Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Trauma In Elena Ferrante's Troubling Love, Maria Luiza Pereira Juzinskas

Masters Theses

Elena Ferrante's novel Troubling Love intertwines a narrative tapestry that explores the complexities of trauma and its enduring impact on individuals. This thesis examines the multifaceted manifestations of trauma within the novel, delving into the interplay between memory, identity, and silence. Through close textual analysis, this paper illuminates how Ferrante employs narrative techniques and character dynamics to depict the profound and often unsettling effects of trauma on both individual and collective levels. Drawing on literary and psychological trauma theory, this research investigates how Ferrante's portrayal of trauma challenges conventional narratives and unveils the complexity of trauma. By engaging with themes …

A Woman Unfolding: A Journey Of Motherhood And Creativity How Inviting Play And Honoring Our Thinking Preference Strengthens Well-Being, Laine M. Walnicki

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Seeking to provide a nuanced understanding of how the facets of motherhood, creativity, and wellbeing intersect and influence each other, this investigation and subsequent analysis answers the questions, "How does motherhood affect creativity?" and "How does creativity affect motherhood?" as well as their impact on creative outlook and wellbeing. Drawing on insights from the science of creativity, self-actualization, flow, and play, an understanding is curated as to how humans develop creative capacity, utilize it to foster well-being, and develop their potential for growth and evolution. The significance of play in the context of motherhood is also explored along with its …

Mothering As Feminism, Meera Patel

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay proposes the concept of mothering-as-feminism, with the intention of interrogating American ideals of mothering and caregiving. Reforming the way we view mothering, as it relates to feminism, requires a re-evaluation of the American role of women and mothers—and how they are portrayed (and therefore seen and understood), valued, and supported. Focusing on the evolution of feminist theory throughout the past 70 years, as well as personal and secondary experiences, I demonstrate how political and social change occurs generationally and is dependent on the education of our children. Ultimately, I show the important role children’s literature plays …

A Cultural History Of Anti-Feminism In Marvel's Scarlet Witch, Madison M. Kooba

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Marvel Comics character Wanda Maximoff, otherwise known as the Scarlet Witch, has received significant attention in popular culture due to her recent appearances as the primary protagonist and antagonist in television show WandaVision (2021) and film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). These depictions foregrounding Wanda’s struggles with mental health have made her an admirable character to many who see her drawing power from her emotions as a celebration of aspects of womanhood that have long been shamed by society. Sourcing these contemporary adaptations, however, lies decades of blatantly anti-feminist and sexist comics that villainize and ridicule Wanda’s …

Bodies Of Silence And Space: Victimhood, Complicity, And Resistance In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Sana H. Mufti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the complexity of resistance and the conditions of power for women in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Using feminist theory, theories of neoliberalism, and Dominionism, this thesis works to understand the ways in which victimhood and complicity influence resistance in totalitarian regimes. I argue that neoliberal ideologies skew understandings of freedom, agency, and power in a way that ensures individuals, specifically women, remain trapped in the system. Focusing on reproduction, I examine how Gilead controls women’s bodies and reproductive abilities to ensure a future for itself. The Eve-Complex is one way that the state integrates itself …

Parenting Skills Of African American Young Mothers Who Transitioned From Foster Care, Tamesha Yvonne Townsend-Simmons

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Prior research indicated there is an ongoing social issue in the United States for young single mothers with foster care experiences and their children. This group of women face poor economic and parenting outcomes without assistance from government resources in the form of effective parenting programs. Yet programming lags and there are ongoing assumptions about young mothers' in foster care parenting skills and abilities. The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to better understand the development of parenting skills among a selected group of African American adult young mothers who transitioned from foster care to independence and motherhood between …

What Mother Meant: Maternal Competence, Medical Authority, And Memory In The Case Of Mary Bickerdyke (1820-1910), Megan Marie Vangorder

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Mary Ann Bickerdyke, a poor widowed mother from Galesburg, Illinois, cared for sick and wounded soldiers across the Western theater throughout the course of the American Civil War. As a result of her efforts, authors and historians lauded her accomplishments. Her success as a Civil War nurse and Sanitary Commission agent has been the subject of several biographies and young adult books that idealize the role of women during the war. These portrayals suggest that Mary Bickerdyke provided an example of determined professionalism during the war years.

Those histories, however, do not tell the whole story. Mary Bickerdyke’s professional journey …

Mothers Behind Cameras: Mother-Artist, Mother-Child Dyads In Sally Mann’S Immediate Family And Elinor Carucci’S Mother, Hayley A. Pierpont

Scripps Senior Theses

Women, particularly mothers, are often made invisible within narratives of their own family and domestic spaces, despite their role as creators and maintainers of those spaces. This perpetuation of invisibility is threaded throughout the history of artistic practices, (photography especially). Contemporary mother-artists Sally Mann and Elinor Carucci confront and unapologetically reflect their singular experience(s) with motherhood through their photography, which addresses the symbiotic dyads of mother-child and mother-artist. This thesis focuses on an analysis of four images: Mann’s The Wet Bed and Lee’s Dirty Hands, and Carucci’s Trying to Protect Emanuelle and I Will Protect You. In both …

Becoming A Mom: Intersectionality And Fashion Consumption For Millennial Latinas And The Role Of Social Media Influencers, Leslie M. Cuevas

Doctoral Dissertations

When it comes to motherhood for women of color, the topic of women empowerment is scarce, and the media mostly portrays Latinas through traditional ethnic stereotypes. The advent of social media has presented women the opportunity to engage in identity formation as they exercise empowerment in choices and self-monitoring online. A good example of this transition in power involves fashion influencers who use their personal influence to change the meaning of motherhood, making it more accessible and realistic to women in general. However, a lack of diversity remains within the influencer industry as white women are the majority. Drawing upon …

"No One's Gonna Say That At Church:" Women's Experiences With Infertility In Christian Faith Communities, Donna Paulsen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores women’s experiences with infertility in Christian faith communities. Drawing from nine one-on-one interviews, the author argues that the presence of particular religious ideologies, social interactions, and rituals within faith communities contributed to the stigmatization and marginalization of study participants. Employing Muted Group Theory, the author uncovers the communicative strategies infertile women employ to resist these oppressive practices. A qualitative analysis of participants’ narratives presents two principal categories, containing a total of four findings relating to the harmful beliefs and practices of these women’s faith communities. The author argues that the veneration of motherhood and children suggests that …

Leveraging Maternal Rhetoric, Space, And Experience: La Leche League's Emergence As A Counterpublic, Jenny Lynn Moore

English Theses & Dissertations

For over six decades, the international, mother-to-mother breastfeeding support organization La Leche League (LLL) has been helping women breastfeed successfully. LLL was formed at a time when the dominant ideology of scientific motherhood framed mothers as obedient adherents to physicians’ strict guidelines, which encouraged bottle-feeding and discouraged close mother-child bonds. LLL has been credited with challenging scientific motherhood, transforming medical discourse and practices surrounding infant feeding, and prompting the medical professional to accept mothers’ active involvement in decision-making; yet, paradoxically, it has also constrained mothers by reducing women to their maternal biology, discouraging mothers from participating in the public sphere, …

Maternal Criticism: Reading Two Middle Eastern Women Writers As Nonviolent Peace Activism, Charlyn Marie Ingwerson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advocates for reading the literatures of two Middle Eastern women writers through a Maternal Critical lens that recognizes the demands of universal vulnerability in characters who resist violence, and responds in Maternal communities of Readers that connect readers to characters, readers to writers, and readers to other readers, carrying the struggle for equity forward. My unfolding argument, centered on Maternal Critical activity in the novels of Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifeh and Israeli writer Ronit Matalon, demonstrates how literature by these Middle Eastern women is part of a narrative context of women’s peacemaking and resistance to violence, a part …

Generations Of Fertility: A Bioethical And Evolutionary Analysis, Kat Panos 19

Honor Scholar Theses

Influenced by both societal and biological factors, women play a central role in reproducing offspring for future generations. Because females play such an integral role in reproduction, it is often psychologically difficult for women to cope with infertility that can arise due to a variety of factors: ovarian factor infertility, cervical factor infertility, uterine factor infertility, and peritoneal and tubal infertility factors. As a result, technology has evolved to cater to women's infertility in procedures and treatments regarded as assisted reproductive techniques (ARTS), medical regimens than impose bioethical implications. Examples of ART include therapeutic intrauterine insemination (IUI), in-vitro-fertilization (IVF), pre-implantation …

“Your Love Is Too Thick”: An Analysis Of Black Motherhood In Slave Narratives, Neo-Slave Narratives, And Our Contemporary Moment, Kaitlyn M. Spong

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, Kait Spong examines alternative practices of mothering that are strategic nature, heavily analyzing Patricia Hill Collins’ concepts of “othermothering” and “preservative love” as applied to Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel, Beloved and Harriet Jacob’s 1861 slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Using literary analysis as a vehicle, Spong then applies these West African notions of motherhood to a modern context by evaluating contemporary social movements such as Black Lives Matter where black mothers have played a prominent role in making public statements against systemic issues such as police brutality, heightened surveillance, and the …

Waging War On The Womb: Women’S Bodies As Nationalist Symbols And Strategic Victims Of Violence In Susan Abulhawa’S Mornings In Jenin, Noora Badwan

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Nationalism is a patriarchal construct that clearly delineates women’s roles in the social structure, and assigns female bodies specific roles in the nationalist, social, and political narratives, albeit passive ones; ironically, as integral to nationalism as women are, they are only ever pawns used by the state, never equal participants. They are often assigned the role of the mother figure who produces new citizens to populate the nation and who are expected to raise them to be “good citizens” and offer them up to the state as potential tools. The mother figure is a nationalist icon who is also often …

Nasty Women: Television Portrayals Of Societal Anxieties Toward Female Leaders, Emily Sullivan

Honors Theses

Historically, women have been excluded from leadership positions around the world, while instead men occupy the highest positions of power in society. The lack of female leadership is especially prevalent in the United States, where there has never been a female president, and the majority of high political offices are still held by men. In a similar manner, women have also been excluded from the sphere of comedy throughout history. Women have constantly had to deal with the assertion that women are not funny. This double exclusion from both leadership and comedy has led to the development of my concept …

The Socially Deviant (M)Other In Euripides' "Medea" And Two Modern Adaptations, Christina Faye Kramer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For centuries male-dominated societies have developed their own culturally constructed images of the socially acceptable and socially deviant mothers. The thesis explores how the Grecian, Caribbean, and Irish cultures of Euripides’ Medea (431 BC), Steve Carter’s Pecong (1990), and Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats (1998) respectively, all based on the Medea myth, commonly define the social deviant (m)other and condemn her for her “otherness.” It also discusses the limitations of each society’s decision to label the Medea-figure as socially deviant. Euripides creates an impossible dichotomy between the culturally constructed concepts of heroism and motherhood, which he locates in …

The Gender Wage Gap And The "Motherhood" Effect, Adrianna Decicco

Honors Senior Capstone Projects

This paper discusses the gender pay gap and how motherhood is a major factor toward the inequalities in the workplace. For this paper, the wage gap is defined as the difference between men and women’s yearly income consisting of hourly or salary wages, overtime, benefits and bonuses. It should be noted that men earn more in every category of work, even the categories that are female-dominated professions.

Away From The End Of Motherhood: Sites Of Haunting In The Social Imaginary In Lemonade And The Handmaid's Tale, Julia Michele Fleming

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the television series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, specifically the episode "A Woman's Place," and Beyoncé's Lemonade: A Visual Album. I argue that these cultural texts leverage representations of women's lived experiences to scrutinize contemporary American anxieties about motherhood and reproductive justice. Lemonade, a celebration of Black womanhood, presents a counterpoint to The Handmaid's Tale's preoccupation with white motherhood in way that speculates on the utopian potentials of a woman-centered society.

Using bell hooks' film analysis, Avery Gordon's "haunting," and Luce Irigaray's "mimicry," I examine two interconnected themes: feminist aesthetics and generational haunting. …

Monstrous Mothers: The Politics Of Forced Mothering, Gillian Henry

Honors Theses

Can a woman be a woman without being a mother? By studying the control of women's bodies around reproduction, my work elucidates the insistence on women becoming "good mothers" for society. Is the childless woman a monster? Analysis of the Medea trope identifies that the most monstrous woman of all is thought to be the woman who kills her children. And while white women fight for reproductive choice, women of color fight for reproductive freedom, as coercive policies such as forced sterilization deprive women of color as even being considered as potential mothers. Society's insistence on women fulfilling their destiny …

Affective Dissonance: (Post)Feminism And Popular Cultural Expressions Of Motherhood, Judith Lakämper

Wayne State University Dissertations

In “Affective Dissonance: (Post)feminism and Popular Cultural Expressions of Motherhood,” I argue that motherhood in the so-called post-feminist age is structured by a conflicted relationship between affective expectations raised by public discourses of motherhood and the material, embodied experience of maternity, inflected by race, class, age, and sexuality. While recent feminist scholarship has engaged questions of (bodily) materiality, and popular medial discourses increasingly critique unrealistic ideals of motherhood, my dissertation considers these approaches together. Juxtaposing representations of motherhood from various sources – memoirs, digital media, art photography, and television – I demonstrate how the postfeminist rhetoric of female empowerment and …

Great Mirror Of Motherly Love: Maternal Fantasy, Mystic Mothers, And Reflected Selves In Modern And Contemporary Japanese Fiction, Jessica E. Legare

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fantasy and mysticism often serve as key elements in escapist literature—constructing stories that move protagonists beyond the furthest reaches of the real, the familiar and the human. Yet, the otherworldly can also bring the protagonist within reach of the familiar if we consider the representations of mothering in the following Japanese narratives: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s “Longing for Mother” (1919), Izumi Kyōka’s “The Holy Man of Mount Kōya” (1900), Takahashi Takako’s “Doll Love” (1976), and Ono Masatsugu’s “Prayers from Nine Years Ago” (2014). Through their depictions based on supernatural and spiritual tropes, mystical-mother figures become metaphorical mirrors meant to reflect the protagonists’ …

Navigating The Transition Into Motherhood: Women's Experiences Of Control, Emotions, And Social Ideals, Jody Sue Sauer-Sargent

Wayne State University Dissertations

In this dissertation, I sought to give postpartum women their own voices so that they could help define the postpartum experience on their own terms. It fills important gaps within the literature on new mothers’ experiences. A phenomenological approach was used, emphasizing the lived experiences of the women, with an overlay of autoethnography, where the personal experience of the researcher becomes important primarily in how it illuminates the phenomenon being studied. Thus, my personal experience of pregnancy into early motherhood is interwoven throughout this dissertation. Forty-two women participated in the in-depth, face-to-face interview, followed by a questionnaire. The qualitative data …

The Unheard New Negro Woman: History Through Literature, Shantell Lee

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Many of the Harlem Renaissance anthologies and histories of the movement marginalize and omit women writers who played a significant role in it. They neglect to include them because these women worked outside of socially determined domestic roles and wrote texts that portrayed women as main characters rather than as muses for men or supporting characters. The distorted representation of women of the Renaissance will become clearer through the exploration of the following texts: Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun, Caroline Bond Day’s “Pink Hat,” Dorothy West’s “Mammy,” Angelina Grimke’s Rachel and “Goldie,” and Georgia Douglas Johnson’s A Sunday Morning in …

Secondary Principals Who Are Mothers: Balancing Home And Career, Turina Parker

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Working mothers who are school leaders face challenges as they attempt to manage competing time demands and personal and professional responsibilities. A need exists for existing school leaders, as well as women aspiring to school leadership, to understand the coping strategies used by mothers who are also school principals. To that end, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the experiences of mothers who are school principals. Strategies used to navigate multiple roles were examined through a role conflict lens. Three overarching research questions guided this study to focus on how female principals with children accommodate their dual …

Blogging Through Motherhood: Free Labor, Femininity, And The (Re)Production Of Maternity, Kara Mary Van Cleaf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Drawing from a thematic analysis of 47 North American mommy blogs over a 2-year period, I situate the genre in critical discussions of feminism, media, and labor, exploring both the technological and cultural shifts that turn mothers into cultural producers and that turn the experience of motherhood into a commodity. I situate the content of such blogs, or what gets said therein, within theories of media, gender, and labor. Examining the blogs within and against such academic discussions allows me to develop an intersectional analysis of feminism, media, and labor studies.

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 …

The Impact Of Interpersonal Communication On Breastfeeding, Jennifer Alarcon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The medical community has offered a lot of evidence in support of breastfeeding which has led to many of the leading medical associations (i.e. the American Academy of Pediatrics, World Health Organization) to recommend breastfeeding infants exclusively for the first six months of life and for at least a full year, up to two years or whatever is mutually desirable to mother and child. However, in the United States, many mothers do not follow this recommendation. Research shows that instances of women being unable to breastfeed exist but are minimal. Many people have attempted to address the problem of low …

Mothers At Work: Reconstruction And Deconstruction Of Patriarchy In Gone With The Wind, Catherine Willa Staley

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In this thesis, I explore the performances of motherhood in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and how those performances conflict with culturally constructed expectations of that role. An analysis of Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Wilkes, and how each woman compares to the South’s model for motherhood, reveals implications that extend beyond the novel’s Civil War setting to reveal the ongoing negotiation of modern readers still living within patriarchal conceptions of mothering. In Chapter 1, I outline the novel’s spectrum of motherhood, which is composed of characters who nurture and manage others. Each individual on that spectrum contributes to or …

Fire On The Mountain, Clear Light Of Day And Fasting, Feasting: An Exploration Of Indian Motherhood In The Fiction Of Anita Desai, Ashley N. Batts

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.