Femalities: Materialist Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Writing

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dc.contributor.advisorBerger, Jason J.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberPipkin, James W.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberHogue, William L.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberGregory, Elizabeth
dc.contributor.committeeMemberJaima, Amir
dc.creatorVollrath, Lesli A.
dc.date.accessioned2019-12-17T04:01:59Z
dc.date.createdDecember 2019
dc.date.issued2019-12
dc.date.submittedDecember 2019
dc.date.updated2019-12-17T04:01:59Z
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation is a study of movements––those that occur on, within, and beyond the body and those set in motion by the energetic and endlessly renewing material forces that take on different forms outside of it. In my introduction, I trace Margaret Fuller’s use of the concept “femality” in her early writing and Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) before reconfiguring femality within a new materialist framework. Building on innovative interdisciplinary work within the field of nineteenth-century studies as well as working with critical studies in a number of related theoretical fields, such as new materialism, posthumanism, and animal studies, I examine women’s novels such as Julia Ward Howe’s The Hermaphrodite (unpublished in era, 1840s), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s A Story of Avis (1877), and Hannah Crafts’s The Bondwoman’s Narrative (unpublished in era, 1850s). Each chapter explores the concept of femality in a wide range of experience and materiality. As a paradigm that creates various modalities of potential between the body and materiality, femality demonstrates how materiality shapes personhood through complex and surprising encounters. In these chapters, I explore several of these modalities, such as materiality as textures of ecstatic connection and metamorphosis as fluidity (Howe), animality as co-existence and plurality (Phelps), and the wild as experiential ground for female ecologies (Crafts). In the epilogue, I return to Fuller to consider how a recognition of materiality’s potential might transform our view of everyday moments. This study seeks to unsettle traditional conceptualizations of the body by reformulating it within a materialist domain. In contrast to a frame that posits the body and materiality as passive entities, femality, as a materialist optic, recognizes both the body and materiality as potentialities of contact, exchange, and transformation. As a secondary concern, movements between female bodies and entities of the environment, such as plants, trees, and birds, reveal a configuration of womanhood that is plural and ecological. While some movements eventually slow or reach their resting state, others keep going, endlessly becoming, to take on new forms and ecological dimensions.
dc.description.departmentEnglish, Department of
dc.format.digitalOriginborn digital
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/5569
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
dc.subjectFemality
dc.subjectNew materialism
dc.subjectEmbodiment
dc.subjectBody
dc.subjectEnvironment
dc.subjectNineteenth century
dc.subjectAmerican literature
dc.titleFemalities: Materialist Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Writing
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.genreThesis
local.embargo.lift2021-12-01
local.embargo.terms2021-12-01
thesis.degree.collegeCollege of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
thesis.degree.departmentEnglish, Department of
thesis.degree.disciplineEnglish
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Houston
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy

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