Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Revisting The Domestic Labor Debate: Toward A Critique Of Workerist Feminism, Alice Feng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The extremely high presence of housewives in Italy during the 'miracle years,' of 1950-1963, seemingly suggested that an unprecedented number of women were unemployed after their expulsion from large-scale industry. This phenomenon inspired debate among feminists on questions such as the contribution of housewives to the reproduction of labor-power, the character of reproductive labor and the relation between the participation of women in waged labor and unwaged domestic labor. In revisiting this phenomenon, this thesis argues that, contrary to the appearance of women being unemployed, a significant number of women, along with children, were irregularly engaged in undeclared forms of …

Labor Market Trajectories Of Black Women In The United States, 1980 To 2010, Danielle Jackson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In light of several trends among Black women in the U.S., including rising levels of college degree attainment, immigration, and household headship, scholars have begun to more thoroughly explore the factors impacting Black women's labor market outcomes (e.g., employment status, earnings, and occupational prestige). Focusing on the 30-year period of 1980 to 2010, this dissertation applies theories of social and cultural capital, intersectionality, and social mobility to the examination of Black women's labor market trajectories according to their nativity (U.S.- vs. foreign-born status) and level of educational attainment (college-educated vs. non-college-educated). Additionally, this dissertation examines recent national data to determine …

Gender, Money, And The Charity Organization Society: 1900-1919, Sarah H. Arnold

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project looks at the work of the Charity Organization Society of New York from 1900 until 1919. Using reports, case histories, meeting minutes, and fundraising material, it concentrates on the ways in which the performance of gender intersected with definitions of expertise and access to money in the lives of both the social workers themselves and their clients. It begins with an overview of the Charity Organization Society's evolution from a largely volunteer charity organization focused on the morality of the poor to an organization that would become key to the development of social work as a profession. Then …

All Consuming Self-Destructiveness: Images Of Female Attractiveness In Fashion Advertising And The Impact On Women's Body Satisfaction, Self-Presentations On Social Networks, And Beauty-Related Consumption Behavior, Maria Christoforou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sociocultural stereotypes of feminine beauty are widespread in almost every form of popular media, but most pervasively in fashion advertising. The fashion advertising industry overwhelms women with images that represent what is considered to be the "ideal beauty." In reality, for most women such stereotypes of beauty are almost totally unachievable, as the ideal beauty portrayed in advertisements is based on absolute perfection. Advertisers' use of such extreme and unrealistic role models implies that in order for a woman to be considered beautiful she must be perfect, which makes it difficult for her to achieve any level of contentment with …

The Journal Of Mother Studies: A Peer Reviewed, International, Interdisciplinary, Open-Acess, Digital Humanities Hybrid Project, Martha Joy Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Academic Journals are an established forum for educators and researchers to disseminate information within their field. Journals act as mediators of knowledge, advancing the canons within specific areas of study. There are currently two journals that focus on motherhood from an interdisciplinary perspective and one that focuses on fathers. However, none of these determine a specific foundational definition of what the field is, what it hopes to study, and how it will advance itself. Rather, these journals are general collections of a great number of things that touch on varying subjects regarding motherhood and fatherhood. This thesis argues for the …

Lost In Translation: Regressive Femininity In American J-Horror Remakes, Matthew Ducca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the ways in which the representation of female characters changes between Japanese horror films and the subsequent American remakes. The success of Gore Verbinski's The Ring (2002) sparked a mass American interest in Japan's contemporary horror cinema, resulting in a myriad of remakes to saturate the market. However, the adaptation process resulted in alterations of the source material to better conform to gender stereotypes and conventions associated with the American conception of the horror genre. Valerie Wee and Steven Rawle's research regarding cultural and gender differences between Ringu and The Ring is expanded to also include similar …

The Pulitzer Prize And Women: An Investigation Into Three Decades Of Winning Plays By Female Dramatists (1981-2009), Kathleen Potts

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dramas by women had won the Pulitzer Prize six times in the years spanning from 1921 to 1958, followed by an unexplained absence of female winners from 1959 to 1980. Then in the 1980s three women won and women continued to win up until the present day. Covering three decades - the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s - this dissertation investigates these Pulitzer Prize-winning plays by female dramatists: Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley; 'night, Mother by Marsha Norman; The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein; How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel; W;t (a.k.a. Wit) by Margaret Edson; …

Affecting Neoliberal Public Health Care: Interdependent Relationality Between Disabled Care Recipients And Their Care Providers, Akemi Nishida

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I trace the neoliberal turn of a public health-care program, Medicaid, and its effects on those who are involved in it: disabled care recipients and their care providers. Also examined is the emergence of an affective relationality between these individuals through their daily practices of care. In 1993, Medicaid went through a neoliberal turn that accelerated its privatization. I investigate the ways in which this turn--in company with the neoliberal transition of other welfare programs and the rise of a transnational care industry--further deployed a gendered, raced, classed, and immigration-based division of care labor that commodified and …

The Sadistic Reader: Gender And The Pleasures Of Violence In The Novel, Pamela Burger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project seeks to explain the prevalence of narratives that feature sexual violence against women in the tradition of the Anglophone novel. To this end, it posits the existence of a sadistic reading practice that coincides with readers' sympathetic identification. A sadistic reader takes pleasure in the bodily violation of the woman at the center of a novel; such a reader enters the text expecting violence, and experiences a sense of narrative gratification when the inevitable violation plays out. These expectations emerge from repeated interactions with a literary tradition in which victimized heroines are routine. To explore such sadism, I …

Dark Matter: Susan Howe, Muriel Rukeyser, And The Scholar's Art, Stefania Heim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Instead of describing poetry as a set of constraints or history of practices, Muriel Rukeyser calls it "one kind of knowledge." Dark Matter heeds Rukeyser's call, theorizing a poetics of the "scholar's art," in which documentary investigation, autobiographical exploration, and formal innovation are mutual, interwoven concerns. The dissertation pairs American poets Susan Howe (b. 1937) and Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), reading their hybrid works not through the received categories of American poetry, or through common generic and disciplinary divisions, but using an inductive methodology that takes its lead from the poets. Understanding Howe and Rukeyser's literary experiments as serious interventions in …

More Than Objects: Understanding Female Slaves In Barbados In The Early Modern Period, Phoebe Martine Downes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will focus on representations of African women in the British colony of Barbados in the early modern era, using travelers' accounts, planters' records and the writings of abolition-minded reformers. The topic is significant because most scholars have focused on British colonial life during the nineteenth century, examining the planter class or the region's colonial commodities.

The period from 1600 to 1700 was an era of beginnings in the British colonial world, with England establishing its first Caribbean colonies and experimenting with different economic strategies to gain wealth. This period was also significant due to the emergence of slavery …

Virtue: A Life Of Mary Wollstonecraft, Jessica Mcgivney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a screenplay for an imagined "biopic" of Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft has already been the subject of many biographies, each presenting their authors' own understanding of her life. Here, I present my view, guided -- to varying and sometimes conflicting degrees -- by my understanding of her own fictionalized autobiographical efforts; by my understanding of Godwin's attempted work in his Memoir of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman; by the idea that her beliefs about virtue and freedom drove her forward through her own life; by the needs of narrative structure and the challenges …