Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“The Way To Dusty Death”: The Feminist Revision Of The Western In Nomadland (2021), Lucas Cicarelli Vieira

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

The Western film genre is founded upon patriarchal and capitalist conditions embedded deeply within structuralist analyses. The portrayal of the solitary, white male cowboy—with its themes of rugged individualism and phallocentric mannerisms—has affected the depiction of women, people of color, and other marginalized groups across media. These prejudicial structures, though applied throughout the genre, has seen revision in recent productions, most notably by feminist directors of the modern era. In Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, Western narrative elements and cinematic techniques have been amended to favor genuine testimonials from affected individuals of economic collapse caused by the hubris of industrialists and the …

Joy As Contestation: Frida Kahlo, "The Dream", Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

This essay analyzes the pictorial representation of Frida Khalo’s “The Dream,” to unfold the nature and reflect upon the notions of joy and innocence as forms of a subtle contestation. How are they represented? By examining the visible and the non-visible as conditions of critical possibility for joy, innocence and contestation, we can reevaluate the interrelation between the notions of life and death in the Mexican culture, and Frida’s personal history. I argue that innocent joy is a quality that articulates a subtle contestation or clandestine activity of freedom

Lastesis: Mass-Collaboration + Mass-Contaminated Language = Changing The Story, Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

LasTesis, a Chilean performance group that choreographed a feminist dance and chant titled Un violador en tu camino (2019) (A rapist in your path) gathers women of all ages and backgropunds. Their bodies dance and chant in unison echoing the tethered notions of collaboration and contamination as thinking, as a massive contamination. This article explores how contamination affects identity and how it also enables the trace of a traumatic past while imagining different futures that are imminent and important. I argue that this knowledge and assertive action exemplified in the performance Un violador en tu camino involves a physical reclaiming …

A Dialogue On Marta Minujin's Happening: Leyendo Las Noticias (Reading The News), Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

Marta Minujín’s Leyendo las noticias is a happening that combines feminine subjectivity with the socio-political, creating a dialogue around notions of trace, the feminine, text, meaning, and impermanence. Specifically, how these notions affect the women living in an unstable and pluralistic world. It depicts a woman as a ‘participatory woman’ talking about women, in a conflicted patriarchal society. I would argue that the popular Marta Minujín’s Leyendo las noticias, represents a ‘slippage,’ for women (Cixoux 1976) amid a repressive culture, and a historical context of a Dirty War, violence, and fear. Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Jane Bennett, and …

Hasta Que La Muerte Los Separe: La Representación De La Violencia Machista En La Literatura Y El Cine Hispánicos Contemporáneos, Anna M. Martija Perez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Violence against women is a worldwide social problem that is far from being eradicated. Sociologists and psychologists have studied this complex issue rooted in the unbalanced distribution of power between the sexes and writers have portrayed it in their works since the Middle Ages to present. This dissertation provides a comparative study of recent representations of male violence in fictional and non-fictional works produced in different Hispanic countries. The works analyzed include: Icíar Bollaín´s film Te doy mis ojos (2003); recent documentaries such as Home Truth (2017) and Las tres muertes de Maricela Escobedo (2021); shortfilms like Disonancia (2005) and …

Primitivismo Y Poesía Femenina En El Cono Sur: Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni Y Juana De Ibarbourou, Ramon Muniz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Primitivism is a philosophical attitude and artistic view based on the search for origins. It is linked to a simpler conception of life and has been used as a strategy to critique modernity through literature and art, as well as a means to subvert traditional and academicist paradigms in cultural production. Although most scholars have considered Primitivism as a problem of Western ideology, Erik Camayd-Freixas, Marianna Torgovnick, and Ben Etherington have shown that Primitivism is present in all cultures and that its strategies have been deployed to deal with racial, ecological, economic, artistic, and gender issues.

My dissertation analyzes the …

The Nomad Selves: The American Women Of The Spanish Civil War And Exile, Maria Labbato

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As witnesses to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and its ensuing streams of exile Americans Muriel Rukeyser and Janet Riesenfeld understood the conflict as symptomatic of larger European and antifascist struggle. Weaving biography, intellectual history, and cultural studies this dissertation reveals how the art and activism of these two North American women in the Spanish Civil War can expose an overlooked element in the antifascist movement and its fate with the rise of Cold War anti-Communism. Their experiences—one a writer and poet, and the other a dancer and screenwriter—with the Spanish conflict and exile informed their lives and creative works. …

Much Ado About Contemporary Women: Gender Adapted In Contemporary Settings, Jessica C. Valdes

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing has been reproduced multiple times in a contemporary context. This thesis focuses on two key productions, BBC’s ShakespeaRe-Told televised adaptation and Joss Whedon’s 2013 film and examines how these productions translate the gender themes in the play to a contemporary setting. To study translations of gender, this thesis is focused on the adaptations of Beatrice and Hero, two major female characters of the play. The comparison of these adaptations is accomplished through analyzing the pieces and reviewing existing work. While there are some important differences between the adaptations, the major problems Beatrice and Hero are …

Spiritual Activism And Political Solidarity In So Far From God And Mother Tongue: Two Views By Two Authors, Jean Paul Russo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM AND POLITICAL SOLIDARITY IN SO FAR FROM GOD AND MOTHER TONGUE: TWO VIEWS BY TWO AUTHORS

by

Jean Paul Russo

Florida International University, 2020

Miami, Florida

Professor Anne Castro, Major Professor

This thesis focuses on the intersection between spirituality and political action in the works of two Latinx authors, Demetria Martinez and Ana Castillo. Building on Gloria Anzaldua’s theories of trauma, narrative, and what she terms ‘conocimiento,’ I contend that the novels So Far From God, and Mother Tongue, present an alternative approach to political action that is derived from a common experience of suffering and trauma as …

Transnational Sex-Positive Play Parties: The Sexual Politics Of Care For Community-Making At A Kinky Salon, Christina Bazzaroni

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To date, feminist geographers and geographers of sexualities have yet to fully interrogate post sexual revolution society. In this dissertation I examine the politics of sex-positive play parties, through the case study of Kinky Salon (KS) – a global organization that claims to catalyze a contemporary sex culture revolution. This project expands on previous feminist geography and geographies of sexualities scholarship centering queer, kinky sex, demonstrating that non-normative sexual practices are informed by and contribute to sexual revolution legacies. I extend feminist geographies’ theorizing of affect and emotion to show how sexual intimacies are care-work, with the emotional power to …

Negotiating With Patriarchy: Women, Sexuality, And Power In Yoruba Sacred Oral Genres., Ajoke Adebisi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study argues that Yoruba oral genres offer women models “of “and “for” ways of enduring resistance from patriarchy. In the myths, proverbs and praise poems, women challenge marginalization in ways incomparable to what prevails in other world religions. By engaging Yoruba oral genres, this study offers insights into how the Yoruba reflect on sharing of power among the male and the female. The study also highlights how Yoruba oral genres speak to the power imbalance in male /female relationships and sheds light on the prescriptions oral genres offer women for negotiating these imbalances.

Material Girls: Consumption And The Making Of Middle Class Identity In The Experiences Of Black Single Mothers In The Washington, Dc Metropolitan Area, Aysha L. Preston Ph.D.

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the ways in which black single mothers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area use material goods and consumption practices to inform their identities as members of the middle class. Black middle class women are challenging stereotypes surrounding single mother households, the idea of family, and class status in the United States, as more women overall are having children while single, delaying or deciding against marriage, and are entering the middle and upper-middle classes as a result of advanced education and career opportunities. Because of these demographic and sociocultural shifts, the romanticized “nuclear family” which consists of a …

Nights In The City Beautiful, Veronica Suarez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nights in The City Beautiful is a collection of confessional, free verse poems that explores sexual trauma, mental health, the exigencies of marriage, and the complexities of human desire. These interconnected poems are grounded with a braided narrative and tackle taboo themes. In Part 1: Monogamy, the reader journeys into the world of Vincent and Victoria, their profound love, and their anxiety disorders. In Part 2: Polyamory, Victoria gets caught in a love triangle when she meets her publishing coworker, Peter Langley.

The book evokes the movement of Romanticism and first-and-second-generation Romantic poets such as William Blake and Lord Byron. …

Monstrous Maternity: Folkloric Expressions Of The Feminine In Images Of The Ubume, Michaela Leah Prostak

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The ubume is a ghost of Japanese folklore, once a living woman, who died during either pregnancy or childbirth. This thesis explores how the religious and secular developments of the ubume and related figures create a dichotomy of ideologies that both condemn and liberate women in their roles as mothers. Examples of literary and visual narratives of the ubume as well as the religious practices that were employed for maternity-related concerns are explored within their historical contexts in order to best understand what meaning they held for people at a given time and if that meaning has changed. These meanings …

Jewish Women’S Transracial Epistemological Networks: Representations Of Black Women In The African Diaspora, 1930-1980, Abby S. Gondek

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how Jewish women social scientists relationally established their gendered-racialized subjectivities and theories about race-gender-sexuality-class through their portrayals of black women’s sexuality and family structures in the African Diaspora: the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, Swaziland, and the U.K. The central women in this study: Ellen Hellmann, Ruth Landes, Hilda Kuper, and Ruth Glass, were part of the same “political generation,” born in 1908-1912, coming of age when Jews of European descent experienced an ambivalent and conditional assimilation into whiteness, a form of internal colonization. I demonstrate how each woman’s familial origin point in Europe, parental class and political …

For Those About To Rock: Gender Codes In The Rock Music Video Games Rock Band And Rocksmith, Elisa M. Melendez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores gender codes within the intersection of two American pop culture staples, video games and rock music, by conducting a feminist analysis of two video games (Rock Band and Rocksmith). Both video games and rock music have had their share of feminist academic critique: Musicologists point out how lack of canonical inclusion, gendered attitudes towards instruments, and messages from supporting media create an unwelcome environment for women to pursue a rock music career. Game studies scholars have examined similar attitudes, including a lack of women represented in both the video games and the studios that create them.

Through …

Examining The Relationships Between Gender Role Congruity, Identity, And The Choice To Persist For Women In Undergraduate Physics Majors, Bronwen Bares Pelaez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Persistent gender disparity limits the available contributors to advancing some science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. While higher education can be an influential time-point for ensuring adequate participation, many physics programs across the U.S. have few women in classroom or lab settings. Prior research indicates that these women face considerable barriers. For university students, faculty, and administration to appropriately address these issues, it is important to understand the experiences of women as they navigate male-dominated STEM fields.

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study explored undergraduate female physics majors’ experiences with their male-dominated academic and research spaces in the U.S. …

The Crafting Of The Self In Private Letters And The Epistolary Novel: El Hilo Que Une, Un Verano En Bornos, Ifigenia, Querido Diego, Te Abraza Quiela, And Cartas Apócrifas, Angelica A. Nelson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The inherent flexibility of the letter form or epistolary mode of writing frees the writer within the framework of salutations and closings to use vocabulary and language to create, to omit or to invert conventional constraints imposed on women by a patriarchal society. The letter begins as a blank page but becomes the space for writing one’s personal thoughts and emotions to the absent other in a communicative effort to minimize the separation.

This dissertation examines the female narrator in actual letters written during the Spanish emigration to the New World in the sixteenth century and four epistolary novels written …

Negotiating Globalization From Below: Social Entrepreneurship, Neoliberalism, And The Making Of The New South African Subject, Oceane Jasor

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neoliberal globalization can threaten the growth of a global civil society that sanctions power-sharing arrangements. Yet, scholarship that focuses unidirectionally on global processes may in effect eviscerate the transformative power of the local. To counter this tendency, this dissertation examines the interrelationships between contextualized and historically-specific experiences in South Africa and transnational processes through a case study of social entrepreneurship, an emerging global justice movement. Drawing on a 12-months institutional ethnography of Sonke Gender Justice, a transnational social entrepreneurship NGO working to achieve gender equality, prevent gender-based violence and reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, this dissertation explores …

The Gender Problem Of Buddhist Nationalism In Myanmar: The 969 Movement And Theravada Nuns, Grisel D'Elena

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses transnational and Black feminist frameworks to analyze Buddhist nationalist discourses of gender and violence against religious and ethnic minorities in Myanmar. Burmese Buddhist nationalists’ marginalization of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority is inextricably linked to their attempts to control Buddhist women. Research includes interviews with U Ashin Wirathu, the leader of the monastic-led nationalist group, the 969 Movement, and with other monks of the organization, as well as with non-nationalist monks, nuns and laywomen. I also analyze Theravada textual discourse as read by my subjects in light of the history of Myanmar to understand the ways the …

Epistemological Analysis Of Traditionalist And Reformist Discourses Pertaining To Islamic Feminism In Iran, Meisam Vahedi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Islamic feminism in Iran is defined as the radical rethinking of religious and sacred texts from a feminist perspective. The purpose of this research is to show how an Islamic feminist discourse developed in Iran, and to outline the differences between the reformist and traditionalist epistemological foundations of women’s rights discourse in Iran.
This study, using documentary research methods, demonstrates that central to the development of Islamic feminism is the development of the reformist movement in Iran. Moreover, it is shown that the main impedance to women’s equality in Iran is the traditionalist epistemology in religious law. While reformists believe …

Social And Economic Factors Influencing Japanese Women's Decision About Childbearing In Post-Bubble Japan, Rebecca L. Richko

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For the past twenty-five years, Japan’s population decline has been a domestic and global concern. A common discourse on the issue of Japan’s low birth rate tends to focus on the role of women, specifically indicating that women should change their behavior to prioritize motherhood. This thesis argues that Japan’s low birth rate is the result of a nexus of social and economic influences that are experienced in contemporary society. In order to provide a nuanced analysis of the influences on a woman’s childbearing decision, motivators of and challenges to population growth will be explored. The dynamic struggle that women …

We Are Standing In The Nick Of Time: Translative Relevance In Anne Carson's "Antigonick", Michelle Alonso

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The complicated issues surrounding translation studies have seen growing attention in recent years from scholars and academics that want to make it a discipline and not a minor branch of another field, such as linguistics or comparative literature. Writ large with Antigonick, Carson showcases the recent Western push towards translation studies in the American academy. By offering up a text that is chaotic in its presentation, she bypasses the rigid idea of univocality. By giving the text discordant images, she betrays the failed efficacy of sign and signification, and by choosing a text to be performed and mutually participated …

La Representación De La Masculinidad Y La Violencia De Género En La Novela Española De La Posguerra, Alfredo M. Pastor

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While it may be argued that aggression against women is part of a culture of violence deeply rooted in Spanish society, the gender-related violence that exists in today’s Spain is more specifically a legacy of Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975). Franco’s Spain endorsed unequal gender relations, championed patriarchal dominance and power over women, and imposed models of hegemonic and authoritarian masculinities that internalized violence by rendering it a feature inseparable from manhood and virility.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive analysis of masculinity and gender violence in Franco’s Spain, by analyzing the novel as the primary cultural vehicle of social criticism and political …

Gender In Motion: Negotiating Bengali Social Statuses Across Time And Territories, Mayurakshi Chaudhuri

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hindu Indian Bengalis as an ethno-linguistic and transnational group have negotiated their social locations historically, contemporaneously, and transnationally. In this dissertation, I examine and argue how transnational migration is the most recent in a long line of Bengali strategies to negotiate their social location vis-à-vis other populations in India. Since the early years of the nineteenth century, in Bengal specifically, a series of socio-political dynamics have reshaped and reconstituted Bengali social status. These dynamics can be observed across various geographic scales - national, regional, and local -- and have continued to inform their contemporary gender relations. En route to this …

Women-Led Community Development Organizations (Cdos) In Miami-Dade County: A Model Of Community Development Efforts Impacting The Economic Security Of Women, Jan Lindsay Solomon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent studies on the economic status of women in Miami-Dade County (MDC) reveal an alarming rate of economic insecurity and significant obstacles for women to achieve economic security. Consistent barriers to women’s economic security affect not only the health and wellbeing of women and their families, but also economic prospects for the community. A key study reveals in Miami-Dade County, “Thirty-nine percent of single female-headed families with at least one child are living at or below the federal poverty level” and “over half of working women do not earn adequate income to cover their basic necessities” (Brion 2009, 1). Moreover, …

Imah On The Bimah: Gender And The Roles Of Latin American Conservative Congregational Rabinas, Valeria N. Schindler

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this research is to analyze the impact of gender on the work of Latin American rabinas within Conservative congregations in Latin America. The fact that women’s roles in Latin America and in Judaism have been traditionally linked to nurturing and caring serves as the point of departure for my hypothesis, which is that the role rabinas play within their congregations is also linked to those traits. In this research I utilize a social scientific approach and qualitative methodology, conducting personal interviews with the rabinas. While this work proves that Conservative congregations in Latin America are gendered, my …

Women Of African Descent: Persistence In Completing A Doctorate, Vannetta L. Bailey-Iddrisu

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the educational persistence of women of African descent (WOAD) in pursuit of a doctorate degree at universities in the southeastern United States. WOAD are women of African ancestry born outside the African continent. These women are heirs to an inner dogged determination and spirit to survive despite all odds (Pulliam, 2003, p. 337).This study used Ellis’s (1997) Three Stages for Graduate Student Development as the conceptual framework to examine the persistent strategies used by these women to persist to the completion of their studies.

Intergenerational Associations Between A Consensual Childhood Sexual Experience And Adult Substance Abuse Among Latina Mothers And Daughters, Patria Rojas, Sunny Kim, Frank R. Dillon, Theophile Niynonsenga

School of Social Work

Purpose: Early onset of sexual activity has been linked to later substance abuse. Our study aimed to further describe the associations between Latina mothers’ and daughters’ early sexual activity and adult substance abuse.

Methods: A survey was conducted with 92 Latina mother–daughter dyads whose members never experienced sexual abuse. Childhood sexual experience was defined as the occurrence of a consensual sexual encounter at the age of 15 years or younger. Substance abusers were identified by the extent of substance use during the 12 months prior to the interview. Path analysis was used to fit our conceptual models to the data. …

Quantifying Rhythmic Differences Between Spanish, English, & Hispanic English, Phillip Carter

Phillip M. Carter

The present analysis examines the Spanish and English of adolescent bilinguals (L1 Spanish, L2 English) from an exclusively Hispanic neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina. Conversational speech was analyzed for prosodic rhythm using the Pairwise Variability Index (Low & Grabe 1995), which included for each speaker at least 200 syllable-to- syllable comparisons in each language in order to determine the actual quantitative differences between Spanish and English. Additionally, the English data were compared to the data in the Thomas and Carter (2003 a, b) corpus in order to determine the rhythmic differences between North Carolina Hispanics and the benchmark non-Spanish-speaking, native …