<p> This study examined the experiences of queer men of color in their first year of higher education. The purpose of this research was to determine what, if any, are ways queer men of color negotiate the intersection of their identity at a four-year institution. Participants in this study included undergraduate students who identified as queer men of color and completed at least one year in higher education. Utilizing qualitative research methods, five young men who attended a California State University or a University of California institution were interviewed and asked to participant in three separate interviews. The first interview focused on the K-12 experience and the second interview focused on their first-year experience. The third and final interview outlined how they documented their first year of higher education via photographs and social media and what type of experiences they had with their peers in the first year. This study found that despite the negative experiences these participants had prior to their first year of higher education, college helped them develop a greater sense of self and provide access to greater networks of support. </p>

<p> Obesity has risen at a significant rate over the last 20 years. By 2015, an estimated 2.3 billion adults will be categorized as overweight, and over 700 million will be considered obese. Obesity is recognized as a global health epidemic and is associated with many negative consequences to physical health, emotional health, and psychological well-being. The negative emotional impact of obesity is greater for adolescent girls than for boys, although the research into the impact on boys is scarce. Prior to this study, little was known about the experiences of previously obese men who achieved and maintained weight loss through self-guided approaches. The problem this phenomenological study addressed were the experiences of obese men who had successfully employed self-guided weight loss approaches. Understanding male dieters&rsquo; experiences with self-guided weight loss methods and how they relate to self-blame and self-efficacy may help to inform future research and weight loss interventions. The lived experiences of seven men, aged 35 to 60 were investigated for this phenomenological study. The confidential, one-on-one interviews revealed the following 14 themes: childhood weight issues, hiding and social withdrawal, developing new habits and routines, healthier food and nutrition, Weight Watchers, exercise and physical activity, motivation, determination, personal responsibility and self-reliance, self-efficacy, self-reliance, self-control, self-image, negative affect, unhealthy eating habits, denial, family history of weight issues, past failures, and lack of support. Data indicated male participants preferred self-guided weight loss interventions, but success was contingent upon their self-efficacy. Study results provide weight loss specialists with practical recommendations and important direction for future research. </p>

My dissertation uses close readings of four texts dealing with the actress, spanning the naturalist novel (Zola’s Nana, 1880, and Edmond de Goncourt’s La Faustin, 1882), autobiography (Sarah Bernhardt’s Ma double vie, 1907) and autobiographical fiction (Colette’s La Vagabonde, 1910), in order to examine late nineteenth-century representations (and self-representations) of the actress in relation to the discourse of hysteria. I argue that in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century France, pathology and performance came together in the stereotype of the hysterical actress. In the wake of the French Revolution, and the subsequent political upheavals of the nineteenth century along with the emergence of a consumer capitalist society, \(fin-de-si\grave{e}cle\) society was living a moment of particular anxiety. This anxiety found a focal point in the hystericised figure of \(la com\acute{e}dienne\), who came to embody a threatening blurring of gender and class distinctions. Actresses were pathologised in a discursive gesture which sought to identify and contain the threat which they were seen to pose, and which seemed to offer an objective narrative which re-established boundaries and identities. The discourse of hysteria, however, was by no means as secure or monolithic as it might seem. I argue that the discourse of hysteria is underpinned by a fundamental performativity which has the potential to be profoundly subversive. By examining different modalities of response to the phenomenon of the hystericisation of the actress, I show how in both male and female-authored texts the discourse of pathology is undermined and reappropriated in a way which foreshadows twentieth-century feminist theories. / Romance Languages and Literatures

The early twentieth century was the apogee of what historians have come to call a `white slavery' panic, a period in which long term anxieties about the social dangers and moral ambiguities of sex work metamorphosed into an intense philanthropic, public and state focus on forced migration for the purposes of prostitution. This dissertation investigates the origins of `the traffic in women' as a social problem in imperial Russian and Soviet law and society, connecting it to emergent regimes of transnational biopolitics at the fin-de-siècle and through the interwar years. This period was one in which state and social understandings of the subject's freedom, to move across borders or to consent to sex, were being reconceptualized. I argue that the traffic in women, as a legal category and cultural discourse, was key to this process of reconceptualization, as it became a heuristic for making sense of the entanglement of legality, clandestinity, consent and coercion operational in cross border migration, particularly that which involved sex work, in an age of rapid globalization. Consequently, this dissertation helps us to understand how certain conceptions of gendered and sexualized bodies have become central to questions of state security and sovereignty. / History

This dissertation is an exploration of the African female body as a site of regulation and resistance. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the Dagara of northwestern Ghana, I illustrate how Dagara women are regulated through narratives of exclusion, through the mobilization of the rhetoric of tradition and cultural authenticity, and the racialization of gender ideologies. I then illustrate how Dagara women carve resistant spaces through song writing, dance, and instrumental performance, pointing to how female bodies in performance essay critiques of existent power structures. I argue that Dagara women redefine the terms of their sexed bodies through performance, as they open up new cultural possibilities. By mediating multiple categories of belonging, Dagara women expand the narrow demarcations that are mapped onto their bodies. Such divisive categories of African/Western, black/white, and traditional/modern are challenged through musical performance. Dagara women subvert regulation in ways that are instructive in re-theorizing the possibilities of resistant and transgressive action. / text

In general, the number of Christian male disciples are less than women disciples in all churches. This phenomenon is prevalent in churches throughout America. C. Eric Lincoln, (Lincoln, 1990), conducted a study where he found that 70% of the adults who attends church are women. A misinterpretation of the patriarchal style of leadership and a lack of empathy for the dilemma of today's men shed great insight into the problem of men not attending church regularly. The misinterpreted patriarchal style of leadership is very confusing too men who want to share the leadership of the church. Women seem to endure this style of leadership better than men, but this probably because women are socialized by the church and society to consider themselves the weaker of the sexes in all phases of life. Empathy from male pastors toward male parishioners is inadequate for several reasons. Males are socialized to be strong and not show true emotions when faced with crises. This leads male pastors to be indifferent to many of the issues that male parishioners face on a day to day basis. Because men have a general inflexibility and fear about expressing their feelings, when these men become pastors and unless they are taught how to empathize with their brothers, they carry these inadequate traits of leadership to the pastoral office.

<p> The musical traditions of New Orleans are largely patriarchal. As the predominant sonic signifier of New Orleans, the brass band amplifies this gender bias more than any other musical tradition in the city. Brass band song lyrics can at times revolve around the subjugation and objectification of women, which renders the brass band canon tricky to access for female musicians. These symbolic issues become socially reified in the male control of instruments and the barriers to professionalization experienced by female musicians. Indeed, female brass band musicians are in the minority, constituting few more than ten musicians in a city with somewhere in the vicinity of fifty bands, all of which feature about ten musicians. The available literature on brass bands has thus far focused almost exclusively on black men and, mostly due to the relative absence of women in brass bands, neglects to view gender as a category of analysis, reflecting the gender bias of the scene at large. Using black feminist theory, this thesis seeks to introduce gender as a key element to brass band research by studying the only current exception to male dominance in New Orleans&rsquo; brass band community, an all-female brass band named the Original Pinettes Brass Band. Their example forces us to reconsider the domain of brass band music not only as one where brass band instruments articulate power, but where gender is a primary element in the construction and consolidation of this power.</p>

This study analyzes the relationship between the access to capital and the individual's construction of gender as presented in six Latin American cinematic depictions from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico that focus the point of view on young women in the urban space. David Harvey's theory on the urbanization of consciousness is used to analyze the females' relationship to family, class, community and state in terms of how each of these elements will impact the access to capital. The interaction with these factors determine that capital will also impact the construction of gender in the city-space. The films analyzed are as follows: Perfume de Violetas (2000) directed by Maryse Sistach, Àngel de fuego (1991) directed by Dana Rotberg Un día de suerte (2002) directed by Sandra Gugliotta, Hoy y mañana (2006) by Alejandro Chomsky, Uma Vida em Segredo (2001) by Suzana Amaral and Antônia (2006), by Tata Amaral. Film theory, feminist film theory, and gender studies are applied in the analysis of films.

Utifrån fem damfotbollsspelares egna berättelser avser den här studien att belysa hur damfotbollsspelare förhandlar med normer och föreställningar som omgärdar fotboll och genus samt illustrera vilka strategier som tillämpas i detta förhandlingsprojekt. Min empiri visar att de två genuskodade föreställningar/myter som omgärdar damfotbollsspelare är att alla är (1) lesbiska och (2) maskulina. Bilden av ”den lesbiska och maskulina damfotbollsspelaren” är stereotyp och att stereotypisera damfotbollsspelare är ett sätt att befästa dem som avvikande och icke-normala eftersom de spelar fotboll, en idrott ursprungligen av och för män, och inte för kvinnor. Min empiri visar också att fotbollstjejerna förhåller sig till kroppsliga ideal som de vill uppnå både som kvinnor och som fotbollsspelare. De ser en önskvärd och ideal kvinnokropp som feminin vilket, för dem, innebär en kropp utan stora muskler. En kropp med stora muskler (främst på benen) är vidare, enligt dem, vad som kännetecknar en fotbollskropp. Den muskulösa fotbollskroppen är således svårförenlig med den ideala/feminint könade kroppen. I fotbollstjejernas förhandlingsprojekt med normer och föreställningar som omgärdar fotboll och genus gör de en viss sorts maskulinitet, vilket är en strategi för att betraktas som ”riktiga” fotbollsspelare trots att de är kvinnor, samtidigt som de gör en viss sorts femininitet vilket är en strategi för att betraktas som ”riktiga” kvinnor trots att de spelar fotboll. De förkroppsligar på grund av sitt görande av olika genus en motsägelsefullhet.

Uppsatsen handlar om maskulinitetsbildning hos gymnasiepojkar i Sverige. Mitt syfte var att ta reda på vad maskulinitet kan vara och hur det uttrycks i skolan hos en grupp gymnasiepojkar. För att göra detta ville jag beskriva och analysera hur pojkarna i en gymnasieklass diskuterade begreppen manlighet, kvinnlighet, vänskap och kärlek och hur de agerade i skolan inom dessa teman. Jag ville även se om det i dessa sammanhang fanns en hegemonisk maskulinitet i pojkgruppen och vilka uttryck den i så fall tog sig i pojkarnas relation till varandra. Som sista forskningsfråga ville jag ta reda på om andra maskuliniteter än den hegemoniska visade sig, och om så var fallet, hur gruppen hanterade dessa. Jag använde mig av en poststrukturalistisk teori av Robert Connell som beskriver maskulinitet som en social konstruktion i en diskurs där olika maskuliniteter rangordnas och definieras av en hegemonisk maskulinitet. För att kunna observera maskulinitetsbildningen hos gymnasiepojkar använde jag en kvalitativ metod med deltagande observationer och intervjuer. Materialet analyserade jag med hjälp av Nigel Edleys diskursanalysapparat som innefattar nyckelbegreppen tolkningsrepertoarer, ideologiska dilemman och subjektens position. Resultatet visade att pojkarna uttrycker två olika tolkningsrepertoarer där den ena innebar en medveten och uttalad vilja att ifrågasätta och bryta mot traditionella heteronormativa mönster. Den andra tolkningsrepertoaren visade en mer traditionell heterosexuell könsroll med manlig överordning och en tydlig dikotomi mellan könen. Inom denna repertoar visade sig en hierarki med olika positioner där en pojkes brott mot den manliga normen genom att bete sig som en tjej medförde den lägsta positionen. Repertoaren hade en hegemonisk position då den kunde definiera och positionera andra subjekt. De två maskuliniteterna var tätt sammanflätade och även om vissa pojkar var mer benägna åt endera hållet så visade samtliga pojkar prov på båda.