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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
It’S Britney, Bitch, Mary Hyepock
It’S Britney, Bitch, Mary Hyepock
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation engages public rhetorics surrounding pop princess Britney Spears as a case study for examining the rhetoricity of bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is commonly understood as the legal right to control what happens to one’s body without external influence or coercion. However, one’s legal access to bodily autonomy is produced, negotiated, and maintained through discourse. In other words, one’s access to so-called “ownership” over their body and agency to make decisions about it is deeply tied to the gendered and racialized symbolic production of citizenship in the United States. Utilizing a reproductive justice framework, I investigate how Britney Spears’ …
Representations Of Female Agency In Medieval French Literature, Mathilde Pointiere
Representations Of Female Agency In Medieval French Literature, Mathilde Pointiere
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines the different ways authors portray female agency in medieval French literature. In focusing on three medieval writers, Chrétien de Troyes, Heldris de Cornouailles and Christine de Pizan, I contend that female agency arises as a result of trauma or crisis. I define my terms as follows: agency is the capacity and intention of performing actions on one’s own behalf. For a fictional character to have agency, therefore, she must be portrayed as having a sense of control and of being the owner of the action she executes. Additionally, I argue that as women characters assume their agency, …
Mixed Messages: Reading Contemporary U.S. Literature Of Biracial Girlhood, Candice Nicole Hale
Mixed Messages: Reading Contemporary U.S. Literature Of Biracial Girlhood, Candice Nicole Hale
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
The tragic mulatta character is no longer an accurate representation of biracial female characters in literature. This dissertation considers the vast history of the tragic mulatto genre and its tragic and mired representations of biracial women and how they are often portrayed in literature. Within a historical, legal, and political analysis, I highlight the ways perceptions, attitudes, and representations about biracial individuals have changed, so those same shifts should change in the literature. Because of the bourgeoning field of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS), both scholars and authors are recasting and rewriting the narratives and discourses of mixed-race in the …
Ageism And Embodied Stereotypes: A Study Of Adult Learners In Community College At Midlife, Marla Jane Erwin
Ageism And Embodied Stereotypes: A Study Of Adult Learners In Community College At Midlife, Marla Jane Erwin
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Adult students are generally classified as a single group for study, yet developmental psychologists recognize separate developmental periods during adulthood that suggest adult students at midlife may experience development within higher education differently that younger adult students, in part due to ageism expressed at individual, institutional and internalized levels. This project applies the concept of lifespan developmental periods to distinguish students at midlife as a focus of inquiry using a mixed method design. Twenty-nine faculty and 205 students responded to the Relating to Older People Evalution (ROPE; Cherry & Palmore, 2008) to assess self-reports of both positive and negative ageist …
"If They Don't Tell You, The Hair Will": Hair Narrative In Contemporary Women's Writing, Darina Pugacheva
"If They Don't Tell You, The Hair Will": Hair Narrative In Contemporary Women's Writing, Darina Pugacheva
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
The history of colonial and racial oppression made hair stories and testimonials fundamental to understanding hair as a unifying element particular for women of African descent in the post-slavery era. Seen as such, their hair narrations provide the first-person perspective of their life experiences while at the same time inviting a critical investigation of colonial and racial oppression. Contemporary women writers develop these types of narrations into a special language of hair that helps them tell a story that is not apparent or straightforward. This literary device that uses hair to uncover deeper social and political issues is bound up …
Will To Remember: Counter-Archives In The Work Of Alvarez, Danticat, And Díaz, Megan Elizabeth Feifer
Will To Remember: Counter-Archives In The Work Of Alvarez, Danticat, And Díaz, Megan Elizabeth Feifer
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation argues the essays, fiction, non-fiction, and non-profit work of authors Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and Junot Díaz produce counter-narratives that when assembled, create a counter-archive of the Rafael Leonidas Trujillo dictatorship and its lasting effects. To support this claim, I analyze the various genres and medias they employ throughout the late 20thand early 21st centuries as redressing not only the “official” state history of the dictatorship, but also the overarching construction of history with a capital “H”. Through a close reading of form and the thematic concerns present in their work, I demonstrate how they …
Labor And Delivery: Television Performances By Pregnant Actresses From 1948-2016, Evleen Michelle Nasir
Labor And Delivery: Television Performances By Pregnant Actresses From 1948-2016, Evleen Michelle Nasir
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Labor and Delivery: Television Actresses’ Pregnant Performances from 1948-2016, examines the labor of six pregnant actresses working on United States television. Mary Kay Stearns, Lucille Ball, Jane Leeves, Kerry Washington, and Katey Sagal all worked through pregnancies while filming their respective television shows. These women exemplify the multitude of actresses who maintained their careers and their pregnancies in the television industry. This is the first study of its kind to examine the labor of an actresses’ pregnant body on film while she performs a role other than herself. Previous examinations of pregnancy in performance are few but have largely focused …
Producing "Fabulous": Commodification And Ethnicity In Hair Braiding Salons, Sylviane Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword
Producing "Fabulous": Commodification And Ethnicity In Hair Braiding Salons, Sylviane Ngandu-Kalenga Greensword
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Black women wearing fabulous braids are a striking feature of the Afro-diasporic cultural landscape. However, the braiders and salon owners who enable this aesthetic engineering are seldom acknowledged. This dissertation investigates the experience and role of Caribbean and West and Central African women in the hair braiding industry, a rapidly growing business in the U.S. I address the complexity of these women’s multiple social roles and the multiple consciousness (King, 1988) associated with their demographic characteristics (color, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and immigrant status). The commonalities between the braiders and their mostly African American customers contrast vividly with their perception of …