Graduate Student Research Conference
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10877/8272
The Graduate College invites graduate students from all disciplines to present at the Graduate Student Research Conference (GSRC) (previously known as the International Research Conference) and showcase their original research and creative works!
Graduate Student Research Conference Website: https://www.gradcollege.txst.edu/events/research/graduate-student-research-conference.html
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Browsing Graduate Student Research Conference by Department "Sociology"
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Item Legitimacy, Cultural Production, and Top Chef(2021-04) Myers, MichelleThe distribution of capital (value/acclaim) is rooted in existing social hierarchies and the relative value of positions within the cultural milieu. In the world of haute cuisine, the value of products and producers is intimately tied to the gendered organization of the professional kitchen and societal norms and expectations about men’s versus women’s work. Previous work exploring legitimacy in culinary arts has found that female chefs are relegated to the home kitchen while men dominate professional spaces. Women are lauded for comfort cooking while men are praised for quality and skill. Competitive reality television is a persistent and popular form of entertainment that is often overlooked in its ability to reify and promote social inequalities. Bravo TV’s Top Chef combines elements of competitive reality television with the elite world of culinary arts and fine dining. The purpose of this study is to explore the way that value is established, debated and potentially negated on TV’s Top Chef. Is value awarded differently based on race or gender? I conducted a thematic content analysis of twelve episodes spanning three seasons of Bravo TV’s Top Chef, focusing on the judges’ critiques as well as the interactions and personal commentaries of the contestants. Results show that while Top Chef provides a seemingly level playing field across gender, race, and training the contestants themselves still enact the creation and definition of boundaries for access to legitimacy in fine dining around existing social hierarchies. Furthermore, marginalized contestants utilize a persistent “rags-to-riches” narrative to gain cultural legitimacy. While food appears to be judged meritocratically by characteristics of the chef, the value is determined by its distance from food associated with the masses.Item Navigating Intersections Between Fat Identity and Misogyny(2022-04) McCleskey, GraceLiving in what is viewed as a deviant body can impact every aspect of a person’s life. The purpose of this comprehensive literature review is to synthesize existing research about how fat women navigate this experience and the stigma they face while finding gaps in the literature. While there are feminists and fat activists publicly advocating for their needs, academia still has much room for growth in this area. Many of the ways women are expected to present femininity place much heavier burdens on fat women. Traditionally accepted archetypes of femininity do not leave any room for fatness or deviant bodies, and fat women are commonly separated from their femininity as a step towards separating them from their humanity entirely. Because of the way that fat women’s bodies are often viewed as objects for public scrutiny, this directly impacts their experiences with sexual assault and fetishization. Fat women are excluded from traditional femininity, and in congruence with other marginal identities, this experience is only amplified. I have investigated the ways in which fat women navigate this intersection between fatness as an identity and their identity as women. Stigmatization of fatness is highly gendered and there is a great deal of overlap between misogyny and fatphobia, as they often inform each other. Fatness defies many social norms, especially in cases in which women are expected to hate their own bodies or actively be trying to change them. Women are taught to actively shrink themselves and when they cannot or choose not to do so, they are viewed as a moral failure and lacking self control. There are many barriers to proper healthcare and career advancement as well as fetishization, sexual assault, and obesity stereotypes that are unique to overweight women. Many academics still address fatness as a problem needing to be solved without taking into account the experiences and needs of people who are directly impacted by their implicit bias.Item The Charismatic “Saviors”: A Depiction of Cults and Leaders in Mainstream Film(2023-04) Trapane, KamrynThis study evaluates four films regarding cults and cult leaders using discourse analysis or content analysis. Cults were depicted as having in-person or historical supernatural motives with both the followers and leaders participating in deviant behaviors. The leaders possessed confidence and charisma in their cultic responsibilities, using impression management (Goffman 1959), or a way to give a perceived perception to others within social interactions, and expressing their charismatic authority (Weber 1947), or a type of leadership which is unique in that it influences a group of people due to attractive qualities. The main characters exhibited anomie (Durkheim 1893), or the morals that the characters follow resulting in instability in their lives. Anomie becomes prevalent when the cult members and leader manipulates the characters, resulting in the characters exhibiting instability when navigating the cult as their morals do not align. Understanding cults and cult leaders in mainstream films can help recognize the social construction that the media has established in our society. These films can establish patterns and differences between real-life cults and fictional movie depictions.