Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Femicides: The Other Growing Epidemic We Don’T Want To See, Natalia Gutierrez

Capstones

This report analyzes how gender-based killings is a growing topic within the feminist community of New York and Mexico City and how the use of the right terminology is essential to understand the scope of the problem. I worked for 18 months with the feminist community in both cities and the term ‘femicide’ came over and over in the interviews Femicide, how it is referred in the rest of the world, is the intentional killing of women or girls because they are female, and it is a growing epidemic in the U.S. and in Mexico. I interviewed more than 40 …

Hannah & Nana: A Personal Memoir On Appalachian Intergenerational Trauma, Womanhood, & Family, Hannah Dunn

Honors Projects

I was deeply affected by the death of my beloved nana in 2018. After her death, my family asked me to be the storyteller for us. Thus, for my Honors Project at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), I decided to write a personal memoir on my family. This memoir explores how we fit into notions of womanhood and family in Appalachia, as well as studying the effects of intergenerational trauma on us. Qualitative research, in the form of the autoethnography, serves as the methodology for this project. In writing a creative memoir, I have transformed my personal to the academic.

The Role Of Sex: An Analysis Of U.S. Attitudes Toward Climate Change, Chloe Riggs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the intersection of sex, environmental risk perception of climate change, and feminism. More specifically, with a sample size of 8,280 respondents from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2020 Times Series Study, this research examines the relationship between pro-environmental attitudes and sympathy for feminism, controlling for sex, as well as if a measure of sympathy for feminism influences pro-environmental attitudes, controlling for demographic (age, education, race, sex, and income) and political preference (political ideology and party affiliation) variables. Previous literature strongly supports a sex gap in risk perception, a pattern known as the White Male Effect (WME) …

Oppression, Resistance, And Empowerment: The Power Dynamics Of Naming And Un-Naming In African American Literature, 1794 To 2019, Melissa "Maggie" Romigh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oppression, Resistance, and Empowerment: The Power Dynamics of Naming and Un-naming in African American Literature, 1794 to 2019 researches and discusses the way African American authors both discuss naming and un-naming in their works and the way they use naming in their works to illustrate the dynamics of power in relationships—racial, familial, gender-related, work-related, etc. Chapter 1 focuses on the earliest forms of African American literature, memoirs in particular, also known as “slave narratives.” In their memoirs, many of those men and women who were formerly enslaved wrote about having their names taken from them and replaced with names chosen …

The Empathetic Autistic: A Phenomenological Look At The Feminine Experience, Dana Fritz

Dissertations (1934 -)

Western philosophy has asserted that in order to be a person, one must be rational. This idea was not challenged until the nineteenth century. One school to challenge this notion was phenomenology, which asserted that what made one a person was their ability to empathize. While the founder of the school, Edmund Husserl, did not assert that the ability to decipher nonverbal cues was necessary in order to empathize, several of his followers did. This emphasis on deciphering nonverbal cues proved problematic for some populations, especially the Autistic. Autism is a neurological condition which makes it difficult to decipher nonverbal …

Autobiographical Narratives Of Sexual Violation: Trauma, Genre, And The Politics Of Telling, Sarah M. Hildebrand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation engages with literary trauma theory and rape studies by investigating how scholars through the 1990s theorized the relationship among trauma, narration, and silence, and how the #MeToo movement causes us to rethink these views. Attending to the specific silence generated in the wake of sexual violation reveals how power structures influence the act of telling, challenging the idea that trauma is untellable. I argue that literary trauma theory needs to push beyond its foundation in biomedical models of trauma—in which the (in)ability to recall or articulate traumatic events is rooted in neurology—to examine the ways traumatic narratives are …

Put Yourself First (In A Sexy Way): Postfeminist Beauty Messaging And Resistant Media Texts, Margarita Artoglou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The makeover montage trope is one of the most recognizable in media content aimed at young women, sending the message that social status and acceptance are only a new outfit and face of makeup away. While this trope and its message have been heavily critiqued by scholars, the message that beauty—and all its social benefits—can be achieved through consumerism has not disappeared, though the means by which this message is conveyed has changed. As a result of companies co-opting feminist rhetoric, conforming to standards of beauty has been recast as a “choice” one makes for herself, often wrapped in the …

Making Space For Unquantifiable Data: Hand-Drawn Data Visualization, Eva Sibinga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project makes space for personal “data” around labor and care, prompting users to consider the concrete and abstract (quantifiable and unquantifiable) forms labor and care take in their lives. The interactive, subjective data visualization uses hand-drawn visual elements to foreground that data about care and human interaction will always be ambiguous and complex, that they may never be satisfactorily or universally quantified, and that they will always be out of reach of perfect categorization.

The project provides an alternative to prescriptive truth-telling with data. Instead of using a dataset to provide data-driven answers and insights to users, the interactive …

The Inconspicuous Lives Of Dr. Susan Smith Mckinney Steward And Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Alexandra W. Bogdanovich

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines trailblazing American female doctors of the nineteenth century in New York. Through the lives of Dr. Susan Smith Mckinney Steward, who is black, and Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, who is white, this analysis tries to understand what motivated these women and how they succeeded in spite of the confines of women’s prescriptive role in nineteenth-century America.

Breaking Down The Gendered Barriers In Critical Pedagogy, Tonianne Erickson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Critical pedagogy is a teaching philosophy that guides students to question dominant discourses and the status quo, encouraging them to reflect on the part they play in these discourses. Since critical pedagogy deals with critical consciousness and sociopolitical topics, teachers who engage in this teaching philosophy are expected to exert some power in the classroom in order for students to get to that place of critical consciousness or personal growth. However, when female-identifying teachers use their power to embody critical pedagogy in the classroom, they are often met with resistance from students and fellow colleagues, rendering them unable to effectively …

Patients’ Rights, Patients’ Politics: Jewish Activists Of The U.S. Women’S Health Movement, 1969-1990, Jillian Michele Hinderliter

Theses and Dissertations

As the women’s health movement grew out of second wave feminism in the late 1960s, activists demanded women be taken seriously as health care consumers and critics of male-dominated medicine. Health feminists aimed to fundamentally redefine the relationship between patient and practitioner. Jewish women helped found and sustain the women’s health movement, yet their activist identities are often separated from Jewishness in histories of health reform. “Patients’ Rights, Patients’ Politics: Jewish Activists of the U.S. Women’s Health Movement, 1969-1990,” considers the impact of Jewish identity on Jewish activists’ conceptions of social justice while also tracing their significant contributions to women’s …

Negritude Feminisms: Francophone Black Women Writers And Activists In France, Martinique, And Senegal From The 1920s To The 1980s, Korka Sall

Doctoral Dissertations

Negritude Feminisms: Francophone Black Women Writers and Activists in France, Martinique and Senegal from the 1920s to 1980s reframes debates about the participation and conversation of francophone women writers in the Negritude movement. I use the Negritude movement as a model to highlight its capacities and limits. Through an intergenerational analysis of the writings and personal experiences of Paulette Nardal and Suzanne Césaire from Martinique, Annette Mbaye d’Erneville and Aminata Sow Fall from Senegal, my dissertation charts common themes of racial consciousness, gender issues and the colonial problem developed by these women. Nardal, Césaire, Mbaye d’Erneville and Sow Fall played …

Sapping, Smudging, Staining: A Feminized Body, Breslin Shea Bell

Masters Theses

This book—of poetry, prose, and lists—muses on the effects of liquidity and leakiness of a feminized body. By bringing echo narrative, illegibility, de-telling, and that which is continuously wet to the viewer’s body and space, this book and accompanying multimedia installation provides a lens to consider reproductive rights, body autonomy, and gender-based aggression and violence. Work of matter and color investigates interiority, both bodily and spatial, as it relates to surface, access, and space-making.

Reaping What They Sewed: Embroidery In Politics, Feminism, And Art, Lilith Haig

Honors Theses

The feminization of needlework under patriarchal systems of power and oppression has reinforced both long-standing feminine stereotypes and temporal sociocultural ideals. As a tool of patriarchal oppression, needlework has been used to confine women to the domestic sphere by teaching them to stay in the home, be quiet, and follow a pattern; as an educational instrument, needlework reinforced standards of women’s behavior, aptitudes, and conduct. However, women for centuries have silently resisted and subverted these expectations and ideals through the very same means. Women have utilized needlework during times of crisis and collective trauma for centuries as both practicality and …

The Voice Of The Other: The Influence Of Capitalism On The Representation Of Gender And Race In Western Classical Music, Marie Comuzzo

Masters Theses

This thesis argues that in order to understand the non-representation of women and BIPOC in the Western musical canon, the analysis of their cultural musical production and reception must start in early modern period, a time heavily influenced by the establishment of capitalism. Intertwining political feminist studies, critical race theory and musicology critique, I argue that the witch hunts and the inhumane colonial practices in Africa and the America (fundamental to establish capitalism as a global system), had an important role in shaping Western musical culture as homogeneous and monolithic. Thus, I first trace the change in female customs in …

«Cuida Tu Alma Y Tu Cuerpo Por Dios Y La Falange»: Women’S Education And La Sección Femenina In Franco’S Spain, Madeleine Fontenay

College Honors Program

My thesis exploration is on La Sección Femenina and its diffusion of female cultural guides and shaping of female education in the early francoist period, from 1939 to 1959. The Sección Femenina and its field offices published work in many facets of women's lives to influence and reeducate women or their values and place. The contrast of rhetoric and reality gives insight into the values and upbringings of generations of Spaniards. By setting the female figure as the foundation of their francoist society, the Sección Femenina held immense cultural power. I am approaching the topic from an educational perspective, focusing …

The Rhetorical Significance Of Women Deminers And Female Participation In Post-Conflict Operations, Brenna N. Matlock

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Across the globe, all female or mix-gender demining teams are working to eradicate landmines and other explosive remnants of war that threaten their communities. However, more generally, women are often absent from the various elements of security and peacekeeping that exists in post-conflict environments. The purpose of this research is to examine the rhetorical significance of women deminers and to analyze wider implications for female participation in post-conflict operations. Using a phenomenological, feminist, and transformative framework, I collected qualitative data from a range of public texts (or “artifacts”) written about women deminers and from online surveys distributed to women demining …

A Resurrected Revolution: Riot Grrrl Remembered, Revived, And Redefined, Rachael A. Nuckles

Women's History Theses

How has the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s been remembered and redefined? Riot Grrrl is typically remembered as an organized movement based on universal girl love which made the personal political, when in reality it had multiple leaders, many manifestos, and several identities beyond just the college educated white women commonly associated with the creation of its girl power agenda. Memory formation is a process. This dominant narrative that emerged about Riot Grrrl was constructed overtime by a number of participants, but also contradicts the lived experiences of many grrrls. To make sense of this tension, this thesis relies …

Turning Tides, Lauren Whitmore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Synthesizing personal narrative, sociological phenomenon, and art historical analysis, Turning Tides examines the relationship between power dynamics and sexual assault. Inequities and injustices with regard to the handling of sexual assault, and the norms that allow this issue to be pervasive, are woven throughout the cultural fabric of the United States. Feminists and feminist activist artists in the 1970s brought the matters women, and other marginalized groups, were facing to the forefront of political and social dialogue. The resulting work left an indelible mark on public perceptions and allowed for other activists and artists to build upon the foundations; creating …

"I Want To Melt Into Her Body": Sexual Empowerment And A Feminist Recentering Of The Female Characters In Dracula By Bram Stoker, Carmilla By J. Sheridan Lefanu, And Villette By Charlotte Bronte, Carson Leigh Pender

Graduate Theses

Simone de Beauvoir argues in The Second Sex, “The normal sexual act [of intercourse] effectively makes woman dependent on the male and the species. It is he–as for most animals– who has the aggressive role and she who submits to his embrace. . . coitus cannot take place without male consent, and male satisfaction is its natural end result” (385). Essentially, de Beauvoir argues that the act of sex cannot exist without the presence of man, but particularly for heterosexual women, the act of sex is dependent on the presence of, responsibility of, and response of men. However, despite the …

The Sea Calls: A Selkie's Liminal Existence, Frances Avery

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Traditionally, the selkies (or seal people) of Scottish-Irish lore exist between spaces: the land and the sea, human and animal, childbearing and childless. Their existence at sea is voluntary but their existence on land is forced. Once the selkie has left behind its sealskin and both the literal and metaphorical sealskin has been stolen, the selkie becomes subject to human will. The lenses of body, reclamation, violation, and abuse prove that the reason why selkies have faded from popularity is because the lessons are too mature for a young audience. A feminist and queer reading and interpretation of this traditional …

Feminist Rhetorics: Theory And Practice Of Strategic Silence, Paolena Comouche

English (MA) Theses

Building upon the concepts discussed by Cheryl Glenn in her book Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence, I conduct a thorough exploration of how silence can be used rhetorically as a unique and powerful form of communication. Because traditional rhetorical theory is rooted in patriarchal bias that “embodies ‘experiences and concerns of the white male as a standard,’” traditional rhetoric is exclusive of groups outside of those that have dominated the discipline (Glenn 155). As a result, it is important to explore rhetoric beyond traditional theory with consideration of feminist and multicultural perspectives, as the exclusion of these perspectives limits the …

An Analysis Of Symbolic Violence In Classical Texts Comparatively To Modern Feminist Adaptations, Marisa Berner

Senior Theses and Projects

This thesis explores the symbolic violence and misogyny present in Classical texts, and then compares them to modern feminist adaptations or retellings of the same stories. We explore the treatment of Briseis and other enslaved women in the Greek camp throughout the Iliad, and compare Homer’s perspective to Pat Barker’s in her book Silence of the Girls. We then look at Ovid’s Metamorphoses compared to Wake, Siren by Nina Maclaughlin, and finish with the comparison of Euripides’ plays Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia Among the Taurians, and Hecuba to A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. The thesis …

Recognizing Race: The Impact Of Twentieth-Century Feminist Movements On Race Relations In West Germany, Lindsey Stobaugh

Master's Theses

After World War II, many West German women had a difficult time coming to terms with the atrocities that the National Socialist leadership committed during that war, as well as their own participation in the Party. Discussions of the roles of women within twentieth-century society began to grow in West Germany as the new women’s movement (die Neue Fraenbewegung) emerged from 1960s student protests. This movement included primarily middle-class white German women. They often dismissed their participation in Party racism by framing themselves as victims of a patriarchal regime. As German women discussed these matters, they ignored the …

“I’Ll Make A Captain Among Ye, And Do Somewhat To Be Talk Of Forever After”: Female Civic Agency In Sir Thomas More’S Staged Insurrection, Heather Miller

Master's Theses

Sir Thomas More is an English chronicle play that has received far less critical attention than generically similar histories written by Shakespeare. Doll Williamson, the play’s strongest female character, assumes a leadership position in initiating, as well as ultimately quelling, the Evil May Day riots, which provide the play’s initial dramatic impetus. Despite the critical tendency to overlook or diminish the seriousness of her dramatic role in the play, including in the staged insurrection scene, I argue in this thesis that we should take the concerns that Doll articulates and embodies seriously from a feminist perspective. Furthermore, I place Doll’s …

“It Could Have Happened To Any Of You”: Post-Wounded Women In Three Contemporary Feminist Dystopian Novels, Abby N. Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My goal for this thesis is to investigate the concept of (mis)labeling female protagonists in contemporary British fiction as mentally ill—historically labeled as madness—when subjected to traumatic events. The female protagonists in two novels by Sophie Mackintosh, The Water Cure (2018) and Blue Ticket (2020), and Jenni Fagan’s 2012 novel The Panopticon, are raised in environments steeped in trauma and strict, hegemonic structures that actively work to control and mold their identities. In The Panopticon, this system is called “the experiment”; in The Water Cure, it is personified by the character King and those who follow him; …

Body Representation Through Digital Mediums And Performance, Karen Loewy Movilla

Theatre Thesis - Written Thesis

No abstract provided.

[Re]Fashioning A Means: Exploring And Adapting Anna Cora Mowatt's Fashion Through A Feminist Lens., Jordan Tudor Haggard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This MFA thesis explores gender representation in Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion (1845) and the adaptation [Re]Fashion presented by the University of Louisville’s Department of Theatre Arts in Spring 2021. Directed by Dr. J. Ariadne Calvano, University of Louisville faculty, staff, and students worked together to repurpose the script for a modern audience. Cast as the governess, Gertrude, I aimed to find truth in my character without ignoring the social prescriptions of mid-19^th-century America. Gertrude values purity and honesty, virtues considered innately feminine by the period’s cultural feminists. I argue that Fashion is a cultural feminist work and Gertrude …

Love Labor: Literal Symbols And True Abstractions., Karen Weeks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

If the home can be a metaphor for our own interiors, then the things that collect there can be similarly thought of, performing as punctuated moments within that interior, giving it shape, creating contours. Within the domestic setting, macro social forces such as global capitalism as well as the more immediate experience of meeting our children’s demands can push and pull us, equally informing the experience of being in the home. Love Labor: Literal Symbols and True Abstractions is comprised of images sourced from common ephemera of the home meant to represent the everyday: notes, discarded letters, open envelopes, unfinished …

"What Camelot Means": Women And Lgbtq+ Authors Paving The Way For A More Inclusive Arthuriana Through Young Adult Literature, Jeddie Mae Bristow

MSU Graduate Theses

Arthurian literature has long been regarded as the domain of “dead white men,” dominated by Thomas Malory and Lord Alfred Tennyson. However, since medieval times, women have also been producing Arthurian literature that not only treats the women characters of the story more equitably, but makes social commentary on how the marginalized of their societies are treated. More recently, women and LGBTQ+ authors (basically, authors who are not cisgender white men) have answered the call for more diverse Young Adult literature with an Arthuriana that has a place for all, both creating a more diverse and equitable Camelot and giving …