Digital Commons Network^™

The Social And Economic Consequences Of Gendered Toys In America, Cydne Pope

Economics Theses

Toys in the American marketplace are heavily gender stereotyped, creating a variety of social and economic consequences. Beginning at an early age, children foster different cognitive abilities based on play with toys deemed appropriate for their gender. While boys’ toys promote skills in math and science fields, girls’ toys promote verbal and linguistic skills. This difference in cognitive ability has shown to influence a child throughout his or her lifetime, beginning with the education gap in schools and continuing on to influence a child’s choice in college major as well as his or her future occupational choice. Additionally, gender specific …

"It's No Life Being A Steer": Violence, Masculinity, And Gender Performance In The Sun Also Rises And In Our Time, Brock J. Thibodaux

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Nearly all discussions of Hemingway and his work touch on the theme of masculinity, a recurrent theme in all of his works. Examinations of Hemingway and his relationship to masculinity have almost unanimously treated the author as a misogynist and a champion of violent masculinity. However, since the posthumous publication of The Garden of Eden in 1986, there has been much discussion of Hemingway’s uncharacteristic use of androgynous characters in the novel. Critics have taken this as a clue that Hemingway possessed a complex attitude regarding gender fluidity, but have failed to examine the constructions of gender and identity in …

The Multidimensionality Of Schoolgirl Dropouts In Rural Bangladesh, Tiffany Yancey

Master's Theses

This thesis outlines the underlying causes for girl dropouts in the secondary school system of rural Bangladesh and assesses the barriers that affect adolescent girls and their families. The complex dynamics of the historical context within the patriarchal-dominant structure of society creates a system that hinders girls’ education and forces them into marriage at an early age. Poverty and lack of parental involvement in schools, as well as societal traditions and lack of government infrastructure play an enormous role and are the main structural factors that are linked to schoolgirl dropouts in this study. This thesis also analyzes previous education …

The Geographic And Social Mobility Of Slaves: The Rise Of Shajar Al’Durr, A Slave-Concubine In Thirteenth-Century Egypt, D. Fairchild Ruggles

The Medieval Globe

Large numbers of outsiders were integrated into premodern Islamic society through the institution of slavery. Many were boys of non-Muslim parents drafted into the army, and some rose to become powerful political figures; in Egypt, after the death of Ayyubid sultan al-Salih (r. 1240–49), they formed a dynasty known as the Mamluks. For slave concubines, the route to power was different: Shajar al-Durr, the concubine of al-Salih, gained enormous status when she gave birth to his son and later governed as regent in her son’s name, converting to Islam after her husband’s death and then reigning as sultan in her …

"Very Many More Men Than Women": A Study Of The Social Implications Of Diagnostics At The South Carolina State Hospital, Clara Elizabeth Bertagnolli

Theses and Dissertations

Treatment and understanding of mental illness has vastly changed in the past century and a half, leading many historians and psychiatrists to puzzle over the logic and motivations driving the once-abundant mental institutions known as insane asylums. Though a great deal of literature has emerged in this burgeoning historical field, few have looked at the diagnostics used by psychiatrists of the past to see what they reveal about the former system of mental health. This paper uses the South Carolina State Hospital as a case study to demonstrate how diagnostic trends can be used to understand the gender and racial …

Jessie Fauset’S Not-So-New Negro Womanhood: The Harlem Renaissance, The Long Nineteenth Century, And Legacies Of Feminine Representation, Meredith Goldsmith

English Faculty Publications

Fauset’s texts offer a repository of precisely what critic Alain Locke labeled retrograde: seemingly outdated plotlines and tropes that draw upon multiple literary, historical, and popular cultural sources. This essay aims to change the way we read Fauset by excavating this literary archive and exploring how the literary “past” informs the landscape of Fauset’s fiction. Rather than viewing Fauset’s novels as deviations from or subversive instantiations of modernity, I view them as part of a long nineteenth-century tradition of gendered representation. Instead of claiming a subversiveness that Fauset might have rejected or a conservatism that fails to account for the …

Men And The Socially Created Stigma Of Anorexia, Marcus Ogawa

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study illuminates how college men negotiate and communicate their body image in a culture that is placing greater emphasis on the importance of body image for men. Embracing the theory of Social Construction, this study offers a communicative perspective to explore men’s articulation of body image and how they make sense of anorexia. Existing research reveals anorexia as a problem primarily associated with women, and consequently men demonstrating anorexic behaviors often find it difficult to receive help. Literature also affirms that our culture often expects men to be ashamed of behaving in any way that does not conform to …

Without Mandate For Conquest: A Transnational Comparison Of Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon And Isabel Allende's Eva Luna, Vivianna Noelle Orsini

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In our current age of globalization, multiculturalism is a key component of human relations. Place, when thought of as a geographic concept is more than just coordinates on a map, it is a concentration of a set of social relations. Geographers use this information to see how places are relational to other places. Morrison and Allende are relational because of their consciousness of place especially exhibited in Song of Solomon and Eva Luna. This project examines the disparate histories, politics, and landscapes that both authors emerged from, and argue the complexity of their work stems from thinking geographically, their conscious …

Young Germans In The World: Race, Gender, And Imperialism In Wilhelmine Young Adult Literature, Maureen O. Gallagher

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation shows how popular reading material for young adults was used to craft a new generation of German imperial citizens in the Second Empire (1871-1918). Uniting insights from contemporary postcolonial theory, gender studies, and the global history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany, it shows the intersectional development of German national identity in the children’s and young adult literature of Wilhelmine Germany. As literature written by adults for young people, designed both to entertain and instruct, children’s and young adult literature offers a unique window on how Germany built nation and empire simultaneously during this period. Focusing on texts set …

"I'M Man Enough; Are You?": The Queer (Im)Possibilities Of Walk A Mile In Her Shoes, Z Nicolazzo

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Walk a Mile in Her Shoes is a national program that has become a staple program to engage college males in sexual violence prevention on many college campuses. In this manuscript, I use queer theory and crip theory—a conceptual framework that merges queer and critical disability theory—to explore both the positive outcomes and potential harm done in the production and implementation of this event. I conclude the manuscript with considerations for educators seeking to engage college students in critical praxis around ending sexual violence on campus. These possibilities are rooted in Cohen's (1998) notion of reorienting future praxis around the …

Happiest People Alive: An Analysis Of Class And Gender In The Trinidad Carnival, Asha L. St. Bernard

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Many of the marketing strategies inherent to the modern version of the Trinidad Carnival include texts that represent Trinidadians as young, fit, bikini-wearing, party enthusiasts. In these advertisements, Trinidadians are often characterized as carefree and welcoming to anyone participating in the much-anticipated annual festival. However, dominant narratives highlight certain groups and cultural aspects of the island while frequently masking several inequalities. They cleverly conceal other narratives and therefore marginalize groups and individuals from the very festival that is understood by many as a national symbol. Through informal participant-observation, and an analysis of some of the main promotional material, in particular …

Commercial Content Moderation: Digital Laborers' Dirty Work, Sarah T. Roberts

Sarah T. Roberts

In this chapter from the forthcoming Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online (Noble and Tynes, Eds., 2016), I introduce both the concept of commercial content moderation (CCM) work and workers, as well as the ways in which this unseen work affects how users experience the Internet of social media and user-generated content (UGC). I tie it to issues of race and gender by describing specific cases of viral videos that transgressed norms and by providing examples from my interviews with CCM workers. The interventions of CCM workers on behalf of the platforms for which they labor directly contradict …

Beer, Blogs, And Bitches, Lauren Murray

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Beer has been branded as a product that is available to men; we see this in popular advertisements online and on television. The heteronormatively-masculine image that is created presents a complicated rhetorical situation for women interested in beer. When searching the online community for female beer bloggers, I came across blogs that seemed to be addressing women who are alienated in the beer community with hyper-feminine rhetoric. This stark contrast to the rhetoric that we typically see in beer advertisements did not appeal to me either. I've been referred to as "the girlfriend with great taste in beer" and intercepted …

A Dispositional Account Of Gender, Jennifer Mckitrick

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

This paper argues that one’s gender is partially constituted by extrinsic factors. In Sect. 2, I very briefly explain my understanding of sex, gender, and transgender. In Sect. 3, a survey recent accounts of gender as a socially constructed or conferred property, ending with Judith Butler’s idea that gender is a pattern of behavior in a social context. In Sect. 4, I suggest a modification of Butler’s idea, according to which gender is a behavioral disposition. In Sect. 5, I develop my dispositional account by responding to a worry that it is too essentialist. In Sect. 6, I defend my …

Brazen (Fall 2015), Hollins University

Brazen - Gender & Women's Studies Department Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Of Sonnets And Archives: Robert Graves, Laura Riding, And The Erasure Of Modern Poetry, Margaret Konkol

English Faculty Publications

In the nearly eighty years since Laura Riding and Robert Graves ceased their collaborative endeavors there has been much speculation as to the nature and extent of their literary partnership. Graves retold the past to his biographers, constructing Laura Riding as a queen yogi figure wielding an almost sinister influence. In response to these accusations Riding returned fire with volley after volley of “corrective” letters which she sent to Graves’s biographers as well as any magazine or student that she found to be sympathizing with Grave’s account of the creative partnership. At the time of her death in 1991, Riding …

Gender And Capital Punishment: The Case Of Gaile Owens, Jenna Brashear

Kaleidoscope

The United States’ use of capital punishment is a practice oft-debated in many disciplines, but the gender imbalance of the death penalty in favor of women makes feminists one group hesitant to discuss the practice. Although females account for one in ten murder arrests, they are only one percent of the criminals actually executed. This paper examines the implications of capital punishment for women, and attempts to explain why women are executed at a disproportionately low rate. Trends that emerge include institutional structures, such as aggravating or mitigating factors, which are constructed in a manner that dictates the severest punishments …

"Go Back To Your Loom Dad": Weaving Nostos In The Twenty-First Century, Corinne Ondine Pache

Corinne Pache

For centuries writers and artists have adapted and transformed Homer's Odyssey in endlessly inventive and surprising ways. Yet the disposition of genders in the poem is seldom altered from its ancient pattern: a man leaves, a woman stays at home and waits until he returns. In her 2007 play, Current Nobody, Melissa Gibson departs from this conventional fidelity to the ancient narrative by rewriting the Odyssey as a twenty-first century family story with a wandering wife and a husband who is left behind. In Gibson's playful tragicomedy, Pen, a female war photographer, leaves her husband, Od, and daughter Tel …

Book Review: God's Design For Man And Woman, Jeremy M. Kimble

Biblical and Theological Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Confessing Nuns: Gender, Hierarchy, And Institutionalized Power In Early Modern Hispanic Literature, Jason Michael Stinnett

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation discusses the inversion of power dynamics between nuns and the Catholic Church during the Early Modern period in Spain and in the New World. I study how Santa Teresa de Ávila, Catalina de Erauso, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz use traditional modes of male thought and action regarding feminine weakness in order to realize their own agendas and participate in arenas generally forbidden to women. In analyzing how these women reinforce the weaknesses and strengths of the gender binary through written confession, I am able to trace their appropriation of power and authoritative voice in spaces …

Reducing Poverty Among Arab And Muslim Women: The Case Of Arab Women In Israel, Yosef Jabareen

Journal of International Women's Studies

The international experience suggests that work is the best way of lifting families out of poverty. Thus, this paper assumes that one crucial policy, among many others, aimed at poverty reduction is to increase the women’s participation in the labour market and their access to decent work. This issue is critical among Arab and Muslim women around the world in general and among Arab women in Israel since the participation rate of women in the labour market is quite low and about 55% of the Arab families live under the poverty line. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the reasons …

Gender Representation In English And Arabic Foreign Language Textbooks In Iran: A Comparative Approach, Mitra Baghdadi, Ali Rezaei

Journal of International Women's Studies

Female educational attainment in Iran has been increasing since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran. This study investigated whether this female superiority is reflected or supported in Iranian textbooks. The study investigated how gender roles are represented in Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and AFL (Arabic as a Foreign Language) textbooks. “Criteria for Analysis of the Equality of Gender Representation” by Rifkin, was used for content analysis. These criteria are grouped into two main categories of ‘pictorial’ and ‘verbal’. The results showed that with no exception and in all criteria, males were represented significantly more than …

Review Of M. Lee, Body, Dress, And Identity In Ancient Greece, Laura Gawlinski

Classical Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Reel Women: Gender Stereotypes In Film, Kayla Marie Krahn

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Horror films portray female characters as sexual, helpless victims. When horror films attempt to portray female characters as the hero, this sends a message to audiences that women can be strong and independent. An experiment was conducted to test an audience's perceptions gender stereotypes of women in the horror film, Scream. Results indicate that stereotypes present in the horror film effected the participants' perception of women as competent heroes. Female participants were also more likely to perceive women as more competent than male participants. Then, from a qualitative standpoint, five individuals were interviewed about their perceptions of characters in their …

The Black And The White Bride: Dualism, Gender, And Bodies In European Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen

Jeana Jorgensen

Fairy tales are one of the most important folklore genres in Western culture, spanning literary and oral cultures, folk and elite cultures, and print and mass media forms. As Jack Zipes observes: ‘The cultural evolution of the fairy tale is closely bound historically to all kinds of storytelling and different civilizing processes that have undergirded the formation of nation-states.’¹⁴³ Studying fairy tales thus opens a window onto European history and cultures, ideologies, and aesthetics.

The Spectacle Of Orphanhood: Reimagining Orphans In Postbellum Fiction, Afrin Zeenat

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Orphan iconography has always been deployed in American literature and culture, but nineteenth-century American literature, fiction in particular, abounds in orphans, both real and imaginary. The orphan’s amphibious nature is hailed and demonized as the epitome of individualism and unbridled freedom, and also as the location of society’s anxiety. This complicated and conflicted construction of orphans animates the Social and cultural realm in postbellum America, foregrounding issues of class, race, and gender.

The All-Embracing Frame: Distance In The Trinitarian Theology Of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Christopher Hadley

Dissertations (1934 -)

The notion of distance plays a complex role in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s trinitarian theology. The infinite distance that metaphorically marks out the difference between God and creation serves Balthasar as a negative-theological guard against earthly projections in images of God. But this distance also structures the biblical, ascetical, and phenomenological imagery upon which trinitarian theology so often depends. The infinite distance between Father and Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit structures Balthasar’s richly symbolic vision of a divine infusion of grace into a suffering world. Not only is inner-triune distance a controversial notion, but it strikes some …

The Fascination Of Manga: Cross-Dressing And Gender Performativity In Japanese Media, Sheena Marie Woods

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The performativity of gender through cross-dressing has been a staple in Japanese media throughout the centuries. This thesis engages with the pervasiveness of cross-dressing in popular Japanese media, from the modern shōjo gender-bender genre of manga and anime to the traditional Japanese theatre. Drawing on theories from gender-studies and performance aesthetics to delineate the female gender in traditional Japanese theatre, I follow the roles of, representation of, and media for women, concentrating on (1) manga, a form of sequential art featuring illustrations with corresponding text, (2) anime, animated productions (where the word anime is the abbreviated pronunciation of “animation” in …

Including Religion In Gender: Lds Men’S Experiences In Masculinity-Making, Ashley Brocious, Dr. Leslee Thorne-Murphy

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Studies in masculinity have grown significantly in the last decades as conversations concerning gender have become more conscious of the meanings and constructions of gender in men’s experiences. Masculinity studies at its core questions the assumption that men have already achieved gender equality. Rather than blanketing all men into categories of privilege, patriarchy, or even neutrality, it seeks to give more nuance to men’s experiences and the transactional nature of their masculinity in the world around them. Latter-day Saint feminists have considered differences between men’s and women’s experiences and voices an important topic. The importance of women’s narratives as a …

Anticipatory Socialization Of Pregnant Women: Learning Fetal Sex And Gendered Interactions, Medora Barnes

Medora W. Barnes