Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: Gender Studies
- All Subjects: Yuan Dynasty
- Genre: Academic theses
- Creators: Weitz, Rose
Description
Based on the Foucauldian understanding that sexuality discourse operates as a powerful instrument for the regulation of societies and individuals, this research considers how internalized gender and sexuality discourses affect young women's embodied experiences of masturbation, and more broadly their sexual subjectivity and health. Drawing on interdisciplinary feminist perspectives on gender, sexuality, health, and embodiment, I examine female sexual health within a positive rights framework. That is, I view the rights to both sexual safety and pleasure as essential components of female sexual health, and conceptualize girls and young women as potential sexual agents. By asking young women about their lived experiences of self-pleasure, this research challenges not only the historical legacy of pathologizing female desire and pleasure, but also scholars' tendency to construct female sexuality solely in a heteronormative, partnered context. Based on focus groups, interviews, journals, and questionnaires collected from 109 female college students from diverse ethnic, religious, and sexuality backgrounds in Arizona and Michigan, I employ grounded theory to analyze individual feelings and experiences in the context of larger societal discourses. My findings indicate that when girls internalize negative discourses about masturbation (e.g. as sin or secular stigma), general heteronormative sexuality discourses, and a silence around female self-pleasure, there are severe negative consequences for how they understand and experience masturbation. I argue that they engage in sexual self-surveillance that often results in emotional and physical struggles, as well as the re-inscription of hegemonic cultural discourses on female masturbation, bodies, desire, and pleasure. By illustrating how even the most private and `invisible' behavior of masturbation can become a site for regulating female sexuality, this research provides important evidence of the power of increasingly covert mechanisms to govern gendered bodies and subjectivities through self-surveillance. Alternatively, this research also highlights the potential of normalizing self-pleasure for increasing girls' and young women's capacity for resisting oppressive gender and sexuality discourses and behaviors, developing an agentic sexual subjectivity, and feeling sexually empowered. Thus, this research also has practical implications for conceptualizing sexual health for girls and young women in a way that includes the rights to sexual safety and pleasure.
ContributorsFrank, Elena (Author) / Weitz, Rose (Thesis advisor) / Katsulis, Yasmina (Committee member) / Fahs, Breanne (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This thesis examines the play Qian Dayin zhichong Xie Tianxiang, written by the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) playwright Guan Hanqing (c.1225-1302). The first chapter of this paper provides brief background information about northern style Yuan drama (zaju) as well as a plot summary and notes about the analysis and translation. Through a close reading of the play, I hope to illustrate how the play's complicated ending and lack of complete resolution reveals why it has received relatively little attention from scholars who have previously discussed other strong, intelligent female characters in Guan Hanqing's plays. The second chapter of this thesis includes translation of the play that is comprised of a wedge preceding the four acts. Before each act of the play is a critical introduction and analysis of the act to follow. Although many of Guan Hanqing's plays have been translated into English, this play has never been translated.
ContributorsByrnes, Kelli (Author) / West, Stephen H. (Thesis advisor) / Zou, Yu (Committee member) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
ABSTRACT
The aim of the study is to examine the impact of international male labor migration on the sexual and reproductive health of women who stay back home in Tajikistan. The data for this study was gathered as a result of ethnographic field works conducted on several occasions from 2011 to 2013.
The results of the study suggest that male migration does not have an impact on fertility levels of the left-behind women. Although similarly to previous studies this study shows that wives of migrants are less likely to use contraception, it nevertheless demonstrates changes in contraceptive behaviors of wives of migrants such as seasonal removal and insertion of an intrauterine device (IUD) and shift from long-term to short-term contraception use. However, despite the availability of numerous forms of contraception in the country, the pattern of contraceptive use such as the reliance on IUDs dominant during the Soviet period continues to exist among wives of non-migrants. One of the most important findings of this study is women’s ability to use condoms for a short term with husbands after their return and asking spouses to have an HIV test. This finding challenges the dominant discourses in HIV and migration literature focusing on the inability, impossibility and failure on the part of the wives to negotiate HIV prevention due to various factors impeding the promotion of HIV prevention skills and measures among women.
Moreover, the study demonstrates that, on the one hand, male migration worsens reproductive health of the left-behind women, but, on the other hand, it improves/increases their access to reproductive health institutions thanks to remittances. Although self-reported symptoms of women show a slight difference in reproductive morbidity, including STIs of wives of migrants and non-migrants, health care providers believe that this difference is significant and wives of migrants are more likely to have complications during pregnancy, delivery and post-delivery periods.
The study also shows that the majority of HIV prevention and family planning programs target only wives of migrants and non-migrants, however it is crucial that migrant men should also be targets of these programs.
The aim of the study is to examine the impact of international male labor migration on the sexual and reproductive health of women who stay back home in Tajikistan. The data for this study was gathered as a result of ethnographic field works conducted on several occasions from 2011 to 2013.
The results of the study suggest that male migration does not have an impact on fertility levels of the left-behind women. Although similarly to previous studies this study shows that wives of migrants are less likely to use contraception, it nevertheless demonstrates changes in contraceptive behaviors of wives of migrants such as seasonal removal and insertion of an intrauterine device (IUD) and shift from long-term to short-term contraception use. However, despite the availability of numerous forms of contraception in the country, the pattern of contraceptive use such as the reliance on IUDs dominant during the Soviet period continues to exist among wives of non-migrants. One of the most important findings of this study is women’s ability to use condoms for a short term with husbands after their return and asking spouses to have an HIV test. This finding challenges the dominant discourses in HIV and migration literature focusing on the inability, impossibility and failure on the part of the wives to negotiate HIV prevention due to various factors impeding the promotion of HIV prevention skills and measures among women.
Moreover, the study demonstrates that, on the one hand, male migration worsens reproductive health of the left-behind women, but, on the other hand, it improves/increases their access to reproductive health institutions thanks to remittances. Although self-reported symptoms of women show a slight difference in reproductive morbidity, including STIs of wives of migrants and non-migrants, health care providers believe that this difference is significant and wives of migrants are more likely to have complications during pregnancy, delivery and post-delivery periods.
The study also shows that the majority of HIV prevention and family planning programs target only wives of migrants and non-migrants, however it is crucial that migrant men should also be targets of these programs.
ContributorsMiskinzod, Dilofarid (Author) / Agadjanian, Victor (Thesis advisor) / Koblitz, Ann (Committee member) / Weitz, Rose (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Research demonstrates that the contemporary global food system is unsustainable, and moreover, because some groups carry the burden of that unsustainability more than others, it is unjust. While some threads of food activism in the United States have attempted to respond to these structural based inequalities--primarily those of race, ethnicity, and social class--overall, very little domestic activism has focused on issues of gender. As feminist scholarship makes clear, however, a food movement "gender gap" does not mean that gender is irrelevant to food experiences, social activism, or agricultural sustainability. Building on a framework of feminist food studies, food justice activism, and feminist social movement theory, this dissertation makes the case for "(en)gendering" the domestic alternative food activist movement, first by demonstrating how gender shapes experiences within food movement spaces, and second, by exploring the impact that an absence of gender awareness has on the individual, community, and organizational levels of the movement. Employing a feminist-informed hybrid of grounded theory and social movement research methods, field research for this dissertation was conducted in community gardens located in Seattle, Washington and Phoenix, Arizona during the summers of 2011 and 2012. With the assistance of NVivo qualitative data analysis software, field notes and twenty-one key-informant interviews were analyzed, as were the discourses found in the publically available marketing materials and policies of domestic food justice organizations. This study's findings at the individual and community level are hopeful, suggesting that when men are involved in food movement work, they become more aware of food-based gender inequalities and more supportive of women's leadership opportunities. Additionally, at the organizational level, this study also finds that where food sovereignty is influencing domestic activism, gender is beginning to enter the discussion. The project concludes with policy recommendations for both community gardening and food justice organizations and the detailing of a new concept of "feminist food justice", with the end goal of preventing the food movement from undermining its own potential to secure a "real alternative" to corporate industrial agriculture.
ContributorsWoodbury, Alicia (Author) / Cruz-Torres, Maria (Thesis advisor) / Weitz, Rose (Committee member) / Wharton, Christopher (Christopher Mack), 1977- (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Personal histories are deeply rooted into my way of existence, far before my brain became ready to challenge such notions. While Americans have been witnesses to the splintering effects of colonialism and patriarchy on socialization, I ask two questions: (1) Where to stand within a society that promotes the marginalization of both women and brown bodies? And (2) how to combat these harsh realities and protect those most affected?
Being both Black and woman, I decided to embark upon a quest of self-actualization in this document. “Ain’t She Sweet: A Critical Choreographic Study of Identity & Intersectionality,” tracks the creative process and concept design behind my applied project for the Master of Fine Arts in Dance. Developed in extensive rehearsals, community engagement, journaling processes, and lived experiences, the physical product, “Ain’t She Sweet,” explored concepts such as identity, socialization, oppression, decolonization, sexuality, and civil rights. The chapters within this document illustrate the depth of the research conducted to form the evening-length production and an analysis of the completed work.
Being both Black and woman, I decided to embark upon a quest of self-actualization in this document. “Ain’t She Sweet: A Critical Choreographic Study of Identity & Intersectionality,” tracks the creative process and concept design behind my applied project for the Master of Fine Arts in Dance. Developed in extensive rehearsals, community engagement, journaling processes, and lived experiences, the physical product, “Ain’t She Sweet,” explored concepts such as identity, socialization, oppression, decolonization, sexuality, and civil rights. The chapters within this document illustrate the depth of the research conducted to form the evening-length production and an analysis of the completed work.
ContributorsCarney, Laina Reese (Author) / Schupp, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Weitz, Rose (Committee member) / White, Marcus (Committee member) / Fitzgerald, Mary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This dissertation explores the representation of female imagery associated with the Yuan pleasure quarters by examining a reservoir of Yuan sanqu. Previous scholarship has studied this topic using either historical material or zaju drama texts but has more or less ignored the voluminous corpus of sanqu. Furthermore, scholarly inquiries of Yuan sanqu either have emphasized its development from the Song ci lyrical tradition or its colloquial features. In consequence, the complexity of sanqu as an independent literary genre has been neglected. Using the representation of female imagery of the pleasure quarters in Yuan sanqu as an entry point, on one hand, this dissertation examines the dynamics of this urban and textual space. On the other, it focuses on rarely-studied sanqu pieces and analyzes them in a new light. The pleasure quarters and the production of Yuan sanqu are closely related to each other. In particular, the pleasure quarters are both revealed through the creative process of sanqu and have established sanqu as a distinctive aesthetic experience. The first chapter will focus on women of the pleasure quarters from the perspective of their hierarchical distinctions in terms of beauty, performative nature, and desirability as companions. Chapter two discusses the representation of women of the pleasure quarters in Yuan sanqu. Distinctive from the exclusive focus on privileged outstanding courtesans in poetic and lyrical tradition, Yuan sanqu depicted women from different registers of pleasure quarters. Thus, the genre formulated a diverse picture of images, rhetoric, and modalities. Chapter three examines a major literary tradition mainly sustained by the Yuan sanqu tradition, which is the story of Shuang Jian and Su Xiaoqing. As one of the most important and widespread literary traditions at play during the Yuan, Yuan sanqu writers’ representation of this pleasure-quarters-based story manifests the fulness and diversity of Yuan sanqu as a distinctive literary genre. In the epilogue, I focus on a zaju script by Ma Zhiyuan and an anonymous song suite in relation to this story. By so doing, I intend to show how Yuan qu lyrics incorporated the poetic, lyrical, and dramatic traditions in a somewhat promiscuous way.
ContributorsChen, Tianjun (Author) / West, Stephen H (Thesis advisor) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Brown, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021