Among the linguistic innovations attributed to mystics is the use of sensual, sensory words to express spiritual and abstract ideas (Waterman 101) which Otto Zirker calls a "Tendenz zur Vergeistigung des Sinnlichen" (15). When histories of the German language discuss Mechthild von Magdeburg (ca. 1212-ca. 1282), they focus primarily on the passionate passages in her text, Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit. While Mechthild's descriptions of the mystical union between God and the soul are indeed full of sensual images, her use of sensory vocabulary is not limited to this context. The goal of this dissertation is to come to a fuller understanding of Mechthild's use of sensory vocabulary by means of an investigation constructed from the vocabulary itself, not from a theoretical framework down. Mechthild says that there are five senses, but does not specify what they are. The underlying assumption is that she was acquainted with the traditional five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. In addition, she describes an allegorical bride with five kingdoms: eyes, speech, thoughts, hearing and touch. This investigation, therefore, includes the additional "senses" of speaking and thinking. An analysis of Mechthild's sensory vocabulary indicates that Mechthild privileges the senses of sight, hearing, and touch over smell and taste and these have the largest amount of vocabulary allotted to them. These senses are also the most prominent in the interaction between the soul and God. God reveals "visions" to the eyes of the soul and Mechthild records the visual details of what she has seen. God and the soul are among the many voices in Das fliessende Licht. They listen and speak with each other in prayers and dialogues. Mechthild also acquires a voice as she speaks through her text. God and the soul also enter into an intimate tactile relationship with each other in the unio mystica, the union between God and soul for which the mystic longs.

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to investigate how, if at all, participants, in a specially designed course, experience and understand the relationship between somatic awareness and their creative processes, and (2) to ascertain the value and effectiveness of this course, which emphasizes creative and somatic awareness processes and seeks to provide an atmosphere conducive to enhancing and fostering creativity. The researcher/teacher designed and implemented, at a university, a semester-long course and research project, in which seven women participated. The women, ages 20-51, were encouraged to do a daily practice of exercises designed to increase conscious awareness of sensations in their bodies. These included (among others) conscious breathing, walking meditations, Authentic Movement, Body-Mind Centering, Feldenkrais Awareness through Movement, yoga related to chakras, and theatre improvisational games. Concurrently, the course encouraged participants to become consciously aware of their creative processes. The researcher utilized data from pre and post questionnaires, written responses regarding exercises, essays regarding creativity, autobiographical essays, and exit interviews. Data were presented via individual profiles of the participants, mostly in their own words, structured around these questions: (1) How do students understand their own creative process? (2) How do they experience creative blocks? (3) What were the effects of this course? (4) What connection, if any, do participants perceive between body awareness and creativity? and (5) Does being a member of a group that comes together to focus on somatics and creativity affect one's creative life? The researcher found participants shared many common themes concerning their experiences of (a) creativity, (b) somatics, and (c) the relationship of somatics to creative process. Themes of self-knowledge, movement from inside to outside, power, energy, receptivity, heightened states of awareness, and change were the most prevalent, dynamic ways in which participants experienced the three categories to be related. The researcher concluded that somatic awareness seemed to be a means of enhancing and fostering creativity for the participants of this study, and that courses which value creativity and kinesthetic "ways of knowing" would be valuable in general college curricula as well as in arts curricula.

The dissertation examines three stage-plays--Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte (1977), Clara S. (1981), and Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen (1984)--by the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek (b. 1946, Murzzuschlag). My dissertation views these works as a trilogy, which articulates the playwright's earliest attempt to create a new language of theater so that she could present her own critical views on Austro-German cultural history, particularly her belief that the historical subjugation of women (within private and public spheres) is closely aligned to the formation of a distinctly gendered subjectivity. I examine how Jelinek develops an increasingly complex notion of the intertextually referenced male- and female-subject in each successive play. Chapter One considers Jelinek's criticism of the growing nationalist sentiment in post-war Germany and Austria. She views residual fascism and misogyny in both these nation states as being inextricably linked to a historical process of hegemonic control by religious institutions, and powerful corporate and political interests. Chapter One considers the extent to which Jelinek's use of language and innovative theater techniques rest on avantgarde artistic trends generated by the postwar Vienna Group. This chapter lays the framework of Jelinek's political theater as she describes this in essays, interviews, and discussion sessions with Graz Group and Munchener Literaturarbeitskreis members. Chapter Two is devoted to an analysis of the Nora play. Jelinek's emerging aesthetic of political theater is evaluated through her construction of gendered dramatic subjects, in particular the female-subject Nora Helmer. Chapter Three examines Clara S., which parodies the marriage of Robert and Clara Schumann while alluding through visuals to resurgent fascism in contemporary Austria and Germany. Chapter Four examines Krankheit oder Moderne Frauen. Multiple narratives (fictional, documentary, mythical) are tightly woven together in Jelinek's depiction of Emily Bronte and Carmilla as lesbian vampires locked in a deadly struggle with the opposite sex. I conclude, in Chapter Five, by evaluating the trilogy plays as a cohesive body of work which sheds light on the early development of the playwright's political aesthetic in theater representation.

This study examines the Hollywood romantic comedy in the context of gender and genre. Utilizing a variety of methodologies, it identifies the generic conventions, inventions, and interventions within Hollywood romantic comedy texts that: (1) affirm patriarchal ideology, (2) challenge patriarchal ideology, and (3) both affirm and challenge patriarchal ideology. Furthermore, through a content, textual, and historical analysis of the "top" 100 Hollywood romantic comedy texts produced between 1970-1995, it demonstrates how the Hollywood romantic comedy has cycled between progress and backlash in its depictions of, and attitudes toward, American women. During the 1970s, the Hollywood romantic comedy exploited its ideological contradictions in order to challenge traditional gender roles and sexual hierarchies. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Hollywood romantic comedy reversed course, containing its ideological contradictions in order to reinforce traditional gender roles and sexual hierarchies. In a final analysis, this study concludes that the Hollywood romantic comedy neither intrinsically affirms patriarchal ideology nor radically rejects it. Rather, it both affirms and rejects patriarchal ideology, and the key to decoding its practices of signification rests in deciphering how it manages to balance its ideological contradictions, and in exploring the specific historical conditions that can--and do--occasionally tip that balance.

In this dissertation I argue that self and social transformation attempted by self-change in order to produce and change the material conditions of the human world and the changing of material circumstances, in mutual relations, eventuates only partial change/transformation. I have pointed out that this partial transformation, based on a materialist view of self and social activity, contributes to the continuation of self and social oppression. I have presented empirical evidence for this argument in the case study of Saamstaan women's housing collective in Namibia. By “self-change” or “becoming” active and collective participants in changing material conditions of their lives, that is, securing houses for all members of the collective, they experience a sense of authentic self-change and changing material conditions. Simultaneously, they are faced with the disappointment, frustration, mental disharmony, and oppression both within and the social, when individual collective members choose not to abide by the ideals of sharing labor and paying off loans, once they acquire their houses. Transformation/change is occurring but the process of full liberation from oppression is not. I have pointed out that the contradiction between self and material changes which are assumed to be positive, good, and empowering and the accompanying pain and grief due to individuals' failings to abide by the ideals of the collective arise owing to the unchanged non-material, non-conceptual inner condition of possessive selves. If the self and social transformation is to be free of pain and grief, the approach needs to be one which provides for skills in ensuing material change and skills in letting go of possessive selves. I have presented the Abhidhamma approach as an alternative for bringing about self and social transformation from liberatory space within and the social. While in this dissertation I have extensively discussed inner liberation, it does not privilege inner over social transformation. Rather, this is an approach which considers both inner and outer/social transformation as inseparable and interdependent processes. Thus, I take the position that letting go of possessive self, and self-change and changing of material conditions must occur simultaneously, with equal weight, to achieve full liberation from oppression.

This dissertation examines the lives of indigenous women in early colonial Peru, residents of the cities of Lima and Trujillo as well as nearby rural regions, between 1532 and 1700. It does so by interweaving two major thematic concerns. On one level, it includes historical investigations, based upon archival records (in particular some two hundred indigenous women's wills from these two cities), into the multiplicity of economic, political and social roles that made up women's daily lives. Their possessions, occupations, values, social networks and strategies for survival are compared, discussed and placed in historical context, without inappropriately generalizing or universalizing their experiences. On another interconnected level, the dissertation examines the hybridity of colonial relations, taking the cultures and institutions of colonial society as fields of contestation and power and investigating them genealogically. By counterpointing chronicles of conquest, notarial documents, and legal and bureaucratic records, the work develops a strategy for reading colonial history that is not predicated upon a neat but false distinction between “European” and “traditional” societies. The contribution of this dissertation is thus not only a rich base of information about colonial women but also the expectation that any such investigation must be creative and open-ended. The five chapters include analyses of the political causes and effects of representations of prehispanic indigenous society in the chronicles of conquest and early histories of Peru; the role of weaving and the development of a gendered division of labor in the colonial economy; urban women's economic roles and networks according to their wills; the cultural significance of their possessions, especially indigenous and European-style clothing; legal and extra-legal strategies regarding property and inheritance; and a genealogy of the “cacica,” indigenous women who held elite office during the colonial period via their claim to continuity with prehispanic political traditions.

The purpose of this study is to explore how auxiliary nurse-midwives (ANM) in government service in Nepal articulate the mediation of the multiple roles their lives encompass. ANMs are pivotal to the government's ability to increase access to health care for pregnant and parenting women and their children in the rural areas of Nepal. Nepal has one of the highest rates of maternal and infant morbidity and mortality in the region. ANMs in the rural health clinics not only provide direct care but also provide supervision and training to a variety of community based health workers who also serve women of child-bearing age. Most studies on women's health in Nepal focus on service delivery with few reports focusing on the experience of women health professionals. The ANM program was developed to achieve two goals: to increase access to health care for rural women and to increase the status of women by increasing access to professional training and a profession. Girls who reach the minimum educational requirements to enter ANM training are often young, unmarried, from urban centers, and protected by the family structure. By virtue of the position, they are put into roles that contradict societal and family norms. Retention and the provision of quality services by ANMs have been raised as major concerns by the government. The main method of research was the use of open-ended and guided interviews with auxiliary nurse-midwives. Document review and meetings with health development workers in Nepal was also carried out. Four themes were focused on to help guide the research: the profession, the role of education, family and other supports, and being a woman. The cornerstone of the study is the women's narratives. The narratives demonstrate the uniqueness of each woman's experience, yet all speak to the dynamics of their own power, agency, resistance and resiliency. It is hoped that this document will add to the discourse on gender, education and health development. The study concluded with recommendations about the ANM program in Nepal and about the roles professionals and institutions play in international health development or social change.

This dissertation addresses gendered vulnerabilities after the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda. It consists of three essays, each focusing on the experience of women in a particular aspect of post-conflict development. The first essay analyzes trends in poverty and inequality in Rwanda from 2000 to 2005. The chapter identifies four important correlates of consumption income: gender, human capital, assets, and geography, and examines their salience in determining the poverty of a household and its position in the income distribution. The second essay is an econometric examination of an important health insurance scheme initiated in post-conflict Rwanda. Employing logistic regression techniques, I find systematically lower membership among female-headed households in the community-based health insurance scheme in Rwanda. This finding contravenes other empirical studies on community-based health insurance in Africa that found higher uptake by female-headed households. Female-headed households are just as likely to access health care, implying greater out-of-pocket expenditures on health. They report worse health status compared to their male counterparts. The third essay examines the prevalence and correlates of intimate partner violence, based on household-level data from the Demographic and Health Survey conducted in Rwanda in 2005. Three results stand out. First, there are significant differences in the prevalence of three different types of gendered violence: physical, emotional and sexual violence. Second, women who are employed but whose husbands are not experience more sexual violence, not less, as would be expected in conventional household bargaining models. This can be interpreted as reflecting ‘male backlash’ as gender norms are destabilized. Finally, there is a strong inter-district correlation between the post-conflict prevalence of sexual violence and the intensity of political violence during the genocide. The findings of the dissertation support its underlying premise: that looking at economic processes through a gendered lens, and recognizing that women face social, historical and institutional constraints that are ignored in much standard economic theorizing, affords important insights into social processes and development outcomes.

Feminist criticism offers a re-visioning of literary analysis by studying the influence of gender identity on author, character, audience, and critic. While feminist critics have focused on the novel and contemporary poetry, they are just beginning to examine women poets of the Victorian era, the first literary period to accept women as poets. Elaine Showalter's A Literature of Their Own offers a theory of women writers as a subculture within a dominant male tradition: their work evolves from a Feminine "imitation" and "internalization" of the dominant standards into first, a Feminist "protest" and search for "autonomy" and finally, a Female literature of "self-discovery" and identity. Adapting this matrix to a study of three poets--Mary Coleridge, Alice Meynell, and Charlotte Mew--the dissertation seeks to redefine the stereotypical Victorian Poetess by discovering the feminist poetics which inspired and guided her. Although she wrote with the burden of the Romantic priest of the imagination or the Victorian priest of social reform as her male models, she could not escape, in fact often turned to, her female identity to define herself as a poet. After a close examination of three individual poets, the dissertation will conclude with an overview of how their processes are echoed in a larger collection of Victorian women's poetry.

Two studies examined the relationship between gender and self- and other-advocacy. In the first study, 163 business students (78 women and 85 men) participated in a questionnaire study that examined the relationships between gender, sex-role, modesty, self-esteem and subjects' responses to two advocacy scenarios. In response to the first scenario, modesty influenced subjects' reported preference for using either self- or other-advocacy. When subjects read a second scenario about a self-advocate, modest and feminine subjects responded more favorably toward people who had explicit reasons for their requests. In Study 2, actual advocacy was examined. In response to a job description, 178 subjects (102 women and 76 men) wrote a letter accepting the position and requesting a salary. As predicted, when women were told that they would meet with a male evaluator, they requested lower salaries for themselves and higher salaries for friends. Men who believed that they would meet with a male evaluator requested higher salaries for themselves and lower salaries for friends. The opposite pattern of results was found when women and men were not told that they would meet an evaluator. Implications for the role that gender norms play in men's and women's advocacy are discussed.