Remembering Liberal Feminism In Radical Ways: Locating Conservative Strategies In The Narratives Of Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, Tammy Bruce, And Dr. Laura Schlessinger

This dissertation identifies and challenges post-feminist narratives that remember the second wave or 1960s and 1970s liberal feminism as a radical form of activism. The narratives of three prominent post-feminist authors: Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, Tammy Bruce and Dr. Laura Schlessinger are used as examples of how identification works as a rhetorical device that motivates individual actors to join in a struggle against liberal and radical feminist ideologies. I argue that each author draws on classically liberal and politically conservative virtues to define a "true" feminism that is at odds with alternative feminist commitments. I demonstrate how these authors create a subject position of a "true feminist" that is reminiscent of the classically liberal suffragist. In Burkean terms, each author constitutes the suffragist as a friend and juxtaposes her with the enemy--modern liberal and radical feminists. I articulate the consequences of such dialectical portrayals of feminist activism and further suggest that these authors' visions of feminism reinforce patriarchal practices, urging women to assimilate into a classically liberal society at the cost of social justice. In opposition to their memories of feminism, I offer a radical democratic approach of remembering feminism that is less concerned with the definition of feminism or feminist than it is with holistically addressing oppression and what oppression means to subjugated populations.

The Perks of Playing Dress-Up: Psychological Impressions of Fashion and Feminism.

Research on the psychological impact of women's fashion has focused on fashion's negative influence over how women think and feel about themselves. Several studies have examined the relationship between fashion and women's self-appraisals (Martin & Gentry, 1997; Pinhas, Toner, Ali, Garfinkel, & Stuckless, 1999; Tiggemann, Polivy, & Hargreaves, 2009), although few investigations have explored the range of viewpoints that arise when women interact with their own personal style or with other forms of fashion media. This paper presents a narrative review of what has been written about fashion in clinical research. I briefly discuss why this is an important topic and why fashion has psychological meaning. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is considered in the exploration of fashion's impact on conjuring unproductive and productive schemas (Beck, 1976; Wright, Basco, & Thase, 2006). This discussion includes a presentation of interviews with female consultants, hypothetical examples, my own accounts, and feminist perspectives. While emphasizing the potential biases of women's interactions with fashion, I discuss matters of gender performance and reflections on clinical work. The purpose of this article is to present a pro-social defense of fashion. I do this by acquiring personal chronicles, applying those findings to the current body of research, and adding to the continued investigation of why women's fashion is still important in a postfeminist world.

Adding Color to Feminism: White Privilege Within the Women's Liberation Movement.

This paper will explore how white privilege has been intertwined with the women's liberation movement in the United States. Feminism and its goals are described briefly and linked to an evaluation of white privilege within the movement. The feminist movement is explored throughout its three waves, including a class and race analysis of each separate period. In addition, this analysis focuses on how Black and Chicana women have been excluded from the mainstream, White, middle-class movement. Through the use of Social Dominance Theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), the prevalence and impact of oppression and hierarchy are explored. The implications of oppression and exclusion in the current political climate are followed by suggestions for aligning the goals and direction of feminism with social justice.

Representational Subversions and the Limits of Postcoloniality: Shahzia Sikander's Strategic Contemporaneity

Transnational artist Shahzia Sikander challenges the limitations of Edward Said's postcolonial emphasis on secular humanism by deploying the heterogeneous traditions of South Asian miniature painting while strategically drawing on tradition to critique contemporaneity. Through a palimpsest process of composition, Sikander reincorporates the unknown and silenced histories implicit in the tradition of miniature painting to create social imaginaries with motifs that draw on the diverse traditions of South Asian religions and aesthetics to create a subversive politics of remembering wherein alternative images of cosmopolitanism emerge. Through a sustained analysis, this dissertation demonstrates how these alternative traditions interrogate and critique the limitations of postcolonial theory. Particularly important to this critique are some recent approaches of Third World feminists that highlight the limitations of secular humanism implicit in much of postcolonial critique. Sikander's compositions mirror these approaches as her motifs of the feminine become an intervention into the spiritual emptiness and ethical confusions of contemporaneity. In effect, Sikander's work is an intervention, a warning, and a plea for the re-invention of positive alternatives as her images embody and facilitate a critical and daring consciousness that is necessary to both our social and spiritual well-being.

Persisting to Graduation: A Grounded Theory Exploration of Nontraditional Undergraduate Women's Enrollment

While women maintain a numerical majority in undergraduate college enrollments and degrees earned, they also represent the numerical majority among students over 29 years old, students of color, students who are in the lowest income category, students who are single parents, and students who attend college part-time (Peter & Horn, 2005; Planty, et al., 2008). The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) has identified seven characteristics that place students at risk of not completing an undergraduate degree; (a) delayed enrollment between high school and college, (b) part-time enrollment, (c) financial independence, (d) students with dependents, (e) students who are single parents, (f) students who work full-time while enrolled, and (g) students who completed a GED as opposed to earning a high school diploma (Choy, 2002; Dickerson & Stiefer, 2006; Horn & Premo, 1995). The above characteristics overlap with the categories where women have a numerical majority, thereby placing women in greater jeopardy of not completing a bachelor's degree. A review of the existing persistence literature demonstrates a lack of research devoted to understanding the persistence experiences, challenges, strategies, and decisions of nontraditional undergraduate in favor of the "traditional" undergraduate student (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005; Reason 2003). For this doctoral dissertation, I have based the research on a critical race feminist framework, informed by my experience working with the population of nontraditional undergraduate women at a women's college and employed a critique of the persistence literature as sensitizing concepts. Using a modified grounded theory research design, I collected and analyzed data which led to the development of a grounded theory of nontraditional undergraduate women's persistence. The emergent concepts of commitment, environment, and support interact in a theory of academic momentum and I offer a critical race feminist reading of the findings and theory to expose race neutrality, honor the voices of women of color, and deconstruct the evidence presented. The implications of this research include student, institutional, and inclusive excellence approaches to increasing the persistence of nontraditional undergraduate women and contribute to the success of this unique population of learners.

The Caustic Pen Is Mightiest: A Tradition of Female Satire in the Novels of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and Muriel Spark

Female satirists have long been treated by critics as anomalies within an androcentric genre because of the reticence to acknowledge women's right to express aggression through their writing. In Pride and Prejudice (1813), A House and Its Head (1935), and The Girls of Slender Means (1963), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969), and Muriel Spark (1918-2006) all combine elements of realism and satire within the vehicle of the domestic novel to target institutions of their patriarchal societies, including marriage and family dynamics, as well as the evolving conceptions of domesticity and femininity, with a subtle feminism. These female satirists illuminate the problems they have with society more through presentation than judgment in their satire, which places them on the fringes of a society they wish to educate, distinguishing their satire from that written by male satirists who are judging from a privileged height above the society they are attempting to correct. All three women create heroines and secondary female characters who find ways to survive, and occasionally thrive, within the confines of a polite society that has a streak of savagery running just beneath its polished surface.

Identiy : an exploration of the exhibition "There's something about Mary"

"The exhibition "There's Something About Mary," held at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in September 2009, invited sixteen contemporary artists to interpret the image of Mary Magdalene. Despite great variety oftreatment, an overarching theme of identity-personal and collective-emerges from the artworks. The artists reference Mary Magdalene's many identities, creating a broader dialogue with both the history of art and issues of the contemporary world"