To read a book or watch a play is to transport oneself to another place and time. However, it is not only the consumers of literature that travel; texts themselves can also make journeys. As is the case for Elin Améen’s play En moder, which has undergone a particular geographic and transformative journey, being based on the play Alan’s wife, an English reworking of Ameen’s Swedish novel ”Befriad”. Thus, the original text left its Swedish context and returned, via England, in a new form. The three works all share the same narrative: a young woman losing her husband in a workplace accident and then giving birth to their disabled child that she later kills. This study provides historical context to these three texts and compares them with a focus on the question of motherhood. By looking at motherhood in Swedish 19th-century drama, the study unveils the social conditions placed upon the protagonist and thus her actions, which in turn captures how motherhood at the time was constructed and reflected as a subject in the arts. As to do this, the study first compares the three texts to illuminate the distinct choices the Swedish and English authors made in their versions. Following this, the debate that took place in England following the premiere of Alan’s Wife is analyzed. Finally, the endings of the three texts are compared, as this is where they differ at its most. The analysis highlights differences between the texts, which are related to their socio-geographic contexts. Religion and punishment, in particular the death penalty, are given greater prominence in the English version, whilst in the Swedish novel and play, Améen, who authors both, sticks to her own beliefs and moral guidelines.

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The study of gynecological resistance as an integral part of the slave community has frequently been ignored in studies of the plantation South. Slave women actively engaged in both collective and individual acts of gynecological resistance. This work, "Dat's one chile of mine you ain't never gonna sell: Gynecological Resistance in the Plantation Community", explores enslaved women's use of birth control, abortion, and infanticide as a means to gain personal autonomy and control over their bodies. This study seeks to forge a collective narrative about the secret practices of slave women, while attempting to give them a voice of their own. Relying primarily on the WPA slave narratives, as well as the Virginia Plantation records, this thesis first seeks to examine cases of gynecological resistance, as well as the motivations behind these acts. This thesis argues that enslaved women used gynecological resistance as a means to maintain some personal autonomy and control over their bodies, as well as the bodies of their children. The study illustrates that these individual acts became collective resistance, when the community worked to aid and protect women, who committed acts of gynecological resistance by keeping their secrets from the master. Finally, this thesis demonstrates how individual acts of resistance became collective, or day-to-day, in the forms of oral narratives about gynecological resistance that were passed along for the purposes of instruction. / Master of Arts

This thesis presents an osteoarchaeological analysis of juvenile mortality profiles questioning the speculations made by some archaeologists that the under-representation of infants from Anglo-Saxon and medieval burial populations could be due to the practice of infanticide in England during these periods. Morphological and metrical age estimation and sex assessment methods are used to determine the age-at-death and sex of 1275 children from fifty-three Anglo-Saxon and medieval sites located in southern England. The age and sex distribution of the Anglo-Saxon and medieval children under six-years-old are then compared with age-specific United Nations demographic statistics see to whether or not a normative mortality profile is presented by the archaeological populations. This study identified an abnormal age-at-death distribution for the early Anglo-Saxon perinatal individuals. Excess female mortality was observed for the perinatal individuals from all three periods; early Anglo-Saxon, late Anglo-Saxon and medieval, and for the neonatal and infant individuals from the early Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods. The results of this osteoarchaeological analysis are discussed in conjunction with a review of the Anglo-Saxon and medieval documentary evidence which examines the possible social and economic motives for infanticide. Whilst this analysis of the historical sources revealed laws and penitentiary warnings against the neglect and deliberate murder of infants, the late Anglo-Saxon and medieval documents provided little evidence to suggest the social devaluation of women that would support a hypothesis of preferential female infanticide. There are few surviving early Anglo-Saxon documents however, so the significance of the abnormal mortality profiles from this period is considered.

Este trabalho parte de uma inquietação acerca dos dizeres que vêm se constituindo na mídia sobre a mulher em seu papel de mãe em nossa sociedade. Trabalhando na articulação entre a Análise do Discurso (Pêcheux, 2008, 2009) e a psicanálise lacaniana, nosso corpus de pesquisa constituiu-se de manchetes sobre abandono e infanticídio, divulgadas em portais eletrônicos de notícias. Tivemos como objetivo central analisar a discursivização da mulhermãe pela mídia na contemporaneidade, a partir do conceito de genéricos discursivos (Tfouni, 2004) e também observar se as manchetes das notícias analisadas produzem efeitos que podem ser compreendidos como elementos indiciários de que A mulher, enquanto conjunto, não existe, conforme preconizou Lacan (2008b). A análise partiu da consideração de que as notícias constituem-se como acontecimentos que fogem ao discurso vigente e colocam-se como indícios a serem observados, por apontarem para um processo discursivo da/na contemporaneidade. Os efeitos da discursivização dos atos cruéis realizados por essas mães, em contraposição ao grupo de todas as mães, repousam nos genéricos que circulam pelo interdiscurso e comparecem na produção de sentidos. Ao narrar um caso fora do conjunto das mulheres-mães, a manchete e a notícia apontam para o pré-construído que se (re) afirma em torno da maternidade como algo inerente ao feminino. Por outro lado, o fato de ser possível dizer algo como o que é dito nessas notícias indica um furo no grupo de todas as mulheres e mães, um menos-um que não permite que a unidade se perpetue. Paradoxalmente, há o recobrimento dessa falta, presente na própria língua(gem), que não dá conta de nomear sujeitos como essas mulheres, se não em contraposição ao conjunto (supostamente homogêneo) de mulheres-mães. Ressaltamos ainda a construção da figura do monstro (Foucault, 2001) produzido pela mídia, que se ancora em um discurso relacionado à natureza e à cultura e produz, mais uma vez, a homogeneização, agora do grupo das mulheres-mãesmonstros. A noção de público e privado também comparece tangencialmente aos outros elementos da análise. Quando passamos do singular para o universal, estamos também passando do privado para o público e é nesse sentido que a mídia tem um papel fundamental. Se partimos da premissa de que mulheres sempre abandonaram ou mataram seus filhos, podemos também afirmar que o estranhamento de notícias como as das manchetes que trouxemos como corpus deste trabalho indiciam que tais acontecimentos ficavam na esfera privada. Ao passar, então, para o domínio público, via midiatização, produz-se o espetáculo (Rubim, 2004). E, ao produzir-se o espetáculo, produz-se o efeito de singularidade, exceção que reafirma o conjunto, com base no pré-construído que se reativa a partir dos genéricos e do interdiscurso. Desse modo, as manchetes produzem um efeito paradoxal: ao trazerem a exceção, corroboram para a afirmação de que A mulher, enquanto conjunto, não existe; ao mesmo tempo em que, ao considerarem a exceção tratam logo de universalizarem, criando uma outra categoria homogênea, a das mulheres-mães-monstros, recobrindo novamente o furo do grupo e escamoteando a fórmula lacaniana / This essay arises from a concern about the sayings about woman as regards her societal role of mother, conveyed on media. Our research corpus was composed of headlines about abandonment and infanticide conveyed on news online homepages, based on the articulation of Discourse Analysis (Pêcheux, 2008, 2009) and lacanian psychoanalysis. Our main objective was to analyze the discoursivization about mother-woman by media in contemporaneity, based on the concept of discoursive generics (Tfouni, 2004) and to observe if the analyzed headlines produce effects that may be understood as index elements that The woman, as a group, does not exist, such as advocated by Lacan (2008b). Analysis was based on the consideration that news are events that are beyond the current discourses and are index to be observed, since they point to a discursive process of/in contemporaneity. The effects of the discoursivization of the cruel acts performed by such mothers, counterposing the group of all mothers, lays on the generics that are present in the interdiscourse and act on sense production. When narrating a different case from the group mothers-women, the headlines and the news point the preconceived that is (re)affirmed about maternity as something womanly. On the other hand, the fact that it is possible to say something such as what is said on this news highlights a puncture in the group of all women and mothers, a less-one that does not allow unity to perpetuate. Paradoxically, there is the covering of such lack, existing in language itself, that does not allow to name subjects such as those women, if not against the (supposedly homogeneous) group of women-mothers. Moreover, we underline the construction of the monster figure (Foucault, 2001) produced by media, rooted to a discourse related to nature and culture, and produces, once more, homogenization, regarding the group of monsters-mothers-women. The notion of public and private is tangentially present on other elements of analysis. When we go from singular to universal, we are also moving from private to public and, in such sense, media has an essential role. If we assume that women always abandoned or killed their children, we can also state that the strangeness of news such as those of the headlines we cite as corpus of analysis, indicate that those events were kept to the private sphere. When it is conveyed to public knowledge, via media, the spectacle is produced (Rubim, 2004). And, when producing the spectacle, the effect of singularity is produced, exception that underlines the group, based on the preconceived material that is reactivated from the generics and the interdiscourse. Thus, the headlines produce a paradoxical effect: when mentioning the exception, corroborate the statement that The woman, as a group, does not exist, at the same time as, when considering the exception, make it universal, creating another homogeneous category, of the monsters-mothers-women, covering again the puncture of the group and concealing the lacanian formula

I monitored demography, movement, and reproductive behavior of gray-tailed voles, Microtus canicaudus, in experimental habitat patches with and without corridors. I tested the hypotheses that reproductive rate, juvenile recruitment, and population size and growth rate would be affected negatively by immigrants that were introduced to resident groups (+ male and + female treatments). I hypothesized that "strangers" would commit infanticide thus decreasing juvenile recruitment. Second, I determined if movement corridors facilitated dispersal among habitat patches, thus potentially increasing infanticide, but decreasing reproductive inhibition of opposite-sex relatives by allowing them to separate (corridor treatment). Experiments were conducted in 12 0.2 ha enclosures planted with alfalfa that was fragmented into four patches (each 156 m��) separated by 12.5 m of bare ground. Introduction of unfamiliar conspecifics did not adversely affect reproductive rate, juvenile recruitment, population size, density, or growth rate. Corridors facilitated dispersal movements with males moving more than did females; however, corridors did not result in an even distribution of animals in the four patches. Unconnected habitat patches resulted in female- rather than the typical male-biased dispersal and females dispersed at lower body mass than in controls. Males that did not disperse from their natal patch exhibited a slight delay in sexual maturation. I conclude that movement is deterred in patchy environments, enhanced with corridors, and differentially affects males and females. Behavioral factors that affect an individual's dispersal or reproductive pattern should be considered in landscape planning. / Graduation date: 1997

abstract: Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is the focus of this meta-study. In the United States, the total number of nonaccidental deaths of children at the hands of a parent is unknown. Five children a day under the age of five die from fatal abuse and neglect (U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1995). This number is a conservative estimate and does not include children kill by means other than abuse and neglect. Regardless of the number, this author views each filicide as a sentinel event for the United States and the world. A sentinel event is an unexpected occurrence involving death and signals the need for immediate investigation and response. The perspectives of social constructionism and role theory frame this meta-study. The author explored six questions of the extant filicide research: What is the research knowledge on filicide? How is filicide constructed in the research discourse and what is the context of this research? Is filicide constructed as a social problem? Can the use of role theory advance our understanding of filicide? Are there common themes in the filicide research findings? Is there disagreement in the research? What is missing, assumed, or overlooked in the research? The sample consisted of 66 international studies of parents (i.e., genetic, step, foster, person in role of parent) who killed their child(ren) from 1969 to 2009. Major findings include "meta-categories" of filicide research, risk factors, salient themes, and new conceptualization of filicide based on role theory. Individual, social, and structural variables to identify and prevent filicide are presented. An outline for educating practitioners and a tool for screening families for filicide risk are offered / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Social Work 2011

Este trabalho parte de uma inquietação acerca dos dizeres que vêm se constituindo na mídia sobre a mulher em seu papel de mãe em nossa sociedade. Trabalhando na articulação entre a Análise do Discurso (Pêcheux, 2008, 2009) e a psicanálise lacaniana, nosso corpus de pesquisa constituiu-se de manchetes sobre abandono e infanticídio, divulgadas em portais eletrônicos de notícias. Tivemos como objetivo central analisar a discursivização da mulhermãe pela mídia na contemporaneidade, a partir do conceito de genéricos discursivos (Tfouni, 2004) e também observar se as manchetes das notícias analisadas produzem efeitos que podem ser compreendidos como elementos indiciários de que A mulher, enquanto conjunto, não existe, conforme preconizou Lacan (2008b). A análise partiu da consideração de que as notícias constituem-se como acontecimentos que fogem ao discurso vigente e colocam-se como indícios a serem observados, por apontarem para um processo discursivo da/na contemporaneidade. Os efeitos da discursivização dos atos cruéis realizados por essas mães, em contraposição ao grupo de todas as mães, repousam nos genéricos que circulam pelo interdiscurso e comparecem na produção de sentidos. Ao narrar um caso fora do conjunto das mulheres-mães, a manchete e a notícia apontam para o pré-construído que se (re) afirma em torno da maternidade como algo inerente ao feminino. Por outro lado, o fato de ser possível dizer algo como o que é dito nessas notícias indica um furo no grupo de todas as mulheres e mães, um menos-um que não permite que a unidade se perpetue. Paradoxalmente, há o recobrimento dessa falta, presente na própria língua(gem), que não dá conta de nomear sujeitos como essas mulheres, se não em contraposição ao conjunto (supostamente homogêneo) de mulheres-mães. Ressaltamos ainda a construção da figura do monstro (Foucault, 2001) produzido pela mídia, que se ancora em um discurso relacionado à natureza e à cultura e produz, mais uma vez, a homogeneização, agora do grupo das mulheres-mãesmonstros. A noção de público e privado também comparece tangencialmente aos outros elementos da análise. Quando passamos do singular para o universal, estamos também passando do privado para o público e é nesse sentido que a mídia tem um papel fundamental. Se partimos da premissa de que mulheres sempre abandonaram ou mataram seus filhos, podemos também afirmar que o estranhamento de notícias como as das manchetes que trouxemos como corpus deste trabalho indiciam que tais acontecimentos ficavam na esfera privada. Ao passar, então, para o domínio público, via midiatização, produz-se o espetáculo (Rubim, 2004). E, ao produzir-se o espetáculo, produz-se o efeito de singularidade, exceção que reafirma o conjunto, com base no pré-construído que se reativa a partir dos genéricos e do interdiscurso. Desse modo, as manchetes produzem um efeito paradoxal: ao trazerem a exceção, corroboram para a afirmação de que A mulher, enquanto conjunto, não existe; ao mesmo tempo em que, ao considerarem a exceção tratam logo de universalizarem, criando uma outra categoria homogênea, a das mulheres-mães-monstros, recobrindo novamente o furo do grupo e escamoteando a fórmula lacaniana / This essay arises from a concern about the sayings about woman as regards her societal role of mother, conveyed on media. Our research corpus was composed of headlines about abandonment and infanticide conveyed on news online homepages, based on the articulation of Discourse Analysis (Pêcheux, 2008, 2009) and lacanian psychoanalysis. Our main objective was to analyze the discoursivization about mother-woman by media in contemporaneity, based on the concept of discoursive generics (Tfouni, 2004) and to observe if the analyzed headlines produce effects that may be understood as index elements that The woman, as a group, does not exist, such as advocated by Lacan (2008b). Analysis was based on the consideration that news are events that are beyond the current discourses and are index to be observed, since they point to a discursive process of/in contemporaneity. The effects of the discoursivization of the cruel acts performed by such mothers, counterposing the group of all mothers, lays on the generics that are present in the interdiscourse and act on sense production. When narrating a different case from the group mothers-women, the headlines and the news point the preconceived that is (re)affirmed about maternity as something womanly. On the other hand, the fact that it is possible to say something such as what is said on this news highlights a puncture in the group of all women and mothers, a less-one that does not allow unity to perpetuate. Paradoxically, there is the covering of such lack, existing in language itself, that does not allow to name subjects such as those women, if not against the (supposedly homogeneous) group of women-mothers. Moreover, we underline the construction of the monster figure (Foucault, 2001) produced by media, rooted to a discourse related to nature and culture, and produces, once more, homogenization, regarding the group of monsters-mothers-women. The notion of public and private is tangentially present on other elements of analysis. When we go from singular to universal, we are also moving from private to public and, in such sense, media has an essential role. If we assume that women always abandoned or killed their children, we can also state that the strangeness of news such as those of the headlines we cite as corpus of analysis, indicate that those events were kept to the private sphere. When it is conveyed to public knowledge, via media, the spectacle is produced (Rubim, 2004). And, when producing the spectacle, the effect of singularity is produced, exception that underlines the group, based on the preconceived material that is reactivated from the generics and the interdiscourse. Thus, the headlines produce a paradoxical effect: when mentioning the exception, corroborate the statement that The woman, as a group, does not exist, at the same time as, when considering the exception, make it universal, creating another homogeneous category, of the monsters-mothers-women, covering again the puncture of the group and concealing the lacanian formula

In the following essay I have studied child suffocation and infanticide in Västbo district in Småland 1860–1949. This has been done with a quantitative study of the district's death and funeral books which have shown the reduced frequency of the phenomena over time. I have also been able to point to a connection where child suffocation tended to occur in cases where the parents were married. Infanticide, on the other hand, was in most cases caused by an extramarital affair. Based on theories concerning the role of marriage,combined with the assumption that a female ideal is constructed on the basisof two counter-images, I have been able to show how the child murderer was seen as a greater threat to the social morality, compared with the married woman who suffocated her child in her sleep. Thus, there was also a greater tendency to punish the former more severely. In the qualitative part of thestudy, I have reviewed the district court's records concerning child murderers. Based on a theory that pregnancies, births and morality fell within the scope of a female sphere of responsibility, I have analyzed the actions of to the accused woman's homosocial group. Here, the study has been able to shed light on a significant female presence. This was partly reflected in the gender distribution of witnesses, as well as in how the authorities seemed to show aconfidence in the female sphere to bring clarity to the case.