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This dissertation is a cultural history of how race and gender influenced nineteenth-century citizenship. The gender ideology of true womanhood is generally described as a practice of white middle-class women; however it was also used to define racial difference and to attach a civic purpose to the everyday practices of women. The antebellum prominence of true womanhood relied upon a female focused print culture and created a shared identity among white middle-class women and those who sought to emulate them. This dissertation provides a new interpretation of the cultural importance of true womanhood. First, it argues that women understood their everyday life to hold a civic purpose. Second, while activists tried to overturn legal curtailments to equality, non-activist women saw their civic status as different -- although not inferior to -- that of men. They made forays into the public sphere through print culture and actively redefined the private sphere by linking their domestic work to nation building. Finally, evolving interpretations of womanhood were not simply a reflection of the changing labor of middle-class women in the emerging market economy, but also linked femininity with class and race. Middle-class white women sought to differentiate themselves from immigrants and women of color by enhancing the significance of the home and by distinguishing between household labor and household management. Middle-class African American women also pursued true womanhood to enhance their own status and to argue that their well-ordered homes proved that African American men were patriarchs in their own rights and worthy of citizenship and the vote. This dissertation rewrites our understanding of women's influence over definitions of citizens and citizenship in the nineteenth century. To do so, I interpret the intersections of black and white constructions of "true womanhood" by applying a cultural (citizenship as lived experience) instead of a political interpretation of citizenship. Doing so re-conceptualizes domesticity as a political force in the nineteenth century and explores how home, race and gender transected to create individual identities of Americans as Americans. An overarching goal of this project is to chart the evolution of citizenship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as it followed the dual tracts of judicial and legislative construction in juxtaposition with cultural understandings of what makes a citizen.

Traumatic triggers come in many forms: the smell of a rose, the taste of a warm pie, the sound of music, the gaze of a loved one, and the touch of soft soil. What appears ordinary to one may repel another, but the tension between these two opposing reactions is what entices me as an artist. Every trigger is tied to a specific memory which causes me, as a survivor, to question my reality and what I believe to be true. Is this love or is this abuse? What happens when I succumb to the memory that haunts me? My work addresses themes of domesticity, trauma, and sentimentality through the creation of sculpture and video works. Asunder is a minefield of such works that are my response to personal trauma while offering a space for outside connection.

This thesis argues that cookbooks and cooking literature prescribed domesticity, specifically linked to the kitchen, as an obligation for American women in World War II. Building on the work of culinary historians and gender scholars, I argue that the government enlisted women as "kitchen citizens." In contrast to the obligations of male military service, government propaganda, commercially-published cookbooks, community cookbooks, and agriculture extension pamphlets used understandings of middle-class femininity to prescribe women's identity and role in the war effort as homemakers. Despite the popular memory of wartime women as Rosie-the-Riveters, this thesis suggests that working outside the home was a temporary and secondary identity. During World War II, cooking literature re-linked women's work inside the home to political significance and defined women's domestic responsibilities as an obligation of American female citizenship. / Master of Arts

This dissertation explores the blurring of labor and leisure through new technologies, specifically how women are transforming the home into a marketing site — both as sellers of lifestyles and as consumers of market produced goods and narratives. I take up three phenomena that emphasize the spontaneous allure and risk of participating in the aspirational leisure-labor that has resulted from the expansion of work. First, I examine the collective fascination with the hunt for the perfect bridal gown in Say Yes to the Dress — currently running its 17th season — and continued memorialization through the wedding photography featured on the blog Style Me Pretty. Second, I turn to several lifestyle blogs that offer designer-grade Do-It-Yourself projects on a budget and Instagram accounts that adhere to what I coin as a “minimalist, homestead aesthetic.” Third, I turn to Pinterest, the virtual “bookmarking tool” that has taken digital media by storm. Each of these sites offer unique representations of domestic spaces and tasks through public, image-based medias and depict another layer of a re-ritualization of domestic labor. I find that even as capital erodes the domestic sphere, there is a new preoccupation with recovering the home as sacred space through rituals.

The definitions of domesticity revolve around the idea of life at home, often regarding a private accommodation. However, a home may also be considered a neighbourhood or city of belonging. In the 21st century, activities associated with the house like eating, reading, and relaxing, are increasingly being performed in the urban context. As a result, modern cities have adapted to provide more domestic spaces for users. Domesti(city) attempts to improve public space by making it more homely. Tensta was chosen as a Million Program area whose public space lacked diversity in the design, scale, and quality of open space.The thesis offers a design-based solution to a systemic issue. It considers the opinions of the most marginalized social groups within the neighbourhood to inform strategies that enhance public space, whether by creating areas that make women feel safe or where the elderly and youths can socialize and strengthen the quality of their social relationships.

As humans, we live in a state of dynamic, conflicting emotions. In moments of pain we experience joy and in moments of joy we have sorrow. In the work that culminates in my thesis show Lovely…, I visually celebrate the contradictions and dynamism of the joy and sadness of life. Just like the word “lovely,” which we may use to describe everything from a wedding ceremony to a funeral service, life is an indefinable experience. It fluctuates, never remaining in one moment or emotion for long. This dynamism creates the complexity of life, the beauty of life, and the path of life. As Joanna Freuh says, “life is sloppy” and, as an artist, I want to celebrate, question, and reveal the sloppiness of our lives. I use my daily life as the main subject of my work to make it honest and accessible. The idea of the work being honest, even painfully so, comes from my desire to be true to my emotions, insecurities, strengths, and intelligence without fear of ridicule or censure from a patriarchal society. By making work that resides within the realm of the everyday, I am attempting to defy and contest masculine censure. In effect, I reclaim my femininity: the quality of being feminine, without the fear of losing strength or respect. Though the autobiographical drives the work and is necessary for it to exist, ultimately it is transcended, enabling the viewer to have his or her own independent relationship to it.

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This thesis analyzes Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons through the framework of the cult of domesticity. In understanding the ways in which Stein mocks and transgresses gender constrictions, while simultaneously adopting the language of domesticity, I understand the ways in which Stein breaks with the antebellum notion of separate spheres.

The concept of home has often been recognized as a foundational concept in popular science-fiction (SF) as the point of departure or place of return in the space odyssey, timetravel mission, or heroic quest. Most SF narratives evidently centre on notions of homelessness, homecomings, threats to home or journeys from it. However, independent of the film’s narrative, home is also considered within SF as the place of the audience member, spatially and temporally, the distinction of which is critical for establishing the alien encounter with the putative future world. As a critical genre, SF continues to offer insights into the contemporary milieu that have significant implications for all areas of cultural research and, more specifically, architecture. While architectural literature and practice has confirmed a sustained interest in SF, representations of home are often overlooked in favour of the various innovations and special effects on-screen. It is the intention of the research to elevate the discussion of home in SF from its often abstract engagement by architectural texts, and more specifically question how notions of home are expressed in SF film through the various narratives and designed environments. Thus, the research posits the notion of home as providing the essential link between SF and architecture by establishing a theoretical framework and detailed analyses of four films adapted from the prolific American SF author, Philip K. Dick: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall (1990), Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002), and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly (2006). The research examines science, method, and truth, in relation to the foundations of the SF genre and its various representations of home. Furthermore, by comparing and contrasting modern and postmodern approaches to design, similarities are drawn between the cultural mechanisms of SF imagery and architecture. The research draws from SF theorists such as Darko Suvin, Scott Bukatman, and Vivian Sobchack, as well as authors focussed on notions of home such as Witold Rybczynski, Mary Douglas, Juhanni Pallasmaa, and David Morley. Topics related to contemporary identity construction, gender roles, domestic environments, global mobility and connectivity, spectacle, surveillance, tourism, and technology, are scattered throughout the chapters offering a broad survey of the notion of home as represented in contemporary SF with the intent of generating further architectural discussion.