published_or_final_version / Business / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis focuses on the use of feminist humor as a method of coalition building among African American women. It is motivated by the central question: what are the ways in which comedic performances may act as both a rebellious counter to dominant views of women of color in the United States and a way to articulate feminist ideologies? More specifically, I am interested in how African American women utilize comedy to articulate specific standpoints and build solidarity. As comedy is often used to persuade and perhaps bond audiences, it is important to continue research in the rhetoric of humor—especially that which takes into account comedy that challenges hegemonic systems and builds cohesion among oppressed groups. I wish to address ways in which theories of humor may work to include not only feminist modes comedy, but performances that also address the intersections of oppressions—including race, class, sexuality, etc. I will be examining the 2001 film The Queens of Comedy starring standup comedians Laura Hayes, Adele Givens, Sommore, and Mo’Nique. A follow-up on the 2000 movie and live standup tour The Original Kings of Comedy, the film depicts the four women’s comedic routines at the Orpheum Theatre in front of a predominately Black and predominately female audience. I argue that the Queens’ use of humor acts as a method to articulate intersections of oppression from a Black female perspective. This creates a specific counterpublic space, defies dominant views of Black American women and fosters cohesion among sympathetic audiences. The first chapter works towards a theory of feminist humor—one that builds off of current comedy research by integrating radical feminist thought (mostly that of Black feminisms). Chapter two identifies anti-feminist dimensions of the Queens’ performances in order to understand unsuccessful (and perhaps harmful) methods of rhetorical humor. Chapter three closely examines dimensions of the Queens’ performances that articulate Black feminist thought and how those performances encourage coalition building among Black women. Chapter four will draw critical implications and address concerns for those interested in humor as a method of encouraging social stability and change. / text

This thesis applies a feminist theoretical perspective to interrogate discourses of postfeminism, as well as the position of the female body, fitness, and resistance within contemporary American culture. I argue that women’s fitness blogs are a vehicle for the production of Rosalind Gill’s “postfeminist sensibility,” focusing specifically on fitness bloggers’ use of self-surveillance and monitoring, personal transformation or “makeovers”, and intensified consumerism. Using ideological textual analysis of several fitness blogs as case studies, I examine the ways in which women publicly negotiate their relationships with their body through the documentation and disclosure of their food and exercise lifestyles. This thesis also acknowledges the feminist potential of fitness blogs as spaces in which women may strive towards body positivity and recovery from eating disorders, as well as challenge cultural expectations regarding female body and appetite. / text

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of known etiological factors in mildly mentally handicapped students across minority and nonminority groups and to examine the similarities of these patterns. A comparison of early diagnoses was also made. The total population of all children labeled Educable Mentally Handicapped (EMH) and attending regular elementary schools within one of the largest districts in the southwest served as the sample for the present study. There were 128 children, 64 minorities and 64 nonminorities. The student records were reviewed for data regarding etiological factors, previous diagnoses and early medical factors. A pilot study which involved administering a questionnaire to a sample to twenty-eight social workers was conducted to ascertain the validity of obtained data. Eight specific hypotheses were addressed. A Chi-Square analysis yielded information about the patterns of category similarities (congenital, prenatal, perinatal, postnatal and familial), between two groups as well as the presence of professional diagnosis. A set of five factorial analysis of variance were performed to examine the impact of age, number of symptoms, presence of professional diagnosis and length of hospital stay on IQ scores of children in both groups. A discriminant function analysis was performed to determine the discriminatory power of four variables (IQ, length of hospital stay, number of symptoms and presence of professional diagnosis). The prevalence of perinatal and postnatal symptoms and diagnoses occurred with high frequency for both groups. Congenital factors occurred significantly more for the nonminority group. The findings indicated that there were no significant differences across minority and nonminority groups in terms of intellectual functioning due to the impact of the four previously mentioned variables. Consistent with the ANOVA results, the information obtained from the discriminant function analysis suggests similarity of the two groups in terms of the four variables. The results were discussed in relation to the utility of early etiological information and the importance of such research. The implications of such findings for placement of children in general in these classes or for the children from minority groups in particular, were emphasized.

In the present effort, the philosopher Henri Bergson’s (1859-1941) seminal philosophical work functions as a revitalizing force and even an implicit point of departure for the more urban-oriented critique of Henri Lefebvre’s (1901-1991) watershed text L’Producción de l’espace/The Production of Space (1974). Both Lefebvre and Bergson in fact share a common perception of space—it is neither a static ground, nor an apriori condition of experience as Kant argued, but is instead a process inseparable from time and implicated in thought itself. Grounded in this resulting novel understanding of space, time and difference, I use an interdisciplinary approach to analyze Madrid’s cultural imaginary through novels by Belén Gopegui (1992), Pío Baroja (1911) and Luis Martín-Santos (1961); films by Carlos Saura (1996), Alejandro Amenábar (1997), and American Jim Jarmusch (1992); and the urban space of Madrid’s Retiro Park. The purpose of this work is twofold. On the one hand it is an attempt to reconcile the spatial issues of concern to cultural or human geography with an approach to social life grounded in the humanities. On the other it is a call for a deeper understanding of methodology taken in its widest sense. The former seeks not only to introduce spatial questions to the analysis of literature and film but also to articulate the intimate relation of cultural products to the urban processes in which they are formed, interpreted and sold. The latter requires an investigation of the philosophical preconceptions that structure our spatial practice and interpretation, as well as an awareness of the consequences these preconceptions hold—not only for understanding our common world, but also for producing it and finally for the possibility of changing it through action. These twin purposes—bringing geographical concerns into the humanities and assessing the philosophical bases of our spatial production and interpretation—are not so far removed. Through a careful reading of the above key literary, filmic and urban texts from twentieth century Madrid, this work explores the important consequences of conceiving of space as simultaneously mental and physical. In the Bergsonian fashion, these explorations seek to dispense with the stagnant and irreconcilable philosophical tropes of both pure materialism and pure idealism in order to yield a more precise understanding of cultural forms as living processes.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This essay is about the hate Ghostbusters (2016) has received. To find out why the film is hated, a reception study has been done. YouTube and IMDb are the two websites used in this study to collect the hate-comments and reviews. Ghostbusters (2016) is a remake of the original film with the same name from 1984, the original solely has men in the main roles. A big difference between the two films is that the remake contains women instead of men in the main roles. The trailer of Ghostbusters (2016) got many “downvotes” on YouTube and there after the hatred streamed in. Why is the film hated?The theories used in this study contains subjects of representation, attraction and fat studies. As a method Stuart Hall’s Encoding/decoding was used to analyze the reception of the film. This essay contains content which can be connected to cultural studies and feminism.

M.A. / The recent social and political changes that have taken place in South Africa, particularly the integration of the universities, makes this an ideal setting for the study of students’ attitudes and perceptions of their own and other cultural groups. A limitation of existing attitude studies in South Africa and abroad is that these studies have focussed minimally on identifying cultural perceptual processes that underlie intergroup attitudes. In addition, these studies tend to focus mainly on the attitudes of single ethno-cultural groups towards one or a few specific ethnic target groups. The variation of group attitudes of each other across diverse cultural orientation groups has thus mostly been neglected. In order to address such problems, this study aimed at examining cultural group attitudes and core value-orientations (Individualism and Collectivism) amongst 1st and 2nd year psychology volunteer students at RAU. More specifically, this study aimed at determining the variation of group attitudes and value-orientations in terms of a number of independent variables, and the correlation between group attitudes and core value-orientations. The study employed a questionnaire survey with a sample of 541 1st and 2nd year psychology volunteer students at RAU. The sample included male and female students from the broad cultural orientation groups (Western, African, Middle-Eastern (Muslim) and Indian/Asian cultural orientation groups), and the three main language groups (English, Afrikaans and African languages), as well as resident students and day-students from various faculties and academic years of study. The assessment instruments comprised of an Individualism and Collectivism Likert Scale (IS/CS) (Gudykunst, 1995), designed to measure generalised core value-orientations, and a Semantic Differential Scale (SDS) (Nieuwoudt, 1973), designed to measure attitudes towards five broad cultural orientation groups, namely: Western-Afrikaans, Western-English, Indian/Asian, Middle-Eastern (Muslim) and Indigenous African groups. The independent variables included in the analyses of the data were: gender, resident vs. day-students (intimacy and frequency of contact variable), cultural group membership/identity, and first language. The construct validity and the internal reliability of the I/CS and SDS were investigated by means of principal axis factor analysis and Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients. Independent t-tests were used to identify statistically significant differences between the IS/CS and SDS scores of the male and female respondents and the resident students and day-students. ANOVA and subsequent Scheffé or Dunnett T3 post-hoc tests were used to identify the group similarities and differences in the scores for the five cultural-identity groups and the three language groups. Finally, Pearsons’ product-moment correlations were used to identify significant correlations between the IS/CS and SDS scores. Important findings were the following: • Females indicated significantly stronger Individualism and Collectivism scores than males. • Day-students indicated significantly stronger Collectivism scores than resident students. • Statistically significant differences were identified in the IS/CS scores of the five cultural-identity groups and the three language groups. • Males and females differed significantly from one another in terms of their perceptions of Indian/Asian cultural groups. • Resident students and day-students differed significantly from one another in terms of their perceptions of Western-Afrikaans and African cultural groups. • The five cultural-orientation groups and the three language groups differed significantly from one another in terms of their perceptions of Western-Afrikaans, Western-English and African cultural groups. • Significant correlations for the Collectivism scores and the SDS scores for the perceptions of the Western-English, Indian/Asian, Middle-Eastern and African cultures were identified. These correlations were however extremely low, indicating that conducting a regression analysis of the SDS attitude scores in terms of the IS/CS scores was not feasible. Theoretical implications were discussed and recommendations were made for future research in this field.