Date of Award

5-1-2020

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

English

First Advisor

Dougherty, Jane Elizabeth

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the empowerment and disempowerment of the female body during the Troubles of Northern Ireland (1969-1998). It explores the ways that visual texts – mainly film and theater – expose, explain, and challenge the denigrating perceptions of the female body that prevailed during and after the prison protests of the early 1980s for special category status. In each of my four chapters, I examine a Troubles film or drama via French Feminist Julia Kristeva’s theorization of the female body as an abject threat to patriarchy. This dissertation utilizes the theory of abjection as a way to explain the elision of the female body, manifested as the so-called “dirty” protester, the mother and wife of the hunger striker, and the transgender female, from the pages of history, but with the ultimate goal of challenging the very perception of the female body as inherently abject.

Share

COinS
 

Access

This dissertation is only available for download to the SIUC community. Current SIUC affiliates may also access this paper off campus by searching Dissertations & Theses @ Southern Illinois University Carbondale from ProQuest. Others should contact the interlibrary loan department of your local library or contact ProQuest's Dissertation Express service.