Master of Arts, Miami University, 2016, English

Imagine if This Were in Comic Sans is a collection of poems that acts as an exploration of scripted womanhood and sexuality as well as an examination of the physical and emotional body as a site of both trauma and desire. With no formal sections, the collection is composed of poems along with sparse images and cellphone screenshots that deal with the admiration of viscera, tortured movements through the mundane, and the warped filters trauma presses upon women's desires. As a corrective to the assumptions that equate women's emotional expression with melodrama and sentimentality, the work adopts a deliberately melodramatic, even grotesque tonality. The conversational style of the speaker in these poems is intended to solicit the reader's empathy and/or identification with painful, sometimes shocking issues, traumas, and desires. Visuals added throughout embody the social, sexual subconscious that surrounds the speaker.

Committee: Cathy Wagner (Committee Chair) Subjects: Gender Studies; Mental Health; Multimedia Communications; Personal Relationships; Psychology; Recreation; Theater

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Arts and Sciences: Classics

Vergil's systematic deployment of gremium to show coexisting maternity and sexuality is unparalleled by other extant Classical authors. Through a close reading of four passages from Books 1 and 4 of the Aeneid, I argue that gremium becomes the physical site where Dido's maternal and sexual desire intersect. My argument responds, in particular, to psychoanalytic readings that oversexualize Dido and see her sexuality as corrupting her maternity; Dido's gremium is a seat of intersecting and overlapping desires, which are related but distinct. In order to preface the discussion of the Aeneid, I first present evidence that the lap and gremium are feminine-coded concepts in the ancient sources and highlight the connections to maternity and sexuality. Building upon these broad observations, I demonstrate how Vergil develops a web of semantic associations surrounding gremium to frame Dido and related characters' maternal and sexual identities. Then, I analyze how those identities interact with each other within the network. In order to contextualize Vergil's unique deployment of gremium to speak to female characters' maternal and sexual identities and desires, I turn to Lucretius who similarly uses gremium systematically in an explicitly feminine-coded context, the image of Mother Earth. An analysis of the four instances of gremium in De Rerum Natura calls attention to the overlapping themes in the use of gremium between Lucretius and Vergil, namely its use with Venus and its use to represent maternity and fertility. My intertextual analysis that compares the similar feminine-coded themes in both authors' versions suggests that Lucretius directly influenced Vergil's use of gremium. The comparison to Lucretius results in a widening of the initial network that illuminates the shared associations of gremium in the Vergilian corpus beyond Dido and Venus. This paves the way for a fruitful analysis of gremium in Ovid. Ovid uses gremium with men to subvert gender roles. When he do (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Markovich Ph.D. (Committee Member); Caitlin Hines Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Ancient Languages

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Popular Culture

This thesis investigates the relationship between the body of the witch in popular culture and attitudes and assumptions about the female body. This study was conducted through textual analysis of several popular films and television shows about witches. This analysis is structured around three core archetypes of femininity: the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, examining how each of the three archetypes preserve stereotypes about women and how witches can subvert or reinforce those stereotypes. Using the theory of abjection as a foundation, this thesis argues that witches have a strong relationship to abject femininity and can therefore expose the anxieties and fears about female bodies in a patriarchal culture. This is not a comprehensive study of witches in popular culture, and further research into the intersections of gender and race, sexuality, and ability is needed to form any definite conclusions. This study is merely an exploration of female archetypes and how the female body is conceived through the witch's body in popular culture.

Committee: Jeffrey Brown Dr. (Advisor); Angela Nelson Dr. (Committee Member); Esther Clinton Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Mass Media; Religion; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, English

Feminists and gender theorists need a better way of thinking about what it means for a Victorian male character to be in pain. Because we've thoroughly codified the reduction of female characters to vulnerable bodies, we've ended up with an essentialist association between pain, femininity, and disempowerment. Male characters' pain doesn't result from disempowerment or oppression, and so its representation enables female novelists to explore suffering to various political and aesthetic ends. This dissertation illuminates how three Victorian women novelists use this same figure—the suffering man—to highlight different intersections between pain, gender, and the novel form. In Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily Bronte does not imagine a just world in which men's violence is punished but rather creates an aesthetic space in which pain becomes a spiritualized artistic medium. Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855), on the other hand, rejects the political expedience of a sensationless industrial masculinity and advocates instead for the pains of erotic love. Finally, Marie Corelli foments aesthetic and political heresy in her bestselling novel The Sorrows of Satan (1895), which combines Satan and Christ into a tortured outcast genius who both desires and rejects the approval of establishment authorities. Because critics have shown how commonly Victorian female characters in pain are figured either as self-sacrificing martyrs or justly punished sinners, critics have tended to refer to male characters' pain as “feminization,” which they have conflated with reformation. Ultimately, however, I show that rather than merely weaving fantasies of punishing patriarchs, these three novelists reconfigured the relationship between torture, gendered justice, and the novel in unexpected and uncomfortable ways.

Committee: Robyn Warhol (Advisor); Jill Galvan (Committee Member); Amanpal Garcha (Committee Member); Sandra Macpherson (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Gender Studies; Literature

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2018, English-Literature

At a time when the moral nature of women was questioned, anxiety surrounding female sexuality invaded many public areas, and various writers took to addressing those anxieties. The possibility for women to fantasize and act on their sexual desires defies norms for the period. The cultural construction that framed female sexuality was a limiting one that barred women from actively engaging in their sexual desires. This thesis focuses on three major genres for the period: ballads, plays, and prose romances. By critically analyzing these genres for their construction of female sexual agency, readers can begin to understand how authors described sexual agency and how they used it to influence their various audience members. Chapter One, “Desire, Death, and the Broadside Ballad,” focuses on broadside ballads. Broadside ballads were published on a single sheet of paper and typically featured an illustration alongside their text. This chapter focuses explicitly on murderous wife ballads, which is a sub-genre that featured women who murdered their husband. By the end of each ballad, the murderous wife is executed and silenced. In many cases, the murderous wife would articulate her motive lying behind the want to commit adultery, which shows active agents in control of their sexuality. Having a murderous wife articulate her desire, especially towards someone outside of her marriage, would have been extremely transgressive. Balladeers used these women's stories to turn a profit and further push against women discovering their agency and to remind listeners of the extremes that can happen to a woman who becomes independent, and they knew that sensationalizing these rare criminal acts would reinforce anxieties among many about these acts happening to other people. Chapter Two, “Tyrannous Agency: Shakespeare and Female Desire,” moves away from broadside ballads to discuss Shakespeare's construction of female sexual agency through an examination of A Midsummer Night's Dream and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Hillary Nunn Dr. (Advisor); Jon Miller Dr. (Committee Member); Joseph Ceccio Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Romance Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, English/Literature

This project explores womens aggression in superhero, science fiction, and crime film through a close reading of Wonder Woman, Ghost in the Shell, and Atomic Blonde. All based in genres that are traditionally considered for boys, these films are different from other superhero, science fiction, and crime films because they feature female leads with aggressive tendencies. Using Dana Crowley Jacks theory of womens aggression and Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negras definition of postfeminism, I argue that Diana, Major, and Lorraine revolutionize the image of the lead postfeminist character by offering examples of womens aggression that resist acceptable, palatable representations of womens aggression. Whereas in the past there have been many representations of aggressive women, those past representations have been affected by postfeminism in a way that commodifies and limits their ability to be authentically aggressive. I examine how these new films, Wonder Woman, Ghost in the Shell, and Atomic Blonde, play into and ultimately resist postfeminist representations because of their aggression and how that aggression is played out on the female body. In the following chapters I analyze how the heroines in Wonder Woman, Ghost in the Shell, and Atomic Blonde disrupt postfeminist notions and prior images of womens aggression by explicitly examining aggressive women who are not domesticated or justified by rape.

Committee: Kimberly Coates (Committee Chair); Jeffrey Brown (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative; Comparative Literature; Film Studies; Gender Studies; Language Arts; Literature

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2016, Theater

This thesis explores the effect of gender confinement and restrictive sexual roles for women in a one-woman show, A Woman Alone by Franca Rame and Dario Fo (1977). This thesis consists of a scholarly analysis of the play and its literary, biographical, and historical contexts; a performance of A Woman Alone on February 4, 5 and 6, 2016; and a reflection on the production. The written thesis consists of four chapters, the first of which is an introduction to the playwrights, especially Rame, and the position of women within Italian culture in the 1970s. The second chapter analyzes A Woman Alone through the lens of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique to contextualize the play. The third chapter uses the prominent feminist dramas Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen, and Machinal, by Sophie Treadwell, to further illuminate Fo and Rame's work and contextualize the women's liberation movement. The final chapter is the reflection on the process of producing and performing in A Woman Alone, directed by Professor David Haugen. The appendix includes the production's program note, photographs from the production and other notable pictures, as well as the translation of A Woman Alone that I used. Through this thesis, I demonstrate the damage done to women because of societal standards and taboos against female sexuality, which in turn necessitate the production of plays such as A Woman Alone that criticize those standards and work to eliminate such taboos.

Committee: William Condee Dr. (Advisor); Carey Snyder Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies; Womens Studies

Bachelor of Arts, Ohio University, 2013, Women's and Gender Studies

The female body is a site of constant contention and critique. Around the world, various cultures and religions prescribe holy or admirable behavior to women, creating skewed and misogynistic ideals that girls aspire to fulfill, thereby perpetuating global, patriarchal power structures. One of the foremost capacities in which many women lack agency and autonomy is sexuality. A popularized notion of female sex workers – especially those in the global south – portrays them as brutalized victims, incapable of autonomy or agency. Abolitionist feminists propagate this image, often with the intention of ending the global sex trade. Although I find their motives worthy insofar as they hope to end cycle of violence that finds women in positions of little or no control over how or when they have sex, abolishing the sex trade is infeasible and founded on problematic assumptions that deny women of the global south agency, pleasure and navigational capabilities. In the coming pages I analyze the sex industry in Southern India, specifically the state of Karnataka with particular emphasis on instances of sex worker empowerment. Two notable examples of sex-worker collectives (Ashodaya and Sonagachi) continue to gain popularity and political sway. I also examine the role of a governmental organization, Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT), as it aims to strengthen and empower vulnerable communities, especially sex workers. Empowerment theory literature suggests that in order to end gender-based marginalization, various structural factors such as poverty, education and ethnicity must all be addressed and contextualized before any type of programming can be truly effective. The Sonagachi and Ashodaya collectives embody this because they are grass roots based, so the people who are being helped are also the ones providing the aid. This type of localized, peer-based contextualization is capable of dissolving problematic, rescue-based initiatives, which are often corr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Patricia Stokes (Advisor) Subjects: Gender; Gender Studies; South Asian Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation fixes a critical eye on the multiple uses of sex and sexuality in the works of four contemporary Spanish playwrights: Paloma Pedrero, Yolanda Pallin, Yolanda Dorado, and Margarita Reiz. All four authors examine issues of sexuality in their plays with regard to the characters, and demonstrate how these issues are inflected by the body and power. This project specifically seeks to analyze crisscrossed sexes and sexualities at the threshold of the difference between the sexes, as well as the notion of (em)powered bodies as they become manifest through the characters in two plays by each of the four authors. While the approach of each is different, the four playwrights in this study all present sex and the sexual in ways that undo typical, normative, or binarized views of such topics and instead proffer means of consideration that concentrate more on the interstices and slippages between traditional categories or manifestations, and, as such, merit inclusion in this project. The theoretical framework implements postmodern theories of gender and sexuality throughout the entire study, drawing chiefly from Judith Butler, whose theorizations seek to move hegemonic views of sexuality and gender away from the binarized notion of ‘male'/ ‘female' and toward the margins, where much deeper meaning may be derived. In addition, specific chapters concentrate on Foucauldian theories of power, Freudian theories of (homo)eroticism and gendered sexuality, as well as additional theories from Wittig, Bornstein, Wilchins, and others. This study specifically seeks to demonstrate how the works of Spanish playwrights Pedrero, Pallin, Dorado, and Reiz offer a new understanding of sex and sexuality, characterized by a distancing from traditional or clearly-defined roles in favor of mixed or blurred understandings that transcend limitations. These theatrical works by the playwrights emphasize ‘liminal' or ‘marginal' sexes and sexualities so that typical notions of ‘man' or ‘ (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stephen Summerhill PhD (Advisor); Elizabeth Davis PhD (Committee Member); Rebecca Haidt PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Gender; Gender Studies; Literature; Modern Literature; Romance Literature; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Women's Studies

In this dissertation, I use contemporary Chinese immigrant women's visual and literary narratives to examine gender, race, ethnicity, migration, immigration, and sexual experiences in various power discourses from a transnational perspective. In particular, I focus on the relationship between body memories and history, culture, migration and immigration portrayed in these works. I develop and define “the sent-down body,” a term that describes educated Chinese urban youths (also called sent-down youths in many studies) working in the countryside during the Chinese Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The “sent-down body” in this context and in my analysis is the politicized and sexualized migrant body. The term also describes previous sent-down youths' immigration experiences in the United States, because many of them became immigrants in the post-Cultural Revolution era and are usually described as “overseas sent-down youths” (yangchadui). Therefore, the “sent-down body” is also the immigrant body, and it is sexualized and racialized. Moreover, the “sent-down body” is gendered, but I study the female “sent-down body” and its represented experiences in specific political, historical, cultural, and sexual contexts. By using “the sent-down body” as an organizing concept in my dissertation, I introduce a new category of analysis in studies of Chinese immigrants' history and culture. I use the term “the sent-down body” to explore a new terrain to study representations of historical, cultural, and political experiences in the context of body memories and coerced or voluntary human movement in physical or symbolic locations. The focus on Chinese immigrant women's cultural production also helps enrich studies of new Chinese immigrants' experiences by treating them as part of Asian American immigrants' experiences.

Committee: Linda Mizejewski PhD (Committee Chair); Sally Kitch PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Rebecca Wanzo PhD (Committee Member); Judy Wu PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Womens Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Comparative Studies

The body and the identity of the black woman in the United States has been under siege since at least the 18th century, as African women were brought to the colonies to labor and procreate. Misrepresented, by the white majority, as morally and intellectually inferior to white men and women, and as sexually perverse, black women have been victims of physical and sexual abuse, social discrimination, and intellectual dismissal. But black women have also challenged the misuse of the black female body and the misrepresentation of the black female identity. This essay explores how black women have worked within and outside of discourses created by western white men to revise understandings of black womanhood. I argue that black women must continue to counter their realities of violence and discrimination by envisioning the black female community as a collective of unique agents working toward a common goal of liberation.

Committee: Kwaku Korang Dr. (Advisor); Stephen Hall Dr. (Committee Member); Maurice Stevens Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2010, Southeast Asian Studies (International Studies)

Since 1998, Ayu Utami has become prominent as one of the female authors who have successfully voiced their perspectives on social issues that were once considered taboo. Her three novels, Saman, Larung, and Bilangan Fu, Utami's have praised both nationally and internationally. As a writer and social critic, she particularly focuses on three Indonesian social cancers, those related to power, sexuality, and religion. Utami's characters personify the tragic flaw of modern people who are trapped between the need to struggle for their own personal beliefs and the different pressures placed on them by the nation, traditional concepts and modernism, patriarchal society and women's desires for greater freedom. Through her male characters (namely Saman, Larung, Yuda, and Parang Jati), Utami portrays how modern men face the clash between their beliefs about religion and the government. At another level, the plots also criticize the way in which Indonesia's socio-cultural conditions always disadvantage the poor and women Her novels also include interactions between these male protagonists and female characters, both modern female characters (Shakuntala, Yasmin, Laila, and Cokorda), as well as traditional female minor characters (Ibu, Upi and Simbah). .Through these interactions, the novels also act as a critique to the modern concept of religion in Indonesia and as an affirmation of the traditional values that Indonesia has had for centuries. This thesis shows how Utami as a modern female writer has been able to integrate into her works her rich thinking about religion, power, and gender. Towards this end, she has been able to include in her works her knowledge of Catholicism in Indonesia, her extensive observation of Javanese and Balinese local traditions, old legends, her understanding on Indonesian political incidents before 1998, and her personal spirituality. In conclusion, this thesis suggests that Utami offers her audience to re-think the need to separate religion from (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard McGinn (Committee Chair); Harry Aveling (Committee Member); Gene Ammarell (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2011, Theological Studies

This thesis involves close readings of both essentialist and constructionist theological views of female sexuality, specifically in regards to reproduction. In particular the philosophies of the female body in the writings of “essentialist” theologian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and “constructionist” theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether are explored and analyzed. This thesis seeks to uncover new understandings of sexual freedom for women by examining both essentialist and constructionist views of female sexuality within contemporary feminist theology based on the various reactions to the Church's teachings on reproduction and emerging feminist philosophy of gender.

Committee: Jana Bennett PhD (Advisor); Judith Martin PhD, SSJ (Committee Member); Sandra Yocum PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Theology

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2013, Popular Culture

When The Golden Girls premiered in 1985, the show helped usher in a new era in American situation comedy television. American audiences had never seen a situation comedy where a group of adult women were the focal point of each episode. There had certainly been programming prior to the show where women held starring roles, but never before had anything like The Golden Girls been shown in American prime time television. The show left an indelible mark and millions of Americans have followed the adventures Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia, both in its original run from 1985 to 1992, and in its current syndication status on several cable television networks. Sex and the City, Platinum Edition: How The Golden Girls Altered American Situation Comedy explores several of the ways in which the program effected American culture in terms of television as well as away from the television screen. The first chapter of the project explores how the show laid the groundwork for several other programs followed the show's lead by installing a group of adult women at its center. Comparisons between The Golden Girls and several of these shows (including Sex and the City, Designing Women, and Hot in Cleveland) are made in terms of character types and plotlines. The conclusion is drawn that The Golden Girls was the first adult female ensemble in situation comedy television and these shows were inspired by the program. The second chapter of the project examines how each of the characters through the performance of age and sexuality were actively fighting denigrating stereotypes often associated with older females in American society. The chapter contains specific examples from several episodes involving each of the series four main characters and how each of these portrayals stands in direct contrast to the beliefs typically attributed to older American women regarding the intersection of age and sexuality. The third and final chapter of the project explores how the series was abl (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Becca Cragin PhD (Advisor); Jeffrey Brown PhD (Committee Member); Scott Magelssen PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Aging; American Studies; Communication; Gender; Gender Studies; Gerontology; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications; Performing Arts; Theater Studies; Womens Studies