Women's Studies Commons^™

"You Keep Yourself Strong": A Discourse Analysis Of African Women Asylum Seekers' Talk About Emotions, Maria Clare, Simon Goodman, Helen Liebling, Hannah Laing

Journal of International Women's Studies

The current study investigates how asylum-seeking African women use talk about emotion to construct empowered roles for themselves. A discourse analysis was conducted on interviews with African asylum-seeking women. Participants used two interacting repertoires, ‘rejecting pity’ and ‘being strong’, to resist inferior positions. By constructing themselves as strong and not needing pity, participants positioned themselves as in control of their lives, and thus presented as responsible and capable mothers, a role they are accountable for. Clinical implications and findings for future research are discussed.

Re-Inscribing The Indian Courtesan: A Genealogical Approach, Meenal Tula, Rekha Pande

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women historiography has been one of the major concerns of the feminist movement particularly since 1960s. Looking at the figure of the courtesan in India–its histories, representations, repression and re-emergence, the paper seeks to problematize discourses of both Universalist and minority history writing that have been built around these women. In the context of Post-Colonial theory, and in the light of the dynamic nature of the categories of Truth, Power, Knowledge, and Discourse, the paper seeks to salvage Foucault’s methodology of writing a genealogical history as opening new avenues within the history of the courtesan in India in particular and …

Pinched Lives And Stolen Dreams In Arab Feminist Short Stories, Rula Quawas

Journal of International Women's Studies

The short fiction of Arab women writers epitomizes their penetrating feminist voices and contributes to our understanding of the diversity of Arab women short-story writing in the second half of the twentieth century. This fiction, which should be read with an open mind and with a nod to the culture and social context in which it is born, cradled and bred, deals with family relations in the Arab world and the ways in which the members of these families show each other love, or perhaps neglect to do so, with social and cultural dominion that emphasizes the collective and downplays …

The Palestinian Women's Movement Versus Hamas: Attempting To Understand Women's Empowerment Outside A Feminist Framework, Sara Ababneh

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper asks whether–and if so, how–Islamic groups such as Hamas that clearly define themselves outside a feminist framework can be studied in terms of women’s empowerment. The material discussed is based on fieldwork conducted with Hamas-affiliated female Islamists, as well as women’s rights activists in general, in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2007. Centrally, this work debates whether it is possible to think of women's empowerment in non-feminist terms. The significance of this study lies in two critical contributions to questions of women’s empowerment in Muslim societies: Firstly, the case of Islamism exposes the hegemony of feminism–religious and secular–as …

Educating And Mobilizing The New Voter: Interwar Handbooks And Female Citizenship In Great-Britain, 1918-1931, Véronique Molinari

Journal of International Women's Studies

British women’s access to the electorate in 1918 and 1928 triggered off a series of efforts to reach out to the new voters both on the part of political parties and of women’s groups. New organisations were created, the role of women’s sections within political parties was reassessed and a wealth of propaganda material was published at election times that specifically targeted women. While some of these efforts were avowedly aimed at mobilizing the female vote in favour of a political party or around an ideological (feminist) agenda, others were seemingly simply intended to arouse women’s interest in politics and …

The 'New Woman' Gender Roles And Urban Modernism In Interwar Berlin And Shanghai, Carol Schmid

Journal of International Women's Studies

During the interwar period, urban modernism was connected to opposing ideals of womanhood. On the one hand, women’s participation in a culture of leisure, consumption and body consciousness created images of the New Women in Berlin and Shanghai during the 1920s and early 1930s. On the other hand, women in Weimar Berlin and Republican Shanghai were both desired and feared for their role in the significant changes in these two metropoles. This article analyzes the emergence of the neue Frau and modeng xiaojie. The growth of the cities, industrialization and changes in the work force provided new opportunities for …

My (Not So) Angry Vagina, Mary E. Maloney

SURGE

Why is feminism a dirty word? Why are celebrities from Susan Sarandon to Lady Gaga and Katy Perry explicitly rejecting the feminist label? And why is Carrie Underwood saying, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am a feminist, that can come off as a negative connotation.”

Since when was there a negativity surrounding feminism? Well, basically since forever. [excerpt]

"We're Taking Slut Back": Analyzing Racialized Gender Politics In Chicago's 2012 Slutwalk March, Aphrodite Kocieda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined bodied activism in Chicago's Slutwalk 2012 march, a contemporary movement initiated in Toronto, Canada that publicly challenged the mainstream sentiment that women are responsible for their own rape and victimization. Adopting an intersectional approach, I used textual analysis to discuss photographs posted on the official Chicago Slutwalk website to explore the ways this form of public bodied protest discursively engages women's empowerment from movement feminism as well as third wave and postfeminisms. I additionally analyzed the overall website and its promotional materials for the Slutwalk marches as well as how Chicago's photographic representations privilege the white female …

Fearless: The Vagina Monologues, Center For Public Service

SURGE

Performed annually around the world to celebrate womanhood, empower survivors of sexual assault and abuse, and create an open forum for challenging cultural attitudes toward women, the Vagina Monologues will be performed by Gettysburg College students next Thursday and Friday (February 20 & 21). [excerpt]

Maniera Devota/Mano Donnesca: Women, Virtue And Visual Imagery During The Counter-Reformation In The Papal States, 1575-1675, Patricia Rocco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The history of women's participation in religious movements during the Early Modern period in Europe has long been less commented upon in modern scholarship than that of their male counterparts. This project will enlarge our understanding of the participation of women in the visual program of the Counter-Reformation in the Papal State of Bologna. The study focuses on Bologna since the city had an unprecedented large group of active women artists as well as being a crucial site of Catholic reform. Knowledge of Bologna's women is still incomplete; therefore this dissertation is structured as a series of interlinked case studies, …

Collective Memory, Women's Identity And The Church, Jo Ana Elise Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Christianity, Judaism and Islam share a deliberative subjugation of women through ideologies, hierarchical structures and performative practices that effectively relegate women to an inferior position. The Christian tradition has one of the longest-standing and most consistent iconographies with regard to the characterization and status of women in society. The Christian church is prototypical of a religious institution iterating an ideology of women's inferiority through various mechanisms that lodge and preserve it in societal collective memory. This study examines three mechanisms used by the Church to preserve collective memory about women's inferior status in society: doctrine, liturgical practices and visual images …

Interview Sue Williams Spurlock: Collegiate Oral History Interview, Christy L. Spurlock

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Interview with Sue Williams Spurlock about her college experience at Western Kentucky University in the late 1950s early 1960s.

Gendered Classrooms And Gendered Attire: Doing Gender On A College Campus, Jeff Lockhart Fcrh '13

The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal

Gender and social identity rank as high priorities for undergraduate students, putting significant weight on their choice of apparel and accessories. In a university, students must also navigate the pressures of academic disciplines, which have their own norms of appearance and gender. Credibility in a discipline often hinges on one’s ability to conform to those disciplinary standards, but people whose social gender role does not match the gender of their discipline, such as womyn in the sciences or men in gender studies, will find these two forces at odds. This study leverages statistical observations of clothing and accessories to examine …

Sex, Power, And Women: Female Viewers’ Perceptions Of Popular Music Video Themes, Whitney Stefani, Ralf R. Greenwald

Student Published Works

Research has linked viewing highly sexual music videos with increased gender role acceptance, and concern over personal physical appearance. However, very few studies have assessed individual differences in how music video sexual content is perceived, and no studies to date have addressed non-objectifying sexual content. In the present study, fifteen college women were exposed to 21 pop music videos and asked to categorize each video on the basis of whether it depicted women a) as sex objects, b) using sex as a source of power, or c) non-sexually. At least one video achieved perfect consensus amongst the participants for each …

Student Leadership And College Co-Educational History, Gabriel Plummer

Psychology Honors Papers

Leadership has been described and thought of as stereotypically masculine, and consequently, leadership positions in student government have historically been dominated by men. This study compared archival data from schools that changed their admission policy from all women to coed (n = 2), changed from all men to coed (n = 1), or a school that has been coed since its founding (n = 1) to see if the history of a school was related to gender representation in the student government leadership positions. The schools that shifted to coed all made the shift at the same time (1969). The …

Oakes Smith Returns To Maine, Timothy Scherman

English Faculty Publications

In June 2014, I was invited to deliver a lecture on Elizabeth Oakes Smith as part of the Gorman Lecture Series at the Yarmouth History Center, a short distance from Oakes Smith's birthplace. I took the occasion to caution those who base their readings of Oakes Smith's works (and those of other women) on their written autobiographies--as if the life of the woman writer stood as the "origin" the woman-as-author could only "copy." Calling attention to the context of Oakes Smith's writing of her autobiography (at which point her popularity was fading, her family disgraced and most of her friends …

Scandalous Deception In The Castle: An Examination Of The Gender Performance Through The Bedtrick Trope In Arthurian Literature, Abby Louise Daniel

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The bedtrick – mistaken identity in a sexual encounter – is a comic motif employed by medieval, renaissance and modern storytellers. While modern readers tend to recognize this motif as (at best) a disturbing sexual escapade and (at worst) rape, the scholarship on mistaken identity in medieval literature still generally glosses over the bedtrick as a moment of comedy. My thesis examines the literary trope of the bedtrick through the critical lens of Judith Butler’s performativity theory, and the motives behind this form of deception and the modern implications. Furthermore, the bedtrick trope is explored in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur …

Why We Stay, Brittany Nicole Mcintyre

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Why we stay is a piece of Creative Non-Fiction, is a work that is heavily focused on region. The narrative takes up the life of a female Appalachian. The challenges of being an Appalachian woman raising a family are analyzed alongside such issues as domestic violence, family dysfunction, and mental illness. Because the piece is set in both rural and urban Appalachia, the issue of family is examined in terms of generational conflict and the strong bonds of a matriarch.

Examining The Theoretical Consequences Of A Post-Feminist Media Culture, Jedidiah N. Bailey

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Since the early 1990s, feminist scholars have declared that a post-feminist media culture has arisen throughout the Westernized world to attack the ideas and values promoted by feminists and the second-wave feminist movement that became established in the late 1960s and 70s. Consequently, this study is designed to gauge the influence that these media have in shaping the attitudes of young college women (in the 18-25 year old demographic) toward feminism and key women‟s rights issues. In order to better understand whether post-feminist media are able to detract support from the feminist movement, this study attempts to quantify the relationship …

Collection Info Tags

Sincerely Yours, Letters From The Maine Women Writers Collection (Multi-Page Items)

Informational tags used in the exhibit "Sincerely Yours" which included letters from a variety of people. The tags include biographical and hisotrical information about the writers of the letters and their holdings at MWWC.