Browsing by Subject "feminism"

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Beauty as the Beast: Constructions of the Girl in Three Modern Variants of the Tale as Old as Time
(2018-05) Syed, Sarah
This thesis aims to answer the following question: How is the girl constructed across three modern variants of “Beauty and the Beast?” The three primary texts examined in this paper are Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Angela Carter’s short story, The Tiger’s Bride, and Salman Rushdie’s novel, Shame. Each text was analyzed specifically for how it remains consistent with and deviates from Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast” published in 1756. My aim was to go beyond a sex-role theory analysis and assess how these modern variants revise a traditional plotline to construct the girl in terms of her agency, transformation, and fate. Emphasis was placed not only on comparing and contrasting the girl and the female experience across these three texts, but also on placing these texts within the context of gender studies and fairy tale scholarship at large. A major premise of this thesis is that fairy tales are in an incredibly powerful position to inform, socialize, and re-socialize both children and adults. As a result, this project strives to elucidate what each of the three primary texts conveys about the fictional girl and about the actual girl represented by the fiction. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates how the fairy tale influences our popular conception of gendered identities and how it can play a role in remedying longstanding and often harmful portrayals of these identities. It shows also how important this research is in today’s social and political climate—where fundamental (if subconscious) misunderstandings of the woman have perpetuated the injustices she faces.
Breaking the Chains of Niceness
(2020-12) Arriaga, Diana
Bureaucratic Activism and Colombian Community Mothers: The Daily Construction of the Rule of Law
(The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, 2014) Buchely, Lina
Whereas mainstream literature affirms that the rule of law is an abstract concept that comes from democracy and liberal institutional systems, people in the local Global South do not experience this certainty. In some ways, the rule of law is a product of the daily life transactions and bargains of social actors. This article analyzes the case of community mothers as street-level bureaucrats who produce the rule of law in their local spaces, within an institutional or democratic mechanism. This case study of community mothers, developed between June 2012 and February 2013, shows how street-level bureaucrats use the rule of law as a tool of empowerment. Community mothers display an undocumented agency that develops a feminist agenda of helping fellow women, contrary to the government agenda that promotes childcare and the early childhood program policies. In this sense, the fieldwork undertaken portrays mothers and children as conflicting actors. Despite this, the social policy hides this conflict reproducing the normative image that ideologically links mothers with their children. The results of this research project reveal, therefore, that the local agents as the street level bureaucrats play an unexpected role in the power dynamics inherent to the rule of law.
Comfort and Memory: Artist Kit Keith and the Oral History Process
(2020-05-11) Mutrux, M. L.; Reynolds, Ann; Seriff, Suzanne
This paper explores the career of St. Louis-based, self-taught artist Kit Keith and the development of my personal relationship with the artist through the interview process. While telling Keith’s story and exploring her art, I analyze my use of an oral history methodology. The paper is broken into four parts, following four days of in-person interviews (two in September 2019, two in January 2020). Part 1 opens with our first day of official interviewing and explores Keith’s permanent return to St. Louis in the late 2000s and several major events in her career around 2013, including her inclusion in the New York Armory Show, her award for Best Local Artist in St. Louis, and the screening of The Comfort of Memory, a short documentary about Keith’s life, at the St. Louis Film Festival. Through analyzing events during 2013, I grapple with questions of “greatness” and categorization in art history. Part 2 explores Keith’s childhood spent performing in a circus troupe, her diagnosis with bipolar disorder, and her move from Sarasota, Florida to St. Louis, Missouri. I introduce the difficult beginning of our interviews, brought on by unclear boundaries and painful memories. Part 3 analyzes our second day of interviewing and takes the reader into the 1990s, when Keith developed a signature style and began to have professional success in New York City. Part 4 jumps to January 2020 and my return to St. Louis to interview Keith, following her story into the 21st century as we viewed The Comfort of Memory and several reviews of her work together. I expand on the relational changes which occurred through the interview process and the disintegration of my art historical categorization framework. Throughout each of these sections, I expound on the changing dynamic of our conversations as we ventured out of the range of an impersonal, art historical narrative and analysis. Ultimately, the project attempts to demonstrate how the personal relationship between interviewer and narrator—preexisting or not—becomes inextricable from both the process of recording oral history, and the character of the resulting narrative itself. It is an addition to an expanding body of literature grappling with feminist and “human-centered” oral history.
DAC Blog 2015-08
(2015-08) Diversity Action Committee (DAC)
DAC Blog 2021-03
(2021-03) Covington, Elle; Arbino, Daniel; Bastone, Gina; Gerberich, Elizabeth; Ryan, Mandy
Dacia Maraini Guest Lecture
(Joynes Reading Room, 2015-03-04) Valentine, Matt
A Delicate Balance: Employing Feminist Process Goals in Writing Center Consulting
(2003) Seeley, Gabrielle
Emigrant Widows of Tajikistan and Guatemala: Where Structural Poverty and Structural Repression of Women Intersect
(2021) Lane Boyer, Judy Elizabeth; Garza, Thomas Jesús
Guatemala and Tajikistan are two countries located in different geographical regions, but they appear to have similarities. Guatemala serves as a link in the illegal drug trafficking route between the world’s highest cocaine producers, Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, and the United States. Tajikistan receives the bulk of heroin and opium from Afghanistan, the world’s highest producer of the two narcotics, much of which is destined for Russia. Additionally, Transparency International’s 2018 corruption perceptions index ranked Guatemala at 144 and Tajikistan at 152 out of 180 countries, placing both countries among the top third in terms of governmental corruption. Yet, reported crime rates in both countries are low to mid-range compared to many other countries. Many men in both countries emigrate for work, with migrant Tajikistanis overwhelmingly choosing Russia as their destination and Guatemalans seeking work in Mexico or the United States. At the same time, existing literature on both countries indicates high levels of social and/or institutional oppression of women, intrafamilial violence, often directed towards women, and endemic poverty, especially in rural regions. Thus, how do structural limitations affect the social and economic opportunity of “emigrant widows,” or women in these countries whose intimate partners have left them to find work outside the country? This qualitative study focuses on this question. It also examines other phenomena, including drug trafficking and government corruption, which may or may not affect the lives of these women, termed “emigrant widows,” but which may share common contributing factors. The data is presented via an ethnographic portrait of emigrant widows based on qualitative data gleaned through a series of semi-structured field interviews with emigrant widows, social workers, and gender experts in each country. The data is contextualized in a framework of existent relevant scholarly literature and articles and reports produced by governmental organizations, news sources, and non-governmental organizations.
Feminist Action Project Blog, April 2010
(2010-04) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, April 2011
(2011-04) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, April 2013
(2013-04) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, April 2014
(Feminist Action Project, 2014-04) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, April 2016
(Feminist Action Project, 2016-04) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, April 2017
(Feminist Action Project, 2017-04) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, December 2011
(2011-12) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, February 2010
(2010-02) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, February 2011
(2011-02) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, February 2012
(2012-02) University of Texas at Austin
Feminist Action Project Blog, February 2014
(2014-02) University of Texas at Austin