This thesis concerning women's histories in the Indian sub-continent and Africa looks at the representation of native women at the intersections of colonial, nationalist, and post-colonial discourses. The histories concern raped and "abducted" women during the communal violence following the partition of India in 1947, their treatment by the law, and their representation in post-colonial literary imaginings, women caught between the "development" machine and euro-centric ecological justice in countries of the South, and the production of the domestic sphere in colonial Africa through structures of exclusion, and its representations in post-colonial novels. The central argument in this thesis is that it is through strategic uses of native women's bodies that social space was made governable during colonialism, and nationalist movements came into being through appropriation of women's bodies in representations of the nation. How those two structures of violence have passed into post-colonial imaginings, along with the legacies of the Enlightenment project that shape the policies of the post-colonial state, are read in details. Through feminist subaltern historiography, and post-colonial eco-feminism, alternate structures of narratives and representation are sought to frame resistance writings.

This dissertation discusses rational feminism as part of the eighteenth century's call for the improvement of the condition of women. Rational feminism is based on a belief in the rational capacity of women and the necessity of developing it. Criticism of the eighteenth century has often associated rational feminism with two key figures, Mary Astell (A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, 1694) and Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792), whose works form bookends enclosing the century. Other texts by Eliza Haywood, Sarah Fielding, and Charlotte Lennox demonstrate that rational feminism appears variously in the middle of the century. These novelistic forms suggest that as an expression of feminism, reason becomes separated from publicity and politics, and united with domesticity and marriage in the midcentury years. Chapter one provides a critical, historical, and intellectual background for rational feminism as well as distinguishing between its manifestations in Astell and Wollstonecraft. Chapter two examines Haywood's Adventures of Eovaai, Princess of Ijaveo (1736), which portrays reason in a dichotomous relationship with the body and identifies this dichotomy as an artificial choice imposed by patriarchy whereby private and public roles for women become mutually exclusive. Chapter three argues that in Fielding's Governess: or, The Little Female Academy (1749), the body and publicity are dissociated from women. Reason comes into the home to produce rational motherhood as well as pleasure, which Haywood linked to the body. In chapter four's The Female Quixote (1752), Lennox makes reason a source of male heterosexual desire and the very basis of the companionate marriage. Lennox questions the terms of such marriage, which demands a specifically female form of rationality, just before Wollstonecraft embraces it as a locus of female rational fulfillment. The conclusion defines the project's intervention in the use of reason as a concept and the historiography of feminism in the eighteenth century.

This dissertation is an analysis of the policies, practices, and effects of a number of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Bangladesh. My work focuses on micro-credit NGOs, the Grameen Bank model in particular, and on the strategy pursued by them to "empower poor women." I look at how the extension of credit to "poor women" intersects with existing gender and community relations to produce results that are often in conflict with the stated goals of "empowerment" and "development." While credit can be a source of capital, and often is such a source for established market agents in Western societies, the extension of credit in more traditional societies, such as Bangladesh, can often become an additional site of stress and exploitation. My research highlights how these new forms of violence in which poor men and women find themselves implicated, sometimes as victims and sometimes as aggressors, are linked with the social stresses and dislocations produced by modern development agencies, the NGOs in particular. My dissertation documents how NGOs have become channels through which globalization enters the most private space of rural society---the home---and how it begins to dissolve the private/public distinctions that regulate rural life. This modernizing agenda of NGOs often disrespects the norms that local people live by. By alienating the very people they seek to empower, NGOs surrender critical ground to Islamic militants who move into occupy moments of social disruptions. Finally, I argue that the development NGO sector in Bangladesh have inducted various groups into its self-perpetuation, thereby, making it difficult for alternatives to the NGO's way of doing things to emerge. Similarly, the Grameen Bank operates as a form of symbolic capital for Bangladeshi national elites and diasporans, and as a financially viable tool for Western aid agencies, thus making it difficult for critiques of the micro-credit model to emerge as a constructive dialogue. My dissertation places these instances in a theoretically developed anthropology of "women in development."

This dissertation challenges the canon in British Romantic Poetry by establishing an interpretive methodology to account for the intertextual relationships that Charlotte Smith, Joanna Baillie, and Mary Tighe maintain with William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Keats. The interpretive model that I develop in the opening chapter builds upon the "rhizome" theory of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in order to replace the "influence" of Harold Bloom's Oedipal model with a complex network of root-like intertextual relationships. By subsuming Bloom's linear structure under a non-hierarchical discourse network, this model encourages us to look at literary history as an intricate "root-system," extending in multiple directions from a plurality of disparate nodes. The resulting paradigm shift enables this dissertation to re-examine one of the dominant aesthetic concepts of the Romantic Period--the sublime--in order to show how the figurative construction of women as signifiers of materiality effects their cultural exclusion from commercial engagement with the Romantic aesthetic of transcendental sublimity. The "material sublime" is the term I use to denote those moments either when the physical world disruptively announces itself within the textual gesture toward transcendence, or when the text itself foregrounds the materiality upon which the sublime experience is based. After developing these two theoretical constructs, this dissertation then argues that Smith's Elegiac Sonnets engages in the discourse of the material sublime by expressing the terror and alienation she encounters upon leaving her spendthrift husband in order to raise their ten children on her own. The chapter examining Baillie's 1798 "Introductory Discourse" to A Series of Plays argues that her aesthetic theory anticipates Wordsworth's valorization of powerful emotions, natural language, and rustic themes, and that it is her methodical formulation of the "sympathetic curiosity" that compels Wordsworth to codify his own theories in the "Preface" of 1800. The final chapter explores the thematic and stylistic concerns of Tighe's Psyche, a rare example of an extended narrative poem by a woman during the Romantic period, in order to map her recuperation of beauty as an aesthetic category.

The six artists presented in this paper hold important places in the world of the performing arts. Their outstanding talent and perseverance have brought them world recognition. Clara Schumann, the pioneer of women pianists, performed throughout her life, receiving an enthusiastic reception by the public. Living in an era when women performers were scarce, Clara Schumann was accepted on an equal basis to any male artist. Teresa Carreno, known for her extremely passionate and bravura playing especially in her youth, captivated her audiences wherever she went. Despite a tumultuous personal life, Carreno enjoyed tremendous success in her own life time. Myra Hess led a blossoming career in England and on the Continent before having a grand success in the United States. She led the National Gallery Concerts during World War II, which brought about much appreciation from her countrymen. Clara Haskil's life was filled with ill health and World War II made it difficult for her to gain recognition; she only launched a career in her 50s. By then, she performed with the best of orchestras and conductors, enjoying the success due her much earlier in her life. Alicia de Larrocha, known as the Queen of Spanish Music, has performed widely since the late 1960s. She has been invited to perform much of Mozart's output besides the Spanish repertoire. Despite her success on stage, she has had to battle her personal feelings regarding the balance between a career and family. Martha Argerich's thundering excitement and devilish technical capabilities keep her at the height of her profession, yet she has had ambiguous feelings toward her career. She limits her appearances, yet her powerful magnetism overwhelms the audience and keeps them asking for more. By many standards, women pianists' careers have evolved to a high level of social acceptance. However, today, as in the nineteenth century, many obstacles remain, and women in pursuit of a concert career are faced with the same competing---and often irreconcilable---challenges. These six pianists have risen above the challenges facing them as women artists and their names have been firmly planted in the history of piano performance.

The modernization and globalization of Korea during the fifty years since the end of the Korean War have brought a remarkable development in every sphere of Korean society. The emergence of female composers is one of the most interesting of these. This dissertation will discuss the music of two internationally recognized composers, Unsuk Chin and Jiesun Lim. It will do this through an analysis of one piano piece by each, 12 Piano Etudes by Unsuk Chin and Spiritual Dance by Jiesun Lim. In order to understand these pieces and these women, Korean traditional music, the one hundred year history of Western music in Korea, and the changing role of women in the society will be discussed. Part of the analysis includes the performer's perspective and suggestions on how to approach these pieces.

Workers often strive to achieve the financial and psychological benefits that are associated with career success. Accordingly, organizational scholars have investigated the determinants of advancement in organizations. However, despite the increasing proportion of working parents and the potential incongruity between involvement in family and success at work, little research has directly considered the effects of parental status and responsibilities on advancement. This study examines the extent to which both genuine (i.e., self-reported) and perceived (i.e., supervisor-reported) behaviors and attitudes about work and family influence the success of working parents. As such, this is the first study to consider the relative importance of supervisor perceptions of work-family constructs in determining career success. Furthermore, drawing from social role theory, it is predicted and found that stereotypes about working mothers drive biased perceptions about their work attitudes and behaviors. Thus, this research provides empirical evidence to support the widely-held assumption that one mechanism underlying the "maternal wall" is bias toward working mothers.

<p> This thesis examines the role of women geographers and cartographers during World War II and their post-war careers. Like the celebrated Rosie the Riveters, who worked in the heavy defense industry during the war, the largely unknown women mapmakers, or Millie the Mappers, were also indispensable to the war effort. In my research, I attempt to dispel the widely held belief and argument that almost all of the women who worked during World War II were forced to forfeit their positions to the returning veterans at the end of the war, as experienced by the Rosie the Riveters. This study will also refute the claims that the employment gains made by women in the workforce during the war were not permanent and it will illustrate that the women mapmakers thrived as a result of their wartime work experiences and, in fact, advanced in their careers. </p><p> By researching, identifying, analyzing, and developing seven case studies of women cartographers and geographers, this thesis will bring to light via primary sources the roles these women played during the war and their many and significant accomplishments to the war effort. In addition to having very successful careers during the war, these women retained their jobs or found new positions at the same or higher levels in the post-war era. They did not have to take other jobs at reduced pay or status as experienced by most of the women who worked in the defense industries. </p><p> My research shows that a large factor in the women mapmakers being able to retain their jobs was a result of their high level of education; professionalism; relevant work experience; technical skills; foreign language proficiency; and the nature of the jobs in the mapmaking profession. In addition, the fields of geography and cartography were transformed during the war with new processes and technologies for map production. Furthermore, intelligence and information gathering, which are part of the research and mapmaking process, assumed a critical role during World War II and the post-war years when the United States was thrust into the Cold War. There continued to be a need for maps and intelligence information, as well as mapmaking personnel, by the expanding Federal Government to plan strategy in foreign and geopolitical matters.</p>

<p> The purpose of this project was to locate a potential funding source and write a grant to create a mindfulness program for female survivors of sexual violence. The program will be hosted by the Long Beach Trauma Recovery Center, an agency which treats trauma survivors exclusively and is committed to the use of evidence-based interventions. The Ahmanson Foundation was selected as the potential funder. </p><p> The mindfulness program will aim to decrease trauma symptoms, improve coping skills, and increase mindfulness in survivors through mindfulness-based stress reduction courses in both English and Spanish. The program will be evaluated through the use of reliable and valid scales using a pre-test/post-test design. If funded, this program would give up to 200 survivors an opportunity to learn a practice that has been proven to improve quality of life and promote healing.</p>

<p> There is no question that early modern France was a patriarchal society. In fact, during this period, there was an increase in legislation further subordinating women under the authority of their fathers and then of their husbands. The legal identities of women as daughters and wives was officially negligible. However, this dissertation argues that in practice, family needs trumped the constricting legal prescriptions placed upon women. In examining the estate accounts, contracts, and family papers of the Saulx-Tavanes, Brulart, Le Goux, Joly, Marmier, and Baissey families, it is abundantly clear that women of both the <i>noblesse de robe</i> and <i>noblesse d'&eacute;p&eacute;e </i> were actively engaged in estate management which required negotiations of the legal hurdles placed in front of them. At least unofficially noblemen expected their wives to enter marriage armed with a cadre of managerial skills to be employed for the good of the family during their marriage and if necessary after. Furthermore, noble husbands, many of whom were legists themselves, seemed to have fully embraced women's negotiations of familial authority as commonplace. </p><p> Fran&ccedil;oise Brulart was a member of the <i>noblesse de robe </i> in Burgundy, albeit of the highest echelon, who married a prominent member of the <i>noblesse d'&eacute;p&eacute;e,</i> Claude de Saulx-Tavanes. From the onset of their marriage, Fran&ccedil;oise and Claude worked together in a sort of collaborative partnership, one in which he clearly depended on her to take an active role in co-managing the estate and family economy. Upon his death, rather than naming a male relative as the trustee over his properties, he left Fran&ccedil;oise in charge. In her viduity, she increased her assiduous estate administration while successfully continuing to promote and defend the family rights and assets. Fran&ccedil;oise's experiences and agency were far from singular. Through the analysis of documents involving not only Fran&ccedil;oise Brulart, but also those of Louise Joly, Anne de Marmier and Anne de Baissey, it is clear that both in marriage and in widowhood, family success and advancement relied on the ability of noble women to administer the estates frugally, and to sustain, and if possible to grow, the family assets.</p>