This thesis details the development of my full-length play Wife/Worker/Whore from outlining and pre-writing to full production at Southern Illinois University over the course of the 2015/2016 school year. In writing Wife/Worker/Whore, I was inspired by Norma Jean Almodovar’s From Cop to Call Girl, in which she details her life as a housewife, police officer and eventually high-class call girl in 1970s Los Angeles. Almodovar’s life story served as the impetus for this script, as I sought to complicate the discourses surrounding prostitution in its various forms. This play, therefore, examines the covert ways in which women are forced to prostitute themselves, even when they don’t call themselves a “whore” by profession. Chapter One includes a statement of the project, the origin, and development of the script, initial structure and plot considerations for the script, research that impacted the creation of the script, character development, and tools for self-evaluation. Chapter Two covers the pre-writing process, feedback from my peers from two in-class readings, notes from my advisor, Jacob Juntunen, and the director, Segun Ojewuyi, about the script’s development and an overall description of the play’s progression through drafts one to eight. Chapter Three describes the design meetings held in preparation for the production of Wife/Worker/Whore. Chapter Four details the audition process as well as rehearsals for the piece. Chapter Five evaluates Wife/Worker/Whore’s production, describes ideas for future productions of the piece as well as possible revisions. Chapter Six concludes the thesis by tracking my progression in the playwriting program over the past three years. It includes my writing growth in terms of structure and developing my artistic voice. It also discusses my professional development over the time in the program, as well as the evolution of my teaching practice. I have also included in the thesis the production script of Wife/Worker/Whore, excerpts from previous drafts of the script, and publicity materials.

The main focus of this study is Benhabib' s concepts of the 'concrete other' and 'interactive' universalism, Cornell's 'ethical' feminist thought and Nedelsky's argument on 'rights as relationship'. The need for an affirmation of the feminine is emphasised. I argue that we should strive towards a 'new choreography of sexual difference' based on the ethical view that 'woman' cannot be described in the present. She is the beyond. My study explore the implications of ethical feminism for the possibility of the transformation of a legal system and society as a whole. In this regard it lays particular emphasis on Derrida's concept of 'justice as aporia' and justice as limit to a legal system. I discuss pornography as a concrete example of texts that may either frustrate transformation or contribute to it. I argue in . this regard that pornography should not be banned but that access to pornography should be subjected to restrictions. This approach will serve the ambigious nature of pornography as both a threat to and a vehicle for the exploration of the feminine in contemporary society. / Private Law / LL.M.

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This essay reconstructs the unexplored history of a group of women who claimed a place for themselves in the male-dominated public sphere of Toronto in the early 1850s. The history of these women, who took a public stand on the issues of slavery, abolition and the fugitives escaping to Canada, does not fit seamlessly into the history of the struggle for women's rights nor the history of women's philanthropy. While the anti-slavery women engaged in some of the same activities as these better-known subjects of women's history, they brought a distinctive set of social and political concerns to their activism. Troubled by the influx of destitute fugitive slaves arriving in Canada from the United States, the potential extension of slavery on the North American continent, and the implications these developments could have for the free Christian nation they were building in Canada, these women took advantage of the public sphere to voice and act on their concerns about the moral progress of society, especially in their city. They constructed a distinctly feminine political culture that represented themselves and their activities as conforming to the canons of femininity and domesticity, while it enabled the women to secure access and influence for themselves - albeit limited access and influence - in the public sphere. With aspirations to influence public opinion, but without formal positions of authority in the public sphere, these women called upon the moral authority that nineteenth century society ascribed to women to underwrite their public activities. Feminine moral authority affirmed the righteousness of the values and beliefs that underlay their public activities, and it justified their attempts to persuade others to espouse similar beliefs. It was the foundation upon which these women tried to build a collective political culture and speak on behalf of all Canadian women in the public sphere. Construed as gender-specific, this moral authority rested, however, not only on the distinction of gender, but also on a combination of social attributes and cultural distinctions that included the distinction of race. While there is no doubt that positions of authority in the public sphere of mid-nineteenth century Toronto were dominated by white men, the inroads the women achieved and the roadblocks they confronted suggest that the public sphere was undergoing considerable change in the early 1850s. To be sure, their attempts to influence the formation of public opinion were indicative of larger social and political changes underway in Canadian society — changes that historians have only begun to consider. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Whereas the dramatic struggle for the suffrage has received extensive academic attention the feminist campaigns that came immediately after 1918 have been largely ignored. This thesis argues that there was vigorous grassroots feminist activity in the inter-war years which can be seen in the activities of the Society for the Promotion of Birth Control Clinics (SPBCC) who in the post-suffrage era explored their new opportunities. Themes running through this thesis include feminism, grassroots activity, locality and modernism. This research utilises the theoretical framework of comparative social movement theory as well as historical research. A Collective Biography of SPBCC committee members has been constructed to give a profile of activists. This thesis argues that the debate within the post-suffrage society the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship gave backing to the new feminist master frame which emphasised women's role as mothers. This strengthened the SPBCC which campaigned to give working class mothers the knowledge to limit their families, something available privately to middle class mothers. This research explores how the SPBCC tried to pursue its case by creating alliances with the National Council of Women and the Women's Citizenship Association,This study shows how local SPBCC groups attempted to prove the need for birth control clinics by mobilising and founding clinics. Middle class women played an important part in this direct action, but working class women, either individually or from the Women's Cooperative Guilds also participated. Class differences were important, but this research shows that volunteers, who were all mothers themselves, stressed the common bond of motherhood. The SPBCC both locally and nationally strove to counter the condemnation of the medical profession and the Churches. The interplay of religious and political forces is seen in case studies in Stockport, Glasgow, Manchester and Salford, Liverpool. The thesis compares the birth control strategies of the confrontational birth control pioneer Marie Stopes with the more analytical approach of Eleanor Rathbone of NUSEC. This research reveals that some SPBCC members felt they had to make uncomfortable choices between class and gender allegiances or feminism and eugenics. This thesis demonstrates how the SPBCC tested the new political structures by attempting to place birth control on the agenda of national political parties, particularly the Labour Party. However, there was more success in building birth control policy advocacy coalitions at the local level. In 1931 the Labour Government issued Memorandum 153/MCW which allowed municipal clinics to provide birth control advice but this thesis questions to what extent this was a victory. Arguably the SPBCC did not achieve its main objective but it did empower its feminist members in a wide range of political activities.

JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga are widely recognized as three of the most successful recent young adult franchises. Although it may not seem so at first, each of these series has a preoccupation with feminist learning; each series’ author, whether explicitly or implicitly, addresses the extent to which their protagonists and fans can learn feminist lessons within, or from, these texts. Each protagonist does seem to undergo some kind of learning experience, and by measuring these against what feminist education scholars such as bell hooks call a feminist pedagogical model, I show that the reality of what is expressed in these texts does not necessarily align with the ways Hermione, Katniss, and Bella have been discussed by critics and fans. Further, I argue that despite their divergence from the didactic nature of earlier feminist young adult fiction, such as that written by Judy Blume, by making connections between young adult fiction and what fan theorist Henry Jenkins calls “convergence culture”, young readers of Rowling’s, Collins’s, and Meyer’s texts, through their critical and creative engagement with online fan activities, are actually participating in a kind of feminist education that interestingly embodies the aims of feminist pedagogy.

This study has attempted to show that the plays of La Chaussée, which were popular in France in the middle to lat eighteenth century, were popular because they appealed to social values of the period, and particularly because they expressed a conservative view of society and of the role of women in that society. The introduction sets forth the historical and biographical background of La Chaussée, the extent of the success achieved by his "comédies larmoyantes" in performance and in publication during the eighteenth century, and the reasons for selecting the five plays on which this study concentrates. The focus on, female characters is explained by the number of plays "about" women: Mélanide, La Gouvernante, L'Ecole des méres and by the tendency in literary criticism to consider eighteenth-century French tastes in theatre dictated by women. Chapter I presents a content analysis of the five plays. This technique, taken from Goodlad, A Sociology of Popular Drama, provides plot summaries of these now unfamiliar plays which are used as a basis for chapter II. Furthermore it permits determination and comparison of these themes, settings, areas of conflict explored and types of resolution offered in the plays under examination. La Chaussée most frequently presents the problems of marital and familial love, and resolves conflicts with reconciliation, marriage, or another form of social integration. Goodlad brings out the relationship between popular success and a play's at least implicit didacticism and its conservatism in form and content. Chapter II uses narratological analysis techniques from Bremond, Logique du récit. The plays are considered as texts. The purpose here is to bring to light the structure of plot: how resolution in delayed or achieved, what roles -- victim, beneficiary, assistant, frustrator -- female character play in that structure. Heroines are found to be passive victims, beneficiaries, or even frustrators. Secondary female characters play minor assistant roles, or act as frustrators for the heroines. Resolution is achieved by male characters. Chapter III turns to discourse, how much and what is said about the female sex and/or by female characters. It examines the quantity, content and situation of female discourse in these plays, and particularly the social and situational restraints on discourse. A female character usually only has one scene with male characters in which she speaks half or more of the total lines, unless she is alone with someone over whom she has affective influence, and not her husband. Maids are used to express generalizations about the situation of women in society, and sympathy for the heroine. The discourse of heroines centres on the standards of virtue to which society holds them: patience, endurance, chastity, obedience. In the conclusion, critical judgments on La Chaussée from the eighteenth century to the present are reviewed and examined. Doubt is cast on the extent to which La Chaussée should be seen as promoting theatrical or social reform, and increased emphasis in placed on the nature of his didacticism, and the pervasiveness of his conservatism. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

The concern with the need for leaders in the nursing profession as well as knowledge that many current nursing leaders advocate alliance with the Women's Liberation Movement, gave rise to the study of leadership characteristics, attitudes towards feminism, and the relationship between these in selected female populations. The samples chosen for study were thirty graduating baccalaureate nursing students, thirty members of organized groups of the Women's Liberation Movement, and as another comparison group, twenty four library science students. Five hypotheses concerning leadership characteristics and attitudes towards feminism were tested. The hypotheses were: 1. There is no significant difference in leadership characteristics, as measured by scores on the Gordon Personal Profile and the Gordon Personal Inventory, among students graduating from a baccalaureate nursing program, women belonging to organized groups of the Women's Liberation Movement, and students in a library science program. 2. There is no significant difference in attitudes towards feminism, as measured by the FEM scale, among students graduating from a baccalaureate nursing program, women belonging to organized groups of the Women's Liberation Movement, and students in a library science program. 3. There is no significant relationship between attitudes towards feminism, as measured by the FEM scale, and leadership characteristics, as measured by scores on the Gordon Personal Profile and the Gordon Personal Inventory, in graduating baccalaureate nursing students. There is no significant relationship between attitudes towards feminism, as measured by the FEM scale, and leadership characteristics, as measured by scores on the Gordon Personal Profile and the Gordon Personal Inventory, in women belonging to organized groups of the Women's Liberation Movement. 5. There is no significant relationship between attitudes towards feminism, as measured by the FEM scale, and leadership characteristics, as measured by scores on the Gordon Personal Profile and the Gordon Personal Inventory, in students of a library science program. No significant differences in leadership characteristics among the three groups were found. Significant differences in attitudes towards feminism were found with the members of the Women's Liberation Movement differing most from the other two groups. No significant relationships between leadership characteristics and attitudes towards feminism were found in any of the three groups. It was concluded that a belief in feminism does not cause leadership characteristics, and that leadership characteristics do not cause a belief in feminism. Similarly, any other variable common to the three groups could not be considered causal for both the possession of leadership characteristics and the expressed attitudes towards feminism. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate

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Johanna Brandt (born Van Warmelo) lived in Pretoria during the Anglo Boer War. She became involved in the events as a nurse in hospitals and later on in the Irene concentration camp and also as a Boer spy. She married the Reverend L.E. Brandt in the Netherlands soon after the war. In 1903 they came to South Africa where Brandt became minister of the Zoutpansberg congregation of the Hervormde Kerk while Johanna organised a spinning school and joined the South African Women's Federation. In 1908 they moved to the Johannesburg congregation. After the Afrikaner Rebellion Johanna helped organize the women's march as well as the Woman's National Party, but she withdrew after internal quarrels. She was interested in women's rights but never became an active feminist. The death of her mother in 1916 was for her traumatic and she sincerely believed that she saw visions which she explained in her book Millennium. While she desperately clung to her mother's home Harmony where she lived for a few years, she awaited the second coming of Christ. She also became involved in theosophy and naturopathy and wrote a book on the grape cure. In 1923 the Brandts moved to Vereeniging. Johanna subsequently undertook long tours on her own to publicize her cures, including a visit lasting 18 months to Europe and the USA. In 1930 the Brandts moved to a smallholding near Johannesburg where Johanna established a sanatorium. She also became involved in the New Age movement. Johanna and Brandt had seven children of their own and adopted another one. He retired in 1939 but died soon afterwards in a freak accident. Johanna subsequently withdrew from public life and settled in Cape Town, where she continued writing. She died in 1964 at the age of 88. / Johanna Brandt neé Van Warmelo het tydens die Anglo-Boereoorlog in Pretoria gewoon toe sy as verpleegster in hospitale en later in die Irene-konsentrasiekamp asook as Boerespioen by die stryd betrokke geraak het. Kort na die oorlog is sy in Nederland met ds. L.E. Brandt getroud. Hulle het in 1903 na Suid-Afrika gekom waar Brandt predikant in die Soutpansberggemeente van die Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk geword het, terwyl Johanna 'n spinskool gestig en by die SAVF betrokke was. Die Brandts het in 1908 na die Johannesburg-gemeente verhuis. Na die Afrikanerrebellie was Johanna betrokke by die Vroue-optog (1915) asook by die Vrouwe Nationale Party, maar na interne twis het sy haar onttrek. Sy was 'n voorstander van vroueregte maar nooit 'n aktiewe feminis nie. Die dood van Johanna se moeder in 1916 was vir haar traumaties en sy het geglo dat sy visioene gesien het waaroor sy die boek Millennium geskryf het. Haar trauma is verhoog deur haar onvermoë om die woonhuis Harmony, waar sy 'n paar jaar gaan woon het terwyl sy op die wederkoms van Christus gewag het, te behou. Sy het voorts by teosofie en natuurgeneeskunde betrokke geraak en 'n boek oor die druiwekuur geskryf. In 1923 het die Brandts na Vereeniging verhuis. Johanna het daarna op haar eie lang reise onderneem om haar kure te propageer en was onder meer vir 18 maande in Europa en die VSA. In 1930 het die Brandts na Johannesburg verhuis waar Johanna 'n sanatorium opgerig het. Sy was ook by die Nuwe Era-beweging betrokke Johanna en Brandt het sewe eie kinders gehad en een aangeneem. Hy is in 1939 kort na sy aftrede as gevolg van 'n fratsongeluk oorlede, waarna sy haar aan die openbare lewe onttrek het. Sy het haar in Kaapstad gevestig en steeds geskryf. Sy is in 1964 op 88-jarige leeftyd oorlede. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Historical and Heritage Studies / DPhil / Unrestricted