Women's History Commons^™

Saint Brigit And Her Habits: Exploring Queerness In Early Medieval Ireland, Jacqueline K. Stephenson

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Saint Brigit's behavior and reception by society highlight an avenue by which women in the early medieval period could escape societal strictures, exercising agency over their bodies and their romantic choices, and carve out a distinct and unexpected place for themselves in a Christian patriarchal society. In Saint Brigit’s case, this is especially demonstrated by the breadth of her portrayed power as not just a nun but a saint, her extreme resistance to marriage, and her frequent comparisons to men. Indeed, her hagiography, written by Cogitosus in the seventh century, positioned her as one of the three principal and earliest …

Navigating The Bow Wave Of Change: The Felt Experience Of Belonging To The United States Naval Academy's First Gender-Integrated Class, Peter Shaner

Dissertations

On July 6, 1976 the United States Naval Academy (USNA) admitted its first-ever gender-integrated class. I was a member of that class, along with 81 female classmates who entered USNA with the class of 1980 (USNA ‘80). Those classmates were pioneers, though few of them realized at the time just how long and how hard their journey would be. The numerous challenges faced by USNA ‘80 on their journey through the Academy have been well documented (Gelfand, 2008). But there has been far less research on the lived experience of that pioneering class. This study fills a gap between historical …

Decolonizing The Western Perception Of Afghan Women: A Feminist Critique, Parwana Azimi

Honors Theses

Abstract: Feminist theory and activism have often been reduced to singular movements from Western literature and history. Thus, the exploration of Feminist theory is often limited to Western ideology and values. In doing so, Western Feminism has primarily promoted the rights of Women living in developed countries while leaving women in developing countries or otherwise out of the discussion of women’s rights and status. Most often, women's rights struggles outside of the West are seen as colonial projects which portray Muslim women as helpless and requiring liberation from their cultures. A prominent example of this is the case of Afghan …

The Controlled Narrative Of “Jane Roe:” Norma Mccorvey’S Life Beyond The 1973 Trial, Eleanor G. Strickland

Honors College Theses

Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, 1973, wrote two memoirs twenty years after the Supreme Court trial that surrounded her third pregnancy. These memoirs (I Am Roe, 1994, and Won by Love, 1997), along with the recent documentary AKA Jane Roe (2020), provide an insight into McCorvey’s life and how she was used by politicians and civilians during and after the influential trial. McCorvey lived a complicated life and was constantly being pulled in different directions spiritually, politically, and personally. This thesis shows how McCorvey attempted to re-write the narrative of her life using …

Little Cricket On The Hearth: The Quiet Feminism Of _Little Women_, Caroline Anderson Klein

Honors Theses

Since the advent of the cult of domesticity, the stakes for female characters in domestic literature have been notoriously high. There was no room for flaws, rebellious decisions, and certainly no room for mistakes—whether of the woman’s own accord, or simply as collateral damage of a male character’s immorality. In this shallowly Calvinist domain, women were never more than one broken guardrail away from social ruin or death. In writing Little Women, Louisa May Alcott breaks these molds through unflinching kindness to her female characters from childhood to adulthood, even unto death. Alcott achieves this quietly feminist feat by …

“Bad Taste, Bad Hygiene, And Bad Morals:” Dress Reform Movements And Women’S Fight For Greater Independence During The Late 1800s., Emily Cahill

Honors Theses

The Victorian Age is debated as a time of brilliant growth, beauty, and prosperity for people living in England. While this era is described as a glory age for England, it was also an age of great inequality. There were significant advancements in learning and new societal freedom, like the widespread availability of education and abundance of jobs. However, freedom was not experienced equally by everyone in the public. One of the main things women sought to change was freedom in their wardrobe. It was nearly impossible to progress in society under the rigid restrictions women’s clothes put on them. …

Ladies Art Club - Bowling Green, Kentucky (Mss 762), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 762. Minute books of the Ladies Art Club, an African-American women’s club in Bowling Green, Kentucky, whose objectives included social and charitable activities and annual exhibits of sewing work.

Writing, Performance, Resistance: Examining Feminist Ideology And Theory In Theatre Since The Second Wave, Olivia Cross

Theater Honors Papers

This project seeks to identify and analyze how feminist theatre is informed by theory and activism in its resistance against white, heteronormative, and patriarchal hegemony offstage through onstage representation. By identifying three consistent themes of gender & sexuality, race, and trauma and the methods used to effectively convey them to an audience, feminist theatre displays how advocacy takes unique forms to uproot the status quo. Furthermore, this research highlights how theatre is a viable and rich outlet for feminist intellectual history, displaying its versatility as a frame of analysis.

Women And Food In World War I Era Arkansas, Emily A. Stolp

ATU Research Symposium

On July 1st, 1917, in the midst of The Great War, Arkansas’s Governor Charles Brough appointed Ida Frauenthal as chairwoman to the state’s new Woman’s Committee of the Council of Defense for Arkansas. The report created by the Woman's Committee allowed the committee to first: organize the results of the efforts of many civil groups and second: immortalize the women’s wartime efforts. Women’s war efforts in this era naturally focused on the home front. The need to conserve food, a national and local concern, occupied much of women’s wartime efforts. Fear mongering and propaganda used to push the food conservation …

Silent Cycles: Unveiling 19th-Century Perspectives On Menstruation, Women's Agency, And Societal Transformations, Anna Bennethum

Campus Research Day

In the 19th century, menstruation was a topic often vieled in silence and misinformation. Nonetheless, it is pivotal in discussions on women's agency and societal shifts. This paper explores 19th-century medical perceptions, the dissemination of reproductive knowledge through women's publications, and a case study of Adventist health publications. Through primary source analysis, this paper reveals how access to medical knowledge empowered women, especially in pursuing higher education. Additionally, examination of Adventist health publications showcases alternative remedies to menstrual disorders, granting women control over their reproductive health. This study illuminates the intersection of menstruation, women's agency, and societal change, emphasizing the …

Genderless And Sexualized: Caribbean Enslaved Women In The 18th Century, Amy Van Arsdell

Campus Research Day

This study focuses on the uniquely-gendered experiences of enslaved women in the Caribbean in the 18^th century. First, I examine the racialized views of femininity and how enslaved women were denied the privileges of white femininity and forced to do the same work as men, yet were still valued less than their male counterparts because of their gender. The study goes on to highlight the sexual oppression enslaved women experienced, and its adverse effects on their health. The study concludes that despite the intersectional racism and sexism they faced, enslaved women were able to use their gender to resist …

Bureaus Of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Comparing The Roles Of Women In The Special Operations Executive And The Office Of Strategic Services During World War Ii, Adaline Nolley

Senior Honors Theses

In 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive. The SOE was one of the first government agencies to recruit female spies. In 1941, United States President Franklin Roosevelt commissioned the Office of Strategic Services, which also employed women. The organizations approached the concept of female agents differently. The OSS maintained female staff in domestic offices, but employed foreign women as agents. The SOE recruited women to go abroad, as they were less suspicious than men in occupied territories. The study of female staff in the OSS and the SOE allow historians to understand roles of women …

Radically Feminist Or Monstrously Feminine?: Witches And Goddesses In Guadagnino's Suspiria (2018), Lindsay Macumber

Journal of Religion & Film

Guadagnino’s 2018 remake of Suspiria explicitly and implicitly incorporates two connected myths, witchcraft and goddess centered matriarchal prehistory. The fact that each of these myths have been claimed by feminists in myriad ways may explain Guadagnino’s claim that Suspiria is a great feminist film that escapes the male gaze. In this article, I argue that Guadagnino’s representation of these myths lays bare their misogynistic origins and perpetuates, rather than subverts, patriarchal power structures.

Borglum’S Horse Flies: The Early Opposition To Mount Rushmore, Riley Merritt

Honors College Theses

This thesis explores the evolution of opposition to Mount Rushmore from 1923-1927—the period before carving began. The resistance was led by a group of preservationists who were concerned about the potential ecological and societal impacts of the project. While much of the existing scholarship has focused on the relationship between the local Indigenous community and the monument, I argue that the preservationists, who opposed the site for their own reasons, deserve similar attention. I aim to reframe the Mount Rushmore controversy within the broader context of the conservation movement, thereby contributing to wider environmental and historical debates. I also emphasize …

Listening To "Silence": Alternative Modes Of Communication In Korean And Korean American Women's Literature, Judy Joo-Ae Bae

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

South Korean feminist activity may be relatively unknown to many Western readers; however, a distinct form of feminist activism can be seen when considering alternative modes of communication that are not less than, simply different from “speech” or “voice” as forms of agency celebrated in the West. Alternative modes of communications such as silence, song, touch, and performance also speak important messages which can be heard when understood through local knowledges. In the three cases of South Korean and Korean American women’s fictions used in this dissertation, I unpack these alternative modes of communications used by the female protagonists through …

Lay It On The Line: The Life And Music Of Gladys Bentley, Bianki Torres, J.

Doctoral Dissertations

This work is a historical biography of Gladys Bentley and her blues music. She was a cross-dressing entertainer from the Harlem Renaissance and performed popular songs with added, sometimes improvised sexual innuendo. This study considers the performances of her recorded and written material as trans music, meaning, that black music provided a platform to determine racial, gendered, and sexual cultural expressions changing over time, however, always rooted in black vernacular culture. Using showbills, promotional material, studio recordings and short autobiography, this study follows Bentley’s career as “male impersonator” and the effects lesbian/gay (queer) culture had on her blues. Also, I …

Business Card With Survey, Clarke & Kleisdorff, Ltd.

Glover Family Papers, 1871-1937

Card: on front: Clarke & Kleisdorff, Ltd., 1301 Tulane Ave., New Orleans, La. On back: questions answer by Lane Glover, 517 Bridge, Jacksonville Florida, regarding amputation and purchasing an artificial limb. Circa 1905-1907.

Donna Loring, Interviewed By Mazie Hough And Carol Toner, Donna Loring

MF144 Women in the Military

Donna Loring, interviewed by Mazie Hough and Carol Toner, June 19, 2001, in Augusta, Maine. Loring, age 53, talks about enlisting in the Army in the Vietnam War; her experiences of discrimination as a Native American in Maine; boarding school; taking an aptitude test after enlisting; basic training; her role as a member of the Signal Corps; the dangers of the job; rising through the ranks; the detachment of the Women’s Army Corps from the rest of the Army; women soldiers and weapons; leaving the base against orders; racism in the military; diversity within the W.A.C.; the psychological effects; leisure …

Donna Loring, Interviewed By Mazie Hough And Carol Toner, Part 1, Donna Loring

MF144 Women in the Military

Donna Loring, interviewed by Mazie Hough and Carol Toner, June 19, 2001, at the CATS Library in Augusta, Maine. Donna talks about enlisting in 1966; training in California and going to Vietnam; serving in the Military Occupational Specialty Signals Corps and as a soldier of the Women’s Army Corps. Text: 9 pp. transcript. Time: 01:20:59. Restrictions: None. Approval to release provided by James Francis of the Penobscot Historic Preservation Committee, 2024-02-23.

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Part 1 mfc_na3207_c2308_01
Part 2 mfc_na3207_c2308_02

Donna Loring, Interviewed By Mazie Hough And Carol Toner, Part 2, Donna Loring

MF144 Women in the Military

Donna Loring, interviewed by Mazie Hough and Carol Toner, June 19, 2001, at the CATS Library in Augusta, Maine. Donna talks about enlisting in 1966; training in California and going to Vietnam; serving in the Military Occupational Specialty Signals Corps and as a soldier of the Women’s Army Corps. Text: 9 pp. transcript. Time: 01:20:59. Restrictions: None. Approval to release provided by James Francis of the Penobscot Historic Preservation Committee, 2024-02-23.

Listen

Part 1 mfc_na3207_c2308_01
Part 2 mfc_na3207_c2308_02