This dissertation examines Black women’s sexual narratives in contemporary Soul music. Through a close analysis of various songs, videos, and images from Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Syd Bennett, and Ari Lennox this research explores the relationship between sexual narratives in contemporary-Soul music and African social and spiritual thought and practice. I examine Black women’s eroticism as a production and reflection of African pleasure, sexuality, and intimacy. This work employs Afrocentricity as a methodological tool to engage with sexual expressions that center on African historical, social, political, and social phenomena. Location theory, Womanism, and ADQT (Afrocentric Decolonizing Queer Theory) provide a framework for interrogating Afrocentric erotic politics historically and contemporarily through patterns of traditional practices of intimacy and cultural productions of sexuality. Ethnographic Content Analysis and Iconography are utilized to examine the artists' work in their discography, interviews, photographs, and social media content. The heart of this work examines how Soul as a cultural symbol and aesthetic can be used as a tool for Black women in this context to acquire agency through freely exploring eroticism. Through analysis of Erykah, Jill, Syd, and Ari, this research develops an ongoing conversation about Black Americans’ relationship with the erotic and its role in African culture and spirituality. Ultimately this research demonstrates the importance of Black women’s erotic expression and how this importance reflects a more extensive conversation of what sexual expression means to African people. Through analyzing these artists' iconography and lyricism, this work demonstrates how erotic expressions in Soul are a self-affirming, self-determining, agentic force of African life. / Africology and African American Studies

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur kvinnors sexuella och emotionella frigörelse skildras i skönlitteratur från det moderna genombrottets 1880-tal. Materialet som ligger till grund för uppsatsen är Victoria Benedictssons roman Pengar (1885), Anne Charlotte Lefflers drama Sanna kvinnor (1883), Amanda Kerfstedts novell ”Synd” (1881) och Mathilda Mallings novell ”Pyrrhussegrar” (1886).   Med utgångspunkt i genusteori och intersektionalitet analyseras de skönlitterära verken genom en textnära läsning utifrån frågeställningarna:  1) Hur skildras kvinnors sexuella och emotionella frigörelse i de litterära verken? 2) Vilka aspekter av den samtida sedlighetsdebatten skildrar författarna? och 3) Vilka didaktiska möjligheter finns för verken i relation till svenskämnets kursplaner? Analysen visar att kvinnors sexualitet skildras som starkt kontrollerad av män. Författarna för fram kritik mot den sexuella dubbelmoralen, unga kvinnors brist på kunskap om sexualitet, samt ojämställdheten mellan män och kvinnor. De skönlitterära verkens didaktiska möjligheter utgörs av 1) texternas olikheter gällande längd och form (roman, drama, noveller), 2) svenskämnets kursplaner med fokus på skönlitteratur från olika tidsperioder och relationen mellan skönlitteratur och samhällsutveckling, samt 3) gymnasieskolans kunskapsområde ”Sex, samtycke och relationer” med fokus på sexualitet, könsroller och jämställdhet.

Relatively few studies have explored the relationship between gender role conflict (GRC) and an individual's religious/spiritual identities. This study sought to add to the research on GRC by exploring the experiences of female and male GRC, and expand the understanding of the influence of religion/spirituality (R/S) variables on GRC. Participants (N = 359) were recruited from social media and undergraduate courses and completed an online survey that assessed GRC, a variety of R/S variables, and life satisfaction. Overall, there were some significant differences found between male and female experiences of GRC. In general, the R/S variables did not have a large impact on GRC. However, religious fundamentalism and extrinsic and quest religious orientations were related to specific subscales of GRC. Maintaining congruency between one's personal values and one's religious institution was related to lower levels of specific subscales of GRC. Additionally, GRC was related to lower levels of life satisfaction. Regarding the subscales of GRC, restrictive emotionality was the strongest predictor of lower life satisfaction. By furthering research on the interplay between GRC and R/S, clinicians will be more equipped to handle the repercussions of stereotypical roles within gender and religion, address negative attitudes and behaviors, and lead discussions about finding congruency between one's gender and R/S identities.

The purpose of the essay is to investigate how social and materialistic surroundings bring outnorms for women. The issue with the environment that encourages norms to be upheld, automatically expects frames of genders to be abided by, which implies an impossible spectrum to comply. During the essay you will read about women in their thirties getting interviewed and describing their view, definitions and experiences of being a woman. One method that has come of use to collect how women behave in different surroundings is the observation that I made in a mall. The result shows how there are quite a few limitations for women since they are viewed through the male gaze. To be considered an object rather than a subject is the product of socialization. Since women of generations have been repeating the gender role, one's own thoughts of womanhood is considered personal and has therefore been made into the norm that is being upheld today.

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Focusing on satirical prints from illustrated newspapers, this thesis examines nineteenth-century French notions of masculinity in a culture that linked its reputation for success to the productivity of its male citizens. I will focus on man’s connection to marriage and family life, as these institutions were so closely connected to perceptions of masculinity. Specifically, I look at portrayals of the cuckold and the bachelor—tropes of male identity that deviated from the ideal notions of the French man—and how printed images reflected, commented on, and shaped the ways in which conventional French masculinity was imagined. Examining these lithographs in light of specific social and political shifts, including changing marriage and divorce laws, the rising feminist movement, and the loss of the Franco-Prussian war, will ground my project historically. Popular lithographic prints, from the 1840s to the early 1900s, remarked not only on masculinity itself—the ways in which men should act and look—but also on the ways in which any departures from the norm threatened the French family and nation. Although medical journals and etiquette manuals expounded on the ‘natural’ qualities of men, satirical cartoons that were most often published weekly, were immediately pertinent in their commentary. Using prints to decode these ever-prevalent issues of masculinity, my project makes clear why representations and notions of certain types of masculinity were so alarming to French audiences. Although much of the scholarship around nineteenth-century French lithography deals with the censorship issues and political implications of the illustrated newspapers, I focus instead on the social ramifications of such images. I emphasize the distinctive nature of such prints—the audience, the circulation, and the cultural impact of printed images themselves. Looking to both art and social historical texts, I concentrate on the everyday realm of printed images, and what it meant for Parisian men and women to be surrounded by such tropes. My thesis connects the growing concerns over family and marriage to issues of failed masculinity and the ways in which they were addressed in the print culture across the century. It explores how these satirical cartoons provided a humorous, yet urgent, visual attempt to illuminate the tricky and conflicting expectations of French men in the nineteenth century. / Art History