Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

The Case For Contraceptives: The Legislative History Of The Aca’S Birth Control Mandate, Julia Grant

Venture: The University of Mississippi Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper seeks to outline the legislative and judicial history of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate. It begins by explaining the justifications and specifications of the provision. It then highlights the three phases of litigation that have surrounded the mandate: closely held, for-profit companies; religious nonprofit organizations; and state attorney generals. This paper provides context for the litigation by describing the opposing stances towards the mandate of the Obama and Trump Administrations and the different modifications to the provision made under each administration. In the wake of last week’s finalization of the controversial rules the Trump Administration issued, …

Sexual Violation, Feminism, And Foucault: Against A Confessional Politics Of Truth, Amber M. Chiacchieri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After many decades of feminist struggle, victims of sexual violation finally have the (relative) freedom to speak about their experiences in different venues to diverse audiences; however, they continue to be silenced, spoken over, and spoken for. While scholars and activists maintain close attention to the content of what survivors say and the means by which their speech is suppressed, there is less interrogation into the power relationships that structure the conditions through which this speech is made possible. This approach, sometimes referred to as “Foucauldian discourse analysis,” is associated with the French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault argued that …

A Study On The Reflections Of Women And Men On A Women’S Empowerment Project: A Case Study Of Sindhuli, Nepal, Shreyasha Khadka

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

Women empowerment and gender equality are considered key aspects of achieving sustainable development goals. At the same time, the empowerment of women is also a process of change that enables women to build capacity in order to make life choices and act on them. Central to women empowerment is incorporating men into the process. Men should be included to deliver effective empowerment through collaboration and interdependence and to understand how women empowerment works in a patriarchal setting. Women’s economic empowerment such as Rural Economic Empowerment Project (RWEE) strives to empower and improve the status of rural women in Nepal. This …

Revisioning The Devī Māhātmya: A Creative Approach To Ecofeminism, Meret A. Luthi

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022

This creative project consists of two parts and revisions the 6^th century puranic Goddess myth Devī Māhātmya through a critical ecofeminist lens. The first part serves as an introduction into mythology, ecofeminism, and the historical and contextual aspects of the Devī Māhātmya. This academic essay investigates how myths provide humanity with a sense of meaning and belonging. The second part of this project is a creative writing piece and a contemporary revision of the Devī Māhātmya. The aim of this approach is to demonstrate the extent to which myths continue to inform and shape us, with particular regard to …

Queerness, Witchcraft, And Embodied Presence: Aesthetic Knowings Of What A Body Can Do, Megan Bigelow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Taking as a point of entry the critique of representation and affirming the limitations of the cuts that language makes, this capstone project explores the imbrications and assemblages between Foucault’s concept of subjugated knowledges, witchcraft and other body-based ways of knowing and being, and the consciousness of non-human forms such as plants and through the framework of non-representational theory, process philosophies, aesthetics, queerness, and the concept of difference itself.

Since such theories themselves are living, breathing entities, this capstone project explores the ideological split that has occurred between sacred and secular beliefs, moving through different figures such as nuns and …

Painting The Leaky Pipeline Pink: Girl Branded Media And The Promotion Of Stem, Juniper Patel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a critical feminist analysis of girl branded media depictions of girls in STEM. Through close textual analysis of three case studies—Disney Fairies films, Barbie: Dreamhouse Adventures, and My Little Pony: Equestria Girls media—I found that such STEM promotion tends to emphasize traditional gender roles and neoliberal market values. Disney Fairies films promote traditional gender roles via portrayals of play STEM, white hegemony, and western beauty standards. Additionally, these films promote the neoliberal ideal of industrialization as consequence free. Dreamhouse Adventures depicts STEM in relation to traditional gender norms such as caretaking, heteronormativity, and girl culture. Furthermore, this …

Maternal Criticism: Reading Two Middle Eastern Women Writers As Nonviolent Peace Activism, Charlyn Marie Ingwerson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advocates for reading the literatures of two Middle Eastern women writers through a Maternal Critical lens that recognizes the demands of universal vulnerability in characters who resist violence, and responds in Maternal communities of Readers that connect readers to characters, readers to writers, and readers to other readers, carrying the struggle for equity forward. My unfolding argument, centered on Maternal Critical activity in the novels of Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifeh and Israeli writer Ronit Matalon, demonstrates how literature by these Middle Eastern women is part of a narrative context of women’s peacemaking and resistance to violence, a part …

Good Dyke Art, Sam M. Mack

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The work in good dyke art visually expands upon conversations about institutional critique and its contradictions, specifically questioning who dictates the boundaries between institutions and bodies: how divisions are made between them and who enacts or receives force. One’s participation in this critique, however, indicates a participation in the problematics of the institution and by extension, a desire to critique may also be considered a desire to participate in that system.

Ceramic, glaze, and found objects manifest an allegorical formalism that utilizes coded languages of institutional spaces, traditions of queer-coding, and charged word-play. The ceramic vessel forms reference the Ancient …

The Impact Of State Political Party Association On The Gender Wage Gap, Audrey Kelly

Honors Theses

Purpose: This study investigates whether political party association impacts the gender wage gap in the United States of America. This study is motivated by the minimal recent reduction in the gender wage gap, despite legislation presented to combat this problem. The study is also motivated by the impact of gender wage gap on females’ choice of major, which directly impacts the national economy.

Design/methodology/approach: Gender wage gap data is collected from 50 states and Washington D.C. for the year 2018 to examine whether political party association significantly impacts the gender wage gap. Mississippi is a proxy for the Republican …

Cristalian De Espana, Ana Grinberg

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

“This Unique Empire” : Sylvia Plath And Anne Sexton’S Embodied Poetry As L’Ecriture Feminine, Theresa Kircher

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis seeks to place the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton within a larger discussion of contemporary feminist thought regarding corporeality and Hélène Cixous’ idea of l’ecriture feminine from her 1976 essay “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Beginning with the basic premise of the mind/body dichotomy that was the basis for western philosophy, this thesis argues that contemporary feminist discourse shies away from viewing women’s bodies as a source of empowerment, hoping to avoid exposure to bioessentialist critiques, and instead focusing on women’s access to areas of intellectual power. This thesis posits that rather than uphold the power …

Women And Their Struggle To Be Considered Funny As Told Through The Study Of Female Standup Comics, Jean Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the history of comedy in America, women standup comics have taken a backseat to their male counterparts. Females have struggled against an inherent societal and male bias alleging that women cannot be funny. Even Sigmund Freud offered a medical explanation of this phenomenon in his 1905 book titled Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious stating that it was physiologically impossible for women to be funny because of the way their brains were structured. In 2007, intellectual British journalist Christopher Hitchens reinforced this theory in a Vanity Fair article titled “Why Women Can’t Be Funny,” claiming that women did …

"Buried...Like A Human Being" At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery: A Bioarchaeological Approach To Defining Fetal And Infant Personhood Through Biological Development, Historical Discourse, And Diapering, Brianne Charles

Theses and Dissertations

The ambiguity of life is visible in the complex sets of beliefs that cultures develop around abortion, stillbirth, and neonatal death. This research grew out of ambiguities surrounding bioarchaeological methods of age estimation among fetal and infant remains and the need for additional lines of evidence to define what a prenatal or postnatal age contextually means, how these definitions were upheld or challenged, and what impact these definitions had on the mortuary treatment of these bodies.

Discernment between fetal and infant skeletal remains is important to forensic investigations and bioarchaeological questions of personhood, infant mortality, and maternal health. However, skeletal …

The Influence Of Interpersonal Dyadic Differences On Condom Use Among Men Who Have Sex With Men, Andrew M. O'Neil

Health, Human Performance and Recreation Undergraduate Honors Theses

Background: Men who have sex with men (MSM) continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS and other STIs. Condom use is one of the most effective methods of prevention, but rates of condom use have been steadily declining among MSM. Therefore, determining what factors influence condom use decision-making among MSM is important. Interpersonal factors such as physical attractiveness, race, and age have been explored in relation to condom use. However, there is a dearth of research exploring the influence of discrepancies between casual partners in these social categories and its influence on condom use directly.

Purpose: The purpose of this …

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.54, No.2, Winter 2018

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Opportunism & Duty: Gendered Perceptions Of Women's Involvement In Crusade Negotiation And Mediation (1147-1254), Gordon M. Reynolds

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Women’s involvement in negotiation and mediation during the Middle Ages has received close scrutiny. However, few scholars have concentrated their investigations on the trends in female-led negotiations during the crusades in the Near East, and the significance of the religious connotations of such leadership in this theatre. There were dramatic societal shifts in the Latin East during the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, most significantly in the aftermath of the Battle of Hattin and loss of Jerusalem in 1187. The destruction of much of the Latin East’s crusader states that followed Jerusalem’s fall displaced many individuals, and with a plethora of Christian nobles …

Demonic Pedagogy And The Teaching Saint: Voice, Body, And Place In Cynewulf's Juliana, Christina M. Heckman

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In Cynewulf’s Old English poem Juliana, the saint frames her encounters with her adversaries as pedagogical confrontations, refusing the lessons they attempt to “teach” her and ultimately adopting the identity of a teacher herself. These confrontations depend on three key tropes in the poem: Juliana’s voice, as a material manifestation of language deployed by the saint; her body, both as living body and as relic; and place, especially the place of the saint’s martyrdom and/or burial. Viewed through theories of material feminism, these tropes reveal diverse forms of agency in the poem, as both human and non-human agents make …

Chaucer's Pardoner: The Medieval Culture Of Cross-Dressing And Problems Of Religious Authority, Larissa Tracy

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

One of the most ambiguous and contentious characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales is the Pardoner, the last (and arguably worst) of the pilgrims described in the General Prologue. The Pardoner accused of being a gelding or a mare endowed with several effeminate traits, plays on multiple gendered associations—including that of a cross-dressing woman. Throughout the Canterbury Tales Chaucer manipulates gender expectations and assumptions in the figure of the Pardoner without fully clarifying the Pardoner’s sex, sexuality or gender, leaving the text open to potentially subversive interpretations. By the fourteenth century, cross-dressing was a relatively common literary motif, …

“A Drunken Cunt Hath No Porter”: Medieval Histories Of Intoxication And Consent, Carissa M. Harris

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay traces medieval representations of intoxication and consent and links them to contemporary cases, including Brock Turner’s 2016 rape trial and the 2017 slew of lawsuits filed against Baylor University. Through an examination of medieval texts from a range of genres, including the Biblical stories of Lot and Noah, the Digby Mary Magdalene play, proverbs, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the 1292 legal case of Isabella Plomet, and Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne, this essay explores past views of gender, perpetrators, culpability, alcohol, and consent. It argues that victim-blaming those who have been assaulted while intoxicated has …

The Wealth Of Wives: A Fifteenth-Century Marriage Manual, Olympia Pelosi

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.