Thesis (S.T.M.)--Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-270).

Thesis (Ed.D.) in Individualized in Girls / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-147).

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 272-291).

Thesis (M.Phil.) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 1997. / Title from title page screen, viewed June 9, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Roberta Seelinger Trites (chair), Jan C. Susina, Heather Brodie Graves. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-247) and abstract. Also available in print.

No description available.

No decorrer da história, os diversos grupos sociais sofrem valorizações, desvalorizações e transformações em seu papéis sociais. No jogo político, econômico e social, à mulher também foram designados padrões de comportamento e a maternidade é considerada, para várias culturas e por longos períodos, o principal desígnio feminino. No Brasil, interesses do Estado, da Igreja e da Ciência contribuem, desde a organização Colonial até possivelmente nossos dias, com alguns importantes fundamentos no que se entende por ser mãe. Mais recentemente, a sociedade sofreu mudanças que derivaram em uma nova inserção social para a mulher provocando um jogo de corroborações e transformações na maneira de ser mãe. Este trabalho pretende buscar um entendimento do que se pensa sobre ser mãe, no grupo entrevistado. Uma reflexão sobre o conjunto de idéias trazido com relação à maternidade, dos elementos que o constituem, suas articulações, levando-se em consideração as influências histórico-sociais. O método utilizado situa-se no âmbito da pesquisa qualitativa. Foram entrevistadas 15 jovens mães, em duas etapas de entrevista, a partir de um roteiro de perguntas abertas que buscava incentivar suas vivências enquanto mães, o sentido a isto atribuído. As narrativas indicaram os temas de reflexão deste trabalho, a saber: a eternização de ações e sentimentos, a responsabilidade na educação, as dificuldades advindas das tarefas com o filho e o trabalho, a família, a projeção daquilo que é visto como nocivo à relação mãe/ filho. Enfim, a meada ideológica da maternidade, interpenetrando o ser e o fazer no cotidiano desta mãe. Podemos dizer que, tanto o desejo de ser mãe como a maneira de sê-lo sofre influências muito antigas e ainda muito atuantes, o que, neste momento de transição dos papéis sociais, faz com que se crie um descompasso entre a antiga e a atual condição da mulher também no seu modo de ser mãe. / Different social groups have been increasing and decreasing their value as well as presenting changes in their social roles, through history. In the political, economic and social game, patterns of behaviour were designated to women and the motherhood has been considered, for many cultures and for a long period, the most important feminine attribute. Since the colonial Brazilian period, State, Church and Science’s interests have been providing some important ideas related to being mother. Recently, society suffered changes that for the woman mean new social status what contributes to reassuring and transforming the way of being mother. Qualitative methods were chosen to analyse the data from this study. Fifteen young mothers were interviewed following a opened questionnaire, trying to get the women’s experiences as mothers. The discourses indicate the reflection themes presented in this work: actions and feelings that were presented as eternal, the responsibility in education, the difficulties in conciliating work and child’s care, family, projection of bad aspects related to mother/child relationship. Lastly, the motherhood’s ideological net’s influences in being and building the mother’s every day life, and vice-versa. Therefore, regarding the social roles in this transitional moment, there are old and still active ideas affecting the present woman’s status as a mother in her being mother’s wish and in her way of being it.

This thesis investigates the representation of femininity within a variety of cultural sources including the earlier novels of Jeanette Winterson and the films of Walt Disney. This juxtaposition parallels images of female development and ego formation bringing to the fore the adolescent heroine's ancient roots in mythology, horror and the fairy story. As a cultural studies project, the thesis deploys the critical techniques of poststructuralism in conjunction with psychoanalysis, feminist theory and film analysis. This is necessary to demonstrate to full potential the heterogeneous quality of the revisioned models of heroinism. My analysis is focused on both popular and literary texts, with Winterson's early fiction in particular selected as a sophisticated and developed example of the ways in which current theory can chart the evolution of a contemporary female literary voice. This thesis carefully scrutinises traditional strategies concerned with literary discourse in order to show how phallocentric structures infiltrate and reflect postcolonial, popular culture. This is achieved through an initial concentration upon mass representation of the female form. This is a necessary analysis as one cannot demonstrate how contemporary women authors revise traditional models of heroinism without first defining what has gone before. Building on the work of Elisabeth Bronfen, this thesis examines how contradictory narratives construct a double opposition, overlapping the dead and the feminine against the living and the masculine, to defend against the knowledge of an incommensurable difference at the origin of life. By representing the narrative of double castration, this is a thorough examination of a movement away from biologically scripted models of castration anxiety, as with Freud, relocating identity at the site of the navel. This enables the subject to move beyond the division of sexuality as presented within patriarchal, heterosexual orthodoxies and to allow for a notion of femininity which is subversive because of its very willingness to explore and inhabit abject/deject states. For the purposes of my investigations, these tradtionally disturbing 'liminalities' will be understood in both psychic and cultural terms, but will focus, in particular on female adolescene. In conclusion, the revisionary heroine marks the dissolution of the certainty once associated with the ancient constructed ideal of femininity. She does not place herself in opposition to the traditional figure, more than that, she surfaces within the broader frame of Western culture as something different, some 'thing' else in the psychoanalytical sense to the 'Other'. My analysis of the figure of the revisionary heroine demonstrates the ways in which both the creation and the interpretation of art and theory can be inflected towards an inversion of the dominant structures of knowledge and power without simply reproducing them.

The fact of death is universal. So too is the fact of womanhood. Yet each age aims to ameliorate the fear of death, and to cope with the construction of womanhood, in its own way. This study explores the female experience of death in Early Modern England. By tracing attitudes towards gender through the occasion of death, it aims to advance our understanding of the construction of femininity in the period. The underlying hypothesis of the study is that the process of dying could be a positive event for a woman, and for her mourners, in terms of defining, enabling and elevating her. The thesis is divided into three sections. The first section, comprising three chapters, takes a cultural and historical overview of death in Early Modern England, examining the means by which the inescapable fact of human mortality was confronted, and how the fear of death and dying could be used to uphold the mores of society. The female experience of death is considered, and the advantages, to both dying women and their supporters, of achieving a death well done are examined. The power of the deathbed is recognised, as is the empowerment of motherhood, in allowing women to speak out from the deathbed in order to bestow dying maternal blessings upon their offspring, or to leave instructions and advice to their survivors, including their children. The second section of the thesis explores, in two contrasting chapters, examples of good and bad female deaths. The motivation behind the reporting of deaths is discussed, and the veracity of such accounts is scrutinised. The societal need to create posthumous images of women, both good and bad, is highlighted, and the ways in which such reports could be used for religious, political and patriarchal purposes is considered. The main body of the research concludes, in the final section of the thesis, with a consideration of how death, as well as confining women within a patriarchy, could also paradoxically liberate them, albeit within accepted gender boundaries. Chapter Six evaluates the opportunity for female involvement in dying and posthumous rituals, including funeral rites, funeral sermons, elegies and epitaphs. Chapter Seven focuses upon two specific areas of posthumous female representation: will-making and the posthumous marital status of women. In the final chapter, the genre of women's literary legacies is discussed. In this chapter it is argued that death could be a catalyst by which women were privileged into print and an assessment of the female response to this unusual opportunity is made. Throughout the thesis it is understood that perfect femininity is an unachievable icon, an artificial construct of its age, and that Early Modem women were necessarily living, and dying, within this construct. Whilst accounts of dying women largely underpinned the existing patriarchy, the experience of dying allowed some women to express themselves by allowing them to utilise an established male discourse. It is this opportunity for expression, coupled with the power of the deathbed, that provides the focus for the thesis.