Anxiety disorders and depression and risk for drug use disorders across the life course: Sex and ethnic contrasts

The present study examined the linkage between mental (i.e., anxiety disorders and depression) and drug use disorders in a multi-ethnic (i.e., 25% Euro-American, 38% Hispanic/Latino, 33% African American, 4% other) sample of adults (N = 1638, age 18–93 years old). Risk for drug use disorders was examined, while attending to methodological issues of prior research including (1) psychiatric comorbidity, (2) variations in risk associated with sex, ethnicity, and age, and (3) temporal order between mental and drug use disorders. ^ Participants were assessed using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI; World Health Organization, 1990). A life history calendar (Freedman et al., 1988) was used to aid the ordering of onsets of all disorders assessed. ^ Preliminary analysis indicated anxiety disorders and depression were significant predictors of drug use disorders, but after controlling for comorbidity and temporal order, anxiety disorders and depression were no longer predictive of drug use disorders. Findings are discussed in terms of their usefulness for prevention and treatment of drug use disorders. ^

A youth vision of the city: The socio-spatial lives and exclusion of street girls in Bogota, Colombia

This dissertation documents the everyday lives and spaces of a population of youth typically constructed as out of place, and the broader urban context in which they are rendered as such. Thirty-three female and transgender street youth participated in the development of this youth-based participatory action research (YPAR) project utilizing geo-ethnographic methods, auto-photography, and archival research throughout a six-phase, eighteen-month research process in Bogotá, Colombia. ^ This dissertation details the participatory writing process that enabled the YPAR research team to destabilize dominant representations of both street girls and urban space and the participatory mapping process that enabled the development of a youth vision of the city through cartographic images. The maps display individual and aggregate spatial data indicating trends within and making comparisons between three subgroups of the research population according to nine spatial variables. These spatial data, coupled with photographic and ethnographic data, substantiate that street girls’ mobilities and activity spaces intersect with and are altered by state-sponsored urban renewal projects and paramilitary-led social cleansing killings, both efforts to clean up Bogotá by purging the city center of deviant populations and places. ^ Advancing an ethical approach to conducting research with excluded populations, this dissertation argues for the enactment of critical field praxis and care ethics within a YPAR framework to incorporate young people as principal research actors rather than merely voices represented in adultist academic discourse. Interjection of considerations of space, gender, and participation into the study of street youth produce new ways of envisioning the city and the role of young people in research. Instead of seeing the city from a panoptic view, Bogotá is revealed through the eyes of street youth who participated in the construction and feminist visualization of a new cartography and counter-map of the city grounded in embodied, situated praxis. This dissertation presents a socially responsible approach to conducting action-research with high-risk youth by documenting how street girls reclaim their right to the city on paper and in practice; through maps of their everyday exclusion in Bogotá followed by activism to fight against it.^

It's not queer to be gay: Miami and the emergence of the gay rights movement, 1945–1995

This work chronicles how queer individuals politicized their same-sex desires from the post-World War II era to the mid-1990s. Using Miami as a site of exploration, this work demonstrates the shift from understanding homosexuality as a same-sex "desire" to a distinct form of "civil rights." It argues that by no means was it inevitable that queer issues entered the American political mainstream. This project pays particular attention to Miami's Cuban exile community, as it managed to garner great socio-political power in the city. Like others in the city's power structure, Miami's Cuban exiles were also fundamentally traditionalists. Together, these phenomena crystallized into a matrix of obstacles that stunted the growth of the gay rights movement. This work demonstrates the historical dynamics of sexuality and politics by contextualizing immigration, ethnicity, race, consumerism, and Cold War domestic and foreign policy.

Museum of urban development and headquarters for the planning/preservation department of the city of Miami Beach.

The objective of this research and thesis was to develop a program and project in the context of the Historic Art Deco District in Miami Beach. This project intended to analyze the chronological history of the urban development of the Art Deco District, its geographical, political and socio-cultural conditions as well as the evolution and different architectonic typologies of the area. In order to understand the issues involved in design in a historic context, this research addressed and analyzed several architectonic interventions within various historic places. This research concluded with the design of a public facility located at Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, consisting of a Museum of Urban Development and Headquarters for the Planning/Preservation Department of the City of Miami Beach. The project proposal and thesis, addresses architectonic and theoretical issues specific to design in an historic area.