Arts and Humanities Commons^™

¡Mujeres Chéveres! – Cool Women!, Hernan A. Gonzales Mejia

LSU Master's Theses

¡MUJERES CHÉVERES! – Cool Women! is a body of work and writing that looks into the history of feminism and analyzes the activism of Colombian women, highlighting their resilience and spirit. Policarpa Salavarrieta, Maria Cano, Madre Laura Montoya, and Adriana Ocampo are a few examples of Colombian women’s contributions to social movements and gender equality. Movements like “Estamos Listas” in Medellín are discussed for their role in advocating for women’s rights and societal change.

As a self-identified feminist male, this body of work, draws from my upbringing among influential women to investigate the societal roles of Colombian women. This …

Effects Of Stereotypes On Black Women Audiences, Darian M. Shorts

LSU Master's Theses

This study focuses on the effects that televised racial stereotypes have on the self-perception of viewers who identify as Black women. This paper lists three commonly used stereotypes for Black women in television and provides detailed background and analysis of each. There were three goals that I wanted to achieve with this study. The first goal of this study was to measure the amount of stereotyped entertainment these specific viewers consume. The second goal of this study was to understand the positive and negative effects that racial stereotypes have on Black women. The last goal of this study was to …

Women Of The Dalit Unrest: Rewriting Bodies, Reinforcing Resistance, Suddhadeep Mukherjee

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The paper aims to take the scholarship on corporeal feminism and Dalit Studies forward by focusing on the Dalit woman’s body. The body is not treated as an inert surface in this paper but is considered as a transformative medium that can alter its embedded codifications and significations through transgressive performances in the face of systemic and systematized caste violence. In doing so the gendered body not only challenges to rewrite the Dalit epistemology from the vantage of resistance but also initiates a rethinking of Indian feminism. The paper begins with a discursive discussion on the importance of the gender …

Concerto For Violin And Orchestra And "Nevertheless, She Composed: A Contemporary Survey Of Women Composers Of The Twenty-First Century", Elizabeth Anne Knox

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two parts: the first part includes an original composition titled, “Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.” This twenty-minute work is composed for traditional orchestral instrumentation and solo violin. Motivic variation is the primary focus of this piece with a goal to show evidence of a thorough understanding and use of this technique. In music composition, variation is a technique achieved by restating musical material in an altered form. Schoenberg describes a motive as, “a unit which contains one or more features of interval and rhythm [whose] presence is maintained in constant use throughout a piece.” Therefore, motivic …

Elders Talkin’, Lizzie Nova

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

“Blood Moon”, Carmela Lanza

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

If Everything Was Perfect, Courtney A. Brown

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

José Martí In Central Park, Zilia Balkansky-Sellés

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

My Big Fat Catholic Queer Wedding, Kourtney Baker

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Om!, Aparajita Dutta

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Continental Divide(S), Carmela Lanza

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

“Seven Mothers”, Carmela Lanza

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Sacred Spaces, Ikea Johnson

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Men Who Write About Women, Grace Pulliam

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Damon Hill, Elizabeth Welch

LSU Master's Theses

“Damon Hill” acts as a physical record of the family folklore of a group of people formed by landscape and kinship. As a member of this group, I have translated my family’s stories into a visual narrative as a way to process my own identity in relation to our shared identity. The focus of “Damon Hill” rests primarily on the lives of my female predecessors, as a way for me to contribute their unique voice to the overarching feminine narrative. I incorporate the visual representation of traditionally feminine handicrafts in order to relay their stories through the primary means of …

A Cleansing Breath: A Journey Of Creation On The Hard Road, Addie Leigh Barnhart

LSU Master's Theses

To adhere to the structure of Louisiana State University and Swine Palace’s Actor Training program, the M.F.A. candidates are required to develop new work. This project is in place to cultivate the individual actor’s sensitivities to his/her own process in theatre making, grow as an artist, and begin the long journey of devising and constructing work, in this case a solo play, that has the potential to continue to grow after graduation. My piece is derived from several of the classic Greek plays and myths but told with a twist on the traditional stories and entirely from different women’s perspectives. …

Construction De L'Identité Culturelle Afro-Antillaise : Regards Croisés Entre Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau Et Fabienne Kanor, Jeanne Jégousso

LSU Master's Theses

The theme of cultural identity is one of the main problematic of francophone literature. Through the years, women writers, especially in Guadeloupe and Martinique, used this theme as the main topic of many of their writings. Characters, especially women narrators, try to understand this notion of cultural identity and its construction in other to make this theme theirs, since cultural identity is at the crossroads of their own story, the history of the Caribbean, and the perception these young women have of themselves. A new generation of writers, born in France of Caribbean families, tries today to offer a new …

The Creation Of "Behind The Vote," A One-Person Play, Jennifer E. Ballard

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis discusses the inspiration, creation and performance of Jenny Ballard’s one-woman show, Behind the Vote, which was the other half of the thesis requirement in order to complete the Master of Fine Arts program in Theatre Performance. Behind the Vote examines the importance and meaning of voting, both during the women’s suffrage movement and in the present, as seen through the eyes of three contemporary women, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This thesis contains Ballard’s inspirations for the project; her research materials about Stanton and Anthony and her source materials for her contemporary characters, including Facebook messages …

The Creation Of "Trash The Dress" : A Solo Play, Kristina Sutton

LSU Master's Theses

The thesis project called for the MFA candidate to create a one-person show of originality and entertainment between 25 minutes and 45 minutes in length. This thesis, submitted to the Graduate School of Louisiana State University as partial requirement for graduation with the Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre, follows the creation of a solo performance piece by Kristina Sutton, called “Trash the Dress.” The thesis includes inspiration for creating this solo performance piece, initial correspondence between the MFA candidate and consultants, research material and a copy of the script, personal reflection on writing and rehearsal challenges, photos from …

Recreating The Image Of Women In Mexico: A Genealogy Of Resistance In Mexican Narrative Set During The Revolution, Julia Maria Schneider

LSU Master's Theses

Traditionally, women have been relegated to the margins of society, history, and culture in male-dominated environments. Patriarchal systems have long denied women to play an appropriate role in nation building and to enter the public sphere, as is the case in Mexico. The female participation during one of the country’s most critical periods, the Mexican Revolution, has largely been ignored. Through situating their narratives into the context of the Revolution and describing the obstacles and limiting conditions that women experience, Mexican writers such as Elena Poniatowska and Laura Esquivel criticize the status quo of social and gender politics in Mexico …

Eve's Prisoners, Tara Rene Ratliff

LSU Master's Theses

All women are the children of Eve and the children of the earth. With the work of Eve’s Prisoners, my aim was to create imagery about the transient stages of womankind and the timeless relationship the feminine ideal has with nature. We are born innocent and able to see the truth of things, but eventually we all imprison ourselves in our bodies, in language, and in our own nature. My pictures want to reconcile the innocence and the pain and to say that by accepting aging and death as part of life, we free ourselves from our own prisons.

Stage(D) Mothers: Mother-Daughter Tropes In Twentieth-Century American Drama, Kristin Hanson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The relationship between mother and daughter is an important one for many women. In learning how to best become a successful member of society, daughters look to their mothers to demonstrate the behaviors and beliefs appropriate to a female. Such explicit and implicit instruction makes the mother-daughter relationship a central one in the socialization of women. Because it is such a powerful site, the mother-daughter relationship has received attention in the world of representation. Of particular import to this study is the representation of the mother-daughter relationship in Twentieth-Century American drama. Recent scholarship has shown that such representations can, however, …

Insiders: Louisiana Journalists Sallie Rhett Roman, Helen Grey Gilkison, Iris Turner Kelso, Angie Pitts Juban

LSU Master's Theses

Sallie Rhett Roman, Helen Grey Gilkison and Iris Turner Kelso were three women journalists in Louisiana, active in consecutive time periods from 1891 to 1996. Their work brings up five particular questions. First, Why did these women start working and how did they negotiate public employment? Second, how did they balance the relationship between work and home since they did find employment outside of the home? Third, how did they fit into their contemporary image of women and journalists? Fourth, how did they use written language to portray a particular voice to the reader for a particular purpose? Fifth, did …

Subversive Bodies: Embodiment As Discursive Strategy In Women's Popular Literature Of The Long Eighteenth Century, Phyllis Ann Thompson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

“Subversive Bodies: Embodiment as Discursive Strategy in Women’s Popular Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century” examines literary representations of the body as strategies of resistance. This study demonstrates that Manley's Secret Memoirs from the New Atalantis, Haywood's Female Spectator, and Burney's Journal and Letters, as well as unpublished receipt books for medicinal and cosmetic preparations, challenge the prevailing masculinist notion of a passive, distinct topography of womanhood and lay the groundwork for a feminist tradition of recognizing the body as an explicit part of experience. Tracing the origins of today's critical perspectives, my study draws on the insights of recent …

"You Go Girl!" Nationalism And Women's Empowerment In The Bollywood Film Kya Kehna, Hope Marie Childers

LSU Master's Theses

This essay puts forth an analysis of the recent portrayal of an unwed mother in the Bollywood film, Kya Kehna! (Kundan Shah, 2000, henceforth KK). The title, which is readily translated to the rhetorical, "What can you say?" has additional significance here as a laudatory exclamation directed at the film's young heroine. Targeting a younger audience, the film was hailed as a challenging exploration of female sexuality and women's empowerment. The film in fact reaffirms traditional stereotypes of women in which their behavior is carefully controlled within a patriarchal framework. In spite of the awkward fact that the main character's …