In 2008 Ciudad Juarez erupted in a violent drug war. The Sinaloa Cartel and Juarez Cartel were in a battle for the lucrative drug route used to smuggle drugs into the United States, while President Felipe Calderon was waging his own war against all the drug cartels. During the height of the violence women journalists emerged on the front lines to tell the stories of Juarez. They risked their lives and dared to tell a story that others refused to. This mixed-method study examines frames used most often in the coverage of the drug war in Ciudad Juarez from 2008-2010. It examines The New York Times, the El Paso Times, and El Norte and also examines articles by the sex of the reporter. It also used in-depth interviews of both Mexican and American woman journalists who covered the drug war in Juarez to examine which themes developed about the reporter’s experiences in covering the drug war.

This interdisciplinary, archetypal study considers the numerous adaptation processes and techniques involved in the transposition of the fairy tale from one medium to another, exploring post-2000 adult adaptations and appropriations of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ across a variety of high-art and popular media, such as advertising, video gaming, and fine art, with a focus on literature and film. As well as examining explicit re-tellings of the tale such as Catherine Hardwicke’s 'Red Riding Hood' (2011), more implicit and intertextual references are discussed, with the intention of acknowledging the pervasive, and at times, unconscious nature of the adaptation process. This can be seen in films like 'The Village' (2004), 'Hard Candy' (2005) and the television series 'Merlin' (2008 - ). As a means of analysing the material I adopt a feminist-Jungian theoretical model which enables the consideration of the mythological and ideological concepts inherent to the works. Specifically, this establishes how Red Riding Hood can be understood as a shifting archetype when compared to her fairy tale sisters such as Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty et al, thus allowing for so many diverse portrayals of her character: as the child, the innocent victim, the femme-fatale, and the monstrous feminine. The rationale behind the thesis is threefold; firstly, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ is typically understood as a cautionary tale, rather than a female quest narrative, therefore, I will explore how the tale is often used as a vehicle for post/feminist issues and/or gender anxieties, providing a commentary on the construction and perception of girls’ and women’s roles in contemporary Western society. Secondly, the work creates a space for the acknowledgement and discussion of unconscious appropriation which has so far remained on the margins of adaptation studies. And thirdly, to establish fairy tales, using ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ as an example, as the ultimate intertext(s), demonstrating how characters, themes and plots are continually (re)appropriated.

While much research has established that gender has undesirable effects, and some has even concluded that subjective and social life would be preferable without it, there has been limited extension of these claims to the corollary of exploring how it might be eradicated and what could replace it. This thesis considers if and how this could be done. It provides a practicable elaboration of an alternative way of being to that of sex/gender difference by developing theory that argues that the eradication of sexual difference is possible and desirable, and presenting various practices that demonstrate this. Drawing on gender theory and feminist science, the durability of gender is traced back to its anterior spectre of an assumed stable and immutable sex, and specifically compulsory sexual difference. Also, drawing on philosophy and empirical sociological studies, it argues that this is not ontologically tied to the nature of sexual difference, but to socially and intersubjectively constituted and enacted factors, and therefore that social life without sexual difference is an ontological possibility and other ways of being and relating are possible. The normative argument that the existence of sexual difference is undesirable is made by appealing to an ideal of “autonomy,” which sexual difference serves to limit. Simone de Beauvoir’s ethical philosophy is drawn on to develop an ontological ethics that posits freedom or autonomy as a collective situated “doing” which sexual difference limits by presenting oppositional antagonism as universal. A more preferable (and practically possible) situated way of “doing” that maximises “autonomy” would be that of reciprocity. In elaborating the principle of reciprocity as a replacement for sexual difference and considering its practicability, it is evaluated in terms of the normative precepts that the thesis takes off from in order to consider its robustness and to avoid accidentally replicating the restriction on, or “violence” towards autonomy that it is intended to replace. Potential antinomies in realising such an ethic, specifically in “impure” real-world contexts are considered. Also, specific features to ensure and maintain reciprocity are developed, by treating the “androgyny” that I argue is inherent to reciprocity as a transcendence, and not combination or collapse, of the oppositional nature of sexual difference. These constitute a specific way of relating to others that is both specific to them individually and also encompasses the universal ethic of reciprocity. In making this ethic practicable, the thesis considers some possible means or strategies through which a reciprocal (in the specific sense developed) ethic could be fostered so that subjects could understand themselves and others without presumptions of sexual difference. It offers some illustrations of ways of perceiving and treating the self and others (and learning how to do so) that are reciprocal, drawing on real-world queer, anarchist and pedagogical practices that are compatible with the ontological, normative and practical precepts of the ethic of reciprocity. It also considers what the consequences for the eradication of sexual difference might be for “sexuality” and desire. My distinctive contribution to knowledge lies in taking critical, deconstructive theoretical work around gender that is often construed as abstract and impracticable, and attempting to render it socially relevant and utilisable, without undermining its antiuniversalising impulses. I have done this by teasing out the practical implications of such theoretical insights and by drawing on non-traditional sources of ideas / theory. Knitting divergent theories together in an original way, I have contributed to making such theories useful for social change by crafting what I argue is a thorough workable re-constructive ethic that is compatible with the impulses of deconstruction.

We have gathered the following pages to archive our time here in Richmond, Virginia. We have been here for two years, growing slowly, moving when needed to new anchorholds to avoid detection or arrest. We scrutinize the urban environment like modern archeologists. We collect stories and speculate about new uses of old things. It is imperative to be resourceful here, and we do so out of necessity but also in the spirit of practice. These pages were made en route, each an exploration of the tools at hand when on the move. The method of creation is just as important as the creation as the story itself. The ancients invented stories about the constellations in order to track their routes across the earth. A cluster of stars exists called the seven sisters. Only six are visible. According to myth, the sisters leave to look for the seventh sister and disappear below the horizon for a month. Their return to the sky signals the end of the planting season. The story becomes allegory, told to educate stargazers about the growing cycle. Like those sisters, we come and go. We tell stories to teach. We tell stories survive.

The images included in my thesis work reflect my experience growing up with military propaganda—pictures of cheerful white women in pearls as part of my rural middle American landscape. I do not name the oppressor because I am not here to pick at the thorns, but to get to the root of the oppression. These are some of the servicewomen I’ve met. Their stories parallel but cannot encompass the private experiences of all service women. I am grateful for their generosity; without them there would be no pictures. The battle for equality is much older than Rosie the Riveter but we still ask the same questions we asked Joan of Arc in the 15th century: if she isn’t working miracles, what is she doing on the battlefield?

This thesis examines the ancestor figure in African American women writers’ neoslave narratives. Drawing on black feminist, critical race and whiteness studies and trauma theory, the thesis closely reads neo-slave narratives by Margaret Walker, Octavia Butler, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison and Phyllis Alesia Perry. The thesis aims to reconsider the ancestor figure by extending the definition of the ancestor as predecessor to include additional figurative and literal means used to invoke the ancestral past of enslavement. The thesis argues that the diverse ancestral figures in these novels demonstrate the prevailing effects of slavery on contemporary subjects, attest to the difficulties of historicising past oppressions and challenge post-racial discourses. Chapter 1 analyses Margaret Walker’s historical novel Jubilee (1966), identifying it as an important prerequisite for subsequent neo-slave narratives. The chapter aims to offer a new reading of the novel by situating it within a black feminist ideological framework. Taking into account the novel’s social and political context, the chapter suggests that the ancestral figures or elderly members of the slave community function as means of resistance, access to personal and collective history and contribute to the self-constitution of the protagonist. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Walker’s novel fulfils a politically engaged function of inscribing the black female subject into discussions on the legacy of slavery and drawing attention to the particularity of black women’s experiences. Chapter 2 examines Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1978), featuring a contemporary black woman’s return to the antebellum past and her discovery of a white slaveholding ancestor. The chapter introduces the term “displacement” to explore the transformative effects of shifting positionalities and destabilisation of contemporary frames of reference. The chapter suggests that the novel challenges idealised portrayals of a slave community and expresses scepticism regarding its own premise of fictionally reimagining slavery. With its inconclusive ending, Kindred ultimately illustrates how whiteness and dominant versions of history prevail in the seemingly progressive present. Chapter 3 discusses Gayl Jones’ Corregidora (1975) and its subversion of the matrilineal model of tradition by reading the maternal ancestor’s narrative as oppressive, limiting and psychologically burdening. The chapter introduces the term “ancestral subtext” in order to identify the ways in which ancestral narratives of enslavement serve as subtexts to the descendants’ lives and constrict their subjectivities. The chapter argues that the ancestral subtexts frame contemporary practices, inform the notion of selfhood and attest to the reproduction of past violence in the present. Chapter 4 deals with Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata (1998) exploring complex ancestral figures as survivors of the Middle Passage and their connection to Africa as an affective site of identity reclamation. The chapter identifies the role the quilt, the skill of quilting and their metaphorical potential as symbolic means of communicating ancestral trauma and conveying multivoiced “ancestral articulations”. The chapter suggests that the project of healing and recovering the self in relation to ancestral enslavement are premised on re-connecting with African cultural contexts and an intergenerational exchange of the culturally specific skill of quilting.

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This analysis explores the progression of my work over the past three years of study. My initial pursuits involved ideas that revolved around contemporary feminism, however, with time I expanded upon those ideas by exploring other subjects. I realized the connection in all of my work lies in the use of manipulated found imagery, and the desire to release this imagery from the confines of traditional pictorial space. With this discovery, I became free to utilize any manner of subjects, as the subject matter relied heavily on the finding and re-interpreting of these disparate images into the language of paint. Moreover, specific modes of thought, such as Feminism, were allowed to become single threads in a diverse, complex tapestry.

My interests lie in the intersection of the public and private, the corporate and personal, especially with regard to self-representation within cultural power structures. Utilizing video and web technologies, performance, and painting, I create imagined realms of fantasy, desire, obsession, and anxiety. Operating within, but not bound by, feminist discourse, my work explores the vehicles and effects by which both analog and digital technologies influence the relationship between the self and the object of desire (whether physical or virtual, interior or exterior to the body) and have produced both progressive and regressive offspring. By performing the role of both producer of cultural archetypes and the compulsive consumer of signs, m­y characters embody the representation(s) of their source but, through action and voice, invent a mutant surrogate who dictates its own agency.

In Tulpamancy Groom explores themes of gender, girlhood, and the grotesque in a collection of poems that confront our stereotypical assumptions about what it means to be feminine. Lyrical and disturbing, the poems in Tulpamancy use language in a highly associative manner to dismantle our preconceived notions about women, the muse, and the relationship between the two.