Interrogating the spaces of personal photography : women, identity, and the cultural formation of photographic practice

Personal photographs permeate our lives from the moment we are born as they define who we are within our familial group and local communities. Archived in family albums or framed on living room walls, they continue on after our death as mnemonic artifacts referencing our gendered, raced, and ethnic identities. This dissertation examines salient instances of what women “do” with personal photographs, not only as authors and subjects but also as collectors, archivists, and family and cultural historians. This project seeks to contribute to more productive, complex discourse about how women form relationships and engage with the conventions and practices of personal photography. In the first part of this dissertation I revisit developments in the history of personal photography, including the advertising campaigns of the Kodak and Agfa Girls and the development of albums such as the Stammbuch and its predecessor, the carte-de-visite, that demonstrate how personal photography has functioned as a gendered activity that references family unity, sentimentalism for the past, and self-representation within normative familial and dominant cultural groups, thus suggesting its importance as a cultural practice of identity formation. The second and primary section of the dissertation expands on the critical analyses of Gillian Rose, Patricia Holland, and Nancy Martha West, who propose that personal photography, marketed to and taken on by women, double-exposes their gendered identities. Drawing on work by critics such as Deborah Willis, bell hooks, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, I examine how the reconfiguration, recontextualization, and relocation of personal photographs in the respective work of Christine Saari, Fern Logan, and Katie Knight interrogates and complicates gendered, raced, and ethnic identities and cultural attitudes about them. In the final section of the dissertation I briefly examine select examples of how emerging digital spaces on the Internet function as a site for personal photography, one that both reinscribes traditional cultural formations while offering new opportunities for women for the display and audiencing of identities outside the family.

EPA's Council for Regulatory Environmental Modeling : a case study of science policy implementation

As environmental problems became more complex, policy and regulatory decisions become far more difficult to make. The use of science has become an important practice in the decision making process of many federal agencies. Many different types of scientific information are used to make decisions within the EPA, with computer models becoming especially important. Environmental models are used throughout the EPA in a variety of contexts and their predictive capacity has become highly valued in decision making. The main focus of this research is to examine the EPA’s Council for Regulatory Modeling (CREM) as a case study in addressing science issues, particularly models, in government agencies. Specifically, the goal was to answer the following questions: What is the history of the CREM and how can this information shed light on the process of science policy implementation? What were the goals of implementing the CREM? Were these goals reached and how have they changed? What have been the impediments that the CREM has faced and why did these impediments occur? The three main sources of information for this research came from observations during summer employment with the CREM, document review and supplemental interviews with CREM participants and other members of the modeling community. Examining a history of modeling at the EPA, as well as a history of the CREM, provides insight into the many challenges that are faced when implementing science policy and science policy programs. After examining the many impediments that the CREM has faced in implementing modeling policies, it was clear that the impediments fall into two separate categories, classic and paradoxical. The classic impediments include the more standard impediments to science policy implementation that might be found in any regulatory environment, such as lack of resources and changes in administration. Paradoxical impediments are cyclical in nature, with no clear solution, such as balancing top-down versus bottom-up initiatives and coping with differing perceptions. These impediments, when not properly addressed, severely hinder the ability for organizations to successfully implement science policy.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AS ENFRAMING OR EMPOWERING: HOW LEAN AND SIX SIGMA DEFINE TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

In this project, I examine current forms of scientific management systems, Lean and Six Sigma, as they relate to technical communication. With the goal of breaking work up into standardized processes in order to cut costs and increase efficiency, Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma hybrid systems are increasingly applied beyond manufacturing operations to service and other types of organizational work, including technical communication. By consulting scholarship from fields such as business, management, and engineering, and analyzing government Lean Six Sigma documentation, I investigate how these systems influence technical communication knowledge and practice in the workplace. I draw out the consequences of system-generated power structures as they affect knowledge work, like technical communication practice, when it is reduced to process. In pointing out the problems these systems have in managing knowledge work, I also ask how technical communication might shape them.

Add a Dash of Rhetoric, a Pinch of Technical Communication, a Handful of Pedagogy, and Mix Well: Cookbooks and Recipes as Instructional Texts, and What Domestic Texts from 1870 to 1935 Can Teach Us About Technical Communication

Through the use of rhetoric centered on authority and risk avoidance, scientific method has co-opted knowledge, especially women's everyday and experiential knowledge in the domestic sphere. This, in turn, has produced a profound affect on technical communication in the present day. I am drawing on rhetorical theory to study cookbooks and recipes for their contributions to changes in instructional texts. Using the rhetorical lenses of metis (cunning intelligence), kairos (timing and fitness) and mneme (memory), I examine the way in which recipes and cookbooks are constructed, used and perceived. This helps me uncover lost voices in history, the voices of women who used recipes, produced cookbooks and changed the way instructions read. Beginning with the earliest cookbooks and recipes, but focusing on the pivotal temporal interval of 1870-1935, I investigate the writing and rhetorical forces shaping instruction sets and domestic discourse. By the time of scientific cooking and domestic science, everyday and experiential knowledge were being excluded to make room for scientific method and the industrial values of the public sphere. In this study, I also assess how the public sphere, via Cooperative Extension Services and other government agencies, impacted the domestic sphere, further devaluing everyday knowledge in favor of the public scientific model. I will show how the changes in the production of food, cookbooks and recipes were related to changes in technical communication. These changes had wide rippling effects on the field of technical communication. By returning to some of the tenets and traditions of everyday and experiential knowledge, technical communication scholars, practitioners and instructors today can find new ways to encounter technical communication, specifically regarding the creation of instructional texts. Bringing cookbooks, recipes and everyday knowledge into the classroom and the field engenders a new realm of epistemological possibilities.

RESILIENT WOMEN, METISTIC SCIENTISTS: A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY OF HOW WOMEN NEGOTIATE THEIR SITUATEDNESS IN SCIENCE FIELDS

The concept of feminist metistic resilience postulates that the voiceless, the marginalized and the minority in societies employ strategies in order to turn tables in their favor. This study presents a qualitative analysis of how women, considered to be the minority, negotiate their situatedness in science fields in order to effect change in their lives or that of the society and why they become successful. By “situatedness,” I refer to the everyday life of women as they live and encounter people, society and culture, especially, the life of women who have transcended the culturally stipulated role of women and are excelling in a male dominated field. The study, in different dimensions, conceptualizes the reason for the fewer number of women in science; looks at how scientific methods and practices inhibit the development of women in science; and, finally, interrogates the question of objectivity in science. It becomes apparent, through feminist metistic resilience, that women become successful when they accept conventional practices in scientific arrangements and structures. They accept the practices by embracing and not questioning structures and arrangements that have shaped the field of science and by shifting shapes and assuming different forms in order to adapt to conditions they encounter. Apart from adapting and shape shifting, the women also become successful through environmental and social influences. My analysis suggests that more women can be encouraged to pursue science when women practicing science begin to question structures and arrangements that have shaped the practice of science over the centuries. The overall findings of the research provide implications for policy makers, educators and feminist researchers.