The popularity of the Twilight saga, enhanced by the film adaptations of the books, sparked a series of interesting reactions of fans. One was the creation of “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob,” in which fans aligned with one or the other character and argue about which one of them could be a better romantic partner. This study explores the messages the movies are sending to young girls around the world about what are the traits of the “ideal” male romantic partner as portrayed through the characters of Edward and Jacob. A textual analysis of the first three movie adaptations of the saga, Twilight (2008), New Moon (2009), and Eclipse (2010) was conducted. Based in social cognitive theory and using a feminist critical approach, I argue that these messages might be teaching young girls lessons about relationships that are up to certain degree dangerous, some of them perpetuating patriarchy.

This thesis investigates the social construction of masculinities in Trabzon, with a (pro)feminist approach. This study is based on the assumption that masculinities are socially and contextually constructed grounding on the local dynamics. In order to examine that, I identified and focused on three trajectories in Trabzon that have largely affected the social construction of masculinities in the last two decades. Those are the men&rsquo / s emotional and sexual lives, men&rsquo / s families and the domestic lives and rightist politics and football fanaticism of Trabzonspor. In order to investigate the social construction of masculinities in the city, a qualitative field research, based on feminist methodology was conducted. The field research was conducted between August 2010 and October 2011 by making interviews with men from different social milieu, in Trabzon city centre. This study presents that the men&rsquo / s experiences of three trajectories noted above contributed the construction of conservative and patriarchal masculinities in Trabzon.

Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Afghan women suddenly gained high visibility all over the world. Since then, representations of Afghan women in the Western media and notably in the U.S. news media provide a critical concern to scholars. Much of the relevant literature on this topic speaks to the fact that the dominant portrayal of Afghan women in the Western media has shown them as passive victims of war and violence, to be liberated only by the Western military intervention. However, the question remains as to how the popular fictional narratives, as another vivid source of information, represent Afghan women to the Western readers. To address this question, A Thousand Splendid Suns, as a popular novel authored by Khalid Hosseini, an Afghan novelist, was selected. Bormannian fantasy theme analysis of this novel conveys the passivity of women in the context of Afghanistan. The findings reveal that the portrayals of Afghan women in the novel correspond with the images of Afghan women in the Western media. Moreover, an examination of a sample of book reviews of the novel unveils the important contribution of Khalid Hosseini to the Orientalist discourse.

The purpose of this study was to explore how Black men and women negotiate ideas about masculine performances within the context of romantic relationships. The New York Times Bestselling book Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, which communicates a particularly patriarchal understanding of masculinity, was used as a point of reference. Six focus groups were conducted with 28 Black males and females between the ages of 19-60. Three general conclusions about masculine performances within Black male/female relationships were drawn from the findings.

This essay investigates how Southern society functions during the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in America. This is done by looking for signs of patriarchy, religion and its influence, and also at the expectations on women in the story “A Rose For Emily”, which takes place in Jefferson, Mississippi. Patriarchy, religion and expectations on women are visible through the analysis of the protagonist Miss Emily’s relationship to her father, her relationship to her lover Homer Barron and when she is on her own at the end of her life. Furthermore, the townspeople are the narrators in this story and how they treat and view Miss Emily in the three examined parts of her life represents how the American South functions. Also, the analysis is done with a feminist theoretical perspective. Through the analysis, the conclusion is made that the South is a very patriarchal and sexist society. Men are considered to be the superior sex and rule over women. Because of the Puritan religion, women live in an oppressive environment and live very strict lives. For Southern women, marriage is a must if they want to survive both socially and financially.

Despite significant progress in increasing female participation in national politics, Tanzanian households are still predominately run by men. Gender norms which define women as houseworkers and men as providers continue to pervade widespread notions that put a heavy burden on the backs of women and hinder an equal division of household labor, regardless of women’s employment situation. Although often disfavored in this patriarchal structure, research has found that women sometimes desire men to adapt to a role that further establishes these norms. This study examined how women and men in Babati town construct masculinities and the male role in romantic relationships, and how officially contested gender roles persist. Primary data was collected through qualitative interviews and focus groups with primarily highly educated married women and men in Babati town. The data was analyzed using a theoretical framework based on masculinities in gender relations and African notions of feminism. Moreover, explanations and rationalizations of gender inequality were deconstructed and categorized in a content-oriented analysis to explicate the resilience of dominant ideologies. The study found that men are expected to have a job and to make sure that the basic needs of the family are met. Most men did not construct ideal masculinity as mutually exclusive to cooking and cleaning, and neither did any woman. However, men often exempted themselves from household labor by arguing that African culture does not allow men to cook and clean unless the wife is sick or otherwise incapacitated.

Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-123).

Thesis (M.A.P.S.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-79).

The privileging of man in African societies has involved an erasure of identities and subjectivities of many women, holding them to an assumption of female inferiority. To counter the injustice, African women writers have engaged in rhetorical and performative strategies designed to reconstitute the cultural erasure as they try to claim status as individuals. But in the process, various cultural expectations such as their maternal roles act as constant bottlenecks to return them back to their prescribed roles as subordinate beings. This dissertation, “Imagined Realities, Defying Subjects: Voice, Sexuality and Subversion in African Women’s Writing” explores the methodologies of cultural resistance and the complex ways in which African women have articulated their subjectivity, challenged societal roles, negotiated tradition and formulated a literary and feminist aesthetic. As inventors invested in creating narratives that speak to the concerns of an African female aesthetic, these authors work in, through and toward what Gloria Anzaldua calls a “mestiza consciousness,” whose work is to “break down the subjectobject duality that keeps her [woman] a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended” (102). Embracing the framework of African Feminism or what Obioma Nnaemeka calls “Nego Feminism,” each chapter articulates the sites of enunciation in which the characters engage with their fragmented conditions. Though with differing methodologies, for each writer, the act of seeking a space through which a self with an “outline” is negotiated and articulated allows the women to become aware of the need to speak their own truths and realities. I examine how authors like Flora Nwapa, Mariama Ba, Yvonne Vera and Calixthe Beyala construct textual strategies that go beyond the marginalized figures and articulate themselves so that they escape society’s sanctioned external definitions. My dissertation proffers a fresh insight that goes beyond the descriptions of how women are represented, superseding this kind of criticism with more complex analysis of gender and women’s oppression.

This dissertation begins with the observation that discursive and visual representations of women in politics have direct consequences on the actual participation of women in politics (Beail & Goren, 2009; Bimey, 2010). For this reason I analyze current visual representations of female politicians in editorial cartoons. This work focuses on political cartoons because these artifacts provide information about cultural assumptions regarding gender roles and can bring insight about the cultural barriers that women still face when they become political actors. For this project I asked the following questions: How are female politicians represented visually? And how does the existing visual rhetoric enable, debilitate or restrain their political participation? This is also a comparative study of political cartoons that portray women in Mexico and the United States. To answer these questions, I analyze cartoons within a feminist framework, using literature on patriarchy, postfeminism, and the notion of the double binds faced by women in power. To examine portrayals of female politicians I developed a methodological approach that consists in identifying cartoons that rely on gender in order to construct their political commentary. Gendered cartoons are then classified using archetypes —specifically the Great Mother archetype— and stereotypes. For the analysis, I connect Kenneth Burke’s notion of perspective by incongruity with the feminist framework I previously constructed. The cartoons analyzed in this project comprise one decade, from 2002 to 2012, and four newspapers: La Jornada and Reforma (from Mexico), and The New York Times and The Washington Post (from the U.S.). I conclude that the argument that a patriarchal system no longer exists is not valid when we analyze cartoons that clearly resent women’s participation in the public political sphere. In these gendered cartoons women continue to be the symbol of the private sphere of the home. Their presence in the political space is portrayed as incongruous and cartoonists seek to restore the patriarchal order by visually taking women back to their traditional domestic space, depicting them as housewives and mothers. In these instances cartoons become powerful tools for reinforcing the traditional hierarchy of the private and public spheres. / text