Browsing by Subject "Body"
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Item Bear fruit(2016-05) Lawrence, Grace Lee; Stoney, John; Reynolds, Ann MThis Master’s Report is a discussion of the ideas, research, and methods I have developed over the course of my three years of study at the University of Texas at Austin. My work draws from a multiplicity of traditions from classical figurative sculpture, feminism, mid-century modern design, large-scale outdoor fountains, to Victorian crafts. The fountains use neoclassical figurative sculptures of women as a point of departure. The original sculpture is translated through a feminist lens and recreated using fruit, rearranging and displacing gender specific sexualities by replacing otherwise sexualized bodies with representations of pears or a pineapple, among other fruits. Cultural references to these specific fruits, a pear-shaped body or the exoticism and colonialism inferred with a pineapple, are important contextual references in the transmutation from figurative sculpture to fruit fountain. The high relief wall sculptures, smooth body parts monochromed in soft colors, speak to the fragments of classical sculptures while conflating gender cues. They confuse our ability to stereotype as non-binary representations of body. In all, the work mimics moments of bodily intimacy while playfully dealing with reproduction, eroticism, as well as the problematic aspects of the sculptural tradition embedded within the patriarchal system.Item Bodily subjectivity as alternative selfhood : The Voyage Out beyond the bildungsroman(2015-05) Kreider, Aleina Anne Nicholas; Carter, Mia; Wojciehowski, HannahVirginia Woolf's The Voyage Out, by initiating and yet resisting the traditional bildungsroman form, illustrates the inadequacy of this genre's brand of self-development and seeks an alternative mode of selfhood. The novel’s protagonist, Rachel Vinrace, though apparently "formless" and unable to "develop," nevertheless exhibits a sense of self and seems to be more than mere blankness. In exploring what selfhood might be when the bildungsroman-self is untenable, The Voyage Out ultimately reaches toward a kind of subjectivity not rooted primarily in intellectual and linguistic experiences—which typically come to shape the subject in the bildungs—but in bodily experience. This bodily subjectivity offers rewards beyond those the telos of the bildungsroman enables, and in affirming the value of the bodily, The Voyage Out also simultaneously facilitates a feminist move towards reclaiming this characteristic of "femininity" that has so often been used to render women lesser-than. Subjectivity and self having long been associated with mind rather than body, they have also long been in the masculine domain, while the feminine is aligned with the bodily, the other, and the object. As The Voyage Out reclaims the value of the body and its involvement in subjectivity, then, it also challenges the notion that to be a subject one must be the mental, masculine hero of the traditional bildungsroman.Item The corporeality of trauma, memory, and resistance : writing the body in contemporary fiction from Chile and Argentina(2014-05) Tille-Victorica, Nancy Jacqueline; Lindstrom, Naomi, 1950-; Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, Héctor; Heinzelman, Susan Sage; Robbins, Jill; Wettlaufer, AlexandraThis dissertation looks at the representation and impact of gendered violence in the novel Pasos bajo el agua (1986) and in the short stories in Ofrenda de propia piel (2004) by Argentine author and former political prisoner Alicia Kozameh (b. 1953), as well as in Jamás el fuego nunca (2007) and Impuesto a la carne (2010), two novels by Chilean writer Diamela Eltit (b. 1949). By examining the particular expressions of physical and psychological pain in the aforementioned texts, I demonstrate that Kozameh and Eltit write the female body to simultaneously represent a corporeality that, until recently, has rarely been expressed in literature, and reconstruct a body that has been traumatized by state-sponsored violence and by what could be considered economic violence. Both of them denounce violence, torture, disappearances, exile, and indifference to justice as painful events that not only damage the spirits of the victims, but that are also inscribed upon the physical body. I also show how each author addresses the overlapping of individual and collective traumatic memories and how these are felt in the body as well. Finally, I argue that writing the materiality of the lived body, from its vulnerability to its resilience, provides for Kozameh and Eltit valuable insight into the ways in which female bodies are able to resist and reassess the meaning imposed on them by legally-endorsed and non-official systems of oppression. Their work thus has direct viii social relevance that goes beyond feminism's countering of male dominance and women's rights. Yet, I also show that they manifest their feminist commitment by using the voice and body of female subjects to incorporate marginalized Chilean and Argentine bodies into the linguistic realm in order to provide a fuller understanding of female corporeality in Latin America.Item Performing unreachable bodies : the politics of encounter in Alison Bechdel's Fun home(2010-05) Francica, Cynthia Alicia; Cvetkovich, Ann, 1957-; Moore, Lisa L.Readings of Fun Home thus far have tended to focus on the representation of Alison Bechdel’s traumatic life experiences and on the ways in which the memoir bears witness to that trauma. While Jennifer Lemberg explores the role of drawing in overcoming the difficulty or impossibility of naming the traumatic experiences Alison undergoes (135), Ann Cvetkovich draws attention to the cultural and political work the memoir performs by making space for everyday life histories of trauma and for accounts of forbidden, pathologized desires (111). I would like to explore the ways in which Fun Home foregrounds those illicit desires, and performs that political work, not only through the telling of Alison’s story but, more specifically, by mobilizing the reader’s affective capabilities in the face of what may be read as surprising, emotionally charged objects and situations. I suggest that Bechdel’s memoir boldly sets the stage for an affective and cognitive encounter with out-of-bounds, unapproachable bodies and histories. Our assumptions about hetero and homonormativity, as well as our conception of home and the family as heterosexual, normative spaces, are interrogated in and through those encounters. I analyze the fundamental role of the graphic narrative form, and the employment of archival objects and elements of performance in particular, in setting the stage for the reader’s affective encounter with Alison’s family history.Item Reconstructing the body : the textile forms of Peju Alatise and Grace Ndiritu(2013-05) Ringle, Hallie Ruth; Okediji, Moyosore B. (Moyosore Benjamin)Nigerian sculptor Peju Alatise and British/Kenyan video artist Grace Ndiritu create works centered on the female form. In these works the artists turn to flesh, their own and representations of, in order to expose prevailing notions of the black female body. Peju Alatise’s mixed-media sculpture, 9 Year Old Bride (2010), depicts the hollow bodies of seven small female figures created from fabric and frozen in motion by resin and white paint. Ndiritu’s video paintings, Still Life: Lying Down Textiles (2007)and Still Life: White Textiles (2005-2007) similarly employs cloths as means of covering and creating the body. In Still Life: Lying Down Textiles, Ndiritu reclines on the floor amongst a rich array of fabrics. Completely covered by cloth, except for her right arm, Ndiritu breathes heavily and twitches for entirety of the five-minute film. In her second film, Still Life: White Textiles, Ndiritu manipulates a large piece of fabric between her bare legs and arms which hints at, but never grants nudity. This thesis argues that both Alatise and Ndiritu incorporate wax-printed fabrics to conceal/reveal and construct/deconstruct the female form. Both artists do so as means of destabilizing dominant essentialized notions of black womanhood rooted in colonial visual practices. The paper draws similarities between Alatise and Ndiritu’s works to colonial photographic practices and historical figures of curiosity, such as Sara Baartman, which both inform contemporary understandings of the black female body. Rather than simply repeat—and therefore perpetuate—Western imagined qualities of deviant sexualities and sexual availability, this thesis asserts that Alatise and Ndiritu allude to and ultimately undermine these notions through a careful control of nudity. The last section of the thesis distinguishes the artistic practices of Ndiritu and Alatise from artists working in similar mediums. Though artists like Yinka Shonibare and Lalla Essaydi incorporate textiles into their works, Ndiritu and Alatise are unique for their use of textiles as extensions of the body rather than simply coverings for the figure. Lastly, the thesis argues that Alatise and Ndiritu straddle both Orientalist and Occidentalist understandings of African culture, incorporating elements of both, seemingly inverse, theories into their artistic practices.Item Social ties and physical activity patterns over the life course : gender, race, and age variations(2014-05) Lodge, Amy Caroline; Umberson, Debra; Angel, Jacqueline; Crosnoe, Robert; Gonzalez-Lopez, Gloria; Hayward, MarkIn this dissertation I explore the lived experiences and meanings underlying population patterns linking social ties and exercise. To do so, I frame an analysis of qualitative data from 60 in-depth interviews with 15 white women, 15 black women, 15 white men, and 15 black men with life course theory and critical perspectives on gender, race, and age. In Article 1, I examine how parental influence matters for individuals’ exercise trajectories (i.e., lived experiences of change or stability in exercise patterns) from childhood into adulthood, how adult life course transitions (e.g., parenthood) and turning points (e.g., injury) matter in relation to this influence for exercise trajectories, and how they matter differently at the intersection of race and gender. I develop the concepts of disrupted advantage and disadvantage to refer to my key finding that adult life experiences can disrupt processes of cumulative (dis)advantage around exercise in ways that differ at the intersection of race and gender. In Article 2, I examine the gendered processes through which intimate relationship formation and dissolution result in shifts in exercise habits and find that relationship formation shapes men’s and women’s exercise habits in distinctive ways. Further, these gendered processes are shaped by men’s and women’s relational gendered performances, which reveal the importance of a gender-as-relational perspective for understanding the links between relationship formation and gendered changes in exercise habits. Finally, in Article 3 I examine how body image, as socially constituted, shapes individuals’ motivation to exercise in ways that differ by gender, age, and race. I further examine how, through exercise intentions and practices, individuals craft meanings about the body, gender, race, and age.Item Walking contradictions : Latina lesbianas, immigration and citizenship(2010-12) López, Candace; González-López, Gloria, 1960-; Rodriguez, NestorIn immigration and sexuality research there is new and emerging literature that understands the convergence of these two topics. However, scholarship primarily examining Latina lesbian immigrants is not as visible. This thesis examines the lives of Latina lesbian immigrants residing in Texas and California to understand greater meanings of immigration, sexuality and citizenship. Ten Latina lesbian immigrants participated in in-depth interviews, answering questions about growing up, sexuality, migration, citizenship and meanings of home. The research questions asked the following: What affect does immigration have on the sexualities and sex lives of Latina lesbian immigrants? How does their age of migration impact their sexualities? How do these women define and conceptualize citizenship? How do immigration and sexuality converge in the lives and on the bodies of Latina lesbian immigrants? The interviews revealed that the age in which the women migrated and their resettlement in urban areas contribute to their conceptualizations of a “sexually open” United States and a not-as-queer-friendly home country. Second, the women interviewed categorize citizenship in local and global ways. While some saw citizenship as part of every day practice, others found it to be connected with a sense of global community. Migration also developed a consciousness surrounding citizenship, as many of them were confronted with the concept upon migrating to the United States. Finally, immigration and sexuality unfolds in my participant’s lives in contradictory and non-linear ways. While many of the women felt a connection to their local gay and lesbian communities in positive ways, their lives are met with adversities in other ways that are affected by their immigrant status – including inability to obtain a driver’s license and obligations to become United State’s citizens. The women also conceptualize home in fluid and unfixed ways. Home and the body collapse when discussing migration, citizenship and nation. The research presented attempts to offer a conversation about the historical and current relationship between immigrants and LGBT people. It is also my objective to further conversations about multiple levels of oppression and how Latina lesbian immigrant women use their circumstances to gain a better awareness of themselves, and hopefully improve their rights and living conditions as human beings.