Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 212-225). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M. A.)--Southern California College, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-151).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2009. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of English, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Aug. 18, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-260). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Matt D. Childs, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of History. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 15, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains xiii, 281 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: This dissertation explores the relationship between motherhood and power in seventeenth-century England. While historians have traditionally researched the role of mothers within the family unit, this study explores the more public and discursive roles of motherhood. It argues that the various threads of discourse surrounding maternity betray a common desire to circumscribe and condemn maternal authority, as this authority was threatening to masculinity and patriarchal rule. It finds that maternity was frequently cited as harmful and dangerous; household conduct books condemned the passionate and irrational nature of maternal love and its deleterious effects upon both mother and child. Furthermore, various images of ‘unnatural motherhood’ reveal larger concerns over social disorder. Sensationalistic infanticide and monstrous birth stories in cheap print display contemporary fears of lascivious, scolding, and unregulated women who were subversive to patriarchal authority and thus threatened the social status quo. The female reproductive body similarly threatened masculinity; an analysis of midwifery manuals show that contemporary authors had to reconcile women’s reproductive power with what they believed to be an inferior corporeal body. This study ends with a discussion of the representation of mothers in published funeral sermons as these mothers were textually crafted to serve as examples of ‘good mothering,’ offering a striking comparison to the ‘unnatural mothers’ presented in other sources. Motherhood in seventeenth-century England, then, involved a great deal more than the relationship between mother and child. It was a cultural site in which power was contested, and a site in which authors expressed anxiety over the irrational female mind and the unregulated, sexual female body. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2015

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Ecofeminism has had a nonlinear developmental path. Although it was celebrated as a potentially revolutionary project in the 1970s, by the time climate change and environmental crises had worked their way into mainstream discourse ecofeminism had become practically unheard of. The purpose of this thesis is to reflect on the failure of early ecofeminism and to explore ecofeminism’s potential as a transformative project of the twenty-first century. This thesis is motivated by my own personal experience of ecofeminism as transformative and also by what I would call a recent resurgence of interest in ecofeminism by young students, budding feminists, and fledgling environmentalists that understand the climate and environmental crises as fundamentally linked to the oppressions of colonial capitalist-patriarchy. Recounting the origin, history, and marginalization of the project of ecofeminism, I explore the rift between materialist and spiritual/cultural approaches to argue that the effectiveness of ecofeminism is dependent upon a collaborative recovery from the damages done by extensive anti-essentialism critiques. The onto-epistemology of our current paradigm— defined by neoliberal capitalism and colonial patriarchy—limits response to the environmental crises of our times to that of incremental policy change that is more symbolic than substantive. I argue that, in order to escape the chains of the neoliberal/capitalist/patriarchal subject that are cast upon us by these predatory onto-epistemologies, we must envisage ways to be human otherwise; in reciprocal relationships with more-than-human nature. As a prefigurative project that centres the more-than-human yet maintains a comprehensive intersectional anti-oppressive framework, a contemporary ‘multispecies ecofeminism’ can endow us with this potentiality. In our times of immense ecological degradation and ‘point-of-no-return’ deadlines, ecofeminism is a needed ‘third story’ that resonates as revolutionary with young scholars of the twenty-first century. / Graduate

Magister Legum - LLM / Refugee women experience the full spectrum of Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV) throughout the refugee experience. SGBV is a global crisis that refugee women are subjected to daily. Refugee women face SGBV in their countries of origin, during the journey, in transit, and upon arrival within their country of asylum. The SGBV that refugee women experience is often not considered a priority and the physical consequences of SGBV such as sexually transmitted diseases, infertility, unwanted pregnancy, injury and vulnerability to disease is often overlooked or ignored. Although there are international laws and domestic laws which are drafted to prevent and protect refugee women against SGBV, refugee women are in reality not effectively protected and refugee women have remained extremely vulnerable to SGBV.

Women’s subjugation to the objectification of men is a traced theme throughout the history of Western culture. In this thesis presentation, the attributes of the male gaze will be explored via the patriarchal pioneers of literature: Dante to Petrarch to Shakespeare. The solidification of the male gaze takes place during the late middle ages as Dante Alighieri writes an infatuated love for Beatrice throughout La Vita Nuova and Inferno, demonstrating the virgin-whore dichotomy between Francesca. Similarly, Francesco Petrarch’s poetry of Rime Sparse describes the objectification and dismantling of woman for erotic pleasure and patriarchal power. The shift from early to late renaissance displays William Shakespeare’s presentation of women in Titus Andronicus, Othello, and Hamlet as a denunciation of women through the male gaze. These themes of patriarchy developed throughout historic literature will help us analyze media advertisements today as women are silenced, dismembered, and exhibited through the male gaze.