ABSTRACT The single-mother figure shows up in myriad American film genres, and my thesis explores three of these genres, maternal melodrama, film noir, and horror. I argue there is a melodramatic mode that carries over from maternal melodrama to film noir and horror. This mode emphasizes emotional excess. In maternal melodrama, the emotional excess is pity. For film noir, the emotion is anxiety, and in horror, it is repulsion. Even though each genre has its own emotional excess, maternal melodrama still speaks to these other genres through its maternal sacrifice, non-heteronormative families and misreading of proper gender performances. For this reason, I intentionally begin with classic maternal melodrama, wherein conventional gender roles, heteronormative familial structures, and mother-daughter separation are standard features. In Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), Stella misreads what "proper" femininity looks like. As a result, she believes she is "bad" for her daughter, Laurel, and makes the heart-wrenching decision to sacrifice Laurel to a traditional nuclear family. The other films I chose extend Stella Dallas' interest in gender roles, kinship structures, and mother-daughter separation but also subtly change the maternal melodrama's relationship to heart-wrenching sacrifice. In each of three chapters, I explore Michael Curtiz's film noir Mildred Pierce (1945), Douglas Sirk's melodrama Imitation of Life (1959) and William Friedkin's horror film The Exorcist (1973). After examining the standard features of maternal melodrama in Stella Dallas, I begin to explore them in other genres that focus on one of the three ideas more predominantly. These ideas are gender roles, kinship structures, mother-daughter separation. This does not mean that each film is limited to only one idea. All of the films address gender performance, familial structure, and mother-child separation, but I let each film take the lead on one of the three ideas. In Mildred Pierce, I explore gender performance. Mildred performs masculinity and femininity depending on whether she is in the public or private sphere. Imitation of Life takes the lead on alternative kinship. The film illustrates how two single mothers create a economically viable non-heteronormative interracial family. I conclude with The Exorcist and the possibility that the mother and child do not need to separate like Stella and Laurel. The Exorcist challenges what has long been considered a necessary process. This is the only film that successfully keeps mother and child united. I believe this project draws attention to the lack of analysis of single mothers in American film, but more importantly, it makes us rethink motherhood. The single mother privileges a certain approach to gender performance, familial structure, and mother-child separation that feminist theory and film studies have overlooked. This approach includes a masculine gender performance to perform as a father, disrupting the heteronormative familial structure to make it work for them, and mothers maintaining a relationship with their adolescent daughters.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:07:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FelipeGM_DISSERT.pdf: 1638160 bytes, checksum: cac1d4505a7b5f89b70b7e4cd074db10 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-07 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / This Masters thesis investigates and analyzes the homoerotic expressions in Fernando Pessoa s poetry and in his heteronyms : ?lvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro and Ricardo Reis. Through the elaboration of deceptive strategies as a way to escape from the insults and the constraints, the poet by means of creative runaway lines builds up a homoerotic poetry that differ from the established patterns and representational models of the literature. We can find, bearing in mind a problematic sexuality which overflows in the various I s, of the sinuous identities and the movable boundaries, and intense mask games. They become real in poems, especially by means of sensations, yielding the possibility of a queer discourse and generating a homoerotic poetry. Pessoa s homoerotism is, thus, presented amid friendly relationships, smooth spaces, of heterotrophy of the city, or others space and the closet s aesthetics. Based on this, it is noted the articulations of a performance gender as body scripture and inscription, thus establishing a physical-writing which reveals a transgressive sexuality, with multiple entrances and exits, affirmations and denials that originate paradoxes. In this matter, we develop links between Foucault conceptions (2010a, 2010b, 2011) towards the history of sexuality, friendship and the power-knowledge relations with traces of significance and subjectivity, in processes of faciality and BwO (Body-without-Organs) in Deleuze and Guattari (1996). We still consider the ontological questionings towards the Gay dimension in Eribon (2008) and we raise aspects concerning the construction of the idea of masculinity in Bourdieu (2010). Finally, we base ourselves on Sedgwick s 1993 closet epistemological approach, as well as on Butler s 2012 gender and performance theory, also going through a few Bataille 1987 passages about erotism, that redimension the homoaffective images of the Portuguese poet / Esta disserta??o investiga e analisa as express?es do homoerotismo na poesia Fernando Pessoa e de seus principais heter?nimos: ?lvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro e Ricardo Reis. Elaborando estrat?gias de fingimento como uma forma de escapar ?s inj?rias e interdi??es, o poeta atrav?s de linhas de fuga criadoras constitui uma po?tica homoer?tica, diferente dos padr?es estabelecidos e dos modelos representacionais da literatura. N?s podemos encontrar, tendo em vista uma sexualidade problematizada, que transborda na multiplicidade dos eus, das identidades fluidas e de fronteiras m?veis, intensos jogos de m?scaras. Estas se corporificam nos poemas, sobretudo, por meio das sensa??es, dando lugar ? possibilidade do discurso queer e homoer?tico emergir. O homoerotismo pessoano ?, assim, descortinado em meio ?s rela??es est?ticas da amizade, dos espa?os lisos, das heterotopias da cidade, ou espa?os do outro, e da est?tica do arm?rio. Partindo disso, percebemos as articula??es de um g?nero de performance como escritura e inscri??o do corpo, estabelecendo uma escrita-f?sica, que pontua uma sexualidade transgressora, com m?ltiplas entradas e sa?das, afirma??es e nega??es, instauradoras de paradoxos. Neste ?mbito, desenvolvemos correla??es entre concep??es de Foucault (2010a, 2010b, 2011) sobre a hist?ria da sexualidade, amizade e rela??es de poder-saber , com tra?os de signific?ncia e de subjetiva??o, em processos de rostidade e CsO (Corpo-sem-?rg?os), em Deleuze e Guattari (1996). Consideramos, ainda, os questionamentos ontol?gicos, voltados para a dimens?o Gay , em Eribon (2008) e levantamos aspectos a respeito da constru??o da ideia de masculinidade em Bourdieu (2010). Finalmente, apoiamo-nos na abordagem da epistemologia do arm?rio, de Sedgwick (1993), como na teoria de g?nero e performance de Butler (2012), encaminhando, al?m disso passagens pelo erotismo, de Bataille (1987), redimensionadoras das imagens homoafetivas do poeta portugu?s

This study consists of an analysis of the novel Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, in terms of cross-dressing as self-representation. The study aims to emphasise how cross-dressing can be significant when expressing one’s gender identity, by examining the gender identity and sexual orientation of the male impersonator Nancy Astley/Nan King and how she reacts to her own queerness. With the use of queer literary theory, Judith Butler’s theories on gender performativity, and ideas of gender as social constructs, this study argues that the novel is a powerful representation of the fluidity and inconsistency of gender and the non-existence of the gender binary. Throughout the novel, the main character disrupts the expected gender roles of the British Victorian era, and through the use of cross-dressing, uses masculinity and masculine femininity to discover and express her gender identity.

PhD (English) / Department of English

No description available.

Music is a ubiquitous part of society and has some capacity for spurring social change by stirring emotions with people. The music genre of punk is overtly political and promotes different kinds of social change, and all this makes punk relevant to study for the social sciences and humanities. However, on one hand, research suggests that punk scenes are masculinist and partly excludes women. On the other hand, other studies point to possibilities for alternative constructions of gender to take form through punk. Furthermore, research on punk is comprehensive, but the Swedish subgenre of trallpunk seems to have been overlooked in studies. Therefore, this thesis aims to investigate how masculinity is constructed in trallpunk. Drawing on a discourse analytical approach, supplemented by the concepts of performativity and hegemonic masculinity, song lyrics and interview data are analyzed in order to discern constructions of gender in trallpunk. The main conclusion is that trallpunk carries a form of transformative potential pointing to the transformation of gender discourses. Such a potential suggests that restricting and oppressive discourses of gender and hegemonic masculinity could eventually be eradicated, which would be an important step towards a more open-minded and inclusive society.

<p>Abstract</p><p>Title: Dragshow on the seven seas</p><p>Number of pages: 51 (56 including enclosures)</p><p>Author: Therése Plastrougi</p><p>Tutor: Ylva Ekström</p><p>Course: Media and Communication Studies C</p><p>Period: Fall 2007</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University</p><p>Purpose/Aim: My main purpose with this paper is 1) to study how film as a media can subvert traditional gender constructions and 2) study the character of Elizabeth Swann in the trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean through four dimensions; Gender performance, Class, Desire and Power.</p><p>Material/Method: My main material is the trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean. I have studied Elizabeth’s character based on semiotic and narratological methods.</p><p>Main results: Film as a media possesses the full potential to change traditional gender roles, but the full subversion is denied due to the heterosexual matrix. Elizabeth’s character almost completes her subversive journey throughout the trilogy, but since she too is a victim of the heterosexual matrix, a full subversion is not possible.</p><p>Key words: gender performance, class, desire, power, sex/gender, subversion, narratologic, semiotic, queer, feminism, pirates of the caribbean, intersectionality, parody</p>

Abstract Title: Dragshow on the seven seas Number of pages: 51 (56 including enclosures) Author: Therése Plastrougi Tutor: Ylva Ekström Course: Media and Communication Studies C Period: Fall 2007 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University Purpose/Aim: My main purpose with this paper is 1) to study how film as a media can subvert traditional gender constructions and 2) study the character of Elizabeth Swann in the trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean through four dimensions; Gender performance, Class, Desire and Power. Material/Method: My main material is the trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean. I have studied Elizabeth’s character based on semiotic and narratological methods. Main results: Film as a media possesses the full potential to change traditional gender roles, but the full subversion is denied due to the heterosexual matrix. Elizabeth’s character almost completes her subversive journey throughout the trilogy, but since she too is a victim of the heterosexual matrix, a full subversion is not possible. Key words: gender performance, class, desire, power, sex/gender, subversion, narratologic, semiotic, queer, feminism, pirates of the caribbean, intersectionality, parody

Traditionally, much criminological research has focused on male complexities of confinement, sidelining the experiences of federally and especially provincially incarcerated women in Canada. This thesis seeks to capture some of the experiences and challenges faced by incarcerated women as they attempt to negotiate agency and maintain choice and control over their health and bodies while inside correctional institutions. In order to do so, this study draws from Foucaultian-inspired concepts of discipline, governance, regulation, power, and resistance as a means to theoretically analyze the daily, often strategic, actions of women prisoners. This research is qualitative, and emerges from the data secured through in depth interviews with twelve previously incarcerated women, who were asked to speak of their experiences inside Canadian prisons with respect to issues of choice and control over hygiene, diet, exercise, and access to over-the-counter medication. The data were coded and organized into three substantial themes: opportunity for choice or learned dependence, the ‘layering’ of punishment, and creating space for agency. The analysis revealed that incarcerated women attempt to manage and maintain control over their health but meet ongoing punitive carceral responses when making decisions about their bodies that conflict with institutional mandates, discourses, or goals. Without the opportunity to perform culturally accepted norms of health and femininity, women in prison fail to achieve a positive or ‘good’ womanly status, which comes to impact their self-worth, self-esteem, and identity. These findings create direct implications for Corrections, as they inevitably produce docile and institutionally dependent women rather than responsible and productive citizens, the stated rehabilitational goal of correctional services.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore selected works from William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and John Keats, in order to expose textual instances of feminist thought. This analysis was aided with feminist theorists falling under the main strains of queer theory, materialism, and gender performance. Specifically, this thesis focused on the ways in which women, particularly virgin daughters, were viewed as property by their male kin. It also looked at how these women engaged in various symbolic masquerades and/or actual cross-dressing as a response to the aforementioned phenomenon. Finally, the thesis exposed how these masquerades can be construed as a queering of identity—manifested through reversals of power and rejection of patriarchal institutions like marriage.