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Title: "Gaming" genre : serious games, genre theory, and rhetorical action
Creator: Sherlock, Lee
Date: 2008
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Give me the worst of them, and I'll make them the best" : an ethnographic study of a successful alternative school for at-risk African American children
Creator: Khalifa, Muhammad A.
Date: 2008
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Gliding through our memories" : the performance of nostalgia in American musical theater
Creator: Edney, Kathryn Ann Tremper
Date: 2009
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Gothified Histories" : eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women's gothic novels and enlightenment historiography
Creator: Swender, Catherine Ann
Date: 2003
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "Gowned Vultures" : anti-legal attitudes in Elizabethan-Jacobean literature
Creator: O'Connor, Thomas Francis, 1931-
Date: 1974
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "HOW IS THIS MAKING MY INSTRUCTION BETTER AT ALL?" : CENTERING TEACHERS' VOICES AND STRIVING FOR HUMANIZATION IN AN INVESTIGATION OF HIGH-STAKES EVALUATIONS
Creator: Guenther, Amy R.
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation investigates teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes evaluations and examines the methods used to conduct this research. While the evaluation of teacher performance has been a long-standing practice in the United States, recent education reform policies have placed a much greater emphasis on teacher evaluation (Cohen & Goldhaber, 2016). These neoliberal policies largely focus on assessing performance to hold teachers accountable (Papay, 2012) and have resulted in many states...
Show moreThis dissertation investigates teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes evaluations and examines the methods used to conduct this research. While the evaluation of teacher performance has been a long-standing practice in the United States, recent education reform policies have placed a much greater emphasis on teacher evaluation (Cohen & Goldhaber, 2016). These neoliberal policies largely focus on assessing performance to hold teachers accountable (Papay, 2012) and have resulted in many states adopting performance-based teacher evaluation systems with high-stakes attached to them (Goldstein, 2014; Lavigne, 2014). These reforms have significantly changed both how teachers are evaluated and the implications of their evaluations. The purpose of this dissertation is to better understand the professional and personal consequences of these high-stakes evaluation systems on teachers, as well as how this research might be conducted in humanizing ways. Thus, I examine the lived experiences of teachers from three elementary schools in different suburban districts in Michigan, as well as aspects of humanizing research (Paris, 2011: Paris & Winn, 2014) that I incorporated into my research methods. This three article dissertation highlights the perspectives of teachers and reveals potential reasons for the ineffectiveness of high-stakes evaluation to improve practice, as well as several harmful consequences that high-stakes evaluations can have on teachers. At the very least, this current evaluation system does not encourage teachers to work together to improve their practice. At its most consequential, it appears to be encouraging isolationism and creating adversarial relationships among some teachers. Thus, I argue, by implicitly and explicitly discouraging collaboration, the current evaluation system is decreasing teachers’ access to the social capital that could help them be more effective in their practice. Additionally, while doing little to enhance their practice, these high-stakes evaluations are negatively influencing teachers’ identities. This finding is particularly significant when one considers teachers’ identities have been linked to their commitment, well-being, sense of agency, and effectiveness (Day & Kington, 2008). Therefore, I argue, it is doubtful that the current evaluation system, which focuses on accountability, is producing the desired effect of improved teaching and may actually be counterproductive, negatively influencing both teachers’ practice and their identities. I contend that teachers’ voices should inform necessary changes to teacher evaluation to produce evaluation systems that actually improve their practice and enhance their identities as teachers. Furthermore, in describing and reflecting upon my efforts to make my research more humanizing for my participants, this dissertation offers methods and a rationale for utilizing aspects of humanizing research amidst neoliberal policies. Such methods can implicate and counter the deprofessionalizing and dehumanizing effects of neoliberal policies on teachers.
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Title: "Hatucheki Na Watu" : Kenyan hip-hop artists' theories of multilingualism, identity and decoloniality
Creator: Milu, Esther
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "This is a qualitative research study that constellates several theoretical and methodological approaches to understand why and how three Kenyan Hip-hop artists, Jua Cali, Nazizi Hirji and Abbas Kubbaff, engage in translingual communicative practices."--Abstract.

Title: "Have your cake and eat it too" : negotiating a friends with benefits relationship
Creator: Bisson, Melissa A.
Date: 2004
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "How the stars were made", an original children's play and an analysis of the production problems
Creator: Dye, Patricia McKenna
Date: 1951
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "I Filled a Lot of Gaps" : How and Why Early Career Teachers Expand Induction Support Systems with Social Media
Creator: Staudt Willet, Kenneth Bret
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Early career teachers face numerous challenges during their transition from teacher preparation programs into professional employment contexts. With many more opportunities for professional learning available today, early career teachers must navigate an increased number of potentially conflicting messages about what and how to teach. This study explores the support systems that early career teachers construct during induction and how they use social media for this purpose. These systems can...
Show moreEarly career teachers face numerous challenges during their transition from teacher preparation programs into professional employment contexts. With many more opportunities for professional learning available today, early career teachers must navigate an increased number of potentially conflicting messages about what and how to teach. This study explores the support systems that early career teachers construct during induction and how they use social media for this purpose. These systems can be understood as professional learning networks (PLNs) consisting of tools, people, and spaces and useful for improving teaching and learning. Interviews with early career teachers provide evidence of reasons why they develop PLNs as well as what tools, people, and spaces they include in these support systems. Findings demonstrate that early career teachers construct induction support systems to navigate change, scarcity of resources, and conflicting teaching beliefs. Early career teachers look for tools for planning, enacting practice in the classroom, and connecting socially. People in early career teachers’ support systems included both in-school and out-of-school connections. Interviewees described how they use various social media platforms in their induction support systems as well as boundaries they maintain around social media use. Finally, early career teachers described their engagement on social media in terms of browsing, asking, and exchanging. Implications of these findings are discussed for early career teachers, teacher educators, and education leaders—especially regarding how stakeholders can help alleviate induction pressures on early career teachers. This study contributes insight into the convergence of tensions experienced by early career teachers as they consider whether and how to construct support systems during induction, including if and how to look for help on social media.
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Title: "I didn't know they made more cinderella stories, and change the color" : counterstories from an after school book club"
Creator: Carey, Carleen
Date: 2013
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In this study, I examine how three African American girls who participated in a multi-cultural after school book club make sense of race and gender as they read versions of the Cinderella story in which the Cinderella character is Black . Analysis of data from interviews and book club discussions suggests that adolescent African American females expand their repertoire of female gender roles when exposed to Pan-African Cinderella's by taking up the texts in ways that both challenge and...
Show moreIn this study, I examine how three African American girls who participated in a multi-cultural after school book club make sense of race and gender as they read versions of the Cinderella story in which the Cinderella character is Black . Analysis of data from interviews and book club discussions suggests that adolescent African American females expand their repertoire of female gender roles when exposed to Pan-African Cinderella's by taking up the texts in ways that both challenge and reinforce family-based female gender roles. I explore the implications of these findings for our understanding of the reading experiences of urban African-American female adolescents.
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Title: "I felt a compulsion to write" : a qualitative examination of the learning experiences of three female composers
Creator: Giebelhausen, Robin Joan
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: With the goal of understanding what experiences and musical identities of women who choose to compose, the purpose of this research was to examine the experience and musical identity of women who choose to compose music.This study was guided by the following Grand Tour question and sub-questions:Why do these women choose to compose?1. What experiences and relationships have played a foundational role in shaping these women as composers?2. What experiences and relationships allowed these women...
Show moreWith the goal of understanding what experiences and musical identities of women who choose to compose, the purpose of this research was to examine the experience and musical identity of women who choose to compose music.This study was guided by the following Grand Tour question and sub-questions:Why do these women choose to compose?1. What experiences and relationships have played a foundational role in shaping these women as composers?2. What experiences and relationships allowed these women to self-identify as a composer? 3. What influences, if any, do these women perceive that their gender has had upon their approach to composing?This investigation was a multiple case study of the learning experiences of three female graduate composition majors enrolled at State University, a large, state university in the midwest. The primary data collection involved four or five interviews between the participants and myself, email communications, one focus group interview with all participants, and field observations at composition studio classes and composition recitals. Two stages of musician-composer identity were observed: the foundational musician-composer identity and the emerging composer-musician identity. There were four main components at play in the foundational musician-composer identity: family support, positive mentors, multiple experiences, and perseverance/independence. Differing from the foundational musician-composer identity, the emerging composer-musician identity and themes that supported this identity allowed the women the confidence to self-identify as a composer. These three themes—arranging as a creative introduction, interest in music theory, and a need for an alternative to music performance—established a scenario in which all the women felt confident to call themselves a composer, though in some cases the label was fragile. I was unable to identify influences confidently that gender had upon their approach to composing. I was unable to answer this question not because I did not ask it, but because the women themselves were relatively unaware of any influences they faced related to gender in their field. These women compose because they must. This compulsion happened independently and in conjunction with many of the experiences that allowed for a foundational musician-composer identity and later an emerging composer-musician identity. Implications for music education include the inclusion of more creative experiences in K-8 music education, a need for arranging as a scaffolding device in creative pedagogy, and the inclusion of alternative music classes for which public performance is not the main objective. Implications for composers include collaborating with researchers and practitioners in music education to help nurture future music composers in K-12 music education.
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Title: "I got new feelings coming in" : drawn emotions and refusing secondly across anti-racist English language arts pedagogies
Creator: Neville, Mary Lefere
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Given the current and historical context of power and oppression in the United States, English language arts (ELA) scholars have called for pedagogies that directly respond to the racialized violence present across texts, schooling, and society (Baker-Bell, Butler, & Johnson, 2017; Baker-Bell, 2020; Butler, 2018; Johnson, 2018). Scholars have long critiqued the ELA curriculum for its dearth of perspectives across race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability, and especially have called upon ELA...
Show moreGiven the current and historical context of power and oppression in the United States, English language arts (ELA) scholars have called for pedagogies that directly respond to the racialized violence present across texts, schooling, and society (Baker-Bell, Butler, & Johnson, 2017; Baker-Bell, 2020; Butler, 2018; Johnson, 2018). Scholars have long critiqued the ELA curriculum for its dearth of perspectives across race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability, and especially have called upon ELA teachers and researchers to center literature written by Black and Brown authors (Thomas, 2016, 2019). In this call for anti-racist ELA curriculum, scholars have also encouraged an attention to emotion, highlighting the necessity of not only including texts by authors of Color in classrooms but also the importance of the emotional and affective resonances through which students and teachers respond to literary texts for racial and social justice (Dutro, 2019; Grinage, 2019). This qualitative research project, then, explores the emotional responses of secondary ELA students and pre-service literacy teachers to literature that addresses race and racism. This dissertation builds upon critical (post)qualitative and visual arts-based methodologies centering the emotional and affective resonances present across our socially constructed identities as students and teachers work to deconstruct whiteness and anti-Blackness using anti-racist pedagogies (Sousanis, 2015; Love, 2019; Muhammad, 2019). In particular, this project explores how objects of feeling are drawn across space and time (Ahmed, 2010, 2014) and how readers refuse "secondly" (Adichie, 2009) within two research contexts: (1) a 12th critical media literacy course and (2) a critical young adult literature course for pre-service teachers. Findings from this study demonstrate how secondary ELA students and pre-service teachers might center the already present emotion traced across objects of feeling in literature classrooms committed to anti-racist and anti-oppressive pedagogies.
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Title: "I have a chance to make it different for this child" : an exploration of maternal cumulative risk and child welfare outcomes of children born during maternal incarceration
Creator: Kasiborski, Natalie Blake
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "The aim of this dissertation is to explore the intersection between the child welfare and criminal justice systems, as well as the role of maternal cumulative risk on the outcomes of involved mother/child dyads."--From abstract.

Title: "I hear, and I forget ; I see, and I remember ; I do, and I understand" : an exploration of children's museums as successful learning environments for students with and without disabilities
Creator: Rapp, Whitney Hosmer
Date: 1997
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "I love this cotton hair!" : black women, natural hair, and (re)constructions of beauty
Creator: Rowe, Kristin Denise
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The aim of this thesis is to investigate the current natural hair movement among AfricanAmerican women in the United States as a space where beauty standards are simultaneouslycontested, reified, and reshaped. Here, the “natural hair movement” is the recent trend of Blackwomen consciously ending the habitual chemical straightening/ processing of their natural hairtexture. The study is guided by the following research questions: 1) To what extent does the“natural hair movement” participate in/...
Show moreThe aim of this thesis is to investigate the current natural hair movement among AfricanAmerican women in the United States as a space where beauty standards are simultaneouslycontested, reified, and reshaped. Here, the “natural hair movement” is the recent trend of Blackwomen consciously ending the habitual chemical straightening/ processing of their natural hairtexture. The study is guided by the following research questions: 1) To what extent does the“natural hair movement” participate in/ endorse Eurocentric standards of beauty? 2) How areBlack women utilizing the natural hair movement to (re)define, (re)shape, and (de/re)constructmeanings of beauty and Black womanhood? Utilizing theories of beauty culture/ standards ofbeauty and Black feminism, this study explores these research questions by way of discourseanalysis. The subjects of this study consisted of four internet-based natural hair care spaces: 1)The official website of Carol’s Daughter brand natural hair care products 2) CurlyNikki.com, theworld’s most popular natural hair blog (Walton) 3) Popular video blogger Naptural85’s YouTubechannel and 4) A Twitter and Tumblr page within the 4C hair type sub-grouping. The languageand images within these spaces were sorted and analyzed, to reveal patterns surrounding theways that beauty is theorized within the natural hair community, via discussions of naturalhairstyles, lengths, and textures. Ultimately, the study suggests the natural hair movement is aspace where negotiations of identity are occurring, as Black women have created their own spaceto (re)shape meanings of Black female beauty, while at times influenced by deeply embeddedEurocentric standards of beauty.
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Title: "I question it myself" : mid-victorian novels' formation of ethical subjectivity and the liberal reform of inheritance laws
Creator: Jang, Hyunsoo
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation explores the socio-economic dimensions of inheritance in notable mid-Victorian novels and their engagement with contemporary social debates over amending feudal inheritance laws. The dissertation argues that these novels contributed to reinforcing a reactionary cultural force that drove the compromised liberal legislation of new inheritance laws. The reform of the inheritance laws, led by Victorian liberals, focused on strengthening absolute testamentary power while...
Show moreThis dissertation explores the socio-economic dimensions of inheritance in notable mid-Victorian novels and their engagement with contemporary social debates over amending feudal inheritance laws. The dissertation argues that these novels contributed to reinforcing a reactionary cultural force that drove the compromised liberal legislation of new inheritance laws. The reform of the inheritance laws, led by Victorian liberals, focused on strengthening absolute testamentary power while displacing radical reformers’ demand for state intervention in redistributing inherited wealth into the hands of broader population. The liberals prioritized the cultivation of individual moral capacity or character-building over the improvement of economic equality. With their generic narrative power, mid-Victorian novels about inheritance dramatized the liberal reformers’ socio-economic ideas and sought to shape a subject who would internalize those ideas in his or her mind. My dissertation also illuminates how mid-Victorian liberals’ reasoning for the reform exposes a paradox in liberalism and a limit of the distinctive Victorian concept of ethical subjectivity.
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Title: "I shall be somebody", Atatürk as entepreneur
Creator: Minderhout, David Jay
Date: 1970
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: "I want to be a better person and a better teacher" : Exploring the constructs of race and ability in a music educator collaborative teacher study group
Creator: Knapp, Erika
Date: 2022
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The way teachers engage with dis/ability and race in their classrooms links to theirunderlying belief systems (Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). Unfortunately, substantial evidence connects teacher beliefs and perceptions to the reification of hegemonic norms, which upholds barriers for students in educational settings (Annamma, 2015b; Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). The purpose of this study was to examine a music educator collaborative teacher study group (CTSG) focused on exploring and unpacking...
Show moreThe way teachers engage with dis/ability and race in their classrooms links to theirunderlying belief systems (Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). Unfortunately, substantial evidence connects teacher beliefs and perceptions to the reification of hegemonic norms, which upholds barriers for students in educational settings (Annamma, 2015b; Heroux, 2013; Ryan, 2020). The purpose of this study was to examine a music educator collaborative teacher study group (CTSG) focused on exploring and unpacking narratives of race and dis/ability in music education. Research questions were: 1) How do teachers conceptualize issues of race and ability in both their belief systems and stated classroom practices? 2) How, if at all, did participants’ beliefs about race and ability change as a result of participating in the CTSG? 3) What conditions facilitated changes in mindset and behavior for participants? I designed and completed a descriptive, collective case study (Stake, 1995; Yin 2018) that examined the experiences of eight music educators across the U.S. Participants were public school music educators who varied in age, teaching experience and assignment, personal identity characteristics and geographic location. As the researcher and facilitator, I served as the ninth member of the CTSG. Participants met via Zoom eleven times (every other week from July 27 to December 14, 2021) to share stories, discuss assigned readings/videos, participate in activities, and collaborate on lesson plans. Throughout the study, participants completed three individual interviews (beginning, midpoint, end), took turns leading the group sessions, contributed to a private social media page, and wrote in their online journal. In addition to my analytic memos, I used transcripts of interviews, planning meetings, CTSG meetings, conversations on Facebook and reflections in journals as data. I utilized two frameworks, Dis/ability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) (Annamma et al., 2013) and Transformative Learning Processes (TLP) (Salvador et al., 2020a) to frame the study, design the CTSG, and analyze the data. Initially participants varied in their stated beliefs and described classroom practices. Further, participants displayed a continuum of prior experiences and stated goals, as well as a broad spectrum of agreements and dissonances between their words (stated beliefs and goals) and actions (conversations in the CTSG and descriptions of their teaching practice). By the end of the study, participants described and demonstrated several changes resulting from participation in the CTSG. Participants reported becoming more aware of the ways that racism and ableism operated in schools and in their personal lives. Furthermore, they reported that participation in the CTSG had lit a spark for continued discovery, reflection, and action. Many ended the CTSG by setting personal and professional goals, such as building allyship in their classroom or redesigning their curriculum through an equity-focused lens. Several conditions proved salient in creating an environment conducive to change. Primary factors that contributed to change were participants building connections with other music teachers, experiencing emotional intensity, having the space and time to grapple with difficult materials, as well as the structures put in place during the CTSG. Based on these themes, I offered several recommendations for practice and policy, including the importance of preservice and continuing education to work with diverse learners, and the necessity of highlighting voices of minoritized students in music education.
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Title: "I was a creature of environment" : Jamesian habit in Jack London's "The Iron Heel"
Creator: Howard, Thomas W., M.A
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: William James describes in his Principles of Psychology the central role that habits and adaptation plays in the human experience. Habits affect an individual’s beliefs, actions, and emotions, and without habits an individual would not have any personality. In the nineteenth century, literary theorists such as Henry James describe the necessity for authors to create realistic characters and events. This thesis displays the intersection of these two intellectual movements in Jack London’s...
Show moreWilliam James describes in his Principles of Psychology the central role that habits and adaptation plays in the human experience. Habits affect an individual’s beliefs, actions, and emotions, and without habits an individual would not have any personality. In the nineteenth century, literary theorists such as Henry James describe the necessity for authors to create realistic characters and events. This thesis displays the intersection of these two intellectual movements in Jack London’s dystopian novel, The Iron Heel. I begin by examining the history of the theory of habits beginning with John Locke and ending with James’s own works on the subject. I then focus on literary theory and the ways it is conducive to the absorption of habit theory into the creation of realistic literary characters. I argue that novels that do this are “psychoepisodic,” or novels containing psychologically realistic characters that describes a piece of the psychological side of the human experience through various episodes. Finally, I use these theories to examine London’s The Iron Heel and the ways London uses habits in the development of the characters.
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