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Social and Behavioral Sciences

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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Theses/Dissertations

2011

Gender

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Utopian Gender: Counter Discourses In A Feminist Community, Jolane Flanigan Sep 2011

Utopian Gender: Counter Discourses In A Feminist Community, Jolane Flanigan

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is an ethnography of communication, situated in the context of a feminist utopian community, that examines members' use of communication and communicative embodiment to counter what they consider to be oppressive United States gender practices. By integrating speech codes theory and cultural discourse analysis with theories of the body and gender, I develop analyses of spoken and written language, normative language- and body-based communicative practices, and sensual experiences of the body. I argue that there are three key ways communication and communicative practices are used to counter gender oppression: the use of gender-neutral words, the "desensationalization" of the …


Resisting Schools, Reproducing Families: Gender And The Politics Of Homeschooling, Brian Paul Kapitulik Sep 2011

Resisting Schools, Reproducing Families: Gender And The Politics Of Homeschooling, Brian Paul Kapitulik

Open Access Dissertations

The contemporary homeschooling movement sits at the intersection of several important social trends: widespread concern about the effectiveness and safety of public schools, feminist challenges to the patriarchal family structure, anxiety about the state of the family as an institution, and challenging economic conditions. The central concern of this dissertation is to make sense of homeschooling within this broader context. Data were gathered through interviews with forty-five homeschooling parents, approximately half of whom are religious and half of whom are secular. The interviews were organized around three central questions: 1) What are the frames that parents use to justify homeschooling? …