Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Ecofeminism And Experiential Learning: Taking The Risks Of Activism Seriously, Jeannie Ludlow

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Ecofeminism And Experiential Learning: Taking The Risks Of Activism Seriously, Jeannie Ludlow

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

The (Inter)Active Soap Opera Viewer: Fantastic Practices & Mediated Communities, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

In today’s cultural realm, everything exists within a hierarchy of sorts – fandom has not escaped this process of judgmental ranking and social stratification. Admitting to be a “fan” of something often earns people mixed responses depending on the subject of their devoted following. The more one’s object of choice strays from the mainstream, the lower one exists on the fan hierarchy. If the masses find the fan subject matter to exist on the cultural periphery, fans are often quite ridiculed. This has historically been the case for soap opera fans. What is often overlooked, however, is the utility of …

The (Inter)Active Soap Opera Viewer: Fantastic Practices & Mediated Communities, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

In today’s cultural realm, everything exists within a hierarchy of sorts – fandom has not escaped this process of judgmental ranking and social stratification. Admitting to be a “fan” of something often earns people mixed responses depending on the subject of their devoted following. The more one’s object of choice strays from the mainstream, the lower one exists on the fan hierarchy. If the masses find the fan subject matter to exist on the cultural periphery, fans are often quite ridiculed. This has historically been the case for soap opera fans. What is often overlooked, however, is the utility of …

Sometimes It’S A Child And A Choice: Toward An Embodied Abortion Praxis, Jeannie Ludlow

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Feminist analyses of recent abortion politics in the United States note that the “abortion debate” has settled into a system of dichotomies, such as the dichotomy between women’s autonomy on the abortion rights side and the value of unborn life on the anti-abortion side. This article posits that these dichotomizations contribute to the erosion of women’s access and rights to abortion through loss of credibility for abortion rights discourse and loss of access to abortion praxis that can handle more complex situations. Maintenance of the dichotomies requires denial or erasure of more complicated situations, like late-second-trimester abortion and situations in …

Sometimes It’S A Child And A Choice: Toward An Embodied Abortion Praxis, Jeannie Ludlow

Jeannie Ludlow

Feminist analyses of recent abortion politics in the United States note that the “abortion debate” has settled into a system of dichotomies, such as the dichotomy between women’s autonomy on the abortion rights side and the value of unborn life on the anti-abortion side. This article posits that these dichotomizations contribute to the erosion of women’s access and rights to abortion through loss of credibility for abortion rights discourse and loss of access to abortion praxis that can handle more complex situations. Maintenance of the dichotomies requires denial or erasure of more complicated situations, like late-second-trimester abortion and situations in …

Sometimes It’S A Child And A Choice: Toward An Embodied Abortion Praxis, Jeannie Ludlow

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

Feminist analyses of recent abortion politics in the United States note that the “abortion debate” has settled into a system of dichotomies, such as the dichotomy between women’s autonomy on the abortion rights side and the value of unborn life on the anti-abortion side. This article posits that these dichotomizations contribute to the erosion of women’s access and rights to abortion through loss of credibility for abortion rights discourse and loss of access to abortion praxis that can handle more complex situations. Maintenance of the dichotomies requires denial or erasure of more complicated situations, like late-second-trimester abortion and situations in …

John Irving, Female Sexuality, And The Victorian Feminine Ideal, Tara Coburn

Masters Theses

In an interview about The Cider House Rules, John Irving states, "It is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel" (qtd. in Herel, para. 18). However, in book reviews, jacket blurbs, literary criticism, and Irving's own writing, readers and critics and Irving often assert that he is a neo-Victorian novelist, and the Victorians were a notoriously political bunch. Though Irving does not admit to the political nature of his writing, the way he treats feminist politics in his fiction has drawn particular notice by the media, who often label him as a feminist writer. …

Changes In Female Athletes' Physical Self-Esteem Across A Competitive Cycle And As A Function Of Athletic Identity, Michelle C. Reed

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine if female athletes' physical self-perceptions are different when comparing their Physical Self-Perception Profile (PSPP) scores within their competitive season with their scores during the off-season. The second purpose was to determine if physical self-perception varied as a function of their athletic identity. A secondary objective was to evaluate female athletes' physical self-esteem in an individual sport setting compared to a team sport setting. Eastern Illinois University female collegiate athletes in six different sports, track (n=15), softball (n=16), soccer (n=11), tennis (n=3), volleyball (n=5), and rugby (n=19) were given the Athletic Identity Measurement …

African-American Life Writing: Harriet Jacobs And Bell Hooks, Luo Yi

Masters Theses

Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and bell hooks' Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood share a common concern with emancipation and employ complementary rhetorical strategies. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl presents Harriet Jacobs' journey of personal self-discovery through various relationships with others, and her personal narrative finally serves the larger goal of emancipation for her people. Jacobs' narrative is full of other voices, or personae. Even the narrator, Linda Brent, is pseudonymous, or "other," in this sense. Jacobs invokes these personae in her autobiography; she explores her experiences as a web of …

Journey To The Frontiers Of Perception: How Women Wrote About The Westward Movement During The Nineteenth Century In Relation To Land, Animals, And The Domestic Sphere, Brandi Dale Spelbring

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Social Support Among Women In Families: A Descriptive Study Of Support In Intergenerational Relationships, Gina L. Bauswell

Masters Theses

This study examines the effects of social support in intergenerational relationships among women in families. The research examines ethnography as a study, some of the benefits of research done in intergenerational communication, changes in this communication over the time span of the intergenerational relationships, the transmission of this communication, social support, the positive effects of the phenomenon of this type of communication for all those participating in this dynamic process, and the heuristic value of this research. The participants were forty women in my extended family, and this study is based upon their answers to a questionnaire and focus group …

The Female Sport Experience: History, Development, And Psychological Implications, Dawn A. Whittington

Masters Theses

This paper reviews the literature related to women in athletics with a focus on the psychological perspective. The paper is divided into three major parts.

Chapter I traces the historical antecedents with specific emphasis on the development of sports psychology and women's gradual integration into amateur and professional athletics. Chapter II reviews literature devoted to the psychosocial issues related to the female athlete. These issues include personality traits and patterns, psychosocial problems associated with women entering and maintaining status in athletics, stereotypes, homophobia, socialization issues and the incidence and etiology of eating disorders among female athletes. Chapter III addresses the …

The Influence Of Higher Education And The Perceived Effects On Women And Their Interpersonal Relationships With Significant Others, Tracy L. Conn

Masters Theses

This study of professional women holding advanced degrees examined the influence of doctoral education and the perceived effects on women and their interpersonal relationships with significant others. It was found that half of the women believed that their level of education affected their relationship status. Though there were a group of women who reported that their level of education limited them in their interpersonal relationships, the majority of the women reported being in gratifying relationships with supportive significant others. Therefore, it is not surprising that the majority of the women reported that their significant other was one of the greatest …

A New Sense Of Time In Female Development: Linearity And Cyclicity In Atwood's Surfacing And Cat's Eye, Diana L. Unes

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Dr. Professor Mommy: Working Mothers' Gender Role Self Images In The University Community, Dawn Renee Krywanio

Masters Theses

A common misperception exists that working mothers experience their professional lives differently than other working women. This is often the basis for differential treatment of mothers in the workplace. This thesis describes gender role self image among university women in administration, faculty, and staff positions who are also parents; it relates to professional relationship satisfaction in the workplace. Data were collected through the use of open ended surveys of 185 female employees at Eastern Illinois University, follow up interviews, and a Likert scale survey within the same population. Content analysis of the data and qualitative results are the descriptive basis …

A New Reading Of Ruth Suckow, Judith Pierson

Masters Theses

By 1950, after three decades of writing, Ruth Suckow (1892-1960) was a well-respected writer whose work seemed headed for a permanent position in the canon of American literature. Instead, Suckow's fiction steadily became less known through the following decades. The question of why her work came to be ignored and why such a position is unwarranted is addressed in A New Reading of Ruth Suckow. The conclusion is that a regionalist categorization and a related gender bias in the literary canon have adversely affected Suckow's works.

Gender bias is reflected in the critical assumptions which ascribe an inferior position to …

Preservation Of The Family Unit In Adolescent Novels, Mary M. Hutchings

Masters Theses

This thesis discusses the development of the family story from the late nineteenth century to the present, beginning with What Katy Did as an example of the earlier moral story from which this genre grows. It then focuses on Little Women as the beginning of the modern family story and uses Jo from Little Women as the starting point to discuss the development of the female adolescent protagonist in these stories. And lastly, comparing Little Women to modern family life stories which began to appear about 1940, the thesis discusses changes in didacticism which have occurred since the late nineteenth …

Pilar And Brett: Female Heroes In Hemingway, Jean Kover Chandler

Masters Theses

The significant works on the hero have always assumed that the hero is male. However, feminist writers, such as Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope, have recently shown many women who are, in fact, heroic in both American and British literature. The main problem is that both cultures have often been unable to recognize female heroism, primarily because of their long-conditioned patriarchal perspectives.

Men go on heroic quests; women either help or hinder them along their paths. Thus, women have been considered as supporting characters only, and they are called heroines. But some authors have created female heroes who are not …

In Common: Voices Of The Common Woman, Zoanne Allen

Masters Theses

This is an original compiled script of selected materials relating to the common experiences of women. The intention was to present a work that would touch all women by describing experiences that are shared among us generally. The script utilized materials from a variety of sources: prose, diaries, poems and plays. The tone of the pieces selected were both serious and humorous. Through the assembling of these pieces, a complete script was created. The final goal of the work was to create a sense of bonding among the women in the audience. Secondarily, the male members of the audience should …

Personal, Professional, And Educational Characteristics Of Illinois Women Superintendents In 1987, Joyce Simpson Kaufman

Masters Theses

This study reviewed the personal, professional, and educational characteristics of the Illinois women superintendents in 1987. A questionnaire was mailed to the twenty-two women superintendents. Eighteen of them replied.

The three specific problems addressed by the study were:

1. What are the personal, professional, and educational characteristics of Illinois women superintendents in 1987?

2. What are the special problems encountered by women superintendents?

3. What advice do the present women superintendents in Illinois offer to women aspiring to become superintendents?

The responses were based on the perceptions of the eighteen women superintendents who replied. The questionnaire results were reported in …

Female Criminality And Feminism – Is There A Causal Relationship?, Heather Whitcroft

Masters Theses

In the past, many criminologists have viewed the collective sentiments of feminism as potentially crimogenic (Lombroso, 1985; Thomas, 1923; Pollak, 1950). Even female academics writing in the last decade have claimed the women's movement has a "darker side" (Cowie, 1968; Adler, 1975; Simon, 1975; Hart, 1975; Dening, 1977). Substantial sceptics appear to remain unheard amongst those who profess that "liberated" women are committing more masculine, violent, serious, male-dominated and occupational crimes. Such remarks are generally unsubstantiated by research.

Box and Hale (1983:36) suggest that "... those who are attempting to prove a causal connection between emancipation and female crime by …

A Study Of The Relationship Between Leadership Responsibility And The Career Aspirations And Salience Of College Women, Deborah R. Stevenson

Masters Theses

Expanded career opportunities for women have emerged following the women's movement and equal opportunity legislation. Today, statistics show more women, single, married and female heads of the household, are in the work force than ever before. Yet, women are not entering those jobs in which greater earning and advancement potential exist and professional women have not advanced significantly.

The literature discussing issues related to women and work indicates that leadership responsibility may play a role in raising both the career aspirations and salience of women. If this is so then providing appropriate leadership experience emerges as a potential tool for …

A Room Of One's Own: The Women's Room, Lou Ellen Crawford

Masters Theses

The recent resurgence of feminism has been accompanied by the development of feminist fiction. Identifying those characteristics by which feminist fiction adds to the American novel a new and valid perspective, feminist criticism has also flourished. Feminist critics agree that fiction with a new perspective demands critical evaluation from that same perspective; and Cheri Register provides a concise, thorough list of five elements which comprise effective feminist fiction. Of Register's five criteria, Carol Heilbrun stresses the equalizing, conciliatory influence of androgyny. Recent feminist authors have written many novels which perform one or more of the functions prescribed by Register. Three …

The Treatment Of Women In The History Of Rasselas, Prince Of Abyssinia, Cindy Fritz

Masters Theses

Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the most prolific and profound contributers to the English language, is, unfortunately, better known for his life and his anti-feminist point of view. James Boswell, in his book The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., provides many pieces of Johnson's conversations which attempt to illustrate the doctor's belief that women were unable to understand the complexities of anything beyond their domestic duties, a belief widely supported among the classes throughout the seventeenth century until the middle eighteenth century. However, this paper, using historical and biographical evidence, demonstrates that Johnson's attitude towards women, specifically in his …

Sexual Harassment Of Working Women: An Exploratory Study, Cheryl Mcmichaels

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the subject of sexual harassment. A total of 82 women were recruited from central Illinois to fill out a questionnaire on sexual harassment and the Assertiveness Inventory (Gambrill and Richey, 1975). An attempt was made to control the subjects for occupational levels. Their occupational levels ranged from physician to unskilled worker, and their educational levels ranged from a high school degree to an advanced degree. The women in this sample worked full-time, part-time, and did volunteer work.

All of the women filled out the Assertiveness Inventory, a 40-item self-report, (Gambrill and …

Woman, A Vehicle Of Visual Expression In Contemporary Times, Tamara C. Bogue

Masters Theses

This paper is a discussion of a woman as a vehicle of visual expression in contemporary times. Certain artists have been selected for the discussion of woman as subject matter and as symbol. An overview is given concerning some trends that have an influence on contemporary society, women in that society, and consequently affect how women have been portrayed. The selected artists were chosen as representatives of "directional types" or "theme types" and some of the implications of their female imagery is discussed. The concept of woman as symbol in her historically recorded debut as fertility figurine ("Willendorf Venus") sets …

A Comparison Of Career And Homemaking Oriented Women Using The Strong Vocational Interest Blank, William L. Clark

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Women In The Political Elite, Lois M. Guymon

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of Incarcerated And Non-Incarcerated Women Based On The M.M.P.I., Rose Marie Carter

Masters Theses

The field for research on women offenders provides an extensive opportunity for scientific investigation. Many writers (Gibbons, 1971; Cunningham, 1964; Sutherland, 1968) have discussed the causes of crime and their resulting social implications. Organized mass presentations of the movement of crime among women is negligible. Today female incarcerates make up approximately 11 per cent (Lerner, 1972) of the total number in state and federal penitentiaries. Previous research (Cunningham, 1964) on female felons found poor self-concept, excessive dependency and pathological emotionality to be a consistent pattern in women criminals. Other research (Apfeldorf, 1971; Guze, 1959) found criminal and non-criminal groups could …