Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies'
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Gieseler, Carly Michelle. "Performances of Gender and Sexuality in Extreme Sports Culture." Scholar Commons, 2012. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4049.
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The purpose of this study is to expose the strategies through which extreme sports constitute gender through exaggeration, parody, queering, resistance, and transcendence of normative gendered binaries. I interrogate how extreme sports operate on the margins of sport, gender, media, and lived experience to better understand the processes and performances that retain, reinforce, and resist our notions of normative gender, bodies, and sexuality. Starting with the claim that performance is constitutive of gender and culture, I will focus on how extreme sporting performances create significant commentaries on mainstream assumptions surrounding sporting gender, sexuality, and corporeality.
These commentaries function in extreme sports' spaces: to critique how extreme sports reclaim oppressive language of gendered binaries; to give voice to sexual silences in performances that lampoon, retrofit, and transcend those assumptions; and, for athletes to reclaim corporeality through strategies of parody, resistance, and elision. Taking up the transcendent possibilities for gender, body, and sexuality in extreme sports, I suggest that these are also places to reimagine a phallocentric combat myth, revisit issues of class and performance, and speak of the invisibility of racial difference.
Using critical analysis, interviews, and personal narrative, I explore performances of gender, sexuality, and the body in mediated and live extreme events beginning with the revival of the roller derby phenomenon exemplified in the 2007 documentary Hell on Wheels, the 2006 A&E series Rollergirls, and the multiple websites, leagues, and fictional representations such as 2009's Whip It. I then turn to MTV's pranktainment playground of Jackass, Viva la Bam and Nitro Circus as well as the traveling motocross spectacle Nuclear Cowboyz. Finally, I attend to the extreme bodies of ultradistance running through multiple texts and conversations with runners as well as my own participation in the 2011 Keys100 in the Florida Keys.
My study will not repeat the many questions, critiques, or concerns of foundational or traditional scholarship on sports, media, or risk. Instead, I focus on several key issues across the chapters: how sport is housed as always already a masculine realm, how mainstream and extreme sports do gender corporeally, and the ways extreme sports challenge our mainstream notions of sexualities.
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Kaye, Sherry Ms. "Women, Feminism, and Aging in Appalachia." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2013. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1238.
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Aging has become a problem for men and women in Western societies where youth is touted and revered as a standard of success by which individual value is measured and esteemed. Older women in particular find that as they age they face discrimination in the form of ageism and social diminution. The purpose of the study is to remedy a lack of scholarship on aging in Appalachia and to establish a precedent for future studies. A liberal, feminist approach is used to analyze the results of recorded interviews and to interpret transcripts of relevant data. The results of the analysis are mixed owing to the heterogeneity of the women interviewed and the differences in personal circumstances, socioeconomic status, and levels of education that influence their perceptions. Limitations of the study include: the size of the sample, and a lack of ethnic diversity.
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Ambady, Nalini. "Intention, Subject Gender, Victim and Perpetrator Gender, and the Attribution of Responsibility and Blame." W&M ScholarWorks, 1985. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625323.
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Waldman, David Kenneth. "A Situational Analysis of Human Rights and Cultural Effects on Gender Justice for Girls." ScholarWorks, 2011. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/913.
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Evidence suggests that despite repeated mandates by the United Nations (UN) for gender equality, local gender justice for girls has been elusive. Conceptually drawn from Merry's human rights-cultural particularism dissonance and Sen's comparative justice theories, the purpose of this grounded theory study, supported by Clarke's situational analysis, was to investigate how local religious and cultural practices impedes a gender equality outcome for girls. The primary research question involved identifying characteristics and situations of actors who focused solely on gender, culture, and human rights issues at the international and national level. A qualitative research design was used in this study of 8 experts in gender, human rights, and cultural issues who were interviewed in-depth in person and on the telephone. A line-by-line analysis of participants' responses identified specific sub theme situations related to the study that included sociocultural, socioeconomic, and intercultural elements. In addition, open and selected coding of participants' responses uncovered critical gender related themes that included democracy, political governance, and fatherhood responsibility. Implications for social change include indentifying a gender justice approach to human rights in which to implement integrated gender focused programs advocated by civil society and the UN to fill gaps left by governments. The findings suggest that obtaining children human rights is a function of the effect of a girl's access to gender justice and a culture's response to social development with an outcome of gender equality. This can result in advancement of gender justice, which research indicates can substantially improve local and global communities socially, economically, and politically.
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Kidd, Billy. "Friendship in young adult heterosexual romantic relationships." ScholarWorks, 2008. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/629.
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Friendship is one of the pillars that supports satisfying, long-term, romantic relationships and marriage. Yet little is known about how romantic friendship is contextually experienced. This lack of knowledge limits the options of researchers and therapists. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to further substantiate a romantic friendship construct. The research question asked how friendship is experienced in heterosexual romantic relationships. Participants in two West Coast metropolitan areas, ages 18 to 29, were selected by convenience sampling. As per Giorgi's phenomenological method, themes were abstracted from the transcripts of focus group and individual interviews. The themes were then shortened and entered into an Atlas.ti software environment. Finally, they were coded into psychological language and analyzed. A romantic friendship affiliation was shown to be the ideal style of relationship for future long-term partnering. Yet the participants' actual lived experiences in serious romantic-friendship relationships were quite limited. Instead, their focus was on establishing economic independence and a full sense of adult identity, as well as improving their communication skills. Therefore, individual cases could not be contrasted, and substantive conclusions were not reached regarding the actual behavioral expression of heterosexual romantic friendship affiliations. A contrast study in Birmingham, Alabama, with participants with high IQs, had similar results. Both studies were supported by psychoneuroendocrine, attachment, social constructionist, and system theories. An important implication for social change was that researchers must account for the participants' ambivalence concerning long-term partnering, their alternative life-course choices, and their desires for economic independence, when studying young, urban, mobile, single-adult romantic relationships.
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Smith, Clara A. "The black surrogate mother." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 2011. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/298.
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This study examines the literary depiction of the black surrogate mother as she is created according to the author’s race, gender, background, experience, biases and goals. Even though she is one of the most successful and popular characters of fiction, she is also controversial. Her reputation is iconic as well as dichotomous. For example, she is credited for the exemplary upbringing of her white charges, while simultaneously blamed for neglecting her own children. Particularly, this paper looks at three black surrogate mothers who conform to the prototypical, often stereotypical, image of the black surrogate mother: Mammy, Aunt Mammy Jane, and Dilsey. The critique substantiates that Mitchell and Faulkner, respectively, were invested in depicting Mammy and Dilsey as representatives of the real black surrogate mothers of their lives. Although, the character of Mammy Jane mirrors Mammy and Dilsey in her commitment and devotion to her white family, Chesnutt employs her as a cautionary warning to the blacks who refuse to accept change and progress after Emancipation. The other three black surrogate mothers, Sofia, Berenice, and Ondine, are antithetical to the stereotypical black surrogate mother. Sofia, an accidental maid, is representative of Walker’s intense efforts to deconstruct the image of the black surrogate mother that plagued her throughout her lifetime. Unlike most white authors, McCullers crafts Berenice as independent, strong, and autonomous, not just as a black surrogate mother of a white child. Morrison provides Ondine with a husband and daughter to be concerned with so that she cannot be cast as the stereotypically loving, nurturing black mother of white children. The conclusion of this study validates that the literary black surrogate mother is most often a creation based upon her author’s specific and personal biases and goals. In conjunction with the above assertion, the critique also contends that the real life black domestic has been and will continue to be significantly influenced by her fictional representative.
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Carter, Shemetra M. "Brown bodies have no glory: and exploration of black women's pornographic images from Sara Baartman to the present." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 2009. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/100.
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This study examines the pornographic images of black women from Sara Baartman, the “Venus Hottentot,” to the Middle Passage, the Auction Block, Plantation Life, Harlem Renaissance, Blaxpomploitation movies, mainstream contemporary cinema, and pornography. It is based on the premise that throughout history black women’s images have been pornographic. The researcher found that the pornographic images present in today’s visual media are outgrowths of the debilitating, racialized and sexualized images of black women historically. The conclusion drawn from the findings suggests that black women’s images in cinema continue to subjugate and objectify black women on and off screen.
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Amital, Eden Noa. "Developmental Measures: The Zika Virus, Microcephaly, and Histories of Global Northern State Anxieties." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1035.
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This project seeks to understand anxious and fearful responses to the Zika virus and microcephaly that began circulating widely in February, 2016. My project works to uncover racial histories embedded in the contemporary scientific and medical practice of measuring head circumference. By arguing that microcephaly is a racialized metric of civilizational and human development, I show that responses to Zika’s proliferation invoke state security because Global Northern states imagine microcephaly as a developmental, economic, and cultural lag. Dominant scientific and medical characterizations of microcephaly constitute modern, developed states as such by making political conceptions of normalcy and capacity seem natural: microcephaly is marked as “abnormal” in the scientific literature that instructs the measurement, surveillance, and diagnosis developmental and cognitive disabilities. Seemingly disparate contemporary moments and histories–among them the 2016 Rio Olympics, histories of racial purity and contamination, phrenology, and eighteenth-century racialized notions of sexuality—are inextricably linked to ideals and practices of white, bourgeois subjectivity. Like the diagnostic category of microcephaly, these ideals and practices are inherently unstable and insecure: they cannot exist nor materialize without the economic and social exploitation of racialized and disabled populations.
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Atencio, Evanie Eve. "Sexual Orientations and Perceptions of Jealousy." ScholarWorks, 2017. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/3747.
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This study examined the participants' level of jealousy towards their significant other and how it affects the longevity and commitment of their respective relationships. Based on a review of the literature, the research filled the gap of explaining the factor that affects the level of jealousy in monogamous relationships, particularly gender, and sexual orientation. Attachment theory was the theoretical construct that informed the research that addressed the gap in the literature. The research employed a quantitative method that used Rubin's Love Scale, Hendrick's Relationship Assessment Scale and Pfeiffer and Wong's Multidimensional Jealousy Scale. Self-reporting questionnaires and surveys were used to measure the attachment process of all participants who are involved in a romantic, close relationship. Participants were assessed using 2 different methods to determine their level of relationship satisfaction and perceived jealousy they exhibit. The dependent variables were the level of relationship satisfaction and jealousy while the independent variables were gender and sexual orientation. It was hypothesized that gender and sexual orientation can be main determinants to understand the dynamics of jealousy and relationship satisfaction in monogamous relationships. The sample of the study was 132 individuals who were currently involved in a romantic, close monogamous and committed relationship in Colorado. The data from this study were analyzed using MANOVA, correlation analysis, and central tendencies. The results indicated that heterosexual samples had the highest level of relationship satisfaction, and the lowest levels of jealousy. In contrast, the bisexual samples had the highest level of jealousy. Homosexual samples had the lowest level of jealousy and had significantly greater levels of relationship satisfaction. These results and the limitations of the study are discussed.
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Gianniny, Megan E. ""Other than Dead": Queering Vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Interview with the Vampire, and The Gilda Stories." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/382.
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This thesis examines three diverse vampire narratives from around the 1990s, arguing that the liminal figure of the vampire, forever in between life and death, is also then well-positioned to queer norms around gender, sexuality, and relationships. This queering, however, manifests differently in each narrative. My analysis looks at each of these three narratives in turn, while also considering how each text’s placement as mainstream or not mainstream affected the manifestation of the vampires’ queering.
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Vreeland, Amy N. ""Seventeen" Magazine as a Manual for "Doing Gender"." W&M ScholarWorks, 1996. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539624404.
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Spahr, Nancy. "Perceptions of Recent Male Nursing Graduates Regarding Gender Bias and Gender-Based Educational Barriers." ScholarWorks, 2011. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1024.
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Despite decades of important contributions by male nurses, nursing is still viewed as a feminine profession. Moreover, male nursing students continue to experience gender bias and gender-based educational barriers within schools of nursing. This has led to failure and drop-out rates much higher than those experienced by their female counterparts. The purposes of this quantitative survey study were to (a) explore the relationship between perceived gender bias, gender-based educational barriers within nursing education, and resiliency in recent male nursing graduates; and (b) to identify those gender-based barriers that were considered to be most prevalent and most important. A view of gender from a social constructivist approach framed the study. Two previously validated data collection tools, the Inventory of Male Friendliness in Nursing Programs-Short(c) (IMFNPS(c)) and the Brief Resilience Scale(c) (BRS(c)) were used to gather data from recent male nursing graduates (N = 97). The results demonstrated no significant correlation (Spearman rho = 0.1025, p = 0.3178), between mean scores on the IMFNPS and the BRS; however, overall mean resilience scores were high (M = 3.90, SD = 0.62). The gender-based educational barriers identified as being most prevalent and most important included (a) curriculum did not include a discussion of the historical contributions of male nurses, (b) clinical experiences were limited during the obstetrical rotation; and (c) male students feared that they would be accused of sexual inappropriateness when providing nursing care for female patients. Positive social change can occur for male nursing students if the most prevalent gender-based barriers are minimized or eliminated, men are provided with the appropriate skills to care for female patients, and resilience education is included within all nursing curricula.
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Fox, Christina. "Unpacking a Feminist Toolbox: A Case Study in Applying Antiracist Feminist Pedagogy." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1010.
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In this thesis, I invite readers to accompany me as I build a bridge that links my learning as a Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major in an elite private college back to the educational settings I grew up in. Here, I present a curriculum for middle school students in a private summer school I attended and worked at in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I chose to create a curriculum as a case study and a launching off point to learn how to bring feminist theory and critical social justice pedagogy back to my home and into my work. I hope to take intersectional feminist lenses and epistemologies forward into a career in K-8 teaching.
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Long, Brittany. "Creating Gender in Disney/Pixar's WALL-E." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2011. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/149.
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In this thesis I will look at Disney/Pixar’s creation and portrayal of gender in the film WALL-E. In particular I will be looking at two areas of interest: (1) The ways in which Disney/ Pixar anthropomorphizes and creates gender for WALL-E and EVE, the two main robots featured in the movie, and (2) whether or not Disney/Pixar’s representations of masculinity and femininity follow the stereotypical representations of male dominance or if this representations challenge this stereotype. In this chapter, I will begin with a brief overview of previous studies in the areas of anthropomorphism, gender representation in children’s media, and the effects of gender portrayal in children’s media. In Chapter 2 I will then move into a description of feminist criticism, the method by which I plan to analyze WALL-E. In Chapter 3, my analysis will be looking at Disney/Pixar’s creation of gender for WALL-E and EVE, the degree of male centeredness and male dominance present in WALL-E, and the ways in which females are marginalized and femininity is portrayed as non-normative.
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Tobin, Erin C. "Campy Feminisms: The Feminist Camp Gaze in Independent Film." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1594039952349499.
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LAU, Sui. "Why do girls stay silent? An exploratory research on young women's tolerance toward stranger harassment." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2015. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/soc_etd/37.
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Stranger harassment has been a rising issue regarding gender equality globally. Nevertheless, this issue has been rarely explored in Hong Kong. This study aims at discovering its prevalence, the frequency of its occurrences, local women’s reactions toward it and variables that may determine women’s reactions in a local context. Both personal qualities, including gender-related belief, self-objectification and body image, as well as situational qualities, namely perceived situational norms, are examined.
350 self- administered questionnaires were collected from local women aged between 18 and 25, in either pencil-and-paper or online forms. Results showed that more than 80% of respondents reported experiencing stranger harassment at least once in their lifetimes. The frequency of experiencing certain types of harassment decreases as the severity of harassment increases. Unlike the results found by previous studies, active coping strategy has been reported as the most common reaction adopted by local young women, following by passive, self-blaming and lastly benign coping strategy. As for personal qualities that may determine women’s reactions toward stranger harassment, self-objectification has been found to be positively linked to benign and self-blaming coping strategies, whereas benevolent sexism, which was one of the measurements of gender-related belief, is positively linked to self-blaming and passive coping strategies. Situational qualities were also found to be related to women’s reactions toward stranger harassment. Among the three items that measure perceived situational norms, item B – ‘women should expect stranger harassment in that setting’ is positively correlated to all three nonactive coping strategies. Item C – ‘people nearby will help me if I experience stranger harassment in that setting’ was also found to be positively correlated to active coping strategy. Explanations to the relationships between these variables and women’s coping strategies as well as practical implications are discussed.
This study contributes towards a greater understanding of stranger harassment and women’s reactions toward it, and fills gap in the literature on stranger harassment in the local context.
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Bailey, Judith Anne Bledsoe. ""Strength for the Journey": Feminist Theology and Baptist Women Pastors." W&M ScholarWorks, 2014. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623641.
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This dissertation grows out of an interest in the women who are pastors in formerly Southern Baptist churches. Because they continue to face opposition to their role as pastors I wanted to know the sources of their strength and determination. Specifically, how did feminism and feminist theology influence their decision to be pastors and their continuing ministry?;I interviewed twenty woman pastors in five different states representing two generations of pastors. These women are among the very few who grew up in Southern Baptist churches and are now pastors, since the Southern Baptist denomination has officially banned women from the pulpit since 1984. I found that their experience of call was nurtured in the church and their plans for ministry were encouraged until the plans included being pastors of churches. Faced with opposition, the women claimed their calling, joined networks of support and turned to feminist theology for alternative biblical interpretations, validation of their role as ecclesial leaders, and inspiration for non-hierarchical models of theology and ministry. These pastors embody feminist theology.;This dissertation explores Southern resistance to evangelicalism, the gendered and racial dynamics in the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as the post World War II changes wrought by the civil rights, women's movement and women's ordination movements; documents the ways Baptist women employed feminist theory and theology to counter the backlash and Southern Baptist controversy of the 1980s; and relates these women pastors' narratives of call, ordination and ministry.
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Lunt, Catherine. "Generational Revolt and the Spirit of Capitalism : Fanny Fern's Confrontation with Calvinism, Class, and Gender Ideology in Ruth Hall." W&M ScholarWorks, 1998. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539624381.
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CHENG, Wai Pang. "性別話語的協商 : 中國當代婦女研究對女性主義話語的接受與建構(1980-2000)." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2007. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/8.
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1980 年代以來，女性主義話語(Feminist Discourse)在中國當代婦女研究的引入與發展，無疑是 跟中國內地的再度現代化同步的，它既是中國現代化進程的時代產物，同時也這個現代化大計 的其中一個非常重要的構成部分。事實上，除了為新時期的中國人民帶來現代性的想像外(例如 西方女性主義話語的「性別平等」觀念以及科學性格)，女性主義話語亦實際上夾帶著「主體」、 「個體自由」等作為現代性標記的概念。
本論文將會借助知識考古學的方法(Archaeology of Knowledge)，透過話語分析(Discourse Analysis)，探討改革開放以來對女性主義話語的接受、建構與變遷，尤其是其間種種的文化協 商。本論文將會把焦點集中在中國當代婦女研究的頭兩個發展階段(1980 年代初至1993 年、1993 至2000 年)，從中分別抽取在中國當代女性主義話語中的一系列關鍵概念(key concepts)，透過 一些具有分析意義或重要的相關話語事件(discursive events)個案，追溯這個理論旅行的歷史過 程。
本論文提出的主要立論是﹕二十世紀八十年代以來中國當代婦女研究對於女性主義話語的接受 與建構，是一個充滿文化協商的過程，它開始於後文革與改革開放的雙重語境之中，面對中國 社會主義的遺產與債務，其間障礙重重，無法得到真正的開展，而直至1995 年聯合國第四次世 界婦女大會的舉行、聯合國成員國對《北京宣言》、《行動綱領》等兩份全球性的綱領文件的簽 定，契機才逐漸出現。可以這麼說，在這一個文化協商的過程中，借著歷史性的契機，中國當 代婦女研究透過對於女性主義話語的接受和建構，在新自由主義邏輯與社會主義的既有體制之 間，在話語以至體制上，為現實中的婦女以及自身建構了一個廻轉與生存的環境。
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Katona, Leah Andrea. "The Use of Violence as Feminist Rhetoric: Third-Wave Feminism in Tarantino's Kill Bill Films." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2008. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2759.
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For the purpose of this thesis, the main focus of the feminist rhetorical criticism method was specifically linked to gender-related power inequities. This method was especially appropriate for the analysis of how film violence is used as a feminist rhetorical strategy in the Kill Bill films. This thesis is more closely aligned with challenging rhetorical standards as it sought to identify feminist counter positions of rhetoric in film violence.
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Nasse, Nicholas B. "Effect of Gender on Bystander Intervention." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1016.
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Since the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 research on the effect of group size on bystander intervention has risen quite rapidly. While this research on the “bystander effect” has proven quite useful there are many other factors that affect bystander intervention. One such factor is the gender of the bystander. This paper reviews current & groundbreaking literature pertaining to the effect of gender on bystander intervention in individual, group, low-severity, and high-severity situations. A review of the literature suggests that gender has a significant effect on bystander intervention. Research results were mixed with some research showing that individually males were more helpful in high-severity situations, while women tended to be more helpful in low-severity situations. Other research showed male or females more helpful in situations of all severities. The effect of gender in group variables showed to be inconclusive. These mixed results demonstrate a need for further empirical research to clarify the strength of the effect when accounting for situational covariates.
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Kitchen, Erica Nicolien. "The Negotiation of Gender and Athleticism by Women Athletes." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2006. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/wsi_theses/7.
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Despite significant improvements in the last thirty years, the sporting world remains a masculine domain. Women athletes continue to face inequalities and criticism for crossing traditional gender lines. This study, which was grounded in Foucauldian, postmodern and social constructionist theories and a third wave feminist perspective, examines how women athletes understand gender and how gender, athleticism and body image intersect for them. Eleven women in various stages of their athletic careers participated in in-depth interviews. Women and girls are influenced to participate in sport by family and friends, have local role models, and value the social aspect of sport. They perceive a mismatch between gender norms and their own gender identities, however this mismatch did not create conflict. The women were satisfied with their body image, and their instrumental athletic goals and their physical accomplishments helped them to build positive body image. Finally, sport empowers these athletes, who use sport as a site for resisting and transforming gender norms.
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Whitlock, Mary Catherine. "Examining Forty Years of the Social Organization of Feminisms: Ethnography of Two Women’s Bookstores in the US South." Scholar Commons, 2017. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6979.
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At the height of their popularity in the 1990s, there were 140 feminist bookstores in the US and Canada (Onosaka 2006). Today, in 2017, there are thirteen left. Feminist bookstores began opening in the 1970s promoting ideas about lesbian separatism, woman only spaces, and nurturing a feminist community. Although many functioned as for-profit stores, many also operated community centers and non-profit organizations. Feminist bookstores provide an excellent site for scholars view decades of social movement organizing merging theory, practice, activism, and academics. As a social movement organization, feminist bookstores as are the quintessential node of academia and activism. Of the thirteen bookstores left, only two are located in the US South: Charis Books and More is in Atlanta, GA and Iris Books is in Gainesville, FL. During my yearlong ethnography, I gathered archival data, field notes and ethnographic data, interview data, and oral histories This is the first comprehensive ethnography of feminist bookstores which looks at the ways feminist theories are used by social movement organizations to create, maintain, and alter collective identities and to reach feminist movement goals. Through my study of these two bookstore owners, workers, and boards, I illuminate the social organization of feminist social movement organizations in the South. In chapter two, I show how the bookstores see the existence of a tangible space to allow for contestation about collective identities and “home work” as a successful social movement outcome. In chapter three, I find that participants believe that southern identity, which is steeped in understands of the past, have created a need for the bookstore’s longevities and for progressive communities. In chapter four, I demonstrate that due to the unique positioning of the histories of racism and slavery in the South, these feminist organizations believe a central problem of feminism is to actively name and confront racism within both the South and feminism. In the fifth chapter, using two gender disputes a decade a part, I argue that the narrative of gender progress understood as inclusion of queer issues as well as transgender and gender variant identities touted by many scholars (Whittier 1995; Jagose 1996; Armstrong and Crage 2006) inaccurately represents the intricacies within practices of feminism. When it comes to feminist identities, politics, and civil rights discourses, our current political climate has illustrated that there is not room for linear narratives of progress—within movements or individual identities. Focusing on the combination of histories and demographics, with an emphasis on race and queerness, this project analyzes how the US South provides a complex space to understand the challenges of intersectional and white feminist communities and social movements.
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Groves, Joan. "Often treated harshly: Girls and young women in 1957 Perth." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2009. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1880.
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This thesis takes inspiration from a submission by a Western Australian seventeen year old single relinquishing mother to the 2004 Senate Inquiry into the institutionalisation of children, Forgotten Australians. It researches various aspects of life for young women and teenage girls in Perth in 1957, that contrast with the idealised youthful femininity promoted by women’s magazines such as The Australian Women’s Weekly. It discusses status offences in the context of child welfare legislation and the criminalisation of youthful sexual activity as well as the ostracism of unmarried mothers by both the community and the state. Specifically confined to the Perth locale the thesis also examines the culture of two long-standing Perth institutions for allegedly errant young women. I contend that the “tolerance, fair play and compassion for those in need” touted by then Prime Minister John Howard in 2006 as inherent Australian values did not exist in the period researched and that many young women suffered under harsh and repressive attitudes. I conclude that the promotion of a conservative political ideology promoting a mythic classless society, which was nevertheless based on middle-class values, saw the collusion of some parents in this harsh treatment of young women. I also conclude that the numbers of young women involved in “moral delinquency” were, in contrast to public perception and the concern of women police, quite small, but nevertheless served a scapegoat purpose in a time when social anxiety existed within increasing prosperity.
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Epstein, Rebecca. "Bartleby the Original the Queer." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2010. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/6.
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Insofar as human beings try to “know” we must define concepts, objects, actions. We label, we distinguish between one concept and another, and in doing this, we make categories. Labels are categories. Our categories are imperfect. Our labels are always relative, defined by and dependent on that which they exclude. The boundaries of our terms, what “counts” as something or what is considered to be within a certain term, are always shifting. Our definitions change based on our method of analysis. For instance, the definition of “human” is different in different disciplines, like science, philosophy, sociology, economics, etc. Given their instability, categories can only be rough approximations of what we mean, and not always very good ones at that. To our detriment, we sometimes forget that they are approximations, and already laden with meaning of their own. Michel Foucault and other thinkers have pointed out that some of our ways of knowing, for example, the scientific method, have become synonymous with truth, objectivity or neutrality. When this happens, we cease to question those ways of knowing, and the questions within those ways of knowing. We forget that the kinds of questions we ask determine the kinds of answers we find. Then, when something that does not prove easily “knowable” or categorizable troubles our ways of knowing, we call it trouble. Instead of remembering that our methods are imperfect, we think that the thing we want to know about is flawed, wrong or bad. This thesis is a reclamation of the flawed, the failed, the queer, a revaluation of it as something positive and productive. It is a reminder to be critical of our categories, and to rule them rather than be ruled by them. Categories are tools, not truth.
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Riera, Taryn. "Online Feminisms: Feminist Community Building and Activism in a Digital Age." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/653.
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This thesis explores both what feminism looks like in a digital age, as well as how the Internet and technology inform the ways in which feminists interact, build communities, and form identities. I found that online feminist spaces are built as communities of validation and support, education and empowerment, as well as spaces of radicalization and contention. Ultimately my thesis leads toward a new understanding of feminist activism that incorporates the unique characteristics and abilities of online feminism.
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Tolley, Rebecca. "Review of Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray! : Feminist Visions for a Just World. Edited by M. Jacqui Alexander, Lisa Albrecht, Sharon Day, and others." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2003. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/5602.
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Lellinger, Richard Eric. "Gender Differences in Knowledge of and Interest in Current Social and Political Events." W&M ScholarWorks, 1996. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539720300.
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Sandberg, Linn. "Getting Intimate : A Feminist Analysis of Old Age, Masculinity and Sexuality." Doctoral thesis, Linköpings universitet, Tema Genus, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-67197.
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This thesis focuses on the intersections of masculinity, old age and sexuality from the perspectives of old men themselves, how they understand and experience sex and sexuality in later life. The study uses qualitative in-depth interviews and body diaries, an exploratory method that asked men write about their bodies in everyday life. Twenty-two men, born between 1922 and 1942, participated in the study. The aim of the thesis is two-fold: firstly, to study sexual subjectivities of old men, how old men articulate and make meaning around sexuality in later life. Secondly, the study aims to explore theoretically what a male body may become in relation to ageing; in what ways the ageing male body could be a site for rethinking masculinity and the male body. This aim was inspired by feminist theories in dialogue with the deleuzian concept becoming. Similarly to gender, age is understood to take shape and become intelligible in social and cultural contexts. Furthermore, the thesis stresses the significance of the specificities of the ageing body to the shaping of masculinity, sexuality and subjectivity. The body is therefore discussed as an “open materiality”, beyond the binaries of culture and nature/materiality. This thesis discusses the concepts intimacy and touch as central to how old men’s sexual subjectivities take shape, allowing for alternative conceptualisations of sexuality beyond erection and intercourse. Intimacy and touch are understood and discussed in several different ways. By orienting themselves to touch and intimacy the old men emerged as more mature, unselfish and with more serene sexual desires. This also involved them distancing themselves from the younger man/other men, whom they perceived as more selfish, inconsiderate and with stronger sexual desires. Intimacy and touch could in this respect be understood as resources for shaping desirable heterosexual masculinity. An orientation to intimacy and touch enabled old men to appear as neither asexual nor as “dirty” old men. But the study also suggests that a turn to intimacy and touch may open up possibilities for rethinking and reconfiguring sexuality, masculinity and the male body. The ageing body then need not be understood as an obstacle but as an enabling site that provides opportunities for intimacy and touch. Moreover, the thesis presents affirmative old age as an alternative conceptualisation of old age, beyond both the discourses of successful ageing and the discourses of old age as negativity and decline. As a theory of difference and bodily specificity, affirmative old age may be of interest for further feminist theorising.Denna avhandling undersöker maskulinitet, hög ålder (jmfr. engelskans old age) och sexualitet med utgångspunkt i äldre mäns egna erfarenheter av och sätt att skapa mening kring sex och sexualitet på äldre dar. I studien har 22 män födda mellan 1922 och 1942 deltagit. Studien bygger på två metoder, kvalitativ djupintervju samt den explorativa metoden kroppsdagböcker, där män ombetts skriva dagbok kring upplevelser av kroppen i det dagliga livet. Studien har två övergripande syften, dels ett empiriskt: att studera sexuell subjektivitet hos äldre män; mäns erfarenheter och förståelser kring sex och sexualitet när man är/blir gammal. Dels ett mer teoretiskt syfte: att utforska nya och skilda sätt att tänka och förstå maskulinitet och den manliga kroppen, vad den manliga kroppen kan bli i relation till åldrande. Det senare syftet har inspirerats utifrån feministisk teori och det deleuzianska begreppet blivande. I studien betraktas ålder och att bli gammal på liknande sätt som genus och sexualitet som något som skapas och blir begripligt socialt och kulturellt. Studien betonar dock även betydelsen av den åldrande kroppens särdrag för hur maskulinitet, sexualitet och subjektivitet kan förstås och skapas. Kroppen diskuteras därför som en ”öppen materialitet”, bortom binära uppdelningar mellan kultur och natur/materialitet. I avhandlingen diskuteras intimitet och beröring som centrala begrepp för hur äldre mäns sexuella subjektivitet tar form, som alternativa sätt att förstå sexualitet bortom erektion och samlag. Intimitet och beröring kan förstås på flera olika sätt. Å ena sidan som resurser genom vilka män kan framstå som önskvärda män. Genom att tala om sig själva som mer hänsynstagande, mogna och osjälviska och genom att distansera sig från den yngre mannens/ andra mäns mer egoistiska och starka sexuella lust, framstår den äldre mannen som lagom sexuell, som varken asexuell eller ”snuskgubbe”. Men intimitet och beröring kan även förstås som något som omskapar och ger nya innebörder åt maskulinitet, den manliga kroppen och sexualitet. Kroppens åldrande behöver då inte nödvändigtvis betraktas som ett hinder utan som något som kan skapa nya möjligheter till intimitet och beröring. I avhandlingen presenteras även begreppet affirmative old age, affirmativt åldrande, som ett alternativt sätt att förstå och diskutera hög ålder bortom både diskurser om framgångsrikt åldrande och diskurser om hög ålder som negativitet och förfall. Som en teori om skillnad och kroppens särdrag kan affirmative old age vara av tänkbart intresse för vidare feministisk teoretisering.
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Chaves, Lina Salete. "Sexually Explicit, Socially Empowered: Sexual Liberation and Feminist Discourse in 1960s Playboy and Cosmopolitan." Scholar Commons, 2011. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3041.
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In this thesis, I provide an analysis of 1960s American popular culture by examining Playboy, "The Playboy Philosophy," Cosmopolitan, and Sex and the Single Girl. These cultural artifacts furthered the feminist movement by challenging gender structures and sexuality. I discuss how these publications focused on the advancement of the individual through careerism, consumerism and sexuality. These publications assisted in challenging and breaking down various aspects of gender and sexual boundaries and assisted in reworking social limitations that kept women from advancing themselves outside of the pre-set gender roles of domesticity. Regardless of the traditional feminist critique of Hugh Hefner and Helen Gurley Brown, this thesis argues that in fact these popular culture icons and their publications worked to re-negotiate sexual liberation, which assisted in furthering women's liberation. This thesis analyzes the writings and advertisements of these publications and shows that Hugh Hefner and Helen Gurley Brown have positive correlations to feminist discourse.
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Yang, Jiling. "In Search of Martha Root: An American Baha'i Feminist and Peace Advocate in the Early Twentieth Century." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2007. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/wsi_theses/11.
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Martha Root (1872-1939) was an exceptional religious and spiritual activist, a leading figure in the international women's peace movement, and a new organism of a new world in the early twentieth century. This thesis represents Martha Root from three aspects: the early life of Martha Root, her four world teaching trips from 1919 to 1939, with a focus on her peace advocacy, and an investigation into her gender awareness and identity construction by reflecting on Tahirih the Pure, Iran's Greatest Woman, Martha Root's only book.
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Cheak, Brittany Lee. "You Don't Talk About It." TopSCHOLAR®, 2017. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2054.
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I am a poet. As an undergraduate, I explored the other genres of writing—I wrote short stories, attempted a novel-length piece, and crafted essays. While I found plays interesting, I could not write one satisfactorily. But poetry fit like an extension of myself. I could fuse my voice and my ideas in stanzas and images, and I found myself weighing words and sounds as I constructed the lines. It was only natural that I pursue mastery in poetry when I returned for my Masters of Fine Arts.
The material presented in this document is the culmination of two years of specialized study in how to craft poetry. In those two years, I have maintained the idea that this collection be relatable, feminist, and emotionally powerful. While the poetry has certainly evolved over that two-year span, the ideas kept each piece connected to my envisioned whole.
The poems revolve around different obsessions I harbored while writing. I meditate on various relationships, personal experiences, and striking images and feelings I felt deserved attention. Of course, this collection is intensely personal, but I believe that it is through the personal that we can reach the general, which is what makes these poems accessible.
I also used this manuscript as a device for exploration and play. Some poems follow strict formal guidelines, and others meander to their destination. Some are short and concise, others long and nebulous. But each is refined and given exceptional thought.
I believe that readers will clearly see how much study was necessary to write these poems; it is through reading the works of the great poets before me that I was able to come to them. My influences show, not only in allusions, but in the choices I’ve made and the structure of the poems themselves.
I submit this manuscript as the culmination of my work, in partial fulfilment of a
Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing.
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Zarza, Jena Amber. "Representations of Feminist Theory and Gender Issues in Introductory-Level Sociology Textbooks." Thesis, Portland State University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10748392.
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A review of sociological literature reveals a long history of the study of gender, and an increased popularity in the application of feminist theories and ideas to sociological research. As transmitters of the discipline, introductory-level textbooks have been heavily studied over the past quarter-century to assess the accuracy with which they portray the field of sociology. In order to update the literature available on the topic, this study analyzed the current cohort of top-selling, introductory-level sociology textbooks for coverage of feminist theory and gender issues. Each of the ten textbooks was read cover-to-cover and coded for both latent and manifest data using a coding sheet. The researcher found a notable increase in the incidences of both feminist theories and gender issues within the current cohort of textbooks. The specific treatment of each topic varied widely across books, and within each book the topics were presented one-dimensionally and were ghettoized to feminized chapters. Definitions of feminist theory and feminism within the books primarily described liberal feminism and little else, and discussions of both feminist theory and gender were most heavily featured in the gender and family chapters. Generally, the gender issues present in the textbook sample were mostly to do with women, and erased non-binary experiences of gender. Additionally, an intersectional approach to discussions of gender was applied about one-third of the time. This study concludes that the current textbook cohort is still far from the ideal model, and the feminization and marginalization of these topics is likely due to the textbook production cycle and the specific phenomenon of textual isomorphism.
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Szucs, Eszter. "Space for Girls: Possibilities of Feminist Agency and Political Engagement on the Internet." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2010. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/wsi_theses/18.
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This thesis analyzes the teen-targeted website gURL.com, which is committed to providing safe space for young girls to explore different aspects of girlhood. I primarily focus on girls’ comments and conversations posted on the message boards in order to trace how teens mediate and extend the borders of the popular conceptualizations of contemporary girlhood. I interpret young women's online activities within the discursive framework of the complex relation between Girl Culture and feminism. Without overvaluing the freedom of online environments, I assume that the relatively unregulated space of the Internet enables girls to step outside the dominant stereotypes and discover alternative modes of doing feminist activism. I argue that these new venues of political engagement are adequate ways of resistance within the specific era of postmodern global capitalism.
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Nelli, Debora Kay. "Gender Representations in U.S. Ed.D. Dissertations: A Feminist Content Analysis." PDXScholar, 2014. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1700.
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Educational access, achievement and opportunity for students and educators in U.S. educational institutions is influenced and often limited by gender. Although the U.S. Glass Ceiling Commission reports that the gender equity values, beliefs and commitments of institutional leaders are a key factor in reducing institutional gender inequities (U.S. Dept of Labor, 1995), very little is known about the current preparation or evaluation of educational leadership values, especially at the doctoral level (Hess & Kelly, 2007, Grogan & Andrews, 2002; Levine, 2005; Murphy & Vriesenga, 2004).
This study utilized feminist content analysis as a conceptual framework and research methodology to examine the collective gender equity values, beliefs and commitments of educational leaders represented in a key textual artifact of doctoral study, the Educational Doctorate (Ed.D.) dissertation.
This sequential mixed method content analysis examines 15,014 dissertation titles of Ed.D dissertations completed from 112 U.S. public doctoral granting institutions between 1998-2007 to identify 1185 dissertations indicating gender in their title. A purposeful sample of 177 abstracts was selected from emergent themes for further analysis. The final research phase examined a purposeful sample of 9 complete dissertation texts selected from the analysis of the abstracts. The research focused on two questions, 1.) How prevalent is gender focused inquiry in recent Ed.D. dissertation scholarship, from 1998-2007? 2.) What are the cultural gender beliefs and gender conceptualizations represented in Ed.D. dissertation scholarship from 1998-2007?
The findings indicate gender focused inquiry is not prevalent in Ed.D. dissertation titles, in public doctoral granting institutions from 1998-2007; only 7.4 % indicated any mention of gender. The findings also revealed great institutional variation in the prevalence of gender focused dissertations in the 112 institutions examined.
Three themes also emerged from patterns of representations illuminating problematic gender cultural beliefs, 1,) male leadership and intellectual authority is privileged, 2.) Black males are "othered", 3.) Latinas are silenced. Three additional problematic themes of gender bias are revealed because of scanty representation in the sample, 1.) LGTBIQ issues silenced, 2.) Title IX trivialized and 3.) Feminism marginalized. Each of these three gender focused categories represented less than 1% of the Ed.D. dissertations completed in U.S. public doctoral granting universities between 1998-2007.
The findings have implications for program planning of doctoral Ed. D. programs for the development of gender equity dispositions. The findings also contribute to the discipline by adding to the knowledge of Ed. D. dissertation content. This report includes recommendation for future research and practice.
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Porter, Deborah Denise Smith. "A study of the perceptions of female leaders' qualifications, leadership style, and effectiveness among elective and selective leaders." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 2009. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/44.
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This study examined the perceptions of female leaders' qualifications, leadership style, and effectiveness to lead. Eighty-nine leaders were surveyed using the Leader Perception Questionnaire Inventory (LPQ-i) on a four-point Likert scale and four random selected phone interviews. This study focused on several conceptual frameworks: first, role congruity theory which examined the incongruence of female leaders; second, contingency and transformational theory, which focuses on behavior style based on qualifications, leadership styles, and effectiveness of female leader's; and lastly, feminist theory which examined gender related issues of leadership. This study details current and historical context of female leader's influence in the workplace throughout history. This study utilized a (qualitative and quantitative) mixed methods approach to gain a new perspective using a phi and chi test to test the hypotheses. The findings concluded that women are continually disproportionately outnumbered by a large margin of (62%) males and '37%) females in high level leadership positions. Also, the findings concluded that men and women hold similar views of female leadership.
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Smith, Erica J. "Humble Servants, Prideful Patriarchs: Submission and Servanthood in Rhetoric of the Promise Keepers." W&M ScholarWorks, 2002. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626344.
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Ulrich, Taylor Jade. "James Deen: The Feminist Enigma." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/364.
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James Deen and his distinct following of fans has allowed for a discussion of what pornography means to women and teenage girls to be teased out. His fans are vocal, public and unashamed in their fascination with him, dismissing previously held ideologies that porn be a clearly private activity that is shameful to be addressed publicly; especially for women. James Deen’s uniquely unintimidating demeanor, both physically and personally, has made him more forgivable for his mistakes (i.e. rape “joke” Tweets), evidence of an intense desire for women to find porn that they can relate to and positively consume. Despite his shortcomings, James Deen is immensely popular among women and because of this, brings to light my critique of the limited definition of feminist pornography as it stands today in academia.
James Deen works against the grain of the porn industry, representing a new type of porn star that lends women their own gaze and further access to genuine pleasure intended for them. When James Deen breaks the common subject-object barrier of mainstream porn by pleasuring women on-screen, he disrupts the visual coding that holds the patriarchal gaze together at its seams, and works to produce female pleasure as a sexual truth. Not only that, but his consciousness around consent further allows women to be able to identify sexual pleasure with roles of submission. This construction of power-knowledge-pleasure to include women, and enthusiastic consent, aligns him with feminist porn aims to primarily focus on women, sexual openness and not shame, and sex positivity and not negativity.
Moving beyond the foci of James Deen’s films and his personality, the theory of disidentification is integral to understanding some women’s relationship with him, and how even the more complicated aspects of porn should be considered for inclusion within the definition of feminist porn. To ignore this survival tactic is to silence women’s participation in an already exclusionary industry. To include disidentificatory practices in feminist porn is to take into account the convoluted, nonlinear and illogical ways women and teenage girls are consuming porn. When the definition is opened up to include all porn that “works on and against dominant ideology” (as James Deen’s does), experienced anxieties due to inconsistencies between one’s erotics and politics can be relieved, fantasy is further understood as a real and validated sexual tool, and masochism’s role in porn is logically brought into this dialogue. When fantasy is accepted as a complex and mysterious phenomenon, disenfranchised demographics such as women are given license. Masochism is no longer limited to an absent and repressed tendency that places women in a punished state. James Deen’s masochistic aesthetic threatens patriarchal dogma and offers up something new to the world of pornography.
While James Deen does not profess to be a feminist, his porn practices and personality set him apart from the majority of the mainstream porn world and within the feminist porn sphere. In the end, the good that he is doing in providing women and teenage girls an option in an otherwise barren landscape of phallocentric porn should be enough to earn him academic scholarship and inclusion in the realm of feminist pornography.
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Booth, Maria Dale. "The "Extraordinary" Case of James Allen: A Study of Gender and Sexuality in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain." W&M ScholarWorks, 2011. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626656.
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Ehner, Carolyn Michelle. "Gender Ideology at the Lowell Boott Mills: A Material Culture Analysis." W&M ScholarWorks, 1999. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626203.
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Burgess, Sarah Stewart. "Divine fluidity: shifts of gender and sexuality in conservative Christian communities." Pomona College, 2009. http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/u?/stc,60.
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This thesis draws on ethnographic research from three communities of conservative Christian women who find empowerment and agency through their religious traditions. Two communities are politically active, outspoken women who also believe strongly in "traditional" roles for women, and one community idealizes conservative standards of sexuality while accepting women who work as sex workers. These women did not view their positions as contradictory, rather, they used religious beliefs and religious practices to enact, embody or explain their complex genders and sexualities. This thesis draws on ethnographic, feminist and queer theories while showcasing the diversity within a movement largely believed to be monolithic. The researcher aims to encourage more dialogue between liberal feminists and conservative Christians.
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Malone, Dana Mesrobian. "FROM SINGLE TO SERIOUS: RELATIONSHIPS, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY AT TWO AMERICAN EVANGELICAL UNIVERSITIES." UKnowledge, 2014. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/epe_etds/16.
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This study investigated the ways in which students attending American evangelical colleges form their heterosexually intimate relationships as well as how they craft gendered and religious performances along the way. Data was generated at two evangelical universities in the southern region of the United States over the 2011-2012 academic year using a combination of qualitative methods, including focus groups, individual interviews, participant observation, artifact analysis, and archival research. Findings suggest students employ a three-phase process, which begins within their peer networks, advances via social media to an intermediate phase, where students assess compatibility in a number of areas, and then potentially progresses into a committed, and oftentimes serious, dating relationship. This process is inherently patriarchal and encourages diffidence as well as shrewdness in many respects related to women’s demeanor, communication, and sexuality. Both women and men utilize a number of gendered and religious strategies to successfully navigate the dating scene amidst the backdrop of an evangelical milieu. Various aspects of campus culture, which influence students’ relational, gendered, and religious practices, are also explored, including the lack of casual dating, modesty expectations, purity imperatives, and an emphasis on (heterosexual) relationships. The implications of which create a high stakes environment surrounding both cross-sex friendships and romantic relationships where sexuality is sidelined and authenticity can be hard to find.
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Clark, Opal. "Opal Clark on Directing Stop Kiss An Exploration of the Directorial Process." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3286.
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The intent of this thesis and thesis project was to execute a successful run of the play, Stop Kiss by Diana Son while achieving the playwright’s intended message. Opal Clark directed this production of Stop Kiss at East Tennessee State University under special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc. It was performed to sold out audiences in ETSU Theatre and Dance Studio 205 October 2-7, 2017. The play explores experiences and hostility toward same sex couples, their relationships with one another and how one individual discovers sexuality. The discovery and actualization of the characters’ struggles were communicated in the play using student performers and crew members. The project was documented through a series of journal entries written by the director, who was guided by mentor Professor Robert Funk. The director details the exploration and process in daily journal entries. Additionally, a feminist criticism of the script further explores the portrayal of the plotline. The consequences and implications of dramatic choices within the context of the play are analyzed within this section.
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Simmons, Devario D. "Interpreting the Costume Designs of In the Next Room through Victorian Fashions of the 1890s." VCU Scholars Compass, 2016. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4277.
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This thesis explores and describes key factors in my process of designing the costumes for In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play by Sarah Ruhl. The document encompasses justification of decisions made through the researching and producing of period costumes for live performance and the challenges and obstacles faced to make seamless transitions during performance.
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Nichols, Caroline Carpenter. "Celebrity and the national body: Encounters with the exotic in late nineteenth-century America." W&M ScholarWorks, 2008. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623336.
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This project uses the remarkable careers of anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, stunt reporter Nellie Bly, anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, and war correspondent Richard Harding Davis, as well as literary texts by Davis and Henry James, to frame a set of questions about the politics and implications of cultural crossover at the end of the nineteenth century. Through their work as participant observers of racial, ethnic and social Others, these reporters, reformers, and authors were gradually transformed into charismatic exotics. More than simply mediating between a mainstream (usually white, middle-class) audience and a more exotic people or place, these individuals inserted themselves into the story and ultimately became its star. Putting their own bodies to work in this manner---as evidence and even spectacle---often meant transgressing the limits of what was socially acceptable for their gender, race, or class. The ensuing scrutiny and speculation, together with their efforts to manage this precarious celebrity, provide insight into the complex cultural tensions underlying America's emergence as a modern nation and imperial power.;As a white man who appeared to "go native," Cushing struggled to reaffirm his status as a serious scholar and dispel rumors that he had succumbed to the intoxicating pleasures of playing Indian. The divergent personas he adopted to describe his experience living as a Zuni suggest that the role of a Smithsonian scientist in primitive drag was an inherently unstable one at this moment. By blurring the boundary between "savage" and "civilized," Cushing threatened to disrupt the self-Other dichotomy which lay at the heart of America's emerging relationship to the exotic.;Despite the titillating social dislocations that her undercover stunts entailed, Bly, unlike Cushing, maintained a coherent performance of self and emphatic bodily presence. By filtering all experience through the lens of her own consciousness and asserting her middle-class femininity, Bly forged what I term personality armor, enabling her to float through the metropolis as an untainted observer while mesmerizing readers with a seemingly unabashed display of self.;Davis' work chronicling America's burgeoning empire posed little threat to his social standing, instead linking him to the gentlemen explorers who populated his fiction. While deeply implicated in the nation's outward imperial drive, Davis also sought to reassert boundaries, particularly those that protected the male body. to see him, as I do, as a proto Boy Scout, allows us to appreciate how freighted his early adventures were with the burden of future expectations.;Seizing upon the new visibility of spectacle lynchings, Wells adeptly manipulated the mechanisms of the exotic to "other" the white South before an external, international audience during and after her two British lecture tours. In addition to advancing the anti-lynching cause, the tours marked a turning point in Wells' sense of her own authority as a public figure. Her reception abroad as an American Negro lady, an oxymoron in the Jim Crow South, paradoxically emboldened her to adopt tactics more suited to a race man.
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Wood, Jillian. "The Glass Ceiling is Not Broken: Gender Equity Issues among Faculty in Higher Education." Chapman University Digital Commons, 2016. http://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/ces_dissertations/6.
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Gender discrimination is an ongoing topic, including discrimination that occurs in higher education. Previous studies have shown female faculty experience a variety of workplace discrimination including sexual harassment/bullying, salary disparities, and lack of worklife balance. This dissertation aimed to analyze equity issues for female faculty at a private university. The researcher utilized a narrative inquiry methodology, conducting interviews with five full-time female faculty. The purpose of this dissertation was to understand the participants’ everyday stories and lived experiences. The researcher utilized critical feminist theory and leadership theory to examine the notion of equity at this campus. The findings, shown through narrative profiles, demonstrate the five women have experienced equity issues at the institution including workplace bullying and lack of work-life balance. It also found the women utilize a self-silencing voice, struggling between challenging equity issues while maintaining their positions at the university. In addition, gender issues experienced prior to working at the university were discussed, demonstrating larger societal issues in relation to gender equity. This dissertation adds to the current studies on equity issues in higher education by focusing on the participants’ stories rather than quantitative or coded data. In addition, it bridged two seemingly disparate frameworks, critical feminist theory and leadership theory, to demonstrate how these concepts can work toward alleviating equity issues in organizations.
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Iverson, Katy. "Honor, Gender and the Law: Defense Strategies during the Spanish Inquisition, 1526-1532." W&M ScholarWorks, 2010. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626631.
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Crist, Rachel Lee. "What's New Pussyhat? Men, Feminism, and Social Identity." PDXScholar, 2018. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4477.
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Current understandings of feminism do not seek to dissuade men from feminism as a movement; moreover, men's inclusion in the feminist movement is seen as paramount to achieving equality and dismantling all forms of hegemonic power. Past research has shown that identification with a social movement is a strong predictor for participation in social change, more so than belonging to a disadvantaged social category. Despite this, there is nascent literature on how men define, identify as, and practice feminism. This study draws from a thematic analysis of three focus groups of self-identified males to investigate their self-identification as feminist. Using social identity theory, the analysis reveals the varied and nuanced ways participants define and understand feminism. The analysis further reveals how men construct their role in feminism and feel they can participate in the feminist movement. Participants expressed feeling excluded from feminism, despite noting that current articulations of feminism aim to include men. Additionally, participants expressed they could enact a feminist practice without identifying as a feminist. Overall, these findings illuminate some of the ways men possibly identify with the feminist movement and negotiate identifying as a feminist. This study illustrates that men's relationship to feminism is influenced not only by their own identities, but also by the perception of others. This study also raises the question of how well social identity theory captures the effect of perceived acceptance by prototypical group members.
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Sargent, Kate. "Talking and Not Talking: Sexual Education and Ethics for Young Women within the Evangelical Movement in America." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2011. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/96.
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In this paper I intend to discuss the ways in which sex, sexuality, and the female body are treated in the discourse within the Evangelical movement, particularly with regard to teenaged and young girls. I will focus on the way young women are talked to about sex, and how they are socialized and educated to regard sexuality and gender. I will spend most of my time with the popular literature aimed at young women, analyzing the underlying theology and theory at work. I will extrapolate, through the use of the (admittedly limited) data regarding sexual activity among young Evangelicals, including but not limited to the age of first sex, and the rate of non-penetrative sex acts, the results of the current ethic, and how it is affecting the lives of young women in America. By the end of this paper I hope to be able to suggest an alternative ethic, one that is sex-positive while still leaving open the option to teach abstinent behavior.
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Purdy, Shelby R. "Spaces of Visibility and Identity." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/346.
Full textAbstract:
“Spaces of Visibility and Identity” is an exploration on how being immersed in constant visibility has an effect on an individual’s identity. Visibility is not a narrow term meant to signify solely observation; rather, visibility is the state of existing within a world that does not allow for total isolation. To exist within the world is to be visible to others, and this visibility is inescapable. Visibility can be seen as a presentation or a disclosure of oneself to other beings. Existing within the world inevitably implies that one is presenting oneself to others, whether or not the presentation is deliberate. I will be going over two different spaces of visibility throughout this paper: “space of surveillance” and “space of appearance.” The “space of surveillance,” discussed by Michel Foucault, is the space where normative standards of identity are created through discursive acts. This space is meant to control, coerce, and normalize. The “space of surveillance” is important for an exploration of identity formation, because it cannot be ignored that each individual is disclosing themselves in the context of a pre-existing world. This ‘pre-existing world’ is full of normative standards that affect identity formation, but it does not have to ultimately determine an identity. The “space of appearance,” as articulated by Hannah Arendt, is meant to be a supplement to the dogmatic normative standards created within a “space of surveillance.” The “space of appearance” gives those that do not, or do not want to, adhere to the normative standards created by the “space of surveillance” a space to disclose an identity that can challenge and rearticulate what is consider normal or culturally intelligible in the first place. The “space of appearance” is not meant to replace the “space of surveillance;” rather, it has the “space of surveillance” as a contextual background that can be challenged. I have found that both spaces of visibility are necessary for an exploration on identity formation, and I have used gender identity as a concrete example to exemplify both spaces.