Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Fabricating Womanhood, Emily Fox

Theses and Dissertations

The exhibit, Fabricating Womanhood, was an attempt to explore the construction of gender and identity. While the artwork addressed well researched and documented feminist themes the artwork also stemmed from personal experiences and my coming-of-age process. The resulting installation included video, prints, painting, ceramics and found objects arranged in a set-like house construction of life-size proportions.

Negotiating Identity: Culturally Situated Epideictic In The Victorian Travel Narratives Of Isabella Bird, Katherine Reilly Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

Epideictic rhetoric, one of the classical modes of persuasion described by Aristotle, has faced some criticism concerning its value in the realm of rhetoric. Though attitudes have been shifting over the last several decades, there is still a tendency to undervalue epideictic, falling back on the Aristotelian system of ceremonial oratory. However, its “praise and blame” style of persuasion employs of the type of rhetor / audience identification described by Kenneth Burke. Epideictic rhetoric is a major component of virtually any communication, as the speaker or writer seeks to create a bond with that audience so as to persuade them …

Female Cfl (Chinese As Foreign Language) Learners' Acquisition Of Native-Like Features Of Feminine Chinese Speech, Shu-Ling Ko

Theses and Dissertations

This study was designed to evaluate the correlation between participants' acquisition of feminine Chinese speech patterns and time lived in Chinese speaking areas. These patterns include final particles, key words, request words, sentence patterns, and intonation. Data collection was administered through an on-line survey. Participants in this study included twenty female native Mandarin Chinese speakers and 39 female CFL learners. The data collected revealed the correlation between the participants' acquisition of feminine Chinese speech patterns and time spent abroad in a Chinese language environment. Part one of the survey targeted the demographics of the participants. The second part of the …

Rethinking The Historical Lens: A Case For Relational Identity In Sandra Cisneros's The House On Mango Street, Annalisa Wiggins

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis proposes a theory of relational identity development in Chicana literature. Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera offers an interpretation of Chicana identity that is largely based on historical models and mythology, which many scholars have found useful in interpreting Chicana literature. However, I contend that another text, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, not only illustrates the need for an alternative paradigm for considering identity development, but in fact offers such an alternative. I argue that Cisneros shows a model for relational identity development, wherein the individual develops in the context of her community and is not determined solely …

Authentic Out-Of-Class Communication In Study Abroad Programs: Success Defined By Continued Motivation And Cultural Appreciation, Erin Fairlight Olsen

Theses and Dissertations

The benefits of study abroad experience in second language acquisition have evolved from unchallenged assumption to the focus of rigorous study in the past several decades. The benefits of out-of-class contact with natives have likewise been questioned. Despite conflicting evidence of its benefit, students frequently cite out-of-class conversations with natives as among the most beneficial aspects of their language acquisition experience. Reviewing the extant literature, this study narrows in on authentic communication-that is, meaningful out-of-class contact with natives, in which students are able to genuinely express themselves and their personality-as a previously unanalyzed element of study abroad research. It is …

A Gentlemen's Benevolence: Symptoms Of Class, Gender, And Social Change In Emma, Nicholas Nickleby, And The Mill On The Floss, Aubrey Lea Hammer

Theses and Dissertations

Austen, Dickens, and Eliot each responded to discussions of their time concerning class, gender, and social change. One of the ways they addressed these issues, and sought to find solutions to the problems facing their culture, was through benevolence. Knightley, in Emma, uses benevolence as a means of mediating self-interest and sympathy. By acting out of sympathy, through benevolence, he achieves the self-interested benefits of reinforcing the class system and achieving his romantic conquests. Likewise, Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby learns how to use benevolence as a means of social mobility from his mentors, the Cheerybles. Throughout Nicholas Nickleby the hero learns …

James Thurber's Little Man And The Battle Of The Sexes: The Humor Of Gender And Conflict, Andrew S. Jorgensen

Theses and Dissertations

James Thurber, along with others who wrote for The New Yorker magazine, developed the 'little man' comic figure. The little man as a central character was a shift from earlier nineteenth-century traditions in humor. This twentieth-century protagonist was a comic antihero whose function was to create sympathy rather than scorn and bring into question the values and behaviors of society rather than affirm them, as earlier comic figures did. The little man was urban, inept, frustrated, childlike, suspicious, and stubborn. His female counterpart was often a foil: confident and controlling enough to highlight his most pitiable and funniest features. Contradictory …

Mi Mama Es Bonito: Acquisition Of Spanish Gender By Native English Speakers, Scott M. Alvord, Lisa Griebling Mccowen

Faculty Publications

For an adult, learning a second language can be a complex and demanding task. Differences between one’s native language and the target language can contribute to the complexity of the task. One significant way in which languages can differ is the system of gender. The difference between gender in English and Spanish provides a challenge for adult native English speakers learning Spanish as a second language. The aim of the current study is to examine gender marking on a variety of tasks by adult NS of English as beginning learners of Spanish, with hopes that such examination will provide insight …

Margaret Cavendish And Scientific Discourse In Seventeenth-Century England, Alisa Curtis Bolander

Theses and Dissertations

Although the natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish is eclectic and uncustomary, it offers an important critique of contemporary scientific methods, especially mechanism and experimentalism. As presented in Observations upon Experimental Philosophy and Blazing World, Cavendish's natural philosophy incorporates rationalistic and subjective elements, urging contemporary natural philosophers to recognize that pure objectivity is unattainable through any method of inquiry and that reason is essential in making sense and use of scientific observation.

In addition to its scientific implications, Cavendish's three-tiered model of matter presents interesting sociopolitical associations. Through her own use of metaphor and her theoretical fusion of matter and motion, …

Review Essay: Valeria Finucci. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, And Castration In The Italian Renaissance, Liz Horodowich

Quidditas

Valeria Finucci. The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8223-3065-2. $24.95 paper.

Gender And Bilinguals' Creativity, Wendy Baker

Faculty Publications

Research on the influence of gender on language across different cultures has mostly concentrated on qualitative measures of analysis. These measures demonstrate that there are differences in rhetorical and literary style across world Englishes in both and outer circle. Using Biber's multidimensional analysis (1988) to examine a large corpus of world English literatures written in Indian, West African, Britain, Anglo-American and Mexican American varieties of English, this paper examines whether quantitative analyses can also be insightful and useful in the examination of the influence of gender on language and in expanding our understanding of what "bilingual creativity" entails. The results …

Statistics On Suicide And Lds Church Involvement In Males Age 15-34, Gilbert W. Fellingham, Kyle Mcbride, H. Dennis Tolley, Joseph L. Lyon

BYU Studies Quarterly

Suicide rates among young adults in the United States have been on the rise in the past four decades, with white males at greatest risk. In 1897, Emile Durkheim proposed that religion provided a source of social integration that decreased the likelihood of suicide. His hypothesis was based on research of religious affiliation and suicide rates in Europe. Pope's reanalysis of Durkheim's data, using covariates such as economic status, casts doubt on Durkheim's interpretation of the data. However, others have suggested that religious affiliation is an important factor in the study of suicide, and studies including religious measures other than …

Review Essay: John Kitchen. Saints’ Lives And The Rhetoric Of Gender: Male And Female In Merovingian Hagiography, Isabel Moreira

Quidditas

John Kitchen. Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 255 pp. ISBN 0195117220.

Gendered Communication Among Second Generation Danish Americans In The "Blair Church:" A Study In Progress, John Mark Nielsen

The Bridge

I am not nor do I pretend to be an expert on gendered communication or feminist criticism. I have, however, used Carol Gilligan's In A Different Voice and Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand in classes with good results.1 While students differ in their responses, these works are accessible to many and have inspired good discussion about how gender may affect decision-making and impact the way messages are sent and received. Additionally, I have found writings by Peggy McIntosh, Carol Smith-Rosenberg, and Barbara Welter helpful in exploring and thinking about the writings of American women writers of the pre-Civil War …

Changes In The Religious Devotion Of Latter-Day Saints Throughout The Life Cycle, Barry L. Johnson, James T. Duke

BYU Studies Quarterly

LDS women rate themselves higher in religious devotion than do LDS men. Both experience diminished religious devotion in certain life stages but increase in devotion over their life spans.

"Withoute Words": The Medieval Lady Dreams In The Assembly Of Ladies, Colleen Donnelly

Quidditas

Two poems, The Assembly of Ladies and The Floure and the Leafe, are unique among Middle English dream visions due to the gender of their narrators; both are narrated by women. In his edition of these two poems, Derek Pearsall argues that whether they were told by women or not is really of little importance. There are many examples of men, such as Lydgate and Deschamps, writing as women. However, while men may speak for women in other types of poems, a woman narrator of Middle English dream vision survives only in these two poems. Moreover, as Alexandra Barratt …

Review Essay: Mary Erler And Maryanne Kowaleski, Eds., Women And Power In The Middle Ages, Joan M. West

Quidditas

Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds., Women and Power in the Middle Ages, University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Review Essay: Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast And Holy Fast: The Religious Significance Of Food To Medieval Women, Janine Marie Idziak

Quidditas

Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, University of California Press, 1987.