Digital Commons Network^™

"That Damned Morality": Willa Cather's Reaction Against Victorian Female Roles In O Pioneers! And Tje Song Of The Lark, Sarah Elizabeth Moore Horne

Theses & Honors Papers

Reacting against Victorian ideal that influenced her childhood, Cather creates numerous gender reversal throughout her fiction. This thesis notes the gender ironies contained within her works to conclude that Cather was herself a liberal, demanding that society’s status quo be eliminated. While America’s political climate did affect Cather’s work, her political ideologies remain difficult to interpret when contrasted with her fiction. Throughout much of her fiction, Cather attempts to raise the social status of certain facets of society and dispels many myths concerning gender.

Sexual Politics And Subversion: Feminist Utopia As Praxis, Jennifer Sue Boyers

Dissertations

Literary studies meets up with sociology as feminist utopian fiction Is examined for what sociologist Dorothy Smith (1990) labels normal narrative and counter-narrative articulations of gendered structures of power. The method of analytical Induction Is used both In the choosing of the four novels for study and the resulting textual analysis. Ursula Le Guln's The dispossessed (1974), Marge Plercy's Woman on the edge of time (1976), Suzy McKee Chamas's Motherllnes (1978), and Sally Miller Gearhart's The wandereround (1979) are examined for their constructions of dystopian normal narratives, as well as for their reconstructions of subversive utopian counter-narratives, both articulating gendered …

A Portrayal Of The Work Life Of Tenured African-American Female Faculty Working Within Historically White, Public Institutions Of Higher Education In Virginia, Carol A. Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to portray the experiences of African-American tenured female faculty employed within Historically White, public institutions of higher education in Virginia. This study is a portrait of the career paths, teaching experiences, institutional experiences, community and personal activities, work life, and the future of African-Americans. The study focused on personal experiences and provided a grounded recording for other African-American female faculty members employed within comparable institutions of higher education. The interviews also addressed educational preparation, mentoring, expectations, frustrations, difficulties, cultural and collegial experiences. Participants' audio taped responses were transcribed. Similarities that evolved from the discussions …

Career Development In Young Adult Women: Educational Influences On Self-Esteem, John E. Montreal

MALS Final Projects, 1995-2019

The study of the college experience and student self-esteem contributes to the understanding of human development. There are biological, environmental, and cognitive factors that influence student behavior. For women, the process is often preordained by gender roles shaped by men. The effects play a strong part in career development. This paper explores social, psychological, and biological research that informs human behavior. Studies about college influences on women's self-concept and self-esteem reveal the factors involved in their career persistence, and decision-making. The evidence exposes the process that embodies student development, more than it suggests conclusions about ' career development. Helen Astin's …

The Causes And Consequences Of Migration: The Case Of Chinese Women, Janet L. Warren

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to determine the causes and consequences of migration. Specifically, it focuses on Chinese women. Using 1988 survey data collected from Chinese respondents in Hubei, a province located in central China, questions about migration status, reasons for migration and contraceptive use were utilized. Analyses reveal that Chinese females migrate for non-economic reasons. This study also revealed that migrants want fewer children than non-migrants, migrants use contraceptives more than non-migrants, and migrants use different methods of contraception than non-migrants. This research also suggests that age, education, and parity makes a difference in the respondents' want for …

Women And The Superintendency: Personal And Professional Demographics And The Perceptions Of Barriers And Strategies Held By Women Superintendents, Deanna Mary Anderson

Doctoral Dissertations

The major purposes of this study were to identify the personal and professional characteristics of women superintendents and to identify women superintendents' perception of barriers and successful strategies.

The survey instrument, Questionnaire on Perceptions of Barriers and Strategies Impacting on Women Securing the Superintendency, was sent to 360 women superintendents with a response rate of 60%. Frequency distributions showed that the average respondent was married between the ages of 50 and 59, was white, holds a doctoral degree, works in district with 1,000 to 2,999 students and has been in her current position for 1 to 4 years.

Frequency distributions …

Giving Her A Voice: The Representation Of The Black Woman In Four Short Stories, Jennifer Sheeler

Theses & Honors Papers

Black women have had to work very hard to pull themselves up the social ladder. Literature reflects society, and the black female experience in the South is a part of American society which has not been overlooked by its literature. This thesis examines short stories by the similarities and tempered differences to develop a closer understanding of the true black female experience. The examination found that the gender and race of each author of the four short stories does not correspond to the amount of power each one gives to his or her black female character the way the reader …

Female Sexuality And The Discourse Of Power, Seham Abd El Salam Mohammed

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Perspectives On History: New Orleans's Women In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! And Anne Rice's The Feast Of All Saints, Stacey Morgan Ford

Theses & Honors Papers

The thesis examines the perspectives on history in New Orleans ' women in William Faulkner 's Absalom, Absalom and Anne Rice's The Feast of All Saints. This thesis looks at historical sources, the most detailed and unbiased of which have been written within the last twenty-five years. The information is then applied to the works of Faulkner and Rice. The thesis concludes that both of the writes provide portrayals which serve their own purposes. Faulkner’s image of the world is vivid, but, it is still only an image, a picture. Faulkner’s purposes serve only as the symbol of slavery at …

Retracing Gender Bias And The Validity Of Believed Differences Between Male And Female Coaches Of Women's Basketball, Melissa Baile

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

Leaders in higher education and athletics are concerned with the decline in the number of female coaches. The lack of role models for young women athletes and the inability for young women to be hired into, and remain in, coaching is problematic to the development of women in society.

The results of Acosta's 1985 study indicated that athletic directors held two stereotypical beliefs regarding the decline in the number of female coaches: a lack of qualification and time constraints due to family responsibilities. The purpose of the current research is to address two questions: (1) are male athletic administrators correct …

President Mrs. Kimball: A Rhetoric Of Words And Works, Janelle M. Higbee

Theses and Dissertations

Scholars of rhetoric and speech communications have suggested that the study of a women's rhetoric should focus on the "distinctly female modes of leadership" that may be found among women in "out-groups" that challenge established political authority. Such leaders must be especially inventive to be effective, and are thus likely to be talented rhetoricians. In looking for such leaders, the religious and political rhetoric of early Latter-day Saint women provides a noteworthy, unique study. Nineteenth-century Mormon women not only battled discriminatory political norms—arguing fervently for both universal woman's suffrage and for the freedom to practice polygamy—they did so from their …

Martha Stewart Weekdays: A Symbolic Construction Of The Image Of Woman, Holly Lorraine Dent

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Today the American culture makes the claim that “image is everything.” Messages bombard the public with how to think, feel and look via the media. Programs on television that target women vary in topics from fitness, talk shows, movies, and home shopping to an endless array of soap operas. Television has provided a medium that visually and aurally appeals to viewers in a way that no other medium can. The messages of the ideal woman on television are often subtle and couched within the pretense of entertainment. Television has produced many ideal images of women through the years: June Cleaver, …

On The Front Lines Of Freedom: Black And White Women Shape Emancipation In Virginia, 1861-1890, Antoinette G. Van Zelm

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Black and white women in Virginia were on the front lines of the struggle over emancipation during and after the Civil War. Between 1861 and 1890, both former slave and former slaveholding women shaped black freedom and thereby re-invented themselves as citizens within their local communities.;Focusing on women who lived in the southeastern and south-central regions of Virginia, this study expands the narrative of Southern history to encompass the vigorous contest between black and white women over the meanings of slavery, the war, and freedom. Based on federal records and private papers, this dissertation assesses women's ideas about the end …

Discursive Departures: A Reading Paradigm Affiliated With Feminist, Lesbian, Aesthetic And Queer Practices (With Reference To Woolf, Stein And H.D.) (Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Hilda Doolittle), Tamara Ann Ramsay

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In her conclusion to Bodies That Matter Judith Butler posits that “if the power of discourse to produce that which it names is linked with the question of performativity, then the performative is one domain in which power acts as discourse" (225). In this thesis I will adopt theories of the performative, as a metadiscursive mode of analysis, to allow me to articulate some of the ways in which reading is regulated by formations of discourse and power. I will argue that if reading is considered as a performative process then different paradigms of reading will name, and consequently produce, …

Teen Pregnancy: What Brings Teens To Family Planning Clinics For Pregnancy Tests, Norma Reynolds Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the factors that bring teenage girls to family planning clinics for pregnancy tests. This study focused on those teens requesting pregnancy tests to investigate the circumstances surrounding their concern that they may be pregnant. A total of 116 teenage girls, between the ages of 13 and 19 completed the 21 item questionnaire. While the results of this study did support previous research showing that teens are using birth control, results found correct and consistent use to be a problem. While most teenage girls reported that they use condoms (73%), over half did …

"I Feel Quite Independent Now": The Life Of Mary Greenhow Lee, Sheila R. Phipps

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This biography of Mary Greenhow Lee of Virginia examines life in the nineteenth century. Born in Richmond in 1819, Lee married a lawyer of modest means in Winchester, became widowed thirteen years later, lived through the Civil War in a border town coveted by both armies, then finally settled in Baltimore where she ran a boarding house to make a living until her death in 1907. The purpose of this study is to use a single personality from the past to examine life in the nineteenth-century South from a woman's perspective, using historic events as a backdrop to the narrative.;Mary …

Gender Differences And Similarities In Moral Orientations: A Narrative Approach To Moral Socialization Within The Family, Susan M. Hilbers

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Some research suggests that adults as parents, in particular, may orient their moral reasoning and socialization of children differentially by gender (Lollis, Ross, & Leroux, 1996; Pratt, Amold, & Hilbers, 1998; Pratt, Golding, Hunter, & Sampson, 1988). The present study investigates the extent to which mothers and fathers differ in their moral orientations with respect to socializing young children, specifically in their use of a narrative or storytelling mode. The present study also examines the extent to which gender of the child influences the orientation of parents’ socialization narratives told to and about their young children. Thirty married couples, whose …

In Search Of The Southern Identity: The Lady, The Farmwife, And The Nonslaveholders Of York County Virginia, 1850-1860, Chesley Homan Flotten

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Generational Revolt And The Spirit Of Capitalism : Fanny Fern's Confrontation With Calvinism, Class, And Gender Ideology In Ruth Hall, Catherine Lunt

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

How Do You Do Your Rage? : A Qualitative Investigation Into Contemporary Women's Experience Of Their Rage, Verena Homberger

Theses : Honours

Feminist researchers investigate women’s lives. This project is looking at a tiny thread embedded in a small section in the huge fabric of women's lives. The section is women’s capacity for violence, and the thread within it is women’s rage. This is a qualitative study of contemporary women experiencing and expressing their anger and rage. Discussions of violence within feminist literature have been largely restricted to accounts of male violence against women and children, and may have inadvertently endorsed the mainstream construction of femininity, which perceives rage in women to be an inappropriate emotion. In this project, I argue that …

Oral Performances As Ritual: Animating The Invisible In Mormon Women's Miscarriage Stories, Kristin Leifson Ballif

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is comprised of ten Mormon women's miscarriage stories and it is their stories that are used as the text for my analysis. The purpose of the study is to provide a space for these women to share their experiences and to reveal their cultural values and beliefs. Because the women are all Mormon, there are some distinctive cultural and religious values that are shared within their stories and it is these aspects that are analyzed and discussed within the text.

Women need to be able to share their miscarriage stories so as to alleviate feelings of isolation and …

Women On The Move: A Qualitative Study Of Relocation To A Remote Area, Ann Jones

Theses : Honours

This study uses a feminist framework to explore women's experiences of relocating from a city or large regional centre to a small and isolated town. It comes in response to my personal and professional experience of remote relocation and to the dearth of feminist discussion in this area. The site of the study is a town of 2,500 people, situated in Northern Australia over 1200 kilometres from the nearest capital city and 800 kilometres from the nearest regional centre. Six women who relocated within the previous 18 months participated in the study. Two of the women were single and four …

A Longitudinal Study On The Essence Of Success Development As Seen By Caribbean Canadian Women In The Storied Landscape Of Their Lived Experience, Glenda-Mae Greene

Dissertations

Problem. Caribbean Canadians are often susceptible to negative stereotyping because of issues of social class and length of residence in Canada. This study describes how three Caribbean Canadian young women avoided stereotype vulnerability and journeyed to their definition of success. This narrative study focuses on themes which acted as catalysts for success in their lives. The data collection began with interviews conducted during their high school years and concluded with another set of interviews in the post-college years. The study records their stories as they strive to develop and achieve their idea of success in the non-school world.

Method. Through …

Fostering Flowers: Women, Landscape And The Psychodynamics Of Gender In 19th Century Australia, Pamela Hodge

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

It is said that when the Sphinx was carved into the bedrock of Egypt it had the head as well as the body of Sekhmet lioness Goddess who presided over the rise and fall of the Nile, and that only much later was the head recarved to resemble a male pharaoh. Simon Schama considered the 'making over' of Mount Rushmore to resemble America's Founding Fathers constituted 'the ultimate colonisation of nature by culture … a distinctly masculine obsession (expressing) physicality, materiality and empirical externality,… a rhetoric of humanity's uncontested possession of nature. It would be comforting to think that, although …

The Female Sport Experience: History, Development, And Psychological Implications, Dawn A. Whittington

Masters Theses

This paper reviews the literature related to women in athletics with a focus on the psychological perspective. The paper is divided into three major parts.

Chapter I traces the historical antecedents with specific emphasis on the development of sports psychology and women's gradual integration into amateur and professional athletics. Chapter II reviews literature devoted to the psychosocial issues related to the female athlete. These issues include personality traits and patterns, psychosocial problems associated with women entering and maintaining status in athletics, stereotypes, homophobia, socialization issues and the incidence and etiology of eating disorders among female athletes. Chapter III addresses the …

Katherine Anne Porter's "Old Mortality" And Virginia Woolf: A Study In Feminism, Rebecca S. L. Waite

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.