This thesis contextualizes Appalachian murder ballads of the 19th- and early 20th-centuries through a close reading of the lyric texts. Using a research frame that draws from the musicological and feminist concepts of Diana Russell, Susan McClary, Norm Cohen, and Christopher Small, I reveal 19th-century Appalachia as a patriarchal, modern, and highly codified society despite its popularized image as a culturally isolated and “backward” place. I use the ballads to demonstrate how music serves the greater cultural purpose of preserving and perpetuating social ideologies. Specifically, the murder ballads reveal layers of meaning regarding hegemonic masculinities prevalent in 19th-century and turn-of-the-20th-century Appalachian culture. This work also explores the biases and agendas of the early folksong projects in the United States. Examining the arguments of early scholars, I consider the American tradition in juxtaposition to the earlier British forms of music. Rejecting earlier scholarship that argues for the relatedness of British and American balladry, I find that ballads associated with, and circulating in, the United States instead reflect a new cultural idiom grounded in the beliefs of those who sought a conservative Christian aesthetic and way of life in the southern Appalachian mountains. The murder ballads witness that Appalachia, specifically in the 19th-century period of industrial change, was defined by essential tensions between cultural traditions of the past and emerging notions of American modernism. This tension is met in the songs with responses of violence against women whose life situations—marked by sexual freedom—are the very depiction of a new cultural modernism that threatens the hegemony of the past.

The trials of a comfort woman was never revealed after the conclusion of WWII. More than half a century has passed before the name was uttered on the international stage. Why the sudden break of silence? What is the response of the Japanese government. In this paper, we discuss the issue of the comfort women and the the political implications it holds on Japan. Japan's failure to accept wartime reparation, largely due to Allied intervention, has resulted in the widening gap between Japan and Asia. This paper focuses on the combination of increased US influence as a result of the San Francisco Treaty of 1951 and Japan’s fervent nationalistic identity served to widen the gap between Japan and other East and Southeast Asian nations, making reconciliation over the issue of comfort women a problem that remains unresolved to this day.

In the early 1860´s, the author and opinion former Fredrika Bremer made a large donation of books to Högre lärarinneseminariet, which is the first governmental institute for higher education of women in Sweden. The aim of this thesis is to describe the collection of donated books as well as to extract information regarding Bremer's international network of contacts, her views on women's education and her relation to Högre lärarinneseminariet. Furthermore, the aim is to highlight the unique relationship between Fredrika Bremer's private collection of the books and the library of Högre lärarinneseminariet from a gender perspective. A handwritten list of the 321 titles constitutin the donation has been preserved in the seminar archive and three quarters of the books have been re-discovered in a bookcase at Årsta castle. The donation is characterized by its double origin as stamps and personal dedications remain as permanent traces in the books. The archive list of the donation defines the scope of the current thesis. A sub-population of the books was selected for a more thorough investigation which was performed according to a bibliographical form. By considering each individual book as an artefact and the donation as its context, information was derived both from the individual book as well as from the book in relation to the collection as a whole. The investigation shows that the collection reflects Fredrika Bremer's areas of interest, her travels and her contacts with other writers throughout the world. The donation of the books, as well as the Iduna statue which she also donated, confirms that she saw her vision of a college being realized in Högre lärarinneseminariet. She was also aware of her own efforts for women's education and emancipation, and her significance as a role model for future students at the school. There is a high cultural history value in the preservation of Fredrika Bremer's book collection and it is desirable to make the collection more accessible for research.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 147 pages. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Blanche Armwood was a remarkable black woman activist, from Tampa, Florida, who devoted her life to improving the political, social, and economic status of blacks in the Jim Crow South. Local historians have kept Armwood's legacy alive by describing her achievements and by emphasizing her dedication to the African-American population during one of the most racist periods in American history. In their efforts to understand Armwood's career, scholars depend upon race as the primary category of analysis and focus mainly on the external forces that defined Armwood's world. They argue that she became resigned to her lot in life as a black woman, and consequently chose to accommodate rather than challenge the Southern racial system. This thesis offers an alternative interpretation of Armwood's activism. / ABSTRACT: It argues that Blanche Armwood rejected the white supremacist ideology of the Jim Crow South and insisted on equal opportunity and political equality for all African-Americans. This study examines how social variables such as race, gender, and class intersected in her life, shaping her world view and leadership style. It explores how Armwood's experiences as a southern, middle-class, black woman affected her racial ideology. Armwood left behind a powerful legacy of resistance against the second-class status that white America imposed on blacks during the nadir in African-American history. She contested the white South's perception of African-American women. In a world that associated them with Mammy and Jezebel stereotypes, Armwood insisted that African-American women deserved the same respect that society accorded white women. / ABSTRACT: Armwood fought for political equality, demanding that black women should have the right to vote and participate in the civic process as women and as African-Americans. In addition, she believed that the federal government had a responsibility to protect all its citizens and that every American was entitled to equal treatment before the law. Finally, Armwood&softsign;s racial uplift work revealed her faith in the cornerstone of the American creed, its promise of equal opportunity. She provided some blacks with the chance to move away from poverty and illiteracy to become respectable middle-class Americans. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

British imperialism of the Ottoman Empire is analyzed in terms of power and influence. Changes in gender roles, nationalism, and culture are all examined through the lens of imperialism. The discourse flows thematically and discusses brief histories of both Britain and the Ottoman Empire. The construction of the Imperial Museum created a unified image of the nation through the collection of material items. As a result of European imperialism, the Ottoman Empire developed a sense of national culture.

During the long eighteenth century, married women in England were subject to the rules of coverture, which denied them a legal identity independent of their husbands and severely curtailed their acquisition, possession and disposition of property. There is a consensus among historians that married women circumvented the restrictions of coverture both in their daily lives and by use of the legal mechanism of the separate estate. This study reviews contemporary legal and social attitudes towards women’s property rights in marriage to examine the extent to which married women had economic agency under coverture. Through a review of reported cases, treatises on the law of property, and a contemporary fictional representation of pin-money, I assess the foundations justifying the law of coverture, and the challenges presented to coverture by the separate estate. I argue that there is a distinction between the theory and practice of the separate estate; the separate estate must be understood as a type of property set aside for a special purpose rather than a type of property separated from a husband’s control. More precisely, the existence of the separate estate generally, and pin-money in particular, did little to advance married women’s economic agency. / Graduate

L’étude du personnel des Hauts-Fourneaux de Chasse pendant les Trente Glorieuses porte sur des catégories professionnelles diverses, sur leurs trajectoires et sur leur travail. Les politiques d’entreprises variées sont inégales selon les âges, sexes et nationalités. Les rapports entre salariés et dirigeants sont faits de collaborations en raison d’intérêts communs comme de tensions. Ils s’établissent dans un contexte de restructuration de l’industrie régionale et de l’évolution inégale des productions. La modernisation de l’outillage productif est alors régulièrement mobilisée, ce qui a un effet sur l’emploi et surtout sur le travail. La fin de cette période est marquée par des luttes pour maintenir ses activités sidérurgiques rassemblant au-delà du personnel de l’usine. Le site est pourtant restructuré et le personnel doit se reconvertir. Les sources à la fois publiques et privées, écrites et orales, sont diverses. / The study of Chasse-sur-Rhône’s blast furnaces staff deals with their various professional categories, careers and work. The varied companies’ policies are unequal when it comes to age, sex and nationality. The relationships between workers and managers rely on collaborations due to common interests as well as tensions. They are built in a context of regional industry redevelopment and unequal evolution of productions. The modernization of the productive tools is thus regularly activated, which has an impact on employment but mostly on work. The end of this period is characterized by struggles to maintain the steel activity gathering beyond the factory staff. However the site is redeveloped and the staff must redeploy. The various sources are both public and private, written and oral.

While it may be argued that aggression against women is part of a culture of violence deeply rooted in Spanish society, the gender-related violence that exists in today’s Spain is more specifically a legacy of Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975). Franco’s Spain endorsed unequal gender relations, championed patriarchal dominance and power over women, and imposed models of hegemonic and authoritarian masculinities that internalized violence by rendering it a feature inseparable from manhood and virility. This dissertation provides a comprehensive analysis of masculinity and gender violence in Franco’s Spain, by analyzing the novel as the primary cultural vehicle of social criticism and political dissent against the new regime during a period (1939-1962) dominated by silence and censorship. The first part of this work defines and elucidates the concepts of masculinity and gender violence and the relationship between them. It also compares the significant social and cultural achievements of Spanish women during the Second Republic (1931-1939) with the reactionary curbing of those achievements during Francoism. The second part of this research presents a multidisciplinary analysis of masculinity and gender violence in three novels: Nada (1944) by Carmen Laforet, Juegos de manos (1954) by Juan Goytisolo and Tiempo de silencio (1962) by Luis Martin Santos. Through the literary representation of different models of masculinity and the psychological and social parameters that encourage and incite gender violence, these authors conceptualize and express their political ideology, as well as their symbolic interpretation of Francoist Spain.

Emma Hardinge Britten’s life encompassed and reflected many of the challenges and opportunities afforded to women in the Victorian world. This dissertation explores the multi-layered Victorian landscape through the life of an individual in order not only to tell her individual story, but also to gain a more nuanced understanding of how nineteenth-century norms of gender, class, religion, science and politics combined to create opportunities and obstacles for women in Britten’s generation. Britten was an actor, a musician, a writer, a theologian, a political activist, a magazine publisher, a spirit medium, a lecturer, and a Spiritualist missionary. Taking into account her multiple subjectivities, this dissertation relies on historical biography to contextualize Britten’s life in a number of areas, including Modern Spiritualism and political and civic engagement in the second half of the nineteenth century in Britain, the U.S., and Australia. The dissertation is organized thematically in a quasi-chronological manner. Time frames overlap between chapters, as Britten travels from the realm of politics to that of science and to religion. Each chapter reflects this transformation of Britten’s multiple intellectual and spiritual engagements, including performance, religion, politics and science. Emma Hardinge Britten challenged, whether consciously or not, gendered expectations by attaining a presence in a male-dominated public. Even though her life and accomplishments pre-date the New Woman of the fin de siècle, Britten established a successful career and her life creates a foreshadowing of the larger movements to come. She was an extraordinarily politically active woman whose influence reached three continents in her lifetime and beyond.

This project seeks to include the historical significance of women in the Foreign Service and subsequently the United States Department of State between 1942 and 1964. Using the life and experience of Margaret Parx Hays, one of fewer than three hundred female foreign service officers before 1960, this study explores the importance of examining women at the "ground level." This narrative examines the life of Hays at several different duty stations and her experience navigating a male-dominant workplace congruent to the political and diplomatic missions of each stations. Hays was stationed in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1942-1945); Bogota, Columbia (1945-1947); Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1948-1950); Washington D.C., U.S. (1951-1954; 1959-1962); Manila, Philippines (1954-1956); Mexico City, Mexico (1956-1958); and Hong Kong, China (1962-1964). Throughout the deployment at each station, Hays was confronted with major political events in her duty station's history or in the intersection of American foreign and domestic policy. Through the use of Hays's archived collection of personal papers, including letters and newspapers, this thesis presents a more representative story about women and about the Department of State as a larger whole than previous scholarship that has ignored how gender affected diplomatic history.