The dissertation investigates the embodied experience of fatness in spaces between subjectivity and subjection on one Internet newsgroup and one listserve. Literature on identity politics, computer-mediated communication, and the social construction of the body is reviewed as it relates to the possibility of individuals with shared characteristics and/or interests utilizing technology to transform meanings for their corporeal experience. Using the methods of critical ethnography, I provide an interpretation of the ways in which site participants fluidly invoke and reject dominant meanings for the fat body within their project of resignifying fat bodies. Emergent themes include narratives of personal fat experience, comparisons of fit within cyberspace and "real" space, discussions of the pleasures and pains of fat bodies, attempts at guarding borders of identity and community, explorations of the mutual constitution of identities and oppressions, and finally, strategies for reconceptualizing fat.

Popular novels by women during the Weimar Republic have been accused of creating a discursive climate among women that glorified motherhood and encouraged political apathy. In this dissertation, I demonstrate that, on the contrary, these novels contained important social criticism and provided advice and role models for women. I also show that critics of these novels have misunderstood the discourse of "organized motherhood," long used within the women's movement to encourage women's entry into the public sphere in the name of civic activism. After situating the texts historically and culturally, my analysis of four texts: Stud. chem. Helene Willfuer by Vicki Baum, Die mit den 1000 Kindern, by Clara Viebig, Die Madels aus der Fadengasse, by Lisbeth Burger, and Thea von Harbou's Metropolis--works all influenced by the philosophies of the bourgeois women's movement--demonstrates a concept of women's role common to authors of the Weimar Republic's older generation. Here, women have the inherent potential to redeem and reform a society damaged by war and modern civilization through their entry into the public sphere and civic activism. Works of Weimar's younger generation of authors--Gilgi-eine von uns and Das kunstseidene Madchen, by Irmgard Keun, Die Mehlreisende Frieda Geier, by Marieluise Fleisser, Kasebier erobert den Kurfurstendamm, by Gabriele Tergit, and Schicksale hinter Schreibmaschinen, by Christa Anita Bruck--were written mainly in a neusachliche style by authors who did not experience the pre-war fight for women's rights but instead came of age during the harsh economic and social realities of the Weimar Republic. These works, devoid of bourgois utopias, instead contain strategies for individual survival and bitter criticism against modern conditions for women. Then as now, the personal was political for women. A novelistic description of the hardships suffered due to an unwanted pregnancy was as surely a protest against existing legislation and social conditions for women as a political speech--and one more likely to be accessed and understood by other women. Rather than contributing to political apathy, these novels criticized political and social realities, intervening into discourses about modern women and their role within society.

The association of intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) and exposure to chloroform in swimming pools during pregnancy was evaluated in 808 live born infants. Female subjects of childbearing age were recruited from the membership roster of the United States Masters Swimming Association and surveyed about their swimming experience during pregnancies resulting in live born infants. Information about other risk factors for IUGR was also collected, with special emphasis on assessment of energy expenditure from exercise and physical fitness activities. Both exposure and energy expenditure were ascertained separately for each trimester of each pregnancy. The risk for IUGR was compared using two surrogate measures of chloroform exposure: duration of swimming and a weighted exposure score (CEU or Chloroform Exposure Unit) which accounted for increased exposure via respiratory absorption while swimming in indoor pools. There was a moderately elevated crude risk (OR 2.13; 95% CI 1.01, 4.49) for those pregnancies with high hours of indoor pool exposure during the third trimester. However, the effect was attenuated after adjustment for parity, prepregnant weight and third trimester energy expenditure (OR 1.38; 95% CI 0.57, 3.37). The crude risk was similar for pregnancies that accumulated high CEUs during the third trimester (OR 1.92; 95% CI 0.87, 4.26), with the effect again attenuated after adjustment for parity, prepregnant weight and third trimester energy expenditure (OR 1.03; 95% CI 0.39, 2.71). For both exposure measures, most of the reduction in crude risk occurred after adjustment for third trimester energy expenditure alone. The effect of intra-mother correlation in birth weight was explored but did not change the results significantly. The conclusion of a modest increase in risk for IUGR with chloroform exposure is reassuring when weighed against the benefits of swimming for pregnant women: weightless exercise, dissipation of body heat, and maintenance of flexibility and well-being. Suggestions for future research include more sophisticated approaches to exposure assessment through water quality models and rigorous epidemiologic study.

The claim of individuals to a private cohesive self might be interestingly thought of as an effect of consciousness. Even if illusory, the self is an object to which one establishes relations, and can be usefully examined by object-relations theory, especially when "troubled" by feminist and gender theory. This self resists institutional identities and received knowledges--perceived as "rot" because they conceal at their core secrets and lies--through the snooping processes of epistemophilia. Epistemophilia responds to the lure of suppressed knowledge, what cannot be out-spoken or often even conceptualized. Literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries displays cultural ideas about self-fashioning and the ideal self. Epistemophilic characters in George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body resist or utilize their perceived "calls" to marry, to enter profession, and to fall in love, developing their own less predetermined epistemologies based on a newly reclaimed desire for self. Epistemophilia teases out the issues of the role of early interests, talents, and premonitions of genius, the perfomativity of reunions, and the lesbian sublime.

Drawing upon historical studies of the family and feminist studies of discourse and culture, this dissertation explores representations of the family in Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. It situates each novel's representation of the family within a central ideological undertaking in Victorian culture—the attempt to confirm individual autonomy without sacrificing collective responsibility. It claims that a new family paradigm, the affective family ideal, gains cultural currency because it appears to reconcile these competing values by, on the one hand, giving a new primacy to individual feeling and choice and, on the other hand, insisting that individual choice be contained by familial bonds. This dissertation thus delineates the network of associations—among them individuality and collectivity, natural law and social progress—that composes the affective family ideal and explores its implications. It suggests that normative conceptions of gender and selfhood mandated by this ideal actually obstructed individual choice even as its new articulation of class difference undermined collective well-being. Fundamentally, it claims that the affective family ideal, despite its construction as individualism's antidote, rationalized practices central to the ideology of individualism and promoted middle class hegemony. The first chapter summarizes historical developments that produced the affective family ideal and explores the ways in which gender, class, and subjectivity were shaped within the context of that ideal's construction. Each succeeding chapter analyzes the discursive construction of the family in one Victorian novel. In each novel, three entities structure the family narrative: the aristocratic patrilineal family, individualism, and the affective family. Besides tracing these recurrent figures, this dissertation demonstrates the complex nature of nineteenth century domestic ideology by identifying points of consensus and dissent among these representations of the family. It claims that, despite notable differences, both Bleak House and Wives and Daughters identify the affective family ideal as a distinctively moral alternative to the traditional patrilineal family and individualism. It argues that Daniel Deronda, despite its similar critique of both patrilineal family and individualism, rejects the family ideal that the earlier two novels posit as the key to individual and collective progress.

This dissertation examines the relationship between gender and political culture in the American radical pacifist movement during the World War II, postwar, and Vietnam War years. Between 1942 and 1972, male and female radicals in the American peace movement translated their beliefs into action as they protested against racial segregation, resisted conscription, and opposed U.S. foreign and nuclear weapons policies through direct action and civil disobedience. As they struggled to create a new paradigm of nonviolent protest, they discovered that political activism was as much about personal transformation as it was about dissent and social change. The history of this vanguard political movement belies accounts that relegate women to the margins of American radicalism and grassroots struggles for social justice and peace. Women played an integral role in the radical pacifist movement: they worked behind the scenes and on the streets, and made substantial contributions to its trajectory and growth. The motivations and experiences of female activists defy the standard equation between masculinity and militant action and refute essentialized associations between women's pacifism and maternal concern. Working alongside of men, these women transcended the distinctions between public and private and challenged the tendency to link female activism to separatist strategies for empowerment. The study's secondary focus on race complicates what traditionally is described as an organic alliance between white peace activists and the black freedom struggle. Radical pacifists were inspired by and hoped to contribute to the emerging civil rights movement. Nevertheless, the different priorities of these two movements created a tense and ambivalent relationship. By engaging in creative acts of nonviolent resistance, radical pacifists redefined dissent in terms of personal sacrifice and risk-taking, all within an egalitarian framework that sought to overcome gender and racial difference. They did not succeed in fostering a pacifist mass movement for social change, nor did they always act in concert with their egalitarian ideals. In spite of these limitations, these men and women modeled a militant style of activism that challenged the cultural and political norms of modern American society and helped to reformulate definitions of gender in the political realm.

This study investigates the relationship between Christian women's self-esteem, spiritual well-being, and feminist/patriarchal attitudes as well as knowledge regarding selected Biblical passages and theological constructs that speak to the women's role. Participants were 78 women seminarians and 78 women parishioners from main line Protestant denominations in urban and suburban New England. Each was given four questionnaires: The Tennessee Self-Concept Scale, The Christian Women's Attitude Scale, The Spiritual Well-Being Scale, and Knowledge of Biblical Passages and Theological Constructs Scale. The questionnaires were administered in groups to insure procedural standardization. Responses were anonymous; all individual responses were pooled. Statistically significant correlations show women in this study with more knowledge of feminist Biblical analysis, have more feminist attitudes regarding the measured passages and constructs and higher levels of all-over self-esteem, particularly perceived self-image, self-acceptance, personal worth, personal adequacy and self-evaluation of their personality. Also these women have a higher sense of moral worth, physical and emotional independence, openness and greater capacity for self-criticism. These women also show higher levels of belief in women and men sharing equal authority, that God's nature has both masculine and feminine attributes, that women and men share equal responsibility for sin, and that women should value their physical selves, their sexuality and their beauty. Conversely, the data demonstrates that women with higher patriarchal attitudes have lower capacity for normal, healthy openness and self-criticism and lower personal self-worth. Puzzling data shows women holding more feminist attitudes and seeing themselves equal with men as well as women higher on patriarchal attitudes and lower on physical and emotional independence both have a significantly higher sense of religious and existential spiritual well-being. Finally, comparing differences between parishioners and seminarians, parishioners have more adequacy, worth and value as family members, while seminarians have more spiritual and religious well-being, more knowledge of measured passages and constructs, and more feminist attitudes about them, particularly regarding female authority and feminine and masculine qualities of God.

Seventy-four female participants took part in an experiment that investigated whether implementing a critical cultural studies media literacy (CCSML) curriculum would result in a decreased drive for thinness, a greater sense of empowerment, and a better grasp of media literacy for women in treatment for eating disorders at Hartford Hospital's Institute of Living (IOL). The treatment group (N=44) participated in weekly 50-minute sessions of the ERA (education-recognition-activism) curriculum, which was implemented in conjunction with traditional eating disorder treatment. The ERA curriculum utilized in this study consisted of a three-pronged approach to eating disorder treatment and was comprised of four lessons. The first session reviewed the five tenets of media literacy. In the second session participants explored media artifacts that trigger emotions that contribute to their eating disorders. During the third session participants performed a personal inventory during which they determined what they needed to do in order to have a healthy and fulfilling life. The fourth and final session asked participants to write a letter to a media figure or corporation that either undermines or promotes positive body image. The control group (N=30) consisted of individuals undergoing treatment at IOL who received the standard of care. Quantitative results revealed that while participants in the treatment group did demonstrate a greater level of media literacy, they did not demonstrate a statistically significant difference in terms of a greater sense of empowerment or a decreased drive for thinness. Qualitative results reinforce the statistical findings that participants in the ERA curriculum did grasp the tenets of media literacy. Furthermore, the qualitative results suggest that participants valued and enjoyed the ERA curriculum.

In the plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson, Alice Childress, and Pearl Cleage, black women are often portrayed as defenders of the physical self, protectors of identity, and guardians of the future. This study will examine how these playwrights examined the issue of protection in their plays. Although each playwright will be looked at specifically in relationship to one of the three categories—physical, social identity, feminist—the boundaries remain fluid. Where each playwright fits predominately into one category, the overlap is noticeable as the definitions between the three areas of protection sometimes merge. “Physical protection” is the act of defending from attack and loss. In relationship to Georgia Douglas Johnson it will mean looking at how black women are unable to protect the body from physical devastation, i.e. lynching. “Social identity protection” requires the main characters to undergo a transformation that will inevitably change how they view themselves in relationship to their environment. Social identity protection is manifested in the plays of Alice Childress when the women realize that they must redefine society's perspective on the black woman's place. This transformation is especially significant for two reasons. First, it is the catalyst for the other characters' journey to self-identity. Second, the journey encourages the reevaluation of their responsibility to the black (and larger) community. “Feminist protection” involves black women who are concerned about the physical safety and longevity of one another. Successful feminist protection requires that black women tell the truth and not keep silent about how their race and gender informs their lives in America. These distinct facets of protection become united in each playwright's individual commitment to portraying the African-American experience on stage and beyond truthfully. An examination of the history of blacks on the American stage will provide a framework that substantiates the need for this study on protection. This historical background will provide the context needed to understand what necessitated the work of Georgia Douglas Johnson, Alice Childress, and Pearl Cleage.

Using ethnographic methods, this case study explores the ways in which women use the ritual of group storytelling to construct “survivor” identities after experiencing domestic violence. The primary focus of this study is an examination of the interrelationship between Second Wave radical and cultural feminist discourse, gender identity formation and contemporary anti-violence educational and clinical practice. The communication events studied to produce these stories are informal conversations, participant observation of shelter outreach group work and semi-structured interviews. This research project analyzes how women use stories to both comprehend and reconstruct their experiences of domestic violence. In addition, it interrogates how adult women in twenty-first century Northern Colorado combine both feminist and recovery concepts and tropes to trouble normative notions of the ‘victim’ of intimate trauma and in doing so, create more useful and potentially oppositional representations of the adult female self after interpersonal abuse.