Honors Project--Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-89)

In the Swedish school one of the tasks is to work against gender stereotypes and towardsequality between the sexes. The purpose with this essay is to present ways of looking atliterature that teachers can either implement in their classroom or use to better preparethemselves, ways for both teachers and their pupils to gain a critical view towards literaturethat can strengthen the work towards such equality. The tools used in the essays are 1) readingprevious scholars’ analysis of the text, 2) the Bechdel-Wallace-Test, and 3) the Gender Stairs.My example text will be Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight from 2007. The results shows that thebook clearly presents stereotypes of males and females, since the male characters in the bookare strong, protective, and active, while the female characters are beautiful, dependent, andpassive. The novel also defends, preserves, and amplifies patriarchal structures. This analysisplaces Twilight as a minus three in Edwertz and Lundström’s Gender Stairs. The novel is thusa good book for teachers to use if they want their students to see a classical example of howgender myths are presented in literature. Showing a classical example of stereotypes inliterature may in turn help the students detect stereotypes, which is one step towards equalitybetween men and women, which is one of the tasks of the Swedish schools.

I denna uppsats analyseras Disneyfilmen Mulan från 1998 ur ett feministiskt perspektiv. I en tid då feminismen återigen står högt upp på dagordningen och eftersom det fortfarande debatteras kring Mulan och feminism ville vi författare undersöka på djupet om Mulan kan kallas för feministisk. Med utgångspunkt i Judith Butlers feministiska teorier om hur genus konstrueras och är en maskerad kompletterat med Laura Mulveys teorier kring den manliga blicken i film samt Margareta Rönnbergs förklaring av den kvinnligt kodade hedoniska makten kontra den manligt kodade agoniska så har vi författare gjort en narrativ analys av filmen Mulan samt en karaktärsanalys av karaktären Mulan och hittat tydliga exempel på hur filmen bryter med rådande genusnormer, bekräftar maskeradbegreppet och bryter mot den manliga blicken. Filmen är dock problematisk då den innehåller scener som också bekräftar rådande makt- och genusstrukturer och där scener mellan kvinnor ges väldigt lite speltid, något vi utforskat genom Bechdel-Wallace-testet. Ser man dock till filmen i sin helhet, går in på djupet i dess narrativ och undersöker karaktären Mulan så är det denna uppsats mening att Mulan är en feministisk film. / In this essay the Disney-movie Mulan from 1998 has been analyzed through a feminist approach. In a time when feminism once again is a burning issue and since there is still a debate regarding Mulan and feminism this essay wanted to investigate if Mulan could actually be called a feminist movie. Based on Judith Butler’s feministic ideas regarding how gender is a construction and a masquerade combined with Laura Mulvey’s theory about the male gaze in movies and Margareta Rönnbergs explanation of the female coded hedonic power versus the male coded agonic we writers have made an narrative analysis of the movie Mulan and also an analysis of the character Mulan and found clear examples of how the movie breaks with current norms of gender, confirms the theory of masquerade and doesn’t conform to the male gaze. However, the movie is problematic since it contains scenes that also confirm current power and gender structures and scenes with just women are given very short screentime, something we have explored through the Bechdel-Wallace-test. If you look at the movie as a whole, goes in depth into the movies narrative and look at the character Mulan it is this essays conclusion that Mulan is a feministic movie. / <p>Cecilia Mörner var examinator för den här uppsatsen medan Per Vesterlund var examinator för kursen och den som attesterade kursens betyg (och därför står som examinator på titelsidan men inte i metadata).</p><p></p>

Orientador: Fabio Akcelrud Durão / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T09:31:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Zouvi_AlinedeAlvarenga_M.pdf: 20010510 bytes, checksum: 7961a9cb7fab81dcec6c56a743811134 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: Este trabalho tem como objetivo a análise da obra autobiográfica da cartunista estadunidense Alison Bechdel publicada no formato livro, composta, até o momento, por duas histórias em quadrinhos: Fun Home ¿ A Family Tragicomic (2006) e Are you my mother? ¿ A Comic Drama (2012). Além do estudo de obras autobiográficas em quadrinhos e as implicações desta combinação de meio e gênero, visamos observar a maneira como Bechdel estrutura suas narrativas através da intertextualidade com outras produções, sejam elas literárias, psicanalíticas, ou imagéticas. Nossa atenção será voltada para o uso que Bechdel faz de tais obras e qual a relação desta construção de paralelos com a sua criação autobiográfica, na qual articula obras e biografias (das personagens relacionadas à sua história e experiência de vida) em diversos níveis, bem como a maneira como a autora reflete sobre o próprio ato de autobiografar-se ao longo de suas obras / Abstract: The aim of this work is the analysis of the autobiographical work of American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, published in book form, composed, so far, of two comics: Fun Home ¿ A Family Tragicomic (2006) and Are you my mother? ¿ A Comic Drama (2012). Apart from the study of autobiographical works in comics and the implications of this specific media and genre combination, we aim to observe how Bechdel structures her narratives through intertextuality with other productions, such as literary, psychoanalytic, or imagery. Our attention will be focused on the use that Bechdel makes of such works and what is the connection between the building of parallels with the author's autobiographical production in which she articulates the works and biographies (of the characters related to her history and life experience) at various levels, as well as the way the author critically thinks, while constructing her autobiographies, of the act of autobiography itself / Mestrado / Teoria e Critica Literaria / Mestra em Teoria e História Literária

In the postwar era of the United States, as military-industrial chemicals leak into airways, waterways, and foodways in unprecedented plumes and cancer clusters, comic art forms generate diverse environmental imaginations. Though historically disparaged as disposable ephemera, comics provide unique access to environmental expression in this critical period. This dissertation analyzes the formal registers of two independent newspaper strips and four graphic cancer narratives for an aesthetics of equity: a set of verbal-visual moves that chart awareness of environmental devastation as determined by privilege and power. The iconicity of the drawn body--its lines, shape, and movement--grapples with complex legacies of environmental harm and exclusion. Maps of environmental risk perception generated through game board motifs, collages, and icon repetition rely on the capacity of sequential art to engage readers in recognizing and analyzing postwar risk. In form and theme, an aesthetics of equity in comics deploys environmental knowledges subordinated and sharpened by interlocking social inequities. This aesthetics revises the elisions and assumptions of mainstream environmentalisms. Ultimately, comics demand a literacy particularly well suited to environmental justice (EJ) ecocriticsm. The dissertation comprises three chapters of analysis. The first examines competing environmental discourses in Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For (1982-2008). This newspaper strip coincides exactly with the start of the contemporary EJ movement. In examining three character arcs across a quarter of a century, I track the emergence of EJ discourse in Bechdel's distinctly lesbian environmental imagination. The second chapter examines the heteronormative limits of the EJ story arc in Jackie Ormes' midcentury romance strip Torchy in Heartbeats (1953-4). Published weekly in the Comic Section of the Black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier, Torchy chronicles its eponymous heroine's quest to end environmental racism in the fictional small town of Southville. Torchy's affect and body language revise romance genre conventions and expose sexism and racism as intersecting environmental oppressions. The third chapter examines transcoporeal exchange in four contemporary graphic cancer narratives from the early 21st century. This chapter examines the extent to which graphic cancer narratives "move out," to use Diane Herndl's phrase, to form coalitions with disparate environmental communities. / 2015-10-17

Readings of Fun Home thus far have tended to focus on the representation of Alison Bechdel’s traumatic life experiences and on the ways in which the memoir bears witness to that trauma. While Jennifer Lemberg explores the role of drawing in overcoming the difficulty or impossibility of naming the traumatic experiences Alison undergoes (135), Ann Cvetkovich draws attention to the cultural and political work the memoir performs by making space for everyday life histories of trauma and for accounts of forbidden, pathologized desires (111). I would like to explore the ways in which Fun Home foregrounds those illicit desires, and performs that political work, not only through the telling of Alison’s story but, more specifically, by mobilizing the reader’s affective capabilities in the face of what may be read as surprising, emotionally charged objects and situations. I suggest that Bechdel’s memoir boldly sets the stage for an affective and cognitive encounter with out-of-bounds, unapproachable bodies and histories. Our assumptions about hetero and homonormativity, as well as our conception of home and the family as heterosexual, normative spaces, are interrogated in and through those encounters. I analyze the fundamental role of the graphic narrative form, and the employment of archival objects and elements of performance in particular, in setting the stage for the reader’s affective encounter with Alison’s family history. / text

Syftet med denna studie har varit att uppmärksamma hur litteratur kan påverka arbetet med demokratifrågor, och särskilt jämställdhet, inom ämnet svenska som andraspråk. Detta har gjorts genom analys av tre utvalda böcker som används av lärare som undervisar på gymnasial nivå. Analysen har skett med hjälp av två typer av utvecklingar av Bechdel-testet. Dessa utvecklingar möjliggör poängsättning genom ett värde baserat på jämställdheten i talutrymme mellan kvinnor och män respektive mellan människor som har migrationsbakgrund och människor som inte har det. Studiens resultat visar att de analyserade böckerna alla visar brister i jämställdhet, i den meningen att de kvinnliga karaktärerna får tala mindre men också sällan om något som inte innehåller en manlig referens. Av de tre böckerna innehåller två karaktärer med migrationsbakgrund, men i en av böckerna får de aldrig komma till tals och i den andra får de aldrig tala om något som inte berör deras migrationsbakgrund. I detta ljus diskuteras för det ena böckernas lämplighet gällande arbete med demokratifrågor med huvudfokus på jämställdhet under studien, och för det andra huruvida en kvantifiering av böckers jämställdhetsaspekter är giltig och användbar i samband med val av böcker för undervisningen.

The purpose of this study is to research how much women interact with each other on screen and what type of interactions occur. The Bechdel Test criticises the lack of female interactions and the content of those discussions. This thesis asks how much women interact with women in film compared to how much men interact with men. It’s an aspect of female representation in film that has previously not been researched.  The study also takes a closer look at female interactions and asks in what context women are placed when they interact with each other. The study explores the global top 20 box office films and focuses on investigating same-sex interactions in order to see the prevalence of female-to-female interactions (FI) compared to male-to-male interactions (MI). This study applies a quantitative research method on the 20 highest grossing films at the worldwide box office of all time. Findings of the study show that film portrays men interacting with men to a substantially higher extent than women interacting with women. Women are often presented in family situations and rarely are they seen interacting with female work colleagues. The paper proposes a gender equality test, the (im)balance test to understand the relationship between FI and MI, and encourages the test to be applied to films in order to measure their gender balance.

This thesis offers a feminist perspective on the character development on Daenerys Targaryen in the TV-series Game of Thrones and Rhaenyra Targaryen in House of the Dragon. It mobilizes Laura Mulvey’s notion of the male gaze, which addresses the objectification of female character in classical Hollywood film, as well as Clarie Johnston’s critical take on the cinematic ideological construction of the image of woman. Another source of inspiration is the so-called Bechdel test, which was initially suggested by graphic novelist Alison Bechdel, but the widely adapted by feminist cinephiles as a useful tool to study the representation of woman in film. Examining the character development of Daenerys and Rhaenyra Targaryen in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon on their journey towards claiming the Iron Throne, this thesis examines three episodes of Game of Thrones and two episodes of House of the Dragon.  The analysis shows that the male gaze is still present in the control, coercion and disciplining of the series’ female characters. Claire Johnston’s theorizations about the objectification of the female characters are echoed in the representation of two female characters’ struggle to lead a country as a woman. Moreover, not each of the series’ episodes would pass the Bechdel test.

This essay is focused on gender issues in the film The Kissing Booth directed by Vince Marcello and how it can be used in a Swedish EFL classroom to problematize the stereotypical portrayals of the main characters. Since film is readily available for people in the Western world, including young students, it is important to teach them to be mindful of how media content can influence people in different ways. Even though the movie challenges some gender norms at first glance, an application of the Bechdel test shows that The Kissing Booth actually strengthens the Western world's traditional representation of gender. Because gender was mostly viewed as a binary correlated to sex before, it is easy to stay within those restrictive ways when creating and depicting characters in film. However, theorists have found that gender is not innate but performative and if it is not depicted as such in mainstream media, it may uphold outdated notions of gender and prevent changes in attitudes needed for a more inclusive society. Modern events, such as the Me Too movement, also indicate that there is a need for more conversations about these issues.