Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Critiquing Psychiatry, Narrating Trauma: Madness In Twentieth-Century North American Literature And Film, Sarah Blanchette

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This dissertation explores representations of trauma and mental distress in twentieth-century novels and films. Drawn on research that emphasizes the ways that marginalized communities—in particular women-coded, racialized, and Indigenous persons—have historically been pathologized, the thesis considers how select novels and films query biomedical approaches to mental illness and critique psychiatric contexts, which prioritize social control more than they provide substantive and humane forms of support and care. How might representations of trauma and mental distress be understood without confirming regimes of psy-authority or psy-power? The thesis takes up this core issue by building on theories drawn from Mad Studies, illuminating …

Dancing Across Difference: Transforming Habitual Modes Of Being In The World Through Movement, Kimberly Dority

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Although some important scholarly work has been done on race, and whiteness, in relation to habit, my account addresses the role of movement in habit through dance. Dance is well-suited for exploring habit since dancers cultivate an intimate knowledge of their bodies as habitual dancing bodies. I argue that dancing can offer critical insight into how habitual modes of being in the world may be shifted and changed. Dancers’ mastery of movement not only consists in sedimenting habits within the body, but also involves actively exploring how one’s own bodily movement can be altered (Ravn 2017; Damkjaer, 2015; Ingerslev, 2013; …

La Voz De Violeta Parra: Una Aproximación A Las Voces Como Materialización Del Vínculo Entre Cuerpo, Identidad Y Cultura, Martha L. Rojas Castaneda

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Violeta Parra (1917-1967) fue una artista multidisciplinaria chilena. A partir de su muerte, su obra adquirió mayor reconocimiento y, consecuentemente, su voz y su legado han trascendido el tiempo y las fronteras. El presente trabajo surge desde los estudios culturales de género sobre la voz como materialización de la unicidad de cada persona y su vínculo con la comunidad. Por lo que la voz de Violeta Parra, audible y discursiva, resultaría una huella de su identidad. Así, esta tesis es una aproximación a la voz de Parra, cuyo fin es comprender qué revela su voz escritural en Décimas: autobiografía en …

Exploring Being Queer And Performing Queerness In Popular Music, Rosheeka Parahoo

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For many pop artists, queer is what they do, not who they are. They perform queerness, rather than identify as queer. The research I present here suggests that popular culture’s understanding of queerness relies on a heteronormative lens, whereby queerness is objectified and paraded primarily as an artistic performance. My analysis demonstrates that David Bowie’s influence rests in his ability to create a space where his fans can perform queerness, without necessarily being queer. As such, Bowie’s performances have come to form our expectation of what a queer performance should look like. Continuing his legacy, Lady Gaga’s tribute to Bowie …

Racialized Women's Experiences Of Sexual Violence And Harassment In Canadian Higher Education: An Intersectional Analysis, Shirin Abdmolaei

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Conducted through a qualitative case study, this dissertation focuses on 15 racialized women’s experiences of sexual violence and harassment while attending a post-secondary institution in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on the notion of intersectionality as a conceptual and theoretical framework, this study investigates how the intersections of their identities shaped their experiences. Findings revealed a number of critical insights with respect to the racialized dimensions of sexual violence and harassment. The behaviours, comments, and actions participants received from men in inter-racial contexts illuminates the simultaneous experience of racialization, sexism, and fetishization which makes racialized women vulnerable to sexual violence and harassment. …

Knock On The Door: A Feminist Standpoint Theory Case Study Of Internationally Educated Chinese Females Finding Academic Positions In China, Chenzi Feng Zhao

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This study examines how gender shapes the experiences of internationally educated Chinese females in trying to obtain academic positions in Chinese higher education institutions from a feminist standpoint theory perspective. The interactions between education and gender in the contemporary globalized world have been an important theme in studies about education, gender, and social equity. Identifying the gaps in the statistic-based understandings of gender parity, this study adopts a qualitative narrative method and interviewed four female scholars who have applied and interviewed for academic jobs in China in the past four years. The findings are presented as four elaborate narratives. The …

Duration And Depravity: Religious And Secular Temporality In Puritanism And The American Gothic, Taylor Kraayenbrink

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Duration and Depravity identifies a temporality of “sinful feeling” operating in the archive of Puritan writings of personal piety, such as diaries, autobiographies, conversion narratives, and sermons, and persisting into early American gothic literature. This temporality of sinful feeling is an attempt to discipline the self through temporal projection oriented towards the theological fact and religiously experienced feeling of sinfulness. Duration and Depravity engages with the proliferation of postsecular criticism in American literature studies generally, and Puritan studies more specifically. Postsecular criticism in literary studies is a style of historicism that reconsiders its primary archive’s position in newly complicated narratives …

ʿAbdulḥalīm Abū Shuqqa’S The Liberation Of Women In The Age Of Revelation: A Translation And Critical Commentary, Ibtehal Noorwali

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One of Muslim scholars’ modern endeavors is to identify Islam’s egalitarian and liberating views on women as espoused by its earliest sources— the Qur’an and hadith. ʿAbdulḥalīm Abū Shuqqa makes such an attempt in his six-volume, Arabic book titled “The Liberation of Women in the Age of Revelation” (Taḥrīr al-Mar’a fī ‘Aṣr al-Risāla) published in 1995. He shows evidence from the Qur’an and authentic hadith reports for women’s autonomy, involvement in communal worship, public life, politics, battlefields, and professional work, among other activities. In an attempt to analyze and bring what was considered a ‘breakthrough’ in the Islamic …

The Simultaneous Book: Women's Writing In Contemporary Art, Maryse Lariviere

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Novels written by women authors who don’t adhere to the classification “visual artist” are nonetheless gaining momentum in today's contemporary art world. Yet works by authors such as Chris Kraus or Catherine Millet are often not recognized as artist’s novels because their authors are not or/and do not consider themselves to be visual artists. I contend that we can usefully situate their work within the genre of the artist’s novel by addressing how they invent artistic postures and artistic alter-egos within the autofictional worlds of their texts. My dissertation The Simultaneous Book proposes to open up the definition of the …

Death Of The Clinic: Trans-Informing The Clinical Gaze To Counter Epistemic Violence, Diana E. Kuhl

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This case study research (Patton, 2002, 2014; Flyvberg, 2006) has grown out of an awareness of deep resistance from the psy disciplines to trans-informed epistemologies as a source of legitimate knowledge (Tosh, 2015, 2016; Winters, 2008). It focuses on examining how the closure of The Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) for Children and Youth at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, signaled a paradigm shift from the ‘treatment model’ to the ‘affirmative model’ with respect to clinical approaches for supporting trans and gender diverse children and youth. As such the case study involved tracing the …

Dead Men Walking: An Analysis Of Working-Class Masculinity In Post-2008 Hollywood Film, Ryan Schroeder

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Working-class masculinity has lost its steam. Since 2008, a sub-genre of Hollywood films has emerged that depicts the current crisis, and imminent demise, of working-class masculinity in the United States. The 2008 financial crisis has had devastating effects on the American economy, and particularly the working-class, whose precarious economic position has only been exacerbated under neoliberalism. These effects have become the thematic focus of a fringe genre of films, which show how the destabilization of the American economy has incited greater instability in gender relations, and has had an acute impact on working-class men. This thesis proceeds by analyzing how …

"I Need To Fight The Power, But I Need That New Ferrari": Conspicuous Consumption, New-School Hip-Hop And "The New Rock & Roll", Emmett H. Robinson Smith

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2017 marked the year in which hip-hop officially became the most listened-to genre in the United States. This thesis explores hip-hop music’s rise to its now-hegemonic position within the music industry, seeking to provide insight into the increasingly popular sentiment that hip-hop is “the new rock & roll”. The “new-school” hip-hop artists of the last six years or so have also been the subject of widespread critical disdain, especially for their heightened degree of emphasis on conspicuous consumption. This study will track hip-hop’s ascent from the mid-1980s through to its current position as both a political vehicle and a commercial …

Resistant Vulnerability In The Marvel Cinematic Universe's Captain America, Kristen Allison

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Established in 2008 with the release of Iron Man, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become a ubiquitous transmedia sensation. Its uniquely interwoven narrative provides auspicious grounds for scholarly consideration. The franchise conscientiously presents larger-than-life superheroes as complex and incredibly emotional individuals who form profound interpersonal relationships with one another. This thesis explores Sarah Hagelin’s concept of resistant vulnerability, which she defines as a “shared human experience,” as it manifests in the substantial relationships that Steve Rogers (Captain America) cultivates throughout the Captain America narrative (11). This project focuses on Steve’s relationships with the following characters: Agent Peggy Carter, Natasha …

Biopolitics, Risk, And Reproductive Justice: The Governing Of Maternal Health In Canada's Muskoka Initiative, Jacqueline Potvin

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In this dissertation, I examine how Canada’s Muskoka Initiative discursively constructs and addresses maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) as a global development problem. I evaluate how the Muskoka Initiative aligns with, and departs from feminist articulations of sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice. I do this by analyzing how the Muskoka Initiative drew on and reinforced dominant norms of motherhood, and aligned with neoliberal development frameworks. I also examine how the reproductive bodies and lives of women in the Global South were configured as sites of both development intervention and biopolitical governance. My findings are based on a …

The Differentiation Of Smallholder Farming And Household Food Responsibilities In Northern Ghana, Siera Vercillo

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One of the most urgent problems facing sub-Saharan Africa is that many people lack access to safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food, particularly in semi-arid regions such as northern Ghana. An important indication of this problem within Ghana is that stunting rates due to prolonged undernourishment are significantly higher in the northern regions than in other parts of the country, despite claims of an overall increase in the availability of food. Broadly, this dissertation employs qualitative case study research in the Northern Region (interviews N=109 and 12 focus groups) to describe the changes in access to resources, roles and …

A Queer Politics Of Imperceptibility: A Philosophy Of Resistance To Contemporary Sexual Surveillance, Andie Shabbar

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This thesis journeys through a series of events to develop a concept of “imperceptibility” as a mode of resistance to contemporary sexual surveillance. The events I examine include biometric recognition of gender and race at airport security checkpoints, the heteropatriarchal colonial surveillance of Indigenous peoples at Standing Rock, various protest actions, and the political potentials of glitch art. Exploring their unexpected points of connection, my goal is to bring into view acts of resistance against sexual surveillance that already operate below and above the threshold of everyday perception.

The project advocates for a philosophy of resistance that underscores the political …

Searching For Wisdom: A Phenomenological Investigation Of Women's Perspectives Following Participation In An Ovarian Cancer Supportive Care Group, Helen Butlin

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This study used a novel methodology of hermeneutic-poetic-phenomenology to explore perspectives of women living with ovarian cancer. Each had participated in a supportive care group process Soul-Medicine prior to volunteering. Three women, Beth, Carrie, and Denise contributed to this study. The methodology was grounded in Gaston Bachelard’s philosophy of poetic-phenomenology. Data was analyzed with attention to image-centred knowledge; material imagination; reverie; and horizons of hope to elucidate their implicated aspects of wisdom and the ways participant’s formed their personal wisdom integrating feminist theories of embodiment and bioethics.

Findings are framed through three images of a uniquely formed inner ‘wisdom-compass’, an …

Unread: The (Un)Published Texts Of Romanticism, Marc D. Mazur

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This dissertation reads the unpublished texts of Romanticism not as fragments on the road to publication but as psychoanalytic “partial objects” that re-figure our understanding of the relationship between Romantic authors and publication. Against positivist interpretations of literary production that limit writing to the professionalization of the author and to a sociology of texts, Unread develops the concept of the (un)published whose parenthetical bracketing signals an unstable suspension of textual instability that is at once prior to and yet persistently remains a part of the writing of the published text. I argue that non-publication also arises from the author’s relation …

Un/Dead Animal Art: Ethical Encounters Through Rogue Taxidermy Sculpture, Miranda Niittynen

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Beginning in 2004, the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists began an art movement of taxidermied animal sculptures that challenged conventional forms of taxidermied objects massively produced and displayed on an international scale. In contrast to taxidermied ‘specimens’ found in museums, taxidermied ‘exotic’ wildlife decapitated and mounted on hunters' walls, or synthetic taxidermied heads bought in department stores, rogue taxidermy artists create unconventional sculptures that are arguably antithetical to the ideologies shaped by previous generations: realism, colonialism, masculinity. As a pop-surrealist art movement chiefly practiced among women artists, rogue taxidermy artists follow an ethical mandate to never kill animals for the …

The Politics Of Wounds, Jonathan Nash

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What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally, by turning to …

“And, Needless To Say, I Was Athletic, Too:” Southern Ontario Black Women And Sport (1920s – 1940s), Ornella Nzindukiyimana

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This dissertation presents a two-part study of sporting practices of Southern Ontario Black women, between the 1920s and the 1940s, aimed at developing a socio-cultural history of sport that includes narratives from marginalized groups. Given sport’s traditional position as a masculine domain, as well as Canada’s status as a patriarchal White supremacy, the accounts presented in this work centre Black women’s sport experiences through an intersectional perspective. It is argued that, by virtue of their simultaneously racialized and gendered identities, Black women had distinct sporting experiences from those of White women and men and Black men.

The first study used …

The Duty To Survive Well: Neoliberal Governance, Temporality And Breast Cancer Survivorship Discourse, Rachael L. Pack

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This study critically examines how discourses of breast cancer survivorship are constructed within professional and popular fields of knowledge production. In this thesis, I used critical discourse analysis (CDA) methods informed by Foucauldian, feminist, and queer theoretical perspectives to analyze a sample of texts, published in the Springer Journal of Cancer Survivorship and by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, in order to elucidate a complex understanding of how discourses of breast cancer survivorship effectively privilege and exclude particular forms of subjectivity and temporal trajectories. I argue that these discourses of breast cancer survivorship operate as neoliberal technologies of governance that …

Pitching The Feminist Voice: A Critique Of Contemporary Consumer Feminism, Kate Hoad-Reddick

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This dissertation’s object of study is the contemporary trend of femvertising, where seemingly pro-women sentiments are used to sell products. I argue that this commodified version of feminism is highly curated, superficial, and docile. The core question at the centre of this research is how commercial feminism—epitomized by the trend of femvertising—influences the feminist discursive field. Initially, I situate femvertising within the wider trend of consumer feminism and consider the implications of a marketplace that speaks the language of feminism. Then, through detailed content analysis of advertising by brands like Dove, Secret, CoverGirl, and Barbie, examples of this trend …

(Not) One Of The Boys: A Case Study Of Female Detectives On Hbo, Darcy Griffin

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In 1997 HBO aired its first original drama series, Oz. In the years that have followed the network has positioned itself as vanguard in the television landscape, however, HBO drama series have remained a complicated, and often dangerous site for female characters. Moreover, with a few exceptions (Sex and the City, or True Blood for example), original HBO drama series remain focused on the network’s primary audience demographic: the predominantly male, relatively affluent consumers of quality television. This research explores the representation of female detectives within original HBO crime drama series, The Wire (2002--8) and Season Two of True Detective …

The Voice As An Object Of Desire In The Work Of Ann Quin, Jennifer Komorowski

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This thesis is a discussion of the voice as an object of desire in the work of Ann Quin. In life Quin suffered from bouts of silence and after death her work was itself silenced; I believe investigating the voice as an object is a fitting way to think about her work. My first chapter discusses the object voice as a silent, interior voice using the concept of the voice which Mladen Dolar develops to expand on Jacques Lacan naming the voice as an object of desire. In the second chapter I continue my discussion of the object voice with …

Impact Of Islamophobia On Post-Secondary Muslim Students Attending Ontario Universities, Hassina Alizai

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This study investigated the experiences of Muslim Canadian students attending institutions of higher education in the context of increasing Islamophobia. This study utilized qualitative case study methodology to investigate the following questions: (1) What are the experiences of Muslim Canadians attending institutions of higher education in the current context of Islamophobia? (2) How is the rising anti-Muslim sentiment impacting the academic performance of Muslim students? (3) How do Muslim students negotiate or navigate their identities subsequent to recent national and international tragic events (e.g. Paris Attacks, San Bernardino and other terrorist atrocities)? The students’ responses resulted in three major themes …

Women In Leadership Within Professional Sport In Canada, Amanda B. Cosentino

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Many women enter graduate and undergraduate sport management degree programs to prepare for leadership positions in sport (Brassie, 1989). However, in professional sport in North America, the proportion of women advancing to senior roles is comparatively small. Previous research (Berry & Franks, 2010; Dreher, 2003; Lough & Grappendorf, 2007; Sartore & Cunningham, 2007) and a review of the company directories all confirm that a relatively small proportion of women hold senior leadership roles at either the league or team levels. In fact many teams do not have a single woman in a senior leadership role in spite of the fact …

Reblogging Gender: Non-Binary Transgender Subjectivities And The Internet, Lee (Molly) J. Fraser

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This thesis is an examination of non-binary transgender communities on the internet and the new, non-binary modes of subjectivity that can be read within these spaces. After my first introductory chapter, which situates my work in the context of previous contributions to transgender theory, I approach non-binary online communities from different perspectives. My second chapter reads certain codes of communication within non-binary friendly online spaces (such as Tumblr) as a form of neo-Dadaism, as well as cyborgian manifestations. My third chapter contends with the interactions of non-binary online communities within a society structured by neo-liberal institutional capitalism. My fourth and …

Creating And Sustaining Community: An Analysis Of Lgbtq Community In London, Ontario, Geoff S. Bardwell

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There has been an increase in literature over the last decade on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer (LGBTQ) communities. However, aside from health-related studies, little has been published pertaining to LGBTQ communities in London, Ontario. This dissertation seeks to answer the following research questions: what are the constitutive elements that make up London’s LGBTQ communities? What forms of community-making prove to be viable and effective in a smaller urban setting? Does the practice of aesthetics/artistic performance lead to socio-political change among members of London’s LGBTQ communities? This is a multidisciplinary research project that utilizes archival, theoretical, and ethnographic-informed qualitative research …

Representing Modern Female Villain: On Feminine Evil, Perverse Nationhood, And Opposition In Rómulo Gallegos’ Doña Bárbara And Salman Rushdie’S Midnight’S Children, Barbara Guerrero

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This thesis aims to contribute to the scholarship on modern female villainy by further exploring the ways in which 20^th century female villains are represented as well as the functions they carry out in the text. In this study, I look at Rómulo Gallegos’ doña Bárbara from Doña Bárbara (1929) and Salman Rushdie’s Indira Gandhi from Midnight’s Children (1981). I argue that both villains are a combination of already-existing forms of evil in more recognizable contexts as well as a rejection of and opposition to modern values. Firstly, I examine how the villains both conform and resist the formula …