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Garrett, Roberta. "Postmodernist cinema and feminist film criticism." Thesis, Staffordshire University, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.272823.
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Garber, Elizabeth Jessie. "Feminist polyphony : a conceptual understanding of feminist art criticism in the 1980s /." The Ohio State University, 1989. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487671640055385.
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Wardrop, Alex. "Feminist criticism and Plato's Timaeus-Critias : rethinking chora." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.574593.
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Brunsdon, Charlotte Mary. "The feminist, the housewife and the soap opera : feminist television criticism and soap opera." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.396230.
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Henderson, Susan E. "Details, baby, details : a feminist criticism of The crying game." Virtual Press, 1994. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/902494.
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This study examined gender portrayals in the film, The Crvinq Game. The societal labels for gender, "masculine" and "feminine," are not negative in and of themselves. However, when they are coupled with stereotypes, their power to direct behavior and perception formation can rob people of their freedom to be simply "human." This study primarily focused upon the costs of maintaining, challenging, and abandoning gender role stereotypes as illustrated in The Crvinq Game. Sonja Foss's four-step approach to feminist criticism was used as a tool for examination of this film.By examining the appearances, attitudes, and behaviors of the four central characters in the film, two messages emerged. First, in all four cases, being of a feminine nature was less desirable than being of a masculine nature. Second, Neil Jordan, the film's director, prescribes that all people should transcend the boundaries of gender, and simply allow themselves and others to be human.Jordan's humanistic message also provides insight into expansion of rhetorical methods and theories. Feminist criticism and Queer theory could attempt to transcend the boundaries of gender, and work toward the inclusion of all non-traditional sex roles.Department of Speech Communication
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MacKeen, Alison. "From discovery to creation : feminist literary criticism's aesthetic turn." Thesis, McGill University, 1989. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=59590.
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This thesis challenges the way feminist literary criticism has been represented as a field polarized between American and French positions. As an alternative to the American/French distinction, I propose one between feminist criticism oriented to research and feminist criticism oriented to aesthetics. In keeping with this alternative distinction, I relocate the shift in feminist criticism within American feminism. The "aesthetic turn" inaugurated by American "gynocriticism" is itself identified in relation to a more general philosophical shift from discovery to creation. While the relativistic and voluntaristic tendencies which distinguish the latter pole are exemplified by French feminism, I argue that they are anticipated by American feminism's "aesthetic turn." Finally, this thesis not only relocates and redefines the shift in feminist literary criticism, but provides arguments in favour of a research-oriented feminist criticism.
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Threadgold, Terry. "Feminist textual practice performance and critique." Monash University, School of Literary, Visual and Cultural Studies, 1999. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/8576.
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Taghavie-Moghadam, Mariah. "A Miraculous Deliverance: An Adaptation Through Historical Criticism and Feminist Theory." VCU Scholars Compass, 2019. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5740.
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This thesis attempts to reconstruct the narrative of Anne Greene, a young female servant in 1650 England that was wrongfully found guilty of infanticide and made into a spectacle by her peers as an example of what happens when one breaks societies gender norms and is met by the influence of the gender politics of the period. Her female body was objectified and placed on display by a ritual performance of the hangman’s noose and the criminal corpse to further the process of by maintaining fear among members of the population, especially rebellious women. Thus, making Anne Greene a subversive figure, victimized by a patriarchal society, a trope that remains relevant today. By way of literary adaptation, explorations of bodily practice, and engagements with the historical archive this thesis allows Anne Greene’s disembodied figure to unfold as a narrative and visual tool in history. This study and the accompanying original play text allow Anne Greene to become an essential figure to feminist studies and continuing struggles for equality in the era of the “Me too” social narrative.
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Luckner, Victoria. "“I AM NOT A PRINCESS BUT…”: AN IDEOLOGICAL CRITICISM OF “FEMINIST” IDEOLOGIES IN DISNEY’S MOANA." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2018. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/753.
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In 2016, Disney animation studios released their newest princess film Moana. The film follows a seemingly feminist plot line of a young female heroine who saves the world from destruction. This study examines Moana (2016) in relation to the views on feminism in the U.S. Disney’s large social and economic influence provides rich grounds for this research. Using an ideological rhetorical criticism, I uncovered the presented and suggested elements of the film. These elements combined with research on U.S. feminist ideology allowed three ideological themes to emerge: ecofeminism, power feminism, and post-feminism. The three themes are threaded to create a seemingly feminist patchwork ideology. I argue that the patchwork ideology that is created is a result of the political and economic conditions present around the production of Moana. Furthermore, I argue that this patchwork ideology is ultimately harmful to current feminist ideology in the U.S. This study adds insight into how feminist ideology is used in popular media.
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Potts, Tracey. "Can the Imperialist read? : race and feminist literary theory." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1997. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/63653/.
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Since the mid 1980's it has been unthinkable for white feminist literary critics to neglect race in their theoretical work. Strong challenges from black feminists have been effective in placing race high on the critical agenda. No longer is the kind of exclusivity that marked early (white) feminist literary theory possible. However, despite the evident commitment to addressing the race question in their work, the black feminist challenge has been greeted with a considerable degree of anxiety by white feminist critics. I suggest that the main source of anxiety is a failure to square the pressing need to 'include' race on the feminist agenda with doubts about straying into what is perceived to be black feminist territory. In other words, white feminist critics have yet to resolve their relation to the black feminist project. This anxiety has meant that a concern over the notion of exclusion has given way to that of appropriation. This has tended to place the white feminist reader in the paralysing position where there seems little available ground between the twin poles of exclusion and appropriation. Typical questions that have arisen out of this dichotomy are: should white feminists teach black women's writing? Should white feminist critics produce critical readings of texts authored by black women? Can white women readers read black women's writings without imposing onto them their own critical agendas? Is a non-appropriative reading relation possible? How should white feminists deal with the fact of their own race privilege and what bearing does this privilege have upon the readings they, potentially, might produce? This project examines some of the ways in which white feminists have attempted to address their relation to the race question in feminist literary criticism. Over the space of six chapters I focus on a number of specific reading strategies offered as positive critical interventions. My main contention is the impossibility of a guaranteed anti-imperialist theory or reading position. I also argue for the necessity of asking the question: whether the imperialist can read, as a complement to that of whether 'the subaltern can speak'. Chapter 1 questions the white feminist ambition of arriving at the truth of the black text as a means of decolonising the text. Through an examination of the Rodney King events some of the perils of appeals to pure seeing are highlighted. Chapter 2 explores the implications of white feminist abstention from the race debates. Chapter 3 looks at the issue of identification as a basis for reading. Chapter 4 questions the identifications that inhere in applying theory to a text. Chapter 5 challenges the use of contextualisation as a source of textual limits. Chapter 6 examines the limits of self-reflexivity as an anti-imperialist method.
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Pearce, Margaret. "A.S. Byatt : writing feminist issues." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26302.
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A. S. Byatt attempts to recover lost voices in Possession and Angels and Insects (a collection of two novellas) by examining the limiting roles of women in literature and society. Chapter one examines Possession in which the characters search for their connections to the literary past, ultimately locating them through a lesser-known, female, Victorian poet. In chapter two I consider "Morpho Eugenia," the first novella in Angels and Insects. Byatt illustrates how the male gaze names women and defines their roles. In the second novella, "The Conjugial Angel," analyzed in chapter three, Byatt (re)tells Emily Jesse's story, one formerly appropriated by Alfred Tennyson in In Memoriam. I conclude that Byatt attempts to relocate her heroines from the margins to the center by deconstructing hierarchical patterns of storytelling. Rather than replacing male-monopolized narratives with female ones, Byatt undermines the dominating viewpoint by demonstrating the way in which it obscures all other perspectives.
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Dunn, Angela Frances. "The continental drift : Anglo-American and French theories of tradition and feminism." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63972.
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Townsend, Jessica A. "How to save the future anxiety and social criticism in feminist dystopia /." Laramie, Wyo. : University of Wyoming, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1594494971&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=18949&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Murphy, Kylie. "Bitch: the politics of angry women." Thesis, Murphy, Kylie (2002) Bitch: the politics of angry women. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2002. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/217/.
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'Bitch: the Politics of Angry Women' investigates the scholarly challenges and strengths in re theorising popular culture and feminism. It traces the connections and schisms between academic feminism and the feminism that punctuates popular culture. By tracing a series of specific bitch trajectories, this thesis accesses an archaeology of women?s battle to gain power.
Feminism is a large and brawling paradigm that struggles to incorporate a diversity of feminist voices. This thesis joins the fight. It argues that feminism is partly constituted through popular cultural representations. The separation between the academy and popular culture is damaging theoretically and politically. Academic feminism needs to work with the popular, as opposed to undermining or dismissing its relevancy.
Cultural studies provides the tools necessary to interpret popular modes of feminism. It allows a consideration of the discourses of race, gender, age and class that plait their way through any construction of feminism. I do not present an easy identity politics. These bitches refuse simple narratives. The chapters clash and interrogate one another, allowing difference its own space.
I mine a series of sites for feminist meanings and potential, ranging across television, popular music, governmental politics, feminist books and journals, magazines and the popular press. The original contribution to knowledge that this thesis proffers is the refusal to demarcate between popular feminism and academic feminism. A new space is established in which to dialogue between the two.
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Murphy, Kylie. "Bitch : the politics of angry women /." Murphy, Kylie (2002) Bitch: the politics of angry women. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2002. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/217/.
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'Bitch: the Politics of Angry Women' investigates the scholarly challenges and strengths in re theorising popular culture and feminism. It traces the connections and schisms between academic feminism and the feminism that punctuates popular culture. By tracing a series of specific bitch trajectories, this thesis accesses an archaeology of women?s battle to gain power.
Feminism is a large and brawling paradigm that struggles to incorporate a diversity of feminist voices. This thesis joins the fight. It argues that feminism is partly constituted through popular cultural representations. The separation between the academy and popular culture is damaging theoretically and politically. Academic feminism needs to work with the popular, as opposed to undermining or dismissing its relevancy.
Cultural studies provides the tools necessary to interpret popular modes of feminism. It allows a consideration of the discourses of race, gender, age and class that plait their way through any construction of feminism. I do not present an easy identity politics. These bitches refuse simple narratives. The chapters clash and interrogate one another, allowing difference its own space.
I mine a series of sites for feminist meanings and potential, ranging across television, popular music, governmental politics, feminist books and journals, magazines and the popular press. The original contribution to knowledge that this thesis proffers is the refusal to demarcate between popular feminism and academic feminism. A new space is established in which to dialogue between the two.
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Rose, Patricia Elizabeth. "The Role of medieval and matristic romance literature in spiritual feminism /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2001. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe16284.pdf.
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Mapes, Margarethe. "GLOBALIZED BACKLASH: WOMEN AGAINST FEMINISM’S NEW MEDIA MATRIX OF (ANTI) FEMINIST TESTIMONY." OpenSIUC, 2016. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1163.
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Feminisms are oftentimes confronted with dissonance, resistance, and backlash. Invested in criticizing the cultural and institutional emergence of patriarchy and calls to re-order structures of inequality make feminism threatening to status quo power dynamics. “Women Against Feminism”—a social media phenomenon and space for women to post anti-feminist messages—began gaining notoriety in 2013. By 2015, “Women Against Feminism” expanded to multiple social media platforms, gained thousands of anti-feminist submissions, and received ample support and criticism across news outlets. This study explores “Women Against Feminism” as a potential site of 21st feminist backlash, noting nuanced rhetorical strategies that rely on fearing feminism, declarations of interpersonal and intrapersonal love, and co-opting feminist ideology to propagate anti-feminist narratives. I situate backlash as a communicative phenomenon of perception rather than a clear-cut movement reacting toward a stated goal of progress by a social group. In this way, feminist progress functions as an illusory cultural script where backlash reacts toward the perceived enactment of a feminist goal, rather than (although not excluding) the successful feminist execution of that goal. Thus, this study dually investigates what backlash strategies are used while also uncovering how differing audiences perceive feminism. Finally, I set forth a series of suggestive practical methods for feminist engagement across dissonance and difference.
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Phillips, Julie D. "Rape myths in the American movie industry : a content analysis and feminist criticism." Virtual Press, 1995. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/941729.
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This study explored rape depictions and rape myths in the mainstream American filmindustry. Four rape myths pervade American culture. The myths argue that women "ask" for rape, "deserve" rape, lie about rape, and are not really hurt by rape. These myths place blame on the victim and absolve the rapists on any wrongdoing. Furthermore, these myths attempt to justify male sexual aggression against women.This study explored film's portrayal of the rape event, the victim, the rapist, and the depiction of specific rape myths. A content analysis of 16 American films released between 1982 and 1994 revealed 27 victims of rape. The content analysis also provided a descriptive analysis of the rape event while a feminist analysis revealed the films' underlying ideological underpinnings.The content analysis revealed that the films distort rape by consistently portraying the rapist and victim as young white, middle class men and women. Additionally, the relationship between victim and rapist was distorted as well as the legal aftermath of the rape.The feminist analysis revealed that films perpetuate rape myths more frequently than they challenge these myths. In some instances, films presented the reality of rape, particularly the environment the victim would enter. Most films, however, advanced patriarchal beliefs about rape.Department of Journalism
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Mayes-Elma, Ruthann. "A Feminist literary criticism approach to representations of women's agency in Harry Potter." Oxford, Ohio : Miami University, 2003. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?miami1060025232.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Educational Leadership, 2003.Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 147 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-141).
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Mayes-Elma, Ruthann Elizabeth. "A Feminist Literary Criticism Approach to Representations of Women's Agency in Harry Potter." Oxford, Ohio : Miami University, 2003. http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?miami1060025232.
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Sponenberg, Ashlie Kristin. "The pendulum is swinging backwards : gender, politics and modernity in the interwar writing of Winifred Holtby, Storm Jameson, Naomi Mitchison and Rebecca West." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.269596.
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Morrissy, Julie. "Materialist-feminist criticism and selected plays of Sarah Daniels, Liz Lochhead and Claire Dowie." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1994. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1837/.
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This thesis is an examination of the extent to which contemporary British plays written by women constitute an ideological theatre. It is based upon the premise that there is a relationship of feminist theatre practice to feminist theory, where theory is seen to have informed practice and practice has informed the theory. I argue that an ideological theatre can be understood with reference to first, playstructure and second, the place of the performer in relation to both character and spectator. The implications of these can be seen terms first, of representation and second, of the physical presence of the body of the performer on stage and are therefore seen to be to do with the representation of issues on stage and performance issues to do with the woman performer respectively. Using aspects of a materialist-feminist analysis I examine the ways in which feminist epistemology has brought about a transformation of social relations in so far as these are deployed through representation and specific processes of performance based upon the slogan "the personal is political". This involves looking at the influence of performance issues and acting, especially at power-relations as they are reproduced and represented in selected theatre exercises. Importantly, these strategies for reading are always seen in the context of modem British political theatre; the importance of this emerges through my proposition that an ideological theatre practice is one which both establishes and foregrounds a relationship or resistance to existing theatrical form or genres. This constitutes the first part of my thesis. The second part of the thesis is comprised of three case studies. In these I draw together aspects of representation and the processes of performance established in Part One as a way of understanding selected plays constructed in relation to existing genres. In Chapter Three I look at the plays of Sarah Daniels in relation to melodrama; in Chapter Four I look at the plays of Liz Lochhead in relation to adaptation. Chapter Five is my concluding chapter in which I stress the importance of both foregrounding previous genres and questioning generic expectations by examining the interactions of theatre with stand-up comedy in the work of Claire Dowie.
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Altieri, Emanuelle Cristina de Oliveira. "Emancipação e silenciamento em Save Me the Waltz (1932), de Zelda Fitzgerald /." Assis, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/192081.
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Orientador: Cleide Antonia RapucciResumo: O presente trabalho propõe uma análise do romance publicado pela estadunidense Zelda Fitzgerald (1900 – 1948), intitulado Save Me the Waltz (1932), segundo o olhar da crítica feminista. A análise contempla como os papeis de gênero aparecem incutidos nas personagens, reproduzidos por meio de padrões de masculinidade e feminilidade nos quais são construídos. Também discute sobre a vida e obra de Zelda Fitzgerald, junto ao contexto em que a obra foi publicada (mesmo contexto em que a trama se passa), tendo em vista tratar-se de uma narrativa de autoria feminina com suas particularidades. Por fim, atrelado tanto à crítica feminista quanto à escrita de autoria feminina, foi feita a análise sobre o gênero da obra levando-se em conta a ficcionalidade, o autobiográfico, a literatura sulista e a literatura de formação e de artista. O método de análise do corpus orienta-se pela crítica feminista e tem o trabalho de Showalter (1977 e 1994) como base. Os gêneros textuais abordados alinham-se com as ideias de Lejeune (2008), Jones (2002), Nanney (1993) e Pinto (1990).
Abstract: The present work analyses the only novel published by the American writer Zelda Fitzgerald (1900 - 1948), named Save Me the Waltz (1932), according to the feminist criticism. The analysis takes into consideration how the gender roles appears engrained in the characters behavior, reproducing the patterns of masculinity and femininity in which they are constructed. It also discusses Zelda Fitzgerald's life and work along with the context the novel was published (same as the story), considering as a narrative of female authorship with its specific aspects. At last, related to the feminist criticism and the female authorship, the genre of the novel is going to be discussed, taking into account the fictional, the autobiography, the Southern Literature and literature of formation or the artist. The method of analysis is guided by the feminist criticism, Showalter's work (1977 and 1994) is our methodology model. Lejeune (2008), Jones (2002), Nanney (1993) and Pinto (1990) are aligned with the ideas of the textual genres mentioned.
Mestre
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Albinger, Dawn. "Diva Voce : reimagining the diva in contemporary feminist performance." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2012. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/538.
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This practice-led contemporary performance study investigates and invigorates the diva icon’s usefulness to feminist theatre praxis. It traces the research journey from an unexamined belief in the diva as an icon of empowered, independent and expressive womanhood, to a more nuanced conception of the diva as boundless feminist performer and philosophical subject. Two major questions emerge from and drive the process. The primary research question asks: How can the diva icon (in all her fury and glory and wretchedness and perversity and mastery and mortality) usefully inform a feminist theatre praxis? Early investigations give rise to a subsequent social query: How do (some) women collude in their own oppression; participate in their voice and voicelessness? Critically engaging with these challenges leads me to conclude the diva icon is most useful to feminist performance praxis when understood as an icon for the richest possible expression of one’s multifaceted, contradictory, poetic and polyphonous self in dialogue with other internal selves, and with one’s community and world.
The study is framed by poststructural feminism in an (at times, uneasy) alliance with psychoanalysis, Jungian psychology, structuralism, positive humanism, and eastern philosophies such as yoga and Buddhism. The process of knowledge-making is experienced as embodied and non-linear, with key insights resonating in the spaces between the questions, the methodology, the literature and the praxis. It has been composed of: the creation of a solo performance; a daily astanga yoga practice; interviews with three senior Australian women practitioners who have referenced the diva icon in their own work; and a contextual review mapping the cultural and aesthetic territory of divas and contemporary female solo performance (literature reviews, performance reviews, popular culture reviews). It also critically engages the provocations of feminist philosophers Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous (among others), and with those of philosopher, poet and performer Margaret Cameron.
Throughout this study the diva is in dialogue: with western myth (romantic love, the handless maiden), with theory (voice, desire, the feminine divine), and with practice (the dramaturgy of breath). This critical dialogue reveals the diva’s capacity for agency, poetry, divinity and mastery that enable her to resist, embrace and receive in ways that offer new possibilities of Being/Isness. From this, I suggest the transcendent voice of reason is, for the female philosophical subject, the diva voce: simultaneously divine and corporeal, located [heard] in the infinite moment between an out-breath and the returning in-breath, inhalation, inspiration. In the final analysis, the feminist performer can be empowered by transforming the the diva’s traditional cry “Lascietemi morir,” (let me die) to “Lascietemi aprire”, (let me open).
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Riordan, Ellen M. "Negotiating commodified culture : feminist responses to college radio /." view abstract or download file of text, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9986752.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 277-289). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
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Elliott, William. "Codependency : a review of the feminist critique and other voices." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/52734.
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Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2002.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This review begins by tracing the history and initial formulations of codependency, followed by the presentation of ten main themes distilled from the feminist critique of codependency: disparate and problematic definitions of codependency; viewing codependency as a disease; the use of codependency as a label; codependency as blaming the victim; codependency as a plot against women; codependency has an attack on femininity and traditional female roles; issues of individualism, narcissism and interdependence; lack of research in the field; over simplification of complex realities; and codependency as big business. These themes are presented along with recent developments and other perspectives in the field. The review concludes with a number of alternative formulations of codependency, as well as a recommendation of a number of criteria against which to evaluate future conceptualisations of the concept.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie werkstuk begin met h uiteensetting van die geskiedenis en vroeë formuleringe van mede-afhanklikheid, gevolg deur h voorlegging van tien hoof temas gedistilleer uit die feministiese kritiek van mede-afhanklikheid: disparate en problematiese omskrywings van mede-afhanklikheid; die bedinking van mede-afhanklikheid as h siekte; die gebruik van mede-afhanklikheid as h etiket; die gebruik van mede-afhanklikheid om slagoffers te blameer; die gebruik van mede-afhanklikheid om vroue te onderdruk; die gebruik van mede-afhanklikheid teen vroulikheid en die tradisionele vroue-rol; narsisme en interafhanklikheid; gebrek aan navorsing; oor-vereenvoudiging van komplekse realiteit; en mede-afhanklikheid en groot besigheid. Hierdie temas word uiteengesit tesame met huidige ontwikkelinge en ander perspektiewe in hierdie gebied. Hierdie werkstuk word afgesluit met met h aantal alternatiewe formuleringe van mede-afhanklikheid, sowel as aanbeveelings van kriteria wat in die toekoms as h maatstaf gebruik kan word om nuwe konseptualiserings te evalueer.
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Brennan, Zoe. "Representations of older women in contemporary literature." Thesis, University of the West of England, Bristol, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.271040.
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This study argues that novels by contemporary women writers, such as Doris Lessing, May Sarton, Barbara Pym and Jenny Diski, through their representation of older female protagonists, create alternative discourses of ageing to those that dominate Western society. By placing these figures at the centre of their narratives, the texts counteract the silence and pejorative stereotyping that routinely surrounds the lives of the aged. The technique of studying literary representations of women is not new; in fact, it is a trusted part of feminist methodology. However, one of the assertions of this dissertation is that it is rarely used to investigate texts about the senescent, reflecting feminism's failure to include the older women in their theories. Part one of the dissertation examines such issues in depth, setting out the theoretical orientation of the study. It considers popular representations and paradigms of ageing, as well as considering the power of normalising discourse and dynamics of representation. Part two uses this material to analyse the strategies that British and North American authors have employed, since the 1960's, to challenge common stereotypes of older women. The first three chapters focus on novels that portray protagonists who display emotions, not usually associated with the old, which are revealed in relation to different aspects of ageing: anger and frustration (dependency); passion and desire (sexuality); and contentment (daily life). Chapter 7, 'The Wise and Archetypal Older Woman', shifts its attention away from more realist texts to study characters who emerge from the covers of ratiocinative fiction. It argues that conventional critiques of the genre often negate its more polemical elements, which is a result of their failure to use an age- and gender-aware approach and a problem that generally greets intelligent novels about female senescence. This thesis sees itself as part of a movement that aims to create a space in which older female characters' voices can be heard and recognised. It contends that the authors treated here produce visions of ageing that are not solely concerned with stagnation and decline. They represent a varied and compelling group of protagonists and, in doing so, illustrate that older women are worthy of literary, social and feminist interest.
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Lucas, Caroline. "Writing for women : a study of woman as a reader in Elizabethan romance." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.328713.
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Sireci, Fioravanti. "Literary criticism as feminist argument in Mary Wollstonecraft's 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/29366.
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Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman makes its feminist argument primarily through literary criticism. Recent scholarship has generally considered the literary critical dimension of Rights of Woman as a minor component of Wollstonecraft’s explicit political argument and cultural critique. This thesis locates and analyses three literary critiques in Rights of Woman in order to illustrate the specificity of Wollstonecraft’s methods. Wollstonecraft’s critique of Milton utilises a practice of quotation and commentary, and interrogates his prominent role in literary and political canons. Her critique of Rousseau’s Emile is highly instructive because she both attacks its content and attempts to undercut the modes by which this paradigmatic statement of the submissive domestic female had become ‘a prevailing opinion of a sexual character’. Wollstonecraft’s critique of John Gregory, the author of the influential conduct book A Legacy to His Daughters, claims that this work perpetuates Rousseau’s repressive norms, even without the conscious knowledge of its apparently capable author. In doing so, Wollstonecraft theorizes the existence of a self-reproducing ‘male’ literary tradition, one which comprises a broad range of texts, whether by ‘great’ writers or less gifted men, a notion which challenges benevolent images of a purist canon of aesthetic value. In the development of her criticism, Wollstonecraft draws from two contemporary critical traditions. The first is that of the bluestocking women, whose public mastery of literary knowledge gives them the status to promulgate social agendas. The second is the literary periodical, which stands at the very centre of print culture in the eighteenth century. A specific analysis of the literary critical dimension of Rights of Woman illuminates new aspects of the organisation and rhetoric of this key work.
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Layman, Amanda. "The Problem with Pussy Power: A Feminist Analysis of Spike Lee's Chi-Raq." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1490453172203067.
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Korkmaz, Miray. "A Feminist Standpoint Analysis Of Women." Master's thesis, METU, 2012. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614295/index.pdf.
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The aim of this thesis is to analyze women&rsquos shelters in the context of the Feminist Standpoint Theory by focusing on a case in Turkey. The majority of the previous studies has not regarded the women&rsquo
s entire subjective experiences of domestic violence and shelter stay. Rather they present a reductionist picture. In this study, women&rsquo
s experiences of violence and shelter stay are analyzed and discussed in relation to
their specificities, the shelter structure, and the system shelters are connected in Turkey, from the perspective of Feminist Standpoint Theory. The issue of to what extent empowerment is attainable within the existing structures of institutions is questioned through qualitative method. Participatory observation is the main data gathering method in this study
semi-structured in-depth interviews are also used as additional data gathering source. Interviews and interpersonal relationships with 78 women are analyzed. The interviews aim at providing individual narratives of these women concerning the experience of violence and the process afterwards. In addition, interpersonal communications with the shelter staff are also added to the analysis. It was understood that the subjective experiences of the women are not wholly understandable under a fixed womanhood categorization of gender
they are mostly underestimated in the existing system of structure
and that the constraints specific to each woman&rsquo
s case combined with the rigid structural practices in the aftermath of violence entrap many women in situations difficult to escape, and the &lsquo
mediating role&rsquo
of the structures and individuals are disempowering for the women.
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McCoy, Vicki J. "Alice Hamilton the making of a feminist-pragmatist rhetor /." unrestricted, 2005. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-11162005-153338/.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2005.Title from title screen. James Darsey, committee chair; David Cheshier, Mary Stuckey, committee members. Electronic text (237 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed July 12, 2007. Includes bibliographical references.
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Polychronakos, Helen. "Reflecting Woolf : Virginia Woolf's feminist politics and modernist aesthetics." Thesis, McGill University, 1999. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=30201.
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No study of Virginia Woolf can do justice to the complexity of her life and work without taking into account the numerous contradictions present in her thought. Though Woolf is recognized as a revolutionary contributor to the development of modernism, it is also important to remember that she was born in 1882 and that the nineteenth century also left its mark on her. The first chapter will examine this double sensibility. The second chapter will trace the development of Woolf's modernist aesthetic. She was obviously rebelling against the realism valued by her Victorian and Edwardian predecessors when she conceived of a literary style capable of abstracting from purely formal elements a more "profound reality" than that captured by objective and representational descriptions. Despite this revolutionary tendency, she constructs a hierarchy of "realities" that is somewhat elitist in its mysticism and runs counter to the revolutionary feminist and Marxist thought evident in so much of her work. The last chapter will examine the contradictions that riddle Woolf's feminist writings.
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Kollmann, Elizabeth. "Jane Austen re-visited a feminist evaluation of the longevity and relevance of the Austen Oeuvre." Thesis, University of Port Elizabeth, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/299.
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Although many might consider Jane Austen to be outdated and clichéd, her work retains an undying appeal. During the last decade the English-speaking world has experienced an Austen renaissance as it has been treated to a number of film and television adaptations of her work, including Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility. Film critics such as Bill De Lapp (1996) and Sherry Dean (1996) have commented on the phenomenal response these productions received and have been amazed by Austen’s ability to compete with current movie scripts. The reasons for viewers and readers enjoying and identifying with Austen’s fiction are numerous. Readers of varying persuasions have different agendas and hence different views and interpretations of Austen. This thesis follows a gynocritical approach and applies a feminist point of view when reading and discussing Austen. Austen’s novels - Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion – are re-read and reevaluated from a feminist perspective in order to call attention to Austen’s awareness of women’s second-class position in her society. Women’s experiences in Austen’s time are compared to women’s experiences in society today in order to illustrate, in some way, the tremendous progress the feminist movement has made. In addition, by examining what Austen reveals about the material reality of women in her time, it is possible to explore the legacy that modern women have inherited. Literary critics such as André Brink (1998), Claudia Johnson (1988), and Gilbert and Gubar (1979) believe Austen to create feminist awareness in her novels. There are critics, however, who do not view Austen as necessarily feminist in her writing. Nancy Armstrong writes in Desire and Domestic Fiction (1987) that Austen’s objective is not a critique of the Abstract iv old order but rather a redefinition of wealth and status. In Culture and Imperialism (1993) Edward Said implicates Austen in the rationale for imperial expansion, while Barbara Seeber argues in “The Schooling of Marianne Dashwood” (1999) that Austen’s texts should be understood as dialogic. Others, such as Patricia Beer (1974), believe Austen’s fiction primarily to be about marriage since all her novels end with matrimony. My own reading of Austen takes into consideration her social milieu and patriarchal inheritance. It argues that Austen writes within the framework of patriarchy (for example by marrying off her heroines) possibly because she is aware that in order to survive as a woman (writer) in a male-favouring world and in a publishing world dominated by men, her critique needs to be covert. If read from a feminist perspective, Austen’s fiction draws our attention to issues such as women’s (lack of) education, the effects of not being given access to knowledge, marriage as a patriarchal institution of entrapment, and women’s identity. Her fiction reveals the effects of educating women for a life of domesticity, and illustrates that such an education is biased, leaving women powerless and without any means of self-protection in a male-dominated world. Although contemporary women in the Western world mostly enjoy equal education opportunities to men, they suffer the consequences of a legacy which denied them access to a proper education. Feminist writers such as Flis Henwood (2000) show that contemporary women believe certain areas of expertise belong to men exclusively. Others such as Linda Nochlin (1994) reveal that because women did not have access to higher education for so many years, they failed to produce great women artists like Chaucer or Cézanne. Austen’s fiction also exposes the economic and social system (of which education constitutes a major part) for enforcing marriage and for enfeebling women. In addition, it illustrates some of the realities and pitfalls of marriage. While Austen only subtly refers to Abstract v women’s disempowerment within marriage, contemporary feminist scholars such as Germaine Greer (1999) and Arnot, Araújo, Deliyanni, and Ivinson (2000) explicitly warn women that marriage is a patriarchal institution of entrapment and that it often leaves women feeling unfulfilled. The issue of marriage as a patriarchal institution has been thought important and has been addressed by feminists because it contributes to women’s powerlessness. Feminist scholars today find it imperative to expose all forms of power in order to eradicate women’s subordination. bell hooks comments in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (2000) on the importance of revealing unfair power relations in order to eliminate oppression of any kind. Austen does not necessarily express the wish to eradicate forms of power or oppression in her novels. Yet, if we read her work from a feminist point of view, we are made aware of the social construction of power. From her fiction we can infer that male power is enshrined in the very structure of society, and this makes us aware of women’s lack of power in her time. Austen’s novels, however, are not merely novels of powerlessness but of empowerment. By creating rounded women characters and by giving them the power to judge, to refuse and to write, Austen challenges the stereotyped view of woman as either overpowering monster or weak and fragile angel. In addition, her novels seem to question women’s inherited identity and to suggest that qualities such as emotionality and mothering are not natural aspects of being a woman. Because she suggests ways in which women might empower themselves, albeit within patriarchal parameters, one could argue that she contributes, in a small way, to the transformation of existing power relations and to the eradication of women’s servile position in society.
35
Kincade, Therese Supple. "You've come a long way, baby? : a feminist rhetorical analysis of More magazine /." View online, 2009. http://repository.eiu.edu/theses/docs/32211131566311.pdf.
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Azevedo, Célia Cristina de [UNESP]. "Conduzir o banquete da vida: a presença feminina na obra de Muriel Spark." Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/94129.
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azevedo_cc_me_assis.pdf: 1000048 bytes, checksum: e139ece903eccd25566cd36fa1a96e7d (MD5)Constitui objetivo principal deste trabalho a observação da presença feminina nos romances The Driver.s Seat e Symposium, da escritora escocesa Muriel Spark, como fator que possibilite traduzir a realidade das mulheres que buscam autonomia e que, conseqüentemente, ofereça uma relação entre esta atitude e as reações sociais que causam. Com base nos estudos que tratam de questões identitárias (dentro dos estudos de gênero, especificamente, a crítica feminista) será averiguada a recorrência de alguns temas. Dentre eles, destacam-se a morte, a loucura e o aparente controle da situação que, de alguma forma, revelam problemas, conflitos e aflições das personagens estudadas. No primeiro capítulo, situamos a autora com relação ao movimento das mulheres, com o objetivo de, ao contextualizá-la, ter uma melhor compreensão de sua obra. Assim, observam-se as características mais evidentes de seu trabalho com relação às práticas das mulheres em um plano global. Dentre as questões que marcam os estudos da escrita das mulheres, no segundo capítulo serão abordadas algumas linhas críticas que por ela se interessam e a diferenciam da escrita dos homens. A proposta da crítica centrada na mulher (ginocrítica) trata da diferença a partir da ênfase no corpo, na linguagem, na psique e na cultura das mulheres. À luz destas críticas, será realizada uma análise preliminar dos romances sparkianos. No terceiro capítulo, as questões de gênero passam a ser discutidas como fator de análise que prevêem diferenças internas ao grupo das mulheres, bem como semelhanças com trabalhos masculinos. Este aspecto do gênero ocasiona uma leitura não mais binária e hierarquizada de textos, mas que permita às diferenças tornarem-se fator de liberdade e autonomia. Finalmente, a contribuição da autora para a literatura e sua relação com o movimento das mulheres constitui objeto de breves comentários.
The main aim of this work is to observe the female presence in Muriel Spark.s novels The Driver.s Seat and Symposium as a factor that can translate the reality of women who look for autonomy and that also offers, as a result, a relation between this attitude and the social reactions they cause. Based on studies that deal with identity matters (within gender studies, specifically, the feminist criticism) the recurring use of certain themes will be verified. Among them we can point out death, madness and an apparent control on the situation which in some way reveal problems, conflicts and afflictions of the observed characters. In the first chapter, the author is placed within the women.s movement as a way to have a better comprehension of her work by putting her in a specific context. Then, her work.s most evident characteristics are observed in relation to women.s practices as a whole. Among those questions that mark women.s writing studies, in the second chapter will be mentioned some critical trends interested in those writings and which differentiate them from men.s writing. The proposal of the criticism centered in the woman (gynocritics) deals with the difference emphasizing the women.s body, language, psyche and culture. Based on these critics it will be made a preliminary analysis of Spark.s novels. In the third chapter, gender matters begin to be discussed as an analytic factor which foresees internal differences in women.s group as well as similarities to men.s works. This gender aspect causes a reading no longer binary and based on hierarchies, but one that allows the differences to become a factor of freedom and autonomy. Finally, the author.s contribution to Literature and her relation to the women.s movement will be subject to brief comments.
37
Donovan, Kathleen McNerney. "Coming to voice: Native American literature and feminist theory." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/186769.
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This dissertation argues that numerous parallels exist between Native American literature, especially that by women, and contemporary feminist literary and cultural theories, as both seek to undermine the hierarchy of voice: who can speak? what can be said? when? how? under what conditions? After the ideas find voice, what action is permitted to women? All of these factors influence what African American cultural theorist bell hooks terms the revolutionary gesture of "coming to voice." These essays explore the ways Native American women have voiced their lives through the oral tradition and through writing. For Native American women of mixed blood, the crucial search for identity and voice must frequently be conducted in the language of the colonizer, English, and in concert with a concern for community and landscape. Among the topics addressed in the study are (1) the negotiation of identity of those who must act in more than one culture; (2) ethnocentrism in ethnographic reports of tribal women's lives; (3) misogyny in a "canonical" Native American text; (4) the ethics of intercultural literary collaboration; (5) commonality in inter-cultural texts; and (6) transformation through rejection of Western privileging of opposition, polarity, and hierarchy.
38
d'Esterre, Elaine, and mikewood@deakin edu au. "Feminist poetics: Symbolism in an emblematic journey reflecting self and vision." Deakin University. School of Literary and Communication Studies, 1999. http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au./adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20050902.123532.
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My thesis tilled Feminist Poetics: Symbolism in an Emblematic Journey Reflecting Self and Vision, consists of thirty oil paintings on canvas, several preparatory sketches and drawings in different media on paper, and is supported and elucidated by an exegesis. The paintings on unframed canvases reveal mise en scènes and emblems that present to the viewer a drama about links between identities, differences, relationships and vision. Images of my daughter, friends and myself fill single canvases, suites of paintings, diptyches and triptychs. The impetus behind my research derives from my recognition of the cultural means by which women's experience is excluded from a representational norm or ideal.
I use time-honoured devices, such as, illusionist imagery, aspects of portraiture, complex fractured atmospheric space, paintings and drawings within paintings, mirrors and reflective surfaces, shadows and architectural devices. They structure my compositions in a way that envelops the viewer in my internal world of ideas. Some of these features function symbolically, as emblems. A small part of the imagery relies on verisimilitude, such as my hands and their shadow and my single observing eye enclosed by my glasses. What remains is a fantasy world, seen by the image of my other eye, or faction, based on memories and texts explaining the significance of ancient Minoan symbols.
In my paintings, I base the subjects of this fantasy on my memories of the Knossos Labyrinth and matristic symbols, such as the pillar, snake, blood, eye and horn. They suggest the presence of a ritual where initiates descended into the adyton (holy of holies) or sunken areas in the labyrinth. The paintings attempt a rewriting of sacrality and gender by adopting the symbolism of death, transformation and resurrection in the adyton. The significance of my emblematic imagery is that it constructs a foundation narrative about vision and insight.
I sought symbolic attributes shared by European oil painting and Minoan antiquity. Both traditions share symbolic attributes with male dying gods in Greek myths and Medusa plays a central part in this linkage. I argue that her attributes seem identical to both those of the dying gods and Minoan goddesses. In the Minoan context these symbols suggest metaphors for the female body and the mother and daughter blood line. When the symbols align with the beheaded Medusa in a patriarchal context, both her image and her attributes represent cautionary tales about female sexuality that have repercussions for aspects of vision. In Renaissance and Baroque oil painting Medusa's image served as a vehicle for an allegory that personified the triumph of reason over the senses. In the twentieth century, the vagina dentata suggests her image, a personified image of irrational emotion that some male Surrealists celebrated as a muse. She is implicated in the male gaze as a site of castration and her representation suggests a symbolic form pertaining to perspective. Medusa's image, its negative sexual and violent connotations, seemed like a keystone linking iconographic codes in European oil painting to Minoan antiquity.
I fused aspects of matristic Minoan antiquity with elements of European oil paintings in the form of disguised attribute gestures, objects and architectural environments. I selected three paintings, Dürer's Setf-Portrait, 1500, Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1630 and Velazquez's Las Meniruis, 1656 as models because 1 detected echoes of Minoan symbolism in the attributes of their subjects and backgrounds. My revision of Medusa's image by connecting it to Minoan antiquity established a feminist means of representation in the largely male-dominated tradition of oil painting. These paintings also suggested painting techniques that were useful to me.
Through my representations of my emblematic journey I questioned the narrow focus placed on phallic symbols when I explored how their meanings may have been formed within a matricentric culture. I retained the key symbols of the patriarchal foundation narratives about vision but removed images of violence and their link to desire and replaced it with a ritual form of symbolic death. I challenged the binary oppositional defined Self as opposed to Other by constructing a complex, fluid Self that interacts with others. A multi-directional gaze between subjects, viewers and artist replaces the male gaze.
Different qualities of paint, coagulation and random flow form a blood symbolism. Many layers of paint retaining some aspects of the Gaze and Glance, fuse and separate intermittently to construct and define form. The sense of motion and fluidity constructs a form of multi-faceted selves.
The supporting document, the exegesis is in two parts. In the first part, I discuss the Minoan sources of my iconography and the symbolic gender specific meanings suggested by particular symbols and their changed meanings in European oil painting, I explain how I integrate Minoan symbols into European oil paintings as a form of disguised symbolism. In the second part I explain how my alternative use of symbolism and paint alludes to a feminist poetic.
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Janowick, Tara. "Feminist discourse across the waves : a rhetorical criticism of first, second and third wave women's discourse /." Available to subscribers only, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1559850881&sid=10&Fmt=2&clientId=1509&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Farfan, Penelope. "Ibsen's female characters and the feminist problematic." Thesis, McGill University, 1988. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=59605.
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This thesis locates Ibsen within the intellectual context pertaining to gender that is provided by such influential nineteenth-century texts as Mill's The Subjection of Women and Bachofen's Das Mutterrecht, both of which seemingly feminist works in actuality foreground women only for their importance in the production of better-quality sons who will ensure the endurance of the patriarchy. The attraction of feminists to the dramas of a playwright who avowedly wrote from this patriarchal standpoint is elucidated by a consideration of the appropriation of the woman-centered texts of patriarchal "feminism" by recent feminists seeking material to reinforce their own movement. The apparently paradoxical project of the analysis of three Ibsen characters, Nora Helmer, Rebekka West and Hedda Gabler, in terms of contemporary feminist literary theory suggests a parallel means of appropriation. These potentially redefined female characters are afforded an added dimension of reality by their embodiment by actresses in stage performances that allows theatre history to be related to real-life history, in which, contemporaneously, nineteenth-century women were beginning to take part.
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Liladhar, Janine. "Third wave feminist analysis : an approach to the exploration of discourses of femininity." Thesis, Sheffield Hallam University, 2001. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/20746/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis suggests that whilst feminist theory has been, and remains, a significant political influence which has contributed to wholesale legislative and social changes, the climate in which this theory circulates is now markedly different from that of the 1960s, when Second Wave Feminism began. Consequently, a new form of feminist theory is developing, which attempts to respond to an increasingly more complex situation, without losing sight of the many important elements of the earlier work. This thesis is situated within this movement and I term the approach it takes Third Wave Feminist Analysis. Third Wave Feminism seeks to challenge sexism and to explore notions of femininity as they are manifested in texts, looking for both the restrictions these seek to impose on women and for the potential these offer for liberatory ways of behaving and being. As this reference to texts might suggest, Third Wave Feminist Analysis is primarily a form of literary criticism. However, it does not only draw on work from that discipline. Instead, it employs ideas and approaches used by feminists working in other fields, in order to formulate a more comprehensive analysis than was generally found in earlier feminist literary criticism. Moreover, the thesis is not limited to an exploration of only literary texts but also explores other cultural forms. This diversity is important because constructions of knowledge and subjectivity are enabled by all types of representations. Thus, interdisciplinarity moves analysis on from a straightforward identification of the Tacts' of literary cultures to an exploration of cultural identities, a step which is assisted by Third Wave Feminist Analysis's insistence on the importance of extra-textual features, including the analyst's own background knowledge of the society in which the texts being explored are produced and interpreted. The object of this emphasis on the cultural and the societal is a more equitable world; in other words, I am claiming that Third Wave Feminist Analysis aids feminist praxis. As part of this attempt, Third Wave Feminist Analysis attempts to interrogate the ways in which femininity is defined in the case studies explored. In this thesis three texts in circulation in the 1990s are examined: Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (1992); The Rector's Wife by Joanna Trollope (1991); and the TV Soap Opera archetype, the Soap Queen. As part of this examination, femininity is understood as one of a number of inter-connecting discourses which not only reflect but shape gender. Thus, discourses disseminate social and institutionalised values and also create them, influencing people's behaviours and attitudes, although individuals do have the potential to resist or challenge this influence. A recurrent discursive theme in the three case studies explored here is the association of femininity with the 'private' or domestic realm of home and family. In many ways, this association is rooted in an outdated notion of femininity; the Victorian concept of the feminine domestic ideal. To this extent, this thesis argues that its case studies are implicated in the promulgation of anachronistic discourses. However, all three texts also subvert this ideal in a number of ways and the ways in which this subversion occurs are also explored.
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Sloan, Jacquelyn Le Gall. "Oppositional structure and design in D.H. Lawrence's culture critique : a feminist re-reading /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9465.
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Di, Guglielmo Antoinette Christine. "Sex and the city: A postmodern reading." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2007. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3239.
Full textAbstract:
Sex and the City was a television show that aired on Home Box Office from 1998-2004. The tv show succeeded because of feminist's wanting a modern woman's drama rich in episodes about consumption, women's sexuality, financial independence, fashion and contemporary relationship dynamics. The characters captured and perpetuated just that. The modern take on the ideologies that drive women's perception of personal fulfillment, body image, consumerism, social behavior and values and romantic relationship dynamics made this tv show the phenomena that it became.
44
Ensor, Ronda L. "Romaine Brooks embracing diversity /." unrestricted, 2008. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04192008-104844/.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2008.Title from file title page. Maria Gindhart, committee chair; Susan Richmond, Akela Reason, committee members. Electronic text (82 p. : ill. (chiefly col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed July 14, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-82).
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Kossick, Kaye. "The poetics of difference : woman, death, and gender in the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/862.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis considers the representation of women and the gender principles in the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins and situates his perceptions of "masculinity" and "femininity" within a cultural, historical and literary context. A selection of his less canonical poems and prose is discussed and re-evaluated in the light of feminist and psychoanalytieal theory. In particular, the binarisms that fracture the representation of woman in Victorian art and literature and the issue of woman's alterity and subsequent association with death are identified and analysed. The thesis is organized into a tripartite introductory section, ten chapters and a conclusion. The first section of the introduction offers a broadly-based sociohistorical and theoretical examination of the gender principles and their origin. Part 11 of the introduction focuýSp s on Hopkins and his society, examining Victorian cultural views of gender diff6rence and the construction of masculinity. The third introductory section gives specific attention to Hopkins's theory of creativity and its relation to the gcndering of genius and aesthetic production. Chapters 1,2, and 3, offer detailed critical consideration of the deep psychosexual ambivalence towards woman, and the carnal materiality she embodies, in Hopkins's early poems: "ll Mystico", "A Voice from the World", "Hcaven-Havcn", "I must hunt down the prize", and "A Vision of the Mermaids". Chapter 4 gives a contextualized consideration of asceticism as an expression of the masculine will-to-power, and examines Hopkins's attraction to violence and the suffering of martyrs. The following three chapters explore the themes of death, violence and martyrdom, with particular emphasis on the issues of female sexual purity and masculine aesthetic vifility in Hopkins's verse drama on the murder of St. Winefred, St. Winefred's Well, and its accompanying chorus: "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo". The final three chapters of the thesis elucidate Hopkins's aesthetic and personal response to the Virgin Mary and the "feminine" pyschological characteristics and virtues she represents. Chapter 8 assesses the status of the Roman Catholic Church and the Virgin Mary in nineteenth century England, and also suggests that the image of the Madonna and the fictive "angel in the house" arc symbolically conjoined in opposition to the Tennysonian view of "Mother Nature" as a monstrous destroyer. This is followed, in Chapter 9, by a consideration of the view of Mary presented in Hopkins's prose. Chapter 10, the final chapter, presents a detailed analysis of Hopkins's Marian poem, "The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air we Breathe", in which the ambivalence and anxiety that surround his concepts of selfhood, masculinity and the body of the mother arc examined. In conclusion, I argue that Hopkins's aesthetic and spiritual vocations are intimately linked with his notion of actual selfhood and are subject to the profoundly damaging influence of conflicting role expectations and mythic paradigms of masculinity and femininity which cannot be reconciled, either within the individual psyche, or in the society in which they are nurtured.
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Katona, Leah Andrea. "The Use of Violence as Feminist Rhetoric: Third-Wave Feminism in Tarantino's Kill Bill Films." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2008. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2759.
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For the purpose of this thesis, the main focus of the feminist rhetorical criticism method was specifically linked to gender-related power inequities. This method was especially appropriate for the analysis of how film violence is used as a feminist rhetorical strategy in the Kill Bill films. This thesis is more closely aligned with challenging rhetorical standards as it sought to identify feminist counter positions of rhetoric in film violence.
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Haley, Jennifer M. "Encomium, agency, and subversion : the feminist recovery of baby books as women's domestic rhetoric." Virtual Press, 2007. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1370879.
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In this dissertation I conduct a feminist recovery of the baby book as one kind of ordinary women's domestic rhetoric. I analyze the ways in which the baby book's evolution reflects changes in cultural practices over time and the means by which the baby book constitutes acts of potentially subversive agency in its power to resist patriarchal structuring. I classify the baby book within the ancient rhetorical genre of encomium, allowing us to perceive how a culture, situated in time and place, values the perception and presentation of an infant and the culturally-assigned role of the mother in the formation of that presentation. The genre of encomium must be redefined as an ongoing, dynamic, adaptive genre.I conduct an interpretation of more than the mere artifact, but of the production and experience of that artifact as well. Thus, this study establishes a unique and significant role for a de-reading methodology as a viable introduction and theoretical foundation to approaching domestic texts, involving self figuration on the part of the researcher and an empathic approach to reading that privileges a loving, appreciative standpoint.My analysis of over fifty baby books from 1885 through 2007 reveals that the role of the baby books and the role of the mother are assigned, to a great extent, by the definition of "family" and shaped by socioeconomic forces. Mothers subvert or comply with the directives from the publishers, thereby implying rejection of or compliance with the maternal script through such strategies as appropriation of space, inclusion of artifacts, and omission. This discovery expands our notion of agency in terms of the power of form, the role of the audience, and the connections to material and symbolic cultural context.My research establishes a line of inquiry into the material practices of production and simultaneously brings into view an array of texts that have been outside the conventional purview of rhetorical scholarship. For those who want to recover women's rhetoric and to extend an understanding of rhetorical praxis, baby books are a valuable primary and, until now, untapped source, as well as a "new" type of rhetorical evidence.Department of English
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James, Sarah J. "Not without my body : feminist science fiction and embodied futures." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/14613.
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This study explores the interaction between feminist science fiction and feminist theory, focusing on the body and embodiment. Specifically, it aims to demonstrate that feminist science fiction novels of the 1990s offer an excellent platform for exploring the critical theories of the body put forward by Judith Butler in particular, and other feminist/queer theorists in general. The thesis opens with a brief history of science fiction's depiction of the body and feminist science fiction's subversions and rewritings of this, as well as an overview of Judith Butler's theories relating to the body and embodiment. It then considers a wide range of feminist science fiction novels from the 1990s, focusing on four key areas; bodies materialised outside patriarchal systems in women-only or women-ruled worlds, alien bodies, cyborg bodies and bodies in cyberspace. An in-depth analysis of the selected texts reveals that they have important contributions to make to the consideration of bodies as they develop and expand the issues raised by theorists such as Butler, Elisabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva.
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Samuelsson, Mathilda. "Shakespeare’s Representation of Women : A Feminist Reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-32509.
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Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a nuanced play that illustrates revenge, madness, and complex relationships. The paper proposes a feminist reading of Hamlet and analyses the play’s central characters, Gertrude, Ophelia, Hamlet, Claudius, Polonius, and Laertes, and their behaviour under the influence of a patriarchal society. Furthermore, the study will focus on the ways in which Shakespeare represents Ophelia and Gertrude in the play. The study does a feminist reading of the play to investigate how Ophelia’s and Gertrude’s actions and behaviour are affected by the contemporary patriarchal society, and how it affects the male characters’ choices. This research allows readers to interpret female characters in several ways, and to see how women are forced to act and make choices in a contemporary patriarchy to be able to influence societal structures.
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Humphrey, Judith Ann. "Liberating images : a feminist analysis of the girls' school-story." [n.p.], 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/.
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