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Beginning with a redefinition of key critical terms and a discussion of the Western academy's stake in devaluing the discourse of the sacred, this dissertation moves into a study of the sacred writings of six American women. First, we look at Lucille Clifton's poetry in Good Woman and Next. We observe this poet's celebration of her participation in generative creation and racial continuity, through the body of motherhood. In addition, Clifton claims kinship with "Other" cultural groups, based on shared values, understandings, and vocation. The second chapter explores the "character" of the American tree in Toni Morrison's Beloved. The tree is a site where we can track the excruciating creation of African American double consciousness. Both African and Western paradigms of order are tested against the "behavior" of the American tree and its displaced inscription on the body of a slave woman. A sapling New World model of the socio-sacred evolves from this experience, and takes root. In the third chapter, we look at the transmutation of Aztecan female deities and the values they embodied, into "official" and non-official versions of the Virgin of Guadelupe. Ascribed and achieved connections with this image of the matrix are explored. In comparing literary representations by Sandra Cisneros and Gloria Anzaldua, we explore how sexual orientation factors into a woman's link with her generative matrix. The fourth chapter concerns the development of the figure Pauline/Leopolda in Erdrich's Tracks and Love Medicine. We piece together her participation in a larger Chippewa drama (that of "creative cosmic conflict"), and come to question whether official Western institutions have "conquered" the Chippewa, or are themselves being amalgamated into a dynamic relationship much more ancient than white incursion. The final chapter is an examination of the slow conversion of an avant-garde, privileged "white" woman Mabel Dodge Luhan, by the spirit of land-matrix she lives on. Written across a period of 20+ years of life in Taos, New Mexico, Dodge Luhan's work demonstrates that the Western subaltern must struggle against many layers of her own ideological programming before meeting with the sacred, body to matrix, without philosophical or sacerdotal intermediaries. This suggests something Man-centered Subjectivity cannot tolerate: the possibility of an autonomous, sacred, forcefield with the ability to call humankind--in spite of material culture or ideological self-interest--to a creative, insurrectionist, alignment in the service of Life.

The speaking subject, or the self, in white Western language and literature predominantly functions as a disembodied construct. Two influential constructions of self exemplify this disembodiment. Cogito ergo sum, as it has been developed outside of Descartes' works, claims subjectivity on the basis of thought alone, potentially relegating all other elements of human existence to non-subjectivity. Desidero ergo sum, as psycho-linguistically developed by Lacan, claims subjectivity only through language, which requires explicitly gender-based disavowals of embodiment. While the desidero disrupts the cogito by theorizing the impossibility of any definitive 'knowledge' of self, both constructions of self function dichotomously (mind/body, male/female; etc.) wherein the "first" element defines itself by not being the "second." These constructs empower those who can effectively disembody themselves (e.g., those who can claim masculinity) at the expense of those who are therefore necessarily, psycho-socially marked with embodiment (e.g., those marked with the feminine). In response, this dissertation conjoins Elaine Scarry's "reading" of torture with mostly Irigarayan developments of gender and subjectivity tempered by Monique Wittig's critique of "the mark of gender," to ironically pose sentio ergo sum in order to tease open both the pretense to universality and the oppressive dichotomizing of hegemonic subjectivity. Calling on a wide range of theories in English and French in an effort to bring the highly theoretical, 'disembodied' discourse that surrounds subjectivity 'down to earth,' I consider the ways in which several contemporary writers and theorists work to create new subjectivities by reconfiguring the relationship between language, self, and embodiment. Roland Barthes' specular search, Luce Irigaray's multivalent "lips", and Julia Kristeva's motherly voice offer problematic theoretical resistance to the dichotomizing heterosexual masculinization of all subjectivity. Similarly in fiction Marguerite Duras's "ravishing" of the subject and Monique Wittig's "lesbianization" of the subject offer very different attempts to alter the patriarchally constructed bounds of subjectivity through radical embodiment. Seen together, the works of these writers offer insights into the importance of embodiment for any challenge to the culturally constructed and personally limiting images of "the speaking subject."

Occupational sex segregation is one explanation for the sex gap in pay. Traditionally female occupations offered low wages, few benefits and lacked ladders of upward mobility. In the United States, education is viewed as a route to upward mobility. Prior to legislation enacted in the early 1970's, however, men's and women's educational opportunities varied. Women's enrollments at medical, law and engineering schools were limited. After removal of such limitations, however, women's penetration of these fields over the past twenty years has varied. Women comprised one third of all new medical doctors and more than 40% of all new lawyers, but only 14% of all bachelors degrees in engineering were awarded to women in 1987. This dissertation answers two questions. First, what factors are instrumental in college students' decision to major in engineering? Second, given they major in engineering, what factors account for sex differences in the completion of a bachelors degree in engineering? Multinomial logit models of major choice are constructed with data from the 1980 senior cohort of the High School and Beyond longitudinal survey. The base year (1980), three follow-up waves (1982, 1984, and 1986) and the Post-Secondary Transcript data were used. Enrollment characteristics of engineering schools in the early 1980's are compiled from several archival sources. The multinomial logit models are decomposed to determine the percent of the sex gap in major choice explained by the models and the relative importance of high school preparation and skills, attitudes and structural constraints as explanations of the sex differences in engineering education. It is shown that, at most, 9.2% of the sex gap in the choice of engineering is explained by the factors specified by the policy literature (i.e., sex differences in high school preparation and skills and occupational attitudes). As much as 77% of the sex gap is attributable to sex differences in how fields of study are viewed. Finally, women who majored in engineering in 1982 were more likely than their male counterparts to complete a bachelors degree in engineering by 1986. Therefore, the primary issue regarding women and engineering education concerns the initial attraction of women to engineering programs.

This document examines works written by women composers for the ensemble comprised of clarinet and string quartet. A thorough search of clarinet and chamber music repertoire lists as well as reference materials devoted to women composers has yielded twenty pieces composed by women for this ensemble. The quintets by Elizabeth Maconchy, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Ilse Fromm-Michaels are discussed in detail, primarily through analysis of theoretical properties, including formal structure, texture and timbre, harmonic idiom, and rhythmic and melodic language. An evaluation of performance requirements, leading to a determination of the level of ensemble needed for successful presentation is also provided, as is an aesthetic evaluation based on the above-mentioned analysis, existing criticism and personal opinion. A history of each composer's life is presented, with emphasis placed on her education and career. The remaining seventeen pieces are presented in the form of an annotated repertoire list. Ten of these works and their composers are discussed in a format similar to the works above, but in less detail. The composers in this category include: Stefania de Kenessey, Ruth Gipps, Elizabeth Gyring, Katherine Hoover, Nicola LeFanu, Helen Lipscomb, Vera Preobrajenska, Louise Talma, Julia Usher, and Joelle Wallach. Music for the remaining seven pieces has not been obtained, but limited historical data for each composer is provided.

Discourse of Resistance explores the representation of the mad woman in Nineteenth Century literary texts by such authors as Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and in modern Freudian psychoanalysis. Generally, in those representations, the figure of the mad woman appears as the outsider to a representational system which fails in representing her: her madness reveals the limits of the logical systems that govern representation; her language shows the failure of the censor; and her body mocks the codes of medicine and hygiene. In Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit, and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Hysteria appears as a textual space which marks both the representational system's attempt at containing the female subject and her resistance to it. The Anorexia essay extends the scope of the study by analyzing the limits of the psychoanalytic representation of the women who suffer from this disease. In effect, each specific case studied reveals the representational systems' attempt to repression and containment, an attempt which only succeeds to a certain extent.

This thesis discusses six fictional works by Banana Yoshimoto (Tsugumi, Kitchen, Moonlight Shadow, N. P., Kanashii Yokan, Amrita) in light of their depiction of different areas of societal change in Japan such as feminism, the dissolution of the nuclear family, the focus on the individual instead of society and contemporary literary tendencies such as postmodern ideas. Yoshimoto describes her characters' feeling of instability and of being lost in a world of rapid social change. Her stories often start in a postmodern setting and with characters who resemble those of shojo manga, and then turn to depict (quite un-postmodern) the individual's search for the own identity and meaning in life. Interestingly, the new meanings her protagonists find and the new bonds they form are based on modern concepts which include a redefinition of the family and of gender roles as well as spiritual connections which have their roots in traditional Japanese religion.

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