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The Experiences Of Second-Generation South Asian Female Students Who Are Attending Universities In Canada, Monisha Aurora

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study examines the experiences of second-generation South Asian women attending university. It also focuses on the ways in which race, gender, and class intersect in the participants’ lives. The research questions being investigated are as follows: (1) How does cultural identity inform young South Asian women’s experiences at home and at school? (2) What types of social boundaries do second-generation South Asian immigrant women negotiate, and how do they change based on their surroundings? (3) Does their socioeconomic status have an impact on these negotiations? The methods adopted were case study qualitative research. The findings discussed some of the …

Mining, Resistance And Livelihood In Rural Bangladesh, Md Rashedul Alam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 2006, over fifty thousand people in the Phulbari Sub-District of Bangladesh mobilized against an open-pit coal mining-project that posed serious environmental and social risks. The state authorities negotiated with the protesters intensively over four days to reach an agreement. However, the state failed to fulfill the agreement, and the protest movement continued. The agrarian communities successfully halted the mining project for the last nine years. My research aims to understand how the protesters resisted this project. My objectives have been to explore the practices of a grassroots movement, attendant transformations in the sociopolitical landscape and role of the state …

"When [S]He Is Working [S]He Is Not At Home": Challenging Assumptions About Remote Work, Eric Lohman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this monograph thesis, I explore how at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the prospects for telework, rather than following a straightforward and inexorably rising trajectory, became strangely complex and conflicted. This project explores the reasons for the apparently contradictory and certainly confusing state of telework. It is about these contradictions, and more specifically about who benefits from telework arrangements, and under what conditions these arrangements are deployed.

The study adopts a mixture of qualitative methodologies, including political economic analysis, reviews of popular press articles, and in-depth interviews. The political economic analysis explores the costs …

Green Berets And Gay Deceivers: The New Left, The Vietnam Draft And American Masculinity, Anna L. Zuschlag

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

When masculinity is predicated on violence and military service is a man’s civic duty, then draft resistance becomes a doubly radical act. Men who refuse to take up arms for their nation threaten, at least potentially, both its political and gender order. This dissertation explores American masculinity during and after the Vietnam War, by analyzing cultural representations of, and responses to, the U.S. Selective Service System. At a time when mainstream Hollywood would not touch the Vietnam War, a generation of independent filmmakers, artists and agitators produced a number of remarkable films and documents dealing with the war, the draft …

Reading Boredom In Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, And Christina Rossetti, Rebekah Ann Lamb

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Focusing on the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poetry and paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the early poetry of William Morris and the poetry and prose of Christina Rossetti, this thesis examines how boredom emerges in Victorian aesthetic culture. Drawing from writings in visual culture, gender studies, social history, and recent returns to new formalism in Victorian studies, this thesis attends to how renderings of boredom open up our understanding of the relationship between poetry, art, temporality, embodiment, and explorations of everyday life and living in Victorian England.

Chapter One of my thesis is an introductory explanation of boredom …

Politics, Ethics, And Aesthetic Play In Diasporic Iranian Visual Literature: Neshat, Satrapi, Bashi, Soltani, Mehraneh Ebrahimi-Eshratabadi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Does the study of aesthetics create response-ability or have tangible effects in the real world? Does the ambivalent form of word/images created by diaspora artists change our gaze toward the Other and the landscape of the possible? In the age of a global march against abstract terror which seems to be only reinforcing terrorism, the sign “Muslim-woman” along with the concept of democracy have become rallying cries for novel civilizing-missions. Leaving aside the failed efforts of littérature engagée, I resonate with Jacques Rancière that the study of aesthetics is intertwined with that of politics. Gayatri Spivak, too, asserts that …

For Keeps-Sake: Women's Experiences With Elective Prenatal Ultrasound Imaging In Canada, Jennifer Chisholm

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores women’s experiences with the practice of elective prenatal ultrasound imaging in Canada. Ultrasound technology was first introduced into obstetric practice in the late 1950s and has, since then, become a routine part of antenatal healthcare. More recently, ultrasound technology has expanded into private industry, with many businesses now offering keepsake or entertainment ultrasound to pregnant women and their families. I begin by offering a brief historical account of the development and diffusion of obstetric ultrasound, and situating the elective ultrasound industry within current debates about non-medical applications of ultrasound technology. Through in-depth interviews with women had who …

Crossing The Law: Trans Activism, Aleatory Materialism, And The Analyst's Discourse, Christopher M. Bomba

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines contingency to elucidate transgender activism’s leadership in radical politics. I take up Louis Althusser’s theory of aleatory materialism to politicize everyday encounters. Trans activists gain a parallax view through gendered (mis)recognition that reveals the structure of ideology’s vanishing points. By contrast, I criticize a cisgendered viewpoint and demonstrate the logical errors that result in transphobic behavior through Jacques Lacan’s version of the prisoner’s dilemma. I conclude to theorize trans activism’s engagement with the state through Lacanian analytic technique. This technique does not result in traditional “treatment,” but instead fuels activism with knowledge of the structures that must …

Turning To See Otherwise, Jennifer L. Martin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis dossier, in combination with an exhibition at the McIntosh Gallery, considers whether an archival collection can generate an alternative narrative other than that which may already exist in the original film and photographic documents. Rather than represent a singular truth, I seek to articulate the transformative realities of collective memory by re-orienting the material for broader viewer identification. I have mined photographic and filmic materials from a personal family archive to focus fragments that specifically record the gesture of the turning face—the turning towards the observer. This “turn” then includes both the turn towards the initial film-maker embedded …

Fantasizing Disability: Representation Of Loss And Limitation In Popular Television And Film, Jeffrey M. Preston

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Most media texts currently being developed with disabled characters are crafted by individuals who are nondisabled and, as such, are based on what the nondisabled think it would be like to be disabled—a perception that is informed by the fantasy of disability. The fantasy of disability is a net of ideas, created by no single individual but perpetuated and circulated between subjects and which seeks to contain the danger of limitation, to subject it to a set of societal preconceived notions about what it means to be disabled and how a person is expected to act and react to the …

Liquidation, Amanda A. Oppedisano

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier is an accompanying document to my MFA thesis exhibition, Liquidation (2014). Within my dossier, I articulate the formal and material considerations of my art making practice in which everyday household goods acquired primarily from the dollar store are manipulated in order to consider the “abject” qualities inherent to these items. Observed through the theoretical work of Julia Kristeva in her essay, Powers of Horror, the “abject” as a term is critically and historically applied to the art objects I create in order to explore the dollar store as the basis for my material selection, but also as a …

A Transpositive Approach To Therapy With Transgender Clients: An Exploration Of Therapists' Subjective Experiences, Ronnie M. Ali

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The longstanding tradition of pathologizing and erasing transgender individuals in psychology has the potential to enter into therapy with transgender clients in insidious and destructive ways. To address this polemic, clinicians have articulated a transpositive approach to working with transgender clients that fosters the client’s right to self-determination. The present study explores the subjective experiences of three therapists working with transgender clients in order to learn how transpositivity materializes in their practices. Utilizing a case study methodology, and cross-case analysis, the study demonstrates that these therapists engaged in self-directed learning and advocacy, demonstrated flexibility in their approach, and were open …

The Public School Washroom As Heterotopia: Gendered Spatiality And Subjectification, Jennifer C. Ingrey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation investigates how secondary school students understand their own gendered subjectivity and the discursive and material processes that contribute to it through visual artifacts (photovoice projects) the students created of school washroom spaces. Drawing primarily on Foucault’s analytics of disciplinary space and the heterotopia (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986), I view the washroom space as producing and perpetuating gendered power relations that invert, suspect, or neutralize those existing in exterior spaces. Deploying both a Foucauldian and Butlerian analytics, these visual student responses are framed as confessional, queering or (de)subjugating (Stryker, 2006) and cartographic products, and hence, understood in terms of …

Talking Nonsense: Spiritual Mediums And Female Subjectivity In Victorian And Edwardian Canada, Claudie Massicotte

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study traces the development of mediumship in Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Especially popular among women, this practice offered them an important space of expression. Concealing their own identities under spiritual possession, mediums ubiquitously invoked well-known historical figures in séances to transmit their opinions on current issues. As such, they were able to promote new ideas to interested audiences without claiming responsibility for their potentially controversial words.

While many studies have been conducted in the United States, Britain, and France regarding the significant role of mediumship in the emergence of women on the political scene, …

An Autoethnographical Tapestry Of Feminist Reflection On My Journey Of A Fitness Model Physique, Stephanie A. Paplinskie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Weight training and fitness competitions are increasingly popular activities for many women seeking an aesthetically fit body. This thesis entails a critical reflection of the various factors surrounding my personal decision to partake in body sculpting, examining how these factors parallel the experience of other women in the fitness industry. Using a feminist theoretical framework and autoethnography, a history of feminist theory is incorporated to demonstrate some of the various perspectives surrounding women bodies. Two challenges for women are discussed in this paper: i) the fear of fat, and how it is connected to a woman’s initial decision to attend …

"Being Stuck": Understanding The Health-Related And Everyday Lived Experiences Of Young Mothers In Rexdale, Ontario Through A Social Determinants Framework, Jaspreet Kaur

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the ways the health-related and everyday lived experiences of young mothers are shaped by various social determinants, and in the context of their neighbourhood. Using a critical qualitative methodology, five mothers between the ages of 17 to 19 were interviewed from Rexdale, a neighbourhood in the City of Toronto characterized by a number of social risk factors(e.g. high rates of visible minorities, unemployment, and teen mothers). In-depth thematic analysis led to the emergence of four themes: 1) Living in Rexdale: Representations and realities; 2) Leaving Rexdale and wanting something …

Queer(Ing) Politics And Practices: Contemporary Art In Homonationalist Times, Cierra A. Webster

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project investigates homonationalism through three different art practices. Briefly, homonationalism is a term to articulate the imbricated systems of contemporary mainstream LGBT politics and nationalist politics. The first article, Queering the Canon: Museum Politics and Hide/Seek at the Smithsonian, unpacks the first major exhibition of gay artwork in America as an example of homonationalist processes in the United States. The second article, entitled Colonial Queeries: Centering a Two-Spirit Critique of Homonationalism, analyses Canadian artist Kent Monkman’s paintings and focuses on the political potential of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. (Pink)Washing the Conflict in Zero Degrees of Separation is …

Climate Change And Human Rights: A Case Study Of Vulnerability And Adaptation In Coastal Communities In Lagos, Nigeria., Idowu M. Ajibade

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Lagos, Nigeria is one the world’s megacities at risk from climate change. Communities along the coast have been hit hard by floods, storm surges, and rising seas, due to the city’s geographic location, inadequate infrastructures, and poor urban governance. These factors together with social inequality have been known to shape vulnerability to climatic hazards but less understood is the role of human rights.

The objective of this thesis is to develop a grounded understanding of the links between human rights and the vulnerability of people to climate change impacts (i.e. floods and storm surges). The study combined qualitative and quantitative …

Thinking With Arendt: Authenticity, Gender And Leadership, Rita A. Gardiner

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation, I examine the conceptual underpinnings of a new management theory called authentic leadership to discover why so little attention has been paid to gender. In much of the scholarly literature on authentic leadership, I suggest there is a failure to interrogate the complexities surrounding the concept of authenticity, especially as it relates to the diversity of lived experience. Rather than encouraging a genuine approach to leadership, this theory's normative foundation is more likely to encourage social conformity. By contrast, I suggest that Hannah Arendt's insights into uniqueness provide a different lens from which to consider how lived …

El Espacio Torcido En La Narrativa Mexicana De Temática Homosexual: 1977-1997, Juan Carlos Rocha Osornio

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines how the narratives of Raúl Rodríguez Cetina, Luis Zapata, Mario Bellatin, and Gerardo Guiza Lemus recreate what I call Espacio Torcido (Queer Space) in which they aim (some more than others) at questioning and deconstructing the values of the heteronormative system: ambiguity, pleasure, rupture, and the quest for legitimacy compose this space. While each author takes a different approach, it can be said that they all participate in the construction of the history of the gay community in Mexico as seen in the latter part of the XX century: 1977-1997. In particular, this study looks at how …

From Nizam To Nation: The Representation Of Partition In Literary Narratives About Hyderabad, Deccan, Nazia Akhtar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines literary representations of the Partition of India in 1947 as it affected the southern princely state of Hyderabad, Deccan. Through my focus on Hyderabad, I interrogate and reject the assumption generally made in scholarly analyses of Partition that this momentous, life-changing event did not significantly affect South India. In doing so, I also question the origins of the self-professed secular, egalitarian, and democratic Indian nation by shedding light on the invasion of Hyderabad and the subsequent erasure of this event from Indian historiography and mainstream culture.

Different literary texts respond differently to this fraught, suppressed history. Engaging …

Online Social Breast-Working: Representations Of Breast Milk Sharing In The 21st Century, Cari L. Rotstein

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the controversial subject of online breast milk sharing through the lens of Social Positioning Theory and interpretative repertoire analysis. I examine medical statements, Facebook wall posts on the Human Milk 4 Human Babies Global group and selected Canadian provincial groups, as well as a selection of Canadian print news media coverage pertaining to milk sharing to discover how this practice is discussed. I argue that the medical literature discusses milk sharing as unsafe, informal, and a generally unacceptable means of obtaining breast milk, whereas the HM4HB group members discuss it as a safe, intimate experience between donor …

Day Of The Woman?: Feminism & Rape-Revenge Films, Kayley A. Viteo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the horror film sub-genre of ‘rape revenge’ for the ways it reflects and helps to constitute broader public debates about women and feminism. In order to do so, it examines two well-known representatives of the sub-genre, Last House on the Left and I Spit On Your Grave. Both of these films were initially made in 1972 and 1978 respectively and were recently remade in 2009 and 2010. This thesis examines both the originals and the remakes of these films within and against their socio-historical context, with a specific focus on dominant discussions about feminism and women taking …

Relational Viewing: Affect, Trauma And The Viewer In Contemporary Autobiographical Art, Matthew Ryan Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the communicative relationship between contemporary autobiographical art and the viewer. By analyzing the work of six artists, Richard Billingham, Jaret Belliveau, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Lisa Steele and Bas Jan Ader, I maintain that lived experience and personal history condition the way viewers respond to autobiographical art. I turn to literary theory as a critical methodology to argue that autobiographical art operates as a catalyst for identification, memory and self-discovery. I use affect and trauma theory to demonstrate how artwork produces meaning and discourse through the viewer’s feelings, emotions and bodily sensations. Consequently, I survey the importance …

Born Again Hard : Transgender Subjectivity In Paul Chadwick's Concrete, Justin Raymond

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Born Again explores how the alien-hybrid character Concrete from the eponymous comic can be used to generate understanding of transgender (trans) lives. I use Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's concept of reparative reading in order to formulate an understanding of Concrete that generates new theoretical insight into trans lives, while also ensuring the development of what Viviane Namaste calls “ethical trans theory.” Born Again argues that even though Concrete does not “look like a transgender person is supposed to,” his experiences of gender dissonance and queer optimism allow him to act as a source of amelioration and pleasure for readers who are …

Architectures Of The Veil: The Representation Of The Veil And Zenanas In Pakistani Feminists' Texts, Amber Fatima Riaz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation, which works at the intersections of feminist theory, architectural theory and postcolonial literary theory, examines the spatiality of the zenana and the burqa as represented in Pakistani literary and cultural texts. I propose that the burqa creates a portable closet, an interstitial, liminal, “third space” that allows Pakistani (secluded and veiled) women to not only traverse the borders between the private (female, domestic) and public (male) spaces, but to also signal chastity and religiosity while in the public, and semi-public spaces of the cities and villages of Pakistan. I argue that the dupatta, the chador and the hijab …

Hearing Women’S Voices: Understanding Women's Stories Of Violence From The Perspective Of Strength, Kayla M. Janes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this study was to understand women's experiences of violence from the perspective of strength. Women who had experienced woman abuse participated, identifying common themes that emerged relating to their strengths and resilience that helped them survive their traumatic experiences, as well as their posttraumatic growth. Interviews were conducted with women who were involved in an adult education program for women who had experienced woman abuse. All of the women in this study were suffering distress and mental health concerns related to their experiences of violence; however all of them showed resilience and posttraumatic growth in areas of …

Total Men!: Literature, Nationalism, And Mascuilinity In Early Canada, Aaron J. Schneider

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis identifies the figure of the totally competent man (a model of early Canadian masculinity distinguished by an unprecedented breadth of competence) as a recurrent feature of early Canadian literary texts, and examines the development and representation of this figure with particular attention to its deployment as a model of national manhood by early Canadian literary nationalists. It argues that the production of a broadly competent model of manhood as an ideal model of national manhood by early Canadian literary nationalists was an anxious work carried out in the face of real and sensible threats to the new nation …

From Marriage Revolution To Revolutionary Marriage: Marriage Practice Of The Chinese Communist Party In Modern Era, 1910s-1950s, Wei Xu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation focuses on exploring the myth of ―revolutionary marriage‖, a popular and lasting marriage tradition of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The concept of ―revolutionary marriage‖ came out of a marriage revolution initiated by the May Fourth radicals in order to challenge the traditional marriage system. This term was then borrowed by the early Chinese Communists who used it to describe their socialist marriage ideal. However, regarding the CCP‘s marriage policy, there was always a gap between the progressive ideals and the conservative realities. In every piece of propaganda the CCP swore to completely overthrow the feudal arranged marriage …