Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

An Uncommon Splice: Seeking Mutations In The Life-Writing And Short Fiction Of Mary Butts And Djuna Barnes, Susan George

Theses and Dissertations

Immersed in a web of short stories, poetry, and supporting biographical and life-writing sources, I investigate the narrative significance beneath and beyond two British and American modernist women authors. I evaluate sisterly connectedness between their literary production, publishing histories and life writings present in a specific cultural-temporal moment and genre: the short story. By looking on these unique, forgotten fictions through a new materialist lens, I argue for their short fiction's greater inclusion in the canon of women's modernism. Chapter I tests correlations between two authors undergoing the same stresses, alienations, joys and desires by taking up tenants of material …

Diurnal And Nocturnal Avian Antipredator Behavior In Thermally Challenging Conditions, Jennie M. Carr

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Diurnal avian antipredator behavior has been the focus of much past research, yet the influence of the thermal environment on such behaviors is often overlooked. Far less is known about nocturnal avian antipredator behavior, including how these behaviors are influenced by challenging thermal environments. The first portion of my research focused on how the thermal environment influences the diurnal antipredator behavior of wintering birds while (i) exposed to high wind speeds, (ii) foraging in sunlit and shaded microhabitats, and (iii) when using thermoregulatory postures to conserve body heat. In addition to increasing convective heat loss, high wind speeds increase the …

“All Things Forget The Forest:” The Convergence Of The War And The Pastoral In Edward Thomas’S Body Of Work, Nicole Trobaugh

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Edward Thomas, often identified as a war poet, eludes definitive characterization despite the fact that his poems are often anthologized as war poems. However, unlike other widely-known war poets, such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, the imagery present in Thomas’s poetry contains much subtlety and features dominant usage of nature themes. This project attempts to navigate the multi-faceted world of Edward Thomas through consideration of his love for nature, his melancholic predispositions, and his preoccupations with the looming Great War in order to study Thomas’s use of natural imagery in the context of grief, melancholy, and traumatic experience. To …

Running On Fumes The Destabilization Of The World’S Interconnected Systems As A Result Of Unsustainable Human Proliferation On A Finite Planet, Eduardo Fradin

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the global interconnectivity of critical and complex societal systems. Today, if consumption patterns continue to rise to unsustainable levels in concert with a soaring global population, these social and technological systems may begin to buckle, which will threaten the advancement of modern human civilization in the 21st century and beyond. The first globally-stressed system that is addressed in this paper is the global economic system. The second system I discuss is the global energy system and how it directly impacts the global economy. The following chapter looks at unsustainable population growth, freshwater scarcity, and food stresses. In …

Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.

My Master's thesis …

‘A River Is Not A Woman’: Re-Visioning Finnegans Wake In Eavan Boland’S ‘Anna Liffey.’, Melissa Dinsman

Publications and Research

"This essay argues that Eavan Boland's 1994 poem “Anna Liffey” is, in part, a re-visioning of James Joyce's famous river-woman and mother, ALP. Although Joyce's deconstructive tendencies provide an added challenge for any author looking to engage with Finnegans Wake, Boland manages to reclaim ALP, both channelling and challenging Joyce's portrayal of the Liffey as “Anna Livia Plurabelle.”--From the Journal.

Power, Politics, And Domestic Desire In Octavia Butler’S Lilith’S Brood, Aparajita Nanda

English

Octavia Butler’s works, from her short stories and novellas to her science fiction novels, focus on themes of power, control, bondage, and a desired freedom from servitude. Power structures inevitably center on the master/slave or the captor/captive trope. Her handling of this issue takes on complex manifestations in her works, where enslavement and genetic evolution often form the core of the narrative. Within this framework, hostile and repressive regimes enforce a controlled society. Butler brings race, gender, and sexuality to the foreground of speculative fiction as she deals with complex social and political issues in all their ambiguity. Her handling …

The Effects Of Social Rank On Shame And Guilt, Alexandra Bohaska

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The differentiation of shame and guilt is not widely discussed. The reason why some people feel shame while others feel guilt is also not universally understood. Various theories have examined cultural influences and how individuals attribute the outcome of various situations. This paper discusses past theories of the reasons behind shame and guilt and conducts a study that examines how social rank, or lack thereof, could affect a person’s emotional response. It was predicted that when the participants, consisting of college undergraduates and residents of a private community, are primed towards feelings of superordination or equality, via vignettes, they would …

Reconceiving Self-Abnegation: Female Vulnerability As Embodied (Un)Sovereignty, Renee Lee Gardner

Dissertations

Liberal feminism views vulnerability as weakness and dominance as strength. This binary parallels nationalistic assertions of sovereignty. Within militaristic responses such as the U.S. retaliation to 9/11, however, we see the cost of refusing to acknowledge our vulnerability. In my analysis of eleven novels arising from eight distinct nation-states and representing historical moments from the final decades of slavery through the early post- 9/11 years, I use alternative (queer, postcolonial, Islamic) feminisms to read power in vulnerability. I explore female characters who deliberately self-abnegate – sacrificing their lives, bodies, voices, and children – but whose actions can be read as …

Donne’S 'Elegy 19': To His Mistress Transcending The Bed, Femininity, And Gender Distinction, Christopher Sarachilli

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

No abstract provided.

Family And Social Roles In Queer Children's Literature, Nicolas Toscana Brouhard

Student Research Symposium

This research investigates family and social roles in queer children's literature. It provides a thematic analysis of popular titles published during the last decade. It argues that heteronormative and queer-identified protagonists in these stories have identical values concerning family and society. The analysis includes "In Our Mother's House" by Patricia Polacco, "And Tango Makes Three" by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, "King & King" by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland, and "Donovan’s Big Day" by Leslea Newman. The analysis focuses on how characters relationships and their commitments to each other such as weddings. It also explores how they take …

Revolutionary Imaginings In The 1790s: Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Elizabeth Inchbald By Amy Garnai, Jennifer Golightly

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Collecting Women: Poetry And Lives, 1700-1780 By Chantel M. Lavoie, Holly Faith Nelson

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

'Lactilla Tends Her Fav'rite Cow': Ecocritical Readings Of Animals And Women In Eighteenth-Century British Labouring-Class Women's Poetry By Anne Milne, Dometa Wiegand

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Numbering The Streaks On A Digital Tulip: Eighteenth-Century Women Poets On The World Wide Web, Emily Bowles

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Hearing Eighteenth-Century Occasional Poetry By And About Women: Swift And Barbauld, Elizabeth Kraft

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

"Calmly To Heav'n Submit Your Cause": Jane Cave Winscom And The Bristol Bridge Riots Of 1793, Catherine Ingrassia

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Missing Immortality: The Case Of Melesina Trench (A Neglected, Celebrated, Dismissed And Rediscovered Woman Poet Of The Long Eighteenth Century), Katharine Kittredge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Lady Mary's Imperfect Employment, Danielle Bobker

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Anna Seward And The Sonnet: Milton's Champion, Claudia Thomas Kairoff

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Women's Poetry: 2011, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

"The Sister Was Not A Mister": Gender And Sexuality In The Writings Of Gertrude Stein And Virginia Woolf, Jillian P. Fischer

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This thesis explores the topics of gender and sexuality within Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando by analyzing the texts through the lens of early twentieth-century sexologists and twentieth and twenty first century gender theorists. Both works reveal a common critique of the heteronormativity present within early twentieth-century understandings of sexuality and propose alternative spheres of sexuality and gender identity. Stein creates an alternative sphere in which desire is expanded. Beginning with an exploration of consumerist desire, Stein ultimately reveals a utopian vision of lesbian sexuality and the foregrounding of female desire, sexuality, and pleasure. Woolf’s alternative consists …

Female Resurrection In Poe's Tales, Laura Hardt (Class Of 2014)

English Undergraduate Publications

The female characters that populate the stories of Edgar Allan Poe are often ethereal creatures of great beauty, ghost-like figures that exist on the fringes of the narrative, very rarely taking part in the action of the plot. This, for the most part, is the case with regard to the female characters featured in Poe’s “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Both the eponymous Ligeia and Madeline Usher exist as virtual non-presences for the vast majority of these stories – at least until the point of their mysterious deaths. After these women pass away due to strange, …

Handling A Social Threat : The Fate Of Women Beyond Victorian Societal Definition., Alexandra Clifton

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Victorian Women And Their Working Roles, Kara L. Barrett

English Theses

Women during the Victorian Era did not have many rights. They were viewed as only supposed to be housewives and mothers to their children. The women during this era were only viewed as people that should only concern themselves with keeping a successful household. However, during this time women were forced into working positions outside of the household.

Women that were forced into working situations outside of their households were viewed negatively by society. Many women needed to have an income to support their families because the men in the household were not making enough money to survive. When the …

“In Counterfeit Passion”: Cross-Dressing, Transgression, And Fraud In Shakespeare And Middleton, Anastasia S. Bierman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the way women cross-dressing as men functions as a crime in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl and William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night. While many modern scholars have discussed cross-dressing in these plays, many look to the end of the plays as the foundation for their analysis rather than the play as a whole. Because of this oversight, scholars deem the characters in the plays not transgressive, when, in fact, cross-dressing is transgressive. They ignore the way cross-dressing is often presented in writing in the Renaissance, i.e. as a type …

Women As Victims In Tennessee Williams' First Three Major Plays, Ruth Foley

Masters Theses

Although Tennessee Williams does not openly champion the rights of women in his plays, he presents strong cases against their social alienation in a harsh and brutal world governed by men. Williams' emotional leanings, sensitivity, and intuition enable him to see life through women's eyes. In The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Summer and Smoke, Williams astutely sounds the battle cry for women to fight against male oppression. He shows how Amanda Wingfield, Laura Wingfield, Blanche Dubois, Stella Kowalski, and Alma Winemiller are held hostage to the rules governing patriarchal society and become unhappy marginalized victims. The self-contained …

Conforming To Conventions In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Pride And Prejudice, And Emma, Veronica Olson

Masters Theses

A major part of Jane Austen's novels consists of a critique of the societal conventions that were prevalent in Regency England. Through a study of Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma, it can be seen that Austen marginalizes those characters who chose conformity to social conventions. Contrariwise, the characters who exhibit a greater degree of autonomy within their patriarchal culture become the focus of the narrative. In looking at societal conventions concerning money, gender roles, and class status in conjunction with Austen's portrayal of various characters in the three novels, Austen's own views about conformity to societal conventions are …

Reading And Critiquing : An Analysis Of Talk About Strong Books For Girls., Renita Schmidt, Amanda Thein, Kathryn F. Whitmore

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In exploring what makes strong books for girls, these authors begin by looking at their critical conversations with each other.

Perspectives On Identity, Migration, And Displacement, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, I-Chun Wang, Hsiao-Yu Sun

CLCWeb Library

Perspectives on Identity, Migration, and Displacement -- edited by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, I-Chun Wang, and Hsiao-Yu Sun (Kaohsiung: National Sun Yat-sen University Press, 2010. ISBN 9789860235418 209 pages, bibliography, index) is a collection of articles about sociological and literary aspects of identity formation as a consequence of (im)migration. (Im)migration results in the problematics of assimilation and hybridity and in postcolonial scholarship, in particular, attention is paid to the concept of migration termed "Creolization" on the ground that cultural contact, cultural transmission, and cultural transformation result in the creation of new cultures. Copyright release by National Sun Yat-sen University to …