This thesis examines two of the female-driven sitcoms from the 2011-2012 season, New Girl and Girls. I analyze both series from a third-wave feminist perspective, looking at how each series portrays its respective lead character, Jess and Hannah, and how each series portrays funny women in general. Through these analyses, I ultimately argue that Jess on New Girl represents a much more promising feminist icon than Hannah on Girls. This is mainly because Jess is driven by self-love and self-confidence while Hannah is so defined by her self-hatred that she becomes difficult for viewers to relate. Most disappointingly, I find that female-driven sitcoms use humor as a weapon to discipline its characters. / Literature review -- Critical orientation -- New girl : feminist role model or just another manic pixie dream girl? -- Girls : the future of television or whiny, selfish, entitled brats? / Department of Communication Studies

Internet memes are exemplary forms of user-generated content in the age of social networking and user participation. This study draws attention to the work of an intersectional feminist community on Instagram who make use of this platform to discuss their personal politics via image macro memes. The community is made up of femmes who typically blend politics, pop culture, and a personal perspective into their content. This practice is identified as a contemporary feminist use of new media and is explored in relation to a theoretical reading of the current Third Wave of feminism as “embodied politics”. The theory of “disciplinary power” by Michel Foucault, and connections between disciplinary power with systems of oppression and social media are also employed to construct an understanding of feminist memes as a means of embodied resistance to disciplinary norms. This study seeks to explore how Internet memes are harnessed as a feminist mode of discourse, and why feminist meme creators (or “memers”) are motivated to use memes in this way. Therefore this research locates an intersection between digital culture and feminist use of new media. The research explores the possibility that Internet memes can serve as a creative and effective mode of feminist discourse in resistance to various forms of marginalisation - which occur both online and offline.

Objectives. Mindfulness and acceptance-based therapies are becoming increasingly popular in practise and meta-analyses have been conducted to evaluate their effects on a range of mental health difficulties. The purpose of this review was to evaluate the evidence base for mindfulness and acceptance-based therapies in the treatment of distressing auditory hallucinations. Method. Five electronic databases were searched in addition to an internet search engine. Authors of included studies were contacted and reference lists were reviewed. Quality criteria were developed and studies were rated independently by three raters. Results. Nine studies met the inclusion criteria; four controlled studies and five case studies. There was substantial variation in study design and outcomes. Overall, the quality of the studies was poor. Reductions in hallucination-related distress, belief conviction, cognitive appraisals and hallucination proneness were noted. Participants’ ability to respond mindfully to hallucinations increased. Conclusion. Although the results of this review suggest that mindfulness and acceptance-based therapies may result in several beneficial effects, the quality of these studies was poor and the results are likely to have been subject to considerable bias. More research is needed before such therapies can be considered evidence-based treatments for distressing hallucinations. Suggestions for future research are made.

This dissertation thesis is focused on the issue of further extension of computers into the human life and its stronger influencing of human being, in the foreign literature defined as ubiquitous computing, everyware or pervasive computing. The basic goals of the thesis are follows: - Compare different views on this issues and make their assessment - Analyze possible effect, especially for banking and insurance area - Propose some specific innovation in named areas The results of this thesis should: - Serve as a basis for further studies in the ubiquitous computing area - Be usable as a basis for further scientific research - Bring some practical application, with which can we met in practice in future years Whole work place emphasis on the innovation process, with which is topic very closely linked and which is constantly emphasizing both in technical as in commercial spheres. The goals of the thesis are fulfilled in the individual chapters in the following way: - Definition of the goals and introduction of the topic -- Chapter 1 - Analysis of current status of knowledge -- Chapter 2 - Brief characteristic of main UC concepts -- Chapter 3 - Practical experience and innovation from UC -- Chapter 4 - Final evaluation -- Chapter 5 The scientific benefits of this work have been awarded by presentation of main parts of the thesis on international conferences and publication in the scientific magazines.

M.A. / The aim of this study was to explore the democratisation process that unfolded in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1990 to 2006 with a view to establishing whether Huntington’s model of democratisation as set out in his Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century (1990) is useful in analysing the Congolese transition. Huntington’s model is essentially based on the experiences of democratisation in the so-called third wave of democratisation that occurred in countries in Southern and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia. In line with Huntington’s analysis of the democratisation process elsewhere, the study examined, among other things, the triggering factors of the democratisation process; the modes and characteristics of the transition and the factors favouring and obstructing the development of democracy in the Congo. The study has found grounds for some minor deviations from Huntington’s observation of experiences elsewhere. These pertain to the sequence of the democratisation process, the complexity of the problem in the Congo and the role of the military. Whereas Huntington posited that one of three modes of transition occurred in a particular country – transformation, replacement and transplacement – all three modes transpired in a dialectical sequence in the Congo. In addition, the democratisation process in the Congo was intensely militarised since it involved not only the government and what one could call the ‘classical’ opposition, but also an ‘armed opposition’ encompassing several rebel groups and militias backed by foreign armies, each with its own agenda. Furthermore, when the military was confronted with the pressure to democratise elsewhere, it was generally instrumental in the democratisation process. In the Congo, to the contrary, it is the powerlessness of the military that constituted an obstruction to the democratisation process in the country. The weakness of the generals in the Congolese army results from their vassalisation by politicians who utilised army officers for their political ends. However, in an overall evaluation of the applicability of Huntington’s model to the Congolese democratisation process, it can be stated that, despite the above minor differences, Huntington’s model serves as a useful tool in analysing the democratisation process in the country, irrespective of the complexity of the Congolese experience. The model serves to elucidate the causes, patterns, power dynamics in the democratisation process, and also identifies potential problems in the consolidation of democracies. Its usefulness in analysing the Congolese transition makes it an equally useful tool in analysing the democratisation processes in other African countries.

Transition to democracy have been a complex and difficult process for many thirdwave democratic countries across the globe. In Ghana, past military governments, role of political parties, rule of law, ethnocentrism and human rights abuses and have played a key role in Ghana’s 1992 Constitution and fourth attempt to democratic governance. In addition, eight successful national elections and five change of governments from 1992-2020 have made Ghana one of the shining examples of democracy in West Africa. The aim of this study has been tounderstand and assess the impact of national elections and change of government in Ghana’s transition to democracy from 1992-2020. To achieve this, I have selected secondary sources from academic books, journals, reports, and have implemented Samuel Huntington’s “Two-turnover test” theoretical concept to examine how national elections and change of governments have contributed to Ghana’s transition to democracy from 1992 -2020. My key finding is that national elections and change of governments have not completely contributed positively to the transition to democracy in Ghana.

This qualitative research study used a theoretical framework of third-wave feminism and reader response theory to examine two research questions: How do girls and women relate to the female protagonist in dystopian young adult literature (YAL)? and How are the responses to dystopian YAL similar and different for the targeted teen audience and the adult audience? A group of four teenaged girls and another group of three adult women read and discussed the YAL dystopian text Uglies. For this project, I collected participant journals and transcripts from individual interviews and book club discussions. I selected quotations from each data source that highlighted the participant’s reactions to the protagonist. Data were analyzed in two phases. In phase one, I used discourse analysis, and in phase two I used constant comparative analysis. The analyses revealed that participants from both groups identified with the protagonist’s attempts to improve society, which aligns both groups’ responses with inclusive aspects of third-wave feminism. However, other aspects of feminism were incorporated into their answers as well. The women participants demonstrated a broader societal concern, such as those shared by second wave feminists. The girls, in contrast, were firmly situated within individualist aspects of third-wave feminism. Whereas, the women related to the protagonist on both a personal and broader societal level, the girls related only on a personal level. Findings from this research extend reader response theory by showing that responses to literature are strongly shaped by generational position.

No description available.

This thesis project is centered on the female body, specifically body image, in relation to Western, cultural images of women. This is a problem that has been around, essentially, since the beginning of Western art. While different scholars argue whether or not this problem has become worse, it is nonetheless problematic that we are still, in 2018, fighting patriarchy’s control of our bodies via body image. Grounding my project in Susan Bordo’s 1993 text Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, this thesis explores Bordo’s argument that the female body is culturally produced through the lens of Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulation and simulacra. Reading Bordo via Baudrillard allows us to explore this age-old problem at a new angle, giving us new reasons that explain why we are still stuck in patriarchy’s chains. Through this lens, I demonstrate how and why Third-wave feminist activism (I focus specifically on the Body Positive Movement) is failing in their attempts to reclaim the female body: the issue lies within Third-wave activism’s desire to portray othered bodies as beautiful and desirable. This becomes problematic in the era of simulacra: abject bodies do not resemble the (un)real ideal so they become “unreal” in the eyes of society. This attempt to represent abject bodies (obese, racialized, trans, disabled) as beautiful results in stigmatization and disgust towards said bodies, and thus the Body Positive Movement leaves out abject bodies because these abject bodies cannot be seen as beautiful in a society that deems them unreal. I argue that in order to reclaim the female body, we must first reclaim the mind side of the mind/body dualism before we can successfully reclaim our bodies. To demonstrate how this is possible, I use Margaret Atwood’s novel Lady Oracle as a case study that not only shows how the female body is culturally produced in the era of simulacra, but also allows us to see how reclaiming the mind side of the binary does allow the protagonist, Joan, to reclaim her past and body as her own, without shame. It is through fiction that reality is represented, and I conclude my thesis with my own personal anecdotes, showing how resistance via fiction can transcend into real life and point to a new, hopeful future.

Chile allowed therapeutic abortion (cases in which the mother’s life was in danger) from 1931 until 1989, the last year of the Pinochet military dictatorship. After Pinochet stepped down, Chile underwent a democratic transition in 1990 that was heavily reliant on a moral fundamentalist mentality, primarily influenced by the Catholic Church and conservative political parties. It has been widely argued that after the democratic transition, the previously strong and united women’s movement lost much of its visibility and cohesiveness due to its progressive fragmentation. This thesis holds that the women’s movement in Chile is not dead, but instead there are numerous small movements that apply different methods in an attempt to change abortion legislation in Chile. Through the dissemination of secondary research and first-person interviews conducted over a period of six months in Chile, the results show that Chilean third-wave feminists have re-shaped the women’s movement in an effort to introduce innovative ideas and tactics to advance abortion rights. Nonetheless, these new voices have also created tensions between new and old feminists further dividing the movement and limiting their ability to effect real change in regards to the abortion debate in Chile.