This thesis examines the representation of female Presidents of the United States in popular culture. This thesis asks how these fictional depictions relate to the cultural understanding of the...Show moreThis thesis examines the representation of female Presidents of the United States in popular culture. This thesis asks how these fictional depictions relate to the cultural understanding of the actual office, and in particular how the characterization of these female Presidents reflects and challenges the public perception of the presidency as a masculine institution. To this end this thesis investigates Commander in Chief's portrayal of President Mackenzie Allen, State of Affairs’ depiction of President Constance Payton and House of Cards’ characterization of President Claire Hale Underwood with a focus on the presidents’ rise to power, their marriages and modes of motherhood, their issue competency and crisis management, and their femininity.Show less
This cross-disciplinary thesis investigated the use of metaphors in modern and contemporary Lebanese literature which portrays Beirut as a woman, and violence or turmoil within the city as sexual...Show moreThis cross-disciplinary thesis investigated the use of metaphors in modern and contemporary Lebanese literature which portrays Beirut as a woman, and violence or turmoil within the city as sexual assaults. Both of these metaphors were identified in texts by Zena el Khalil, Elias Khoury and Etal Adnan, along with shorts from Beirut Noir. Lakoff’s theory of metaphor was used to underline the significant interactions between figurative language, knowledge and real action which motivated the research. The mother-virgin-whore triad was found overly simplistic to describe Beirut’s figuration, although interestingly non-normative characterisations such as corrupted mother and once-virgin arise in the literature. However, Beirut has been consistently imagined as a ‘whore’ throughout history. This stereotyping has a particularly complex impact on the allocation of blame and pity in the related literary imagery of Beirut’s ‘rape’, which was further dissected through feminist and critical theory. Overall, an interrelation between machoistic violence and the destruction city was identified, exemplified in Civil War literature but arising in broader contexts. This thesis' intersectional question merited a broad, multi-stranded answer, concluding that imaginaries of women and cities alike must be nuanced and multiple in order to escape harmful stereotyping which can ‘justify’ destructive action.Show less
