This thesis discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) in relation to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and examines to what extent Atwood used Jacobs’s...Show moreThis thesis discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) in relation to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and examines to what extent Atwood used Jacobs’s slave narrative as a template for her dystopian novel. With this comparison, this thesis considers whether Atwood’s novel marginalizes Afro-American experiences of slavery and to what extent The Handmaid’s Tale can be seen as a product of white feminism through a focus on the concept of intersectionality.Show less
This thesis analyzes the making of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a popular cultural celebrity in and through three cultural texts: the biopic 'On the Basis of Sex', the documentary 'RBG', and the...Show moreThis thesis analyzes the making of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a popular cultural celebrity in and through three cultural texts: the biopic 'On the Basis of Sex', the documentary 'RBG', and the book 'My Own Words'. The central concern is to explore how each primary source navigates the paradox of the impassioned celebrity figure, where there is a specific focus on the personal, and the dispassionate Supreme Court Justice, whose role is to be impersonal and ‘blind’. I argue that it is the careful construction of Ginsburg’s public persona by herself, and others engaged in representing her, that navigates this issue. Subsequently, I conclude that this negotiation is not to increase Ginsburg’s ego or material gain, but functions as a means to promote and strengthen the institution of the Supreme Court of the United States.Show less
