A mysterious goddess magically generates a swirling wind to conceal the body of a hero. A licentious flower deity seduces a male to experiment with forty-three postures of copulation in a picturesque garden. Such graphic details of late imperial Chinese fiction exhibit two types of power from women: their martial prowess and seductiveness. This dissertation brings these two types of female power together by focusing on the Mysterious Woman (Xuannü 玄女) and the Immaculate Woman (Sunü 素女), two Daoist goddesses who figure prominently in martial arts and erotic stories, respectively. I argue that after being marginalized by institutionalized Daoism, these goddesses played a pivotal role in framing two different, though occasionally interrelated, types of novels. One type of novel concerns war and public affairs, including dynastic crises; the other type concerns domestic life, as exemplified in erotic fiction. The metaphor that equates sex with war relates these two types of stories. I consider these fictional texts to be powerful agents that reused and reinterpreted the goddesses’ stories in late imperial China. I also situate these texts in the cultural network within which they constructed or reconstructed the goddesses’ images in collaboration with Daoist discourse. In this research, I also examine how femininity (yin 陰) is constructed in late imperial Chinese fiction. As I argue, the ideas of invisibility (yin 隱) and licentiousness (yin 淫) constitute the notion of femininity. The Mysterious Woman demonstrates the power of invisibility when being portrayed as a goddess of war and associated with Daoist magic, such as the magic of invisibility (yinshen shu 隱身術). The Immaculate Woman represents the idea of licentiousness as she appears in various forms to seduce male protagonists. The dissertation contains two sections. The first part focuses on the following fictional texts: Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳), Quelling the Demons’ Revolt (San Sui pingyao zhuan 三遂平妖傳), Bull’s Head Mountain (Niutou shan 牛頭山), and Unofficial History of Female Immortals (Nüxian waishi 女仙外史). In this part, I show how the Mysterious Woman is depicted as a war goddess and a moral agent in stories concerning war, rebellion, and dynastic crises. The second part of the dissertation discusses Su’e pian 素娥篇 (The Story of Su’e), Zhulin Yeshi 株林野史 (Unofficial History of the Forest), Yesou puyan 野叟曝言 (Humble Words of A Rustic Elder), and Honglou meng 紅樓夢 (Dream of the Red Chamber). These works create various literary reincarnations of the Immaculate Woman. These reincarnations guide male protagonists to their spiritual awakenings by means of sex. While drawing on fictional and Daoist texts to rebuild the history of the Mysterious Woman and the Immaculate Woman, this research illuminates a complex relationship between Chinese fiction and Daoism.

O que quer uma mulher? Essa questão permaneceu enigmática na obra de Freud. Alguns psicanalistas apontaram a maternidade como uma das respostas para a insondável questão do ser... mulher. O campo privilegiado da discussão desta tese é a articulação entre a feminilidade e a maternidade, num percurso de investigação dos textos freudianos, das teorizações pós-freudianas e das formulações lacanianas. Consiste em um estudo teórico-clínico, motivado por questões surgidas na experiência psicanalítica com sujeitos femininos, diante dos impasses do ser mãe e do ser mulher. Freud entendeu a maternidade como caudatária da função fálica na menina, mas manteve em aberto a questão sobre o enigma da feminilidade. A querela do falo permaneceu com os pós-freudianos; que enfatizaram o papel da mãe, a partir do discurso sobre o amor materno. Lacan, ao postular um mais-além do pai, realizou a promoção da sexualidade da mulher, enfatizando o desejo da mulher na mãe. Para destacar a disjunção entre a mãe e a mulher, esse estudo realiza a análise da histeria no romance Memória de duas jovens esposas (Honoré de Balzac, 1955) e da paranóia, a partir do Emílio (Rousseau, 1762) e do caso Aimée (Jacques Lacan, 1932). Para concluir, salienta a divisão entre a mãe e a mulher, articulando-as às vertentes de desejo e gozo, próprios aos sujeitos femininos. / What does a woman want? This question has remained enigmatic in Freud´s work. Some psychoanalysts indicated maternity as one of the answers for the unsoundable question of being... a woman. The privileged discussion topic of this study is the articulation between femininity and maternity, in an investigation path of Freudian texts, of post-Freudian theories and Lacanian formulations. It consists of a clinical-theoretical study, motivated by questions originated in the psychoanalytical experience with female subjects, in face of the impasses of being a mother and a woman. Freud understood maternity as being submissive to the phallic function of a girl, but kept in open the question related to the enigma of femininity. The indictment of phallus remained with the post-Freudians who emphasized the role of the mother, from the discourse on maternal love. Lacan, when postulating on something else more than a father, promoted women´s sexuality, emphasizing the woman´s wish in the mother. To point out the disjunction between the woman and the mother, this study proposes an analysis of histery in the novel Memoirs of Two Young Wives (Honoré de Balzac, 1955) and of paranóia, from Émile (Rousseau, 1762) and also in Aimée´s case (Jacques Lacan, 1932). All in all, it stresses the division between the mother and the woman, articulating them to the slopes of desire and joy, totally related to female subjects.

This research seeks to explore the gendered nature of nationalisms and the ways that they can be challenged and perhaps transformed through the participation of women in sport at the national level. Nationalism is part of the public sphere, while women have historically been relegated to the private sphere. However, many scholars argue that women do in fact taken part in nation building primarily as biological reproducers of the nation. This has led scholars to conclude that nationalism is indeed gendered. Sport has traditionally been a masculine domain where conceptions of hegemonic masculinity as well as the nation are developed and reinforced. However within the last thirty years women's participation in sport, specifically at the national-elite level has risen dramatically. This research seeks to explore how women's increased participation in the nationalistic and masculine domain of sport will affect nationalism. To discover how the increase in women's participation in national sport may or may not be affecting nationalism, two exploratory case studies were conducted focusing on the media coverage of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games between 1972 and 2008. The cases used in the analysis were Canada and India. For each case, a large, English-language, national daily newspaper was selected as a data source and the articles covering women athletes during the Olympic Games were collected, subjected to a basic form of content analysis and then categorized into one of three categories. Individual women athletes featured in the articles were also analyzed as well. The findings of this study reveal that Indian and Canadian nationalism were affected by the increase in women's participation in sport. However, the study also demonstrates the ways in which media continues to feminize women athletes in order to make them socially acceptable. Despite this, the study reinforces the idea that sport remains a valuable space where women can challenge traditional gender ideals within a nationalisms.

Hildegard alleged a spiritual connection with the physical world in her claim that she, a woman, was chosen by God to incarnate His Word on earth as Christ had done in the flesh years before. Woman, the embodiment of the feminine, was connected to the physical world in the medieval era. It was with this idea in mind that Hildegard attached an important significance to nature and the Virgin, seeing each as the ultimate expressions of the feminine divine on earth. However, included in the incarnation, according to Hildegard, was the Church itself along with the clergy, both men and women. In earth, in mankind, in all of nature, she saw a dimension of God, a dimension that found its expression uniquely in the world yet paralleled the God beyond this world. Using Hildegard's letters in German translation, I will show how, in a patriarchal world of the 12th century, Hildegard emphasized the feminine as salvific as a means to establish a balance in the world, a balance that had been offset by the corrupt behavior of Church and State. I will preface this with a brief discussion of the era (p. 6). In Chapter II, I will focus first on how Hildegard saw the feminine manifested in the world and how, for various purposes, she expressed it in her letters. Secondly in Chapter II, by citing further examples in her letter, I will concentrate on how she saw a lack of feminine expression in the world and how she viewed the negative result of this lack. Finally in Chapter IV, I will show how she achieved the expression of this balance. In concluding my paper, I will consider whether she was successful in her efforts: Did she achieve, from others as well as from herself, the balance she sought or were her efforts in vain?

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a scale that measures more accurate and flexible gender role representations of Black women regarding themselves and others. Scholars have called for the development of gender role instruments that measure more culturally relevant interpretations of masculinity and femininity (Dade & Sloan, 2000; Miville, 2013). Instruments that incorporate traditional Euro-centric notions of gender roles do not account well for the unique racial-ethnic contexts that likely influence how Black women construct gender as well as perpetuate the misrepresentation of black femininity, the justification of negative stereotypes of Black women (e.g., the Mammy, Jezebel and Sapphire), and the exclusion of Black women from healthy expressions of womanhood (Dade & Sloan, 2000; Harris, 1994). This study referred to the Multicultural Gender Roles Model (MGRM; Miville, Bratini, Corpus, Lau, and Redway, 2013) in an effort to better describe the gendered experiences Black women. The Multicultural Gender Roles Scale - Black Women (MGRS-BW) reflected a 22 Likert-type item scale reflecting a 3-factor structure. Reliability and construct validity was established in several ways: expert ratings, alpha coefficients, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Implications for future research and clinical applications also were presented.

The increasing presence of Chinese international graduate students in American higher education has mandated a closer examination of their multifaceted lives against stereotypes that hinder their efforts to find, transform, or assert their identities in the dominant discourses of American academia and culture. Cross cultural studies of Chinese international students tend to reinforce stereotypes of their writer identities, learner identities, and teacher identities. Examining these various identities discloses dichotomies that read Chinese students’ traits and behaviors as handicaps and thus characterize them as “abnormal” in relation to the “normal” traits and behaviors of Chinese students’ Western counterparts. Whereas Western student writers are described as direct and logical, Chinese student writers are characterized as indirect and illogical. In comparison to the assertive and critical way of thinking that is regarded as the norm among American students, Chinese students are seen as submissive “rote learners.” Conversely, the liberatory, student-centered approach to teaching that is promoted in the American educational system is thought to be antithetical to what is considered to be an authoritarian, teacher-centered approach of Chinese education. Underlying these binaries is an unchallenged gender binary. Deeply entrenched Western notions about masculinity and femininity ultimately lead to a feminization of Chinese identities. Despite the constant critique from various disciplines, dichotomous views of gender persist and consequently lead to misconceptions about Chinese subjectivity in U.S. This project argues that these misconceptions have produced consistently devastating effects on Chinese students and further demobilize them from acculturating themselves into the dominant discourse in the United States. To deconstruct these socially, culturally, and ideologically constructed binaries, this work uses scholarship on subjectivity and identity by Michel Foucault and Homi Bhabha to examine critically how identity is formed and transformed; it also draws heavily on scholarship in rhetoric and composition and in feminist studies to delineate how Chinese students’ various identities are formed and transformed. The goal of this work is to advance a complementary thinking to advocate new conceptions about Chinese students’ various identities and ultimately to allow Chinese students to assume more active agency in their identity transformation process in the U.S.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisors: Wendy Bellion and Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Dept. of Art History. Includes bibliographical references.

<p>Everybody has seen advertisements in his/her life even if this person is never watching television or listening to radio. However, an average person watches television 1 to 4 hours per day. In these hours of watching television, there is a big probability that this person will see an advertisement. But how does he/she react to this advertisement? There are probabilities of reacting positively or negatively or indifferently. Culture is one of the significant aspects that can determine the reaction of the viewer.</p><p>The purpose of this master thesis is to understand the influence of the cultural background on consumers when they see a man or a woman appearing on advertisements. This study can be used by managers as a part of their considerations they should have when deciding communication strategies. Moreover, it can bring further understandings for students who are interested on culture and advertising. The main question I wanted to answer with this research is “How masculinity and femininity of a culture is influencing the consumers’ responses on the gender appearance in television advertisements”?</p><p>In order to accomplish this goal, I used a quantitative and a deductive scientific method. The empirical data were collected by distributing questionnaires to 40 students of Umea University. The questionnaires are given in order to find out how consumers are affected by culture towards advertisements.</p><p>The theoretical framework is actually divided in two parts. The first part is presenting some definitions, components, layers and dimensions of culture combined with masculinity and femininity. The second part is presenting advertising and gender where someone can see how to manage an advertising communication and which strategy to follow.</p><p>After the theoretical framework, the empirical results of this study are presented. In the analysis of the empirical data I found out that the masculinity-femininity level of the country a person comes from does not affect his/her reactions towards the genders appearance in advertisements. This can be a result either of the size or homogeneity of the sample either of the personality aspect or the subculture belonging of the person. So it can be said that the personality and the subculture belonging of people may be some factors that influence their reactions towards advertisements. However, what was proved by this research is that a person’s reactions towards advertisements can be influenced by the fact that this person is a man or a woman.</p><p>At the end of the study some suggestions are given to marketers such as to define who the target group of the advertising communication is and then develop the appropriate strategy. Moreover, suggestions are given to future researchers such as to conduct the same study but with a bigger sample.</p>

<p>This essay focuses on the character of Lily Briscoe in Virginia Woolf's <em>To the Lighthouse. </em>From a gender perspective it discusses Lily's striving to exceed her socially constructed position as a woman by attempting to be an artist. At the beginning of the twentieth century women were supposed to be housewives rather than artists. This ideology of femininity held women back from achieving anything outside the home, and forced women to attempt to escape their femininity in order to pursue their dreams. This essay discusses Lily's efforts to escape her femininity by attempting to transcend her body and by striving to achieve an androgynous mind.</p>

<p>This essay focuses on female identity formation in patriarchal society in Virginia Woolf’s <em>To The Lighthouse </em>and Sylvia Plath’s <em>The Bell Jar</em>. Both authors portray female characters who struggle with the normative gender identity. As the novels represent different eras and locations, the two characters examined in this essay, Woolf’s Lily Briscoe and Plath’s Esther Greenwood, have very little in common on the surface. However, both authors deliver similar feminist social criticism concerning the negative impact of patriarchal norms on female identity formation. This study analyzes some of these external constraints, or norms, and aims to prove that the two female characters’ ideas of womanhood and identity collide in a similar manner with those norms. Schachter’s study on identity constraints in identity formation and Sanchez and Crocker’s research on gender ideals work as the theoretical background in the study. The negative influence on Lily’s and Esther’s identity formation is similar since both characters live under a symbolical bell jar, unable to form their identity according to their own preferences. Patriarchal conventions remain a constant constraint and the two women keep struggling to find a balance between their own ideas and those of their societies. Both Lily and Esther grow to understand their own traits, desires and abilities in their respective stories, but fail to reach their preferred identity. Their resistance to adapt to gender conventions helps them to form a stronger identity, but it is an identity that remains profoundly and negatively influenced by the patriarchal norms of their societies.</p>