The thesis submitted deals with the topic of marriages in Interwar Japan through an analysis of the women's magazines (fujin zasshi) issued between 1920-1941. The women's role change brought about a gradual shift from a traditional ie-family structure to a new type of a partially atomized two-generation family. Consequently, the roles of man and women in a family have been revised since then. In relation to the modern thoughts incoming from the West, the Japanese started to perceive new ways of getting married, such as the liberal marriage (jiyū kekkon) or the love marriage (ren'ai kekkon), which have broken the old conventions of the traditional go-between marriage (miai kekkon). The purpose of this study is to show the views and opinions of men and women on marriage, establishing the family, spouse relationships, etc. by analyzing the women's magazines and to ansewer the reasearch questions. The analysis is based not only on the regular magazine articles, but also on the editorial interviews (zadankai) and counseling columns (mi no ue sōdan). At first, I introduce the women's magazines, their brief history, purpose and characteristic features. The following chapter discusses the historical background of the women's position from the social point of view, rather than political, and then mentions...

This thesis addresses needlework between 1920 and 1970 as a window into women's broader experiences, and also asserts it as a valid topic of historical analysis in its own right. Needlecraft was a ubiquitous part of women's lives which has until recently been largely neglected by historians. The growing historiography of needlework has relied heavily on fashion and design history perspectives, focusing on the products of needlework and examples of creative needlewomen. Moving beyond this model, this thesis establishes the importance of process as well as product in studying needlework, revealing the meanings women found in, attached to, and created through the ephemeral moment of making. Searching for the ordinary and typical, it eschews previous preoccupations with creation, affirming re-creation and recreation as more central to amateur needlework. Drawing upon diverse sources including oral history research, objects, Mass Observation archives, and specialist needlework magazines, this thesis examines five key aspects of women's engagement with needlework: definitions of ‘leisure' and ‘work'; motivations of thrift in peacetime and war; emotions; the modern and the traditional and finally, the gendering of needlework. It explores needlework through three central themes of identity, obligation and pleasure. Whilst asserting the validity and importance of needlework as a subject of research in its own right, it also contributes to larger debates within women's history. It sheds light on the chronology and significance of domestic thrift, the meanings of feminised activities, the emotional context of home front life, women's engagement with modern design and concepts of ‘leisure' and ‘work' within women's history.

In this Thesis, from the disciplinary vantage point of English Studies, I explore some of the complex meanings that may be attributed to several forms and practices of South African consumer culture: magazines, malls and themed leisure. While these contemporary cultural 'texts' are often ephemeral, and people's attachments to them fractured, transient or at least ambivalent rather than unproblematic, my argument takes issue with the pessimism that informs much local and international criticism of consumer culture. My Thesis turns to concepts of affect, image, sign and discourse which have become features of current English Studies in order to generate readings of commercial culture more nuanced than the 'hard analyses' favoured by dominant practitioners of 'radical' South African cultural studies. At the same time, though, my analyses have learnt through disparate forms of local cultural study the necessity of grounding textuality in the structures of political economy. By means of manageable yet conceptually-suggestive South African instances, I consider how commodities and commodified experiences - generated in the first instance by the vested interests of Capital and related ideologies - may nevertheless be experienced by people in a plethora of ways not directly tied to the commercially-expedient construct of the 'target audience'. This experiential process entails a rampant volatility typical of a mass-mediated lexicon which challenges boundaries between high and low, formal and unofficial, propriety and the improper. While advertising and promotion, for instance, function as corporate attempts to contain proliferating signifiers and to secure a preferred, 'authorised' meaning for cultural goods or services, it is also the case that consumers themselves, perhaps creatively and certainly in clandestine ways that escape the supposed authorities of either market researcher or academic intelligence, author meanings that rework the limitations of what still tends to be construed within the university as a culture industry at once banal and insidious. The meanings of the contemporary cultures with which I deal, then, are highly mediated and many-layered, rather than constituting the mere surface announcement often imagined by scholars of both literary culture and of media- and cultural studies. The contexts of my Thesis are particular: it was completed in 1998, and has been produced from a university in KwaZulu-Natal by an academic formally trained in English Studies. In some respects, then, the interpretations I offer are narrow: geographically, historically and disciplinarily focussed. Yet in working on South African examples of commoditised forms and practices that derive from metropolitan vectors and have convoluted international genealogies, I have also sought to theorise the shifting interrelations of regional and national, local and global, discipline-specific and interdisciplinary knowledge. Drawing widely on studies into consumer relations - and at apposite points identifying conceptual connections and differences between 'foreign' figures like Michel de Certeau and influential South African thinkers such as Njabulo S. Ndebele - I suggest that for all its shortcomings consumerism needs to be understood as active process rather than as passive effect. My argument implies that such a rethinking of the conventional binaries of production and consumption is appropriate in a South Africa which is gradually giving substance to a democratic social order. Even within a politics premised on the individual, forms of consumption such as magazine reading and shopping need not necessarily be scorned as the selfish, even hedonistic pursuits caricatured by ideological purists: the Thesis seeks to demonstrate that people are at once citizens and consumers, individuals searching after distinctive identity and style as well as desirous of achieving a variety of community inflected bonds. Overall, the commercial culture examined in the Thesis is represented not as inevitably marred by cultural deficiency and degraded value - despite the dissatisfactions, irritations and deferred pleasures which for many of us form at least one facet of consumption - but as an everyday spectacle which is available for symbolic interpretation and aesthetic investment. This investment may be emotional as well as cognitive, sensuous as well as critical, mundane as well as exceptional, since individuals come to commodity culture with a range of longings, dreams, fears and sedimented allegiances. As my readings demonstrate, it is such diversity of response - provisional and elusive rather than predictable and guaranteed - which gives the lie to theories which are 'always-already' premised on the prior inscription and encoding of consumerism as manipulation. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1998.

In the 70-year history of the weekly magazine Vlasta, there were three main divisions that fundamentally influenced the personnel department, as well as the choice of topics. This diploma thesis is focused in the years 1988-1991. That is, before and after the Velvet Revolution. After 1989 there were changes in the editorial office, changes in the topics of articles (influenced by propaganda) and changes in advertising and graphic design. This thesis deals with these three lines. The main goal is to find out how the working environment in the weekly magazine Vlasta has changed during the years under review and how did the content changed. The first part deals with the functioning of the editorial office two years before the change of régime and the subsequent change in the magazine environment after 1989. The thesis is focused on the work of individual editors, but also on what topics they chose and why.

This thesis deals with the life of Františka Plamínková (1875-1942) paying special attention to her role as a women's rights activist, politician and journalist. The study maps out Plamínková's journey to becoming one of the principal characters of the Czech women's movement before and after the First World War and her merits regarding the women's suffrage in Czechoslovakia in the appropriate historical context. Furthermore, it describes her politics in the Czechoslovak Senate as well as her other public activities, such as being the chairwoman of the Czech National Women's Council. It highlights Plamínková's fate during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, which ultimately led to her execution. The chapter dedicated to Plamínková's journalistic work analyses her texts published between 1906-1940 primarily in women's magazines, where Plamínková reflected on the period narrative concerning women and aimed to change their limited options within both their public and private lives. The premise of this thesis is that Plamínková projected her own experience and opinions into her journalistic body of work. The study is based in archival materials and sources, texts in period magazines and other studies related to the topic at hand. Enclosed are several period photographs and archival documents.

In this dissertation, the researcher presents the findings of a discourse analytic enquiry on the construction of femininity within a contemporary South African magazine. It is argued that gender is a social construction and that women’s magazines provide a channel through which discourse of femininity reaches women. These discourses in women’s magazines are often narrow and stereotypical in nature which may limit the development of women’s feminine gender identities. A discourse analytic approach was utilised to reveal the different discourses of femininity within a contemporary women’s magazines, Cosmopolitan, as well as to indicate how they may contribute to the construction of femininity. From the magazine, relationship-focused articles were selected, from which three predominant discourses of femininity were identified which includes femininity as heterosexual, nurturing, and managerial. An important finding is that competing discourses of empowerment and traditional femininity were evident. This points to the highly complex ways in which gender, specifically femininity, is constructed in the magazine under study. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

In recent years, there is an apparent renaissance of the Czech cuisine, the "First Republic era" (1918 - 1938, CSR I) especially. Both chefs and journalists writing about cooking and dining are referring to the gastronomy of this time period more and more often and they are praising its quality and taste. However, there is no comprehensive publication about Czech gastronomy in 1918 - 1938 period, sparse references and notes can be found in witnesses commemorative volumes, from history of folklore and from the historical press, respectively. Based on the last especially, the image of "first republic" gastronomy is gradually puzzled out. Using a content analysis method, the four biggest newspapers (Lidové noviny, Národní listy, Český deník and Venkov) and eight women journals (Žena, Ženské listy, Ženské noviny, Ženský list, Rozsévačka, Česká Žena, Ženský svět and a "Československá žena" calendar) being published in examined period are investigated. For further findings of completive and linking facts, the historical analysis method is being used as well. Aim of this work was to answer questions about the first republic journals topics and titles, and in what fashion the first republic press thought about gastronomy. Further, this work explores the possible tendency, and development and attention is...

Thesis "The comparison of selected topics in Vlasta Magazine between periods 1973- 1978 and 2013-2018" informs readers about thematic categories in Vlasta Magazine of the 1970s and the 21st century. The main goal was to compare topics of these two periods and decide how they have changed during forty years. This work introduces media theories, reminds of the most important Czech and Czechoslovakian historic events, the third chapter discusses woman's roles, especially her work and social roles. The next chapter is about media owners and about Vlasta Magazine. The practical part of this work is dedicated to quantitative and qualitative differences among thematic categories in Vlasta Magazine between periods 1973-1978 and 2013-2018. Research shows that texts of both periods have their typical features. Authors write about politics and criticize social imperfections. A woman is shown like an unselfish mother and a hard worker. Nowadays, journalists speak neither about policy nor foregone regime. An appeal to women is not coherent - they should be beautiful and slim, but on the other hand "real women have curves" and "a real lady does not care about wrinkles". Today's women do care about relationships with men and about shopping. In addition, consumerism is evident because of increased number of...

The diploma thesis "Sequel novel in selected volumes of two magazines for women published in the first Czechoslovak Republic - List paní a dívek and Hvězda československých paní a dívek" deals with sequel novels, which were published in favorite women's magazines. These novels belongs to genre "červená knihovna" and genre of teen female novels. Term "červená knihovna" (similar to harlequin) is typical for Czech literary background. Theoretical part consists historical context of sequel novel and his development and also history of popular women's literature. This part also refers to fundamental elements of sequel novels. Mainly it is stereotypization of main protagonist, patterns and plot. The end of the sequel novel for women is traditionally closed with happy ending. The practical part is focused on analyzed novels in two magazines - List paní a dívek and Hvězda československých paní a dívek. At first there are described basic data about magazines, their establishments and summary of content they consisted. Research part contains list of all sequel novels which were published and analyzed. The aim of this part was to describe main pattern, genre and plot. Part of description was focused on nationality of authors and number of sequels. The result contains the most important analyzed data and...

In this dissertation, the researcher presents the findings of a discourse analytic enquiry on the construction of femininity within a contemporary South African magazine. It is argued that gender is a social construction and that women’s magazines provide a channel through which discourse of femininity reaches women. These discourses in women’s magazines are often narrow and stereotypical in nature which may limit the development of women’s feminine gender identities. A discourse analytic approach was utilised to reveal the different discourses of femininity within a contemporary women’s magazines, Cosmopolitan, as well as to indicate how they may contribute to the construction of femininity. From the magazine, relationship-focused articles were selected, from which three predominant discourses of femininity were identified which includes femininity as heterosexual, nurturing, and managerial. An important finding is that competing discourses of empowerment and traditional femininity were evident. This points to the highly complex ways in which gender, specifically femininity, is constructed in the magazine under study. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)