VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Faulkner, Brandy S."

Browsing by Author "Faulkner, Brandy S."

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An Alchemy of Smoke and Flame: The Politics of Tear Gas Use Against Social Movements in the United States
Leff, Jack Rance (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-08)
Tear gas is a chemical weapon used by the police to put a stop to protests, riots, and other large-scale political actions. It has been employed for over one hundred years, yet our historical and political understanding of the technology is relatively limited. The historical framings of tear gas are dominated by deference to state and military claims and the biomedical literature furthers this one-sided approach to the security technology. At the same time, many groups have fought against tear gas and fought through tear gas as part of the struggle against state politics. The history of tear gas is deeply intertwined with that of policing and questions of state violence against protest movements. A deeper knowledge of tear gas enables us to better understand how and when it is used against protestors as well as how protestors challenge dominant narratives of security. As a scholar of Science, Technology, and Society, I am interested in understanding the sociotechnical elements of tear gas and how it operates within racial capitalism. This dissertation asks, in what ways has tear gas been used as a security technology mobilized to protect the State from political dissidents and what lessons can be learned from how social movement activists challenged the sociotechnical narratives surrounding tear gas? This is a social study of a particular security technology that is used in moments of contestation between State forces (military, police, and weapons industry) and radical social movements. I look at two specific kinds of contestation. The first are historical examples of contestations. That is, the interwar historical context in which tear gas emerges and examples from the 1960s through our contemporary political moment where it is used against social movements. The second is the contested space of biomedical knowledge, which has two major narratives associated with it. On the one hand, mainstream medical literature has examined tear gas using military research labs and military test subjects. This selective research has facilitated claims that tear gas is a "less-lethal" weapon that is practically harmless to those it is used on. On the other hand, social movement activists and street medics who are exposed to it on a regular basis have identified some real concerns surrounding its deployment, thereby challenging claims to its harmlessness.
The All-Volunteer Force and Presidential Use of Military Force
Nasca, David Stephen (Virginia Tech, 2019-10-16)
The creation of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973 allowed U.S. presidents to deploy American military power in times and places of their own choosing with fewer concerns that the electorate would turn against their leadership. A reaction to the trauma of the Vietnam War, the AVF did away with conscription and instead relied on volunteers to serve and fight in U.S. military operations. The AVF's ranks were mostly filled with those willing to deploy and fight for their country, without the U.S. having to rely on conscription. When U.S. presidents had to use the AVF to fight in conflicts, they could expect to enjoy a higher degree of public support than those presidents who led the U.S. military during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Drawing from casualty, financial, and public opinion statistics from 1949 through 2016, this thesis argues that with the adoption of the AVF in 1973 U.S. presidents have been better able to deploy the AVF in combat with less resistance from the American people. It examines the circumstances behind the creation of the AVF, looking second, at the deployment of the AVF from the Gulf War to the Global War on Terror to determine if U.S. presidents enjoyed popular support and were encouraged to rely on military force as the primary option in foreign policy. Finally, the study compares casualties, financial costs, and public support for conflicts relying on conscripted forces to those depending on the AVF to examine if U.S. presidents were better able to involve the U.S. in military conflicts of questionable interest with fewer worries about organized anti-war movements. The conclusions of my research revealed that my hypothesis was wrong in that the creation of the AVF did not mean the U.S. presidency enjoyed a higher degree of support during conflicts. With the exception of the Gulf War, presidential approval when using the AVF was less than 50% in every conflict by the time military operations ended. The majority of conflicts disclosed that public approval and disapproval was based on casualties, regardless if service members were draftees or volunteers, as well as financial costs. For Korea and Vietnam, high casualties and financial costs resulted in approval levels dropping quickly while Afghanistan and Iraq took longer because casualties and spending did not escalate as quickly. As a result, I discovered that public approval and disapproval levels influenced political change. In the case of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, it forewarned changes in political leadership while conflicts such as Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo were kept short and inexpensive to prevent political opposition from organizing against the presidency.
Artists for Humanity's Sake: An Ameliorative Project Concerning Artists and the Existentialist Struggle Against the Dominant Narrative
Shepard, Kathryn Ann (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-25)
Existentialist ethics tell us that we as individuals cannot be truly liberated until all are. This means that we must pursue a more just world for all. Interestingly enough, as we look at the evidences of the ways in which cultural violence have been used historically and today as a means to withhold power from the people, we find that participating in the arts grants a great deal of power to the people. Thus, accessibility to participating in artistic acts or the creative process become fundamental to activism for social justice. This work lays out five fundamental aspects of the creative process that help us move towards liberation—confrontation of ideas, vulnerability, choice making, truth or world building, and authentic identity formation. In order to realize the full potential of positive impact the creative process can have in the realm of social justice, however, we must reframe our understanding of artists and the creative process in our society. This is a call to action both to artists and audience to recognize and wield the power of the arts to liberate all within our society.
A Black Feminist's Critique of the Crooked Room of Medicine (CRoM): Innovation of Thick Studies and the Gender, Race, Weight (GRW) Matrix
Strozier, Jariah Li'Shey (Virginia Tech, 2022-07-14)
First described by physician William Dietz in 1995, the "Food Insecurity-Obesity Paradox" (FIOP) attempts to explain the biology and behaviors of people who are simultaneously overweight and food-insecure. I was introduced to this theory as a Behavioral Health graduate student and, in that context, was taught to understand it as a fact. My personal experiences as a Black woman, however, alongside ongoing engagement with Black feminist thought and critical medical sociology, have taught me otherwise. This disssertation takes Dietz's theory as a starting point in order to argue that Black women in the US experience fatphobic and racial discrimination while being "cared for" by western institutional medicine. I argue that discourses like the FIOP, though framed as benevolent clinical theories, do more harm than good: not only do they multiply pathologize so-called "fat" Black women by drawing on disparaging stereotypes, but they simultaneously ignore the specific health and wellness needs that emerge at the intersection of weight, size, skin color, gender, ability, and economic class. My broader dissertation project is an interdisciplinary critique of pathologizing discourses about Black women, including medically "legitimate" ones like the FIOP. Via critical analysis of these discourses, and employing Black feminist and medical sociological perspectives, I explore how stereotypes of Black women correlate with how these women are perceived and treated by physicians and other health professionals. These racialized perceptions and forms of discriminatory medical treatment are instances of what has been labeled, variously, as a racial formation (Omi and Winant, 1997), a matrix of domination (Patricia Hill Collins, 1990) and a racial ideology (Feagin, 2006). These processes are further extended by physicians who use these pathologizing discourses and practices to advance their own careers. Black feminist theorists have described the multiple marginalizations experienced by contemporary Black women in the US and my project places weight and body size within this marginalizing dynamic. After tracing the long history of medical "othering" of Black women by science, I show the persistence of these ideologies in contemporary medical practice. My interviews with Black women investigate their lived experiences of these ideologies and practices, and allow women to speak for themselves in a space that so often speaks for them.
"Call Me Bill": Social Justice and the Administrative Jurisprudence of William Brennan, Jr.
Faulkner, Brandy S. (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-25)
This study examines former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr.'s opinions on the following administrative law topics: civil rights, civil liberties, human resource management, due process, and privacy. The purpose of this examination is (1) to apply Rohr's regime values framework to Brennan's case law, (2) to determine the usefulness of Brennan's regime values to discretionary decision making, and (3) to consider the effectiveness of these regime values as a pedagogical approach to ethics. A purposive sample of 25 cases was selected for the study. Case briefing and discourse analysis were the primary research methods used. I found eight regime values in Brennan's opinions: freedom, accountability, flexibility, equity and equality, unconstitutional conditions, property, and social justice. Social justice was his dominant regime value and is the basis for all of his jurisprudence. Brennan's regime values reconcile two approaches to ethics, the low road and the high road, by emphasizing a Constitutional basis for the latter. Brennan's values may help administrators learn how to think through the important decisions they make daily by providing both a foundation and justification for their choices. Public administrators can be taught how to use the regime values method to extract additional values.
Country Quares: (Dis)identification Discourse in Black Country Aesthetic
Ballard, Tamar Jalia (Virginia Tech, 2023-04-27)
The purpose of this study is to explore the ways Black women and queer artists and their audiences employ country music as a way to facilitate a reclamation and complication of (Black) Americanness. The data for this study emerges from a qualitative content analysis of six music videos by Black artists released on YouTube between January 2016 and December 2022 and their associated comment sections. The years between 2016 and 2022 have seen the United States contend with what has been considered a "racial reckoning." This study recognizes these six music videos as sites for personal and communal reflection and re-evaluation on how this moment of race-based national conversation brings into question the ways we typify American identity and citizenship. The foundational literature for this study focuses on the production of culture perspective, disidentification, quare studies, and musical construction of identity.
Hip Hop Voices in the era of Mass Incarceration: An examination of Kendrick Lamar and The Black Lives Matter Movement
Salmons, Patrick Jeremiah (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-08)
The United States has many problems currently, the most persistent of which is the issue of race, and the problem of Mass Incarceration. This thesis addresses what Mass Incarceration is, as well as developing a theoretical understanding of how to overcome Mass Incarceration through the music of Kendrick Lamar and The Black Lives Matter Movement. This thesis presents the questions: What is the era of Mass Incarceration? How does Kendrick Lamar's music inform the problems of Mass Incarceration? How does The Back Lives Matter Movement use this information to create a solidarity movement against the oppression of African Americans? What does this mean going forward? Creating a synthesis of Mass Incarceration, the music of Kendrick Lamar, and The Black Lives Matter Movement, that overlaps and propels an intersection of culture and activism that inform one another. This all leads to the main takeaway of the thesis, that attempts to provide an interpretive understanding that pop culture, social media, and activism have created a different civil sphere, a Black public sphere that informs and educates through different avenues. All in all this thesis shows that music, social movements, and policy are all interconnected, and the music of Kendrick Lamar and the activism of The Black Lives Matter Movement provide a catalyst for change in the era of Mass Incarceration.
How Geographic Proximity to the Kennedy Space Center Effects Attitudes Relating to NASA
Reutt, Christopher Thomas (Virginia Tech, 2023-05-19)
In 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives, newly under Republican control, sought to limit federal spending, creating a potentially dangerous situation for American space exploration and NASA. Given the budget situation, it may be beneficial for NASA to look to its existing geographic footprint for areas of deeper support to provide elected leaders with an electoral justification to support NASA missions. The areas with the greatest chance of generating support for NASA are spaceports due to the rocket launches they support serving as focusing events for NASA. Rather than focusing as past scholars have on specific regions, this research examines driving distance from the Kennedy Space Center to provide more detail about the possible relationship between geographic proximity to spaceports and views of NASA. To test for the existence of this proximal relationship and the impact of viewing rocket launches on opinions of NASA, the study fielded an original online survey to gather U.S. residents' opinions about NASA, as well as information on where they lived and on how frequently they view rocket launches. Employing bivariate and multivariate regression models, the responses were analyzed to explore the relationship between geographic proximity to the primary spaceport and exposure to rocket launches on respondents' reported views of NASA. This study found that as respondents' distance from the Kennedy Space Center increased, positive views of NASA decreased. Additionally, respondents who viewed the launch of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket had more positive views of the agency than others. Overall, these results indicate that direct exposure to NASA activities, facilitated either by living near the Kennedy Space Center or by viewing the SLS launch is associated with more positive perceptions of NASA. The hypothesis that rocket launches can impact views of space exploration was supported based on analyses of reported online and in-person viewership that suggested notable relationships with opinions of commercial launch providers. Yet, even though the models found support for this relationship, they suggested that other factors likely are also important to fully understanding the relationship. NASA's future public engagement strategies evidently should focus on narrowing the awareness gap of NASA activities for those further away from spaceports and do not have direct exposure to the agency.
Impact of Attitudes on the Relationship between Psychological Symptoms and Help Seeking Behavior in a Black and Non-Black International Sample
Jones, Sydney B. (Virginia Tech, 2024-04-08)
Internationally, members of the African diaspora, (Black people), report higher rates of untreated mental illness than peers of other races. Research has suggested that symptoms associated with poor mental health such as clinical depression and anxiety are associated with negative evaluations of help seeking behaviors such as contacting mental health professionals for care. The current study sought to examine the impact of attitudes toward seeking mental health care on the causal relationship between symptoms of depression, anxiety or stress as measured by the DASS-21 to help seeking behaviors reported by participants. This study further examined the impact of racial identity on this relationship to highlight any discrepancies specific to Black people. This research is intended to help guide and improve outreach, access, and clinical approaches to treating Black people with mental illness. A total of 500 participants were recruited for this study via online surveying software. Participants were divided into two groupings of 250 Black participants and 250 Non-Black participants (N=500) to complete the survey. A moderated mediation analysis was conducted to examine the mediating effects of attitudes towards professional help seeking on the relationship between psychological symptomology and help seeking behaviors, as well as to examine any moderating effects that could be highlighted by racial differences. There was a significant direct relationship between symptoms and help seeking behaviors found with a significant partial mediating effect of participant attitudes on the direct relationship (R2= 0.1521, p=<0.000). Race was not found to be a significant moderator of this mediation (CI95%: -0.001 to 0.004), though race did moderate the direct relationship from symptoms to help seeking behaviors (β= 0.016, SE= 0.0025, t= 6.375, p= < 0.000).
Incentive Based Budgeting: The Financial Game at Land-grant Institutions
Nolen, Heather Linkous (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-23)
This thesis explores the impacts of the Partnership for Incentive-Based Budgeting (PIBB) model at Virginia Tech (VT), a land-grant institution. By conducting a mixed-methods approach including semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and a review of political theory, this research examines the differences in perceptions of employees across employee classifications, academic area, and financial experience at VT on the PIBB model, unhealthy internal competition, communications, fiscal policy, and political influence. The PIBB model was adopted at VT as a strategic response to reduced state funding and aims to encourage budget management improvements and collaborative planning across the university. Findings indicate that while the PIBB model is designed to align financial incentives with the university's academic and operational goals, it may also foster unhealthy, internal competition among faculty, staff, and administrative units. This competition arises from the pressure to meet specific performance metrics linked to budgetary allocations, potentially leading to conflicts and misalignment with the university's broader educational objectives –underscoring the need for a balanced approach to budgeting that supports both financial sustainability and academic integrity. Complexities of implementing market-driven budgeting models within academic settings suggests that while such models can drive efficiency, they must be managed carefully to avoid undermining the core mission of educational institutions. This thesis contributes to ongoing discussions about the optimization of resource allocation in public higher education.
Intersections: Privilege
Iorio, Josh; Faulkner, Brandy S.; Paige, Frederick; Copper, Cathryn (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2018-10-10)
How does gender, race, and class privilege inform the design and construction of the built environment? Panelists will discuss how gender-related language norms, race-related structures of power in the workplace, and occupancy of sustainable infrastructures in the housing industry impact the built environment. Should we as a society demand more equity from the individuals that create the built world?
Kantianism and Its Commitment to Non Naturalism
Frazier, Joseph (Virginia Tech, 2016-06-27)
Kantian ethics has a strong following amongst the philosophical community when it comes to morality and ethics. Many Kantians, including Christine Korsgaard, subscribe to the view that Kantianism is opposed to Non-Naturalism. This view, while understandable, is incorrect. In fact, the Kantian approach to ethics has a strong commitment to Non-Naturalism in its metaphysical construction. The purpose of this paper is to prove this dependence by showing the inferences and concepts of Kantianism that one cannot accept without accepting Non-Naturalistic principles. To demonstrate this connection between Kantianism and Non-Naturalism, I will give a summary of Kantianism through the interpretation given by Velleman (2005). Then I will present Non-Naturalism as presented by Fitzpatrick (2008) and Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014). After explaining these views as clearly as possible, I will explain why Kantianism is committed to Non-Naturalism, address the possible contradiction of Kantianism and Fitzpatrick's idea of 'ethical truths being independent of any perspective,' as well as address the issues raised by Korsgaard (2003) concerning the realist approach to Kantian ethics.
Niggaz Wit Aesthetic: A Sociological Conceptualization of Diasporic Hip-Hop Identities in the Era of Mass Incarceration
Miles, Corey J. (Virginia Tech, 2019-04-18)
When mainstream institutions fail to provide adequate avenues for black Americans to develop humanizing understandings of their identities and exclude them from full citizenship, how do black Americans develop identity, belonging, and community within structures of oppression? Through ethnography and archival research this study documents how the aesthetic realm historically and contemporarily serves as a site of articulation where rural black Americans recast notions of black subjectivity and local belonging. To understand the process of rural black Americans using the aesthetic realm to reposition the importance of mainstream institutions, this research uses a 'socio-diasporic' framework to view the ways those socially positioned as black come to understand that positioning via the way institutions structure their day-to-day reality; and how through the forging of diasporic connections black people have been able to construct knowledge within, alongside, and independently of those institutions. Specifically, this ethnography situates the criminal justice system as a primary institutional apparatus in defining the societal significance of blackness in northeast North Carolina. Hip-hop has served as a performative avenue to engage negotiations of identity, and through this search for identity black centered epistemological and ontological understandings of black subjectivity have been created. To appreciate black Americans' unique understandings of the world that I argue they construct, I advance the notion of "vibe" as a methodological tool to conceptualize the way specific aesthetic and cultural sensibilities are used to construct understandings of blackness, gendered identity, and local belonging.
Overrepresented Man: Genre, Violence, and Hegemony
Fallon, Jordan Keats (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-09)
This thesis explores the intersections between practices of epistemic production and distribution and material violence. Following the work of Sylvia Wynter, a framework of "genre" is engaged to provide an account of intersectional social identities, disproportionately distributed hegemonic violence (including both state and non-state actants), and the traditions and technologies of anti-colonial theoretical modeling, material praxis, and political work engendered by the rich, interdisciplinary body of Black Feminist thought. To address the continued practices of social, political, and material violence which sustain the Wynterian onto-epistemological "Overrepresentation of Man," an emergent archipelagic politics of heterogenous coalition-building presents a viable path of becoming for liberatory political projects.
Queer: The Creation of Power Structures within Deviancy
Erb, Michael S. (Virginia Tech, 2018-05-30)
Queer theory has a fundamental flaw: queer. This thesis seeks to explore the fractured usages, meanings, and scopes of the term queer to uncover the power structures that have been created within and around the term. Specifically, this thesis analyzes the ways in which academic queer theorists, the university system, and LGBTQ+ groups and activists, in an attempt to make the queer useful, perpetuate limiting definitions of the word queer that create power structures that re-marginalize some queer people. Queer, being a reclaimed slur, is sometimes used to describe members of the LGBTQ+ community. It has recently been adopted by a variety of groups to make the term politically useful. In doing so, the term has developed many, often conflicting, meanings. A term that means everything, however, has very little analytical use. Because of this, attempts to make the term queer useful to have unintended implications that re-marginalize some queer people.
Race-conscious Student Support: A Comparative Analysis of Organizational Resilience in Engineering Education
Holloman, Teirra Keina (Virginia Tech, 2023-01-18)
One response to calls for broadening participation in engineering was the establishment of minority engineering programs (MEPs). Since their inception, MEPs have taken many forms with various functions and can be classified as engineering student support centers (ESSCs). Some ESSCs can be considered race-conscious, meaning they specifically focus on race/ethnicity in their support of engineering students. Prior literature points to race-conscious ESSCs as integral to the recruitment and retention of minoritized students in engineering. Despite their importance, race-conscious ESSCs have been met with various direct and indirect barriers threatening their organization's survival. To understand how race-conscious ESSCs have survived given consistent challenges, I conducted a multiple case study focused on exploring race-conscious ESSCs through the lens of organizational resilience. In this study, I interviewed founding and current directors, with a cumulation of 70+ years of experience, of three race-conscious ESSCs at large, public, predominately-white, R1 institutions. The findings from this study provide insight into the types of events, actions, and outcomes that inform the forms and functions of race-conscious ESSCs. I identified six types of events and four types of developments that were salient in leaders' descriptions of their ESSC's history. When considering the relationship between events and developments, some event types only occurred in connection with one type of development while others were in connection with two or more types of developments. This study aims to be a historical documentation of race-conscious ESSCs and events they have endured to remain a resource to racially minoritized engineering students. Additionally, this study contributes to the holistic understanding of ESSCs by using Kantur and Íserí-Say's Integrated Framework of Organizational Resilience as a tool for identifying the factors that enable these organizations to be resilient amid disruption. Lastly, this study adds to efforts calling for policy-makers, researchers, and practitioners to be mindful of the tradeoffs being made by race-conscious ESSCs in the name of resiliency and the unintended consequences of these actions.
Racism in American Public Life: A Call to Action [Book review]
Faulkner, Brandy S. (Wiley, 2022-03-31)
A book review of Racism in American Public Life: A Call to Action, by Johnnetta Betsch Cole, University of Virginia Press, 2021. 152 pp. $19.95
Resilience
Faulkner, Brandy S. (2021-11-10)
This Is Bigger Than Me: A Multiple Case Narrative Analysis of Sociopolitical Development within Black Engineers' Career Journeys
Lightner, Taylor Courtney (Virginia Tech, 2023-08-02)
Exploring the stories of Black engineers provide an opportunity to challenge dominant narratives about the apolitical nature of engineering work and realize the potential of bridging the socio-technical divide. Sociopolitical development (SPD) is an inclination towards social justice, the motivation to address social inequality in surrounding environments, and the formation of social agency to address contextual oppression. The purpose of this multiple case narrative study is to explore the process of SPD within five Black engineers' narratives who are inspired to address social inequities through their engineering work. The overarching research question is: How does the SPD process unfold through the career narratives of Black engineers? Through the multiple settings surrounding Black engineers' career development, this research provides insight into how engineering stakeholders influence the cultural values underlying the nature of engineering work. Throughout their career narratives, Black engineers' awareness, behavior, and evaluations of critical consciousness evolve. Events shaping their SPD are also mapped to the socio-ecosystems. The movement through SPD elements depict the holistic nature of the SPD process for Black engineers experiences in childhood, formal education, and the workforce. These results contribute to engineering education literature by: (1) presenting a counter-narrative of engineering work that accounts for the perspectives of Black engineers; (2) highlighting the sense of agency that is necessary to integrate social justice elements in engineering practice; (3) emphasizing the utility of critical consciousness development in establishing a sense of fulfillment in engineering identity; and (4) discussing the influence of critical reflection and social identities on political efficacy and action. Insights from this study should compel engineering stakeholders to reflect on how engineering values perpetuate inequities in engineering pathways and engagement.
#VTDITC Vol 8: Hip Hop & Liberation
Faulkner, Brandy S.; Offendum, Omar; Right, Dumi; Taj, Saba (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2018-03-15)
Join Dumi Right (DC), Omar Offendum (LA), Saba Taj (NC), and Dr. Brandy Faulkner (VT Department of Political Science) for a discussion of hip hop as a tool for liberation. Performances and an open cypher to follow. #VTDITC

Browsing by Author "Faulkner, Brandy S."

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