ABSTRACT This research report investigates the manifestation of hair as a symbol of cultural and gender identity as is seen in selected works of South African artist Tracey Rose, whose usage of her own culturally specific hair and body serves as metaphor through which she critically engages with issues surrounding the gendered and racialized body. The report will explore the ways in which Rose both in her video piece Ongetiteld (1996) and her performance video installation Span II (1997) challenges and subsequently deconstructs the rigidly defined monoliths of ‘Woman’, ‘femininity’, and the racially constructed category of ‘Coloured’, assigned and imposed on her during the Apartheid era. Rose’s work, highlighting the extent to which the conceptualization of gender and racial identity are bound and read off the body’s corporeality, relates to my own artistic practice, whereby I examine the metaphorical functioning of skin, as a corporeal ‘text’ and parchment, facilitating the inscription of my own cultural, religious and linguistic Otherness.

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Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Sudan is one of the countries with a large number of people who move around the country for safety and better living conditions due to conflicts and the long lasting war. These people are referred to as Internally Displaced People (IDPs), and most of them live in rural areas. The war in Sudan has led to socio-economic deterioration, and has negatively affected social services such as health and education, particularly in the IDP camps. As a result, children's access to education and the quality of education remain a great concern. Educational challenges include poor infrastructure, lack of facilities and teaching-learning materials, over-crowding and shortage of trained teachers. Illiteracy rates are higher among women, and the drop-out rates are higher among girls. It is believed that traditional socio-cultural practices are barriers to girls' access to education in this country. In light of the above, this study investigates factors which contribute to girls' construction of educational aspirations in the IDP camps of North and South Sudan. The girls' educational aspirations are explored in relation to gender empowerment discourses in order to gain an understanding of how gender empowerment is perceived and implemented by young females as they move between the school and home environments. It analyzes the impact of socio-cultural factors on girls' educational aspirations, perceptions and self-esteem in order to understand the significance of education within a gender empowerment framework in the lives of young girls 10 disadvantaged communities of Sudan. Through the lens of the Capabilities Approach and various Feminist views, the study explores how gender discourses in education are understood, and the extent to which they contribute to building girls' opportunities and capacities in the local context. The study provides an analysis of the girls' opinions of themselves, and the influence of socio-cultural factors on their inspirational plans and expectations. This study employed a qualitative case study design. Various qualitative data collection methods which include qualitative Life History Interviews (LHJs), In-Depth Interviews (IDIs), Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and non-participant observations were used for triangulation purposes. Data were collected from two schools in IDP areas in North Sudan, Khartoum State and in Juba, South Sudan. The target groups were girls in Grades 6, 7 and 8. The teachers and girls' parents in the IDP communities were also involved in the study. The findings of this study indicate that the girls' educational aspirations are built around knowledge, agency and capabilities which appear to correspond with girls' empowerment and self efficacy. However, there a number of traditional socio-cultural practices which . seem to have a negative influence on girls' educational aspirations, and they tend to reinforce gender inequality and stereotypes in different ways. These practices are rooted in the patriarchal nature of the Sudanese society, and the manner in which children are socialized. Girls' educational aspirations in such contexts are subject to the life challenges that they experience in their environment, such as poverty and their perceived low socio-economic status at home and in school. This study concludes that girls' educational aspirations and perceptions are constructed and shaped within the gender role socialization and the traditional or patriarchal social system in Sudan. The home and school environments in disadvantaged communities of Sudan appear to reinforce gender inequality in the manner in which parents and teachers treat children. The entrenched socio-cultural practices and pressures seem to impact negatively on the school girls' educational aspirations, expectations and self-esteem. The research provides a number of recommendations which aim at bridging the gender gap in school and at home, in order to support girls' equal access to education. It recommends free gender biased school and home environments which provide equal education opportunities to both boys and girls for socio-economic empowerment.

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One way that children explore concepts of gender is through make-believe and performative play. One of the most prevalent presentations of gender that is packaged for children's play is the Disney Princess brand. In 2007 the Walt Disney Princess campaign profited over four billion dollars and expanded to include over 25,000 items for sale. Princess paraphernalia reflects a change in the way that young girls (ages 3-5) engage in imaginary play by creating a whole new paradigm of thought. As these girls project themselves into the role of a certain Princess, typical play transforms into a consumer based theatrical experience. Girls not only identify with the ideas of playing princess, but of being a Princess as well. Judith Butler examines gender as consisting of performative “acts” that are stylized, repeated, and public. Gender identity usually includes aligning one's self with socially accepted definitions of male or female. Using Butler's idea's about gender performance, this thesis looks closely at the Disney Princess brand and how it contributes to the idea of a gender identity through films, live performances at Disneyland, and merchandise designed for enhancing play. As media and consumerism plays an increasingly large role in children's lives, careful attention must be made to the influence of such brands, especially as the Princesses become defining models of the word female.

Uppsatsens problemformulering beskriver kategorisering som fenomen och dess konsekvenser på samhällsstrukturen. De mest etablerade och explicita kategorierna – man och kvinna – ses som ett resultat av de kategoriseringsprocesser som ständigt pågår. Strukturernas och kategoriernas existens och reproduktion finns i alla sociala samspel, och min huvudsakliga hypotes är att en viktig del i reproduktionen av våra könsidentiteter utgörs av det arv vi ger till barn. Denna studie syftar till att belysa huruvida det finns ett signifikant sätt att skildra könsidentiteter i barnböcker. Uppsatsen har en teoretisk utgångspunkt i en feministisk köns- och diskursteori. Frågeställningen besvaras genom en diskursanalytisk studie av barnböcker. Resultatet visar att det i många fall finns ett signifikant sätt att skildra de olika könen på, och att det finns tydliga skiljelinjer i vad som karaktäriseras som manligt respektive kvinnligt. Detta mönster av en I-särhållning av könen är ibland subtilt och ibland utpräglat, men utifrån teorier och tidigare forskning är det möjligt att visa på att det faktiskt tycks finnas ett mönster. Det mest centrala i uppsatsen är åskådliggörandet av det dialektiska förhållandet mellan text och bild i barnböckerna och samhällsdiskursen de är en del av. / The phenomenon of categorization has a great impact on community structure. This essay describes one of the most established and explicit categories - male and female – as a result of the categorization processes which constantly are going on. The structures’ and categories’ existence and reproduction can be found in all social interactions, and my main hypothesis is that an important part of the reproduction of our gender identities consist of the legacy we give to children. This study aims to shed light on whether there is a significant way of describing gender identities in children's books. The essay has a theoretical basis of a feminist gender- and discourse theory. The issue is answered by a discourse analytical study of children's books. The result shows that in many cases there is a significant way of describing the different sexes, and that there are clear divisions in what is described as male or female. This pattern of a separation of the sexes is sometimes subtle and sometimes pronounced, but based on theories and previous research it is possible to show that there actually seems to be a pattern. The most central in the paper is the visualization of the dialectical relationship between text and image in children's books and the public discourse they are part of.

This article contains the findings of a content analysis on transgender-related scholarship in four counseling and counseling psychology journals from 2007 to 2020. A total of 94 publications were coded for analysis, and results from this analysis indicate an increase in the literature pertaining to transgender people and issues, though limitations still exist. Trends in the research are discussed, as well as gaps in the understanding of transgender communities in the counseling literature.

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This dissertation contends with the diverse corpus of Gothic ivory grooming implements carved in France in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Employing feminist, queer, posthumanist, and ecocritical methodologies, it explores these objects as tools in gender and identity formation. Attending to the complexity of medieval attitudes to grooming and women and to the polysemy of these objects’ iconographies, this dissertation argues for the inherent ambiguity of the bodies that constitute and were constituted by these tools. It participates in a broader project of revealing the inherent ambiguity of medieval gender and its deep enmeshment with the nonhuman animal world by presenting ivory beauty implements as nexuses of excess and resistance to feminine ideals. Calling attention to the body of the elephant as the source of the grooming tools’ materiality, its analysis demonstrates how the subjugation of the nonhuman animal reverberates through objects created to give order to human animal bodies, in particular the bestial female body. The material, iconographical, functional, and textual strands wound together in ivory grooming tools reveal the women of flesh and ivory to be far more multilayered and subversive, resourceful and complex, than scholarship has hitherto recognized. At once tools of subjugation and instruments to assert agency, in the hands of their users, ivory grooming tools become sites of identity expression and self-transformation.

We are living in an age of widening inequality and fragmented social solidarity and trust. Simultaneously, our social connections and relationships are increasingly disperse. In this context, how do people understand and respond to their experiences of marginality and alienation? This dissertation uses the case of transnational intimate relationships in Peru to understand how these relationships and the context in which they occur become sites for individuals to resist experiences of subordination and disaffection, and reimagine future possibilities for themselves. Máncora, Peru is a small coastal town that has experienced rapid growth as a tourist destination, but that contends with high levels of socio-political and economic informality and precarity. Against this backdrop, I examine the relationships that have emerged between a group of local men and tourist women mainly from North America and Europe. Previous scholarship has understood these relationships as “female sex tourism” or “romance tourism,” however this dissertation moves beyond these sometimes one-dimensional accounts. Ultimately, beyond arguing that these relationships are not merely transactional, I argue that these relationships, and the context in which they occurred, provided the men and women I met in Máncora with something curative: a remedy for the marginality and alienation that they experienced in their everyday lives. Specifically, I examine how their relational pursuits of pleasure, escapism, and desire gave rise to fantasy. This fantasy fueled and was fueled by their relationships, and allowed the men and women to contest and cope with a sense of alienation and marginality engendered by neoliberalism, and make meaning under conditions of structural constraint. Using qualitative methods, including participant observation, interviews, photography, and social media content analysis, I explore three key themes. Part one describes a masculine subculture that emerged on the beach where the men worked and met their partners. This subculture was premised on pleasure and leisure, and shaped how they cultivated relationships with their partners, managed everyday experiences of subordination, and planned for the future. Part two examines the economic and gendered dynamics that underpinned the women’s desire for travel and escape. These dynamics also shaped why they sought out relationships with unlikely partners, and how they envisioned that they could transform their everyday lives to be more fulfilling. Finally, part three explores the role of fantasy in how the men and women imagined alternative possibilities for themselves within their relationships, and in the touristic context of the town. This dissertation also makes three key contributions. First, within sociology, Weber’s thesis of the “disenchantment of the world” is well known. It describes the sense of a loss of purpose, meaning, and transcendence in people’s lives as a consequence of modernity and the rationalization of social life. Less explored, however, is Weber’s recognition of the possibility of re-enchantment that can paradoxically emerge in response to these forces as people seek to recover meaning. This dissertation locates this process of re-enchantment in the ways that people engage with fantasy. Second, this dissertation advances a sociology of fantasy. I define fantasy as material, economic, and erotic imaginaries that allow people to project and construct alternative lives. I argue that fantasy can be understood as operating beyond the realm of individual-level behavior, and be recognized as a social condition or relational phenomenon. I also argue that while sometimes improbable and limiting, fantasies can also be a productive means through which people cope with and contest experiences of marginality and alienation. Finally, this dissertation makes a theoretical intervention by bridging conceptions of the future from sociology and queer theory. Queer theorists argue for utopian orientations to the world that permit for potentiality where there is none, and a being and doing for the future to move through the present. Sociologists have written about “imagined futures” to describe how people use seemingly irrational ideas about the future to make identity claims, assert moral worthiness, and transcend present realities. I argue that queer theory provides us with models for thinking about the reasons for, and means through which, marginalized people find spaces to exist, thrive, assert identity, and find community. A queer lens is useful because it demonstrates how and why marginality can lead to responses centered around pleasure, utopic imaginaries, and the projection of alternative futures.