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Browsing by Author "Jacobi, Tobi, committee member"

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    A qualitative case study of community corrections case managers' experiences with TGNC clients
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Ellis, Taylor, author; Opsal, Tara, advisor; Nowacki, Jeffrey, committee member; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member
    This thesis seeks to understand how community corrections case managers work with transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) clients within the context of a facility that relies on the gender binary in its physical structure and institutional practices. Using case study and feminist methodologies, as well as semi-structured interview techniques, I interviewed 11 case managers from this facility. Participants identified as having worked with a TGNC client in the past (either directly through case management or indirectly in a managerial or security position), having worked with women in some capacity, or having received gender-responsive training. The results from this thesis present several important findings. Such findings include that because of sex-segregated housing requirements, case managers must rely on programming opportunities for their TGNC clients to receive gender-affirming care, which creates uncertainty as these opportunities vary across clientele. Additionally, while case managers disagree on the fairness of housing TGNC clients with cisgender men, they fear that housing TGNC clients with women would be dangerous; simultaneously, case managers grapple with the fear that their TGNC clients might be sexually assaulted while living on the men's side. Underlying these first two findings, case managers report a pervasive lack of institutional training to help them navigate working with this specialized population, causing them to rely on alternative knowledge sources, such as their own identities, other case managers, and clients themselves. This thesis concludes with recommendations to the facility pertaining to training and institutional practices that could be modified to better serve their TGNC clients.
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    Measuring occupation span at two stone circle sites in Larimer County, Colorado
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Meeker, Halston F.C., author; LaBelle, Jason M., advisor; Pante, Michael, committee member; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member
    Stone circle sites are notorious for low artifact frequencies. This deters archaeological study because low artifact frequencies are thought to limit research potential. Two stone circle sites, Killdeer Canyon (5LR289) and T-W Diamond (5LR200) offer insight into short-term habitations, despite their low artifact frequencies. The two sites are located in northern Colorado, in the hogback zone along the Front Range of the Southern Rocky Mountains. The Colorado State University field school excavated the sites in 1982 and 1971 respectively. Artifacts from the interior of the features include lithic tools and debris, bone, and ceramics. This thesis examines each artifact class from excavated context as a proxy for understanding the length and number of occupations. Local and non-local chipped stone ratios, faunal procurement and processing strategies, and petrographic analysis are used to address how long and how many times each site was occupied. New radiocarbon dates show contemporaneity between rings at each site, dating Killdeer Canyon to the late A.D. 1600s and T-W Diamond to the late A.D. 1200s. These data demonstrate the ephemerality of the two sites but highlight potential differences in site use. While Killdeer Canyon likely represents a small group passing through an area, T-W Diamond could represent a larger group congregation, perhaps for hunting purposes. Furthermore, this thesis attests to the merit of using multiple lines of evidence to compensate for small sample sizes.
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    Mississippi prisons as sites of environmental injustice: extreme heat, social death, and the state
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Luzbetak, Austin, author; Opsal, Tara, advisor; Mao, KuoRay, committee member; Malin, Stephanie, committee member; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member
    Expanding on existing literature which understands incarcerated people as victims of environmental injustice and states as complicit actors in the production or allowance of environmental harm, I explore how incarcerated people in Mississippi experience extreme heat and how the state of Mississippi manages heat in state carceral facilities. I answer these questions by drawing on data from letter correspondence with people in three state prisons in Mississippi, as well as conducting critical policy analysis on relevant Mississippi laws, policy documents, and Department of Corrections reports. My findings from correspondence show that extreme heat amplifies the experience of "social death" already endemic to incarceration. More specifically, extreme heat intensifies incarcerated peoples' experiences of social disconnection and isolation, humiliation, and loss of sense of self, all of which produce social death. Moreover, state law and Mississippi Department of Corrections policy do not adequately protect incarcerated people from extreme heat, which I characterize as a state-green crime of omission. Instead, my findings from critical policy analysis demonstrate how the state of Mississippi is centrally focused on turning people in prison into laborers to maintain the state's carceral arm and provide benefits to counties, municipalities, and state agencies. I argue that these data have profound implications not only for environmental justice researchers and green criminologists, but more broadly for all who are interested in the project of prison abolition.
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    Moving toward a newer understanding of writing anxiety in adult students using a critical emotion studies framework
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Smith, Carmody Leerssen, author; Langstraat, Lisa, advisor; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member; Davies, Timothy, committee member
    Writing anxiety has been a part of composition scholarship for many years, but the research has failed to adequately address the effect it has on adult students. Early research on writing anxiety was primarily cognitively based and focused on quantitative data analysis such as Daly and Miller’s Writing Apprehension Assessment from 1975. These cognitively based research strategies are useful and valuable to composition and for understanding writing anxiety, but in this thesis I argue that it is now time we move beyond the notion that writing anxiety is an internal, mental barrier to writing success and instead look at the causes as well as strategies for alleviating writing anxiety through a critical emotion studies lens. By using a critical emotion studies framework, we can begin to understand writing anxiety as a social and cultural construct that is created through the individual’s relationship with writing.
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    Passing through or journey's end? A chronological analysis of projectile point curation and discard at Rollins Pass, northern Colorado
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Dinkel, Michelle A., author; LaBelle, Jason M., advisor; Glantz, Michelle M., committee member; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member
    Rollins Pass is an intermountain travel corridor situated along the Continental Divide that connects the Western Slope and the Front Range of Colorado. This high-altitude pass is located at the intersection of Gilpin, Boulder, and Grand counties, and is notable because it contains the highest density of pre-contact Native American alpine game drives in North America. While the game-drive features represent one aspect of prehistoric use, 17 sites, four small sites, and five isolated finds provide an opportunity to explore a different facet of the prehistoric use of Rollins Pass. Investigations at these surface sites and isolates produced a total of 91 projectile points. Past research conducted at high altitudes in northern Colorado suggests prehistoric use spans from the Paleoindian to the Protohistoric period. However, chronological reconstruction is challenging in alpine settings due to poor preservation, shallow stratigraphy, and short occupation spans by hunter-gatherer groups. Due to this complication, researchers often rely on typology or index fossils, such as projectile points, to assign age to surface sites. While the analysis of other chipped stone data can provide information on-site use and occupation span, it is frequently complicated by the occurrence of multicomponent or palimpsest sites. This thesis aims to examine the prehistoric use of Rollins Pass through the analysis of projectile points -- a functional tool type -- to establish chronology, lithic raw material use, and curation intensity. The results suggest an occupation beginning in the Late Paleoindian period and extending to at least the Middle Ceramic era (10,000 - 410 BP). Lithic raw materials identified suggest consistent acquisition of both local and non-local toolstone, across all periods represented. Curation patterns demonstrate a willingness to discard high utility portions of tools, with many projectile points discarded despite a potential to rejuvenate their forms and indicating a lack of raw material conservation. Projectile point analysis of Rollins Pass sites and isolates suggest that prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations interacted with the pass as a destination and to lesser extent as an intermountain travel corridor.
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    Rhetorics of silence/listening and teaching trauma: Holocaust testimony in the composition classroom
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Miller, Teva, author; Langstraat, Lisa, advisor; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member; Alexander, Ruth, committee member
    Many scholars and educators who have taught Holocaust testimony and literature in their classes have offered numerous pedagogical methods to outline best practices, ethical concerns, and student engagement. While some of these methodologies are particularly instructive for the first year college composition course, most do not address the gaps or silences found in Holocaust testimony. Other pedagogical methods tend to lack the affective component that is an unavoidable part of teaching trauma texts. In this thesis, I offer a heuristic that can be used in the composition classroom to engage with Holocaust testimony. I argue that there is a need for this heuristic because it not only attends to the affective economies that are vital and inseparable from reading and writing about Holocaust testimony, but also because it re-privileges silence as a powerful rhetorical act made by both survivors and secondary witnesses. It also works to destabilize and disrupt “sentimental” student responses that tend to thwart invested critical analysis and which often lead to dehumanizing depictions of victim as well as potential misappropriations of a victim’s or survivor’s words.
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    Trump's "Travel Ban": how the discourse of two executive orders conceals animus against Muslims
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Fredrickson, Amy, author; Cloud, Doug, advisor; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member; Prasch, Allison, committee member
    The implementation, although temporary, of the Trump administration's "travel ban" executive orders sparked public criticism. Many criticized these orders for restricting travel based on religious profiling, an inimical sentiment seemingly contradicting the "core American values" of acceptance, tolerance, and equality. While many criticized these orders thus, few have closely analyzed the discourse of the source material itself, nor considered how these orders compliment and contradict previous presidential rhetoric on immigration. Consequently, this research positions the Trump administration's executive orders within the context of previous presidential administrations, considers why the Trump administration might attempt to conceal animus against Muslims within the context of a democratic, liberal system, and, by the method of critical discourse analysis, outlines three discursive features the administration used to obfuscate prejudice against Muslims. The research reaches the conclusion that the Trump administration did, in fact, discursively conceal animus against Muslims throughout its "travel ban" executive orders and their surrounding discourse, subsequently highlighting not only the Trump administration's concealed discrimination, but the manipulative and coercive ability of presidential rhetoric.
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    White mothers of Black biracial children: mixed race as the new Mulatto
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Bell, Erin Halcyon, author; Bubar, Roe, advisor; Souza, Caridad, committee member; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member
    This research explores how White women perceive their roles as parents to "mixed" race or biracial Black children. This qualitative project analyzes data from in person interviews, photographs and comments posted on Internet blogs, Facebook fan pages of mixed race children. Core elements of grounded theory are used as methodology to explore how White women understand themselves in relation to the role they play in pursuing their desire to create a mixed race or biracial child. Emerging themes from this research include: Objectification of Mixed Race Children, "We are going to get designer babies!" Displacing Black Women, and "I have mixed kids, so I can't be racist."
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    Writing to act: developing activist writing curricula for LGBTQQIA community centers
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Becker, Stephanie L., author; Sloane, Sarah, advisor; Jacobi, Tobi, committee member; DeMirjyn, Maricela, committee member
    Relying on the scholarship of Harriet Malinowitz, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Jonathan Alexander, among others, this thesis develops a theoretical framework that can inform curriculum designed for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, and Ally (LGBTQQIA) activist writing groups. The framework synthesizes scholarly and activist writing on queer pedagogy and community literacy and explores how this scholarship realizes some of the goals of queer activism. After a discussion of the author's positionality and chosen terminology, the thesis uses close textual readings and these theoretical syntheses to develop a new theory and stance that will guide or shape a writing curriculum that can be adapted to the needs and goals of specific LGBTQQIA writing groups. The thesis also includes interviews with two local activists, whose perspectives demonstrate the complicated and rhetorically situated nature of activist methods. Ultimately, this thesis suggests some ways that queer pedagogy can be translated into new activist potential in community-based writing groups using a sample activist curriculum.