With a focus on gender expectations, this qualitative study analyses how Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series represent evil. Through close reading the first and the final three books of the series using the feminist criticism perspective performativity, the aim of this study is to highlight how the evil women in the series are portrayed in comparison to both good characters of both sexes as well as evil men. The results show that while the evil women represent evil in the ways that they break their gender expectations, the good men also represent goodness in the way that they break their gender expectations. Thus, they are not evil because they deviate from these expectations, but because the gendered traits these women embody are connected to evil and, in turn, help make the reader perceive them as such.

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There has been a longstanding fascination with motorcycling culture in popular mainstream North American media, but this culture has only recently become the focus of rigorous, contextualized academic research. While smaller research projects have studied specific aspects of motorcycling culture, few academic researchers have investigated the exclusionary discourses that underpin motorcycling culture and none have done so in a methodical manner. Using a series of columns published over a thirty-five year period in the popular Canadian motorcycle magazine, Cycle Canada, I have analyzed the discourses through which motorcycling culture comes to have meaning to its participants and I have elucidated the socio-historical understandings of masculinity that are present in North American motorcycling culture. This thesis provides a historical sociological analysis of motorcycling discourse through a feminist lens. I view gender as a relation that must constantly be (re)negotiated amongst socially constituted subjects and I pay particular attention to how technological discourse is made socially durable and sustainable by the interface of material (motorcycles) and organic (human) beings. Longitudinal analysis of Cycle Canada illustrates the presence of heteronormative discourses that constrain readers' choices of gender identification and sexual orientation to traditional notions of masculinity. In an effort to create solidarity with their readers, the magazine editors cater to the perceived interests of an idealized male audience by performing these masculine identities. Though motorcycling culture in Canada is increasingly diverse, Cycle Canada has only begun to reflect this diversity in the past two years of publication. Explicating the social, political, economic, technological and historical context which gave rise to particular masculine identities in motorcycling culture allows us to focus on the positive agency involved in the performance of masculine identities, while still recognizing that there remains room to include other figurations of identity beyond traditional concepts of heteronormativity and homosociality. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2008-05-07 06:21:18.665

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Medieval bodies often push against easy categorization. Hybrids, saints, giants, and transformative bodies are represented in literature as falling between or occupying multiple taxonomic hierarchical positions of divine, human, or animal. / 10000-01-01

The condemnation of suicide is a historical product whose presence has been sealed throughout history. Increased liberal views on humanity and gentle penal codes led to the desecration of the unfortunate dead being strongly questioned and subsequently spared from condemning customs and practices. This study focuses on a time when suicide was decriminalized in Sweden to examine the interpretations of suicide in Swedish newspapers during the period 1864–1904. In the extension, the study intends to contribute to a nuanced theoretical discussion of the subject, which is achieved via Judith Butler’s theory of grievability. A thematic analysis could ascertain four themes – sorrow, carelessness, laconic, and dramatic – which should be understood as representations of the newspapers’, Aftonbladet and Nya dagligt allehanda, view on suicide and as stereotypes of the suicide victims. The results show that condemnatory interpretations of suicide are of a subtle nature anchored in the discourse of history and marked by contemporary class ideals. This means that whoever seeks to understand historical suicide interpretations is dependent on contextualization. However, a homogeneous suicide image does not emerge from the material. The themes demonstrate two extremes that represent each other’s opposites in the hierarchy of grief which also actualizes the question of whether suicide as an act is grievable or whether who commits the act is decisive.

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Yes / Middle managers occupy a central position in organizational hierarchies, where they are responsible for implementing senior management plans by ensuring junior staff fulfil their roles. However, explorations of the identity of the middle manager offer contradictory insights. This article develops a theory of the identity of the middle manager using a theoretical framework offered by the philosopher Judith Butler and empirical material from focus groups of middle managers discussing their work. We use personal pronoun analysis to analyse the identity work they undertake while talking between themselves. We suggest that middle managers move between contradictory subject positions that both conform with and resist normative managerial identities, and we also illuminate how those moves are invoked. The theory we offer is that middle managers are both controlled and controllers, and resisted and resisters. We conclude that rather than being slotted into organizational hierarchies, middle managers constitute those hierarchies.

Today, feminist theory, instead of accompanying a movement or being generated by a movement, is out there on its own. There is no large-scale social movement to complement it and to act on it. The energy and excitement of collective action is what many feminists miss and what is implied through critiques of contemporary feminist theory. The lament is for unity, for what was conceived of as “sisterhood” and what emerges as a myth. Many feminists share a nostalgia for a time that was filled with the potential for and intensity of social revolution. When we look at the theory of early second wave feminism and the theory of more recent years, the differences are negligible. What is different, and glaringly so, is the social climate. Theory is not to blame; we are. Theory is not the culprit. Theory is just as impacting and politically useful as it ever was, but it is missing its partner. This realization should be no cause for alarm, however, because there still exist many opportunities for activism, albeit different sorts of activism, based on different sorts of political issues that complement our present needs and abilities. / Master of Arts

<p>This study focuses on Finnish transmen and their life stories. It goes through the practical reality of the gender re-assignment process, but focuses on the personal experiences of two individual men. The study is based on in-depth interviews with informants, material which has been analyzed with the help of Judith Butler’s theory on gender.</p> / <p>Den här uppsatsen handlar om två finska transmän och deras livshistorier. Studien går igenom den praktiska realiteten av könskorrigeringsprocessen, men fokuserar på de personliga erfarenheterna av dessa två individuella män. Den är baserad på djupintervjuer med informanter, material som har analyserats med hjälp av Judith Butlers teori om genus.</p>