In the mid-1990s, two discourses of girlhood emerged in both the popular and academic spheres. Consolidated as the girl power discourse and girls in crisis discourse, the tension between these two intertwined discourses created a space for new narratives of female adolescence in the decade between 1995 and 2005. As sites of cultural construction and representation, teen films reveal the narratives of girlhood. The films under consideration serve as useful exemplars for an examination of how such discourses become mainstreamed, pervading society’s image of female adolescence.

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the ways in which the media products of the non-profit organization Latinitas revealed ideologies and discourses about identity. The organization purports to empower Latina youth via media education. The media products include two online magazines that feature content for and by the members of the organization. The media products also include a Web site where members of the organization can post and update individual blogs and videos. While not the focus of this dissertation, it is important to note that the organization also hosts various after-school programs and workshops that teach its members about issues related to media education. The study was managed in two stages. First, a content analysis of the two magazines was conducted to reveal which ideologies were featured in the magazine articles. Literature suggests that the two most relevant identities to Latina girls are gender and ethnicity. As such, special attention was given to ideologies that directed attention to those identities. Second, a discourse analysis of the blogs and videos hosted on the Web site was performed to reveal whether the featured ideologies carried over into the media product of the members of the organization. Results suggested that the magazines focused on issues of gender while mostly ignoring issues of ethnicity. The blogs housed on the Web site reflected the focus on gender but were also the only place where talk of ethnicity was dominant. The videos were generally not used as a means to express identity and were vehicles for displaying the activities of the organization.

This thesis is based on Project Artemis, a critical, girl-centred participatory action research (PAR) project designed as part of an evaluation of Artemis Place, an alternative education program serving “at-risk” girls in Victoria, BC. Nine Artemis Place students between the ages of 15 and 18 worked alongside me as co-researchers to investigate how Artemis Place has affected their lives. Our research also explored girl co-researchers' schooling experiences more broadly and the structural inequities they experience across the multiple contexts of their lives. Our process was rooted in a critical, participatory, collaborative framework, which aimed to investigate, problematize, and address (through social action) the complex forces shaping girls' experiences of marginalization. We used arts-based methods such as photovoice, graffiti walls, journaling and participatory video to cycle through the iterative phases of PAR: exploration/data collection, critical reflection/analysis, and action. We produced a documentary film as our primary research dissemination tool. In this thesis, I undertake my own analysis of our collective research to do a deep reading of girls' resistances to “at-risk” constructions of girlhood, in order to understand their negotiations of the complex forces shaping their daily realities. I complicate the concept of resistance using a hybridized feminist-poststructural (Davies, 2000) and desire-based (Tuck, 2010) framework to explore the ways girls' resistances are produced through flows of desire – creative and productive force – that disrupt, exceed, (re)configure, and/or (re)code “girl” and “risk.” I argue that tracing the “desire flows” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) and reconfigurations produced in/through our critical research process, is an important, political move toward sustaining alternative figurations of girlhood. As such, this thesis contributes promising, ethical/affirmative/political possibilities for understanding the complexities of girls' lives and for engaging alongside them in feminist research, praxis, and activism for social justice. / Graduate

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.