Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 274-287). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 355-371) Also available on the Internet.

This dissertation is an exploration of the African female body as a site of regulation and resistance. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the Dagara of northwestern Ghana, I illustrate how Dagara women are regulated through narratives of exclusion, through the mobilization of the rhetoric of tradition and cultural authenticity, and the racialization of gender ideologies. I then illustrate how Dagara women carve resistant spaces through song writing, dance, and instrumental performance, pointing to how female bodies in performance essay critiques of existent power structures. I argue that Dagara women redefine the terms of their sexed bodies through performance, as they open up new cultural possibilities. By mediating multiple categories of belonging, Dagara women expand the narrow demarcations that are mapped onto their bodies. Such divisive categories of African/Western, black/white, and traditional/modern are challenged through musical performance. Dagara women subvert regulation in ways that are instructive in re-theorizing the possibilities of resistant and transgressive action. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 287-308).

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2010. / Title from screen (viewed on July 19, 2010). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Karen Kovacik, Peggy Zeglin Brand, Ronda C. Henry. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-83).

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / My thesis examines the ways in which female performance poets deliver their messages and how those messages inspire, affirm, and encourage their audiences. From the traditions of outsider art—Beat poetry, feminist poetry, jazz, folk, punk, and rap—feminist performance poets choose the public sphere as a platform to witness to social injustices. In naming inequality, these poets challenge patriarchal foundations of gender roles, question academia’s criteria as to what constitutes “good” poetry, and expose social injustices. In this thesis, I examine the work of feminist performance poets Ani Difranco, Alix Olson, Andrea Gibson, Ursula Rucker, and Jessica Care Moore as examples of a new way of reading. Their work is significant in that they continue the tradition of feminist poetry by challenging the patriarchal status quo through a re-socializing and accessible style. Their work allows audiences to commune together in shared experience and promotes social change by demystifying cultural norms and gender codes in order to expose the exclusivity in patriarchal ideologies. These poets draw on a woman-centered spirituality, subvert misogynistic feminine archetypes, pay homage to ancestors and foremothers, and address issues of the body—naming oppression yet making room for pleasure.