Bachelor of Science, Walsh University, 2022, Honors

The aim of this thesis is to exemplify the application of transcendentalism and the resulting consciousness-raising in early feminism to ideas surrounding contemporary feminism in a small collegiate population at a private university with religious affiliation in the midwest United States. Similar research has neglected to address a college student population with majority religious affiliation at a private university. This research addresses how such college students define contemporary feminism, to what extent these students identify as feminists, whether or not feminist discussions are an active part of student participation in feminism, and what current ways these students participate in social activism in relation to feminist activity. Using a web-based questionnaire to investigate perceptions around contemporary feminism, this study's survey provokes an internal thought process in its participants concerning their views around feminism by applying a consciousness-raising framework. This showed that students at a private university with religious affiliation define feminism as focused on women's and equal rights; though a majority have feminist beliefs, these students are hesitant to label themselves as feminist. This study also showed that discussion around topics of feminism is somewhat prevalent amongst such a collegiate population, and this holds true for social activism s well. However, these numbers these data are more spread out due to their perceptions of feminism. The significance of the research and findings is that an application of transcendental history and consciousness-raising to contemporary feminism provided individuals with a new outlook on feminist objectives and ways to reach them.

Committee: Jeffery Warnke (Other); Eugenia Johnson-Whitt (Advisor) Subjects: American Literature; Higher Education; Social Research; Womens Studies

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2021, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

While scholars who investigate the works of African diasporic authors Edwidge Danticat, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Claudia Rankine acknowledge the importance between form and audience in their works, critics have either yet to fully recognize how and/or for what purpose each author implements specific techniques. Paying close attention to what I propose are formal affective strategies in Danticat's Everything Inside, Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck, and Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, allows us to see how each author infuses experimental forms that are strategically bound to how their future readers will react to their texts with the hope that these reactions will prove more socially and politically moving than just moving—as in readers simply turning the page. Black diasporic women authors, including Danticat, Adichie, and Rankine, destabilize traditional literary paradigms and invent new formal affective strategies in their works. Upon closer consideration, these strategies not only help expose the continuous exclusivity of the American Dream and contemporary problems associated with the enduring patriarchal hegemony, but by engaging the audience with commonly felt affects, reconfigure future possibilities for intersectional solidarity through the very conflicts and difficulties their writings explore and formally embody.

Committee: Julie Burrell Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Frederick Karem Ph.D. (Committee Member); Melanie Gagich Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Literature; American Literature; Black Studies; Caribbean Literature; Gender; Literature; Modern Literature; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Contemporary Music

Gender inequality is pervasive in the world of performing arts. There are far more female dancers, actresses, and singers than there are male performers. This inequality is amplified by fewer numbers of roles for women. This document examines gender inequality in contemporary North American operas, including the various factors that can influence the gender balance of a cast, with focused studies on commissioning organizations and ten works that feature predominantly female casts. Chapter 1 presents the analysis of all operas in OPERA America's North American Works database written and premiered from 1995 to the present. Of the 4,216 roles in this data, 1,842 (43.6%) are for female singers. Operas written by a female composer or librettist have 48% roles for female singers, operas with a female lead character have 51%, and intentionally feminist or female-focused operas have 53% roles for female singers. Chapter 2 considers ten companies devoted to the creation and production of contemporary opera in North America. Works premiered by these companies have an average of 47% roles for women, and companies with a female executive or founder are more likely to have a higher average. Companies that use language like “innovative” or “adventurous” in their mission statement are more likely to have greater female representation in the casts of their commissioned works. Chapter 3 discusses ten contemporary operas that feature at least 50% female casts in a wide variety of stories, with multi-layered female characters and diverse musical styles. The works profiled are Hildegurls Electric Ordo Virtutum (1998) by Kitty Brazelton, Eve Beglarian, Elaine Kaplinsky, and Lisa Bielawa, Amy Beth Kirsten's Ophelia Forever (2005), Catherine Reid and Judith Lane's The Yellow Wallpaper (2008), Ana Sokolovic's Svadba (2011), Errollyn Wallen's ANON (2014), Kate Soper's Here Be Sirens (2014), Kamala Sankaram and Susan Yankowitz's Thumbprint (2014), Sean Ellis Hussey's …for the sake (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jane Rodgers DMA (Advisor); Kristen Rudisill PhD (Other); Kevin Bylsma MM (Committee Member); Ryan Ebright PhD (Committee Member); Emily Brown PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music; Performing Arts

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Music Composition

Stream of Consciousness is a fifteen-minute one-act opera scored for solo soprano, three voices, piano, electric guitar, and electronics. It is based on an original libretto by Rachael Smith (MM Composition, University of Louisville) that focuses entirely on the fictional character Liv_Is_Live, a young woman who is a full-time video game streamer. The work showcases some of the struggles that streamers face: isolation, constant questioning of their chosen profession, and interaction with a chat room full of anonymous viewers who are often rude or abusive. Beyond that, it addresses the more universal theme of being a woman working in a male-dominated industry.

Committee: Marilyn Shrude PhD (Advisor); Elainie Lillios PhD (Committee Member); Katherine Meizel PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Music History

Female figures are rarely prominent characters in classic literature, nor are they featured in history. Many of them are often remembered only in relation to their male counterparts. Such is not the case for subjects of three contemporary dramatic vocal works, each of which reimagines and engages with familiar female characters from history, literature, and myth. Three versions of Shakespeare's Ophelia manifest in Amy Beth Kirsten's chamber opera Ophelia Forever, three conceptions of the siren myth interact in Kate Soper's music theater piece Here Be Sirens, and five wives of Henry VIII take center stage in Libby Larsen's song cycle Try Me, Good King: The Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII. In this thesis, I investigate how contemporary composers portray and dramatically construct female characters through music and the voice. Although I am not using a specific feminist approach, the discussion itself is inherently feminist as it critiques the societal structures that surround these familiar women as well as the gendered roles they are expected to fulfill. Building on interviews I conducted with each of the composers, I engage in hermeneutic musical analysis by observing the conformation or refusal of operatic vocal conventions, studying text-music relationships, and interpreting the compositional voice of each composer. I argue these female characters are empowered because these pieces expose the sexism embedded in their past artistic and historical representations. I also suggest, however, that although all three of these pieces give voice only to women, they also demonstrate that the influence and reach of men is still very present. Nevertheless, in dramatizing these familiar figures in a musical setting, these composers attribute agency to females who have traditionally lacked voices of their own.

Committee: Eftychia Papanikolaou Ph.D. (Advisor); Ryan Ebright Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; History; Music

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Contemporary Music

The vocalizing pianist is a genre in which the pianist speaks, sings, and/or acts while playing the piano. Because of the presence of the voice, the audience perceives the performer's sex and gender not only visually, but also aurally as part of performance. The voice connects the audience to the performer intimately, revealing the normative conceptions and gender ideologies inscribed on the performer's body. Because the vocalizing pianist compositions specify neither the performer's gender nor the voice type, cross-gender, cross-identity performance have been freely undertaken without an established performance practice. Although such gendered performances are common in vocal genres, pianists are now entering this unfamiliar field with the emergence of the vocalizing pianist genre. As a step toward an interpretive performance practice, this document investigates the role of the performer's voice, body, and gender, by reading the genre through the lens of feminism. Feminist theories such as gender performativity and l'ecriture feminine are introduced and applied to case studies of selected compositions: Amy Beth Kirsten's (speak to me), Brian Ferneyhough's Opus Contra Naturam, and Stuart Saunders Smith's Lazarus. Using the concept of the Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, the author also explores the performer-centric interpretative practice that emphasizes the centrality of gender in musical performance. This project articulates the importance of performer's gender as an integral element of vocalizing pianist performance and demonstrates how understanding the gendered aspect of a composition adds greater depth and nuance to the performer's interpretation.

Committee: Thomas Rosenkranz (Advisor); Nora Engebretsen (Committee Member); Mikel Kuehn (Committee Member); Sidra Lawrence (Committee Member); Mihai Staic (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Music; Performing Arts

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Music Composition

Respectable Woman is a twenty-seven minute one-act opera scored for four voices (two sopranos, tenor, and baritone), flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. The creation of this opera was inspired by the “Poe Project,” an initiative created by the American Lyric Theater (ALT), the aim of which was to celebrate and explore the genius of one of America's most famous poets, Edgar Allan Poe. For the project, participating composers and librettists chose a short story written by Poe, speculated on how that story would have been different if it had been written in modern times, then wrote an opera based on the modern version of that story. The narrative of Respectable Woman follows the same guidelines given to the composers and librettists that participated in ALT's “Poe Project.” Librettist Jennifer Cresswell and I worked together to modernize the short story “A Respectable Woman” by Kate Chopin (1851-1904) and realize it as a chamber opera. The result is an account of self-discovery and acceptance set in modern-day Joliet, Illinois. The main character, Cassandra (Sandy) McGavin, is a married woman in her late twenties. Her husband, Dave McGavin, is a second-generation blue-collar worker who is emotionally disconnected and indifferent toward his wife. The story follows Sandy as she discovers her true identity through the chance meeting of Dave's distant cousin, Lexi Swain. The piece carries heavy undertones of current issues relating to the stigma surrounding gender stereotypes and sexual identity.A wide variety of pieces written for voice and instruments inspired my composition of Respectable Woman. Two of the most influential include Gian-Carlo Menotti's The Telephone and Samuel Barber's A Hand of Bridge, both with libretti by Menotti. Other influential pieces include Alban Berg's Lulu, Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, and David Lang's the difficulty of crossing a field.

Committee: Marilyn Shrude DM (Committee Chair); Mikel Kuehn PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Gender; Gender Studies; Music; Performing Arts; Personal Relationships; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2015, English

This thesis explores the spectrum of female representation and feminine experience in Helen Oyeyemi's Boy, Snow, Bird, a postmodern fairy tale retelling of “Snow White.” Within the novel, Oyeyemi creates several female characters that represent various feminine experiences. The image of the mirror enables me to navigate these characters and their stories. As each character searches for her identity within the constraints of patriarchal oppression, she develops a voice through the act of storytelling. I contend that the novel, as a postmodern fairy tale, engages in social-resistance as it uses the mirror to expose and confront patriarchal constructions of women.

Committee: Tereza Szeghi Dr. (Committee Chair); Kara Getrost Dr. (Committee Member); Bryan Bardine Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This is a feminist project that investigates the performative practices of contemporary female Colombian artists. It was guided by a main research question: Is there a particular kind of strength that comes from their specific situation as contemporary Colombian female artists? As such, this dissertation relies on fieldwork and critical theory in order to elucidate how such diverse individuals perform multiple art practices and what they do in and with their art practices. Two dozen women opened their doors, provided their time for video taped conversation and gave their archival material for the realization of this project. The main hypothesis this dissertation worked with relates to the existence of a possible double work or doubling of the work a woman artist executes in the need to undo what has been culturally assigned in order to then create her own images, ideas and concepts about being a woman in her society. Within the undoing and the doing, a liminal space allows the artists to realize how the cultural ideas of feminine essences evidence a conceptual void. Once the artistic work uncovers these supposed essences as false expectations, the strength that emanates from the vantage point of un-definition becomes the source of unbound creativity that produces artwork of political significance. The themes that emerged during fieldwork and writing show that in the same way these artists become others; multiplying possibilities of being while in their practices, they are able to influence their surroundings in minute, effective ways. Otherness is a central theme that has aided the understanding of the work these women realize. An important theoretical source is the seminal work of Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, even though in five chapters the artistic work of nine artists are thoroughly discussed through multiple theories that traverse the text. Some of the theorists that have aided the present text are: Gloria Anzaldua, Rosi Braidoti, Judith Butler, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Marina Peterson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Vladimiri Marchenkov Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jennie Klein Ph.D. (Committee Member); Louis-George Schwartz Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; Art Criticism; Art History; Cultural Anthropology; Dance; Fine Arts; Gender Studies; Latin American Studies; Literature; Performing Arts; Philosophy; Theater

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, English

Feminist activism in the United States and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s harnessed radical social thought and used innovative expressive forms in order to disrupt the “grand perspective” espoused by men in every field (Adorno 206). Feminist student activists often put their own female bodies on display to disrupt the disembodied “objective” thinking that still seemed to dominate the academy. The philosopher Theodor Adorno responded to one such action, the “bared breasts incident,” carried out by his radical students in Germany in 1969, in an essay, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis.” In that essay, he defends himself against the students' claim that he proved his lack of relevance to contemporary students when he failed to respond to the spectacle of their liberated bodies. He acknowledged that the protest movements seemed to offer thoughtful people a way “out of their self-isolation,” but ultimately, to replace philosophy with bodily spectacle would mean to miss the “infinitely progressive aspect of the separation of theory and praxis” (259, 266). Lisa Yun Lee argues that this separation continues to animate contemporary feminist debates, and that it is worth returning to Adorno's reasoning, if we wish to understand women's particular modes of theoretical insight in conversation with “grand perspectives” on cultural theory in the twenty-first century. I argue that the separation between theory and praxis becomes visible in the history of women's experimental autobiography across media, in which the boundary between self and subculture can be delineated. In this project, I look at a contemporary transmedia storyworld that animates this conversation. In Felicia Day's comedy Web series The Guild, six introverted gamers collaboratively navigate both the complex storyworld of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game and daily life in suburban Los Angeles. The Web series is complemented by a series of comic books, which transform the forward-moving, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jared Gardner (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, French and Italian

This dissertation analyzes the women's retelling of history in French-language cinema during the last thirty years. It explores artistic creations by Chantal Akerman, Karin Albou, Martine Dugowson, Yamina Benguigui, Geraldine Nakache, and Herve Mimran which draw on the memory of the Holocaust or colonialism and reveal how the repressed memories of deportation and colonization concurrently reverberate through generations. These filmmakers also show how the intergenerational transmission of trauma causes dislocations of already internalized images of the past and how women's coping with historical trauma engenders women's questioning of their own position in society and contributes to their identity formation. Using Michael Rothberg's theory of multidirectional memory as a point of theoretical departure, my dissertation demonstrates how these artistic creations encourage the remembering of the Holocaust simultaneously with the recollection of colonialism as memories that intersect, enlighten each other, and facilitate intercultural communication. Adopting feminist film theory, I investigate how the six filmmakers assign a central role to personal and collective histories in their works while examining the status of women as agents in making and writing history. I suggest that, by re-appropriating hegemonic discourses, women bring new perspectives, such as gender and ethnicity, to the rewriting of history and that by retrieving images from the past, they gain agency. My research also reveals innovative cinematic and writing styles created by these film directors in order to represent female subjectivity and desire as tropes through which tensions between past and present are expressed and new spaces for multicultural identity negotiation are constructed.

Committee: Judith Mayne (Advisor); Danielle Marx-Scouras (Committee Member); Jennifer Willging (Committee Member) Subjects: Film Studies

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2010, Art

I begin this paper by describing how a string of failed relationships led me to investigate the ever-growing contemporary realm of online dating, from Match.com online profiles to the community posting boards of Craigslist.org. I discuss how a little curiosity turned into appreciation, commiseration, and eventually a collection of funny, poignant, and surprisingly specific requests from women in the form of appropriated excerpts from personal ad postings from the “Women Seeking Men” section of the Craigslist.org webpage for the Columbus, Ohio, area. This collection was the basis for my installations I Want a Man Who… and Wish Lists, that were exhibited in the 2010 Masters of Fine Arts Exhibition: Me and You and Everyone We Know at the OSU Urban Arts Space in Columbus, Ohio, from April 21 to May 20, 2010. Chapters two and three describe the installations in detail as well as the processes it took to make them, the underpinning ideas, and the artists who inspired me. In Chapter 2, I also spend time outlining the history and importance of hand embroidery in colonial American women's marriageability and in contemporary art making. I conclude by discussing some of the transitions in my art practice, primarily as they relate to my shifting from photography to a more multi-media practice, with strong ties to traditional decorative arts and appropriation.

Committee: Tony Mendoza (Advisor); Suzanne Silver (Committee Member); Sergio Soave (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Art History; Fine Arts; Gender; Personal Relationships; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2010, English

My dissertation explores the intersections of femininities and sexualities and how these intersections are made to appear natural and normal. My historical charting of queering femininities begins with different key historical and discursive moments in twentieth-century British Culture that shape how we now think about femininity. Femininity becomes a key area of contestation in early twentieth-century Britain, as Britain attempts to redefine femininity with the emergence of categories of lesbian sexuality. Because of this cultural shift in how femininity and sexuality are conceptualized, I analyze how different modernists and contemporary British literatures represent a historical trajectory of femme femininities and how this literature offers us a space to queer femininity. My dissertation project theorizes the resistant and transformative possibilities of the pleasures of femme femininities. My goals for this project are to question damaging and destructive assumptions about femininity, and then to show pleasurable resistant possibilities of queer makings of femininities to force people to confront, question, be aware, and change their preconceptions. As my dissertation traces the intersections of femininity, lesbian sexuality, and heteronormativity, it also reclaims femininities as queer, positive, optimistic, and resistant. To reclaim femininity, I show how various queer narratives challenge dominant definitions of femininity by offering us scripts and performances of pleasurable, critical, and political femme femininities. In other words, not only do I explore what femininity might do for the individual who reclaims it, but I also explore how this reclamation can enhance all of our lives. I also reassert femmes as agents of pleasure, political, and princesses who rescue themselves. Femmes' performances show how dangerous and damaging a dominant understanding of femininity can be; and at the same time, they show us that we are not stuck with such scripts. Stor (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Madelyn M. Detloff PhD (Advisor); Kathleen N. Johnson PhD (Committee Member); Stefanie K. Dunning PhD (Committee Member); Ronald P. Becker PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: English literature

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2010, English

This dissertation examines novels for spatial and temporal practices, what I call “tactics of trespassing,” used by twentieth- and twenty-first-century women writers Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Penelope Fitzgerald, Margaret Drabble, Hilary Mantel, and Jeanette Winterson to re-imagine established constructions of national and gender identity and its relation to property. I focus on property's ability to enable or to prevent particular identity formations and chart the responses of modern British women writers to the ways that legal, political, and economic treatises have historically rendered property ownership in terms of the masculine. As a result, these discourses have defined feminine propriety through property's inaccessibility for women. In novels by these writers, I discern a preoccupation with “looking back,” a process through which authors revisit narratives of national and gender identity – narratives that did not account for or represent particular sections of the British public – for the goal of redefining what, as a result of this absence, was defined as properly “British” for a woman. The specific sites through which these works look back are incarnations of property. By enacting new narratives of identity that challenge the propriety of traditional accounts, contemporary women writers aim to stake a claim for a place within the current British body politic. Through their tactics of trespassing upon grounds of property and propriety defined by masculine society, in other words, these writers show how traditional constructions of national and gender identity are essential but insufficient for marginalized groups to understand their relationship to and position within Britain. By showing how these writers establish a degree of plurality and creativity in their intellectual heritage, this dissertation disputes the claims of British property discourses that assert to represent the whole of British society. My approach investigates contemporary novels that cu (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kurt Koenigsberger (Committee Chair); Mary Grimm (Committee Member); Gary Stonum (Committee Member); Joseph Fagan (Committee Member) Subjects: English literature; Gender; Law; Literature; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2011, American Culture Studies/Ethnic Studies

Arab Muslim women have been portrayed by the West in general and Western Feminism in particular as oppressed, weak, submissive, and passive. A few critics, Nawar al-Hassan Golley, is an example, clarify that Arab Muslim women are not weak and passive as they are seen by the Western Feminism viewed through the lens of their own culture and historical background. Using Transnational Feminist theory, my study examines four autobiographies: Harem Years By Huda Sha'arawi, A Mountainous Journey a Poet's Autobiography by Fadwa Tuqan, A Daughter of Isis by Nawal El Saadawi, and Dreams of Trespass, Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Mernissi. This study promises to add to the extant literature that examine Arab Muslim women's status by viewing Arab women's autobiographies as real life stories to introduce examples of Arab Muslim women figures who have effected positive and significant changes for themselves and their societies. Moreover, this study seeks to demonstrate, through the study of select Arab Muslim women's autobiographies, that Arab Muslim women are educated, have feminist consciousnesses, and national figures with their own clear reading of their own religion and culture, more telling than that of the reading of outsiders.

Committee: Ellen Berry PhD (Committee Chair); Vibha Bhalla PhD (Other); Radhika Gajjala PhD (Committee Member); Erin Labbie PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Ethnic Studies; History; Religion

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2007, English/Literature

This thesis, which used both postcolonial and feminist frameworks, detailed the value of a widely-popularized text like Andre Dubus III's House of Sand and Fog in academic discourse. Employing mainly the works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, the thesis explained how Dubus' work exposes issues of internal colonization in America for both immigrants like the Iranian Behrani family in House of Sand and Fog and white, less recently immigrated citizens. In addition, it acknowledged the value of distinguishing between First and Third World feminisms when working with a text like House of Sand and Fog, and it illustrated such a distinction in the exploration of the two main female characters in Dubus' novel. Through exploring issues of language, identity, class, race, sex, economic opportunity, and physical space, it argued for an opening of Dubus' text that acknowledges the suppression of voice endured – in separate and distinct ways – by both immigrant and female voices in America. Ultimately, this thesis encouraged a reconsideration of a somewhat overlooked text, as far as academic discourse is concerned, and a rejuvenation of interest in Dubus' novel.

Committee: Khani Begum (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, English