This essay, which is at once a literary critical examination and a theological exploration of the Hebraic scriptural book of Lamentations in relation to ancient Sumerian lament, employs a mixed critical approach (e.g., form, feminist, postmodern, reader response), to address various lyrical, contextual, and thematic elements common to both the biblical Lamentations and the older Sumerian compositions. Specific focus is given to issues of gender and gender-malleability, as well as the notion of "transgression" and the various meanings that may be attached to this word in various contexts, theological or otherwise. Also addressed is the means by which the lament genre reflects/reveals the ways in which individuals and communities attempt to construct meaning, or find solace, in the face of human suffering.

No description available.

<p>This thesis examines sexual trauma in Lydia Kwa’s <em>This Place Called Absence</em> (2000), <em>Pulse</em> (2010), and <em>The Walking Boy</em> (2005), and establishes how the domain of sexuality becomes operative in post-trauma healing. This project engages not only the traditional, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder model of trauma, but, using Laura Brown and Maria Root, expands the definition of trauma by drawing attention to the insidious, everyday trauma that affects minority groups and sexual minorities. Kwa’s novels reveal the dynamics and complexities of sexual trauma, which encompasses acts of sexual violence such as rape and abuse, but also what is rarely acknowledged – the trauma that queer individuals face in a heteronormative society. This thesis also investigates the possibility of healing sexual trauma and locates viable modes of therapy in the area of sexuality, including sexual intimacy, sexual practices such as erotic bondage, and the formation of queer communities. This project seeks to illuminate the connections between queerness and trauma, and, via Kwa’s fiction, considers alternative avenues of healing and therapy beyond the medical field.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Utilizing the strategies of feminist criticism, this study seeks to define masculinity and the issues confronting it as presented in Books III and IV of Edmund Spenser’s <em>The Faerie Queene</em>. The thesis analyzes the means by which Spenser’s poem challenges conventional notions of violence as inherent to masculinity. This includes examining the tropological use of rape to represent masculine lust as animalistic, as seen in the various male pursuers and aggressors of Florimell and Amoret, and the metaphorical conceptualization of love as a violent conquest as a means of contributing to homosocial status elevation.Thus this study contributes to the understanding of the didacticism of Spenser’s allegory concerning the fashioning of a proper gentleman.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Barring a few notable exceptions, English music between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries earns scant notice in music history textbooks, despite overwhelming evidence that England enjoyed a vibrant musical culture, especially during the Georgian era. However, I will argue that the English of this period were, in many respects, even more committed to music than their continental counterparts. The problem, for England, was not that it made no music during this period, but that it made the wrong kind of music, and enjoyed it in the wrong ways. At a time when Germanic critics like E.T.A. Hoffmann and A.B. Marx were establishing grand, large-scale musical masterpieces (and the singular geniuses who created them) as the highest form of art, the English prioritized musical process over the musical work, and remained committed to music that could be played and enjoyed socially, in drawing rooms. I argue that England’s absence from the standard music history is due to three primary social issues: England’s complex and longstanding cultural anxieties regarding music’s supposed ability to feminize men and empower women; the invisibility of England’s most musical citizens (women); and a vibrant culture of domestic music-making (dominated by women) that was incompatible with the new aesthetic values of nineteenth-century Romanticism, which placed greater importance on the autonomous musical product than the malleable musical process.

z & s charts the story of Sophreen and Zehra, ostensibly two girls in love, who experience transnational migration together. Through the lens of their relationship, I explore themes of embodiment, survival, complicity, cultural erasure, and the complexity of abuse and trauma for multiply marginalized people. I use poems and visual art to portray the colliding worlds of feminized people as they navigate madness, psychosis, disability, and illness in the frame of desire.

Working class Black girls experience multilayered oppression informed by their triadic social identity that sits at the intersection of race, gender, and class in their lives and more specifically in their schooling experiences (Collins, 1986, 1989; Onyeka-Crawford, Patrick, & Chaudry, 2017). A variety of mentoring practices have been adopted among educators throughout the public-school system to remedy the impact of poor educational opportunities for Black girls. In contrast to the use of traditional mentorship practices that solely focus on the individual, critical mentorship seeks to engage and support the cultural, political, and economic contexts that positively shape the experiences and aspirations of Black girls and young women. To better understand this phenomenon, this deeply insightful autoethnographic study engages the following questions: (a) What were my particular experiences with mentors that prepared me to persevere in education in ways that nourished my commitment and empowerment? (b) What were the particular experiences with my mentors that assisted me in connecting with the Black girls that I have mentored in my work? and (c) What can my experiences as a Black feminist mentor of Black girls contribute to our understanding of critical mentoring? The application of Black feminism, Black girlhood studies, and critical mentoring frameworks found the following major themes to be critical in mentoring Black girls during childhood, adolescence, and the university years: (a) individual identity development, (b) development of individual voice, (c) sisterhood and solidarity, and (d) conscientization and resistance. This dissertation offers key principles in mentoring Black girls, and recommendations for how to shift the larger approach of mentoring to better meet the needs of Black girls in childhood, adolescence, university years, and beyond.

The purpose of this study was to expand on the current research pertaining to women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, better understand the experiences of undergraduate women in the sciences, identify barriers to female persistence in their intended STEM majors, and understand the impact of the STEM co-educational Living Learning Community (LLC) model on female persistence. This study employed a mixed-methods approach that was grounded in standpoint methodology. The qualitative data were collected through focus groups and one-on-one interviews with the female participants and was analyzed through a critical feminist lens utilizing standpoint methodology and coded utilizing inductive analysis. The quantitative data were collected and analyzed utilizing a simple statistical analysis of key academic variables indicative of student success: cumulative high school GPAs, SAT scores, first year cumulative GPAs, freshman persistence patterns in the intended major, and freshman retention patterns at the university. The findings of this study illustrated that the co-educational LLC model created an inclusive academic and social environment that positively impacted the female participants‟ experiences and persistence in STEM. The findings also found the inclusion of men in the community aided in the demystification of male superiority in the sciences for the female participants. This study also highlighted the significance of social identity in the decision making process to join a science LLC.

Many studies have been conducted on the achievement gap between Caucasian and minority students (Bankston & Caldas, 1998; A. Brown & Donnor, 2011; Howard, 2008; O’Conner, Lewis, & Mueller, 2007; Osborne, 1999), as this gap has been a persistent problem for decades. However, despite more students of color gaining access to institutions of higher education, there is still a severe gap in college graduation rates (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2011), with African American males being the least likely group to be found on college campuses (Dunn, 2012), and thus, possessing the lowest college graduation rate. St. Peter Claver Academy (pseudonym) is a Catholic, male high school located in an inner city, low-income community in the western United States. The demographic composition of the school is 65% Latino and 35% African American. Despite the fact that 100% of seniors are accepted into a college or university, the graduates of St. Peter Claver Academy have very poor college graduation rates. This qualitative study investigated the narratives of seven African- American graduates of the school in order to understand their college experiences, looking closely at attrition, retention, resilience, and persistence. Through the lens of critical bicultural theory, the voices of these former students are central to this study in an effort to seek common threads about their experiences, which can provide educators useful insight on how to improve the college graduation rate for this underrepresented student population group.

<p>This dissertation examines contemporary cultural representations of rurality in southern Ontario. It demonstrates how literary and cultural texts construct, support and/or expand our understandings of the social composition and character of rural culture. Examining various literary forms (drama, life narrative, and the novel), music, and photography, my research and analysis responds to Chris Philo’s pivotal call in the field of rural geography “to pay more careful attention to ‘the multiple forms of otherness’ present in . . . rural areas” (“Neglected” 199) and to foreground what he identifies as “neglected rural geographies.” I argue that dominant literary and cultural representations of rural southern Ontario overwhelmingly mobilize and rarely contest white heteromasculinist rural discourses that support rural cultures of sameness and exclusion. As a means of exposing the motivations for and deleterious effects of these discourses, I draw attention to alternative representations of the region’s rural social geography that expand the imaginative scope circumscribed by hegemonic conceptualizations of what it means to be rural in southern Ontario. As such, my project responds to Philo’s call in three ways: first, it repositions southern Ontario as a rural locale of critical relevance; second, it addresses a gap in Canadian literary and cultural studies by taking up new and evolving approaches in rural studies, with respect to rural “others,” being developed in disciplines like geography, sociology, history and political science; third, it intervenes in dominant socio-spatial discourses currently circulating in Canadian literary and cultural studies that eagerly address issues of gender, sexuality, race and class in Canada’s urban environments while too often neglecting how they intersect with discourses of rurality.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)