Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Making A Gender Transition In Northwest Arkansas: Issues Of Access And Civil Rights In The Health Care System, April Michele Wallace

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The transgender population in Northwest Arkansas has difficulty in finding quality, accessible healthcare for gender transition-related procedures and for basic medical needs as well. These difficulties stem in part from a complex combination of discrimination, lack of information and training for proper treatment and care. This study takes a look at what is and isn’t available to transgender people in Northwest Arkansas and why they travel to other states and countries to seek healthcare.

Preparedness To Counsel Transgender College Students: Perceptions Of College Mental Health Clinicians, Valerie G. Couture

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to assess the perceived preparedness levels of college mental health clinicians to counsel transgender college students. Multicultural counseling competency is required of professional counselors and transgender individuals are considered to be part of the multicultural population. A survey was completed by college mental health counselors (N = 84) from across the United States. The results showed a moderate amount of preparedness overall with no significant differences based on years of counseling experience nor graduation from a CACREP accredited program. Results did show the participants believed they do have a professional duty to be knowledgeable …

The Fascination Of Manga: Cross-Dressing And Gender Performativity In Japanese Media, Sheena Marie Woods

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The performativity of gender through cross-dressing has been a staple in Japanese media throughout the centuries. This thesis engages with the pervasiveness of cross-dressing in popular Japanese media, from the modern shōjo gender-bender genre of manga and anime to the traditional Japanese theatre. Drawing on theories from gender-studies and performance aesthetics to delineate the female gender in traditional Japanese theatre, I follow the roles of, representation of, and media for women, concentrating on (1) manga, a form of sequential art featuring illustrations with corresponding text, (2) anime, animated productions (where the word anime is the abbreviated pronunciation of “animation” in …

An Exploratory Study Of Spending Patterns, Obstacles And Traditions Among Same-Sex Marriage Vs Heterosexual Marriage: Who's The Bigger Spender?, Lydia Perritt

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated if there was a significant difference in the amount of money spent on same-sex weddings versus heterosexual weddings. The results of this study would assist both the wedding and hospitality industry by providing much needed financial and planning information.

A descriptive, four-section survey was distributed online via Qualtrics utilizing snowball sampling. A total of 152 respondents participated in the study; 84 heterosexual and 68 LGBTQ. The respondents completed the questionnaire that measured wedding traditions, wedding spending, obstacles and challenges faced during their wedding and wedding planning, and demographic information.

The results of this study indicated that same-sex …

Queer Tastes: An Exploration Of Food And Sexuality In Southern Lesbian Literature, Jacqueline Kristine Lawrence

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Southern identities are undoubtedly influenced by the region's foodways. However, the South tends to neglect and even to negate certain peoples and their identities. Women, especially lesbians, are often silenced within southern literature. Where Tennessee Williams used literature to bridge gaps between gay men and the South, southern lesbian literature severely lacks a traceable history of such connections. The principal objective of this thesis is to explore the ways in which southern lesbians manipulate food metaphors to describe their sexual desires and identities. This thesis only begins to lay out a history of southern lesbian literature as many lesbian writers …

Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.

My Master's thesis …

Times Are A Changin': Gender Role Orientation And Alcohol Use, Jessica Lauren Fugitt

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol misuse is an important public health concern as it is related to an elevated probability of experiencing a number of negative life events. Historically, alcohol consumption patterns seemed to differ according to sex, but more recent research suggests that the difference has narrowed as gender role orientations have converged. Further, it seems that gender role orientation more reliably predicts differences in patterns of use than biological sex. The goal of this two-part study was to investigate the relation of gender role orientation and alcohol use behaviors with the expectation that masculine gender role orientation would be associated with these …

A Mixed-Method Examination Of Homicides Targeting Lgbt Individuals In The United States, Kristin Kaye Kelley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study is to understand the dynamic processes of fatal attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals across different situational circumstances. Recent scholarship has begun to identify the heterogeneous nature of anti-LGBT homicides, including possible differences in how victims are targeted by offenders. However, several limitations of prior research have stunted the systematic examination of these circumstances. Few studies, for instance, have disaggregated by crime type and bias type, thus masking unique patterns and causal processes associated with varying types of anti-LGBT homicide events. Others have relied on official data sources whose validity and …

The Androgynous Tomboy: Adolescent Liminality In The Contemporary Southern Bildungsroman, Brooke Alexandra Shippee

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Androgynous Tomboy: Adolescent Liminality in the Contemporary Southern Bildungsroman is an analysis of the adolescent, specifically, of the young tomboy characters central to three Bildungsroman texts set in the American South during the twentieth century: Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding (1946), Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country (1985) and Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina (1993). I seek to challenge the very notion of the conventional tomboy within the coming of age literary genre by defining these youths as androgynous, rather than as young individuals who assume a singular gender opposite of their biological sex. Throughout my work, …

Determining Multidimensional Gender: Development And Psychometrics Of A Measurement Instrument, Karyl Lounsbery

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Gender identity is often thought of only as a binary construct, masculine and feminine, despite the fact that there are many people who do not see themselves as fitting this dichotomy (Rochman, 2006). Within the counseling field, it is likely that every counselor will eventually see someone who will be struggling with issues of gender identity (Ehrensaft, 2011). The introduction of the Arkansas Multidimensional Gender Scale (AMGS) will show there is a much broader scope of gender identity, more in line with the idea that all gender identities are normal and that there are as many gender identities as there …