English Theses and Dissertations

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/2042

This collection contains some of the theses and dissertations produced by students in the University of Oregon English Graduate Program. Paper copies of these and other dissertations and theses are available through the UO Libraries.

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Browsing English Theses and Dissertations by Author "Bostrom, Margaret"

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    Clearing the Static: Challenging the Limits and Repetitions of Single-Issue Feminisms in the Era of Women's Studies' Institutionalization
    (University of Oregon, 2020-02-27) Bostrom, Margaret; Wood, Mary
    Despite longstanding critiques of single-issue feminisms—feminisms consisting primarily of a response to particular forms of sexism or specifically patriarchal violence—this model for theorizing and protesting gendered and sexual violence, and for envisioning more egalitarian futures, continues to have widespread and powerful purchase, both in mainstream U.S. culture and in feminist scholarship. This dissertation traces the continued centrality of single-issue feminist frameworks back to the late 1970s and 1980s, the period of women’s studies formal institutionalization as an academic discipline. By analyzing a diverse array of cultural objects, including the shifting personas of actress, activist, and fitness entrepreneur, Jane Fonda, the critical theory of black feminist thinker Hortense Spillers, and a novel by black feminist writer and cultural worker Toni Cade Bambara, I show how the broader historical context in which the process of women’s studies institutionalization occurred shaped which commitments became definitional to this emerging field of study, even as these very commitments were being openly critiqued as inadequate, exclusionary, unsophisticated, or misleading. I argue that rather than revising some of its fundamental epistemological commitments, the emerging discipline of women’s studies attempted to adapt to these critiques in two primary ways: by adopting a shared understanding of women’s victimization as women (Fonda) or by valuing and incorporating difference under a model of multiculturalism that inaccurately suggests that incompatible positions can be reconciled with one another. Drawing on the work of Spillers and Bambara, I show how alternate models for theorizing interconnected forms of multi-scalar violence, including gendered and sexualized violence, were being articulated during this same period, and I explore how they have been developed in specific fields of thought and their continued relevance to our contemporary moment.