Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Women--Fiction; Creation (Literary, artistic, etc)--Fiction; African American women--Fiction; African American women; Creation (Literary, artistic, etc); Women; Fiction;
Abstract
A Whole Range of Women is a novel which challenges prevalent notions about the value of many kinds of female creativity. At the beginning of the story, one of the main characters is sculpting a collection of famous North American women. She soon decides she would rather celebrate the creativity exhibited by women in their daily lives. The development of this idea is one of the main themes of the novel. The central focus of each chapter alternates between the lives of three female characters: the above-mentioned sculptor; an English professor who specializes in African-American literature; and, a history professor who also directs a Graduate Women's Studies program. In addition, there are a variety of other female characters in the novel. This allows an examination of how gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, and ethnicity affect the nature of the creativity exhibited by various women. In attempting to make this thesis a culmination of my work in the Master's program in Women's Studies, I incorporated as many of my graduate school experiences as possible. For example, I researched and wrote about the movie Waiting to Exhale for one of my literature classes. In my thesis, three African-American women view and then discuss the movie. Their exchange includes a description of the stereotypical images of black women in film. Besides classes, I also used material gleaned from my two research assistantships, from events I attended on and off campus, and from the personal experiences of many women, including my own. This novel describes many historical female achievements as well as the creativity used by women in daily activities that range from sewing doll clothes for grandchildren to feeding a family on a minimum wage salary. I think this kind of non-hierarchical treatment of women's creative gifts is important to both feminist movement and the Women's Studies program at the University of Northern Iowa
Year of Submission
1997
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of English Language and Literature
First Advisor
Susan Rochette-Crawley
Second Advisor
Alice Swensen
Third Advisor
Pierre Mvuyekure
Date Original
1997
Object Description
1 PDF file (11 leaves)
Copyright
©1997 Marianne Hartz
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Hartz, Marianne, "A Whole Range of Women" (1997). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2887.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2887
Comments
The creative work referenced in this graduate thesis, consisting of pages 1-128, currently is not being made available in electronic format through UNI ScholarWorks.
If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.