Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Dancing Mi Cultura: The Production Of Ethnic And National Identity In Midwestern Mexican-Americans Through The Performance Of Ballet Méxicano Folklórico, Katrina J. Frank

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies how Mexican Americans living in the northwest suburbs of Chicago produce connections to their Mexican heritage and culture through the performance of ballet Mexicano folklórico. Through ethnographic interviews of current and former folklórico dancers, as well as participant observation of adult folklórico dance practices, I contextualize the experiences of the interviewees using the anthropological theories of habitus, continuous and discontinuous selves, double-consciousness, liminality, and collective effervescence, as well as the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Frantz Fanon, with the discussion of folklórico as an art, and the concept of institutional use of dance as …

Disrupting An(Other): Sexuality As Political Resistance, Emma C. Downey

Master’s Theses

If sexual knowledge can threaten social and political institutions and their control, how do the contents and subjects of literature and publications in the interwar period make that legible? Moreover, if female sexuality–represented or real–was seen as something disruptive to the normal functioning of society, did sexuality offer a useful entry point for social, political, or ideological critiques of the interwar period? My project responds to these questions by analyzing the lives and writings of two female authors of the interwar period: Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) and Katharine Burdekin (1896-1963). In my analysis, I focus on two major points of connection. …

The Representations Of Gender And Sexuality In Contemporary Arab Women’S Literature: Elements Of Subversion And Resignification., Rima Sadek

Theses and Dissertations

Arab women’s literature continue to receive considerable critical attention by scholars in East and West. However, through my focus on three novels in this dissertation, The Cinnamon’s Aroma (2008) by Samar Yazbek, Brooklyn Heights (2011) by Miral al-Tahawy and It’s Called Passion (2009) by Alawiya Sobh I hope to contribute a more holistic understanding of these works by highlighting features not fully explored in previous scholarship. I concentrate on the creative means of struggle and resistance to the entrenched structures of oppression locating sights of potential hope and emancipation. I point out the ways in which these texts subvert and …

Bricolage Propriety: The Queer Practice Of Black Uplift, 1890–1905, Timothy M. Griffiths

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bricolage Propriety: The Queer Practice of Black Uplift, 1890-1905 situates the queer-of-color cultural imaginary in a relatively small nodal point: the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Through literary analysis and archival research on leading and marginal figures of Post-Reconstruction African American culture, this dissertation considers the progenitorial relationship of late-nineteenth century black uplift novels to modern-day queer theory. Bricolage Propriety builds on work about the sexual politics of early African American literature begun by women-of-color feminists of the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Hazel V. Carby, Ann duCille, and Claudia Tate. A new wave of …

Desire And Fantasy Between Commercialism And Personal Room, Yukimi Otagiri

Theses and Dissertations

I apply two aspects of my life history to my art; my childhood experiences and my advanced studies in sociology. My work therefore combines a highly personal reading of my experiences of social interactions and my ongoing analysis of the nature of capitalism and socialism, commodification and media, especially in regard to the experiences of women in particular and consumers in general.

Lengua Latina: Representations Of Sex And Gender In Latina Literature, Jessica L. Harris

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

An exploration of the influence of Spanish language on gender, sexuality, and sisterhood in various aspects of Latina/o literature. In Chapter I, I examine Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s film, Chicana playwright Josefina Lopez's Real Women Have Curves, and Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera as a tool for analyzing conceptions of “Other” and the ways these issues intersect with one another. In Chapter II, I look at La Virgen and La Malinche dichotomy and the ways stereotypes appear in Latina poetry. In Chapter III, I discuss hermanas and comadres and their importance outside the intimacy of romantic relationships. Throughout this project, I …

Preposterous America: The Language Of Inversion In Thoreau, Melville, And Hawthorne, Rasmus R. Simonsen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation stages a series of readings that activate the inherent pull towards a queer aesthetic of “preposterousness” in the American Renaissance. In the introduction, I claim that American Studies and Queer Studies have been mutually implicated ever since F.O. Matthiessen’s seminal work American Renaissance. In this way, I bring to light the nascent strands of homoeroticsm and “deviant” practices that disrupt the teleology of normative masculinity in the nineteenth century. My intervention develops a queer heuristic through an exploration of the classical figure of hysteron proteron—the rhetorical inversion of the order of things. As a master-trope for my …

Destabilizing Tradition: Gender, Sexuality, And Postnational Identity In Four Novels By Irish Women, 1960-2000, Sarah Nestor

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation examines four novels that represent Irish women and girls confronting the typical narrative of Irish national identity in the twentieth century. The post-independence construction of Irish national identity depended upon prescriptive roles that aligned with its founders’ beliefs about the nation’s ethnic homogeneity and moral superiority. Irish women’s identity and roles as wives and mothers were imperative to upholding this idea of the nation, particularly its morality. Irish women were therefore charged with maintaining well-defined gender roles and the nuclear family in an effort to define a distinctive Irish identity. Thus, when women’s roles are challenged or changed …

Sex Role Identity And Relationship Factors As Correlates Of Abusive Behavior In Lesbian Relationships, Grace A. Telesco

CAHSS Faculty Theses and Dissertations

The recognition of partner abuse between lesbian intimates has gained attention in the literature only within the last few decades. The current research indicates that physical and psychological abuse is occurring between lesbian partners at about the same rate as their heterosexual counterparts. The theoretical explanations for lesbian partner abuse share similarities with the heterosexual paradigm. However, significant differences in gender make-up and the patriarchal issues of power and control do not fit within the lesbian framework and the unique issues of attachment in lesbian relationships and the issue of homophobia are cause for another perspective.

This study shifts the …