A presente dissertação tem como objetivo analisar as diferentes representações da mulher em três romances do moçambicano Mia Couto, são eles: A varanda do Frangipani, Antes de Nascer o Mundo e A confissão da leoa. Pretende-se perceber como ocorrem essas representações e possíveis relações com o mundo de Moçambique, com suas formas de ver a vida, a mulher, a história. Notar tais ligações do narrado com a realidade do povo pode servir para um melhor entendimento do país e de seu modo de viver. A fundamentação teórica é baseada nos estudos de Edward Said, Homi Bhabha e Stuart Hall. A metodologia consistiu na localização e recolha dos diferentes momentos de representação feminina. Partindo desse material, analisaram-se os significados e repercussões dessas imagens. Primeiramente, buscou-se tratar de elementos relevantes da história moçambicana, por entender que é importante para compreender o livro e a literatura como um todo. Após, cada obra foi abordada separadamente, com seus elementos significativos, e a análise da representação da mulher. Pode-se concluir que o que é narrado assemelha-se, em grande parte, com o que as pessoas enfrentam no seu dia a dia. Além disso, nota-se uma maior abordagem da temática feminina ao passar dos anos por Mia Couto, juntamente com o aumento das discussões sobre o tema. / This work aims to analyze the different women representations in three novels by the Mozambican Mia Couto, they are: A varanda do frangipani, Antes de nascer o mundo and A confissão da leoa. It is intended to analyze how these representations occur and their possible relationships with the Mozambique world, with their ways of seeing life, the woman, the story. To notice such narrated links with the reality of people can serve to better understand the country and its way of life. The theoretical framework is based on the works of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Stuart Hall. The methodology consisted in locating and collecting the different female representation moments. From this material, we analyzed the meanings and implications of these images. First, it sought to address relevant elements of Mozambican history, understanding that it is important to comprehend the book and literature as a whole. After each work was approached separately, with significant elements, and the representation of women analysis.. It can be concluded that what is narrated resembles largely with what people face in their everyday life. In addition, there is a greater approach of the female subject over the years by Mia Couto, along with the increase of discussions about the topic.

Stereotypes and myths are created by media to simplify and mystify reality. The two are used to form negative stereotypical images that are used as tools of social oppression in today’s white patriarchy. This essay will focus on how Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye depicts black womanhood and motherhood and resists the reductive images of black women through the narrative technique. In the text we find the stereotypical images of the Mammy and the Matriarch in the character Pauline "Polly" Breedlove, both simplifying and mystifying black motherhood but also condescending towards African-American family constellations. The text resists these images by making readers inhabit Polly who at first fits in to the two archetypes, only to then give us additional information and use an engaging narrative technique that invites the reader to decide if Polly really is the Mammy and the Matriarch.

This study examines the impact of globalization and religious nationalism on the personal and professional lives of urban Hindu middle class media women. The research demonstrates how newly strengthened forces of globalization and Hindutva shape Indian womanhood. The research rests on various data that reveal how Indian women interpret and negotiate constructed identities. The study seeks to give voice to the objectified by scrutinizing and challenging the stereotypical modern faces of Indian womanhood seen in the narratives of globalization and Hindutva. Feminist open-ended interviewing was conducted in English and Hindi in New Delhi, the capital of India, with 23 Hindu women, employed by electronic and print media corporations. Accumulated data were analyzed and interpreted using feminist critical discourse analysis. Findings from the study indicate that while the Indian middle class women have embraced professional opportunities presented by globalization, they remain circumscribed by mutating gender politics. The research also finds that as academic and professional progress empower the women within their homes, their public lives have become fraught with increasing gender violence and decreasing recourse to justice. Therefore, women accept the power stratification of their lives as being dependent on spatial and temporal distinctions, and have learnt to engage and strategize with the public environment for physical safety and personal-professional progress. While the media women see systemic masculine domination as being symbiotic with tenets of religious nationalism, they exhibit an unquestioned embracing of capitalism/globalization as the means of empowerment. My research also strongly indicates the importance of the media’s role in shaping gender dynamics in a global context. In conclusion, my research shows the mediawomen’s immense agency in pursuing academic and professional careers while being aware of deeply ingrained gender roles through their strong commitment towards their families. The findings of this study contribute to the literature on Third World nationalism, urban globalization and understandings of reworked-renewed masculine domination. Finally, the study also engages with recent scholarship on the Indian middle class (See Nanda 2010; Shenoy 2009; Lukose 2005; and Radhakrishnan 2006) while simultaneously addressing the notions of privilege and disengagement levied at the middle class woman, a symbiosis of idealization and imprisonment.

In 2015 the Polish political environment saw a sudden change with the election of PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość/Law and Justice), a conservative right-wing wing party that became the ruling voice in society. Due to the interconnectedness of politics and religion, the role of the Catholic church gained prevalence leading to a shift in the preferred discursive practices. This paper shall primarily focus on the gender perspective, specifically the envisioned role enforced on Polish women by PiS given the shift from liberalism towards conservatism. Substantive representation linked to descriptive representation shall allow to researching policies that concern the needs of women.  As an objective, the study aims to explore gender roles and womanhood through social discourse as well as political actions. The study contributes to the identified research gap between social conservatism and the substantive representation of women in Central and Eastern Europe. Three theories are employed (the Queer theory, the Performativity theory and the Dramaturgical model) that complement each other with the purpose of creating a multi-layered analysis.  In terms of methodology, qualitative research is conducted that includes a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in relation to online data, drawing on principles from nethnography and feminist ethnography. Moreover, in order to grasp the lived experience, a small number of interviews have been conducted. Results have shown the challenging social positioning of women after the implementation of policies concerning women’s rights, such as reproductive rights. This created national debates as to what it means to provide women with a ‘voice’ and how this might threaten the freedom of expression and consequently human rights. Counter-narratives show the resistance to the conditioning of behavioural expectations.

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and filled out the appropriate web form. / BEASTS is a character driven play that explores the chaos of American womanhood through the dark underbelly of a relationship between Fran, a pregnant suburbanite and her older sister Judy, an irreverent artist with a propensity for disruption. When Judy hears that Fran’s husband, Jim is on a business trip she decides to pay Fran a visit. The friction between these siblings is palpable and continues to intensify as Judy unearths confounding secrets and infringes upon the relationship that Fran has with her Doula, Amelia, an elitist earth mama who’s been Fran’s only female friend since relocating back East. The world of the play begins in realism and ends in magical realism; as their environment starts to mirror the anarchy of their psychological labyrinthine world: a giant tree falls in the middle of the living room, the walls of the house cave in, raging wolves howl in the distance. Form and logic disintegrate into another realm as Fran and Judy unwittingly fight through pain to arrive at a moment of love which is devitalized when Jim returns home. / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

Colonization within Indigenous territories has impacted Indigenous governance structures and women in leadership in different ways. In order to best understand the violence, displacement and oppression that Coast Salish women face today we need to focus on the ways that the state has attacked the powerful role that si´em slheni´ (honoured and respected woman) held within her socio-political societies prior to contact. I use an historical institutional analysis to draw out the ways that history has impacted Coast Salish people. I also utilize Diane Million’s Felt Theory (2008) by weaving Coast Salish women’s stories, experiences, and understandings of colonization within their own ancestral territories. The research question at hand is: How have Coast Salish si´em slhunlhéni´ (honoured and respected women) been impacted due to colonization historically and how are these impacts still affecting our slhunlhéni´ and our communities today? In asking this question, I hope to urge the reader to engage a territorially-based approach in dealing with the violence and displacement that Indigenous women in Canada face today. I aim to do so by illustrating what an approach based in Coast Salish history and governance would look like. I argue that if we do not choose to take up a territorial based approach, we are only furthering the erasure and silencing of Indigenous womanhood denying its resurgence. I highlight how settler statecraft has played out in Coast Salish territory and explore the myriad of ways that racist ideologies and colonial violence have taken shape within Coast Salish territories. To do so, I examine the different ways that the state has attempted to control and pathologize coastal people and illustrate the shift that has occurred in moving from Coast Salish economies to capitalism. Ultimately, I demonstrate the multi-faceted approach taken by legislative discrimination that was fueled by ideological racism that the settler colonial project depends upon in order to maintain control over Indigenous lands, waters, and people. By examining these issues, I highlight how the settler project was able to weaken slhunlhéni´ role and therefore firmly establish itself within Coast Salish territories Finally, I turn to present day reality in Coast Salish territory and argue that while there are ways the state, settlers and Indigenous people living within Coast Salish territories are attempting to address the wrongs of colonization, Coast Salish women’s voices and roles are being left out of decolonial discourse and actions. In order to liberate Coast Salish women, we need to turn back to our ancestral ways and for those who are not a descendant to these territories one must work to understand what your responsibility is to the local people and women of these lands. In this way, centering a territorially based approach to governance in all acts of resurgence and decolonial action allows for Coast Salish women to maintain authority, therefore empowering these women. Centering local laws and governance will center Indigenous women, lifting them from the displaced positions they find themselves in today. / Graduate

MA (English Literature) / Department of English / See the attached abstract below

The American Civil War is often framed as exclusively masculine, consisting of soldiers, god-like generals, and battle; a sphere where women simply did not enter or coexist. This perception is largely due to the mobilization of approximately six million men, coupled with the Victorian era which did not permit women to engage in the public sphere. Women are given their place however, but it is more narrowly defined as home front assistance. Even as women transitioned from passive receivers to active participants, their efforts rarely defied gender norms. This thesis looks at Confederate female camp followers who appeared to defy societal conventions by entering the male dominated camps and blurred the lines between men and women’s proper spheres. While camp followers could be expanded to include women of the lower class, including black women, laborers, slaves and prostitutes, only middle and upper class white women are analyzed because they were the ones required to maintain respectability. More specifically, I analyze unmarried women, female soldiers, bereaved women and nurses. Barbara Welter articulated and labeled the concept of public versus private spheres, plus the attributes necessary to achieve respectability as the Cult of True Womanhood. The Cult of True Womanhood demanded that women be pious, pure, and submissive within the domestic sphere. It is with this foundation that the camp followers can be analyzed. Their actions appeared to break with the Cult of True Womanhood, but when they explained in memoirs, newspaper accounts, and journals why they entered the camps, they framed their responses in a way that allowed them to appear to conform to the cult.

This thesis explores the conception and embodiment of nature in the songs of American folkmusic/doom metal singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe. Through the theoretical perspective of ecocritical feminism that emphasise the interconnectedness of the subjugation of women and the environment, this study delves into how Wolfe’s songs relate to nature and the feminine in relation to voice and song. I employ the methodology of Critical Musicology as described by Lawrence Kramer, to provide an understanding of the relationship between song, text and language. And to further facilitate a comprehensive understanding of gender and vocal expression, I utilise the feminist vocal philosophy of Adriana Cavarero where the logocentric division of speech and sound is scrutinised. Alongside this study’s primary focus on Wolfe’s vocal expression, attention to how ideas are musicalized and conveyed through sound and textual inclusions contribute to a richer and more nuanced understanding of how the relationship with nature is embodied in Wolfe’s songs.

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