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"A MAN'S WORLD"?: A STUDY OF FEMALE WORKERS AT NASA'S KENNEDY SPACE CENTER
Title
"A MAN'S WORLD"?: A STUDY OF FEMALE WORKERS AT NASA'S KENNEDY SPACE CENTER.
Creator
Schwartz, Nanci, Leckie, Shirley, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
By focusing on women workers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, this study seeks to understand why women were initially congregated in certain occupations such as clerical work and later moved into non-traditional jobs such as engineering and the sciences. Such an investigation requires careful examination of the changing attitudes towards female workers in technical or non-traditional fields and why and how those attitudes changed over time and the extent to which this occurred. It...
Show moreBy focusing on women workers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, this study seeks to understand why women were initially congregated in certain occupations such as clerical work and later moved into non-traditional jobs such as engineering and the sciences. Such an investigation requires careful examination of the changing attitudes towards female workers in technical or non-traditional fields and why and how those attitudes changed over time and the extent to which this occurred. It also attempts to identify areas of continuing concern. The study reveals that several factors contributed to the women's progress in the workplace. These included the rise of the second wave of feminism, the federal government's support for the new feminism, favorable U.S. Supreme Court decisions and the willingness of officials at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to implement federal decrees. In addition, the women's movement expanded its efforts to encourage women to gain the skills and education that were necessary to move women into scientific and technical fields, although recently that effort has reached a plateau. The research for this study includes employee data from NASA and KSC, oral histories with female KSC workers, articles from KSC's official employee newsletter, Spaceport News, websites, and other secondary sources about women in technical fields, women in the workplace, and the recruitment of women into the labor force. Data from NASA and Spaceport News articles was also compared with information obtained through oral histories, to determine if the official policies of KSC influenced the behavior of its employees. Attention is also given to the legislation and court cases that opened doors for women seeking new avenues of advancement and the extent to which these outside factors influenced changes in women's employment and opportunities at KSC. This study shows that the status of women at KSC changed along with the larger women's movement in America. Supreme Court cases and Equal Employment Opportunity laws helped women gain headway in fields traditionally occupied by men. Women received token representation at first, but later moved up in their fields and even became senior managers. This change took place over a long period of time and is still ongoing. At the same time, there is still strong evidence of backlash and some weakening on the part of federal government in terms of its willingness to support women's drive for equality.
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Date Issued
2004
Identifier
CFE0000292, ucf:46211
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0000292
The Inclusion of Women's History in the Secondary Social Studies Classroom
Title
The Inclusion of Women's History in the Secondary Social Studies Classroom.
Creator
Scheiner-Fisher, Cicely, Russell, William, Hewitt, Randall, Hartshorne, Charles, Fine, Terri, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The author examined the motivation for why, and methods of how, some secondary social studies teachers incorporate women's voices into the traditional history framework. A multi-layered qualitative methodology was employed for this study using survey, case study, and phenomenological approaches, including interviews and classroom observations of participants. The researcher discovered the percentage of teachers who claim to incorporate women's history/perspectives into their lessons; how...
Show moreThe author examined the motivation for why, and methods of how, some secondary social studies teachers incorporate women's voices into the traditional history framework. A multi-layered qualitative methodology was employed for this study using survey, case study, and phenomenological approaches, including interviews and classroom observations of participants. The researcher discovered the percentage of teachers who claim to incorporate women's history/perspectives into their lessons; how teachers incorporate women's history/perspectives into their lessons; and, the factors that contribute to teachers including women's history/perspectives into their classes.?
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Date Issued
2013
Identifier
CFE0004933, ucf:49623
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004933
VIBIA PERPETUA'S DIARY: A WOMAN'S WRITING IN A ROMAN TEXT OF ITS OWN
Title
VIBIA PERPETUA'S DIARY: A WOMAN'S WRITING IN A ROMAN TEXT OF ITS OWN.
Creator
Perez, Melissa, Larson, Peter, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Writing the history of women in antiquity is hindered by the lack of written sources by them. It has been the norm to assume that the only sources that can tell us something about them are the sources written by men. This thesis challenges this convention as it concerns the social history of Rome through the exploration of a written source by a woman named Vibia Perpetua. She was a Roman woman of twenty-two years from Roman Carthage, who was martyred on March 7, 203 C.E. The reason that we...
Show moreWriting the history of women in antiquity is hindered by the lack of written sources by them. It has been the norm to assume that the only sources that can tell us something about them are the sources written by men. This thesis challenges this convention as it concerns the social history of Rome through the exploration of a written source by a woman named Vibia Perpetua. She was a Roman woman of twenty-two years from Roman Carthage, who was martyred on March 7, 203 C.E. The reason that we know of this Roman woman and what happened to her is because of the diary she wrote. The diary survived because it was preserved in the martyrology Passio Sanctarum Martyrum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. The Passio which was edited by an unknown redactor, documents the martyrdom of several people. Unlike any other martyrologies the editor of the story included the actual diary as it was written by Vibia Perpetua. Although we have a Roman woman's writing from the second/early third century C.E, her diary reached us through a filter that has influenced up to this day the way that the text is interpreted and preserved. The intention of this thesis is threefold; to analyze the diary of Vibia Perpetua with a new focus on the discourse of Roman women by first exploring the history of the Passio Sanctarum Martyrum Perpetua et Felicitatis. Then, a method is formulated that makes use of contemporary studies on women's diaries and self-representation in texts in order to incorporate Perpetua's writing within the social history of Rome and the history of women more broadly. The study concludes by demonstrating how this diary can help to open a new dialog about the life of both women and men in antiquity and further question the history we have inherited from them.
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Date Issued
2009
Identifier
CFE0002731, ucf:48164
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002731
FARM WOMEN AS PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS IN THE 20TH CENTURY U.S. SOUTH
Title
FARM WOMEN AS PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS IN THE 20TH CENTURY U.S. SOUTH.
Creator
Kaminski, Joseph J, Lester, Connie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The intent of this thesis is to examine white, rural women of the South who were directly affected by home demonstration between 1920 - 1950 and to discuss their roles as producers and consumers in the expanding market economy. Home demonstration, a three-tiered bureaucratic agency that provided domestic education and production techniques to Southern women, played a major role in guiding women toward the expanding market economy. Agents often had to temper their programs in order to...
Show moreThe intent of this thesis is to examine white, rural women of the South who were directly affected by home demonstration between 1920 - 1950 and to discuss their roles as producers and consumers in the expanding market economy. Home demonstration, a three-tiered bureaucratic agency that provided domestic education and production techniques to Southern women, played a major role in guiding women toward the expanding market economy. Agents often had to temper their programs in order to compromise with the women they served to accommodate rural restrictions on capital, capability, and confidence. By integrating rural women into a more modernized, less isolated, and more urbanized environment, home demonstration hoped to improve the lives of women through its focus on sanitation, nutrition, and efficiency within household production.
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Date Issued
2019
Identifier
CFH2000509, ucf:45653
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH2000509
Portrait of a young African American female
Title
Portrait of a young African American female.
Date Created
1861-1865
Identifier
DP0012820
Format
Image (JPEG)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/DP0012820
Portrait of an elderly African American female
Title
Portrait of an elderly African American female.
Identifier
DP0012818
Format
Image (JPEG)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/DP0012818
'A Room of Their Own': Heritage Tourism and the Challenging of Heteropatriarchal Masculinity in Scottish National Narratives
Title
'A Room of Their Own': Heritage Tourism and the Challenging of Heteropatriarchal Masculinity in Scottish National Narratives.
Creator
O'Neill, Carys, Lyons, Amelia, Beiler, Rosalind, Cheong, Caroline, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis explores the visibility of women in traditionally masculine Scottish national narratives as evidenced by their physical representation, or lack thereof, in the cultural heritage landscape. Beginning with the 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England, a moment cemented in history, literature, and popular memory as the beginning of a Scottish rebirth, this thesis traces the evolution of Scottish national identity and the tropes employed for its assertion to paint a clearer...
Show moreThis thesis explores the visibility of women in traditionally masculine Scottish national narratives as evidenced by their physical representation, or lack thereof, in the cultural heritage landscape. Beginning with the 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England, a moment cemented in history, literature, and popular memory as the beginning of a Scottish rebirth, this thesis traces the evolution of Scottish national identity and the tropes employed for its assertion to paint a clearer picture of the power of strategic selectivity and the effects of sacrifice in the process of community definition. Following the transformation of the rugged Celtic Highlander from his pre-Union relegation as an outer barbarian to his post-Union embrace as the epitome of distinction and the embodiment of anti-English, anti-aristocratic sentiment so crucial to the negotiation of a Scottish place in union and empire, this thesis hones in on notions of gender and peformative identity to form the basis for an analysis of twentieth and twenty-first century national heritage dynamics. An innovative spatial study of monuments and memorials in the Scottish capital city of Edinburgh highlights the gendered inequity of memorialization efforts and the impact of limited female visibility on the storytelling potential of the cityscape. Such a perspective not only adds a distinct visual component but also brings my study full circle by exemplifying contemporary discussions on the role of gender in narrative-setting, the sociocultural relevance of monuments and memorials, and the nature of representation in public spaces.
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Date Issued
2019
Identifier
CFE0007846, ucf:52811
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007846
THREADS OF IDENTITY: MARISOL'S EXPLORATION OF SELF
Title
THREADS OF IDENTITY: MARISOL'S EXPLORATION OF SELF.
Creator
Williams, Emily, Colo'n Mendoza, Ilenia, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Marisol Escobar, known in the 1960s as the "Latin Garbo," is a sculptor famous for showing with the Pop art greats. However, Marisol holds a curious position in art history, stranded between the formalism of the 50s and 60s male dominant Pop movement and the conceptual experimentation and radicalism of the 1970s. Her quiet yet intense observation pinpoints the overriding human elements present in the objects of her scrutiny. Most notable for turning her gaze inwards, her self-portraiture...
Show moreMarisol Escobar, known in the 1960s as the "Latin Garbo," is a sculptor famous for showing with the Pop art greats. However, Marisol holds a curious position in art history, stranded between the formalism of the 50s and 60s male dominant Pop movement and the conceptual experimentation and radicalism of the 1970s. Her quiet yet intense observation pinpoints the overriding human elements present in the objects of her scrutiny. Most notable for turning her gaze inwards, her self-portraiture defies easy categorization. Marisol's approach to self-portraiture is in service to the exploration of her own identity. Yet, from the 1990s onwards, Marisol's work has received little scholarly coverage despite her stylistic affinities within Postmodern discourse. Therefore, I will discuss Marisol's body of work, use of iconography and development of style in the last three decades which focuses on the artist's expression of identity, sexuality, and power.
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Date Issued
2013
Identifier
CFH0004535, ucf:45208
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004535
White and Black Womanhoods and Their Representations in 1920s American Advertising
Title
White and Black Womanhoods and Their Representations in 1920s American Advertising.
Creator
Turnbull, Lindsey, Lester, Connie, Sacher, John, Dandrow, Edward, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The 1920s represented a time of tension in America. Throughout the decade, marginalized groups created competing versions of a proper citizen. African-Americans sought to be included in the national fabric. Racism encouraged solidarity, but black Americans did not agree upon one method for coping with, and hopefully ending, antiblack racism. White women enjoyed new privileges and took on more roles in the public sphere. Reactionary groups like the Ku Klux Klan found these new voices...
Show moreThe 1920s represented a time of tension in America. Throughout the decade, marginalized groups created competing versions of a proper citizen. African-Americans sought to be included in the national fabric. Racism encouraged solidarity, but black Americans did not agree upon one method for coping with, and hopefully ending, antiblack racism. White women enjoyed new privileges and took on more roles in the public sphere. Reactionary groups like the Ku Klux Klan found these new voices unsettling and worrisome and celebrated a white, native-born, Protestant and male vision of the American citizen. Simultaneously, technological innovations allowed for advertising to flourish and spread homogenizing information regarding race, gender, values and consumption across the nation. These advertisements selectively represented these changes by channeling them into pre-existing prescriptive ideology. Mainstream ads, which were created by whites for white audiences, reinforced traditional ideas regarding black men and women and white women's roles. Even if white women were featured using technology or wearing cosmetics, they were still featured in prescribed roles as housekeepers, wives and mothers who deferred to and relied on their husbands. Black women were featured in secondary roles, as servants or mammies, if at all. Concurrently, the black press created its own representations of women. Although these representations were complex and sometimes contradictory and had to reach multiple audiences, black-created ads featured women in a variety of roles, such as entertainers, mothers and business women, but never as mammies. Then, in a decade of increased tensions, white-created ads relied on traditional portrayals of women and African-Americans while black-designed ads offered more positive, although complicated, visions of womanhood.
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004612, ucf:49939
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004612
"ANIMAL-LIKE AND DEPRAVED": RACIST STEREOTYPES, COMMERCIAL SEX, AND BLACK WOMEN'S IDENTITY IN NEW ORLEANS, 1825-1917
Title
"ANIMAL-LIKE AND DEPRAVED": RACIST STEREOTYPES, COMMERCIAL SEX, AND BLACK WOMEN'S IDENTITY IN NEW ORLEANS, 1825-1917.
Creator
Dossie, Porsha, Lester, Connie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
My objective with this thesis is to understand how racist stereotypes and myths compounded the sale of fair-skinned black women during and after the slave trade in New Orleans, Louisiana. This commodification of black women's bodies continued well into the twentieth century, notably in New Orleans' vice district of Storyville. Called "quadroons" (a person with 1/4 African ancestry) and "octoroons" (1/8 African ancestry), these women were known for their "sexual prowess" and drew in a large...
Show moreMy objective with this thesis is to understand how racist stereotypes and myths compounded the sale of fair-skinned black women during and after the slave trade in New Orleans, Louisiana. This commodification of black women's bodies continued well into the twentieth century, notably in New Orleans' vice district of Storyville. Called "quadroons" (a person with 1/4 African ancestry) and "octoroons" (1/8 African ancestry), these women were known for their "sexual prowess" and drew in a large number of patrons. The existence of "white passing" black women complicated ideas about race and racial purity in the South. Race as a myth and social construct, or as Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham explains in her essay, African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race, a "metalanguage" exposes race not as a genetic fact, but rather a physical appearance through which power relations and status were to be conferred. My methodology uses race and gender theory to analyze primary and secondary sources to understand and contextualize how population demographics, myths, and liberal 18th century colonial laws contributed to the sale of black women's bodies. The works of Emily Clark, Walter Johnson, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and other historians who utilize Atlantic history have been paramount in my research. Emily Clark has transformed the "white-black" women from a tragic, sexualized trope into a fully actualized human being, while Hall has tackled the racist underpinnings inherent in the neglect of black women's history. The writings of bell hooks, particularly her essay Eating the Other, establishes the modern day commodification of black women vis-a-vis their representation in media, as well as through the fetishism of their bodies by a white patriarchal system. During slavery plantation owners could do virtually anything they wanted with their property, including engaging in sexual intercourse. By depicting black women as hypersexual jezebels, they could justify their rape, while establishing their dominance and place in the white male hegemony of that time period. For the right price a white male of a lesser class could achieve the same thing at a brothel down in Storyville at the turn of the twentieth century, for as Emily Clark argues in her book, The Strange History of the American Quadroon, these brothels were a great equalizer, allowing all white men to experience "sexual mastery enjoyed only by elite planters before the Civil War." By democratizing white supremacy, the quadroon and others like her forged solidarity that bridge across all classes, while upholding whiteness and oppressing people of color at the same time.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFH0004652, ucf:45310
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004652
EXPLORING TRANSIENT IDENTITIES: DECONSTRUCTING DEPICTIONS OF GENDER AND IMPERIAL IDEOLOGY IN THE ORIENTAL TRAVEL NARRATIVES OF ENGLISHWOMEN, 1831-1915.
Title
EXPLORING TRANSIENT IDENTITIES: DECONSTRUCTING DEPICTIONS OF GENDER AND IMPERIAL IDEOLOGY IN THE ORIENTAL TRAVEL NARRATIVES OF ENGLISHWOMEN, 1831-1915.
Creator
DeLoach, CarrieAnne, Stockdale, Nancy, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Englishwomen who traveled to the "Orient" in the Victorian era constructed an identity that was British in its bravery, middle-class in its refinement, feminine in appearance and speech and Christian in its intolerance of Oriental heathenism. Studying Victorian female travel narratives that described journeys to the Orient provides an excellent opportunity to reexamine the diaphanous nature of the boundaries of the public/private sphere dichotomy; the relationship between travel, overt...
Show moreEnglishwomen who traveled to the "Orient" in the Victorian era constructed an identity that was British in its bravery, middle-class in its refinement, feminine in appearance and speech and Christian in its intolerance of Oriental heathenism. Studying Victorian female travel narratives that described journeys to the Orient provides an excellent opportunity to reexamine the diaphanous nature of the boundaries of the public/private sphere dichotomy; the relationship between travel, overt nationalism, and gendered constructions of identity, the link between geographic location and self-definition; the power dynamics inherent in information gathering, organization and production. Englishwomen projected gendered identities in their writings, which were both "imperially" masculine and "domestically" feminine, depending on the needs of a particular location and space. The travel narrative itself was also a gendered product that served as both a medium of cultural expression for Victorian women and a tool of restraint, encouraging them to conform to societal expectations to gain limited authority and recognition for their travels even while they embraced the freedom of movement. The terms "imperial masculinity" and "domestic femininity" are employed throughout this analysis to categorize the transient manipulation of character traits associated in Victorian society with middle- and upper-class men abroad in the empire and middle- and upper-class women who remained within their homes in Great Britain. Also stressed is the decision by female travelers to co-assert feminine identities that legitimated their imperial freedom by alluding to equally important components of their transported domestic constructions of self. Contrary to scholarship solely viewing Victorian projections of the feminine ideal as negative, the powers underlining social determinants of gender norms will be treated as "both regulatory and productive." Englishwomen chose to amplify elements of their domestic femininity or newly obtained imperial masculinity depending on the situation encountered during their travels or the message they wished to communicate in their travel narratives. The travel narrative is a valuable tool not only for deconstructing transient constructions of gender, but also for discovering the foundations of race and class ideologies in which the Oriental and the Orient are subjugated to enhance Englishwomen's Orientalist imperial status and position. This thesis is modeled on the structure of the traveling experience. In reviewing first the intellectual expectations preceding travel, the events of travel and finally the emotional reaction to the first two, a metaphoric attempt to better understand meaning through mimicry has been made. Over twenty travel narratives published by Englishwomen of varying social backgrounds, economic classes and motivations for travel between 1830 and World War I were analyzed in conjunction with letters, diaries, fictional works, newspaper articles, advice manuals, travel guides and religious texts in an effort to study the uniquely gendered nature of the Preface in female travel narratives; definitions of "travelers" and "traveling;" the manner in which "new" forms of metaphysical identification formulated what Victorian lady travelers "pre-knew" the "East" to be; the gendered nature in which female travelers portrayed their encounters with the "realities" of travel; and the concept of "disconnect," or the "distance" between a female traveler's expectation and the portrayed "reality" of what she experienced in the Orient.
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Date Issued
2006
Identifier
CFE0001487, ucf:47101
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0001487