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- Title
- Low-income women's standpoint: Recognizing poor and working-class American women as generators of resistant knowledge.
- Creator
- Larson, Holly Ann., Florida Atlantic University, Caputi, Jane
- Abstract/Description
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This dissertation puts economically disadvantaged American women at the center of analysis. I turn to standpoint theory to demonstrate that low-income women construct knowledge out of resistance to systemic oppression in their everyday, concrete worlds. In addition, I create a distinct theory on low-income women's standpoint to show that poor and working-class women are grounded in and produce knowledge from the messiness of contradictions and the murkiness of ambiguity in the immediate,...
Show moreThis dissertation puts economically disadvantaged American women at the center of analysis. I turn to standpoint theory to demonstrate that low-income women construct knowledge out of resistance to systemic oppression in their everyday, concrete worlds. In addition, I create a distinct theory on low-income women's standpoint to show that poor and working-class women are grounded in and produce knowledge from the messiness of contradictions and the murkiness of ambiguity in the immediate, material world. Therefore, their forms of resistance is as complex, ambiguous, and messy as the world from which they struggle. Discerning and analyzing low-income women's standpoint does not create a value hierarchy that places more worth on one form of resistance than on another. Nor does it make an ethical judgment on how low-income women resist or uphold moral absolutism that categorizes their acts of resistance as "good/healthy" or "bad/dysfunctional." Rather, uncovering and examining low-income women's standpoint focuses on how poor and working-class women struggle to be whole, complex beings who daily fight against economic oppression under structural limitations and within contradictory situations. Low-income women's standpoint theory acknowledges the messiness of life and the imperfection of humanity. Furthermore, it illustrates that knowledge is an ongoing process of seeking "truth"; there is no one correct way of finding "truth." Hence, low-income women's standpoint theory shows that there is "truth" in the murkiness and confusion of contradictions and ambiguity. My dissertation is set up as the following: in chapter one, I explain what poor and working-class women's standpoint is and highlight how their resistant knowledge is grounded in their immediate and everyday world; in chapter two, I examine how low-income female performing artists and writers openly express their sexuality as "bad girls" through their art and writing to claim sexual agency; in chapter three, I analyze how low-waged female workers encountering structural limitations negotiate power relations in the workforce; and, in chapter four, I look at how low-income women deal with emotional pain and anger as they resist being crushed by economic and social oppression.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2003
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12046
- Subject Headings
- Poor women--United States, Oppression (Psychology), Working class women
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- An Examination of Recurring Misogynistic & Intersecting Sexist/Racist Female Character Tropes in Popular Science Fiction & Superhero Films & Television Since 1996.
- Creator
- Ronson, Jeannette H., Caputi, Jane, Florida Atlantic University, Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
- Abstract/Description
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The representation of lead female characters as sexually threatening or naturally deceptive, hysterical, or evil, especially non-White or non-gender conforming characters, in popular science fiction and superhero film and television productions over the past few decades is concerning in that these films promote misogynistic and intersecting racist and hetero/sexist tropes in genres that typically appeal to younger audiences. Within their historical roots as cheap print entertainment, i.e.,...
Show moreThe representation of lead female characters as sexually threatening or naturally deceptive, hysterical, or evil, especially non-White or non-gender conforming characters, in popular science fiction and superhero film and television productions over the past few decades is concerning in that these films promote misogynistic and intersecting racist and hetero/sexist tropes in genres that typically appeal to younger audiences. Within their historical roots as cheap print entertainment, i.e., pulp magazines and comic books, directed at White working-class boys and young men, these genres have historically, and unabashedly, featured scantily clad, sometimes racially stereotyped, sexually titillating temptresses such as the Dragon Lady and Catwoman that threatened the hyper-masculine hero as well as humanity. Ignored by literary and cinematic critics throughout the twentieth century as juvenile male fantasy entertainment, the science fiction and superhero genres in film and television now dominate Hollywood productions. Unfortunately, these genres in the twenty-first century still often promote damaging female tropes that suggest women as naturally defective, deceptive, power-hungry, irrational, raging monsters reminiscent of historical patriarchal myths of women. Additionally, a recent popular Netflix television series includes a character assigned female at birth (AFAB) who presents as gender non-conforming and carries attributes such as irrational rage and murderous violence that follows the historic cinematic trope of the “gleeful gay killer” as seen in Psycho (1960) and Dressed to Kill (1980). Although these themes in film and television are fantasy, they also mirror and bring to life the political and cultural anxieties of a significant number of men in our country who support the ideology of the manosphere that includes anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ+, White supremacist, and racist beliefs. This dissertation examines three popular Hollywood films and one Emmy Award winning Netflix television series from the science-fiction and superhero genres since 1996 that reveal damaging female tropes that still prevail in popular entertainment.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2023
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00014313
- Subject Headings
- Women in motion pictures, Tropes, Misogyny, Superhero films
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Fattitude The Movie: Theory and Praxis of Creating a Documentary that Examines Fat Representation and Fat Social Justice.
- Creator
- Averill, Lindsey, Caputi, Jane, Hagood, Taylor, Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Abstract/Description
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This dissertation explores the making of and research for the film, Fattitude, a social justice based documentary that looks to awaken viewers to the reality of weight bias in media representation. This dissertation reviews the filmmaking process and then engages with the nature of stereotypes about fat bodies. Deeply tied to feminist and fat studies theory, the work here seeks to categorize and shape the understanding of weight bias in the media by linking fat tropes to clearly understood...
Show moreThis dissertation explores the making of and research for the film, Fattitude, a social justice based documentary that looks to awaken viewers to the reality of weight bias in media representation. This dissertation reviews the filmmaking process and then engages with the nature of stereotypes about fat bodies. Deeply tied to feminist and fat studies theory, the work here seeks to categorize and shape the understanding of weight bias in the media by linking fat tropes to clearly understood images of oppression, for example the monstrous, the fool, they hypersexual and the asexual. The work also seeks to present theory on the nature of creating media representations of fatness that are not oppressive – making note of current media created by grassroots movements for body acceptance and fat positivity.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2017
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004900, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004900
- Subject Headings
- Fattitude., Body image--Social aspects., Discrimination against overweight persons., Feminine beauty (Aesthetics), Obesity., Body image in women., Self-esteem in women., Physical-appearance-based bias.
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Enduring relationship with the dead: The corpse, the feminine and popular culture.
- Creator
- Kelly, Suzanne M., Florida Atlantic University, Caputi, Jane
- Abstract/Description
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Feminist theory has long criticized the hierarchical and oppositional thinking responsible for creating the basis of what counts as real knowledge. In questioning how and why the experience of enduring relationship with the dead is not imagined as real, this dissertation will draw from this theoretical tradition. This analysis involves a paradigm shift in thinking about the nature of relationship---one that posits these kinds of experiences as something other than either a psychological...
Show moreFeminist theory has long criticized the hierarchical and oppositional thinking responsible for creating the basis of what counts as real knowledge. In questioning how and why the experience of enduring relationship with the dead is not imagined as real, this dissertation will draw from this theoretical tradition. This analysis involves a paradigm shift in thinking about the nature of relationship---one that posits these kinds of experiences as something other than either a psychological remedy to our grief or the requisite belief in the survival of the self. Feminist critiques of dualistic thinking become the cornerstone of Chapter One in order to get to the roots of how knowledge of enduring relationship with the dead gets denied. This chapter addresses the splitting responsible for the othering of death, the desire to flee it, and, by association, the desire to flee the body. This flight is predicated on a bounded and distinct subject who imagines it must separate itself from the material in order to survive. Imagining the body in this manner sets limits for making visible a relationship that endures with death. Dualistic thinking, the degradation of the body and the desire to flee it will also be the focus of Chapter Two as it looks at the dominant contemporary practices around what is done with the corpse. These practices work together to deny a dead body that matters and one important for legitimizing enduring relationship with the dead. While enduring relationship is made invisible through these hegemonic discourses and practices, there are, as I mentioned at the start, experiences that say otherwise. Chapter Three will suggest that the knowledge that comes with these experiences is one sometimes accepted and explored in popular culture. Popular culture may provide the reminder, but recognizing enduring relationship also relies on the willingness to bring to the fore the role, the value and the contribution of the corpse. The conclusion will offer some examples of what I call practices of proximity that recognize the corpse as central for the living.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2006
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12216
- Subject Headings
- Loss (Psychology), Feminist theory, Women--Death--Social aspects, Perception (Philosophy), Philosophy of nature
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Music, rhetoric and the creation of feminist consciousness in the Marian songs of Hildegard of Bingen (1098--1179).
- Creator
- Lomer, Beverly R., Florida Atlantic University, Caputi, Jane, Keaton, Kenneth
- Abstract/Description
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This dissertation examines the sixteen songs to Mary in the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum of twelfth century nun composer, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). The analysis demonstrates that the idiosyncratic musical style of the Symphonia cycle represents an innovative application of the rhetorical procedures of the medieval ars praedicandi and the ars dictamen to music centuries in advance of an articulated concept of musical rhetoric, and that one goal of the Marian repertory was to...
Show moreThis dissertation examines the sixteen songs to Mary in the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum of twelfth century nun composer, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). The analysis demonstrates that the idiosyncratic musical style of the Symphonia cycle represents an innovative application of the rhetorical procedures of the medieval ars praedicandi and the ars dictamen to music centuries in advance of an articulated concept of musical rhetoric, and that one goal of the Marian repertory was to affect the self-consciousness of the all-female audience in a positive direction. The effect is achieved through the strategically constructed and inextricable relationship between text and melody. The study reveals that Hildegard's deployment of repeated melody, and the predominance of such factors as wide pitch ranges, high ranges, elaborate melismas, the use of key modal tones as demarcating devices, and the predominance of uncharacteristically large leaps, serve as musical-rhetorical substructures by which the import of the text is enhanced, and additional levels of meaning are created. In accordance with the feminist agenda, the optimistic images that are presented in the songs are designed to challenge the contemporary devaluation of women and to restore the feminine to its formerly sacred place in the divine plan. The attribution of aspects of divinity to Mary, which closely resonate with the precepts of the ancient goddess thealogies, and which present her as an essential partner of the Godhead in the Redemption and as an and active, independent Salvatrix, offer the female monastic audience an alternative to the solely-masculine concept of the divine.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2006
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/12192
- Subject Headings
- Hildegard,--Saint,--1098-1179--Criticism and interpretation, Music theory--History--500-1400, Hildegard,--Saint,--1098-1179--Musical settings, Women composers--Germany, Sacred songs, Women--History--Middle Ages, 500-1500
- Format
- Document (PDF)