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Both Judaism and feminism encompass a wide range of practices and beliefs. Both are often misunderstood in popular media and educational settings. Outcomes of these misrepresentations can vary from social slights to dangerous anti-semitic and sexist behaviors, all of which have potential of interfering with development among Jewish and feminist people. Because religion, culture, and ideology contribute to adult identity in important ways, and because Judaism and feminism are poorly understood within the general population, research on the experience and meaning of Judaism and feminism is warranted. In this study I explored the development of Jewish and feminist identity among a sample of adult women residing in an area with small Jewish and feminist populations. Participants discussed how they negotiated the patriarchal hierarchy found in Judaism and in society at large, and they assessed the influence of residing in their community on their Jewish and feminist identities. Feminist standpoint theory guided development of the interview questions and procedures. This approach brings women, who have often been at the margins of research, to a central focus. Jewish feminist women are often outsiders within the Jewish community, the feminist community, and the general community. They share the usual concerns of patriarchy noted by other feminists, but also must contend with patriarchy within Judaism and anti-semitism within the feminist and general communities. Feminist standpoint theory focuses attention on these intersecting elements of infuence on identity. The results of this study reveal variation in the meaning of Judaism and feminism in women's lives. Although all of the participants used Jewish as a cultural identity, some also used it as an ethnic, racial, spiritual, or religious designation. Participants in this study found that their Jewish and feminist ideologies, for the most part, coexisted well. Any conflict between the two ideologies was generally resolved by reframing the Jewish perspective. All of the participants reported that living in an ideologically conservative and predominantly Christian environment influenced their sense of self. For most of the women the influence contributed to a clearer definition of and stronger identification with both Jewish and feminist ideologies. / Ph. D.

In this project I outline the current discourse within feminist epistemology and elucidated its limitations of feminist epistemology particularly its lack of formal attention to the modes of theorization and, in complementarity, the generative potential of an analysis foregrounding materiality. The first chapter explores the theories that constitute the field of study and the relationships between both feminist empiricism and standpoint theory illuminate the conceptual concerns of feminist epistemology. Building from this, I present an analysis that examines the rhetorical and disciplinary structures that determine the kinds of arguments and methodologies that are possible within these frameworks. This argument simultaneously presents an analysis of theoretical formation as well as a critique of the lack of attention given to the rhetorical and formal scaffolds which render additional epistemic limitations perceivable. Lastly, I demonstrate a mode of knowledge production that centers materiality and body which exerts pressure on the very frameworks utilized in the analysis of materiality and embodiment. If materiality has the capacity to articulate relationships between knower and knowledges formed by the knower and formal elements of research has the capacity to render the limits of knowledges created from the research, then feminist epistemology should account for the formal and the material in its attempts to explicate the possibilities and limitations of epistemology.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (Women and Gender Studies) / Events in the last few years on the global stage have heralded a new era for domestic workers, which may afford them the voice as subaltern that has been silent until now. Despite being constructed as silent and as subjects without agency, unionised domestic workers organised themselves globally, becoming more visible and making their voices heard. This culminated in the promulgation of the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) Convention No.189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers (or C189) in September 2013, and the establishment of the International Domestic Workers' Federation (IDWF) in October 2013. This broadening of the scope of domestic workers' activism has not yet received sufficient attention in academic research. These two historic events on their own have the potential to change the dominant discourse around domestic workers, by mobilising workers with agency to challenge the meaning of the political ideologies informing their identity positions of exploitation and subjugation.

Searching for the Womanist Within is a play about self identity and the daily experience of African-American women who are at the intersecting oppressions of race, gender and class. The unique life perspective of Afeican-American women is explored through the retelling of stories from the writer’s life as well as the lives of other black women. In Feminist, Black Feminist, Afrocentric and Womanist drama it is common to steer away from conventional theatrical structures, Solo drama, a less conventional structure, was selected for this play. In addition to the play is an essay about the writing process, as well as a literature review and a statement of significance about this creative thesis.

This thesis challenges the way feminist literary criticism has been represented as a field polarized between American and French positions. As an alternative to the American/French distinction, I propose one between feminist criticism oriented to research and feminist criticism oriented to aesthetics. In keeping with this alternative distinction, I relocate the shift in feminist criticism within American feminism. The "aesthetic turn" inaugurated by American "gynocriticism" is itself identified in relation to a more general philosophical shift from discovery to creation. While the relativistic and voluntaristic tendencies which distinguish the latter pole are exemplified by French feminism, I argue that they are anticipated by American feminism's "aesthetic turn." Finally, this thesis not only relocates and redefines the shift in feminist literary criticism, but provides arguments in favour of a research-oriented feminist criticism.

I am baffled each time someone asks me, “Who is Jessie Fauset?” As I delved into critical work written on Fauset, I found her critics dismissed her work because they read them as bad fairytales that showcase the lives of middle-class Blacks. I respectfully disagree. It is true that her novels concentrate on the Black middle-class; they also focus on the realities of Black women, at a time when they were branching out of their homes and starting careers, not out of financial necessity but arising from their desire for working. They establish the start of what Patricia Hill Collins later coined “Black feminism” through strong female characters that refuse to be defined by society. This thesis seeks to add Jessie Fauset to the canon of Black feminists by using Collins’ theories on Black feminism to analyze Fauset’s first two novels, There Is Confusion and Plum Bun.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Theatre, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-137).

The firstly explicitly adopted Feminist Foreign Policy was developed in Sweden in 2014. Since then, seven countries have so far adopted a so-called Feminist Foreign Policy. Nevertheless, no common definition of Feminist Foreign Policy has been agreed upon, nor by the States neither by the scholars. Different States have therefore adopted Feminist Foreign policies with different understanding. Recently adopted Feminist Foreign policies in Europe, France (2018), Spain (2021) and Germany (2023) have been hardly analysed against feminist perspectives and Feminist International Relations theory. To contribute to fill in in this gap the research aims at responding to the following research question: What understanding of feminism and feminist International Relations theories underpin the different Feminist Foreign Policies? The findings demonstrate that FFPs are not a unified phenomenon, they are not grounded on a common understanding of feminism and feminist theories. These three Feminist Foreign policies differ in their gender transformative ambitions, understanding of gender equality, embracement of intersectionality or appetite for inclusion and listening to marginalized groups. Diverse perspectives of feminism and elements pertaining to Feminist International Relations theory have strongly influenced the Feminist Foreign policies of France, Spain and Germany in dissimilar ways.

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