Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Peeking Out: A Textual Analysis Of Heteronormative Images In Prime-Time Television, D. Renee Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation traces lesbian portrayals on network television from the 1960s through the 1990s. A focus on episodic dramas and situation comedies reveals a concise representation of the mediated lesbian image. Building on existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender images on television, this work focuses exclusively on the lesbian image broadcast free of charge over the air during prime-time on commercial networks in the United States. Using a postmodern feminist framework, this textual analysis examines the images and texts portraying lesbian characters in episodic dramas and situation comedies. Furthermore, applying a semiotic lens to the analysis dissects the …

Middle School Technology And Media Literacy: An Action Research Case Study, Mekisha Renaé Parks

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

This qualitative action research case study seeks to modify a Middle School Computer Science Course at a medium‐sized private school in North Atlanta, Georgia by examining the intersection of media literacy, technology, and adolescent teens. The main purpose of this project is to improve the course by incorporating media literacy skills into the curriculum. Guided class discussions, active participant observation, participant journals, and participant projects will be used to learn more about students’ experience with Media Literacy education. Centering on reflective practices, teacher‐student dialogue, and peer collaboration, this project aims to identify, engage, and explore issues critical to the effective …

The Rebellious Angel, Pamela Gannon Mazzuchelli

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Examines Virginia Woolf's writing and her anger in historical contexts, revealing that circumstances dictated that she deflect this volatile emotion. Focuses on the ways in which this deflection of anger illuminates the fictional dynamics of Woolf's autobiographical novel, To the Lighthouse and analyzes the concept of the Angel in the House, posited to be at the root of Woolf's anger. Argues that anger exists on three levels in the novel and that the main character, Mrs. Ramsay, is a victim of the Angel in the House ideology.

Media Gender Bias In The 1984 And 2008 Vice Presidential Elections, Katherine Shaunesi Reeves

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Media coverage in political campaigns helps shape public opinion and can be a factor in people determining how to vote. Thus, bias evident in the coverage of political candidates should be a concern for a society which values fair elections. In the 2008 general election, for the first time in 24 years, a woman was on a major party ticket. The treatment of female candidates historically has been sexist. To understand the media coverage of Sarah Palin I chose to look at editorials in The New York Times. I compared her editorial references to Joe Biden’s in The Times. Then, …

Silent Subversions, Derek Dubois

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Explores the concept of spectatorship in relation to gender in the earliest period of film history in the United States known as the silent era. Argues that a new mode of spectatorship emerges for women during the 1920s, which employs to advantage the extra-diegetic components of spectacle in theater design, new customized genres for female filmgoers, fandom, and exotic male film stars, such as Rudolph Valentino. Focuses primarily on feminist film theory and on cultural studies as methodological models.

Does Everybody Love Patriarchy?, Lyndsay Attebery

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Exploration Of Barriers And Solutions For Women In The Pathway To The High School Principalship, Tracy Shook Skinner

Educational Foundations & Leadership Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate barriers women face when entering school administration as well as perceptions of the high school principalship held by female high school principals and assistant principals aspiring to the principalship. Work conflicts and job demands for women were explored as well as the significance of mentoring and networking along the pathway to the principalship. The information gathered through a critical feminist approach was used to assess women's barriers to the principalship and describe methods employed to overcome those barriers.

The Mystery Of The Body: Embodiment In The Nancy Drew Mystery Series, Katie Still

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

This thesis investigates the ways in which ideas about class, gender, and race are produced and articulated through the body in the Nancy Drew Mystery series in the 1930s. Physical descriptions and bodily movements, as well as material surroundings, work together to reify and contradict dominant ideas of normalcy and deviance being located on the body.

Mapping The Global Landscape In Women's Diasporic Writing, Martha Addante

Dissertations

As a contribution to the theory of cognitive mapping, the dissertation examines the ways in which contemporary novels by women writers of diasporic literature offer new conceptual maps of the present global space. This study argues there is a need for alternative mapping strategies that locate the female diasporic subject within the new global political economy. Fredric Jameson's theory of cognitive mapping and Arjun Appadurai's model of global flows provide a useful framework for mapping global space, yet each must be filtered through a feminist critique and modified by a feminist politics. Ultimately, the dissertation argues for a feminist theory …

Cuando Te Pierdes En Mí, Carolina E. Alonso

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

En esta tesis se presenta una coleccion de veintiseis poemas de mi autoria que tienen como base una tematica lesbica. En estos se abarcan subtemas como la sensualidad femenina, el amor, y el desamor. Ademas del poemario, se incluye un ensayo referente al desarrollo de la literatura homosexual, enfocandose en la poesia lesbica contemporanea en Mexico a manera de ars poetica. De igual forma se adentra en la importancia de los movimientos sociales y politicos que iniciaron en el siglo XX, los cuales ayudaron al desarrollo y propagation de la literatura lesbica.

Power And Surrender: African American Sunni Women And Embodied Agency, Lisa Renae Frazier

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

This thesis addresses the lack of scholarly attention devoted to African American Sunni women by examining how they use collective memory to negotiate embodied agency. Through an analysis of African American Sunni women’s narratives of testifying conversion, and vignettes from diaries and interviews, I show how African American Sunni women utilize racial, religious, and spiritual memory in the form of ritual practices and Islamic texts to multiply construct their bodies, and how this construction allows them to enact multimodal and nomadic forms of agency. A contextual analysis also illustrates how environment and interpretation (tafsir) further mobilizes forms of agency, articulating …

Searching For The Womanist Within, Carmela L. Pattillo

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses

Searching for the Womanist Within is a play about self identity and the daily experience of African-American women who are at the intersecting oppressions of race, gender and class. The unique life perspective of Afeican-American women is explored through the retelling of stories from the writer’s life as well as the lives of other black women. In Feminist, Black Feminist, Afrocentric and Womanist drama it is common to steer away from conventional theatrical structures, Solo drama, a less conventional structure, was selected for this play. In addition to the play is an essay about the writing process, as well as …

Relationships Between Black Female College Students' Relationships With Their Fathers And Adult Romantic Attachment, Nicole A. Dock

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The current study examined the relationships between the quality and quantity of time that young Black female college students spent with their fathers during high school as related to romantic attachment and fear of intimacy. Although researchers have investigated the impact that early attachment bonds to mothers have for later psychosocial development, much less research has examined how attachment to fathers may be associated with psychosocial adjustment in young adulthood. In particular, there is a lack of information on how relationships to one's father or father figure may be associated with adjustment in young women from culturally diverse populations.

To …

Woman Has Two Faces: Re-Examining Eve And Lilith In Jewish Feminist Thought, Diana Carvalho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the religious history of American feminism, Jewish feminist biblical interpretation shifted attention away from Eve as a viable example of women's identities. Instead, Lilith, the independent, "demon" and "first wife" of Adam is praised as a symbol of female sexuality for "Transformationist" Jewish feminists. Re-claiming Lilith as the "first Eve," "Transformationist" Jewish feminists turn scripture on its head. Eve's creation and her actions in Genesis are interpreted as a product of patriarchy and male dominance, while Lilith in the midrashic narrative, the Alphabet of Ben Sira, is used by Jewish feminists to reclaim their identities on religious and …

The Passions And Self-Esteem In Mary Astell's Early Feminist Prose, Kathleen A. Ahearn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the influence of Cambridge Platonism and materialist philosophy on Mary Astell's early feminism. More specifically, I argue that Astell co-opts Descartes's theory of regulating the passions in his final publication, The Passions of the Soul, to articulate a comprehensive, Enlightenment and body friendly theory of feminine self-esteem that renders her feminism modern. My analysis of Astell's theory of feminine self-esteem follows both textual and contextual cues, thus allowing for a reorientation of her early feminism vis-a-vis contemporary feminist theory. An entire chapter in the dissertation is devoted to Astell's use of Descartes's theory of regulating the …

To Work Or Not To Work: Mothers In The Middle, Kirstin O'Rielly Drabek

MALS Final Projects, 1995-2019

Women face many challenges when they become mothers and decide to remain in the workforce. The choice of whether to remain in the workforce can be a hard decision for many mothers. With a reduced income, remaining at home can have an impact on the family's budget at a time when financial needs have increased with the addition of a new family member. Leaving the workforce can also have a long term impact on a woman's career. Remaining on the job has other challenges. Until social policies are created to support both women who have children and decide to stay …

I Will Help You Carry The Earth On My Shoulders: The Rise Of Female Affectivity In Marie De France's Lais And Christine De Pizan's The Book Of The City Of Ladies, Teva J. Glueck

MALS Final Projects, 1995-2019

This thesis will trace the progression of proto-feminist themes Marie de France and Christine de Pizan use to endorse women's empowerment through gynocentricity and female affectivity. As medieval women writers, both faced many injustices that went along 'with being a woman and a writer. Their solution, as seen in their themes, was for women to bond together to overcome the discrimination that hampered their lives and creativity.

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 …

Petticoat Government: Poems And Essays, Tiffany Ann Noonan

Dissertations

Petticoat Government is a collection of poems and essays that draw upon the varied lexicons of science, mythology, sports, literature, travel, art, fashion, and popular culture in an attempt to understand what deliminates womanhood. Using a mix of traditional and contemporary forms, these texts seek to complicate the myriad—and often conflicting—models of femaleness and the female body.

Divine Fluidity: Shifts Of Gender And Sexuality In Conservative Christian Communities, Sarah Stewart Burgess

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis draws on ethnographic research from three communities of conservative Christian women who find empowerment and agency through their religious traditions. Two communities are politically active, outspoken women who also believe strongly in "traditional" roles for women, and one community idealizes conservative standards of sexuality while accepting women who work as sex workers. These women did not view their positions as contradictory, rather, they used religious beliefs and religious practices to enact, embody or explain their complex genders and sexualities. This thesis draws on ethnographic, feminist and queer theories while showcasing the diversity within a movement largely believed to …

Transgressive Masculinities In Selected Sword And Sandal Films, Merle Kenneth Peirce

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Examines significant films in the ancient epic canon from a queer theoretical viewpoint to survey the extent of atypical gender formations within the genre. Uses the studies of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, in the main, to establish the basis of these trangressive gender formations and to provide an explanation of their causes and appearances.

Feminisms In Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Emily G. Brown

Institute for the Humanities Theses

With Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick examines the causes and conditions in which men are more powerful and men's production, ideas and activities are seen as having greater value and higher status than women's. Eyes Wide Shut's (EWS) renders the tension between Bill (Tom Cruise) and Alice Hartford (Nicole Kidman) in the modem struggle to find balance between the institution of marriage and their autonomous selves visible. As Bill's travels dominate the film, little beyond the first scene of Alice's disrobed body and the last scene highlighting her psychological stability are shown. We follow Bill as he meets several women; …

Developing Feminist Activist Pedagogy: A Case Study Approach In The Women's Studies Department At The University Of South Florida, Stacy Tessier

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I examine the relationship between activism and the two introductory-level Women's Studies classes, Introduction to Women's Studies and Issues in Feminism, and the social justice mission of the Women's Studies department. These two classes are the pillars for the program and are often the first classes that draw students into the program. I propose that the Women's Studies department does promote social justice through the curriculum and there are ways that the department could do more to facilitate activism in the classroom and beyond the classroom.

The Women's Studies department at the University of South Florida is …

Constructions Of Femininity: Women And The World's Columbian Exposition, Lauren Alexander Maxwell

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The women of the Queen Isabella Association were the embodiment of what has been termed the ‘New Woman.’While the New Woman was an amalgamation of many different trends, historians agree that she “represents one of the most significant cultural shifts of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”5 These women chose to “move beyond domesticity” and fought to become equal members of American sociopolitical life.6 Joanne Meyerowitz argues that their greater significance was the tendency of the New Woman to “challenge the dominant Victorian sexual ethos.” 7 She inserted herself into the public sphere on her own terms, without the protection …

African American Women And Hiv, Michell D. Reynolds

Graduate Capstone Projects

Over 33 million people around the world are infected with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Of that number, over a million people are infected with AIDS in the United States. At first, AIDS in the United States was considered a white gay man’s disease. In fact, AIDS was once referred to as “The Gay Plague” (Shilts, 1987, p. 352). However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2005 that women now make up 26 percent of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses. African American women are infected at even higher rates than women of other racial and ethnic groups. …

Multiple Minority Identities : Queer And Muslim Arab Americans, Timothy A. Duvall Brown

HIM 1990-2015

People who are Queer Muslim Arab Americans have unique experiences, as their multiple identities often clash head-on with cultural expectations of their respective communities. To fully grasp the concept of someone who identifies as such, this thesis explores each minority identity individually, and then examines the interactions of all three identities. The Double Jeopardy and Intersectional Invisibility theories of multiple minority identities are explored in relation to people who are Queer Muslim Arab Americans. Scenarios are outlined in which each theory seems more relevant. Finally, community needs of Queer Muslim Arab Americans are discussed, with a focus on the opportunities …

Communicating Queer Identities Through Personal Narrative And Intersectional Reflexivity, Richard G. Jones, Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is currently a lack of intersubjective research involving human participants and conceptual frameworks that include queer theory. Queer theory's poststructuralist epistemology tends toward desubjectification, problematizing research that relies on participants' self-reports of lived experience. The author proposes that the interdisciplinary nature of Communication Studies, which is situated within the humanities and social sciences, leaves communication scholars well poised to contribute to ongoing metatheoretical and metamethodological conversations regarding queer theory and intersubjective research, particularly in relation to cultures and identities. To contribute to this scholarly conversation, the author utilizes the deconstructionist lens of queer theory to contextualize communication, employs personal …

Poetry From The Glass Closet: The Experiences Of Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Pk-12 Educators As They Manage Their Sexual Orientation Identity Within A Teaching Role, Megan Suzanne Kennedy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to portray the experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual educators in PK-12 schools in the State of Colorado. This aim emerged from my own personal experiences, previous research, and the current status of state and federal laws. This research focused on the experiences of 15 lesbian, gay, bisexual and allied identified teachers, including myself.

This study focused on a primary research question: What are the experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual PK-12 educators as they manage their sexual orientation identities within a teaching role?

Heuristics was the qualitative methodology best suited to address this …

Representational Subversions And The Limits Of Postcoloniality: Shahzia Sikander's Strategic Contemporaneity, Linda Eilene Sanchez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transnational artist Shahzia Sikander challenges the limitations of Edward Said's postcolonial emphasis on secular humanism by deploying the heterogeneous traditions of South Asian miniature painting while strategically drawing on tradition to critique contemporaneity. Through a palimpsest process of composition, Sikander reincorporates the unknown and silenced histories implicit in the tradition of miniature painting to create social imaginaries with motifs that draw on the diverse traditions of South Asian religions and aesthetics to create a subversive politics of remembering wherein alternative images of cosmopolitanism emerge. Through a sustained analysis, this dissertation demonstrates how these alternative traditions interrogate and critique the limitations …