Abstract
dc:description.abstractThis project is a deconstructive discourse analysis of smart girlhood. From a feminist post structural framework, with a focus on discourse and performative identity, I scrutinize three dominant discourses of smartness that are prevalent and academic and popular press. These constructions frame smart girls as being either Losers, Have-It-All Girls, or Imposters. By conducting semi-structured group interviews with six self-identified smart girls, I explore the question of how smart girls perform their smart girl identities in their current sociocultural context. After analyzing the data from the group interviews, I outline five themes that seem to be prevalent in the stories told by the smart girls in this thesis. Finally, I discuss how the performative identities of the smart girls in my thesis appear to be much more complex, multiple and rhizomatic than the discourses under review allow.
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- M.A. Child and Youth Studies
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Masters
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- Faculty of Social Sciences
- Department dc:contributor.department
- Department ofChild and Youth Studies
- Grantor
- Brock University
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2011
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Cramp, Lindsay
Subjects
dc:subject × 3Rights
- Language dc:language.iso
- eng
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Handle dc:identifier.uri
- http://hdl.handle.net/10464/3158
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:brocku.scholaris.ca:10464/3158