ABLE-BODIED WOMANHOOD: DISABILITY AND CORPOREALLY EXCLUSIONARY NARRATIVES IN BLACK AND WHITE WOMEN’S RIGHTS DISCOURSES, 1832-1932

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorStruna, Dr. Nancy Len_US
dc.contributor.authorTemple, Heidi Anneen_US
dc.contributor.departmentAmerican Studiesen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2016-09-03T05:42:09Z
dc.date.available2016-09-03T05:42:09Z
dc.date.issued2016en_US
dc.description.abstractThis project is a feminist disability rhetorical analysis of US black and white women’s rights movements from 1832-1932. Guided by Disability and Feminist Theory, it works to identify the presence and use of patterns of disability tropes in women’s rights discourses. From Lucretia Coffin Mott to Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Mary Church Terrell, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Addie Hunton, this project interrogates the rhetorical work of dominant narratives and lesser known voices in women’s rights discourses. I argue that early black and white women’s rights advocates often utilized and repeated a disability rhetoric that relied on disability metaphor, narrative prosthesis, and corporeally exclusionary narratives in order to construct definitions of womanhood. Their insistence on cognitive ability as a marker of “fitness” and “ability” provided the foundation for rights arguments based on ableist assumptions of autonomy and citizenship. I also argue that this use of disability rhetoric relied on and furthered a pervasive ableist ideology present not only in many of these movements, but in US society. In the process, US black and white women’s rights discourses have continually elided women with disabilities from women’s rights discourses because their bodies (physically, cognitively, and/or psychologically) did not meet the ableist prerequisites set for claiming women’s rights during this time period.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M2ZJ64
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/18598
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledAmerican studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledWomen's studiesen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledCultural Narrativesen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledDisabilityen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledDisability Narrativesen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledDisability Rightsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledRhetoricen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledWomen's Rightsen_US
dc.titleABLE-BODIED WOMANHOOD: DISABILITY AND CORPOREALLY EXCLUSIONARY NARRATIVES IN BLACK AND WHITE WOMEN’S RIGHTS DISCOURSES, 1832-1932en_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Temple_umd_0117E_17455.pdf
Size:
1.42 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

UMD Theses and Dissertations
American Studies Theses and Dissertations