Browsing by Author "Begley, Ashley"
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Item Their Eyes Were Watching God and the Revolution of Black Women(2014) Begley, Ashley; EnglishIt did not pay to be a woman during the Harlem Renaissance. Women’s work was seen as inferior and the women themselves were often under-valued and deemed worthless, meant only to be controlled by the patriarchal society. To be a black woman meant that this societal suffocation and subjugation were doubled, for not only did a black woman have to overcome the inequalities faced by all women, she also had to fight the stereotypes that have been thrust upon her since slavery. Many authors of the Harlem Renaissance, especially Zora Neale Hurston in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, wrote about black women in order to defy stereotypes that were commonly held as truth. Through their writings, these authors explored how the institutions of race and gender interact with each other to create a unique experience for black women of the Harlem Renaissance.Item Veiling and Vampirism: Imperialism and Resistance in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night(2016) Begley, Ashley; Bachelor's DegreeAfter witnessing the rise of militant Islamophobia, I thought it necessary to offer a perspective that disrupted the norm that has become virulent in Western society—demonization of the “Other.” Therefore, I decided to focus on the “first Middle Eastern vampire western film,” A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, because the protagonist of the film is Othered both by her belief in the Islamic faith and her deviating vampiric body. More so, this paper examines the Iranian-American film as an act of resistance to imperialism in the Middle East. It explores how the protagonist subverts Western imperial influence by claiming the power that lies within her female sexuality. My hope, then, is that this paper will contribute to the destabilization of hegemonic power that is found within imperialist and heteropatriarchal relationships to bring about actualized change, and that the true force behind this change, the embodied identity and agency of local Iranian women, will no longer be made invisible by Western-centrism.