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In this study I explore narrative resistance in three Canadian novels: Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman , Adele Wiseman's Crackpot and La Rivière sans repos by Gabrielle Roy. I argue that the first two novels counter the dominant constructions of the virgin as the thin, acquiescing body and the whore as the out of bounds, devouring body respectively. I also reflect on whether these texts recognize the importance of a common narrative that speaks to the specificities of female experience, helping us move beyond the dominant constructions that continue to frame our day-to-day lives. La Rivière sans repos is a postcolonial narrative, but it is also a text about mothers. It exposes the containment Western consumerism has placed on the role of mother, the subsequent devaluing of that role and consequently a devaluing of the women who fill that role. Throughout this study I draw from recent theorists who combine feminist perspectives with theories on the body including Susan Bordo and Elizabeth Grosz along with feminist literary critics such as Linda Hutcheon and Patricia Smart. By incorporating feminist theory and theory on the body along with literary criticism I approach the texts with an interdisciplinary analysis that offers a new reading of these narratives. Feminist thought was only just emerging into our cultural consciousness, and theory on the body was little known when Wiseman, Atwood and Roy were writing these novels in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Classical texts reflect and create the construction of women as objects of beauty, who are selfless, inherently weak and needy or they condemn us as "bitchie", manipulative and threatening if expressive of our desires. I seek alternatives to such cultural constructions by exploring how the three novels present and represent the body in relation to female subjectivity and agency by writing against classical representations. In my reading of The Edible Woman I suggest that Atwood's protagonist deviates from the virgin stereotype by following the knowledge of her body rather than that of her intellect. In Crackpot I argue that the fat, sexual body of Wiseman's Hoda asks the reader to question assumptions about normative beauty, female sexuality and marginalization. In La Rivière sans repos I explore how Roy places mother at the centre of the text, which allows for an exploration of the contrast between mothering as experience and motherhood as institution. Each novel proposes a complexity to our experience that has generally been limited to virgin, whore and mother and, consequently, I argue that each offers a discourse of resistance and the possibility of social, cultural and political change.

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An exploration of Chinese paper cutting technique in relation to body and clothing / Program: Konstnärligt masterprogram i mode- och textildesign

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Abortion is a dilemma that women may encounter. The perceptions towards abortion are likely to be shaped by women¡¦s marital statues. Since the 1960s, feminists claim that women should own the right to their bodies, with a particular emphsis on pregnant women and their decisions to have abortion. By saying this, however, there are still pressing structural constraints that regulate women¡¦s bodies and their entitlement for such right. This research is therefore to investigate Taiwanese women¡¦s experiences with abortion, revealing social constraints and cultural cohesions, which determine women¡¦s experiences with abortion. In the context of Taiwan, unmarried women with pregnancy are still considered as ¡§deviants¡¨. Little research has been conducted in order to explore women¡¦s experiences with abortion. In order to contribute such research gap, this study wants to look at (1) how marital status might influence women¡¦s attitudes towards abortion, (2) how women¡¦s marital statuses may contribute to their decisions for abortions (3) how abortions might affect women¡¦s lived experiences? By examining these three questions, this research tried to explore women¡¦s autonomy through their own rights to bodies and abortions. It is suggested that regardless their marital statuses, women rarely own their bodies and the right for abortion. Fertility freedom is a basic human right grounded to women. Yet, in order to obtain such right, women have to constantly battle against husbands and their families, medical authorities, and even the state. Unmarried women with pregnancy, rather than their male partners, are still stigmatized and morally condemned . In addition, research in abortion rarely addresses how men perceive such experience. This is nevertheless important. In particular, by comparing men¡¦s and women¡¦s accounts for abortion, we can understand how gendered inequalities and gendered stratifications are operationalized through patriarchal values. Rather than women themselves, their male partners often make the final decision on abortion. In saying this, yet, this research also explores how ¡¥being a responsible man¡¦ becomes a mainstream gendered language for these men to appropriate in order to construct their masculinity.

The research in this thesis (composed of a written element, audio documents and a live performance) focuses on the relationship of the female speaking voice to her own body and others’ bodies within the particular temporality of performance space. Arguing that the female voice can be theorised as a resistant theatre material, which through its volatile nature can escape attempts at control, the work here develops practical strategies and methods for discovering how the voice eludes any easy identification or ownership as part of a feminist agenda. Following Michelle Duncan who writes that ‘voice puts matter into circulation, matter that is more, or other than language,’ the research undertaken investigates how this matter can be manipulated in performance so that the sound material of the voice makes meaning. Concentrating on how a female body might ‘handle’ the voice as matter, with the body in question being both performer of voice, and director/designer of voice, the work develops a methodology of the “auditorcomposer,” the female body who speaks through careful listening to others’ voices. Introducing the model of the auditor-composer through a rethinking of the character of Ophelia, both the practical and textual research undertaken then investigate how bodies compose through longdistance time and space, activating the return of past voices to reverberate in the present. Animating and patterning elements of the theoretical projects of Gina Bloom and Elin Diamond and using Gertrude Stein as a theorist of motion and return, the research argues that the material movement of sound happens in the continuous present, and as such the single voice cites many voices in the action of its live sounding

This thesis seeks to explore how young women's body esteem is influenced by their beliefs about ambivalent sexism and stigma consciousness. In this study, a sample of 168 undergraduate female students at the University of Central Florida were asked to complete an online battery containing six psychological measures. The measures in this study included measures of body esteem and objectified body consciousness, perception and attitudes toward sexism, experiences with sexist events, and stigma consciousness. The results showed an association between higher body esteem and higher beliefs in benevolent sexism, and no relationship was found between hostile sexism and body esteem. As expected, body consciousness was positively correlated with stigma consciousness and women who experienced more sexist events had higher stigma consciousness. Additionally, regression models predicting body esteem based on hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, and stigma consciousness were only significant for benevolent sexism. These findings suggest further research to explore body esteem in relation to sexism and stigma consciousness. The results of this study can help highlight the importance of a cultural context when addressing female body esteem issues.

I argue that to understand the gender dynamics of New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, and the storm's aftermath, one must interrogate the cultural conflation of the black female body and the city's legacy to explore what it means and how it situates real black women in social, cultural, and physical landscapes. Using a hybrid theoretical framework informed by Black feminist theory, ecocriticism, critical race feminism, and post-positivist realism, I explore the connections between New Orleans' cultural and historical discourses that gender the city as feminine, more specifically as a black woman or Jezebel, with narratives of real black females to illustrate the impact that dominant discourses have on people's lives. I ground this work in Black feminism, specifically Hortense Spillers's and Patricia Hill Collins's works that center the black female body to garner a fuller understanding of social systems, Kimberlé Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality, and Evelyn Hammonds's call for a reclamation of the body to interrogate the ideologies that inscribe black women. In addition, I argue that black women should reclaim New Orleans' metaphorical black body and interrogate this history to move forward in rebuilding the city. As an ecocritic and feminist, I understand the tension involved with reading a city as feminine and arguing for this reclamation, as this echoes colonial and imperialist discourses of conquering land and bodies, but I negotiate these tensions by specifically examining the discourse itself to expose the sexist and racist ideologies at work. / Master of Arts