published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

丁毓玲. / "2000年2月" / 論文 (哲學碩士)--香港中文大學, 2000. / 參考文獻 (leaves 106-112) / 附中英文摘要. / "2000 nian 2 yue" / Ding Yuling. / Lun wen (zhe xue shuo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2000. / Can kao wen xian (leaves 106-112) / Fu Zhong Ying wen zhai yao. / 致謝 --- p.vi / 摘要 --- p.viii / 地圖 --- p.x / Chapter 第一章 --- 導論 --- p.1 / 福建的人類學研究 --- p.3 / 中國人類學的婦女研究 --- p.6 / 人類學的性别研究與本文的理論架構 --- p.11 / 研究方法 --- p.17 / 本文章節安排 --- p.19 / Chapter 第二章 --- 潯埔村的現狀與歷史背景 --- p.21 / 潯埔村現狀 --- p.21 / 潯埔村的村落歷史 --- p.23 / 從裝束看潯埔人的族屬 --- p.27 / Chapter 第三章 --- 經濟活動與性别 --- p.33 / 1949年以前：女性經濟地位的奠定時期 --- p.34 / 1949´ؤ1980年：女性生産組織確立了她們獨立的經濟身份 --- p.43 / 1980年以後：女性經濟實力的提高和社會性别的認同 --- p.48 / 經濟與性别角色 --- p.52 / Chapter 第四章 --- 家庭、村落文化和女性 --- p.59 / 家庭的角色分配 --- p.60 / 女性文化氛圍的營造 --- p.64 / 中國傳統文化和潯埔地方文化的關係 --- p.70 / Chapter 第五章 --- 宗教活動 --- p.78 / 潯埔的神明 --- p.79 / 佛教會及其組織者 --- p.84 / 從佛教會到媽祖宮董事會 --- p.90 / 佛教會和其他地方組織的關係 --- p.94 / Chapter 第六章 --- 結語 --- p.101 / 參考書目 --- p.106

This dissertation, “Communicating Across Time: Female Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination,” explores the range of genealogical forms, alternative to patrilineage, that British writers used to depict the transmission of women’s power across time in early-twelfth to late-fourteenth-century literature. By taking an expansive definition of genealogy and exploring romance and hagiography, it highlights a widespread and persistent interest in medieval literature in the ways female characters record their legacies and communicate these legacies to future generations. By examining genealogy in these literary terms, this study revises current understandings of a core aspect of medieval culture and expands current definitions of what constitutes medieval historiography. Though patrilineal genealogy has been widely studied, we currently have little vocabulary to talk about female genealogies. Broadly stated, genealogy in this study describes the author’s description of a deliberate communication from the past that explains, curates or contests contemporary social-political landscapes, and to make claims to the future. Patrilineage, which became the main system of genealogy from the twelfth century, idealized the transmission of power – name, land holdings, and the legend of a common ancestor – from father to son. Even the notion that women possessed power and stories to communicate threatened a system that relied on mothers as passive genealogical vehicles. Aristocratic women, as landholders, heirs, politicians and religious leaders, did of course have legacies to communicate. Because medieval women’s claims to land and power were more mobile and less standardized than men’s, this dissertation is less interested in what female protagonists communicate across time and more interested in how - the means and processes of communication. This study’s focus on alternative female genealogies also highlights new ways of understanding literary representations of medieval maternity. In the texts examined, motherhood is not limited to the domestic, bodily and momentary, but is a political and agential role that is actively managed by the woman herself, often in conjunction with other forms of written and verbal communication. Literary texts reveal the various, and often unexpected, means medieval writers and readers imagined for women’s cross-temporal communications. Female characters frequently employ alternative genealogical ‘bodies’ to that of a male child, actively revising the topos of women as simply the bodily matter and means for a male line. The characters inscribe their claims to land, power and spirituality through footprints in rocks, blood-impressed doors, tenderly-handled books, a mother’s exact resemblance imprinted in her child’s face. The intimacy and deliberateness with which these women create and manage their cross-generational communications both draws on and destabilizes traditional ideals of motherhood and genealogy. The four chapters read across French, English and Latin texts, as many English readers would have done, with a focus on the genres of hagiography, romance and chronicle from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.

Tang Wai Man. / Thesis submitted in: June 2003. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 194-196). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgements --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Introduction / Background / Literature Review / Methodology / The Contribution of this Thesis / The Structure of the Thesis / Personal Statement / Chapter 2 --- The Formation of the Gay Christian Identity (I) --- p.46 / Acquiring a Christian Identity vs. Acquiring a Gay Identity in Hong Kong ´ؤ A Comparison of the Processes / Case Studies - Facing the Gay Identity in the Hong Kong Context / Reasons for Entering the Liminal Stage / Chapter 3 --- The Formation of the Gay Christian Identity (II) --- p.74 / Separation / Transition / Reincorporation / Conclusion / Chapter 4 --- The Individual Expression of the Gay Christian Identity --- p.104 / Changing Attitudes towards God and their Subsequent Expression / Changing Attitudes towards Sexuality and their Subsequent Expression / Conclusion / Chapter 5 --- The Group Dynamics of the BMCF (I) --- p.132 / Maintaining the Differences with Outsiders / Chapter 6 --- The Group Dynamics of the BMCF (II) --- p.155 / Maintaining Unity in the BMCF / A Conflict between the Conservative and the Liberal in BMCF / Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.182 / Conclusion / Hong Kong Gay Christians and Modernity / Future Prospects of Hong Kong Gay Christians / Bibliography --- p.194

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2005 / Refer to the document

This study addresses the complex issues of etiology and conceptualization of gender variance in the modern West. By analyzing medical, psychological, and popular approaches to gender variance, I demonstrate the highly political nature of each of these paradigms and how gender variant individuals engage with these discourses in the elaboration of their own gender identities. I focus on the role of institutional authority in shaping popular ideas about gender variance and the relationship of gender variant individuals who seek medical intervention towards the systems that regulate their care. Also relevant are the tensions between those who view gender variance as an expression of an essential cross-sex gender (as in traditional transsexual narrative) and those who believe that gender is socially constructed and non-binary. I finally argue that the standards of treatment for gender variant individuals pertains more to the medical legitimization of their identities than with necessarily improving outcomes.

Poetry by Russian women which has been published since the fall of the Soviet Union reveals that the quest to explore female identity and experience is no longer inviolable in Russian literature. This thesis examines female personae, gender and cultural identity in the work of Russian poets Nina Iskrenko (1951--1994), Tatiana Voltskaia (b. 1960), and Iuliia Kunina (b. 1966). Although the poetics of these writers' texts are broad-ranging, all of their work takes up the subjects of gender and cultural identity. Their poems explore identity as a discursive practice, rather than a fixed construct within the strictures of authoritative metanarratives' binary oppositions (male/female, feminine/masculine, Russian/non-Russian). This lends their poetry to postmodern analysis, an approach that heretofore has rarely been applied to poetry by Russian women. Within this theoretical framework, Judith Butler's formulation of "performativity" and Mikhail Epstein's theory of "transculturalism" are particularly well-suited to the task, as each entails non-essentialist conceptions of identity. Donna Haraway's formulation of "woman" as cyborg" is also a fitting theoretical complement, as it suggests the hybridization of identity, as well as the increasing role of the Internet in contemporary and future developments in Russian literature. The rapid changes in the late- and post-Soviet cultural landscape have engendered in contemporary poetry by Russian women powerful, new expressions of gender and cultural identity, which are resulting in startling subversions of authoritative discourses while at the same time forging coalitional "transmodern" identities.

This research project was aimed at identifying the perceptions of adolescent boys and girls with regard to the role function of men and women in society. Quantitative and qualitative methods, and a hybrid form of sampling were employed in this research project. The sample for this study was drawn from 5 secondary schools and comprised 65 boys and 65 girls. The adolescents' perceptions were analysed and interrogated critically against the yardstick provided by the non-sexist values of the South African constitution. An attempt was made to identify the extent to which the adolescents' perceptions are in synch with rigid patriarchy, sexism and the gendered division of labour, and the extent to which the adolescents' perceptions are in synch with the non-sexist South African constitution. The analysis of the adolescents' perceptions were informed inter alia by the theories of essentialism and constructivism. The research revealed, inter alia, that most of the adolescents reject rigid patriarchy; reject the gendered division of labour in some spheres ; accept the gendered division of labour in some spheres ; accept and favour the economic empowerment of women ; believe that sex should be negotiated ; believe that men are more suited to be leaders than women ; are against the perpetration of violence by either of the sexes and are homophobic and heterosexist • It was also evident that while both boys and girls rejected rigid patriarchy; girls were decidedly more receptive to the empowerment of women than boys. The study revealed that while there has been an erosion of the rigid division of the masculinized public sphere and the feminized domestic sphere, the public sphere is perceived as one in which men should dominate while the domestic sphere is deemed more suitable for women than men with women and men playing supportive, subdued albeit ever increasing roles in the public and domestic spheres respectively - the researcher as termed the existing perception the yin-yang worldview and the emergent perception the yanging-yin-yining-yang worldview. The study also highlighted that perceptions are not determined entirely by knowledge and ideals and served to bring home forcefully, the overriding potency of social realities and conditioning in shaping and regulating perceptions. In short the study demonstrated that the adolescents have not fully embraced the non-sexist values of the new constitution. The findings of the study were utilized by the researcher as a diagnostic instrument to produce recommendations and solutions - based on Freirean praxis - for the elimination of sexist, patriarchical perceptions. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2003.

This thesis examines shojo manga (Japanese comics for girls) as a site of the subversion of gender. The focus will be on stories about cross-dressing, as the crossdressed heroine poses from the outset questions about the nature of girls within shojo manga and the girls who are supposedly reading the texts. The analysis takes place at two levels: visual language and narrative. Over the course of five chapters, focusing on a couple of series in each, this thesis will show the various ways categories of gender and sex are undermined in five different subgenres. Yet gender norms are recuperated in the end. The manga always return to the figure of the shojo , the ambiguously gendered "not-quite-female" female that must expire at adulthood and the regulatory function heterosexuality plays in this inevitable demise. Nevertheless shojo manga readers need not necessarily share this end. The various ways that the reader is positioned both visually and narratively suggests that her gender and sexuality remains ambiguous and indefinable.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.