Browsing by Subject "identity"
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Item A Case of Misunderstood Identity: The Role of Rural Identity in Contemporary American Mass Politics(2021-08) Lunz Trujillo, KristinWhy do rural individuals tend to be more right-wing in the contemporary U.S.? I answer this question by treating rurality as a social identity – a psychological attachment to rural or small-town life that encompasses a particular set of values and worldview. Previous studies on rural identity by scholars such as Katherine Cramer or Arlie Hochschild argue that rural areas’ turn to the right – particularly to right-wing populism - is rooted in socioeconomic class-based concerns and anti-urban resentment. However, using national experimental and survey data, in contrast to the qualitative and ethnographic approaches typically used, I find that rural identifiers are not more likely to be lower- or working-class individuals or to express economic concerns. Further, rural social identity does not significantly differ between racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. In other words, politically speaking the white working class does not equal rural identity, something often and nearly automatically assumed in scholarly and popular accounts. Instead, I argue that the turn to the right has been due to rural identifiers’ intermediate status in the societal status hierarchy. Rural areas perceive a group status-based threat from two different out-groups, which map onto definitions of right-wing populism. The first out-group is experts and intellectuals, who rural residents believe favor lower-status groups, such as immigrants – a second out-group - allowing them to cut in line ahead of rural Americans to gain social, economic and political status. These two out-groups (intellectuals/experts and immigrants) are more likely to be urban residents but not necessarily, complicating the idea of anti-urban resentment being the primary feature of rural identity. In this work, I rely on several sources of quantitative data, including original survey data and experiments collected over three years, as well as data from the ANES (American National Election Studies), the CCES (Cooperative Congressional Election Studies), and county-level data.Item Digitizing Difference: Fraudulence, Gender Non-Conformity, and Data(2019-03) Mackenzie, LarsThis dissertation explores how fraudulence shapes contemporary trans life. It examines the impacts of software design, law, and policy on trans and gender non-conforming people, arguing that social expectations about the stability of sex, gender, and identity systematically devalue the lives of trans and gender non-conforming people with particularly harmful impacts in the financial and healthcare sectors. Further, it demonstrates that incongruent or gender non-conforming data wields significant and dangerous power in an era of data-driven decision-making and present alternative approaches towards challenging these paradigms.Item Fall 2021 University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts First-Year Student Surveys(2022-01-07) Estrella, Emma; Davis, Cassandra N; Mody, Isha; DeWitt, Katie; Roy, Aarushi; Yan, Chenwei; Hines, Alexander; Hammell, Abbey E; Hofelich Mohr, Alicia; Ronning, Emily; estre059@umn.edu; Estrella, Emma; University of Minnesota Office of Student Experience; Liberal Arts Technologies and Innovation ServicesThis data is from two surveys distributed to first-year students in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. The surveys include questions about the value based on one's identity, comfortability with various tasks related to transitioning to college, sense of belonging in various campus communities, identity, discrimination, mentorship, Canvas use, and demographic identifiers. Survey 1 was sent at the beginning of the Fall 2021 semester, and Survey 2 was sent at the end. The aim of these surveys were to better understand the first-year experience for students, including the transition to college and campus climate.Item Forging Their Own Way: Queer Visibility, Identity Politics, and Cultural Change On Minnesota’s Iron Range(2016-12) Strano, AndriaThis is a study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people on Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. Minnesota’s important history of LGBT rights activism extends into contemporary times. The Iron Range is notable for many reasons, including strong Nordic influences, geographical remoteness, and historical extractive mining and logging economies. I utilized ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, and semi-structured life history interviews. In total, I spent thousands of hours of fieldwork and interacted with over 100 people in the Iron Range’s LGBT and ally communities. I conducted 30 formal interviews with participants aged 19-78 years old. This dissertation argues that positive and restrictive regional norms and narratives impact LGBT Rangers’ understandings of self, as well as collective LGBT identities and communities in specific ways that, in turn, construct regionally-specific sociocultural modes of strategically navigating their lives, relational power dynamics, and affiliations with others. I make three important contributions to existing sociological and interdisciplinary scholarship on gender and sexuality, identity and community development, and place. First, challenging scholarship limited by a static understanding of the relationship between heteronormativity, sexuality, and gender, I illuminate how different cultural discourses and blurred regional gender norms create flexible, socially-condoned gender expressions and (mis)readings of these performances. Additionally, Iron Range culture creates the possibility of valued masculinity in both heterosexual and non- heterosexual women and strategic maneuvering within the hegemonic gender order. Second, through my introduction of the glass closet, I provide rich empirical examples demonstrating how the combination of place-based norms and narratives (i.e. strong personal boundaries, heteronormative assumptions, and desire for conflict avoidance), as well as presumed heterosexuality enables strategic and sagacious maneuvering. I illustrate highly nuanced visibility politics and how same-sex desires and behaviors are not recognized (or are misrecognized) due to place-specific factors. Finally, I introduce the disidentified sexual identity culture, complicating discussions about motivations for and possibilities of assimilation within contemporary society. I demonstrate how rural LGBT people strategically and pragmatically balance community-based and sexual identities; actively (symbolically and physically) distance themselves from other LGBT people; and utilize silencing to their advantage.Item Homo Mediaticus: Immigrants, Identity, and (Tele)Visual Media in Contemporary Francophone Literature(2016-09) Bates, SeverineThis dissertation examines the figure of the Immigrant in light of the practical and symbolic role played by the mass media, and especially television and its images, in the processes of identity construction and socialization, as problematized in several Francophone North African immigrant novels. It aims to shed light on the ways in which the figure of the Immigrant has been “mediated” in novels such as Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Les raisins de la galère, Youssouf Elalamy’s Les clandestins or Faiza Guène’s Kiffe kiffe demain. These novels fall mainly into three literary categories: Beur Literature, Banlieue literature and Illiterature (Hakim Abderrezak) which focuses on the phenomenon of clandestine migration (Hrig) in the Mediterranean basin. Products of what I call the “génération du visible,” these novels offer ground for reflection on the political, psychological, social, cultural and, ultimately, ontological effects of the media’s obsessive representations of this social category. Arguing for a new model of subjectivity for the Immigrant grounded on his relationship with the mass media, I posit that, in these novels and more generally in the collective imagination, the Immigrant—embodied by the Beur, Jeune de Banlieue or Harraga—emerges not only as a constructed figure of alterity and subalternity, but also as a Homo Mediaticus (Massimo Ragnedda) born from the interstices of images and discourses, and of the virtual and the real. I also contend that as a Homo Mediaticus, the Immigrant is both a product of media representation and a media user whose existence, subjectivity, and agency depend on his visibility (as object of the Gaze) and on the performative and meaningful act of “seeing” (as agent and user of technology). In novels like Faïza Guène’s Kiffe kiffe demain, the Immigrant's use of media technologies and of his imagination allows him to mediate his experiences in and with society, to control his “droit de regard,” and to create new identities that are more subversive and transcultural in nature than fixed or unique.Item Leading with Privilege: Personal Journeys of White Male Leaders in Higher Education to Become Advocates for Diversity, Equity and Social Justice(2017-05) Johnson, CraigWith the growing participation of under-represented groups in American higher education, it is more important than ever that college presidents position diversity issues as a high priority on their leadership agenda. Given the continuing dominance of white males in college presidencies, it is especially important that white male leaders develop a greater awareness and understanding of diversity issues and the varying life experiences of different populations while also acknowledging and assessing the impact of their own personal identity and life experience on their leadership actions, practices and behavior. This study examines twenty white male presidents and chancellors who have established a reputation as effective advocates for diversity, equity and social justice. Findings from interviews with each president are compared with existing research to explore three key aspects: life experiences that inspired them to become involved in diversity issues; strategies and activities to develop greater awareness and understanding of diversity; and actions and strategies to develop successful diversity initiatives in their institution and community. In the end, this study documents ways that a white male leader can use his personal status as an asset in diversity work while at the same time actively working to acknowledge and address potential challenges of personal identity that may hinder efforts to ensure his institution provides access, equity and inclusion for all.Item Normalizing Discourses of Upward Mobility: Working Class Roots, Motherhood, and Idealized White Femininity(2015-09) Clements, Colleen HAbstract: Upward mobility has been tied to racialization of identity in the U.S. since its inception. According to Thandeka (2007), for white people, social class is race, and the way to become “whiter” was (and is) through upward mobility. This narrative of upward mobility is perpetrated in part through normalizing cultural discourses (Foucault & Ewald, 2003), in which upward mobility is constructed as smooth and leading to unquestionably desirable outcomes. These discourses hold particular interest in relation to the role of “mother” in the U.S., as mothers are often in the position of imagining and helping to create the future trajectories of their children (Barry, Osborne & Rose, 1996; Danaher, Schirato & Webb, 2000; Donzelot, 1979; Rose, 1999). This study was an inquiry of the ways in which white mothers from working class backgrounds narrated their experiences with upward mobility. I was interested in the relationship between normalizing cultural narratives of upward mobility and the narratives the participants took up in their daily lives. In addition, I was interested in the ways in which these narrations influenced their identities in the culturally constructed role of “mother,” as a feature of idealized white femininity. Through the use of the arts-based methodology of dramatization (Saldaña, 1999, 2008) and post-intentional phenomenological interview methods (Vagle, 2014), I produced a script based on the narratives of three focal participants. This script was also used in the analysis process, to illuminate the ways in which the narratives of the mothers in the study contained moments of both adherence to normalizing cultural discourses and ruptures with those normalizing discourses. The narratives of the participants in this study revealed complicated stories of upward mobility that did not match the smooth trajectory of the American Dream. The ways in which the narratives of the participants differed from the normalizing narratives of upward mobility varied, depending on personal experience. The narratives contained multiple stories of tension and loss, creating three portraits of conflicted identity related to upward mobility.Item Self-Awareness of Identity for Social Justice: A Case Study of a Pre-medical Study Abroad Program(2015-05) Plager, WendyThis paper explores the relationships students make between their identities, what they learn abroad, and their future career by focusing on 10 pre-medical students participating in a two week study abroad program to South India. Coming from a critical constructivist paradigm, the data for this case study was gathered through interviews before and after their trip. This paper adds new understandings to the existing study abroad literature by examining a unique student population, and to the literature on student identity by investigating this specific program's effects on students' perceptions of themselves and their futures. Findings were broken into three major themes related to students' identity and learning; their experiences, evolving understandings, and expressions of change. Analysis revealed the importance of intentionally reflecting with students about their personal identities and values as it relates to their experiences abroad and in their future careers. Recommendations include providing more structured reflection upon re-entry.Item "Spiritual Pursuits" in Singing: Identity Making of the Chinese Education Diaspora(2015-09) Liu, YaSince the last century, a striking impact that globalization has had on education is the increasing exodus of students and scholars from the global south to the global north to study and stay, which is termed as “education diasporas” in this study. From the 1980s onward, the overstayed Chinese students and scholars overseas have grown into the largest and most fast-growing education diasporas globally. However, the facts and logics of their diasporic daily practices remain vague in the existing scholarship. Compelled by an ethnographer’s curiosity about how the diasporic Chinese make sense of their daily practices, particularly in the public sphere, and how that indicates their sense of being and belonging, I selected a Chinese chorus (“CC” for acronym) in the United States as a case to exemplify the post-1980s Chinese education diaspora. Around three-years’ deep “hanging out” in the field, along with a number of interviews and documents collected from the informants, enabled me to reveal their identity making centering on “spiritual pursuits” that the education diaspora featured. I went back and forth between the emic and the etic perspectives in presenting the study, in the form of a tapestry interweaving the insiders’ narratives: “something is missing”, “dragging”, “circles”, “renqing”, “stage”, “dilemmas”, “community”, “solidarity”, “re-charging”, “re-rooting”, “home”. The overarching theme of “spiritual pursuits” indicates the peculiarity of the education-motivated and well-educated diasporic population in the fast-changing transnational contexts. The logics of their diasporic self-making, as was discovered in the study, encompassed an identity loss due to uprootedness, and imperative needs for self-making by means of social interactions, collective endeavors, and “spiritual pursuits”. In CC’s case, people were brought together by the stage, the music, the interconnectedness, the memories of home, and the eagerness to “unite”, which were constantly and contestedly negotiated in-between the past and the present, “here” and “there”.Item Spring 2022 University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts First-Year Student Surveys(2022-06-09) Estrella, Emma; Voss, Ethan; Mody, Isha; DeWitt, Katie; Roy, Aarushi; Yan, Chenwei; Hammell, Abbey E; Hofelich Mohr, Alicia; Hines, Alexander; Ronning, Emily; estre059@umn.edu; Estrella, Emma; University of Minnesota Office of Student Experience; Liberal Arts Technologies and Innovation ServicesThis data is from two surveys distributed to first-year students in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. The surveys include questions about the value based on one's identity, comfortability with various tasks related to transitioning to college, academic support networks, use of academic services, sense of belonging in various campus communities, identity, discrimination, mentorship, Canvas use, and demographic identifiers. Survey 1 was sent at the beginning of the Spring 2022 semester, and Survey 2 was sent at the end. The aim of these surveys were to better understand the first-year experience for students, including the transition to college and campus climate.Item Tell Me About It: The Role of Confession in Contemporary Art(2019-11) Flaherty, ShannonThis dissertation investigates the role of confession in recent artistic practices in the United States and United Kingdom, as a recurring motif and as a method for addressing questions of identity formation and institutional power. Although deeply historical, confession also saturates the western contemporary moment, from judicial proceedings to reality television. Its very ubiquity, however, masks the mechanisms of power that elicit and analyze confession, particularly within the twenty-first century American culture of surveillance. Further, confession’s significant role in constituting truths about individual and group identities means that it more dramatically affects minoritarian subjects than those in dominant groups. I bring together works from the United States and United Kingdom to consider the ways shared historical traditions of confession, in Protestant faiths and systems of justice, both persist and diverge in our contemporary moment. More specifically, these works are made and exhibited in a post-September 11th context in which the global consequences of the American political and military-industrial systems depend upon and are disseminated via confessional logic, including “enhanced interrogation,” military imaging techniques aimed at discovering hidden secrets, and news media analysis expressed through feeling. By intervening in ongoing discussions on contemporary confession from an art historical perspective, I argue that analysis of the sensory experiences offered by art contributes to our understanding of confession in a significant way, distinct from other disciplines. I demonstrate that close attention to the relational and embodied practices of contemporary new media art allows us to understand the operations of power that establish and authorize expressions of truth and identity. I offer a consideration of ways artists engage conventions of confession, but, more importantly, argue for the potential for artworks to reimagine social relationships.Item Why Don’T Girls Think They’Re Good At Physics? Recognition In A High School Classroom(2024-04) Stoeckel, MartaWomen, especially Black and Latina women, are marginalized in physics, including in high school classrooms. Recognition is one of the ways women and girls experience marginalization in physics. This dissertation is comprised of three distinct but related studies examining how students experience recognition in an AP Physics 1 classroom. The first study is a mixed-methods study examining students’ sense of self-efficacy using a sequential explanatory design. This study first examined the relationship between students’ self-assessments and actual quiz scores and found no statistically significant difference between boys and girls in this class. I next used open-ended self-assessment prompts and semi-structured student interviews to identity classroom experiences that students felt contributed to or detracted from their sense of self-efficacy. While boys and girls talked about many experiences, such as the way labs in the course were structured, in very similar ways, only boys clearly discussed receiving consistent recognition from their peers, leading to the research questions in the subsequent studies. The second study examined how students provided each other with recognition, what kinds of contributions they recognized, and how peer recognition interacted with students’ sense of physics identity using small group video and student interviews. Recognition fell into two major categories: explicit, where students directly recognized a peer, and implicit, where the recognition was provided indirectly. Explicit recognition was primarily connected to correct answers while implicit recognition was connected to a much broader range of contributions. During interviews, when students discussed their personal physics identity, they primarily discussed correct answers and explicit recognition they had received, suggesting that their personal identity was primarily connected to explicit recognition. When discussing their conceptions of what it means to hold a physics identity, students referenced not only correct answers, but the much broader range of contributions connected to implicit recognition. They also described giving both explicit and implicit recognition. This suggests that students connected both categories of recognition to their conceptions of a physics identity. Third, I analyzed exchanges in which students positioned each other in terms of physics ability without directly referencing physics using video of a mixed-gender group and an all-boy group. The mixed-gender group engaged in many of these exchanges and primarily used them when the girl contributed a correct answer with the boys taking authoritative positions. Rather than providing the girl with recognition, these exchanges served to devalue her contribution. The all-boy group, by contrast, only had one of these exchanges and neither was clearly established as more authoritative. Together, these studies provide insights into the gendered dynamics of the recognition that students give and receive in physics classrooms with implications for instructional practice. There is a clear need for teachers to structure group work in ways that ensure all students are recognized by their peers for a wide range of contributions and to disrupt gendered patterns in the classroom.