Browsing by Subject "Identity"
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Item “A cousinly resemblance” : negotiating identity in literature of Russia and the U.S. South(2016-05) Leachman, Julianna Lee; Hutchison, Coleman, 1977-; Kuzmic, Tatiana; Bremen, Brian; Livers, Keith; Pesenson, MichaelFollowing Carson McCullers’ 1941 declaration that “there is surely a cousinly resemblance” between Russian literature and literature of the U.S. South, this dissertation examines that affinity, revealing that understandings of identity in both Russia and the U.S. South have been shaped by their historic marginalization by the dominant cultural centers of Europe and the U.S. North, respectively. This oppositional definition of identity, which has labeled Russians and southerners as inferior “others” against which those in the cultural centers define themselves, has led to a cultural hybridity that wavers between allegiance to a conservative, defensive self-definition of superiority to the dominant culture and a more cosmopolitan identity that seeks to integrate fully with a multicultural and multinational global culture. Scholarly dialogue surrounding issues of regional and national identity, from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s conception of “minor literature” to Homi Bhabha’s understanding of “minority discourse” to Edward Said’s ruminations on exile and postcolonial identity, inform my study of Russian and southern identity. Through a comparative analysis grounded in literary-historical and cultural studies, I examine literary texts by three Russian writers and three writers from the U.S. South, spanning more than a one hundred year period from 1842 to 1955. Attending closely to works by Andrei Platonov, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers, this dissertation seeks to answer questions of authority and authenticity regarding the stories of Russia and the U.S. South. By insisting on a reevaluation of traditional accounts of regional or national narratives, the authors considered here demand to know who or what gets to belong to these narratives, and by whose standards.Item The advertising construction of identity in Lebanese television(2010-08) Nasr, Assem; Wilkins, Karin Gwinn, 1962-; Straubhaar, Joseph D.; Kackman, Michael; Kraidy, Marwan M.; Kumar, ShantiThe Middle East saw much social change in recent tumultuous decades. On one hand, some communities embraced Westernness as part of the inevitable path to development and modernization. On the other hand, there were communities that resisted global trends that were mostly dominated by the West. The latter deemed these trends as a threat to native cultures, religious groups, and local traditions. This made the Arab world a ground for constant redefinition of the meaning of identity. Of the countries in the region undergoing a turbulent debate over what constitutes national identity, Lebanon serves as a good example. Ever since its independence, Lebanon was a nation-state with no sense of nationality to unite its people. As some communities saw themselves more francophone than Arab, others felt a close connection to a pan-Arab nation. Arguably, the Lebanese people found themselves amidst a tension between the two poles. Defining one’s identity required a negotiation between the two extremes. Not only did this negotiation demand a thorough investigation of one’s beliefs, social network, and history, but it also necessitated a diligent ‘performance’ of identity. An individual represented her identity by habits and expressions that she associated with that particular identity. The study at hand is an exploration of the relationship between identity and consumption in the Lebanese society. This project applies a unique approach in that it considers the producers’ agency in the construction of identity. Taking television advertising as a site for inquiry, the study explores how commercial advertisers utilize the tension between the local and the non-local to promote the consumption of the advertised products. Through exploring the values that educate advertising producers’ choices in creating text and meaning, this study applies theories of globalization, postcolonial studies, and consumer behavior through which advertisers manifest an ambivalence of identity. Therefore, by taking Lebanon as an example and focusing on advertising, this study contributes to the debates of globalization and the Arab world by invoking questions of producers’ agency in producing identity references through attitudes, behaviors, and social status associated with the featured products.Item The African American college football player : a holistic exploration of identity, challenges and environment(2012-05) Miller, I Shujaa Keino; Cokley, Kevin O. (Kevin O'Neal), 1969-College football is big business, earning slightly more than $1 billion in profit in the last few years. As a result of its popularity, fans of the game devour massive amounts of information about college teams and their players. Less known are the non-academic challenges college football players face, in addition to the typical concerns shared with their non-athletic peers. Along with academic and cognitive challenges, the ability to effectively navigate non-academic areas - such as personal, social and cultural - is critical to the development and holistic growth of today’s college football players. These factors can affect a student's ability to thrive or persist toward graduation. In this report, I explore the specific challenges of African American college football players at predominantly White institutions. Within this scope, I will examine the growth of college football in addition to the reach and impact it has on African American families. Within these communities, research shows a pervasive focus on playing professional football. Some players believe that college football is a mere stepping stone on the road to a professional career. The reality is that very few college football players are chosen to play professionally – actually less than .2%. This report explores some of the psychosocial issues that can impact the on and off the field success of African American college football players at predominantly White institutions The goal of this work is to lay a foundation and make an argument for counseling and therapeutic support targeted to, but not exclusively for African American college football players. As systems that seek to understand growth and change for optimum mental and physical well-being, the field of counseling and sports psychology present intervention models that can be useful for today’s African American college football players.Item African diaspora in reverse : the Tabom people in Ghana, 1820s-2009(2010-05) Essien, Kwame; Falola, ToyinThe early 1800s witnessed the exodus of former slaves from Brazil to Africa. A number of slaves migrated after gaining manumission. Others were deported after they were accused of committing various “crimes” and after slave rebellions. These returnees established various communities and identities along the coastline of West Africa, but Historians often limit the scope to communities that developed in Benin, Togo and Nigeria. My dissertation fills in this gap by highlighting the obscured history of the Tabom people—the descendants of Afro-Brazilian returnees in Ghana. The study examines the history of the Tabom people to show the various ways they are constructing their identities and how their leaders are forging ties with the Brazilian government, the Ghanaian government, and institutions such as UNESCO. The main goal of the Tabom people is to preserve their history, to underscore the significance of sites of memories, and to restore various historical monuments within their communities for tourism. The economic consciousness contributed to the restoration of the “Brazil House” in Accra which was opened for tourism on November 15, 2007, after a year of repairs through the support of the Brazilian Embassy and various institutions in Ghana. This watershed moment not only marked an important historical event and the birth of tourism within the Tabom community, but epitomized decades of attempts to showcase the history of the Afro-Brazilian community which has been obscured in Ghanaian school curriculum and African diaspora history. My central thesis is that the initiatives by the Tabom people are not only influenced by economic interests, but also by the need to express the “dual” identities that underlie what it means to the “Ghanaian-Brazilian.” The efforts by the Tabom leaders to project their dual heritage, led to the visit by Brazilian President Luiz Inácios Lula da Silva “Lula” in April 2005, who also graciously supported the restoration of the “Brazil House.” Through these interactions Lula extended an invitation to the Tabom chief and members of the community to visit Brazil for the first time. This dissertation posits that Lula’s invitation highlight notions that the African Diaspora is an unending journey.Item After rupture : innovative identities and the formalist poetry of Akilah Oliver, Sharon Bridgforth, and Alice Notley(2010-08) Smith, Laura Trantham; Jones, Meta DuEwa; Moore, Lisa L. (Lisa Lynne); Cvetkovich, Ann; Hutchison, Coleman; Tejada, RobertoThis dissertation reveals a twentieth-century tradition of poetic formalism that positions race, gender, and sexuality as formal concerns, and further, as key factors in the development of contemporary formal poetics. My readings of three contemporary poets, Akilah Oliver, Sharon Bridgforth, and Alice Notley, combine formalist analysis with cultural approaches, including critical race theory and queer theory, to show how contemporary poets use form to confront racist, sexist, and homophobic representational traditions and to reshape identity discourse. This project intervenes in a critical tradition that divorces poetic form from political context and neglects formal aspects of poetries that engage with social identities, especially African American poetry. As Notley, Oliver, and Bridgforth portray racial, gender, and sexual diversity—including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered bodies—they invent and remake forms, genres, and textual strategies, from the feminist epic to the performance novel. These new forms exceed the strategies of rupture, fracture, and fragmentation that marked many modern and postmodern experiments and, in fact, reveal the limitations of rupture as a means of political critique. Instead, they widen the field of formalism, incorporating performance genres (epic, storytelling, blues) and new textual strategies to call attention to the histories of bodies and their representations, assert interdependent identities, promote pluralism, and insist on the interrelationship of literature, orality, and bodily experience.Item An examination of identity formation during adolescence: a person-oriented appraoch(Texas Tech University, 1999-08) Forthun, Larry F.The purpose of this research was to study the formation of a sense of identity during adolescence longitudinally, psychosocially, and developmentally. Based on the evidence that has accumulated over the past several decades, it was reasonable to conclude (a) that exploration and commitment are important processes in identity formation (e.g., Marcia's idendty status model), (b) that the process of forming an identity cannot be divorced from the context in which it occurs, and (c) that it is important to understand how adolescents respond to identity challenging information. The current study addressed each of these components by combining a longitudinal investigation of adolescents who were experiencing identity-relevant disruptions with a person-oriented developmental perspective. A sample of 20 adolescents were followed throughout their participation in a community based after-school program. The purpose of this study was not to evaluate the program; rather, to examine identity developmental processes among a group of adolescents who were experiencing identity-relevant disruptions in their lives. Each adolescent was interviewed at the beginning and end of their participation in the program using the Groningen Identity Development Scale. Using a qualitative analytical strategy, eight subgroups of adolescents were discriminated based upon variations in the configuration of identity relevant characteristics. The groups were discriminated based on themes of strength and congruence of commitments in identity relevant domains, level of exploration and openness to experience, the degree of attachment to parents, the degree of validation and belonging with peers, the adoption of a relevant belief system to guide their behavior (e.g., an ideology), and commitment to future scholastic and/or occupational goals. Supplemental questionnaires were also completed by the participants in this study and repeated measures ANOVAs suggest that the subgroups differed in the expected direction on many of the measures. Although the findings are not inconsistent with Marcia's identity status model, the adoption of a person-oriented developmental perspective allows the key concepts of commitment and exploration to be integrated with contemporary empirical and theoretical notions regarding identity formation without sacrificing a person-centered orientation.Item An object relations approach to identity in young adults(Texas Tech University, 1978-05) Daniels, Linda CarterThe present study seeks to apply the constructs of object relations theory to the realm of normal late adolescent personality development. First, there will be an examination of the theory of pathology, with specific attention to the simultaneous development of object relations and identity. Second, the theory of normal personality development will be presented. This theoretical presentation is given in order to explicate the relationship between the personality variables to be experimentally investigated. Following the review of relevant theory, each instrument used in the present research will be discussed. The present study will also evaluate the construct validity of the instruments used to measure the dependent variables of guilt and interpersonal withdrawnness.Item Armenian Iranian identities in the institutional home visit : a case study(2014-12) Cameron, Adam Dean; Atwood, Blake Robert, 1983-In recent years, many ethnic Armenians from Iran have come to the US as refugees, resettling in a diverse landscape that already includes large Armenian and Iranian diaspora communities. Soon after arrival, they also interface with US institutions in a home visit from a refugee resettlement case worker. In this thesis I adopt constructivist understandings of identity-in-interaction to examine the identity work that older Armenian Iranian immigrants do during these visits, reproduced here as life history interviews. I argue that Armenian Iranians use the home visit to discursively construct an Armenian Iranian identity that addresses the tension between institutional and community pressure to represent themselves as uniquely discriminated against in Iranian society while still identifying with an Iranian national identity. The more localized and temporary identities and interactional roles that speakers – including the researcher – adopt in the interviews also contribute to gender asymmetries in the interactions to the effect that men most often command the floor. Therefore, while the home visit format provides insight into the ways Armenian Iranians articulate an identity that is at least in part “Iranian” amidst normative pressures to do otherwise, it can also translate into an interaction that privileges men’s perspectives and allows them to largely determine its direction and content.Item Becoming a media activist : linking culture, identity, and web design(2011-12) Fineman, Elissa Arra; Staiger, Janet; Christ, Bill; Kearney, Mary; Stone, Alluquere; Straubhaar, JosephThis dissertation explored two facets of media activism. It used a Life History research methodology to understand how someone becomes a media activist, and it employed a textual analysis to explain the visual interface choices made by a media activist on the Internet. Throughout, the study is informed by theories of social identity, authorship, visual culture, and agency. The results that emerged offer insight into four areas of media studies: digital resistance, media education, digital aesthetics, and the use of social psychology to understand new media production.Item Being a female engineer: identity construction and resistance of women in engineering schools(Texas A&M University, 2006-10-30) Chu, HyejinCompared to other professions, women's representation in engineering professions is considerably lower than men's, and this particular situated-ness or locality makes women experience a unique process of identity construction. Using qualitative methods - two focus group meetings, nineteen autobiographical essays, and twenty two individual interviews, this research focuses on what women learn from their experiences in engineering school, and how they respond to their perceived experiences. This study proposes to delineate (a) the dynamic interaction between women and the social structure of engineering school; (b) women's perception and conceptualization of the social structure they practice; and (c) women's strategic responses to the structure leading to identity construction. Becoming an engineer is problematic for women because the identity of "engineer" is based upon hegemonic ideas developed by previous generations of engineers - men. This research explores how women, standing in the borderline of being women and being engineers, account and construct their identities as women engineers. Sometimes women are subtly or not subtly coerced; sometimes they embrace dominant ideas; sometimes they creatively resist dominant approaches.Item The black male athlete through the prism of sport : a mixed method study examining identities, academic self-concept and experiences(2012-05) Bimper, Albert Yves; Harrison, Louis, 1955-The Black experience throughout the history sport has engendered significant transformations to the landscape and culture of both sport and society. However, in the present sociocultural climate of intercollegiate athletics, the disproportion of Black male student athletes in the revenue generating high profile sports have a unique experience in sport unlike their athlete and non-athlete counterparts. The uniqueness of these student athletes’ experiences exists in the ways in which they figure to negotiate their Blackness and their roles as an athlete and student contextualized within the current racial climate of sport culture. There remains a gap in existing literature and research of the conditions and lived experiences of Black student athletes concerning the developmental process of racial identity and its relationship with their athletic identities and academic self-concepts. The present research addresses this gap of knowledge about these stakeholders (i.e. the Black male student athlete) in sport by conducting a mix-methods study exploring the issues of identities, academic self-concept, and developing a deeper understanding based on the experiential knowledge of participants. The relationships between racial and athletic identity and academic self-concept were examined with a participant sample of Black male college football players at Division 1-A universities (N=255). Additionally, a qualitative instrumental case study grounded by Critical Race Theory explored the experiences and perceptions of eleven Black male student athletes participating in high profile athletic programs at predominately White institutions. The research findings indicate at least partial evidence of a relationship between pre-encounter assimilationist and miseducation attitudes with academic self-concept mediated by an elevated athletic identity of participants. There were five themes that emerged from the empirical materials. The themes are presented as: Lane Assignments, Allegiance to the Game versus Classroom, Race Matters??, Conformity, and Still at Work. This research illustrates that the identity, academic self-concepts and experiences of the Black male student athlete in college sport is vastly impacted by complex sociocultural systems. Findings suggest intercollegiate athletic support staff should purposefully accommodate the needs and experiences of student athletes with culturally relevant systems of practice to enhance student athlete development.Item Borderlands curanderismo : folk healing in the Rio Grande Valley(2016-05) Azua, Anneleise Victoria; Guidotti-Hernández, Nicole Marie; Cordova, CaryThis study examines the ways the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas has been a unique haven for the Mexican and Mexican American folk healing system of curanderismo, as well as other informal approaches to healthcare. I argue that this trend in inherently connected to the emergence of Tejano identity in the Rio Grande Valley, which has deep connections to notions of sovereignty and self-sufficiency in the borderlands. My research provides a brief history of the South Texas region and the formation of Tejano identity. This identity formation is considered in relation to the multiple modes of traditional and informal healthcare practices continuously practiced in the region, despite the region’s recent surge in medical development. Further, it suggests contemporary models for community engagement and graduate medical education that, if implemented, could serve the Rio Grande Valley’s population (which is currently over 90% Latino) in innovative ways. Most importantly, this M.A. report exposes aspects of the region’s historically insufficient healthcare systems based upon one local woman’s oral history.Item Challenging the 'Shiʿi Century': the Fatimids (909-1171), Buyids (945-1055), and the creation of a sectarian narrative of Medieval Islamic history(2013-08) Baker, Christine Danielle; Spellberg, Denise A.; Aghaie, Kamran S; Frazier, Alison; Moin, A. Azfar; Mulder, StephennieThis dissertation focuses on two Shiʿi dynasties of the tenth century, the Fatimid caliphate (909-1171) of Egypt and North Africa and the Buyid Amirate (945-1055) of Iraq and Iran. It traces their rise to power from eighth and ninth-century missionary movements, the ways in which they articulated their right to rule, and reactions to their authority. By bringing the Fatimids and Buyids into a comparative framework, the goal of this dissertation is to challenge the notion of the ‘Shiʿi Century,’ a term used to describe this era, as a label that has needlessly narrowed analyses of this period into binaries of Sunni versus Shiʿi and privileged the urban, elite, Sunni textual tradition over experiences of medieval Muslims that are often discredited as ‘heterodox.’ This dissertation focuses on three aspects of Fatimid and Buyid history that have never been studied together. First, it explores the role of eighth- and ninth-century non-Sunni missionary movements in the conversion and Islamization of the non-urban peripheries of the Middle East, which led to the rise to power of the Fatimid and Buyid dynasties. Second, it analyzes the pragmatic ways that these two Shiʿi dynasties combined multiple forms of authority to articulate their legitimacy in a way that appealed to the heterogeneous populations of the tenth-century Middle East. Third, it compares tenth-century reactions to the rise of these two Shiʿi dynasties with depictions of them from the eleventh century and later, arguing that it was only in retrospect that the story of the tenth century was rewritten ex post facto as a sectarian narrative. By comparing the Fatimids and the Buyids and focusing on contemporary Sunni depictions of these dynasties, this dissertation concludes that the significance of the Shiʿi identity of these two dynasties has been exaggerated. Rather than being only Shiʿi anomalies, these dynasties fit into existing processes in the development of Islamic society.Item Charting contemporary Chamoru activism : anti-militarization & social movements in Guåhan(2013-08) Naputi, Tiara Rose; Cloud, Dana L.This project examines social movements in Guåhan (Guam) and activism within this unincorporated territory of U.S. Two assumptions guide this work. First, Guåhan is the site of rhetorical struggle over identity, indigeneity, and Americanness. Second, indigenous Chamoru (Chamorro) struggles must be examined within the historical context of colonial projects, which have established a political economy of stratification. Thus, the complexities of social movement organizing might be better understood when historicized with political and economic realities. To get a more complete understanding of how indigenous social movements and activism in contemporary Guåhan are shaped by understandings of national identity, colonization, and military buildup, I analyze three sets of artifacts: (1) testimonies at United Nations from 2005-2012; (2) the texts and activities of the group We Are Guåhan and its legal action against the Department of Defense (DOD) regarding the U.S. military buildup; and (3) interviews with social movement members and organizers regarding activism in Guåhan and contending with American influence. The project argues that resistance takes place through social movement efforts centered on the issues of ancestral land, language and cultural revitalization, and self-determination for Chamorus; and these moments occur primarily through actions that both depend upon and reinforce communicative channels directed against the U.S. nation-state. This phenomenon is articulated through the rhetoric of both/neither that demonstrates complex and contradictory identities positioned as both part of the U.S. while simultaneously remaining exterior to it.Item Conditions Affecting the Relationship between Power and Identity Verification in Power Imbalanced Dyads(2012-12-10) Davis, Jennifer 1983-In the present study, I look at the relationship between power and identity verification and the conditions under which this relationship can be disrupted. Specifically, I look at the role of information in disrupting power differences within identity processes. I examine these processes through an experiment with task-oriented, power-imbalanced, dyads (N=144). Priming participants with a task-leader identity, I test how the introduction of negotiation resources?or information discrepant and external to a high power actor?s self presentation, affect presentation power?or the degree to which an actor can maintain identity meanings in light of partner negotiations. In contrast with existing literature, I did not find a direct relationship between power and identity verification. I did, however, find that those in higher positions of power experience greater identity stability, while those in lower positions of power experience increased identity change. Interestingly, I found that identity change and identity verification varied with identity valence, such that those with dominant task leader identity meanings experienced greater identity stability but less identity verification than their more submissive counterparts. These relationships, however were power dependent, such that differences disappeared among power-high actors, and were magnified for power-low actors. Negotiation Resources did not have a significant main effect, but showed a significant interaction with identity valence when predicting identity verification among power-low actors.Item Constructing Tibetanness from the 'in-between' : self-representations of hybrid identity in Tibetan fiction films(2016-05) Carlton, Scott Andrew; Frick, Caroline; Ramirez Berg, CharlesTibet is a contested and ambiguous concept perched precariously between multiple and contradictory sociocultural and historical discourses. In this thesis, I examine self-representation in the liminal space of Tibet through twelve Tibetan feature films in order to determine how the filmmakers, crew, and actors use the poetics of film to construe Tibetan individual, cultural, religious, political, and national identity. These films, with Tibetan directors, Tibetan actors, and largely Tibetan crews, have been described in the press as “Tibetan.” I adopt a neoformalist approach informed by postcolonial theory, especially Homi K. Bhabha’s conception of hybridity, to examine Tibetan self-representations in fictional feature films. The twelve films consistently make use of narrative structures in which protagonists embark on physical quests in order to locate ambiguous or unknowable entities. Their stories often take the form of road films, and emphasize internal yearning and development over external plot detail. Internal character development and identity are conveyed through cultural performance of songs, theater, and storytelling that serve as narrational devices for self-expression and identity articulation. Thematically, identity is represented on these journeys through paradigms of tradition and modernity, complex hybridity, and disenfranchised masculinities. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the career and films of auteur Pema Tseden, an internationally respected auteur. In Tseden’s films, the implications of liminality for Tibetan identity are dire, but the possibility for the processual and ongoing articulation and construction of Tibetanness through the medium of film are emphasized. This group of Tibetan film representations may not reveal an essential Tibetanness, but they do constituate an invaluable platform for critical deconstruction, formulation, articulation, and continual rearticulation of Tibetanness.Item Consuming and performing Black manhood : the Post Hip-Hop Generation and the consumption of popular media and cultural products(2011-12) Williams, Adam Clark; Watkins, S. Craig (Samuel Craig); Moore, Leonard N.Thirty-three young Black men of the Post-Hip Hop Generation (ages 18-25) in Austin, TX, participated in a qualitative study centering on questions investigating Black manhood, media use, and the consumption of popular cultural products. Further, the researcher examined representations of Black men throughout music videos, films, and MySpace profiles. The purpose of this study was to enhance our knowledge about how Black manhood is being defined, conceptualized, and expressed by young Black men, and how significant media and cultural consumption plays a role in their lives. This study probes six questions: RQ1: How do young Black males interpret the images and messages about Black men from mainstream media? RQ2: What types of cultural products are being consumed by young Black men? Why do they consume them? RQ3: How do young Black males define Black manhood? RQ4: Do these cultural products influence the ways that young Black men define/express Black manhood? If so, how? Focus group sessions were conducted throughout the study, which were video recorded and transcribed. Transcriptions were then imported into a qualitative software program known as Atlas.ti, where statements related to the purpose of the study were coded and analyzed. These coded statements were then compared to observations made by the researcher from the examined media representations.Item Consuming manhood : consumer culture and the identity projects of black and white millennial males(2011-05) Thomas, Kevin Devon; Henderson, Geraldine R. (Geraldine Rosa), 1963-This study qualitatively examines the synergetic relationship between marketing communication, identity formation, and consumer behavior within the context of black and white males of the Millennial Generation. The sample consisted of 20 males between the ages of 18-29; ten self-identified as black and 10 self-identified as white. This project expands the knowledge base of consumption/identity research by incorporating intersectionality into the present body of consumer behavior work. A consumer’s identity project is far more complex than what is represented by current consumer behavior scholarship. Consumers must navigate multiple sites of identification that constantly shift in importance and involvement. To more closely reflect consumers in the flesh, this study incorporated multiple sites of identity projects into the analysis. By taking a more “true-to-life” approach to consumption/identity research, this project unearths new knowledge that is proximate to the lived experience of consumers. Consumer culture theory (CCT), a division of consumer research that moves the discussion of consumption behavior deep into the realm of cultural impact was used as the conceptual focus of this project. Autodriving was utilized to collect data. This form of photo elicitation involves the use of informants taking photos of a particular phenomenon and then “driving” the interview by discussing the photos they have taken. In the context of this study, informants were furnished a disposal camera and asked to photographically document representations of the following: achievement & success, morality, humanitarianism, nationalism, and freedom. Informants were strongly encouraged to also visually document anything that did not fit into the abovementioned categories but represented something they found particularly interesting or offensive. To examine the impact of marketing communication on the informants’ identity projects, print advertisements featuring different configurations of masculinity and manhood were explored. Three key themes emerged from the data. All informants used the marketplace to express values. The concept of identity elasticity was developed to explain the significant difference in identity potentiality between white and black informants. Many white and black informants shared the perception that they live in a post-racial society. However, the experience of a post-racial society was highly divergent based on racial formation.Item Cosmic cowboys, armadillos and outlaws: the cultural politics of Texan identity in the 1970s(2009-05) Mellard, Jason Dean; Davis, Janet M.This dissertation investigates the figure of “the Texan” during the 1970s across local, regional, and national contexts to unpack how the “national” discourse of Texanness by turns furthered and foreclosed visions of a more inclusive American polity in the late twentieth century. The project began in oral history work surrounding the cultural politics of Austin’s progressive country music scene in the decade, but quickly expanded to encompass the larger transformations roiling the state and the nation in the 1970s. As civil rights and feminist movements redefined hegemonic notions of the representative Texan, icons of Anglo-Texan masculinity—the cowboy, the oilman, the wheeler-dealer—came in for a dizzying round of celebration and critique, satire and ritual performance. Such Seventies performances of “the Texan” as took place in Austin’s “cosmic cowboy” subculture provided an imaginative space to refigure Anglo-Texan identity in ways that responded to and internalized the decade’s identity politics. From the death of Lyndon Johnson to Willie Nelson’s picnics, from the United Farm Workers’ marches on Austin to the spectacle of Texas Chic on the streets of New York City, Texas mattered in these years not simply as a place, but as a repository of longstanding American myths and symbols at a historical moment in which that mythology was being deeply contested. This dissertation maps the messy ground of the 1970s in Texas along several paths. It begins some years prior with the Centennial Exposition of 1936 and the regionalism of J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb, and Roy Bedichek before proceeding to the challenges to their vision of “the Texan” on the part of the African American civil rights, Chicano, and women’s movements. The dissertation’s central chapters then address the melding of countercultural forms and the state’s traditional Anglo-Texan iconography and music in spaces like Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters. Popular music, art, film, journalism, and literature evoke this attempted revisioning of Anglo-Texan masculinity in dialogue with the decade’s identity politics.Item Creating art, creating selves : negotiating professional and social identities in preservice teacher education(2012-08) Kraehe, Amelia McCauley, 1977-; Brown, Keffrelyn D.; Urrieta, Jr., Luis; Valenzuela, Angela; Bolin, Paul E.; Carpenter, B. StephenThis critical ethnographic collective case study examined the process of becoming a teacher in the context of visual art education. This longitudinal study was grounded in larger educational concerns regarding the preparation of teachers for socially and culturally diverse U.S. public schools. This framing of teacher learning went beyond traditional dichotomies in educational research that maintain an artificial boundary between learning to teach content and learning to teach all students effectively and equitably. In order to re-integrate the study of teacher learning, this research foregrounds the transactional relationship between a preservice art teacher’s social locations (e.g., race, class, sex-gender, language) and how s/he makes sense of what it means to be an “art teacher.” Specifically, the study asked (a) how preservice art teachers negotiated their emerging art teacher identities in a university-based teacher education program, (b) how their social positions were implicated in that process, and (c) how their teacher identities were meditated by cultural narratives, artifacts, and practices. This approach eschewed simplistic and reductive analyses of teacher identities in order to attain a nuanced understanding of the multiple, sometimes contradictory social processes involved in becoming a teacher. This collective case study centered six preservice art teachers with varied racial, class, gender, and sexual identities, all of whom attended the same undergraduate teacher education program in the southwestern U.S. Social practice theory of identity, and critical curriculum and cultural theory were employed in constructing a multi-leveled relational analysis of the commonalities and divergences in participants’ self-understandings over time. Findings showed historical patterns of institutionalized racism, as well as complex class and sex-gendered meanings of art. These inequitable norms were reproduced in ways distinctive to the asocial and apolitical “common sense” knowledge that was mobilized within the world of art teacher education. Some participants experienced alienation and marginalization based on their social positioning in relation to the world of art education. The findings also illuminated the polyvalent nature of identity through the coexistence of hegemonic identities as well as counter-hegemonic agency. Implications and possibilities for generating more critical, equity-oriented teacher education and art education research, practice, and policy are considered.