The dissertation explores the two primary types of public administration feminist literature, equity feminism and other voice feminism, and determines that they do not reveal a clear typology that practically outlines the characteristics of an alternative organizational viewpoint from that of the dominant viewpoint. Building on Camilla Stivers' metaphor of the home, and drawing on nine other strands of literature, a typology comprised of 4 primary dimensions -- epistemology; ontology; social theory; and ethics -- was constructed that opposed the home metaphorical perspective and the dominant business metaphorical perspective. The home metaphor, based on Stivers' historical analysis of the early founding of the field of public administration, provided a framework for implementing the rediscovered typology. The home metaphor was then practically illustrated and revealed through a content analysis of two cases of community policing. The analysis of these case studies revealed the apparent difficulty of moving from the dominant business metaphorical perspective to the less familiar home metaphorical perspective. Despite this apparent difficulty, the case studies revealed rich examples of how the home metaphor plays out in cities that are striving to utilize community policing practices. Public administrators and researchers may use this typology to identify other alternative perspectives for analysis and praxis, as well as nonconventional courses of action. The case studies demonstrated that a critical aspect of public administration, that of policing, has begun to strongly value this alternative perspective and the positive gains that it brings to strengthening the relationship between public administrators and citizens. / Ph. D.

On the surface, Dennis Lehane’s novel Mystic River appears quite fascinated and occupied with macho ideals and ideas of heroism, vengeance, vigilantism, violence, and blind loyalty. The novel might even be said to paint a picture of a world ultimately ruled and controlled by men, who are expected to set the terms and encouraged to take charge. This points to an overt message stating that attributes such as strength, cold practicality, efficiency, action, decisiveness, and rationality – all stereo-typically masculine values – ultimately pay off and are rewarded. However, such an initial analysis may be meaningfully countered, overturned, and distrusted. Making use of feminist deconstruction, this essay argues that Mystic River’s superficial praise of stereotypical gender ideals is in fact undermined by tensions and contradictions beneath the surface of the text. This undermining in turn serves to criticize binary hierarchies at the very core of patriarchal ideology.

This project analyzes the intersections between representations of female sovereignty used to promote and rethink feminine virtue in both early modern English and Spanish advice literature and literary texts published in the decade after Queen Elizabeth I’s death. I suggest that the question of women’s sovereignty prompted by the rise of ruling queens in Spain and England influences the prominence of regal women as models of feminine virtue in advice literature and reconceptualizes feminine virtue as a political discourse, forming a new category I term “princely feminine virtue.” Scholarship analyzing the relationship between advice literature and literary works has not recognized England and Spain’s shared indebtedness to princely models to advise and represent feminine virtue. By examining the interplay between feminine virtue, tropes of sovereignty, and the advisory mode in both types of texts, this project emphasizes the widespread potential for women’s exemplary virtue across the social spectrum. In addition to recasting feminine virtue through a princely lens, these texts reveal a shared vision of how performances of feminine virtue are invested with agency and power.

Made Up, a body of paintings, expresses my love/loathe relationship with the beauty/fashion industries and the fantasy/deception they instill. Aging amplifies my fear of being rejected or invisible and is assuaged by being made-up. Pages torn from fashion layouts are manually distressed to become the visually striking crumpled images that are the basis for my painting. The wrinkled nature of my source communicates my frustration with aging and never being able to meet the standards of modern beauty ideals. My careful repainting of the disfiguration demonstrates my desire to intimately repair and own the image. In taking my power back through painting, the defiled magazine spread becomes a layout of my ability and power as a painter to create and control the illusion. Paint enables me to accept myself through the virtuosity of its application, scale, and in the resulting illusion, in which cathartic moments of subversive humor play out. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-191). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

In the last twenty years, Italian female literature has been characterized by a tendency to resort to a transgressive code for creating its fictional discourse. The transgression consists of desecrating those themes that Italians intimately continue to honor as taboo: menstruation, female ugliness, eating disorders problems, the refusal of maternity–or better its degradation to a mere biological fact–and homosexuality. Those issues go beyond what Italians recognize as normal and reassuring. Transgressing them is as a powerful and creative act able to awaken women, and promote their emancipation. These authoresses’ goal is to create a new dynasty of women different from their mothers–examples of women considered models of obedience and submission to the rules of patriarchy. Their aim is to have women conquer the right to talk about topics that have always been invisible and unspeakable. The meaning of transgression, taboos and the “the uncanny” is outlined upfront. The most representative transgressive authoresses in the Italian literary scene are analyzed: Elena Ferrante (L’amore molesto and I giorni dell’abbandono), Mariapia Veladiano (La vita accanto), Alessandra Amitrano (Broken Barbie), Valeria Parrella (Lo spazio bianco) and Elena Stancanelli (Benzina). Each chapter focuses on an author and her work. Historical, cultural, and social background of taboo is offered. An analysis of the text is provided to explain the violation of the taboo, while offering an interpretation of the transgression. The conclusion alludes to the way in which Italian literary criticism still struggles not to condemn works that are inconsistent with what it is determined to be the norm. / Romance Languages and Literatures

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This dissertation examines the works of five medieval women mystics—Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijch of Brabant, Angela of Foligno, Birgitta of Sweden, and Julian of Norwich—to argue that these writers used feminine topoi, commonplace images of women symbolizing complex themes, to convey authority based on embodied experience that could not be claimed by their male associates. The lens used to study their works is rhetorical analysis informed by a feminist recuperative objective, one concerned with identifying effective rhetorical strategies useful to many women and men who have traditionally been denied speech, rather than with women's entrance into traditional rhetorical canons. In addition, the project deliberately engages scholarship by critics whose work has been informed by postcolonial, gender, and queer theories. This preference allows an exploration of the ways in which legitimized language becomes unstable and permeable, permitting members of oppressed and suppressed groups to usurp the authority of dominant discourse, and of historically situated rhetorical practice as the result of cultural and textual negotiations of gender.

During the last few decades the academic re-gendering has reached the field of rhetorical discourse and differences of speech and rhetoric has been determined. Another gender shift has occurred during the last few decades in the appointments of foreign policy representatives, from being one of the last patriarchal strongholds the change towards equality has been remarkably swift. However, the norms of masculinity and formality within the sphere of foreign policy are still persistent. The first aim of this thesis was to determine if the rhetorical style of men and women differed even in a context heavily laden with norms, such as the UNGA. The secondary aim is based upon the concept of masculinity and femininity in culture, to determine if the gender of culture influenced the speaker’s rhetorical style, even in the UNGA. This thesis generates its own theoretical framework from the works of rhetoric and linguistics to separate masculine and feminine rhetorical style. The method used is a qualitative textual analyze applied to transcribed speeches held by Swedish and U.S. representatives in UNGA. The analysis proved that there is a difference in rhetorical style between genders and culture, even in a context such as the UNGA, but only a small one.