Completed Dissertation Projects
2022
Emily McDonald
Dissertation Title: Let Them Give: Philanthropic Infrastructure and Industry in the United States
Major Professor: Shannon N. Davis
Carol Petty
Dissertation Title: Belonging in Refuge: Cultural Logics of Refugee Incorporation in Contemporary Germany
Major Professor: Nancy W. Hanrahan
Abdullah Alnassar
Dissertation Title: Conversion to Islam and Impact on Racial Identity
Major Professor: Lester R. Kurtz
2021
Hale Inanoglu
Dissertation Title: Gender and Diaspora in the Making of Pious Subjectivity
Major Professor: Amy L. Best
Alysia Blake
Dissertation Title: Policing and Communities of Color: A Multilevel Intersectional Examination of Police Fatal Encounters
Major Professor: Shannon N. Davis
Marissa Kiss
Dissertation Title: Baseball: The (Inter) National Pastime
Major Professor: James Witte
Stephanie Trapnell
Dissertation Title: Contesting Open Government: Discourse, Development, and Democracy
Major Professor: John G. Dale
Katie Matthew
Dissertation Title: Duty and Responsibility: Understanding Work-Family Conflict for Multigenerational Households
Major Professor: Shannon N. Davis
2020
Robert Fenton
Dissertation Title: Guayaquil Antiguo and Cacao Capitalism during the Long 19th Century: On the Peripheral Origins of Planetary Urbanization
Major Professor: Nancy W. Hanrahan
Yukiko Furuya
Dissertation Title: The Role of Schools in Occupational Attainment in Japan: School Mediated Job-search Systems and High School Vocational Education
Major Professor: Dae Young Kim
2019
Jason A. Smith
Dissertation Title: Deliberating Diversity: Race and Gender in FCC Ownership Debates, 2007-2011
Major Professor: John G. Dale
Joshua Tuttle
Dissertation Title: Stewards of the Kingdom: Christianity and Neoliberalism
Major Professor: Johanna Bockman
Erin M Stephens
Dissertation Title: Making #BlackLivesMatter: A Social Media Ethnography of Cultural Trauma
Major Professor: Amy L. Best
2018
Avideh Mayville
Dissertation Title: The Transformation of “Capacity” in International Development: US AID and the Rise of Transnational Militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan (1977-2017)
Major Professor: John G. Dale
Abdallah Hendawy
Dissertation Title: Reluctant Radicals: from Democratic Aspiration to Violent Conspiration in the Wake of Egypt’s Arab Spring
Major Professor: Lester R. Kurtz and John G. Dale
Melissa Gouge
Dissertation Title: Generating Solidarity: The Playful Politics of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Major Professor: John G. Dale
Felicia Garland-Jackson
Dissertation Title: Missing Voices: Participants' Narratives of the National Park Service's Summer in the Parks Program [1968-1976]
Major Professor: Dae Young Kim
Jessica Emami
Dissertation Title: Gender, Group Solidarity, Group Conflict, and the Civic Engagement of Iranian Americans
Major Professor: Shannon N. Davis
William Roche
Dissertation Title: Implementing the International “Responsibility to Protect”: A Sociological Case Study of the Institutional Practices of United States Department of Defense toward Operationalizing Humanitarian Intervention.
Major Professor: John G. Dale
Virginia D’Antonio
Dissertation Title: “Vetting” The American Dream: Nostalgia, Social Capital and Corvette Communities
Major Professor: Amy L. Best
2017
Anderson Bean
Dissertation Title: Popular Power, Agency, and Communes in Venezuela
Major Professor: John G. Dale
Melissa Cidade
Dissertation Title: Defining Bullying: A Split-Ballot Survey Experiment
Major Professor: James Witte
Victoria Hoverman
Dissertation Title: Social Perceptions Matter: Exploring Factors that Influence Perceived Community HIV/AIDS Stigma amongst Black, White, and Hispanic Men Who Have Sex with Men
Major Professor: Shannon N. Davis
Ann Johnson
Dissertation Title: A Right-to-Work Model, the Unionization of Fairfax County Government Workers
Major Professor: Dae Young Kim
Jeffrey Johnson
Dissertation Title: “Meet Them Where They Are”: Social Movement Communication in a Culture of Personal Politics
Major Professor: Amy L. Best
2016
Abigail Reiter
Dissertation Title: Racialized Microaggressions, Internalized and Intersecting Oppressions, and Identity Negotiation among Students of Color at a Predominately White University in the US Southeast
Major Professor: Dae Young Kim
Randall Salm
Dissertation Title: The Transformation of Ethnic Conflict and Identity in Syria
Major Professor: John G. Dale
Jean Boucher
Dissertation Title: Culture, Carbon, and Climate Change: A Class Analysis of Climate Change Belief, Lifestyle Lock-In, and Personal Carbon Footprints
Major Professor: James Witte
Nicole Barreto Hindert
Dissertation Title: The Jeito of the Mulata: Race, Identity, and Distinction in a Racial Democracy
Major Professor: Nancy W. Hanrahan
Katie Kerstetter
Dissertation Title: School Reform, Care Work, and Social Reproduction in Two Public Elementary Schools
Major Professor: Amy L. Best
Randy Lynn
Dissertation Title: Hardware, Software, and "Peopleware": Educational Technology and Embedded Struggles in U.S. High Schools
Major Professor: Amy L. Best
2015
Olivia Blackmon
Dissertation Title: Underrepresented Minority Students in Urban School Districts: A Study of Technology Use and Student Academic Performance in Math Grades Four and Eight
Major Professor: James Witte
Perry Threlfall
Dissertation Title: Contextualizing the Support Systems of Single Mothers in College: Facilitating Critical Feminist Analysis Using Mixed Methods
Major Professor: Shannon N. Davis
Naliyah Kaya
Dissertation Title: Pen-Full Resistance: Poetry, Power, and Persona
Major Professor: Joseph A. Scimecca
2013
Sara Moore
Dissertation Title: The Moral Landscape of Modern Motherhood: Ideology, Identity, and the Making of Mothers
Major Professor: Amy L. Best
