Digital Commons Network^™

Land, Gender, And The Politics Of Identity Formation: Uncovering Hispana/Mexicana Voices In The Southwest, Karen R. Roybal

American Studies ETDs

The southwestern United States has an exceptional history that makes the region a prime focus for study concentrating on culture, tradition, language and land. As an area closely tied to the concept of conquest, the Southwest has had its share of issues related to colonization, imperialism, Manifest Destiny, and cultural erasure. This study focuses on the Southwest as a region that is closely linked to the land as it relates to the formation of identities of its people. Mexican Americans in the Southwest have historically experienced struggle, particularly after 1848 and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, when …

The Girl In The Postfeminist World: Rethinking The Impact Of Chick-Lit Fiction, Sarah T. O'Connor

Honors Theses

This thesis discusses “chick-lit” series in relation to popular culture, adolescent development, and feminist theory. The role of the female in the United States is currently dominated by both neo-liberal and conservative postfeminist ideology. Postfeminism advocates female empowerment via consumption, sexual attractiveness and physical beauty, while at the same time valorizing passive femininity and the roles of wife and mother. Chick-lit fiction provides a means by which postfeminist messages can be examined as they are presented to adolescent girl audiences, and reveals that the influence of this discourse over female subjectivity is inherently patriarchal. As a genre, chick lit is …

Androcentrism As A Fallacy Of Argumentation, Catherine Hundleby, Claudio Duran

OSSA Conference Archive

The deep operation of androcentrism in scientific argumentation demands recognition as a form of fallacy. On Walton’s (1995) account, fallacies are serious mistakes in argumentation that employ presumptions acceptable in other circumstances. There are only isolated cases in which androcentric pre-sumptions are acceptable, and I argue that androcentrism affects an overarching theme of generalization in science rather than an isolated scheme. Androcentrism is related to other ways of treating privileged people as exemplary humans, whose negative impact on processes of argumentation can be described as the fallacy of “appeal to the standard.”

"God Must Have Been A Feminist To Make Me": Writings From The Girls Of El Hogar La Buena Esperanza, Anna Lapera

Latin American Studies ETDs

My thesis, 'God Must Have Been a Feminist to Make Me': Writings From the Girls of El Hogar la Buena Esperanza is a feminist ethnography of a poetry workshop I conducted over three months in el Hogar la Buena Esperanza, a home for under-privileged indigenous girls located within a cloistered Carmelite Convent in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon. Based on seventeen girls and over fourteen different creative writing activities, I explore how their writings reveal particular life histories in Latin America. From reimagining and re-writing stories and memories of their long departed hometowns, re-writing small-town histories; from exploring the cultural borders …

In Defense Of The Unmother: Rhetoric, Motherhood, And Social Networking, Rebecca Ingalls

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Wanted: kind, nurturing, compassionate females. Childless women need not apply. Link to video: Rhetoric, Christmas Cards, and Infertility: A Season of Silence

La Lucha Por La Libertad Y La Identidad: La Casa De Los Espíritus Como Comentario Sobre La Evolución Del Movimiento Feminista En Chile, Mary Stirchak

World Languages and Cultures

This project will analyze Isabel Allende's novel La casa de los espíritus and provide insight into how the novel functions as a commentary about the feminist movement in Chile during the 20^th century. Though La casa de los espíritus is a work of fiction, the project will attempt to draw connections between the experiences of the female characters in the novel and the experiences of women in real life. The actions of each female character represent the struggles of real women as the attempt to subvert the oppression of the patriarchal system. Each woman in the novel attempts to …

Waves Of Feminism: Discussions And Disruptions, Melissa Ooten, Emily Miller

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

As an educator and a student situated in women, gender and sexuality studies, we find it of great importance to analyze our relationship with each other and with our fellow students and teachers. As both student and teacher, we are already actively engaged in social justice work. As a teacher, Melissa wants not only to support and nourish the work of her students, but she also wants to give students the theoretical tools necessarily to fully analyze and frame their experiences. In other words, she wants them to understand the connections between theory and practice in order to be informed …

A Situational Analysis Of Human Rights And Cultural Effects On Gender Justice For Girls, David Kenneth Waldman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

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 …

Studying Rape Through A Theorectical Lens: The Development Of A Serial Rape Model Using Fbi Data, Brooke Smith

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The current study assessed whether there is an empirical foundation for different theories of rape including the feminist, evolutionary, social disorganization, psychopathy, and rapist type theories. Using a data set from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on serial rapists collected in the early 1990's, the study included two phases. The first phase assessed whether FBI data supported the previously mentioned theories of rape by analyzing associations between individual variables that are thought to support each theory. Support was demonstrated for the evolutionary and psychopathy theories. Using MPlus statistical software to accommodate the multi-level nature of the data, the second …

A Case Study Of Selected Female Elementary School Leaders' Perspectives On The, Julie D. Hasson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The transition from the comfort of a familiar role, that of teacher, to the discomfort of a new role, that of school administrator, is a transformative process. Transforming oneself requires leaving what is known and venturing into the unknown. Researchers have illuminated women's struggle to attain school leadership positions, but the transformation of females making this change in professional roles is seldom addressed in leadership literature. Although context cannot be ignored, there are some challenges common to many women undergoing this transformation.

Situated in the elementary education setting, this study investigated the perspectives of female, early-career administrators who recently experienced …