Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 259 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 242-254).

With this study, the authors wish to highlight the way artificial intelligence, as a new form of media technology, seems to be ascribed gender, both in fiction and reality. These, by humans artificially developed beings, would not need to be gendered, but still are. Given these beings are human made and new phenomenas, an opportunity of preventing boundaries considering gender, class and etnicity to be reproduced would be possible and in favour. By analysing the Alex Garland 2015 film Ex Machina, the authors wish to discuss how and why the artificial intelligence becomes gendered, particularly feminised, and what this means from a wider perspective concerning the way we look at this new technlology not yet fully introduced in real life. By using post- and transhuman theory mixed with feminist theories such as Judith Butlers theory of perfomativity, Donna Haraways posthuman feminist theory and Laura Mulveys theory of The Male Gaze, this study results in a qualitative text analysis. The methodic tools used in this study contains elements from visual text methods and therefor also semiotics.   The authors reach to the conclusion that the depiction of artificial intelligence in the film Ex Machina (2015) reproduces stereotypic feminine gender acts and even intensifies these. When these ways of presenting new and futuristic technology seems to appear in ficiton, an assumption can be made that they origin from existing and deep gender acts in the western society. Researchers, such as Donna Haraway, wishes for these strong boundaries in gender, class and etnicity to not be reproduced in new technology, but in the fictional case of the film Ex Machina (2015), this wish has unfortunately not been fullfilled. If society would be able to rethink the sharp boundaries between nature and technology and succeed with this ontological change in the way we look at humanity, it would hopefully be easier to approach the new technology with an open mind. Perhaps then the reproduction of gender stereotypes in this new technology would cease in fiction, but also in reality.

To get a deeper understanding of mothers own experiences this bachelor thesis will investigate mothers' perceptions of her own motherhood and the characteristics of a good versus a bad mother based on themes of class and femininity , parenthood and identity. This will be examined on the basis of questions about what is a good versus bad mother and how this dichotomisation affect mothers in the role of mother. Through breif interviews in two places with different socioeconomical background the informants, moms with children under 24 months visiting open preschool, expressed their view on motherhood and how to find new knowledge. The results show that mothers obtains knowledge from various forums , depending on the socio-economic status , but that the mothers preferred to discuss with other parents to share experiences and tips.

Submitted by Drielly Teixeira Lopes Silveira (driellylopess@gmail.com) on 2018-07-30T05:23:22Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DDrielly_part1 (1).pdf: 1880333 bytes, checksum: 31028c6d7e1ebb39cf89aa52be3cd3af (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Aline Aparecida Matias null (alinematias@fclar.unesp.br) on 2018-07-30T11:09:39Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 silveira_dtl_me_arafcl.pdf: 1880333 bytes, checksum: 31028c6d7e1ebb39cf89aa52be3cd3af (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-30T11:09:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 silveira_dtl_me_arafcl.pdf: 1880333 bytes, checksum: 31028c6d7e1ebb39cf89aa52be3cd3af (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-05-03 / A experiência transexual é uma temática de especial evidência no contexto acadêmico contemporâneo, sendo descrita como um fenômeno complexo, que pressupõe uma incompatibilidade entre gênero e sexo biológico. Por interrogar o modelo binário sexo/gênero, permite que se questione os discursos científicos envoltos em pressupostos de naturalização dos corpos. A deficiência, fora dos modelos reabilitativos, representaria per si um transgressão da “ordem anatômica”, ainda que seja reconhecida pelo modelo biomédico como o resultado de uma falha, congênita ou adquirida, que afetará o funcionamento “normal” do corpo ou de algumas de suas partes. A percepção de ambos os corpos recebe novos contornos quando de encontro à leitura de Judith Butler, para a qual, o lugar de patologização e abjeção conferido a estas experiências são resultado de práticas discursivas que estabelecem relações de poder que incidem sobre os corpos. Refletindo sobre as múltiplas possibilidades de experiências compreendidas a partir do feminino e considerando a posição de subalternidade conferida a esses corpos diante das normas hegemônicas, este trabalho se propõe a oportunizar um espaço de narrativa e análise para uma experiência pouco explorada academicamente: a experiência subjetiva de mulheres trans deficientes. Focalizando em especial os disability studies e suas possíveis interlocuções com a Teoria Queer como aporte teórico, foram realizadas entrevistas com três mulheres trans deficientes, sendo elas: duas portadoras de deficiência física e uma sensorial. Utilizou-se para a coleta de dados do método de História Oral Temática (Meihy, 1996). As análises de narrativas foram organizadas conforme a metodologia de Análise Textual Discursiva, destacando as categorias que recebem destaque na fala, constituindo 3 eixos de análise: (1) O transito como transgressão: da dificuldade de locomoção ao gênero itinerante. (2) O olhar como fonte de escárnio, reconhecimento e desejo. (3) A mulher como poder. Esta pesquisa possui um caráter qualitativo e exploratório, e tem como pretensão, ampliar e fomentar novas produções e discussões relacionadas às noções de feminilidade, corpo e sexualidade a partir da subjetividade trans em interface com a deficiência. / The transsexual experience is a highlighted theme in the current academic context, being portrayed as a complex phenomenon, which presupposes an incompatibility between gender and biological sex. By questioning the binary sex/gender model, it is allowed to question the scientific speeches wrapped in body naturalization presumptions. Disability, out of rehabilitative model, would represent, per se, a transgressions of the “anatomic order”, even if recognized by the biomedical model as the result of a flaw, either congenital or acquired, that will affect the “normal” functioning of the body or of some of its parts. The perception of both bodies acquire new outlining when facing the reading of Judith Butler, for whom the place of pathologization and abjection conferred to these experiences are the result of speech practices that establish power relations that act upon the bodies. Reflecting upon the multiple possibilities of experiences, understood on the basis of feminine, and considering the subordinate position conferred to these bodies in the face of the hegemonic rules, this work aims to create a space of narrative and analysis for an experience that has been little explored academically: the subjective experience of disabled trans women. Focusing, specially, on the disability studies and its possible interlocutions with the Queer theory as theoretical basis, interviews with three disabled trans women were made, being them: two physically disabled women and a sensorial disabled one. For data collection, we made use of the Thematic Oral History method (Meihy, 1996).The analyses of the narratives were organized according to the Discursive Textual Analysis, highlighting the categories that are prominent in the speech, constituting 3 analysis axes: (1) Transit as transgression: from walking difficulties to the itinerant genre. (2) The eyes as a source of scorn, recognition, and desire. (3) The woman as power. This research has a qualitative and exploratory nature, intending to expand and foment new works and discussions regarding the notions of femininity and sexuality from the interface between transgender subjectivity and disability

Since Draper & Harpending (1982) proposed that father absence would be associated with a shift in reproductive strategy, a body of literature has accumulated supporting their claims. This thesis explores further aspects of father absence theory, utilising computergraphic facial processing. It opens with an overview of both father absence theory (Chapter 1) and the Evolutionary Psychology of attraction (Chapter 2). Part 1 Part 1 explores the meaning of masculinity in partner choice scenarios. Male facial masculinity co-varied with facial age but not apparent facial health both in tenns of women's preferences (Study 1) and women's direct perceptions (Study 2). This suggested that masculinity in male faces is not a cue to immunocompetence health status as other authors have suggested, In Study 3, while masculine faces were perceived as more dominant than feminised faces, they were otherwise considered poorer quality partners. It was suggested that masculinity was attractive because of a 'sexy son' mechanism (dominance increasing offspring reproductive success), which was traded off against the anti-social traits associated with masculinity. Part 2 Studies 4, 5 and 6 found that father absence or poor relationships with the parents generally reduced masculinity preference and age preference (although in Study 5, this effect was moderated by relationship status). This contradicted predictions made from traditional father absence literature (that father absence should be associated with a short term strategy and therefore masculinity preference). Sociological explanations were discounted as family background did not relate to the traits women said they desired in a partner (Study 7). Altogether these results raised questions about the attractiveness and self-esteem of father absent females. Part 3 therefore investigated the physical development of these females. Part 3 Study 8 found that marital difficulties between parents were associated with an increase in perceived facial masculinity in both male and female offspring's faces, a decrease in facial attractiveness and increased weight and waist-hip ratio in women. Study 9 found that levels of progesterone were inversely related to quality of parental relationship. The overarching conclusions of the thesis were that there appears to be an effect' of physical masculinisation which is associated with father absence. This masculinisation may be the predicator for previously observed father absence effects, and the results in Part 2. As such, attachment based explanations of father absence effects (such as Belsky et al, 1991) may be redundant.

Women are subject to a number of societal recommendations about what it means to be an 'ideal' woman. These recommendations take the form of social scripts, constructing an idea of ideal femininity, which women must perform in order to be socially accepted and successful. 'Emphasized femininity', a white, Western, script of femininity is dominant and has been critiqued by feminists, social theorists, and individual women for the limits that it places on women's behaviour. As a result a number of alternative scripts of femininity have arisen. These scripts can provide alternatives to restrictive understandings of female sexuality and beauty - they can serve to challenge 'appropriate' feminine behaviour and hence allow women to live more freely. Raunch femininity is a contemporary alternative that uses sexually explicit public performance, and encourages specific body and dress norms, in an attempt to challenge the norms of emphasized femininity. This thesis looks at raunch femininity, specifically its norms of sexuality and beauty, in the hopes of understanding what the effects of such a script are on women's behaviour. Theoretical understandings and explanations of women's lives are often contradicted by reports that women provide of their lived experiences. For this reason, this thesis investigates the lived experiences of women who self-identify as subscribers to this script in order to assess to what extent superficial expressions of freedom have deeper effects on women's freedom. The tension between theory and empirical reports is evident. However, in many cases, the reports of research participants reveal that the script of raunch femininity, like other scripts of feminine behaviour, has its own limits that women must abide with in order to be accepted. This thesis argues that these limits outweigh the benefits of this script. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

Female solo aerialists of the 1920s and early 1930s were internationally popular performers in the largest live mass entertainment of the period in the UK and USA. Yet these aerialists and this period in circus history have been largely forgotten by scholars. I address this omission by arguing these stars should be remembered for how they contributed to strength being incorporated into some stereotypes of femininity. Analysing in detail Lillian Leitzel, Luisita Leers and, to a lesser extent the Flying Codonas, I employ a cross-disciplinary methodology unique to aerial scholarship that uses embodied understanding to reinvigorate archival resources. This approach allows me to build on the wider scholarly histories of Peta Tait, drawing important conclusions about the form including how weightlessness is constructed and risk is performed. In the introduction I re-evaluate the nostalgic histories of circus to establish circus’ and aerialists’ popularity in this period, before exploring how engagements shaped careers. Chapter 1 considers the difference in experiencing aerialists in the USA and UK by bringing together previously unrelated data on circus, variety and vaudeville venues. Aerialists made good celebrities because their acts, located above audience members’ heads, challenged the conventional relationship between ticket prices and sightlines. Chapter 2 explores how the kinaesthetic fantasy evoked by experiencing aerial action created glamour and how glamour had the power to reframe femininity in the 1920s. Glamour and celebrity have often been confused and Chapter 3 distinguishes the two before considering what characterises aerial celebrity. Reconfiguring Joseph Roach’s public intimacy as skilful vulnerability allows me to analyse how risk was gendered and performed in relationship to skill. The gendering of risk leads me to consider what in society contributed to aerial stardom by drawing upon Richard Dyer’s argument that celebrities embody a cultural ambiguity. Female aerialists reframed their femininity in a similar way to women who aspired to the modern girl stereotype in wider society. In the final chapter I expand on the activity of the modern girl, comparing strategies used by young exercising women to female aerialists. This enables me to draw conclusions about how witnessing these stars tapped into national ideas of citizenship, and to designate aerialists as the first to use the power of glamour to make muscular femininity acceptable.

MOREIRA Nayanny Sampaio. A legitimação dos fatores filogenéticos da feminilidade em Freud: uma investigação epistemológica. 2011. 82 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Psicologia) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Departamento de Psicologia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Fortaleza-CE, 2011. / Submitted by moises gomes (celtinha_malvado@hotmail.com) on 2012-04-02T19:16:03Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2011_dis_NSMoreira.PDF: 431818 bytes, checksum: 19f58f4a309bcb06ab9c4322cc529cc4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Josineide Góis(josineide@ufc.br) on 2012-04-17T12:16:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2011_dis_NSMoreira.PDF: 431818 bytes, checksum: 19f58f4a309bcb06ab9c4322cc529cc4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-04-17T12:16:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2011_dis_NSMoreira.PDF: 431818 bytes, checksum: 19f58f4a309bcb06ab9c4322cc529cc4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Fazemos aqui uma investigação sobre o modo com que Freud legitimou epistemologicamente os fatores filogenéticos de sua teoria da feminilidade. Situamos com Kurt Lewin, a perspectiva epistemológica de nossa pesquisa. Com Colette Chiland trabalhamos a noção de “femeidade”, como termo que representa os fatores biológicos da feminilidade, ou seja, o que a de biológico no corpo da mulher e que todas tem que elaborar. O tema deste Projeto foi sugerido por nosso orientador o Prof. Ricardo L. L. Barrocas e faz parte de uma série de pesquisas que este vem realizando no Círculo de Pesquisas sobre Lógica e Epistemologia das Psicologias (CPLEP). Dentre as razões da escuta clínica que temos realizado, consideramos o tema pesquisado de grande valia: ele esclarece questões que nem sempre são levadas a sério sobre a feminilidade. Quando falamos sobre a sexualidade feminina compreendemos tanto a heterossexualidade quanto as variações desta função, isto é, a homossexualidade feminina por exemplo. Na primeira parte, discorremos sobre a feminilidade em Freud. Seguimos com uma apresentação da perspectiva epistemológica de nossa pesquisa inspirada no artigo O conflito entre os modos aristotélico e galiléico de pensamento na psicologia contemporânea de Kurt Lewin (1975). Na segunda parte, expomos a teoria da feminilidade em Freud. Na terceira parte, fazemos um pequeno levantamento sobre a teoria da feminilidade mediante outros psicanalistas, críticos de Freud ou não. Por fim na quarta parte analisamos os dados da pesquisa empreendida, estabelecemos algumas idéias a guisa de conclusão e mostramos as perspectivas que daí inferimos para outros trabalhos.

In the academic year 1996/1997, the number of women undergraduates enrolled on degree courses at UK universities for the first time in history surpassed the number of men (Dyhouse, 2006). Year-on-year, statistics continue to indicate that women outnumber men in higher education (HE). Feminist scholars have noted that, as a consequence, women’s participation in HE has in recent years been constructed as an unequivocal ‘success story’, with women widely regarded as both outnumbering and outperforming men (Dyhouse, 2006; Leathwood and Read, 2009). This thesis seeks to trouble the notion that women really are the educational ‘winners’ by virtue of their gains at the point of access by highlighting some enduring gender inequalities within HE – that is, women's uneven experiences of the cultures and structures of HE by gender, class, ethnicity and discipline. Using a qualitative case study design, this thesis seeks to explore the everyday ‘lived’ experience of a small number of women undergraduates studying either a science, technology, engineering or mathematical (STEM) discipline or arts/humanities discipline at one high-performing British university. Using a combination of focus group interviews and 14 longitudinal case studies of individual women (comprising participant-kept diaries, in-depth interviews and email interviews), this study seeks to provide a detailed understanding of women's lives both inside and outside of their course and their negotiations of academic achievement, disentangling some of the complex processes involved in identifying with, and specializing in a discipline over time. In this study, a ‘patchwork’ theoretical approach has been adopted in order to conceptualise women’s identities, incorporating insights from feminist post-structural theory, new material feminisms and Becky Francis’ (2012) concept of gender monoglossia and heteroglossia as re-worked from Bakhtin (1981, 1987). This study indicates that women's gender and academic identities are intricately interwoven and often complex, contradictory and precarious – with women differently taking up and discarding dominant discourses of the ‘ideal’ and ‘successful’ university student in line with their distinct classed, ethnic and ‘aged’ backgrounds. This study also highlights the role that academic disciplines play in shaping women’s lived university experience both inside and outside of formalized learning contexts. In particular, the data suggests that the discourses of academic success open to the women were uneven, and powerfully shaped by the science/arts divide. Yet this study also highlights how the high-performing university was constructed by many women as a positive and freeing space, offering up a variety of discourses of student success.

O exame da narrativa ficcional permite a abordagem, para além do universo da teoria literária, de questões discursivas que refletem índices históricos, sociológicos e antropológicos, dentre os quais a construção da identidade de gênero. Neste sentido, o instrumental psicanalítico favorece a análise do sistema de referentes que constitui a feminilidade. Interessa, aqui, refletir acerca da feminilidade contemporânea inserida no contexto português do período ditatorial e construída discursivamente no período pós-revolucionário. Tal feminilidade apresenta-se avessa, muitas vezes, aos valores sedimentados no pensamento ocidental judaicocristão, que atribuem à mulher uma posição inferior, passiva e no limite castrada. Ao enfocar personagens femininas presentes em alguns exemplares da prosa portuguesa das últimas três décadas, pretende-se localizar um outro paradigma, que corre à margem dos padrões sociais vigentes: o da mulher libertária, independente, ativa, enfim, que rompe o compromisso com as regras da família, sociedade e religião. Cabe observar que quatro das personagens ora abordadas são discursivamente constituídas a partir de uma perspectiva masculina, tanto do ponto de vista do foco narrativo, quanto do ponto de vista autoral. O contraponto se dá com a escolha de uma personagem feminina fruto da perspectiva autoral feminina. Para a realização da abordagem proposta, são percorridos cinco romances, a saber: Balada da Praia dos cães e Alexandra Alpha, de José Cardoso Pires, Vícios e Virtudes e Pedro e Paula, de Helder Macedo e A Costa dos Murmúrios, de Lidia Jorge. / The investigation of fictional narrative leads to an approach beyond the universe of literary theory, discursive issues representing historical, sociological and anthropological insights, among which the genre identity may be cited. In this way, the psychoanalytical tools enable the analysis of the referring systems which constitute the femininity. This work reflects upon the contemporaneous femininity which has been inserted in the Portuguese context within the dictatorship period, and built up discursively in a post-revolutionary era. Most times this femininity proves itself to be contrary to the moral values established by the western Jewish Christian thoughts; such values set women mostly to an inferior, passive, submissive and castrated position. By focusing on female characters in the Portuguese prose from the last three decades, another paradigm is brought up, mainly sideways to the imposed common social patterns: the libertarian, active and independent woman is brought to life, the one who breaks away from rules imposed by family, society and religion. It is relevant to observe that four of such characters are discursively constituted from a male perspective, within the narrative and authorial focus. The counterpoint is set in the choice of a female character, based on a feminine authorial perspective. For this proposed approach to take place, five novels have been fully taken into consideration: Ballad of Dogs Beach and Alexandra Alpha, from José Cardoso Pires, Virtue and Vices and Peter and Paula, by Helder Macedo and The Murmuring Coast, by Lidia Jorge.