No description available.

This study examines the love and desire between Angela von Pahlen and Stanny Landborg in Agnes von Krusenstjerna’s Fröknarna von Pahlen series. I have studied the characters in Krusenstjerna’s texts using Judith Butler’s theory of the heterosexual matrix. My main focus has been the desire in Fröknarna von Pahlen. Drawn from the primary question, “What is love?”, I examine the desires possibilities and obstacles. The essay is divided into two parts. In the first part I read Fröknarna von Pahlen against its contemporary view on homosexuality. I have found both an awareness of the contemporary view but also a tendency to surpass this view, go beyond it in order to create something new. In the second part of the essay I focus on the relationship between the two young girls, Angela and Stanny, and a few other characters close to them. The desire in Krusenstjernas texts reaches an almost universal level, it is written as the same irrespective of between what or who it is expressed. The characters are however also always subject to culture and society which is dominated by the heterosexual matrix. Its rules for sexuality are embodied in different ways, through actions or thoughts, and are constantly present. The novels use both the hetero-normative model for love and the ones the heterosexual matrix rules out as unwanted. But through repeating these models differently the text becomes a subversive instrument in the deconstruction of the heterosexual matrix. By means of applying a lyrical tone to the text and by putting the “divergent” love in a secluded place Agnes von Krusenstjerna brings her text to something new and bends the rules for what desire and love are allowed to be.

This paper focuses on the subject of Simone de Beauvoir and how she creates her view of motherhood. With help from Toril Moi’s method – which she calls personal genealogy – as a standpoint I have read Beauvoir’s autobiography Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter with and against her essay about women, The Second Sex. The genealogy tries to understand the term ‘making’ and the idea of production or construction and the personal genealogy sees the subject – the person – as an extraordinarily complex effect of a whole network of different discourses or determinants. In order to be able to understand Beauvoir’s view on motherhood I have read her philosophy with and against the feminist philosopher Ulla M. Holm’s and the radical feminist Adrienne Richs’ theories about mothering and the institution of motherhood. In Beauvoir’s other works I have also found keys to the patriarchal motherhood she writes about in The Second Sex. A motherhood she in her individual life dissociates herself from, and through which she creates her own self, when she ten years after The second Sex publishes the first volume in her autobiography. With help from Julia Kristeva’s theory about the abject my study also shows that the ”motherhood as slavery” that she runs away from has made engraving marks in her own body.

Syftet med uppsatsen är dels att undersöka om mediefenomenet Pär Ströms jämställdistiska diskurser går att förstå, genom att knyta an till maskulinitetskonstruktioner. Även hur dessa diskurser förhåller sig till könskategoriseringar och heteronormativitet. Delvis genom att undersöka hur subjektspositionen kön konstrueras i dessa diskurser. Det empiriska materialet utgörs av två böcker skrivna av Pär Ström. Det teoretiska ramverket som tillämpas i analysen är diskursteori, queerteori samt maskulinitetsteori. Främst används queerteoretiska och diskursteoretiska begrepp som verktyg i analysen för att kunna bedriva den diskursanalytiska metoden på empirin. Analysen av empirin visar att Ströms jämställdistiska diskurser innehar ett essentialistiskt, statiskt och binärt förhållningssätt till könskategorier. Även att det går att kontextualisera mediefenomenet Pär Ström i en nyliberal diskurs, där maskulinitet har en inverkan på de jämställdistiska diskursernas innehåll. Slutsatsen i uppsatsen är att det, i de jämställdistiska diskurserna, hävdas en essentialistisk och objektiv sanningssyn, där det framläggs en syn på subjektspositionen kön som dikotomi. Denna objektivitet är problematisk, då den i sin blindhet gentemot sociala strukturer inte kan frångå varken det ”naturgivna” könet eller ett heteronormativt seende.

Mitt syfte är att undersöka de positioner som möjliggörs och utesluts för subjektspositionen tjej, genom beskrivningar av kön, kropp, genus och sexualitet. Med hjälp av diskursanalys och med en utgångspunkt i queerteori har jag analyserat mitt empiriska material, som består av semi-strukturerade intervjuer med fem tjejer som går på gymnasiet. Positionen tjej upplevs, beskrivs och omförhandlas på varierande sätt hos respondenterna. Jag har delat upp material i fyra teman; sexualitet, sammanhang och utrymme. I dessa kan man förstå omförhandlingar som sker utifrån makthierarkier såsom den heterosexuella matrisen, värdehierarkier inom heterosexualiteten och normalitet. Utifrån dessa makthierarkier kan man se hur respondenterna formar och ger innebörd till sina subjektspositioner, där de beskriver olika upplevelser av positions betydelse.

This research explores transformative learning occurring through the Farmer Field Schools of the Taita Hills, Kenya using a qualitative, case study approach. The findings reveal that cultural roles and premises profoundly impacted learning and that a mixed-group setting could contribute to closing the gap between gender inequalities, leading to a more just and sustainable type of agriculture. / February 2009

Plant imagery abounds in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, and critical readings have not thoroughly explored the meaning of and intent behind that imagery. Plant metaphor and images in Aurora Leigh are used to challenge the concept of Victorian women's inherently inferior "nature" and to present an argument for female equality. When traced throughout the work, plant imagery foreshadows Aurora and Marian's ultimate personal independence and familial harmony and helps the reader to understand the poem's controversial ending. Ties to three of Browning's literary influences in the selection of plant images are explored: Emanuel Swedenborg, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Each of these three understood and used nature imagery to significant effect in their own writings, and Browning adopted and developed those images in her work.

The Swiss author Annemarie Schwarzenbach created literary figures that resist being classified according to a gender binary and heterosexual norm. She thereby, already in the 1930s, imagined something akin to the recent investigative work by Lisa Diamond on gender and sexual fluidity. Schwarzenbach's texts are populated by feminine men and masculine women, a genderswitching that can be interpreted as breaking apart the categories of gender and sexuality. In her novel Flucht nach oben (1933), in which the dichotomy of male and female is proven invalid, gender role models become obsolete, leading to the protagonist's deep uncertainty about his identity. Schwarzenbach’s characters can thus be called “multi–sexual” as they meld both genders as well as homo– and hetero–sexual orientations, thereby exceeding culturally fixed borders. The dichotomy between male and female becomes ever more instable, just as the labels hetero–, homo– and bisexual fall apart. In the end of the novel, the main protagonist forms a queer family together with other characters who do not fit into cultural gender norms. In contrast to earlier studies which interpret Schwarzenbach's texts biographically, I seek to use Diamond’s contemporary model indebted to queer studies. I involve, moreover, theories by Joan Rivière, René Girard, Eve Sedgwick, and Judith Butler. In addition, Flucht nach oben is read alongside Schwarzenbach's other novels – Freunde um Bernhard (1931), Lyrische Novelle (1933) and Eine Frau zu sehen (1929). These works serve as intertexts that contribute to a deeper understanding of the recurring character types and constellations of relationships in Schwarzenbach’s oeuvre.

Plant imagery abounds in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, and critical readings have not thoroughly explored the meaning of and intent behind that imagery. Plant metaphor and images in Aurora Leigh are used to challenge the concept of Victorian women's inherently inferior "nature" and to present an argument for female equality. When traced throughout the work, plant imagery foreshadows Aurora and Marian's ultimate personal independence and familial harmony and helps the reader to understand the poem's controversial ending. Ties to three of Browning's literary influences in the selection of plant images are explored: Emanuel Swedenborg, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Each of these three understood and used nature imagery to significant effect in their own writings, and Browning adopted and developed those images in her work.

Perceptions of Title IX's impact on gender equity within intercollegiate athletics| The Mississippi public community and junior colleges