Repository logo

Browsing by Author "Daum, Courtenay, committee member"

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Complicating understandings of dis/ability apparentness: developing a scale of dis/abled apparentness in educational settings
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Wilke, Autumn K., author; Dockendorff, Kari, advisor; Poon, OiYan, committee member; Daum, Courtenay, committee member; Archibeque-Engle, Shannon, committee member
    This research study presents the Scale of Dis/ability Apparentness in Education Settings (SDAES) to explore the complex and dynamic nature of dis/abled apparentness among college students. The study combines qualitative and quantitative data to examine five key domains: Environment, Ableism, Identity, Taking Action, and Embodied Dis/ability, shedding light on the intricate interplay between these domains and the influence of demographics and dis/ability contexts. The findings challenge the binary concept of visible and invisible dis/ability, emphasizing the nuanced and ever-changing nature of apparentness. Key implications for practitioners include addressing experiences of ableism, prioritizing dis/ability identity, and recognizing the importance of self-reported visibility. Researchers are urged to diversify samples, disaggregate data, and further investigate the role of socio-economic status and other identities in dis/abled apparentness. Overall, the SDAES offers a comprehensive framework to understand the multifaceted experiences of dis/abled college students in educational settings and highlights the active agency of dis/abled individuals in shaping their apparentness.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Dramaturgy and gender performance in fitness spaces
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Macartney, Remo, author; Hempel, Lynn, advisor; Mao, KuoRay, committee member; Daum, Courtenay, committee member
    This study uses theories from symbolic interactionism and feminist theory to understand performance in fitness spaces. Dramaturgical Theory and the theory of Doing Gender are used to address this topic. The first theory is used to examine the way that actors perform their gender within a gym. This includes space, appearance, and props from Dramaturgical Theory. The second concept incorporates ethnomethodology to examine how the actor fashions an intelligible body and uses their modified body to complete certain performances. Along the way the actor builds competency with certain props. This allows them to complete new performances. This research is important in understanding how power is distributed across fitness spaces. Additionally this study provides insights into participant behavior and can be used to understand how actors use and arrange space.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Drifting sands; shifting identities: reclaiming an identity through the looking glass
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Haghighi, Mehzad, author; Ishiwata, Eric, advisor; Daum, Courtenay, committee member; Souza, Caridad, committee member
    The aim of this research is to introduce a different narrative, and thus the ways in which a new understanding of Middle East can emerge. Worldwide, corruption is endemic. In developing countries, the circulating capital surplus dividend subsequent to autonomy has not been widely shared. Services—protection, prosperity, health, and housing—are fundamental support pillars for the Social Contract between sovereign and citizen. Contrary to their anointed leader, populaces in developing countries are no longer willing to be complicit with sustaining Matured Democracies' nationalistic interests. This research, then, is a reasonable attempt to outline these multifaceted trends by disentangling history, economic, and politics of the region. The culturally specific logic to these localities, the forces of globalization, and the governmentality of the nation-state, has led to flawed ethnography of the Middle East as a delimited land and romanticized nomadism. In the Middle East, the Sykes Picot Agreement disrupted tribal composition, alliances, and politics in the region. The analysis will conclude with suggestions of how to avoid a verbal high-wire act, with fresh impetus on nationalism and patriotism encouraging identity as a continuum and not just a spectrum. Thus, we must begin by introducing different narratives, invert the scripts, alter the discourses, and directly engage and educate the Joe Six-Packs' of Matured Democracies.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    "France deserves to be free": constituting Frenchness in Marine Le Pen's National Front/National Rally
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Seitz, Lauren, author; Anderson, Karrin, advisor; Khrebtan-Hörhager, Julia, committee member; Daum, Courtenay, committee member
    This thesis employs constitutive rhetoric to analyze French far-right politician Marine Le Pen's discourse. Focusing on ten of Le Pen's speeches given between 2015 and 2019, I argue that Le Pen made use of Kenneth Burke's steps of scapegoating and purification as a way to rewrite French national identity and constitute herself as a revolutionary political leader. Le Pen first identified with the subjects and system that she scapegoats. Next, she cast out elites, globalists, and immigrants, identifying them as scapegoats of France's contemporary identity split. Finally, by disidentifying with the scapegoats, Le Pen constituted her followers as always already French patriots and herself as her leader. This allowed her to propose a new form of French national identity that was undergirded by far-right ideals and discourse of revolution. This thesis presents several implications for understanding contemporary French national identity, the far right, and women politicians. It also contributes to the project of internationalizing public address research in Communication Studies.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Gender and racial inequality in U.S. credit markets
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Wentzel-Long, Melanie G., author; Bernasek, Alexandra, advisor; Pena, Anita, committee member; Pressman, Steven, committee member; Weiler, Stephan, committee member; Daum, Courtenay, committee member
    Outstanding household debt in the U.S. has grown dramatically since the 1980s, and households' borrowing activity is on track to return to levels unseen since the 2008 Financial Crisis. There has been limited research in economics on how patterns of credit use reflect and reproduce inequality by gender and race. In this study, I apply an intersectional feminist lens to household finance with four empirical investigations of women's position in credit markets. The papers are situated in an historically informed theoretical framework positing that women have been subject to three interconnected phenomena as consumers of credit: stigmatization, conditional inclusion, and exclusion. Chapter 2 investigates the relationship between borrowing from friends or family and financial exclusion, motivated by work in sociology suggesting that such informal borrowing has long-run costs and may be disproportionately used by women. I find that Black women are two to three times more likely than White respondents to plan on using informal borrowing as their primary coping strategy in the case of an emergency expense. Unobserved factors such as access to bank branches appear to link financial exclusion and informal borrowing. Chapter 3 explores differences by gender and race in U.S. high school students' aversion to borrowing for college and in the impacts of debt aversion. Female students and Black students are more likely to have a low but positive willingness to borrow for college than other groups. Moderate debt aversion is linked to lower levels of college enrollment, less borrowing, and lower costs of attendance, while strong debt aversion reduces the probability of enrolling in college for men only. Chapters 4 and 5 identify gendered and racialized trends in the growth of household debt surrounding the 2008 Financial Crisis. The results provide mixed evidence that high-cost mortgage lending targeted women or Black or Hispanic respondents. These groups experienced greater growth in consumer debt levels and debt burden relative to income than other groups post-crisis.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Green courts and global norms: specialized environmental courts and the global governance of environmental challenges
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Angstadt, James Michael, author; Betsill, Michele M., advisor; Daum, Courtenay, committee member; Gruby, Rebecca, committee member; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member
    As the diversity and intensity of environmental challenges increase, so too does the demand for institutions equipped to address those issues. This dissertation examines the emergence and implications of one such institutional model: dedicated environmental courts, referred to within this dissertation as "green courts." In a foundational effort to better understand and characterize green courts, it examines why the global spread of green courts is occurring, how it is manifesting, and what the global spread of green courts may imply for the domestic development and application of international environmental law norms. To examine these questions, this dissertation employs literature and methods derived from constructivist international relations and global environmental politics, yet speaks directly to established international environmental law scholarship. Through qualitative analysis of academic literature, primary documents, original expert surveys, and semi-structured elite interviews, this dissertation develops a detailed portrait of the actors seeking to promote the spread of green courts, the potential diversity of green courts, and the nature and global extent of existing national-level green courts. Its findings indicate that diverse actors are promoting the diffusion of a norm advocating green court establishment, and that green court norm dynamics reflect broader trends of transjudicial exchange, but that relatively few green courts currently exist of the model holding the greatest capacity to implement international environmental law. Collectively, this dissertation and its insights provide a strong foundation for timely future research objectives, including efforts to evaluate implications of green courts in light of environmental justice, to consider contributions of green courts to broader procedural and distributive environmental justice initiatives, and to evaluate how green courts affect environmental quality and outcomes.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    "It's just a cross, don't shoot": white Supremacy and Christonormativity in a small midwestern town
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Eleanor, Kate, author; Souza, Caridad, advisor; Bubar, Roe, advisor; Daum, Courtenay, committee member
    This paper, guided by poststructuralist and feminist theories, examines public discourse that emerged in response to a controversy over whether a large cross should be removed from public property in a highly visible location in Grand Haven, Michigan. Situating the controversy within the context of the election of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, this thesis seeks to answer the inquiry: How do the events and discourse surrounding the controversy over a cross on public property in a small, Midwestern city shed light on the Trump phenomenon? A qualitative study using document data was conducted, using grounded theory method to analyze 152 documents obtained from publically accessible sites on the internet. Three conceptual frameworks, Whiteness, Christian hegemony, and spatiality were utilized in evaluating the data. Findings reveal a community that sits at the intersection of White and Christian privileges. So interconnected are these privileges that they create a system of "codominance," in which they cannot be conceptually separated from one another, and together constitute the necessary criteria for full inclusion in the community. This qualitative study paints a compelling picture of the ways in which racial and religious privilege affect the underlying belief systems of many members of an overwhelmingly White, Christian community. Results provide valuable insight into the mindset of a Trump supporting community in the period immediately preceding the 2016 election.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    State injustice: trapping black women as "sex offenders" for prostitution in "the Big Easy"
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Sheets, Crystal Faye, author; Bubar, Roe, advisor; Cespedes, Karina, committee member; Valdez, Norberto, committee member; Daum, Courtenay, committee member
    This qualitative case study explores the use of a sodomy statute, Crime Against Nature, to criminalize prostitution and its impacts on impoverished Black women located on the streets of New Orleans. Data from in-depth interviews with six participants including a Public Defender, a Prosecutor, a Judge, a Community Worker, and two sex workers, were studied through a critical feminist analytic framework to decipher prevalent themes regarding the state's implementation of this charge. Major findings include: intersecting race/class/gender oppressions socially track or position Black women in the street sex economy where they are targeted by the state, the regulation of prostitution is performed in ways which permit a sex economy in the French Quarter to cater to tourists while it criminalizes prostitution in poor areas outside of the French Quarter, drug addiction is used as justification by the state to criminalize Black women on the street using this charge, and the ways in which recipients of this charge are further burdened and trapped by the state, which labels them felons and sex offenders rather than offering assistance and protection.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Transmen and transwomen in China: darkness and resilience
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Xue, Yan, author; Kwiatkowski, Lynn, advisor; Snodgrass, Jeffrey, committee member; Daum, Courtenay, committee member
    Anthropologists have studied transgenderism in various cultures and societies; however, few of these studies investigate the topics of identity development, family lives, and transgender community engagement, and their interwoven relationships in a socialist society. In this research, I look at the lives of Chinese transgender people and aim to understand what roles the government, family and domestic transgender community institutions play in their identity development trajectory. I approach this main research question through a contextualized cultural perspective, analyze it within a critical-interpretive medical anthropological framework, and draw from both anthropological and non-anthropological literature that focus on these three themes. Research data is collected through a mixed qualitative methodology, including online and offline participant observation and semi-structured interviews of ten Chinese transwomen, ten Chinese transmen, and three key informants. Findings suggest that for Chinese transgender respondents, their trajectory of realizing, exploring, and living as their identified gender, which is different from their assigned sex/gender, is commonly repressed and stigmatized on an everyday basis within the cisgender male-female binary system in Chinese society. During these processes, acquiring family recognition and building community connection are respondents' vital sources of resilience, which not only consolidate their (trans)gender identification but also facilitate their transitions. Nevertheless, this is not to say that the family and community institutions are immune to the sexist ideology and cisgender prejudice circulating in Chinese society, which can generate distress mixed with their empowering influences on Chinese transgender respondents. Therefore, throughout their identity development trajectory, respondents always have to resort to their own agency to protect and emancipate themselves from both structural discrimination and transnormative discipline that operate within the institutions which are commonly expected to enhance the resiliency of transgender people.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Ushering in participatory democracy on cyber waves of change? The possibilities of an interactive White House
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Purnell, Amanda Lynn, author; Griffin, Cindy, advisor; Daum, Courtenay, committee member; Sprain, Leah, committee member
    This thesis seeks to understand in what ways the Obama administration uses web-based technologies to fulfill key campaign promises for transparency and participation, as well as how those strategies may foster participatory democracy. To answer these questions, the thesis engages conversations of interactivity, interpellation, participatory democracy and the role the net generation plays in the future of participatory democracy in the United States. The project considers two key features of WhiteHouse.gov—the Briefing Room and the Blog—as well as the administration's online presence on Facebook through their White House Live feature. It concludes that the administration is fulfilling most of their campaign promises, but not all of those promises have the capacity to promote participatory democracy. The American public has more access to their government, and to information, but has little actual influence in everyday governing. This thesis also suggests that the Obama administration is putting forth a new understanding of American citizenship that interpellates an active citizen. The characteristics the administration attributes to this active citizen align with the characteristics attributed to members of the net generation. The implications of these findings and the barriers to participatory democracy are discussed as the project concludes by considering the future of politics in the United States.