Browsing by Subject "Human sexuality"
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Item The effects of acute and chronic stress on sexual arousal in women(2010-05) Hamilton, Lisa Dawn, 1979-; Meston, Cindy M.; Delville, Yvon; Jones, Theresa A.; Gore, Andrea C.; Dormire, Sharon L.In most adult animals, stress is generally thought to be detrimental to reproductive (sexual) function. However, in humans, there is a limited body of literature that indicates some stress can potentially be beneficial for sexual function. One theory is that there is an inverted U relationship between stress and sexual function with low and high levels of stress (or anxiety) causing an impairment of sexual response, while a moderate level of stress facilitates sexual arousal. This aim of this dissertation is to identify the mechanisms through which both acute and chronic stress may facilitate or impair sexual arousal in women. In particular, I examined the role of adrenal hormones, the autonomic nervous system (ANS), and psychological factors. To test these mechanisms, I measured cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), heart rate, distraction, and misattribution of arousal during stressful and sexual laboratory situations. Two of the studies examined the effects of acute stress, and the final study focused on chronic stress. Results indicated that acute stress is beneficial for genital arousal in women, and that the sympathetic branch of the ANS is the key mechanism involved in that relationship. High levels of chronic stress were found to significantly impair genital arousal compared to average levels of chronic stress. Increased levels of cortisol and distractions contributed to this effect. DHEAS did not appear to play a role in the relationship between stress and sexual arousal, and there was no evidence for misattribution of arousal. Neither acute nor chronic stress affected women’s subjective (psychological) arousal. Acute and chronic stressors affect sexual arousal in different ways and through separate mechanisms. The findings from these studies can inform treatment approaches for women with sexual arousal difficulties.Item Family-friendly : homo-affinity in the French sentimental novel, 1770-1850(2016-12) Spinelli, Nicholas Christopher; Wettlaufer, Alexandra; Moore, Lisa L. (Lisa Lynne); Picherit, Hervé; Wilkinson, Lynn; Bennett, ChadThis dissertation investigates the central significance of desire for the self defined as different-than-the-self––of an affect I articulate as homo-affinity––within the domains of Romanticism, Romantic love, and the French Sentimental novel. As expressed in my Introduction, this project is predicated on an analysis of the erotics of sameness, the literary trace of outlaw desire, and the exploration of a queer archive of feelings in the French Sentimental novel. Chapter One pertains to François-René de Chateaubriand’s Atala/René (1801), in which I outline the Romantic topos that serves as a forerunner to the ideal of homo-affinity in the French Sentimental novel. In keeping with Chateaubriand’s autobiographical mode of fiction, the enchanteur’s reliance on reflexive metaphors yields a chiasmatic mirror through which his protagonists might envision another version of themselves and that, as such, conditions the experience of an expansive desire that encompasses passions toward incest, homosexuality, and narcissism––if not a newfound libertinage. In Chapter Two, I examine archival documents that obtain to the manuscripts of Claire de Duras’s Olivier, ou le secret (1821-1824) in order to expose the author’s careful treatment of the closet, which revolves around her creation of a linguistic polari that could furtively portray the eponymous secret and its relevance among writers and intellectuals of Restoration France. Finally––in Chapter Three––I go on to posit that Stendhal, in Armance (1828), deliberately reinscribes and multiplies the erotically charged bonds that figure between knights in pre-Revolutionary novels and chivalric lore, so as to forge a trope for the expression of homosexuality––and even that of a homosexual subject––within his satire of Romanticism. Throughout these chapters, I illustrate how the interconnectivity of these topoi (such as the chiasmatic mirror, parlor polari, and Romantic chevalerie) constitutes a coherent expression of homo-affinity that spans the formation of the French Sentimental novel. In the end, I conclude that the prevalence of a (now queer) attraction toward sameness in Sentimentalism and Romanticism intertextually colored a handful of subsequent literary movements and, ultimately, determined the emergence of homo-affinitive (and equally non-heterosexual) narratives across the evolution of the French novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.