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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Reconceiving Self-Abnegation: Female Vulnerability As Embodied (Un)Sovereignty, Renee Lee Gardner
Reconceiving Self-Abnegation: Female Vulnerability As Embodied (Un)Sovereignty, Renee Lee Gardner
Dissertations
Liberal feminism views vulnerability as weakness and dominance as strength. This binary parallels nationalistic assertions of sovereignty. Within militaristic responses such as the U.S. retaliation to 9/11, however, we see the cost of refusing to acknowledge our vulnerability. In my analysis of eleven novels arising from eight distinct nation-states and representing historical moments from the final decades of slavery through the early post- 9/11 years, I use alternative (queer, postcolonial, Islamic) feminisms to read power in vulnerability. I explore female characters who deliberately self-abnegate – sacrificing their lives, bodies, voices, and children – but whose actions can be read as …
Fay Weldon's Late Bloomers And Comedy And A Lawyer, A Vet, And A Couple Of Dogs, One Of Them Dead, Susan Rote Siferd
Fay Weldon's Late Bloomers And Comedy And A Lawyer, A Vet, And A Couple Of Dogs, One Of Them Dead, Susan Rote Siferd
Dissertations
Creative dissertation begins with a critical study of comedy as Weldon employs it in her novels of marriage, infidelity, and divorce. Traditionally, comedy ends in marriage; Weldon's dark comedies end in self-understanding as a necessary prerequisite to growth and possible future relationship. However, Weldon does not celebrate divorce. She recognizes the impact on women's lives of historic period, world events, and their own female nature. An avowed feminist, Weldon yet refuses to blame men for women's problems, but insists that while women struggle against sexism, they often conform to it. If there is no genre designation comparable to "bildungsroman" for …
Sexual Politics And Subversion: Feminist Utopia As Praxis, Jennifer Sue Boyers
Sexual Politics And Subversion: Feminist Utopia As Praxis, Jennifer Sue Boyers
Dissertations
Literary studies meets up with sociology as feminist utopian fiction Is examined for what sociologist Dorothy Smith (1990) labels normal narrative and counter-narrative articulations of gendered structures of power. The method of analytical Induction Is used both In the choosing of the four novels for study and the resulting textual analysis. Ursula Le Guln's The dispossessed (1974), Marge Plercy's Woman on the edge of time (1976), Suzy McKee Chamas's Motherllnes (1978), and Sally Miller Gearhart's The wandereround (1979) are examined for their constructions of dystopian normal narratives, as well as for their reconstructions of subversive utopian counter-narratives, both articulating gendered …