My thesis, titled Female Agency in the Canterbury Tales and Telling Tales, compares Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth century work and Patience Agbabi’s modern adaptation in regards to their portrayal of female agency. While each work contained a whole selection of tales, I focus on four tales, which were The Miller’s Tale, The Clerk’s Tale, The Physician’s Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Tale. I also include relevant historical information to support and assist in the analysis of the literary texts, and secondary sources were also used supplementarily to enhance the analysis. I argue that female agency is irrationally believed to be dangerous, and the consequent attempts at protection manifest as limitations, which are themselves damaging. The paper is divided into two main sections, which are themselves separated into three smaller categories. The first of the two main sections concerns what actions and options are available to women influenced by a distinction of gender; this section is divided into female gender ideals, marriage, and occupation. The second of the two main sections addresses the entities or individuals enacting the limitations upon female agency, and its three subsections are society, men, and women. I ultimately conclude that not only is it irrational to believe that female agency is dangerous, but also that making gender-based judgment on the capacity of a group of people or an individual is inherently flawed.

Female celebrities are commodified by the entertainment industry at every stage of their lives. The industry's expectations of female celebrities reflect society's expectations for women. From girlhood to adulthood, women are expected to follow particular scripts of femininity. These scripts are promoted and perpetuated by the entertainment industry. Women are used as commodities for consumerism by both the industry and the media alike. Female celebrities have higher expectations today than ever. With the modern phenomena of reality television and social media, the public demands a new level of authenticity and transparency from celebrities. In this thesis, I explore three womens' lives and careers: Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, and Demi Lovato. I discuss the ways in which these three women have been commodified by the industry at each stage of their lives, as well as how they have, over the course of their careers, attempted to regain control of their images.

What if I told you that a few photos of a sweatshirt, delivered at the perfect time, cracked a case that had stumped some of the world’s greatest marketing minds for more than twenty years? What if I told you that a dismissed lawsuit played an integral part in this? One made possible by a rainy night in Couva, Trinidad? Or that all of this, hundreds of years in the making, could aid a wrongfully incarcerated man in being freed after spending twenty two years in prison, and pioneer one of the largest-scale social justice movements of the 21st century? All catalyzed by the effects of a global pandemic? If I told you, would you believe me? But let’s get back to that sweatshirt for now.<br/>In January 2020, the Coronavirus was a seemingly distant issue for another part of the world to most Americans. A generation that had seen the likes of H1N1 and Ebola come, cause irrational panic, and subsequently disappear had grown complacent with regard to unknown diseases. On March 9th, Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert took a defiant step in dispelling fears of COVID-19 by touching every microphone in the room at the end of an interview. Two days later, a test revealed that he had contracted the virus, the first professional athlete to do so. The NBA suspended all activities, and thus began the succession of sports leagues across the nation suspending their seasons as global infection numbers rose. But we humans are resilient. As weeks became months, the NBA and WNBA were able to engineer “bubbles” to play in: isolated areas with only the players and essential personnel to play the games, equipped with safety precautions and persistent testing. With no fans allowed inside, social media and media members provided the only glimpse into the “bubble” that ordairy fans would get.<br/>The mornings of July 25th and 26th, as the players arrived for the first games of the day and were snapped by photographers, many sported orange hoodies with the trademark white WNBA logo in the center, to promote the start of the WNBA’s “bubble” season that summer. This sent the internet into a frenzy. “#OrangeHoodie” was trending across all social media platforms, the item sold out on many websites, and more people than ever were talking about the WNBA online. That season, WNBA viewership spiked. More people watched the WNBA than ever before, even with the NBA’s playoffs taking place at the same time. How, then, did a single orange hoodie change the future of marketing the WNBA? What does that tell us about other women’s sports that have similarly struggled with attention and viewership? What role does media exposure play in all of this; do we perceive women differently in the media than we do men? Are these issues rooted in deeper societal prejudices, or are women’s sports simply quantifiably less entertaining?<br/>On a journey to find the answers to these questions, I learned a lot about the relationship of media and culture, about sport, and about the outstanding untold stories of American sportswomen. However, the most important thing I found was that women are marketable. After long being denied the opportunities and exposure they deserve, American culture has as a result pushed women to the background under the guise of them not being demanded or marketable. This could not be further from the truth. They are not demanded because they are not seen. Investing in sportswomen would not only create a better future for all women, but for all people. How, then, is this achievable? How will the powers that be allow for changes to be made? How can we as individuals be receptive to this change? In this thesis, I will take you on a journey where media is fun and fair, and where the future is female.

A handbook consisting of scholarship and social media included to frame the six experiences around which this handbook is organized: getting in the zone, a thought process in overdrive; impulsivity; a distinct relationship to creativity; difficulties with transitions, especially the transition to and from sleep; and a complex relationship to medication. Following the initial framing, I then describe what each of these experiences feel like to me. To render these experiences for the purpose of a shared inquiry, I followed the critical-incident interview method that Flower describes in Community Literacy and the Rhetoric of Public Engagement. I first learned to use this interview technique in ENG 205: Introduction to Writing, Rhetorics and Literacies and practiced it further in ENG 390: Methods of Inquiry. The crux of my project is the insights of research participants as they read and responded to the six critical incidents and respective follow-up questions I designed for this study. The full interview protocol–approved by ASU’s Internal Review Board in December of 2022–is included in the appendix. Following IRB approval, I recruited four participants for a critical-incident interview, the results of which enliven this handbook’s portrait of thriving with ADHD.

Women of color have, over the years, come to power, with more of them in congress now more than they were before. This is a very significant and powerful way for women, especially women of color, to rise and be an encouragement to girls of color all over the world. It is worth noting that every one of these women has a story and has been through a journey that can be inspirational to young girls, a story that can teach young girls traits such as resilience and the need to work hard despite any challenges. This essay is a background on some selected women of color in Congress, discussing where they come from, how they got to Congress, and the impact they left behind.