Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A New Approach: The Feminist Musicology Studies Of Susan Mcclary And Marcia J. Citron, Kimberly Reitsma

Musical Offerings

One of the currently prevalent analytic approaches in academia is feminist theory and criticism. Its combination with musicology has influenced the field for the past four decades. The goal of the new approach, loosely termed “feminist musicology,” has been to discover, analyze, discuss, and promote the representation of women and the “feminine” essence in various disciplines of music. Today, feminist musicology is highly researched, published in books and journals, and presented as scholarly papers at various musicological conferences around the world. This new approach introduces the ideologies of feminism to the study of music.

Susan McClary and Marcia J. Citron …

Voices Made (M)Other, Lizbett Benge

MAIS Projects and Theses

Voices Made (M)other is a theatrical project I created consisting of two original short plays, Momologues and ILL. This interdisciplinary project combines motherhood studies, feminist studies, whiteness studies, and theatre. One cannot have political change without revolutionizing each individual; and so I am sharing the process behind creating ILL, an autobiographical play tracing events throughout my motherline, to demonstrate the ways in which this project has helped create a more nuanced version of motherhood that incorporates mental illness, maternal abuse, and healing from trauma. This project builds upon the theory of empowered mothering (O’Reilly, 2006) by which society begins looking …

Transformational Learning: Influence Of A Sexism And Heterosexism Course On Student Attitudes And Thought Development, Judy Ouellette

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The current study investigated whether a course regarding prejudice toward homosexuals and women impacted student attitudes and thought development (compared to a controls). Students completed measures of social dominance, attitudes toward homosexuals and obese persons, and modern sexism. Compared to controls the experimental group had less negative attitudes post course.

Brave: A Feminist Perspective On The Disney Princess Movie, Danielle Morrison

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Islamic Feminism: A Discourse Of Gender Justice And Equality, Breanna Ribeiro

Senior Theses

This paper examines Islamic feminism using structural methodology and the phenomenological approach to examine the component of Muslim feminists' activism that utilizes ijtihad and tafsir to reinterpret patriarchal rhetoric and highlight Islamic discourses that validate gender equality. These scholars and activists critically analyze Islamic theology by employing hermeneutics in order to produce Islamic exegeses that affirm social justice, gender equality, and liberation. Religion plays a critical role in building collective cultural identities; therefore, examining sacred texts' representation and prescription of gender roles and mores generates an understanding of the gender order in the community of believers, while simultaneously exposing contextual …

Comparing The Reproductive Climates Of Japan, Norway And Italy: A New Way Of Looking At The Reasons For Low Fertility Rates, Samantha Graham

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In recent years, much has been made of the looming demographic crisis that is forming in Japan. The declining birthrate and graying of the population has made many government officials, sociologists, and scholars very anxious about what will happen when a nation begins to shrink. These same officials and scholars are also looking for a reason for the decline, and many have placed the blame on Japanese women without examining the reasons these women have for having fewer children or forgoing motherhood altogether. But Japan is not the only nation suffering from population decline. Other smaller, industrialized nations also face …

Whovians And Directioners: Challenging The Fangirl Identity, Brianna Vancant

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Using notions from fan blogs and fan theory, this project analyzes the inconsistencies surrounding the phenomenon of so-called fangirls in the Doctor Who and One Direction worlds. The term fangirl is usually defined as an irrational adolescent female who is only a fan of very specific types of entertainment because of factors that are perceived by other fans as superficial and irrelevant. In contemporary music and television fandom, these fangirls are often criticized and policed by other fans, many times disregarded as not ‘true’ fans. The project studies this distorted perception and how it leads to misconceptions about the wider …

A Divine Inequality: Contextualizing Gender And Authority In Contemporary Mormon Feminism, Taylee Robinson Pardi

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project traces the decline of authority for Mormon women coupled with the rise of defined gender roles within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in order to contextualize contemporary Mormon feminism. Using a radical feminist analysis, this project will explore how contemporary Mormon women relate to their early Mormon sisters and the ways in which the culture and doctrine of Mormonism often converge, lending itself to a unique feminist perspective. This project argues that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as currently practiced, is not just inherently patriarchal, but un-egalitarian, and that contemporary …

To Hell... And Back? An Examination Feminism And Its Consequences, Kaylee Mahaffey

Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to give an in depth analysis of the feminist movement and the effects it has had on society and the family unit. The first portion of the thesis will be allotted to a historical account of the feminist movement and the various feminist theories that it spawned throughout the three waves of the movement. After the account of the movement itself, a description of the four categories of feminist ideologies will be explained and mildly critiqued. Once the historical stage has been set, a thorough criticism feminism will be performed and particular emphasis will …

Diversity In Times Of Austerity: Documenting Resistance In The Academy, David Moscowitz, Terri Jett, Terri Carney, Tamara Leech, Ann M. Savage

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

What happens to feminism in the university is parallel to what happens to feminism in other venues under economic restructuring: while the impoverished nation is forced to cut social services and thereby send women back to the hierarchy of the family, the academy likewise reduces its footprint in interdisciplinary structures and contains academic feminists back to the hierarchy of departments and disciplines. When the family and the department become powerful arbiters of cultural values, women and feminist academics by and large suffer: they either accept a diminished role or are pushed to compete in a system they recognize as antithetical …

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Catholic Feminism: Understanding Prophetic And Deliberative Responses To The Institutional Catholic Church, Mridula Mascarenhas

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation contrasts the Catholic Church's rhetorical framing of feminist activism within the Church against the rhetoric of two organizations that speak on behalf of Catholic feminism. The study conceptualizes the engagement between the Church hierarchy and the feminists as a chorus of voices, each claiming to advocate for authentically Catholic principles. The rhetorical voice of each agent is analyzed to uncover underlying rhetorical strategies. The dissertation argues that although the Church establishment, through the use of the doctrinal voice, claims a contradiction between Catholicism and radical feminism, Catholic feminists attempt to dissolve the alleged contradiction with the use of …

Female Reverberations Online: An Analysis Of Tunisian, Egyptian, And Moroccan Female Cyberactivism During The Arab Spring, Brittany Landorf

International Studies Honors Projects

Digital technologies and social media networks have the potential to open new platforms for women in the public domain. During the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions, female cyberactivists used digital technologies to participate in and at times led protests. This thesis examines how Tunisian, Egyptian, and Moroccan female cyberactivists deployed social media networks to write a new body politic online. It argues throughout that female activists turned to online activism to disrupt gender relations in their countries and demand social, religious, economic, and political gender parity.

Long May She Reign: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender Expectations In Disney’S Tangled And Disney/Pixar’S Brave, Caitlin J. Saladino

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

This project addresses messages about gender expectations in Disney princess narratives. The two films included in my project are Tangled (2010) and Brave (2012), which feature the most recently inducted princesses to the marketed Disney Princess line (Rapunzel and Merida, respectively). Using genre as an organizing principle, I argue that Rapunzel and Merida are different from the past Disney princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, etc.) because their narratives reflect new ideas about gender expectations in modern society. The central tension appearing in both films is the opposition between the image of woman as traditional, domestic, and dependent and woman …

Defying Borders: Transforming Learning Through Collaborative Feminist Organizing And Interdisciplinary, Transnational Pedagogy, Terri Carney, Margaretha Geertsema Sligh, Ann M. Savage, Ageeth Sluis

Ageeth Sluis

The authors provide a case study of how a group of faculty members was able to initiate a transformation in student learning and institutional structures at a small university in the Midwestern U.S. through the introduction of collaborative feminist organizing and pedagogy. It details faculty-led initiatives that set the stage for innovative teaching and learning, and it describes the authors' experience in the face of resistance when introducing a global women's human rights course into the university's new core curriculum. Because of its divers, interdisciplinary and transnational content, this course challenged deeply ingrained disciplinary and pedagogical borders of both traditional …

Royal Resistance: The Hegemony Of Disney Princess Culture And The Agency Of Language, Rachel Leonard

Culminating Projects in English

The Disney Princess franchise has been commercially successful and culturally influential. While popular culture idealizes the Princess products, this thesis uses a feminist perspective to argue that the brand promotes an ideology of essentialized, traditional femininity that inhibits the ability of preschool girls to create complex identities. This problematic ideology is exacerbated by a transformation of the brand into a type of cultural hegemony that makes it seemingly impossible to resist the troubling influence of Disney's Princess.

Yet, in order to counteract a sense of determinism, there must be a way for individuals, especially parents and daughters, to exercise agency …

Coming Into Consciousness Women’S Empowerment Projects In Chinandega, Nicaragua, Brittany Wightman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Nicaraguan people are gridlocked into various oppressive hierarchies. Those who find themselves at the bottom of these hierarchies face what Paolo Freire calls “dehumanization”, because they are unable to engage in the inquiry and praxis of their realities. Through my independent study project, I address the hierarchical system of patriarchy in Nicaragua, and highlight the ways in which women empowering themselves are reclaiming their humanity through increasing consciousness. I was fortunate enough to work with two organizations in Chinandega: El Movimiento de Mujeres de Chinandega, and El Grupo Crecer. In working with these organizations I became immersed in the the …

Men And Feminism: The Art Of Negotiation, Emma Craig

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study is the result of a month-long interview process with seven men living in the Netherlands. It focuses on the feminist experiences of the men as well as the ways in which they enact or embody feminist ideals in their daily lives. Their backgrounds are very diverse. Some are Dutch natives, while others are migrants from other nations. There are diversities in race, sexuality, age, and class as well. Each interviewee negotiates their masculinity and their feminist ideology differently. Specifically, this study examined the pressure to uphold hegemonic masculinity, homosociality as a platform for feminism, and some of the …

Tammy Rae Carland's Queer Riot Grrrl Zine"I ( Heart ) Amy Carter": A World Of Public Intimacy, Annah-Marie Rostowsky

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Tammy Rae Carland's queer Riot Grrrl zine I (heart) Amy Carter as a counterpublic sphere engendered by acts of public intimacy that make visible the intersectional complexities of gender, sexuality, class, and race that insidious traumas continually work to conceal. It looks to Ann Cvetkovich's inquiries into the positive aspects of public cultures in the book An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (2006) as well as Mimi Thi Nguyen's investigation of the Riot Grrrl race crisis in the article "Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival" (2012) as frameworks to critique Carland's visual and textual …

From Eugenics To Planned Parenthood: How A Black Feminist Can Reconcile A Troubled Past In Order To Accept A Promising Future, Ebony Davenport

De/Constructing Social Justice: Past, Present, and Futures

Science has long debunked genetic differences between races but prior to this knowledge several hundred thousand people believed otherwise. Fueled by Social Darwinism and evolutionary theories the Eugenics Movement emerged. This school of thought turned into a social movement and began as a method of reducing society to its most fit members. This scientific racism employed an insidious agenda to reduce procreation amongst blacks in America. This ethnic cleansing was rather overt except toward the thousands upon thousands of black women being sterilized unbeknownst to them. Key figures of the American Eugenics Movement contributed large amounts of funds to found …

The Palestinian Women's Movement Versus Hamas: Attempting To Understand Women's Empowerment Outside A Feminist Framework, Sara Ababneh

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper asks whether–and if so, how–Islamic groups such as Hamas that clearly define themselves outside a feminist framework can be studied in terms of women’s empowerment. The material discussed is based on fieldwork conducted with Hamas-affiliated female Islamists, as well as women’s rights activists in general, in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2007. Centrally, this work debates whether it is possible to think of women's empowerment in non-feminist terms. The significance of this study lies in two critical contributions to questions of women’s empowerment in Muslim societies: Firstly, the case of Islamism exposes the hegemony of feminism–religious and secular–as …

My (Not So) Angry Vagina, Mary E. Maloney

SURGE

Why is feminism a dirty word? Why are celebrities from Susan Sarandon to Lady Gaga and Katy Perry explicitly rejecting the feminist label? And why is Carrie Underwood saying, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am a feminist, that can come off as a negative connotation.”

Since when was there a negativity surrounding feminism? Well, basically since forever. [excerpt]

Women's Studies At Umass Boston: Celebrates 25 Years 1973-1998, Sherry H. Penney, Jean Mcmahon Humez

Sherry Penney

What follows is an impressionistic overview of our program's first twenty five years, derived in part from our archives and in part from our collective recollections, and written by the current program director. As with any celebratory institutional history, it makes no claim to objectivity. Our aim is to look back at the main lines of our growth and development, and in so doing to acknowledge many of the individuals who have contributed to the building of the program over time. We gratefully acknowledge the work of our first archivist, UMass Women's Studies / Sociology graduate dian fitzpatrick who, in …

For Love And For Justice: Narratives Of Lesbian Activism, Kelly Anderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the role of lesbians in the U.S. second wave feminist movement, arguing that the history of women's liberation is more diverse, more intersectional, and more radical than previously documented. The body of this work is five oral histories conducted with lifelong activists and public intellectuals for the Voices of Feminism project at the Sophia Smith Collection: Katherine Acey, former Executive Director of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice; Dorothy Allison, author and sex radical; Suzanne Pharr, southern anti-racist organizer and author; Achebe Powell, activist and diversity trainer; and Carmen Vázquez, LGBT activist and founding director of the …

Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes In Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In a number of international fairy tale types, such as ATU 451 ("The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers"), the female protagonist voluntarily stops speaking in order to attain the object of her quest. In ATU 451, found in the collected tales of the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen as well as in oral tradition, the protagonist remains silent while weaving the shirts needed to disenchant her brothers from their birdlike forms. While this silence is undoubtedly disempowering in some ways as she cannot defend herself from persecution and accusations of wickedness, here I argue that the choice to remain silent …

Why We Stay, Brittany Nicole Mcintyre

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Why we stay is a piece of Creative Non-Fiction, is a work that is heavily focused on region. The narrative takes up the life of a female Appalachian. The challenges of being an Appalachian woman raising a family are analyzed alongside such issues as domestic violence, family dysfunction, and mental illness. Because the piece is set in both rural and urban Appalachia, the issue of family is examined in terms of generational conflict and the strong bonds of a matriarch.

Teaching Postcolonial Literature In An Elite University: An Edinburgh Lecturer’S Perspective, Michelle Keown

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This reflective essay explores some of the pedagogical challenges I have faced in teaching postcolonial literature and theory at the University of Edinburgh. There are particular social dynamics at work at Edinburgh that make engaging with intersectionality, particularly in the context of colonialism and racism, a rather complex endeavor. Edinburgh is a Russell Group university, and our undergraduate constituency is overwhelmingly white, middle class and British, with a high proportion of students coming from British public-school backgrounds. Many of these students approach postcolonial writing with well-meaning liberal intentions, but often adopt what Graham Huggan (2001) would term an exoticizing perspective …

Mother Of A New World? Stereotypical Representations Of Black Women In Three Postapocalyptic Films, Karima K. Jeffrey

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This essay explores three cinematic representations of Black matriarchs who play prophetic roles in redeeming humanity in the midst of apocalyptic change: Ika (Quest for Fire), Kee (Children of Men), and The Oracle (The Matrix trilogy). Not only do these courageous women resist the politics of domination, rebelling against a dying status quo, but they "give birth" to the leaders needed to rebuild a world in chaos and decay. One film ends with a pregnant woman rubbing her belly as she stands on the precipice of evolutionary change; another positions a mother and newborn adrift, waiting to be found by …

“Of The Woman First Of All”: Walt Whitman And Women's Literary History, Vivian Delchamps

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis contemplates Walt Whitman's role in the lives of 19th and 20th century women writers and his significance to early American feminism. I consider the ways women inspired him to develop pro-feminist ideas about maternity, womanhood, and female liberation.

Undermining The Angelic Restrictions Of First-Wave Feminism: What The New Woman Did, Didn't, And Wouldn't Do, Jane Kristen Asher

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation provides an intertextual reading of Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did (1895), Victoria Cross's The Woman Who Didn't (1895), and Lucas Cleeve's The Woman Who Wouldn't (1895) in order to historically and culturally contextualize these popular New Woman novels in social-purity feminism, the marriage debate, and reticent sexual politics of the late-nineteenth century. By examining the ways that The Woman Who heroines discursively and thematically engage with first-wave feminism and by focusing on this dialectical exchange of feminist ideas and practices as they were manifested in feminist publications and campaigns at the turn of the century, I argue …

Atatürk's Balancing Act: The Role Of Secularism In Turkey, Patrick G. Rear

Global Tides

The intersection of religion and politics in the form of a civil religion has been present since time immemorial. This paper looks specifically to the relationship between Turkey’s development of a secular civil religion after gaining independence and the advancing of women’s rights and democratic values. In examining the intersections of state and religion in a secular Islamic society, it draws parallels to the French civil religion as it came to be following the French Revolution. Though Atatürk and other secularists were strong forces in developing the civil religion, the paper also examines liberal democratic and conservative Islamic groups in …