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- All Subjects: Social Media
- Creators: School of International Letters and Cultures
- Creators: Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm
- Creators: Department of English
- Status: Published
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.
The Charlie Hebdo attacks fueled an online debate over freedom of expression and religion, whereas the purpose of social media evolved into a humanitarian one following the November 13 attacks in Paris. This research looks into the individual evolutions of the related hashtags that surfaced in 2015, including #JeSuisCharlie (and its opposites, such as #JeNeSuisPasCharlie), #DonDuSang, #PorteOuverte and #RechercheParis, among others. Another research point was with the September 11 attacks—with the 9/11 attacks against the United States, few to no channels were available for the kind of immediate discussions and support seen after the Paris attacks. After spending time in Paris during the spring 2015 semester and researching the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the history of the publication, the conclusion rests on the idea that the online discussions perpetuated by both supporters and dissenters of the magazine contribute to a more robust, open democracy supported by these social media platforms.
A portion of this thesis also delves into the parallels and differences between the American First Amendment and the French free speech laws—all of which pertain to the Charlie Hebdo content and the online responses to the 2015 Paris attacks.
The interviews conducted include a French art history professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris, two creators of the “Je Suis Charlie” Facebook page, an American journalist living in Paris who covered the Charlie Hebdo attack and who was present during the November attacks, and a Muslim-American doctor in Phoenix who founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. The ideas surrounding free speech, the value of art such as that found within the pages of Charlie Hebdo, the media’s treatment of religion, traditional democratic freedoms and ties to social media revolutions are all components of this research thesis.
What was found was that although gender did play a large part in the way men and women spoke, there were more similarities when comparing individuals of the same industry or profession, than there were if they were simply analyzed just based on gender. Additionally, there were many factors that made it difficult to say whether these were qualified patterns or simply tendencies. More research into this would be able to help marketing companies and individuals, better target the audience they want for social media campaigns, by taking into account the importance in contemporary differences in language use by men and women. However, this research would have to be done on data from sites like Twitter to provide an accurate depiction of the way men and women, on these very unique mediums, speak.