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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Gender

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

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Institutionalized Normative Heterosexuality : The Case Of Sexual Fluidity, Nicole Lamarre Jan 2022

Institutionalized Normative Heterosexuality : The Case Of Sexual Fluidity, Nicole Lamarre

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Since Alfred Kinsey’s early exploration of sexual behaviors, identities, and desires, there has been a proliferation of studies on what is generally regarded today as sexual fluidity. Inquiry into sexual histories that are neither wholly heterosexual nor homosexual (or even bisexual) has been incredibly well documented by this time. Generally, theories about sexual fluidity have taken one of two positions. The first camp interprets sexual variance as a sign of changing times and crumbling sexual and gender binaries. The second group of theorists postulate that sexual fluidity is neither new nor a particularly positive or liberating social trend. Instead of …


Flexible Lives On Engineering's 'Bleeding Edge' : Gender, Migration And Belonging In The Semiconductor Industry, Sarah E. Appelhans May 2021

Flexible Lives On Engineering's 'Bleeding Edge' : Gender, Migration And Belonging In The Semiconductor Industry, Sarah E. Appelhans

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation explores gender, flexibilization, and belonging within professional high tech employment, particularly amongst women and migrant engineers. Prior studies of women in the “integrated circuit” focused on low-skilled factory labor (Nakamura 2014, Grossman 1980); however, women are increasingly choosing careers in the male-dominated engineering workforce, which designs and manufactures semiconductor technology. Fieldwork for this dissertation took place between May 2018 – Aug 2019 in the Northeastern US, a regional hub for semiconductor manufacturing companies. Thirty-eight life history interviews were conducted with participants from several companies in the area, along with frequent follow ups and participant observation with seventeen engineering …


The Everyday Sacred : A Symbolic Analysis Of Contemporary Yucatec Maya Women's Daily Realities, Crystal Sheedy Jan 2019

The Everyday Sacred : A Symbolic Analysis Of Contemporary Yucatec Maya Women's Daily Realities, Crystal Sheedy

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

As a collaborative effort between myself and the Maya women with whom I worked, who live in Xocén, this dissertation seeks to illuminate the sacred world of Maya women, as well as dismantle the insidious narrative that younger generations of Mayas are losing their culture. Instrumental to this process is the use of decolonial methods (Lawless 1993) and descriptive theoretical premises (Geertz 1973; Turner 1967, 1969) that allowed me to analyze Maya women’s discursive speech, referred to as both chismes and heridos in Spanish, which can be translated as gossip, as well as the speech genre of u t’àan nukuč …


"We Get Nothing" : An Ethnography Of Participatory Development And Gender Mainstreaming In A Water Project For The Bhil Of Central India, Indrakshi Tandon Jan 2019

"We Get Nothing" : An Ethnography Of Participatory Development And Gender Mainstreaming In A Water Project For The Bhil Of Central India, Indrakshi Tandon

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Through the close examination of a state-sponsored watershed project being implemented by Association for Integrated Social Development (AISD) in the district of Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, this dissertation project explores how current development approaches in water projects impact its intended targets, in this case the Bhil tribal community. A key aspect of this research is to analyze in detail how development narratives such as participatory or bottom-up approaches and gender mainstreaming often result in unintended consequences. With a focus on the gendered nature of participatory policies, I argue that popular development practices in India often lead to governing and managing target …


Exploring Kindergartners' Understandings Of Gender : Responding To Picture Book Read Alouds With A Focus On Fairy Tales, Karen Marie Maher Jan 2018

Exploring Kindergartners' Understandings Of Gender : Responding To Picture Book Read Alouds With A Focus On Fairy Tales, Karen Marie Maher

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation explores four of my kindergartners’ understandings of gender across one academic year with an in-depth study of responses to a series of picture book read alouds including Cinderella variants. Critical literacy offered opportunities for these young students to critique inequities within social practices (Au & Raphael, 2000; Vasquez, 2014, 2017); whereas, poststructuralist feminism framed the inquiries into the locations of deeply ingrained gender identities (Blackburn, 2005, 2006; Blaise, 2005a, 2005b, 2014; Villaverde, 2008). This critical analysis of literature provided a means for the kindergartners to uncover underlying messages of power and inequity by interrogating whose voices were heard …


"Remarks On A March" : A Female Perspective On Gender, Rank, And Imperial Identities During The French And Indian War, Erica Ingrid Nuckles Jan 2018

"Remarks On A March" : A Female Perspective On Gender, Rank, And Imperial Identities During The French And Indian War, Erica Ingrid Nuckles

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation expands and complicates the study of women who accompanied and contributed to the British army in the French and Indian War (1754-1763), while also exploring the ways in which the war affected gender, rank, and imperial identities within the army and, more broadly, the British colonies in North America. This is done through the lens of Charlotte Browne, a British middling widow and mother who served as matron of the British army’s General Hospital for the entirety of the war. Browne kept a journal for much of her service that traces her journey with the army from London …


Sexism Makes Me Sick : An Examination Of Potential Mediators In The Link Between Sexism And Women's Mental Health, Kristin L. Mclaughlin Jan 2017

Sexism Makes Me Sick : An Examination Of Potential Mediators In The Link Between Sexism And Women's Mental Health, Kristin L. Mclaughlin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

It has been well established in the literature that discrimination is related to negative mental health outcomes. Consistent with this research, studies have found women’s exposure to sexist discrimination is associated with a host of mental health problems. Moreover, research on women’s exposure to a specific form of sexism called sexual objectification suggests links with specific psychological outcomes related to poor body image and eating problems. Based on a theoretical framework informed by system justification theory, this study attempted to unify and extend research on perceived sexism and objectification theory by investigating benevolent sexism and self-objectification as potential mediators of …


Application Of Cotter And Colleagues' Glass Ceiling Test To Examine Salary Disparity In Field Of Social Work, Kris Foote Jan 2016

Application Of Cotter And Colleagues' Glass Ceiling Test To Examine Salary Disparity In Field Of Social Work, Kris Foote

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract


Space, Place, Gender, And Sexuality : Situational Gender In Four Coffee Houses, Kimberly Tauches Jan 2016

Space, Place, Gender, And Sexuality : Situational Gender In Four Coffee Houses, Kimberly Tauches

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In this dissertation, I explore the notion of situational gender in four coffee houses. Drawing on recent theoretical contributions by Barrie Thorne (1993) and Jacob Hale (1997) I determine the ways in which gender changes salience, as well as how gender shifts for individuals in these specific social settings. The crux of my research question focuses on determining the fluidity of gender in everyday life by highlighting the importance of situation while still maintaining a deep understanding of how gender operates as a major social structure. I draw on recent theoretical notions in gender performance, queer theory, and postmodern theory …


All The Single Ladies : How The Intersections Of Race And Family Type Influence Health, Cassandra G. Carter Jan 2016

All The Single Ladies : How The Intersections Of Race And Family Type Influence Health, Cassandra G. Carter

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Decreasing rates of marriage and the delay of motherhood or decision to forsake childbearing altogether are emergent trends in the United States. Historically, shifts in family composition have always been important, yet the increase in the number of unmarried and child-free adults is rarely acknowledged by health researchers. Race and family type will be used to investigate the health of Black and White unmarried, childless women (SWANS), using intersectional theory, the Social Determinants of Health, and the Sojourner Model. The frequencies of poor health outcomes are analyzed to determine if family type influences health outcomes, and if so, does this …


Explaining Participation : An Explanatory History Of Select Gender Patterns In Undergraduate Stem, Michael Pasquale Mastroianni Jan 2015

Explaining Participation : An Explanatory History Of Select Gender Patterns In Undergraduate Stem, Michael Pasquale Mastroianni

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This explanatory study examines three focal periods in undergraduate STEM as related to the gender gap. Social, economic, and more general historical data are used to develop a clear and powerful explanation of baccalaureate trends in biology and engineering. Specifically, historical accounts are offered for 1) a ten-year period in undergraduate biology in which the number of baccalaureates awarded to men decreased 44 percent, while the number of baccalaureates awarded to women decreased one percent; 2) the start of a twenty-year period in which the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the biological sciences increased 150 percent—from 36,068 degrees in …


Negotiating Ethnosexual Difference In The Armenian Transnation, Nelli Sargsyan Jan 2013

Negotiating Ethnosexual Difference In The Armenian Transnation, Nelli Sargsyan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Since heteronormativity is an inextricable part of the ethnonationalist ideologies and discourses of Armenianness, conformity and transgression are communally policed both in the Republic of Armenia, as well as in the Armenian diaspora, albeit in different ways. In the diaspora it is through public silence regarding Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) and queer self-identified Armenians that hetero-belonging is managed. In the Republic of Armenia, on the other hand, it is managed through hate speech promoted by public figures and through mass media. In both cases the anxiety that the issue of non-heteronormativity points to in the public outcry is that …


Pragmatism And Democratic Embodiment : The Poetics Of Constructive Conflict In Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, And Laura (Riding) Jackson, Aidan Patricia Thompson Jan 2013

Pragmatism And Democratic Embodiment : The Poetics Of Constructive Conflict In Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, And Laura (Riding) Jackson, Aidan Patricia Thompson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

My dissertation, "Pragmatism and Democratic Embodiment: The Poetics of Constructive Conflict in Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, and Laura (Riding) Jackson," establishes a methodology based on William James's notion of the subject (1890) as fluid to interrogate how these poets, working roughly between 1860 and 1970, complicated questions of writing in order to critique systems of gender. I reconsider a presumed relation between language and feminism in Modernist Studies that understands the aesthetic practice of unsettling linguistic norms to be counter to feminist concerns relating to the body. Through this reassessment, I argue that the poets anticipated problems associated …


Tabaqueras On The Shop Floor : Gendered Labor Process And Production Model Transformations In Cigar Factories In Santiago, Dominican Republic, 1940-2011, Ingrid Mercedes Bircann-Barkey Jan 2013

Tabaqueras On The Shop Floor : Gendered Labor Process And Production Model Transformations In Cigar Factories In Santiago, Dominican Republic, 1940-2011, Ingrid Mercedes Bircann-Barkey

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation uncovers the different gendered labor processes that have shaped the cigar women workers or tabaqueras' work experiences on the cigar shop floor or galera since the 1940s. I argue that contradictory processes of exclusion and inclusion in the urban-rural nexus of the tobacco/cigar economy may be based on gendered notions of skills. This gendered notion may be traced to how changes in state policy, international markets, and financial systems as well as changes in premium cigar production models, have transformed the galera's social organization and labor process.


Flowers In The Trenches : The Experiences Of Women In The Landscaping Profession, Paul E. Calarco, Jr. Jan 2012

Flowers In The Trenches : The Experiences Of Women In The Landscaping Profession, Paul E. Calarco, Jr.

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This research project aims to provide an in-depth analysis of women in the landscaping field. It is important to expand on the literature on nontraditional blue-collar occupations, as more women are moving into these jobs in this 21st century. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (2001), the landscape and horticultural services industry is ranked 11th in the top twenty fastest growing service industries, almost two times the average for job growth. This occupation represents a significant, viable and fruitful arena for sociological investigation, as well a fantastic occupational option for women.


Negotiating New Roles, New Moralities : Ukrainian Women Physicians At A Post-Socialist Crossroad, Maryna Yevgenivna Bazylevych Jan 2010

Negotiating New Roles, New Moralities : Ukrainian Women Physicians At A Post-Socialist Crossroad, Maryna Yevgenivna Bazylevych

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

My dissertation discusses concepts of professionalism and morality as seen by women physicians in post-socialist Ukraine. As in many other post-socialist societies, Ukrainian women constitute the majority of the medical profession (over 70% of practicing physicians and 80% of medical students). Most of the existing literature explains this narrowly in materialist terms whereby low salary is viewed as determinant of low prestige and thus unattractiveness to men. I suggest that prestige is defined much broader in the local context. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Central and Western Ukraine (2007-2008), I argue that the meanings of prestige carry both socialist and …


Modern Day Mary Poppins : Uncovering The Work Of Nannies And The Expectations Of Employers, Laura Ann Bunyan Jan 2010

Modern Day Mary Poppins : Uncovering The Work Of Nannies And The Expectations Of Employers, Laura Ann Bunyan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Throughout the past few decades the number of parents relying on child care has risen. Most research on parental use of child care focuses on relationships between employers and employees of differing racial-ethnic, social class, and educational status. This dissertation was designed to examine the experiences of those who perform nanny work, the process of selecting care, and understand the experiences of those who do not seek to maximize social space between employee and employer.


Individualized Intimacy? : The Negotiation Of Self And Other In Heterosexual Relationships, Daniel Santore Jan 2010

Individualized Intimacy? : The Negotiation Of Self And Other In Heterosexual Relationships, Daniel Santore

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Sociologists working in various scholarly traditions posit an individualization of contemporary romantic relationships occurring in Western societies over the passed several decades. This dissertation uses North American and European theoretical perspectives on "individualized intimacy" as the basis for a qualitative interview study of 45 women and men involved in heterosexual relationships. In keeping with the theoretical perspectives that ground the study, the interviews focus on how concepts of self-development, communication, gender and social class collide with one another in, and serve to shape, respondents' narratives of self and other in intimacy. Findings demonstrate that: (a) regarding gender, women and men …