Theses and Dissertations

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Dissertations appearing in this collection have been digitized, with the authors' permission, from the paper version approved by the UO Graduate School. Dissertations are under copyright protection and should be appropriately cited. There are two collections of dissertations listed below:

Theses and Dissertations (Official) represent items that have been digitized from official paper manuscripts approved by the Graduate School.
Theses and Dissertations (Self-Submitted) represent items for which authors have submitted their own electronic files of their dissertations. The electronic files have not been reviewed by the Graduate School and the content may differ from the official, authorized paper manuscripts.

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Integrating Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills and Parenting for Emotionally Dysregulated Parents: Intervention Development
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Everett, Yoel; Zalewski, Maureen
Parental emotion dysregulation (ED) is linked to less effective parenting behaviors that are associated with increased child emotional and behavior problems. There is a lack of integrated adult mental health + parenting interventions that can improve these interlinked domains in families experiencing clinical-level symptoms. Integrating Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills with parenting may be a promising, transdiagnostic treatment approach to intervening on parental ED and parenting. This dissertation aimed to advance intervention development in this area.In study 1, an integrated DBT Skills + Parent Training (DBT Skills + PT) group therapy intervention for parents of preschoolers was developed and tested in a case study with dually-dysregulated parent-child dyads. The study used idiographic analyses of repeated measures of parental ED, child ED and parenting quality to evaluate changes throughout treatment. In study 2, the intervention was pilot tested with parents struggling with ED and substance misuse. Study 2 examined changes in parent, child and parenting outcomes, and evaluated feasibility, implementation and acceptability of DBT Skills + PT. Group-level analyses of pre-post effects, idiographic individual-level analyses of cascading effects between parental ED, parenting and child behavior, and qualitative analyses of participant feedback were all conducted. Across both studies, parents reported improvements in their ED, their children’s behavior and emotion regulation, and their parenting, often with large effect sizes. The pattern of changes varied across parents. Some showed a cascading effect and others showed evidence of bidirectional effects of children’s behavior on parent outcomes. Parents had high rates of attendance, good implementation of skills, and found the intervention highly acceptable. Study 3 coded video-recorded sessions of Standard DBT Skills Training for mothers with severe ED to identify skills mothers reported were helpful to improving parenting. Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation skills were useful to increasing positive parenting and Distress Tolerance skills were useful to decreasing negative parenting behaviors. Study 3 findings can aid in selection of DBT Skills to include in an abbreviated version of DBT Skills + PT. Together, these three studies lay the groundwork for a larger scale randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of DBT Skills + PT.
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The Art of Baking: How QAnon Folk Media Turned Crumbs into a Mass Conspiracy Culture
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Selcer, Leslie; Wood, Mary
QAnon’s umbrella conspiracy culture operates through a multi-scaled folk media infrastructure constituted by an array of distinct subcultures. Because QAnon offers a broad variety of online subcultures and corresponding internet communities (each with their own flavor of QAnon), this conspiracist movement has been able to attract and unite a wide variety of audiences without necessarily requiring ideological unity amongst them. In their role as lead interpreters, QAnon influencers position themselves as central nodes around which social media networks and distinct QAnon subcultures form. QAnon meaning-making occurs largely through the collaborative process of “baking”, a term which refers to a variety of do-it-yourself media strategies used to interpret, decode, and spread the esoteric messages (“crumbs”) supposedly embedded in the jumbled posts of the anonymous forum user known as “Q Clearance Patriot”. Baking combines long-standing folkloric traditions—such as the collective production of shared symbols, myths, and vernaculars—with the many formats and platforms offered by social media in order to advance QAnon narratives. QAnon incorporates many pre-existing vernaculars and narratives from both online and offline extremist cultures. First appearing on the infamous /pol/ (“politically incorrect”) board of the anonymous internet forum 4chan, QAnon’s lore draws heavily upon tropes from right-wing internet forum cultures, as well as centuries-old white supremacist myths. QAnon claims to offer truths about widespread abuses of power, while also misdirecting critical attention away from systemic analysis of historical and material configurations of power/domination. Instead, QAnon primarily advances theories of ontological good versus evil, personified by an alleged secret war between good and evil individuals involved in grand conspiracies. QAnon calls for a “Great Awakening” to the many injustices of the world, while simultaneously undermining the idea that oppressive systems like capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy drive many of these injustices. Thus, QAnon defends the ultra-conservative ideologies of hardcore American self-identified patriots (explicitly or implicitly constructed as white/Christian) by reacting against perceived threats of transformation to an imagined vision of the traditional great nation.
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Making and Unmaking Worlds: Towards Liberation Beyond Subjectivity
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Friaz, Ricardo; Russell, Camisha
This dissertation develops the concept of liberation by questioning what it means to destroy, abolish, and create worlds. I develop a critical position towards agential or subject-based accounts of liberation in order to think through Abolitionist and Decolonial accounts of mourning and collective world-making. I trace the endurance of historical processes of slavery and colonialism and their violent effects today, and I discuss contemporary police torture and migrant camps to reflect on practices of observing world destruction that do not center a subject of liberation. I give a critical account of the contemporary organization of the world around the Cartesian subject, and develop an alternative account of the world by drawing on Spinoza’s account of substance and bodily knowing. I conclude by developing an account of world creation by engaging with Lugones’ account of world-traveling and playfulness along with Winnicott’s theories of the playground and transitional object.
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Inequality in Shared Micromobility: Global, National, and Local Perspectives
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Meng, Sian; Brown, Anne
Shared micromobility systems, such as shared bicycles and e-scooters, have seen substantial global growth over the past decade. Although these systems offer affordable, flexible, and environmentally friendly transportation options, their rapid proliferation has raised significant equity concerns. The unequal distribution of shared micromobility services may limit access for the transportation disadvantaged, which could exacerbate the inequalities in the existing transportation system. This dissertation examines inequalities in shared micromobility through three studies at global, national, and local scales. The global-level study utilized world city theory to analyze the establishment and expansion of shared micromobility companies worldwide and employed mixed methods to explain what leads to the inequality in system distribution across cities. This study reveals that shared micromobility industries are associated with the world cities of ride-hailing, advanced producer services, and startups. Factors such as low demand for shared micromobility, unfriendly regulatory environments, and negative public and governmental attitudes towards shared micromobility are the major barriers to the adoption of shared micromobility systems at the city level. The national-level study examines the effects of policies aimed at equalizing resources and opportunities on vehicle and trip inequalities within shared micromobility systems in the US. Resource-equalizing policies for shared micromobility aim to equalize the distribution of shared micromobility vehicles, which directly alleviates inequalities in vehicle distribution and indirectly lessens trip distribution inequalities. In contrast, opportunity-equalizing policies subsidize people with less capability to use shared micromobility, such as low-income, unbanked, and non-tech-savvy people. However, policies for equal opportunity are less effective in addressing inequalities in shared micromobility. The local-level study investigates the impact of introducing shared e-scooters on existing transportation modes—bikeshare, railway, bus, taxi, and ride-hailing—in Chicago’s transportation equity priority areas, where residents face increased mobility barriers. The introduction of shared e-scooters results in distinct effects on different transportation modes between equity priority and non-equity priority areas. In the equity priority area, shared e-scooters significantly boost bikeshare usage and reduce taxi usage. In contrast, in the non-equity priority area, shared e-scooters notably reduce trips by bikeshare, railway, and taxis, but increase ride-hailing trips.
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Vulnerability in the Avalanche Capital: The Human Dimensions of Avalanche and Landslide Hazard in Juneau, Alaska
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Provant, Zachary; Carey, Mark
In the United States, climate disasters kill thousands of people and cost billions of dollars each year. In 2023, the United States experienced 28 environmental disasters that cost more than one billion dollars each—the most ever in a single year—highlighting the accelerating convergence of climate change and hazard zone development. The cryosphere faces some of the most amplified climatic changes, yet snow hazards continue to receive little attention from social scientists. This dissertation therefore examines snow hazards from avalanches and landslides in downtown Juneau, Alaska, one of the most exposed cities in the country. Using mixed qualitative methods—including interviews, participant observation, document and media analysis, and geospatial analysis—this dissertation draws on Juneau as a case study to advance the existing research on vulnerability in hazard zones. To contribute to vulnerability and unnatural disasters literature, chapters two through four examine the actors, sites, and moments that produce vulnerability and offer three key findings. Chapter 2, “Hazard Zone Conflicts in the Avalanche Capital,” argues that political, economic, and legal conflicts create windows of opportunity for powerful actors to influence the trajectory of hazard management. Chapter 3, “Housing Justice in a Hazard Zone,” argues that not only inequitable city planning and development initiatives create unnatural disasters, but also the process of hazard mitigation itself. Hazard mitigation strategies, such as the 2018-2023 hazard zone mapping project, disproportionately distribute new risks throughout the community. Chapter 4, “Shifting Climate Hazards and the Inertia of Disasters,” argues that the momentum of powerful societal forces, such as longstanding avalanche research programs and public unfamiliarity with landslides, obstructs Juneau’s ability to adapt to climate change and the increasing landslide hazard. While the details in each chapter are contextual and place-based, the broader findings offered in this dissertation are relevant for hazard zones around the world. This dissertation recommends: 1) scientists proactively integrate research on local social dynamics into their hazard and risk studies; and 2) decision-makers prioritize greater equity in the hazard mitigation and climate adaptation process. This dissertation includes previously published coauthored material.
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TRANSGRESSING THE STAGE: FEMALE XIQU PERFORMERS AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Deng, Xiaoyan; Chan, Roy
This dissertation explores a previously overlooked aspect of xiqu history - the role of female xiqu performers in fin-de-siècle China. Focusing on the transitional period between the late Qing and the early Republican era (1870-1937), it argues that female xiqu actors were not merely marginal figures but played a crucial role in shaping the stagecraft and culture of xiqu, on par with their male counterparts. The study begins by examining the performances of female xiqu actors in foreign concessions in Shanghai and Tianjin during the late-Qing period. It highlights how these performers demonstrated their exceptional stagecraft, which was comparable to that of the top male performers of the time. This challenges the notion that female performers were inferior in the xiqu tradition. Moving on to the 1910s in Beijing, the dissertation explores the significant contributions of female players like Liu Xikui and Xian Lingzhi. These performers challenged the traditional sheng players of the previous generation, showcasing their talent and pushing the boundaries of gender norms within xiqu. The study then delves into the 1920s, a period when female players such as Zhang Wenyan, alongside nandan stars, formed the first star culture in modern China. This highlights the importance of female performers in shaping the entertainment industry and popular culture of the time. Contrary to popular belief, the dissertation argues that the triumph of Republican nandan stars over their female counterparts was not solely due to the male players’ alleged artistic superiority. Instead, it suggests that various forms of social prejudice against women placed the female actors at a disadvantage in their competition with male players. This sheds light on the complex dynamics of gender and power within the xiqu tradition. Overall, this dissertation aims to rectify the neglect of female xiqu performers in the study of xiqu history. By highlighting their significant contributions and challenging traditional gender roles, it seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the role of women in shaping the stagecraft and culture of xiqu during the Qing-Republic transition.
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Primordial Narratives: The Jomon Period in Postwar Japanese Literature and Thought
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Strikwerda, Timothy; DiNitto, Rachel
This dissertation explores the reasons that Japanese intellectuals and writers reached back to the Jōmon period (12,500-500 BCE) to define Japanese culture in the wake of Imperial Japan’s defeat after World War II. The Jōmon period covers the Stone Age on the Japanese archipelago. Despite leaving no written records, Jōmon period inhabitants produced some of the world’s earliest pottery and left behind a cornucopia of anthropomorphic ceramics that have long fascinated archaeologists. Beginning in the 1950s, however, the discourse surrounding the Jōmon period shifted from a tone of antiquarian curiosity to a more ideologically fraught mode, where the period was recast as a foundational era of Japanese history and culture. Taking this shift in discourse as my departure point, my project examines the ways that the Jōmon period has functioned as a shifting signifier across the postwar period. Drawing equally from cultural studies and intellectual history, I trace the ways prehistory has been used to define modern Japanese identity in texts and media as varied as literary fiction, philosophy, ethnographic travel narratives, and film.
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Eudaimonic Entertainment in Board Games: Serious Interactions in Playful Simulations
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Rahman, Md Waseq Ur; Davis, Donna
This dissertation studies the formation of pleasurable and meaningful entertainment experiences during playing board games using a media psychological lens. It sheds light on players’ psychological and emotional substrates during play and the potential links between them that predict entertainment gratifications. Following the dual process model of entertainment framework that describes mechanisms behind pleasurable and meaningful gratifications (Oliver & Raney, 2011; Elson et al., 2014; Lewis et al., 2014; Bartsch et al., 2014; Bartsch & Schneider, 2014; Rieger et al., 2014; Vorderer & Reinecke, 2015; Weinmann, 2017; Raney et al., 2020), the study scrutinizes how playful interaction with analog elements of board games are connected to hedonic and eudaimonic forms of experiences that facilitate thought-provoking and self-reflective contemplation about the game’s meaning and purpose. Theoretically, it explores the question of how players come to appreciate the experience of board game play (as opposed to playing for fun) and traces the connection between eudaimonic outcomes of playing board games and affective and psychological gratifications. The study first argues and empirically investigates the notion that board games present a unique media context to facilitate meaningful and enduring experiences that can involve both psychological gratifications as well as complex emotional deliberations. In addition, the study evaluates the potential downstream effects of the eudaimonic entertainment experience in influencing deep engagement and issue interest in socio-political issues. Specifically, it scrutinizes board games that feature environmental, ecological, or natural themes in provoking reflective thoughts and issue interest about the environment (Fjællingsdal & Klöckner, 2017, 2020). Together, the study evaluates the value of playful interactions with analog simulations in board games in facilitating meaningful entertainment in general and its effects on engagement with environmental science rhetoric and their advocacy value. To do so, it asks three overarching research questions. First, how do hedonic, non-hedonic, and eudaimonic mechanisms of entertainment experiences predict enjoyment and appreciation of board games? Second, how are board game elements linked to the experience of enjoyment and appreciation, and the specific mechanisms that underlie these outcomes? Third, how do eudaimonic experiences from playing environmental board games influence cognitive elaboration or reflective thoughts about the games themselves, as well as broader implications of the games’ environmental theme outside of the game? To answer these questions, a first survey study on board game players takes stock of the play experience in board games using the dual process model of media entertainment (Oliver & Raney, 2011; Elson et al., 2014; Oliver et al., 2016; Bartsch et al., 2014). Based on this theoretical framework, the study links the intrinsic elements of the analog medium, such as game mechanics, narrative themes, and social context of play to hedonic enjoyment and eudaimonic appreciation during board game play (Elson et al., 2014; Oliver et al., 2016). Second, the study evaluates the experience of commercially available environmental board games to understand the downstream effects of non-hedonic and eudaimonic forms of entertainment from environmental-themed board games in influencing environmental issue interest (LaMarre & Landreville, 2009; Bartsch et al., 2014; Bartsch & Schneider, 2014; Vorderer & Reinecke, 2015; Weinmann, 2017; Raney et al., 2020). It considers how non-hedonic forms of emotions during media entertainment can influence cognitive depth and its effects on reflective contemplation, environmental issue interest, and connectedness to nature. The evidence presented for the study consists of two separate sets of sample populations investigated. To understand whether games can proffer meaningful emotional experiences, data was collected from general people who play board games. On the other hand, the examination of the experience of environmental science simulations in board games sought to understand the perspectives of players familiar with popular games that feature environmental/ecological themes. The findings suggest analog games may indeed provide a space for discursive learning to unfold and for players to feel equipped to tackle critical issues relating to the environment through deliberative co-construction of playful simulations with others. The two studies together present converging evidence for how board games facilitate meaningful experiences. It reports evidence for the continuum that psychological gratifications lie on and that certain need satisfactions are crucial in delivering eudaimonic entertainment while others tend to coincide. The findings also indicate that a meaningful appreciation of board games can facilitate cognitive elaboration in the form of reflective thoughts. Certain types of reflective thoughts while playing games can lead to issue interest and connectedness to nature. Overall, player interactions with environmental board games and the resulting entertainment experience (e.g., satisfaction of self-determination needs, eudaimonic affect) may aid in negotiating challenging emotions arising from dissonance experienced during play. While these findings are constrained within the bounds of the limitations that exist in the study they can inform environmental science communication strategies to engage audiences with climate science.
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(De)Constructing Hazard: The Making of Meaning and Value in Oregon’s Firescapes
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Casey, Alexandra; Walker, Peter
Amidst the global rise of wildfire disasters and the complex human-environment interactions they (re)produce (Fischer, et al., 2016), Oregon’s Senate Bill 762 stands out as an ambitious policy initiative aiming to improve wildfire adaptation, resilience, and mitigation across scales—from home protection zones to entire firesheds. However, this legislative effort met significant public pushback after the release of a wildfire hazard map that identified high-hazard areas for downstream regulation. The SB 762 hazard map has since been rescinded, and implementation of new fire safety codes were delayed as the state revised its approach under SB 80. This thesis explores the political ecology, critical physical geography, and critical GIS of wildfire hazard mapping in Oregon, focusing on the construction of SB 762 wildfire map and its rearticulation under SB 80. Chapter I presents a broad overview to mixed-methods research and builds on an interdisciplinary body of literature from geography, sociology, science and technology studies, wildfire risk science, and political science to uncover how these maps are dynamic entities shaped by scales of influence and visibility. Chapter II uses geospatial data, interviews, and public meeting transcripts to find how units of measurement such as pixels and tax lots do not just determine the scale of analysis but also influence the extent and outcomes of negotiations within GIS decision-making processes. Through a close examination of these units, I find that the fixed scales of scientific assumptions in the initial SB 762 map affect whose voices are amplified in the shaping of definitions, thresholds, and distribution of power and responsibility in wildfire risk management. In Chapter III, I analyze a large set of appeals and public meetings to understand how individuals work to articulate property’s conditions in ways legible to current and anticipated future hazard metrics. I ultimately find that influence from individuals and representatives of rural agricultural interests shifts the map's meaning of hazard. Overall, this thesis argues that scientific units of analysis and political representation produce the parameters through which rural agricultural stakeholders (re)negotiate the SB 762/80 wildfire map.
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Obscure Pleasures: Ritual, Pain, and the Black Feminist Imagination
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Stephens, Jiesha; Barter, Faith
My dissertation, Obscure Pleasures: Ritual, Pain, and the Black Feminist Imagination, traces how twentieth- and twenty-first-century black women’s literature and performance generate ways of feeling, inhabiting, and embodying the world through the black feminist imagination. Obscure Pleasures explores black women's creative production that conjures intersecting erotic and spiritual forms of embodied agency. This work draws on a rich array of literary and cultural sources, including Ana Maurine Lara's poetry narrative Kohnjehr Woman, Queenie's performance in the series American Horror Story: Coven, and Erna Brodber's novel Louisiana. My dissertation demonstrates how black women engage the sensory and the metaphysical to intervene in anti-black visual, ideological, and auditory regimes. Using obscure pleasure as a framework, I refer to 'obscure' as a way to name the elusive or uncertain ways black women embody pleasure in spaces saturated in anti-blackness.
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Multiethnic Intellectual Traditions and Reinvention of America in Early Twentieth-Century Ethnic American Literature
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Jung, Junha; Peppis, Paul
The interwar period was a time when the American community and the meaning of its membership were dismantled, contested, and demanded to be redefined through a series of events, such as the Great Depression, the Great Migration, the settler-colonial nation’s territorial expansion in the Midwest, and the related attempt to consolidate its border in the South. In the context of this dissertation, being American is less a legal-administrative matter of nationality. Rather, it is a set of epistemological conditions that are used to naturalize the boundary called American and to exclude others from it. By discussing the works of H. T. Tsiang, Zora Neale Hurston, Charles Eastman, and Américo Paredes, this dissertation demonstrates how these multiethnic author-intellectuals commonly critiqued the liberal notion of the human defined in terms of the possession of scientific rationality. In response to the specific historical conditions their communities were facing, the four writers drew on their own ethnic intellectual traditions to reinvent the social scientific, legal, and political discourses through which Americanness is defined and imposed. Multiethnic literature formally renders multiethnic communities’ shared critique of the figure of the English-speaking, property-owning man as a model American while suggesting alternative ways of being American.
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The Texture of Affect: Catastrophic Violence and the Matter of Knowing in Late Twentieth Century U.S. Literature
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Ecklund, Ashley; Wood, Mary
DISSERTATION ABSTRACTAshley Ecklund Doctor of Philosophy in English The Texture of Affect: Catastrophic Violence and the Matter of Knowing in Late Twentieth Century U.S. Literature This project addresses affectivity as an epistemological resource and affects as im/material phenomena that are expressed in certain works of literature as accumulating climates pertaining to specific bio-political events of violence. The texts discussed in this project are Charles Johnson’s work of short fiction “Exchange Value” (1981), Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus II (1986-1991), and Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel Tropic of Orange (1997). Through both allusion and explicit content, these works address the allegedly distant catastrophes of the Middle Passage, the Holocaust, and Japanese American internment along with countless other entangled violences through grotesque imageries in the everyday late-capitalist settings of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. These earth-shattering and world-bending events are linked to the capitalist system-sustaining structures of our familiar daily routines such as buying a jacket at the mall, going to a country club for bingo, or driving down the highway during rush hour. Putting multiple contexts for different global events together through three texts which are partially set and published in the 1980s-1990s United States has allowed me to show how narratives reach across time and place to spatialize catastrophically violent histories via resonant affective connections; though distinct in terms of context, narrative form, and genre, each text centers capitalism as constitutive for ongoing catastrophic conditions and develops images of affect through the texture of everyday material living conditions. For this project, texturing, in terms of “The Texture of Affect,” is an encapsulation of violent histories into the atmosphere of narrative frames, the syntax of drawn patterns, and prose imagery which work to inscribe affect as tangible, palpable, and mattering in a polysemic sense. With vivid sensory detail, and other text-specific choices in form, these works show the importance of situating global catastrophes outside the concept of one-off tragedy. This dissertation includes previously published material.
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The Ru-volution will be Televised: Unveiling the Commercialization of Drag in RuPaul's Drag Race through Bourdieu's Theory of Practice
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Guzman, John; Chávez, Christopher
This dissertation explores the commodification of drag by exploring the reality competition series RuPaul’s Drag Race. Using Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, the show draws its data from the first fourteen seasons of the show, as well as the first season seasons of RuPaul’s Drag: All-Stars, and the show’s behind-the-scenes series Untucked, as case studies to examine the impact of the show’s major sponsors. As a third case study, this project also focuses on RuPaul’s Drag Con, the show’s official drag convention. In using these case studies, I argue that although initially the show’s sponsors had a major impact in how drag was performed within the show, these corporate demands of drag became embedded within the program and became self-regulating. Such, the show’s popularity and the sponsor’s impact ultimately changed the field of drag and made it more palatable for a mainstream audience and advertisers. Further, since Drag Race is seen as the apex of what drag is, the show becomes a gatekeeper for those who wish to make a career out of the art form, thereby demanding people conform to the show’s limited interpretation of drag.
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A Counterhistory of the Ratchet: Black Aesthetics in the New Millennium
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Thompson, Jalen; Ovalle, Priscilla
Framing my discussion in the 1990s and early 2000s, my dissertation—“A Counterhistory of the Ratchet”—explores what I term “the ratchet aesthetic” as both an aesthetic language that rejects the politics of respectability and a reading method for redressing performances of Black female hypersexuality and excess in film, television, and music video. In Black southern vernacular, “ratchet” is a term used to describe people and behaviors that are deemed socially deviant. This includes being loud, disruptive, sexually explicit, angry and a host of other non-respectable actions. The term is often used as a way to police the boundaries of respectable Black femininity. Following the work of scholars in hip hop feminism and Black feminist cultural criticism, I argue that Black femme cultural producers adopt excessive performances of Blackness that elicit an expansive viewing experience of emotions, feelings, and beauty and that challenge the viewers’ perception of Black femme expression. Chapter 1 “Preliminary Thoughts on the Ratchet Aesthetic” situates the ratchet aesthetic as an intervention in Black aesthetics. Chapter 2 titled “The Televisual Ratchet Aesthetic” analyzes Martin Lawrence’s drag embodiment of the character Sheneneh Jenkins from the television series "Martin" (1992-1997). By looking at the performance of Sheneneh’s ratchet aesthetic, I argue Lawrence’s performance as Sheneneh undermines the heterosexist and gender specific logic of the series. Chapter 3 titled “The Cinematic Ratchet Aesthetic” uses the 1997 film "Black American Princesses" (or "B.A.P.S.") starring Halle Berry (as Nisi) and the late comedian Natalie Desselle (as Mickey) to investigate the visual iconography of the Black American Princess in American culture. With a creative team including two-time Academy Award winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter and celebrity hair stylist Kim Kimble, I argue that through wardrobe, makeup, hairstyling, and nail art the film immortalizes distinct stylistic conventions of working-class excess in the latter half of the 1990s and progresses a narrative of refinement over the course of the film. Chapter 4 titled “The ‘Real’ Ratchet Aesthetic” looks at the career of the reality television star Nene Leakes from the Real Housewives of Atlanta (2008-present). I explore Leakes' blonde embodiment as a form of ghetto fabulous identity formation. Finally, my coda “The Ratchet Aesthetic in the Twenty-First Century” ends with a discussion of the rapper and reality television personality Sukihana and "baddie" culture to explore the kinds of futurity the ratchet aesthetic offers in the progression of the new millennium.
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Exhibiting Socialist Chineseness Abroad: PRC’s Audio-visual Propaganda in Cold War Hong Kong and Beyond, 1950s-1970s
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Tao, Sabrina Y.; Groppe, Alison
This dissertation investigates how socialist Chinese audiovisual productions (especially cinema) that incorporate folklore, regional, and traditional Chinese cultural elements after socialist reform were exported internationally to win the hearts and minds of diasporic Chinese audiences via the intermediary of Hong Kong in the early Cold War era. In contrast with previous conceptions on PRC’s domestic propaganda that highlight revolution and class struggle, my dissertation argues that “socialist Chineseness” was an alternative as it blurred revolutionary messages in its audiovisual representations and marketing strategies for the purpose of circumventing censorship from the British colonial government and to construct a benevolent image of the new PRC to global audiences. Muting overt political themes while still shadowed by ideologies of socialism and anti-colonialism, these audio-visual texts created a nostalgic space of “cultural China” that blurred boundaries between regions, nationhood, social class, political and cultural identifications. In the meantime, they also had anti-colonial and anti-capitalist stances and acted as a contesting discourse against pro-rightist and pro-American culture in Cold War East Asia. By tracing these long-neglected transnational cultural interactions, this study hopes to reexamine the national boundary of Chinese cinema, as PRC films in the early socialist era were circulated in the broader regions of the Sinosphere. Meanwhile, by building a bridge between PRC and Hong Kong studies, this study explores the role of Hong Kong as a cultural nexus for the PRC’s audiovisual propaganda overseas. The dissertation not only reexamines how China presented itself to the world historically, but also explores how the socialist bloc conducted and responded to the global cultural Cold War in the realm of “soft power.”
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Silence, Intimacy, and the Other: Rhetorical Storytelling in Asian and Asian/American Feminist Writings
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Nadarajah, Madhura; Cortez, José
My dissertation, Silence, Intimacy, and the Other: Rhetorical Storytelling in Asian and Asian/American Feminist Writings investigates how Asian and Asian/American women have used storytelling as a form of discursive transgression. I argue that rhetorical studies tend to understand speech acts as something only accessible to those who are formally represented, which implies that those who are informally represented cannot speak. Reading through Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, and Sharika Thiranagama’s In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka, I argue that the discipline’s traditional approach to analyzing speech acts has failed to consider how informally represented communities have always been speaking in silent and intimate ways that are not always legible. Drawing from cultural rhetorics and women of color feminisms, my dissertation traces how Asian and Asian/American feminists have used different forms of storytelling, a speech act in itself, as a means of revising the racial and gendered subjectivities placed on them.
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Memory, Whiteness, and Right-Wing Opposition to National Heritage Areas
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Ford, Sophia; Pulido, Laura
The political right is most often associated with defending statues and monuments honoring colonizers, confederates, and enslavers. An example is the 2017 'Unite the Right Rally' in Charlottesville, Virginia, where activists violently protested the removal of a confederate monument to Robert E. Lee. Despite this known inclination of the right defending memorials, tensions rise as white, right-wing landowners across the United States vehemently oppose the expansion of National Heritage Areas (NHAs), framing them as a “federal land grab.” Established in 1984 under President Ronald Reagan and overseen by the National Park Service (NPS), NHAs receive federal funding to maintain historic sites, museums, monuments, and other public memorials. This dissertation examines the right’s growing resistance to NHAs, focusing on a case study spanning Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri. I explore the right’s support of historic commemoration through ethnographic methods, archival analysis, and fieldwork. Central to this study are questions such as: Why do people support or oppose National Heritage Areas, and what discourses do they use? What groups oppose NHAs, how are they funded, and who are their alliances? To what extent does whiteness play a role? What kind of relationship, if any, to the past, do opponents want? Overall, I find an increasing emphasis on local management of commemorative sites, aligning with broader right-wing movements characterized by a sense of white masculinist entitlement to private property. Additionally, prominent right-wing organizations, including the John Birch Society, American Stewards for Liberty, the Heritage Foundation, and Protect the Harvest, leverage these sentiments to advance their interests, particularly within the oil and gas industries. By examining the complexities of resistance to NHAs, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of the intersections between historical commemoration, political ideology, race, gender, and class.
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Left-Right Patterning: Biophysical and Chemical Signaling Pathways that Contribute to Left-Right Axis Establishment
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Luna-Arvizu, Gabriel; Grimes, Daniel
Cells sense their environment by detecting and responding to mechanical forces and chemical signals across their surface. Fluid flows, which can impart force and distribute chemicals, are critical for organ development, embryonic patterning, and contribute to host-microbe interactions and cancer metastasis. Despite the impacts on human health, flow signal sensation is understudied. We aim to elucidate how embryos break left-right (L-R) symmetry using flow-derived signals to understand cell communication. During development, beating cilia within structures called L-R organizers (LRO) generate an asymmetric flow that breaks symmetry. Cells sense flow, repressing the target gene dand5 on the left side only. The response to flow signals involves cilia yet mechanisms remain unclear. Our main hypothesis is that the Polycystin transmembrane protein Pkd1l1 complexes with cation channel Pkd2 to mediate flow signal sensation and establish L-R asymmetries. We found that pkd1l1 zebrafish mutants exhibited L-R defects in the heart, brain, pancreas, as well as displaying aberrant laterality-associated behaviors. Spatiotemporally, pkd1l1 and dand5 are co-expressed during flow stages. Global and cell-specific mutagenesis revealed Pkd1l1 functions cell-autonomously to maintain high levels of dand5, suggesting that flow normally represses Pkd1l1 on the left, leading to reduced dand5 on that side. Flow signals are thought to open Pkd2 channels, resulting in intraciliary Ca2+ signals. Mutation of pkd1l1 led to increased intraciliary Ca2+ signals, supporting a model in which Pkd1l1 represses Pkd2 channels until that repression is relieved by flow on the left.A second goal of this thesis was to discover novel causes of human laterality diseases. Recently, our team discovered DIXDC1 mutations in families exhibiting heterotaxia and situs inversus i.e. defective L-R symmetry breaking. Dixdc1 is thought to play a role in Wnt signaling, but had not previously been linked to L-R patterning. Using loss and gain of function approaches, we determined that perturbation of dixdc1a and dixdc1b, two zebrafish paralogs of DIXDC1, caused edema, abnormal body axis development, reduced forebrain and, importantly, severe heart laterality defects. Molecular evidence suggests dixdc1a and dixdc1b act upstream of dand5. Thus, we have uncovered a new role for the Wnt regulator Dixdc1 in L-R patterning across species. This further establishes an interplay between mechanical and chemical signals that orchestrate the breaking of symmetry during development. This dissertation includes previously published co-authored material.
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“Who am I, without…?” Identity, geopolitics, and Palestinian film in the 21st century: Toward a fifth cinematic period
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Abuhmaid, Hadil; Martinez, Gabriela
Since the production of the first Palestinian film in the 1930s, cinema in Palestine has unfolded into four different periods, each shaped by the political climate of its era: (1) Al-Nakba or “Catastrophe” (1935 - 1948); (2) Epoch of Silence (1948 - 1967); (3) Al-Naksa or “Setback” (1968 - 1982) and (4) Palestinian Autor’s Individual Initiatives (1982 – 2020). In this dissertation, I argue that the aftermath of second Intifada of 2000 has marked the beginning of a fifth cinematic period: Palestinian Fictional Realism. In the fifth period, Palestinian filmmakers feature “typical” Palestinians living within the historical map of Palestine. They move the historic trauma of the Nakba to the background and move to the foreground fictional-realistic stories of Palestinians of often problematic attempts to working through Palestinian trauma. In so doing, Palestinian filmmakers enact their agency and that of the Palestinian people by refusing to allow traumatic history or contemporary realities define the present and future. The dissertation is based on four case studies that include semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Muayad Alayan, Maha Haj, Ameen Nayfeh, and Arab Nasser. Each filmmaker’s case represents a theme that is present in many Palestinian films which are as follows: Sumud, collective memory, identity crisis, and lived experience. My research draws from a combination of theoretical frameworks including film theory, collective memory, political economy of communication, and theories of race, trauma, and identity.
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A Key Mechanism of Control: Communication Strategies and Preference Formation in the U.S. House of Representatives
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Asberry, Craig; Tichenor, Daniel
This dissertation explores the origins and content of strategic communication in the House of Representatives. Social science literature has established that congressional communication is mediated by various factors: personal characteristics, constituency pressures, and institutional-contextual incentives. All of these variables change the prevalence and content of MC communication. The focus of this dissertation is to explore the determinants and flavors of congressional speech from a quantitative, text-as-data perspective. In short, why do members of Congress focus on the substantive policies that they do? And how does that change the content of their speech? The answers are nuanced. Personal characteristics seem to exert the broadest influence on how often members speak about certain policies, while constituency pressures and institutional-contextual incentives can exert strong, narrowly focused effects on the prevalence of speech by members. Differences in content seem to follow procedural or identity-based rhetorical strategies, representational or obfuscatory strategies, or brand management rhetorical strategies vis-à-vis a member’s posture within the institution of congress. Elucidating these dynamics provides a greater ability for scholars and citizens alike to hold public servants accountable to the American people and take effective action to correct decades of partisan polarization.

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