Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Identity-Making Processes In The Storytelling And Experiences Of Tabletop Roleplaying Game (Trpg) Players, Allen Barnhart

Master of Rhetoric and Composition

Tabletop roleplaying game (TRPG) play involves complex social interactions and imaginative processes. These recursive elements cause players to evaluate and reevaluate the identities of themselves and the identities of their imagined characters. Previous research has established that TRPG play unwittingly allows players to rehearse social interactions and potential self-identities. Explorations such as these can be desirable to educators trying to give students a critical outlook on identity and perspective. This study presents a novel survey of Discord users from communities with the goal of understanding players’ awareness and experience with these identity-making processes. Nineteen experienced TRPG players responded to the …

Internalized Oppression: Exploring The Nuanced Experiences Of Gender And Sexuality In Historically Black Colleges And Universities, Kathryn Kendal Ryan

The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History

In the American South at the turn of the century, quality education was scarce and legislative laws were put in place to ensure that African American individuals remained far away from Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). As a result, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) became a catalyst for change in a “separate but equal” driven society. This article will explore the significance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in elevating Black Americans throughout the twentieth century while assessing the conservative nature of the institutions and their inflexibility towards the various nuances of African American communities. While not particular to HCBUs, …

Romancing The University: Bipoc Scholars In Romance Novels In The 1980s And Now, Jayashree Kamble

Publications and Research

English-language mass-market romance novels written by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) writers and starring BIPOC protagonists are a small but important group. This article is a comparative analysis of how recent representations of diversity in this sub-set of the genre, specifically the character of the Black academic and the language of racial justice, compare with the first group of BIPOC novels that were published in 1984 (Sandra Kitt’s Adam and Eva and All Good Things as well as Barbara Stephens’s A Toast to Love). In Adrianna Herrera’s American Love Story (2019), Katrina Jackson’s Office Hours (2020), and …

Visualizing The Risks: The Significance Of Graphic Design In Educating Women About The Risks Of Prescription Opioids & Pre-Existing Mental Health Conditions, Natascha Foret Truong

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the critical issue of educating women about the increased risks of prescription opioid use and misuse relating to a co-occurring mental health illness. The research-based graphic design solutions proposed in the thesis aim to create awareness and provide knowledge to women on this matter. It is imperative to address this issue as it has severe consequences for women, their families, and society. This thesis utilizes research and best practices from scholarly articles, case studies, visual analysis, personas, and mind mapping to present graphic design solutions based on evidence. These solutions aim to educate women about the gender-specific …

Collaborations, Not Competitions, Can Reduce Gender Disparities In Robotics, Sonia Roberts, Alysson Light

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Review Of Botanical Entanglements, By Anna K. Sagal, Millie Schurch

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Review of Botanical Entanglements, by Anna K. Sagal

A View Of Black Speculative Past And Future: An Interview With Tim Fielder, Julian Chambliss

Third Stone

No abstract provided.

Every Tongue Got To Confess: Zora Neale Hurston As Afrofuturist, Nicole Huff

Third Stone

To understand Hurston’s influence on the black speculative practice and engagement in Afrofuturist practice, we must first understand the period she was working within— the Harlem Renaissance.

From The Pen Of The Secretary: Latter-Day Saint Women And Relief Society Minute Books, 1868–1889, Mckall Erin Ruell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

In 1868, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon church) re-organized their women's organization, the Relief Society. The secretaries of each local ward or congregation of the Relief Society in Utah kept a record of their meetings in their own minute books. These records have largely been neglected by scholars and much can be learned about nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint women through their pages. This thesis examines Relief Society minute books from Cedar City, Fillmore, Meadow, Holden, Spring Lake, Provo, Salt Lake City, and Millville, Utah, looking specifically at Latter-day Saint women's discourse, testimonies, and …

Keeping And Challenging Familial Attachments: The Bakla Within Contemporary Mainstream Filipino Film, Abraham James A. Mata

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Throughout Filipino television and film, it is difficult to ignore the almost always apparent bakla. The bakla, often portrayed as either an effeminate gay man or a trans woman, largely appears as a side character in many Filipino films. Many depictions of this queer figure in the past have cast them as merely comedic relief or perverted figures. However, within the past two decades of the 21st century, many Filipino films have been produced with a central bakla character. Through an analysis of five mainstream films from the years of 2013-2023, this project is seeking to answer how mainstream depictions …

How Early Modern English Pedagogy Shaped The Gendered And Racialized Use Of Magic In William Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Erin Lindsay Faya

Graduate Thesis Collection

Magical usage plays a significant role in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. However, who gets to use magic and in what ways? Why is Prospero painted the protagonist while Sycorax gets labeled a witch though both use magic? This thesis looks at how early modern English pedagogy shapes the use of magic in The Tempest. When magic is read as knowledge, then the pedagogy influencing early modern education dictates whose knowledge counts and is seen as correct and whose is erased and vilified. The epistemological formation happening in early modern England is apparent in The Tempest as Prospero uses magic …

Disney Princess Films: Feminist Movements And The Changing Of Gender Roles, Mckinley M. Frees

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

A Character And A Fame To Model Their Own: Statesmanship, Masculinity, And Honor In Northern Political Culture, 1852-1874, Rachel Elise Wiedman

Masters Theses

The advent of the 1850s ushered in a period great change in the United States. Finding themselves in a moment of transition punctuated with a political changing of the guard, Americans were prompted to consider what kinds of political leadership they valued in the midst of sectional conflict and crisis. By the 1870s, the ideals northerners held looked very different than those touted only two decades before. Using the eulogies of Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, and Charles Sumner, this thesis explores how changing ideals of masculinity drove the transformation of northern political culture and in particular its values regarding …

“America’S Nervous Breakdown”: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Popular Psychology, And The Demise Of The Housewife In The 1970s, Kate L. Flach

Journal of 20th Century Media History

In 1976, soap opera satire Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (MH, MH) debuted and reached an estimated 55 million households. Produced by Norman Lear, the central storyline developed during the first season involved the mental breakdown of Mary Hartman (Louise Lasser), a typical consumer housewife who Lear claimed metaphorically represented the United States. Portraying a discontent housewife with mental illness as a proxy for the nation reflects how ubiquitous popular psychology became in explaining American anxieties over the transformations of the family and politics. An analysis of tape-recorded writers meetings reveals that the show’s creators pulled from contemporary books, theories, and …

Roan, Alex, Paige Ravenscraft

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Alex Roan is a 42 year old trans masc individual who uses he/him pronouns. He was originally from Stoughton, Massachusetts where he grew up with his family before moving to Central Maine for college and living in the Portland area through adulthood. Alex shares his experience with growing up in a Catholic family and finding himself as a trans person in college. He details what it was like to come out to his family, who was in denial at first but later in life became his biggest supporters.

Alex Roan is the founder of MaineTransNet. This interview captures the story …

A Dance Of Resistance: The Puerto Rican Bomba As A Means To Challenge Intersections Of Discrimination On The Island, Daniel Loving

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the Puerto Rican Bomba as a multifaceted cultural and political phenomenon, focusing on its pivotal role in challenging and subverting the enduring issues of racial and gender discrimination on the Island. Drawing from an interdisciplinary framework that encompasses cultural studies, anthropology, history, performance and film studies, this research elucidates the complex interplay between Bomba's rhythmic and choreographic elements, its historical evolution, and its contemporary significance in the context of Puerto Rico's sociopolitical landscape. By analyzing Bomba's historical roots in African and indigenous traditions, its adaptation during colonial and post-colonial eras, and its ongoing relevance in the struggle …

The Word That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Pamela Caughie

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay asks, when does our effort to avoid offending students interfere with our ability to teach them? Rehearsing conflicts over language and terminology, over who can speak and what can be said, from my four-decade career as a literature professor, critical theorist, and gender scholar, I confront contemporary efforts to censor certain words, to prohibit certain kinds of inquiry, and to limit who can speak about certain subjects by placing recent incidents in relation to previous debates in academia and the public sphere. The university classroom and scholarly peer-reviewed journals have long served as spaces where established viewpoints can …

Joyland: A Story Of Unquenchable Desires, Salma Javed

Journal of International Women's Studies

Contrary to the title, Saim Sadiq’s debut work Joyland is about struggling with gender identities and unquenchable desires in a conventional society. This heart-breaking drama of a conservative family belongs to the exceptional kind of cinema that sews craft with content. This poignant tale contains such intrigue that the viewers feel glued to the aching narrative until the very last minutes of the movie. The storyline follows three men protagonists from a damaged family, and four women characters, including a transgender woman. The story takes a turn when Haider, one of the main characters, falls in love with Biba, a …

We Deliver: The Condition Of The Woman Academic In India Today, Ananya Dutta Gupta

Journal of International Women's Studies

This auto-ethnographic essay draws upon Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge to discuss the condition of Indian women in the Humanities in academia today. While acknowledging the encouragingly gender-inclusive projections in India’s National Education Policy vision statement from 2020, I argue for more probing engagement with the concrete reality of being a woman teacher and researcher in the increasingly competitive and corporatized milieu of higher education. My methodology has been a close reading of the NEP’s vision statement to analyze recurrences of terms and concepts as pointers to its discursive field. I argue that this policy statement implicitly envisions an empowered new-age …

“We Need To Figure Out Who We Are”: Reframing Manhood In An Online Discussion Forum, Tomas Sanjuan Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I explore the potential of online communities in negotiating alternative forms of “doing” masculinity. I focus on the /r/bropill which is hosted on Reddit – home to thousands of active discussion forums called subreddits. I argue that the members of /r/bropill subreddit are attempting to redefine what it means to live your life not only as a man but as a “good man.” Using a purposive sample, I analyzed 24 discussions which totaled 1325 posts (n = 1325). I conducted a qualitative textual analysis of the original posts and comments inspired by grounded theory. My findings reveal …

From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr

Journal of Religion & Film

Sinan Çetin’s blockbuster Berlin in Berlin (1993) is a Turkish-German co-production. In contrast to certain representational tendencies with German orientalism or Turkish occidentalism, it deconstructs the intersectional structures of migration, religion, and gender. The portrayal of religion in films about Turkish-German labour migration is a kind of cultural narcissism often projected into national cinema by denigrating the faith of the other and glorifying one’s own religion. However, perspectives at such intersections are critical and require sensitivity in filmmaking, as films can create prejudice or help build peaceful relationships around these sensitive issues. The paper employs discourse analysis in linking Derrida’s …

Unruly Ideas: A History Of Kitawala In Congo, Nicole Eggers

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Original oral and ethnographic sources inform this conceptual history of power in central Africa, imagined through the lens of Kitawala religious practices.

Unruly Ideas: A History of Kitawala in Congo recounts the multifaceted history of the Congolese religious movement Kitawala from its colonial beginnings in the 1920s through its continued practice in some of the most conflict-riven parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo today. Drawing on a rich body of original oral, ethnographic, and archival research, Nicole Eggers uses Kitawala as a lens through which to address the complex relationship between politics, religion, healing, and violence in central …

Fierce Female Friendships: An Artistic Representation And Exploration Of The Benefits Of Gender-Based Inclusivity And Community In Stem, Maya Bachmeier-Evans

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Incorporating visual art, social research, women’s studies, and artificial intelligence, Fierce Female Friendships investigates the ramifications of gendered experience on the learning environment. By reflecting upon her work in a male-dominated discipline, the author transforms her sense of classroom isolation into two paintings that highlight the subtle yet significant differences that separate inclusivity from alienation. In addition to her personalized reflections, the author also creates a fourteen-question survey which invites her peers to consider gender in academia, to assess their experiences on a university campus, and to imagine how they might depict those experiences using visual art. Positing the idea …

Conceptual Engineering & Contextualism, Madhavi Mohan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation, I explore the relationship between conceptual engineering and contextualism in philosophy. Conceptual engineering evaluates philosophical theories about concepts against whether they meet normative and political objectives, while contextualism highlights the influence of context on meaning and truth. I argue that conceptual engineering is subject to contextualism, rendering theories about concepts applicable only in specific contexts.

The first chapter examines essentially contested concepts: concepts inevitably subject to contestation, owing to different, equally legitimate reasons philosophers may have for valuing them. Nevertheless, within specific contexts, these concepts serve particular purposes, and conceptions aligned with those purposes better capture their …

Moral Considerations In Political Decision-Making: Differences By Political Orientation And Gender, Christina M. Frederick, Shawn Doherty

Publications

There may be many factors determining the moral dimensions used by individuals when making political decisions. Two important dimensions worthy of examination are political orientation and gender. Based on Moral Foundation Theory (Graham et al., 2009), the present study examined how both of the aforementioned factors influence the moral dimensions used in political decisions. Participants (n = 338) completed a demographic survey, rated their self-perceived political orientation and then completed the Moral Relevance Scale (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009) and the Ideological Consistency Scale (Pew Research Center, 2014), which was used to place participants in liberal, moderate or conservative political …

Representaciones Ideológicas Del Lenguaje Entre La Población Mexicana En Nueva York, Maria Del Rocio Carranza Brito

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the linguistic ideologies that Mexican migrants bring when migrating and reproduce in their daily interactions with other Spanish and English speakers, as well as the representations of the language presented in their linguistic behaviors. This work presents an intersectional analysis where the factors of gender, migratory status, education, and work are determining factors in the adoption, maintenance, and reproduction of language ideologies, which affect the linguistic decisions of the speakers in their use of Spanish, learning of English and the support of bilingualism. Based on the stereotypical idea of Spanish as the …

White Male Privilege, Diversity-As-Deficit, And Tokenism In The North American University: Reflections On Netflix’S The Chair, Annamma Joy

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Ji-Yoon, an Asian-American woman, is the newly appointed chair of the English department at Pembroke University, a lower-tier Ivy League school. Most of the department’s faculty are older and white and male, but do include a female white professor, Joan Hambling, clearly suffering from marginalization. There is also a young black faculty member named Yasmin McKay, whom Ji-Yoon wants to make the university’s first black tenured professor in the English department. Yaz, as they call her, has published in the top journals and is loved by her students, who flock to take her courses. There are other story dynamics dealing …

Feminist Foreign Policy And The War In Ukraine: Hollow Framework Or Rallying Force?, Sara J. Chehab

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines the applicability of Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) frameworks following the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War. By looking at how Sweden, France, Canada, and Mexico responded to the war in the February 2022 to January 2023 period, the paper seeks to examine whether states’ reactions were in line with their FFP commitments or whether FFP was placed on the backburner in the face of a major threat. While there has not been a common feminist response to the war in Ukraine because states have responded through different means without consistently employing their FFP principles, the article argues that a clear …

Queer Frontier: Gender, Sexuality, And Intimacy In Minnesota Before 1900, Tyler J. Amick

History Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

The colonization of Minnesota brought about a sexual revolution that redefined what gender, sexuality, and intimacy meant within Minnesotan society before the turn of the twentieth century. Initial Euro-American forays into Minnesota created a hybridized society where indigenous traditions and Euro-American cultural ideas intermixed. Fur traders and early settlers broadly accepted indigenous customs, and some Euro-Americans even adopted indigenous practices. The most apparent of these practices are indigenous marriage rites. Large numbers of fur traders engaged in marriages à la façons du pays, in the style of the Dakota and Ojibwe. In some instances, these fur traders even engaged in …

The Ripple Effect: Gender And Race In Brazilian Culture And Literature, Maria José Somerlate Barbosa

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

In The Ripple Effect: Gender and Race in Brazilian Culture and Literature, Barbosa adopts a comparative, multilayered, and interdisciplinary line of research to examine social values and cultural mores from the first decades of the twentieth century to the present. By analyzing the historical, cultural, religious, and interactive space of Brazil’s national identity, The Ripple Effect surveys expressive cultures and literary manifestations. It uses the martial art-dance-ritual capoeira as a lynchpin to disclose historical ambiguities and the negotiation of cultural and literary boundaries within the context of the ideological construct of a mestizo nation. The book also examines laws …