Digital Commons Network^™

The Lived Experience Of Postpartum Sleep For Black And White Women, Ashley R. Macpherson

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study utilized a phenomenological research approach (van Manen, 1990), and intersectional feminist lens (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw ,1989; hooks, 2000), to uncover the lived experience of sleep in the postpartum period. Participants were 10 mothers who were less than 12 months postpartum. Data collection consisted of in-depth interviews. Data analysis procedures followed recommendations by van Manen (1990, 1997). In order to increase the trustworthiness and rigor of the study, the researcher engaged in reflexive journaling, member checking, and peer debriefing. The results were organized into six themes; 1) the importance of the sleep environment, 2) anxiety and hypervigilance, …

Theorizing #Girlboss Culture: Mediated Neoliberal Feminisms From Influencers To Multi-Level Marketing Schemes, Frankie Mastrangelo

Theses and Dissertations

I define girlboss feminism as emergent, mediated formations of neoliberal feminism that equate feminist empowerment with financial success, market competition, individualized work-life balance, and curated digital and physical presences driven by self-monetization. I look toward how the mediation of girlboss feminism utilizes branded and affective engagements with representational politics, discourses of authenticity and rebellion, as well as meritocratic aspiration to promote cultural interest in conceptualizing feminism in ways that are divorced from collective, intersectional struggle. I question the stakes involved in reducing feminist interrogations and commitments to discourses of representation, visibility, and meritocracy. I argue that while girlboss feminism may …

In A Building, A Stairwell, A Room Speaks, Tsz Wai Wallis Cheung

Theses and Dissertations

Working toward a personal definition of womanhood while progressing with my research in feminist discourse, I frame biographical events alongside the intricate use of language surrounding feminist theory. Experimenting with material specificities that speak to my personal narratives and cultural significance, my work seeks to address the interlacing operations of subjectivity expanding on the intersection of class, gender and race.

Why Katniss Everdeen Is Our Favorite Feminist – An Analysis Of The Heroine Of The Hunger Games Film Saga And Her Reception By Young Female Spectators, Paula Talero Álvarez

Theses and Dissertations

THROUGH THE FIGURE OF FICTIONAL CHARACTER KATNISS EVERDEEN, THIS DISSERTATION STUDIES HOW THE FILM INDUSTRY SIMULTANEOUSLY ENTRENCHES AND DISRUPTS GENDER, SEXUAL, AND RACIAL NORMATIVITIES. THE PROJECT USES TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND PARTICIPANT RESEARCH TO ANALYZE HOW THE FILMS AND NOVELS OF THE HUNGER GAMES SAGA ENCAPSULATE BOTH DOMINANT AND ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS RELATED TO FEMININITY, MASCULINITY, WOMANHOOD, AND MOTHERHOOD. IT ALSO EXPLORES IF AND HOW THE FEMALE HEROINE CAN BE READ AS FEMINIST AND PRODUCES A SENSE OF EMPOWERMENT. I CONCLUDE THAT ALTHOUGH THE INDUSTRY IS PRODUCING NEW MODELS OF WOMANHOOD THAT CHALLENGE TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES, IT STILL PERPETUATES ROMANTIC IDEALS AND …

F-Word Fun Home, Kim Cosier

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Growing up fundamentalist can be challenging for any child, but when you do not fit within the confines of traditional gender norms, when you are masculine, female-bodied or feminine, male-bodied, navigating identity can make you feel like a foreigner within your own family. Certain forms of feminism, too, can feel alienating. In this article, I share personal experiences with both social constructions of feminism and fundamentalism. Borrowing from queer theories, I wrestle with ways of doing, undoing, and redoing religion and gender that may have implications for teaching in a more inclusive and expansive manner.

Below The Neck, Above The Knees, Desiree Dawn Kapler

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis explores the act of violation in the context of trauma and healing through the use of personal narratives and experimental film. My research allows personal storytelling to transform into a larger and more universal theme of generational trauma and dysfunction. Through a feminist lens, I challenge social norms of body autonomy for the sick and abused, capitalism’s social effects on the poor, and passed down maternal lessons from the women who are doing the best that they can with the lives and opportunities that they have been given.

This work is created in spite of the labels my …

Pebbles Is A Girl That Doesn't Know Anything, Grace A. Kubilius

Theses and Dissertations

I am not quite sure how to be a woman. It’s complicated, contradictory and highly surveilled. I make videos, sculptures and wearable objects that attempt to rationalize my female identity. The body is a sustained fixture in my work: as an armature, as an absent actor for constructed environments, as fragment and as the literal inclusion of my image. It is through these various modes of dis/embodiment that I negotiate the complexities of gendered existence. Crumbling ceramic and paper objects, pieced fabric forms, videos, beauty products, and delicate flowers reference splintered narratives and unwieldy terrains. I consider the idea of …

Recognizing Her Characteristics As A Leader: An Examination Of The Self-Assessment Of Women Leaders As Shaped By Social Identity Theory And The Concept Of Double Consciousness, John C. Gregory

Theses and Dissertations

Women leaders are grossly underrepresented in police and Army organizations and relevant research suggests that women face the most significant challenges in reaching leadership positions in male dominant organizations. Although there have been recent policy changes to increase opportunities for women in police and Army organizations, women are still barely represented in senior command and primary staff positions in police and Army organizations. When women are underrepresented, particularly at the most senior ranks, there are implications regarding cultural, structural, and attitudinal challenges that simply should not still exist in these organizations. Using qualitative methods, this study examined the experiences of …

Sweaty Mother Slow Groove, Devin Kylie Harclerode

Theses and Dissertations

Sweaty Mother Slow Groove is an engagement in magical thinking that proposes a displacement of swamp methodologies into the virtual realm, existing during the fourth wave. In doing so the cyborg and goddess are united in a re-routing of essentialism and the neo-liberal domination of technology. The metaphorical swamp is the possibility of a mushy danger zone that harnesses the absorption of an unwanted space: a disintegration of the binary and the soft-coded awareness of the body as a process, not a site.

If She Isn’T Working Miracles, What Is She Doing On The Battlefield?, Alex Matzke

Theses and Dissertations

The images included in my thesis work reflect my experience growing up with military propaganda—pictures of cheerful white women in pearls as part of my rural middle American landscape. I do not name the oppressor because I am not here to pick at the thorns, but to get to the root of the oppression. These are some of the servicewomen I’ve met. Their stories parallel but cannot encompass the private experiences of all service women. I am grateful for their generosity; without them there would be no pictures.

The battle for equality is much older than Rosie the Riveter but …

No Woman Is An Island, Adele Ball

Theses and Dissertations

We have gathered the following pages to archive our time here in Richmond, Virginia. We have been here for two years, growing slowly, moving when needed to new anchorholds to avoid detection or arrest. We scrutinize the urban environment like modern archeologists. We collect stories and speculate about new uses of old things. It is imperative to be resourceful here, and we do so out of necessity but also in the spirit of practice. These pages were made en route, each an exploration of the tools at hand when on the move. The method of creation is just as important …

“I Am Not Free While [Anyone] Is Unfree”: A Proposal And Framework For Enmarginalized Feminist Policy Analysis, Avina Ross

Social Work Student Works

This paper introduces a new feminist approach and framework to policy analysis. As an integration of intersectionality, Black feminist thought and endarkened feminist epistemology, enmarginalized feminist policy analysis (EFPA) offers an intersectional and flexible scope in a framework to assess policy for a diversity of populations, focusing on groups who are forced to live marginal and oppressed lives. Discussion is provided on existing approaches and frameworks in addition to an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of EFPA. A nine-component framework, which includes a section for analyst reflexivity, is provided to guide users in conducting EFPA. The author concludes with implications …

Feminist Zines: (Pre)Occupations Of Gender, Politics, And D.I.Y. In A Digital Age, Courtney Lee Weida

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This article examines the potential of recent feminist zines as frameworks of grassroots D.I.Y. and direct democracy in physical and digital communities. While the height of zine creations as works on paper may be traced to the 1990s, this form of feminist counterculture has evolved and persisted in cyberspace, predating, accompanying, and arguably outlasting the physical reality of protests, revolutions, and political expressions such as the Occupy Movement(s). Contemporary zines contain not only email addresses alongside ‘snail mail’ addresses, but also links to digital sites accompanying real-world resources. Zinesters today utilize the handmade craftsmanship and hand drawn and written techniques …

Reflections On Sexuality, Sensuality, And Painting, Loie Hollowell

Theses and Dissertations

The written component of my thesis will take the form of an extended artist statement in which I discuss all six paintings included in my thesis exhibition. A major theme of my work is sexuality, specifically female sexuality. This thesis will begin by looking at the three miniature paintings that spearheaded the investigation of this theme. I will examine the generalized and personal feminist symbolism that these paintings contain. The two works that followed the miniatures are depictions of sexual interactions between my husband and myself. I will explain the significance of my depictions and relate them to the work …

From Desegregation To Desexigration In Richmond, Virginia, 1954-1973, Leslee Key

Theses and Dissertations

This investigation explores the relationships and experiences in the urban community that connected black and white women to understand the complexities of Jim Crow, its breakdown, and the subsequent expansion of female activism in Richmond, Virginia. By examining the South’s famous department stores, Thalhimers and Miller & Rhoads, this research attempts to focus on female-created and female-oriented spaces within downtown Richmond, from 1954 until 1973, and draws a line from the Thalhimer boycott staged by African-American women in 1961 to the sit-in performed by white women in the Thalhimers male-only soup bar in 1970. Historical context is developed to show …

Menorah Review (No. 75, Summer/Fall, 2011)

Menorah Review

Books in Brief: New and Notable -- Hasidic Women: Boundaries and Empowerment -- Jews in the Shaping of Modern Capitalism -- Moreshet: From The Classics -- New Approaches to Gender and Feminism: Jewish Philosophical Perspectives -- Reckoning with Rival Religions -- Two Poems -- Zachor: An Appeal for the Ransom of the Captives

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938): Early Female Nudes In Landscapes, Kathryn Rogge

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Ernst Ludwig Kirchner reconceived the female nude within the two contexts of Expressionism and the German nudist movement. In particular, it looks to Kirchner’s early paintings, executed between 1909 and 1914, of female nudes in landscape settings to determine how Kirchner operated within and departed from the conventions of the female nude. This thesis challenges the feminist critique of Expressionist painting and Kirchner’s female nudes. It also examines how Kirchner’s female nudes in landscapes are complicated by the early twentieth-century development of German nudism. While these paintings are often categorized as bathers following nineteenth-century French precedent, …

Bollywood Broads: Reconstructing The Femme Fatale In Popular Indian Film, Erin Zimmerman Moss

Theses and Dissertations

Mumbai is currently one of the most prolific and lucrative film centers in the world. Its production of the "Bollywood" popular film has attracted billions in audience members outside the nation of India, many of whom do not belong to Indian culture in the Diaspora. The significance of this influence draws from the cross-cultural borrowings increasingly present in Bollywood cinema. The advent of Western investment in the production center has coincided with the diversification of the standard Bollywood film from "masala" musical to more genre specific action, horror and even romantic comedy musical. Within this genre expansion, a nod to …

Roles And Attitudes Of Males And Females In The Anarchist Punk Community, Donna M. Manion

Theses and Dissertations

Sexism is a widespread social problem that exists throughout the world today. It persists within the dominant culture, as well as in various subcultures, including the punk subculture (Daugherty 2002; Leblanc 1999; McRobbie 1991; Rosenberg and Garofalo 1998). Nijole Benokraitis and Joe Feagin's (1995) theory of sexism posits that subtle sexism is the unequal and harmful treatment of women that is typically less visible than blatant sex discrimination. This particular type of sexism may often go unnoticed, as society has internalized subtle sexist behaviors. Empirical research on subtle sexism has been conducted in various settings, such as the employment, academic, …

Evolving A Theatre Of Truth, Susan Hayes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the challenges of evolving a Theatre of Truth in the context of the immediate zeitgeist. The questions I address are the role of feminist theatre in a world dominated by global media and corporate omnipotence; the conflation of theatre and Realpolitick; the limitations of postmodern thought and critical theory, and the struggle not only of the marginalized, but of all of us to create an activist theatre in perilous times. After examining my response to directing a production of Mud by Maria Irene Fornes, this project will also suggest that a theatre of specialized singular interests, such …

Schooled In Silence, Patricia M. Amburgy, Wanda B. Knight, Karen Keifer-Boyd

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

What is not said, is often more powerful than what is spoken about diversity, difference, and identity in U.S. classrooms. Examples are everywhere: Although no students of color may be enrolled in a course at a prominent research university, members of the class do not believe there is such a thing as institutional racism. A handful of women are discussed in course textbooks, all authored by men, but no one thinks it odd that only men have written accounts of women's achievements that appear on the syllabus. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people do not speak for themselves, either, in …

Sugar And Spice And Everything: Reflections On A Feminist Aesthetic, Deborah Smith-Shank

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Over the past 25 years, feminist art, art criticism, and action have allowed insights in to the work of women artists. Because culture imposes an assumed unity on a diversity of codes and has a naturalizing function, it makes the status quo appear as given and enduring. Feminist artwork disrupts common cultural assumptions by purposefully calling into question the arbitrariness of cultural sign systems. It brings into the conversation those cultural signs which are routinely unexamined and forces a look. This article is about feminist artwork, feminist context (s), and my own development as a woman, artist, teacher, and participant …

Feminist Collaboration In The Art Academy, Cynthia Bickley-Green, Anne G. Wolcott

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Women's activity in the visual arts both in and outside of the art institutions of Europe and the United States reveals a history of collaboration in artistic production and political activism This paper analyzes the effects of feminist collaboration upon the disciplines of art, the pedagogy of art, and the administration of art institutions. In Part I, the authors review the impact of feminist collaboration in art history, aesthetics, art criticism, and art production. Part II provides examples of collaborative experiences of women in higher education art institutions and in some art communities in the United States, Scandinavia, and Italy. …

Valuing Difference: Luce Irigaray And Feminist Pedagogy, Yvonne Gaudelius

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The anonymous worker- the mother, the teacher- the anonymous woman. Woman defined by her fixed place in the system of reproduction. How has this come to be? How has woman become-how does she remain-an anonymous instrument in the reproduction of patriarchy? How does social reproduction relate to the position of woman as mother-as the “vehicle” of physical reproduction? In this paper, I tie questions such as these to the discipline of education, and to women's role in the underlying ideologies of our educational system. In order to do so I will approach these questions from three distinct vantage points: a) …

Visibility And Invisibility In Art And Craft, Fiona Blaikie

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The visibility and invisibility or censorship of art and craft is determined by individual and group ontologies. Their production has often been constricted and/or defined by gender, class, culture, race, religion, and politics. In this paper, I am concerned with the visibility of varieties of art, design, and craft. I will examine censorship based on three criteria; gender, culture, and class, with the censorship of artwork because of gender being the dominant theme.

Feminism And Feminisms: The Prospect Of Censorship, Gudrun Helgadottir

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Given the diversity and division of women according to class, face, ethnicity, religion, age and other social factors, we must expect and accept conflict and contradiction within feminism. I refer here broadly to feminism as a school of thought and as a political movement aiming to improve the lot of women (Black, 1989). Current theorizing about the social construct, gender, is inspired by the contradictions inherent in feminism (Scott, 1983). They fuel a constructive dialogue but they aIso contain the threat of censorship. There is the tendency to disregard the right to dissenting voices within feminism, to suppress internal questioning …

Feminist Film Theory And Art Education, Michael J. Emme

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Every ten years or so, lonely voices make themselves heard in the art education literature shouting something like ‘Pay attention to the “newer media” (Lanier, 1966, p.7), or ‘Have you heard? There a “new image world” (Nadaner, 1985, p.9) out there.’ One writer even suggested that “directed, critical inquiry of [television] will extend knowledge in art and aesthetics and enhance the quality of peoples’ lives (Degge, 1985, p.85) Despite these sporadic exhortations, Jaglom and Gardner’s (1981) observation that “our culture has not yet invented ways of presenting [the mass media] or teaching its structure to children” (p.35) is still true …

On The Impossibility Of Men In Feminism: Taking A Hesitant Step Through The Minefield Of Pheminism In Art And Education, Jan Jagodzinski

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The relationship of men in pheminism is an impossible one. On the one hand, the "proposition" of the preposition is intrusive; it signifies break and enter with all the multiple meanings that this entails, from virginal to criminal reprochment. On the other hand, the “preposition" of the proposition is an illusionary one, both in its flirtatious invitation to men and in its very non-existence of being, for there is no inside nor outside. Men are "implicated” in this relationship by virtue of both their difference and indifference which lie on either side of the "membrane" that separates the sexes. In …

Acting Out Caring: An Andogynous Trait, Clayton Funk

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

A problem in gender studies concerns frequent critique of sex-role stereotypes. But how often do we analyze characteristics that men and women have in common? The notion is doubtful that women must be essentially nurturant and empathic, and that men must be analytical and assertive. The strongest educators possess the best of both, no matter the gender, and are usually capable of modeling a sensibility of caring about learning.

Art Educators’ Responsibility To Cultural Diversity: Or “Where Are You Goin Wid Alla My Stuff?”, Kristen G. Congdon

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The responsibility of art educators to recognize and study the art and context of as many populations as possible is examined in this article. Examples of how artistic expressions have been borrowed, used in different contexts and otherwise removed from their original cultural context are given, and examples of ways that art teachers can help to recognize origins and the artistic functions of many cultures are suggested. By placing art in its context and studying it as it changes, students may begin to understand the artistic source, appreciate the importance of the creative context, and begin to see multi-cultural dimensions …