Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

This thesis is a feminist case study of the public life and experiences of pioneering Canadian woman engineer, Elsie Gregory MacGill. Earning her undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at the University of Toronto in 1927, she then became the first woman in North America to obtain a Master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1929. In 1938, she was appointed Chief Aeronautical Engineer at Canadian Car and Foundry in Fort William, Ontario (presently Thunder Bay), achieving celebrity status during the war for her work at the company. MacGill later established herself as a key social reformer and feminist activist. Between the 1950s and 1980s she was actively involved in the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs (CFBPWC), served on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCWS), and was a founding member of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC). This thesis discusses MacGill's training and career in engineering at a time when women's access to this male-dominated profession was extremely limited. She devoted years of dedicated service to her profession. She strongly believed that engineers needed to reach out beyond their field and interact with the larger Canadian society. However, MacGill's firm belief in the principle of equality led her to challenge her profession's ability to attract and retain women; after the war, she thus became a public advocate for women in the profession, and served as a role model and mentor. This thesis also examines MacGill's multi-dimensional feminism, which is difficult to label. It was certainly shaped by her experiences as a professional engineer. In this respect, this thesis offers important insights into the links between engineering and feminism.

This dissertation presents the life story of Freda Diesing, artist, teacher, and the first Haida woman known to become a professional carver. Diesing holds the Haida name Skilquewat, which translates as the descriptive phrase "On the trail of Property Woman." This phrase makes an appropriate title, as it reflects both the research process and the form of the written result. Diesing's life is not presented here as a monolith discovered, singular and clearly bounded, but rather as an organic accretive identity, constantly in the process of construction and negotiation. Diesing defines herself in relation to her mother and her grandmother, and her stories tell how they negotiated their own identities during times of rapid cultural change. For all three women changes in Haida culture under pressure from wider Canadian society tended to emphasize the role of women in the domestic sphere, as wives and mothers, while mmimizing their wider political and social impact. Diesing, a woman of mixed ethnic decent, who married late, has no children, lives only on the mainland and grows increasingly independent and active as an elderly widow, resists easy classification. She performs her own identity variably, depending upon her audience. By developing her identity as a Haida artist and teacher Diesing has been able to negotiate a position of continuing respect and influence appropriate to her chiefly heritage, despite inauspicious circumstances in her own life and in the contemporary history of the Haida people. Yet it is not being recognized as an artist or a master carver that has been Diesing's primary intention. Rather she has used her art itself as a tool in achieving a goal she defines as most important: helping both Natives and non-Natives understand and take pride in the indigenous cultural heritage of the Northwest Coast. More than an artist, Freda Diesing is a teacher. Through the stories she tells, and through her own life's example, she reminds us all of the continuing vitality of Northwest Coast cultures, and especially of the important contributions of women in Coastal society. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

The manner in which a literary work is produced by its author and received by its audience is significantly influenced by the existing prestructures of both the author and the audience. As evidence of this phenomena, this thesis presents a case study of the impact of prestructure on the summation of narrative frames which form Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War.

No description available.

Birth of a Mother is a memoir that tells the story of how my unplanned pregnancy helps me to transform from a damaged adolescent into an empowered mother. Using a first person, present tense narrative, I relive the nine months leading up to the unmedicated home birth of my first child, exploring the conflicts I faced over my obesity, over having no job and no place to call home, and over developing a relationship with a man who was not the baby's father. Weaving in past tense vignettes, I attempt to show how I prepared myself for impending motherhood by reflecting on my mother's short, violent life and the abuse I suffered at her hands; the effect of losing my mother at the age of twelve and my quest to find someone to fill her role throughout my adolescence; my experiences with faith, from Christianity, to Buddhism, to Atheism, to Paganism; and by struggling to heal the emotional scars left over from suffering childhood abuse, and multiple rapes as a teenager. As I uncover parallels between my mother's life and my own, I come to a new understanding of the mental illness that seems prevalent in my family, of the causes and triggers of my personal flaws, and of methods that I can use to become for my child the mother I always wanted for myself

No description available.