Women's Studies Commons^™

Historical Butches: Lesbian Experience And Masculinity In Bryher's Historical Fiction, Haley M. Fedor

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This project analyzes three of Bryher's historical novels, while also providing background on the shadowy figure of Bryher herself. Looking at Gate to the Sea, Roman Wall, and Ruan, each serves to represent lesbianism in a variety of coded or metaphorical ways. Various geographical locations or landscapes serve to either represent or depict homosexual desire, and also construct queer spaces for characters to traverse. Limited scholarship exists on any of Bryher's works, particularly that which looks at lesbian sexuality. The genre Bryher writes in allows for a cross-writing of lesbian characters, or gendering lesbian characters as male, and displays awareness …

Approaches To Life Narrative: A Scholarly And Creative Thesis, Tanya Bomsta

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis includes both scholarly and creative approaches to women’s life narrative and rhetoric. The author first analyzes Terry Tempest Williams’ recently published memoir, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice, through the lenses of writing and rhetorical theory. She examines how Williams’ hybrid genre negotiates the boundaries between journaling and autobiographical writing and between silence and voice. She argues that Williams employs a feminist rhetoric in her writing in order to negotiate these boundaries.

The second and third works are personal essays in which the author examines her journals and her marriage. These creative works meditate on the …

Mike & Molly -- An Other World, Maureen Elizabeth Johnson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis explores the impact of the television show Mike & Molly on the modern debate related to fat in America. The thesis uses the work of Michel Foucault as well as disability scholars such as Lennard Davis and feminist scholars such as bell hooks to examine how a comedy show like Mike & Molly can further disenfranchise fat people in society. The thesis shows that fat makes people an Other in society, and television shows and other forms of comedy that mock those who are fat just reinforce that Other status.

Maine Women Pioneers Iii: Vanguard, Homage, Worldview, Dirigo, University Of New England Art Gallery, Center For Ethics In Action

Exhibition Catalogues

Maine Women Pioneers III is the catalogue from the University of New England Art Gallery’s October 12, 2012—July 21, 2013 four-part exhibition.

Vanguard (Oct. 12 - Dec. 16, 2012) featured avant-garde, experimental and innovative works by nine Maine artists who offer insights into the future using mixed media, conceptual installation, performance and video elements. Featured artists: Susan Bickford, Diana Cherbuliez, Amy Stacey Curtis, Alicia Eggert, Lauren Fensterstock, Lihua Lei, Julie Poitras Santos, Carrie Scanga, and Ling-Wen Tsai.

Homage (Jan. 2 - March 3, 2013) highlighted veteran artists who are powerful examples of career and lifelong original creative accomplishment, ahead of …

Unrelated, Kathryn Muhlestein

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

The Feminine Peter Pan, Felicia Jones

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Cross-casting in performances has effected outrage and social dilemmas in audiences, despite the important cultural messages those characters display. Since its beginning as a play, women have been cast as the young boy Peter in Peter Pan. J.M. Barrie wrote Peter Pan through inspiration from the young deaths of his brother and childhood friend, who will always remain in their youth. In order to capture that youthful innocence, females have been cast as Peter. This choice in casting was also made to achieve androgyny and transcend gender by blurring gender lines.

Transformations In Body And Cuisine In Rural Yucatan, Mexico, Lauren Wynne

Anthropology and Sociology Faculty Publications

Many twentieth-century ethnographic accounts of the rural Yucatec Maya analyze the accruement of culinary knowledge as a crucial part of the process of socialization, by which children become adults (e.g., Gaskins 2003; Greene 2002). Indeed, in the rural town of Juubche, fairly predictable culinary milestones continue to mark the lives of girls and women. Some young women, however, are using their access to new foods and related knowledge to challenge both local hierarchies of expertise and ideologies of racial difference. For many young women in Juubche, there is a link between consuming new foods and identifying oneself with larger Yucatecan …

Awe Volume 1 (2013), Awe Editors

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

The Blessed Circle And Tales Of Woe, Susan Pickett

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

A history of woman composers: The comprehensive history of music, revered as “The Grout,” fails to mention woman composers. Since 3000 B.C., over 6000 woman have composed alongside male colleagues; their work is largely neglected. There is a black hole of female composers. Despite praise and celebration during their lifetime, these women and their works are sucked out of history as though they never existed. Due to frantic and purposeful efforts, great composers like Marion Bauer, Carla Schumann, Elfrida Andrée, and Lousie Farrenc are receiving a second look at their works. There is a desperate rush to archive, gather, and …

Happenings 2013: Year In Review, Women's Center, Wright State University

Women’s Center Newsletter

A four page newsletter created by the Wright State Women's Center documenting the current affairs of the Women's Center as well as other happenings on campus.

This issue highlights the 20th Anniversary of the Women's Center, a performance by artist-in-residence Margaret Murray, a calendar of events and more.

Contributors, Awe Editors

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

The Caustic Pen Is Mightiest: A Tradition Of Female Satire In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, And Muriel Spark, Jaclyn Andrea Reed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Female satirists have long been treated by critics as anomalies within an androcentric genre because of the reticence to acknowledge women's right to express aggression through their writing. In Pride and Prejudice (1813), A House and Its Head (1935), and The Girls of Slender Means (1963), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969), and Muriel Spark (1918-2006) all combine elements of realism and satire within the vehicle of the domestic novel to target institutions of their patriarchal societies, including marriage and family dynamics, as well as the evolving conceptions of domesticity and femininity, with a subtle feminism. These female satirists illuminate …

The Myths Of Muslim Women Liberation: Why Islamists Resist The Western Concept Of Universal Women’S Rights, Justine O'Sullivan

Self-Designed Majors Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

The “Reproductive Destiny” Of Women: Constructing Women Solely As Reproductive Entities In Oral Contraceptive Medical Texts, Andrea Carson

Cultural Analysis and Social Theory Major Research Papers

This major research paper analyzes the representation of women and sexual reproduction in Western oral contraceptive medical texts. Drawing on previous feminist and sociological literature on the medicalization of women’s sexuality and reproduction, I suggest that these texts draw upon a particular discourse that confines/restricts the social construction of women as reproductive entities. This study is based on a discourse analysis of 10 oral contraceptive medical texts, published between 1965 and 2007. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of feminism and medicalization, I interrogate how womanhood and motherhood become inexplicably linked and how women are homogenised based on their reproductive capacities. …

Rethinking The Connections Between Female Empowerment And Gender Bias In Child Births And Survival In Urban India, Sucharita Sinha Mukherjee

Economics Faculty Publications

Notwithstanding improvements in female work and educational achievements persistent and increasing female survival disadvantage is a feature of urban India’s demography. A temporal and cross sectional analysis of most recent available data from the Census of India while reaffirming the positive association between female work and the birth and survival of more female children, fails to reconfirm the oft emphasized positive connection between female education and increased survival of girl children. Relatively high levels of female education, by being indicative of household socioeconomic status may be associated with increased ability to discriminate especially in the presence of cultural biases resulting …

The Bollywood Hindu Heroine, Emily Holmstead

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

The melodramatic, high-grossing Bollywood film industry is intertwined in almost every aspect of Indian culture with its blunt commercialism and unapologetic enthusiasm. Both the western world and the feminist movement are changing women’s depictions in these films. These featured women fill university classrooms and cry out against social injustice all the while pursuing husbands and performing traditional rituals. The power structure of the female-male relationship is also changing as women’s education and career are given more importance while maintaining their devotion to romance and motherhood. The appetite for female-centered films will grow as the theories and practices of female empowerment …

Ua12/2/7 Student Affairs - Panhellenic Council, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about the Panhellenic Council.

Word, Spirit, And Power: Women And Prophetic Authority In The Early Church, Mitchell Locklear

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

In the second century, a prophetic movement emerged out of Asia Minor that sent shockwaves through the Christian Church. Montanism, as the movement became known, emphasized both prophetic and female authority. These aspects of the movement were a threat to the male hierarchy of bishops, and in their efforts to combat threats to both episcopacy and patriarchy, Church leaders tied prophetic excesses to the usurpation of authority by women. Both Montanists and their opponents used New Testament literature and their own understandings of Church tradition to legitimize their claims. Church leaders were largely successful in neutralizing prophecy as a threat …

Bringing Feminism, Halakhah, And Social Status Together: Women's Ordination In American Judaism, Michelle Seares

Senior Scholars Papers in Jewish Studies

The ordination of women as rabbis is seen as one of the most important steps in bringing American Judaism in line with contemporary American values. However, the road to women’s ordination was a long and contentious one that is still being debated in Orthodox circles. The most problematic challenges to changing the role of women in Orthodox Judaism are certain exemptions and prohibitions outlined in the halakhah (Jewish law) that pertain to women. The halakhah exempts women from positive, time-bound commandments and for the purpose of ordination, the most important are those relating to public worship. However, many sources agree …

The Impact Of Inter-Intra Clan Conflict On Women In Northern Israel's Patriarchal Arab Community, And The Impact Of Such Women On The Process And Outcome Of The Sulha (Settlement) Dispute Resolution Process, Doron Pely

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Inter-clan conflicts within Northern Israel's Arab community may pit dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people against each other in revenge and counter-revenge cycles that can take years to resolve. Because disputants' clans often live in close proximity to each other, third party interveners- Sulha (Settlement) Makers, mitigate against possible revenge attacks, sometimes command the extended family of the perceived perpetrator to leave their homes and move to another village or town. This exile (tarhil in Arabic) often impacts dozens of family members (mostly women and children), and can extend years, sometimes decades. Such enforced exile has a severe impact on …