Digital Commons Network^™

A Poetically Embodied Out-Of-Body Experience, Natalie Sunseri

Honors Theses

The choreographic project Euphoric Dysphoria emerged as a response to the choreographer’s gender dysphoria and personal observations about the way that feminine-presenting people are perceived and approached in dance spaces, particularly in comparison to masculine-presenting people. The dance originated as a choreographic exploration of extreme femininity and masculinity, and it evolved into a manifestation of performative gender and experiential gender. The choreographer was guided by her poem “Uneven Envy” when developing movement and building relationships among the dancers. She considered the contributions of Judith Butler, a scholar who writes about gender manifesting in the body due to socialization, and Laura …

Cultivating Spaces For American Citizenship In Pauline Hopkins’S Contending Forces, Jonathan Puckett

Honors Theses

Rediscovered through archival recovery in the late 1970s, Pauline E. Hopkins (1859-1930) was an African American author, journalist, and activist at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (1900), Hopkins’s African American characters craft spaces, both sacred and secular, where they can freely exercise their citizenship in the Jim Crow era. As Hopkins utilizes the sentimentalist genre to portray realistically life at the turn of the century, my thesis highlights the historical and literary significance of sacred spaces like Boston’s black Baptist churches. I also review two minor characters …

Tectonic, Rebecca E. Holifield

Honors Theses

Tectonic is a collection of original poems accompanied by a critical preface.

Women’S Resistance: Patient Pathographies And Medical Authority, Anna Claire Elliott

Honors Theses

In recent years, illness narratives have risen in popularity. Women’s medical narratives in particular have gained momentum in the literary world, and they often share commonalities including the inherent theme of medical resistance and an emphasis on the power dynamic between patients and physicians. This thesis will examine two pathographies, Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted and Porochista Khakpour’s Sick, in the contexts of gender and disability studies, as well as theories of illness narratives. I examine how each text resists medical authority, and I also closely survey the physician-patient relationships within each text. The themes of gender and disability emerge …

Naturalism And The New Woman: Fated Motherhood In Kate Chopin's The Awakening And Edith Wharton's The House Of Mirth, Lindsay J. Patorno

Honors Theses

Proto-feminist novels have garnered great critical attention in recent decades, largely owing to the reclamation efforts of feminist scholars from the 1960s onwards. These feminist scholars have remarked the fin-de-siècle emergence of a recurring narrative archetype: the unabashed New Woman, whose exploits in what were traditionally male-dominated spheres distinguished her from the domesticated matrons and sentimental bachelorettes of past literary paradigms. While the New Woman is now a commonplace among feminist critics, the following thesis uniquely interprets this feministic archetype in conjunction with the concurrent movement of American literary naturalism—a genre that proffers a deterministic worldview and is often regarded …

Gendered Speaking Patterns In Supreme Court Oral Arguments From 1981-2016, Gillain Purser

Honors Theses

This research attempts to discover whether or not the Supreme Court of the United State is subject to implicit gender biases during oral argumentation, largely through examining speaking time and the number of questions each justice is able to ask during a case's oral argumentation period. While there is substantial research on gender’s impact on communication and decision-making processes, as well as gender’s impact on court decisions, most research stops before it gets to the Supreme Court of the United States. There are two main goals to this research: First, to determine whether or not women Justices are impacted by …

“Patriotism Is Not Enough”: Edith Cavell’S Life And Death In Anglo-American Context, Erin B. Blackledge

Honors Theses

In October 1915, British nurse Edith Cavell was killed by the Germans for aiding in the illegal liberation of Allied soldiers. In the wake of her death, the British government created a propaganda firestorm to garner both domestic and foreign support for the war. In particular, the propaganda featuring Cavell was highly gendered and over the course of multiple generations has generated a diverse, and often polarized series of social and political responses in both Britain and the United States. Through the examination of government documents, newspapers, and popular culture, such as film and children’s novels, this thesis examines the …

Effect Of Physical Activity On Quality Of Life For College Students: A Comparative Gender Study, Sarah J. Boozer

Honors Theses

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between physical activity levels in college students and health related quality of life scores. Additional analysis was used to determine whether more of a relationship exists between female or male students’ in terms of activity versus quality of life.

Methods

Students for this study were gathered through their involvement in kinesiology based organizations on campus. Two surveys were utilized, the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire and the Health Related Quality of Life survey. Students were also asked to record their gender, which allowed for the second analysis. After scoring the …

Women In Gaming: A Study Of Female Players’ Experiences In Online Fps Games, M Allison Mcdaniel

Honors Theses

Existing literature has long been divided over whether the gaming world fosters violence and misogyny or provides a space for people to explore diverse identities. Not enough is known about how women experience videogames, especially the hypermasculine environment of first-person shooter (FPS) games. Competition, violence, and war, are dominant features of these games. The following thesis explores what harassment and discrimination women playing FPS games face, how they respond, and in what ways they find games to be empowering. A survey was distributed online to an international sample of 141 female FPS gamers. This research finds that women who play …

A Queen’S Reputation: A Feminist Analysis Of The Cultural Appropriations Of Cleopatra, Chamara Moore

Honors Theses

While there is no doubt that Cleopatra is considered a notable historical figure and popularly regarded character throughout modern media, there is a distinct pattern in her portrayal throughout time as a woman whose power is defined by her sexual promiscuity. Even throughout periods of powerful female monarchs, political change, and social progress her prowess as a leader has been assumingly attributed to her affairs with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. The purpose of this study is to examine how literature and media has contributed to this sexualized reputation of a queen who yielded authority over such a prosperous nation. …

Lgbt Parents On American Television, Heather Kahn

Honors Theses

Television is an ever changing medium used in mass communication, and people often rely on this medium for knowledge about different subjects. This study demonstrates how television depictions of marginalized groups can change over time. Focusing specifically on a subset of the LGBT community – parents – this study documents the evolution of LGBT parents on American television. A total of 14 television shows were selected for a qualitative analysis. The parents depicted in these shows were analyzed according to gender, race, class and sexuality. The results were then summarized and put into historical context. This study contributes to the …

Changing The Nature Of The Beast: An Analysis Of Significant Variations From Madame De Beaumont’S La Belle Et La Bête In Disney’S Beauty And The Beast, Heather A. Stevens

Honors Theses

Madame Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont wrote and published La Belle et La Bête while working as a governess and educator in 1757. She told the tale to a young female audience as a means of teaching important life lessons. Walt Disney’s animated film Beauty and the Beast, released in 1991, is clearly inspired by Beaumont’s story, yet Disney makes many alterations to her characters. This thesis locates and analyzes these changes, arguing that they greatly alter the message of Beaumont’s story from one that is empowering to women to one that is harmful and ultimately anti-woman. This thesis also examines …

Holy Experiments And Unholy Acts: Sex, Law, And Religion In Colonial Massachusetts, Rhode Island, And Pennsylvania, Anna L. Todd

Honors Theses

This thesis uses the law codes and court cases of sexual misconduct from the colonies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania to determine the degree to which the colonies’ stated understandings of the relationship between church and state were practically applied to the governing of their societies as well as how that understanding affected the daily lives of colonial women. Thus, this analysis uses the lens of female sexual deviance to determine the degree to which church and state were integrated or separated within the three colonies.

Chapter 1 discuses the law as it was written. It examines the sexual …

The Relationship Between Attitudes And Achievement In Mathematics Among Fifth Grade Students, Madeleine P. Michelli

Honors Theses

There have been a number of studies investigating how attitudes such as confidence and motivation affect students and their academic achievement. This study was conducted to identify specifically how fifth grade students’ attitudes affect their achievement in mathematics. Gender was studied to determine its effect on attitude and achievement. Furthermore, various types of personality traits were studied including extroversion, conscientiousness, self-control, and intellectual efficiency to determine their effects on achievement. To gather the data a questionnaire including a Likert scale survey and a math test was administered. The results indicated that there is a significant relationship between attitudes toward and …

Differences In Race And/Or Gender In Attitudes And Beliefs Towards Obesity Among Students At The University Of Southern Mississippi, Erick Brown

Honors Theses

Overweight and obesity have been described by various experts as critical problems in populations around the world, especially in the United States. These issues are so characterized because they affect numerous facets of life in this society. Researchers in the medical community have repeatedly described the health-related risks associated with obesity rates, asserting that higher risks of debilitating or fatal disease are tied to one’s level of obesity. They also say that obesity rates of populations are related to other disease rates, and many imply or clearly state that obesity is the cause and therefore the problem to be contested. …