Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Empowering Senior Females By Utilizing Each Female Person's Voice To Create Desired Lifestyle Options, Icydor Aldale Mohabier

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

Interviews of senior females ranging in age from 55 through 72 were conducted between September 2004 and April 2005, in order to determine what lifestyle options this group would like made available to them. The participants represented a sample of senior females who had different backgrounds, including culture, education level, and economic circumstance. Although all the participants had very different lifestyles at the time of their interviews, most were satisfied with their current lifestyles but wanted to change something about it. The research results indicate that there are three desired lifestyle options that senior females want: socializing, improving their health, …

Shedding Light Upon The Shadows: An Examination Of The Use Of Voice As Resistance And Reclamation Of The Black Woman From Enslavement To Freedom., Courtney Erin Brooks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My research examines the enslaved black woman's reclamation of self through the use of voice and resistance from enslavement into freedom. I argue that the enslaved black woman's voice was one that grew stronger and louder, in an effort to have her story heard, through her attempts of reclamation of self and transition from slave to a free woman. I begin with an introduction to the purpose of my research. Chapter one describes my approach to my research. Chapter two describes the conditions of slavery for black women. Chapter three describes enslaved black women's mechanisms of resistance. Chapter four examinations …

The Negotiation Of Gender And Athleticism By Women Athletes, Erica Nicolien Kitchen

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

Despite significant improvements in the last thirty years, the sporting world remains a masculine domain. Women athletes continue to face inequalities and criticism for crossing traditional gender lines. This study, which was grounded in Foucauldian, postmodern and social constructionist theories and a third wave feminist perspective, examines how women athletes understand gender and how gender, athleticism and body image intersect for them. Eleven women in various stages of their athletic careers participated in in-depth interviews. Women and girls are influenced to participate in sport by family and friends, have local role models, and value the social aspect of sport. They …

A Manifest Cyborg: Laurie Anderson And Technology, Julie Malinda Goolsby

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

This thesis seeks to demonstrate that although Laurie Anderson’s performance works are technologically driven and often involve gender play, seemingly transgressing the gender binary, ultimately she reinscribes traditional gender norms. On the one hand, Anderson has been a pioneer in the use of electronic technology, which is significant considering she is a woman and electronics is a male-dominated arena; on the other hand, her ambiguously- gendered cyborg persona, which does often raise awareness about gender stereotypes, ultimately reinscribes traditional gender norms. Although I consider these issues as they pertain specifically to Anderson, the significance of this project lies in the …

"Mother May I? Food, Power And Control In Mothers And Daughters", Lisa Joy Borello

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

Fourteen women in the United States were interviewed to determine the role mothers played in shaping their daughters’ attitudes toward their bodies and eating, and the extent to which women negotiated the messages they received from their family and larger culture concerning weight and appearance. Results of this study complicated existing theories concerning the factors that most influence women’s self-esteem and body image. The results demonstrated that the women within this sample engaged in a variety of disordered eating patterns, but did not recognize their own actions as out-of-the-ordinary; rather they re-produced familial and cultural messages about women’s “normative body …

I'M Not Loud Enough To Be Heard: Rock 'N' Roll Camp For Girls And Feminist Quests For Equity, Community, And Cultural Production, Stacey Lynn Singer

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

Because of what I perceive to be important contributions to female youth empowerment and the construction of culture and community, I chose to conduct a qualitative case study that explores the methods utilized in the performance of Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, as well as the experiences of camp administrators, participants, and volunteers, in order to identify feminist constructs, aims, and outcomes of Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls. My interests lie in the feminist and activist approaches in the construction and production of Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, as well as in the quest for equity, community …

Andalusia, Julia Clare Peteet

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

This is a creative thesis in the form of a screenplay titled “Andalusia” in which a woman, Katherine, searches for meaning in her life. After suffering through a childhood wrought with tragedy, disappointment, and chaos, Katherine strives to create a healthy reality in which she can thrive. After failing miserably at this once, she takes a different path and finds herself hidden away in her dead father’s house writing about the Mississippi Delta town of Andalusia.

“A Highly Ambiguous Condition”: The Transgender Subject, Experimental Narrative And Trans-Reading Identity In The Fiction Of Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter, And Jeanette Winterson, Jennifer A. Smith

Dissertations

This dissertation examines how the constantly evolving gender identity o f a text’s transgender subject relates to the text’s narrative structure and shapes the orientation o f the reader to the text. Accordingly, this project examines how these transgender narratives deploy experimental stylistic techniques that enhance the reader’s experience of ceaseless transitioning by revealing gender as a constant process that never solidifies onto a body and by highlighting the text’s own status as process rather than finalized product. Further, this project examines how a transgender subject and his/her relationship to the body, culture, and narrative is involved in the re-vision …

Third Wave Feminist History And The Politics Of Being Visible And Being Real, Robbin Hillary Vannewkirk

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

This project works to illuminate some of the main theoretical claims that writers of the third wave make in order to understand these claims as rhetorical devices used to make themselves visible and real. Being visible is a common theme in third wave texts and realness is a site that is both contested and embraced. Being Visible and being real work together to situate third wave actors in a U.S. feminist continuum that is sprinkled with contradiction and ambiguity. This thesis will examine the contextual development of third wave feminism, and then using examples of realness and visibility in the …

Constitutionalism, Gender Equality And Judicial Reform: A Study Of The Status Of Women In The Egyptian Judiciary, Mahmoud Moustafa

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Women's Rights In Islam, Two Reformist Approaches: Abdullahi An-Na'aim And Khaled Abu El Fadl, Mohamed Sayed Sultan

Archived Theses and Dissertations

The thesis examines two different reformist approaches to Islamic law in general and women's rights in particular. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im and Khaled Abou El Fadl are chosen as the focus of this study because of their respective innovative approaches to a historically controversial issue. The focus is on the Qur'anic verses and various definitive texts in Qur'an or al-nas qati al-delalah. Discussed is the historical context of the scholars interpretation of the Qur'anic verses; the relationship between the historical context of the Qura'nic verses and the occasions for which the Quranic verses were revealed to the Prophet; any differences between …

Mining The Meaning Of Collective Memory And Imagination: The Construction Of Identity In The Puerto Rican Diaspora, Courtney Hooper

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project illuminates the relationship between cultural resistance, cultural production, and cultural identity in the poetry of Puerto Ricans in New York (“Nuyoricans”). Through textual analysis, informal interviews, and participant observation conducted in the South Bronx, this project is interested in how the descriptions of the island as “home” are used to mediate a cultural or ethnic identity, particularly amongst a people who do not live there, or perhaps never have. While the construction of an ethnic identity and a conceptual homeland in a diasporic community has been studied in past research, the intention here is to elaborate upon the …

From Transcendentalism To Progressivism: The Making Of An American Reformer, Abby Morton Diaz (1821-1904)., Ann B. Cro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Author and activist Abby Morton Diaz (1821-1904) was a member of the Brook Farm Transcendental community from 1842 until it folded in 1847. Although critics have long recognized that Brook Farm played a role in Diaz's intellectual preparation, they have not attempted to demonstrate its influence through a study of her writings.

In this study I will examine in detail two of Diaz's novels and two long essays, with passing references to other works, that reveal how the utopian socialism practiced at Brook Farm influenced Diaz as a writer and reformer. In all her writings Diaz emphasized the importance of …

I Am What I Wear: The Use Of Dress In Constructing And Evaluating Sexual Identity, Jean Stevens

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This thesis explores different disciplinary studies and discussions of dress, and more specifically, the use of dress in constructing a gendered identity and sexual identity. To conduct this research, I performed a literature review and referenced various social psychological, sociological, and/or feminist theoretical frameworks. I argue that dress cannot serve as any sort of innate or accurate indicator of sexual identity; rather, the meanings associated with dress are socially produced and vary across time and place. Evidence for this argument emerges only after a literature review, as one can recognize a common theme linking the literature, or perhaps a commonly …

"A Word Can Make All The Differences" : Translating Caribbean Feminist Discourse And Simone Schwarz-Bart's Pluie Et Vent Sur TéLuméE Miracle, Stacey Lynn Diliberto

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

How is a literary text—and the culture it represents—translated? Is the translated text a hindrance to the unique voice of an author, or is it beneficial for the circulation of the text in a culture that is not the author’s own? Must the translator be an insider to the author’s culture, or can any translator take up the task of interpretation? This thesis seeks to investigate these questions by examining the English translation of Simone Schwarz - Bart’s Pluie et Vent Sur Télumée Miracle. Barbara Bray, the translator of Pluie et Vent, renames the book in English as The Bridge …

The Unknown Struggle : A Comparative Analysis Of Women In The Black Power Movement., Elizabeth Michele Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis comparatively analyzes the experiences and roles of women in the United States and Caribbean Black Power Movements. Using the Black Panther Party and Trinidadian National Joint Action Committee as case studies, the researcher isolates similarities and differences among women in these two regions of the African Diaspora. Black Feminist and Caribbean Feminist theoretical perspectives aide in understanding how the interlocking social forces of race, class, and gender impacted women participating in the Black Nationalist movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's.

Cultural Analysis Of The Indian Women's Festival Of Karvachauth, Puja Sahney

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The festival of Karvachauth is celebrated by upper class married women of North India and occurs in the month of October or early November. On this day married women fast to ensure the long lives of their husbands. They wake up before dawn and eat a meal. After sunrise they do not drink water or eat any food until they see the moon at night. The moon is watched through a sieve and prayed to before breaking the fast. An important part of Karvachauth is a ritual that is performed by women in the afternoon. This ritual is hosted by …

Doers Of The Living Word: Gospel Ideology And The African American Womanist Novel, Rebecca Erin Huskey

Dissertations

In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison issues a charge and illuminates the challenge that she and other African American writers face in defining the self through a racially oppressive language:

Neither blackness nor "people of color" stimulates in me notions of excessive, limitless love, anarchy, or routine dread. I cannot rely on these metaphorical shortcuts because I am a black writer struggling with and through a language that can powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive "othering" of people and language which are by no means marginal or already and completely known and …

Isolation And Community In Short Story Collections By Z.Z. Packer, Jhumpa Lahiri, And Mary Gaitskill, Katy A. Howe

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Looking at short story collections by Z.Z. Packer, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Mary Gaitskill, this work explores the protagonists' development of identity in relation to others. Using relational psychoanalysis as a theoretical base, this thesis probes the tension between involvement in community and maintaining individuality.

A Feminist Perspective On The Precautionary Principle And The Problem Of Endocrine Disruptors Under Neoliberal Globalization Policies, Erica Hesch Anstey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Industrialization and "development" during the last 200 years have led to an increase of pesticides, an intensified use of synthetic chemicals, higher levels of environmental pollution, and more exposure to hazardous working conditions. Environmental toxins, many of which are endocrine disruptors, are stored in fat tissue, increasing reproductive health risks for both women and men. Women’s bodies are particularly vulnerable as sites for creating, growing, feeding, and nurturing the next generation. And yet, women’s lives are consistently devalued, especially in a capitalist economy, so that a woman’s rights to her own reproductive health are no longer guaranteed.

In this thesis …

Conversations With Women In Ma'sarah, Cairo, Jeannette Rizk

Archived Theses and Dissertations

My research centers around the daily realities and lives of three women of one family in Ma'sarah, Cairo. The particularities of their life experiences speak to the experience of Egyptian women in general, while their own unique situation as Evangelical Christians in a majority Muslim country sets them apart from both their Muslim and Coptic neighbors, about whom much has been written. Various methods are used to illuminate their perception of life with a focus on gender identity. The written prose captures their personal narratives while the visual narrative, a documentary film, allows the women to speak for themselves. Together …

Sylvia Plath And The Crisis Of The Self: A Feminist Reading Of The Late Poetry, Rania Salah Mohamed

Archived Theses and Dissertations

The study of Sylvia Plath's poetry sheds light on the various approaches that can be used to read the crisis of the self in Plath's poetry. It reveals the latent power and talent of a woman poet who fought against the male tradition to express her voice and demand full recognition. Plath's late poems can be approached in different ways. The thesis examines the existential dilemma of the modern poet in a world of confusion and the psychology of defense against death and suffering in the feminist struggle against the other. These approaches are used to account for the richness …

Literary Love Making In Nicholas Sparks Novels: Finding The Balance Between The Writer’S Life And The Writer’S Work In Bestselling Romantic Literature, Ryan Spanich

Honors Theses

For almost a decade now Nicholas Sparks has been writing love stories. Not only has he been publishing his stories, but they have received high acclaim in each of their installments. Several of his novels have been made into major motion pictures and increased his popularity quite significantly. His status as a successful romantic fiction writer is undeniable, but the question is, why? What is it about Nicholas Sparks that makes his novels so engaging, and personally, what do I need to do as an aspiring novelist to try and acquire the same literary status? Sparks’s novels reach readers at …

Silent Outsiders: Searching For Queer Identity In Composition Readers, Travis Duncan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study searches twenty composition readers' table of contents for the degree of inclusivity of queer people and issues. Four means of erasure are labeled as possible erasing of queer identity: presuming heteronormativity, overt homophobia, perpetuating tokenism, and pathologizing queer identity. The presence of other differences are compared to the number of times that queer identity is referenced in the table of contents. The final portion of the analysis examines the two most inclusive composition readers to understand more clearly how the readers present queer individuals and issues. In a sense, I want to explore the question of how often …

Elizabeth Kee : A Clarion Voice Of And For The People Of Southern West Virginia 1951-1964, Shari A. Heywood

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Elizabeth Kee served as the first woman to represent West Virginia in the House of Representatives from 1951-1964. Newly available sources: taped interviews with her son, Jim Kee, from 1978 and 1980; a complete copy of Elizabeth Kee’s entries into the Congressional Record; copies of many of her “Keenotes” columns from the late 1950s and early 1960s; and correspondence between Elizabeth Kee and veterans from West Virginia from 1961-1963 allow a more complete picture of Kee to emerge. Elizabeth Kee was not only a hardworking politician, who laid the groundwork for future programs like the War on Poverty, she was …

Christina Rossetti, Sarah Grand, And The Expression Of Sexual Liminality In Nineteenth Century Literature, Jennifer Persinger Adams

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study defines sexual liminality as a transient, threshold moment in which textual characters explore not only their sexual desires, but also their gender identities. During the nineteenth century, social critics reveal that sexuality and gender play a vital role in laws, social practices, and family structure. Thus, when authors such as Christina Rossetti and Sarah Grand produce characters that embark upon introspective journeys of their sexualities against the background of social expectation, one clearly identifies the influence of life upon art. Rossetti’s Prince in The Prince’s Progress and Grand’s Angelica in The Heavenly Twins enter into the realm of …

Cultivating Dissent: Queer Zines And The Active Subject, Angela Connie Asbell

Theses Digitization Project

Performs a rhetorical analysis of several zines that deal with gender and sexual identity and outlines some shared aesthetics and ethos of zines and zinesters, then connects the rhetorical and stylistic choices of zinesters to their searches for political and personal identity.

The Honorable Women Of Williamsburg: Resistance To Union Occupation And Female Honor, Rebecca Sommers

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Memory-Craft: The Role Of Domestic Technology In Women's Journals, Tammy Powley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The term "memory-craft" refers to arts and crafts media where personal memorabilia and journaling are combined and assembled into book form. Examples of memory-crafts include scrapbooks, art journals, and altered books. Traditionally, women have been the primary assemblers of memory-crafts, using this form as a method of autobiography and genealogical archiving. Memory-crafting is often associated with the amateur home-crafter, and while historians have long understood its cultural significance, academia has not properly considered memory-craft as a type of alternative discourse. The purpose of this study is to examine the use of memory-crafting as a non-traditional method of writing, especially among …

Motivational Factors That Influence African American Women To Serve As Michigan State Legislators, Rogenia Goza

Dissertations

Problem. The purpose of this study was to discover factors that influence the political career choice of African American women legislators to serve in the State of Michigan Congress. Therefore, this study focused on motivations that affected three African American women legislators' political experiences.

Method. This study used a case-study approach, and the end result is a multi-faceted case study of the political experiences of three State of Michigan African American women legislators. The techniques used in the ethnographic research---interviews, observations, note-taking, and reviews of public and personal documents---were intended to increase understanding of the observed phenomena. Data …