Digital Commons Network^™

Envisioning Maternal Health Practice Through Antiracist Feminisms, Haley Moles

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Health care systems in the United States perpetuate disturbing maternal health inequity. Rampant maternal health disparities, including preterm births, low birthweight, maternal and infant mortality, and maternal morbidities, disproportionately affect birthing parents of color, queer parents, and low-income parents in comparison to white, cisgender, heterosexual, financially-privileged parents. My master's thesis examines how hegemonic cultural ideology surrounding motherhood in the United States (rooted in white supremacist, cis-hetero-patriarchal, and classist standards of mothering and birth) affects health care practices and provider biases, as well as directly contributes to maternal health disparities experienced by marginalized birthing parents. Furthermore, my thesis examines how antiracist …

Naming And Re(Claiming) Feminism In Orthodoxy: Voicing The Gender And Religious Identities Of Greek Orthodox Women, Anne Marie Adams

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a qualitative study of the effects of Greek Orthodoxy on the gender and religious identity meaning-making of five Greek-American women. The emergent themes from this study indicate that participants’ gender and religious identities were heavily influenced by the dueling tensions and contradictions between patriarchy and feminism, conservative traditionalism and modernity, and secular life and the religious community (i.e., family and church). Underpinning this study are Narrative Identity Theory and Feminist Standpoint Theory. Portraiture methodology was employed across three semi-structured interviews, as well as three written/video reflection journals to reveal how women, as articulated through their own perspectives, …

Toward Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Provocations To German Idealist Aesthetics, Amelia Hruby

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three imagined dialogues: one between Alexander Baumgarten and Sara Ahmed about aesthetics and happiness, one between María Lugones and Immanuel Kant about play and common sense, and one between Audre Lorde and Friedrich Schiller about feeling, thinking, and the erotic. These dialogues are connected by the following thesis: the German idealist aesthetic tradition begins with an attempt to understand the incomprehensibility of certain objects and works its way to respect for them and their freedom, while the feminist tradition cited here begins with the necessity of respect for otherness and then cultivates new modes of …

Las Curanderas De La Herida Abierta: How Online Communities Of Women Of Color Are Challenging Coloniality, Aracelis Sanchez

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Using Facebook and Instagram pages, women of color create virtual communities for epistemological transformations and community healing. In this thesis, I show that online communities of women of color constitute a decolonial feminist virtual space that serves as a site of knowledge production. I argue that these online communities can be conceptualized as a decolonial project existing and expanding from online spaces to public places and characterized by a deliberate rejection of anti-blackness, a critique of the capitalist/colonial/imperial world system, and liberating conceptions of sexuality and gender. I focus on Latina Rebels, Xicanisma, and Lindas, Libres pero Chingonas in order …

Sarah Pappalardo: Tongue Firmly In Cheek

DePaul Magazine

Profile of Sarah Pappalardo, co-founder of the satirical feminist website Reductress, talks about her time at DePaul as a double major in English and communication and working as a comedienne, in addition to the founding and running of Reductress.

Intersectionality As An Institution: Changing The Definition Of Feminism, Holly Sanchez Perry Esq.

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

No abstract provided.

As Above, So Between: Configuring Miss Lala As A Mixed Race Subject, Elizabeth Fei

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Elizabeth Fei situates Miss Lala, the subject of Degas’ “Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando” painting to recenter Lala’s racially mixed body as a crucial site for understanding how discourses of race and gender manifested then and continue to manifest. Using images, articles, and recollections of her act, Fei recovers Lala’s subjectivity by drawing on three main aspects of Lala’s identity: her black womanhood, her circus performances, and her multiraciality. Fei contends that to configure Lala as a mixed race figure allows for all of the possible ways she might have identified to emerge as it is dexterous and adjustable …

Imaginative Methods: A Feminist Rereading Of John Maynard Keynes, Cassandra Forster-Broten

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses a feminist lens to reveal aspects of the life of John Maynard Keynes that previous scholarship has missed. lt uses a feminist framework to view the connections between Keynes's lived experiences, beliefs, and work in a fuller and more nuanced way. The research highlights the importance of Keynes's sexuality, his connection to women and women's issues, and the significance of his relationships to friends, family, lovers, and colleagues. Feminist theory questions objectivity in knowledge production, argues for the importance of lived experience, and requires us to grapple with interconnected identities, which leads to a new interpretation of …

Raeleen Kao Interview, Beena Patel

Asian American Art Oral History Project

BIO: Raeleen Kao is a drawer, printmaker, and amateur competitive eater aka glutton residing in Chicago with a Charles Brand etching press, a red tabby, and forty plants.

Her prints and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries across the country most notably at the International Museum of Surgical Science, the Monmouth Museum of Art, Bert Green Fine Art, the Smith College Museum of Art, Tory Folliard Gallery, Firecat Projects, and Normal Editions Workshop. Her work has been represented at SELECT Fair New York, the Editions and Artist Books Fair in New York, the Cleveland Fine Print Fair, the …

Entrepreneurship As Empowerment: How Women Are Redefining Work, Charlynn Odahl

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

The number of women who are entrepreneurs in the United States has steadily risen since the 1970s and today women found almost half of all new companies. For women, creating their own companies through entrepreneurship may be a way to reject existing work settings, where existing setting and gender dynamics may limit their advancement, creativity, or flexibility. Indeed, entrepreneurship may serve as a form of empowerment to enable women to pursue greater control over their lives. Yet research on the lived experience of this population is limited, with few studies examining the lived experience of this important group. Also, existing …

“If You’Re Not That As An Asian Woman, You’Re Not Shit As An Asian Woman.”: (Re)Negotiating Racial And Gender Identities, Andi T. Remoquillo

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

This studies utilizes a critical, postcolonial feminist lens when analyzing the ways in which Asian-American women are (re)negotiating their gender and sexual identities within the contemporary United States. Through the use of empirical research, as well historical content and discourse analyses, this M.A. thesis deconstructs the ways in which Western society has constructed Asian/Asian-American women as the hypersexual Other, and revisits the ways in which empowerment, agency, and autonomy are reconfigured by Asian-American women themselves.

The Constitution And Societal Norms: A Modern Case For Female Breast Equality, Brenna Helppie-Schmieder

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

“The Constitution and Societal Norms: A Modern Case for Female Breast Equality” argues that laws prohibiting the public display of the female breast, but not the male breast, are unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. That these laws discriminate against women is obvious, yet courts have historically refused to recognize an Equal Protection Clause violation. However, the primary reasons courts rely upon are ripe for review. Most significantly, courts typically justify female breast censorship laws based on the government interest in protecting public sensibilities, without recognizing that public sensibilities change. Indeed, perceptions of the public female breast have …

Covernance: Feminist Theory, The Islamic Veil, And The Strasbourg Court's Jurisprudence On Religious Dress-Appearance Restrictions, Amina Haleem

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

This paper explores how the human right of religious freedom has been conceptually and pragmatically developed under international law within the European Court of Human Rights as applied to veiled Muslim women. This paper analyzes the application of human rights guarantees as established in the European Convention on Human Rights and case law established by the European Court that has interpreted international documents to determine the religious freedoms of veiled Muslim women in the public sphere. The analytical framework identifies the divergence between liberal and third wave feminist approaches to the Islamic veil, and identifies the feminist approaches to international …

Mothers Behind Bars: Breaking The Paradigm Of Prisoners, Anna Mangia

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

Prison is an oppressive institution created for men, by men. While some may argue that oppression is the point of prison, this oppression is still created for and directed toward men. Because the paradigm of a prisoner is a violent male, the needs and concerns of women are often not considered. Female prisoners, therefore, experience layers of oppression: intended oppression inherent in the prison system, as well as gender-based oppression inherent in our society. Furthermore, incarcerated mothers experience a third layer of oppression due to their roles and expectations in society. “The mother” is glorified, but when a woman breaks …

(In)Articulating The Specter: Queer Communicative Resistance In The Hysterical Supernatural, Clare Stuber

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Using discourse analysis, this paper investigates the unresolved nature of a recently documented case of “conversion disorder” or “mass psychogenic illness” experienced by a group of teenage girls in Le Roy, New York. I argue we can see this contemporary embodiment of hysteria as a form of queer communicative resistance, existing in a discursive space called the hysterical supernatural. This new terminology – an alternative to the one-dimensionality of conventional medical models – looks toward the crucial intersection of queer theory, antiracist feminisms, disability studies, and trauma studies. The construction of hysteria becomes an important framework for investigating nuances of …

Arendt And Spivak: A Feminist Approach To Political Worlding And Appearing, Rosalie Siemon Lochner

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

“Arendt and Spivak: A Feminist Approach to Political Worlding and Appearing” offers the first systematic and comparative reading of Hannah Arendt and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Beginning with their mutual interests in political speech and appearance (the ability for individuals to represent themselves as individuals and not be reduced to their social identity) this dissertation argues two points. First, considering the political in terms of worlding (the fact that humans are both conditioned and conditioning beings) means taking a two-handed approach to the political: addressing the seemingly contradictory need for both political equality and an understanding of the impossibility of escaping …

Masked Victims: Examining The Violence Of Femme Fatales In Contemporary Film Noir Cinema, Alexx Bonovich

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

This thesis examines how depictions of femininity in both neo-noir and contemporary noir cinema challenge feminist activism, conform to post-feminist ideology and perpetuate problematic depictions of sex and violence in the figure of the femme fatale. In order to understand the textual and ideological function of sex, violence, and victims characterized by women in contemporary noir cinema, this research draws on existing discourse in film and cultural studies and analyzes depictions of violent and sexualized women across genres of film and throughout popular culture. The post-modern culture represented in Hollywood films emphasizes post-feminist notions of female empowerment through individualism, subjectivity, …

Divorcing Gender From Marriage: A Feminist Perspective On The Jurisprudence Of Transgendered Marriage, Michelle Cass

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

Sex is an immutable characteristic; says who? As transgendered people and LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning) issues gain more traction and recognition, the clear contours of sex and gender are fading, and a more fluid concept of gender is emerging. However, the American legal system lags behind the mutability of gender in an environment where the conceptualization and understanding of gender is becoming ever more nuanced and complex. This is most apparent in the law’s treatment of transgendered marriage: a marriage involving at least one person who identifies as transgendered. A transgendered person can be defined as a …

Fifty Shades Of Oppression: Sadomasochism, Feminism, And The Law, Jacqueline Horn

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

Can sadomasochism (S/M) be reconciled with feminism? When pain is pleasure and humiliation is empowerment, how should the law respond? This article investigates S/M under the legal gaze, particularly the manner in which legal theory and legal practice have constructed female masochism. This article argues that the jurisprudence of S/M is formed by the perception of the “sexual other” as a threat to the normative sexual behavior the law has worked tirelessly to maintain. Historically, society – and by extension the law – has been intolerant of behavior that transgresses sexual norms. As Laura A. Rosenbury and Jennifer E. Rothman …

Through A Feminist Lens: Language, Power And Identity In Catalan Nationalism, Christine Gallagher Kearney

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

The goal for my master’s thesis is to understand how the working class women of Catalunya (specifically women that lived in the small farming villages in the region of Les Garrigues),contributed to the survival of Catalan. Catalunya is an autonomous region of Spain that endured more than three decades of the Francisco Franco dictatorship (1934-1975) that attempted to eradicate the Catalan language and culture. As stated by Everly (2003): “[…] the regional exile of Catalunya from the rest of Spain acts as a backdrop provoking women to go a step further and experiment with their own sense of gender separation …

Keeping "Body And Soul Together": Rosa Coldfield's Gothic Voice In Absalom, Absalom!, Valerie Baehl

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Within the context of the female gothic genre, Rosa’s hysteric personality allows her voice to control aspects of the story and the narrative that would be limited to her as just a peripheral character, the spinster aunt. The first section of this essay, “Absalom, Absalom! as Rosa’s Text,” argues that Rosa is a marginalized and hysteric character in the eyes of her community and her fellow narrators. Rosa’s narrative of Thomas Sutpen is surrounded by narratives of Mr. Compson, Quentin, Shreve and a third person narrator. Rosa’s position as an old maid, paradoxically, validates her position as storyteller and provides …