The inequalities and marginalization of people with disabilities is an issue with global scope. Environmental influences and socially derived assumptions shape the way disability is defined and experienced cross-culturally. Statistics shed light on significant disparities throughout various countries. According to United Nations Enable (2006), 10% of people in the world have some type of disability. Of this entire population of people with disabilities, 80% live in developing countries. Further, out of the estimated 200 countries in the world, only 45 have disability-specific laws such as anti- discrimination. In this research, I examined the driving factors behind this disparity through a cross-cultural comparison of disability advocacy efforts. In particular, I looked to countries that have experienced shifts in policy that directly influenced people with disabilities. I identified disability advocacy taking place in South Africa in a post-apartheid context, Ukraine in a post-soviet context, and the US in post-ADA context (Americans with Disabilities Act). Through rhetorical/discourse analysis of the imagery and language used on nongovernmental groups’ websites, I examined how shifting power dynamics have situated people with disabilities in South Africa, Ukraine, and the US and how these patterns manifested in online communications.

This study analyzes the color complex which is defined as psychological fixation about color and features that lead African-Americans to discriminate against each other. There is a lack of dialogue around how history has turned African-American women to focus towards hurting each other through colorism - skin color biases. This research asks how issues of colorism within the African-American community lead to concerns of self-acceptance and perception of beauty among young African-American women. I expect to find evidence of the effects of the color complex and determine how young Black women perceive beauty in order to frame their identity. The findings will fill a gap in existing research by challenging the work of earlier researchers, who have looked at the existence of colorism among African-American women today and look farther into how this issue has been and is affecting their perception of beauty in relation to the acceptance of themselves. 

The world is filled with gendered images that shape and echo society’s ideas on what is feminine, reinforce the ideologies about how a woman should look and act, and are hidden under the guise of humor. This humor shames women who step out of their place, and encourages them to step back into the gender “box” defined by the culture industry. In the modern, mediated world, this plays out in advertising as well as “humorous” pictures, called Internet memes, which are shared by individuals on social media websites. The term meme first appeared in “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins in 1976. He defines a meme as “small cultural unites analogous to genes, which spread from person to person by imitation” (as cited in Shifman, 2009, p. 1). An Internet meme, therefore, is an idea that spreads (or “goes viral”) through imitation in cyberspace. To understand how women are invited into certain feminine subjectivities, this paper performs a semiotic analysis of memes related to gender “codes” that define what is feminine through the use of humor. Building off the work of Erving Goffman(1969, 1979), Sut Jhally (2009) defines the traits (passive, childlike, and submissive) that are commonly associated with being feminine, and argues that these traits are considered subordinate to masculine traits. The Internet memes examined in this paper are selected from popular social media websites and deal with body image, behavior, dress, and a woman’s “place.” The role of advertising in society has been discussed extensively; however, there is less discussion of the role of Internet memes related to gender. This presentation fills that gap and brings to the conversation a view on a form of ideological reinforcement that is unique and increasingly widespread.

 When students study abroad, some find it harder than others to integrate within the culture of their host country. Scholars have created models mapping students’ process of acculturation over time. A stage of crisis, or “culture shock,” is identified as a fundamental phase of the abroad experience. This study investigates four elements influencing students’ ability to overcome this crisis stage: students’ interaction with the host community, confidence using the host language, previous experience traveling abroad, and the disparity between students’ home and host culture. This study aims to determine the role communication plays in the navigation of the crisis phase; I do so specifically by examining these four elements, and how the connection between these factors and student adjustment manifests. Past studies have flagged these elements as major predictors of a students’ achieved assimilation while abroad. This study aims to determine if and how a connection exists between these factors and students’ cultural adjustment. The qualitative method of semi-structured interviews was used to collect responses via Skype from four students in Quito, Ecuador and four students in Rome, Italy during their Winter quarter abroad. The eight students' narratives provide insight on the modern impact of the four key elements on intercultural development—and an understanding of why: why some students overcome the crisis phase and achieve healthy cultural adjustment while others remain culturally stagnant for the entirety of their exchange.

My research explores the means by which identities of “non-white” Habesha (Ethiopian and Eritrean) immigrants are negotiated through the use of media, community spaces, collectivism, and activism. As “black” immigrant subjects who do not have a longstanding historical past in the United States, Habesha face the challenges of having to re-construct and negotiate their identities within binary, black/white, American racial landscapes. To explore the ways in which ethnic-based collectivism and activism challenge stereotypical portrayals of Habeshaness and blackness which are typically cemented through media, I focus on unpacking mediated representations of Hana Alemu Williams, her death, trial, and subsequent support from the Ethiopian Community of Seattle (ECS). In short, Hana Alemu Williams was an Ethiopian child who died in 2011 from abuse, severe malnutrition, and cruelty at the hands of her white adoptive family in Sedro-Woolley Washington. Through close readings of mediated texts: news paper articles, television news broadcastings, blogs, and interviews of people from the ECS who were used as news “experts”, I will critically analyze the moments in which Habesha immigrants challenge narratives of race and identity in the American context. I hypothesize that Habesha immigrants sometimes assimilate into American constructions of race while at other moments creating counter-narratives of hybridity or exclusive ethnic-based identities like Habeshaness, or maintaining purely national identities as Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants, in an effort to defer perceived racial stereotypes and oppression that arise with identifying as simply black or African American. Furthermore, I discuss potential steps that can be taken by Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrant communities to address these harmful and limited understandings of race and racism in America. This research enriches the existing academic literature by creating a more nuanced understanding of the Seattle Habesha community’s racial discourses in their efforts to re-imagine Habesha identities.

Barack Obama's historic election to the United States presidency in 2008 focused national attention on the first Black president and his family as living and unequivocal proof of the triumph of equal opportunity and the end of centuries of racial strife. The visible role of elite women like Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey has often been explored, while less well understood is the role of everyday portrayals of Black women as they normalize colorblind paradigms of post-racialism and “neoliberal multiculturalism" (Goldberg 2009, 23). This paper analyzes three media texts, all released in 2008 - Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace, Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys, and Beyoncé’s “If I Were A Boy” music video - focusing on representations of Black women as sexualized objects involved in interracial relationships with white men. The paper reveals that these ways of seeing serve the privileged white male gaze while falsifying racist and sexist realities. Offering key insights into the "post racial gaze," the paper exposes how Black women are being positioned to normalize pleasurable post-racial fantasies and to facilitate discursive shifts toward neoliberal multiculturalism.