This study is positioned in a context where the ideologies of communities, creeds and genders are marked in violent ways on women’s bodies. It is also located in a context where Christian women, by and large, internalize their subordinate status as Godordained and accept the violence perpetrated on them as normal and natural. In such a context, the christological understanding of Jesus as the “Suffering Servant” serves to reinforce the submissive, docile and subordinate position of women and legitimize the various forms of suffering that are inscribed on them as normal and even as ways to salvation. This study analyses the experiences of women who, in the midst of oppressive regimes, structures and forces, have refused to accept the inscriptions of gender, power and violence thrust on them. They have created an alternate way of speaking with their bodies in order to challenge gender stereotypes, oppressive powers and the denial of life and subjectivity imposed on them and their communities. Using the analysis of women’s resisting bodies, this study argues for an interpretation of christology that is centered on the motifs of struggle, resistance and protest, as evidenced in women’s resisting bodies and in the story of Jesus. Women’s resisting bodies and Jesus’ resistance are paralleled to reconstruct christology as resistance and protest and the resurrection as the continued and ongoing struggle for life amidst continued violence and oppression. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

This thesis is a study of the relationship between gender, citizenship and reproductive rights in the poblaciones of Santiago, both in relation to the Chilean State and in terms of the categories of international human rights law. At a time in which there has been a great deal of debate about women's international rights and new areas of rights directed at women have begun to be defined, this study seeks to draw attention to the need to consider how such rights operate in specific cultural contexts. In particular, it considers how dominant cultural discourses of gender are constructed and reproduced in the context of marginal urban communities in Santiago, Chile, and the constraints they may place on the conception and exercise of women's citizenship. The thesis sets out to show the ways in which these discourses are embedded in state institutions and reproduced in its practices. It describes the ways in which the law operates in a discursive way to allow or disallow interpretations of events and thereby conditions and delimits women's citizenship. Rather then depicting these dominant discourses as totalizing, the thesis aims to present a more complex picture in which women may on the one hand be seen to be complicit in their own subordination, but on the other to adopt alternative discourses, for example the new feminist discourse on human rights and the discourses emanating from NGOs which focus on concepts of freedom and autonomy. Women may be seen to reinterpret these discourses in the course of applying them to their own situations, accepting, rejecting and transforming them in the process. It draws on interviews with 89 women living in marginal urban communities, which investigate the exercise of citizenship and the variables affecting women's capacity to operationalise their rights. The data aims to show how rights discourses, including human rights can play a transformative role in the content and practice of citizenship. The extension of the concept of citizen to incorporate new areas of rights such as reproductive and sexual rights, creates the potential for women to use these conceptual tools to challenge traditional gender discourse that discriminate against them and inhibit the exercise of their citizenship. The thesis lays out the theoretical debates in relation to gender and citizenship, the state, the universalist-relativist debate in anthropology and the feminist discourse on human rights and argues in favour of a perspective that incorporates a gendered analysis of the cultural factors influencing the operation of laws.

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In this thesis, I explore the construction of lesbian and gay parenting in psychology (Part 1), in the media (Part 2), and in lesbian and gay parents' talk (Part 3). My research brings together a diverse range of influences and ideas from lesbian and gay psychology, feminist psychology, and constructionist and discursive research. I draw on varied data sources: the psychological and lesbian feminist literature on lesbian (and gay) parenting, television talk shows, documentaries and newspaper articles, and research interviews with lesbian and gay parents. These data are analysed within a feminist constructionist framework, using discourse analysis. The thesis is divided into three parts. In Part 1.1 present my analysis of the psychological and lesbian feminist literature on lesbian (and gay) parenting. In this part of the thesis, I treat the literature as data and explore what it reveals about the social construction of lesbian and gay parenting. First, I provide a historical overview of the literature on lesbians and parenting over the last one hundred years. Then, I focus in detail on how discourses of sameness and difference and discourses of science inform the construction of lesbian (and gay) parenting in the literature. In Part 2, I analyse media constructions of lesbian and gay parenting. First, I identify arguments against lesbian and gay parenting in talk shows and in newspaper articles. Second, I focus specifically on talk show debates and analyse how these debates are constructed and identify the key themes informing pro-lesbian/gay parenting discourse on talk shows. In Part 3, I focus in detail on lesbian and gay parents' talk about two issues that significantly inform psychological and media debates about their fitness to parent: homophobic bullying and male role models. I explore how lesbian and gay parents engage with anti-lesbian/gay claims about homophobic bullying and male role models, and the ways in which they construct bullying and role models in the process of discursively managing their identity as 'bad' parents. In the final chapter, I discuss the contributions and implications of my research, and indicate some future developments for research on lesbian and gay parenting and for lesbian and gay psychology.

This thesis aims to demonstrate the interrelatedness of the rebellious form and content of Pilar MirO's first six films - La petición (1976), El crimen de Cuenca (1979), Gary Cooper gue estás en los cielos (1980), Hablamos esta noche (1982), Werther (1986) and Beltenebros (1991). The Introduction provides a brief outline of the director's life and an insight into some of the core themes of her cinema, summaries of relevant theoretical arguments from psychoanalysis and gender theory in the context of sociology and film studies and an outline of the situation of men and women in Spain vis-à-vis the law, social prejudices, attitudes to sexuality and work. Part I (chapters 1-6) examines gender issues and character portrayal in each of the films in chronological order using these theories. Part II deals with the metafictional textual strategies of Miró's works. Chapter 7 outlines features of metafiction, such as stylistic intertextuality, literal intertextuality, mise-en-abime devices and other cinematic strategies which highlight the constructed nature of the films by laying bare the processes of fictional creation and disturb the viewer, making him or her an active reader, who cannot acquiesce in a passive spectatorial position. It also discusses the issue of authorship in film to posit that Miró abdicates from the position of onmiscient auteur through intertextuality and her use of assistant authors, another strategy of metafictional, postmodern art. Chapters 8 and 9 look at specific examples of intertextuality. The first section of chapter 8 examines the thematic and stylistic influence of the American artist, Edward Hopper, on the setting of Beltenebros and José Gutiérrez Solana's tremendista paintings as a visual reference for El crimen de Cuenca: the chapter also takes into account the joint stylistic influence of Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) on Beltenebros. The second section of chapter 8 applies theories of historiographic metafiction and intrahistory to Miró's depiction of a miscarriage of justice in the Spanish legal system and the imprisonment of two innocent men in El crimen de Cuenca. Chapter 9 outlines a special instance of intertextuality in Miró's employment of stars. Using recent work in star studies, I consider the contributions and implications of her choice of two actresses - Ana Belén and Patsy Kensit - to La petición and Beltenebros. The conclusion suggests that, while Miró demonstrates an active interest in and sympathy for the victims of oppression, her use of intertextuality may be unconscious and that this thesis presents just one possible argument or interpretation. An interview with Miró in 1995 is included in an Appendix, as are relevant stills of Ana Belén.