One of the lasting legacies of the Third Republic is its sweeping secularizing mission. My dissertation examines the figure of the devoutly Catholic woman — or devote — in this context, from the beginnings of the Third Republic to the 1905 separation of church and state. Applying an interdisciplinary approach using novels of Balzac, the Goncourt brothers, Zola, and popular novelists, visual representations, medical treatises, essays, funeral remembrances, personal letters, and other sources, I explore representations of the devote as they reflected social, political, and gendered anxieties about the tenacity of republican institutions, the role of women in private and public, the reach of Catholic ideas to French citizens, and the differences between men and women during the period. The devote was variously described as falsely pious, naive, hyper-sexed, a conniving prude, a model housewife or anorexic, neglectful mother. The devote — real or imagined — challenged power relationships in the domestic sphere and made strange bedfellows of some anticlerical and Catholic critics alike, while female religiosity intersected with taxonomies of new pathologies, particularly hysteria. Throughout this period, an anxiety about ascertaining female sincerity made it seemingly impossible to reconcile spiritual life with reason, although some Catholics attempted to do so. Focusing on the case of the devout Comtesse dAdhemar, who, in her writings during final decades of the nineteenth century sought to reconcile Catholicism with the democratic order, I explore how the devote could be at once progressive using the tools of modernity and proclaiming a better sort for women, including expanded political rights) and traditional remaining faithful to a submissive, domestic role, committed to essentialist ideas of female “nature”). Whether as caricature or historical case study, the devote challenges our bifurcated view of religious and gendered questions and is a point of entry into a more complex examination of fin-de-siecle society.

In the 1860s British missionaries of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa began working with African refugees from the Indian Ocean slave trade. The missionaries established schools on Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania to train African refugees as evangelists, in the hopes that they would introduce Christianity throughout East Africa and work to create a single, supraethnic spiritual community. The theological backgrounds of the mission’s founders and the social circumstances of mid-nineteenth century East Africa provided conditions that made a supra-ethnic community possible. For example, the mission focused specifically on what they believed to be the power of African women to engender—both biologically and ideologically—a community of believers. This dissertation focuses on the UMCA’s female adherents, women who trained as clerics’ wives and teachers, nurses and nuns, wives and mothers. The every-day work of African female evangelists is a lens through which I examine how certain widespread habits of mind and certain modes of thought developed within the UMCA’s African communities. Specifically, I look at how this disparate group of African Anglicans first came to think of themselves as members of a supra-ethnic spiritual community and later how the values and goals of this community became entangled with those of other communities in Tanzania. Throughout the mission’s 100 years of existence, individuals motivated by modernizing Christianity and by a sense of belonging to a supra-ethnic spiritual community became increasingly involved with territorial, pan-Africanist, anti-colonial nationalist, and political organizations that grew up around the church in Tanzania. I argue that African Anglicans applied their inherited discourses of Christian modernity and supra-ethnic unity to these new circumstances, and that by looking at day-to-day, domestic, and less self-consciously political contributions of individuals to community development we can see instances when individuals continued to find meaning in longer-standing, less self-consciously political ideals of supraethnic community, and where they applied these discourses to new circumstances in ways that were explicitly political, such as the contributions of a multi-generational network of Anglican female evangelists to the development of nationalism and national identity in Tanzania.

A lot has been said about the declining status of national paradigms. Most recently, the forces of change have been located in the transnational and global phenomenon. Contemporary Arabic literature, however, identifies globalism as only one among many factors undermining the existing national formations in the Arab countries. Among these factors is the postcolonial condition, and in the case of Palestine, the struggle against the continuing military occupation of Palestinian lands, wholesale and unsystematized modernization, and complex internal social, cultural, religious and racial differences exacerbated by neo-colonialism. The contemporary Arab women writers’ fiction analyzed in this dissertation posits yet another dimension that can be said to dismantle the concept of the nation as an imagined and constructed political community from within. This fiction implies that the limited and independent aspects of the nation are its most imagined or false characteristics. The falsity of imagining the nation as such (limited and independent) becomes even clearer when we examine the nation’s subjects, whose identities, by contrast, are fluid and unfixed. The argument proposed in this study is that the contemporary Arab women writers’ fiction gnaws at the concept of the nation as a limited and fixed political entity, by depicting the individual identities of the national subjects as similarly constructed and therefore constantly reconstructed and unfixed. The writers discussed in this dissertation insist, thus, on the dynamics inherent in the act of construction, that is its constant reconstruction and re-signification, resulting from the enactment of identity.

My dissertation examines how lay Buddhist women during the Ming 1368–1644) and Qing 1644–1911) dynasties participated in the cult of Guanyin, the most popular Chinese female deity of the age, by reproducing her image as a way to salvation. The Bodhisattva Guanyin, or Avalokitesvara, originally a male deity in India, was completely indigenized as a female deity during the early Ming period. A key result of this gender transformation was a system in which the production of identity was interwoven with ideologies and material practices linked to the reproduction of gender hierarchy. Previous scholarship on the cult of Guanyin has not taken account of these changes, however, focusing instead either on textual transformations or on iconographic variations in the images of Guanyin over time. My dissertation investigates the relationships that obtained between worshipped and worshipper, and examines how this feminized deity influenced believers in terms of their gender identities. One way of investigating these gendered differences is through the things that worshippers produced and used to forge a connection with the deity. In particular, I focus on secular Buddhist womens unique ways of making the image of Guanyin through various womans skills, things, and bodies to express a world-view that provided an alternative to the Confucian patriarchal system. By looking at various ways women make the image of Guanyin, this dissertation demonstrates the complexity of womens religious practice which allows us to examine aspects that are not visible in the written accounts in and of late imperial China. The study of the material perspective of women making the image of Guanyin and other Buddhist images not only sheds light on womens creativity but also enables us to understand how women synthesized the xii conflicting symbolic frameworks of Buddhism and Confucianism within material culture and practice.

Science fields have a dearth of female participants. Previous research has provided evidence that many factors contribute to this phenomenon, including negative stereotypes of women’s abilities in STEM and women’s lowered identification with STEM fields. This dissertation aimed to demonstrate how stereotyping and identity are part of a pattern of cognitive associations. In particular, the research considers the role of gendered traits (i.e., agentic and communal traits). The goal of Study 1 was to identify how gendered traits correspond to traits necessary in science fields. Results demonstrated that agentic traits are viewed as more necessary for success in science fields. Next, Study 2 aimed to demonstrate that the agency-science association is related to gender-science stereotyping and women’s identification with science by experimentally manipulating the agency-science association. Results revealed that male and female students who are exposed to the agentic-science association have a stronger relationship between their gender-science stereotyping and science identity than those exposed to a communal-science association. Study 3 took an individual-differences perspective to test whether a meaningful pattern of associations involving the self, sex, traits (agentic & communal), and science emerges. This model is referred to as the pyramidal model of sex stereotyping, and it delineates a pattern of associations that may contribute to the underrepresentation of women in science. Results revealed that people do hold cognitively consistent patterns, particularly those who are in stereotypical fields for their gender (e.g., men in STEM and women in humanities), and that these patterns predict behavioral choices and career intentions. Finally, Study 4 tested an intervention based on the pyramidal model by experimentally manipulating the association between gendered traits and science fields, revealing that increasing communal-science associations increases the degree to which women in STEM form cognitively consistent patterns of associations. Together, these four studies provide evidence for the role of gendered traits in the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields, while offering a theoretical contribution by emphasizing the importance of examining patterns of associations rather than isolated stereotypes. Future research should consider these patterns when designing interventions to increase women’s participation in science fields.

The Nagas are situated at the tri-junction of China, India and Myanmar. Their political struggle for self-determination has continued for over six decades, and several Naga generations have lived in an environment of constant conflict and unrest. Given such a historical backdrop, Naga womens stories have often been overlooked in most writings on Nagas. Hence, this dissertation is a study of the contemporary challenges Naga women face in building their nation. The study adopts an expansive definition of nation building, reflecting a wholistic understanding of Naga womens overall concerns for the general health and well-being of their nation. This dissertation set out to answer the question: “What are the contemporary challenges of Naga women in nation building, and how are they responding to these challenges?” I use the metaphor of weaving, a traditional Naga womens skill, as the organizing framework, which not only respects Naga traditional values and culture, but also gives voice to the stories in their oral tradition. I also articulate the contemporary challenges of Naga women through the lenses of fifteen Naga women nation builders, and intertwine some early Naga womens stories with a historical account of Nagas. Nagas are now in the midst of a transition as they begin to acknowledge the binary of change and continuity in the present socio-political setting, with the pull towards modernity on one hand, and the strong underlying traditional and customary practices on the other. As such, the womens voices in this study capture the current challenges they face, their concerns, efforts, and visions for the future of Nagas. Particular themes include: the impact of tradition on contemporary Naga women； contemporary challenges in the areas of social, economic, political, and educational life； and their traditional role of peacemaking. A discussion of the roots of these contemporary challenges is also included, along with the women nation builders visions for the future. This dissertation contributes towards the literature on Naga women, and also furthers the realization of Naga womens vision for the future. It is also my hope that this work is a contribution to the broader movement of Indigenous scholarship that is grounded in our own knowledge traditions and that benefits our communities. Keywords: Nagas, Nagaland, Naga women, Naga customary practices, Naga weaving, Kohima, Naga Mothers Association NMA), Naga women nation builders, Naga womens peace interventions, Nagaland Self-Help Groups SHGs), Nagaland Board of School Education NBSE), Nagaland Baptist Church Council NBCC), Naga Hoho. Indigenous peoples, Indigenous research, Indigenous research methodologies.

The purpose of this study was to explore the work and home life experiences of immigrant women in the Winnipeg garment industry. A case study involving interviews with twenty-three current and former immigrant women garment workers from a variety of backgrounds was developed. Participants were asked to share their experiences of coming to Canada, working in the garment industry, and balancing work and home life. They were also asked to share their views and opinions on the removal of quotas on imported textiles as stipulated by the World Trade Organizations Agreement on Textiles and Clothing ATC), and the impact this has had on the local garment industry. The findings of this research reveal that the immigrant women garment workers in this study have faced economic barriers and challenges throughout their lives in Canada. While strategizing to improve their situation and deal with these constraints, often through social networks, the World Trade Organizations Agreement on Clothing and Textiles has lead to further challenges through the rapid loss of jobs in this industry. Thus, the increased liberalization of the garment industry through the WTO has intensified the inequalities workers have experienced, especially in a context where company owners are profiting from cheaper overseas labour while local garment workers are losing their livelihoods.

Women worldwide encounter social structures of “group domination” such as social norms that disempower them, or workplace arrangements that impede their success), which systematically obstruct women from pursuing fundamental, empowering opportunities and social goods, and which are in turn made easier for men. Yet liberal theory overlooks these systematics impediments as constraining on womens “freedom”, because it characteristically posits a “restrictivist” view of negative freedom that only counts as freedom constraints those interferences directly and intentionally imposed by an easily-identified individual or entity. While the pervasive barriers posed by group domination are not characteristically directly imposed by a particular individual or entity with the intent to constrain women, they remain very real constraints on womens choices. I argue that liberal theory should count these diffuse but pervasive obstacles as constraining womens freedom, if it is to be true to its own core commitment against domination, or its “antidomination” commitment. I offer an alternative account of negative freedom called “social freedom,” which is truer to this commitment and also supported by the views of Isaiah Berlin. Social freedom entails a more capacious yet still liberal) view of “freedom constraints,” which includes as constraints those obstacles posed by structures of domination, if responsibility for them can fairly be attributed to human arrangements whether or not intended to constrain), as opposed to being beyond the scope of human responsibility. In articulating what constitutes “responsibility” for these obstacles, however, I oppose an “individualistic” analysis, which ascribes responsibility narrowly to an “isolatable” individual or entity) who intentionally and directly constrains. I claim that a form of shared, “social responsibility” exists for obstacles to womens choices generated, whether or not intentionally, by structures of domination. This shared responsibility holds us each accountable for our participation in, and contribution to, these obstacles, which result from alterable, and thus contestable, social arrangements of unjust domination. While my account of responsibility does not entail blameworthiness, I also offer some brief criteria for ascribing blame for our contributions to social practices of domination.

Does the experience of stereotype threat (ST) truly not depend on people’s endorsement of stereotypes? We investigated whether women’s explicit and implicit stereotypes concerning women’s incompetence at work moderate their experience of ST. We hypothesized that ST effects would occur only among women with stronger explicit or implicit stereotypes. Women’s explicit stereotypes were assessed in mass-testing. Later, 120 women completed a math test described, in the control condition as a non-diagnostic exercise, and in the ST condition as a diagnostic test for which gender differences were being explored. Approximately one week later, women’s implicit stereotypes were assessed. A significant Condition X Explicit Stereotypes X Implicit Stereotypes interaction was found. Post hoc analyses also revealed that effort mediated the relation between the three-way interaction and performance. The conceptual meaning of these results was explored. This research shows that women’s explicit and implicit beliefs do in fact moderate their experience of ST.

This thesis seeks to probe the identity of Woman as constructed by patriarchy through the rigorous use of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory in dialogue with the work of Margaret Atwood. The identity of Woman is often portrayed as inadequate, both to the women who attempt to fulfill it and to the men who want to see it. This inadequacy resides in the social pressures that bring subjects into conformity with a society of speaking beings that fosters these normative desires and identifications. However, the identity of Woman can never be whole because of the sacrifice both feminine and masculine speaking beings have to make in order to enter into language. Through a multi-layered reading of Surfacing and Alias Grace I show how it is through the feminine position’s relation to this sacrifice that the identity of Woman may be subverted through conscious performances of femininity.