Finding agency : Bess Furman's negotiation of power and gender within a male discursive regime
Bess Furman's career as a journalist challenged her both personally and professionally through the material she produced as a female reporter in a male-dominated profession. Her early career was spent covering material for the women's society pages, that while writing to an informed audience, the material authored by Furman contrasted with her personal interests as a feminist. She befriended political elites such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Ruth Bryan Owen, Molly Dewson, and Dorothy Ducas. These relationships shaped Furman's feminist ideals that fostered the mounting tension she developed having identified herself as a working woman, wife, and mother. Though Furman lived within societal norms established by gender discourse, she wrote material that relegated women to a masculine standard of femininity through fashion editorials and war propaganda. Furman reasserted gender norms through the regulated material she published from the 1930s-1940s as an employee with the Associated Press and the Office of War Information, which changed once she reached the New York Times
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2019
[University of Wyoming], Laramie, Wyoming, 2019