<p> The purpose of this paper is to explore medieval gender roles through the discourse and conduct of warfare. Some modern historians such as John Keegan have maintained that medieval warfare was a masculine activity that precluded female participation in all but the most exceptional cases. Megan McLaughlin asserted that the change from a domestic to public model of warfare resulted in a disenfranchisement of women after the eleventh century. This paper shows that medieval warfare was not male exclusive, and women's active participation throughout the period was often integral to a combat's outcome. By analyzing both the military activities of female combatants and changes in academic dialogues over war in the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, an ongoing disparity unfolds between the ideological gendering of warfare and its actual practice. </p><p> This disparity informed an accepted norm in which women were seen as inherently weak and unfit for combat, requiring a "masculinization" of women who successfully engaged in battle. This in turn led to the establishment of the <i>virago</i> image of female warriors; paradoxically, women who therefore defied the normative expectation of feminine behavior could be held in high regard for their masculine virtues. At the same time, the contributions of individual women to warfare are often left with minimal mention or treated as anomalous by some later chroniclers. </p><p> The paper is divided into seven sections. Part I explores the eleventh century military career of Matilda of Canossa, and subsequent treatment of her activities by apologists and canonical reformers. Part II discusses the means by which women had access to military activity in a changing climate of gendered social roles, through marriage, inheritance, and the influence of the <i>Pax Dei</i> movement. Part III discusses the military activity of women during the Crusades, and the differences in how that activity was noted in Western versus Islamic sources. </p><p> Parts IV - VI discuss the thirteenth century academic dialogues over women's participation in combat in the wake of the Crusades, through the work of Giles of Rome and Ptolemy of Lucca. As well, it analyzes the enfolding of knighthood as a construct of feudal vassalage into the noble class, and the changing access to military orders granted to women as armies became professionalized. Part VII looks at the formation of a new kind of war rhetoric and an attempt to resolve the disparity between the theory and practice of warfare in regards to women through the fifteenth century work of Christine de Pizan. </p><p> The conclusions of this work are that war may be understood to be a masculine activity, yet is not male exclusive. Writers and war chroniclers were forced to complicate gendered social norms in order to justify or refute women engaging in combat. This only resulted in a continued re-evaluation of the proper ideological place of women in war, and was not necessarily reflective of a change in the actual circumstances or frequency with which women took part.</p>

The focus of this thesis is the complex relationship between women and the category 'leisure', a relationship which is only infrequently addressed within the historiography of leisure and only partially understood within the existing frameworks of that field. The research draws upon feminist scholarship to establish a fluid theoretical structure within which the leisure experiences of women may be better conceptualised, and re-thinks the methodologies necessary to access those experiences within a defined historical period: that of 1920-1960. Throughout, 'leisure' is approached less as self-defined, discrete activity, and more as a mutable category, open to changing meanings and inseparable from its contextual and historical background. To this end, the nature of 'leisure' is itself problematised: the study challenges definitions of the concept as directly oppositional to work/workplace and explores the problems inherent in the notion that leisure constitutes a reward for paid labour. Indeed, the sources suggest that 'leisure' and 'work' often interacted within women's lives and that notions of leisure as something 'earned' had a fundamental impact upon women's experiences over the life cycle. The thesis is built around interviews with Manchester women from working-class and lower middle-class backgrounds. However, it also uses local newspaper evidence, women's magazines and the contemporary work of a number of researchers with an interest in leisure during the period. The study examines changing experiences of leisure and shifting perceptions of the concept across social classes and over the historical period. It presents a picture of leisure at the local level, whilst suggesting a chronology of leisure which has implications for our understanding of the national experience. The fundamental originality of the project rests in its approach; it offers a holistic, life cycle based, approach to a field which largely consists of research of a topic-based nature. The central findings concern the role of life cycle stage in determining the relationship of women to leisure across both period and social classes. In particular, the thesis explores how the transition from youth to adulthood impacted upon women's ideas of appropriate leisure behaviour and entitlement, and asserts that a contrast may be drawn between the personal leisure of youth, and the 'family' leisure of adulthood.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Francisco, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-05, Section: A, page: 1940. Adviser: Gay Becker.

<p> This thesis looks at over 3,000 inscriptions of unmarried daughters, under the age of 20, during the Roman Empire. It discusses the formulaic ways in which daughters were described on their tombstones based on their age and the Roman virtues valued at the time. It primarily focuses on descriptors, superlatives used, the dedicators who commissioned the work, girls who died before their wedding, and ages of girls which have excesses in the months or days she lived as inscribed on her epitaph.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4529. Adviser: Paula Treichler. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 276-304) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.