Thesis (M.A.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Women and Gender Studies." Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-86).

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Thesis (M.A.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Women's and Gender Studies." Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-95).

Thesis (M.A.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Women and Gender Studies." Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-135).

Thesis (M.A.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Women and Gender Studies." Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-96).

abstract: In this convergent mixed methods research project, I address the question of why large numbers of college students take women’s studies courses yet are reluctant to major in the field.  Using availability bias and intersectionality as my theoretical framework I hypothesized that the reluctance to declare women and gender studies as a major stems from 1) the failure to see the applicability of the major to career goals and aspirations, 2) social stigma associated with feminism, 3) social location. As a part of my intervention I designed and tested two 10-minute video modules; one on job applicability featuring women studies alumni discussing their career paths and their decision to major in the field, and a second on deconstructing stereotypes about feminism.  The control group was shown a generic video on cinematic representations.  Students were randomly assigned to one of the three groups and administered a pretest and posttest survey designed to measure job applicability, social attitudes about feminism and social location. Interviews were conducted with 6 students. My goal was to better understand perceived practicality of the women’s studies degree, social attitudes about feminism and the impact of these perceptions as they relate to a student's selection of the major. My research questions include:   RQ 1) Among students taking a course in women’s studies, how and to what extent does participation in a module on job applicability influence a student's perceptions of the potential career applicability of the women’s studies degree?  RQ 2) Among students taking a course in women’s studies, how and to what extent does participation in the module regarding feminism impact a student's perceptions of the value of the women’s studies degree?   RQ 3) How does one’s social location interact with the findings of RQ’s 1 & 2?  My sample (n=115) was drawn from students enrolled in online and hybrid courses I taught in the WST program at Arizona State University, the largest such program in the country, drawing over 6,000 students annually. However, the number of majors at 84 students is not commensurate with the growth we are experiencing in terms of enrollment or the popularity of the courses. These research addresses these My findings showed that the job applicability module increased student knowledge about the applicability of the women and gender studies major and that students had a better overall understanding of the degree in relation to career applicability, while the module about feminism did not have an effect on the choice of major.  My findings suggest that students lack of previous career knowledge in terms of job paths available to WST graduates proved to be an obstacle for our program and intervening may allow for the increase of majors. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Leadership and Innovation 2018

The creation of the French Penal Code of 1791, which failed to address the legality of prostitution, and the social climate of nineteenth-century France led to the rapid development of sexual commerce. The spread of syphilitic diseases soon became a serious crisis, and the fault of the spread of syphilis and disease was quickly ascribed to purchasable women. Other social crises of the time, such as problems with sewage and the spread of disease and decay also came to be associated with prostitution. My thesis will examine ways in which male artists of the time used literature and painting to suppress the contagious, transgressive sexual female, and the ways in which the representation of this female illustrates deeper anxieties and fears of the French bourgeois society about class and gender. I have constructed my argument in the context of two literary/artistic prostitute figures: the “heart of gold” and the “man-eater.” The “heart of gold” is characterized as a prostitute with qualities of goodness and integrity, who must ultimately die as the only way to reconcile her deviant behavior. The “man-eater,” by contrast, is a woman who destroys the men who seek her, driving them to financial, emotional, and even physical devastation. In order to complete my thesis, I have used a selection of primary sources (the works of Balzac, Dumas fils, Maupassant, Flaubert, and Manet), analyses of nineteenth-century French literature, and several historical sources, as well as the memoirs of Céleste Mogador, a courtesan in nineteenth-century France. The goal of my thesis is to examine the two literary figures mentioned above in the context of gender relations and power, the spread of disease, and decay and degeneration.

This dissertation addresses the university student as a figure of mental health and illness. Drawing on the methods and theories of disability studies, interpretive sociology, critical, feminist and queer theory, as well as hermeneutically oriented phenomenology, my work explores the social production of this student figure or type – variously depicted as ‘ invisible’, ‘maladjusted’, ‘stressed’, ‘difficult’, sensitive’, ‘resilient’, ‘narcissistic’, and extraordinarily ‘ordinary’. This figure is addressed as a means of revealing contradictory understandings of the relationship between success and survival, as this relationship appears in the ordinary daily life of the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The social and historical significance of the contemporary University’s Student Life Programs and Services is analyzed with a view to reveal the Western cultural values and practices which organize consciousness of success as a necessary condition of contemporary existence. Special attention is paid to the cultural production of knowledge concerning university student ‘mental life’, the appearance of which is located at the interstices of colonialism, global health policy, institutional ‘best practices’, cultural mores and folkways, and embodied experiences. I dwell with this appearance as an occasion to engage the materiality of Western mythologies of resilience, and with them the meaning of human agency under neoliberal governance. This engagement examines the productive power of the disciplinary and institutionalized ‘language of mental illness’ through a genealogy of the University of Toronto, a textual analyses of the University’s Student Life Programs and Services literature, and a discursive analysis of open-ended interviews with student services representatives which seeks both to understand and transgress conventional interpretations of the structure of Student Life. I demonstrate how University presentations of student bodies, minds and senses perceived to be lacking in ‘ordinary order’, can be reconceived as sites to reflect on the paramount presence of psychiatric knowledge in interpretations and responses to embodied difference within the university setting. Overall, this dissertation seeks to disrupt unexamined relations to the meaning of student types; and in the process, display how normative relations to the student as a figure of mental health and illness needs is currently and historically organized and socially achieved.

This dissertation addresses the university student as a figure of mental health and illness. Drawing on the methods and theories of disability studies, interpretive sociology, critical, feminist and queer theory, as well as hermeneutically oriented phenomenology, my work explores the social production of this student figure or type – variously depicted as ‘ invisible’, ‘maladjusted’, ‘stressed’, ‘difficult’, sensitive’, ‘resilient’, ‘narcissistic’, and extraordinarily ‘ordinary’. This figure is addressed as a means of revealing contradictory understandings of the relationship between success and survival, as this relationship appears in the ordinary daily life of the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The social and historical significance of the contemporary University’s Student Life Programs and Services is analyzed with a view to reveal the Western cultural values and practices which organize consciousness of success as a necessary condition of contemporary existence. Special attention is paid to the cultural production of knowledge concerning university student ‘mental life’, the appearance of which is located at the interstices of colonialism, global health policy, institutional ‘best practices’, cultural mores and folkways, and embodied experiences. I dwell with this appearance as an occasion to engage the materiality of Western mythologies of resilience, and with them the meaning of human agency under neoliberal governance. This engagement examines the productive power of the disciplinary and institutionalized ‘language of mental illness’ through a genealogy of the University of Toronto, a textual analyses of the University’s Student Life Programs and Services literature, and a discursive analysis of open-ended interviews with student services representatives which seeks both to understand and transgress conventional interpretations of the structure of Student Life. I demonstrate how University presentations of student bodies, minds and senses perceived to be lacking in ‘ordinary order’, can be reconceived as sites to reflect on the paramount presence of psychiatric knowledge in interpretations and responses to embodied difference within the university setting. Overall, this dissertation seeks to disrupt unexamined relations to the meaning of student types; and in the process, display how normative relations to the student as a figure of mental health and illness needs is currently and historically organized and socially achieved.

abstract: La autobiografía, como medio de expresión y reivindicación del yo, ofrece a las autoras/artistas femeninas la oportunidad de definirse a sí mismas. El género autobiográfico tiene orígenes muy antiguos y resulta fundamental en el proceso de construcción de la identidad por parte de mujeres pertenecientes a grupos étnicos minoritarios. El discurso autobiográfico permite a la mujer ser al mismo tiempo escultura y escultor, creador y creación. El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer una nueva aproximación al universo femenino de la autorepresentación visual. La autonarración debería estar en el centro de la atención feminista, siendo uno de los métodos más efectivos que las mujeres pueden aplicar para hablar sobre sus experiencias y condiciones. Esta investigación intenta reunir voces multiétnicas y promueve un recurso interdisciplinario que interesa no solo a la literatura y la cultural, sino también a otros campos de las humanidades, como la historia, la sociología y los estudios de género y de la discapacidad. Una de las principales intenciones es desmantelar las formas tradicionales de identidad y destruir las fronteras sociales, adoptando la diferencia y la alteridad como un componente único de cada individuo. Mi proyecto de disertación analiza textos autobiográficos femeninos en sus diferentes formas visuales poniendo especial énfasis en los países de Argentina, México y Estados Unidos. A través de narrativas personales, fotografías, películas, pinturas, murales y producciones digitales, estas obras femeninas examinan temas como la homofobia, la identidad política, la soberanía nativa, la maternidad, la identidad lesbiana y diferentes identidades culturales minoritarias. Algunas de las autoras seleccionadas viven al margen de la supremacía blanca por el hecho de pertenecer a grupos étnicos y sociales minoritarios. Otras voces viven al margen del sistema heteronormativo dominante para reconocerse a sí mismas como lesbianas o bisexuales. Más allá de estos contextos, todas las autoras se encuentran discriminadas por ser mujeres en un contexto patriarcal. Los marcos teóricos que se emplean incluyen en sí definiciones autobiográficas interdisciplinarias teorizadas exclusivamente por mujeres. Podrían mencionarse, por ejemplo, los conceptos de HERstory (Ashby y Gore 1995), Autohistoria (Anzaldúa 1999) Pathography (Hawkins 1999), Feminography (Abrams 2017) y Autobiografilm (Paola Lagos Labbé 2011). Las diferentes historias visuales exploran los diferentes matices de la identidad racial y/o lesbiana de las mujeres que a menudo se perciben como forasteras dentro de su propio país. Todas las artistas objetos de mi análisis se enfrentan a diferentes formas de represiones y están motivadas por un deseo de reconocimiento social. Estos grupos marginados invitan a los lectores a desarrollar nuevas formas de diálogos, prácticas y alianzas transculturales. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Spanish 2020