Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-225). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-130). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ71576.

Over the past few years, incidents of gender-based violence on Canadian university campuses have gained public attention. In 2013 rape chants occurred during frosh week at two universities – UBC and Saint Mary’s. In March 2014 the University of Ottawa’s hockey and coaching staff was suspended after the sexual assault of a woman was reported in Thunder Bay where the team was playing an out-of-town game. Later in 2014, the misogynistic Facebook posts by Dalhousie dentistry students came to the public’s attention. A number of sexual assaults have also taken place on the University of Saskatchewan campus, including high profile cases in 2003 and 2012. The current project takes a step back to explore two research questions. First, how did women’s experiences at the University of Saskatchewan campus shape the institutional discourse and policies and procedures on sexual assault? Second, what were the “ruling relations” that affected the chain of actions leading to the development of sexual assault policies? In order to answer the two research questions, institutional ethnography, augmented by interpretive historical sociology, were utilized. Archival documents from the University of Saskatchewan Archives and Special Collections were gathered and six semi-structured interviews were conducted. Double standards, sexism, limited child care, sexual harassment and sexual assault were just a few issues that female students, faculty, and staff were concerned with at the University of Saskatchewan. There were a number of groups on campus during the time frame under investigation such as the Pente Kai Deka, the Women’s Directorate, and the Help Centre. However, the thesis focuses mainly on the President’s Committee on the Status of Women (PCSW), the President’s Advisory Committee on the Status of Women (PACSW), and the Sexual Harassment Office (SH Office). In 1990 the PACSW was formally created. The main iii goal of the PACSW was to create the Reinventing Our Legacy (ROL) report, which was based on submissions received from all groups on campus. Through the submissions the PACSW derived nine recommendations to address sexual/gender harassment at the University of Saskatchewan. The six interviewees involved with the PACSW described the barriers experienced both within and outside the Committee. As well, the interviewees felt the ROL report did not have the expected impact on the University of Saskatchewan campus. Incidents of sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault are still occurring at the University of Saskatchewan. Based on information received from the women of the PACSW interviewed for this research, the archival data collected, and other research involvement regarding campus sexual assault, the thesis presents five recommendations for the University of Saskatchewan: a safe space, professional staff, education, policy and procedures, and resources.

College choice is often described as a three-stage developmental process where students progress through the following phases: predisposition, search and choice (Cabrera & La Nasa, 2000; Hossler & Gallagher, 1987). Existing research, however, suggests this model does not account for all aspects of Latina/os’ college choice experience (Hurtado, Kurotsuchi, Briggs, & Rhee, 1996; Perna, 2000), warranting further investigation. As such, in-depth phenomenological interviews (Seidman, 2006) were conducted with 20 Mexican American high school seniors from the South Texas Border, an area with postsecondary attainment rates below the state and national average (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008f), to gain a deeper understanding of their college choice experience. Guided by an integrated social capital and Chicana feminist conceptual framework, this study sought to uncover how the intersectionality of students’ social identities shaped their college choice process. Specifically, this study explored how students’ identities influenced their college aspirations and their access to college information, support and assistance via their social networks. Findings revealed that students negotiated among several social identities (generational college status, sibling identity, academic identity, class identity, racial/ethnic identity, co-curricular identity, regional identity) which influenced the development of their college aspirations and their ability to access college knowledge and support from their social networks in both positive and negative ways within the four main spaces (cultural/familial space, community space, school space, and cyberspace) they occupied on a daily basis. Students’ narratives further indicated that the individuals or entities in their social networks that were influential and/or considered sources of college knowledge and support included immediate and extended family members, various community members such as neighbors or members of students’ religious congregations, school personnel (counselors, teachers, co-curricular sponsors), higher education representatives and institutions, peers, and various college oriented websites found on the Internet. Students also noted, however, various challenges in navigating their college choice process that centered around: 1) parents’ limited college knowledge, 2) attending a local/regional institution or one outside the region, 3) combating negative educational stereotypes of Mexican Americans in general and those in the South Texas Border in particular, and 4) accessing adequate college information and assistance at school. / text

In an analysis of literary and historical documents from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, Gender, Genre, and the Eroticization of Violence in Early Modern English Literature examines depictions of love, beauty, and desire and identifies within these discourses a rhetoric of violence. It explores how eroticized violence can be deployed to privilege male speakers and silence female voices. It also reveals, by pairing female- and male-authored works that make specific claims to represent gendered experience that early modern writers both recognized the mechanisms of violent representation as literary conventions and realized they could be deployed, exploited, resisted, fashioned to new ends. By integrating feminist psychoanalytic, film and architectural theories with literary analysis, this study demonstrates how spatial topographies in literary works can function as stimuli that provoke desire to turn violent. Gender, Genre, and the Eroticization of Violence ultimately identifies how this body of literature constructs and maintains genders and points to violence as a structural principle, bound by the hydraulics of subjectivity and cultural anxieties about gender, class, and literary production. Finally, this study identifies the residue of early modern ideas about desire and violence in the materials of our modern culture.

The increasing psychologisation of domestic violence in the past 25 years is an example of what Rose (1985) terms the 'psychological-complex'. The psy-complex rests on a particular understanding of the subject of psychology. The subject is the unitary, rational and psychological being. This understanding of subjectivity is gendered as it identifies women as responsible for the transferal of the psy-complex to the family. The psy-complex is analysed as a form of power resting on this gendered subjectivity. It is also analysed as a form of power that has escaped feminist scrutiny due to the feminist assumptions. that power is repressive and prohibitive. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

This thesis is about the possibility of addressing power disparities in divorce mediation in order to maximize the benefits that this alternative practice offers. It describes the development of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in general and of divorce mediation in particular, primarily through a feminist lens. In doing so it discusses the promise that feminist proponents saw in mediation initially, and then proceeds to describe the breaking of the promise that developed into some of the harshest critique of this process. The thesis explores a critical element of this critique, namely the problematic nature of utilizing mediation in the face of existing power imbalances generally, and in the context of divorce specifically. In order to facilitate the address of incongruities of power, it delves into an examination of the concept of power from several angles. To enhance and deepen the analysis of this concept, it describes Foucault's definitions and understanding of the term, and applies these towards advancing the discussion regarding the possibility of addressing existing inequality in power between parties to a dispute. Finally, it offers some tools that can be used in addressing power disparities in order to ameliorate the mediation process and its results. To this end it describes the ethical guidelines that can be utilized, comprised of internal tools to address power imbalances through mediation styles, as well as external ethical guidelines inherent to the process. Additionally, it suggests legal boundaries that may be utilized to offset possible power discrepancies. It ends with a hopeful message of the possibility of transformation in the face of conflict, thereby entertaining the prospects of a promising future for this alternative to resolving disputes.

It has become commonplace within feminist theory to claim that women's lives are constructed by multiple, intersecting systems of oppression. In this thesis, l challenge the consensus that oppression is aptly captured by the theoretical model of "intersectionality." While intersectionality originates in Black feminist thought as a purposive intervention into US antidiscrimination law, it has been detached from that context and harnessed to different representational aims. For instance, it is often asserted that intersectionality enables a representational politics that overcomes legacies of exclusion within hegemonic Anglo-American feminism. largue that intersectionality reinscribes the political exclusion of racialized women as a feature of their embodied identities. That is, it locates the failure of political representation in the "complex" identities of "intersectional" subjects, who are constructed as unrepresentable in terms of "race" or "gender" alone. Further, largue that intersectionality fails to supplant race- and class-privileged women as the normative subjects of feminist theory and politics. [...] / Dans la théorie féministe, l'énoncé selon lequel la vie des femmes est structurée par de multiples systèmes d'oppression qui se croisent est devenu un lieu commun. La présente thèse conteste l'accord général que le modèle théorique connu comme « l'intersectionalité » explique adéquatement l'oppression. Alors que l'intersectionalité a ses origines dans le féminisme noir comme intervention spécifique dans la loi antidiscriminatoire des États-Unis, elle a depuis été arrachée à ce contexte et consacrée à d'autres buts. Par exemple, on affirme souvent que l'intersectionalité permettrait une politique de représentation qui surmonte l'héritage d'exclusion du féminisme hégémonique anglo-américain. Je soutiens que l'intersectionalité réinscrit l'exclusion politique des femmes racialisées, cette fois comme caractéristique de leurs identités incarnés.[...]

The central problem addressed in this thesis has two parts. First, how can an educator respect the developing autonomy of a student's rational capacities while nurturing'the development of particular moral sensibilities and a particular moral perspective? Second, if a moral educator challenges a group of students to consider an alternative moral position, how can she or he be justified in presenting the new perspective as superior to the old one? My argument, in summary, is that an ideal of strong objectivity, as it is conceived by Sandra Harding in the context of feminist standpoint theory, works as a set of standards against which to evaluate the adequacy of one's moral perspective, and it offers a valuable means for comparing this perspective to others. Strong objectivity is an ideal which employs a set of standards including respect, reflexivity, and critical evaluation of social situations to challenge inquirers to maximise their objectivity. They do this through recognising and testing not only the content of their knowledge claims but also the purpose these claims play in the development of research programs, A commitment to strong objectivity entails attempting to understand the partiality of one's own perspective and recognising how that partiality distorts one's perception. The process of learning from others' perspectives is central to revising and enriching one's own perspective, and this revision and enrichment is an . ongoing responsibility for any teacher. Through the application of strong objectivity to moral theory building, a moral educator can be justified in believing that her or his own moral perspective is the most adequate one available. If a moral educator understands Harding's conception of strong objectivity, and embraces it as an ideal, the result will be a more justly equitable learning environment and a more complete understanding of the moral perspective which is being developed within the classroom. These are fundamental to the legitimacy of the work of a moral educator.

Friendship matters. Practical support, caring, moral guidance, enjoyment, improved health and greater life expectancy are but a few of its benefits. Despite living in a stigmatizing social environment where isolation is common among disabled youth, some disabled teens establish strong friendships. A nuanced understanding of these meaningful friendships from the perspective of disabled teens was constructed through this qualitative study. Teens aged 15 to 20 who self-identified as experiencing stigma due to disability were recruited from urban, suburban and rural areas of Nova Scotia, Canada. Each teen was involved in a friendship of at least six months’ duration and had a close friend (with or without a disability) who was also willing to participate. Seven boys and seven girls, all but one of whom were disabled teens, took part in the study. These seven sets of friends engaged in research interviews and participant observation sessions. Nine adults who witnessed the friendships develop over time were also interviewed. Preliminary coding was completed using Atlas.ti. This was followed by a deeper, critical approach to analysis which generated three inter-connected themes. The first theme outlines how stigma disrupts the friendships of disabled youth though a range of processes (labeling, stereotyping, status loss, separation) that arise from and contribute to ableism – discrimination against disabled people. The second theme, finding a balance between adult support and surveillance, emphasizes the crucial role adults play in facilitating the friendships of disabled youth. The final theme, disrupting oppression to create enduring friendship, highlights the strategies used by these disabled teens to make and keep friends in a stigmatizing society. Strategies most often used that appeared to be effective for participants were disrupting norms about friendship, coming out as disabled, connecting through stigma, and choosing self-exclusion. Two strategies – horizontal hostility and passing as nondisabled – were potentially harmful to disabled youth and in some ways limited friendship opportunities. Ideas to counter the harmful effects of ableism while creating lasting friendships are addressed to disabled teens, to their families, to allies in the education system, and to the broader community.