The focus of this dissertation is a social and cultural theoretical analysis of the empirical data regarding the prison abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by American forces. I provide the following: an examination of the photographs of abuse that were leaked to the press in the fall of 2003; an analysis of both Lynndie England’s and Sabrina Harman’s courts-martial (two of the “rotten apples”); a discussion of the body associated with punishment and torture, and also as marked in ways of identification; and an assessment of additional representations regarding prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. Throughout this analysis, I use gender as a lens to understand Abu Ghraib and the subsequent courts-martial. It is important to note that I gained access to and was intimately involved as a graduate researcher for Dr. Stjepan G. Mestrovic, an expert for the defense, and experienced the events of the trials themselves, first-hand and during closed counsel and open session. The empirical data provided is drawn primarily from first-hand qualitative research that involved participant-observation of two trials, interaction with soldiers and officers, and analysis of both documents pertaining to the trial as well as the photographs of abuse themselves, among other things. I incorporate cultural studies, feminist and sociological theory (modern and postmodern), and feminist philosophy so as to provide a theoretical analysis of the abuse at Abu Ghraib and the subsequent courts-martial focused on gender and sexuality. The result of this dissertation is a social and cultural theoretical analysis of the empirical data regarding the prison abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by American forces, where women, gender, and sexuality are shown to be important criteria for examination. Specifically, the results of this project highlight areas that current analyses of the abuse at Abu Ghraib have left out: how women fit into American military politics, how gender functions as power within the military, how gender is socially constructed in the military in terms of heterosexuality, and how both gender and sexuality are used as weapons by the American military. This kind of examination is useful in future policy considerations for the military and for detainee treatment, where analyses of women, gender, sexuality, and power have been so far neglected in any serious way, and even by sociologists Phillip Zimbardo and the application of his Stanford Prison Study to the events of Abu Ghraib.

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-50).

The purpose of this work is to explore the gendered cultural meanings surrounding female soldier representations found in official print and online military recruiting materials during Global War on Terror (GWOT) period (2001-2014). Using recruitment advertisements found in three popular women’s magazines and on the official Instagram accounts of the U.S. military, three research questions are addressed: 1) What visual and/or textual codes found in female soldier representations are used to construct gendered cultural meanings around women in the military?; 2) How do print and online recruiting materials encourage audiences to co-construct, produce, and distribute these gendered cultural meanings?; and 3) What is the significance of these gendered cultural meanings and audience interactivity/participation in female soldier representations during the GWOT era? A visual analysis of the data was performed using critical media guidelines provided by Luke & Iyer (2011) and Kellner (2015, 2013). The findings of this study suggest that there continue to be underlying, embedded notions of essentialized femininity found in contemporary representations of female soldiers. These findings and military recruiting materials are discussed in relation to broader public discourse around female soldiers and civilian women in society, particularly within important cultural moments of rising fourth-wave feminism and changing patterns of media consumption. In addition, a discussion around the growing need to conceptualize and study audiences as hybridized producers/consumers and as active interpreters of media messages in the digital age is provided. In doing so, this work seeks to understand and recognize the incredible power mass media (particularly social media) audiences have in constructing popular representations of all women. Finally, important implications related to the overwhelming lack of critical gender, media, and military studies in American school-contexts, key sites for military recruiters, are discussed. / text

Through an analysis of selected representative poems from Ingrid de Kok’s Familiar Ground, this article examines the role played by feminist poetry in the quest to address gender-related issues as well as to contribute constructively to South Africa’s liberation from patriarchal apartheid. The article further argues that feminist writers desire to (re)negotiate the space within which they can (re)construct and articulate their identities as women and mothers, and that in such a context the politics of identity cannot be detached from other aspects within the struggle for socio-political and economic emancipation. Thus characteristics of apartheid oppression are contrasted with the patriarchal domination opposed by feminist writers.

Adult education programmes in East Africa have historically combined literacy training with a range of efforts to shape the way African women expressed their femininity and sexuality. Early missionaries believed that literacy together with Victorian ideals of feminine propriety, housewifery and mothering would engender 'civilisation' in African women. Today, assisting women to undergo a process of self-realisation is more likely an aim of literacy programmes and reported impacts are more readily attributed to the use of participatory methods than to literacy learning. My first aim is to show that participatory approaches to adult learning are vulnerable to prescriptive manipUlations in the way conventional literacy programmes have long been. This ethnographic study focuses on two NGO literacy programmes in Uganda, one urban, one rural; to explore how women learners construct knowledge during the learning process; how they and others around them perceive this effort and its outcomes, and how this tallies with the expectations development practitioners invest in adult education. Women's ambitions are analysed both with regard to those themes of study that have been popular since colonial times (i.e. health and hygiene) and with regard to more recent concerns for women's empowerment (gender equality in the domestic and public domain). Regardless of their own intentions, programme makers are found to exercise only limited influence over the outcomes of literacy programmes. My second objective is then to illustrate how women learners and facilitators selectively interpret and internalise learning themes and use the messages received or construed to advance their own position in their social contexts. To this end women may prize externally visible health and hygiene practices as symbols of their own conversion to modem ways of living, showing less interest in benefits to physical well-being that may ensue. The desire to be recognised as a 'proper' woman also takes priority over attempts to overtly challenge prevailing norms of gender relations, not because of women's conservatism, but on the contrary, because gender relations already are subject to much overt and covert tension outside of the classes. In conclusion, the aspirations women develop from within their cultural context are seen to mould literacy programmes and their outcomes more significantly than the degree to which participatory methods are followed.

The purpose of this study was to examine instructor-student interactions in the College Algebra classroom for gender bias. Three measuring instruments were constructed to answer five research questions. These instruments included a Researcher Observation Code Sheet, an Instructor Questionnaire, and a Student Questionnaire. One of the research questions required triangulation of all three perspectives for the interactions.Participants included four mathematics instructors, 54 female students and 45 male students. Eighty-one students filled out the Student Questionnaire. The researcher coded 764 interactions.Findings showed most interactions involved instructors posing open questions to the class. Students mostly called out answers. Lower-level questions were asked the most by instructors.Male and female students responded almost equally to male and female instructor's questions. Male students received more positive responses from female instructors and females received more negative responses from male instructors. More students with male instructors were silent in class. Female students interacted more in male taught classes and female students communicated more via questions/comments in female-taught classes.Students perceived instructors called on them by name, pointing, or eye contact. Although male students thought they had more interactions than females, male students in male-taught classes thought females had more interactions with instructors. Female instructors tended to ignore students more than male instructors. More male students thought they were ignored than females. Female students thought instructors responded to them more positively than male students did. Students also thought that male and female students interacted with questions/comments equally regardless of instructor sex. Furthermore, students reported that instructor sex did not matter.Instructors reported their interactions with students as equitable, they knew all or most of the students' names, and treated both sexes equally when responding to them. Male instructors thought female students participated more, whereas female instructors thought males did. Most instructors classified their classroom climate as warm, friendly, or laid back.Triangulation of the three different perceptions showed that in most instances, instructor-student interactions were not perceived the same. However, all three were in agreement on classroom climate.

This paper outlines interview based, qualitative research that was conducted with six male youth who were previously students in my Social Studies 11 class. Within two separate, semi-structured interviews, participants were asked to discuss student resistance to anti oppressive pedagogy that focused on gender, and their understanding of masculinities. The initial purpose of this research was to find a relationship, if any, between acts of student resistance and the construction of masculinities. Participant perceptions of masculinities evolved as the dominant theme within the interviews. These discussions revealed that student understandings of masculinity were often entrenched in hegemonic language, yet contradictions were exposed between their rote definitions and personal narratives. Further, the use of media as a discourse became a venue for complicating essentialist understandings of masculinity, and for exposing multiple, fluid, versions of masculinities. Within these discussions of multiplicity, race and sexuality became two intersections of identity that took precedence. Also the intersection of teacher identity and the reading of identity terms emerged as a salient interpretation for gender discussions in the classroom. Throughout this write-up of the research are methodological considerations surrounding power, the construction of masculinity and race, and the further entrenching of heteronormativity, in the form of methodological interludes. Finally, within the conclusion, I consider the implications for practice and future directions for research in masculinities.

This dissertation traces a shift in the Communist Party of Canada, from the 1929 to 1935 period of militant class struggle (generally known as the ‘Third Period’) to the 1935-1939 Popular Front Against Fascism, a period in which Communists argued for unity and cooperation with social democrats. The CPC’s appropriation and redeployment of bourgeois gender norms facilitated this shift by bolstering the CPC’s claims to political authority and legitimacy. ‘Woman’ and the gendered interests associated with women—such as peace and prices—became important in the CPC’s war against capitalism. What women represented symbolically, more than who and what women were themselves, became a key element of CPC politics in the Depression decade. Through a close examination of the cultural work of two prominent middle-class female members, Dorothy Livesay, poet, journalist and sometime organizer, and Eugenia (‘Jean’ or ‘Jim’) Watts, reporter, founder of the Theatre of Action, and patron of the Popular Front magazine New Frontier, this thesis utilizes the insights of queer theory, notably those of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler, not only to reconstruct both the background and consequences of the CPC’s construction of ‘woman’ in the 1930s, but also to explore the significance of the CPC’s strategic deployment of heteronormative ideas and ideals for these two prominent members of the Party. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2010-11-30 21:57:57.33