published_or_final_version / abstract / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

“Shengnü” (“leftover women”) has become a popular discourse in China during recent years. In existing literature and media coverage, discussion on shengnü often draws on population gender imbalance, western individualization theories, and women’s “too picky” mating criteria. Seeing beyond these perspectives, this research aims to problematize the myth of shengnü by explicating how this social phenomenon indicates the changing gender landscape and emerging new femininity in modern China. The empirical study is based on in-depth interviews with 36 women regarding their lived experience of partner selection through xiangqin (matchmaking). Their experience of participating in commercial xiangqin (matchmaking websites, matchmaking fairs, high-end matchmaking clubs, marriage hunting, and matchmaking TV shows) and parents-arranged xiangqin are investigated. Findings in the research demonstrate that empowered by a series of social structural changes in reform-era China, modern women have rising expectations in partner selection and they possess greater control over intimate relationship. It is argued that xiangqin in contemporary China provides a stage for rising new Chinese femininity characterized by pragmatic idealism. To maximize their gain in the marriage market, from modern commercialized xiangqin to “old fashioned” parents-arranged xiangqin, modern Chinese women proactively seize every opportunity to approach potential partners. However, while engaging in xiangqin, the practice in which the purpose of partner selection is directly and pragmatically foregrounded, they have not given up the romantic pursuit in their relationship ideal. The central discourse of “gan jue (感觉feelings)” in their mating concerns suggests that they consciously avoid downgrading themselves as slaves of pragmatism and proudly distinguish themselves from women of pervious generations who satisfy with conventional pattern of intimacy that centers on “da huo guo ri zi (搭伙过日子making a mundane living together)”. When dealing with intergenerational dynamics in partner selection, although they make conditional compromise pertaining to intimacy and resource flows between generations, they also demarcate their non-negotiable territory. This research helps to problematize the indefinable essence and transcendental nature in Western theorization of love; it also contributes to question existing literature that pragmatism and materialism dominate contemporary Chinese love culture under the context of market economy. It reveals that constraining cultural and structural forces still limit single women’s bargaining power in current Chinese society; and modern Chinese women make different kinds of adjustments to expand their life opportunities. Through frankly articulating their materially grounded concerns in partner selection, they redefine romance in precarious social environment and stage new morality in post-socialist China. By sticking to a “bu cou huo (不凑合no compromise)” stance in their pursuit of love, they demonstrate their persistence and strength as modern Chinese women. Their relevant site-specific femininity performance also exemplifies the flexibility of modern women in achieving their life ambitions. / published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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In opposition to theories of power which focus on the domination of one group by another, Michel Foucault coined the term "biopower" to refer to the ways in which power manifests itself in the form of daily practices and routines through which individuals engage in self-surveillance and self-discipline, and thereby subjugate themselves. Biopower is a useful concept for medical anthropology because it focuses on the body as the site of subjugation, and because it highlights how individuals are implicated in their own oppression as they participate in habitual daily practices such as the self-regulation of hygiene, health, and sexuality. Yet few medical anthropologists have taken advantage of Foucault's framework to illuminate how both the individual and society are involved in perpetuating such practices. This paper brings together Foucault's theory and three concrete examples of bodily practice in Western culture, demonstrating how behaviors associated with physical fitness, femininity, and obstetrical practices all contribute to the creation of "docile bodies". The article ends by considering why some scholars have found Foucault's conception of power to be problematic.

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One especially contentious issue for Matthew's predominantly Jewish-Christian audience is how to relate to Gentiles, who are also followers of Jesus and desire to be incorporated into their community. To address this issue, Matthew appeals to Israel's wisdom tradition, and particularly to the pilgrimage of Woman Wisdom. In this journey, Woman Wisdom is commanded to dwell in Israel. She makes her home there and calls all people to come to her for wisdom and life. Ultimately, Wisdom is rejected by Israel and she returns to God. This thesis proposes that it is this pilgrimage of Woman Wisdom that is an underlying metaphor for Matthew's gospel. Like Wisdom, Jesus arrives in Israel, calls Israel to follow him, and is ultimately rejected. Woman Wisdom's cry to come to her to receive life is echoed in Jesus' call for all to enter the kingdom of God. The inclusion of the Gentiles in the community therefore demonstrates the presence of the kingdom of God.

This essay discusses how female and male characters are represented in the novel Peter & Wendy by J.M Barrie from 1911 and the Disney version Peter Pan from 1953. Jane Sunderland’s models on social gender are used as a substructure to help clarify how the characters are portrayed as individuals, in relation to other characters and through their own actions and speech acts. The essay shows that there is a major difference in how male characters are portrayed compared to the female characters and that every character of the story lives up to what seems to be socially constructed gender roles.

This thesis examines the meanings of forms of fashioned femininity in Britain in the post-war period. Drawing on a range of popular, academic and media texts, the widespread social, political and cultural disdain for the feminised decorative is defined and discussed. Modernist rhetoric and taste, the championing of design austerity, masculinity, bohemianism and appropriations of functional working-class fashioning are shown to be linked to the emergent tastes of Second-Wave feminism. In contrast, fashionings associated with working class and other disdained communities of women, defined here as 'feminine excess', whether in hair, make-up, jewellery or dress is shown to be demonised across historical and contemporary contexts by the arbiters of taste, expressed in key Modernist and feminist texts. Whereas both Modernism and facets of feminism are viewed as occluding and repudiating cultures and forms of working-class femininity, the emergence of queer theories and the rise of camp in popular culture is also critiqued here as ultimately confining discussions of and approbation for fashioned feminine excess to within the ironic discourse of drag. In the absence of research on, in particular working-class women's experiences and dis/pleasures in fashioning femininity, empirical data from female participants discussing their own histories of and tastes in fashioning is analysed alongside memory-work findings. Participants' contributions are discussed in two key chapters that focus on the significance of forms of identification in the self-fashioning of excess, specifically the iconic, excessive model of Dusty Springfield for women and girls growing up in Britain in the 1960s and, secondly, the complex array of meanings of hair and hair fashioning in constructing feminine and feminist selves. Throughout both the significance of class, notions of cultural difference, glamour and other pleasures in the processes of fashioning femininity. In a further chapter an array of media texts are analysed alongside insights generated by research participants focussing on the trope of jewels and jewellery. Desires for, pleasures in and identifications with female stars and Royals through their fashioning of glittering models of excess are charted across an array of popular texts consumed by communities of girls and women. Self-conscious, middle-class tastes for dissident fashioning and ironic appropriations of working-class excesses exemplified in punk or trailer trash vogues are compared to the non-ironic dissidence of Royal Taste, a form of feminine excess exemplified by stars such as Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley Bassey who, it is argued, have usurped the Royal aura in the post war period symbolised in their excessive will to adorn. This thesis concludes with a reflection on the obduracy of discriminatory trashing of working class forms of fashioning femininity and the consequences of this in terms of cultural justice. The hegemony of Modernist taste in paradoxically subordinating and appropriating otherness is critiqued alongside feminist neglect of the productive processes and loci of fashioning. This thesis calls for a re-evaluation of the existing institutional, modernist and feminist demonising of the other, excessive woman, highlights the constructedness of all fashioning and details the cultural value of disdained women's fashioning regimes and tastes.

This qualitative essay explores and compares women’s roles and identities in the gothic novels Rebecca and Jane Eyre. The investigation shall be a social critique on feminine ideals from a feminist perspective. Comparable analysis of the "other women" who act as doubles for the protagonists will be essential to understanding the alter egos of Mrs. de Winter and Jane Eyre. These double personalities raise questions of identity and the roles of femininity. Similarly the power struggles between husband and wives and other feminine influences shall throw further light on prevailing feminine ideals of the times. I shall analyze Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca in relation to the concepts of the "Angel in the house" and the "Mad Woman in the Attic" with Charlotte Bronte’s novel to explore parallels between the plot and female characters. I shall show how Daphne du Maurier offers varying feminine models and ultimately takes a feminist standpoint with her novel much like Brontë’s Jane Eyre before her. Finally, I will show how the suppression of women by men through gender stereotyping can lead to female rebellion and, in turn, the stigmatization of female madness.

With a focus on gender expectations, this qualitative study analyses how Bellatrix Lestrange and Dolores Umbridge in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series represent evil. Through close reading the first and the final three books of the series using the feminist criticism perspective performativity, the aim of this study is to highlight how the evil women in the series are portrayed in comparison to both good characters of both sexes as well as evil men. The results show that while the evil women represent evil in the ways that they break their gender expectations, the good men also represent goodness in the way that they break their gender expectations. Thus, they are not evil because they deviate from these expectations, but because the gendered traits these women embody are connected to evil and, in turn, help make the reader perceive them as such.