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This dissertation examines the discursive construction of the trope of the ideal girl in popular American girls' series in the twentieth century. Girls' cultural artifacts, including girls' literature series, provide sites for understanding girls' experiences and exploring girlhood itself as a socially constructed identity, yet are often overlooked due to

This dissertation examines the discursive construction of the trope of the ideal girl in popular American girls' series in the twentieth century. Girls' cultural artifacts, including girls' literature series, provide sites for understanding girls' experiences and exploring girlhood itself as a socially constructed identity, yet are often overlooked due to their presumed insignificance. Simple dismissal of these texts ignores the weight of their popularity and the processes through which they reach such status. This project challenges the derisive attitude towards girls' culture and begins with the assumption that these cultural texts do ideological work and therefore require consideration. The dissertation traces the development of the ideal and non-ideal girl over time, taking into account the cultural, political, and economic factors that facilitate the production of the discourses of girlhood. I include analysis of texts from six popular American girls' series as primary texts; visual elements or media productions related to the series; and supporting historical documents such as newspapers, "expert" texts, popular parents' and girls' magazines, film; and advertising. Methodological approach incorporates elements of literary criticism and discourse analysis, combining literary, historical, and cultural approaches to primary texts and supporting documents to trace the moments of production, resistance, and response in the figure of the ideal girl. Throughout the project, I pay particular attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality in the figure of the ideal girl and her non-ideal counterparts. I argue that girls' series, slipping under the radar as a denigrated cultural medium, capture and perpetuate cultural anxieties around heterosexuality, whiteness and American identity, appropriate gender roles, and class mobility. These texts discipline the non-ideal girl toward the ideal, always with the expectation of failure.
ContributorsHarper, Kate (Author) / Scheiner Gillis, Georganne (Thesis advisor) / Anderson, Lisa (Committee member) / Switzer, Heather (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Zines have made space for queer, intersectional feminists to bring together academic and artistic knowledge in order to produce a message and inspire readers. In order to criticize the legal definition and practical execution of obscenity in the US, a visual component was a necessity. The use of a Zine

Zines have made space for queer, intersectional feminists to bring together academic and artistic knowledge in order to produce a message and inspire readers. In order to criticize the legal definition and practical execution of obscenity in the US, a visual component was a necessity. The use of a Zine allowed for a critical and humorous exploration of obscenity in US law and media. The Zine provides a visual analysis while the companion essay provides a critique of the zine and additional analysis. The Zine brings awareness to ways in which the legal historical objectification of black and native bodies contributed to the creation of modern obscenity laws. These laws are based on racist and sexist ideals of morality and create inherently flawed definitions of obscenity through personal bias. The flaws within the laws allow for exceptions in the legal definition of obscenity which normalizes the commodification of women's bodies. These laws and the exceptions present contribute to the dehumanization of and violence towards women as usefulness is deemed the most important factor when considering the use of women’s bodies in potentially obscene images and films.
ContributorsTidwell, Alana Juliet (Author) / Koker, Neveser (Thesis director) / Switzer, Heather (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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Description
This dissertation examines pro-immigrants' rights activism and advocacy among middle-class White women in and around Phoenix, Arizona, in order to analyze these activists' understandings and enactments of their racialized and gendered citizenship. This project contributes a wealth of qualitative data regarding the operation of race, gender, class, (dis)ability, sexuality, and

This dissertation examines pro-immigrants' rights activism and advocacy among middle-class White women in and around Phoenix, Arizona, in order to analyze these activists' understandings and enactments of their racialized and gendered citizenship. This project contributes a wealth of qualitative data regarding the operation of race, gender, class, (dis)ability, sexuality, and community in the daily lives and activism of White women pro-immigrants' rights advocates, collected largely through formal and informal interviewing in conjunction with in-depth participant observation. Using a feminist, intersectional analytical lens, and drawing upon critical race studies, Whiteness studies, and citizenship theory, this dissertation ultimately finds that White women face thornily difficult ethical questions about how to wield the rights entailed in their citizenship and their White privilege on behalf of marginalized Latinx non-citizens. This project ultimately argues that the material realities and racial consequences of being a White woman participating in (im)migrants’ rights work in the borderlands means living with the contradiction that one’s specific and intersectionally mediated status as a White woman citizen contributes to and further reifies the gendered system of White supremacy that functions to the direct detriment of the (im)migrants one seeks to assist, while simultaneously endowing one with the advantages and privileges of Whiteness, which together furnish the social capital necessary to challenge that same system of their behalf. The dissertation contends that White women committed to pro-(im)migrants’ rights advocacy and antiracism writ large must reckon with the source of their gendered and racialized citizenship and interrogate to what complicated and unforeseen ends they wield the Master’s tools against the Master’s house. In doing so, the project makes the case that White women's lives, as well as their experiences of citizenship and activism, are inherently and fundamentally intersectional and should be analyzed as such by scholars in Women's and Gender Studies.
ContributorsVandermeade, Samantha Leigh (Author) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Thesis advisor) / Switzer, Heather (Committee member) / Lee, Charles T (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
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Description
The process of pathologizing grief and othering grievers is historically situated in white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy and is reproduced socially. ‘Grief norms, gender norms’ explores and complicates the ways that grief and gender are co-constitutive; mediated by social norms; and reinforced through institutions like psychiatry and medicine, workplace policies, and

The process of pathologizing grief and othering grievers is historically situated in white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy and is reproduced socially. ‘Grief norms, gender norms’ explores and complicates the ways that grief and gender are co-constitutive; mediated by social norms; and reinforced through institutions like psychiatry and medicine, workplace policies, and public discourses around grief which all work together to create ‘acceptable’ structures of feeling. This dissertation uses a combination of in-depth, semi-structured interviews and digital grief content across two social media sites: Instagram and TikTok in order to explore various sites of this affective social reproduction and the multi-directional impact of gender and grief when studied side by side. This project is made up of three distinct, but thematically related sections: feminine embodied grief and masking; how the Widow is socially reproduced as ‘Other’; and the intimate publics of female grief influencers on Instagram. Each of these chapters explores a different aspect of the shaping of 'acceptable' grief through valences of gendered norms - which are already raced and classed - and explores the ways that those norms socializes individuals of all genders towards expectations about how grief 'should' be experienced and expressed. Feminine embodied grief is experienced beyond linear temporality, and felt sensationally and relationally. This means that grievers experiencing this kind of feminine embodied grief more readily rely on grief masking to 'pass' in non-grieving society. In the third chapter, the experience of the Widow is the primary focus. This chapter examines the social processes that render the Widow as 'Other', socially, and polices the active grief of the Widow through processes of isolation and exclusion. Each widow in this study experienced such othering, including John, whose partner died of AIDS in the 1990s. The end of this chapter explores his experience of ambiguous widowhood. The final chapter takes a wider view and focuses on the intimate publics formed by female grief influencers on Instagram. This chapter highlights two such influencers and the ways that the discourses about grief that they employ both disrupts and reinforces traditional, Western logics about 'acceptable' grief.
ContributorsLacey, Elisabeth (Author) / Switzer, Heather (Thesis advisor) / Anderson, Lisa (Committee member) / Cacciatore, Joanne (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023