Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Crafting Lives: Experiences Of Ethiopian Refugees In Cairo, Nayrose S. Abd El-Megid

Theses and Dissertations

There has been an ongoing influx of refugees for years driven by political instability, famine, and prolonged conflicts in the region, leading many individuals to seek sanctuary in other countries. Egypt has become a host country for many years, whether for settlement or transit, for various populations from different nationalities hoping to find refuge. However, amidst this influx, Ethiopian refugees often find themselves overlooked or usually associated on the sidelines with other African nationalities; their stories and struggles are marginalized in broader narratives of displacement. The experience of Ethiopians is heterogeneous and multidimensional in terms of their intersectional identities of …

A Journey To A Black Woman’S (Read Black Girl’S) Joy And Her Story Of Coming Home, Brittany Lauren Brock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an auto/ethnography about the self-actualizing journey of reclaiming storytelling as my native tongue and my journey to joy. Throughout, using my story and the stories of so many others, I not only lay out the wounds (the pain, the loss, then the hope that comes) within the academy and outside in the world but I also use storytelling as a tool of healing—my tool of healing—to show how I wrote myself free.

When Black women (read Black girls) go through The Reckoning (the moment we realize something isn’t right with how we are perceived by others) …

Queer Rural Youth Online: A Digital Ethnography, Joseph Robert Burns

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is based on digital ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2023 within Queer subcommunities on the social media sites Reddit and Twitter (now known as X) and data collected from interviews with Queer rural youth members of these communities. The data reveal that social media use directly influences the lives and actions of Queer rural youth, who use the space to build social connections, shape their personal identities, and seek advice pertaining to their in-person lives and decisions. By using these spaces, Queer rural youth build both bonding and bridging social capital, learn to subvert restrictions to their Internet access, …

Swipe For More: Digital Sex Education, The Emergence Of Femtech And The Neoliberal Subject In Cairo, Egypt, Marisa Breathwaite

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I approach digital sex education in Cairo, Egypt and how it is navigated by Cairo’s urban elite. The way digital sex education in Cairo is consumed via social media and online courses is touted as “new” by popular media coverage. The content, products and services boast the first of their kind by the creators of the platforms themselves. That middle and upper class Cairene women are talking about sex online and consuming digital sex education content, in visible public forums, is portrayed as a completely novel phenomenon—in other words, platforms like Cairo’s first femtech company, Motherbeing, are …

Exploring The Factors That Influence Female Offending In The U.S. And Mexico, Dana Villasenor

CMC Senior Theses

Hollywood has painted a picture of the criminal woman as a sexy, sneaky, and often psychotic female fatale. This is because men run Hollywood. Much like movies, research on why women offend had historically focused on men as their stellar. However, towards the turn of the century and with the disproportionate rise in female incarceration, literature caught up to the fact that women and men do not experience the same socialization, standards, or reality and, therefore, have different reasons for and ways of offending. This research explores those reasons for women in the U.S. and Mexico and paints the picture …

Diasporic Women’S Mutability In South Asian Postcolonial Literature, Tasnim S. Halim

Theses and Dissertations

Though Western scholarship tends to homogenize South Asian experiences, researchers and novelists shed light on different classes of South Asian postcolonial and migratory women who experience mutability, or the internal and external changes as a trauma response after British colonial rule ended and the 1947 Partition abruptly fractured national identity. Though this mutability has positive and negative transformative qualities, it also allows women characters the power to remove themselves from cycles of oppression, work towards healing, and transforming their physical bodies from sites of repressed trauma to sites of expression and agency. What binds them is not only their physical …

Let Go And Let God: An Ethnographic Study Of Overeaters Anonymous, Subjectivity, And Extreme Eating Distress, Abby Forster

Theses and Dissertations

Academic discussions regarding eating disorders have been dominated by two frameworks: biomedical and feminist. While the former explains eating disorders as a product of individual pathology, the latter asserts the cause is culture. An aspect of culture that is often suggested is neoliberalism. This ethnographic study utilizes the term “eating distress” to acknowledge the localized idioms that occur outside of the bounds of biomedical settings. The research documents the experiences of many members of Overeaters Anonymous dealing with eating distress within a social context in which their body types are stigmatized. The dissertation examines the relationship between subjectivity, Overeaters Anonymous, …

The Solidarity Manifesto: A New Network For Future Change, Sofia Calicchio

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Colonialism is a scheme of standpoint; colonizer versus colonized, West versus East, good versus bad. When put in the foreground, the value of what we see heavily relies on our perspective and knowledge. When learning to dissect, deconstruct, and decolonize spaces, we need to start utilizing decolonial thought as an historical tool rather than a true depiction of reality. Decolonizing spaces and recognizing Western colonization practices means challenging the normative structures in colonial history, thus breaking the cycle of oppression through building community and fostering solidarity. Drawing on theories exploring access to public spheres, representation, protection, permanence, cultural displacement and …

Eldest Daughter Or Third Parent? An Exploration Of Eldest Daughters In The Egyptian-American Diaspora, Fatima Abdel-Gwad

Theses and Dissertations

Egyptian-American first-born daughters in the diaspora women cope with the pressures of immigration by improvising processes of identity-making and preserving ethnicity. This group is subject to complex systems of gendered, classed, and racialized tensions that become relevant in their attempts to preserve cultural formations in the diaspora. This work seeks to showcase the various tensions present in diasporic existence and explore the methods with which these diasporic daughters participate in processes of cultural and ethnic preservation. Through the ethnographic accounts of six eldest daughters in the New York City and Northern New Jersey areas, this research explores the connections between …

Naming Venus: An Exploration Of Goddesses, Heroines, And Famous Women, Kavya Beheraj

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Humans have been observing and romanticizing Venus for more than 5,000 years. However, mapping its surface has nearly always been impossible, since the planet is shrouded in thick clouds. A breakthrough came just fifty years ago with the invention of radar imaging, leading to the discovery (and naming) of hundreds of new features in a relatively short length of time.

The rapid naming of Venus is a case study on the impact of planetary nomenclature — the process of naming features on other worlds. While the act of naming streamlines communication and humanizes alien landscapes, it is subject to bias, …

Queer Is Here, Hopefully To Stay: The Incorporation And Reception Of Lgbtq+ History At The History Colorado Center, Madeline Ohaus

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historically, the documentation of LGBTQ+ histories, struggles, and accomplishments has been absent from museum collections and exhibitions. Scholars argue that given the authoritative nature of museums and their influence on the public, exclusions of LGBTQ+ history can mount to institutional erasure of queer identities. However, in the past decade, there has been an increase in attempts to document and curate exhibitions highlighting and encouraging the public to engage with LGBTQ+ history. While this history is imperative to preserve and display, it can be met with controversy, leading some LGBTQ+ history exhibitions to be relocated or even removed. During the summer …

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

Colombian Women’S Experiences Of The Canadian Refugee And Asylum Adjudication Process, Camila N. Parra Carrillo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present thesis “Colombian women’s experiences of the Canadian refugee and asylum adjudication process” is an ethnographic description and analysis of the experiences of Colombian refugee women as they move through the refugee and asylum adjudication system in Ontario, Canada. Using concepts such as liminality, politics of waiting, hermeneutics of suspicion and arbitrariness, the refugee and asylum adjudication system is shown to be a site of power and domination that creates negative emotions in the people who face it, especially in the oral hearing as a central event in the process. Centering Colombian refugee women’s voices, their experiences and emotions …

Feminism At The Borders: The Navigation Of Gender Issues By Mexican-American Women Along The U.S.-Mexico Border, Carolina Fuentes

Capstone Collection

Feminist movements have taken on various iterations since they first began, particularly as the movements expanded beyond predominantly Western and white spaces. This research study explores how gender equality is perceived and navigated along the U.S.-Mexico border area, taking into account the various Latin American and U.S. feminist developments that have shaped the current landscape of the border. 11 Mexican and Mexican-American women living in U.S.-Mexico border states were interviewed to gain an understanding of their definitions, perceptions, and opinions on feminism and gender-related issues given their bicultural contexts. These conversations revealed that ideas of rights and equality were central …

Gender Neutral Parenting: Raising A Generation Outside The Gender Binary, Toni Noelle Martinez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, the social and cultural reality remains organized around the gender binary. The binary legitimizes itself on the widely held belief that gender is determined by biology and, therefore, is “natural.” By exploring and firmly placing gender as a cultural construct, this thesis looks at the possibilities of fracturing the binary. Borrowing from Stephan Hirschauer (1994) and Judith Butler’s (2004), this thesis theorizes what a gender neutral world could look like and examines how Gender Neutral Parents contribute toward a gender revolution. Gender Neutral Parents, a community that is mostly found online, represent a small group that …

“The Worst Part About My Pregnancy Was Stuff That Didn’T Have To Do With My Pregnancy”: Medicaid Beneficiaries’ Pregnancy Intentions & Experiences In South Carolina, Andrew Michael Chen

Senior Theses

Low-income women and women of color experience adverse birth outcomes at disproportionately higher rates in the United States than most people who give birth. This thesis examines individual interviews conducted with 30 low-income women whose most recent birth was covered by Medicaid, the United States’ largest means-tested public health insurance program. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the women in the study thought about pregnancy, and how they described their intentions to become or avoid becoming pregnant at various times in their life. While public health researchers often frame pregnancy as an event that is either intended …

“Even If You Have Food In Your House, It Will Not Taste Sweet”: Central African Refugees’ Experiences Of Cultural Food Insecurity And Other Overlapping Insecurities In Tampa, Florida, Shaye Soifoine

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, resettled African refugee populations experience food insecurity at rates up to seven times higher than those of the general population. In Tampa, Florida, anthropologists have documented high levels of food insecurity among Central African refugee households since members of this population began to be resettled in the area in 2016. Utilizing an intersectional lens and drawing upon theoretical concepts such as cultural food security, navigational capital, and social reproduction, this thesis examines how Central African refugees, particularly women, experience food (in)security and other overlapping forms of (in)security as they integrate into US systems of structural inequality …

Navigating The Cairene Table: Food And Family Between What Is Ideal And What Is Real, Iman Afify

Theses and Dissertations

Our daily encounters with food, especially during our childhood, play a crucial role in shaping and informing our identity and our habitus. In this research, by using multimodal and auto ethnography, I argue that due to the guiding path that our senses carve for us, we make sense and contextualise our surroundings through our senses, and not only the five senses of vision, smell, taste, hearing, and touch, but also through our inner senses of time and temporality, and how time and memory play an important role in the registration of our surroundings through our bodies and senses. I am …

Reconsidering Scales And The Binary In Forensic Anthropology: A Critical Analysis Of Morphoscopic Data Utilized In Sex Estimation Standards., Bailey N. Watson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This research explores sex estimation standards used in forensic anthropology in an effort to further the conversation about forensic anthropology's binary-focused language and methods. Discussions regarding sex estimation methodology are important in light of gender variance in the general population. Presently, there is minimal published research on the identification of gender non-conforming individuals in forensic anthropology.

Two researchers individually assigned scores to features associated with sexual dimorphism in the os coxae according to existing methods for 253 individuals, equally represented by self- reported males and females. These data were statistically analyzed for correlation and overlap between features.

Results mainly point …

Asking For Forgiveness: Negotiating The Creation Of Memory Through Public Memorialization, Alyssa Castronuovo

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The practice of spatializing culture, or “examining space through theories of embodiment, discourse translocality, and effect,” localizes the global and separates hegemonic narratives of space from how it is actually utilized by the people who interact with it. Setha Low argues that this perspective is especially useful to the anthropologist committed to challenging the discipline’s historically eurocentric approach to studying culture. She writes that a spatial focus “[draws] on the strengths of studying people in situ, producing rich and nuanced sociospatial understandings.” This project began with an interest in theorists such as Edward Soja, Michel de Certeau, and Henri Lefebvre, …

Women And Western Mission: A Case Study On The Christian Khasi And Garo Tribal Women, Rosemary Philip

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Western mission justified a mission to the Global South that was ingrained with the dominance of its culture and values. Women’s mission, as a tool of this mission, patronized themselves as the ‘care-taker’ of the ‘subjugated’ women of the Global South. This mission promulgated new ways of thinking and prescribed new gender roles and values to the Global South. In doing so, it framed the traditional roles and cultural values of the non-Western world as oppressive and replaceable. Subsequently, Women’s mission along with Western feminism and Feminist theology as a broad idea has been challenged by feminists from the Global …

“She Too ‘Omanish’”: Young Black Women’S Sexuality And Reproductive Justice In Bluefields, Nicaragua, Ishan Elizabeth Gordon-Ugarte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Most never-married young “Creole” (Afro-Caribbean) women in Bluefields, Nicaragua are raised in fundamentalist Protestant families and institutions that emphasize sexual abstinence before marriage. In this context, abstinence is required to maintain social standing and “respectability.” Nevertheless, women in Bluefields, the administrative center of Caribbean Nicaragua, exhibit what Creoles themselves understand to be high rates of sexuality and pregnancy among post-menarche unmarried teenaged women (USAID, 2012; Mitchell et al. 2015). Such young women’s pregnancies occur at an important developmental stage of their lives and have long been associated by social scientists with adverse social, emotional, and health situations. These scholars have …

Development With Identity Or Commodities With Identity? Lenca Craftswomen, Honduras' Cultural Identity Politics, And Global Economies Of Culture, Ana Hasemann Lara

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Across Latin America ‘development with identity’ schemes are currently widely promoted by multilateral and aid organizations; schemes based on the commercialization of heritage, which increasingly focus on impoverished ethnic minorities. As part of this trend, the Honduran state’s discourse on cultural diversity reinforces the ‘heritage-making’ (patrimonialización) of cultural minorities, their identities, and livelihoods—particularly indígena women, under the auspices of multiculturalism. However, the on-the-ground reality for indigenous Lenca communities, specifically Lenca craftswomen, participating in such initiatives, remains with some of the highest indices of poverty and vulnerability in the country. Hence, the conditions under which ‘development with identity’ benefits local communities, …

Crafting Up A Narrative: An Ethnographic Study Of Fair Trade Marketing Practices And The Representation Of Female Handicraft Producers, Jessica Bradley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Unlike the exploitative supply chains that exist under neoliberal globalization, where the social conditions of their supply chain are largely hidden; fair trade attempts to reveal the conditions of their supply chains through transparent marketing practices. Transparency is often presented in the form of storytelling wherein fair trade organizations (FTOs) reveal intimate details of the artisans they partner with to educate consumers on the interrelations of their product supply chains. I wanted to explore the implications of sharing artisan stories to further sales of the handicrafts they produced. How does sharing intimate stories of artisans formulate the perceptions Western consumers …

Colonial Markets, Consumers, And Trade: A Comparative Analysis Of Historic Ceramics From The Bluefields Bay Area, Westmoreland, Jamaica, Lacy Risner

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The ceramic assemblages from a British colonial settlement in Bluefields Bay, Jamaica, provide a unique window into the market availability, exchange routes, and consumption patterns of the eighteenth century. This study compares the historic ceramics collected from two sites in Bluefields Bay to one another and to other intra-island (Jamaica), intraregional (Lesser Antilles), and international (North America) colonial and postcolonial sites to reveal patterns of individual and global ceramic consumption and distribution in the emergent capitalist networks and markets of the colonial era. Integrating small British colonial sites into the networks of other more extensive studies focusing primarily on plantations …

The Isolated As The Revolutionary: How “Leftover” Men In China Challenge Heteronormativity, Ruwen Chang

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

In contemporary China, demographers estimate that 30 million men are single because there are simply not enough women in the Chinese population, and the 2020 Chinese census shows that there are 34.9 million more men than women. These men are called guanggun, which can be directly translated to “bare sticks/branches,” a slur that indicates a lack of marriage and sex. In this project, I demonstrate that guanggun’s singlehood marks them as the marginalized at the intersection of heteronormativity, patriarchy, globalizing capitalism, and pronatalist governmentality. In a highly heteronormative and patrilineal culture, guanggun are branded as abnormal/incomplete. However, because …

"Bonobo" Rights For All: Using A Primatological Approach To Secure Gender Equity, Francesca V.E. Kaser

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Western patriarchy sustains male-dominance and perpetuates gender inequity. While there have been great achievements toward gender equity, women are burdened to navigate a society that upholds male success. Equality offers individuals the same opportunities, but often falls short in delivering equal outcomes because of historic and systemic male privileges conserved by patriarchy. Equity, on the other hand, ensures that fair opportunities effect equal outcomes to rectify systemic injustices. To reconstruct women’s role in society, our closest living relatives, patriarchal chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and matriarchal bonobos (Pan paniscus), allow humans to compare the role of females in …

Sacramental Ethnicity: Women’S Culture And Vernacular Religion In Twentieth-Century America, Aaron J. Rovan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This project examines the reciprocal and evolving relationship between American women’s culture, vernacular religion, and the social development of American ethnicity. This project focuses on the roles of white ethnic women, both literary and real, in the construction, maintenance, and transmission of ethnic identity. The project highlights the connections between the folkloric performances of vernacular religion and the discursive articulation of ethnicity by focusing on two women writers and two groups of Slovak American women. The fiction of Kate Chopin and Anzia Yezierska illustrates how literary authors bring their contemporary concepts of folklore into their writing. The writings of these …

Desde El Fuego Que En Mí Arde: Performance, Literatura Y Cine Afro-Latinoamericano Producidos Por Mujeres Afrodescendientes En Perú, Cuba Y Brasil (1960–2000), Elena Ekatherina Chavez Goycochea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines different films, literary, and performance art pieces created by contemporary afro-descendant women from Peru, Cuba, and Brazil after the sixties with emphasis on the most relevant works of Conceição Evaristo, Sara Gómez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Lucía Charún-Illescas. I focus my research on the crucial role these artists played in the cultural identity formation of Latin America when inserting ‘race’ as a category of socio-political analysis and cultural production. How did their films, performances, and texts challenge national narratives and imaginaries after 1960? Although in the sixties, women improved their civil rights in different countries, the ‘mujer …

Transformative Health Care: Integrating The Perspectives And Lived Experiences Of Transgender And Gender Diverse Patients Into Health Care Education And Delivery, Shammarie Raquel Mathis

Dissertations and Theses

Prior research studies have found transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) patients at increased risk for poor physical and mental health as a result of disparities in health care access and treatment. Research has shown that perioperative patient education can improve patient outcomes, as well as promote increased knowledge, preparedness, and recovery post-surgery. For TGNC patients, gender affirming perioperative education classes are especially important for prospective patients as they not only provide comprehensive information about perioperative topics but also serve as a mechanism to promote personal empowerment through knowledge acquisition. The Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) Transgender Health Program (THP) …