Browsing by Subject "Gender studies."
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Item Girls with guns : understanding gender and violence in contemporary action cinema.(2011-12-19) Roark, David E.; Kendrick, James, 1974-; Communication Studies.; Baylor University. Dept. of Communication Studies.Since Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) there has been a steady trend toward movies featuring women using firepower. These films have been, for the most part, shunned by the critical community. They are regularly called sexist and/or unsophisticated. I argue that these criticisms often ignore the basic mechanisms at work within these films and how they effectively communicate positive representations of women. Through analyses of Alien, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Barb Wire (1996), Sucker Punch (2011), KickAss (2010), and La Femme Nikita (1990), I argue that, while these films include problematic elements (e.g., ideologically male women, sexualization, and women whose motivation relies on one or more males), they are also often misunderstood. Within the context of a film, these taboos can be used to criticize society’s understanding of established gender norms. Therefore, the “girls with guns” subgenre should not be seen as necessarily regressive.Item Possession, witchcraft, and the suffocation of the mother : Edward Jorden's effects on women's spiritual agency in early modern England.(2013-09-24) Clark, Meghan M., 1989-; Barr, Beth Allison.; History.; Baylor University. Dept. of History.This thesis argues that Edward Jorden’s 1603 treatise A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother emphasized the physical weakness that resulted from women’s unstable reproductive systems and was crucial to the Protestant desacralization of women’s bodies and subsequent decrease of women’s spiritual agency. The first body chapter examines possession through four case studies that compare treatment of men’s and women’s bodies in Puritan possessions. The second chapter provides a close analysis of Jorden’s text in the context of women’s bodies. The third chapter analyzes witchcraft through a case study of the East Anglia trials of 1644-1645. The conclusion reiterates Jorden’s role in redefining the relationship between women’s bodies and spiritual agency in early modern England.