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Confined: Motherhood in Twenty-First Century American Film

Pyles, Tessa
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1587303410049169

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies.
This dissertation examines American motherhood in twenty-first century film, particularly as motherhood intersects with the cultural meanings and experiences of blackness, whiteness, and class status. Through textual analysis of select mainstream and independent films, contextualized within an historical, cultural studies, feminist, and critical race theoretical framework, I build on the matricentric feminist scholarship that has long pointed out that motherhood is one of the most intimate forms of women’s oppression. Working within the framework I establish, I argue that the role of motherhood has often shifted in order to reflect and perpetuate white supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist power structures. The result of these shifts at particular social, cultural, and political moments is that layers of meaning have been added to the role of motherhood, but these meanings have never liberated the role. Thus, mothers remain confined within a system that values their work only to the extent that it upholds the status quo. Ultimately, I argue that these films are, in various implicit and explicit ways, pulling back the proverbial curtain to reveal the mechanisms of control within American mothers’ lives. I acknowledge that the ubiquitous range of representations of motherhood within twenty-first film will in no way act as liberator for mothers. However, I contend that these films offer a glimpse into the layers of social, cultural, political, and economic constraints that perpetuate motherhood as a practice in ideological confinement.
Timothy Messer-Kruse, PhD (Advisor)
Eftychia Papanikolaou, PhD (Other)
Kimberly Coates, PhD (Committee Member)
Sandra Faulkner, PhD (Committee Member)
179 p.
African American Studies; African Americans; American History; American Studies; Black Studies; Ethnic Studies; Film Studies; History; Womens Studies
American motherhood; race; class; black American motherhood; whiteness and motherhood; impoverished mothering;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Pyles, T. (2020). Confined: Motherhood in Twenty-First Century American Film [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1587303410049169

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Pyles, Tessa. Confined: Motherhood in Twenty-First Century American Film. 2020. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1587303410049169.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Pyles, Tessa. "Confined: Motherhood in Twenty-First Century American Film." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1587303410049169

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1587303410049169
644
© 2020, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.