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A Woman Is A Dish For The Gods': Shakespeare's Use Of Myth To Criticize Patriarchy, Marissa Polascak Dec 2012

A Woman Is A Dish For The Gods': Shakespeare's Use Of Myth To Criticize Patriarchy, Marissa Polascak

Honors Theses

William Shakespeare's canon is famous throughout the world, studied by scholars as well as read by laymen for leisure. These scholars and laymen value Shakespeare's works for their content and form, at the same time that they criticize them for their flaws. On the surface, it is clear that Shakespeare touches on many issues in his poems and plays, such as love and war, but hidden underneath are messages that are ambiguous. These hidden messages are a product of censorship. During the Renaissance, Sir Francis Walsingham established the State apparatus which helped to protect society against counter-Reformation activists. This apparatus …


Gendered Governing: Leadership Experiences Of Seven Women Former Governors, Deborah A. Havens Nov 2012

Gendered Governing: Leadership Experiences Of Seven Women Former Governors, Deborah A. Havens

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Fifty years ago, Second Wave feminists theorized that American culture was dominated by patriarchal systems that subordinated women to second class citizenship status (Brown, 1988; Dolan, Deckman & Swers, 2010). In the 21st century, women have become highly visible candidates for office on a national level. Since 1925, 31 women have served as governors; 20 were elected to office, three replaced their husbands, and eight became governor by Constitutional succession (CAWP, 2012). Many women of the Third Wave generation, or Post-feminists, reject the theory that male oppression continues to influence women’s life choices, some claiming that there is no need …


Mothers At Work: Reconstruction And Deconstruction Of Patriarchy In Gone With The Wind, Catherine Willa Staley Jan 2012

Mothers At Work: Reconstruction And Deconstruction Of Patriarchy In Gone With The Wind, Catherine Willa Staley

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In this thesis, I explore the performances of motherhood in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and how those performances conflict with culturally constructed expectations of that role. An analysis of Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Wilkes, and how each woman compares to the South’s model for motherhood, reveals implications that extend beyond the novel’s Civil War setting to reveal the ongoing negotiation of modern readers still living within patriarchal conceptions of mothering. In Chapter 1, I outline the novel’s spectrum of motherhood, which is composed of characters who nurture and manage others. Each individual on that spectrum contributes to or …


Illusionary Strength; An Analysis Of Female Empowerment In Science Fiction And Horror Films In Fatal Attraction, Aliens, And The Stepford Wives, Jennifer Lynn Ruben Jan 2012

Illusionary Strength; An Analysis Of Female Empowerment In Science Fiction And Horror Films In Fatal Attraction, Aliens, And The Stepford Wives, Jennifer Lynn Ruben

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

An expanded notion of empowerment along with three specific theories-Beauvoir's concept of the Other, Speciesism, Cyborg Feminism-is used to analyze the female protagonists and antagonists in the following 1970's and 1980's science fiction and horror films: Fatal Attraction, Aliens, and The Stepford Wives. The female protagonists are allowed more access to power as human beings pitted against nonhuman antagonists, but these characters are ultimately not empowering for women because they reinforce rather than undermine the patriarchal structure. Implications for further research encourage a critique of female empowerment based on both gender and species.