Digital Commons Network^™

"Tales" Of Text And Culture: Tropes Of Imperialism, Women's Roles, Technologies Of Representation, And Collaborative Meaning-Making In Rita Golden Gelman's Tales Of A Female Nomad, Female Nomad And Friends, And Personal Website, Michelle Lynne Van Wert Kosalka

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines contemporary travel writing specifically created for a popular reading culture, Rita Golden Gelman's Tales of a Female Nomad, Female Nomad and Friends, and personal website. The project is concerned with how culture is continuously represented and shaped through the dialogic interaction between writer and reader, and the subsequent liminal spaces which emerge in moments of meaning-making. Chapter 1 is a close reading of how Gelman's works reinforce and, in some cases, resist, tropes of imperialism. Chapter 2 examines patriarchal gender roles in Gelman's works and the ways in which recent advances in feminist psychiatry and psychology can …

The Cultural Crime Of Femininity: Advocating For Viable And Successful Womanhood In Charles Dickens And George Eliot, Mary K. Leigh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mid-century Victorian England creates an environment for women in which they are expected to adhere strictly to a socially inculcated view of gender and prescribed behaviors. Difficulty arises, however, because women who follow these cultural expectations ultimately fail as they are not given the appropriate skills to function as wives or mothers. On the other hand, women who choose to disregard these social norms for gender are crushed by a cultural policing force that includes both women and men. Thus, prior to legal and educational reforms that allow for women to progress beyond these restrictive gender norms, they are unable …

"Murderous Mania": Gender And Homicide In Milwaukee Newspapers, 1840-1900, Kadie Kroening Seitz

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the ways in which Milwaukee's newspapers used gender norms to make sense of acts of murder during the nineteenth century. First, women victims of men's violence are examined, particularly through the lenses of ethnicity, class and race. Women victims who did not fit into middle class gender norms were less likely to be portrayed as "beautiful female murder victims." Then, women perpetrators of violence (not exclusively against men) are discussed, including a specific examination of women's use of an insanity defense. Newspaper tropes used to describe women's motivations for filicide are also examined, and found to vary …

A Feminist Case For Leadership, Amanda Sinclair

Amanda Sinclair

No abstract provided.

Cross-Gender Casting As Feminist Interventions In The Staging Of Early Modern Plays, Gemma Miller

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay explores cross-gender casting of Renaissance canonical texts in modern British theatrical institutions as an act of feminist activism. Reversing early modern all-male theatrical practices, female-male re-gendering can not only interrogate the misogyny immanent in the works themselves, but also expose the ideological structures that continue to collude with these values on the contemporary stage and in society more generally. Through a comparative analysis of all-female productions such as Julius Caesar (dir. by Phyllida Lloyd, Donmar Warehouse, 2012-13) and selective cross-gendering, as exemplified in Edward II, (dir. by Joe Hill-Gibbins, The National Theatre, 2013), I argue that cross-gender …

Human Papillomavirus And The Gardasil Vaccine: Medicalization And The Gendering Of Bodies And Bodily Risk, Lauren Camara

The Partisan

No abstract provided.

Brazen (Fall 2014), Hollins University

Brazen - Gender & Women's Studies Department Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Mapping Italian Women's Filmmaking: Urban Space In The Cinema Of The New Millennium, Laura Di Bianco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation lies at the intersection of Italian studies, film studies, women's studies, and urban studies. Applying gender studies and feminist theoretical perspectives, I trace a thematic map of contemporary Italian women's cinema (2000-2012) that investigates female subjectivity in urban contexts. Examining the works of the filmmakers Marina Spada, Francesca Comencini, Wilma Labate, Roberta Torre, and Alice Rohrwacher, I identify a common tendency to treat locations like characters, apply similar modalities of incorporating city-views into the narration, and recurrently construct parallels between physical journeys through cities and inner journeys of the self. As a prism through which to look at …

The Earning Power Of Mothers And Children's Time Allocation In Lao Pdr, Sevinc Rende

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this paper I explore the relationship between a mother’s contribution to household income and her children’s work and school outcomes. Using household data from Lao PDR, I find that as a mother’s share of total household earnings increases, her children shift time away from school and wage work to work under parental control. The findings demonstrate that a mother’s short-term needs and interests may not always align with her children’s long-term interests, and work may become a contested terrain between mothers and children.

A Feminist Exploration Of Gender And Communication In The Professional Sales Workplace, Chelsea Heil

Communication Studies

For many years, the sales profession has been largely male-dominated, however recently there has been more and more women are taking on this career choice (Dawson, 1997). In order to better understand the implications of this change, I propose to conduct a critical analysis that addresses the roles of women in the sales profession. Primarily, I will engage in a feminist exploration of gender and communication in the professional workplace with regards to the sales profession.

Women And Information Technology: How Do Female Students Of Education Perceive Information Technology, And What Is Their Approach Toward It?, Rachel Baruch

Journal of International Women's Studies

Researchers and scholars consider the Internet today to be the most far-reaching technological tool, in regards to its implications for our present-day society. Its development and usage has, among other things, implications for gender perceptions, as well as for education and studies. The main purpose of the study was to examine attitudes held by female education students toward information technology in general and studying within an Internet-environment in particular, as well as the way they perceive themselves in such a changing world.

Twenty interviews with students of education were analyzed during the course of this study. Results of the study …

Does Monogamy Harm Women? Deconstructing Monogamy With A Feminist Lens, Ali Ziegler, Jes L. Matsick, Amy C. Moors, Jennifer D. Rubin, Terri D. Conley

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

In this paper, we utilize a critical feminist lens to analyze the advantages and disadvantages found within two different romantic relationship configurations: monogamy and polyamory. While visibility of polyamorous relationships has increased in recent years, there is still a lack of information and a plethora of misinformation concerning non-monogamous romantic relationship dynamics (Conley, Moors, Matsick, & Ziegler, 2012; Conley, Ziegler, Moors, Matsick, & Valentine, 2012). One such notion is that polyamory is differentially damaging to women vis-à-vis men. From a phenomenological perspective, sociocultural values dictate that women, unlike men, are prescribed to be dependent upon monogamy in order to define …

Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Linguistic uses of ‘sisterhood’ provide a window into disparate understandings of relationality among virtual and actual interlocutors in women’s development across vectors of caste, class, ethnicity and nationality. In this essay, I examine the trope of ‘sisterhood’ as it was employed at a women’s development project in Janakpur, Nepal, in the 1990s. I demonstrate that the use of this common signifier of kinship with culturally disparate ‘signifieds’ created a confusion of meaning, and differential readings of the politics of relationality. In my view, ‘sister,’ as used at this project, was a multivalent, strategically deployed, and divergently interpreted term. In particular, …