Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ricucire Il Tessuto Della Società: L’Intersezione Di Moda Femminile E Femminismo, Caroline Grace Bisese

Honors Theses

La moda è tutt'altro che una conseguenza frivola e accidentale dell'abbigliamento disponibile e del luogo in cui si va a fare shopping. L’abbigliamento è una forma di retorica corporea che evoca un ampio dialogo non verbale. Una narrazione che va ben oltre il materiale e lo stile, sebbene entrambi questi dettagli sono fondamentali, la moda al livello più elementare è essenziale per capire chi sono le persone, perché sono come sono e in cosa credono. Queste sono alcune dei capisaldi per capire una persona in relazione alla cultura e una cultura in conseguenza delle persone che la compongono. È una …

The Postmodern And The Personal In Edna St. Vincent Millay’S Aria Da Capo, Roxanne Rankin

Munn Scholars Awards

Aria Da Capo, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1919 play, has thus far been largely ignored in literary criticism. This essay, through a historical survey of Millay’s previous critical reception followed by a close reading of Aria Da Capo, attempts to explain and then bridge this gap in academic scholarship. A postmodernist reading of the play will then illustrate why Millay’s work still confounds scholars today and how Aria Da Capo specifically continues to be relevant more than 100 years after it was first produced.

Adrienne Rich And Women's Confinement, Marissa Weber

Student Writing

Adrienne Rich's poems "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law," "Living in Sin," and "From a Survivor" weave a tale of the average American housewife expressing her discontent with her day-to-day and searching for a way out. All three poems contain themes of societal oppression scaled to a personal level, and the varying conclusions speak to the harsh reality of being a woman in the mid-twentieth century. Rich's career as an activist defined her poetic style, and her feminist pieces have remained relevant decades after they were originally published.

The Feminist Gothic Journeys Of Shirley Jackson, Grace Sanko

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Power Dressing And Its Importance In Modern Democracy, Mansiben R. Patel, Dr. Catherine Amoroso Leslie

Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences

This research aimed to study the significance of Power Dressing in a modern democracy, by exploring the dynamics of clothing concerning the power it portrays for women holding influential positions in public office in a variety of countries throughout the world. This research accomplished its motive by collecting, reviewing, and analyzing scholarly articles, academic journals, newspapers, and current events which formed the foundation for data collection using a survey developed by the researchers. The analysis provided a platform for procuring knowledge of the association between Fashion and Politics, the concept of Women’s Power Dressing, and its significance in a modern …

Power Dressing And Its Importance In Modern Democracy, Mansiben R. Patel, Dr. Catherine Amoroso Leslie

Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences

This research aimed to study the significance of Power Dressing in a modern democracy, by exploring the dynamics of clothing concerning the power it portrays for women holding influential positions in public office in a variety of countries throughout the world. This research accomplished its motive by collecting, reviewing, and analyzing scholarly articles, academic journals, newspapers, and current events which formed the foundation for data collection using a survey developed by the researchers. The analysis provided a platform for procuring knowledge of the association between Fashion and Politics, the concept of Women’s Power Dressing, and its significance in a modern …

To Be Necessary: The Remarkable Life Of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elisabeth Phillips

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Although overshadowed by her daughter, Mary Shelley, in the public imagination, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) stands as a significant figure in her time who left a significant legacy. Her writings advocating for women’s education, equal rights, and career opportunities established her as the progenitor of the modern women’s rights movement. Wollstonecraft’s ideas resonated in the era of the Atlantic world revolutions and laid the foundation for later advances of women in the Western world; therefore, it is important to study her contributions in the present.

Feminist Theorizing In The International Relations Discipline, Inass Abdulsada Ali

Journal of International Women's Studies

The discipline of International Relations has been a science for almost a century and has undergone considerable development and dynamism as a field of knowledge. In the aftermath of the First World War, traditional idealistic trends prevailed. Still, after the end of the Second World War, the theory of realism dominated the analysis of international relations, international politics, and its laws and mechanisms. With the inter-paradigm debate of the 1980s, a broad spectrum of theories of international relations emerged, the most significant of which are critical theories including feminism. Feminist theory has since become central to the debates about global …

Bell Hooks And Online Feminism, Hazel T. Biana

Journal of International Women's Studies

Feminist theorist and cultural critic bell hooks was known for calling out modern-day feminists for failing to take into consideration the plight of other non-privileged women. She intricately analyzed how various factors of oppression form a web, which contributes to the complexities of women’s marginalization. The vision of hooks, thus, is a revolutionary type of feminism which is inclusive and for everybody. This means that everyone, all persons of various races or classes, should become enlightened witnesses and be a part of the struggle towards eradicating what she refers to as White Capitalist Supremacist Patriarchy. Such vision, however, seems to …

Feminism In Modern Japan: A Historical Review Of Japanese Women’S Issues On Gender, Polina Lukyantseva

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study primarily illustrates the evolution of the feminist movement in Japan by comparing two waves of the feminist movement. Furthermore, this paper examines the development of gender roles and gender bias in modern Japanese patriarchal society. It also illustrates and explains traditional roles, Japanese ideologies, the system of Fu-you (Jap. 扶養, Eng. dependent), and modern trends in contemporary Japan. In this study, the following qualitative research methods were applied. A thorough historical context analysis was done to comprehend the social dynamics, issues, and specifics of feminism in Japan, and the principle of historicism was used to illuminate and compare …

Loving Blackness: A Sense Experience, Ricardo J. Millhouse

Feminist Pedagogy

The late bell hooks framed feminist pedagogies as a set of practices and systems that provide a description of feminism, a feminist learning environment, and ways to cultivate a community that is ready for feminist instruction. Using intersectionality, hooks (1992) discussed “loving blackness” as a representational and destabilizing practice to de-center whiteness. hooks (1992, 20) writes, “loving blackness as a political resistance transforms our ways of looking and being, and thus creates conditions necessary for us to move against the forces of domination and death and reclaim black life.” I propose a black feminist praxis teaching tool, “a sense experience,” …

Resisting Burnout: Bell Hooks’ Pedagogy Of Hope And Teaching Antiracist Feminism Online At The University Of Wyoming During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Samantha L. Vandermeade

Feminist Pedagogy

After earning a PhD in Women’s Studies from an urban, multicultural, R1 university in 2020, I accepted a teaching position at the University of Wyoming, where I was hired primarily to teach feminist and critical race-focused courses. When an in-person position suddenly moved entirely online, I found myself facing not only the culture shock of teaching at a rural, primarily White institution whose state legislature and general populace are largely hostile to antiracist feminism, but also the myriad daily challenges of teaching online during a global pandemic. I had felt personally prepared--as a White lesbian raised in a rural environment, …

I, Discomfort Woman: A Fugue In F Minor, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Bodies Of Silence And Space: Victimhood, Complicity, And Resistance In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Sana H. Mufti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the complexity of resistance and the conditions of power for women in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Using feminist theory, theories of neoliberalism, and Dominionism, this thesis works to understand the ways in which victimhood and complicity influence resistance in totalitarian regimes. I argue that neoliberal ideologies skew understandings of freedom, agency, and power in a way that ensures individuals, specifically women, remain trapped in the system. Focusing on reproduction, I examine how Gilead controls women’s bodies and reproductive abilities to ensure a future for itself. The Eve-Complex is one way that the state integrates itself …

Autonomy, Post-Puberty Bacha Posh And Third World Feminism In Selected Afghan Fiction, Asma

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper examines the fictional representation of the ways in which Afghan girls attain autonomy in their post-puberty stage through the tradition of bacha posh despite the traditional constraints to switch back to their gender at birth. This analysis of bacha posh characters in Ukmina Manoori’s I Am a Bacha Posh and Zarghuna Kargar’s Bakhtawara’s Story attempts to demonstrate how the bacha posh tradition develops the potential for transgression in Afghan girls, fostering a resistance to traditional gender roles. In doing so, this paper challenges and rebuts Western feminist views regarding Afghan women, who are stereotyped as incapable, voiceless, and …

Veiled Figures: Attached Settler Women In Andaman’S Post-Colonial Archive, Raka Banerjee

Journal of International Women's Studies

Dominant discourse on India’s eastern Partition (1947) has constructed settlement as a masculine prerogative and man as the settler prototype. Women were eligible for rehabilitation on account of being “attached” to a male guardian, who would be assigned the head of the household in granting state benefits. In the case of these attached settler women transported by the state to Andaman Islands, a range of marginalities–region, gender, caste, and class–intersect with each other to create a veiled figure. The essay locates the settler women in the island’s post-colonial government archive to bring out the state’s construction of gendered settler subjecthood. …

“Am I More Than A Housewife”? An Exploration Of Education, Empowerment, And Gender Preference In Relation To Female Genital Cutting/Mutilation In The Far North Region Of Cameroon, Maurine Ekun Nyok

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

The Heart Is Not Hopeless: Pakistani Television Drama, Patriarchy, And Activism, Neelam Jabeen

Journal of International Women's Studies

A Muslim society that interprets feminism as anti-Islamic may not accept overtly feminist maneuvers to challenge patriarchy. However, there are subtle ways of steering out of the Islam vs. feminism dichotomy. What triggers anti-feminists are phrases like women’s rights, female emancipation, and women’s freedom since all these are interpreted as the agenda of the West and hence are considered anti-Islamic. In this paper, I argue that since feminists are fighting against all forms of oppression and have joined forces with other forms of activism such as child protection, human rights, animal rights, rights of the underclass and minority groups, and …

How The U.S. Mainstream Media Perpetuates Cis White Masculine Hegemony, Yelena Dzhanova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The news is important because it helps individuals understand their place in the world and make the best decisions for themselves. Throughout its strong history and presence in the United States, the journalism industry has prided itself on delivering fact-based news using an objective framework, meaning that there is an expectation that journalists communicate the news impartially and without bias. Through an examination of gendered language and visual representations published in and by recent mainstream U.S. digital and print media outlets, this paper explains how the media plays a major role in the perpetuation of cis white masculinity. This paper …

Development Of Southern Interracial Marriage And Divorce: Why Our Children Are Code-Switching, Zoe R. Grant

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

The fundamental basis of my final paper will be of my own lived experience. In my paper, I will argue that as a result of an interracial divorce, mixed-race children are learning to code-switch leading to a greater sense of empathy and community. I will pull from the theoretical framework of Gloria Anzaldua’s “Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza” as well as other sources to support my claims.

By focusing heavily on a southern perspective, I will question whether or not a history of southern interracial marriage causes a strain on nuclear families. Are interracial children having new experiences, and …

Feminist Retellings Of Homer's The Odyssey, 2005-2022, Brenna R. Bretzinger

CURE Proceedings

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of feminist retellings of Greek mythology. These retellings serve to give voice to the marginalized female characters from ancient stories whose characterizations were deprioritized over their male counterparts. Furthermore, these stories connect the plights of ancient women with modern feminists to champion issues that women continue facing today. This study focuses on retellings of Homer’s The Odyssey, but these ideas and arguments are still largely applicable to other retellings of Greek mythology. Along with discussing The Odyssey, this project also analyzes three feminist retellings: …

’90s “It Girls”: Britpop At The Postfeminist Intermezzo, Benjamin Halligan

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In considering the Britpop genre of music and its moment of popularity in the mid/late-1990s, the few female-fronted Britpop groups created space for more compelling articulations of existential matters than were to be found in standard Britpop fare. This article argues these articulations are most appropriately read as arising from a moment of feminist thought in transition: a premature “victory,” under the sign of postfeminism, in which the struggles of Second Wave feminists could be seen to have delivered equality. This moment results in an encroaching and contested sense of entry into maturity, and a loss of youth. The groups …

Swerf Necropolitics: Three Sites Of Feminist Mistranslation And The Politics Of Feminist Exclusion, Aaron Hammes

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The acronym SWERF, or Sex Work(er) Exclusive Radical Feminism, and its attendant ideologies brings up a number of questions and potential schisms for the enterprise of feminist thought more broadly. This inquiry examines what it means for feminism to exclude, what the excluders believe is gained by protecting certain boundaries around which identities and practices are included, and the ideological foundations and consequences of this thinking. SWERF logics are understood as mistranslations of the radical potentialities of feminism, clustered around three sites: exclusion (against bodily autonomy) , equivocation (between sex work and labor trafficking), and misrepresentation (of the sex worker …

Manifesting Magic: Occultism And Feminism In The Art Of Leonora Carrington And Remedios Varo, Margaret Dirschl

MA Theses

The artworks of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo are replete with
symbolism and evocations of the occult, formulating bodies of work that are charged with magic and mysticism. When studied within the context of their male contemporaries of the Surrealist group, it becomes apparent that this use of the occult operates as a compelling and historically based feminist strategy. Immediately stemming from the occult revival of the previous century and the issues for females presented by Surrealism, the foundations of this idea originate much earlier in the pagan traditions of antiquity and the witch hunts of the 15th through 18th …

“I'M Kind Of A Big Deal In This Industry:” How Killing Eve’S Villanelle Subverts The Femme Fatale Archetype, Molly Kent

Honors Theses and Capstones

From the instant Catherine Tramell stepped on screen with shaven, glossy legs and a perfectly curled, bouncy, blonde bob, Basic Instinct (1992) became a cult classic, centered around the dangerous and seductive femme fatale who makes the movie tick. Nearly 25 years later, a new monstress steps on screen as a suited, quirky, slicked-back assassin with a penchant for curly-haired women and a destiny to reform the femme fatale trope: Villanelle of Killing Eve.

The co-lead and resident femme fatale of Killing Eve, Villanelle, subverts the traditional role of the femme fatale in a decentering of the patriarchy …

The Feminization Of Mexico City In The Late Twentieth Century: Polvo De Gallina Negra, Pola Weiss, And Lourdes Grobet, Alexis N. Corral

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis centers on select artworks in public intervention, photography and video as an exploration of female's relationship to Mexico City's social landscape and urban space during the late 1970s into the early 1990s. In three case studies, I explore historical urban planning, gender relations, and the effects of modernization.

Defining Heroinism: Heartthrobs Refining Heroines In 18th And 19th Century Women's Literature, Grace M. Gibson

Honors College Theses

This project will explore the emergence of “heroinism,” a uniquely feminine way in which early female authors approached the heroine’s journey. Barred by male expectations of female conduct both in society and literature, eighteenth and nineteenth century women daring to “attempt the pen” forged stories of heroines with conventions and tropes distinctly, though not entirely, separate from those told of centuries of heroes. I intend to track the ways in which these early tales of heroines told by women strayed from the traditional heroic plot, with unique motivations, mentors, trials, and rewards, but also how they were shaped and confined …

South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Introverse Arrangements: Rediscovering The Typewritings Of Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Savannah M. Champion

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to understand Wolf-Rehfeldt’s place in the unofficial art world of the GDR by examining her work in light of her status as a clerical worker with social rather than professional ties to the art world. She stands out within the East German Mail Art context, not just for her inventive use of a typewriter to create abstract figurations, but for the way she used it to interject considerations of gender and power into a network of artists overwhelmingly dominated by men with her open-ended Typewritings.”

Through historical research and close readings of her work, this study uncovers …

Embodiment And Gendered Subjectivity In Ukrainian Women’S Film, Poetry, And Prose During Perestroika (1985-1991), Sandra J. Russell

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I look to Ukrainian women’s literary and filmic contributions in the final Soviet years of perestroika to recontextualize and reconsider feminist and gendered epistemologies in Eastern Europe. I view the last Soviet Ukrainian filmmakers, writers, and artists as groundbreaking in their conceptualization a new, more “liberal” vision of nation, especially through their increasingly open and subversive critiques of the Soviet state. I locate perestroika as a powerful moment in Ukraine’s histories of resistance to the weaponization of colonialist and imperialist mythologies, past and present. For women in particular, the stakes of this shifting articulation of nation became …