Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Multifront Battle Waged Against Female Autonomy: A Comparative Study Of Ancient Medical And Literary Texts, Leah K. Montello

Honors Theses

Male authors have long waged a multifront campaign against female independence. In this thesis, I focus on two specific fronts: literary and medical texts of the Classical Greek period. This thesis intends to explore the varying strategies in a selection of works, employed to reinforce prescribed gender norms. I approach this with a feminist lens to critique attempts made by elite educated Greek men to define what a woman ought to be like. I do not, however, explore every single tactic a medical and literary writer has applied to uphold patriarchal norms. My two body chapters revolve respectively around two …

Una Deconstrucción Espacial: Movimiento Maricas Bolivia Y La Resistencia Indígena Cuir, Cooper J. Bussberg

Honors Theses

El legado (neo)colonial ha intentado borrar las experiencias Indígenas cuir en Abiayala. Sin embargo, existen cambios a esta historia. Grupos activistas se están adaptando a retos distintos por medios diferentes. Movimiento Maricas Bolivia es una organización activista de La Paz, Bolivia que ejerce activismo en su canal de YouTube donde publican varios videos informativos alrededor del tema Indígena cuir. En este proyecto, yo aplico una perspectiva teórica trans- Indígena hemisférica para aproximar a un entendimiento mejor de la resistencia Indígena cuir de Movimiento Maricas Bolivia. Utilizo varios críticos de los estudios Indígenas de varios sitios de Abiayala para promover la …

Acoso Visual: Staring Back At The State And Gender Conformity, Juan Luna

Honors Theses

A semi-autoethnographic piece that uses a radical transfeminist lens to interrogate hegemonic systems of gender and race in the Dominican Republic through the violence that Trans and Gender Nonconforming people face. While focusing on trans violence, this thesis explicitly turns its gaze away from Trans/Gender Nonconforming people and interrogates the state, cisnormativity, and gender conformity. This thesis explores how acoso visual (visual accosting) is a historically informed process that works to border trans/gender nonconformity out of the idea of Dominicanidad. Ultimately, this text reminds Trans/Gender Nonconforming individuals that they are not the reason for the transphobia that they experience, and …

Comunidad, Antigüedad Y Solidaridad Ser Gay En El Tardofranquismo 1969-1978, Andrew Healy

Honors Theses

En una época de represión e intolerancia en España, los homosexuales todavía existían, pero en una manera clandestina. Esta tesis explora cómo esta comunidad clandestina se expresaba durante el tardofranquismo en los años 1969-1978. Con discusiones de los valores del régimen, las representaciones del hombre en relaciones sexuales y sitios históricos que preservan el legado del franquismo, esta tesis ilumina la historia de un grupo oprimido en España.

A través del uso de diferentes fuentes académicas, incluso documentales, películas y artículos, esta tesis discute cómo los homosexuales se comportaban en el franquismo, y su tratamiento bajo un régimen opresivo. Unos …

A Rethinking Of Gray Asexuality: What Do We Learn From An Undefinable Identity?, Jason M. Gurevitch

Honors Theses

Gray-Asexuality offers us a paradox in understanding sexuality, since while it is posed as a middle ground between Asexual and Allosexual, it is also solidly a category of Asexuality. This poses the question of when does someone become Asexual and if they are ever interested in sex why are they not just Allosexual? While understandings of Asexuality that have excluded the Gray-Asexuality can ignore this question, including it requires asking this question, which not only requires defining Asexuality, but also more importantly requires a naming of what normative sexuality is. Within these contexts people who are Gray-Asexual engage in a …

Devising Performance & Queer Futurity, Brendan F. Leonard

Honors Theses

This project argues that devising performance is an inherently queer and utopian form. In response to recent political movements, such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, which seek to stage dissatisfaction with the systems of late capitalism, I turn to devising performance as a site. Informed by the queer and performance theories of Jose Esteban Munoz, Lee Edelman, and Jill Dolan, I argue that devised theater allows us to process disillusionment, rehearse collectivity, and stage futurity. In conversation with Munoz, I define futurity as an imaginative site that considers what will follow what some scholars suggest will be …

Expanding The Literary Enterprise: How We Experience The Texts Of The Advanced Placement English Literature And Composition Curriculum, Molly Ostrow

Honors Theses

How we read the texts of the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition curriculum.

Feminicidios En Cd. Juárez: Sombras Del Evanescente Olvido; Luces De Lucha, Fuerza Y Resistencia, Amber Ramirez

Honors Theses

Desde principios de los años noventa, mujeres y niñas en Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, México han sido raptadas de día y de noche mientras se dirigen al trabajo, a sus casas, o a la escuela. Después de días, semanas y a veces hasta años, muchas han sido encontradas brutalmente asesinadas, calcinadas, mutiladas, violadas y torturadas; sus cuerpos han sido abandonados para luego ser localizados completamente desnudos o parcialmente vestidos, en completo estado de descomposición o solamente en huesos en las calles en las zonas desérticas de Cd. Juárez. El paradero de muchas otras mujeres y niñas aún se desconoce y a …

Gender, Nature, And The Fairytale Structure In Robin Mckinley's Works, Molly Rogers

Honors Theses

Robin McKinley is an American fantasy author who uses fairytale structure to explore themes of gender and nature. Her first book, Beauty, a retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” was published in 1978. She continues to write fairytales and other fantastic fiction, utilizing the fairytale form and structure. She has won a few awards, including the Newbery Award in 1985 for her novel The Hero and the Crown. Her latest book, Pegasus, was published in 2010. Jack Zipes describes McKinley’s heroines as "self-confident, courageous young women who take the initiative in a world which they help to define with men…it …

Les Contes De Fées Oubliés: Vision D'Un Monde Plus Égal, Deborah Amato

Honors Theses

J’ai toujours aimé les contes de fées et j’ai toujours été intéressée par la question de l’égalité entre les sexes. Il y a deux ans, j’ai suivi un cours intitulé « Women in Myth and Fairy Tale». Nous avons lu et analysé des contes de fées aussi vieux que Cupid and Psyche, qui date du IIe siècle, et aussi récents que la version de Disney de la Belle et la Bête (1991). J’ai examiné alors pour la première fois les stéréotypes masculins et féminins que ces contes présentaient. Après cette expérience, j’ai voulu approfondir ma connaissance des premiers contes de …

Remapping Nature: Motherhood, Autonomy, And Anti-Mining Activism In Íntag, Ecuador, Ellicott K. Dandy

Honors Theses

This honors thesis explores the social changes that women engaged in anti-mining activism bring to a region in rural Ecuador. I discuss the ways in which they incorporate their activist techniques into everyday life, using their status as mothers to access public discourses of environmentalism, and ultimately rewrite gender roles locally. Framing the mining conflict as a catalyst for social change, I draw parallels between this movement and indigenous politics in Ecuador, propose new interpretations of the mestizo ethnic identity and assimilation in the Spanish Empire, and finally, make the case for a nature-centric cultural analysis in anthropology.

Mediums Change, Fears Stay The Same, Lucy Wilhelms

Honors Theses

Although generally dismissed by scholars as being overly sentimental or superstitious, the gothic genre has survived for over four centuries and maintained significant cultural appeal, outlasting the sentimental novel and the travelogue as popular literature. What, then, makes this genre different? What is so special about the gothic?

In my thesis, I examine the evolving cultural appeal of the gothic genre that keeps it attractive and relevant for readers by tracing the gothic text, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, through its initial inception and its subsequent adaptations. As a novel, The Woman in Black both repeats and revises …

“Called Her Women Together” Home Birth In Maine, Margaret Kruithoff

Honors Theses

Nine months ago, I set out to write a thesis on childbirth: hippies having their babies in the woods, hospital politics, and women’s rights. The final product is very different than what I had intended. Instead of finding crazy hippies in the woods, I found a community of kind and skilled midwives and loving, openhearted mothers. I am deeply indebted to these inspiring women for their stories and wisdom, which fill the pages of this thesis. Interviewing these mothers, midwives, and home birth advocates was a tremendously empowering experience for me, a young woman.

Shakespeare And Homoeroticism: A Study Of Cross-Dressing, Society, And Film, Leigh Bullion

Honors Theses

William Shakespeare’s plays cover an array of topics focused on sexuality, from gender reversal to adultery to beastiality. But perhaps the most consistent and emphasized topic is homoeroticism.This focus on homoeroticism proceeds from the prohibition of women on the English stage and the subsequent female roles young boys would play. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night each present different representations of homoeroticism yet complement each other. A Midsummer Night’s Dream focuses on the erotic potential of unrestrained desire and the tense relationship between female amity and dominating patriarchal and heterosexual interests. As You Like It …

Literary Love Making In Nicholas Sparks Novels: Finding The Balance Between The Writer’S Life And The Writer’S Work In Bestselling Romantic Literature, Ryan Spanich

Honors Theses

For almost a decade now Nicholas Sparks has been writing love stories. Not only has he been publishing his stories, but they have received high acclaim in each of their installments. Several of his novels have been made into major motion pictures and increased his popularity quite significantly. His status as a successful romantic fiction writer is undeniable, but the question is, why? What is it about Nicholas Sparks that makes his novels so engaging, and personally, what do I need to do as an aspiring novelist to try and acquire the same literary status? Sparks’s novels reach readers at …

The Female Language Barrier: A Close Reading Of The Poetry Of Emily Dickinson And Adrienne Rich, Annmarie Faiella

Honors Theses

Historically, the First Amendment right to free speech was limited to certain groups. Language, although constitutionally guaranteed since 1776, has not always been a freedom for everyone. Among those at language's mercy are immigrants, slaves, and women. Women's speech was limited not by a lack of knowledge, but by a societal acceptance of women as inferior.

What then do women do to overcome this ever-present chasm? What women did in the nineteenth century, the 1960s, and are still doing today is: write more creatively. The tighter the restraint of language, the more inventive the woman must be to use it …