Communication Commons^™

Perfect Little Feminists? Young Girls In The Us Interpret Gender, Violence, And Friendship In Cartoons, Spring-Serenity Duvall

Faculty Publications

Girls’ studies has emerged as a dynamic area of scholarship that examines the cultural construction of girlhood, the role that girls play in society, their identity formation, and their representation in media. This paper extends previous research by interviewing young girls about their interactions with each other as they view and interpret animated cartoons. Expanding claims that Girl Power programs such as The Powerpuff Girls empower viewers, I also discuss the role of third wave, commodity, and post feminism in influencing girls’ expectations of gender equality even as they embrace gender role differences. In discussing the importance of researchers engaging …

Model Citizen: Exploring The Portrayal Of Unconventional Models On Television Shows In Relation To Women's Self Image, Nicole Jenelle James

All Capstone Projects

According to the renowned Mayo Clinic, having a low self-image can lead people to suffer harmful: physical, emotional, and behavioral consequences. Much of women’s selfimage is reliant on comparing themselves to the media’s perception of beauty. In an effort to bolster American women’s self-esteem, a workshop is proposed to explore the relation between portrayal of unconventional models on television shows and women’s/viewer’s self-image.

Erotic Mourning And Post-Traumatic Sexual Desire, Gila G. Ashtor

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Erotic Mourning and Post-traumatic Sexual Desire" Gila Ashtor investigates the ways Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius 2000 memoir contains an alternative logic of affectivity that locates possibilities for mourning in the ambivalent directionalities of post-traumatic sexual desire. Ashtor links dominant conceptualizations of post-traumatic working-through and regimes of heteronormative sexual reproductivity in order to argue that Eggers's self-exhibitionistic spectacle of failed post-traumatic healing, precisely as a drama of undoing that replaces the cumulative acquisition of psychic cohesion with survival incoherent gestures, produces a version of what this paper will call "radical mourning." To particularize the …

Gender In Winterson's Sexing The Cherry, Paul Kintzele

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Gender in Winterson's Sexing the Cherry" Paul Kintzele examines the ways in which Jeanette Winterson's 1989 novel explores and critiques aspects of gender and sexuality. While acknowledging the importance of the performance theory of gender that derives from the work of Judith Butler, Kintzele contends that such an approach must be complemented with a psychoanalytic approach that insists on a particular distinction between sex and gender. Although some scholars map the sex/gender distinction onto the perennial nature/nurture binary and thus reduce sex to biology or anatomy, scholars of psychoanalysis such as Joan Copjec and Charles Shepherdson, read …

Nationhood And Women In Postcolonial African Literature, Elda Hungwe, Chipo Hungwe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Nationhood and Women in Postcolonial African Literature" Elda Hungwe and Chipo Hungwe, through an analysis of Pepetela's Mayombe, Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah, and Ngugi's Petals of Blood discuss nationhood and nation in postcolonial African literature within the framework of the postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory negates master narratives of nation and nationhood, hence it deconstructs such narratives as problematic. Hungwe and Hungwe discuss problems associated with definitions of nation where groups or members are peripheralized. While Hungwe and Hungwe acknowledge that nationalism served a critical role during decolonization, their conclusion is that in postcolonial Africa notions of …

Consumer Responses To Stereotypical Vs. Non-Stereotypical Depictions Of Women In Travel Advertising, Jessica Eran Mcdonald

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Women are active travel consumers, yet travel advertising notoriously depicts women stereotypically. If consumers react negatively to these stereotypical portrayals in advertising, they may disregard the ad or brand and purchase a different travel product. The purpose of this study is to determine if consumers react differently to stereotypical versus non-stereotypical depictions of women in travel advertising. The study will examine these reactions, by measuring attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, purchase intention, and cognitive responses to carefully prepared advertisements that are characterized as ―stereotypical‖ or ―non-stereotypical.‖ Ads are defined as stereotypical by utilizing Goffman‘s (1979) framework for …

A Comparative Study Of Self-Disclosure In Face-To-Face And Email Communication Between Americans And Chinese, Carolyn Durand

Senior Honors Projects

Self-disclosure occurs when one person communicates personal information about his or her self to another. This information can include facts, opinions, or feelings, and can vary in both breadth and depth. The amount of self-disclosure a person offers depends on several factors. The gender and personality of the person, the relationship they have with the listener, or target, the topic they are discussing, and the medium through which they are communicating all influence how much they are willing to reveal about themselves.

Another aspect that affects self-disclosure is culture. Culture refers to a set of beliefs, values, and traditions shared …

Hands On Hips, Smiles On Lips! Gender, Race, And The Performance Of Spirit In Cheerleading, Laura Grindstaff, Emily West

Emily E. West

Cheerleading has long been synonymous with “spirit” because of its traditional sideline role in supporting school sports programs. In recent decades, however, cheerleading has become more athletic and competitive - even a sport in its own right. This paper is an ethnographic exploration of the emotional dimensions of cheerleading in light of these changes. We argue that spirit is a regulating but also flexible concept that is deployed in order to manage and uphold ideologies of emotion, and that these ideologies are central to how cheerleading reproduces racialized gender difference. On the one hand, the performance guidelines for spirit stabilize …

Two To The Power Of Three: An Exploration Of Metaphor For Sense Making In (Women’S) Collaborative Inquiry, Louise Grisoni, Margaret Page

Organization Management Journal

This paper explores how working with metaphors provides a way to explore under the surface dynamics embedded in the practice and processes of collaborative inquiry. We argue that metaphors are a form of presentational knowing and provide a bridge between experiential knowing and propositional knowing. We have surfaced an exploration of horizontal (sibling) and vertical relations using retrospective inquiry. This paper demonstrates the reality, messiness and politics of collaborative research inquiry processes, which tend to be understudied and under-theorized. We are concerned to affirm the value of collaborative inquiry, and at the same time, break some taboos and myths concerning …

Feminist Criticism: The Importance Of Sharing The Native Female Journey, Michelle Newfield

Communication Studies

The female Native American perspective is grossly neglected in mainstream media. Sadly, stereotypical images romanticize Native American women in a light that disallows them to be taken seriously in a modernized world. The fact is that the majority of women with American Indian ancestry do not live on reservations; they make up a considerable part of the general population.

There is an unfortunate “invisibility of Native women in comparison to men,” and “Native women are often represented by popular culture within the Plains Indian context, the generic Indian. Omnipresent is the ‘squaw’ who is portrayed as servant, concubine, beast of …

Review Of Redesigning Women: Television After The Network Era, Ann M. Savage

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

Review of book: Redesigning Women: Television after the network era.

The Effects Of Power Distance, And Gender On The Use Of Nonverbal Immediacy Behaviors In Symmetrical And Asymmetrical Power Cond, Vincent Santilli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous cross-cultural research in nonverbal immediacy indicates that nonverbal immediacy behavior varies across cultures, and some researchers have suggested that power distance might serve as a moderating variable, however no research has systematically set out to determine whether that is the case. This study assessed the perceived use of nonverbal immediacy under symmetric and asymmetric power conditions, as well as gender, in three cultures: Brazil, Kenya, and the United States. Quantitative data was collected from 527 participants who completed a nonverbal immediacy measure and an individual power distance measure under either a symmetric or an asymmetric power condition. Results related …

Democratic Or Gendered Domain: Communication And Learning Styles In The Online Classroom, Jennifer Ann Bruns

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) within cyberspace has become a recent pedagogical phenomenon. Cyberspace creates a domain for new learning environments. Using the online classroom has the potential to break down gender barriers and erect a more democratic space for students. Even with this limitless potential, there are competing conceptions regarding these new and promising classrooms--will online education conform to the same standards that shape a gendered society, or will these classrooms create a more equitable environment for both male and female students? Because of the rising numbers of online female students, gender bias becomes an increasingly important research topic. Yet the …

"The Joshua Generation": Rethinking The Rhetorical Presidency And Presidential Rhetoric, Mary Stuckey

Communication Faculty Publications

While the “rhetorical presidency,” has been both accepted as a heuristic justifying the study of presidential speech on one hand and disputed as to its accuracy and utility yon the other, this model assumes a white male president who governs within a pre-cable, pre-internet political context. This essay will first briefly survey the history of the rhetorical presidency and then look closely at the factors (class, race, gender, and the mediated and even interactive nature of presidential rhetoric) that will need to be taken into account as scholarship on the rhetorical presidency - and on presidential rhetoric - moves forward.

Crisis Preparation, Media Use, And Information Seeking During Hurricane Ike: Lessons Learned For Emergency Communication, Jennifer A. Burke, Patric R. Spence, Kenneth Lachlan

Patric R. Spence

Audience Interpretations Of "Crash", Debbie Owens

Debbie Owens