Arts and Humanities Commons^™

[There Is So Much Blood In Us], Lindsey C. Whitlock

Scripps Senior Theses

[There is So Much Blood in Us] is an ambiguously alternate universe in which absolutely nothing is true but almost everything could be. In these poems, tension between the absurd and the possible synthesize into one linguistically and psychologically driving force – discomfort. More than anything, I am writing about discomfort.

America’s media representations of women are almost always defined by a singular, and often sexualized experience. Yet, when I talk to the many wonderful / brilliant / badass / etc. women in my life, most of our truly defining experiences are impressively unsexy. Our womanity, if you will, orbits …

Contingency Holding By A Thread: Intersectionality In Selected Works By Ghada Amer, Sarah Eileen Sabo

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Ghada Amer is a diasporic, female, artist of color who creates canvases that wield the domestic as both medium and subject. Her fiber work, including an early formative series combined with her later pornography pieces, feature densely threaded surfaces where images of women working oscillate between representation and non-objectivity. This thesis intervenes with the existing discourse surrounding Amer’s oeuvre by utilizing the artist’s own words along with materialist and intersectional theoretical material to offer two novel interpretive approaches. Specifically, I argue that Amer uses a gendered formula that is reflected visually as a way of referencing the entirety of a …

Why Katniss Everdeen Is Our Favorite Feminist – An Analysis Of The Heroine Of The Hunger Games Film Saga And Her Reception By Young Female Spectators, Paula Talero Álvarez

Theses and Dissertations

THROUGH THE FIGURE OF FICTIONAL CHARACTER KATNISS EVERDEEN, THIS DISSERTATION STUDIES HOW THE FILM INDUSTRY SIMULTANEOUSLY ENTRENCHES AND DISRUPTS GENDER, SEXUAL, AND RACIAL NORMATIVITIES. THE PROJECT USES TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND PARTICIPANT RESEARCH TO ANALYZE HOW THE FILMS AND NOVELS OF THE HUNGER GAMES SAGA ENCAPSULATE BOTH DOMINANT AND ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS RELATED TO FEMININITY, MASCULINITY, WOMANHOOD, AND MOTHERHOOD. IT ALSO EXPLORES IF AND HOW THE FEMALE HEROINE CAN BE READ AS FEMINIST AND PRODUCES A SENSE OF EMPOWERMENT. I CONCLUDE THAT ALTHOUGH THE INDUSTRY IS PRODUCING NEW MODELS OF WOMANHOOD THAT CHALLENGE TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES, IT STILL PERPETUATES ROMANTIC IDEALS AND …

"It Came In Little Waves": Feminist Imagery In Chantal Akerman's Je, Tu, Il, Elle +, Staci C. Dubow

Honors Theses

Chantal Akerman writes, “she who seeks shall find, find all too well, and end up clouding her vision with her own preconceptions.”[1] This thesis addresses the films of Chantal Akerman from a theoretical feminist film perspective. There are many lenses through which Akerman’s rich body of work can be viewed, and I would argue that she herself never intended for it to be understood in just one way. I wish to situate Akerman’s films, in particular her 1974 Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1h 30m), within a discourse of other feminist film theorists and makers that were further rooted in …

Sculpted From Clay, Shaped By Power: Feminine Narrative And Agency In Wonder Woman, Mikala Carpenter

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

By applying deconstructive and feminist theories to the Wonder Woman saga, this thesis develops a potential definition of feminine narrative in contrast to the normative and exclusionary patriarchal narrative that reigns supreme in popular culture and Western ideology. Though much of comics discourse functions on the assumption that superhero narratives are homogenous reflections of this ideological hero narrative, I posit that the Amazonian princess's resilience and iconicity stem from her own narrative's uniquely deconstructive nature: Where the patriarchal story would demand dominance, destruction, and violence, the feminine narrative that Diana models advocates for equality, nurturance, and emotional and rational communication. …

What Happened To Feminism?: A Comparative Study Of Feminism In Ireland And Great Britain From 1919-1939, Emily Uterhark

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

The Creation Of Power: Leaving The Closed Space Of Voluntary Servitude, Isabel Mae Torgove

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This project is a collection and absorption of concepts and frameworks drawn from centuries of thought. Indebted to the past, this philosophical and literary journey seeks to elucidate a productive path to follow in the wake of the “moment,” derived from Du Bois’ “double consciousness.” This split second explosion, resulting in the severance of the conception of the self from the world’s perception of the self, places one in the position of either submitting voluntarily to the dominant forces or producing and creating something, anything, to aid in the search for understanding the self. The transitive property of a split …

Seize The Means Of Reproduction! Gender Wars In Zamyatin's We, Alexandra Gage Michaud

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Une Salade, Cora Della Katz

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Blaming The Victim: Deconstructing María De Zayas's Feminism, Jennifer Zundel

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

María de Zayas y Sotomayor (1591 – 1661?) was the best-selling author of two extant collections of novellas, Novelas Amorosas y Ejemplares (Exemplary Tales of Love) (1637) and Desengaños Amorosos (The Disenchantments of Love) (1647). Both collections, consisting of stories of love, marriage, and gendered violence between aristocratic men and women, are explicitly and unapologetically pro-woman. Zayas condemns systemic misogyny and calls for institutional inclusion and protection of women, earning her place as an early modern feminist. Despite her depictions of violence against women and her denunciation of patriarchal institutions, Zayas does not advocate for a radical restructuring of society. …

Escape From Wonderland - A Novel, Crystal Denise Pennymon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

N/A

Ways Of Doing: Feminist Educational Development, Emily O. Gravett, Lindsay Bernhagen

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In response to the recent special call in To Improve the Academy, we offer the following collaborative essay that describes how feminism is our characterizing perspective on educational development. The essay details various, interrelated facets of feminism that inform our work in the field: gender, intersectionality, power, privilege, standpoint theory, and collaboration. Not only do these facets characterize our own feminist approach to educational development—from consultations to organizational development to publications—but, we argue, they also align well with the values and approaches of the field as a whole.

Seize The Memes: Community, Personal Expression, And Everyday Feminist Politics Through Instagram Memes, Tessa Westfall

Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

The Storytellers’ Trauma: A Place To Call Home In Caribbean Literature, Ilari Pass

MA in English Theses

This thesis is an examination gathering of trauma, unhomeliness, and the use of non-traditional narrative structure in Caribbean literature. While literature helps the reader travel inside the skin of the character, the mystery of another human being, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, and Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker, also help readers to explore the complicated process of identity formation in each work through the lenses of the imperialism, colonialism, racism and sexism that the protagonists experience. A non-traditional narrative structure enables this process of healing from trauma and allows for a new …

Ghetto Birds And Other Things That Lurk, Mary Frances Henn

MSU Graduate Theses

This collection is comprised of poetry critically introduced by a narrative essay. The pieces included explore place, trauma, and the female experience: what modern domestic life looks like, what life looks like in the urban core, how substance abuse impacts familial relations, and especially, what it means to be female in relation to these things. Often, the intersection of these themes becomes central to a poem; the borders of these subjects blur, leading to overlap in the record of personal experiences and observations.

Deconstructing The Dogma Of Domesticity: Quaker Education And Nationalism In British Mandate Palestine, Enaya Othman

Enaya Othman