Digital Commons Network^™

First Comes Love, Then Comes Disparage: How The Production Code Impacted Women’S Roles In Romantic Comedies, Emma Hoback

Honors Projects

Through the analysis of twelve films, I looked to see how the creation and dissolving of the Motion Picture Production Code impacted women’s representation on screen. I looked at six films from the pre-Code era of film (1930-1934) and six films from the newly defined post-Code period (1968-1972). In this paper, I break down the Production Code itself and conduct genre research. The romantic comedy sub-genre was selected for this project. The romantic comedy creates a space for women to have leading roles and have comedy make fun of or reinforce gendered stereotypes. This paper looks at how women went …

"The Grimmest Reversal We Have Ever Faced": Aids And The Hard-Boiled Detective Genre In Joseph Hansen's Early Graves, Seamus Coon

Honors Projects

Published from 1970–1991, Joseph Hansen’s “Dave Brandstetter” series consists of twelve novels written in the hard-boiled detective style, featuring a relatively-out gay insurance detective as the titular protagonist. Many novels discuss then-contemporary social issues, including the ninth novel, Early Graves (1987), which attempts to address the AIDS crisis. The “Brandstetter” series has not been the subject of much scholarship, let alone individual novels in the series. This project attends to how the “Brandstetter” series typically embodies the hard-boiled genre more than it subverts it, as well as how Early Graves is forced to become subversive as the limitations of the …

Censorship Of Lgbtq+ Books: Causes And Consequences, Merrick Glass

Honors Projects

Censorship in the United States of America has accelerated over the past four years. LGBTQ+ books are specifically being targeted and banned within high school classrooms. Banned books are nothing new--court cases today are influenced by Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982) plurality decision on censorship. Students and professionals alike have power in their rights and voices. In the framework of bell hooks, the classroom can be perceived as a site of resistance in order to take power back into students' hands. Without a diversity of books, students will lack cognitive development and community.

Coming Out Of The Coffin: The History And Present Of Queerness In The Vampire Genre., Bailey Drummond

Honors Projects

This essay delves into the captivating and lasting influence of vampires on popular culture since their creation. The fascination with vampires can be traced back to literary works such as John Polidori's "The Vampyre" and Bram Stoker's classic "Dracula," which have served as foundations for vampire mythology across different media platforms. Despite the evolution of media and cultural contexts, certain themes surrounding vampires have persisted throughout history. Notably, vampires have been portrayed as symbols of sexuality and queerness, reflecting societal fears and desires from past eras to the present day. These themes have been critically analyzed and dissected in various …

Sexual Health Education Scope And Sequence, Sara Wadsworth

Honors Projects

Based on a significant amount of prior research, comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) has been identified to be the most effective method of teaching sexual health education (SHAPE America, 2021; World Health Organization, 2023). Comprehensive sexual health education improves healthy behaviors and outcomes, provides useful information, and is positively perceived by students (Gardner, 2015; Kirby, 2002; Robinson et al., 2022). However, the United States’ current sexual health education has not implemented this ideal method, which is shown through state laws, students’ experiences, underdeveloped skills and flawed understanding of concepts, and – most importantly – a lack of resources for teachers (Foley, …

"Real Women Have Bodies": A Study In Adaptation, Madison Ephlin

Honors Projects

The art of adaptation is a difficult process, and is often hard to please general audiences that have a connection to the source material. As a student who studies both English Literature and Film Production, the question asked through this study is what does it take to write a “successful” adaptation? What qualifies as “successful”? How does an adaptation balance the themes, characterization, and plot of a piece of literature with the continuous momentum and visual complexity that the medium of film requires, all in 120 pages or less? This study engages with these questions by actively practicing adaptation, adapting …

Love Is Real & I Just Had Some For Dessert: Legacies Of Communal Care & Compassion In Asian Diasporic Women's Food Writing, Miki Rierson

Honors Projects

In this project I work to recover influential yet often erased Asian American female immigrant chefs and food authors from the mid-twentieth century to the present, situating their contributions in a deep-rooted tradition of diasporic women who used cooking as a means of communal agency and care. Immigrant Asian cookbook authors and chefs have long faced internal criticisms from their own diasporic communities of either inauthenticity or engaging in “food pornography,” to use writer Frank Chin’s term—a line of criticism that Lisa Lau has elaborated on as “re-Orientalism.”Though these criticisms should not eclipse the works themselves, I discuss and counter …

Church Space As Queer Place? Lgbtq+ Placemaking, Assimilation, And Subversion Within Progressive Faith-Based Spaces In Maine, Salina Chin

Honors Projects

In popular discourse, understandings of queerness and religiosity as antithetical proliferate. However, the political involvement of Portland, Maine’s First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church in Maine’s queer political movement points to a more complex relationship between the LGBTQ+ community and progressive religious institutions. Through participant observation, archival research, and semi-structured interviews with nine LGBTQ+ community members and informants, I reveal the crucial role of Portland’s First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church in Maine’s queer political movement from the late 1980s into the present day. On the one hand, progressive faith-based spaces across Maine provide safe spaces for queer political organizing. On the other hand, …

Haunted Heroines: An Examination Of The Complication Of The Gothic Heroine, Molly S. Callison

Honors Projects

This undergraduate research thesis is an examination of two of the most significant evolutions of the literary figure of the Gothic heroine, focusing on innovations made by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey (1817) and Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre (1847). It discusses the origins of the Gothic heroine, set up by Horace Walpole in The Castle of Otranto (1764), and examines the ways that Austen and Brontë make their heroines more internally complex, bringing not only realism to the Gothic heroine but a psychological depth to the feminine Gothic.

Women And Supposition: The Chronicles Of Narnia And Biblical Womanhood, Carolyn Dailey

Honors Projects

Supplemented by C.S. Lewis' works in theology, predominately Mere Christianity, and 'Priestesses in the Church?" as well as sources from other theologians, and historians, this paper explores the relationship between Christian tradition and Biblical womanhood that is expressed in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. This paper finds that C.S. Lewis drew more from the core tenets of love and equality that exist at the heart of Christianity rather than from traditional Christian beliefs, including some he held himself. In doing this, he crafted an imaginative fiction that affirms Biblical womanhood.

Bowling Green State University's All-Gender Housing And The Student Expereince, Molly Marody

Honors Projects

All-gender housing has become a way for colleges and universities to create affirming spaces for LGBTQ+ students. As of 2022, only about 425 American schools have gender-neutral or all-gender housing programs out of the over 5,000 colleges in the United States. This lack of institutional support leads to trans and gender-nonconforming students reporting feeling less comfortable on their campuses. LGBTQ+ students report high rates of discrimination and harassment on college campuses. Studies about all-gender housing point to structural issues that cause students discomfort and feelings of instability. This study looks at Bowling Green State University’s all-gender housing program in hopes …

Title Ix: An Analysis Of Its Effects On Collegiate Athletics, Hanna Laube

Honors Projects

Title IX has had a monumental impact on the development of women’s opportunities in sports. I conducted three interviews with women athletes who competed in college from 1967-71, 1995-99, and 2009-2014. I also analyzed some primary research on how female athletes remember Title IX and some secondary research on remembering Title IX. In the interviews I found that all the athletes were very appreciative of Title IX, but did not know much about it and therefore could not think very critically about it. In contrast, scholars were very critical of Title IX and pointed out the shortcomings in the law. …

[Un]Seen, Al Benbow

Honors Projects

[un]seen is a community-centered project and installation that consists of a collection of portraits and statements from underrepresented members of the LGBTQ+ community. Each subject submits their own action item that depends on their identity and response to the question, “what do you wish people understood about the experience of being [your identity]?”

This project was initially born out of research into the commodification of LGBTQ+ identities, and the realization that corporations tend to market to members of the LGBTQ+ community who they believe have the most spending power: white, cisgender, able-bodied, upper class, gay men, and therefore most often …

Spring Awakening: A Midwest Children's Tragedy, Lena Nighswander

Honors Projects

Spring Awakening: A Midwest Children's Tragedy is a new play that takes up the issues of adaptation, translation, and temporality in regards to Frank Wedekind's Frühlingserwachen, a play infamous in its revelry in controversy and unflinching nature in the face of social issues many would prefer to ignore. Several modern adaptations of the original text exist, but none have utilized the 2020s as a setting nor have they used the fertile landscape of the American midwest as a background.

This play, set in Toledo, OH, leans into the Wedekindian tradition of cutting social criticism and controversy in its exploration of …

Nuevas Posibilidades Para La Subjetividad Feminista En La Literatura Del Cono Sur, Kate Elizabeth Tapscott

Honors Projects

¿Cómo es que se puede escapar verdaderamente de la opresión patriarcal? Esta investigación aborda a través de un análisis de la literatura de escritoras del Cono Sur el asunto complicado de la liberación bajo un sistema en constante mutación. En el primer capítulo, a partir de aportes teóricos de Freud, Josefina Ludmer y Homi Bhabha entre otros, analizo cuentos de Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo, y Clarice Lispector cuyas protagonistas intentan resistir su condición de víctima con diversos grados de éxito. En el capítulo que sigue, exploro una tendencia reciente en la literatura de escritoras del Cono Sur que incorpora …

Empire Of Horror: Race, Animality, And Monstrosity In The Victorian Gothic, Grace Monaghan

Honors Projects

This project examines Victorian England through the analysis of three Victorian gothic novels: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903/1912), and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897). The end of the nineteenth century and the final years of the Victorian era brought with them fears and uncertainties about England’s role in the world and its future, fears that the Victorian gothic sought to grapple with, but inevitably failed to contain. In examining this genre, I draw on “Undisciplining Victorian Studies” (Chatterjee et al, 2020), which calls for the field of Victorian studies to center racial theory. As …

"In Loving Virtue": Staging The Virgin Body In Early Modern Drama, Miranda Viederman

Honors Projects

The aim of this Honors project is to investigate representations of female virginity in Renaissance English dramatic works. I view the period as one in which the womb became the site of a unique renewal of cultural anxieties surrounding the stability of the patriarchy and the inaccessibility of female sexual desire. I am most interested in virginity as a “bodily narrative” dependent on the construction and maintenance of performance. I analyze representations of virginity in female characters from four works of drama originating in the Jacobean period of the English Renaissance, during and after the end of the reign of …

Unraveling Paradise: Colonialism And Disguise In German Language Literature, Brigita Kant

Honors Projects

For centuries, the Pacific Islands have been disguised by Europeans through the trope of “island paradise." Despite Europe’s role in bringing colonization and racial oppression to Oceania, the dominant narrative has been that Pacific Islanders lead simple lives, untouched from the complicated aspects of the “modern world.” This narrative has enabled White outsiders to fantasize about the Pacific Islands as a place for personal denial of Western social conventions, simultaneously allowing White European men to fetishize and possess Pacific Island culture and identity. My honors project will closely examine three fictional German language texts- Haimotochare (1819), Der Papalagi (1920) …

Hannah & Nana: A Personal Memoir On Appalachian Intergenerational Trauma, Womanhood, & Family, Hannah Dunn

Honors Projects

I was deeply affected by the death of my beloved nana in 2018. After her death, my family asked me to be the storyteller for us. Thus, for my Honors Project at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), I decided to write a personal memoir on my family. This memoir explores how we fit into notions of womanhood and family in Appalachia, as well as studying the effects of intergenerational trauma on us. Qualitative research, in the form of the autoethnography, serves as the methodology for this project. In writing a creative memoir, I have transformed my personal to the academic.

Period Poverty: Achieving Menstrual Equity In Bowling Green, Ohio, Courtney Foerg

Honors Projects

Period poverty is the persistent lack of access to sanitary products, menstrual hygiene education, and sanitary facilities (Alvarez, 2019). Until quite recently, it has received very little attention in the United States. This project proved the prevalence and relevance of period poverty in the United States. As an applied research project this project acted upon this finding and aimed to help combat period poverty in the Bowling Green, OH community. This paper details the process and results of a campus menstrual products drive and social media advocacy campaign to address the stigma of menstruation in the United States. The overall …

“Have You Come Out?”: Refutation Of Segdwick’S Theorization Of The Closet In Another Country And Lot: Stories, Mary Ross

Honors Projects

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick outlined in her book entitled Epistemology of the Closet a paradigm of expressing queer sexuality when it is known and when it is not know. In response to Sedgwick closet paradigm, Marlon Ross wrote his essay entitled “Beyond the Closet as a Raceless Paradigm” in which he demonstrated that Sedgwick’s paradigm is not applicable to marginalized class and racial groups. He also made a call to action to change the necessity of the closet paradigm when discussing queer sexuality. In this paper, I put James Baldwin’s Another Country and Bryan Washington’s Lot: Stories in conversation with Sedgwick …

From Marginal To Mainstream: The Queer History Of Camp Aesthetics & Ethical Analysis Of Camp In High Fashion, Emily Barker

Honors Projects

‘Camp’ has become a buzzword in fashion over the last few years, due to a rise in popularity following the 2019 MET Gala theme, “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” Based on Susan Sontag’s 1964 book “Notes on Camp,” the event highlighted many aesthetic elements of Camp sensibilities, but largely ignores the importance of the LGBTQ+ community in Camp’s development. In this piece, I highlight various intersections of Camp and queerness over the last century and attempt to understand Camp’s place in High Fashion today.

Properly Unhinged: A Collection Of Poems, Madison Everett

Honors Projects

This is a collection of poems that explores the identities I possess and am a part of. These identities include being half black and half white, clinically diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Generalize Anxiety Disorder, pansexual or bisexual or something altogether different (depending on the day), and cis gendered womanhood. I also explore what a poem is and what a poem is not, and how there is very little difference between the two. In a lot of ways, this is an exploration into myself and what it means to be within the world. What does it mean to …

A Foray Into The Camp: Human And Ecological Liberation In Contemporary Queer Conversion Therapy Literature, Mitchel Jurasek

Honors Projects

Through the analysis of two contemporary conversion therapy novels in North America, this project explores the intersections of biopolitics (specifically camp theory), queer theory, ecocriticism, and YA literature. Emily Danforth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Nick White’s How to Survive a Summer are paired with scholars such as Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Joshua Whitehead, Greta Gaard, Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Claudio Minca, Catriona Sandilands, Luce Irigaray, and Michael Marder to create a complex and intricate understanding of how ecologies impact queer youths’ experience in conversion therapy camps. The effect of such an intersectional and ecological understanding of queer becomings …

“The Speechmaking Of A Girl-Orator”: Reason, Gender, And Authority In Dorothy Hunter’S Free Trade Oratory, Erinn Elizabeth Campbell

Honors Projects

Dorothy M. Hunter (1881-1977) rose to prominence during the 1906 United Kingdom general election as a markedly “girlish” yet widely respected free trade orator. While men on the Edwardian public political platform typically built a reputation for oratorical prowess through theatrical displays of “heroic” masculinity, Hunter established her authority as a speaker through two very different (and apparently contradictory) strategies. Her performance of “charming” middle-class femininity helped demonstrate her right to speak on free trade as a “women’s question,” extending women’s traditional authority over matters of domestic consumption to include questions of political economy. Trusting in the power of education …

A Quantitative Approach And A Qualitative Approach Towards Intersectionality Among Individuals With Lgbtq+ Identities, Viet (Mason) Trinh

Honors Projects

This is a two-parted project that integrates a quantitative approach and a qualitative approach toward the concept of intersectionality. Research about intersectionality has shown the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. Therefore, I decided to explore the concept using both approaches. The quantitative section of this project investigates the relationship between victimization experiences due to race/ ethnicity and/ or LGBTQ+ identities and emotional well-being. The sample for this section consisted of college students from all states in the United States who identified as LGBTQ+ and were between 18 and 24 years old. The qualitative section examines salient identities, identity gaps, …

Bridging The Generation Gap In The Lgbt+ Community Through Advocacy, Melanie Moore

Honors Projects

HEALTH is a program designed to meet the needs of LGBT+ older adults by connecting them with volunteers of LGBT+ nonprofit organizations. Through HEALTH, LGBT+ youth and older adults can form connections that can extend beyond the structure of the program. By connecting younger volunteers with older adults, HEALTH can help grow the social capital of the LGBT+ community. Fostering friendly relationships between people of all ages can influence the progress of LGBT+ rights moving forward by combining the experience of the elders with the technological and social capabilities of the youth.

The Misogyny Of Psychology: A Tribute To Women Often Overlooked, Gabrielle Miller

Honors Projects

Although the remarkable achievements of these twelve women may seem of concern to only a small group of feminist scholars, it should in fact concern anyone who cares about equal representation of diverse identities, especially within the branches of science which historically refused to give due credit to individuals other than straight, white men. For this reason, we must be able to recognize and react quickly to social issues, otherwise we run the risk of perpetuating oppression of certain minority groups for the remote future. Under those circumstances, we must work toward positive change by doing away with such inequities …

Performing Sor Juana: Reimagining A Mexican Literary Figure In The 21st Century, Uriel López-Serrano

Honors Projects

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (c. 1648-1695) was a Mexican nun, poet, playwright, and scholar from the colonial era. She has become an icon for various global, social, and political movements. This project looks at four dramatic works created by Sorjuanistas who reimagine Sor Juana’s story for contemporary audiences living in the United States. The works included in this essay are Estela Portillo-Trambley’s Sor Juana (1986), Karen Zacarías’s The Sins of Sor Juana (2001), and Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s “Interview with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz” (1998/2014) and her newest work, Juana: An Opera in Two Acts (2019), …

Mémoire Et Souvenir Dans L'Imaginaire Antillais - Maryse Condé Et Fabienne Kanor: Identité Et Existence Noire Aux Antilles Et En France, Elijah B. Koblan-Huberson

Honors Projects

L’histoire d’un peuple est en grande partie liée à sa mémoire, aux souvenirs et commémorations des évènements passés et des ancêtres.En raison de la colonisation et ses conséquences, les habitants des îles de la Guadeloupe et de la Martinique vivent un malaise vis-à-vis de la mémoire en tant que peuple antillais.Par conséquent, il est important de se demander comment, après la déshumanisation effectuée par l’extermination des premiers habitants, les Caraïbes et les Arawaks, l’esclavagisation des Africains, et la colonisation des territoires antillais, une nouvelle conceptualisation de la mémoire peut mener à une nouvelle conceptualisation de l’existence et de l’identité pour …