young people in order to shift responsibilityfor overcoming this issues to Young people themselves, by individual efforts, enhancement of the resilience and anchievement of social solidary actions. This perspective the concepto f education is a political and ideological toward the politicization of youth in relation to macro social cause of peverity. The concepto f Prominence Youthis a great challenge that permeat such as different perspectives of citizenship, participation, social responsability, among others. The metodology of the work is in literature and Field research, using questionnaries and dialogue groups, composed of high school students at a school in the city of Umuarama - PR. Their analysis revealedthat conceptual ambiguities, and the Young people in many lines associated with youth involvement in social activities and volunteer. However, italso reveals the expression of a quest for autonomy and need to be designed as a social subject. The resulto f this research suggests that youth involvementis unveiled by researchers in a critical way, speccially with regard to its conceptual ambiguity. / Mestre