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- Item"This is What We Sign Up For": Questioning the Student-Athlete Experience at Haverford College(2022) Morrison, Moorea; Moses, JoshuaHistorically, concepts and values of health have primarily focused on physical health without considering the implications that mental health has on physical health and general well-being. With growing conversations about what it means to maintain "good" mental health, this thesis explores the ways that mental health plays out in the dynamics of collegiate student-athletes, but this conversation is not always prevalent in regards to smaller NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Division III schools like Haverford College. Mental health has a major role in the everyday life of collegiate student-athletes as a result of the emphasis on the physical body within athletics coupled with the pressures that come along with attaining a college education. Through feminist ethnography and autoethnographic work, I highlight the experiences of four fellow student-athletes as well as my own experiences as a student-athlete at Haverford College to explore the sailence of mental health for student-athletes, including the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. Through this exploration, I argue that structures within collegiate athletic departments and the higher education institution of Haverford College shown through expectations of student-athletes stress an idealization of the student-athlete experiences. This idealization leads to values and social norms that create an environment of toxic positivity that are internalized and impact the ways that student-athletes understand and approach challenges with mental health. Ultimately, these settings are not conducive with the promotion of positive mental health and can actually create more challenges, and this thesis questions whether the current structure of higher education is able to properly support student-athlete mental health and student's mental health generally.
- ItemAgainst Virtuosity: A Political Framework for Music Education as Care, Possibility, and Curiosity(2022) Penrice, Maria; Eisenberg-Guyot, NadjaThis thesis pays close attention to the insights provided by affective responses and emotional states to interrogate the overinvestment in classical music education in the United States. Through autoethnographic reflection and conversations with a small group of interview participants, I trace how identifying emotional disconnects in music education settings is a crucial source of information for disrupting severely imbalanced power dynamics and analyzing the alliance between white supremacy and heteropatriarchal powers. In synthesizing my personal reflection and interviewees' insights alongside the work of a diverse set of theorists, I hope to articulate a vision of music education that is based on critical wellness, genuine emotional connection and caring relationships, curiosity, and the building of political solidarity. Focusing on questions of race, power, and capitalism in my research process, I was led to artists, movements, and traditions that have long enacted a radical vision of music education. Throughout the paper, I undertake a process-focused methodology that seeks to leave the reader with a set of ongoing, unanswered inquiries that I will continue to grapple with far into the future.
- ItemGrind And Bear It: Constructions of Toughness, Community, And Choice In White Women's Childbearing(2022) Post, Julie; Eisenberg-Guyot, NadjaBirth in the context of the United States continues to be stratified among a number of markers, including race as one of the most pronounced areas of disparity between the maternal health of white women and women of color (Tikkanen et al. 2020). This project examines white women's lived experiences of childbearing and the economic, social, and political factors that shape such experiences while forming an analysis on the ways in which race interacts with each of those factors and how the experience of childbearing could be improved for all birthing people. Ultimately, it was revealed that notions of choice in childbearing lie not solely within a mother's autonomous domain. Additionally, experiences of toughness are formative in women's perspectives of expertise and motherhood before, during, and after giving birth. Finally, the most emphasized aspect of white women's childbearing was that access to supportive social relationships were key in determining mothers' ability to reflect positively or negatively on their experience.
- ItemAddressing Health Inequities Through Structural Competency(2022) Graham, Darius; Moses, JoshuaCultural competence refers to the ability to identify cross-cultural expressions of illness and health, and to thus counteract the marginalization of patients by race, ethnicity, social class, religion, sexual orientation, or other markers of difference. To gain cultural competency, clinical professionals learn approaches to communication and treatment that take into account instances of stigma. Cultural competence was first used by Terry L. Cross and his colleagues in 1989, and is administered by healthcare professionals in a way that stereotypes understanding of the "cultures'' of patients and cultural competency tends to be used as a way for clinicians to create clinical narratives that prioritize biomedical reasoning. Despite the application of cultural competency, it is widely known that it lacks a component to address healthcare inequities in communities of color. In my thesis, I will discuss the 'culture' that exists within the American medical system, how cultural competency is administered by healthcare professionals, the shortcomings of cultural competency, and how incorporation of structural competency into the medical system can benefit patients from marginalized groups.
- ItemAll That We Are We Carry With Us: Stories and Possibilities of Southeast Asian Organizing(2022) Kaunang, Erica; Hong, EmilyThis project emerged from many questions and emotions I've grappled with through my lived experiences, but are particularly relevant today. As more anti-Asian violence has garnered the attention of people worldwide, it is important now more than ever to explore the complexities of the Asian communities in the U.S. and how we've endured multiple layers of violence. Current discourses surrounding Asian communities emphasize the importance of stopping hate– but what does hate mean? Some even touch upon the importance of stopping Asian violence, but the reality is that these interpersonal acts of violence are rooted in historical patterns of white supremacy, gender violence, and capitalism. And like much of Asian discourses in the US, the experiences and histories of Southeast Asians are homogenized, if not outright erased. In this zine, I collect stories and oral histories from various leaders, organizers, and storytellers from the Southeast Asian diaspora and diving into the local histories and contexts of Philadelphia and New York. While the term Southeast Asian encompasses many different countries and ethnic groups, the stories in this zine come from community members of Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Lao descent. As an Indonesian born and raised in Queens, of Batak and Manadonese descent, many of my reflections are rooted from this particular perspective. How can we trace our various Southeast Asian communities' histories to better understand our needs and potential for organizing? How can we look at Queens, NY and Philadelphia as sites of tensions and transformation for Southeast Asians? How do we process, heal, and organize around the different forms of violence Southeast Asians face in the age of Covid-19? We cannot work through these greater structures of violence without recognizing how these structures manifest in particular ways depending on our local contexts and spaces. We must start with our homes, the people around us, and the spaces we move through everyday in order to build a better future for ourselves.