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Madwomen And Mad Women: An Analysis Of The Use Of Female Insanity And Anger In Narrative Fiction, From Vilification To Validation., Lindsay Haralu
Madwomen And Mad Women: An Analysis Of The Use Of Female Insanity And Anger In Narrative Fiction, From Vilification To Validation., Lindsay Haralu
College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses
This project examines the use of female insanity and anger in narrative fiction, as demonstrated by the character of the madwoman. Madness is a concept that has long been gendered female throughout Western history, in medicine, language, religion, and culture. Socially and culturally constructed madness can be used to determine the boundaries of society, the norms and values from which “madness” deviates, while the character of the madwoman can be used to demonstrate how women have challenged these boundaries and how the roles of women and definitions of femininity have changed over time. This study analyzes the madwoman trope from …
Þorn: A Novel Excerpt Exploring Giantesses, Their Relation To Women's Bodily Expectations, And Patriarchal Control In The Literature Of Early Modern Britain And Contemporary America., Brady P Alexander
College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses
This thesis will analyze examples of women of size in the literature of the British Isles throughout history, focusing predominantly upon the Early Modern Period, and will create a fiction piece in response to such attitudes. I argue that one of the most clear ways to dissect contemporary cultural attitudes about powerful women and women who occupy more space than men is to examine giantesses and other examples of women of size within this period of literature. From this, a novel excerpt will be written from the perspective of a time-traveling woman of size who engages with these texts and …
Resonating Otherness: Rethinking The Body Through Octavia Butler's Dawn., Tristan Dewitt Carr
Resonating Otherness: Rethinking The Body Through Octavia Butler's Dawn., Tristan Dewitt Carr
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis focuses on the intersection between sound and bodies as a way of re-envision the concept of human, using Octavia Butler’s Dawn as a case study. Specifically, this study contends that Butler’s re-envisioning is sonic, imagining the concept of self as it is understood by Jean-Luc Nancy’s idea of the “resonant subject,” in that sound embroils us within our environment. This sonic, resonant body is revealed in Dawn through Butler’s adaption of Roland Barthes’ concept of “grain,” which is not merely embodied sound, but the result of artifice – a carefully crafted “slip” that allows for a way of …
[Re]Fashioning A Means: Exploring And Adapting Anna Cora Mowatt's Fashion Through A Feminist Lens., Jordan Tudor Haggard
[Re]Fashioning A Means: Exploring And Adapting Anna Cora Mowatt's Fashion Through A Feminist Lens., Jordan Tudor Haggard
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This MFA thesis explores gender representation in Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion (1845) and the adaptation [Re]Fashion presented by the University of Louisville’s Department of Theatre Arts in Spring 2021. Directed by Dr. J. Ariadne Calvano, University of Louisville faculty, staff, and students worked together to repurpose the script for a modern audience. Cast as the governess, Gertrude, I aimed to find truth in my character without ignoring the social prescriptions of mid-19th-century America. Gertrude values purity and honesty, virtues considered innately feminine by the period’s cultural feminists. I argue that Fashion is a cultural feminist work and Gertrude …
Love Labor: Literal Symbols And True Abstractions., Karen Weeks
Love Labor: Literal Symbols And True Abstractions., Karen Weeks
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
If the home can be a metaphor for our own interiors, then the things that collect there can be similarly thought of, performing as punctuated moments within that interior, giving it shape, creating contours. Within the domestic setting, macro social forces such as global capitalism as well as the more immediate experience of meeting our children’s demands can push and pull us, equally informing the experience of being in the home. Love Labor: Literal Symbols and True Abstractions is comprised of images sourced from common ephemera of the home meant to represent the everyday: notes, discarded letters, open envelopes, unfinished …