Dissertations / Theses: 'FICTION / Contemporary Woen'

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Chivers, Marian. "The warrior woman in contemporary romance fiction." Thesis, Federation University Australia, 2014. http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/96448.

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Master of Arts by Research
The warrior woman is a recurring figure in myth and history. She could be seen as an ambiguous character as she challenges patriarchal assumptions about gender roles with her capability for masculine aggression while being recognisably female and “feminine”. In the new millennium, she has reappeared as the action heroine in films, televisions, comics and video games and she has also infiltrated romance fiction, a genre often considered one of the most conservative genres in terms of gender roles and equality. The Silhouette Bombshell line was created by the multinational publisher Harlequin to capitalise on the popularity of “action heroines” in popular culture. The romance genre, perhaps the most derided of all scorned literature, is often accused, particularly by feminist critics, of reinforcing the patriarchal structure of society. This thesis examines how this character type in romance fiction can provide a means to question and even subvert traditional or patriarchal gender expectations. It will undertake the close examination of the first six books of the Athena Force series, which were published in 2004-2005 as part of the Silhouette Bombshell line. Both the warrior woman and the romance genre are defined and historically reviewed, together with an outline of the workings of the contemporary romance industry with regard to category, genre and publishing guidelines. There follows a detailed analysis of the warrior woman character as she appears in the Athena Force series with regard to agency, violence, sisterhood, professional career, performance of femininity and romantic relationships. This study of the warrior woman in romance fiction challenges many critical and social preconceptions about the romance genre in general, and its treatment of gender roles in particular

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Al-Harby, Nesreen Abdullah. "Veiled pearls : women in Saudi Arabia in contemporary fiction." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/42480.

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In comparison to other Arab/Muslim women, Saudi women are underexamined and/or often misrepresented. This thesis resists Saudi women’s obscurity and sheds light on their struggle to overcome domination and achieve emancipation. It analyses Hilary Mantel’s Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988), Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh (2008), Zoe Ferraris’s trilogy, Finding Nouf (2009), City of Veils (2011), and Kingdom of Strangers (2012), and Alys Einion’s Inshallah (2014). The thesis examines the significance of pre- and post-9/11 political and social contexts of representations of women in Saudi Arabia, compares depictions of Western (English, Welsh, and American) and Saudi women, and scrutinizes the effect of genre (the Gothic, the thriller, detective fiction and Chick Lit) on representations of women in a Saudi context. It draws on Arab/Muslim feminism to assess the degree to which the novels reproduce or challenge prevailing discourses of gender and Orientalism. This thesis argues that, through their employment of genre, the writers examined highlight women’s injustices. It contends that, although the novels analysed indicate that white women are not less oppressed than Saudi women, they provide an Orientalist representation of Saudi Arabia as a fearful space. Finally, this thesis demonstrates that Alsanea is the only writer that provides Saudi self-representation. However, she falls into self-Orientalism by restricting her depiction of Saudi women to the social elite. This thesis sheds light on Western representations of women in Saudi Arabia, broadens the very limited number of feminist studies of Saudi women, paves the road for more studies of gender in Saudi Arabia and provides much-needed material for international scholars interested in investigating the lives of women in Saudi Arabia.

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Vogt-William, Christine Florence. "Women and transculturality in contemporary fiction by South Asian diasporic women writers." Thesis, University of York, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.489210.

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My thesis investigates how transculturality is articulated and theorised in contemporary fictional works from the 1990s onwards by South Asian diasporic women writers from England, Canada and America. Using the paradigm of transculturality, diasporic and postcolonial theories as well as gender concepts, the thesis takes a broadly chronological approach in addressing South Asian diasporic female identificatory processes in South Asian women's cultural production.

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Graham-Bertolini, Alison. "Home of the Brave: Vigilante Women in Contemporary American Fiction." LSU, 2009. http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04142009-191748/.

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Vigilante literature tells the stories of individuals who rectify injustice by taking matters into their own hands. Examples of this plot can be found in American literature dating from colonial times, when settlers made an effort to preserve their moral code without the aid of an established justice system. The popularity of this theme finds further currency in tales of the frontier and the Wild West, and more recently, Hollywood has capitalized on its popularity by drawing from the myth of American pioneer culture and the theme of the lone avenger. This project identifies an analogous theme in contemporary fiction by women writers, who in the twentieth century began frequently employing female avatars of vigilante justice to challenge (in an illegal or extralegal fashion) those who violate the economic, social, or political rights of women. This dissertation analyzes a collection of novels and short stories by contemporary American women who employ the avatar of the vigilante woman, and demonstrates how female avengers, warriors, bandits, and killers extend and amend the vigilante tradition in the United States.

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Strazds, Robert. "Contemporary Russian Soviet women's fiction, 1939-1989." Thesis, McGill University, 1991. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=60088.

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A number of critics have observed that there is no tradition of women's writing in Russian. The writings of Lydia Chukovskaya, I. Grekova and Tatiana Tolstaya--the principle subjects of the present work--partially contradict this perception, and defy the restrictions imposed by ideological authoritarianism and of gender.
All three writers describe aspects of the Soviet, and human, condition, in unique ways. Lydia Chukovskaya's fiction portrays women, paralyzed by the scope of the Stalinist terror, who attempt to survive with dignity and accept their individual responsibility. I. Grekova writes about single women who maintain their autonomy through a balance between their professional and domestic lives. Tatiana Tolstaya's characters inhabit an atmosphere of lyrical alienation from which there is no exit.
This study examines in detail the work of these writers in the context of other Soviet men and women writers, as well as in the light of Western, feminist thought.

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Nicol, Rhonda M. Harris Charles B. "The spaces between feminism and postmodernism in contemporary women's fiction /." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 2004. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p3196671.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2004.
Title from title page screen, viewed May 23, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Charles Harris (chair), Christopher Breu, Janice Neuleib. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-163) and abstract. Also available in print.

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李仕芬 and Shi-fan Lee. "The male characters in the fiction of contemporary Taiwanese women writers." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1997. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31235979.

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Lau, Lisa. "Women's voices : the presentation of women in the contemporary fiction of south Asian women." Thesis, Durham University, 2002. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2021/.

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This thesis contains a detailed study of the genre of contemporary South Asian women's writings in English. It is still a relatively young literary subculture, and thus the majority of the works here discussed are those produced from the 1980s onwards. The study takes into account the postcolonial legacy of a culturally, racially and religiously diverse South Asia as well as the current social changes and upheavals in the region. The study encompasses the works of those writing both from within and without South Asia, noting the different social patterns emerging as a result of the geographical locations of the authors. The research primarily investigates issues pertinent to these writers; as women writers, as South Asian writers, as South Asian women writers, and as South Asian women writers writing in English. One key issue is the negotiation by these writers between the English language and the South Asian reality. Because it is literature written by the women of a traditionally proudly patriarchal society where the position of women has mostly been one of subservience, another form of negotiation in the literature is that between the centre and the periphery, the Self and the Other. In the course of this study, it will be seen that South Asian women writers have carved out a space for themselves on the literary scene, and staked an intellectual, literary and emotional territory of their own. The thesis focuses in particular on the representation of women, within the genre as well as in other contexts. Their literature creates images and identities of and for South Asia, South Asians, and South Asian women. The diasporic writers in particular play a vital role in the promotion and distribution of these images. The research also considers how readers respond to this literature and how publishers market the same.

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Karekla, Melina. "Women look into love : reimaginings of heterosexual love in contemporary women's fiction." Thesis, Durham University, 2013. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7742/.

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This thesis explores how contemporary women writers write about heterosexual love, considering not only the ways it has been implicated in patriarchal models and traditional romance plots, but also its portrayal in light of developments in feminism and fiction in the 1990s and 2000s. The thesis examines Carol Shields’s The Republic of Love (1992), Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992), Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1993), Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup (2001), Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto (2001), Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (2000) and Doris Lessing’s Love, Again (1995). In this study it emerges that as well as illustrating continuities, the scope of the treatment of love is opened up further in recent fiction as aspects like age or social, economic and historical factors are centralised and considered in interesting ways. The thesis also identifies some positive approaches to heterosexual love, as in, for example, the emphasis on men’s capacity for emotions. However, this is not always the case, as a writer like Lessing further develops a vision of love without providing an affirmative view. Thus, the contemporary women writers’ work can be said to contribute to understandings of heterosexual love on many different levels, even as feminist criticisms of repressive, patriarchal forms of romantic relationship continue to remain relevant.

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Henninger, Katherine. "Ordering the façade : photography and the politics of representation in contemporary Southern women's fiction /." Digital version accessible at:, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.

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Boettcher, Anna Margarete. "Through Women's Eyes: Contemporary Women's Fiction about the Old West." PDXScholar, 1995. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4966.

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The myth of the West is still very much alive in contemporary America. Lately, there has been a resurgence of new Western movies, TV series, and fiction. Until recently the West has been the exclusive domain of the quintessential masculine man. Women characters have featured only in the margins of the Western hero's tale. Contemporary Western fiction by women, however, offers new perspectives. Women's writing about the Old and New West introduces strong female protagonists and gives voice to characters that are muted or ignored by traditional Western literature and history. Western scholarship has largely been polarized by two approaches. First, the myth and symbol school of Turner, Smith, and followers celebrated American exceptionalism and rugged male individualism on the Western frontier. Second, the reaction against these theories draws attention to the West's legacy of racism, sexism and violence. The purpose of the present study is to collapse these theoretical fences and open a dialogue between conflicting theoretical positions and contemporay Western fiction. Molly Gloss's 1989 The Jump-Off Creek and Karen Joy Fowler's 1991 Sarah Canary selfcritically re-write the Old West. This study has attempted to explore the following questions: How can one re-write history in the context of a postmodern culture? How can "woman," the quintessential "Other" escape a modernist history (and thus avoid charges of essentialism) when she has not been in this history to begin with? In this study I analyze how these two contemporary feminist authors, Molly Gloss, and Karen Joy Fowler, face the dual challenge of writing themselves into a history that has traditionally excluded them, while at the same time deconstructing this very historical concept of the West. Fowler's and Gloss's use of diverse narrative strategies to upset a monolithic concept of history-- emphasizing the importance of multiple stories of the Old West-- is discussed in detail.

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Saar, Amy L. "Solitary Women Wanderers: Urban Stories of Resistance in Contemporary Spanish Women's Narrative." Thesis, view abstract or download file of text, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3113027.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 213-219). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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Earle, Monalesia. "Misdirection : representations of queer women of colour in contemporary fiction and graphic narratives." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 2016. http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/196/.

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This thesis examines the notion of misdirection and queer women of colour representation in contemporary fiction and graphic narratives. Its aim is to analyse the gaps in discursive debates that overlook or minimise queer women of colour subjectivities. In so doing, it develops new lines of critical enquiry that bring into dialogue recurring themes of race, gender, class, homophobia, sexual violence and trauma. The thesis discusses five texts published between 1982 and 2008, opening up critical pathways into the interrogation of intersecting oppressions that limit and/or completely eradicate the voices and realities of queer women of colour. Developing the notion of misdirection as both an analytical and performative tool that problematises ‘difference’, this thesis shows that through contemporary framings, queer women of colour representation in literary fiction and comics/graphic narratives can be liberated from the cultural hegemony of whitecentric paradigms. By adding the visual dimension of graphic narratives/comics to unpack the sometimes explicit, but more often than not, coded messages regarding the subaltern in literary fiction, this thesis places within a contemporary context trauma narratives that fail to adequately address the unique experiences of queer women of colour.

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Hipkins, Danielle E. "Unmanned territories : contemporary Italian women writers and the intertextual space of fantastic fiction." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2000. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/50761/.

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Thethesis examines how somewomen writers of fiction relate to the question of literary tradition in the 1980sand 1990s. Contemporary literary practice appears to be dominated by postmodern anxiety about a state of 'late arrival' as writers. I wish to explore how womenwriters' experience of the weight of literary predecessors is affected by their different subject position. I chooseto site this study within the area of fantastic fiction for several reasons. The fantastic tradition in Italy was largely overlooked by the critics until the 1980s- a factor which has exacerbated the neglect ofwomen's contribution to it. More importantly the fantastic is now vaunted by contemporary criticism as an area conducive to transgressive challenges to traditional literary practice, particularly for women writers. At the same time, however, the traditional tropes ofthe predominantly male-authored canon of fantastic literature offer a problematic and challenging range of gender stereotypes for female authors to 'rewrite'. I choose to focus on the notion of space both literally and metaphorically in the development ofthis thesis. In the opening chapter I tease out the threads which connect space, Italianwomenwriters and the fantastic. I beginby showing that the fantastic itselfis often construed spatially as a genre and offers potential for spatial innovation. This suggests a subtler way of looking at womenwriters' use of literary models, which avoids falling into simplistic analyses of gender portrayal. I then outline the position of womenwriters in Italy in relation to the genre ofthe fantastic. I suggest that the missing sense of a womenwriters' tradition in this genre maybe one reason whythe fantastic is used to explore self-consciously the relation betweenthe female writer and the male authored text. Finally I showhow the fantastic offerswomen a space in which to re-write, namely through their manipulation ofthe literal and metaphorical spaces ofthe text. The following two chapters execute this study with close reference to texts by four authors. The second chapter is dedicated to the early fiction ofPaola Capriolo whoseexperience ofliterary tradition as a particularly claustrophobic space inspired this thesis. I agree with the widely held viewthat her use of a Gothic-oriented fantastic, which privileges a world of enclosure in labyrinthine interiors, reflects a typically postmodern anxiety about the end ofliterature. I argue howeverthat the anxiety ofthe writer's relation to literature is more closely linked to her identification with a predominantly male literary tradition. This gives her writingsome interesting links with muchearlier examples ofwomen's writing. It also provides an interesting springboard from whichto look at the treatmentof similar themes of enclosure in work by other women writers. The final chapter follows the emergence of new models ofthe fantastic in the work ofthe writers FrancescaDuranti, RossanaOmbres and Laura Mancinelli. I suggestthat in their work we see a contemporary use ofthe fantastic 'al femminile' which juxtaposes the external space with the internal space, giving rise to the recurrent motifoftravel. I argue that this use of the fantastic genre pushes the genre in a new direction, towards a space in which the internal fantasy and dialogue co-exist.

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Emanuel, Elizabeth F. "An examination of embodied female identity in contemporary crime fiction by women writers." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2016. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/98017/5/Elizabeth%20Emanuel%20Exegesis.pdf.

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This practice-based dissertation explores issues relating to women's identity and embodiment within the framework of the crime fiction novel and contends that the genre offers women writers the opportunity to question, undermine, and redirect existing values related to the construction of the female image.

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Green, Dawn. "Imagining the past [electronic resource] : contemporary Italian women's historical fiction /." Full text available, 2001. http://images.lib.monash.edu.au/ts/theses/greend.pdf.

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Ham, Rosalie, and rosalieh@optusnet com au. "Representations of men and women of the bush in Australian fiction." RMIT University. Creative Media, 2007. http://adt.lib.rmit.edu.au/adt/public/adt-VIT20080110.100527.

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At the heart of this exegesis is the city-bush gap and the rivalry and stereotypes that gap has generated. I acknowledge how and why our national identity evolved from the writing of the 1890s but I argue that most current artists, particularly novelists, have failed to incorporate the ongoing cultural, societal and industrial changes that have occurred since, particularly in the last thirty years. I assert that the majority of artists still refer to and draw inspiration from established, inaccurate myths and stereotypes rather than the bush and Australian characters of today. Through examining three texts, Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection (Picador, Sydney, 1999), Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded (Random House, Sydney, 1995) and Silences Long Gone (Picador, Sydney, 1998) by Anson Cameron, I also point out how most artists in general have failed to keep pace with changes in the bush city cross-culture. My exegesis attempts to give an account of some deficiencies in contemporary Australian literature. In the creative component of this project, Summer at Mount Hope (Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 2005), I write, as did Anson Cameron in his book, Silences Long Gone, (Pan Macmillan, 1998) of a bush (in 1894) where city and bush rely on each other and technology pushes into the bush uniting city and bush, thus enhancing the economy, the cross cultural interdependence and advancing the commonality between the two. I replace stereotypical characters with less predictable characters whose traits sit easily in either bush or city culture and skew the Traditionalist role of bush and city.

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Bode, Katherine. "In/visibility : women looking at men's bodies in and through contemporary Australian women's fiction /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://adt.library.uq.edu.au/public/adt-QU20060120.161127/index.html.

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Rine, Abigail. "Words incarnate : contemporary women’s fiction as religious revision." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1961.

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This thesis investigates the prevalence of religious themes in the work of several prominent contemporary women writers—Margaret Atwood, Michèle Roberts, Alice Walker and A.L. Kennedy. Relying on Luce Irigaray’s recent theorisations of the religious and its relationship to feminine subjectivity, this research considers the subversive potential of engaging with religious discourse through literature, and contributes to burgeoning criticism of feminist revisionary writing. The novels analysed in this thesis show, often in violent detail, that the way the religious dimension has been conceptualised and articulated enforces negative views of female sexuality, justifies violence against the body, alienates women from autonomous creative expression and paralyses the development of a subjectivity in the feminine. Rather than looking at women’s religious revision primarily as a means of asserting female authority, as previous studies have done, I argue that these writers, in addition to critiquing patriarchal religion, articulate ways of being and knowing that subvert the binary logic that dominates Western religious discourse. Chapter I contextualises this research in Luce Irigaray’s theories and outlines existing work on feminist revisionist literature. The remaining chapters offer close readings of key novels in light of these theories: Chapter II examines Atwood’s interrogation of oppositional logic in religious discourse through her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Chapter III explores two novels by Roberts that expose the violence inherent in religious discourse and deconstruct the subjection of the (female) body to the (masculine) Word. Chapters IV and V analyse the fiction of Kennedy and Walker respectively, revealing how their novels confront the religious denigration of feminine sexuality and refigure the connection between eroticism and divinity. Evident in each of these fictional accounts is a forceful critique of religious discourse, as well as an attempt to more closely reconcile foundational religious oppositions between divinity and humanity, flesh and spirit, and body and Word.

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Tagore, Proma. "The shapes of silence : contemporary women's fiction and the practices of bearing witness." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36793.

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This dissertation examines the complex and multi-faceted ways in which contemporary minority women's fictions may be thought of, both generically and individually, as practices of bearing witness to silence---practices of giving testimony to the presence of lives, experiences, events and historical realities which, otherwise, have been absented from the critical terrain of North American literary studies. For the most pact, the texts included in this study all tell tales of various, and often extreme, forms of sexual, racial, gender, colonial, national and cultural violence. Through readings of select works by Toni Morrison, Shani Mootoo, Arundhati Roy, Louise Erdrich, M. K. Indira, Mahasweta Devi and Leslie Feinberg, I argue for the ways in which these fictions may be understood as situated within the bounds of a genre---a genre that attempts to provide an account of what we might call "the half not told." I examine these fictions, both generically and specifically, as texts which have the ability to make several important critical interventions in the field of literary studies. Firstly, these texts have the potential to negotiate the impasse that feminist and postcolonial literary scholarship finds itself in around debates about the relationship between theory, activism and experience---as well as in debates about the relationship between violence, beauty, culture, subjectivity and desire. Secondly, the fictions under study help to challenge our very definitions of witnessing. Witnessing, in these works, is not simply a matter of "speaking out" against violence, but rather the issue of making space for the affective and emotive dimensions of various kinds of silences and silencings. Finally, in attempting to chart more precise vocabularies with which to assume readings of these narratives, my thesis also helps to think about the ways in which reading, writing and storytelling may, themselves, be seen as profoundly ethical undertakings that seek to give evidence

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Celdran, Lynn Y. "LETTERS AS SELF-PORTRAITS: EPISTOLARY FICTIONS BY WOMEN WRITERS IN SPAIN (1986-2002)." UKnowledge, 2013. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/hisp_etds/17.

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My study seeks to explore the interest that Spanish women authors such as Josefina Aldecoa, Carme Riera, Nuria Amat, Esther Tusquets, Marina Mayoral, Carmen Martín Gaite, and Olga Guirao have taken in the revival of epistolary fiction in recent decades. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century epistolary fiction in Spain was conditioned by social practices and by literary conventions that typically confined its heroines to an amorous plot and women authors to anonymity. I contend that if modern tradition of epistolary practices and other male-discriminatory practices kept women writers silenced or invisible in the Spanish literary world, contemporary women writers sketch themselves back into their texts. Fictional letters function as written self-portraits for them to reflect and tell their own stories, thereby creating a playful mirror effect between the fictional epistolographer and the historical author. By pushing the conventional boundaries of letter writing as a sentimental genre, contemporary women authors take liberty to rewrite female representation and to give the fictional protagonists a new voice and visibility. They revisit the theme of love in epistolary literature to explore refashioned—and often transgressive—discourses on gender, sexuality, and subject identity.

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MacDonald, Deneka C. "Locating resistance/resisting location : a feminist literary analysis of supernatural women in contemporary fantastic fiction." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2003. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5344/.

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In this thesis I examine the ways in which feminist and human geographies intersect with contemporary women-centred fantasy fiction. In particular, I consider space and place to be significant to female characters in their role as a physical presence as well as an intangible location. Thus I explore the forest, the body and the mind as territories occupied by the supernatural women. These various spatial themes, I suggest, outline distinctive locations for supernatural female characters and enable them to engage in a position of resistance from patriarchal ideologies. Through a spatial analysis of selected fiction, I reflect on challenges to notions that construct identity, gender and sexuality as well as conflict among women. I argue that the supernatural woman in fiction has been frozen in one-dimensional representation within traditional male-centred texts. This one-dimensionally, I suggest, hinges on the juxtaposition of the overly simplistic good/bad binary that has often illustrated female characters within fantasy fiction. As fantasy is a genre typically more concerned with worlds than characters, the women-centred fantasy text is unique in its exploration and pursuit of the literary character. Given the contemporary and interdisciplinary nature of this thesis, I have drawn upon filmic adaptations of texts at times to illustrate a further level of cultural awareness. The main emphasis is, however, on literary texts and, thus, reference to film is meant to supplement my textual analysis.

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Wright, Charlotte M. "Plain and Ugly Janes: the Rise of the Ugly Woman in Contemporary American Fiction." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1994. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278032/.

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Women characters in American literature of the nineteenth century form an overwhelmingly lovely group, but a search through some of the overlooked works reveals a thin but discernible thread of plain, even homely, heroines. Most of these fall into the stereotypical "old maid" category, and, like their real-life counterparts, these "undesirable" women are considered failures, even if they have money or satisfying careers, because they do not have boyfriends, husbands, or children. During the twentieth century, the old maid figure develops into someone not just homely, but downright ugly; in addition, the number of these characters increases, especially in the latter half of the century. In many works written since the 1960s, the woman's ugliness is such an intrinsic part of the story that it could not take place if she were beautiful. In subtle ways, these "ugly woman" stories begin to question the overwhelming value placed on beauty, to question the narrow definition of beauty in American society as a whole, and to suggest that the price for such a "blessing" might indeed be too high. Rather than settling for being a mere "heroine"—which still carries feminine connotations of passive behavior and second-class status—the ugly woman's increase in power over her own life and the lives of others, allows her to achieve a status more in keeping with the more "masculine" and active role of hero.

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Gantzert, Patricia L. "Throwing voices, dialogism in the novels of three contemporary Canadian women writers." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/mq23313.pdf.

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Barlow, Jenna Elizabeth. "Womens historical fiction after feminism : discursive reconstructions of the Tudors in contemporary literature." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/86303.

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Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Historical fiction is a genre in a constant state of flux: since its inception in the nineteenth century, it has been shaped by cultural trends and has persistently responded to the way in which history is popularly conceptualised. As such, historical novels have always revealed as much about the socio-political context of their moment of production as they do about their historical settings. The advent of feminism was among the most significant movements which shaped the evolution of the women’s historical novel in the twentieth century, prompting as it did a radical shift in historiographic methodology. As feminist discourse became embedded in popular culture in the latter decades of the twentieth century, this shift in turn allowed authors of historical fiction the opportunity to reconsider the ways in which women have been traditionally represented in both historical narrative and fiction. The historical novel thus became a site for exploring the female perspective of history, a perspective that had been denied or ignored by more male-centred historical narratives. This dissertation will assess the impact wrought by the popularisation of feminist discourse on the genre of women’s historical fiction during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An examination of a selection of contemporary women’s novels set during the Tudor era will prove particularly useful in executing this assessment, not least because of the Tudors’ unprecedented popularity as the focus of literature and film in the last decade. More significantly, the women of this period have proven to be ideal subjects for their authors to imaginatively reconstruct in the mould of third wave feminist icons in the twenty-first century. By examining how Tudor women have been represented in the contemporary historical fiction of Jean Plaidy, Philippa Gregory, Mavis Cheek, Suzannah Dunn and Emily Purdy, this dissertation will demonstrate the ways in which popular feminist discourse has impacted on the development of women’s historical fiction in the last century, focusing specifically on texts published within the last decade. Three key aspects of the genre will be assessed in detail in this regard: the author’s self-conscious feminist intervention in the characterisation of her historical heroines; the shift in the narrative perspective adopted and the deployment of postmodern literary devices; and the representation of female sexuality. The evolution of the genre as a whole will also be examined in some detail, and the shifting parameters of modern feminisms will be interrogated in order to fully understand their manifestations in popular culture.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Historiese fiksie is ’n voortdurend veranderende genre: sedert die ontstaan daarvan in die negentiende eeu is dit beïnvloed deur kulturele neigings en het dit aanhoudend bly reageer op die manier waarop die geskiedenis populêr gekonseptualiseer word. As sodanig het historiese romans altyd net soveel oor die sosiopolitieke konteks van hulle produksiemoment as oor hul historiese milieus onthul. Feminisme was een van die betekenisvolste bewegings wat gedurende die twintigste eeu die evolusie van die historiese roman vir vroue sou beïnvloed, en het sodoende aanleiding gegee tot ’n radikale verandering in historiografiese metodologie. Namate feministiese diskoers in die latere dekades van die twintigste eeu deel van die populêre kultuur geword het, het hierdie verandering op sy beurt die skrywers van historiese fiksie die geleentheid gegun om die maniere waarop vroue tradisioneel in sowel historiese narratief as fiksie uitgebeeld is, te heroorweeg. Die historiese roman het dus ’n terrein geword waarop die vroulike perspektief op die geskiedenis verken is, naamlik ’n perspektief wat deur meer manlik-gesentreerde historiese narratiewe ontken of geïgnoreer is. Hierdie verhandeling sal die impak evalueer wat die popularisering van feministiese diskoers op die genre van historiese fiksie vir vroue gemaak het tydens die twintigste en een-en-twintigste eeue. ’n Ondersoek na ’n seleksie van kontemporêre vroueromans wat in die Tudor-tydperk afspeel, is veral nuttig in hierdie verband, onder andere as gevolg van die Tudors se ongekende gewildheid as die fokus van letterkunde en film in die afgelope dekade. Wat meer veelseggend is, is dat dit blyk die vroue van hierdie tydperk was ideale subjekte wat verbeeldingryk deur hulle outeurs gerekonstrueer kon word in die vorm van derdegolf-feministiese ikone in die een-en-twintigste eeu. Deur te ondersoek hoe Tudorvroue uitgebeeld is in die kontemporêre historiese fiksie van Jean Plaidy, Philippa Gregory, Mavis Cheek, Suzannah Dunn en Emily Purdy sal hierdie verhandeling die impak demonstreer wat populêre feministiese diskoers in die afgelope eeu op die ontwikkeling van historiese fiksie vir vroue gemaak het, met die fokus spesifiek op tekste wat in die afgelope dekade gepubliseer is. In hierdie verband sal drie sleutelaspekte van die genre uitvoerig geassesseer word: die skrywer se selfbewuste feministiese ingryping in die karakterisering van haar historiese heldinne; die verskuiwing in die vertellingsperspektief en die ontplooiing van postmoderne letterkundige tegnieke; en die uitbeelding van vroulike seksualiteit. Die evolusie van die genre as geheel word ook beskou, en die veranderende parameters van moderne feminismes word ondervra sodat hul manifestasies in die populêre kultuur ten volle verstaan kan word.

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Helton, Josh A. "Politics of Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Altered Carbon." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1587732433724245.

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Alfraih, Ibrahim. "Between convention and westernisation : negotiating gender, religion and traditions in the contemporary fiction of Saudi Women." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2018. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/between-convention-and-westernisation(c42eb5d4-c7d1-4462-b47d-dc11622f55fd).html.

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Bozkurt, Suzan. "Beyond the mirror : transgressing the canon and the fiction of contemporary Portuguese women writers (1980-2015)." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2017. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/beyond-the-mirror-transgressing-the-canon-and-the-fiction-of-contemporary-portuguese-women-writers-19802015(1d9249a4-fad3-4416-891c-e58ff056a23f).html.

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This thesis looks at the representations of four contemporary Portuguese women writers, Helia Coreia, Lidia Jorge, Teolinda Gersao and Ines Pedrosa in literary histories, press critical commentaries and digital media. This study analyses how far a gendered critical view is present inch of the three different media and whether any alternative contextualisation exists that allows for a non-gendered, universal critical representation of female authorship. The process of canonisation within the Portuguese cultural field is studied here, following the fundamental changes in the critical landscape over the past thirty years, especially the new possibilities offered in electronic media. This thesis explores the juxtaposition between an elitist institutionalism, which can be found in academic, press and online criticism, and the presence of alternative critical voices in cultural criticism, that would adequately represent female authorship and open up the critical debate, so the traditional constructions of cultural value, such as a division into popular and quality literature, can be re-evaluated.

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Scafe, Suzanne Ruth. ""Now the half has been told" : resistance and the fiction of four contemporary Caribbean women writers." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2006. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/28945/.

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This thesis focuses on the articulation of political resistance in contemporary fiction by Caribbean women writers and, by using a dialogic approach to reading selected texts, theorises the difference that gender makes in the representation of these dominant themes. Representations of political resistance and transformation in novels by Merle Collins, Zee Edgell, Brenda Flanagan and Erna Brodber are examined in the context of an analysis of Caribbean fiction by male and female writers, which spans a seventy-year period. It begins by arguing that, although Caribbean writers have traditionally used creatively transformed linguistic and textual strategies to signify resistance to colonial domination. Merle Collins' first novel, Angel, extends these traditions of novelistic transformation to produce a text which is more radically oppositional and at the same time dependent for meaning on its literary precursors. Subsequent chapters focus on different aspects of resistance and trace dialogic connections between fiction by contemporary women writers, colonialist narratives and writing by earlier canonical and non-canonical Caribbean novelists; these connections are used to reveal the ways in which ideologies of gender shape the character of resistance and determine the conditions and possibilities of political, social and cultural transformation. The study concludes by arguing for the need to resist merely reproducing the over-determining categories of resistance and liberation that have characterised fictional and theoretical treatments of these themes: it argues for a need to take into account women's complex and sometimes contradictory interventions in the process of anti-colonial resistance and for the construction of a model of resistance which is inclusive, plural and dialogically defined.

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Maloul, Linda Fawzi. "From immigrant narratives to ethnic literature : the contemporary fiction of Arab British and Arab American women writers." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.647377.

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The purpose of this thesis is to firmly situate the fictions of contemporary Arab British and Arab American women writers who write in English within the corpus of ethnic and mainstream literary criticism. I aim to position these fictions within their historical and sociopolitical contexts. I also aim to shift the focus from the texts’ female protagonists to male and minor characters in order to explore how the writers construct both political Islam and Islam as a private faith; how they construct Palestinian Muslim masculinities; and how they respond to the events of 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror. I argue that these fictions offer some of the most astute reactions to the events of 9/11 and their repercussions. I also argue that Arab American literature in general and Arab American women’s literature in particular is more canny than its Arab British counterpart. Thus, I aim to show how Arab American literary productions refract a development from the literature of self-exploration to that of transformation allowing them a well-deserved spot in Ethnic-American literary studies and in time, mainstream American literary studies. Another of my aims is to investigate how Arab American and Arab British writers highlight the diversity of Arabs, Muslims and Islam, thus addressing essentialist reductions of Arabs and Muslims as a monolithic group. In chapter one, I investigate how Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun and Leila Aboulela’s Minaret negotiate issues such as Islamic clothing. I also question anew Arab women writers’ perceived role as “cultural commentators.” In chapter two, I explore how Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan and Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home construct Palestinian Muslim masculinities, and how they challenge the Anglo-American stereotypical representations of Arab Muslim masculinity. In chapter three, I analyse how Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land, Frances Khirallah Noble’s The New Belly Dancer of the Galaxy and Alia Yunis’ The Night Counter negotiate cultural, political and social views of America. I aim to examine whether Halaby, Noble and Yunis’ ambiguous position, as legally ‘white’ citizens who are also members of a marginalized and religiously racialized minority, offers them a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between ‘East’ and ‘West.’ In the conclusion, I offer some suggestions for future research.

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Emanuel, Elizabeth Frances. "Writing the oriental woman : an examination of the representation of Japanese women in contemporary Australian crime fiction." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2009. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/64475/1/Elizabeth_Emanuel_Exegesis.pdf.

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This study considers the challenges in representing women from other cultures in the crime fiction genre. The study is presented in two parts; an exegesis and a creative practice component consisting of a full length crime fiction novel, Batafurai. The exegesis examines the historical period of a section of the novel—post-war Japan—and how the area of research known as Occupation Studies provides an insight into the conditions of women during this period. The exegesis also examines selected postcolonial theory and its exposition of representations of the 'other' as a western construct designed to serve Eurocentric ends. The genre of crime fiction is reviewed, also, to determine how characters purportedly representing Oriental cultures are constricted by established stereotypes. Two case studies are examined to investigate whether these stereotypes are still apparent in contemporary Australian crime fiction. Finally, I discuss my own novel, Batafurai, to review how I represented people of Asian background, and whether my attempts to resist stereotype were successful. My conclusion illustrates how novels written in the crime fiction genre are reliant on strategies that are action-focused, rather than character-based, and thus often use easily recognizable types to quickly establish frameworks for their stories. As a sub-set of popular fiction, crime fiction has a tendency to replicate rather than challenge established stereotypes. Where it does challenge stereotypes, it reflects a territory that popular culture has already visited, such as the 'female', 'black' or 'gay' detective. Crime fiction also has, as one of its central concerns, an interest in examining and reinforcing the notion of societal order. It repeatedly demonstrates that crime either does not pay or should not pay. One of the ways it does this is to contrast what is 'good', known and understood with what is 'bad', unknown, foreign or beyond our normal comprehension. In western culture, the east has traditionally been employed as the site of difference, and has been constantly used as a setting of contrast, excitement or fear. Crime fiction conforms to this pattern, using the east to add a richness and depth to what otherwise might become a 'dry' tale. However, when used in such a way, what is variously eastern, 'other' or Oriental can never be paramount, always falling to secondary side of the binary opposites (good/evil, known/unknown, redeemed/doomed) at work. In an age of globalisation, the challenge for contemporary writers of popular fiction is to be responsive to an audience that demands respect for all cultures. Writers must demonstrate that they are sensitive to such concerns and can skillfully manage the tensions caused by the need to deliver work that operates within the parameters of the genre, and the desire to avoid offence to any cultural or ethnic group. In my work, my strategy to manage these tensions has been to create a back-story for my characters of Asian background, developing them above mere genre types, and to situate them with credibility in time and place through appropriate historical research.

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Arimbi, Diah Ariani Women's &amp Gender Studies UNSW. "Reading the writings of contemporary Indonesian Muslim women writers: representation, identity and religion of Muslim women in Indonesian fictions." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. Women's and Gender Studies, 2006. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/25498.

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Indonesian Muslim women???s identity and subjectivity are not created simply from a single variable rather they are shaped by various discourses that are often competing and paralleling each other. Discourses such as patriarchal discourses circumscribing the social engagement and public life of Muslim women portray them in narrow gendered parameters in which women occupy rather limited public roles. Western colonial discourse often constructed Muslim women as oppressed and backward. Each such discourse indeed denies women???s agency and maturity to form their own definition of identity within the broad Islamic parameters. Rewriting women???s own identities are articulated in various forms from writing to visualisation, from fiction to non fiction. All expressions signify women???s ways to react against the silencing and muteness that have long imposed upon women???s agency. In Indonesian literary culture today, numerous women writers have represented in their writings women???s own ways to look at their own selves. Literary representations become one group among others trying to portray women???s strategies that will give them maximum control over their lives and bodies. Muslim women writers in Indonesia have shown through their representations of Muslim women in their writings that Muslim women in Indonesian settings are capable of undergoing a self-definition process. However, from their writings too, readers are reminded that although most women portrayed are strong and assertive it does not necessarily mean that they are free of oppression. The thesis is about Muslim women and gender-related issues in Indonesia. It focuses on the writings of four contemporary Indonesian Muslim women writers: Titis Basino P I, Ratna Indraswari Ibrahim, Abidah El Kalieqy and Helvy Tiana Rosa, primarily looking at how gender is constructed and in turn constructs the identity, roles and status of Musim women in Indonesia and how such relations are portrayed, covering issues of authenticity, representation and power inextricably intertwined in a variety of aesthetic forms and narrative structures.

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Barletta, Sandra A. "Cougars, grannies, evil stepmothers, and menopausal hot flashers : roles, representations of age and the non-traditional romance heroine." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2014. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/72686/3/Sandra_Barletta_Thesis.pdf.

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Cougars, Grannies, Evil Stepmothers, and Menopausal Hot Flashers: Roles, Representations of Age and the Non-traditional Romance Heroine is an examination of the stereotyped roles of age and the under-representation of women over forty as worthy protagonists in romance fiction.

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Roupakia, Lydia Efthymia. "Multicultural Questions, Family Matters : Gender, Generation and Ethics in some Contemporary Fiction by Women in Canada and England." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.508685.

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Hill, Lorna. "Bloody women : a critical-creative examination of how female protagonists have transformed contemporary Scottish and Nordic crime fiction." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/27352.

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This study will explore the role of female authors and their female protagonists in contemporary Scottish and Nordic crime fiction. Authors including Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Lin Anderson and Liza Marklund are just a few of the women who have challenged the expectation of gender in the crime fiction genre. By setting their novels in contemporary society, they reflect a range of social and political issues through the lens of a female protagonist. By closely examining the female characters, all journalists, in Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series; Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan series; Anna Smith’s books about Rosie Gilmour; and Liza Marklund’s books about Annika Bengzton, I explore the issue of gender through these writers’ perspectives and also draw parallels between their societies. I document the influence of these writers on my own practice-based research, a novel, The Invisible Chains, set in post-Referendum Scotland. The thesis will examine and define the role of the female protagonist, offer a feminist reading of contemporary crime fiction, and investigate how the rise of human trafficking, the problem of domestic abuse in Scotland and society’s changing attitudes and values are reflected in contemporary crime novels, before discussing the narrative structures and techniques employed in the writing of The Invisible Chains. This novel allows us to consider the role of women in a contemporary and progressive society where women hold many senior positions in public life and examine whether they manage successfully to challenge traditional patriarchal hierarchies. The narrative is split between journalist Megan Ross, The Girl, a victim of human trafficking, and Trudy, who is being domestically abused, thus pulling together the themes of the critical genesis in the creative work. By focusing on the protagonist, the victims and raising awareness of human trafficking and domestic abuse, The Invisible Chains, an original creative work, reflects a contemporary society’s changing attitudes, problems and values.

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Delgado, Anjanette. "The Clairvoyant of 8th Street." FIU Digital Commons, 2012. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/597.

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The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho tells the story of Mariela Valdes, who discovered she was clairvoyant in her teens, but renounced her gift when she failed to foresee her mother’s fatal illness. When her lover is found dead mere yards from her front door, she embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of his death, regain her gift for knowing, and free herself of the fear that has kept her from “seeing” her way to happiness. Though the novel contains a murder and several mysteries, it is not primarily a murder mystery. Instead, as in the novels of Dame Muriel Spark, crime is just the catalyst for the unraveling of the motivations, secrets, and true characters of a small community. As Mariela conquers her fear of seeing, she discovers the importance of sisterhood among women and comes to a new definition of marriage, infidelity, and forgiveness.

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Tuft, Bryna. "This Is Not a Woman: Literary Bodies and Private Selves in the Works of the Chinese Avant-Garde Women Writers." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12934.

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During the period of economic expansion and openness to personal expression and individuality following Deng Xiaoping's reforms, the Chinese avant-garde women writers engaged in a project of resistance to the traditionally appropriated use of the female body, image, and voice. This resistance can be seen in the ways they consciously construct a private space in their fiction. In this dissertation, I argue that this space is created by presenting alternative forms of female sexuality, in contrast to the heterosexual wife and mother, and by adding details of their own personal histories in their writing. Key to this argument is the Chinese concept of si (privacy) and how the female avant-garde writers turn its traditionally negative associations into a positive tool for writing the self. While male appropriations of images of the female body for political or state-authored purposes are not new to the contemporary period or even the twentieth century, the female avant-garde writers are particularly conscious of the ways in which their bodies are not their own. Moreover, contemporary criticism that labels the works of the female avant-garde writers as self-exposing, titillating, and trite overlooks the difference between authorial intent and commercial or political appropriation, which has led to a profound misunderstanding of these works. In addition, it has also led to a conflation of the female avant-garde writers' works with those of the later body writers. Therefore the purpose of this dissertation is to provide a closer look at the concept of si-privacy and how it intersects with various forms of self-writing, as well as how it is used as a narrative strategy by three contemporary female authors, Xu Kun, Lin Bai, and Hai Nan. Specifically, I consider the similarities and differences in the ways that these authors create and orient themselves in both their memoirs and their self-referential fiction.

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Kashou, Hanan Hussam. "War and Exile In Contemporary Iraqi Women’s Novels." The Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1386038139.

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Murray, Delaney. "DAUGHTERS OF THE DIGITAL: A PORTRAIT OF FANDOM WOMEN IN THE CONTEMPORARY INTERNET AGE." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1587738612384951.

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Moss, Maria. "We've been here before women in creation myths and contemporary literature of the Native American southwest /." Münster : Lit, 1993. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/30100337.html.

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Jack, Rosemary. "The power and pleasure of women's laughter : an exploration of the use of humour in contemporary fiction written by women." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.249815.

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Vieira, Foz Romeu de Jesus. "Uma literatura das ausencias: o colonialismo portugues e os seus rescaldos em ficcões de autoria feminina (2009 ate ao presente)." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1593441909219757.

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Brinker, Gretchen. "The Alluring and Manipulative "Spider Women" of the Silver Screen: Femmes Fatales of the Hard-Boiled Fiction, Classic Noir and Contemporary Noir Periods." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2008. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/887.

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This thesis delves into three categories of femmes fatales: the ones of hard-boiled fiction/classic noir and contemporary noir. Moreover, it generates several comparisons among those aforementioned categories, and extrapolates on them. Third wave feminism and how it draws relevance/is significant to the Bound and The Last Seduction films is additionally explored in this thesis. This thesis will discuss the similarities of the femmes fatales of the '30s/1940s-50s and contemporary noir (1980s-90s), while delving into differences between them.

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Liu, Yuanhang. "Reifungsromane vis-à-vis Social Novels about Older Women: A Comparative Study on Fiction about Female Ageing in Contemporary Australian and Chinese Literature." Thesis, Curtin University, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/80628.

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This study focuses on fiction about female ageing since the 1970s as an important literary genre. By conducting a cross-cultural comparison based on the close-reading of the primary texts of two recent literary genres – Reifungsromane in the Australian context and Social Novels about Older Women in the Chinese context – this study contributes to the deeper understanding of female ageing experiences represented in contemporary literature.

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Wallace, Linda M. "Negotiating place, explorations of identity and nature in select novels by contemporary Canadian women writers." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0018/MQ49460.pdf.

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Vrtis, Christina E. 1979. ""Death is the Only Reality": a Folkloric Analysis of Notions of Death and Funerary Ritual in Contemporary Caribbean Women's Literature." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10697.

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viii, 91 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
Caribbean cultural ideas and values placed on death and mourning, especially in relation to cultural roles women are expected to perform, are primary motivating factors in the development of female self and identity in Caribbean women's literature. Based on analysis of three texts, QPH, Annie John, and Beyond the Limbo Silence, I argue that notions of death and funerary rituals are employed within Caribbean women's literature to (re)connect protagonist females to their homeland and secure a sense of identity. In addition, while some texts highlight the necessity of prescribing to the socially constructed roles of women within the ritual context and rely on the uproper" adherence to the traditional process to maintain the status quo, other texts show that the inversion or subversion of these traditions is also an important aspect of funerary rituals and notions of death that permeate contemporary Caribbean culture.
Committee in Charge: Dr. Dianne Dugaw, Folklore; Dr. Lisa Gilman, English; Dr. Phil Scher, Anthropology

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Weber-Fève, Stacey A. "There's no place like home homemaking, making home, and femininity in contemporary women's filmmaking and the literature of the Métropol and the Maghreb /." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1148746370.

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Munoz, Cabrera Patricia. "Journeying: narratives of female empowerment in Gayl Jones's and Toni Morrison's ficton." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210259.

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This dissertation discusses Gayl Jones’s and Toni Morrison’s characterisation of black women’s journeying towards empowered subjectivity and agency.

Through comparative analysis of eight fictional works, I explore the writers’ idea of female freedom and emancipation, the structures of power affecting the transition from oppressed towards liberated subject positions, and the literary techniques through which the authors facilitate these seminal trajectories.

My research addresses a corpus comprised of three novels and one book-long poem by Gayl Jones, as well as four novels by Toni Morrison. These two writers emerge in the US literary scene during the 1970s, one of the decades of the second black women’s renaissance (1970s, 1980s). This period witnessed unprecedented developments in US black literature and feminist theorising. In the domain of African American letters, it witnessed the emergence of a host of black women writers such as Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison. This period also marks a turning point in the reconfiguration of African American literature, as several unknown or misplaced literary works by pioneering black women writers were discovered, shifting the chronology of African American literature.

Moreover, the second black women's renaissance marks a paradigmatic development in black feminist theorising on womanhood and subjectivity. Many black feminist scholars and activists challenged what they perceived to be the homogenising female subject conceptualised by US white middle-class feminism and the androcentricity of the subject proclaimed by the Black Aesthetic Movement. They claimed that, in focusing solely on gender and patriarchal oppression, white feminism had overlooked the salience of the race/class nexus, while focus by the Black Aesthetic Movement on racism had overlooked the salience of gender and heterosexual discrimination.

In this dissertation, I discuss the works of Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison in the context of seminal debates on the nature of the female subject and the racial and gender politics affecting the construction of empowered subjectivities in black women's fiction.

Through the metaphor of journeying towards female empowerment, I show how Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison engage in imaginative returns to the past in an attempt to relocate black women as literary subjects of primary importance. I also show how, in the works selected for discussion, a complex idea of modern female subjectivities emerges from the writers' re-examination of the oppressive material and psychological circumstances under which pioneering black women lived, the common practice of sexual exploitation with which they had to contend, and the struggle to assert the dignity of their womanhood beyond the parameters of the white-defined “ideological discourse of true womanhood” (Carby, 1987: 25).

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation langue et littérature
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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González, María Carmen. "Toward a feminist identity contemporary Mexican-American women novelists /." 1991. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/28143091.html.

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Day, Sara K. "Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Fiction for Adolescent Women." Thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-08-8184.

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This dissertation offers the term “narrative intimacy” to refer to an implicit relationship between narrator and reader that depends upon disclosure and trust. By examining contemporary American fiction for adolescent women by critically- and commercially-successful authors such as Sarah Dessen, Stephenie Meyer, and Laurie Halse Anderson, I explore the use of narrative intimacy as a means of reflecting and reinforcing larger, often contradictory, cultural expectations regarding adolescent women, interpersonal relationships, and intimacy. Specifically, I investigate the possibility that adolescent women narrators construct understandings of the adolescent woman reader as a friend, partner in desire, or “bibliotherapist,” which in turn allow the narrator to understand the reader as a safe and appropriate location for disclosure. At the same time, the novels I discuss offer frequent warnings against the sort of unfettered disclosure the narrators perform in their relationships with the reader: friendships are marked as potential sites of betrayal and rejection, while romantic relationships are presented as inherently threatening to physical and emotional health. In order to interrogate the construction of narrative intimacy, I rely upon a tradition of narrative and reception theory concerning the roles of narrator and reader. I also turn to other cultural representations of adolescent women and their relationships, from films, television, and magazines to the self-help and nonfiction literature that provides insight into current psychological, sociological, and anthropological understandings of adolescent womanhood. Ultimately, I argue, the prevalence of narrative intimacy in fiction for adolescent women reflects a complex system that encourages adolescent women to seek intimate interpersonal relationships even as it discourages the type and degree of disclosure that is ostensibly required in the development of intimacy. The narrator thus turns to the reader because the “logical gap”—to borrow a term from Peter Lamarque—between fiction and reality allows for a construction of the reader as a recipient of disclosure who cannot respond with the threats of criticism, judgment, or rejection that may be presented by other characters within the text. The reader, in turn, may come to depend upon narrative intimacy as a space through which to vicariously explore her own understanding of intimacy.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'FICTION / Contemporary Woen'

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