On the surface, Dennis Lehane’s novel Mystic River appears quite fascinated and occupied with macho ideals and ideas of heroism, vengeance, vigilantism, violence, and blind loyalty. The novel might even be said to paint a picture of a world ultimately ruled and controlled by men, who are expected to set the terms and encouraged to take charge. This points to an overt message stating that attributes such as strength, cold practicality, efficiency, action, decisiveness, and rationality – all stereo-typically masculine values – ultimately pay off and are rewarded. However, such an initial analysis may be meaningfully countered, overturned, and distrusted. Making use of feminist deconstruction, this essay argues that Mystic River’s superficial praise of stereotypical gender ideals is in fact undermined by tensions and contradictions beneath the surface of the text. This undermining in turn serves to criticize binary hierarchies at the very core of patriarchal ideology.

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Thesis advisor: Patrick H. Byrne / This dissertation assesses the relevance and significance of Lonergan’s work to feminist philosophy. In particular, this work examines the debate between several contemporary feminist philosophers regarding the question of the relation between sex and gender, as well as their critiques of the Western metaphysical tradition. Ultimately, the trajectory of the work argues that Lonergan’s philosophy, in particular his re-envisioning of the meaning of what it is to do metaphysics, provides a unique and compelling response to the critiques made by feminist philosophers, despite the appearance of overt sexism in his writing. In fact, Lonergan’s approach clarifies the relevance of metaphysical thinking to feminist philosophical analysis. The first chapter examines likely feminist criticisms of Lonergan’s philosophy, as well as points of commonality, particularly between Lonergan’s cognitional theory and various feminist epistemologies. In particular, this chapter undertakes an analysis of Lonergan’s notion of “the pure desire to know” which he claims is a primordial, normative human response to our experience of the universe of being. Chapter Two focuses on the feminist debate regarding the “sex/gender” distinction. This chapter examines the analyses of sex and gender by four prominent feminist philosophers, Luce Irigaray, Elizabeth Grosz, Moira Gatens, and Judith Butler, and their critiques of the Western metaphysical tradition. Chapter Three explicates Lonergan’s cognitional theory, as well as his analysis of four patterns of experience – the biological, aesthetic, intellectual and dramatic. In addition, the notion of “neural demands” developed by Lonergan is discussed, as well as the connection between “neural demand functions” and patterns of experience. Chapter Four is dedicated to an exploration of the complexity of Lonergan’s approach to metaphysics. The chapter begins with Lonergan’s notion of being, and moves on to explore his notions of finality, emergent probability and objectivity. I turn next to a discussion of Lonergan’s revision of the traditional metaphysical vocabulary of potency, form, and act. This is followed by an examination of Lonergan’s understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and development, as well as dialectic. Chapter Five elaborates a dialectical exchange between Lonergan’s philosophy and the philosophy of Irigaray, Grosz, Butler, and Gatens. In addition, this chapter articulates Lonergan’s notion of anti-essentialism, and argues that his unmistakably clear rejection of essentialism supports the repudiation of the idea that human natures are fixed and determined by biological sex. In addition, Chapter Five explores the metaphysical and ethical significance of classical and statistical law, as well as the relationship between metaphysics and ethics as it pertains to feminist philosophy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: William Stanwood / The textual analysis of season four, episode one of Mad Men entitled “Public Relations” study the productions values in terms of feminist motifs. By using social codes developed by Leed-Hurwitz and Barthes’ five systems of meaning in semiotics, observations are made about the elements of the mise-en-scène in relation to the gender roles present in the narrative. If certain codes persist, it is assumed that these repetitive observations reflect the deliberate composition of the mise-en-scènce in order to reinforce feminist motifs. The results reveal that the production values in the mise-en-scène indeed reinforce feminist motifs in Mad Men, the most comprehensive motif being the male gender as the norm. The messages communicated by this motif include the idea that masculinity is defined by sex and that a women’s worth is defined by masculinity. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Communication Honors Program. / Discipline: Communication.

Margaret Atwood, in The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace, explores representations of gender and madness through her male as well as her female characters. Through the use of a psychological and postcolonial framework – specifically based on the works of Melanie Klein, Stephen Slemon and Helen Tiffin – Atwood’s representations come to signify the relationship between self and society in such a way as to show the connection between identity, power, powerless and the definition of madness in society. While many critics have explored Atwood’s representation of identity in relation to gender, an exploration of representations of gender in relation to madness has been mostly overlooked. Atwood explicitly links the concept of ‘powerlessness’ to madness; madness can be seen (by Foucault and other members of the antipsychiatric tradition) as being essentially constructed and controlled by the intellectual and cultural forces that operate within society, connecting one who is ‘powerless’ to one who is ‘mad’. As well as this relationship, the connection between postcolonial theory and psychology that suggests that Western psychology, specifically psychoanalysis, in its denial of the political influence on the psyche, denies the postcolonial subject the space in which to identify with his or her community. While Atwood’s novels show an interest in human curiosity, they also represent notions of control and power in a way that makes the reader appreciate the relationship between self and society and how this relationship is related to identity formation.

This thesis examines the performance art of Serbian artist Marina Abramović from 2010 to today following her emergence into mainstream media with the success of her performance The Artist Is Present (2010). This thesis investigates Abramović’s approach to performance and how the roles of artist and viewer change in face of increased fame, documentation, and age. The thesis argues that as Abramović ages, she is becoming increasingly preoccupied with her fame and with securing her legacy and that this concern is reflected by her increased documentation and self-promotion, as well as her interest in transitioning into the role of teacher rather than artist. This thesis ends with an optimistic look at the opening of The Marina Abramović Institute in late 2015 as a new type of institute in which Abramović's presence and legacy will be mediated not through the static and limited representation of photographs and relics but by the experiences and actions of the visitors themselves.

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

The thesis explores current debates ,around postfeminism and neoliberalism, and young women's articulations of femininity within the context of young women's excessive drinking practices. Alcohol plays a key ro le in UK culture today, and for young people, getting drunk is an accepted, expected and indeed normalised part of a night out in the current 'culture of intoxication'. It is also a space for enacting highly visible displays of gender, femininities and class, and one that represents an important 'space of attention' for exploring contemporary subjectivity. As such this space provides a productive source for carrying out in-depth analysis of how young women negotiate and manage 21st century femininities in the UK. Data is provided in the form of white working-class women's accounts of excessive drinking in various drinking venues within the county of Hampshire, England. Thirty-three women, aged between 18 and 24 years, took part in several phases of data collection, and these include individual interviews, friendship group discussions, and ethnographic methods. I employed a version of Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify key themes and discourses in the young women's talk, and note how young women use excessive alcohol for confidence within what has become a drinking culture of hyper-sexuality, where the emphasis is on the traditional male gaze, but also and possibly even more powerfully, the postfeminist female gaze. The young women draw on a number of discourses to construct drunkenness as a routine part of going out, and how the female gaze plays an important role in 'mirroring' and/or 'othering' women in terms of their feminine recognition. Furthermore, the women draw on postfeminist discourses to emphasise how painful and hard it is becoming a young female subject today.

This project details the ways in which the classic slasher films of the 1970s, and their post-9/11 remakes, are representative of the individual and complex world views out of which each set of films were borne. The remakes manipulate gender roles including those of the Final Girl and the mother; genre conventions, including increases in domestic melodrama and pathos; production models, including the use of star actors, directors, and producers; sexuality and presentation of the sexualized female body; and race, especially in fine differences between white and non-white characters. In doing so, the post-9/11 films reveal a conservative cultural climate that strives to show recovery of the nuclear family unit after trauma, unlike the originals which are more nihilistic in tone and portray families as either absent or deeply flawed and unrecoverable.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / In much feminist literature, women’s spaces are analysed as constructive and supportive sites that may offer respite from patriarchy. However, women’s spaces are not inherently emancipatory. Through the socio-spatial dispersal of patriarchal power, places and spaces varying in scale – nations, cities, rural towns, private-public places and the home – can construct women who further the interests of men. Specifically, homosocial spaces, spaces where women interact with other women, can produce femininities that oppress other women by actively advancing patriarchal concerns. The selected primary texts consider spaces in regionally diverse but socially similar African contexts: Sefi Atta’s Swallow (2011) and Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (2010) are set in Nigeria, Miral al-Tahawy’s The Tent (1998) is set in Egypt, while Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley (2010) is set in both Egypt and Sudan. I use the selected novels as cartographies for socio-geographical inquiry to establish how space and place construct patriarchal women. Literary spaces and places are studied from largest to smallest scale: The analysis of national spaces in the novels is followed by a study of urban and rural spaces, followed by private-public places, domestic place and, finally, at a micro-scale, the body-as-place. The analyses of these literary spaces will reveal the mechanisms by which patriarchal women are spatially produced, and may use space to oppress other women.