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Articles 31 - 60 of 85
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“In Black And White, I’M A Piece Of Trash:” Abuse, Depression, And Women's Pathways To Prison, Alexa Adamo Valverde
“In Black And White, I’M A Piece Of Trash:” Abuse, Depression, And Women's Pathways To Prison, Alexa Adamo Valverde
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Women’s lived experiences of abuse and depression are examined within the context of gendered and racialized pathways to incarceration among 403 women randomly selected from a diagnostic unit in a state prison. This study utilizes feminist action research and community psychological methods to understand what factors predict incarcerated women’s placement on the mental health caseload and provides quantitative support for the pathways theoretical framework. Findings indicate that, among the sample, the prevalence of abuse experiences prior to incarceration exceeded 90%, prevalence of mental health problems exceeded 70%, and less than 35% were receiving mental health care. Being Caucasian, experiencing depression …
Bitches Be Like...: Memes As Black Girl Counter And Disidentification Tools, Sesali Bowen
Bitches Be Like...: Memes As Black Girl Counter And Disidentification Tools, Sesali Bowen
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Memes are a popular source of online media. As such, they become tools that can distribute racialized and gendered narratives. While memes are often a source of shaming and devaluing Black girls, my research also explores how they can be used as tools to counter and disidentify with narratives. Using Hip-Hop feminism and trap feminism as frameworks, I analyze several memes to not only exemplify the hegemonic narratives of Black girlhood that circulate via memes, but to illuminate the possibilities for resistance and transformation via this technology.
Spirits In The Food: A Pedagogy For Cooking And Healing, Sumita Dutta
Spirits In The Food: A Pedagogy For Cooking And Healing, Sumita Dutta
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Cooking is mind, body, spirit work. What’s possible when we ‘drop in’ to our bodies when cooking? We begin noticing what we are energetically bringing to the food we make. This creative project practices a pedagogy that works with food to create healing space. Healing, as it is defined here, is not void of discomfort nor is it happiness all the time. Who haunts your domestic space? Who is at your back when you cook? This project finds information and sacred knowledge in the food we cook and eat; it reflects back to us deeply buried truths regarding our traumas, …
Planning Obsolescence: Generational Labor, Welcoming Crisis, And Actualizing Immaterial Bonds, Syeda Mahmood
Planning Obsolescence: Generational Labor, Welcoming Crisis, And Actualizing Immaterial Bonds, Syeda Mahmood
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
The 2008 economic crisis crippled the global public higher education sector, leaving a generation questioning the practicalities of pursuing higher education. In response to the neoliberalization of the public university, I examine the proliferation of DIY ethics and practices Millennials (AKA the Recession Generation) have strategically developed to evade institutions that further indebt their members. I further examine how the Recession Generation shapes affective labor, also described as immaterial labor, which serves as a necessary condition in the informational age of late capitalism. In examining a range of DIY sites, I show how Millennials strategically develop para-academic practices in order …
Mapping Transgender Narratives In A Digital Age, Megan Mabry
Mapping Transgender Narratives In A Digital Age, Megan Mabry
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Considering the rise of transgender representation and discussion across many media platforms (television, film, print, social networking, etc.), how does such burgeoning and diverse exposure affect transgender individuals and communities? This project explores the ways in which transgender communities have developed and investigated potential for alternative and community-created representations of transgender experiences. With a particular focus on the utility and versatility of digital spaces, this project investigates the potential of web comics in harnessing both digital space and graphic narrative in creating alternative representation and discourse. The ensuing work, Maps, follows the journey of a cast of queer and …
Gendered Admission: Transinclusive Admissions Policies At Women's Colleges, Ruby Kett
Gendered Admission: Transinclusive Admissions Policies At Women's Colleges, Ruby Kett
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Many women’s colleges in the United States are evaluating their mission to educate women in a society where gender is recognized as a social construct. As a result, some women’s colleges have changed their admissions policies to include transgender people. By examining the admissions policies of select women’s colleges, I analyze who becomes a thinkable student at women’s colleges, as well as who is excluded by the admissions policies. Through my analysis of the admissions policies of twelve women’s colleges, I divide the colleges into four categories: colleges with self-identification policies, colleges with consistent identification policies, colleges with legal and/or …
From Panic To Pity: Circuits And Circulations Of The Contemporary Anti-Trafficking Crusade, Juliana Ramirez-Rodriguez
From Panic To Pity: Circuits And Circulations Of The Contemporary Anti-Trafficking Crusade, Juliana Ramirez-Rodriguez
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
The creation, implementation, and ratification of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), as well as the growth of parallel private initiatives against human trafficking, have emerged from a neoliberal political agenda that focuses on redefinitions of labor, sexuality, securitization of humanitarian campaigns, and immigration policies. In this thesis, I explore some of the meanings and effects of those redefinitions by focusing on the affective registers of pity and panic in their ability to mobilize publics toward restrictive forms of assistance to real and imaginary victims of the so-called phenomenon of “modern-day slavery.”
“You Can’T Pour From An Empty Cup”: Self-Care And Spiritual Activism In Queen Afua’S Sacred Woman, Brandy J. Pettijohn
“You Can’T Pour From An Empty Cup”: Self-Care And Spiritual Activism In Queen Afua’S Sacred Woman, Brandy J. Pettijohn
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Queen Afua created the Sacred Woman as a text and program that seeks to heal women of common disorders that particularly affect the African American community. This thesis project is a conversation about the self-care methods embedded within the text that moves away from the ideology of the strongblackwoman. I position both theories and methods of self-care by using a womanist theoretical framework, as well as textual analysis and interviews as methods that examine the womanist concept of spiritual activism, which expands what is thought of as radical and liberatory activist actions.
Sexy Ambiguity And Circulating Sexuality: Assemblage, Desire, And Representation In Seba Al-Herz's The Others, Kristyn Johnson
Sexy Ambiguity And Circulating Sexuality: Assemblage, Desire, And Representation In Seba Al-Herz's The Others, Kristyn Johnson
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Sexual representations in Seba al-Herz’s Saudi Arabian novel The Others span various kinds of sexual identification and experience. Surface level readings of the novel find examples of lesbian identities and encounters, but a deeper, more nuanced examination of the novel unearths a complex set of queer desires, practices, sexual encounters, and relationships that do not fit neatly in to regulated sexual identity categories. Through literary analysis, I argue that through ambiguities in the novel’s construction and narration, and through the Narrator’s sexual experiences, The Others offers a kind of sexual expression that opens up possibilities of de-territorializing and re-territorializing sexual …
The Veiled Identity: Hijabistas, Instagram And Branding In The Online Islamic Fashion Industry, Kelsey Waninger
The Veiled Identity: Hijabistas, Instagram And Branding In The Online Islamic Fashion Industry, Kelsey Waninger
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
What it means to be a Muslim woman is frequently redefined in reaction to the notions of ‘Muslim womanhood’ constructed within neoliberal society. By examining the ways in which Hijabi fashion bloggers use the visual discourse of their Instagram accounts to implement specific notions of taste, authenticity and branding this project aims to address the question of where fashion blogs fit within mainstream fashion frameworks and the ways in which the assumed tensions surrounding veiling and fashion are disrupted.
(De)Tangled: An Exploration Of The Hierarchies In The Natural Hair Community, Schillica Howard
(De)Tangled: An Exploration Of The Hierarchies In The Natural Hair Community, Schillica Howard
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Within popular discourse, natural hair is considered to be a source of liberation where Black women can accept and nurture their natural hair texture. My research explores the points of contention in this community and the hierarchies that exist based on length of hair, curl pattern, and texture. By using product content analysis, interviews with Black women with natural hair, and analysis of social media, this thesis brings the ideal aesthetics in the natural hair community to the forefront for closer examination. Findings insist that, in the natural hair community, a curl is more attractive than a kink, longer hair …
"Lean In," "Opt Out," And The Journey To Happiness: Brazilian College Women Imagine Freedom, Cecilia Troiano
"Lean In," "Opt Out," And The Journey To Happiness: Brazilian College Women Imagine Freedom, Cecilia Troiano
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
This work focuses on understanding how nine Brazilian college women, from different ethnicities and sexual orientations, navigate their future expectations related to career and personal lives. Thus, the research explores how they are planning to create and maintain a work/life balance and how they are shaping their intentions in relation to the duality “lean in”/ “opt out,” a dichotomy that tells women to work hard and assert themselves or to leave the competitive workplace. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the author explores how the women’s idealized futures do not follow the propositions offered by “lean …
The Commercialization Of The Atlanta Pride Festival: “Somebody's Got To Pay For It”, Sarah Beasley
The Commercialization Of The Atlanta Pride Festival: “Somebody's Got To Pay For It”, Sarah Beasley
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
This thesis is focused on the commercialization of the Atlanta Pride Festival during the years 1992-1997. Through personal interviews, I have concluded that the Atlanta Pride Festival produced complicated experiences for participants who had mixed feelings about the commercialization.
The Politics Of Impossibility: Cece Mcdonald And Trayvon Martin— The Bursting Of Black Rage, Taryn Jordan
The Politics Of Impossibility: Cece Mcdonald And Trayvon Martin— The Bursting Of Black Rage, Taryn Jordan
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
What can the affect of black rage do in a era of impossibility marked by the circulation of neoliberal post-race post-feminist themes? I argue that black rage is a key weapon in the fight against our impossible era—black rage operates through an affective bursting apart, disrupting circulating narratives connected to a post racial, post feminist world and charting a new path of social unrest that has the potential to transform the social order. I locate political uses of black rage through two case studies: CeCe McDonald, a black Trans* woman who was brutally attacked by a group of transphobic and …
Cooking Up Authenticity: Latina Celebrities, Cookbooks, And Consumerism, Siobhan Cooke
Cooking Up Authenticity: Latina Celebrities, Cookbooks, And Consumerism, Siobhan Cooke
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
This thesis examines contradictory stereotypes navigated by Latina celebrities within dominant representations of Latina identity. On one hand, Latinas are represented as traditional and family-oriented and on the other hand are understood as exotic and hypersexual. I argue that the marketing and content of cookbooks by Eva Longoria and Gloria and Emilio Estefan serve to perpetuate dominant stereotypes about what it means to be/cook/eat Latina, which limits the possibilities for relating to food and creates a narrative of a static, homogenous Latina identity. By performing rhetorical analysis of cookbooks by Eva Longoria and Gloria and Emilio Estefan, I illustrate the …
Forever Adolescence: Taylor Swift, Eroticized Innocence, And Performing Normativity, Valerie Pollock
Forever Adolescence: Taylor Swift, Eroticized Innocence, And Performing Normativity, Valerie Pollock
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
As a popular culture subject, Taylor Swift is an example of a widely circulated image that adheres to the guidelines for “appropriate” girlhood, innocence, and feminine performance. The proliferation of Swift’s identity as a virginal, delicate girl makes Swift the successful pop music figure that can “save” the troubled young girl of today. This thesis grapples with Swift’s image as an artist and addresses the ways that she often stands in as the example for imagined “appropriate” femininity. Swift’s image relies on ideas about innocence and normativity that are directly linked to markers of whiteness without ever having to explicitly …
Paying For The Gift Of Education: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Intown Academy Of Atlanta, Scott Nesbit
Paying For The Gift Of Education: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Intown Academy Of Atlanta, Scott Nesbit
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
In my critical discourse analysis of The Intown Academy's (TIA) various documents and media—including the school's charter petition, charter, Parent-Student Handbook, and website—I articulate the school's subjectifying narratives and analyze how these narratives function to (re)produce particular subjects according to tropes of threat/crisis, opportunity, corporate/non-profit benevolence, and personal responsibility. Identifying these subjects, I analyze how they are effected/affected by the practice of education at TIA. To this end, I examine the various practices of school discipline codified in the Parent and Student Contracts in TIA's 2012-2013 Parent Student Handbook, including mandates for the wearing of school uniforms, volunteer labor, and …
Femininity And Masculinity In Indonesian Popular Music Videos, Hannah Carswell
Femininity And Masculinity In Indonesian Popular Music Videos, Hannah Carswell
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
This work fills a gap in research on Indonesian popular culture by delving into the presentation of femininity and masculinity in Indonesian music videos. Through a textual analysis of four videos, a survey of the video YouTube comments, and interviews with Indonesians about these videos, the author examines the presentation of Order/Chaos and other Male/Female binaries in the music videos and their relationship with the current pop culture and political environment.
Performing Specters Of Imperialism: Affect, Terror, And The Body In Naveed Mir's The Cinco Sanders Show, Andrea Miller
Performing Specters Of Imperialism: Affect, Terror, And The Body In Naveed Mir's The Cinco Sanders Show, Andrea Miller
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Examining the work of Pakistani-American performance artist Naveed Mir’s The Cinco Sanders Show, this thesis explores Mir’s work as conjuring the specters of the terrorist, tortured, and targeted bodies of the U.S. war on terror and unpacks ghosting/haunting as a primary technology of U.S. imperialism. Through close readings of Mir’s characters Party Mummy and Mohammed the Plumber, I argue that Mir’s affective performance style evokes and complicates what I refer to as the three decorporealizing logics of the war on terror: the body-made-threat, the body-made-target, and the body-made torture. Understanding these processes as violent forms of racialization that take …
Resisting Tropes, Inserting Selves: An Interpretative Biographical Analysis Of The Life Writings Of Mixed Race Women Writers, Erin M. George
Resisting Tropes, Inserting Selves: An Interpretative Biographical Analysis Of The Life Writings Of Mixed Race Women Writers, Erin M. George
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
This thesis focuses on the patterns of racial formation, and epistemological points of entry that are salient to the mulatta experience in the United States, through the use of life writings. The results gleaned from this research are utilized to problematize revived political and social assertions of a post-feminist, post-racist United States.
It Makes Atlanta Feel Like A Real City: Biopolitical Urbanism And Public Art On The Atlanta Beltline, Sherah Faulkner
It Makes Atlanta Feel Like A Real City: Biopolitical Urbanism And Public Art On The Atlanta Beltline, Sherah Faulkner
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Functioning as both a light rail transit project and comprehensive redevelopment program, the Atlanta BeltLine is widely expected to impact the city of Atlanta as profoundly did 1996 Olympic Games. In this paper, the Atlanta BeltLine is examined as a biopolitical project and the manners in which its public arts program, Art on Art on the Atlanta BeltLine, works to secure local consent redevelopment are explored.
J-Setting In Public: Black Queer Desires And Worldmaking, Lamont Loyd-Sims
J-Setting In Public: Black Queer Desires And Worldmaking, Lamont Loyd-Sims
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
My research provides an inquiry of Black southern queerness situated through the artistic performance of j-setting. I explore j-setting as a dance style created by Black gay men by mapping out its beginnings, and how it has (not) traveled through mainstream culture. With this in mind I interrogate how j-setting exists as a cultural scene for Black queer men in the South to celebrate who we are, while also representing a strategy for our survival against racism, heteronormativity, and other dominant forces that pathologize our realities. This project suggests that an exploration of j-setting exemplifies the resilience and vulnerabilities of …
Listening From The Heart: The Experience Of Compassionate Listening In Teen Talking Circle, Carla Wilson
Listening From The Heart: The Experience Of Compassionate Listening In Teen Talking Circle, Carla Wilson
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of former teen talking circle participant’s experience with the practice of compassionate listening in talking circles and to explore compassionate listening as a form of spiritual activism. This study explored the use and effect of compassionate listening within the facilitator training materials developed and used by the organization Teen Talking Circles as well as the use and experience of compassionate listening within the teen talking circles. For the purpose of this study, I interviewed seven former female teen talking circle participants. Open ended semi-structured interviews were the means of …
A Feminist Action Research Project: Creating A Practical Support Program For The Georgia Reproductive Justice Access Network, Melinda Mckew
A Feminist Action Research Project: Creating A Practical Support Program For The Georgia Reproductive Justice Access Network, Melinda Mckew
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
The purpose of this feminist action research project was to produce a practical support volunteer training and manual for the Georgia Reproductive Justice Access Network (GRJAN). Founded in 2011, GRJAN is a grassroots, reproductive justice abortion fund that provides abortion funding and until 2012, practical support (lodging, transportation, and childcare) to low-income individuals seeking abortion services in Atlanta, GA. The resultant thesis is a reflective essay upon the project, documenting and analyzing the successes and failures of the project as well as discussing the limitations of pursuing feminist activist work within the academy.
Monsters In My Bed: Accounting For The Popularity Of Young Adult Paranormal Romances, Whitney Young
Monsters In My Bed: Accounting For The Popularity Of Young Adult Paranormal Romances, Whitney Young
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Using textual analysis of 49 young adult paranormal romances, I answer what it is about the cultural milieu that makes these novels popular right now? This thesis argues that the discourse which emerges from the novels reflects contemporary discourse and narrative about the girls and young women who read the genre and who place themselves within this discourse and narrative. The novels respond to this discourse by offering instances where the girls' ideologies, built on the discourse taught to them, can be temporarily restored when the narrative proves false. These novels also undermine the confining discourse which the girls find …
A Story Of One's Own: Creative Narratives About Muslim Women In Turkey, Mirkena Ozer
A Story Of One's Own: Creative Narratives About Muslim Women In Turkey, Mirkena Ozer
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Writing fiction within a feminist framework is a helpful way in bringing up women’s issues to a wider readership that is not necessarily familiar with feminist scholarship. Through creative narrative an author can dispel misunderstandings, correct misconceptions and represent underrepresented women who have been rendered invisible or pushed to the margins by hegemonic discourses. My novella tells the story of a group of Muslim women doing community work in Turkey. Navigating their way in contemporary Turkey, these women dispel the upheld literary stereotypes of Muslim women. Through their work and dedication, these women show that they are not victims of …
Mexican/Migrant Mothers And 'Anchor Babies" In Anti-Immigration Discourses: Meanings Of Citizenship And Illegality In The United States, Margaret E. Franz
Mexican/Migrant Mothers And 'Anchor Babies" In Anti-Immigration Discourses: Meanings Of Citizenship And Illegality In The United States, Margaret E. Franz
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
The right wing anti-immigration movement’s recent surge in racial panic and paranoia concerning the specter of the overly fertile Mexican migrant mother and her US-born child points to a discursive struggle over the meaning of citizenship and illegality. Starting from the assumption that both citizenship and illegality are highly contested and fluid political and moral categories, this project examines how white supremacist and heteronormative ideologies and political emotions like love and fear construct both Mexican migrants and their children as “illegal,” while simultaneously shrinking the meaning and enactment of citizenship for everyone. I argue that citizens of Mexican descent are …
Not Simply Women's Bodybuilding: Gender And The Female Competition Categories, Sheena A. Hunter
Not Simply Women's Bodybuilding: Gender And The Female Competition Categories, Sheena A. Hunter
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
Once known only as Bodybuilding and Women’s Bodybuilding, the sport has grown to include multiple competition categories that both limit and expand opportunities for female bodybuilders. While the creation of additional categories, such as Fitness, Figure, Bikini, and Physique, appears to make the sport more inclusive to more variations and interpretation of the feminine, muscular physique, it also creates more in-between spaces. This auto ethnographic research explores the ways that multiple female competition categories within the sport of Bodybuilding define, reinforce, and complicate the gendered experiences of female physique athletes, by bringing freak theory into conversation with body categories.
Queer Feelings, Political Potential: Tracing Affect In Performance Spaces, Dylan Mccarthy Blackston
Queer Feelings, Political Potential: Tracing Affect In Performance Spaces, Dylan Mccarthy Blackston
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
This thesis layers theories of affect circulation, queer performance participation, counterpublics, and queer space and time with ethnographic work performed in queer performance spaces. In so doing, the thesis explores affective networks in queer performance spaces in order to begin a theoretical analysis of the connecting affects amongst queer performance participants. In my interviews, I found affective connections which I explored as keywords. These keywords express affects that, in part, create the affective networks of queer performance participants.
Recovering Frances Virginia And The Frances Virginia Tea Room: Transition Era Activism At The Intersections Of Womanism, Feminism, And Home Economics, 1920-1962, Mildred H. Coleman
Recovering Frances Virginia And The Frances Virginia Tea Room: Transition Era Activism At The Intersections Of Womanism, Feminism, And Home Economics, 1920-1962, Mildred H. Coleman
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses
ABSTRACT This work answers the question “Who was Frances Virginia?” by recovering the story of an Atlanta entrepreneur, Frances Virginia Wikle Whitaker, and her tea room foodservice business. It acknowledges “Frances Virginia,” as the public knew her; and focuses on her career as demonstrative of an under‐theorized form of women’s activism. Her education and proclivity in the once all‐female domain of home economics have important characteristics that are under‐ represented, and often misinterpreted, in today’s discourse. I use a womanist theoretical lens within a historical frame to examine her story as a home economist during the tea room movement of …