Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Feminisms At The Door: Gender And Sex At A Women's College, Susan Chappell Overton

Cultural Foundations of Education - Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation is a qualitative study of early 21st century American female college students' experiences of their gender, sexuality, and racial identities, and of institutional politics as their single-sex college transitioned to co-education. It is an ethnography that utilizes feminist theorizing to understand tensions between feminists of different generations or waves; the complexities of identities and institutions in which gender, sexuality, and race intersect (bell hooks and Kimberle Crenshaw); and the workings of dominant gender and sexual norms (Judith Butler). As the College prepared to `go coed,' the prospect of introducing male bodies into this environment generated rich discourses about …