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TV Talk: American Television, Chinese Audiences, and the Pursuit of an Authentic Self
(2012-07-18)
This dissertation examines the ways educated urban Chinese youth seek out and engage American scripted TV as a vehicle of self-reflexivity and as a symbolic tool for identity work. Based on 29 one-on-one interviews with ...
René Girard and the exorcism of the possessed consumer
(2006-04-17)
This thesis describes René Girard’s mimetic theory of desire and explicates its relevance for a critique of consumerism, emphasizing the loss of identity that can result from mimesis in a consumer society. It first presents ...
Faith in My Bones: An Exercise in Ethnographic Theology
(2011-08-05)
In this dissertation, I endeavor to bring to life Kathryn Tanner’s way of framing theology as a cultural practice within which ad hoc, context specific modes of Christian discourse (everyday theologies) and more specialized, ...
Major depressive disorder: an embodied disruption of agency and a disruption of a form of life
(2013-04-17)
This dissertation addresses the philosophical problems of meaning and identity in the context of major depression. I provide a phenomenological account of the depressive’s intrapsychic and intersubjective life that is ...
Subversion through subjection: a feminist reconsideration of kenosis in Christology and Christian discipleship
(2008-04-01)
This paper offers a reformulation of Christological kenosis and its implications for Christian discipleship in light of the confusion surrounding “self-emptying” language and the painful ramifications of its prescription ...
Exploring Computational Thinking Concepts, Practices, and Dispositions in K-12 Computer Science and Engineering
(2018-05-16)
New initiatives in computing education call for the integration of computational thinking (CT) across subjects in K-12 schools. At the same time, researchers do not have a strong consensus about what CT is and how it is ...
“This moment for life”: popular culture’s impact on the moral sphere of young black women
(2012-05-10)
Given the increasing influence of popular culture on today’s society, this project will analyze representations of black women to explore how these images influence young black women’s moral sphere. Cultural representations ...
Making evolutionists and creationists in Tennessee: the causes and consequences of evolution education, 2009-2012
(2016-07-12)
The ongoing public debate over teaching evolution is typically disembodied from the social reality in which it occurs and is framed as a collision of mutually incompatible beliefs—Bible-based creationism vs. naturalistic ...
Reflected self-esteem, identity, and mental health in adolescence
(2006-04-13)
This dissertation examines how identity processes affect teens’ mental health as they move through adolescence and transition into young adulthood. Using seven waves of panel data in the National Youth Survey (N = 1725), ...
Behavioral Properties of Correlated Equilibrium;Social Group Structures with Conformity and Stereotyping
(Vanderbilt University, 2008)
We explore the potential for correlated equilibrium to capture conformity to norms and the coordination of behavior within social groups. Given a partition of players into social groups we propose properties that one may ...