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This dissertation examines constructions of femininity in three male-authored Latin/o American comics: Gabriel Vargas' La Familia Burrón (Mexico, 1948-2009), Quino's Mafalda (Argentina, 1964-1973), and Love and Rockets (Los Bros. Hernandez, 1981-1996; 2000-present). After first establishing an analytical context from which to explore these works, discussing contemporary trends in national comics production as well as the ways in which femininity has been prescriptively constructed in each particular time and place, I then analyze the ways in which each author questions, challenges, and/or completely reconstructs their own version of "graphic femininity." As the following chapters will show, each articulation of femininity as constructed within the three serial comics under examination here takes different forms in each comic under analysis; while female characters in one title might embody a socially idealized model of femininity such as the "angel in the house," or the cult of "true womanhood", characters in other comics (or even within the same title) might play inverse roles, defying the mandates of the role assigned to them by contemporary society and ideological institutions such as compulsory heterosexuality or patriarchal power. A variety of models of feminine behavior and subjectivity are present in the panels of these comics, but in contrast with other contemporary constructions of femininity in cultural texts, products and sociopolitical discourse, they are presented critically rather than prescriptively, depicted in ways that disrupt the limits of femininity as it has traditionally been construed and, in some cases, offer visions of alternative, liberating paths.

The term "narratives of confinement" redefines the parameters by which first-person, fictive and non-fictive, accounts of female captivity are classified, broadening the genre beyond Indian captivity narratives and slave narratives to include other works in which female narrators describe physical and/or psychological confinement due to tangible or non-tangible forces. Often these narratives exhibit the transformation of the drudgery of housewifery into powerful symbols of resistance and subversion, especially in reaction to traumatic events related to confinement. Needlework and food, including its preparation and distribution, frequently emerge as metaphors that express the ways in which disempowered women seek to regain control in their lives: sewing often represents an effort by women to seize power, blending the creative act with economic achievement; food preparation also relates to creativity and economic achievement and often represents love and nurturing. In this study, I examine three representative narratives of confinement, using close reading and scholarly evidence as support: Mary Rowlandson's 1682 Indian captivity narrative, A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Harriet Jacobs' 1861 slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself; and Toni Morrison's 1987 fictional neo-slave narrative, Beloved. My examination begins the dialogue regarding the connection between domestic metaphors and narratives of confinement, broadening scholarship to allow more consideration for the subtle, feminized language of domesticity.

This study explains how expatriate South Australian woman artists established both new lives and art careers in the modern metropoles of Paris and London in the early years of the twentieth century. It also argues that relocation to the modern metropole required new representational forms in their art practices. The interior view set in domestic, rather than public space was the particular form chosen by the women of this study to represent their experience of modern urban life.

The number of women in the Chartered Accounting (CA) profession has continued to rise since the 1970s; women now make up one-third of working CAs in Canada (Tabone, 2007). Yet, the number of women in the upper levels of the profession remains very low. The main purpose of this dissertation is to understand how women CAs experience and talk about the CA profession and to explore the implications of the CA context for the development and maintenance of friendship among women CAs. The ways in which power and agency are exercised in the micro-politics of the everyday lives of women CAs and the nexus of relations through which individuals develop and enact their identities is explored through open-ended interviews and discussion groups with Western Canadian women CAs. <p> The dominant ideology of professionalism constructs both individual and collective identities while structuring workplace relations. The findings of this study demonstrate that female CAs believe strongly in elements of professionalism such as meritocracy, excellence, client service, and commitment but that their understanding is gender-neutral and differs from the dominant masculinist interpretations and practices. The participants narratives reveal a particular pattern of engagement with the profession characterized by stages of early optimism, disillusionment and the glass ceiling, negotiation and the glass box, resignation, and justification. All participants encountered a glass ceiling, or invisible barriers to advancement, as a result of the conflicting meanings of the ideals of professionalism. As the women attempted to negotiate solutions to the constraints imposed by the professions elite, masculinist discourses were mobilized by those in power in new ways resulting in further constraints upon the women, containing them within a glass box that limited their career mobility in all directions and may contribute to gender segmentation in the profession.<p>Masculinist discursive practices have a significant impact not only on the participants career aspirations, but also on their friendship relationships, which are, in part, constituted by their relationship to the profession, their need for support against masculinist strategies, and their choice of gender identity strategy. Friendships do not increase activism as the participants feel powerless to create change and fear reprisals.

The methodological approach used to tell the Smith sisters’ story is first and foremost a case study of women in the nineteenth century and the gendered categories that were constructed to define women. The story will be told through a biographical narrative, which will allow Hannah, Julia, and Abby Smith’s to tell their story in their own voice. Also, included within the biography is an examination of the nineteenth-century theories that defined women’s lives, and what effect, if any, these theories had on the Smiths. Each chapter is layered with three different narratives in an attempt to unravel the world that women lived in the nineteenth century. First, the chapter provides a description and analysis of the specific theories such as Republican Motherhood and cult of domesticity to ground the Smith women in the discursive world in which they lived. Then the chapter closely examines the practice or the way the Smith women lived their lives and what they thought about their world. Lastly, each chapter explores the secondary sources that have been written about each subject, such as the new female seminaries that opened in the nineteenth century. By combining these approaches, I hope to avoid some of the shortcomings that dominate the study of women today. First, the theoretical models and the study of real lives of women actually leave women out of their own stories. Second, historians tend to evaluate women’s lives from the past based upon their own political agendas and their own beliefs of what freedom and rights mean completely discarding what it might have meant to women in their own time period.

As architects, we cannot resist the opportunity to build good houses on generous budgets to accommodate happy families. We could use this opportunity, however, to reconfigure the detached single-family house for a group of people that are not yet family, let alone happy. These are distressed times for a growing margin of society: seniors are lonely, young families struggle with little household help and middle-aged couples continue to pay large mortgages on their “empty nest” homes. We live in a society that copes. Seniors move into annexes of their children’s homes, two young families share daily chores, and middle-aged couples invest in a property with friends. It is happening all around us, and much can be done to provide the infrastructure to both accommodate and encourage the shift. This work builds the case for a house: a shared house for the emerging demographic of non-autonomous households that fall outside the conventions of the nuclear family. The project is a social experiment that investigates, probes and predicts the dynamics between 7-12 occupants who may be family, friend or stranger. It promises not only to test current proclivities, needs and desires for domesticity and privacy, but begs to be considered as an acceptable, and even preferable, way of living.

The number of women in the Chartered Accounting (CA) profession has continued to rise since the 1970s; women now make up one-third of working CAs in Canada (Tabone, 2007). Yet, the number of women in the upper levels of the profession remains very low. The main purpose of this dissertation is to understand how women CAs experience and talk about the CA profession and to explore the implications of the CA context for the development and maintenance of friendship among women CAs. The ways in which power and agency are exercised in the micro-politics of the everyday lives of women CAs and the nexus of relations through which individuals develop and enact their identities is explored through open-ended interviews and discussion groups with Western Canadian women CAs. <p> The dominant ideology of professionalism constructs both individual and collective identities while structuring workplace relations. The findings of this study demonstrate that female CAs believe strongly in elements of professionalism such as meritocracy, excellence, client service, and commitment but that their understanding is gender-neutral and differs from the dominant masculinist interpretations and practices. The participants narratives reveal a particular pattern of engagement with the profession characterized by stages of early optimism, disillusionment and the glass ceiling, negotiation and the glass box, resignation, and justification. All participants encountered a glass ceiling, or invisible barriers to advancement, as a result of the conflicting meanings of the ideals of professionalism. As the women attempted to negotiate solutions to the constraints imposed by the professions elite, masculinist discourses were mobilized by those in power in new ways resulting in further constraints upon the women, containing them within a glass box that limited their career mobility in all directions and may contribute to gender segmentation in the profession.<p>Masculinist discursive practices have a significant impact not only on the participants career aspirations, but also on their friendship relationships, which are, in part, constituted by their relationship to the profession, their need for support against masculinist strategies, and their choice of gender identity strategy. Friendships do not increase activism as the participants feel powerless to create change and fear reprisals.

Until recently Alice Cary's works have gone largely unnoticed by the literary community, and those critics who have examined her writings have recognized her primarily as a regionalist sketch writer. However, studying Cary's total body of fiction, including her novels and children's fiction as well as her sketches, and examining the influence of Christian Universalism upon her work reveals that Cary is a much more complex and nuanced writer than she has been previously understood to be. This dissertation explores the way that Cary questions stereotypes of accepted behavior specifically as they pertain to the identities of men, women, and children and offers a more flexible and inclusive religious identity rooted in Universalist ideals. In her depictions of women, Cary uses tropes from gothic stories, fairy tales, and sentimental fiction to criticize evangelical faith, Transcendentalism, and separate spheres-based stereotypes of women's behavior, and she undermines these stereotypes and replaces them with a Universalist emphasis on communal service and identity. Similarly, Cary's depictions of manhood are influenced by her desire to dissect preconceived notions of masculinity like that of the Self-Made Man and his earlier counterparts the Genteel Patriarch and the Heroic Artisan and replace these stereotypes with a Universalist model that embraces gender fluidity and sacrifice of self interest for the larger community. Cary's treatment of children continues her critique of nineteenth century stereotypes. Cary, unlike most early nineteenth century writers, exposes the dangers of romanticized visions of middle class children, which physically isolated children from their families and endangered working class children by increasing the demand for child labor; thus Cary's Universalism leads her to depict all children, not just the wealthy ones, as God's children and worthy of protection. Cary also uses children metaphorically to represent minorities and tentatively question the treatment of African Americans and Native Americans. Cary stands as a prime example of an author who has been overlooked and whose obscurity has hindered the construction of literary history, particularly in regard to the antebellum roots of realism and the influence of liberal religious belief on realistic fiction.

This dissertation explores American domestic pleasures and duties during the two Gilded Ages that bracket the twentieth century. It draws upon the theoretical work of scholars from several disciplines and analyzes prescriptive and literary sources to create an intellectual history of the idea of pleasure as it appears in home life as well as its consequences. This project reframes domestic pleasures as both "true" insomuch as individuals experience them viscerally, and primarily constructed, in that hegemonic cultural discourses shape experiences of them. I argue that pleasure regulates and restricts individuals both by simultaneously shaping aspirations and manifesting in habits and activities. Since enjoyment of scripted behaviors serves to naturalize them, many seemingly private choices escape interrogation. Ultimately, domestic pleasure establishes a regulative norm that continually reshapes the meanings of homes, families, and even the individual.