Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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.

A Phenomenological Study On The Experiences Of Christian Mothers Navigating Through Societal Worldviews And Social Movements, Holly Amber Neavitt

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study will investigate the lived experiences of Christian mothers as they navigate through various societal worldviews and influences. By examining the available studies on the misuse of Christian doctrine that facilitate the patriarchal worldview and the feminist movement to abolish faith-based gender assignment, the need to investigate the experiences of Christian mothers will be identified. Moreover, the burden of social conformity will be examined. Motherhood can feel like unfamiliar territory as mothers take on their role of motherhood. Investigating these influences and identifying the common experiences mothers face will help to better support Christian mothers. Investigating these lived experiences …

Times Are Changing: Addressing Racism And Sexism In Die Zauberflöte, Cassidy Wiltjer, Anna Winn, Linnea Johansen

2022 Festschrift: Mozart's Die Zauberflöte

The eighteenth century philosophy regarding discrimination based on gender and race do not align with the philosophy of the modern era. Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, written in 1791, is full of racist and misogynist remarks which are woven carefully into the music and plot of the opera. Racism is evident through the character of Monostatos and the claims that his status as a Moor make him less valuable as a human being. Additionally, the character Sarastro exemplifies a rational and powerful male while the Queen of the Night, while powerful in her own right, is the villain: an unruly, emotional woman. …

Madwoman On The Screen: Streaming Forms Of Feminine Power, Kassandra I. Schreiber

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores how the formal aspects of streaming platforms create a female inheritance that helps foster multiple representations of femininity and womanhood which empowers women. Building off of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's Madwoman in the Attic, the paper argues that because streaming platforms produce original content, are a space for multiplicity and interconnection, and act as a type of archive, they can build a female inheritance. The combination of these attributes offer a widespread emergence of multiple stories that valorize women and what is socially coded as feminine, creating a creative network that improves the representation of women …

Return, Leilani Bascom

Theses and Dissertations

Return is a video-based installation which includes sound, performance, and textile elements. Leilani Bascom is the lone actor navigating the water and where the water meets the land in this personal project exploring concepts of the life cycle from birth to death and rebirth. Life's paradox of struggle and release unfolds with imagery of battling through waves to swim deep underwater, fighting a river current and then surrendering to the flow, and carving a hole in the sand to climb into and be held. Viewers are immersed in the movement and sounds of water to witness the power and meaning …

Seeing Beyond: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Approach To The Politics Of The Cinematic Gaze, Sofia Koukia

Masters Theses

This essay presents a feminist psychoanalytic approach to the cinematic gaze which employs late Lacanian film theory in order to construct a conception of the gaze that allows for its political significance to emerge. The gaze is hereby understood as something that the subject (the spectator) encounters in the object (the film) and, also, as what constitutes the epitome of the cinematic experience. It is regarded as being inherently political, existing within the realm of the Lacanian real in the form of an objet petit a (or object-cause of desire), and exhibiting itself in the world(s) of fantasy and/or desire. …

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 …

Surviving The Seventies: How Ten East Texan Women Labored For Their Families, Emily B. Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The 1970s were a period of political and social turmoil. Many women left the domestic sphere and entered public life to work, seek higher education, and pursue a career. Yet many factors worked against them. They entered a workforce that treated them poorly or went to a university with limited degrees for women. The seventies were also a time of social, cultural, and political upheaval marked by a deep recession in which quality jobs were harder to find and layoffs were common. This oral history project seeks to document the experiences of East Texan women during this tumultuous period. And …

Demarginalizing Black Ordained Women’S Voices In The Black Baptist Church: A Phenomenological Study Of Black Women Ministers’ Lived Experiences When Seeking Cleric Leadership Roles, Angela Mosley-Monts

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation sought to understand the living experiences of Black Ordained Women in the Black Baptist Church. The study employs a phenomenological perspective and interviews to gather the voices and lived experiences of ordained Black women ministers who have served in the Black Baptist Church at various times. Womanist Theology and Black Feminism form the theoretical basis of the study. Black ordained women interviewed in this study are currently or formerly associated with the Antioch District Missionary Baptist Association, the Antioch District Congress, and the Regular Arkansas Congress of Christian Education. Although some Black ordained women remain with the Black …

Heroine Of The Peripheral: An Exploration Of Feminism And Anti-Feminism In The Poetry Of Sylvia Plath, Devoney Looser

Augsburg Honors Review

Recognizing that there are many legitimate ways to view Plath's work, this study doesn't claim a definitive reading or even a glimpse into the 'real' Sylvia Plath. Instead, the following exploration will focus on feminist and anti-feminist renderings of motherhood in Plath's Crosstng the Water, Ariel, and Winter Trees. This study doesn't set out to prove or disprove these labels as they relate to Plath either. My intention is not to make value judgments about various aspects of the poetry but rather to highlight the contradictions and the co-existence of feminist and anti-feminist qualities in the text.

Embodying The Divine Feminine: Doja Cat’S Use Of Vocal Timbre, Text, And Body In Planet Her To Construct A Feminine Soundscape — Annotated Bibliography, Tommy Dainko

Musicology and Ethnomusicology: Student Scholarship

In 2021 Doja Cat released her album Planet Her, an imagination of a planet where there was no bigotry, and everyone could live in peace. The main theme of her album, however, revolves around femininity and the divine feminine. This paper will examine how Doja Cat constructs these concepts through a variety of ways. This paper will use Black feminist work to position Doja Cat’s work as feminist. Through the use of a variety of ‘feminine’ vocal timbres—both hers and from featured artists on her album—Doja Cat creates a feminine soundscape. Doja cat also embraces femininity and embodies the …

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 …

The (Counter) Politics Of Digital Comics In India: Reading Literature Of The Digital Space, Debadrita Chakraborty

Journal of International Women's Studies

In her 1984 essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Donna Haraway envisioned that digital technology would introduce a utopian space which would liberate women from gendered power dynamics. Despite such optimism shown by third and fourth wave feminists in India, political inertia and juridical failure to implement laws and justice for victims of gender violence, be they domestic violence or sexual assault, have manifested how the digital sphere has failed to become a post-gender space. On the other hand, the pervasiveness of online gender-based violence in social media and other interactive web platforms exacerbates women’s exclusion from the public political sphere. Against …

(Re)Asserting The Feminist Sensibilities: Confessionalism, Christian Feminism, And The Poems Of Eunice De Souza, Payel Pal

Journal of International Women's Studies

In her poems, Eunice de Souza, one of the most prominent Indian women poets writing in English, depicts women’s cultural sensitivities, their developing personalities in a male-dominated societal structure, their desire for independence, and frustrations stemming from their constrained surroundings. Her poetry demonstrates a range of feminist aesthetics and efforts to chart new territory for women. Her treatment of love and sexuality confirms her discontentment with a society that necessitates a woman’s silence and subservience. In her compositions, she implements an assertive and subversive tonality, and this article illustrates how the poet’s confessional mood enables readers a glimpse into her …

The Structures Of Intra-National Class Divisions In Neoliberalism: The Women Of “Light” And “Dark” In The White Tiger, Sneha Madimi

Theses and Dissertations

Aravind Adiga’s novel, The White Tiger, represents gender hierarchies and the class struggle of India’s neoliberal present. Adiga uses elements of satire and allegory to teach us something about how women are differently positioned in the neoliberal system. David Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism defines neoliberalism as “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (2). I will consider the novel, alongside Chandra Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes” …

A Feminist Political Theological Ethics Of Formation: Being And Becoming Christian In The Face Of American Christian Nationalism, Sara Wilhelm Garbers

Dissertations

Feminism, Formation, New Political Theology, Political Theology, Preaching, Theological Ethics

“Let's Hear It From The Girls”: Abortion Activism At Cal Poly, 1970-1980, Michelle L. Mueller

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Decolonizing Genderqueer: An Inquiry Into The Gender Binary, Resistance, And Imperialistic Social Categories, Lauren E. Abruzzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines core metaphysical properties of nonbinary and genderqueer categories in dominant U.S. contexts. I address a prevailing argument that these categories, by definition, resist the gender binary and are therefore radical modes of existing. In response, I put forth a view of ‘nonbinary’ and ‘genderqueer’ that I call the Diachronic Approach, which describes these categories as yet another set of tools within an imperialistic gender system, much like ‘man’ or ‘woman.’ In other words, they are what I refer to as imperialistic social categories. While nonbinary and genderqueer people do not fall perfectly within the U.S. gender …

Feminism, Interrupted? A Review Of Lola Olufemi's Feminist Primer, Alex W. Watkins

Feminist Pedagogy

This book review discusses Lola Olufemi's recent book, Feminism, Interrupted (2020), and how its project to promote an action-oriented, Marxist, intersectional feminism in contrast to a mainstream white feminism steeped in neoliberal thought might integrate within courses in women's and gender studies.

Spa203. ¿Qué Hacemos Con La Lengua? Lenguaje, Diversidad Y Derechos Humanos, Juan Jesús Payán

Open Educational Resources

Descripción del curso

SPA203 - (For native or near-native speakers.) The grammatical structure of today's standard Spanish. Intensive practice in reading, speaking, and elementary composition.

En SPA203 vamos a explorar la relación entre el lenguaje y la diversidad en el marco de los derechos humanos fundamentales. El título del curso, “¿qué hacemos con la lengua?”, nos pregunta dos cosas: qué tipo de prejuicios perpetuamos por medio del lenguaje y cómo hacer para que la lengua albergue de manera efectiva la diversidad de nuestra sociedad. En un contexto actual, sorprendente estancado en la indiferencia, la ignorancia, el prejuicio y estigmatización de …

Feminism, Femininity, And Arkansas First Ladies: Hillary Rodham Clinton And Janet Mccain Huckabee, Spencer A. Hurlbut

ATU Theses and Dissertations 2021 - Present

Through the 1970s and into the 2000s, Hillary Clinton and Janet Huckabee served as first ladies. Their husbands were elected and ran campaigns for Arkansas Governor and President of the United States. While the two men were the elected officials that constituents cast their votes for on election day, Hillary and Janet were beside the men playing a tremendous role in securing or discouraging votes. Third wave feminism ran rampant throughout these two decades and resulted in higher numbers of women in the workforce, later years of marriage, less children, and greater awareness of sexual harassment and sex discrimination. Hillary …

African Moral Fibre As The Lost Glory In Combating Violence Against Women, Lilian Cheelo Siwila

Journal of International Women's Studies

Africa, like any other society, embodies moral responsibilities that govern the way society is to be ruled. These morals, which are embedded in people’s belief systems and worldviews, are transmitted from generation to generation. The gendered nature of these morals can be reflected in the way women and girls are protected and respected in their communities. Since the holistic mothering roles of women are viewed as the highest order of society, heinous crimes like violating a woman are seen as taboo in that society. Among the Tonga people of Zambia, where this study is located, raping or beating a woman …

Instagram Influencers And Their Youngest Female Followers, Amanda Jenkins

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of the content teenage girls are surrounded by on Instagram, specifically focusing on influencer self-presentation and the impacts it can have on Instagram’s youngest female users. To do so, this research identifies and analyzes the top ten most popular influencers followed by a concentrated sample of 13–16-year-old girls. Theoretically informed qualitative analysis is used to analyze the influencers’ profiles by applying Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical approach (1956). With reference to Angela McRobbie’s (2008) work on “girl culture” and Alice Marwick’s (2015) work on “insta-fame”, the ways in which influencers code …

Bettina Von Arnim And Civil Action: How To Defy Oppression By Championing Others, Tesla L. Gontjes

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Children, cooking and church: Like most of the European world before 1900, these were “the three Cs” designated by society for women in Germany. However, some women broke through these expectations and pursued a fourth “C”: Civil action. Such a woman was Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859). A writer, activist, feminist, and intellectual, von Arnim was politically active during a time when women were delegated to domestic duties and expected to be completely subservient to their husbands. She lived during a tumultuous era of French, Prussian, and Austrian occupation of Germany during the early 19th century. Instead of being a mild-mannered …

Spa321. Búsquedas De La Igualdad: Feminismo Y Abolicionismo En Los Siglos Xviii Y Xix (Sílabo Y Materiales De Lectura), Juan Jesús Payán

Open Educational Resources

SPA321 - 3 hours, 3 credits. Readings from representative works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

El curso está dedicado al examen de la situación de la mujer en la sociedad patriarcal y el compromiso abolicionista durante los siglos XVIII y XIX. Tras una contextualización sumaria sobre los problemas que subyacen a la naturalización acrítica del canon y la periodización hegemónica, debatiremos sobre los estigmas que pesaron sobre las mujeres que querían dedicarse a la literatura; discutiremos el perdurable impacto que tuvo el modelo de domesticidad del “ángel del hogar” y finalmente analizaremos la contradictoria posición ideológica encarnada en el …

Sharon Carlson Part 1: Destined For Western, University Libraries

East Campus Oral Histories

Dr. Sharon Carlson, Professor Emerita and Archival Consultant, sits with Cassie Kotrch for her first of two interviews to talk about her time as a student at WMU.

"Dear Stanford: You Must Reckon With Your History Of Sexual Violence" By Seo-Young Chu, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

In 2000 a Stanford professor raped me. My rape is now older than I was. (I’m still not as old as he was.) The more time passes the more I’m struck by Stanford’s apathy and fecklessness about sexual violence. I wrote a letter asking Stanford to stop compounding the abuse and to reckon with its rape culture. This letter—including the “Incomplete Compilation of Links to Sources Documenting Stanford’s History of Sexual Violence, in Chronological Order”—should be mandatory reading for administrators, faculty, students, alumni, and stakeholders at both Stanford and CUNY. #MeToo #MeTooAcademia

You Go To My Head: Women's Prescription Pill Use In Postwar America, Erin K. Brown

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

During the postwar era, US pharmaceutical companies grew their production and distribution of prescription pills, which included barbiturates, minor tranquilizers, and amphetamines for mass consumption. Middle- and upper-class women were the majority users of these pills, finding assistance with the aid of prescribed drugs that helped correct difficulty with sleeping, eased anxiety, provided energy, and reduced the users’ size. This dissertation works to bring drug history and women’s history together to integrate the impact prescription pills had on women’s lives, positive and negative, and how and why consumers sought these drugs and the effects they promised. This project uncovers interactions …