The purpose of this essay is to make visible, how and to what extent, women are illuminated in selected textbooks. All textbooks in this study are aimed at high school. In this essay, a qualitative method has been applied to generate opportunities to draw conclusions from the examined material. The textbooks are scrutinized individually and then compared to each other. Finally, the textbooks are set against the curricula to answer the overall question of the thesis, How well do the textbooks correspond with the curricula? Using theoretical formulas, the study shows that women are marginalized in all textbooks. It is the men's history that is served which generates that women become more like a complement. This study also shows that when women are co-authors, the representation of women in the textbooks increases. Although women are underrepresented it has over a 50-year period become more equal and it is our responsibility as future teachers to continue the gender equality work at school.

No description available.

This thesis discusses how a historic woman is represented on stage today. The woman in mind is Sabina Spielrein, and she is portrayed in a play called: Name: Spielrein Sabina. She was born in the late 19th century and made a significant impact on the development in psycho-analysis. Since her letters, diaries and fragments was found 1977, and later on in 1982, nu-merous of people have been fascinated regarding her life, especially with her relation to Jung and Freud. One of my arguments is that there could be another story to tell, as she is living in a context when women were organized and struggled for their rights on many levels. It is a period when a new type of women is formulated, with new visions on society, morals and sexuality. This New Woman discourse was intense all over Europe. With representation as a theoretical instrument it was possible to see how this play challenges several typical women images. By using the character Sabina I have looked at (stereo) types such as: the good daughter, the mad woman, the genius, the mistress, the wife and the mother. Putting Sabina Spielrein in focus has also made it possible to discuss around cultural power, how it works and the importance of who is in charge.

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / History / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

In search of an Irish women's literary tradition, this dissertation examines the fiction of Irish women writers from Maria Edgeworth in 1800 to Jennifer Johnston in 1984. Contemporary anthropological, psychoanalytical, and literary theory suggests that women, even those of different cultures, excluded from public life and limited to the domestic sphere, would develop similar interests. When these interests ran counter to those of the dominant group, the women would have had to develop a technique to simultaneously express and encode these interests and concerns. This technique in literature, and specifically in the writers considered, often results in a muted plot. On the overt level the plot reifies the values and tenets of the establishment, but, at the muted level, the plot often expresses contradictory and subversive values. In 1800, Maria Edgeworth employs a "naive" narrator who both expresses male disinterest in the awful situations of the women he depicts and also distances the author from any implied criticism of this male perspective. Edgeworth combines her subtle expose with a critique of the desires encoded as "human," but actually merely "male," in canonical literature. At the end of the nineteenth century, E. OE. Somerville and Martin Ross again use an arguably deceptive narratorial device, as does Molly Keane in 1981. Elizabeth Bowen employs a more subtle narratorial device in The Last September, but one which still distances the author from her text. The re-vision of texts, literary and historical, indeed the re-visioning of history, recurs in Bowen, Keane, Kate O'Brien, Julia O'Faolain and Jennifer Johnston. Finally, one can trace similarities of both theme and technique over the whole period, despite the modifications of time and social change. We can also point to the major thematic and structural change which occurs when, in the past ten to fifteen years, writers have reversed the placement of muted and overt plot.

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published_or_final_version / toc / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The central assumption of this study is that the awareness of a historically constructed, culturally sanctioned condition of subalternity is at the heart of the fictional production of Francophone African women writers. Subalternity here is viewed as a narrative and spatial continuum inside which African women have to negotiate issues relating to subjecthood and identity, both marked by gender and colonialism. Various definitions of 'the subaltern' are relevant, ranging from Antonio Gramsci's to those of the South Asian Subaltern Studies group, and to John Beverley's and Fredric Jameson's discussions. Jameson's emphasis on subalternity as "the feelings of mental inferiority nad habits of subservience and obedience which... develop in situations of domination - most dramatically in the experience of colonized peoples" (Jameson, 1981) is crucial, because it demonstrates the constructedness of that ontological condition. The approach adopted here aims to include gender as a category in a discourse that often excludes it, and to bring social science-oriented concepts into dialogue with literary theory and criticism. Combined with a discussion of Africa-influenced versions of feminist theory (stiwanism, negofeminism, motherism), Subaltern studies provides a space for the emergence of a south-south postcolonial debate that can throw new light on writing by African women. Fictional works by Therese Kuoh-Moukoury, Mariama Ba, Aminata Maiga Ka, Angele Rawiri, Philomene Bassek, Evelyne Mpoudi-Ngolle, Regina Yaou, Fatou Keita, and Abibatou Traore are read as conveying the various stages of consciousness on the part of the subaltern. Kuoh-Moukoury's Rencontres essentielles (1969), Maiga Ka's La voie du salut (1985), and Bassek's La tache de sang (1990) exemplify a first stage of consciousness in which the subaltern woman submits passively to oppressive patriarchal, cultural and religious prescriptions. Ba's Une si longue lettre (1979), Mpoudi Ngolle's Sous La cendre le feu (1990) and Rawiri's Fureurs et cris de femmes (1989) present a more assertive, rebellious heroine whose efforts are undermined by a resilient social context. Finally, Traore's Sidagamie (1998), Kei'ta's Rebelle (1998) and Yaou's Le prix de la revoke (1997) address the possibility of a sustained African women's struggle resulting not only in transient personal and isolated victories but also in an enduring social transformation governed by the ethos of gender equality.