http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/84152 2017-07-10T07:46:21Z http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123059 Gender, Sexism, And Marriage Practice In Contemporary China: A Study Of ‘Shengnü’ (‘Leftover Women’) In Popular Media Feldshuh, Hannah Anxiety about late marriage is a common theme in contemporary Chinese cinema. In the scene above from the 2015 film Let’s Get Married, the tearful protagonist Gu Xiaolei confronts her long-term boyfriend, lamenting his unwillingness to commit as she is growing older. She cries passionately, imploring him to marry before she reaches the “advanced” age of thirty. Throughout the film, Gu Xiaolei is not anxious because she is unattractive or unsuccessful. She is eager to wed because she has internalized a socially expected—and I would argue sexist—timeline for marriage and motherhood that is quickly passing. As a representative of women in Chinese media, the character Gu Xiaolei is not unique; Chinese film and television programming in recent years is replete with female characters like Gu. Their preoccupation with marriage, age, and social pressure reflect enduring, and in this case resurgent, discourses of sexism in Chinese society. U-M Library Undergraduate Research Award - Global Award, Blue Award for Multi-Term Projects 2016-08-26T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123058 "A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg: SNCC and Local Voting Rights Activism in Southwestern Mississippi, 1928-1964 Ramsay-Smith, Alec This thesis tells the story of McComb, Mississippi, a rural town that for four months during the summer and fall of 1961 rose up in support of black residents’ right to vote against a local government and white society that for decades had denied them any progress towards political and social equality. A movement emerged out of a coalition activists from McComb and elsewhere in Southwestern Mississippi and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a South-wide civil rights organization of student activists, to engage every segment of the black community through a broadly based voter registration drive. While these two groups did not always agree on tactics, they built an organizing infrastructure with the knowledge, capacity, and credibility to mount the most serious challenge to white supremacy that this town had ever seen. U-M Library Undergraduate Research Award - Third Place, Blue Award for Multi-Term Projects 2016-08-26T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123057 When Isolation Fosters Creativity: The Oddities of the Las Huelgas Manuscript Goldblatt, Cassidy Of the substantial 13th-14th century music manuscripts available to scholars today, the Las Huelgas codex (hereafter Hu) is rarely addressed in academic conversation compared to collections such as Florence (F), the Wolfenbüttel manuscripts (W1 & W2), Bamberg (Ba) or the Montpellier Codex (Mo). Perhaps this is due to Hu’s isolated location in the Iberian Peninsula, or perhaps because certain of its musical tendencies are odd compared to those found in contemporary manuscripts. It may be these very oddities, however, which shed light on the musical situation and compositional taste of 14th century Iberian culture. This paper will explore a sampling of Hu motets, examining their differences from the mainstream repertoire, isolating their atypical musical characteristics, and presenting possible explanations for these anomalies. Finally, it will consider what these compositional choices suggest about music transmission to the Iberian Peninsula, as well as what the culture’s musical preferences of the time might have been. U-M Library Undergraduate Research Award - Global Award, Maize Award for Single-Term Projects 2016-08-26T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123056 Kill Your Darlings: Birth Control, Child Abandonment, and Infanticide in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Britain Hoban, Michelle In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were few ways to prevent a birth that were both effective and safe, yet single or impoverished women often had no way to provide for children. As a result, infanticide became an increasingly prominent issue in British society. It was in this context, during a period of debate and reform, that Daniel Defoe wrote Roxana, a novel which, as Figure 1 illustrates, is full of children—children who often remain nameless rather than becoming fully realized characters. In Roxana, Defoe takes a surprisingly sympathetic view toward the plight of the eighteenth century woman, a view which is complicated by his more explicitly negative positions on the topic presented in A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed (hereafter referred to as the Treatise for brevity). These two texts show Defoe contributing to the debate on a growing public concern— and confusion—around morality, socioeconomic inequity, and reproductive rights. U-M Library Undergraduate Research Award - Third Place, Maize Award for Single-Term Projects 2016-08-26T00:00:00Z