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Before The Second Wave: College Women, Cultural Literacy, Sexuality And Identity, 1940--1965, Babette Faehmel

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation follows career-oriented college women over the course of their education in liberal arts programs and seeks to explain why so many of them, in departure from original plans of combining work and marriage, married and became full-time mothers. Using diaries, personal correspondences, and student publications, in conjunction with works from the social sciences, philosophy, and literature, I argue that these women's experiences need to be understood in the context of cultural conflicts over the definition of class, status, and national identity. Mid twentieth-century college women, I propose, began their education at a moment when the convergence of long-contested …

The Artistry And Activism Of Shirley Graham Du Bois: A Twentieth Century African American Torchbearer, Alesia Elaine Mcfadden

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation traces the early origins of Shirley Graham Du Bois, a well known Negro achiever in the 1930s and 1940s, from the decades preceding her birth in 1896 up through the mid-twentieth century when she has reached mid life and achieved a number of successes. It attempts to reclaim from obscurity the significant cultural production that Shirley Graham contributed to American society. Her artistry and activism were manifested in many ways. As a very young woman she conducted, throughout the northern and eastern parts of the U. S., musical concerts extolling the beauty and significance of spirituals. While attending …

On Becoming Virginia: The Story Of A Man Who Crashed A Woman's Body: A Translation Of Alejandro Tapia Y Rivera's Postumo El Envirginiado [1882], Aaron M. M. Suko

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis establishes a biographical and critical context pertaining to the life and work of the nineteenth-century Puerto Rican author Alejandro Tapia y Rivera (1826-1882), and presents a proposed translation of his final novel, Póstumo el envirginiado o la historia de un hombre que se coló en el cuerpo de una mujer (1882). In a discussion of Tapia’s life and work, I highlight important historical factors for comprehending the text’s and Tapia’s relatively obscure status. Then I turn to the text itself to analyze key themes and narrative techniques, referring to literary scholars of Póstumo in order to provide a …

Tainted Gender: Sexual Impurity And Women In Kankyo No Tomo, Yuko Mizue

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis consists of research on women and Buddhism in light of a medieval Japanese Buddhist tales collection called Kankyo no Ｔomo. This collection reveals the predicament in which women in medieval Japan found themselves. As the focus of sexual desire (towards them and by them), they were also inherently polluted due to their connection with blood (kegare).

The Pursuit And Dispelling Of Holy Heterosexual Love: From "Love Must Not Be Forgotten" To Wu Zi, Li Li

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

My thesis is going to include three sections as follows:

1.A brief biography of Zhang Jie 张洁 (1937 - ).

Zhang Jie began to publish in the post-Cultural Revolution era, and became well-known in the early 1980s for her fictional depiction of the problems of the urban intellectual women attempting to resolve conflicts between love and career, love and marriage, and ideals and reality.

The main part of this section is going to be the deep influence of her eventful fatherless life experience, traditional Chinese culture, as well as that of former Russian literary masters, especially Chekhov and Tolstoy, on …