This poetry thesis explores the relationship of the Buddhist concept of nonduality to polar mood disorders by employing motifs of bomb testing, war crimes, spiders, and seascapes. A critical preface credits Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, and Mary Ruefle as influences. The manuscript favors free-verse poetry and field composition, though also includes a lyric essay and two formal poems.

In 2016, Disney animation studios released their newest princess film Moana. The film follows a seemingly feminist plot line of a young female heroine who saves the world from destruction. This study examines Moana (2016) in relation to the views on feminism in the U.S. Disney’s large social and economic influence provides rich grounds for this research. Using an ideological rhetorical criticism, I uncovered the presented and suggested elements of the film. These elements combined with research on U.S. feminist ideology allowed three ideological themes to emerge: ecofeminism, power feminism, and post-feminism. The three themes are threaded to create a seemingly feminist patchwork ideology. I argue that the patchwork ideology that is created is a result of the political and economic conditions present around the production of Moana. Furthermore, I argue that this patchwork ideology is ultimately harmful to current feminist ideology in the U.S. This study adds insight into how feminist ideology is used in popular media.

In this survey, women's roles (jobs) and their participation in the workforce in the Muslim Middle-Eastern countries will be discussed generally; moreover, some of the Middle-Eastern countries, such as Egypt and Iran, will be studied a little more specifically as a sample. The status of women, their education, skills, and profession, will be explained historically from the date of the Islamic period until today. The problems and factors that prohibited women from having outside jobs, social life, and equal rights in past and present times (from 610 A.D. to 1982) will be analyzed. On the other hand, the attempt is to make a general picture of women's conditions in the society to which they belong from the time of Muslim's Prophet until today.

This research seeks to answer the following questions: Do feminist organizations have more internal conflicts than other organizations? And, if so, why?

A review of sociological literature reveals a long history of the study of gender, and an increased popularity in the application of feminist theories and ideas to sociological research. As transmitters of the discipline, introductory-level textbooks have been heavily studied over the past quarter-century to assess the accuracy with which they portray the field of sociology. In order to update the literature available on the topic, this study analyzed the current cohort of top-selling, introductory-level sociology textbooks for coverage of feminist theory and gender issues. Each of the ten textbooks was read cover-to-cover and coded for both latent and manifest data using a coding sheet. The researcher found a notable increase in the incidences of both feminist theories and gender issues within the current cohort of textbooks. The specific treatment of each topic varied widely across books, and within each book the topics were presented one-dimensionally and were ghettoized to feminized chapters. Definitions of feminist theory and feminism within the books primarily described liberal feminism and little else, and discussions of both feminist theory and gender were most heavily featured in the gender and family chapters. Generally, the gender issues present in the textbook sample were mostly to do with women, and erased non-binary experiences of gender. Additionally, an intersectional approach to discussions of gender was applied about one-third of the time. This study concludes that the current textbook cohort is still far from the ideal model, and the feminization and marginalization of these topics is likely due to the textbook production cycle and the specific phenomenon of textual isomorphism.

In this thesis, I share my personal story of finding healing—post-traumatic growth—after experiencing intimate partner violence seven years ago. Written in Scholarly Personal Narrative format, I dig into my own past, draw upon research and scholarship to better understand and make meaning of and from my experiences, and finally, make connections with other survivors, advocates, and educators through my narrative. I discuss how survivors of intimate partner violence can move closer to healing; provide practical tips on how individuals and educators can support survivors and better understand the complexities of abusive relationships; and explain how educators can use writing, specifically the Scholarly Personal Narrative format, as an avenue for healing and growth for their students in a classroom setting. My thesis is an example of how, when given the opportunity, educators can encourage students to experience post-traumatic growth within the American University.

This study is a very personal reflection. The purpose of the study is to illuminate how following the calling of my heart led to a deeper passion in my own work whereupon I realized my natural and limitless creative potential. It is a blending of my narrative with research conducted over a ten year time period on midlife women, work, and the search for passion within. The capacity and fostering of creativity became a focus in my writing because that is exactly where my spirit has led me. It has been my personal joy to put something in this world that was not there before. My personal story is my unique Scholarly Personal Narrative, but the story itself and the constructs embedded within on midlife women moving beyond the feminine mystique to fulfill their career dreams by embracing their passion and seeking creativity is universal to many women. I believe that my experiences are both generalizable and transferable and will serve as a beacon of light in guiding other midlife women in their own journey to follow their dreams and nurture their true self. Scholarly Personal Narrative was used to blend my experiences with research on women's identity, midlife, reinventing careers, opting-out, on-ramps for women returning to work and expressing creativity. My narrative speaks to how specific events in my life, as in many women's lives, have contributed to finding my own authentic voice, navigating a course of rediscovery, and ultimately realizing the personal power of knowing you are empowered. Throughout my writing I highlight that midlife is a unique period of time. I believe it can be claustrophobic and it can be ripe with opportunity and adventure. If you allow it, this time of life affords an opportunity for self-discovery and unanticipated growth. Midlife is a time to dig deep in examining our life experiences to extrapolate meaning. My meanings derived combined with my dreams within has led me in finding my true creative calling through my work. But, I believe that we each are the only ones who can find the meaning in and through our life experiences because they both form and inform our own truth. It became about harmonizing creative development, my identity, and work to fuel major change. Universal themes that emerge include recognizing one's creativity has worth, viewing future work life as an opportunity to incorporate that with which we are passionate, and embracing midlife as a time for positive personal growth and change. It is a complex narrative, but in finding the truth, I became open to building on the successes, experiences, and lessons of my past to pursue work that excites, enriches, and motivates me. Findings suggest that midlife is a crucial time of personal and professional growth. Findings also suggest many highly educated women have non-linear career paths which in turn deepen our self-understanding moving us toward authenticity and allowing ourselves to engage in work that matters to us. Embracing creativity in midlife, through our work. can fill us with both passion and purpose and ultimately lead us on a magical journey in discovering our own truth.

Chapter one, “Narrating Entanglement: Posthuman Agency and Subjectivity in Shane Carruth’s Filmography,” considers the resonances of independent filmmaker Shane Carruth’s two SF films, Primer (2004) and Upstream Color (2013) with the ethos of quantum entanglement through close-readings of Primer’s anti-individualistic portrayal of scientific invention and Upstream Color’s metaphorically entangled human-pig character system. Chapter two, “Race and Schrödingers’s Legacy: History is Both Alive and Dead in Hari Kunzru’s White Tears” analyzes the 2017 novel White Tears as a narrative figuration of of the political, racial, and cultural entanglements set in motion by the economic structure of slavery, ultimately arguing that Kunzru’s entangled plotlines and histories critique the entanglement of contemporary U.S. capitalism with its past and present exploitation of black bodies. The third and final chapter, “Problem Child: Untangling the Reproduction Narrative in Lai and Phang’s SF Bildungsromans” uses close readings of two SF bildungsromans, Larissa Lai’s 2002 novel Salt Fish Girl and Jennifer Phang’s 2015 film Advantageous, both of which follow women of color protagonists not permitted to grow up in the ‘right’ ways, to shed light on the instability of a social order simultaneously grounded in the exploitation of marginalized bodies and the illusion of a reproducible, homogenous nation. Ultimately, “Entangled Bodies” uses a literary exploration of quantum entanglement to reveal both the limits of seemingly-totalizing power structures, narrative or otherwise, and the collective possibilities for re-definition that can, in part, be kindled by a favored tool of Western science: the human imagination.

Working toward a personal definition of womanhood while progressing with my research in feminist discourse, I frame biographical events alongside the intricate use of language surrounding feminist theory. Experimenting with material specificities that speak to my personal narratives and cultural significance, my work seeks to address the interlacing operations of subjectivity expanding on the intersection of class, gender and race.

This thesis examines narrative representation of female characters in video games and how game narratives and representations contribute to socio-cultural discourse. First, this thesis explores and defines the cultural background for female representation in video games. It then defines video games as a type of text and describes the features that are unique to games, such as the use of avatars, and what impacts these features have on game narratives. The thesis attempts to establish evidence of an evolutionary arc of comprehensive female representation in video games by first exploring historical female narrative tropes, and then comparing them to narrative case studies of female characters within five recent game titles (Tomb Raider, Bayonetta, Dragon Age, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and Horizon: Zero Dawn). In these case studies, the implications for their representations of female characters are analyzed in the context of socio-cultural discourse. Furthermore, this thesis argues for the importance of diverse representation within video games as a form of media, and as cultural objects that contribute to social discourse.