Modern Languages Commons^™

Painting Stories And Filming Change, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Contributions to Books

Mithila Art has helped illuminate various aspects of the relationship between gendered Maithil social roles and Maithil women’s narratives in connection with a feminist participatory action research project conducted primarily in 2016-2017 in and around the northern Bihari town of Madhubani. While participatory action research philosophically and methodologically attends to process as much as product, Mithila Art played a role in the process and product of making a documentary film and in our capacity to understand and communicate with varied audiences about shifting Maithil gender norms. The research and filmic project provided insight into the complex relationship among the stories …

“Et Les Filles”: Le Féminisme Subtil De Françoise Hardy, Charlotte Aexel

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This article focuses on “yéyé” music, in particular the music of Françoise Hardy. I examine the feminist themes in the songs found on her first album, Tous les garçons et les filles. The majority of critics view her first album as immature, but I suggest that it shows a subtle but powerful feminism. For me, Françoise Hardy’s first album shows depth and advanced perception of social dynamics. In particular, Hardy demonstrated an awareness of the experiences of young women in her time. From her first album, Hardy presented herself as independent and intelligent. I cite critics from Hardy’s time and …

Avant Et Après : Examen Du Proto-Féminisme À Travers La Résistance Littéraire En France Au Xve Siècle Et Au Mexique Au Xviie Siècle, Madison Coleman

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This essay seeks to understand the implications of a “before” distinction in the feminist canon— i.e., why is there “proto-feminism”, and not just “feminism”? This essay will explore the works of “proto-feminist” writers, Christine de Pizan and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and examine how the feminist themes and issues prevalent throughout their respective works are in response to the respective and collective inequities and injustices they experienced. Their oeuvres provide insight into what advocacy for women and other marginalized peoples looked like outside of the modern understanding of the historical “waves” of feminism. This essay seeks to examine …

Le Proto-Féminisme De George Sand, Jasmine Harrison

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, was a radical and revolutionary writer. Through her writing, she challenged social norms and incorporated gender equality into her novels. This presentation examines Sand's four works: Indiana, Valentine, Lélia, and La Mare au diable. The question of Sand's status as a feminist writer, or even as an early feminist writer, is explored through women's roles in society through the analysis of nineteenth-century literature.

Clarice Lispector: From Brazil To The World, Earl Fitz

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Clarice Lispector: From Brazil to the World explains why the Brazilian master was so transformative of modern Brazilian literature and why she has become such a celebrity in the world literature arena. This book also shows why Lispector is not one writer, as many think, but many writers. By offering close readings of her novels, stories, and nonfiction pieces, Earl E. Fitz shows the diverse sides of her literary world. Chapters cover Lispector’s devotion to language and its connection to identity; her political engagement; and her humor, eroticism, and struggle with the concept of God. The last chapter seeks to …

Other Oceans, Other Skies, Sharlene Lee

MFA in Visual Art

I create immersive installations, performances, and time-based media artworks that delve into stories of belonging, feminism, and language as power. These stories offer a potential for transformation from viewer to participant and a shift in how our world is seen and experienced. Through an exploration of perception and affect, I challenge dominant narratives, prompting a contemplation of contemporary power struggles for control.

In this text, I examine the impact of historical borders and migration on my life while also investigating questions of home, shared values, and rituals that contribute to one’s sense of belonging. I also highlight my commitment to …

Reproductive Justice And Feminism: A Comparative Legal Analysis Of The Policies And Healthcare Systems In The United States And Colombia, Samantha Cooke

Modern Languages, Philosophy and Classics Theses

This thesis seeks to offer a comparative legal analysis of the state of the laws regarding abortion and reproductive autonomy in the United States of America and Colombia. This thesis will first address a brief history of feminism and its origins in the United States and Colombia. It will also analyze the policies held by each respective nation; starting with old legislation and moving to current policies regarding abortion. It will also include a comparison between both the U.S. and Colombia; offering suggestions for the future with regards to potential policy changes. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate …

Elgin's "Native Tongue": A "Me Too" Universe?, Amir Barati

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Suzette Haden Elgin’s novel Native Tongue (1984) provides a fascinating critique of the ideologies inscribed into patriarchal language and evokes an extremely valuable linguistic and political awareness. This article will examine the liability of the ways the novel revolts against the patriarchal society via the introduction of a gynocentric linguistic intervention. I claim, Elgin’s novel showcases an invaluable instance of how it is possible for women to revolt against the pillars of patriarchy through manipulations at the gestalt and schematic level of language and most specifically, the bodily metaphoric quality of the English. This proposed transformation of the schematic and …

Imagined Locality Of A Girlhood Home: A Performative Reading Of Maxine Hong Kingston’S “White Tigers”, Jing Tan

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Both the locality and the language of Sze Yup are of immense significance to Kingston, as well as to her narrator-protagonist: it is the locus of her mother’s storytelling, the land whence her mother absorbed the incredible power of “talking-story” that has been inherited by Kingston and has permeated her text, the soil whose spirit has been transplanted to her birthplace in America and whose mystery has never ceased to inspire her imagination. Likewise, the Sze Yup dialect is the language that both the writer and her narrator first learned to speak (Jaggi): she “entered school speaking no English” (Talbot …

"Chicas Raras:" A Comparative Literary Study Of Historical Spanish And 21st Century Feminism, Serenity Dzubay

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

How have women learned to rebel creatively against male-dominated political structures when their public voices are silenced? How has literature aided in feminist rhetoric and helped to protest the patriarchy? In 1987, Carmen Martín Gaite created the term “chica rara” to describe female protagonists in novels who revolted against their gendered positions in society. Women of Spain have faced severe repression of identity due to the Franco regime; however, his oppressive ideologies helped to produce a rich history in feminist protest through literature from Spanish authors who I would argue are real-life chicas raras, because they rejected their traditional roles …

El Rock En Nicaragua: Un Discurso De Resistencia Contra La Neoliberalización O Una Re-Definición De La Tradición, Martina Barinova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Abstract in English

This work, which parts from the premise that music is a medium of communication with the potential to transform and create identities, explores rock music in Nicaragua since its beginning until the present. Nicaraguan rock music is born in a sociopolitical context of extreme economic instability and during a crisis of values in the last decade of the 20^th century, with the end of the Sandinista Revolution and the establishment of neoliberal government. The young cultural movement, and rock in particular, constructs a discourse dissident from the patriarchal and capitalist hegemony and interrogates the social reality …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

Modl: 398: Women In Quran—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Abla Hasan

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This project highlights the experience of teaching Quran as a literature through MODL 298: “Women in Quran”. This course is an attempt to read Quran as a diachronically approached literature and discover what would the analytic, linguistic as well as the critical study of both the Qur’anic text and its exegesis reveal when it comes to feminism and gender issues in Islam.

Embodied Literate Practices Of Freshman Women Students: A Phenomenology Of Students In First-Year Composition, Carmen Lynn Christopher

English Theses & Dissertations

This project examines the experiences of freshman women students as they compose their first papers for first-year college composition. This study uses an interpretative phenomenological method to explore the lived experiences freshmen women undergo before they arrive at college and how those experiences inform these women’s practices in first-year composition. This dissertation has three main goals: to recover and clarify Heidegger’s interpretative phenomenology, to use that clarified method to explore freshman women’s experiences in first-year composition, and to suggest ways in which phenomenology might be used in the daily practices of writing instructors and administrators in higher education.

To address …

"Oh, Those Loud Black Girls!": A Phenomenological Study Of Black Girls Talking With An Attitude, Jacqueline B. Koonce

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

Current research suggests that it is imperative for researchers and educators to pay more attention to the needs of African American adolescent girls and how their race and gender affect schooling (Fordham, 1993; Morris, 2007). The purpose of this study was to highlight the lived experiences of two African American adolescent girls when they used the African American women's speech practice, "Talking with an Attitude" (TWA), with their teachers. Using phenomenology and Afrocentric feminist epistemology as methodological and theoretical approaches, interviews were used to collect and analyze data that revealed the nature of their lived experiences. Van Manen's description of …

De ‘Ángel Del Hogar’ A ‘Mujer Moderna’: Las Tensiones Filosóficas Y Textuales En El Sujeto Femenino De Carmen De Burgos, Estrella Cibreiro

Spanish Department Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.