Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Le Proto-Féminisme De George Sand, Jasmine Harrison

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, was a radical and revolutionary writer. Through her writing, she challenged social norms and incorporated gender equality into her novels. This presentation examines Sand's four works: Indiana, Valentine, Lélia, and La Mare au diable. The question of Sand's status as a feminist writer, or even as an early feminist writer, is explored through women's roles in society through the analysis of nineteenth-century literature.

L’Universalité De La Voix Féminine : Interprétations Genrées De La Poésie Romantique Française Et Allemande, Mimi Mackilligan

Senior Theses and Projects

Contemporary French feminist literary critics have debated whether the category of woman is an empowering or limiting paradigm through which to analyze women writers. Hélène Cixous coined the term "feminine writing [écriture féminine]" in order to link femininity to a radical particularity, whereas Monique Wittig has asserted that this concept confines women writers to their minority identity rather than allowing them to be read universally. Such discussions serve as a useful lens through which to analyze women writers who grappled with their gendered position far before the advent of 20^th-century feminism.

Despite the abundance of woman …

La Voix Humaniste Dans La Grève Des Bàttu, Lauren Redding

Theses and Dissertations--Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures

This research explores how West African postcolonial literature offers a social critique of society, trapped between past and future, and how such a critique treats the ideas of feminism, westernization, and humanism. I then relate this analysis to the current theories of négritude and afropolitanism, as discussed in Sortir de la Grande Nuit by author Achille Mbembe, which creates a meaningful context and future implications for the ideas already examined. The primary text I am working with, because it covers a wide range of topics through social critique, and because the author is one of the first of her kind, …

Éric Touya De Marenne. Simone De Beauvoir: Le Combat Au Féminin. Presses Universitaires De France, 2019., Tessa Ashlin Nunn

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Éric Touya de Marenne. Simone de Beauvoir: Le combat au féminin. Presses Universitaires de France, 2019. pp. 128.

Sex Education In France: An Imbalanced History, Marisa Peters

Honors Theses

Although the history of sex education is relatively new, it is very complex. Enlightenment philosophers from Rousseau to de Sade had ideas on what the sex education of girls and of boys should entail, with Rousseau preparing her for marriage, and the latter preparing her to be a libertine! In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries there were stereotypes too, of girls in the countryside learning about sex as a result of cramped living and proximity to farm animals. For young bourgeois women in the city, there were manuals on marriage and how to perform their wifely …

Queer Displacements: Minorities, Mobilities, And Mobilizations In French And Francophone Literature, Thomas Muzart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing on the work of Virginie Despentes, Jean Genet, Guy Hocquenghem, and Abdellah Taïa, this dissertation challenges the antisocial turn taken in queer theory, by means of a parallel study of the authors’ geographical and intellectual itineraries. While critics like Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman have suggested that the revolutionary potential in queer identity lies in its opposition to romanticized forms of community, I argue, along with José Esteban Muñoz, that their praising of singularity and negativity is similarly extreme. Alternatively, my study shows how the geographical displacements both experienced and imagined by my primary authors can illuminate the passage …

Honoré De Balzac’S Portrayal Of The Feminine Condition In The Wild Ass’S Skin, Père Goriot, And The Lily Of The Valley, Brooke V. Musmeci

Honors Theses

In 19th century France, women appeared to be second class citizens. They were often limited in their abilities to have independence and secure their own wealth. This perception of women perhaps justifies why, as Honoré de Balzac’s novels illustrated the realities of French society, he attempted to characterize women’s struggles to obtain control and power in their lives. In his novels The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), The Lily of the Valley (1835), and Le Père Goriot (1835), Balzac sought to prove how women could improve their lot.

Firstly, in studying how women had been relegated to second-class citizens under their …

Femmes À Huis Clos : Les Féminités Non-Normatives Dans Le Théâtre De Sartre, Megan Caljouw

Senior Theses and Projects

This thesis explores Jean-Paul Sartre’s depiction of women in theater, focusing on the female characters of The Respectful Prostitute (1946) and No Exit (1944). More specifically, I argue that Sartre presents women who reject normative conceptions of femininity prevalent in France during the twentieth century. Using Claire Duchen’s Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives in France 1944-1968 to provide a baseline understanding of gender roles during this time, I illustrate the ways in which the plays’ female characters “fail” to adhere to stereotypical notions of femininity in the realms of motherhood and sexuality. My argument is informed by a variety of …

The Simultaneous Book: Women's Writing In Contemporary Art, Maryse Lariviere

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Novels written by women authors who don’t adhere to the classification “visual artist” are nonetheless gaining momentum in today's contemporary art world. Yet works by authors such as Chris Kraus or Catherine Millet are often not recognized as artist’s novels because their authors are not or/and do not consider themselves to be visual artists. I contend that we can usefully situate their work within the genre of the artist’s novel by addressing how they invent artistic postures and artistic alter-egos within the autofictional worlds of their texts. My dissertation The Simultaneous Book proposes to open up the definition of the …

Christina Gerhardt And Sara Saljoughi, Editors. 1968 And Global Cinema. Wayne State Up, 2018., Anne Cunningham

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi, editors. 1968 and Global Cinema. Wayne State UP, 2018. 422 pp.

Sillage, Trace, Empreinte: La Migrance Ambulatoire De Fatou Diome, Catherine Mazauric

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

From Le ventre de l'Atlantique and Impossible de grandir to Marianne porte plainte!, going as far back as her early poems and short stories published in journals, Fatou Diome uses recurring patterns of wake, trace and footprints as different forms of physical and ethical engagements in the world. In the process of literary creation, such engagement generates a mobile third location, "a space of migrance" where various sets of cultural heritages and ethical values undergo reformulation. This paper argues that it is in such a space that Diome locates the emergence of a powerful feminine subjectivity which gained its autonomy …

If The Shoe Fits: Cinderella And Women's Voice, Farrah V. Kurronen

Honors Undergraduate Theses

One of the fundamental stories in fairy tale studies is "Cinderella": folkloric designation ATU 510A, the Persecuted Heroine. As Fairy tale and Folklore studies continue to evolve, authors beyond Basile, Perrault and Grimm are added into the Cinderella canon to lend a more nuanced approach to the study of this fairy tale. Yet "Cinderella" is still often interpreted as a tale of feminine submissiveness, in which the heroine is little more than a passive ornament or else a likeable social-climber. These interpretations stem largely from the focus of "Cinderella" stories written by men. Though studies of "Cinderella" are expanding, "Cendrillon", …

The Creation Of Power: Leaving The Closed Space Of Voluntary Servitude, Isabel Mae Torgove

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This project is a collection and absorption of concepts and frameworks drawn from centuries of thought. Indebted to the past, this philosophical and literary journey seeks to elucidate a productive path to follow in the wake of the “moment,” derived from Du Bois’ “double consciousness.” This split second explosion, resulting in the severance of the conception of the self from the world’s perception of the self, places one in the position of either submitting voluntarily to the dominant forces or producing and creating something, anything, to aid in the search for understanding the self. The transitive property of a split …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

Eric Touya De Marenne. Francophone Women Writers: Feminisms, Postcolonialisms, Cross-Cultures. Lanham, Md: Lexington, 2013. 195 Pp., Nancy E. Wardle

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Eric Touya De Marenne. Francophone Women Writers: Feminisms, Postcolonialisms, Cross-Cultures. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2013. 195 pp.

Touria Khannous. African Pasts, Presents, And Futures. Generational Shifts In African Women’S Literature, Film, And Internet Discourse. Lanham: Lexington, 2013. Xxv + 203 Pp., Marzia Caporale

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Touria Khannous. African Pasts, Presents, and Futures. Generational Shifts in African Women’s Literature, Film, and Internet Discourse. Lanham: Lexington, 2013. xxv + 203 pp.

Proto-Féminisme Dans L'Epistre Othéa De Christine De Pizan: Appropriation Et Réinterprétation De Deux Figures Mythologiques, Minerve Et Médée., Nathalie D. Lacarriere

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on Christine de Pizan’s mythological allegoric work entitled Epistre Othéa, written around 1400. True to the beliefs she portrays in many of her later seminal works, such as The Book of the City of Ladies, or The Treasure of the City of Ladies, Christine displays in this piece a strong didactic vision. The crucial pairing of text and image in the two manuscripts that I chose to focus on prove the power she exerted as a woman and as an artist but also mark her intention to strengthen her moral and political message through …

Complicating Eroticism And The Male Gaze: Feminism And Georges Bataille’S Story Of The Eye, Chris Vanderwees

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article explores the relationship between feminist criticism and Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye. Much of the critical work on Bataille assimilates his psychosocial theories in Erotism with the manifestation of those theories in his fiction without acknowledging potential contradictions between the two bodies of work. The conflation of important distinctions between representations of sex and death in Story of the Eye and the writings of Erotism forecloses the possibility of reading Bataille’s novel as a critique of gender relations. This article unravels some of the distinctions between Erotism and Story of the Eye in order to complicate …

“Knaller-Sex Für Alle”: Popfeminist Body Politics In Lady Bitch Ray, Charlotte Roche, And Sarah Kuttner, Carrie Smith-Prei

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Germany has seen a recent upsurge in publications proclaiming that feminism is again an urgent matter for a new generation of women. Faced with the reactionary demography debate and the hegemony of second-wave feminism, young writers, musicians, journalists, and critics call for new models of feminism relevant to women today. As one of these viable models, popfeminism draws on dominant trends in mass culture, on pop’s forty-year history as a cultural prefix in Germany, and on traditional feminism in order to create a new, ostensibly apolitical, feminist subculture based in self-stylization and individual autonomy. Shared by many popfeminist sources is …

Inequities Of Contemporary French Women, Olivia Kuhlman

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the current situation of women in contemporary France. It analyzes the current situation of French women in education, the work force, politics, and French society, with the intent of uncovering the gender inequalities French women encounter in contemporary France.

For-Giving Death: Cixous's Osnabrück And Le Jour Où Je N'Étais Pas Là , Eilene Hoft-March

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In her early writings, Hélène Cixous earned recognition as the feminist proponent of a theory of gift economy that challenges the patriarchal practice of giving. Patriarchal giving, she contended, enacts the master-slave dialectic, maintaining power differentials by indemnifying and reducing the other to the one who gives. Cixous imagined an alternate practice whereby the gift incurs no debts and no death for the other, a giving without expectation of return, a generosity that enriches all who participate. More than two decades after those theoretical essays, Cixous continues to explore in her fiction the relationship to the other as mediated by …

From War Films To Films On War: Gendered Scenarios Of National Identity—The Case Of The Last Metro, Leah D. Hewitt

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

If France's ongoing struggle for self-definition in the late twentieth century involved new conceptions of citizenship and nationality, in short what it means to be French, this struggle also entailed the search for an accurate portrayal of a past in which France could recognize itself...

Passion Simple And Madame, C'Est A Vous Que J'Ecris: "That's My Desire", Elizabeth Richardson Viti

French Faculty Publications

No two texts better exemplify the contemporary "he said, she said" phenomenon than Annie Ernaux's Passion simple (Simple Passion) and Alain Gerard's Madame, c'est a vous que j'eeris (Madam, It Is To You That I Am Writing). Ernaux's book, published in 1991, recounts the author's heretofore hidden affair with a foreign businessman living temporarily in France. Dissatisfied with Ernaux's account, Gerard assumes the lover's identity and chronicles events from his perspective, making Madame, e'est a vous que j' ecris, published four years later, an explicit response to Passion simple. The result is a rare …

Passion Simple And Madame, C'Est À Vous Que J'Écris: "That's My Desire" , Elizabeth Richardson Viti

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

No two texts better exemplify the contemporary "he said, she said" phenomenon than Annie Ernaux's Passion simple and Alain Gérard's Madame, c'est à vous que j'écris. Ernaux's book, published in 1991, recounts the author's heretofore hidden affair with a foreign businessman living temporarily in France, and Gérard's, published four years later, is an explicit response in which the writer, dissatisfied with Ernaux's account, assumes the lover's identity and chronicles events from his perspective. The result is a literary "tac à tac" very much in the public eye in which a man and woman both wish to tell their side …

George Sand And Cristina Di Belgiojoso's Literary Dialogue, Claire Marrone

Languages Faculty Publications

Presents a scholarly analysis of Italian woman writer Cristina Di Belgiojoso's writings in an effort to situate them better in relation to the work done by another female writer George Sand to identify the influence these two authors had on one another. Impact of their involvement in progressive politics on their work; Overview of similarities of views between these two authors; Highlights of their writings that suggests their mutual influence on one another.

Should Feminists Forget Foucault?, Dominique D. Fisher

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Up Against Foucault (1993), a collection of essays edited by Caroline Ramazanoglu, reevaluates Michel Foucault's theories on power and sexuality in regard to feminism from a sociological perspective…

From The Sea Wall To The Lover : Prostitution And Exotic Parody, Pascale Bécel

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This analysis of the two novels highlights Marguerite Duras' equivocal stance with regard to colonial Indochina where she grew up at the beginning of the century. As The Lover rewrites The Sea Wall in the autobiographical mode, the emphasis shifts from an explicit denunciation of colonialism and an implicit subversion of the Lotilian novel, to a parody of exotic themes and narratives. However, by focusing on the two young protagonists' construction of themselves as femmes fatales and prostitutes, this discussion reveals that the politics of gender and race remain at odds in Duras' fictional autobiographies. The cultural other (qua a …

Desire, Duplicity And Narratology: Boris Vian's L 'Ecume Des Jours, Charles J. Stivale

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In this examination of Boris Vian's L'Ecume des jours, I call into question the masculinist resistance to criticism of Vian and his works through a critical counter-resistance from a feminist narratological perspective. In order to examine the implications of "narrative desire" for understanding textual and sexual difference, I argue for a narratology that develops the concept of textual "seduction" as a question of narrative duplicity. I undertake this "re-reading" not merely from the perspective of an "ideological unmasking," but also to suggest the possibility of a positive hermeneutic, or more precisely, the limits of such a move given inherent …

Private Life And Collective Experience In Quebec: The Autobiographical Project Of France Théoret, Mary Jean Green

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

In her study of women's autobiographical writing, Carolyn Heilbrun contends that women's authorship has been most hindered by the lack of narrative structures adequate to the telling of women's experience. She further suggests that female narrative will be found as women talk together, exchange stories, and move toward a collective understanding of self. In recent years, the interplay of women's voices has assumed new importance in women's writing, and specifically in women's life/writing in French. Perhaps beginning with Simone de Beauvoir's feminist classic, The Second Sex, where the words of hundreds of other women are woven into the text …

Feminism And Islamic Tradition, Winifred Woodhull

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

"Feminism and Islamic Tradition" explores the territory mapped by Fatima Mernissi in Sultanes oublées (1990) and Le Harem politique: Le Prophète et les femmes (1987) in relation to that charted by Assia Djebar in her latest novel Loin de Médine (1991). The aim is to see why Maghrebian feminists as different as Mernissi and Djebar—a liberal democratic sociologist and a postmodern writer—have begun to move into Arab-Islamic cultural-political spaces which, until recently, have been occupied mainly by various Islamic fundamentalist factions and other right-wing groups such as conservative nationalists in the Maghreb. The essay delineates the change between these writers' …