Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

The subject of this study is contemporary Saudi women's literature and art between 2005 to 2017. In this research, I examine a selection of novels written by Saudi women and paintings composed by Saudi women artists to discuss how women negotiate their individuality, independence and rights to personal decision-making. This research argues that Saudi women have used literature and art to transform the way their society thinks about women. Novelists intertwine love stories, a traditionally taboo topic, with social issues on which there is broad agreement, for example the critique of terrorism, thus hoping to mute criticism. Saudi women artists, on the other hand, focus on portraying women's faces and figures in ways that show emotion and reveal depth of feeling. The key themes in these novels and works of art contribute to the authors' and artists' goals. Both the novels and the paintings focus on depicting some intimate aspects of women's lives in order to create empathy and make their society think differently, thus act differently. This dissertation highlights the importance of including Saudi women's literature and art in discussions of world literature and arts. It contributes to our understanding of Saudi women's shared challenges and seeks to establish that although Saudi women struggle with some sociopolitical issues, as do other women throughout the world, they do not allow these obstacles to prevent them from having open conversations about their position within society. They create conversations by confronting the power structures that women face and using techniques that foster audience engagement. This research was designed to describe Saudi women's concerns as told through their own literary and artistic expressions, in hopes that it may also inspire women in other societies who may share similar social circumstances.

Committee: Johanna Sellman (Advisor) Subjects: Art Criticism; Art History; Comparative Literature; Literature; Middle Eastern Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

This dissertation explores the representative works of several contemporary Iraqi women's writing and the themes of war and exile employed in their narratives. Iraqi women focus their fictional narrative discourse and themes on the Iraqi war(s) and the political situation their nation faced over the past thirty years. The writers chosen for this study are a mere representation of the many Iraqi writers who focus their efforts and their writings on the war story. I argue that the themes of war and exile, and the historical and pragmatic vein that they write from, have come to dominate the discourse of Iraqi women. It has become the focal point of their themes which has come to serve as their national narrative. The framework Iraqi women articulate, this national narrative, is an embodiment of the violence they witness in their quotidian life in war and exile. They write this experience from a feminist impulse as well as through a maternal instinct to articulate the voice of the voiceless subaltern members of their society. They depict their national war story through the sub-narratives of the tumultuous experience of Iraqis. Women novelists, through their powerful depiction of the reality Iraqis experience, deliver a significant and necessary voice to their contemporary national narrative of war.

Committee: Joseph Zeidan Dr. (Advisor); Morgan Liu Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Gender Studies; Literature; Middle Eastern History; Middle Eastern Literature; Middle Eastern Studies; Modern Language; Modern Literature; Near Eastern Studies

PHD, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

In 1954, Allport wrote, “No corner of the world is free from group scorn. Being fettered to our respective cultures, we … are bundles of prejudice” (4). In so many ways, prejudice seems part of the nature of human beings and an inevitable cognitive process that we all fall into. It is basically because the human mind is naturally skilled at forming categories of related information. This categorization skill leads people to think of individuals on the basis of the social categories to which they belong rather than considering them in terms of their unique attributes and characteristics. These categories function as templates, and when they designate people of other social groups, these templates are typically referred to as stereotypes (Amodio and Devine 251). Stereotypes thus have their basis in the human mind's attempt at simplifying information and trying to understand the complex social environment around us. But stereotypes often lead to prejudice and discrimination. This project focuses specifically on the stereotypes surrounding Muslim women. Many of these stereotypes are triggered by hijab or veil. Hijab is a marker through which a hijabi woman is instantly recognized as being a Muslim. As a result, hijabi Muslim women are easy targets for Islamophobic sentiments that take the shape of various prejudicial attitudes and discrimination and sometimes even hate crimes. A hijabi Muslim woman is instantly categorized as an “other,” and the hijab, this piece of clothing, becomes a saturated symbol: a Muslim woman is seen as either oppressed and needing to be saved, with the hijab as the sign of oppression, or as a threat and an accomplice to terrorism, with the hijab as a sign of danger. To redress the stereotypes surrounding Muslim women, this dissertation has developed pedagogical practices employing various prejudice-reducing techniques, which are demonstrated using two literary works written by and about Western Muslim women. The two novels; Randa A (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mark Bracher (Advisor); Tammy Clewell (Committee Member); Babacar M’Baye (Committee Member); Françoise Massardier-Kenney (Committee Member); Kenneth Bindas (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation analyzes the construction of a pervasive social imaginary of unequal order in Central America between 1870 and 1900. This period was crucial in the region, which underwent a series of economic, political, and social reforms that would forever transform the natural and social landscapes of the isthmus. Although most of these structural changes have already been studied, it is still unclear how literary and cultural production intersected with the liberal elites' endeavors of social classification, economic modernization, and political institutionalization. This dissertation addresses that problem through theoretical elaborations on the social imaginary (Cornelius Castoriadis) and the distribution of the sensible (Jacques Ranciere). I specifically analyze three different types of cultural texts: household economy guides for girls and young women; cuadros costumbristas (sketches of manners); and sentimental novels and theater plays. Part 1 deals with the cultural measures that contributed to a symbolic and material division of public spaces and private spaces, both ruled by the rationale of capitalism. Chapters 1 through 3 study in detail the role of household economy manuals in the dissemination and implementation of the new capitalist logics of productivity, rationalization, and accumulation across the domestic or private spaces. Chapter 1 analyzes how these cultural texts created two opposing female archetypes: the "economic woman" or "productive housewife", figured as an agent of domestic modernization, and the "abject servant", a subaltern subject that would undergo a set of new domestic policies of surveillance, discipline, and exploitation. Chapter 2 addresses the role of the productive housewives in the implementation of new modes of regulation of time and desire within the urban households, while Chapter 3 covers the rearrangements in domestic spaces brought by the new concepts of comfort and hygiene. Part 2 deals with the simultaneous reo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Abril Trigo (Advisor); Ana Del Sarto (Committee Member); Fernando Unzueta (Committee Member); Marta Elena Casaus Arzu (Committee Member) Subjects: Latin American History; Latin American Literature; Latin American Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, English

Knowledge-Making in Early Modern Englishwomen's Literary Writings, 1570-1650 investigates early modern Englishwomen's exploration of scientific ideas and epistemological inquiries in several literary forms, arguing that their chosen literary conventions significantly influenced their epistemic exploration of science, and vice versa. The literary works of Englishwomen writers, rich with valuable scientific insights, have often been neglected in the field, and their contributions have yet to be fully integrated into the canon of English scientific history. In this dissertation, I rectify the historical oversight regarding Englishwomen's contributions by demonstrating their active participation in scientific and epistemological thinking of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through their literary productions. This dissertation analyzes four literary works from the 1570s to the 1650s: Isabella Whitney's anthology A Sweet Nosegay (1573), Elizabeth Cary's closet drama The Tragedy of Mariam (1613), Lady Mary Wroth's prose romance The Countess of Montgomery's Urania (1621), and Hester Pulter's poetry collection Poems Breathed Forth by the Noble Hadassa (1640s-50s). I trace how these women writers deployed and reshaped epistemological inquiry to suit their creative endeavors, which reveals that literary forms served as vehicles for their investigation of scientific epistemologies, actively contributing to the scientific conversations of their time. Women writers critiqued, reinterpreted, and navigated theoretical knowledge, demonstrating a dynamic intersection between science, literature, and cultural narrative. In this way, literary forms provided these women with the means to question and reshape prevailing knowledge systems, offering diverse perspectives that are essential for fully historicizing women's knowledge-making in the early modern period. My project ultimately challenges the idea that science and art exist separately and highlights how creative and intellec (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sarah Neville (Advisor); Elizabeth Kolkovich (Committee Member); Alan B. Farmer (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Literature; Science History; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1923, Graduate School

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Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1970, Graduate School

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Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1970, Graduate School

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Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1971, Graduate School

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Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1964, Graduate School

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Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1903, Graduate School

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Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

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Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1923, Graduate School

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Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1920, Graduate School

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Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1971, Graduate School

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Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, English/Literature

This thesis puts into conversation the work of four influential late medieval writers whose lives or writings skirted the fringes of Christian orthodoxy - Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, John of Morigny, and Marguerite Porete - in order to explore the way "autobiographical" theological and/or mystical writers asserted spiritual authority and subjectivity under the constraints of both the threat of condemnation for heresy and the inherent inexpressibility of mystical or visionary experiences. Beginning with Marguerite Porete and reverberating out, the performance-based rhetorical strategies in storytelling, in self-narrativization, in discernment, and in revision employed by writers in response to the dynamic, complex, and in many ways increasingly hostile social and religious environments of the long fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in France and England provide an important window into the relationship between these writers' ideas and the environment which shaped them. Each of these writers struggles with the limitations of the written word to express the truth of their spiritual experiences, and each engages in an experiential and bodily performative, rhetorical, and/or apophatic discourse in order to understand, assert, or make real their encounters with and understanding of themselves, the divine, and the relationship between the two.

Committee: Erin Labbie Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Casey Stark Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Medieval History; Medieval Literature; Rhetoric; Spirituality; Theology

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, History

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's employment of references to the classical Greco-Roman tradition as well as literary devices allowed her to skillfully weave her thoughts between the lines of both her secular and religious pieces. The written works of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz served as an outlet in which the nun could express her opinions and commentary regarding the status of indigenous peoples, women's roles, and the influence of the Catholic Church. Without straying from the confines of what was deemed acceptable by the elite male authorities of the Catholic Church, Sor Juana was thus able to successfully navigate the social and religious norms of Colonial New Spain while living a paradoxical life as a woman, a nun, and a public intellectual. Chapter one provides an analysis of Sor Juana's veiled critiques regarding the treatment and status of indigenous peoples within two of her dramatic works, The Loa to the Divine Narcissus and The Divine Narcissus. It is asserted that Sor Juana's public display of sympathy for indigenous peoples during the Spanish conquest and the portrayal of indigenous religion and culture as valid beliefs indicates her support and awareness of the issue. In chapter two, the focus is shifted to women's roles and education. I contend that Sor Juana used her poetry to defend women's rights to attain an education and to partake in experiences that contradicted patriarchal expectations of gender and sexuality. The final chapter is dedicated to Sor Juana's controversy with prominent authorities of the Catholic Church and her justification of her secular writing. The study of the Respuesta and El Primero Sueno reveals Sor Juana's criticism towards the patriarchy and the overarching religious hierarchy as well as her belief that she was entitled to write and participate in both religious and secular intellectual discourse.

Committee: Amílcar Challú Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Casey Stark Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Latin American History; Latin American Literature; Religious History

PHD, Kent State University, 2023, College of Communication and Information

The objective of this historical study of Akron, Ohio's Saalfield Publishing Company during its years of operation (1900-1976) is to illuminate the role this company played within Ohio, but also within the larger United States publishing community and to investigate the role women played within this organization. Utilizing a theoretical framework that draws from Bourdieu (1984, 1993), Darnton (1982), Gramsci (1988), feminist scholars (Collins, 2000; Cott, 1987; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; hooks, 1981), Hall (2007), Williams (1962), McRobbie (1986), Adams and Barker (1993) and Kaestle and Radway (2009), this dissertation introduces a new communication model for understanding this particular children's publishing company, but also for understanding the larger children's publishing industry which flourished during Saalfield's era. This work interrogates the power structure within and around the publishing company and within its communications sphere. Historical methods were utilized throughout this study to locate and interrogate the data, utilizing the frameworks of Startt and Sloan (2003), Cox (1996), Kerr, Loveday and Blackford (1990), and Tanselle (1971). Catalogs of the Saalfield Publishing Company, Saalfield Publishing Company products, Akron City Directories, newspapers, journals, books, websites and databases were consulted. This study provides a deeper understanding of the Saalfield Publishing Company, its products, players and position, and creates a model to interpret the relationships found within and throughout its reach. It illuminates the role of women and the marginalized within the company and the surrounding community, while developing a clearer picture of its pioneering role and commercial success in the field of children's literature from 1900-1976.

Committee: Marianne Martens (Committee Chair); Miriam Matteson (Committee Member); Karen Gracy (Committee Member); Jennifer MacLure (Committee Member); Ellen Pozzi (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Economic History; Gender Studies; History; Information Science; Library Science; Literature; Marketing; Mass Media; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2023, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This paper written in French examines the works of two female comic artists, Zeina Abirached and Brigitte Findakly, who grew up in the Middle East during periods of political instability and social tension. Abirached's book Le Piano Oriental combines her own life with that of her great-grandfather, while Findakly blends her childhood and adult experiences with a broader portrait of her country and society in Coquelicots d'Irak. Both artists incorporate their personal stories into the historical context of their native and adopted countries. Through their use of autofiction, autobiography and captivating visual storytelling, these two graphic novels demonstrate the transformative power of Art in bringing together and unifying fragmented identities, facilitating healing and reconciliation, and commemorating destroyed and/or forgotten pasts. Art is showcased as a means of expression for bicultural identities and as a vital need. By exploring personal experiences, Abirached and Findakly use original narrative techniques and exploit the rich linguistic and visual elements of their medium to express the transformative power of art in unique ways, offering powerful critiques of war, sexism, prejudice, and inequality.

Committee: Mark McKinney (Committee Chair); Audrey Wasser (Committee Member); Elisabeth Hodges (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Literature; Romance Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1966, English

Committee: Alma J. Payne (Advisor) Subjects: American Literature