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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Bodies Of Silence And Space: Victimhood, Complicity, And Resistance In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Sana H. Mufti Feb 2023

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 …


Investigating The Experiences Of Faculty Members And Administrators With Quality Assurance And Accountability In Higher Education In Ontario, Melanie Lawrence Mar 2021

Investigating The Experiences Of Faculty Members And Administrators With Quality Assurance And Accountability In Higher Education In Ontario, Melanie Lawrence

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The main objective of this qualitative case study was to explore the professional experience of six faculty members and three administrators in higher education during a time of increasing quality assurance and accountability policies so to gain a deeper understanding of how neoliberalism is changing their work experience as academics in Ontario, Canada. I have presented the research findings by employing policy sociology as both theory and methodology using the method of the qualitative case study. This form of qualitative inquiry provided an opportunity to explore how each interviewee navigated the current context of neoliberalism within their respective roles in …


Dead Men Walking: An Analysis Of Working-Class Masculinity In Post-2008 Hollywood Film, Ryan Schroeder Aug 2019

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

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

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 …


“In The End, It’S Your Pleasure That’S On The Line”: Postfeminist, Healthist, And Neoliberal Discourses In Online Sexual Health Information, Laura Cayen Oct 2016

“In The End, It’S Your Pleasure That’S On The Line”: Postfeminist, Healthist, And Neoliberal Discourses In Online Sexual Health Information, Laura Cayen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation expands the critical literature on postfeminism, which is largely discussed in relationship to popular culture, to focus on how postfeminism permeates and shapes contemporary popular understandings of sexual health. A focus on women’s sexual health is particularly relevant considering the way in which postfeminist discourse is seen to simultaneously and contradictorily take up and reject the gains and methods of the ‘second wave’ feminist movement, within which feminist struggles relating to the women’s health movement and the sexual revolution were fought. Using a feminist critical discourse analysis methodology, I explore how female sexuality is discursively constructed in five …