Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Defining Afghan Women Characters As Modern Archetypes Using Khaled Hosseini’S A Thousand Splendid Suns And Asne Seierstad’S The Bookseller Of Kabul, Alexandra Andrews

Masters Theses

Middle-Eastern women, specifically Afghan women, are often misunderstood. Yet, authors Khaled Hosseini and Asne Seierstad use the method of storytelling to show that Afghan female characters are not completely subjugated, voiceless, and powerless—despite how they are often depicted in media. Instead, in Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Seierstad’s The Bookseller of Kabul, Afghan female characters are represented as assertive, risk takers, and heroic. By applying Joseph Campbell’s theory regarding the archetypal heroine to the lives of Mariam and Laila from A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Sharifa and Leila from The Bookseller of Kabul, it is clear that these Afghan …

“See Ourselves As Others See Us”: Empathy Across Gender Boundaries In James Joyce’S Ulysses, Madison V. Chartier

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

Many critics originally attacked James Joyce’s Ulysses for its dark representation of gender relations. Today, many scholars consider this criticism prematurely formed and recognize that these early critics responded more to Stephen Dedalus’s antagonistic, misogynistic views in the novel’s opening chapters than to the rest of the epic and the views of the novel’s main protagonist, Leopold Bloom, who displays a much more receptive, appreciative attitude toward women. These scholars now believe that gender relations as portrayed in Ulysses actually undermine preconceived notions of a gendered hierarchy. However, this difference in character perspective is not the only or even the …

Strong, Independent, And In Love: Fighting Female Fantasies In Popular Culture, Allison P. Palumbo

Theses and Dissertations--English

During the late 1970s and 1980s, feminist critics like Janice Radway began to reconsider so-called women’s genres, like romance novels and soap operas and melodramas, in order to address the forms of subversion and expressions of agency they provided female audiences. However, in spite of greater willingness to consider the progressive potential in romance narratives, there has been little such consideration given to stories of romance for the fighting female character—defined as a protagonist who uses violence, via her body or weapons, to save herself and others. The fighting female has received a good deal of attention from critics like …

Animal Welfare And Animal Rights, M.E. Rolle

Animal Sentience

This overview of Broom’s book, Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), considers the role the book could play in the animal rights debate. In a thoroughly researched and objectively presented text, Broom lays out information that could place doubt in the minds of decision-makers. By highlighting not just the ways animals resemble humans, but also the ways humans resemble animals, Broom shines a light on a solidly grey area in the animal rights debate.

What Do You Think I Am?: On Perceiving Unintelligibility In The Nonbinary Gender Experience, James Warwood

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

What does it mean to be “retired from gender,” and what role does such an identity play in daily life? Engaging with the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Judith Butler, this project attempts to elucidate the experience of nonbinary – that is, external to the male/female gender binary – gendered individuals, and the ultimate unintelligibility of that experience. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach to perception allows for an exploration of the social norms and regulations that determine how gender is defined in Western culture; combined with Butler’s significant work on gender and its performativity, phenomenology proves a useful tool for revealing the …

Toward An Ontology Of Exhaustion: On The Affective Structures Of Masculinity In The American Oilfield, John W. Jepsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

What is the significance of the oil encounter in the lives of men living and working in the modern oilfields of the United States? Engaging with both literary examples of the lives of men in the Interior West and the personal experiences and reflections of the author, this essay seeks to examine the connections between ideology and place as it works to shape the identity and affect of men in America's oilfields, ultimately ending in them identifying with the very resources their activities seek to exploit and exhaust. Utilizing Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia as its moral touchstone, this essay works …

Characters Through Time, Alyssa Venezia

Honors Thesis

T. S. Eliot once wrote that we “often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of [an author’s] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously” (Eliot 37). By focusing on character adaptations, one comes to understand how authors of children’s books are able to adapt classic literature into age-appropriate texts that retain the merits of the original. Five sets of characters shall be analyzed to demonstrate the success of the adaptations presented in children’s literature. In the first, Sir Bedivere from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur …

Glycemic Control Among Type 2 Diabetics, Abdi H. Nur

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between diabetics’ socioeconomic status, self-efficacy, education levels, gender, and ethnicity and their medication and physical activity (i.e., healthy exercise) adherence regarding to their physicians and health educators’ counsels. Also, the study investigated whether or not the respondents adhered to medication prescription and physical activity routines. The study used a non-probability convenience sampling technique to recruit 102 type 2 diabetics (female, n = 65 and male, n = 37) from Indiana and Illinois Counties surrounding Vigo County, Indiana. The respondents reported their self-care activities throughout the seven days prior to …

The Lawrentian Woman: Monsters In The Margins Of 20th-Century British Literature, Dusty A. Brice

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite his own conservative values, D.H. Lawrence writes sexually liberated female characters. The most subversive female characters in Lawrence’s oeuvre are the Brangwens of The Rainbow. The Brangwens are prototypical models of a form of femininity that connects women to Nature while distancing them from society; his women are cast as monsters, but are strengthened from their link with Nature. They represent what I am calling the Lawrentian-Woman.

The Lawrentian-Woman has proven influential for contemporary British authors. I examine the Lawrentian-Woman’s adoption by later writers and her evolution from modernist frame to postmodern appropriation. First, I look at the …

"Persephone's Contemporary Dilemma: Consent, Sexuality, And "Female Empowerment." [2015], Cassandra Elizabeth Cerjanic

Master's Theses

Greek mythology never strays very far from Western imagination. Though every few years literature involving the infamous Gods tapers off into the back of our collective minds, a resurgence soon follows. The late Romantic literary movement (as popularized by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelly, and John Keats) depended heavily upon Greco- Roman mythology to help illustrate characters that existed somewhere between the shadow of imagination and the truth of humanity. Perhaps in an attempt to harken back to Romanticism, contemporary poetry has once again given life to the Greek Gods. Mythological characters can be seen throughout the works of modern …

Daisy And Frederick: An Exploration Of Innocence And Its Consequences In Henry James' Daisy Miller: A Study 2015, Mark Andrew Meyer Ii

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

The Dale Spender Collection At The Women's College, University Of Sydney, Olivia Murphy

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

Notice of the opening of the Dale Spender collection of books relating to feminism; Australian women's writing; and women's writing in English of the long nineteenth century.

Recovering The Beauty Of Medusa, Alexander M. Schlutz

Publications and Research

This essay presents a close analysis of P.B. Shelley’s fragmentary ekphrastic poem “On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery.” It places Shelley’s text in its aesthetic, mythological and historico-political contexts to demonstrate how Shelley aims to undo the ideological and representational structures of power that inform human language, art, and history, and which turn Medusa into the monstrous Other as which she appears. In Shelley’s text by contrast, Medusa becomes a figure for a revelatory beauty that cannot become visible in the distorting parameters of a discourse of power that informs our very perception of what …

“Between That Earth And That Sky”: The Idealized Horizon Of Willa Cather’S My Ántonia, Miriam A. Gonzales

Anthós

Since its 1918 publication, Willa Cather’s My Ántonia has been lauded for Cather’s masterful description of the Nebraska prairie landscape; since the mid-1980s, this text has also been the subject of countless queer theoretical analyses, many of which focus on what their authors perceive as an obstructed romantic connection between the novel’s two main characters, Jim Burden and Ántonia Shimerda. While these two subjects may not initially seem correlative, a more recent—and unrelated—critical essay illuminates a new way of examining Cather’s attention to setting. When we view My Ántonia in conjunction with José Esteban Muñoz’s “Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics …

Male Feminists: Oxymoron Or The Next Step? An Exploration Of Attitudes Associated With Male Feminists, Abigail K. Slowik

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although many studies have examined attitudes toward feminism and feminists, very few have been devoted to the study of attitudes toward male feminists. The existing body of literature has shown mixed results; with feminist men being rated more positively in some regards, and more negative in others. In the current study, Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 2004) is used as a framework for understanding factors associated with attitudes towards male feminists, male feminist identification, and gender-self-esteem. Attitudes associated with male feminists were examined in a sample of 466 male and female undergraduate students from Indiana State University. Participants were …

More Awesome Than Infinity: Explorations Of Sea Imagery And Sexual Deviance, Kelly Lonergan

Undergraduate Honors Theses

More Awesome Than Infinity: Explorations of Sea Imagery and Sexual Deviance

Discreet Feminism: Neil Gaiman’S Subversion Of The Patriarchal Society In American Gods, Christopher P. Thompson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Neil Gaiman’s use of a hyper-masculine American culture in American Gods sheds light upon the multiple issues surrounding a misogynistic society in which women are treated as sexual objects and punished for their independence as sexual beings. Gaiman’s efforts at highlighting these issues are discreet and hidden under layers of patriarchal expectations, but through the use of his protagonist, Shadow, Gaiman is able to provide an alternative to the society he represents. While he successfully illustrates this more “ideal” society, his endeavors fall short and are almost imperceptible throughout his novel. Gaiman’s work in American Gods, while lacking in its …

Factors Contributing To The Academic Success Of Low-Ses Students, Lynn Kathryn Daanen

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that may contribute to the success of some students of poverty to complete high school through graduation. The research examined if positive teacher–student relationship behaviors, the use of learning strategies, school locality or enrollment, years of experience as a principal, and years of teaching prior to becoming a principal had an impact on the non-waivered graduation rate of some Indiana poverty high schools. The study tested for a statistically significant difference between graduation rates or types of school locales on the relationship score and the learning style score. The study also …

Exposing Narrative Ideologies Of Victimhood In Emma Donaghue’S Room And Gillian Flynn’S Gone Girl, Meredith Jeffers

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Stories about abducted women and murdered wives are sadly common on cable and network news programs, from Nancy Grace to Dateline. These at the center of Emma Donaghue’s Room (2010) and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012). These contemporary novels manipulate the narrative conventions of popular true-crime stories to expose the

In the each chapter, I examine the interesting narrative perspectives of Room and Gone Girl to understand the ways that these novels deconstruct mass media narratives of violence to reveal ideas about gender. In Room, Donaghue dislocates the narration by narrating the novel not from the perspective of …

Setting Fires: Literary Women Blazing Trails For Contemporary Women, Laura Salinas

Senior Honors Projects

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim” — Nora Ephron

Literature has always provided an outlet for writers to express their commentary on society tracing from Shakespeare’s plays in the 1600’s to Jane Austen’s classic novels to the modern literary narrative. These writings are often more than just tales to entertain a crowd or a reader; they create dynamic characters that call into question the standards and expectations that society deems acceptable.

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy has created an iconic and dynamic character that resists and challenges what it means to be a woman in terms …

The Self-(Un)Made Mother: Jungian Archetypes In Dickens's Little Dorrit, William David Love Jr.

Master's Theses

Charles Dickens’s novel Little Dorrit (1857) depicts an abundance of surrogate mothers while simultaneously revealing an absence of biological motherhood. The primary female characters become surrogate mothers in their own ways in order to bypass the legal and physical dangers associated with biological motherhood. To do this, they embrace various alternate forms of femininity—the crone, the maiden, the woman warrior, and the seductress. These women negate themselves willingly in actions that would seem to reinforce the gender norms of their time, but their self-negation actually leads to empowerment and sustainability for themselves and for others. Furthermore, a Jungian interpretation of …

Generic Organizational Strategy Integration Impacts On Profit Margin Ratio And Inventory Turnover In Publically Traded Oklahoma Manufacturing Organizations, Christopher Bell

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to determine if and to what extent strategy integration was related to the financial indicators profit margin ratio and inventory turnover for publically traded manufacturing organizations in Oklahoma. Current strategy theory states that the more thoroughly an organization adopts a given strategy the greater the effect will be on these financial indicators. Hence the need to more fully understand the extent and rates at which strategy integration effects these indicators. This study looked at perceived strategy integration scores for publically traded Oklahoma manufacturing organizations taken from June to August 2014 and financial indicators from 2012 and 2013. …

The Ecology, Biogeochemistry And Phylogeny Of Methane Seep And Non-Seep Benthic Foraminifera From The Pacific Margin, Ashley M. Burkett

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In an effort to understand the relationships between active methane seep and adjacent non-seep (inactive) populations of the deep-sea foraminifera Cibicidoides wuellerstorfi, a common paleo-indicator species, from methane seeps in the Pacific were analyzed and compared to one another for genetic similarities of small subunit rDNA (SSU rDNA) sequences. Pacific Ocean C. wuellerstorfi were also compared to those collected from other localities around the world (based on 18S gene available on Genbank, e.g., Schweizer et al., 2009). Results from this study revealed that C. wuellerstorfi living in seeps near Costa Rica and Hydrate Ridge are genetically similar to one another …

A Model Of Packet Loss Caused By Interference Between The Bluetooth Low Energy Component Of An Ios Wearable Body Area Network And Residential Microwave Ovens, William C. Barge

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the United States. Advances in wireless technology have made possible the remote monitoring of a patient’s heart sensors as part of a body area network. Previous studies have suggested that stray wireless transmissions in the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band cause interference resulting in packet loss in Bluetooth piconets. This study investigates the impact that wireless transmissions from residential microwave ovens have on the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) component of the body area network. Using a systematic data collection approach, two variables were manipulated. The distance between the microwave oven …

An Exploratory Study On The Impact Of Mobile Wireless Technologies In A Teacher Education Classroom, Anupama Ghattu

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mobile technology is revolutionizing the American higher education system. Integrating mobile technology into college classrooms is changing the teaching and learning process. Today’s millennial generation students are tech savvy and using their mobile devices to learn and explore in many possible ways. Mobile technology devices can be used as effective tools to enhance teaching and learning. The ubiquitous nature of these mobile devices with wireless capabilities makes learning possible instantly anywhere and everywhere with easy access to information for everyone. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of integrating mobile wireless technologies (MWT) on preservice teachers’ attitudes …

“The Bedroom And The Barnyard: Zoomorphic Lust Through Territory, Procedure, And Shelter In ‘The Miller’S Tale’” & Haunchebones, Danielle N. Byington

Undergraduate Honors Theses

“The Bedroom and the Barnyard: Zoomorphic Lust Through Territory, Procedure, and Shelter in ‘The Miller’s Tale’” is an academic endeavor that takes Chaucer’s zoomorphic metaphors and similes and analyzes them in a sense that reveals the chaos of what is human and what is animal tendency. The academic work is expressed in the adjunct creative project, Haunchebones, a 10-minute drama that echoes the tale and its zoomorphic influences, while presenting the content in a stylized play influenced by Theatre of the Absurd and artwork from the medieval and early renaissance period.

The Anti-Hero And The Wallflower Heroine: Moll Flanders And Mansfield Park In Dialogue, Alex Valin

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel Moll Flanders and Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, published ninety years later, retain many narrative similarities. The protagonists of both novels find themselves born poor, symbolically adopted by a well-to-do family, whom they are Othered from to a certain degree, and eventually marry one of the sons of said family. However, no reader of literature could say that Moll Flanders and Fanny Price are the same character. Rather, the differences in their characters come from the amount of agency afforded to them by the respective novel. Ultimately, these two characters form prototypes of characters to be ingrained …

Postcolonial Disability In Mohesen Makhmalbaf’S Kandahar, Sukshma Vedere

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

Kandahar (2001), an Iranian film directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, details the journey of the protagonist, Nafas, to Kandahar to save her sister from committing suicide on the day of the solar eclipse. The film has gained recent attention by disability studies scholars for the representation of disability in Afghanistan; scholars have discussed the significance of prosthetics and international aid for the disabled in post-war zones of the Third World, but little has been said about disability as a postcolonial embodiment. I argue that Kandahar represents the postcolonial state as a disabled space both literally and metaphorically. It projects the veil …

Psychosexualism In Victorian Literature: A Psychoanalysis Of Jane Eyre And Dracula, Heather Marie Ward

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

My thesis consists of historical facts and literary analysis and is made up of three chapters. In the first chapter, I look at two varying elements of psychosexualism, the emotional and the physical, and discuss how each can be applied to Jane Eyre and Dracula. The chapter also contains an explanation for the term psychosexualism and provides a brief history of: the Victorian notion of hysteria and spermatorrhea, the twentieth-century classifications of love and sex addiction, as well as the twenty-first-century to Histrionic Personality Disorder and Sexual Sadism Disorder. The second chapter provides an analysis of Jane Eyre, specifically looking …

Expanding The Literary Enterprise: How We Experience The Texts Of The Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition Curriculum, Molly Ostrow

Honors Theses

How we read the texts of the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition curriculum.