Southern writer Ellen Glasgow once told an audience that “the longer one lives in this world of hazard and disaster, the more reckless one should become . . . in the matter of words.” Between the 1880s and the 1940s, opportunities for southern women writers like Glasgow increased dramatically, first bolstered by readership demands for southern stories in northern periodicals and followed by their acceptance into the southern literary canon during the 1920s-30s Southern Renaissance movement. And yet, it remained difficult for southern women writers to be reckless with words. Confined by magazine requirements and sociocultural expectations, writers often used regional settings to attract publishers and readers. Once a readership was established, they sought to publish a collection of stories separate from popular magazine contexts. This project examines the selection and arrangement of previously-published magazine stories into first short story collections by Kate Chopin, Ellen Glasgow, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Katherine Anne Porter. Publishing a collection enabled authors to revise their stories outside of magazines’ requirements and provided the agency to arrange individual stories into a collective narrative. In “Arranging Stories,” I argue that selecting and ordering magazine stories for these collections was not arbitrary nor dictated by editors. Instead, it allowed women writers to privilege stories, or to contextualize a particular story by its proximity to other tales, as a form of sociopolitical commentary. This project, supported by archival research at ten institutional repositories, invites a reconsideration of women writers’ authorial control throughout the publication process.

Women often harbor ingrained attitudes that restrain them from achieving a successful career. They retain deep-seated attitudes that confine them to a self-defined space based on internalized patriarchal standards. Some women do achieve success in spite of the challenges they face. Esperanza Spalding, a young, African-American woman jazz instrumentalist is one such success story. She defies convention, plays an unconventional musical instrument in a musical genre that is historically deemed a masculine world. My thesis discusses the difficult path she traverses between feminist ideals and commercial success. It discusses what characteristics of femininity she chooses to display. Some intentional, some based on ingrained stereotypical standards set by society. Like wearing a gown to perform at the White House. It seems a normal standard of dress for a female in the West for such an occasion but it is based on a standard of what is appropriate dress for a man and for a woman. It is based on binary gender roles created by a patriarchal system. Esperanza was relatively unknown by the general public before she beat out Justin Bieber to win the 2011 Grammy for Best New Artist, yet she had already released three solo albums and was highly regarded by both critics and her jazz peers. Although extremely talented, it was not until her performance persona was molded by her management company that she became famous. The music industry and her management team are mostly controlled by men. Her mentors were mostly men. The male ideal of femininity is reinforced by the music industry, mass media, and in some cases, women themselves. Frequently, a female instrumentalist who plays the upright bass, a seemingly masculine instrument, is perceived as a novelty, but Spalding transcends that patriarchal ideology. She successfully negotiates the chauvinistic world of jazz. This paper explores Spalding’s performance through the lens of feminine consciousness as described by Sandra Bartky, and discusses the social construction of a female jazz instrumentalist’s identity based on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. While this paper classifies a musician as female or male, which implies that they are each a separate and distinct category, it does not discount that each gender may possess qualities of the other. Chapter two discusses elements of Esperanza’s physical appearance which embrace feminine ideals and simultaneously fight against them. She uses make-up to enhance her appearance, she wears clothes that adhere to a double standard, yet she defies the white ideal of femininity with her afro hairstyle and callused hands and blunt nails. Spalding is a dedicated professional. Her appearance is important to her livelihood. Feeling good about oneself instills self-confidence to engage with the audience. The patriarchal point of view is so ingrained in a woman’s subconscious, reinforced in the media and in marketing that women often dress with the visualization of the gaze of the ‘Other,’ which reinforces gendered significations. Signifiers of femininity are not only characterized by physical attributes, but also by elements of sound, body movements, occupied space, and appurtenant objects that historically represent a masculine or feminine frame of reference. Chapter Three discusses how Esperanza Spalding’s music tends to resist society’s views of gender roles. Jazz musicians, in particular, construct a distinctive role or persona based on the conventions of the genre, the marketing strategies of the music industry, and the individual talents of the artist. [rock star and jazz]. Spalding, as band leader, occupies center stage. Standing center stage in the spotlight leading the band on an upright bass is a seemingly aggressive, masculine position. Spalding challenges gender appropriate norms and expectations and embodies a strong, confident band leader, yet not with the negative effects of the Double Bind. Two aspects of the jazz musician is their stance and their ability to improvise. Spalding’s stance communicates to the audience her competence and leadership ability without sexual innuendo. Her improvisational style communicates her musical talents. It is traditionally viewed as a masculine skill and a competitive exercise but Spalding’s display is not aggressive and competitive. She uses her creative musical talent to carry on a musical conversation. Improvisation is creation of music in the moment. Spalding exhibits courage and a willingness to take a risk which are perceived historically as masculine traits. Spalding provides an individualized path to femininity. Women tend not to pursue paths that are not already fully occupied by women. Spalding is doing some remarkable things in terms of a woman in a male-dominated field. Spalding challenges socially constructed gender roles and serves as a role model for future generations.

This research investigates the sociological, psychological, and physiological factors known to affect women’s career advancement opportunities. It examines how awareness and knowledge shared through the #MeToo (hashtag Me Too) movement influenced gender specific perceptions about the factors affecting women’s workplace opportunities. Finally, it recommends measures to alter the divergent gender perceptions that remain an obstacle to gender equality in the workplace. This study was conducted because gender inequalities continue in the U.S. workplace in 2018. Currently women fail to advance in careers at the same rate as men, and they are paid 21% less for similar work with equal skills and experience. Women comprise approximately 51% of the U.S. population and 47% of the workforce, so equality would dictate a one-to-one male to female ratio throughout all levels of government and private industry. The current male to female ratio in the U.S. Congress is four-to-one. The male to female executive ratio in Fortune 500 companies is three-to-one, and in the U.S. Government it is two-to-one. The researcher conducted a mixed method experimental study by comparing pre- and post-treatment interview and survey data to determine how much awareness and knowledge shared through the #MeToo mass media event impacted gender specific perceptions of women’s equality struggles in the workplace. The qualitative interview analysis indicated a moderate shift from divergent gender perceptions in Study 1 to convergent viewpoints in Study 2 following the #MeToo media events. The quantitative analysis of pre- and post-treatment survey studies supported the qualitative findings and showed a 43% reduction in the gender perception gap in the post-event assessment. With outcomes from three independent qualitative and quantitative investigations aligning, the researcher concluded the overall statistical results demonstrate a strong impact on men’s and women’s perceptions and a largely reduced gender perception gap following the #MeToo media events. Because it is unknown if those changes are permanent, the researcher believes future research could focus on awareness, education, and accountability initiatives to more adequately address gender equality problems in the workplace and bring about lasting change.

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This thesis will examine the representation of motherhood in horror cinema in order to discuss the problems and potentials of repeated domestic traditions. While maternal horror narratives impose gender roles based on heterosexual hegemonic biases, some of these films also examine the feminine experience and criticize the patriarchal institutional structures that affect domesticity and femininity. If we discuss these promising features, we can build on the implied trajectories, and engender more representation of marginalized experience in order to seek out new methods of cultural stabilization and unity. This proposal relies on Jacques Derrida's theory of hauntology, which addresses past and future specters of anxieties and ideologies, and suggests that in order to confront these anxieties, we must recognize how and why mainstream repeats cultural traditions, and how to engage these specters to project new resolutions. By studying The Ring (2001), Silent Hill (2006), and Mama (2013), I have determined that most maternal horror narratives impose gender roles and standards upon its mother characters, but their conclusions criticize patriarchal rhetoric, and repeat cultural traditions with new, progressive implications that can both challenge and resolve cultural stability. This thesis intends to generate more discussion for domestic representation in mainstream media, negotiate our desire for cultural stability with destabilizing, non-hegemonic resolutions, and call attention to the social pressure enforced on mothers that neglects their experience and position.

In this project, I focus on women's relationships with technology in the context of contemporary music culture. In choosing this focus, I intend to elucidate the interplay between social constructs of gender, power and technology as they enacted in a particular arena of artistic and economic activity. The nature of this interplay is informed by prevailing regimes of truth which have emerged through historical processes and which surface in diverse social contexts, of which this is but one. My intention here is to identify such regimes and to situate women's discourses within them. In this undertaking, I draw on a body of theory which lies at the conjunction of contemporary feminist critique and the later work of Michel Foucault on power and the 'technologies of the self' to explore a model of power which promises cogent strategies in the feminist project of reworking notions of gender and social agency. The inquiry enlists the perspectives of women students in a university school of contemporary music through a guided interview process. The technologies referred to include musical instruments both of traditional and twentieth century design, as well as a range of sophisticated systems of equipment used for recording and amplifying, for composing and arranging music. Through analysis of the interview data and through readings from social science and musicology, I identify a dominant discourse, or regime of truth, which privileges men and marginalizes women in the realm of techno-musical activity. Alongside this prevailing regime are women's discourses which both comply with and dissent from its assumptions. In examining these discourses, I seek insights into the processes by which women collude in their own exclusion from a male-colonized terrain, but also exercise power to insist on entry. The alignment of technology and masculinity in contemporary music creates serious training and employment disadvantages for women in many facets of the industry. I contend that this anomaly demands attention in the interests of socio-economic justice, in the interests of the industry itself through full utilization of human resources and market potential, and in the interests of women's desires to expand their creative options and employment opportunities.

This paper seeks to establish a critical understanding of issues of sexualization and re-appropriation and how they relate to contemporary fashion advertising that specifically utilizes the Lolita Effect.

In 1974, decades before foreign terrorists became a fixture in the American consciousness, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an American domestic terrorist group, abducted nineteen-year-old media heiress Patricia (Patty) Hearst. The abduction kicked off a four decade multi-faceted media spectacle. The media and public raptly followed Hearst’s imprisonment as a hostage, apparent conversion to SLA revolutionary and criminal, eventual rescue and arrest, trial and conviction, presidential pardon, marriage to her bodyguard, half-hearted career as an actress, and ultimate withdrawal from the public eye. Along the way, the media portrayal of Hearst twisted and turned. She was the heiress, the hostage, the criminal, the victim, depending on the moment in time. The varying depictions of Hearst reflected evolving events, but also specific images of Hearst that captured the attention of the American public and the media. Resonant images of Hearst from her kidnapping, arrest, trial, and release – spanning the five years from 1974 to 1979 – demonstrate that the heiress’s case became a magnification of American anxieties of the time concerning celebrity, feminism and gender, the radicalization of youth, and terrorism. In a time dominated by print, radio, and television media, Hearst’s portrayal showcased the media spectacle as cultural parable for a controversial time.

Without pretensions to exhaustiveness, this study briefly examines the mid- to late-twentieth-century flowering of western theory and criticism built around autobiographical writing and follows the feminist branch(es) of that theory and criticism through a reading of the following four memoirs: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, All the Lost Girls by Patricia Foster, Lying by Lauren Slater, and Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Using both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory as they relate to literature, I argue that the selves these four women write in their memoirs are not selves built around the model historically set for women by feminist criticism of autobiography. Instead, Grealy, Foster, Slater, and Wurtzel, each raised by a relatively ineffectual or absent father and a strong-willed mother, fashion autonomous Lacanian 'I's for themselves out of relationships with their mothers that more closely resemble the adversarial relationship Freud posited between fathers and sons than they do the communal and less autonomy-engendering mother-daughter relationships many feminist critics predict.

This thesis explores how science fiction and fantasy retellings of the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast" bring visionary insights to the fairy tale. Stories such as Tanith Lee's science fiction novella "Beauty" and Mercedes Lackey's fantasy novel The Fire Rose constitute living and developing incarnations of "Beauty and the Beast." To better explore the visionary leaps made by these stories, they are placed in contrast with one of the original recordings of the story by Madame Marie Le Prince de Beaumont and the 1991 Disney film version, Beauty and the Beast.