No description available.

I position my work at the intersections of identity and form. More specifically, I’m interested in how and why an individual’s physical appearance and demeanor become communicative and are then interpreted. Socially, it seems that we still often operate in ways that honor categorical distinctions between people, meaning for instance, that a man is something and a woman is something different from a man. Well, what if a woman can become a man or be read as a man simply by a change of clothes or through the addition of simple hormone injections? If this is possible, what does it mean for the terms that were previously understood to be fairly stable? Why does my body mean something or have to mean something, and if it doesn’t have meaning, what is it that it conveys? I live in a body that has shifted from something that was labeled female at birth to something that is now read as male. This adjustment has radically undermined my relationship to the blunt categorical expectations that partition the social face of our psychic lives. I’m unconvinced that the interpretation of my self is generally concurrent with the interpretation of my form. Too often, I believe the latter restricts the potential of the former. This is particularly evident in my unique position as a practically unreadable gender. My physical cues point to a familiar position within the gender binary that I don’t identify with. This limits my ability to engage with even members of my own queer community without resorting to the act of disclosure. I’m also curious about the flip side of this problem when, upon disclosure, the binary’s seam opens to be revealed as faceted, possessing multiple, unnamable spaces that reflect uncertainty back into the ideas of man and woman and render gender into a flexible field of characteristics that individuals use for many things, as opposed to simply inhabit. My work addresses this potential break between font and legibility, gesture and etiquette, the familiar and the possible. My portrait of the body and gender is incidental not substantive. / text

This essay discusses how female and male characters are represented in the novel Peter & Wendy by J.M Barrie from 1911 and the Disney version Peter Pan from 1953. Jane Sunderland’s models on social gender are used as a substructure to help clarify how the characters are portrayed as individuals, in relation to other characters and through their own actions and speech acts. The essay shows that there is a major difference in how male characters are portrayed compared to the female characters and that every character of the story lives up to what seems to be socially constructed gender roles.

Critics have analyzed Leni Riefenstahl's four feature length films from 1932 to 1954 largely for their depictions of fascist ideals while often neglecting how they represent gender. Viewing Riefenstahl's films using the theoretical gender models of Judith Butler and R.W. Connell provides a greater understanding of gender roles in Germany during both the Weimar and Nazi eras. Beginning with Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932), and continuing to Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935), Olympia (1938), and concluding with Tiefland (The Lowlands, 1954), there is a clear evolution of how Riefenstahl understood and represented gender. Riefenstahl's earliest film Das Blaue Licht depicts a strong and independent female protagonist in Junta, but with the rise of fascism in Germany this type of character disappears and evolve into the weak and helpless figures like Martha in Tiefland. This study will look at these films within the cultural context of early-twentieth century Germany and National Socialism to consider how Riefenstahl's films participate in the understanding, articulation, and performance of gender at a crucial turning point in the history of Western Culture.

This thesis examines the concept of “speaking bodies” in the early modern European world, primarily in the seventeenth century. Demoniacs and corpses that bled due to cruentation are examined comparatively through the lens of gender. Utilizing sources that include pamphlets, broadsheets, witness testimonies, and legal records, this thesis performs a close textual analysis to reveal that the gender of the speaking bodies informed contemporaries’ beliefs in the validity of a body’s speech. This thesis also argues that one form of speaking bodies – bleeding corpses – survived over another form – demoniacs – because of gender differentials. In order for a body to speak and be heard, whether through literal demonic speech or metaphorical blood, this body either had to be male, or possessed by a male spirit such as a demon.

For centuries, the horror genre has ensnared audiences across generations and genre lines: ballet, opera, literature, poetry, film, and, most recently, video games have all utilized the power of terror to shock, horrify, and, perhaps most disturbingly, attract. But what does fear sound like? This thesis will focus on that question as it explores both the twin worlds of Konami’s survival-horror title Silent Hill and the underwater-nightmare city of Rapture in 2KGames’ 2007 hit Bioshock. Offering a deeper understanding of the agency video game sound employs, this thesis will engage critical gender, race, and feminist theory, confront issues of social and cultural fears evoked through sound, and offer an in-depth analysis of each game’s soundscape in order to discuss the ways video game soundtracks can serve as vehicles for both signifying and unpacking complicated social and political topics that prevail in modern society.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate teachers' perceptions of students' construction of gender in the music classroom at lower secondary schools in Sweden, as well as their methods of avoiding normative positions. To study this, gender theory is used, as it was felt to be the most suitable theory for what the essay intends to investigate. The essay is based on a qualitative method, specifically phenomenography, which is based of qualitative semi-structured interviews. Four music teachers at lower secondary school were interviewed for the study. The essay's results demonstrate that boys' and girls' behavior reenforces different gender roles in teaching, but the teachers narrate that they do see an improvement. However, the teachers believe that a pedagogical responsibility is required to further prevent these gender-normative positions to form.

The present thesis aims at exploring and analyzing elementary school music teachers’ work from a perspective of gender equality. Previous research shows differences between boys’ and girls’ choice of musical instruments, school performance and claiming of space in a music classroom. The purpose of the study is to investigate these gender-related phenomena that occur in elementary school music education, how music teachers perceive these phenomena and their methods for integration of gender equality. The theoretical framework of the research is based on gender theories and phenomenography. Qualitative semi-structured phenomenographic interview was applied as the methodological approach for collecting data. In order to fulfill the purpose of the study, two female and two male music teachers from four different elementary schools in southern Sweden were interviewed. The results reveal that the participants perceive the gender-related phenomena differently. The majority of the respondents point out that boys prefer louder music instruments, such as drums and electric guitar, while girls choose piano and singing, which confirms the conventional gender norms. Some of the respondents assert that girls earn better grades in the subject of music because of their faster neurological development. Regarding claiming of space, two of the interviewed music teachers utter that boys tend to dominate in the classroom soundscape, which seems to be a consequence of their masculine and attention-seeking behavior. Additionally, the results of the research expose that the music teachers experience difficulties in applying the national policy documents concerning gender equality. However, the study discovers various methods for integration of gender equality in the interviewed teachers’ work.

Most people in Sweden have come into contact with the narratives from the Bible, through a children’s bible book. There exists several different kinds of these books for children. Two of the most popular is Barnens bibel and Bibel för barn, which are the explored subjects of this essay. The narratives conveys different norms and values, and it is therefore legitimate to investigate what they convey about women and femininity. Five female characters; Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Naomi and Ruth are the focus of the study. The stories underwent a narratological analysis to clarify the narrative structure. Furthermore, sex- and gender theory were applied on the narratives and showed that they in general express a dominant male norm, and dichotomy between the sexes. Keywords: children’s bible, femininity, narratology, sex- and gender theory

This thesis considers the representation of manly identity in the works of George MacDonald, and the way in which that identity is formed in relation to shifting power networks and contemporary social discourses. I argue that the environment of technological and societal change experienced in the mid-Victorian era (in the wake of industrialisation, urbanisation, changes in suffrage and war) led to a cultural need to re-align social, political, physical and economic power within a framework of male moral strength. Taking his lead from Thomas Carlyle and German transcendentalism, MacDonald promoted a paternalist ‗ideal‘ of manliness that articulated a synthesis of moral and physical power, yet which also served to promote a paradigm of domestic authority within diverse areas of male interaction. The dual purposes of this ideal were the defence of national identity (the purview of what I term the ‗Soldier body‘), and the enforcement of a paternalist authority hierarchy that is swiftly subsumed within a hierarchy of social status. As a result, we see the growth of close inter-relationships between the representation of manly identity and the language of class, heavily influenced by Christian socialist narratives of individual development through social education and quiescence. Moreover, we begin to witness disturbing scenes of violence and control, as aspects of MacDonald‘s culture defy confinement within his model of patriarchal domestic authority.