Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Responding To Change: Girl Scouts, Race, And The Feminist Movement, Phyllis E. Reske

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA) is to teach girls to be giving, self-sufficient, and independent in their homes and communities through volunteer work and earning merit badges. Open to all girls since its inception, the GSUSA offers Girl Scouts training in both gender-conforming and nontraditional vocations. However, during the first half of the twentieth century, segregation and domesticity was emphasized in American society. The organization began to focus less on careers, independence, and racial inclusion to preparing predominately white girls to be good wives and mothers. As Black Power and women’s liberation …

Feminism And The Black Church: A Qualitative Analysis Of Feminism Among Black Women In A Southern Baptist Church, Brianne Alexandra Painia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Black women’s religious faith has been found to be integral to their survival (Harris-Perry 2011) in a world that many times chooses to marginalize them due to a host of factors, including their race, gender, and expressions of sexuality (Collins 1996; Morgan 2000) meaning that for black women religion is more than a simple denominational label (such as Lutheran, Catholic, or Baptist). Black women’s involvement in the Black Church has been covered from a variety of angles with researchers noting the importance of African American women to the success of many black churches (Evans 2001), the benefits such faith practice …

Away From The End Of Motherhood: Sites Of Haunting In The Social Imaginary In Lemonade And The Handmaid's Tale, Julia Michele Fleming

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the television series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, specifically the episode "A Woman's Place," and Beyoncé's Lemonade: A Visual Album. I argue that these cultural texts leverage representations of women's lived experiences to scrutinize contemporary American anxieties about motherhood and reproductive justice. Lemonade, a celebration of Black womanhood, presents a counterpoint to The Handmaid's Tale's preoccupation with white motherhood in way that speculates on the utopian potentials of a woman-centered society.

Using bell hooks' film analysis, Avery Gordon's "haunting," and Luce Irigaray's "mimicry," I examine two interconnected themes: feminist aesthetics and generational haunting. …