Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Beyond Boundaries: Embodiment And Selfhood In Hilary Mantel's Novels, Tara Koger

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

No abstract provided.

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 …

Sexism In The Academy, Laura Stivers

Laura Stivers

The Legacies And Potentials Of Feminism In Art De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam: A Case Study, Tatyana Neplioueva

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This report is the outcome of a month-long practicum and exploratory study of the history of feminist art at de Appel arts centre, an internationally oriented arts center located in Amsterdam. The result of this study is a documentary film exploring the connections between Feministische Kunst Internationaal (Feminist Art International), a show held at de Appel in the winter of 1978-'79, and If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution (IICD) Edition III “Masquerade,” a rolling curatorial platform working in collaboration with de Appel in the fall of 2008. Data was obtained by means of …

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

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 …

When Tragedy Hits: A Concise Socio-Cultural Analysis Of Sex Trafficking Of Young Iranian Women, Sholeh Shahroki

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

In this paper, I focus predominantly on the cultural context of sex trafficking of young Iranian women into the underground markets of the Persian Gulf region. Neither human trafficking nor sex trade is a modern trait. While these age-old practices have been the subject of protest by the moralists and the liberal feminists alike, rarely does the discourse of eradication of human trafficking and the restoration of the abject bodies include a remedy to revise the local and common gendered belief that allows for these informal economies to proliferate. New trends of sex-trade in the Gulf region have emerged out …

Woman’S Identity And The Qur’An: A New Reading. Nimat Hafez Barazangi. University Press Of Florida. 2004. Isbn: 0-8130-2785-3, Mark Davidheiser

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

From Thailand With Love: Transnational Marriage Migration In The Global Care Economy, Sine Plambech

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Women from Asia are increasingly traversing borders to marry men in the Western world. This article presents ethnographic research focused on Thai women married to Danish men. The existing discourse portrays these Thai ”mail order brides” through a discourse of victimization. First, they are commonly portrayed as being uprooted and permanently alienated from Thailand. Second, they are seen as merely victims of Third World poverty. A third portrayal sees them as a contraband commodity in illegal human trafficking. As a result, they are seen as victims of simple male domination. This raises two socio-political problems. First, the discourse does not …

Anti-Trafficking Campaign And Karaoke Bar Hostesses In China, Tiantian Zheng

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This article discusses the adverse effect upon sex workers of China’s abolitionist policy that focuses on forced prostitution and launches anti-trafficking campaigns. The argument developed in this paper is based on over twenty months of fieldwork between 1999 and 2002 in Dalian. I will first discuss karaoke bar industry and China’s policy of anti-trafficking campaigns. I will then demonstrate the impact of this policy on hostesses in karaoke bars. I will follow it with an account of how, unlike the government’s perception of forced prostitution, hostesses voluntarily choose their profession and actively seek sex work in countries such as Japan …

The Ngo-Ification Of The Anti-Trafficking Movement In The United States: A Case Study Of The Coalition To Abolish Slavery And Trafficking, Jennifer Lynne Musto

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

While NGOs proffer valuable services to trafficked persons, this paper maps how increased professionalization of the anti-trafficking movement in the U.S. has curtailed trafficked persons’ efforts to organize a movement that speaks to their experiences and needs. In order to highlight tensions and exclusionary practices that exist within the professionally centered U.S. anti-trafficking movement, I present one case study of a Los Angeles based NGO dedicated to providing social services and political advocacy to trafficked persons. By examining the micropolitics of advocacy work, this paper explores how funding pressures and ideological debates about prostitution have delimited trafficked persons’ ability to …

Editorial, Tiantian Zheng

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Beyond Trafficking, Agency And Rights: A Capabilities Perspective On Filipina Experiences Of Domestic Work In Paris And Hong Kong, Leah Briones

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Current analyses of trafficking in unskilled female migrant labour are dominated by the concepts of victimisation, agency and rights. So far, however, such concepts have done more to legitimate receiving countries’ border control protection than to protect the livelihood needs of these migrant workers. Drawing on the experiences of Filipina domestic workers in Paris and Hong Kong, this paper uses Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach to question the efficacy of the current anti-trafficking discourse.

Akua Kuenyehia (Ed.). Women And Law In West Africa: Gender Relations In The Family- A West African Perspective (Accra: Women And Law In West Africa, 2003. Pp. Xv, 215. Graphs, Tables.), Emma Nesper

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Birth On The Threshold: Childbirth And Modernity In South India By Cecilia Van Hollen. Berkeley, Ca. University Of California Press, 2003, Kathryn Coffey

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Iris Von Roten As A Feminist: Observations, Interpretations, And Impact Of Frauen Im Laufgitter, Regina Wecker

Swiss American Historical Society Review

PART ONE

ASPECTS OF AN IDENTITY

When Iris von Roten published her book Frauen im Laufgitter. Offene Worte zur Stellung der Frau (Women in the Playpen. Plain Words About the Situation of Women) in 1958, it caused a scandal. Her analysis of women's present social status and their political and economic situation in Switzerland was repudiated, von Roten and her book were showered with scorn, hatred, and ridicule, and even made the subject of a carnival farce in Basel (Kochli 1992: 101-118). Frauen im Laufgitter and its author were called "cold" and soulless, though it was rumored that …

Organizing For Domestic Worker Rights In Singapore: The Limits Of Transnationalism, Lenore T. Lyons

Lenore Lyons

Extract: This article examines the limits of transnational feminist activism through a case study of domestic worker rights in Singapore. This work builds on my decade-long research on the feminist movement in Singapore and my activist involvement in the Singaporean women’s organisation, the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE). I argue that the Singaporean state inhibits attempts by local feminist organizations to engage transnationally (either through links with international NGOs, or by confronting the forces of globalization locally). Singaporean activists have creatively responded to these challenges, but their actions remain constrained by the imperatives of the nation-state.

Dignity Overdue: Women’S Rights Activism In Support Of Foreign Domestic Workers In Singapore, Lenore T. Lyons

Lenore Lyons

The forces of globalisation increasingly compel feminist activists to engage internationally, either through their involvement in transnational networks and social movements, or by incorporating understandings of the ‘global’ into local and national activist practices. However, as differently situated actors with diverse agendas and priorities come together to address women’s rights within a transnational frame they face a range of challenges and contradictions. Rather than simply transcending the ‘national’, transnational feminist activists must pay particular attention to the roles played by nation-states and national governments in mediating the relationship between local and transnational groups. Amongst the issues they must consider are …

Disrupting The Center: Interrogating An ‘Asian Feminist’ Identity, Lenore T. Lyons

Lenore Lyons

The problem of ‘difference’ has emerged as a significant issue in western feminist theory making during the past two decades. In response to claims that mainstream feminism has ignored the lives and voices of third world women and women of colour, attention has increasingly been placed on the ways in which class and ‘race’ intersect in the everyday lived experiences of women. This work has sought to displace the hegemonic control of white, western women in the production of feminist knowledge. Despite a growing body of literature on women’s movements throughout the Asian region, however, common-sense perceptions of Asian ‘submissiveness’ …

Negotiating Difference: Singaporean Women Building An Ethics Of Respect, Lenore T. Lyons

Lenore Lyons

Extract: The problem of difference emerged as a significant issue in western feminist theory making during the 1980s-1990s. In response to claims that western feminism ignored the lives and voices of third world women1, attention was increasingly been placed on the need to forge broad-based coalitions that embrace difference and commonality. But, in the call to build coalitions, little work focused on the meaning of difference in the everyday lives of feminist activists; how do feminists work with women who are different to themselves? In this paper I examine the lives of women who belong to the Singaporean feminist organisation …

The Limits Of Feminist Political Intervention In Singapore, Lenore T. Lyons

Lenore Lyons

In recent years increasing attention has focused on the Singapore government’s new attitude towards limited public participation in civil society. The women’s rights organisation the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) is one example of a nongovernment organisation (NGO) that is directly engaged in this newly emerging ‘civic’ society. AWARE’s activities are constrained, however, by a state demand that its objectives remain overtly ‘non-political’ and reformist in character. This has led some observers to comment that as a state-defined practice, feminism in Singapore is unable to address issues of structural inequality and difference.

Kate Chopin's Life And Personal Influence, Jasdomin Tolentino

Excellence in Research Awards

No abstract provided.

The Art Of The Pink Nun: Evangelical Christianity And The Performance Of Capitalism, Sonia M. Hazard

Religious Studies Honors Projects

The Pink Nun is an underground feminist performance artist, chastity advocate and pious evangelical Christian. In her artwork, the Pink Nun ironically deploys the methodologies and visual vocabulary of late American consumer capitalism, such that the evangelical Christian values of chastity and sexual purity become products to be bought and sold. In this unorthodox appropriation of capitalism, the Pink Nun finds an alternative way to preach her message, engage a self-announcing secular culture, and perhaps ultimately “harvest souls.” I argue that religion here does not perform in a conventionally “religious” way; it may be manifest more subtly, entwined with and …

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.

Infertility And Moral Luck: The Politics Of Women Blaming Themselves For Infertility, Carolyn Mcleod, Julie Ponesse

Philosophy Publications

Infertility can be an agonizing experience, especially for women. And, much of the agony has to do with luck: with how unlucky one is in being infertile, and in how much luck is involved in determining whether one can weather the storm of infertility and perhaps have a child in the end. We argue that bad luck associated with being infertile is often bad moral luck for women. The infertile woman often blames herself or is blamed by others for what is happening to her, even when she cannot control or prevent what is happening to her. She has simply …

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 …

Fantasies Of Gender And The Witch In Feminist Theory And Literature, Justyna Sempruch

Comparative Cultural Studies

In Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature, Justyna Sempruch analyzes contemporary representations of the “witch” as a locus for the cultural negotiation of genders. Sempruch revisits some of the most prominent traits in past and current perceptions in feminist scholarship of exclusion and difference. She examines a selection of twentieth-century US American, Canadian, and European narratives to reveal the continued political relevance of metaphors sustained in the archetype of the “witch” widely thought to belong to pop-cultural or folkloristic formulations of the past. Through a critical rereading of the feminist texts engaging with these …

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

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

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 …