Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Identity (Feminist Theory'

The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of a sociocultural theory of objectification with a population of older women. Specifically, the study sought to determine if level of self-objectification influenced psychological well-being, disordered eating, and sexual dysfunction. Additional goals of this study included determining if older women self-objectify like their younger counterparts and if level of selfobjectification was influenced by one’s feminist identity. Participants were 128 randomly selected women living in a small city in the southwest recruited through a local seniors fair and organizations. Participants completed a take-home survey which included a demographic questionnaire, the Feminist Identity Development Scale, the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale, the Scales of Psychological Well-Being Short Form, the Eating Attitudes Test, and the Brief Index of Sexual Functioning for Women. Participants returned surveys in postage pre-paid envelopes. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling methods and the final model fit the data well. Results indicate that older women do self-objectify but this level of self-objectification is not influenced by their level of feminist identity. In addition, level of self-objectification is negatively related to psychological well-being and positively related to disordered eating; however, no relationship exists between self-objectification and sexual dysfunction. Implications for clinical practice and further research are discussed.

The aim of this thesis study is to understand the significance of today&rsquo
s feminist politics in Turkey for post-identity politics. When it is considered that identity politics is being widely practiced today, whereas there is still much vagueness regarding the ways of doing post-identity politics, in order to achieve the aim of this study it becomes necessary to make a critique of identity politics and to reveal post-identitarian tendencies through this critique of identity-based political mobilization. In this study, feminist identity politics is analyzed and criticized from the perspective of Judith Butler, who is a poststructuralist feminist questioning identity and its relation to gender politics. These issues are questioned through qualitative research method and semi-structured in-depth interviews are used as the data gathering technique. Five in-depth interviews were conducted with women who consider themselves feminist. The interviews aim at providing individual narrations of the participants to be exposed to deconstruction later on through the analysis process. Therefore, participants are not asked direct and categorical questions about their ideas on specific issues
instead, they are encouraged to talk about how they perceive the gendered world around them and how they respond to it and how these ideas are transferred to the political arena. It was found that the participants perceived sex, gender and sexuality in a dualistic framework to a certain extent and this relative fluidity enables them to realize the importance of doing post-identity politics, but they do not have a tendency to transfer this to the political arena in the near future.

This thesis will argue that feminism is at the edge of a new wave brought about by the fragmentation of the feminist political movement and the rise of postmodern theory. It contends that postmodern theories have been used by feminists as a 'critical strategy' to understand why the movement fragmented and to move towards the acceptance of more strategic and conventional politics. Thus many feminists are now prepared to leave behind the utopian and separatist legacies of the second wave. These feminists are willing to consider how a future feminist movement can be built that will account for the differences between women, and realise that there will thus need to be a painful and precarious process of alliance-building. It is argued that given the precarious nature of the alliance, feminists in a new wave must also re-conceive democratic models of citizenship to ensure that women and feminists' concerns are met in the wider political sphere. This second concern also makes sure that they have institutional and procedural support should fragmentation recur. The thesis considers three such models of citizenship: Seyla Benhabib's deliberative model, Iris Young's communicative model and Chantal Mouffe's agonal one. It contends that these models only partly address the concerns of new wave feminism, because they are based on transformative and participatory models of politics. These models undermine the importance of feminists finding legitimate political relationships that respect the multiplicity of their demands as feminists, as women and as citizens. This thesis concludes that representative models of democracy are more suited to feminist concerns in a new wave. Such models have distinctive characteristics that allow women to be politically included in terms of a range of political concerns and identities. Representative models of democracy, moreover, make it clear that the political relationship is one of formal authorisation and not one of personal identity recognition and transformation.

This study examines secular mommy bloggers, a group of women who blog about the difficulties of being a nonbeliever parent in a predominantly religious society. In this study, I explore the rhetorical dimensions of four separate blogs by investigating how each mother builds identity within her personal blog and how her sense of identity enables her to construct individual ethos. Furthermore, I illustrate how the individual ethos of each blogger contributes to a group ethos representing the entire secular parenting community. Ultimately, I show how these mothers rhetorically set themselves apart from other nonbeliever/secular groups.
Master of Arts

A review of sociological literature reveals a long history of the study of gender, and an increased popularity in the application of feminist theories and ideas to sociological research. As transmitters of the discipline, introductory-level textbooks have been heavily studied over the past quarter-century to assess the accuracy with which they portray the field of sociology. In order to update the literature available on the topic, this study analyzed the current cohort of top-selling, introductory-level sociology textbooks for coverage of feminist theory and gender issues. Each of the ten textbooks was read cover-to-cover and coded for both latent and manifest data using a coding sheet. The researcher found a notable increase in the incidences of both feminist theories and gender issues within the current cohort of textbooks. The specific treatment of each topic varied widely across books, and within each book the topics were presented one-dimensionally and were ghettoized to feminized chapters. Definitions of feminist theory and feminism within the books primarily described liberal feminism and little else, and discussions of both feminist theory and gender were most heavily featured in the gender and family chapters. Generally, the gender issues present in the textbook sample were mostly to do with women, and erased non-binary experiences of gender. Additionally, an intersectional approach to discussions of gender was applied about one-third of the time. This study concludes that the current textbook cohort is still far from the ideal model, and the feminization and marginalization of these topics is likely due to the textbook production cycle and the specific phenomenon of textual isomorphism.

El cine asiático, puede tomarse como un tipo de paradigma que se ha tratado de alejar del establecido por la casi monopólica industria del cine hollywoodense. Este cine se ha etiquetado eurocéntricamente como “cine periférico”, todo esto a causa de la simplificación a la que a veces se somete a estas cinematografías, desdibujando su rica diversidad. A veces un cine cargado de sensualidad cinematográfica pero no explícita necesariamente, sino más bien sutil. Desarrollan tramas no tan complejas, o en ocasiones si, pero que emplean un ritmo cinematográfico lánguido con elementos visuales y auditivos que atraen al público a comprometerse con el encuentro en la sala de cine. Expresando la figura de la mujer alejada de la idea falocentrista y del constructo estereotipado de: la buena (la virgen y la madre) y la mala (la prostituta y la femme fatal), la virtuosa (la acompañante fiel) y la viciosa (quien aparece como presa fácil de cualquier hombre). Todo lo que en occidente ha sido tratado desde la perspectiva del hombre, en su papel de guionista, director de cine, productor o crítico.
Asian cinema can be taken as a type of paradigm that has tried to move away from the one established by the almost monopolistic Hollywood film industry. This cinema has been labeled Eurocentrically as "peripheral cinema", because of the simplification that these cinematography’s are sometimes subjected to, deleting their rich diversity. Sometimes this type of cinema is loaded with cinematographic sensuality not necessarily explicit, but rather subtle. They develop plots that are not so complex, or sometimes they are, but totally inversed in a languid cinematographic rhythm that uses visuals and sounds elements that try to make the public committed with the experience of their movies. This cinema also, show us the figure of a woman far away from the phallocentric idea and the stereotypical construct of: the good woman (the virgin and the mother) and the bad woman (the prostitute and the femme fatal), the virtuous (the faithful partner) and the vicious (who appears as easy prey to any man). Everything that in the West has been telled from the perspective of man, in his role as screenwriter, film director, producer or critic.
Trabajo de investigación

This study explores the hegemonic articulation of ‘feminist politics’ by the Swedish political party Feminist Initiative (Feministiskt initiativ) during 2014 national parliamentary election campaign. The analysis is carried out on two levels: the construction of the hegemonic project of feminist politics and the construction of an antagonist.      Deploying the discourse-theoretical approach by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as well as the theories of radical democracy and intersectionality, it is shown how a new, broad collective feminist identity is produced by deconstructing womanhood as an identifiable and unproblematic category as well as expanding the signifying chain of feminism by including new social struggles into it. As a result, the feminist subject is conceptualized in radical-democratic terms as a citizen with equal rights, rather than an essentialized female subject. Two nodal points that fix the meaning of the hegemonic project of feminist politics are identified: one is human rights, which enables the expansion of the chain of equivalence, and the other is experience of oppression, which acknowledges differences existing within the movement and prevents it from muting marginalized voices. Discrimination, being the constitutive outside, both threatens and produces the subject: on the one hand, it violates human rights that underlie feminist politics; on the other hand, it produces the experience of oppression that gives a unique feminist perspective to each member of the collective identity. The hegemonic project thus emerges as dependent on the oppressive power of discrimination. The study suggests a critical discussion on how the constitutive outside – discrimination – empties the concept of feminism by a radical expansion of its meaning.    The research furthermore explores the construction of the antagonist of the hegemonic project. Utilizing analytical concepts from the writings of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek, it is demonstrated how social structures and norms acquire agency and become the significant Other for the feminist identity. The thesis is concluded by a critical discussion on the fundamental impossibility of identification based on opposing oneself to something that can only be expressed with a signifier that ultimately lacks any signified.

The thesis focuses on Shelley Jackson’s Half Life: a Novel with efforts directed towards a literary interpretation considering relevant issues within the context of gender and feminist theory. The argument rests upon four basic units: the theoretical framework at the outset, the question of the body next, thirdly an investigation of sexuality, and finally a consideration of identity. In Jackson’s Half Life: a Novel the non-dualist thinking underlies a deliberate play of dualism. To go beyond the binary, Jackson captures the tension and confusion revealed from the body, sexuality and identity; and therefore this thesis aims to conduct a dynamic discussion on these gender issues to encounter and reconsider the entrenched binary-defined social, cultural and gender norms.

This thesis explores the work experiences and life histories of a group of Latina migrant women who work in specific sectors of the service industry in Atlanta, Georgia. I focus on janitorial/custodial as well as domestic labor in order to confront the social issue of the continued devaluation and exploitation of feminized wage work. This ethnography reveals how education and English proficiency tie into how migrant labor is viewed in the United States specifically, and asks how Latina migrant women might be able to achieve labor legitimacy in the future. My findings are based on in-depth interviews that I collected from ten Latina migrant women who live and work in the Atlanta metro-area.

More than 2.6 million troops have deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, surveys reveal that more than half feel “disconnected” from their civilian counterparts, and this feeling persists despite ongoing efforts, in the academy and elsewhere, to help returning veterans overcome physical and mental wounds, seek an education, and find meaningful ways to contribute to society after taking off the uniform. This dissertation argues that Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans struggle with reassimilation because they lack healthy, complete models of veteran identity to draw upon in their postwar lives, a problem they’re working through collectively in literature and artwork. The war veteran—returning home transformed by the harsh realities of military training and service, having seen humanity at its extremes, and interacting with a society apathetic toward his or her experiences—should engage in the act of storytelling. This act of sharing experiences and crafting-self subverts stereotypes. Storytelling, whether in a book read by millions, or in a single conversation with a close family member, should instruct civilians on the topic of human resiliency; it should instruct veterans on the topic of homecoming. But typically, veterans do not tell stories. Civilians create barriers to storytelling in the form of hollow platitudes—“thank you for your service” or “I can never understand what you’ve been through”—disconnected from the meaning of wartime service itself. The dissonance between veteran and civilian only becomes more complicated when one considers the implicit demands and expectations attached to patriotism. These often well-intentioned gestures and government programs fail to convey a message of appreciation because they refuse to convey a message of acceptance; the exceptional treatment of veterans by larger society implies also that they are insufficient, broken, or incomplete. So, many veterans chose conformity and silence, adopting one of two identities available to them: the forever pitied “Wounded Warrior” or the superficially praised “Hero.” These identities are not complete. They’re not even identities as much as they are collections of rumors, misrepresentations, and expectations of conformity. Once an individual veteran begins unconsciously performing the “Wounded Warrior” or “Hero” character, the number of potential outcomes available in that individual’s life is severely diminished. Society reinforces a feeling among veterans that they are “different.” This shared experience has resulted in commiseration, camaraderie, and also the proliferation of veterans’ creative communities. As storytellers, the members of these communities are restoring meaning to veteran-civilian discourse by privileging the nuanced experiences of the individual over stereotypes and emotionless rhetoric. They are instructing on the topics of war and homecoming, producing fictional and nonfictional representations of the veteran capable of competing with stereotypes, capable of reassimilation. The Introduction establishes the existence of veteran culture, deconstructs notions of there being a single or binary set of veteran identities, and critiques the social and cultural rhetoric used to maintain symbolic boundaries between veterans and civilians. It begins by establishing an approach rooted in interdisciplinary literary theory, taking veteran identity as its topic of consideration and the American unconscious as the text it seeks to examine, asking readers to suspend belief in patriotic rhetoric long enough to critically examine veteran identity as an apparatus used to sell war to each generation of new recruits. Patriotism, beyond the well-meaning gestures and entitlements afforded to veterans, also results in feelings of “difference,” in the veteran feeling apart from larger society. The inescapability of veteran “difference” is a trait which sets it apart from other cultures, and it is one bolstered by inaccurate and, at times, offensive portrayals of veterans in mass media and Hollywood films such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), First Blood (1982), or Taxi Driver (1976). To understand this inescapability the chapter engages with theories of race, discussing the Korean War veteran in Home (2012) and other works by Toni Morrison to directly and indirectly explore descriptions of “difference” by African Americans and “others” not in positions of power. From there, the chapter traces veteran identity back to the Italian renaissance, arguing that modern notions of veteran identity are founded upon fears of returning veterans causing chaos and disorder. At the same time, writers such as Sebastian Junger, who are intimately familiar with veteran culture, repeatedly emphasize the camaraderie and “tribal” bonds found among members of the military, and instead of creating symbolic categories in which veterans might exist exceptionally as “Heroes,” or pitied as “Wounded Warriors,” the chapter argues that the altruistic nature which leads recruits to war, their capabilities as leaders and educators, and the need of larger society for examples of human resiliency are more appropriate starting points for establishing veteran identity. The Introduction is followed by an independent “Example” section, a brief examination of a student veteran named “Bingo,” one who demonstrates an ability to challenge, even employ veteran stereotypes to maintain his right to self-definition. Bingo’s story, as told in a “spotlight” article meant to attract student veterans to a college campus, portrays the veteran as a “Wounded Warrior” who overcomes mental illness and the scars of war through education, emerging as an exceptional example—a “Hero”—that other student veterans can model by enrolling at the school. Bingo’s story sets the stage for close examinations of the “Hero” and the “Wounded Warrior” in the first and second chapters. Chapter One deconstructs notions of heroism, primarily the belief that all veterans are “Heroes.” The chapter examines military training and indoctrination, Medal of Honor award citations, and film examples such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Heroes for Sale (1933), Sergeant York (1941), and Top Gun (1986) to distinguish between actual feats of heroism and “Heroes” as they are presented in patriotic rhetoric. The chapter provides the Medal of Honor citations attached to awards presented to Donald Cook, Dakota Meyer, and Kyle Carpenter, examining the postwar lives of Meyer and Carpenter, identifying attempts by media and government officials to appropriate heroism—to steal the right to self-definition possessed by these men. Among these Medal of Honor recipients one finds two types of heroism: Sacrificing Heroes give something of themselves to protect others; Attacking Heroes make a difference during battle offensively. Enduring Heroes, the third type of heroism discussed in the chapter, are a new construct. Colloquially, and for all intents and purposes, an Enduring Hero is simply a veteran who enjoys praise and few questions. Importantly, veterans enjoy the “Hero Treatment” in exchange for silence and conforming to larger narratives which obfuscate past wars and pave the way for new ones. This chapter engages with theorists of gender—such as Jack Judith Halberstam, whose Female Masculinities (1998) anticipates the agency increasingly available to women through military service; like Leo Braudy, whose From Chivalry to Terrorism (2003) traces the historical relationship between war and gender before commenting on the evolution of military masculinity—to discuss the relationship between heroism and agency, begging a question: What do veterans have to lose from the perpetuation of stereotypes? This question frames a detailed examination of William A. Wellman’s film, Heroes for Sale (1933), in the chapter’s final section. This story of stolen valor and the Great Depression depicts the homecoming of a WWI veteran separated from his heroism. The example, when combined with a deeper understanding of the intersection between veteran identity and gender, illustrates not only the impact of stolen valor in the life of a legitimate hero, but it also comments on the destructive nature of appropriation, revealing the ways in which a veteran stereotypes rob service men and women of the right to draw upon memories of military service which complete with those stereotypes. The military “Hero” occupies a moral high ground, but most conceptions of military “Heroes” are socially constructed advertisements for war. Real heroes are much rarer. And, as the Medal of Honor recipients discussed in the chapter reveal, they, too, struggle with lifelong disabilities as well as constant attempts by society to appropriate their narratives. Chapter Two traces the evolution of the modern “Wounded Warrior” from depictions of cowardice in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (1895), to the denigration of World War I veterans afflicted with Shell Shock, to Kevin Powers’s Iraq War novel, The Yellow Birds (2012). As with “Heroes,” “Wounded Warriors” perform a stereotype in place of an authentic, individualized identity, and the chapter uses Walt Kowalski, the protagonist of Clint Eastwood’s film, Gran Torino (2008), as its major example. The chapter discusses “therapeutic culture,” Judith Butler’s work on identity-formation, and Eva Illouz’s examination of a culture obsessed with trauma to comment on veteran performances of victimhood. Butler’s attempts to conceive of new identities absent the influence of systems of definition rooted in the state, in particular, reveal power in the opposite of silence, begging another question: What do civilians have to gain from the perpetuation of veteran stereotypes? Largely, the chapter finds, the “Wounded Warrior” persists in the minds of civilians who fear the veteran’s capacity for violence. A broken, damaged veteran is less of a threat. The story of the “Wounded Warrior” is not one of sacrifice. The “Wounded Warrior” exists after sacrifice, beyond any measure of “honor” achieved in uniform. “Wounded Warriors” are not expected to find a cure because the wound itself is an apparatus of the state that is commodified and injected into the currency of emotional capitalism. This chapter argues that military service and a damaged psyche need not always occur together. Following the second chapter, a close examination of “The Bear That Stands,” a short story by Suzanne S. Rancourt which confronts the author’s sexual assault while serving in the Marines, offers an alternative to both the “Hero” and the “Wounded Warrior” stereotypes. Rancourt, a veteran “Storyteller,” gives testimony of that crime, intervening in social conceptions of veteran identity to include a female perspective. As with the example of Bingo, the author demonstrates an innate ability to recognize and challenge the stereotypes discussed in the first and second chapters. This “Example” sets the stage for a more detailed examination of “Veteran Storytellers” and their communities in the final chapter. Chapter Three looks for examples of veteran “difference,” patriotism, the “Wounded Warrior,” and the “Hero” in nonfiction, fiction, and artwork emerging from the creative arts community, Military Experience and the Arts, an organization which provides workshops, writing consultation, and publishing venues to veterans and their families. The chapter examines veteran “difference” in a short story by Bradley Johnson, “My Life as a Soldier in the ‘War on Terror.’” In “Cold Day in Bridgewater,” a work of short fiction by Jerad W. Alexander, a veteran must confront the inescapability of that difference as well as expectations of conformity from his bigoted, civilian bartender. The final section analyzes artwork by Tif Holmes and Giuseppe Pellicano, which deal with the problems of military sexual assault and the effects of war on the family, respectively. Together, Johnson, Alexander, Holmes, and Pellicano demonstrate skills in recognizing stereotypes, crafting postwar identities, and producing alternative representations of veteran identity which other veterans can then draw upon in their own homecomings. Presently, no unified theory of veteran identity exists. This dissertation begins that discussion, treating individual performances of veteran identity, existing historical, sociological, and psychological scholarship about veterans, and cultural representations of the wars they fight as equal parts of a single text. Further, it invites future considerations of veteran identity which build upon, challenge, or refute its claims. Conversations about veteran identity are the opposite of silence; they force awareness of war’s uncomfortable truths and homecoming’s eventual triumphs. Complicating veteran identity subverts conformity; it provides a steady stream of traits, qualities, and motivations that veterans use to craft postwar selves. The serious considerations of war and homecoming presented in this text will be useful for Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans attempting to piece together postwar identities; they will be useful to scholars hoping to facilitate homecoming for future generations of war veterans. Finally, the Afterword to the dissertation proposes a program for reassimilation capable of harnessing the veteran’s symbolic and moral authority in such a way that self-definition and homecoming might become two parts of a single act.

No
Assembling Archaeology provides a radical rethinking of the relationships between teaching, researching, and practicing as an archaeologist in the twenty-first century. At its heart, this book addresses the marketization of higher education, demonstrating how this fundamentally impacts contemporary archaeological practice. The book proposes a solution which is grounded in a theoretical rethinking of archaeological teaching, training, and practice. Archaeology is currently undergoing a material turn which sees the revaluing of artefacts, objects, and the non-human in understanding the world. Drawing upon this, Cobb and Croucher approach the discipline as a subject of investigation and offer a new perspective founded upon the notion of learning assemblages. The holistic approach they propose challenges traditional power structures and the global marketization of the higher education system. The issues addressed here are global and applicable wherever archaeology is taught, practiced, and researched. This book is therefore valuable to all archaeologists, from academics to those in Cultural Resource Management, from heritage professionals to undergraduate students, and provides significant insights for educators throughout higher education.

This thesis examines how efforts regarding the commercial sex industry in Thailand can be positioned in relation to an agent-victim framework. In the context of the expanding sex industry in Thailand, it becomes relevant to look at how efforts regarding it risks reproducing notions of ‘the prostitute’ as the victimised Other, and thus reinforcing neo-colonialism. However, the response in the form of an agent narrative has also been criticised for not taking into account intersecting forms of oppression. Here, a model coming from an emerging literature on the ‘third way feminist approach’ is used to illustrate how these instead can be combined. Using critical discourse analysis, this study draws on postcolonial feminist theory to scrutinise the ways in which non-governmental organisations imagine women as either agents or victims, or rather a combination of the two. The starting point has been that this binary definition might not be sufficient, neither for theoretically addressing the issue, nor for describing discourse. Two ideal types based on the agent-victim framework has been used to study to what extent the discursive practice of the organisations NightLight and Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers can be placed neatly into one of these ideal types, or whether a third perspective is indeed needed to account for their perception of the women they work with. The analysis has been conducted using different forms of information gathered from the official websites of the organisations, in order to understand they ways in which the organisations themselves choose to communicate their work. The results show that the discursive practices of these organisations to some extent can be accounted for using this framework, yet that in order to fully understand them, one should consider the third way which combines the strengths of both.

This thesis investigates the continuance of the MeToo movement in the Swedish context via the digitalplatform Instagram, collective action and feminist organizations that are engaged to end sexual violence.It illuminates how the sisterhood impacted by the practice of challenging the rape script a conceptused to describe the discourse on how sexual violence should be like, and how victim-survivors should behave, how the engagement is made among the activists that engage to challenge the rape script and lastly, how since the MeToo movement started a discourse of rightlessness have been exposed through the sharing of experiences that the MeToo movement initiated. The ethnographic study is based on participant observation of feminist actions in real life and on Instagram as well as interviews with 13 activists from feminist organizations and with background as organisers of collective actions. It is found that the MeToo movement in Sweden is commonly practiced through an engagement in Feminist organizations that serve to keep the movement alive through continuous work to keep sexual violence on the agenda by keeping it visible, and that the engagement is driven by an experience of anger towards the societal discourse that sets the discourse on rape which affects the possibility to be recognized by the legal system. The thesis will overall suggest that there is a sisterhood built on a collective identity, and that the shared identity and oppression between non-men with an aspiration to support one another in the experience of oppression as well as organize safety nets for those who are sentenced for defamation as a consequence of speaking out.

John Rawls's theory of justice, which he calls "justice as fairness," has proven to be most influential with regard to the course of contemporary political theory. In both of Rawls's books, A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, his aim was to present a theoretically-compelling defense of deontological liberalism, and to present a set of principles by which to fairly order a just society. While Rawls's project has attracted a fair number of proponents over the years, it has also been a popular target for liberal and nonliberal critics alike. A recurrent theme among these criticisms has been an objection with Rawls's conception of the self as presented in A Theory of Justice. This thesis will focus on feminists' criticisms of Rawls's conception of persons. In general, feminists contend that Rawlsian liberalism suffers a structural gender bias resulting from Rawls's conception of the self. Rawls's notion of the self, feminists argue, rests on male or masculine attributes. I will demonstrate in the course of this thesis that feminists' charges fail on two accounts. First, feminists do not present an accurate reading of Rawls's conception of persons in either A Theory of Justice or Political Liberalism. Second, in reviewing feminist approaches to gendering the self (which is integral to their critique), it will be shown that feminists are unable to gender the self in a theoretically defensible manner. Thus, feminists cannot make the claim that the Rawlsian self is a male or masculine concept. It follows from these twin defects that feminist contentions fail to prove that Rawls's theory is gender biased.

This thesis is a queer theory analysis of the feminist science fiction novel The Kanshou by Sally Miller Gearhart. After exploring both male and female authored science fiction in the literature review, two themes were to be dominant. The goal of this thesis is to answer the questions, can the traditional themes that are prevalent in male authored science fiction and feminist science fiction in representing gender and sexual orientation dichotomies be found in The Kanshou? And does Gearhart challenge these dichotomies by destabilizing them? The analysis found determined that Gearhart's The Kanshou does challenge traditional sociological norms of binary gender identities and sexual orientation the majority of the time.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2002.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis uses an analysis of Fay Weldon's Puffball and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale to explore the construction of identity, particularly female identity. It takes into consideration the influence of both biology and culture on identity and explores how, within the context of the patriarchal societies depicted by the novels, female identity is closely linked to reproductive function. It examines how the construction of female identity based on reproductive function further objectifies the female body in society, and how it can aid patriarchal domination and oppression of women. The analysis of the novels draws on both essentialist and social constructionist feminist approaches to oppression and female identity. The essentialist approach views female biological difference (reproductive function) as responsible for the way in which women are oppressed. The social constructionist view argues that female oppression stems from the social construction of female identity around concepts of motherhood and femininity. The thesis takes both approaches into account as it seeks to explain how patriarchy oppresses women through the construction of female identity. The thesis also explores how control over the female body and identity can be exercised through reproductive technology. An examination of the role reproductive technology plays in contributing to patriarchal dominance, suggests that new technologies may compel women to conform to stereotypes of femininity based on pregnancy and motherhood. The thesis considers the impact infertility and the choice not to have children have on female identity and takes into account the options available to these women. The main focus, with regard to infertility and choice, is on the relationship between women who have children and those who do not. This thesis refutes the notion that there is solidarity between women based on shared childbearing experience, and focuses on the conflict that occurs between fertile and childless women. It finds that the conflict that occurs is a result of the socialisation of women into viewing motherhood as an essential aspect of 'normal' femininity. The thesis also considers what causes the desire to have children and finds that, as in the case of the conflict between women, it is as a result of socialisation and an innate/instinctual biological drive. The thesis investigates options available to women in order for them to avoid constructing their identities solely around their reproductive function. It considers the alternatives women are presented with when constructing their identity and how these may contribute to or liberate them from patriarchal oppression. If they choose to identify themselves using patriarchal norms, then they are contributing to their objectification; but if they choose to construct their identity on their own terms, and offer some resistance to patriarchal constructions, they will be more liberated than women who conform to stereotypes. Evidence of such resistance can be seen in both novels in the narrative structure the respective authors have chosen: just as the main characters subvert traditional stereotypes through the construction of their own identity, embracing female experience on their own terms, so do both authors subvert traditional narratives.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis is gegrond op die analisering van die novelle Puffball deur Fay Weldon en The Handmaid's Tale deur Margaret Atwood ter ondersoek van die konstruksie van identiteit, naamlik die vroulike identiteit. Die analise neem beide die biologiese en kulturele invloed van identiteit in ag, veral binne die konteks van die patriargale samelewing wat in novelles voorkom.Die wisselwerking tussen vroulike identiteit en die funksie van reproduksie word aangeraak. Die tesis ondersoek die wyse waarop die konstruksie van die vroulike identiteit gebasseer op die reproduksie funksie, verder die vroulike liggaam binne samelewingskonteks tipeer en hoe dit indirek patriargale dominansie ondersteun sowel as die onderdrukking van die vrou. Die analise van die novelles steun sterk op beide die essensialistiese en sosiale konstruksialistiese feministiese benaderings ten opsigte van onderdrukking en vroulike identiteit. Die essensialistiese benadering blameer die vroulike biologiese verskil, met verwysing na die reproduksie funksie, vir die wyse waarop die vrou onderdruk word. In kontras hiermee, argumenteer die sosiale konstruksialistiese seining dat vroulike onderdrukking voortspruit uit die sosiale konstruksie van vroulike identiteit binne die konsep van moederskap en vroulikheid. Die tesis neem beide standpunte in ag daar dit hom ten doel stelom te verduidelik waarom patriargie die vrou onderdruk deur die konstruksie van die vroulike identiteit. Die tesis fokus ook op die wyse waarop kontrole oor die vroulike liggaam en identiteit uitgeoefen kan word deur die reproduktiewe tegnologie. 'n Ondersoek na die rol wat reproduktiewe tegnologie speel ter ondersteuning van patriargale dominansie, argumenteer dat nuwe tegnologieë "Toue kan verplig tot die konformering van stereotipes van vroulikheid gebasseer op swangerskap en moederskap. Die analise neem ook die impak wat onvrugbaarheid op die vroulike identiteit het, in ag , sowel as die besluit om nie kinders te hê nie. Verder neem dit ook die verskeie opsies wat beskikbaar is vir die vrou wat daarteen besluit om kinders te hê, in ag, sover dit die konstruksie van identiteit raak. Die hooffokus met betrekking tot onvrugbaarheid en keuse, is gebasseer op die verhouding tussen vroue wat wel kinders het en diegene wat kinderloos is. Die tesis weerlê die idee dat daar solidariteit is tussen vroue gebasseer op gedeelde ervarings en gemeenskaplike doelwitte en begeertes en fokus op die konflik wat ontstaan tussen kinderlose en vrugbare vroue. Die ondersoek ondervind dat die konflik wat onstaan, 'n produk is van die sosialisering van vroue met die idee van moederskap as 'n essensiële aspek van "normale" vroulikheid. Die tesis ondersoek ook die oorsake van die begeerte om kinders te hê en ondervind dat, soos ook die geval met konflik, dit die produk is van sosialisering en instinktiefbiologies gedrewe is. Die tesis ondersoek die opsies beskikbaar vir die vrou ten einde haar te verhoed om die konstruksie van haar identiteit te grond alleenlik op die reproduktiewe funksie. Die analise neem die alternatiewe waarmee die vrou gekonfronteer word tydens die konstruksieproses, in aanmerking, en bevraagteken die wyse waarop hierdie alternatiewe kan bydra tot , of die bevryding van, die patriargale onderdrukking. Indien die vrou verkies om haarself te identifiseer deur patriargale norme te gebruik sal sy bydra tot haar objektivering binne die tradisionele patriargale konteks; maar indien sy kies om haar eie identiteit te konstruktueer volgens haar eie norme en terselfdertyd patriargale konstruksie teenstaan, sal sy meer geëmansipeerd wees as haar eweknie wat tot die stereotipe gekonformeer het. Deel van die weerstand wat voorkom in beide novelles, kan opgemerk word in die naratiewe struktuur gekies deur die skrywer. Paralelle word aangetref tussen enersyds, die wyse waarop die hoofkarakters hulself aan die tradisionele stereotipes ondermyn deur die konstruksie van hul eie identiteit, terselfdertyd deur die koestering van vroulike ervarings, en andersyds die wyse waarop beide skrywers hulself aan tradisionele naratiewe onderwerp.

This study focuses on three young women in their final year of school using data gathered during a year-long process of individual conversational interviews, the contents of which were largely determined by their interests. Three themes arise from critical incidents during this year - the debutante ball, teenage pregnancy and dieting. These themes are used to focus wide ranging explorations of what it is to be a young woman at this particular time. The broader cultural production of discursive positions available to, and developed by, these young women as part of their identity formation is discussed. Methodological issues concerning power relationships between research participants are also the focus of critical attention. It is considered that young women's bodies and bodily practices are central to understanding the processes involved in their identity formation. It is in this context that the focus turns to bodies that matter. In contemporary Western cultures 'adolescent bodies' could be said to matter 'too much' in the sense that they are increasingly the focus for disciplinary practices in institutions such as schooling, the church, the family, health care, health promotion and the media. This disciplining is legitimised because adolescence is socially constructed as a 'becoming'. In this case it is a matter of 'becoming woman'; a sort of apprenticeship which allows for knowledgeable others to provide not only guidance and nurturance, but discipline. Using insights gained from feminist poststructuralist theory and cultural feminism this thesis argues that the discourses and practices generated within and across institutions, which are normalised by their institutional base, are gender differentiated. The focus is on young women's embodied subjectivity and how the discourses and practices they engage with and in work to construct an ideal feminine body-subject. The discursive production of a gendered identity has a considerable impact on young women's health and their health-related behaviours. This is explored specifically in the thesis in relation to sexuality and the cultural production of the 'ideal' female body. It is argued that health education and health promotion strategies which are designed to influence young women's health related behaviours, need to consider the forms of power, knowledge and desire produced through young women's active engagement with institutionalised discourses of identity if they are to have an ongoing impact

Women in the sex industry struggle with emotional turmoil, drug and alcohol addiction, poverty, and spiritual disillusionment. Their lived experiences as stigmatized individuals engender feelings of powerlessness, which inhibits their attempts to leave the sex industry. This study illuminates how personal narratives develop throughout the process of shedding stigmatized identities and how mutual support functions as a tool in life transformation. Social identity theory and feminist standpoint theory are used as theoretical frameworks of this research, with each theory adding nuanced understanding to life transformations of female former sex workers. Results indicate that women in the sex industry share common narratives that reveal experiences of a "Living Hell", transitional language, and ultimate alignment with traditional norms. Implications of SIT and FST reveal the role of feminist organizations as possible patriarchal entities and adherence to stereotypical masculine ideology as an anchoring factor in continued sex work.

An ethical understanding of responsibility should entail a richly qualitative comprehension of the links between embodied, unique individuals and their lived realities of behaviour. Criminal responsibility theory broadly adheres to ‘rational choice’ models of the moral self which subsume individuals’ emotionally embodied dimensions under the general direction of their rational will and abstracts their behaviour from corporeal reality. Linking individuals with their behaviour based only on such understandings of ‘rational choice’ and abstract descriptions of behaviour overlooks the phenomenological dimensions of that behaviour and thus its moral significance as a lived experience. To overcome this ethical shortcoming, engagement with the aesthetic as an alternative discourse can help articulate the ‘excessive’ nature of lived reality and its relationship with ‘orthodox’ knowledge; fittingly, the comics form involves interaction of rational, non-rational, linguistic, and non-linguistic dimensions, modelling the limits of conceptual thought in relation to complex reality. Rational choice is predicated upon a split between a contextually embedded self and an abstractly autonomous self. Analysis of the graphic novel Watchmen contends that prioritisation of rational autonomy over sensual experience is symptomatic of a ‘rational surface’ that turns away from the indeterminate ‘chaos’ of complex reality (the unstructured universe), instead maintaining the power of rational and linguistic concepts to order the world. This ‘rational surface’ is maintained by masking that which threatens its stability: the chaos of the infinite difference of living individuals. These epistemological foundations are reconfigured, via Watchmen, enabling engagement beyond the ‘rational surface’ by accepting the generative potential of this living chaos and calling for models of criminal identity that are ‘restless’, acknowledging the unique, shifting nature of individuals, and not tending towards ‘complete’ or stable concepts of the self-as-responsible. As part of the aesthetic methodology of this reconfiguration, a radical extension of legal theory’s analytical canon is developed.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2007.
Title from file title page. Elizabeth West, committee chair; Layli Phillips, Kameelah Martin Samuel, committee members. Electronic text (52 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Jan. 30, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-52).

A considerable amount of work has been written on race and education in the British context since the 1960s. This work has largely focused on policy issues, curriculum development and teacher training. This work has been important largely for developments in multicultural education in the school context. In Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), the teaching of race related modules and courses have flourished since the 1980s (Jacobs 2006). This interest, however, has not translated into work on praxis, that is, anti-racist teaching practices that aim to improve the situation that students and teachers face when challenging racism. This PhD study by publication begins to redress this by exploring student experiences and classroom dialogue. It adopts an interpretist methodological perspective and uses participant observation and interview methods. The observations and interviews are drawn from my classroom teaching, specifically, my modules dealing centrally with race and racism. Most of the writing around race and HEIs focuses on institutional matters rather than those that seek to enable praxis. The original contribution to knowledge advanced in this critical commentary and my published works submitted here is that it underlines the importance of anti-racism as it emerges organically within classroom engagement and exchange. Anti-racist practice, I claim, becomes fundamental to the learning process, where student experiences are first considered within the teaching process. This study focuses on students' learning experiences as found in my second and third level modules on the Sociology degree on which I teach at Wolverhampton University. My publications examine students' perspectives on racism as they arise in class. They explore student identities as they are experienced and classroom interaction. In this endeavour, I focus on the ways that Critical 5 Theory and Feminism and Critical Pedagogy can challenge students' prior perspectives on their identities and those of others. This work seeks to add to analyses of the ways that racism currently operates and could be challenged in HEIs. It argues that it can be challenged through more fully developing anti-racist educational practices that must engage with debates about ethnicity and identity in education, as discussed in Section One. This is because students’ lived experiences are core to an understanding of how racism impacts on students' lives. This commentary advances the argument that anti-racist debates in HEIs that organically evolve from classroom teaching and learning are paramount to the work of anti-racist education in HEi, because lived experience is seen to be powerful material that can counter mainstream discourse on racism. What is distinctive about my model of anti-racist teaching and learning practices is my anti-racist practice. This informs my academic work with students and encourages them to reconsider their thinking in classroom teaching and learning. The use of Critical Race Theory and Feminist theoretical and methodological approaches and Critical Pedagogy is central to my anti-racist teaching practices in HEis.

La narrativa de Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993) no goza del lugar que merece en la ficción argentina y latinoamericana como obra de la principal cuentista del siglo XX. Hace relativamente poco que su obra comenzó a despertar el interés de la crítica, atención que se evidencia en la cantidad de artículos y disertaciones recientes. Mediante una disección de la narrativa ocampeana a partir de las grandes coordenadas que la intersectan se pueden caracterizar los aspectos peculiares y distintivos de su estilo. Desarrollada tras la consolidación del psicoanálisis y su influencia en la estética surrealista, la narrativa de Ocampo incorpora algunos de esos elementos. El género fantástico también se articula aunque mediante una selección de rasgos configurados a su modo. Si bien Ocampo rechaza la etiqueta de feminista, ciertos aspectos de su estilo sólo pueden explicarse a partir de la visión particular de una mujer escritora y su representación de la identidad y las relaciones. La lectura pormenorizada de varios cuentos recogidos en “Cuentos completos” I y II (1999), once volúmenes publicados durante su vida, pertenecientes a distintos períodos de su producción permiten realizar un análisis diacrónico que ofrece una caracterización redonda de su estilo y evolución. El análisis sincrónico de estos textos incorpora datos históricos acerca del contexto de producción; a la vez que otras obras literarias del período ofrecen un punto de comparación para identificar influencias y contribuciones. Este análisis, realizado desde el marco teórico de la crítica literaria, da cuenta de la presencia de constituyentes narrativos (narrador, ironía, ambigüedad) que configuran espacios de indeterminación, noción postulada por las teorías de la recepción. Éstos explican las peculiares características de la obra ocampeana: su habilidad para inquietar, intrigar, sorprender y, en suma, desestabilizar al lector y sus expectativas. Es más, sirven para explicar la idiosincrática representación de la realidad que emana de su obra, su interés en lo fantástico y la articulación de lo anti-convencional, como mecanismo subversivo para escapar del orden social dominante, lo cual revela sensibilidades protofeministas. La narrativa de Silvina Ocampo se resiste al reduccionismo y construye una visión peculiar y multifacética de la artista y su obra.

The field of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) traditionally encompasses care and education for children aged from birth to eight years. In this study, the focus is specifically on the field that provides services for children in prior to school settings, that being the birth to five sector. This sector is highly feminised and has emerged over the last century from philanthropic roots. Despite considerable work into leadership in other areas, until recent times, attention to aspects of leadership has been limited within the ECEC field and much of the research undertaken has focused heavily on centre-based leadership. This study investigated how personnel, from a range of services, understand and enact leadership. In terms of data analysis it draws heavily on symbolic interactionism as a methodological tool and engages standpoint feminist theory to inform the analytical process. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with twenty-six participants who also identified artefacts, which they considered influenced and supported their understandings of leadership. In addition, two focus groups were conducted to explore themes emerging from early analysis of the data. Findings indicate two categories, which emerge as relevant to how leadership is understood and enacted by participants. The first of these is the concept of interpreted professional identity, which reflects participants' interpretations of who they are as early childhood professionals informed by their own views and the views of others. How individuals interpret their sense of self (manifest in their professional identity) is influential in the secondary category, which is interpreted leadership capacity. This category reflects participants' leadership activity or inactivity. The analysis reflects a complex interplay between how participants interpret their professional sense of self (interpreted professional identity) and their capacity and willingness to enact leadership (interpreted leadership capacity). Individuals in the formation of their professional identity interpret factors, both internal to the ECEC field and external (through social expectations). The culture of the ECEC field (internal factors) includes competing elements such as a discourse of niceness juxtaposed against examples of horizontal violence. Factors external to the field suggest there are lingering social associations between heroic male images and leadership, which make women as leaders problematic. Within a highly feminised field such as ECEC, this study brings new perspectives to understandings of leadership and its enactment.

Urban Education
Ph.D.
African American rites of passage (ROP) have historically contributed to adolescent gender socialization enabling Black youth to overcome the effects of racism and oppression. ROP in the schools provide lessons in Black history, traditions, and culture as they guide youth through the turbulent terrain of adolescence via the communal "coming of age" process. This study examined adolescent girls' experiences in weekly ROP classes at Ella Baker Freedom Academy (EBFA) Charter School over the course of one academic year and five months. EBFA is an African-centered Freedom School in a northeastern city in the United States. This study employed ethnographic methods within a Black Feminist/Womanist framework to investigate how rites of passage support adolescent girls' gendered ethnic identity, self-concept, and peer relations. This study fills in gaps in the literature on ROP, focusing on the participants' ROP experiences within the intersections of adolescent identity formation, womanhood and sisterhood empowerment, and culturally relevant gender socialization practices in school. Three major questions guided the study: 1) How ROP classes supported adolescent girls' intersecting and developing gender and ethnic identities; 2) How ROP classes supported students' female peer relations; and 3) How African values were utilized in ROP classes. The study revealed the interconnected ways in which ROP supported participants' developing gender/ethnic identities, and improved peer relationships, conflict resolution strategies, and personal definitions of womanhood. The ROP classes supported students by: a) developing a critical awareness of sexism, internalized oppression; i.e., colorism, negative racial/gendered stereotypes about Black women and girls in U.S. society, particularly those propagated through the media; b) building appreciation, esteem, and respect in themselves and each other; c) cultivating positive academic identities through healthy female peer relationships via critical dialogue, trust building, conflict resolution, and empowering communications; d) developing personal standards for womanhood using African-centered values; and e) revealing gendered passageways to womanhood and sisterhood in intergenerational and emotionally safe spaces, and across school contexts.
Temple University--Theses

This thesis focuses on how identity in contemporary British and French women’s writing has developed since the times of second wave feminism, when identity in women’s literature was virtually narrowed down to gender identity and women’s identities more often than not were portrayed as discriminated against, alien and other in world dominated by patriarchy. The thesis addresses different aspects of identity explored in the work of four contemporary female authors: British Trezza Azzopardi and A.L. Kennedy, French Marie NDiaye and Marie Darrieussecq. It also articulates the structure of identity as it appears in the work of each author. The study suggests that Azzopardi, NDiaye, Kennedy and Darrieussecq address a wide range of aspects of identity in their work. Nevertheless, gender identity remains a significant preoccupation in their writing and is often explored together with other discriminated identities and their combinations (i.e. gender/race/social/class or gender/age/national identities. It is argued that self identity in the work of all four authors takes the form of the other in different guises. It is argued that a prominent concern with the exploration of self as other is the distinguishing mark of the latest generation of women writers compared to previous ones. It is the contention of this thesis that the change in the female speaking position has inevitably transformed the way the female speaking subject perceives herself and functions in discourse and culture.
Disertacijoje siekiama atskleisti, kaip moterų tapatumo problema naujausioje prancūzų ir britų moterų literatūroje pakito nuo antrosios feminizmo bangos laikų, kai moterų literatūroje ji buvo tapati lyties tapatumui, o moters tapatumas vaizduojamas kaip diskriminuojamas, svetimas, kitas vyrų pasaulyje. Lyties tapatumas šiuolaikinėje moterų kūryboje išsirutuliojo į sudėtingą ir platų tapatumų tinklą. Disertacijoje nagrinėjami įvairūs tapatumo aspektai ir jų raiška keturių šiuolaikinių rašytojų – prancūzių Marie NDiaye ir Marie Darrieussecq bei bričių velsietės Trezzos Azzopardi ir škotės Alison Louise Kennedy (pasirašinėjančios A. L. Kennedy) – kūryboje. Per minėtų autorių kūrybą aptariami XX–XXI amžių sandūros britų ir prancūzų moterų literatūroje aktualizuojami tapatumo aspektai ir jų konstravimo principai. Daromos išvados, kad šiuolaikinių rašytojų nebeslegia lyties identifikacijos, joms rūpi aktualizuoti ne vieną, bet daugelį tapatumo aspektų, kurie vis dėlto dažniausiai yra diskriminuojami. Vyraujantis mąstymo apie tapatumą būdas Azzopardi, NDiaye, Kennedy ir Darrieussecq kūryboje yra kito neišvengiamumo deklaravimas. Tai simbolizuoja visavertį moterų rašytojų dalyvavimą diskursyvinėje erdvėje, tai, kad kūrybą jos suvokia ne kaip kito dominuojamą erdvę, bet kaip areną, kurioje jų talentas, jų kūrybinė savastis gali skleistis ir skleidžiasi per santykį su kitu, kitais, jų tekstais, kūrybiniais ir meniniais ieškojimais.

Disertacijoje siekiama atskleisti, kaip moterų tapatumo problema naujausioje prancūzų ir britų moterų literatūroje pakito nuo antrosios feminizmo bangos laikų, kai moterų literatūroje ji buvo tapati lyties tapatumui, o moters tapatumas vaizduojamas kaip diskriminuojamas, svetimas, kitas vyrų pasaulyje. Lyties tapatumas šiuolaikinėje moterų kūryboje išsirutuliojo į sudėtingą ir platų tapatumų tinklą. Disertacijoje nagrinėjami įvairūs tapatumo aspektai ir jų raiška keturių šiuolaikinių rašytojų – prancūzių Marie NDiaye ir Marie Darrieussecq bei bričių velsietės Trezzos Azzopardi ir škotės Alison Louise Kennedy (pasirašinėjančios A. L. Kennedy) – kūryboje. Per minėtų autorių kūrybą aptariami XX–XXI amžių sandūros britų ir prancūzų moterų literatūroje aktualizuojami tapatumo aspektai ir jų konstravimo principai. Daromos išvados, kad šiuolaikinių rašytojų nebeslegia lyties identifikacijos, joms rūpi aktualizuoti ne vieną, bet daugelį tapatumo aspektų, kurie vis dėlto dažniausiai yra diskriminuojami. Vyraujantis mąstymo apie tapatumą būdas Azzopardi, NDiaye, Kennedy ir Darrieussecq kūryboje yra kito neišvengiamumo deklaravimas. Tai simbolizuoja visavertį moterų rašytojų dalyvavimą diskursyvinėje erdvėje, tai, kad kūrybą jos suvokia ne kaip kito dominuojamą erdvę, bet kaip areną, kurioje jų talentas, jų kūrybinė savastis gali skleistis ir skleidžiasi per santykį su kitu, kitais, jų tekstais, kūrybiniais ir meniniais ieškojimais.
This thesis focuses on how identity in contemporary British and French women’s writing has developed since the times of second wave feminism, when identity in women’s literature was virtually narrowed down to gender identity and women’s identities more often than not were portrayed as discriminated against, alien and other in world dominated by patriarchy. The thesis addresses different aspects of identity explored in the work of four contemporary female authors: British Trezza Azzopardi and A.L. Kennedy, French Marie NDiaye and Marie Darrieussecq. It also articulates the structure of identity as it appears in the work of each author. The study suggests that Azzopardi, NDiaye, Kennedy and Darrieussecq address a wide range of aspects of identity in their work. Nevertheless, gender identity remains a significant preoccupation in their writing and is often explored together with other discriminated identities and their combinations (i.e. gender/race/social/class or gender/age/national identities. It is argued that self identity in the work of all four authors takes the form of the other in different guises. It is argued that a prominent concern with the exploration of self as other is the distinguishing mark of the latest generation of women writers compared to previous ones. It is the contention of this thesis that the change in the female speaking position has inevitably transformed the way the female speaking subject perceives herself and functions in discourse and culture.

The purpose of this study is to explore how well prepared educators at pre-schools are to receive children with another gender identity than their biological gender. The focus for the study lies on the discourses that exist in the pre-school regarding gender norms and how they become visible through the language educators use in the equal treatment plans, that are a part of the pre-schools value works, and in talks between educators. My research questions are: ·         How does pre-schools describe their work with children with another gender identity than their biological gender? ·         Which discourses regarding gender norms does the pre-schools equal treatment plans and group talks with educators show? To answer these questions, I have used the analyses of five equal treatment plans and two group talks. By analysing the equal treatment plans and the group talks with the four strategies for anti discrimatory education from Kumashiro, by letting the strategies make the discourses visible, I have come to the result that gender identity is made invisible in the pre-schools by the educators. The equal treatment plans contain descriptions of the discrimination grounds but not how the educators work with these in the daily workings with the children, and the educators describe gender instead of gender identity in the group talks. In my discussion and conclusion I reason about the causes for this in relation to previous research about norms around gender and gender identity in pre-schools.

Considerando que tanto a música quanto a escola contribuem para a constituição de nossas identidades, este trabalho teve como objetivo investigar os discursos de licenciandos/as em música acerca da diversidade de gênero e sexualidade, em suas relações com a música. Os objetivos específicos propostos foram: identificar/visibilizar quais significados sobre gênero e sexualidade estão sendo compartilhados, naturalizados e legitimados; identificar/visibilizar como esses significados circulam; e identificar/visibilizar por quem esses significados são compartilhados. Adotando uma abordagem qualitativa, utilizei como ferramenta para a produção do material empírico a entrevista semiestruturada com licenciandos/as em música de quatro instituições de ensino superior de Curitiba-PR. Para a realização da análise do material empírico produzido na relação com o/as participantes, foram utilizadas algumas estratégias da teoria fundamentada nos dados. No que se refere à perspectiva analítica, recorri às formulações dos estudos feministas e da teoria queer. A investigação realizada permitiu dizer que os sentidos partilhados pelo/as licenciando/as trouxeram divergentes formas de significação da diversidade de gênero e sexualidade, as quais posicionam os sujeitos em distintos lugares. Reconhecer essas divergentes formas de significação é assumir que nas redes de representação a “realidade” terá muitas versões e que os processos de conhecer são construídos social e culturalmente. Os saberes que compõem os sistemas de significação do/as licenciado/as sobre a diversidade de gênero e sexualidade não foram reconhecidos como tendo sido constituídos em seus cursos de licenciatura em música. O silêncio sobre a articulação música/gênero/sexualidade nos espaços acadêmicos atravessou a percepção do/as licenciando/as em música. Esse silêncio configura um discurso que invisibiliza outros modos de ser para além da matriz hétero-cis-normativa.
Considering that both music and school contribute to the constitution of our identities, the aim of this thesis was to investigate the discourses of bachelor in music education students about gender and sexuality diversity, and its relations with music. More specifically, it aimed: to identify/make visible meanings of gender and sexuality that are being shared, naturalised, and legitimated; to identify/make visible how those meanings circulate; and to identify/make visible by whom these meanings are shared. Adopting a qualitative approach, the empirical material was produced through semi-structured interviews with four music education students from four higher education institutions from Curitiba-PR, Brazil. The empirical material was analysed using some of the strategies of grounded theory and further interpreted based on ideas from the field of feminist studies and the queer theory. The meanings shared by the music education students revealed divergent ways of making sense of gender and sexuality diversity, ways that locate people in distinct places. To recognize these divergent ways of sense making is to assume that, in the representation networks, “reality” will have multiple versions and the processes of knowing are socially and culturally constructed. The knowledge that constitutes the students’ systems of meaning about gender and sexuality diversity was not recognized as being constructed through their undergraduate courses. The silence about the interaction between music, gender and sexuality in the higher education settings goes through the students’ perception. This silence configures a discourse that makes invisible other ways of being beyond the hetero-cis-normative matrix.

Den här studien vill bidra med kunskap kring normkritisk pedagogik inom dramapedagogiken i Sverige. Det genom att belysa det svenska DRACON-projektet ur ett normkritiskt perspektiv. Det svenska DRACON-projektet är en del av det internationella DRACON-projektet vars övergripande syfte var att bygga  en bro mellan drama och konflikthantering. I bakgrunden till den här studien beskrivs dramapedagogik, svensk dramaforskning och internationell dramaforskning utifrån kritiska teorier. Normkritisk pedagogik är en kritisk pedagogik som vänder blicken mot maktstrukturer och privilegier istället för att fokusera på minoriteter eller förtryckta grupper. I det teoretiska perspektivet förklaras och fördjupas begreppet normkritisk pedagogik utifrån feministisk teori, queerteori, postkolonial teori och kritiska vithetsstudier, funktionalitet, intersektionalitet och kritisk pedagogik.   Syftet med den här undersökningen var att genom ett kritiskt makt- och identitetsperspektiv belysa det svenska DRACON-programmet. Det utifrån forskningsfrågorna: Vilka föreställningar om makt och identitet finns inbyggda det svenska DRACON-programmet? Hur förhåller sig dessa föreställningar till den normkritiska pedagogikens syn på makt och identitet?   Studien genomfördes utifrån textanalys av boken DRACON i skolan. Analysen strukturerades med hjälp av en analysmall. Resultatet tyder på att DRACON-programmet i Sverige är inkluderande och försöker ta tillvara på alla deltagares erfarenheter. Samtidigt verkar programmet sakna ett ifrågasättande av kön och genus och fördjupade analyser kring makt. Spår av postkolonialism framträder i någon enstaka lek.
The general aim of this study is to contribute to the knowledge of, so called, norm-critical pedagogy (normkritisk pedagogik) as part of Drama in Education in Sweden. This through looking at the Swedish DRACON-project from a norm-critical point of view. The Swedish DRACON-project is a part of the international DRACON-project which aimed at building a bridge between drama in education and conflict management. Norm-critical pedagogy is a Scandinavian term for critical pedagogy that focuses on the structures of power and privilege, rather than the oppressed. The pedagogy is explained in this paper and has its roots in queer pedagogy, queer theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory and intersectional perspectives.   The aim of this study was to look at the Swedish DRACON-project from the critical point of view of power, privilege and identity.  The study examines the following questions: What conceptions of power and identity can be found in the Swedish DRACON-program? How do these conceptions relate to norm-critical perspectives of power, privilege and identity?   The examination is done through text analysis of the book DRACON i skolan(DRACON in school). The results indicate that the Swedish DRACON-project is inclusive and tries to seize the experiences of all participants. At the same time the project seems to lack the questioning of gender and the immersing of analyzing power structures.

Under 1995 togs ett riksdagsbeslut om att skapa en stödform som möjliggjorde för partier med mandat i riksdagen att med Sida-finansierade projektmedel verka för att bygga upp partisystem i Östeuropa och i utvecklingsländer genom så kallade partianknutna organisationer (PAO). Dessa organisationer skall enligt ett regeringsbeslut från 1998 också arbeta med att särskilt uppmärksamma kvinnor i sina projekt. Jämställdhet har sedan mitten av 1990-talet varit ett av huvudmålen för svenskt bistånd och på senare år har jämställdhet kommit att utgöra en betydelsefull markör för svensk nationell identitet.

I uppsatsen studeras hur svenska nationella identiteter konstrueras i PAO:s biståndsarbete för jämställdhet, och med att särskilt uppmärksamma kvinnor. Syftet fokuserar på hur dessa föreställningar, sammanlänkade med idéer om kön och ’ras’, etableras och upprätthålls inom PAO-biståndet. Ett kompletterande syfte är att lyfta fram ambivalenser i konstruktionen av dessa identiteter, för att visa att organisering kring andra identiteter är möjligt. På det här sättet vill uppsatsen ifrågasätta förgivet tagna identiteter och sätta in dem i ett sammanhang där olika aspekter av identitetskonstruktioner inom bistånd kan diskuteras.

This thesis examines the performance of affect in relation to gender identity across some of the major works of Willa Cather’s and John Steinbeck’s careers. Throughout this discussion, I contend that Steinbeck—an author not often thought of as projecting feminist concerns—indeed approximates the feminist themes of Cather in his creation of characters who embody nonnormative castes of gender identity, even if Cather does perhaps exceed Steinbeck’s feminist vision in her optimism for the potential of people of nonnormative gender identity to find peace, happiness, and acceptance in an often xenophobic early-twentieth-century America. Over the course of this thesis, I build on the work of affect theorists such as Sara Ahmed and Anu Koivunen by demonstrating the power of affect theory as a tool for understanding gender politics and gender identity.

The Wild Beasts springs from my desire to thank my ever-expanding queer chosen family and mentors for their strength. Working through the often violent and othering aspects of the lens and photographic histories I create floral portraits responding to each person’s being and our relationship. Using the 19th century, 8x10 large format view camera—the same used by colonialists and ethnographers to “capture” the divinity of Nature—I erect each as a traditional still life studio setup at the threshold between the natural world and that constructed by humans. These environments speak both to the character of each friend and also to the use of Nature against queer people in most legal systems across the planet. We are deemed unnatural and made criminals through inequitable semantics. The 8x10 negative becomes a portrait, a darkroom contact print that is gifted to each of The Wild Beasts, an intimate artifact of my gratitude. At these borders I lash at the histories of oppression, remaking these lineages and tools into spaces for empathy, tenderness, and love.

Figurines with a human shape have been created in almost every culture all throughout human history. In this thesis one such group of figurines is under investigation, Viking age female figurines. These figurines are most often interpreted as representations of the Valkyries – shieldmaidens of the god Odin – or as the goddess Fröja. Interpretations made through comparative studies with the medieval written sources. However, these interpretations always privileges some attributes of the figurines over others, creating simplified and general interpretations. The purpose of this thesis is to (re)interpret the figurines beyond the concept of representation, and instead focus on what the figurines, through their various attributes (size, motive, material), do and how they influence human actions. This is realized through the creation of a catalogue of all currently known female figurines from the Viking age (53 pieces), a correspondence analysis and through the use of symmetrical archaeology and embodiment theory. The result shows that the most important attributes of the figurines is their physical bodies, through which they can interact with the world, trigger emotions, hold memory, become animated and be part of the performative practice of upholding individual identity as well as upholding both the social- and cosmological worlds.

This thesis explores the construction of identity amongst the second generation of South- Korean migrants to Germany in Frankfurt am Main, focussing mainly on women. Overwhelmingly, when talking about migrants the German media focus on the Turkish minority. Literature follows a similar pattern. However, West Germany recruited South Korean nurses and miners during the 1970s as labour migrants. Today, they and their children constitute the largest South Korean minority in Europe. In this thesis I examine the second generation of the Korean minority in relation to broader discourses on migrants and integration in Germany, and trace the dynamics of identification and self-understanding. Central to these are narratives of shared experiences, of having Korean parents and of living in German society, particularly in relation to discourses in which they are identified as foreigners. Korean parents impart a sense of “Korea” as a source of timeless tradition and practices; whereas “Germany” is a setting for their everyday lives. These shared experiences are mobilised as a framework for negotiating identities. In contrast to the essentialist understanding of identity invoked by Germany society, the second generation describe themselves as kyopo, a Korean term meaning “Korean living in a foreign country” and which, in the German context, means “Second-generation German-Korean living in Germany”. This thesis looks at the ways Korean-Germans articulate the possibilities and limits of kyopo identity in relation to narratives and discourses on ‘Koreanness' and ‘Germanness', and in the context of social interactions. I focus especially on the ways in which this occurs for women, whose experiences are often marginalised in the process of kyopo identity negotiation. They are caught between the need to expose the problems of male privilege and the desire to unite with Korean-German men to contest the German discourse on integration and foreigners that confines them both.

Germaine Dulac's 1928 avant-garde film, La Coquille et le Clergyman, based on a script written by Antonin Artaud, presents the idea of the woman as an object of desire, subjected to the male gaze through the cinematic process. Not only is the lone female character the object of desire of her two male suitors on screen, but she also becomes the object of desire for the presumably male viewer of the film, who has become a silent character in the film. Rather than simply being the spectator, the viewer's own identity becomes entwined with that of the on screen characters. While the idea of the woman as the object of desire subjected to the often male gaze in the cinema has been analyzed by many feminist film theorists, including Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman and Mary Ann Doane, the theories presented center on films directed either by male directors or female directors since the 1970's. Very little has been written about films directed by women in the 1920's, including La Coquille et le Clergyman. By examining Coquille et le Clergyman, I hope to fill in a gap in the discourse of the majority of feminist film theory. This thesis will not only attempt to understand how Germaine Dulac, an early feminist film director, approaches the idea of the female body as an object of desire subjected to the male gaze differently than her male film director counterparts, but will examine how the relationships between the female character and the two male characters differ from other male directed avant-garde films from the 1920's and how these relationships affect spectatorship. By examining La Coquille et le Clergyman, I hope to better understand how Dulac's cinematic interpretation of Artaud's script treats the idea of spectatorship, not only in 1928, but also today.