Emptying the bell jar: an exploration of adolescent responses to a women's literature unit /

This study examines adolescent student responses to a women's literature unit taught within a grade 12 Writer's Craft course. Current research (Gilligan, 1989, Pipher, 1994 & Slack, 1999) suggests that there is a great under-representation of female authors in the high school literature curriculum. The use of women's literature may draw attention to important literary figures who are historically overlooked within the curriculum. It gives voice to a marginalized group and presents students with alternative subjects and heroes. It encourages students to develop a critical perspective and reevaluate assumptions about institutions, ideologies, language and culture. It also allows me, as a teacher, to reflect on my own teaching practices and explore alternate feminist pedagogical principles and teaching styles encouraging multiplicity of voices, deconstruction of power relations, and alternative assessment tools within the classroom. As an educator, it is important for me to teach curriculum that is relevant and meaningful to students and help them become critical, self-reflective thinkers. It is also important for me to assist students in their exploration of self and encourage them to expand their awareness of historical, social and global issues. Sylvia Plath's (1963) The belljar is used as the primary text taught within this unit. In this novel, the bell jar is a central image that signifies entrapment and isolation. "To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead body, the world itself is the bad dream"(p.l 54). As a metaphor, the bell jar resonates with young readers in a variety of ways.

‘Designer Vaginas': The Representation of Female Genitals on Canadian Cosmetic Surgeons' Websites

This thesis critically examines the online marketing tactics of 10 (English language) Canadian cosmetic surgery clinics’ websites that offer Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery (FGCS), specifically, labiaplasty (labial reduction) and vaginoplasty (vaginal tightening). Drawing on a qualitative Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) and a feminist-informed social constructionist framework (Lazar, 2007), I examine how FGCS discourses reiterate and reinforce heteronormative sexual scripts for women, and impose restrictive models of femininity through the pathologization of genital diversity and the appropriation of postfeminist and neoliberal discourses of individual choice and empowerment. I explore feminist analyses of the links between FGCS and contemporary Western women’s postfeminist subjectivity, and the reconfiguration of women’s sexual agency, to better understand what these contemporary shifts may mean for women’s sexual anxiety and expression. My analysis highlights several discourses that organize the online marketing material of Canadian FGCS websites, including: the pathologization of genital diversity; restrictive models of femininity; heteronormative sexual scripts; neoliberal and post-feminist rhetorics of individual choice and empowerment; and psychological and sexual transformation. Overall, these discourses undermine acceptance of women’s genital diversity, legitimize the FGCS industry and frame FGCS as the only viable solution to alleviate women’s genital and sexual distress despite the lack of evidence regarding the long-term benefits and risks of these procedures, and the recommendations against FGCS by professional medical organizations.