Log in

Relevant bibliographies by topics / Feminism and literature – Australia / Dissertations / Theses

Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Feminism and literature – Australia'

To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Feminism and literature – Australia.

Author: Grafiati

Published: 4 June 2021

Last updated: 28 January 2023

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles

Select a source type:

Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Feminism and literature – Australia.'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.

Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.

1

Thompson, Jay. "Sex and power in Australian writing during the Culture Wars, 1993-1997 /." Connect to thesis, 2009. http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/6714.

Full text

Abstract:

I address a selection of texts published in Australia between 1993 and 1997 which engage with feminist debates about sex and power. These texts are important, I argue, because they signpost the historical moment in which the culture wars and globalisation gained force in Australia. A key word in this thesis is ‘framing’. The debates which my texts engage with have (much like the culture wars in general) commonly been framed as conflicts between polarised political factions. These political factions have, in turn, been framed in terms of generations; that is, an ‘older’ feminism is pitted against a ‘newer’ feminism. Each generation of feminists supposedly holds quite different views about sex. I argue that my texts actually provide an insight into how various feminist perspectives on sex diverge and intersect with each other, as well as with certain New Right discourses about sex. My selected texts also suggest how the printed text has helped transport feminism within and outside Australia
My texts fit into two broad genres, fiction and scholarly non-fiction. The texts are: Helen Garner’s The First Stone (1995), Sheila Jeffreys’ The Lesbian Heresy (1993), Catharine Lumby’s Bad Girls (1997), Linda Jaivin’s Eat Me (1995) and Justine Ettler’s The River Ophelia (1995). I engage with various critical responses to these texts, including reviews, essays and interviews with the authors. I draw also from a range of theoretical sources. These include analyses of the culture wars by the American theorist Lillian S. Robinson and the Australian scholars McKenzie Wark, David McKnight and Mark Davis. Davis has provided a useful overview of how the metaphor of ‘generational conflict’ circulated in Australian culture during the 1990s. I draw on Arjun Appadurai’s model of “global cultural flows” and Ann Curthoys’ history of feminism in Australia. I engage with research into the increasingly ‘globalised’ nature of Australian writing, as well as a number of feminist works on the relationship between sex and power

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

2

Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette. "Keeping mum : representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature - a fictocritical exploration." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054.

Full text

Abstract:

[Truncated abstract] This thesis argues that the non-representation and under-representation of mothering in contemporary Australian literature reflects a much wider cultural practice of silencing the mother-as-subject position and female experiences as a whole. The thesis encourages women writers to pay more attention to the subjective experiences of mothering, so that women’s writing, in particular writing on those aspects of women’s lives that are silenced, of which motherhood is one, can begin to refigure motherhood discourses. This thesis examines mother-as-subject from three perspectives: mothering as a corporeal experience, mothering as a psychological experience, and the articulations and silences of mothering-as-subject. It engages with feminist, postmodern and fictocritical theories in its discussion of motherhood as a discourse through these perspectives. In particular, the thesis employs the theoretical works of postmodern feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva in this discussion . . . A fictional narrative also runs through the critical discussion on motherhood. This narrative, Catherine’s Story, gives a personal and immediate voice to the mother-as-subject perspective. In keeping with the nature of fictocriticism, strict textual boundaries between criticism and fiction are blurred. The two modes of writing interact and in the process inform and critique each other.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

3

Anderson, Emma Kate School of English UNSW. "Representations of female sexuality in chick-lit texts and reading Anais Nin on the train." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of English, 2006. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/27319.

Full text

Abstract:

My critical essay uses Foucault???s theory of discursive formation to chart the emergence of the figure of the single modern woman as she is created by the various discourses surrounding her. It argues that representations of the single modern woman continue a tradition of perceiving the female body as a source of social anxiety. The project explores ???chick-lit??? as a site within the discursive formation from which the single modern woman emerges as a paradoxical figure; the paradoxes fundamentally linked to her sexuality. This essay, then, essentially seeks to investigate representations of female sexuality within chick-lit, exposing for scrutiny the paradoxes inherent in and around the figure of the single modern woman. My fictional piece is a work of erotica. It is divided into four sections: The Reader, The Writer, The Muse and The Critic. Essentially it explores the relationships between female sexuality and literature; between female sexuality and feminist, post-feminist and patriarchal values and between literature and issues of truth, perspective and representation. The two works complement each other to illuminate the paradox of female sexuality: one from a theoretical perspective and the other from a fictional perspective. The critical work focuses on female sexuality and its relationship to, and development within, the current social context. Chick-lit, as a new and immensely popular genre of fiction which holistically explores the lives of single modern women was useful for examining the relationship between the sexual persona of the single modern woman and society. The fiction is concerned with a narrower focus: specifically the sexual life of the single modern woman. Through the creative process, it became apparent that working within the genre of ???erotica??? would be not only more useful than working within chick-lit, but more powerful in exploring the themes I was interested in. The creative work draws on numerous points of interest raised in the critical work from, for example, the grander notions of the relationship between object and discourse ??? in this case female sexuality and literature ??? and the female body as a source of social fascination and anxiety to finer observations such as what it means to have sex ???like a man.??? In essence, the creative work seeks to examine the many faces of the single modern woman as a sexual being and to illuminate, on an intimate level, the many conflicts between and surrounding those faces and to suggest that while paradox remains in female sexual ideology, the single modern woman will remain suspended in a kind of sexual paralysis.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

4

Webb, Rosemary Ferguson. "Australian girl readers, femininities and feminism in the Second World War (1939-1945) a study of subjectivity and agency /." Access electronically, 2004. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20050706.111946/index.html.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

5

Noble, Jenny Austin School of English UNSW. "Representations of the mother-figure in the novels of Katharine Susannah Prichard and Eleanor Dark." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of English, 2005. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/23897.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis argues that through bringing together two branches of inquiry???the literary work of Katharine Susannah Prichard and Eleanor Dark and socio-feminist theory on health, contagion and the female body???the discursive body of the mother-figure in their novels serves as a trope through which otherwise unspoken tensions???between the personal and the political, between family and nation and between identity and race in Australian cultural formation???are explored. The methodology I use is to analyse the literary mother-figure through a ???discourse on health??? from a soma-political, socio-cultural and historical perspective which sought to categorise, regulate and discipline women???s lives to ensure that white women conformed to their designated roles as mothers and that they did so within the confines of marriage. The literary mother-figure, as represented in Prichard???s and Dark???s novels, is frequently at odds with the culturally constructed mother-figure as represented in political and religious discourses, and in popular forms of culture such as advertising, film and women???s magazines. This culturally constructed ???ideal??? mother-figure is intimately linked to nationalist discourses of racial hygiene, of Christian morality, and of civic and social order controlled by such patriarchal institutions as the state, the church, the law and the medical professions during the period under review. This is reflected in Prichard???s and Dark???s inter-war novels which embody unresolved tensions in a way that challenges representations of the mother-figure by mainstream culture. However, their post-war novels show a greater compliance with nationalist ideologies of the good and healthy mother-figure who conforms more closely with an idealised notion of motherhood, leading up to the 1950s. Through a detailed analysis of the two writers??? changing representations of the mother-figure, I argue that the mother-figure is a key trope through which unspoken tensions and forces that have shaped (and continue to shape) Australian culture and society can be understood.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

6

Bode, Katherine. "In/visibility : women looking at men's bodies in and through contemporary Australian women's fiction /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://adt.library.uq.edu.au/public/adt-QU20060120.161127/index.html.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

7

Carson, Susan J. "Making the modern : the writing of Eleanor Dark." Thesis, The University of Queensland, 1999. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/21029/1/CARSON_DARK_THESIS_PDF_%282%29.pdf.

Full text

Abstract:

This dissertation examines the published and unpublished work to date by Australian author Eleanor Dark (1901-1985). It discusses quite divergent aspects of Dark's work, ranging from her engagement with modernist writing styles to her interest in ecology and, in so doing, offers quite diverse perspetives on Australian women's writing in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. In this discussion, I consider Dark as a transitional author who deployed differing narrative modes, from realism to modernism, but also as an itnellectual writer who undertakes an ideological enquiry into her vision of an Australian 'nation.' In this study, I trace the ways in which Dark's writing has been eclipsed by a confluence of political machinations, literary critical strategies and, so some extent, the perceptions permitted by Dark herself. The dissertation calls attention to the tensions and ambivalences associated with creative aspiration in a period of accelerating change. In this examination certain feminist and cultural studies stragegies take precedence. The study endeavours to extend existing Dark criticism by focussing on the connections between, on the one hand, her varied writing techniques and thematic interests and, on the other, the wider perspectives of a newly-constituted nation's engagement with modernity.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

8

Conte, Susannah. "The Fifth Sparrow: In Memory of Mollie Skinner." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2018. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2080.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis offers a case study in adapting Australian literary biography to the theatre, specifically in the form of a one woman show or monologue performance. The thesis consists of a novel play script, together with exegetical writing which outlines the source materials used and the process and themes under consideration. These themes include those of family (specifically a difficult relationship with her mother), love (including a lesbian affair), life as an aspiring writer, and the protagonist’s difficult to shake sense of damage, pain and struggle. The play offers a portrait of West Australian writer Mollie Skinner (1876- 1955). Sources included her autobiography (both the original manuscript and that edited and published by Mary Durack), Mollie’s novels and her letters—particularly her extensive correspondence with the British author D.H. Lawrence, who she met in WA—and secondary writings. Skinner’s writing has been described as akin to an “untended garden,” rich in imagery, but scattered and often difficult to follow. In recognition of this, my play takes the form of a series of vignettes and images, a succession of heightened moments, choreographed with sound and movement elements for dramatic impact. Mollie’s life thereby emerges as one marked by pain and suffering, yet suffused with rich language and visions. Although Mollie was more than just a friend of D.H. Lawrence, it is nevertheless clear that the better known author offered her support and encouragement that few others did. Together with her Sybil these two figures emerge as Mollie’s only true loves and companions, figures physically separated from her, yet who enabled her life and many of her joys. Skinner emerges then as a modest but indomitable spirt, poised on the veranda, looking at the world through her failing eyesight; touched by the beauty of it all. The aim of the play is thus to do justice to the spirit of Skinner, without presenting an exhaustive account of her entire life, and in doing so, to present her story to a new generation of West Australians.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

9

Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette Weeda-Zuidersma Jeannette. "Keeping mum representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature : a fictocritical exploration /." Connect to this title online, 2006. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054/.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

10

Cheers, Rebecca. "Knowing Anne Brennan: Lyric poetry as feminist biography." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2020. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/206891/1/Rebecca_Cheers_Thesis.pdf.

Full text

Abstract:

This practice-led thesis explores the use of lyric poetry as a form of feminist biography through the writing of a poetic biography, No Camelias, on the life of Anne Brennan, a figure of Australian literary history whose life has been sparsely recorded, and whose existing historical profile is marred by misogyny and indifference. The creative manuscript is accompanied by an exegetical essay which analyses poetry by Natalie Harkin and Jessica Wilkinson, two poets who explore marginalised histories through contrasting poetic approaches to archival research. Together, these connected components re-present Anne Brennan’s life through feminist grief, subjectivity and empathy.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

11

Adebayo, Adebanke. "West African Feminism| Maneuvering the Reality of Feminism Using Osun." Thesis, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10682016.

Full text

Abstract:

West African Women writers are constantly looking for ways to maneuver the patriarchal system within their indigenous cultures. To say maneuvering implies the dilemma in consciously navigating patriarchal epistemology as West African women, which in reality is not exotic to other feminist struggles outside the continent. To deal with the dilemma of constantly maneuvering, this thesis suggest for an indigenous framework. It suggests Osun –a Nigerian goddess– as a response to the theoretical problems and as a methodology to navigating a postcolonial patriarchal worldview in order to express West African feminist discourse. The specificity of Osun is essential, but the fluidity of Osun across borders cannot be undermined as it paves the way for flexibility within feminist and gender discourse and draws upon various gender oppressed experiences. The idea of specificity and fluidity is fundamental to developing Osun as West African feminist discourse because of her ability to transcend space. The combination of specificity and fluidity are necessary within any feminist discourse as it allows for women from different regions to relate and align the tenets to their specific struggles found in the diversity of Osun.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

12

Kastelein, Barbara. "Popular/post-feminism and popular literature." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1994. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/36104/.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis is concerned with the ambivalence expressed towards feminism by many women in the last decade and identifies post-feminism as a problematic through which to explore this in contemporary women's writing. It focuses on selected fictional and non-fictional texts of the 1980s and 1990s and examines the ways in which they engage with feminist concerns. Until now, post-feminism has not been studied through its articulations in popular literature. To do justice to the wide range of views held by women and avoid a defensive and pessimistic reading of commercialised mainstream culture, I have made use of intertextual readings. The methodology is derived from feminist critical theory and cultural studies in order to address the relation between feminist and non-feminist literary texts and the dynamic interchange between what have been labelled as feminist politics and mainstream or consumer women' s interests. The significance of the research lies in the identification of ways in which such works of fiction and nonfiction provide an outlet for women's voices which could serve as a basis for developing feminist criticism and politics. The thesis is divided into three chapters, the different themes of which illustrate post-feminist concerns. In the first, I address the literature of popular therapy by women. The second chapter focuses on contemporary fictional and non-fictional writings by women on sex. The final chapter examines women' s relationship to transgression through genres of crime writing. I have found that popular literary forms used by women may offer a progressive and complex reading of post-feminism. I conclude that post-feminism has drawn on popular elements of feminism and that, at the beginning of the 1990s, one may identify a reincorporation of feminism into postfeminism.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

13

Munt, Sally Rowena. "Feminism and the crime novel." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.387221.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

14

Kerr, Joanna. "Learning from the novel : feminism, philosophy, literature." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/26656.

Full text

Abstract:

Analytic philosophy since Plato has been notoriously hostile to literature, and yet in recent years, increasing numbers of philosophers within the tradition have sought to take seriously the question of how it is that literature can be philosophical. Analytic philosophy has also been noted for its hostility to women and resistance to feminism. In this thesis I seek to make connections between firstly the prejudice against, and then the potential for, the contribution of the perspectives of literature and feminism in philosophy, attempting to answer simultaneously the two questions; How can literature be philosophical? How can feminists write philosophy? In the sense that I attempt to take these questions seriously, and answer them precisely, this thesis fits into the analytic philosophical tradition. However, my response to these questions, and thus the majority of this thesis, takes the form of a non-traditional demonstration of the philosophical potential of literature presented through three feminist literary genres; autographical fiction, utopian fiction, and detective fiction. Using generic divisions seems to be an appropriate strategy for reclaiming literature as philosophical, since it suggests an identification with the Aristotelian defence of literary arts against Plato's assault. However, I will argue that these literary genres have traditionally been defined in terms which prohibit a philosophical reading. I will expose and then recover this anti-philosophical bias, particularly when it coincides with feminist genre revisions. This recovery will take the form of a philosophical reconceptualizing of each genre, and a specific comparative analysis of two texts adopted as representative of each genre as I conceive it. In this way I hope to show that it is not only possible, but highly advantageous, to learn from the novel.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

15

Huntley, Rebecca. ""Sex on the Hustings" : labor and the construction of 'the woman voter' in two federal elections (1983, 1993)." Connect to full text, 2003. http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/adt/public_html/adt-NU/public/adt-NU20040209.113517/index.html.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

16

McIver, Victoria. "Psychoanalytic feminism: a systematic literature review of gender." AUT University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/905.

Full text

Abstract:

Using a modified, systematic literature review I will examine issues of subjectivity, gender, and differnce in relation to psychoanalytic feminist theory. Psychoanalytic feminism evolved out of a reaction to classical psychoanalytic theory. In particular, the works of Chodorow (1978), Kristeva, (1977, 1989) and Benjamin (1988) were used. The literature revew will discuss the development of these theoretical perspectives and the understanding of subjectivity, gender and difference in psychoanalytic feminism and the implication this has for clinical practice.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

17

Young, Kathyrn M. "Withdrawn from Curriculum: Feminism and Young Adult Literature." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1307377432.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

18

Gale, Heather. "Constance Beresford-Howe's interrogation of integrative feminism." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/6537.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis analyzes Constance Beresford-Howe's novels in terms of their place in the contemporary feminist debate over women's traditional roles as mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. Her treatment of these roles supports Andrea O'Reilly's assertion that Beresford-Howe espouses what Angela Miles has called "integrative feminism", "a feminism which affirms and celebrates women's specificity and asks not for the eradication of women's traditional roles and values but for the recognition of their importance" (O'Reilly 69). Chapter One deals with a range of feminist literary criticism and particularly with the notion of "integrative feminism" and its applicability to the novels of Beresford-Howe, as well as entertaining complementary and divergent readings of this theory offered by such critics as Germaine Greer and Judith Stacey. Chapter Two considers the portrayal of sisters, daughters, and other female "helpers" in such novels as Of this Day's Journey (1947), The Invisible Gate (1949), My Lady Greensleeves (1955), A Population of One (1977), and Prospero's Daughter (1988). Chapter Three examines the portrayal of the institutionalized roles of mother and wife in such novels as The Unreasoning Heart (1946), My Lady Greensleeves 1955), The Book of Eve (1973), and Night Studies (1985). Chapter four extends the discussion of mothers and wives, with an emphasis on the protagonist's successful redefinition of those roles in The Marriage Bed (1981) and A Serious Widow (1991).

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

19

Allen-Johnstone, Claire. "Dress, feminism, and British New Woman novels." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2018. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dd38da33-efbb-463f-86fd-9fcc1c4f707e.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis examines the close and complex relationship between dress, feminism, and British New Woman novels. It provides in-depth analysis of six New Woman novels and draws comparisons with numerous other works. The case study texts are Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and From Man to Man: Or Perhaps Only ... (1926, posthumously), Sarah Grand's Ideala: A Study from Life (1881) and The Heavenly Twins (1893), and Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did (1895) and The Type-Writer Girl (1897). I explore why dress was so important to such novels, and examine the diverse, individual, developing, and shared ways in which authors engaged with dress as a feminist strategy and feminist concern. Areas considered include From Man to Man's use of functional clothes and dress production to celebrate female labour, Grand's interest in both dress reform and dressing to impress, Allen's shift in focus from the white-clad free lover to the sensibly-dressed working woman, and authors' use of deceptively clean clothes to address male immorality and disease. The thesis looks beyond as well as within New Woman narratives, demonstrating that writers, and publishers, were broadly concerned with dress in its various literal and more metaphorical manifestations. Focuses include self-styling, authorial cross-dressing, and bindings. Dress does not, however, always seamlessly support these texts' feminisms, I argue. For example, Grand elevated cross-class feminism, but she belittled middle-class women's taste, side-lined poor women's most pressing sartorial concerns, and dressed to impress. I also stress that dress, being so closely bound up with New Woman novels' feminisms and their ambiguities, is a revealing lens through which to read such texts, and one often capable of prompting re-readings. Attention to Allen's rejection of sartorial realism in parts of The Woman Who Did problematises the dominant conception of this novel as straightforwardly pro-free union, for instance. The thesis, as well as gesturing towards dress's centrality to the production and interpretation of literary feminisms and anti-feminisms broadly, emphasises the importance of dress to New Woman literature and its analysts, and uses dress to provide fresh readings of various novels and genre-wide issues.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

20

Brankovich, Jasmina. "Burning down the house? : feminism, politics and women's policy in Western Australia, 1972-1998." University of Western Australia. School of Humanities, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0122.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis examines the constraints and options inherent in placing feminist demands on the state, the limits of such interventions, and the subjective, intimate understandings of feminism among agents who have aimed to change the state from within. First, I describe the central element of a

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

21

Flaherty, Patricia. ""Poor girl!" feminism, disability and the other in Ulysses /." Diss., Connect to the thesis, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10066/634.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

22

Sydeman, Melissa. "Misogynist politics : film theory, feminism and Brian De Palma." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.386520.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

23

York, Regina. "Feminism, Selfhood & Emily Dickinson." TopSCHOLAR®, 1991. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/3019.

Full text

Abstract:

This paper will draw on the work of leading feminist critics and the works of Dickinson, her biographers, and her critics. No effort is being made to trace the history of feminist criticism; that has been done numerous times by critic after critic. Nor does this paper attempt to provide a concordance to critical thought on Dickinson. That, too, is unnecessary. Rather, this paper looks at the relationship between self-identity in Dickinson's poetry and the fundamental need for such a pronounced sense of identity to serve as the cornerstone of feminist criticism. Dickinson's courage to be female and the implications of that courage on her world view are at the core of neofeminist or post-feminist criticism. Dickinson exhibited an independence of mind that broke out of the boxes of cultural constraints developing a strong sense of identity as a woman and as a poet. She expressed a strong moral view of the world solidly grounded in, but often critical of, the Christian tradition. With her strong sense of self, her overarching moral vision, and her disregard for the "oughts" and "shoulds" of her culture, Dickinson held her work to a high standard of significance. Feminist criticism is only now reaching such a standard of significance. As Dickinson achieved personal wholeness and creative integrity through the integration of (not the obliteration or repression of) opposing qualities, feminist criticism, too, must have that same courage to stand firm in the face of powerful opposition and defy social and political pressures to conform. Conforming to a mediocre, and consequently powerless but socially acceptable, integrated position within mainstream criticism places feminist criticism once again on the sidelines waiting for the next popular trend to relegate it even further from the intellectual center.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

24

Cully, Eavan. "Nationalism, feminism, and martial valor: rewriting biographies of women in «Nüzi shijie» (1904-1907)." Thesis, McGill University, 2009. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=32363.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis examines images of martial women as they were produced in the biography column of the late Qing journal Nüzi shijie (NZSJ; 1904-1907). By examining the historiographic implications of revised women's biographies, I will show the extent to which martial women were written as ideal citizens at the dawn of the twentieth-century. In the first chapter I place NZSJ in its historical context by examining the journal's goals as seen in two editorials from the inaugural issue. The second and third chapters focus on biographies of individual women warriors which will be read against their original stories in verse and prose. Through these comparisons, I aim to demonstrate how these "transgressive women" were written as normative ideals of martial citizens that would appeal to men and women alike.
Cette thèse examine les images de femmes martiales reproduites dans la rubrique biographique du journal Nüzi shijie (NZSJ; 1904-1907) publiée à la fin de la dynastie Qing. En examinant les implications historiographiques des biographies révisées des femmes, j'essai de démontrer l'importance de la façon dont les femmes martiales étaient décrites come citoyennes idéales à l'aube du vingtième siècle. A travers une exploration des objectifs posés par le journal et mis en évidence dans deux éditoriaux extraits du premier numéro du journal, mon premier chapitre essaie de placer le NZSJ dans sa propre contexte historique. Le deuxième et le troisième chapitres se concentrent sur les biographies individuelles des femmes guerrières, lesquelles sont juxtaposés aux histories originales écrites sous forme de vers et prose. A travers ces juxtapositions, mon projet démontre la façon dont ces "femmes transgressives" illustraient l'idéal normatif du citoyen martiale, lequel attirait les hommes ainsi que les femmes.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

25

Eltis, Sarah. "Anarchism, feminism and socialism in the plays of Oscar Wilde." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.241287.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

26

Hare, Nicola Tracy. "The goddess, the witch and the bitch : three studies in the perception of women." Thesis, University of Port Elizabeth, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/278.

Full text

Abstract:

In the minds of many people all over the world, women are ‘second class citizens’, standing accused of the downfall of mankind ever since Eve allegedly ate the apple. Even amongst those who do not openly denigrate women, there are many who do so in other, more subtle ways even if they are unaware of it. This study proposes to challenge such a view of women by exposing the ways in which perceptions of women are constructed by society, which frequently wants to maintain the status quo of male dominance. This study employs a feminist approach in examining this gynocentric theme, along with cultural studies which, with its focus on power relations and ways of decentring power structures, is also clearly of use. In addition, this multidisciplinary approach of cultural studies offers the possibility of studying literary texts as well as popular culture. Three specific time periods are examined, with a view to uncovering negative perceptions of women and ways that women can resist such attempts to control them. In chapter one, the focus turns to contemporary perceptions of prehistoric women and the ways that so-called ‘objective’ science has failed to represent women accurately. Similarly, ‘objective’ accounts of Goddess-worship – which frequently fail to examine this phenomenon adequately – are revisited. Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar (1989) is discussed as a text which acts as a site of resistance to societally-informed perceptions. Chapter two continues this investigation by turning to the concept of the witch and its maligned association with women. Woman and witchcraft, having been associated for centuries, are investigated as a pairing which frequently results because iii of attempts to control women by androcentric society. In such situations, the practising of witchcraft can actually become a form of resistance to patriarchy. The pernicious effect of society’s need to purge itself – by witch hunts – of witches is also investigated. The Devil’s Chimney (1997) by Anne Landsman and “The prophetess” (1994) by Njabulo S. Ndebele are discussed as texts which examine fictionalised South African versions of this phenomenon. Sinead O’Connor, the Irish singer, is the ‘bitch’ discussed in chapter three. She is examined as a woman who offers strong and on-going resistance to patriarchal ways of thinking which would ‘box’ women in. This singer refuses to accept societal roles which are offered to women and so offers means of resistance to patriarchy, many of which are discussed in this chapter. This study concludes that it is the responsibility of women to resist patriarchy and to define roles for themselves. The three chapters examine various means of resistance and offer women insight into the forms of opposition they themselves can take.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

27

Tai, Yu-Chen. "(W)holistic Feminism: Decolonial Healing in Women of Color Literature." The Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1459357822.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

28

Dhrodia, Reshma. ""Have you met Miss Jones?": Feminism and difference in the Bridget Jones diaries." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/27125.

Full text

Abstract:

Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones novels are popular with countless readers all over the world. They are "ripe for feminist interpretation and investigation" because they are "contemporary women's novels" that discuss the everyday lives of women, particularly unmarried women in the West (Whelehan 2004, 38). Imelda Whelehan argues that if the Bridget Jones novels do not "offer a 'true' reflection of contemporary single life for women, they perhaps present its tensions more boldly than ever" (2004, 30). This thesis is a feminist study of the Bridget Jones novels and the film adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary, focussing on how discourses of feminism and otherness appear in Fielding's texts and in the film, and how the major women characters use them to interpret their own lives. Chapter One investigates the ways in which Bridget, Sharon, and Pam Jones understand feminism and employ feminist language in Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary (1996). Chapter Two explores how characters who are Other---those who are racially and ethnically different from Bridget, her friends, and her family---create barriers between the white, heterosexual couples in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999). Finally, Chapter Three turns to the 2001 film adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary in order to demonstrate how prevalent themes in the first novel, including feminism, go missing in the adaptation.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

29

Khoury, Nicole Michelle. "Hybrid identity and Arab/American feminism in Diana Abu-Jaber's Arabian Jazz." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2005. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2862.

Full text

Abstract:

In her novel Arabian Jazz, Diana Abu-Jaber attempts to explore the Arab American identity as something new; as an identity that exists related to, but ultimately separate from, the Arab and American identities from which it was originally created. This thesis discusses the emergence of the depiction of the Arab American female identity in the novel, examining how the characters explore issues of race, class, imperialism, and sex within both the Arab and the American cultures as those issues shape female identity. The thesis also presents a rhetorical analysis of the speeches that allow the characters a voice with respect to how identity is shaped and reshaped throughout the novel.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

30

Kellar, Pinard Katrina. "Settler Feminism in Contemporary Canadian Historical Fiction." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/39608.

Full text

Abstract:

Canada has seen a veritable explosion in the production and popularity of historical fiction in recent decades. Works by women that present a feminist revision of national narratives have played a key part in this phenomenon. This thesis discusses three contemporary Canadian historical novels: Gil Adamson’s The Outlander (2007), Ami McKay’s The Birth House (2006), and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996). By examining these novels through a settler colonial lens and with a specific interest in the critique of settler feminism, this thesis offers readings that can reveal how feminism operates within the confines of the settler fantasy. These readings suggest that women’s historical fiction offers an opportunity to consider different aspects of feminism in the settler setting and to consider different aspects of critiques of patriarchy in settler contexts. This thesis suggests that these novels present a settler women’s history that cannot be properly understood through the simplistic logic of male/female or colonizer/colonized oppositions, and that the ways the novels depict women’s interactions with patriarchal settler structures and institutions can contribute to critical understandings of a colonial history with which Canada continues to reckon.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

31

Fish, Tamara Lynn. "Feminist traces : women and feminism in college composition and communication, 1963-1992 /." Digital version accessible at:, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

32

Turnage, Rachel Anne. "Finding the faces of our mothers every day feminism in Stephen King's "Dolores Claiborne" and "Gerald's game" /." Thesis, Montana State University, 2006. http://etd.lib.montana.edu/etd/2006/turnage/TurnageR0506.pdf.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

33

MacArthur, Lori Kinder. "John Rawls, Feminism, and the Gendered Self." PDXScholar, 1995. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/5030.

Full text

Abstract:

John Rawls's theory of justice, which he calls "justice as fairness," has proven to be most influential with regard to the course of contemporary political theory. In both of Rawls's books, A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, his aim was to present a theoretically-compelling defense of deontological liberalism, and to present a set of principles by which to fairly order a just society. While Rawls's project has attracted a fair number of proponents over the years, it has also been a popular target for liberal and nonliberal critics alike. A recurrent theme among these criticisms has been an objection with Rawls's conception of the self as presented in A Theory of Justice. This thesis will focus on feminists' criticisms of Rawls's conception of persons. In general, feminists contend that Rawlsian liberalism suffers a structural gender bias resulting from Rawls's conception of the self. Rawls's notion of the self, feminists argue, rests on male or masculine attributes. I will demonstrate in the course of this thesis that feminists' charges fail on two accounts. First, feminists do not present an accurate reading of Rawls's conception of persons in either A Theory of Justice or Political Liberalism. Second, in reviewing feminist approaches to gendering the self (which is integral to their critique), it will be shown that feminists are unable to gender the self in a theoretically defensible manner. Thus, feminists cannot make the claim that the Rawlsian self is a male or masculine concept. It follows from these twin defects that feminist contentions fail to prove that Rawls's theory is gender biased.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

34

Sears, John. "Gothic times : feminism and postmodernism in the novels of Angela Carter." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1993. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1816/.

Full text

Abstract:

The problematic relationship between feminism and postmodernism manifests itself, in contemporary fiction by women, as a conflict between political and aesthetic practices which is ultimately waged upon the ground of subjectivity. Angela Carter's novels offer an extended exploration of subjectivity which utilises, in many ways self consciously, the ongoing theorisation of subjectivity and related notions - notably desire, gender and power - which characterises contemporary feminist and postmodernist philosophy. This thesis offers a series of readings of Carter's novels which traces their engagement with particular aspects of the theorisation of subjectivity. It attempts to present Carter's novels as examples of how the aesthetic and the political can to a certain extent be combined, and of how feminist political practice can be both represented and problematised in the postmodernist fictional text, while postmodernist aesthetic practices are also exploited but problematised in and by that exploitation. The Introduction explores the relationship between feminist and postmodernist theories of the subject, through a survey of theorists from both 'camps' and a brief survey of contemporary women novelists, before discussing the critical neglect of Carter's fiction. Chapter 2 explores more extensively the confluence of feminist, postmodernist and psychoanalytic models of the subject and offers an exemplary reading of a short story by Carter, in order to demonstrate certain stylistic and thematic characteristics of her fiction. In particular, psychoanalytic models of subjectivity are examined. The succeeding two Chapters address Carter's early (pre-1972) novels in order to explore the development of her fictional career from its context of 1960s British fiction, and trace the progressive elaboration of certain thematic preoccupations in their nascent form. Three further Chapters individually address each novel in Carter's 'trilogy' so as to demonstrate how each text explores a particular aspect of the construction of the postmodern self. The Conclusion offers a reading of Carter's fiction as extensively engaged, both at a formal and a thematic level, with the deconstruction of conventional notions of the self in order to expose the political interests invested in those notions. Carter's last novel is also addressed in the context of this discussion, as are the ways in which Carter's fiction offers contributions to the feminist/postmodernist debate as discussed throughout the thesis. Throughout the thesis, extensive reference is made to critical and theoretical works which elucidate or impinge upon the themes addressed in Carter's novels, and Carter's own comments in interviews and in her critical texts are also utilised.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

35

Chou, Mei-ching Tammy, and 周美貞. "Feminism and the representations of teenaged girls in 20th century children's literature." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2005. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31940201.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

36

Siesing, Gina Michellle. "Fictional democracies : the formation of lesbian-feminist literary publics /." Digital version accessible at:, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

37

Brennan, Karen Morley. "Hysteria and the scene of feminine representation." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185047.

Full text

Abstract:

In the sense that women have been hystericized by male theories about femininity, Freudian psychoanalysis has functioned as an institution which seeks women's silence. Hysteria is the dis-ease of this silence; that is to say, it is a set of eloquent symptoms--a "writing" on the body--which signify women's oppression/repression. It is within this apparent contradiction that feminine representation takes place. The figure for such representation is, therefore, hysteria: working "in the gaps," "between the lines," telling the story of patriarchy only to disrupt this story, Frida Kahlo, Anais Nin, and Kathy Acker create feminine fictions. Kahlo's autobiographical painting is inextricable from her obsession with husband Diego Rivera, just as Nin's erotica is inextricable from her relationship with Henry Miller. Likewise, Acker's postmodern production is entangled in the androcentric agenda which attempts to recuperate patriarchy by appropriating the figure of Woman. The "engine" of transference/counter-transference becomes the most viable description of the hysterical process these women employ to represent themselves. The epilogue contains original fictions which extend comment on both hysteria and feminine representation.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

38

Garayta, Isabel. ""Womanhandling" the text : feminism, rewriting, and translation /." Digital version accessible at:, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

39

Meyer, Denis Charles. "Monde Flottant: médiation du Japon et thématique de la féminité dansl'oeuvre de Kikou Yamata (1897-1975)." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1998. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B20906742.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

40

Woodward, Wendy Vilma. "Narrative and gender in the novels of Christina Stead." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1987. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/21883.

Full text

Abstract:

Bibliography: pages 205-231.
This dissertation locates Christina Stead as a woman writer, who interrogates, both mimetically and poetically, the ideology of the dominant literary tradition. Because the formal narrative strategies, subtexts, and repressed discourses reveal inscriptions of Christina Stead's gender, the issues of language and power are central. A humanist feminist who anticipates a close bond between reader and text fails to overcome the problem of those narrative modes which alienate the readers of Stead's novels. Only a textual feminist who foregrounds the ideology of form recognizes that Stead's methods are dislocating in order to produce a reader who participates in the narrative process itself. For Stead, both women and men are entrapped within the prison-house of language, which becomes the locus of power struggles. The embedded artworks of four women artists, speak and write against the realism of the dominant discourse in the women's desires to assert their own sexuality, to postpone death, to connect with maternal figures, and to undermine androcentrism. These women, and others in Stead's canon, speak their difference. Male genderlects, however, attest to their dominance, endorsing an ideology of oppression in their competitiveness, their narcissism, and their theorizing. Christina Stead, herself, like the women artists she depicts, uses metaphor variously. She has metaphor convey the sexuality of the female characters and subvert the metaphorical commonplaces of the dominant tradition. Other metaphors reveal transcendent impulses, seemingly at odds with the narratives' usual deterministic ethos. In the plots and their endings Christina Stead also negotiates with the norms of the dominant literature. The formal structures correlate with the patterns of the characters' lives either in Bildungsromanen or in novels of repetition which metonymize deathly compulsions. Thus a reading which foregrounds narrative and gender, particularly in the embedded artworks, genderlects, metaphor, plot and closure, depicts a Christina Stead who has never been comprehended by masculist critics who fail to take cognizance of the woman writer's desires to combat the dominant literary tradition.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

41

Rose, Patricia Elizabeth. "The Role of medieval and matristic romance literature in spiritual feminism /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2001. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe16284.pdf.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

42

Waite, Rebecca S. L. "Katherine Anne Porter's "Old Mortality" and Virginia Woolf: A Study in Feminism." W&M ScholarWorks, 1998. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626152.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

43

McVeigh, Andrea Maureen. "An examination of the utopianism and feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.284362.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

44

Chou, Mei-ching Tammy. "Feminism and the representations of teenaged girls in 20th century children's literature." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2005. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B31940201.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

45

Mohanram, Radhika Thiruvalam. "Narrative techniques and subversion in the novels of Edith Wharton." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185791.

Full text

Abstract:

There are two branches of scholarship on Edith Wharton. One branch tends to focus upon a comparison of her novels with her life, and tends to document her work as that of a social historian and custodian of manners of old New York. The other branch, represented by feminist critics, uses a Marxist approach to read the thematics of Wharton's novels, and argues that her heroines are perched between the cusp of the "old" and the "new" woman. This study of Wharton extends and intertwines both these lines of scholarship to argue that Wharton's novels must be read against her life, and that the critical focus must be kept on her "new" woman, who, as the gendered speaking subject, speaks from the margins of cultural edifices. This study will focus on the idea of the splintered self, particularly the quandaries of the gendered self, an issue that shapes and determines the form of her narratives. This analysis shows that in the intersection of her fiction, her letters, and her autobiography, Wharton's gendered speaking subject enunciates a radical critique of the culture in which she lived.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

46

Buchanan, Brenda Marie. "HARPER LEE’S PINK PENITENTIARY: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, GO SET A WATCHMAN AND FEMINISM." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1606410740885098.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

47

Garcia, Alesia 1962. "Aztec Nation: History, inscription, and indigenista feminism in Chicana literature and political discourse." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/282854.

Full text

Abstract:

In the United States in the mid-1960's, Chicano cultural nationalists mobilized a generation by recuperating the history and mythology of the pre-conquest Aztecs as strategies of political resistance. Claiming themselves la Raza de Bronce the Bronze race) in their art, literature, and political discourse, Chicano activists and intellectuals distinguished themselves racially from white America and worked toward reunifying an indigenous culture that had been fragmented by colonization and diaspora. This discursive practice of reinscribing Mexican Indian ancestry is a political act that I refer to as narrating the Aztec Nation. Indigenous movement activists across the Americas have often reclaimed their pre-colonial histories. "Aztec Nation" examines the impact of Chicano cultural nationalist revisions of Mexican indigenismo (politics and aesthetics of the post-1910 indigenous movement) upon race, class, gender, and sexuality in contemporary Chicano and Chicana literature and political discourse. In my analysis of Chicano and Chicana political manifestos, graphic art, poetry, essays, and novels, I trace various Chicano cultural nationalist expressions of indigenista ideology throughout el movimiento (the Chicano movement). In particular, I develop critical approaches for rereading Chicana literature and activist journalism published in Chicano/a movement newspapers and journals between 1969 and 1979 that emphasize Chicana faminist reinventions of indigenismo as a transnational alternative to ideological limitations within the Chicano cultural nationalist and second wave white American feminist movements. I offer a new critical term: "Chicana indigenista feminism," which recognizes a distinct Chicana feminist discourse that is characterized by an ongoing negotiation of mestiza (mixed blood) identity. My investigation begins with analyses of Chicano cultural nationalist literature and political documents from 1964 and ends with a reevaluation of chicana indigenista feminist theories posited as recently as 1994.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

48

Ratcliffe, Krista L. "Words of one's own : toward a rhetoric of feminism in selected essays of Virginia Woolf and Adrienne Rich /." Connect to resource, 1988. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view.cgi?acc%5Fnum=osu1244661816.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

49

Dunn, Angela Frances. "The continental drift : Anglo-American and French theories of tradition and feminism." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63972.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

50

Hitchcott, Nicola Marie. "The unspoken self : feminism and cultural identity in African women's writing in French." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.321098.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

We offer discounts on all premium plans for authors whose works are included in thematic literature selections. Contact us to get a unique promo code!