Advisors/Committee Members: Shaw, Stephanie J.

▼ This dissertation examines the ways that teenage girls’ online interactions reflect their psychic and social struggles to negotiate contradictory and constricting discourses regarding contemporary American girlhood. Literature on girls’ online interactions has tended to fall into one of two categories. In the first, scholars sound alarms about the ubiquity of risk in digital spaces (for instance, on websites that supposedly promote eating disorders). In the second, scholars celebrate the ways that teenagers engage in social activism online. In contrast, I argue that emergent media scholarship often fails to question the messages of autonomous selfhood that characterize girls’ digital personas. I utilize feminist and psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity to suggest that girls’ voices and agencies are always embedded in normative ideals of gender, race, sexuality, and class. I examine a variety of digital spaces that cover a diverse range of contemporary American girlhoods, including queer girls’ MySpace pages, pro-bulimia message boards, and fan sites for young musicians such as Taylor Swift. I utilize a three-pronged methodology: analysis of the textual and visual elements of websites, instant messenger interviews with girls, and a research blog that explains my project to my research subjects in understandable language. Website analysis and interviews reveal that girls feel personally empowered by the ability to express themselves and demonstrate “who they really are” online in ways they cannot offline, but their digital personas are deeply embedded in discourses that privilege normative femininity, whiteness, heterosexuality, thinness, and middle-class status as conditions to aspire to. This research shows that despite girls’ proclamations about articulating independent selves online, their self-presentations are consciously and unconsciously motivated by a yearning for recognition by real and fantasy online audiences. Elucidating girls’ desire for recognition illustrates the limited range of possible subjectivities to girls under post-feminism and hegemonic white consumption ideals. My dissertation thus points to the inadequacy of media scholars’ reliance on teenage girls’ explicit statements about their intentions for their online personas, demonstrating the importance of a psychoanalytic perspective to reveal the ways that allusive and unspoken desires—especially the subject’s fundamental longing for recognition—underpin girls’ digital self-presentations. Advisors/Committee Members: Thomas, Mary.

▼ This project investigates the ways that the Black female body has been constructed using corpulence as a central narrative that reflects anxieties about race, gender, class, sexuality, and national identity. It identifies how the performance of corpulence through the Black female body has particular ideological meanings that have been articulated through visual and narrative cultures. Corpulence is operative in defining rigid boundaries in regards to identity, which are built on constructed notions of whiteness and Blackness. Moreover, this study identifies corpulence as a facet of identity and illuminates how it intersects with race, gender, and class to relegate Black women to the bottom of American society. Through an analysis of several popular texts, this study illuminates the varied ways that the discourse involving corpulence reflects narratives that deploy race, gender, and class as signifiers of “authentic” American identity and restrict the social, economic, and political mobility of the Black female body. The analysis begins with a historical examination of how pertinent size has been to the construction of the Black female body in visual and narrative cultures and how this particular construction has worked to establish ideals regarding difference. It assesses the historical ‘Mammy’ construction of the Black female body in an effort to identify how the physical attributes of this particular construction serve to nurture whiteness in general. The primary interest is to identify the function of corpulence in the construction of this caricature and analyze how it was composed as a signifier of ‘Blackness’ that was used to establish, promote and sustain white supremacy through visual culture. Also, corpulence has been appropriated and used in Black folklore as a means to comical effect. This study illuminates the ways in which corpulence is performed in Black folklore as a means to denigrate the Black female body. Moreover, it traces this assault through analyses of practices and rituals like ‘Yo Mama’ jokes (playing the Dozens/snapping) and the use of the gendered ’fat suit.’ Such practices and internalizations perpetuate the myth of an overindulgent, cantankerous, and ‘lazy’ Black female body that prevents itself from acquiring the ‘American Dream’. These practices continue to relegate Black women to the bottom of the racial hierarchy and marginalize them from constructions of nationality and ‘American’ identity. Conversely, this study also analyzes how Black women artists have engaged in corpulence politics. It analyzes various forms of visual and narrative cultures in order to identify how Black women perform corpulence. Black women have used literature, film, television and music as mediums to articulate ideals about their own bodies and identities. Consequently, cultural and identity theorists such as Toni Morrison and contemporary celebrity figures such as Queen Latifah and Mo’Nique have been invested, whether indirectly or proactively, in corpulence politics. This study analyzes the corpulence politics of these artists, while noting the tension between their own self-constructed bodily performances and external appropriations. Through an analysis of corporeality, this study identifies how the body is still used as a central location for the inscription and dissemination of ideology. Advisors/Committee Members: Lee, Valerie.

▼ Gloria E. Anzaldua’s theory of spiritual activism shares significant similarities with the work of influential engaged Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh. However, neither feminist scholars who engage with theories of spirituality nor engaged Buddhist scholars are drawing connections between their work. While disciplinary categories have prevented us, scholar-activists, from placing these theories of social transformation in conversation with one another until now, I insist that feminist scholars, as well as engaged Buddhist scholars can no longer ignore this crucial relationship. Placing Anzaldua’s theory of spiritual activism in dialogue with Nhat Hanh’s philosophy of engaged Buddhism provides alternative ways to read and understand these philosophies and, at the same time, offer scholars and activists a more global and radical political context to ground both their theoretical framework and activist practice. Furthermore, I argue that exploring these theories side-by-side provides an entryway for engaged Buddhism to enter feminist dialogue, and at the same time helps scholar-activists to see engaged Buddhism as a feminist epistemology with implications for practice. In this project, I explore pedagogy, specifically, as one site in which to apply this dialogue and in so doing, develop a new theory and practice I term “spiritualized feminist pedagogy.”   Advisors/Committee Members: Latorre, Guisela.

▼ This dissertation considers the state of environmentalism in feminist studies in the American academy. I propose that ecofeminism, the branch of feminist philosophy that concerns itself with environmentalism, is limited by disciplinary divides and geographical exclusions that appear in its historiography—these limit what counts as ecofeminism as well as what it could be. “Ecofeminism” describes many things, including how the domination of women may be linked to the domination of nature and an examination of women’s environmental activism. While ecofeminist theories criticize the historically negative image of women and nature that exists in patriarchal cultures that measure nature by its market value, ecofeminism also posits a positive identification of women with nature. Some point to women’s greater contact with the environment through farming and conservation, reproduction and care work, or a spiritual connection with “mother nature” to describe woman-nature identifications and argue that women are well-positioned to protect nature. Though ecofeminist theory is useful for understanding the nature of oppression and strategies for resistance, it has also been marginalized in feminist studies due to criticisms of gender essentialism. It has also been marginalized because of its exclusions, including what appears to be a white, middle-class bias. My dissertation revisits these criticisms by reframing ecofeminism through the lens of Chicana studies. In bringing these two fields together, I aim to revise and revitalize environmentalist feminist theory to make it more inclusive and relevant to academics and activists. Revision is a multi-part process. First, I map ecofeminism in Western feminist studies through a genealogy that follows the master narratives that govern the field as well as their exclusions, such as the absence of Chicana environmentalisms. Second, I identify ecological narratives in the work of Chicana and Mexican-American women to revise and expand feminist environmental philosophy with the perspectives of a population that is underrepresented in the literature. I chose Chicana studies not just for the lack of attention it receives, but because the most problematic areas in ecofeminist theory can be re-evaluated in light of how such relationships are articulated in complex, non-essentialist ways by Chicana and Mexican-American writers, artists and activists. My conclusions find that Chicana environmentalisms rewrite the essentialist themes in ecofeminism that have drawn criticism, including the link between women and nature, the role of embodiment and of spirituality in environmental literature and movements. At the heart of Chicana environmental practices is an effort to construct open and performative intersubjective identities that create new kinds of politicized human/nature /spirit relations. Ultimately, what can be seen in these efforts is the deterritorialization, or de-sedimenting and pushing into new directions, of identities and movements in ways that invigorate activism for social and ecological justice. Moreover, in bringing together ecofeminist and Chicana studies, I aim to disrupt each of those fields, deterritorializing them in productive ways. Together, then, this project reflects work to decolonize subjectivity, movement politics, and disciplinarity in the academy. Advisors/Committee Members: Rakowski, Cathy.

▼ Within low-income populations, there is a history of community work aimed at highlighting the plight of those living in poverty and establishing economic justice. In the contexts of the United States, an increasing number of these antipoverty activists are mobilizing within their communities to make demands on the state in an effort to contest state exclusions, challenge notions of inequitable citizenship, and reclaim power as impoverished citizens. This project investigates the relationship between the state, economic status, and citizenship by focusing on the role antipoverty activism plays in generating critiques of the state and defining citizenship for low-income individuals. While feminist political theorists posit that citizenship can exclude certain populations based on gender, race, and class, this study investigates how those individuals living at the margins understand citizenship in their own right. By comparing and contrasting the work of two women-led antipoverty groups located in the Midwest, this study uncovers that despite the lower-class standing of their members, these organizations collectively express important critiques regarding the relationships between citizenship and neoliberal individualism within the United States. Specifically, as this study reveals, through an articulation of an oppositional community, in which individuals challenge class, gender, and race oppression through activism, these antipoverty organizations are renegotiating citizenship rights from the economic margins. Advisors/Committee Members: Keating, Christine.

▼ The language of authenticity that valorizes the mind over the body is embedded in Cartesian dualism, which thereby inspires an entirely personal understanding of self-fulfillment. Within the trans community, this language depoliticizes trans issues by framing nonnormative gender presentation as a personal issue. This paper examines the relationship of Cartesian dualism to the paradoxes of authenticity in trans medico-scientific discourse. For example, to express authenticity and gain social recognition within the medical model of trans identity, an individual must articulate her/his desire within the normative language of the medical establishment; therefore, the quest for authenticity is already foreclosed through the structures of normalization. This paper argues that, while medical procedures typically normalize one’s body to “pass” as the other sex, these procedures are also necessary for many trans individuals to gain social recognition and live a bearable life. The notion that trans individuals are “trapped” in the wrong body has been the dominant paradigm since at least the 1950s. This paper argues that centering gender in the body constructs gender as ahistorical and thereby erases the political, economic, and cultural significance of trans oppression and struggle. This paper concludes that the systematic pathologization of nonnormative sex/gender identification has historically constituted the notion that gender trouble is indeed a personal problem that should be cured through medical science. I then outline alternatives to the medical model that trans activists and academics have created to politicize trans identities and make the personal a political issue as a way to think beyond the Cartesian dualism rooted in the language of authenticity. Advisors/Committee Members: Winnubst, Shannon.

▼ Throughout the 1990s in the United States, a series of suburban school shootings perpetrated by young, white males disrupted contemporary perceptions of American youth, often a population configured in terms of ideal whiteness. In conjunction with sensationalized media coverage of school shootings, various fictional portrayals of suburban youth violence also emerged throughout this period as what Henry Giroux has called “public pedagogy” that served to further influence national perceptions of youth. In this body of film, television and literary narratives, school violence is often related to other national concerns surrounding American youth identity such as deviant sexuality and teen pregnancy. While a good deal of scholarly attention has focused on popular representations of education and youth generally, little has been written about these specific fictionalizations of school shootings and what they signify. This dissertation offers a feminist, discursive analysis of these fictional narratives of suburban school violence and argues that rampage violence narratives are intricately connected to national anxieties regarding youth, citizenship, threats to white masculinity, and American identity. In order to illustrate the complexities of themes present across popular culture mediums, my research delves into the purpose of the narratives and what they signify about contemporary American youth identity. Thus, my dissertation will explore representations of youth violence from a variety of angles that prioritize intertextual connections. Specifically, I offer a comparative analysis of portrayals of urban versus suburban school violence, explore the creation of gay male shooters as protagonists, and analyze fictional female shooter characters and teen pregnancy storylines. As well, my dissertation examines the genre phenomenon of young adult novels portraying school violence in order to place these novels in dialogue with other “adult” narratives. Throughout my dissertation I explicate the ways in which school shooting narratives reflect and challenge political and academic debates that situate American youth as current and future citizens in the U.S. Advisors/Committee Members: Mizejewski, Linda.

▼ Bringing together Black Feminist and post-structuralist perspectives, this dissertation examines how the public discourse of the African American Civil Rights movement has created specific subject-positions that African American women must write through and with, if they are to tell their remembrances of that historical moment. Through textual analysis and archival research, this dissertation performs a queer reading of the Civil Rights movement. Previous scholarship on African American autobiography has centered on analyzing race, gender, and the experience of being oppressed by the dominant culture. My project differs from previous scholarship because it explores the ways that hetero-normative and racialized surveillance influences African American constructions of the self. Advisors/Committee Members: Royster, Anne.

▼ The syndicated television series Xena:WarriorPrincess has exploded into cult status both on television and on the internet. In this thesis, I am interested in the ways in which fans of Xena mediate the contradictions Xena embodies, not only as femme fatal gone hero, but as an icon, role model and fantasy figure. Xena and her series appeals to a broad range of viewers in multiple ways and does so in highly contradictory ways: both as a feminist role model and a sex symbol; both as the first "real" portrayal of female friendship and an "escape" from daily realities; and both as silly light humor and a commentary on social roles for women. By using 43 letters that I have received from Xena viewers in response to a post placed on MCA/Universals official Xena netforum, I provide an investigation of the ways in which viewers of Xena negotiate these seemingly contradictory pleasures. I have identified reoccurring themes in these letters and centered my discussions around these themes: 1) the dynamics of a female action hero in a male dominated genre and audience responses to such a gender bender; 2) the importance and the effects of transformation of Xena from femme fatale to action hero (for both viewer pleasure and generic boundaries); 3) the multiple possibilities for viewer negotiations of Xena's sex appeal and her status as role model; and 4) the multiple possibilities for viewer negotiations of subtext and parody, under the subheading of camp.These responses reveal the ways viewers negotiate meaning by fitting them within their own shifting positionalities, according to what they have invested and how they choose to construct their own viewer pleasure. The multiple ways of interpretation are highlighted in the viewers discussion of the function of camp within the series, as camp and parody, ranged from being silly to being subversive. At the same time, producers of the series use tactics (such as subtext, parody, and camp) to broaden their audience base, all of which depend upon viewers abilities to negotiate meaning. Such dynamics exposes the interdependency between producers and audiences in terms of negotiating meaning. Things become even more complicated when the television producers are also cultural theorists who not only agree that audiences have agency in negotiating meaning but rely upon such agency in order to increase viewership. In this scenario, it is the producers of Xena who are providing the subtext (what might be considered counter-hegemonic texts), while viewers negotiate whether to pick up on it or not.The need to reframe the ways in which we view popular culture becomes clear when investigating the relationship between the meaning makers and meaning negotiators of the television series, Xena: Warrior Princess. For both television viewers and cultural theorists, binary frameworks - such as domination vs. innovation, hegemonic vs. subversive, escapism vs. realism, sex appeal vs. feminist role model — can be counter productive. Looking at the ways spectators interpret their own positionality and formulate their own mechanisms of identification not only exposes how such contradictions are inherent in television and filmic images but also reveal the multiple ways viewers facilitate such contradictions in constructing their own viewer pleasure. Advisors/Committee Members: Mayne, Judith.

▼ This dissertation introduces the concept of noncorporeal embodiment as an analytical tool for understanding the experience of having a body in three-dimensional graphical virtual space, i.e., a representational avatar body. I propose that users of virtual worlds such as Second Life develop a sense of embodiment that is comparable but not identical to a sense of embodiment in the actual world. The dissertation explores three key areas—the development of a virtual identity, the practice of virtual sexuality, and the experience of virtual violence—to locate evidence that Second Life residents identify with their avatars in ways that reflect the concept as it is developed in the text. Methods include interviews with Second Life residents, a blog that presents questions for public response, and the use of resident-produced written materials (e.g., blogs, forum discussions, classifed ads), while theoretical perspectives are drawn from feminist theorists concerned with studies of the body in various respects. The dissertation concludes with a summation of the social patterns observed in the previous chapters and with a discussion of future directions for further research. Advisors/Committee Members: Rakowski, Cathy.

Advisors/Committee Members: Rakowski, Cathy A.