Digital Commons Network^™

Lady Problems: A Study On The Effect Of Perceived Femininity When Evaluating Female Presidential Candidates, Mackenzie O. Marquess

Communication Theses

There is currently an observable gender gap associated with political leadership. Though many have tried, no woman has successfully campaigned for the presidency. Historically, media coverage of female candidates is vastly different from coverage of their male counterparts and it is well established that the media has significant control over public perception of candidates. This study examines media coverage of female candidates in an attempt to understand the rhetoric that consistently positions women as unelectable regardless of their experience or political prowess. This study analyzes post-debate commentary from the first Democratic presidential debate of the 2020 election beginning on June …

Navigating The Athletic Terrain For Transgender Athletes: Identity, Policy, And The Future, Lia M. Bevins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transgender athletes face scrutiny because they do not fit within the traditional and constructed bounds of male and female. The objective of this study was to discover how to provide advocacy to this marginalized population amidst discriminating policies and transphobic environments. The research included a survey of high school coaches from thirty schools throughout Tennessee along with interviews with five transgender athletes from across the United States. All five athletes reported that leaders were the most impactful allies in their lives and can be the main sources of advocacy for transgender athletes. Survey findings showed that not every coach throughout …

Paid Family Leave & The Media: A Narrative Policy Framework, Nichole Angelic Horn

Public Affairs Dissertations

This study seeks to understand how paid family leave laws influence traditional gender roles and stereotypes. The mother homemaker/father breadwinner narrative, a prominent concept within feminist circles, assumes particular gendered roles that include women’s responsibility for unpaid labor within the home. The implications of these gendered roles leave women in an economically disadvantaged position. Given the media’s influence in policy making and function to echo current social values, this study utilizes the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to investigate how the media frames these policies, and whether that framing helps to dismantle traditional gender narratives. This study finds that as these …

Madame Bovary Syndrome: The Female Protagonist's Plight, Audrey C. Giesler

Honors Theses

The Madame Bovary Syndrome is a phenomenon that occurs among different female protagonists of the nineteenth century. Based on Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary, this syndrome was defined by French philosopher Jules De Gaultier to describe chronic affective dissatisfaction with one’s life. The Madame Bovary Syndrome can be applied to the female protagonists in George Sand’s Indiana, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Each protagonist in these stories exemplifies chronic feelings of dissatisfaction, hopelessness, and despair due to the lack of control over their lives. With the rise of the middle class, women were now …

Women Of Pop., Jourdan Cunningham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The hegemonic values that were represented in 1960s mass media were heavily reinforced by the Pop Art movement. Male Pop artists have often been viewed as genius, while the women were pushed aside to reside within the margins of the Pop canon. This thesis emphasizes the work of four female artists who participated in the Pop Art movement and were largely overlooked throughout Pop’s discourse. By analyzing their “popness” and Feminist viewpoints, it allows for the imbalance that has resulted from women Pop artists neglect throughout Pop’s discourse to be readdressed. In the Introduction I analyze the background of the …

Affect And Feminist Storytelling In Three Spanish American Novels: Leonora By Elena Poniatowska, De Un Salto Descabalga La Reina By Carmen Boullosa, And El Infinito En La Palma De La Mano By Gioconda Belli, Ayelet Ishai

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation analyzes the portrayals of the female protagonists of three Spanish American biographical novels in an exploration of identity formation within feminist literary expressions. Amidst the resurgence of auto/biographical genres, there has been an effort to revive the stories of the historically maligned, and biographical novels about women have become increasingly prevalent. The movement to recover and revise the stories of women, including those who have traditionally been interpreted within misogynist societies, reaches beyond the written text to influence not only the way a character is seen and understood, but the ways that readers see and understand themselves. As …

Womanism & Wellbeing: A Manuscript Dissertation Exploring The Effects Of Shame, Loss And Gender Issues, Christy Angelle-Vidrine Bauman

Education Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the research on gender issues and psychological well-being across the adult lifespan utilizing qualitative research examining factors (e.g., societal influences, sexual objectification, shame, loss, meaning-making, and internal identity) in developing resilience and mitigating mental health issues. This paper discusses the importance of addressing well-being through expression of loss, meaning-making, and social impact. This manuscript style dissertation will review publications in such areas as sexuality, spirituality, grief, shame, intimacy, social, and interpersonal relationships. The exploration of biopsychosocial impacts as it relates to meaning-making, resilience, and communal involvement. The three publications will be …

“The Speechmaking Of A Girl-Orator”: Reason, Gender, And Authority In Dorothy Hunter’S Free Trade Oratory, Erinn Elizabeth Campbell

Honors Projects

Dorothy M. Hunter (1881-1977) rose to prominence during the 1906 United Kingdom general election as a markedly “girlish” yet widely respected free trade orator. While men on the Edwardian public political platform typically built a reputation for oratorical prowess through theatrical displays of “heroic” masculinity, Hunter established her authority as a speaker through two very different (and apparently contradictory) strategies. Her performance of “charming” middle-class femininity helped demonstrate her right to speak on free trade as a “women’s question,” extending women’s traditional authority over matters of domestic consumption to include questions of political economy. Trusting in the power of education …

Toward Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Provocations To German Idealist Aesthetics, Amelia Hruby

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three imagined dialogues: one between Alexander Baumgarten and Sara Ahmed about aesthetics and happiness, one between María Lugones and Immanuel Kant about play and common sense, and one between Audre Lorde and Friedrich Schiller about feeling, thinking, and the erotic. These dialogues are connected by the following thesis: the German idealist aesthetic tradition begins with an attempt to understand the incomprehensibility of certain objects and works its way to respect for them and their freedom, while the feminist tradition cited here begins with the necessity of respect for otherness and then cultivates new modes of …

Three Strikes: The Evolution Of A Creative Practice Through Discovery, Connection, And Structure Or We Should All Be Artists, Anthropologists, And Feminists, Anne Barnes

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

By identifying the three areas that merge to form my artistic practice: discovery, connection, and structure; this thesis uses my creative process as a way to form the link between my intellectual and material impulses, and to identify the connections I make between what abstract painting means to me, my feminist ideals and how they are informed by the gender inequality persistent in the art world today, as well as thoughts I have around the concept of the “feminine” as viewed through the lens of art history. In this way, I demonstrate how these elements are woven together and the …

Sex Education In France: An Imbalanced History, Marisa Peters

Honors Theses

Although the history of sex education is relatively new, it is very complex. Enlightenment philosophers from Rousseau to de Sade had ideas on what the sex education of girls and of boys should entail, with Rousseau preparing her for marriage, and the latter preparing her to be a libertine! In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries there were stereotypes too, of girls in the countryside learning about sex as a result of cramped living and proximity to farm animals. For young bourgeois women in the city, there were manuals on marriage and how to perform their wifely …

A Screenplay For Bystander Intervention For Sexual Harassment Scenarios For College Students, Shanti Herzog

Journalism

This project was developed to describe the drafting of a screenplay for an interactive, virtual reality sexual harassment training module for students of the California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. The research began with the examination of the prevalent and persisting issue of sexual harassment within college campus communities, and how to present college students with the tools to intervene as bystanders, thus encouraging them to intervene when encountering sexual harassment scenarios. The resulting screenplay was written to provide college students at Cal Poly with strategies to identify and take action when encountering sexual harassment, especially in small group gatherings …

If It Wasn’T For The Women: An Exploration Of Works By Renita Weems, Wil Gafney, & Kelly Brown Douglas, Charlene Adams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Womanist Bible scholars Renita Weems, Kelly Brown Douglas, and Wil Gafney’s offerings to the world of biblical scholarship have had a profound impact on Christian faith in the United States. Womanist biblical scholarship is the hermeneutics, ethics, critique, theology, and more, done with a specific lens on Black women and how we are understood within and as a result of biblical texts. Weems, Douglas, and Gafney’s work has asked the tough questions of Christianity, and bravely tackled taboo topics like sexuality, abuse, and racism. Their aim has been to interrogate whose voices have not been present in popular Christian discourse, …

Hebrew As A Gendered Language And An Oppressive Mechanism Against Women In The Israeli Society, Rotem Itzhaky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Wherever you look, whether reading a textbook, scrolling through wanted ads, looking at job requirements, or just watching the news on the television – the effects of the gendered nature of Hebrew are noticeable everywhere. For many years I have been fascinated by the fact that Hebrew is a gendered language in a way that promotes patriarchy by using the unmarked masculine form of words as a default. Some claim that the language as we know it today is neutral, and not discriminatory, while others, including women which interviews you can find in this paper, do not experience it as …

Politically And Historically Bound: Examining Whiteness And Intersectionality Among Self-Identified Feminists, Olivia M. Mclaughlin

Dissertations

This dissertation examined the perspectives and beliefs of 23 self-identified feminists who are White. Specifically, it explored whether—and if so, to what extent—Whites have adopted intersectionality. Intersectional feminism refers to the activism and scholarship that recognizes the multi-dimensional nature of power and privilege and stands in contrast to the white-centered feminism that has dominated most feminist spaces since the suffrage movement. Since Kimberlé Crenshaw’s seminal article where the concept of intersectionality was formally introduced to the academy, feminist scholars have characterized the most recent wave of feminism as the intersectional wave. This third, intersectional wave of feminist movement is believed …

Mise En Place, Amie M. Geistman

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Mise en Place is a collection of essays that chronicles the author's experiences working as the lone female line cook in the culinary boy's club of professional restaurant kitchens. These essays follow the author's descent into a wild love affair with food, the burnout and gender dynamics associated with the job, and how she navigates the passion and the stress that the kitchen brings out in her.

Trauma, Violence, And Deathly Consequences: Female Justice In Contemporary Literature And Television Adaptations, Allie Owens

English MA Theses

Over the past decade, a familiar villainous character has begun to arise in television adaptation: the mentally-fractured heroine who turns to villainy: women who have been attacked, raped, or lost loved ones to villains. These attacks and losses trigger murderous rampages and other violence that often leads to their descent into villainy. Netflix’s Jessica Jones, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and its television adaptation Game of Thrones, feature heroines that turn to violence to get revenge. However, the violent heroines in these texts and television adaptations do not just become villains; some …

Through The Lens Of Koreans: The Influence Of Media On Perceptions Of Feminism, Neha Cariappa

Master's Projects and Capstones

Regardless of country and culture, the media has the power to influence the opinions and perceptions of its viewers. This project evaluates specific Korean movies—and the reactions of South Koreans to gender representations in films that are considered “feminist”—along with the variety show genre, which also tends to reinforce gender stereotypes and imbalances. With these media representations as a framework, this research explores the impact of the internet in forwarding feminist views along with unearthing the reactions of Koreans. Given the anonymity of the internet and social media, these platforms allow for honest expression and counterpoints to sexist views and …

Subjectivities Of Struggle: Charting Inscriptions Of Violence And Refusal On The “Cuerpo Territorio” Of Peru’S Defensoras, Natalia Guzmán Solano

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Subjectivities of Struggle: Inscriptions of Violence and Refusal on the ‘Cuerpo Territorio’ of Peru’s Defensoras” calls into question the colonial assumptions underpinning contemporary understandings of extractivism. The sixteen months of ethnographic research I conducted with the defensoras (women ecoterritorial defenders) of Cajamarca is situated at the fraught extractive frontier where social conflict paralyzed the expansion of a large-scale mining project and generated a coalitional struggle against extractive-led economic development. This dissertation conceptualizes extractivism as a modern/colonial product of power and knowledge that has feminized the land and inhabitants from the time of the European invasion of the Americas. While recent …

Imperial Subjection And The Orientalist Gaze: Turning Asian Women’S Bodies Into Entertainment, Miriam Ahn

Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the structural factors that provide meaning and space to performances where violence is served as entertainment. What are the structural conditions that turn gendered and racialized violent forms of display into enjoyment? By exploring the sex tourism in Thailand, particularly ping-pong shows, I will analyze aspects of international political economy and feminist studies to address forms of display based on the abjectness of the other. I argue that sex tourism in Thailand is not part of local culture but is upheld by imperial hegemonic perceptions of the colonized and gendered bodies. The perspectives of Orientalism, patriarchal systems, …

To Participate In The Image: Reification & Reproduction, Justine Xi

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Spanning sculpture, video, and installation, I develop my work through techniques of collage and (re)appropriation to investigate and criticize Western hegemonic perceptions and representations of the (Asian) Other. I investigate perceptions of Asianness in the Western imagination from Orientalism to Techno-Orientalism, demonization and fetishization, focusing on the circulation of imagery in art, media, and popular culture. Further, I draw attention to the internalization of these standards and what it means to participate in the construction and distribution of the image, its implications and perceptions.

European Imperialist Violence And Feminine Influence In Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, Katlyn S. Davenport

English Department Theses

This thesis explores themes of influence and resistance to imperialism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. To contextualize the feminine control and resistance of imperialism and colonialism, the thesis first examines Marlow’s and Kurt’s roles as agents and representatives of the Company, and thereby reveals their complicity in the brutalities carried out against the native people of the Congo. Additionally, it compares the vivid descriptions of violence inherent in imperialist domination with the vaguer characterization of violence among the tribespeople. Finally, by examining relationships between male and female characters as well as the ideals of the Anglo/American New Woman, this …

Honoré De Balzac’S Portrayal Of The Feminine Condition In The Wild Ass’S Skin, Père Goriot, And The Lily Of The Valley, Brooke V. Musmeci

Honors Theses

In 19th century France, women appeared to be second class citizens. They were often limited in their abilities to have independence and secure their own wealth. This perception of women perhaps justifies why, as Honoré de Balzac’s novels illustrated the realities of French society, he attempted to characterize women’s struggles to obtain control and power in their lives. In his novels The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), The Lily of the Valley (1835), and Le Père Goriot (1835), Balzac sought to prove how women could improve their lot.

Firstly, in studying how women had been relegated to second-class citizens under their …

Revealing The Gothic Narrative Tradition In Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding And Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey: A Study Of The Transatlantic Novel, Rachel Adornato

English Theses

The aesthetic principles of the Gothic lexicon were first legitimized by popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels such as The Monk and The Castle of Otranto. The male authors of these novels promote a fascination with the supernatural. As scholars studied this period in the history of the novel, two subgenres of the Gothic emerged: the masculine and feminine. This feminine subgenre includes Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding. Jane Austen, and later Eudora Welty, remediate the Gothic narrative tradition of eighteenth-century novelists. The goal of this new feminine subgenre is to satirize the masculine subgenre’s …

Feminism And Low Breastfeeding Rates In France, Megan Wadsworth

Honors Theses

Breastfeeding rates in France are among the lowest in high-income countries, indicating that French mothers do not breastfeed for nearly as long as is recommended by healthcare professionals and international health organizations. French government, society and conflicting feminist perspectives all influence the likelihood that mothers will breastfeed. The French government has regulations in place to protect women’s right to breastfeed in public and in the workplace, but it is unclear if these are truly beneficial for French women. French society is a seemingly inhospitable environment in which mothers do not feel safe and secure to breastfeed publicly. Motherhood and feminism …

A Woman's Place: Historicizing The Persistence Of The Gender Gap, Alexandra J. Kolleda

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis examines the distinction created between men and women in regards to their use of power in England through the Medieval (476-1492) and the Victorian periods (1837-1901). While women have displayed power through the ages, the nature of that power has traditionally been behind the scenes and relegated to the domestic sphere. As a result conceptions of femininity and masculinity confined women to a role not compatible with modern ideas of power and leadership. Present-day individuals are indoctrinated into this gender discourse through characterization of women in literature and gendered laws, which have been passed down since the Middle …

Warping The Wall: Representations Of Gender In American Ninja Warrior, Samuel Paul Winemiller

Doctoral Dissertations

The television series American Ninja Warrior (ANW) is unique amongst televised sport, both as an example of the emerging ninja obstacle course racing genre, and as a sport in which athletes of all genders compete on the same courses. By featuring a gender-integrated sport, ANW offers different possibilities for the mediated representation of gender than do televised gender-segregated sports. Such mediated representations of gender are further complicated by shifts in contemporary discourse about gender politics and performance (Gee, 2014; Gill, 2007a) Given these considerations, the purpose of this study was to explore the communicated meanings about athletes' gender in ANW.I …

Instagram And Eating Disorders: An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Instagram On Disordered Eating Habits Among Young Girls, Katherine Wayles

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Scholars have studied the relationship between body dissatisfaction and social media use, particularly focusing on young women as vulnerable consumers. Many studies concentrate on the amount of media consumed, rather than the specific activities and behaviors associated with feelings of low self-esteem or poor body image. It is important to determine exactly what behaviors and social media engagements contribute to disordered relationships with food, assessing a user’s pre-existing weight/body concerns in relation to the amount and type of media they consume. Instagram in particular is included in this study, as it is an image-based social networking site where users can …

Brilliant Women: Prose And Poetry, Amelia Fisher

MSU Graduate Theses

This collection of creative writing explores themes and subjects relating to feminism, sexuality, performativity, societal woes, popular culture, and the different ways we communicate. The individual pieces often examine women’s empowerment and lack thereof. These stories, essays, and poems are introduced by a critical work situating the contents of the thesis within greater literary traditions, such as Viktor Shklovsky’s defamiliarization, which I claim can function on the structural level as well as the story level, and his theory of the Chronotope; time and place are significant threads I follow from one genre to the next to create a cohesive collection …

Effects Of Sexualized Images In Media On Attitudes Toward Public Breastfeeding, Hannah J. Powell-Yost

Honors Theses

Although breastfeeding is known to promote both physical and emotional health in both infant and mother, many women are hesitant to breastfeed in public due to perceived attitudes toward public breastfeeding. This research explores the relationship between frequent exposure to sexuality in mass media and people's positions regarding breastfeeding. It was hypothesized that sexualized portrayals of the female body perpetuated in mass media would negatively impact individuals’ attitudes toward breastfeeding. No significant correlation was found between media exposure and negative attitude toward public breastfeeding. However, a few interesting results were observed. Individuals who responded positively to sexual media were more …