Thesis (M.F.A.) / Note: The author, Logan Ann (Lumm) Taylor, can be reached at logananntaylor@gmail.com. / The bombshell figure is nothing new— she has been a historical site of feminist discourse, both applauded and vilified for her position and influence within celebrity culture. In the post-feminist era in which we may now live, the bombshell has been reimagined in reaction to the ideologies of the post-feminist movement. She emphasizes the problematic aspects of this movement, but also finds agency and power within its confines. This study provides two examples of the modern day bombshell figure, Sofia Vergara and Angelina Jolie, and explores the facets of these women’s brand identity that further women’s advancement toward true equality as well as those facets that inhibit women’s ability to rise above objectification and limited perspectives of equality and feminist success. This study explores the complicated relationship between celebrities, their fans, and the societal constructs in which they operate, ultimately revealing two women who have updated previous models of femininity with an agency and empowered sensibility that could well be the future of feminist action and choice.

Feminist theory in International Relations is usually considered to be a homogenous approach within the field, critical of mainstream IR theory. There are, however, various strands of feminist IR, differing in their methodologies as well as their epistemological and ontological underpinnings. This is well visible in the ongoing discussions amongst these strands, an issue I try to emphasize throughout. In my thesis, I present various feminist re-interpretations of conventional theories of International Relations. After providing an overview of these different strands, I reflect on traditional political philosophy and re-conceptualize these concepts via a specifically feminist lens. By addressing the current accepted understandings of IR's core concepts - the state, its place in the international system, war, sovereignty, and IPE, I reconsider them from three different viewpoints, based on their stance towards positivist methodology, epistemology and ontology. With the help of notions presented by and typical of feminism, as is the public/private divide, I re-view the familiar concepts to then portray them from a different point of view. Throughout my thesis, I place emphasis on the gendered aspects of the customary schemes, and with the help of the method of deconstruction aim to bring to light less...

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This thesis examines the performance of affect in relation to gender identity across some of the major works of Willa Cather’s and John Steinbeck’s careers. Throughout this discussion, I contend that Steinbeck—an author not often thought of as projecting feminist concerns—indeed approximates the feminist themes of Cather in his creation of characters who embody nonnormative castes of gender identity, even if Cather does perhaps exceed Steinbeck’s feminist vision in her optimism for the potential of people of nonnormative gender identity to find peace, happiness, and acceptance in an often xenophobic early-twentieth-century America. Over the course of this thesis, I build on the work of affect theorists such as Sara Ahmed and Anu Koivunen by demonstrating the power of affect theory as a tool for understanding gender politics and gender identity.

This dissertation offers a new exploration of the relationship between geographic awareness and literary realism in Alice Munro’s depictions of female identity-formation. It demonstrates how Munro, the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, uses the discourse of place and positionality not just as a Canadian regionalist writer, but also as a writer implicitly concerned with the paradigms of intersectionality as advanced in Susan Stanford Friedman’s 1998 book Mappings and in the recent work of feminist geographers. These theories shed light on Munro’s efforts to represent her female protagonists’ individual and communal identities authentically. Following an introduction in which I explain how Munro’s cautious statements about feminism relate to these recent geopolitical theories, my chapters examine groupings of Munro’s stories through concepts associated with locational feminism. Chapter 2 compares Munro to one of her major influences, the American regionalist writer Willa Cather, through the concept of geopolitical space. Chapter 3 applies this concept more closely to Munro’s portrayals of female maturation in Lives of Girls and Women and The Moons of Jupiter, focusing on a thematic tension between belonging and alienation. Munro sees women’s dilemmas of identity as deeply connected to their sense of place and their definitions of their home places and positions. Chapter 4 examines how issues of place and space, especially regarding what Munro calls “home ground,” affect the construction of relational identity in the title story of Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and in several stories from the collection Runaway. Chapter 5 demonstrates how Munro employs the tropes of women’s mobility and travel -- usually seen as tools of empowerment -- to depict their unsettled lives, characterized by instability, insecurity and imbalance. Because these experiences have to do with multiple nodes of difference, Munro’s depictions of mobility as a mixed reality overlap with recent theories of transnational feminism. Chapter 6 deals with the question of narrative agency vis-à-vis locational identity and positionality in her collection, Who Do You Think You Are? In sum, the dissertation argues that Munro’s realistic focus on women’s lives and experiences, and her emphasis on strategic place-awareness rather than the goal of equality, does carry an inspiring message to her readers about the nature of empowerment in today’s world.

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Because of the speed and convenience of Twitter, it has become one of the most widely utilized platforms for breaking news and is often used to raise awareness of current social issues, political happenings, and social injustices. As more women use Twitter and other social media to embrace the feminist label online, an array of criticism has come to surface. A new movement, #WomenAgainstFeminism, has become popular with Twitter users who reject feminism ideals and the feminism label. Research has been done examining the presence of online feminism, “hashtag feminism,” and online activism in general. Currently, there is no research analyzing the online reaction to feminism, #WomenAgainstFeminism. The purpose of this study is to analyze tweets containing #WomenAgainstFeminism to identify the salient reasons for rejecting feminism, stereotypes associated with feminism, and characteristics associated with feminists. This study broadens the current literature that analyzes attitudes towards feminism, stereotypes of feminists, and feminist identification. This study also adds to the growing body of literature that appreciates the impact Twitter and other social media networks have on members of society and social movements. This study differs from previous research because it focuses on the common stereotypes and characteristics associated with feminism that are prevalent in a social media campaign created to refute feminism.

This study examined the way gender operates in relation to time within the food work spectrum discussed in 19 narratives. The 19 narratives came from individual open ended face-to-face interviews with self-defined healthy men who shop at healthy food stores. This study's examination of how gender operates in the narratives was based on how the men constructed their experiences with women and work in relation to time through the food work spectrum. Women mentioned in the sampled narratives taught the men how to shop and eat in a healthy manner but women still did the cooking. Work wise the findings split the men into two groups, the majority were the men who did not eat at work and the minority were the ones who did. Both of these sets of findings illuminate that how the men constructed their experiences of the food work spectrum depended on gendered relations of power.

The purpose of this paper is to research in which way feminist messages are incorporated and communicated through femvertisements from the 1970’s, 1990’s and 2010’s. In doing so our goal is to achieve an elaborated understanding of how feminism is used in advertisements as well as how these messages have changed over time. A theoretical framework consisting of feminist theory, gender theory, discourse theory and representation theory was applied. The study was conducted through a multimodal critical discourse analysis where nine advertisement pictures, three from each decade, were analysed. The purpose of the analysis was to identify the symbols and visual elements in the advertisements which carry meaning and relate to feminist discourses. The result of the study found that the femvertisements from the 1970’s, 1990’s and 2010’s were shaped by the feminist and social context in which they were produced. Advertisements from the 1970 ‘s related to the interests and goals of the first wave feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement. Advertisements from the 1990’s related to postfeminist discourses regarding sexual liberation and women's perception of self worth and empowerment. Whereas advertisements from the 2010’s incorporated broader messages regarding female empowerment and support that align with the purpose and definition of “femvertising”. Furthermore, discourses regarding girls participation and engagement in sports were identified in advertisements from the 1990’s and 2010’s. Symbols associated with traditionally masculine domains were found in advertisements from all decades in use of supporting women's participation in masculine areas. Contrasting or contradicting messages were also identified in advertisements from all decades which led to uncertainty about the dominating discourse in the picture. In conclusion, the most prominent change over time was the nature of the feminist messages in relation to the feminist and social context in which they were produced. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka på vilket sätt feministiska budskap inkorporeras och kommuniceras genom femvertisements från 1970-talet, 1990-talet och 2010-talet. Genom detta strävar vi efter att nå en fördjupad förståelse för hur feminism används i reklam samt hur dessa budskap har förändrats över tid. En teoretisk ram bestående av feministisk teori, genusteori, diskursteori och representationsteori tillämpades. Studien genomfördes genom en multimodal kritisk diskursanalys där nio reklambilder, tre från varje årtionde, analyserades. Syftet med analysen var att identifiera de symboler och visuella element i reklamerna som skapar mening och relaterar till feministiska diskurser. Resultatet av studien visade att femvertisements från 1970-talet, 1990-talet och 2010-talet formades av den feministiska och sociala kontext de producerades i. Reklam från 1970-talet kopplades till intressen och mål hos den första vågens feminism och Women's Liberation-rörelsen. Reklam från 1990-talet kopplades till postfeministiska diskurser om sexuell frigörelse och kvinnors uppfattning av självvärde och styrka. Vidare inkluderade reklam från 2010-talet bredare budskap om kvinnlig styrka och stöd som överensstämmer med syftet och definitionen av "femvertising". Dessutom identifierades diskurser om flickors deltagande och engagemang inom idrott i reklam från 1990-talet och 2010-talet. Symboler associerade med traditionellt maskulina domäner hittades i reklam från alla decennier som stöd för kvinnors deltagande inom maskulina områden. Kontrasterande och motstridiga budskap identifierades också i reklam från alla decennier, vilket ledde till osäkerhet kring den dominerande diskursen i bilden. Sammanfattningsvis var den mest framträdande förändringen över tid karaktären av de feministiska budskapen i relation till den feministiska och sociala kontext de producerades i.

Down Among the Women (1972), Female Friends (1974), and Remember Me (1976), three of Fay Weldon’s early novels, share similar themes, narrative voices, and stylistic elements. Although the novels explore different aspects of women’s lives, the similarities call for a study of Weldon’s early techniques and contribution to twentieth-century literature. I study Weldon’s early works to reveal her belief that feminism evolved through small, individual changes rather than general societal upheaval. I center my study on motherhood and wifehood in Down Among the Women, friendship in Female Friends, and motherhood in Remember Me. In each novel, women make changes in these specific areas of their lives, and through these changes, Weldon rewrites traditional women as newly defined feminists. My readings of each novel support my contention that although the women are not reformed in every facet of their lives, Weldon defines them as feminists because they have actively redefined at least one firmly rooted feminine role to benefit themselves.