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Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The "New Woman" On The Stage: The Making Of A Gendered Public Sphere In Interwar Iran And Egypt, Fakhri Haghani Nov 2008

The "New Woman" On The Stage: The Making Of A Gendered Public Sphere In Interwar Iran And Egypt, Fakhri Haghani

History Dissertations

During the interwar period in Iran and Egypt, local and regional manifestation of tajadod/al-jidida (modernity) as a “cultural identity crisis” created the nationalist image and practice of zan-e emrouzi-e shahri/al-mar’a al-jidida al-madani (the urban/secular “New Woman”). The dynamics of the process involved performance art, including the covert medium of journalism and the overt world of the performing arts of music, play, and cinema. The image of the “New Woman” as asl/al-asala (cultural authenticity) connected sonnat/al-sunna (tradition) with the global trends of modernism, linking pre-nineteenth century popular forms of performing arts to new genres, forms, and social experiences of the space …


The Compatibility Of Containment And Autonomy In Lydia Minatoya's The Strangeness Of Beauty, Rachel Jeppsen Jul 2008

The Compatibility Of Containment And Autonomy In Lydia Minatoya's The Strangeness Of Beauty, Rachel Jeppsen

Theses and Dissertations

Subaltern studies has overwhelmingly privileged subaltern resistance as a means for the subaltern to attain autonomy. While the group's project has made breakthroughs in rewriting Indian subaltern history, their emphasis on resistance to oppression has also essentialized what it means to create autonomy. A 1999 novel, Lydia Minatoya's The Strangeness of Beauty, challenges this essentialist view by portraying alternative behaviors that indicate autonomy. The novel is set in 1920s Japan when transnational excitement and anxiety provided opportunities for one subaltern group, Japanese women, to gain autonomy. While some feminist movements in Japan substantiate the notion that autonomy must be gained …


Identity, Desire And Spectatorship: An Examination Of Germaine Dulac’S La Coquille Et Le Clergyman, Jennifer A. Melko Jul 2008

Identity, Desire And Spectatorship: An Examination Of Germaine Dulac’S La Coquille Et Le Clergyman, Jennifer A. Melko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Germaine Dulac's 1928 avant-garde film, La Coquille et le Clergyman, based on a script written by Antonin Artaud, presents the idea of the woman as an object of desire, subjected to the male gaze through the cinematic process. Not only is the lone female character the object of desire of her two male suitors on screen, but she also becomes the object of desire for the presumably male viewer of the film, who has become a silent character in the film. Rather than simply being the spectator, the viewer's own identity becomes entwined with that of the on screen …


Romaine Brooks: Embracing Diversity, Ronda Lea Ensor Apr 2008

Romaine Brooks: Embracing Diversity, Ronda Lea Ensor

Art and Design Theses

While the majority of literature written in regard to artist Romaine Brooks has focused on her portraiture of cross-dressing women, I intend to focus on other aspects of her oeuvre which are often neglected. Therefore, I will examine works depicting women produced or exhibited by Brooks during the years 1910 and 1911 when her output was at its most varied. I have divided these works into four different categories: nudes, interior scenes, balcony scenes, and portraits. These paintings prove that while Brooks painted in a traditional fashion, she also subtly challenged the role of women in art and society.


The New Feminine Rhetoric: Wollstonecraft, Austen, And The Forms Of Romantic-Era Feminism, Elisabeth Louise Guyon Mar 2008

The New Feminine Rhetoric: Wollstonecraft, Austen, And The Forms Of Romantic-Era Feminism, Elisabeth Louise Guyon

Theses and Dissertations

Countering traditional claims that the feminist movement all but vanished during the early nineteenth century, this thesis suggests feminism remained prominent in both the literature and rhetoric of the time. In tracing the development of the "New Rhetoric," a rhetorical movement that aimed to accommodate new principles of the Enlightenment, I focus in part on the rhetorical battle between Edmund Burke, with his Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Thomas Paine, with his Rights of Man. From there, I suggest that Mary Wollstonecraft, writing in the wake of the Burke-Paine debate and drawing upon the rhetorical philosophy of George …


The Conception Of Irony With Continual Reference To Kierkegaard: An Examination Of Ironic Play In Fear And Trembling, Julie Ann Parker Frederick Mar 2008

The Conception Of Irony With Continual Reference To Kierkegaard: An Examination Of Ironic Play In Fear And Trembling, Julie Ann Parker Frederick

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the relationship of irony, as defined in Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony to the text and subject of Fear and Trembling. Irony is interpreted in this thesis as negative space, which both binds and separates and which assumes meaning equal to or greater than the positive space that binds it. This definition applies to Kierkegaard's Socrates who lived ironically in the space between actuality and ideality. This thesis considers how Abraham also lived in ironic space and why ironic space is a prerequisite for faith. Unlike Socrates, Abraham did not stop with irony, but used irony to …


I Am Warrior Woman, Hear Me Roar: The Challenge And Reproduction Of Heteronormativity In Speculative Television Programs, Leisa Anne Clark Mar 2008

I Am Warrior Woman, Hear Me Roar: The Challenge And Reproduction Of Heteronormativity In Speculative Television Programs, Leisa Anne Clark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores how the "warrior woman" trope in western culture, as portrayed in late 20th century science fiction/fantasy and speculative television, reflects heteronormative/heterosexist discourses of femininity in American culture. First, I will examine feminine discourse in American culture, especially in the late 20th century. Then I will discuss how the tenets of second and third wave feminism influenced western paradigms of "the ideal female" and impacted pop culture by producing "warrior women" who both reflected and challenged heteronormative ideas and feminist principles. By examining several television shows produced in the United States and Great Britain from the late 1960s …


Opportunities For Spiritual Awakening And Growth In Mothering, Melissa J. Albee Mar 2008

Opportunities For Spiritual Awakening And Growth In Mothering, Melissa J. Albee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My experiences as a mother have been enhanced by spirituality and my spirituality has been transformed through the practice of mothering. I will argue that part of the transformation available in mothering is that one can go from thinking of oneself as an individual with free will, self autonomy, and independence to believing maybe we are all more connected and dependent upon each other than we thought. I intend to explore my personal spiritual journey from an academic perspective in order to gain and share knowledge. Intense emotional experiences such as childbirth, learning how to take care of a person …


Gender, Quota Laws, And The Struggles Of Women’S Social Movements In Latin America, Merav Frazier Feb 2008

Gender, Quota Laws, And The Struggles Of Women’S Social Movements In Latin America, Merav Frazier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Assuming gender neutrality in comparative analysis, i.e. not including either explicit or implicit references to a particular gender or sex, runs the risk of camouflaging the unequal distribution of political power, economic influence, and political access for men and women. Unfortunately, in assuming such neutrality, one is blinded to the inherent flaws of political systems, the inequalities they create, and their lack of consideration of gender and women's rights. To counteract this inequality between the sexes, women's social movements are fighting to create gender awareness and establish formal policies that place them at the same level as their male counterparts, …


The Edge Of Things, Robin Koman Jan 2008

The Edge Of Things, Robin Koman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Edge of Things is what I like to call a love song to the dispossessed. Each of the eight stories in the collection is an examination of the lives of women who are exiled from modern American consumer culture, whether by circumstance or by choice. This separation brings them heartache, risk, and sometimes even hope. The collection is fueled by the landscape of Florida, observed at its most beautiful and most corrupted, from highways, landfills, and trailer parks to housing developments, gardens, and secret forests. Setting is a constant source of revelation, the external landscape offering insight into the …


Beyond Postmodern Margins: Theorizing Postfeminist Consequences Through Popular Female Representation, Victoria Mosher Jan 2008

Beyond Postmodern Margins: Theorizing Postfeminist Consequences Through Popular Female Representation, Victoria Mosher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 1988, Linda Nicholson and Nancy Fraser published an article entitled "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," arguing that this essay would provide a jumping point for discussion between feminisms and postmodernisms within academia. Within this essay, Nicholson and Fraser largely disavow a number of second wave feminist theories due to their essentialist and foundationalist underpinnings in favor of a set of postmodernist frameworks that might help feminist theorists overcome these epistemological impediments. A "postmodern feminism," Nicholson and Fraser claim, would become "the theoretical counterpart of a broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered solidarity, the sort …


Will Travel : Journey Memoirs, Kelly Renee Broce Jan 2008

Will Travel : Journey Memoirs, Kelly Renee Broce

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Memoirs and poetry. Concerns the travels of a West Virginian woman, the granddaughter of a first generation Sicilian West Virginian, within the U.S., the Bahamas, Thailand, and China, where she taught English as a second language for two years from 2000-2002. Themes include identity (Appalachian, Persian, African-American, Chinese, and even Uigur), ethnicity and gender in West Virginia, fatalism, religion, poverty, Diaspora, travel, discrimination, the Ugly American/European, Ah Q, Imperialism, Orientalism, otherness, political asylum, victims and survival, substance abuse in West Virginia, feminist narrative, West Virginian authors, mountaintop removal, environmentalism, and protest.


Bollywood Broads: Reconstructing The Femme Fatale In Popular Indian Film, Erin Zimmerman Moss Jan 2008

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 …


In The Spin, Kathryn Noel Beles Jan 2008

In The Spin, Kathryn Noel Beles

Theses and Dissertations

In the Spin is a semi-autobiographical collection of poetry, dealing primarily with themes of family, marital infidelity, loyalty, the female body, and the tension between political vs. aesthetic existence. This is a collection of poems influenced by the work of French Feminism, Shakespeare and Faulkner, and hybrid lyric-narrative poets of the last fifty years.