English Language and Literature Commons^™

Batwoman And Catwoman: Treatment Of Women In Dc Comics, Kristen Coppess Race

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

DC Comics has existed through the first, second, and third waves of feminism, publishing popular female characters who appeal to a mass market. By focusing on depictions of Batwoman and Catwoman, this paper examines the contrast between the social and political progress forms of feminism promised for women and the increasingly violent treatment of female characters in DC Comics, focusing on Batwoman and Catwoman. M. Thomas Inge maintains that male "comic book heroes [...] tend to fit most of the classic patterns of heroism in Western culture" (142). These heroes are designated by their completion of quests or missions, their …

Haunted By Passion: Supernaturalism And Feminism In Jane Eyre And Villette, Laurel Lorber

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

.

The Emergence Of Feminism During The Late Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries By Female Artists And Authors, Tracy S. Koubek

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This thesis paper identifies the ways in which the painters Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and Mary Cassatt and the writers Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning challenged the limitations of their sex by engaging in professions outside of the domestic sphere during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This essay first focuses on the negative effects that a separation between the private and public spheres had on women, how these changes came about, the expectations society imposed on women, and how many women learned to cope and step forward into the public sphere. The emphasis shifts to an examination of the lives …

Reverential Feminism: (Re) Considering The Status Of Women In The African Novel, Joseph M. Brogdon

The Corinthian

In assessing the African novel from a twenty-first century Western perspective, the tendency inevitably arises to interpret the culture as inherently bearing an excessive force of patriarchal subjugation against which all African women must struggle. Perhaps such a reading is not entirely unwarranted, but if this is the chosen lens for interpretation, it then becomes necessary distinguish the author’s beliefs from those represented in the cultural attitudes of their text. In failing to make this ideological distinction between the world of the novel and the world of the novelist, it becomes easy to err in the way of too readily …

Modernism En Vogue: Popular Periodicals And Their Engagement With Modernist Culture, Natalie Kalich

Dissertations

My project investigates commercial magazines from the 1920s, including, The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Vogue, and Vanity Fair to reveal the frequency with which modernist writers contributed to these periodicals and the extent to which editors of these magazines found modernist discourse marketable to larger audiences, thereby undermining the assumption that modernists only spoke to a coterie audience. Furthermore, by investigating the similarities present in discourse on modernism and developments in popular culture such as jazz and film in a commercial context, I expand and complicate constructions of modernist and popular culture from both sides of the cultural …

Mediums Change, Fears Stay The Same, Lucy Wilhelms

Honors Theses

Although generally dismissed by scholars as being overly sentimental or superstitious, the gothic genre has survived for over four centuries and maintained significant cultural appeal, outlasting the sentimental novel and the travelogue as popular literature. What, then, makes this genre different? What is so special about the gothic?

In my thesis, I examine the evolving cultural appeal of the gothic genre that keeps it attractive and relevant for readers by tracing the gothic text, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, through its initial inception and its subsequent adaptations. As a novel, The Woman in Black both repeats and revises …

“To Say Nothing”: Variations On The Theme Of Silence In Selected Works By Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz, Sandra Cisneros, And María Luisa Bombal, Hannah M. Frantz

Student Publications

This paper explores the various ways in which Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s La Respuesta, Sandra Cisneros’s “Woman Hollering Creek,” and María Luisa Bombal’s “The Tree” address the theme of silence. It interrogates how the female characters in each of these works are silenced as well as their responses to that oppression. Meaning is subjective, so writing is a safe outlet for the oppressed. These works each identify an oppressor, either a husband or the male dominated church, as well as an oppressed individual, who is the female lead. In La Respuesta, the Catholic church, and specifically …

Anticipative Feminism In F. Scott Fitzgerald’S This Side Of Paradise And Flappers And Philosophers, Andrew Riccardo

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

For The Benefit Of Others: Harriet Martineau: Feminist, Abolitionist And Travel Writer, Laura J. Labovitz

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

One of the distinctive and remarkable traits of Harriet Martineau was her need to publish information that she believed would benefit society. Her publications - Illustrations of Political Economy (1832), Society in America (1837) and Retrospect of Western Travel (1838) - have the distinct characteristic of being published with the intent to inform and educate the British public. Scholars have focused on her later 1848 publication, Eastern Life: Present and Past, as her most important publication. Yet I will argue that it was her earlier works which set the stage for this later, better known book. Her travel to the …

Women On The Ground: Bringing Theory And Activism Together Through Domestic Violence Narratives, Kacey J. Barrow

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis works toward bringing domestic violence activism and feminist theory together by refuting that these two approaches are necessarily in binary opposition. It is centered on changing the way we make sense of violence against women by addressing why the authors that include personal narrative in their writing should be help up as examples of theory. By analyzing literary domestic violence narratives, the author demonstrates that narrative is itself theory. In addition, this essay creates a third space where the author‘s own domestic violence narratives complement the literary narratives. The author shows how we can analyze victimized characters in …

Mirroring The Madness: Caribbean Female Development In The Works Of Elizabeth Nunez, Lauren Delli Santi

MA in English Theses

Elizabeth Nunez is a Trinidadian author, critic, and professor who explores the development of female identity within Trinidadian society through her fictional and critical writings. Nunez's article, "The Paradoxes of Belonging," questions the identity of the white creole woman in the Caribbean as she lives in exile due to rejection from her European heritage as well as Afro-Caribbean society. Nunez questions this shaping and questioning of identity through her own fictional works with the formation of her female characters. She uses her native country of Trinidad as the main setting to develop black and biracial female characters and utilizes the …

The Intricacies Of M.F.K. Fisher: Discovering A Kaleidoscopic Hybridity, Elizabeth Lee Sleeper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to analyze M.F.K. Fisher's socio-historic role and the components of her texts as a means to interrogate the categorization of her writing, to identify her authorial voice, and to see how it all contributes to and proves that Fisher is a `kaleidoscopic' hybrid writer. I utilize theoretical positions such as New Historicism, Feminism, Genre Theory, and Everyday Theory to help me identify and explain the hybrid tendencies of Fisher's writing. It is not a comprehensive study of her texts in light of these theories, but rather, it is a broad overview in order to demonstrate alternative readings …

Sleeping Beauty: The Reality Of Harmful Images Of Women Within The Film Industry, Noretta A. Morales

Whittier Scholars Program

This senior project is composed of three parts: a screenplay, essay, and journal. The purpose of this senior project is to provide a perspective of how women are treated within the film industry and women’s obsession with beauty and sexuality, as well as how the media portrays women. It focuses on the pressures that women deal with in the film industry and the construction of beauty and sexuality concepts. Drawing from articles, journals, books, and interviews, the project attempts to provide the various sides and aspects of how women give in, or not, to the stress of conforming to the …

Women And Bodily Separation In Literature From The Victorian Era Until Today, Delisa Leonard

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The dualities that are often associated with female characters have taken many forms throughout the centuries. In the Victorian era, female characters were often presented as dual natured; oftentimes this division was represented through the use of a madwoman and a heroine. In the early 20th century, however, this motif was picked up by female poets, who used duality in order to express the disconnect women often feel from their family, their friends, and, especially, their bodies. In today‟s literature, these feelings of duality and separation are expressed through a literal separation, not between good and evil, but of body …

A Mutiny Of Silence: Swarnakumari Devi's Sati, Teresa Hubel

Department of English Publications

Aim:
To discuss how Swarnakumari Devi's family connections as much as her sex contributed to why her work faded from the memory of nationalist India.

Introduction:

The historical context that helped to produce the writing of Swarna-kumari Devi Ghosal also gives us a glimmer into some of the possible reasons why her work faded from the literary memory of nationalist India. Some of that context is hinted at in the back pages of her collection of short stories in English, published in 1919 by Ganesh and Co., Madras. Reminding us of the inescapable connection between capitalism and knowledge, these back …

With His Guitar In His Hand: Representations Of U.S. - Mexico Border Masculinity In Robert Rodriguez's “El Mariachi”, Marlene Galvan

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This thesis closely examines Robert Rodriguez’s film El Mariachi and its portrayal of border masculinity - the masculine identity which exists on the physical space between the U.S. and Mexico, but also the masculinity created by the melding of cultures. The film ignores this complexity and instead dichotomizes maleness along the traditionally Western lines of hard versus soft masculinity. Further, the film glorifies violence, the exploitation of female bodies, shows women as only useful agents of man, punishes transgressive women, and depicts men as only possessing or aspiring to possess individualistic, economic, phallocentric, and patriarchal power which reinforces a variation …

Mass-Marketing "Beauty": How A Feminist Heroine Became An Insipid Disney Princess, Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

Originally published in Beyond Adaptation. Ed. Phyllis Frus & Christy A. Williams. McFarland, 2010

Mass-Marketing "Beauty": How a Feminist Heroine Became an Insipid Disney Princess by Marc DiPaolo

To see more or purchase works by Marc DiPaolo, visit his Amazon page here: https://www.amazon.com/Marc-DiPaolo/e/B004LV7W6Y%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Post-Mao Chinese Literary Women’S Rhetoric Revisited: A Case For An Enlightened Feminist Rhetorical Theory, Hui Wu

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

Identifying the specific complexities and historical context of post-Mao Chinese literary women's rhetoric, along with ways they have been misread, the author argues in general that Western feminist critics need to be cautious about applying their concepts to non-Western women's literature.

Defying The Feminist Dilemma: Eavan Boland's "Listen. This Is The Noise Of Myth", Rachel Newman

English

Boland creates a narrative poem, “Listen. This is the Noise of Myth,” that repudiates all legends that show men to be stronger and the savior of women, and suggests both that there are endless ways to depict any myth.

Ambivalent Kabbalah: Myla Goldberg's 'Bee Season' And The Vicissitudes Of Jewish Mysticism, Paul Eisenstein

English Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Monstrous Bodies: Femininity And Agency In Young Adult Horror Fiction, June Pulliam

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Young Adult horror fiction with female protagonists presents sympathetically the untenable situation of adolescent girls within society whereby they are increasingly pressured to embody a doll-like feminine ideal that deprives them of voice and agency. In Young Adult horror fiction, the monstrous Other problematizes what is presented to girls as “normal” and “natural” feminine behavior. As a double with a difference, the monstrous Other is an iteration of femininity whose similarity to the original implies the possibility of resisting restrictive gender roles. Because in Young Adult horror fiction the monstrous Other is nearly always a sympathetic character, it is fairly …

"Just A Girl": The Community-Centered Cult Television Heroine, 1995–2007, Tamy Burnett

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Found in the most recent group of cult heroines on television, community-centered cult heroines share two key characteristics. The first is their youth and the related coming-of-age narratives that result. The second is their emphasis on communal heroic action that challenges traditional understandings of the hero and previous constructions of the cult heroine on television. Through close readings of Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Dark Angel, and Veronica Mars, this project engages feminist theories of community and heroism alongside critical approaches to genre and narrative technique, identity performance theory, and visual media …

Jane Austen: Bildungsroman, Socioeconomics, And The Feminine Community, Erica P. Lindquist

Whittier Scholars Program

Eighteenth-century romantic comedies are the lenses through which the novels of juvenilia of Jane Austen are often viewed. However, like all art, Austen’s literature can be viewed on several different levels. Particular elements in Austen’s works that are not always focused on are the importance of the three elements of a bildungsroman, socioeconomics, and the feminine community. These aspects play essential parts in the development of the characters and their romantic relationships but also can be distanced from the general theme of a romantic comedy and observed on their individual merits; in effect, they are essential to the overall plot …

Beyond Boundaries: Embodiment And Selfhood In Hilary Mantel's Novels, Tara Koger

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

No abstract provided.

The Compatibility Of Containment And Autonomy In Lydia Minatoya's The Strangeness Of Beauty, Rachel Jeppsen

Theses and Dissertations

Subaltern studies has overwhelmingly privileged subaltern resistance as a means for the subaltern to attain autonomy. While the group's project has made breakthroughs in rewriting Indian subaltern history, their emphasis on resistance to oppression has also essentialized what it means to create autonomy. A 1999 novel, Lydia Minatoya's The Strangeness of Beauty, challenges this essentialist view by portraying alternative behaviors that indicate autonomy. The novel is set in 1920s Japan when transnational excitement and anxiety provided opportunities for one subaltern group, Japanese women, to gain autonomy. While some feminist movements in Japan substantiate the notion that autonomy must be gained …

The New Feminine Rhetoric: Wollstonecraft, Austen, And The Forms Of Romantic-Era Feminism, Elisabeth Louise Guyon

Theses and Dissertations

Countering traditional claims that the feminist movement all but vanished during the early nineteenth century, this thesis suggests feminism remained prominent in both the literature and rhetoric of the time. In tracing the development of the "New Rhetoric," a rhetorical movement that aimed to accommodate new principles of the Enlightenment, I focus in part on the rhetorical battle between Edmund Burke, with his Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Thomas Paine, with his Rights of Man. From there, I suggest that Mary Wollstonecraft, writing in the wake of the Burke-Paine debate and drawing upon the rhetorical philosophy of George …

Fantasies Of Gender And The Witch In Feminist Theory And Literature, Justyna Sempruch

Comparative Cultural Studies

In Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature, Justyna Sempruch analyzes contemporary representations of the “witch” as a locus for the cultural negotiation of genders. Sempruch revisits some of the most prominent traits in past and current perceptions in feminist scholarship of exclusion and difference. She examines a selection of twentieth-century US American, Canadian, and European narratives to reveal the continued political relevance of metaphors sustained in the archetype of the “witch” widely thought to belong to pop-cultural or folkloristic formulations of the past. Through a critical rereading of the feminist texts engaging with these …

Will Travel : Journey Memoirs, Kelly Renee Broce

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Memoirs and poetry. Concerns the travels of a West Virginian woman, the granddaughter of a first generation Sicilian West Virginian, within the U.S., the Bahamas, Thailand, and China, where she taught English as a second language for two years from 2000-2002. Themes include identity (Appalachian, Persian, African-American, Chinese, and even Uigur), ethnicity and gender in West Virginia, fatalism, religion, poverty, Diaspora, travel, discrimination, the Ugly American/European, Ah Q, Imperialism, Orientalism, otherness, political asylum, victims and survival, substance abuse in West Virginia, feminist narrative, West Virginian authors, mountaintop removal, environmentalism, and protest.

A Virginia Woolf Of One's Own: Consequences Of Adaptation In Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Brooke Leora Grant

Theses and Dissertations

With a rising interest in visual media in academia, studies have overlapped at literary and film scholars' interest in adaptation. This interest has mainly focused on the examination of issues regarding adaptation of novel to novel or novel to film. Here I discuss both: Michael Cunningham's novel The Hours, which is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and the 2002 film adaptation of Cunningham's novel. However, my thesis also investigates a different kind of adaptation: the adaptation of a literary and historical figure. By including in The Hours a fictionalization of Virginia Woolf, Cunningham entrenches his adaptation with Virginia …

Another "Scandalous Woman": Edna O’Brien, Irish Feminism And Her Gébler Men, Jeffrey P. Griffin

Honors Scholar Theses

Irish novelist Edna O’Brien suffered a tumultuous early reception; her first six novels were banned in Ireland, and critics complained that her writing was sensational and gratuitous. Yet by the time Ireland’s economic boom arrived on the island, many contemporary critics suddenly applaud the novelist’s writing. Is this significant change in critical reception based on O’Brien’s development as an author? Or was O’Brien writing stories that were ahead of her time and are only now accepted by contemporary critics? My paper considers the writing and critical reception of Edna O’Brien by placing her life and career alongside three waves of …