My thesis delves deep into Bad Bunny's music video "El Apagon- Aqui Vive Gente" and how Puerto Rico became an island constantly faced with adversity. I discuss the history of colonialism in Puerto Rico and how it became a colony of the United States and continues to be. I explore the debate of statehood vs. independence in Puerto Rico, gentrification, tourism, and the U.S. media portrayal of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Deeply entrenched eugenic values overdetermine who is treated with care and dignity and who is treated with violence. These eugenic values inform and are informed by settler colonialism, patriarchy, and ableism. Carceral locales such as nursing homes, hospitals, and jails enact specific kinds of harm onto disabled people and rely on their convoluted and self-serving bureaucratic processes to evade responsibility. Given my interest in the indivisibility of carceral logics, spaces of capture, and ableism, my focus in this dissertation is both the real-life contexts of the individual incidents and the systemic, cross-institutional patterns evident in each of the three incidents analyzed.I take a modified case study approach to three incidents in which disabled people in carceral locales experience tremendous harm. The first incident is about the gross medical neglect and rape of a San Carlos Apache disabled woman at a skilled nursing care facility in Phoenix, Arizona. The second incident occurred at a hospital in Austin, Texas where doctors worked hastily to killing a Black disabled man within only days of his arrival and change his code status to Do Not Resuscitate against his family’s will. The third incident focuses on duty of care violations and disability-based discrimination against a white disabled man at a Chicago jail. These situations, when analyzed individually and with/against one another, identify important connections relating to institutional power and cross-institution patterns of harm. I find that the paternal dynamics of medical[ized] facilities, the pervading anti-disability sentiments in US society, and bureaucratic violence make accountability and justice impossible.

Through an interdisciplinary American Studies approach, this thesis examines access to education and immigrant “illegality” as tools of racial domination by investigating colonial legacies and structural inequalities linked with immigration policy. Providing a background on the political formation of immigrant “illegality”, this research focuses on how race relations have influenced immigration policies, as well as political efforts to exclude racialized and minoritized groups from lawful immigration, naturalization, and national belonging. These historic texts shed light on overarching connections between the racialized policy construction of immigrant “illegality” and the role of education in nation building and class conservation. Comprising three analytic chapters; the first historicizes how education was used as a tool of the nation-state in the early formation of U.S. territories, the second chapter applies discourse analysis to link contemporary political rhetoric with color-blind ideologies. The third analytic chapter is a critical review of existing quantitative findings on the effects of legal status on educational attainment for Mexican and Central American immigrants and their descendants living in the United States. Challenging the dominant narrative around immigrant “illegality”, this work highlights the racist formation and continued application of unequal access (to both education and citizenship), further demonstrating how structural inequalities remain racialized.

U.S. non-profit organizations (NPOs) offering Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programming, particularly those serving minorities and women, are becoming guideposts that assist academic, government and corporate institutions alike to steer their efforts and investments towards achieving their diversity and inclusion goals. Despite multi-year, multi-billion, and multi-resource investments in broadening STEM access and inclusion, the inequitable representation of young women and girls of color actively participating in school and out-of-school STEM programs continues to persist. The primary aim of this study was to validate a feminist theoretical framework grounded on the constructs of intersectionality, collective impact, and accountability systems, to help inform and disrupt persistent trends for women graduating in engineering and computer science through the third sector’s facilitation of STEM programming. A secondary objective was to understand the history and trajectory of the change and emergence of non-profit STEM Girl-Centered Organizations (SGCOs) and their profiles as a comparative measure of their relative status within the third sector ecosystem, how they serve, and who they serve. By leveraging over twenty-five years of practical experience and applying a mixed-methods research methodology, the research findings pointed to 1) an early adoption of intersectionality concepts into program outreach efforts by integrating cross-elements of race/ethnicity, geographies, and socioeconomic markers of identity; 2) emerging interest in, and incorporation of, culturally responsive programming that is better matched to the needs of diverse program beneficiaries; 3) an increase in equitable program access for participants residing in under-resourced communities; 4) a growing appreciation for the value of partnerships as a precursor to more authentic collective impact collaborations; and 5) priority shifts in systems of accountability from funders to primary programs’ beneficiaries.

Those who are in or have aged out of foster care, most of whom are queer, Black, brown, and low-income, are represented by social workers, educational advocates, behavioral health specialists, and the mainstream media as “at-risk” for criminal behavior, teen pregnancy, homelessness, and lower levels of educational attainment. Current and former residents of foster care and their experiences must be understood beyond these deficit models in order to restore humanity to and bring about positive change for this population. This project traced the strategies for survival of those in and aged out of foster care in Arizona through artmaking and critical qualitative methods.

Using borderlands theory and medicinal histories, I demonstrated how system involved youth paint a picture of foster care as a dehumanizing borderland creating una cultura mestiza – a hybrid culture that youth learned to navigate as both healers and healing. Additionally, I argued the foster care system is inherently disabling by way of the processual (re)narrativization the system dictates in order to make those in the system legible to the State through the labeling of mental and physical disabilities. Lastly, I explored insights garnered about foster care through ensemble-based devised theatre. I found it is important to have systemic representations of foster care in tandem with embodied experiences of said system. Collage-making served as an accessible mechanism for relationship building, material generation, and material knowledge. I discovered meaningful ways of representing absent presences of system involved people through feeding forward their artistic creations into the devising process. Taken together, I found foster care system involved people survive through art and creativity, connection to people and places, and keen resourcefulness cultivated in the system.

Research in intercollegiate athletics has provided a relatively large body of findings about the kinds of stressors found in high profile intercollegiate athletic environments and their effects on student-athletes. Research is less robust regarding stress and its effects on head coaches in high profile collegiate athletics. This study focuses on the types, frequencies, and intensities of stress experienced by NCAA, Division I head coaches. The purpose of the study is to identify the types, frequency, and intensity of stress common to 20 head basketball coaches participating in the study, as well as differences in their experiences based on gender, race and the intersectionality of race and gender. The participants in the study are 20 head coaches (five Black females, five Black males, five White females, and White males). The conceptual framework guiding the study is a definition of stress as an interaction between a person and her or his environment in which the person perceives the resources available to manage the situation to be inadequate (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The study’s design is an adaptation of prior research conducted by Frey, M., 2007 and Olusoga, P., Butt, J., Hays, K., & Maynard, I., 2009, and Olusoga, P., Butt, J., Maynard, I., & Hays, K., 2011. This study used qualitative and quantitative methods that triangulated results scores on Maslach’s Burn-out Inventory and the Perceived Stress Scale with the thick data collected from semi-structured interviews with the 20 head coaches from each of the three data sources to enhance the validity and reliability of the findings. The researcher analyzed the data collected by placing it in one of two categories, one representing attributes of the participants including race and gender; the second category was comprised of attributes of the Division I environment.

This toolkit and paper were created as a thesis project for Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University (ASU). When creating this Toolkit, extensive research on existing relationship violence education programs was conducted. Existing data was also analyzed to assess the prevalence and demography of relationship violence. In conclusion, Relationship Violence Intervention toolkit was created to educate students on how to identify unhealthy behaviors in any relationship.

Relationship Violence Intervention was funded primarily through Barrett, the Honors College, as a thesis and creative project. In addition, the project was awarded a grant through the Sexual Violence Prevention program at Arizona State University.

The authors of this thesis project are qualified to address these topics because of their extensive involvement in relationship and sexual violence. Both authors worked to implement a student organization, Team One Love at ASU, into the ASU community. Through this student organization, the authors were able to spend three years educating Arizona State University students about “red flags” in relationship behaviors through a guided-facilitation format. In addition, the authors collaborated with the Sexual Violence Prevention Education program at Arizona State University to put on large scale events for Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

This thesis will examine the implications behind a higher than average hysterectomy rate in the United States, particularly for women of color and women with lower incomes. It also examines barriers placed on persons trying to obtain a hysterectomy, such as those who are younger and therefore, considered be within the "ideal" demographic for reproduction. This is viewed through both a Critical Race Theory and Reproductive Justice framework. The goal of this research is to determine possible reasons behind disparities in hysterectomy demographics and evaluate how these reasons are influenced by the ideologies of white supremacy, pronatalism, population control, and the medicalization of female bodies integrated into the United States medical system. Understanding the reasons behind these disparities is the first step in deconstructing embedded racism and eliminating unconscious healthcare provider bias in order to provide true equitable care. Exploring the historical context of these embedded values is also essential to understand how they are placed into effect today. This thesis takes into account and evaluates both statistical and phenomenological data in order to understand the full scope of the lived impact. It also provides possible solutions and methods for combating the issues outlined for patients, healthcare professionals and healthcare institutions as well as suggestions on how to take this research further.

From physical assault to intimidation, domestic/intimate partner violence (DV/IPV) is a phenomenon that plagues partners around the world. With serious ramifications like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and homicide, among others, DV/IPV poses a threat to the health and well-being of individuals engaged in abusive relationships. It is for this reason that second wave feminists made it a part of their agenda fight for legislation that would protect battered women. Encouraged by the second wave feminists, researchers began studying DV/IPV and the most effective ways to address and combat violent relationships. With the help of research, activism, and landmark court cases, many states have decided upon mandatory arrest laws as the preferred method for handling situations of DV/IPV. While there is a great deal of research that has been conducted on DV/IPV and on mandatory arrest laws, this research seldom extends to DV/IPV in the LGBT+ community. Even more concerning, research on how mandatory arrest laws affect LGBT+ individuals locked in abusive relationships is practically non-existent. Using 25 different sources, I have conducted a literature review that examines the existing literature surrounding mandatory arrest laws, DV/IPV, and DV/IPV in the LGBT+ community. I furthermore utilized the theory of intersectionality, to lay out how DV/IPV in the LGBT+ community differs from DV/IPV among heterosexual couples. This literature review details the history of DV/IPV legislation, identifies the social and structural barriers facing LGBT+ individuals experiencing DV/IPV, and lays out ways that researchers, law enforcement, advocates, and political actors can better equip themselves to help LGBT+ victims of DV/IPV.