Interrogating the spaces of personal photography : women, identity, and the cultural formation of photographic practice

Personal photographs permeate our lives from the moment we are born as they define who we are within our familial group and local communities. Archived in family albums or framed on living room walls, they continue on after our death as mnemonic artifacts referencing our gendered, raced, and ethnic identities. This dissertation examines salient instances of what women “do” with personal photographs, not only as authors and subjects but also as collectors, archivists, and family and cultural historians. This project seeks to contribute to more productive, complex discourse about how women form relationships and engage with the conventions and practices of personal photography. In the first part of this dissertation I revisit developments in the history of personal photography, including the advertising campaigns of the Kodak and Agfa Girls and the development of albums such as the Stammbuch and its predecessor, the carte-de-visite, that demonstrate how personal photography has functioned as a gendered activity that references family unity, sentimentalism for the past, and self-representation within normative familial and dominant cultural groups, thus suggesting its importance as a cultural practice of identity formation. The second and primary section of the dissertation expands on the critical analyses of Gillian Rose, Patricia Holland, and Nancy Martha West, who propose that personal photography, marketed to and taken on by women, double-exposes their gendered identities. Drawing on work by critics such as Deborah Willis, bell hooks, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, I examine how the reconfiguration, recontextualization, and relocation of personal photographs in the respective work of Christine Saari, Fern Logan, and Katie Knight interrogates and complicates gendered, raced, and ethnic identities and cultural attitudes about them. In the final section of the dissertation I briefly examine select examples of how emerging digital spaces on the Internet function as a site for personal photography, one that both reinscribes traditional cultural formations while offering new opportunities for women for the display and audiencing of identities outside the family.

Doing it from your heart: The role of older women as informal volunteers

This paper explores the contributions made by older women to the Community as informal volunteers. It argues that ageing policy is not gender neutral and tends to ignore the contributions made by Women Outside paid work. As well as being ignored in policy, women's unpaid roles have been denigrated by some feminist commentators, who suggest that these roles Subordinate the position of women. The aim of the present paper is to explore the lived experiences of older women in relation to their informal volunteer roles, using role identity theory as a framework. The study utilizes data from a qualitative study Using focus group methodology. Findings demonstrate. that informal volunteering contributes to the women's identity and gives their lives meaning. These findings suggest that a more positive policy framework around ageing is needed to ensure that the worth of these contributions is recognised.

Smart girls : a deconstructive discourse analysis of smartness

This project is a deconstructive discourse analysis of smart girlhood. From a feminist post structural framework, with a focus on discourse and performative identity, I scrutinize three dominant discourses of smartness that are prevalent and academic and popular press. These constructions frame smart girls as being either Losers, Have-It-All Girls, or Imposters. By conducting semi-structured group interviews with six self-identified smart girls, I explore the question of how smart girls perform their smart girl identities in their current sociocultural context. After analyzing the data from the group interviews, I outline five themes that seem to be prevalent in the stories told by the smart girls in this thesis. Finally, I discuss how the performative identities of the smart girls in my thesis appear to be much more complex, multiple and rhizomatic than the discourses under review allow.

Recetas para la construcción nacional: la producción culinaria y la identidad en el siglo XIX colombiano

A lo largo del siglo XIX, el proyecto de creación de nación incluyó varios elementos asociados a la cotidianidad y vida diaria de los habitantes de la república en construcción. La cocina como uno de estos elementos puesto en consideración, se construyó desde el imaginario de las élites masculinas, pero con la intervención directa del conocimiento femenino. Aunque la construcción de una identidad culinaria para el siglo XIX, fue un planteamiento femenino, se construyó basándose en el universo femenino de la cocina y sus conocimientos orales.

Irmão Sol, Irmã Lua: gênero, poder e clausura em um mosteiro da Ordem de Santa Clara de Assis - São Paulo

Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais - FFC

Entram em cena as tecnologias de subjetivação: Corpos e Desejos na cinematografia brasileira pela ótica de diretoras de cinema no período de 2002 a 2012 e suas implicações para (des)construção dos gêneros

Pós-graduação em Psicologia - FCLAS

Mujeres en la Acción Católica y el Opus Dei. Identidades de género y culturas políticas en el catolicismo de los años sesenta

En los años sesenta, dos organizaciones católicas con prestigio y poder ofrecieron espacios de actuación y modelos de comportamiento a las mujeres de clase media españolas: el Opus Dei y la Acción Católica. Ambas reproducían desde sus inicios discursos y prácticas de género jerarquizadas, de acuerdo con la cultura política nacionalcatólica. Sin embargo, las Mujeres de Acción Católica experimentaron una clara evolución hacia posiciones críticas con el poder y emancipatorias, que supusieron una reformulación de las identidades de género en clave igualitaria desde la cultura política conciliar. Por su parte, la sección femenina del Opus Dei mantuvo tesis propias de la cultura política nacionalcatólica integrista, un discurso que ensalzaba la domesticidad y una práctica de subordinación a los varones, reafirmando la identidad femenina católica tradicional bajo un ropaje moderno.

I got drunk and lost my virginity : young women's magazines and the management of sexual identity

It has often been argued that young woman’s magazine’s, like Cosmopolitan, Cleo Dolly and Seventeen, constitute a significant instrument in the patriarchal repression of young women - their hegemonic success lying in the fact that they appear to be sites wherein young women are ‘free’ from the elements of coercion so obviously in evidence within other terrains, such as the school and the family. This paper will suggest an alternative approach to these magazines. Rather than locating such texts within an overall model of repression and patriarchal domination, it will be argued here that they can be regarded as practical manuals which enrol young women to do specific kinds of work on themselves. In doing so, they form an effective link between the governmental imperatives aimed at constructing particular personas (such as, for example, ‘the sexually responsible young woman’), and the actual practices whereby these imperatives are operationalised. These manuals do not prevent young women from learning to ‘project a unique self’, they constitute a significant source of practices and techniques through which particular types of self are shaped.

Divining for meaning and searching for a female literary identity in Alice Munros Lives of girls and women and Margaret Laurences The diviners

Esta dissertação tem por objetivo investigar como Alice Munro e Margaret Laurence se apropriam de gêneros canônicos, especificamente do Bildungsroman e do Künstlerroman, para subvertê-los e representar versões diferentes do sujeito feminino através de romances de cunho autobiográfico escritos por mulheres. A investigação é focada em dois romances: Lives of Girls and Women (1971), escrito por Alice Munro, e The Diviners (1974), escrito por Margaret Laurence. No romance de Alice Munro, as estratégias de apagamento das fronteiras entre gêneros, a ideia de que perspectivas de realidade mudam de acordo com a experiência e a memória de cada indivíduo, como também a ênfase no desenvolvimento da protagonista enquanto pessoa e escritora, são assuntos amplamente discutidos. No romance de Margaret Laurence, a ênfase no aspecto subjetivo da memória, a desconstrução de estereótipos de gênero e a renegociação da representação do sujeito feminino para o alcance de uma identidade feminina autônoma na vida e na arte são os principais assuntos investigados. Em vista disso, esta dissertação visa mostrar como a representação da identidade feminina é redefinida por duas escritoras canadenses que se apropriaram de discursos dominantes para subvertê-los e, então, reescreverem suas histórias

In pursuit of an identity: A qualitative exploration of retirement from women's artistic gymnastics

David Lavallee, Hannah K. Robinson, In pursuit of an identity: A qualitative exploration of retirement from women's artistic gymnastics, Psychology of Sport and ExerciseVolume 8, Issue 1, , January 2007, Pages 119-141. RAE2008

Rethinking the identity artist-researcher, from the project “Dialogues with women art teachers”

The questioning of identity and the various roles that artists have begun to explore, from the last century, are fundamental aspects in this article. Today it is difficult to speak of the artist as individual isolated innate talent working in his studio, but the various social, political and cultural effects, have moved the artists to become part of the social world and to generate artistic practices that visualize and manifest critically these concerns. To explain these transits deeper, we will share part of the personal artistic practice and reflections, and how it has begun to intertwine with the doctoral research, through the art project “Dialogues with women art teachers”. From the experience as an artist and researcher in training, we will share what this project of artistic inquiry is about and reflect their points with the notion of `artistic practice as research´ developed by Graeme Sullivan (2010, 2011). On the other hand, we will seek to reflect how the identities of `artist´ and `academic´ are in constant dialogue. This art project seeks to show that these identities are not in a fixed position, but rather reflect, from the place of an artist, how through the various shifts in different disciplines, can conceive an identity ‘in-between’. The latter refers to the ability to understand the processes of being a woman, artist and researcher who travels and forms its identity among both disciplines.