The western world has long viewed ‘mental illness’ from a biomedical perspective; treating the brain the same way it treats physical issues, through diagnosis, medication and clinical intervention. We however tend to forget that a person is interdependent on her or his environment, and resultantly we frame the person as ill or weak rather than the environment as sick, or ‘mad’. With this thesis I assess how mental health and ‘mental illness’ are being framed within secondary schools in the province of Ontario (Canada). I achieve this by analyzing mental health strategies using a theoretical lens developed from Critical Disability Theory and Mad Studies. Through use of a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) I analyzed a total of 4 mental health strategies from the federal government, the Ontario government and 2 Ontario school boards. My findings indicated that these mental health strategies generally subscribe to a medical or individualized understandings of mental health, and overlook the disabling influence that the school environment can have on the student. By minimizing the role of the social and physical environment on student mental health schools are reinforcing the dominant discourse, which is that distresses in mental health are the result of an individual deficit caused by a brain defect or personal weakness. This discourse has far reaching consequences that may contribute to many Ontario students not receiving the support they desire. I contend that social workers employed by school boards can be influential in challenging these dominant framings of mental health and carry forward the standpoint that the school environment and its social structures play a principal role in the mental health of students. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

The gangsta rap has topped the Swedish music charts in recent years and the controversial message of the music genre has led people in the community to question what the gangsta rap message convey. The purpose of the study is to investigate how a normalization and encouragement of crime are characterized in the contemporary song texts, and how men and women are portrayed in connection with the power aspects of society. The method choice is a qualitative thematic and linguistic content analysis with the aim of examining the significance of the song texts in deph. The study has been conducted on the 24 songs that have been streamed the most number of times according to P3´s DigiLista since 2018. The result shows that the gangsta rap encourages and romanticizes crime through its choice of personal pronouns and semantics in the song lyrics. Women and men are portrayed in an unequal way, where women are portrayed as objectified as opposed to the hegemonic masculinity with which masculine men are equated. Power has been proven to be a dominant concept throughout the performance analysis and the power aspect has conveyed different viewpoints in each theme. The power that gangster rappers get through their coveted music may come to encourage criminal acts through their choice of words. / Gangsterrapen har toppat de svenska musiklistorna de senaste åren och musikgenrens kontroversiella budskap har fått människor i samhället att ifrågasätta vad gangsterrapens budskap förmedlar. Syftet med studien är att undersöka på vilket sätt en normalisering och uppmuntran av kriminalitet präglas i de nutida låttexterna och hur män och kvinnor skildras i koppling till samhällets maktaspekter. Metodvalet är en kvalitativ tematisk och språklig innehållsanalys med syftet att kunna granska låttexternas betydelse på djupet. Studien har genomförts på de 24 låtarna som har streamats flest antal gånger enligt P3’s DigiLista sedan 2018. Av resultatet framkommer att gangsterrapen uppmuntrar och romantiserar kriminalitet genom dess val av personliga pronomen och semantiken i låttexterna. Kvinnor och män skildras på ett ojämlikt sätt, där kvinnor framställs som objektifierade gentemot den hegemoniska manligheten som maskulina män likställs med. Makt har påvisats vara ett dominerande begrepp genom hela resultatanalysen och maktaspekten har förmedlat olika synvinklar i respektive tema. Makten som gangsterraparna får genom deras eftertraktade musik bidrar till att de kan komma att uppmuntra till kriminella handlingar genom deras val av språkbruk.

Absent Presence: Women in American Gangster Narrative investigates women characters in American gangster narratives through the principal roles accorded to them. It argues that women in these texts function as an “absent presence,” by which I mean that they are a convention of the patriarchal gangster landscape and often with little import while at the same time they cultivate resistant strategies from within this backgrounded positioning. Whereas previous scholarly work on gangster texts has identified how women are characterized as stereotypes, this dissertation argues that women characters frequently employ the marginal positions to which they are relegated for empowering effect. This dissertation begins by surveying existing gangster scholarship. There is a preoccupation with male characters in this work, as is the case in most gangster texts themselves. This preoccupation is a result of several factors, such as defining the genre upon criteria that exclude women, promoting a male-centred canon as a result, and making assumptions about audience composition and taste that overlook women’s (and some women characters’) interest in gangster texts. Consequently, although the past decade saw women scholars bringing attention to female characters, research on male characters continues to dominate the field. My project thus fills this gap by not only examining the methods by which women characters navigate the male-dominated underworld but also including female-centred gangster narratives. Subsequent chapters focus on women’s predominant roles as mothers, molls, and wives as well as their infrequent role as female gangsters. The mother chapter demonstrates how the gangster’s mother deploys her effacement as an idealized figure in order to disguise her transgressive machinations (White Heat, The Sopranos). The moll chapter examines how this character’s presence as a reforming influence for the male criminal is integral to the earliest narratives. However, a shift to male relationships in mid- to late-1920s gangster texts transforms the moll’s status to that of a moderator (Underworld, The Great Gatsby). On the other hand, subsequent non-canonical texts feature molls as protagonists and illustrate the potential appeal of the gangster figure to women spectators (Three on a Match). Subsequently, the wife chapter explores texts that show presence is manifested in the wife’s cultivation of a traditional family image, while absence is evident in her exposure of this image as a façade via her husband’s activities (The Godfather, Goodfellas). In the following female gangster chapter, I examine how gender functions to render this rare character a literal absent presence such that she is inconceivable as a subject (Lady Scarface, Lady Gangster). Expanding upon this examination of gender, a final chapter on the African-American female gangster (in Set It Off and The Wire) explores how sexuality, race, and female—as well as “gangsta”—masculinity intersect to create this character’s simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility. By examining women’s roles that often are overlooked in a male-dominated textual type and academic field, this dissertation draws scholarly attention to the ways that peripheral status can offer a stealthy locus for self-assertion.

Absent Presence: Women in American Gangster Narrative investigates women characters in American gangster narratives through the principal roles accorded to them. It argues that women in these texts function as an “absent presence,” by which I mean that they are a convention of the patriarchal gangster landscape and often with little import while at the same time they cultivate resistant strategies from within this backgrounded positioning. Whereas previous scholarly work on gangster texts has identified how women are characterized as stereotypes, this dissertation argues that women characters frequently employ the marginal positions to which they are relegated for empowering effect. This dissertation begins by surveying existing gangster scholarship. There is a preoccupation with male characters in this work, as is the case in most gangster texts themselves. This preoccupation is a result of several factors, such as defining the genre upon criteria that exclude women, promoting a male-centred canon as a result, and making assumptions about audience composition and taste that overlook women’s (and some women characters’) interest in gangster texts. Consequently, although the past decade saw women scholars bringing attention to female characters, research on male characters continues to dominate the field. My project thus fills this gap by not only examining the methods by which women characters navigate the male-dominated underworld but also including female-centred gangster narratives. Subsequent chapters focus on women’s predominant roles as mothers, molls, and wives as well as their infrequent role as female gangsters. The mother chapter demonstrates how the gangster’s mother deploys her effacement as an idealized figure in order to disguise her transgressive machinations (White Heat, The Sopranos). The moll chapter examines how this character’s presence as a reforming influence for the male criminal is integral to the earliest narratives. However, a shift to male relationships in mid- to late-1920s gangster texts transforms the moll’s status to that of a moderator (Underworld, The Great Gatsby). On the other hand, subsequent non-canonical texts feature molls as protagonists and illustrate the potential appeal of the gangster figure to women spectators (Three on a Match). Subsequently, the wife chapter explores texts that show presence is manifested in the wife’s cultivation of a traditional family image, while absence is evident in her exposure of this image as a façade via her husband’s activities (The Godfather, Goodfellas). In the following female gangster chapter, I examine how gender functions to render this rare character a literal absent presence such that she is inconceivable as a subject (Lady Scarface, Lady Gangster). Expanding upon this examination of gender, a final chapter on the African-American female gangster (in Set It Off and The Wire) explores how sexuality, race, and female—as well as “gangsta”—masculinity intersect to create this character’s simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility. By examining women’s roles that often are overlooked in a male-dominated textual type and academic field, this dissertation draws scholarly attention to the ways that peripheral status can offer a stealthy locus for self-assertion.