Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Fragments Of An Anarcha-Transfeminist Sociology Of Sex Work, Veronica Andrek

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The purpose of this study is to explore ways in which feminist and sociological theory can be expanded by looking at the experiences of transgender women who are engaged in sex work specifically with an eye for transfeminist and anarchist political theory. Based on qualitative interviews with five transfeminine sex workers, I found that transfeminine sex workers, while facing substantial obstacles such as criminalization, transmisogyny, and poverty, are capable of building communities and forging new meanings in their lives. Within sex work are opportunities by which to reimagine labor and its role in our lives, with the possibility of abolishing …

Theorizing #Girlboss Culture: Mediated Neoliberal Feminisms From Influencers To Multi-Level Marketing Schemes, Frankie Mastrangelo

Theses and Dissertations

I define girlboss feminism as emergent, mediated formations of neoliberal feminism that equate feminist empowerment with financial success, market competition, individualized work-life balance, and curated digital and physical presences driven by self-monetization. I look toward how the mediation of girlboss feminism utilizes branded and affective engagements with representational politics, discourses of authenticity and rebellion, as well as meritocratic aspiration to promote cultural interest in conceptualizing feminism in ways that are divorced from collective, intersectional struggle. I question the stakes involved in reducing feminist interrogations and commitments to discourses of representation, visibility, and meritocracy. I argue that while girlboss feminism may …

Subjectivities Of Struggle: Charting Inscriptions Of Violence And Refusal On The “Cuerpo Territorio” Of Peru’S Defensoras, Natalia Guzmán Solano

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Subjectivities of Struggle: Inscriptions of Violence and Refusal on the ‘Cuerpo Territorio’ of Peru’s Defensoras” calls into question the colonial assumptions underpinning contemporary understandings of extractivism. The sixteen months of ethnographic research I conducted with the defensoras (women ecoterritorial defenders) of Cajamarca is situated at the fraught extractive frontier where social conflict paralyzed the expansion of a large-scale mining project and generated a coalitional struggle against extractive-led economic development. This dissertation conceptualizes extractivism as a modern/colonial product of power and knowledge that has feminized the land and inhabitants from the time of the European invasion of the Americas. While recent …

Overstimulated - An Immersive, Multimedia Art Installation, Quinn Devlin

Honors Theses

This thesis provides the explanation, inspiration, research and progression of an immersive, multimedia art installation that emulates the idea of a “sexual dystopia.” It explores how our dichotomy of inadequate sex education and hypersexual, gender-based media is resulting in a dystopian sexual reality for women in particular. The work portrays a future world in which sexual and fertility technology is so advanced and accessible that real men and women no longer interact. As a result, women and objects become one in the same.

Female literary icons are over-sexualized to suggest that porn-culture is a by-product of a historical framework that …

Does Money Indeed Buy Happiness? “The Forms Of Capital” In Fitzgerald’S Gatsby And Watts’ No One Is Coming To Save Us, Allie Harrison Vernon

English (MA) Theses

Looking primarily at two critically acclaimed texts that concern themselves with American citizenship—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Stephanie Powell Watts’ No One is Coming to Save Us—I analyze the claims made about citizenship identities, rights, and consequential access to said rights. I ask, how do these narratives about citizenship sustain, create, or re-envision American myth? Similarly, how do the narratives interact with the dominant culture at large? Do any of these texts achieve oppositional value, and/or modify the complex hegemonic structure? I use Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Forms of Capital” to investigate the ways in which economic, cultural, …

Violence In The Hands Of Women: An Analysis Of Gendered Violence In Life Is Strange And Before The Storm, Mitchi Anne Maja

Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the video games Life is Strange and Before the Storm and how they serve to reflect social expectations and norms placed upon both women and men even today. Cultural studies recently accepted video games as a form of media to study, especially with the prevalence and accessibility of video games in various platforms. Violence in video games is culturally associated with men and the male audience; my analysis focuses on violence in the hands of women. By analyzing the choices I made as a player and how these games present their narratives and characters, …

Cultivating Chingona Power: A Study On The Chingona Identity, Celia Orosco Haro

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Mujeres across the country are claiming the Chingona identity and using it to cultivate their Chingona strength, feel empowered, and live for their own approval. A Chingona in this newly reclaimed use means a woman who embodies confidence, acceptance of self, reclamation of sexuality, siguiendo le adelante por su propio camino sin importarle lo que digan los demás, rejects social and cultural norms/expectations of women, and uses her strengths to empower and uplift others. Through the reclamation of this identity, these mujeres are moving beyond being hijas de la chingada to being Chingonas. This research highlights the Chingona identity …

I'M Sorry For Everything, Hille Sennott

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My work is rooted in the fact that women are practically conditioned to apologize for everything, and tells the intimate story of my life. By recording my apologies for several months and deeply examining my behavior, I noticed themes and made work based on these — work that exposed my private moments. I noticed a disconnect between times I needed to apologize, and this compulsive need to take on the blame for every little thing. I examine the feminine battle of soft and strong, eventually coming to the conclusion that there are occasions calling for both. Women are taught to …

Why Katniss Everdeen Is Our Favorite Feminist – An Analysis Of The Heroine Of The Hunger Games Film Saga And Her Reception By Young Female Spectators, Paula Talero Álvarez

Theses and Dissertations

THROUGH THE FIGURE OF FICTIONAL CHARACTER KATNISS EVERDEEN, THIS DISSERTATION STUDIES HOW THE FILM INDUSTRY SIMULTANEOUSLY ENTRENCHES AND DISRUPTS GENDER, SEXUAL, AND RACIAL NORMATIVITIES. THE PROJECT USES TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND PARTICIPANT RESEARCH TO ANALYZE HOW THE FILMS AND NOVELS OF THE HUNGER GAMES SAGA ENCAPSULATE BOTH DOMINANT AND ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS RELATED TO FEMININITY, MASCULINITY, WOMANHOOD, AND MOTHERHOOD. IT ALSO EXPLORES IF AND HOW THE FEMALE HEROINE CAN BE READ AS FEMINIST AND PRODUCES A SENSE OF EMPOWERMENT. I CONCLUDE THAT ALTHOUGH THE INDUSTRY IS PRODUCING NEW MODELS OF WOMANHOOD THAT CHALLENGE TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES, IT STILL PERPETUATES ROMANTIC IDEALS AND …

Bricolage Propriety: The Queer Practice Of Black Uplift, 1890–1905, Timothy M. Griffiths

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bricolage Propriety: The Queer Practice of Black Uplift, 1890-1905 situates the queer-of-color cultural imaginary in a relatively small nodal point: the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Through literary analysis and archival research on leading and marginal figures of Post-Reconstruction African American culture, this dissertation considers the progenitorial relationship of late-nineteenth century black uplift novels to modern-day queer theory. Bricolage Propriety builds on work about the sexual politics of early African American literature begun by women-of-color feminists of the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Hazel V. Carby, Ann duCille, and Claudia Tate. A new wave of …

Breaking The Glass Slipper: Analyzing Female Figures' Roles In Disney Animated Cinema From 1950-2013, Brianna Prudencia Gutiérrez

Honors Theses

In this study, heroines and villainesses in nineteen Disney animated films from 1950- 2013 are characterized as traditional, complex, or non-traditional. A total of twenty-four female characters are classified based on their representation, actions, personality traits, appearance, and relationship status. Traditional female figures are beautiful dependent on male figures and engage in a heterosexual relationship as part of their "happily ever after." The traditional female figures in this study are Cinderella from Cinderella (1950) Lady from Lady and the Tramp (1955) Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) from Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Duchess from The AristoCats (1970). Complex female figures are, in the …

What Street Harassment Means, Madison Davis

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This paper is exploratory research into how college-age women understand their experiences of street harassment. Street harassment is a normative experience for women living in patriarchal cultures, and is an intrusive experience faced regularly in public life. Women told their experiences as part of a narrative that changed over time as they aged from teens into college. Their experiences were not confined to the street, but experienced across public life, and women often carry the weight of harassment in silence. Women resign to the ongoing reality of harassment, and their experiences did not exist in a vacuum but a larger …

Pushing For New Options In Childbirth: A Case Study In Contemporary Integrative Midwifery, Kerie Ann Francis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this study, I investigate the concept of “integrative midwifery” in a major metropolitan area in the Southwest United States. Specifically, I look at a group of midwives, doulas, and other birthworkers who have organized into a collective business entity to provide services to pregnant and birthing women. Stemming from a perception that the medical model of maternity care is broken in this country, these practitioners seek to offer alternatives. I draw upon literature regarding complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) which shows that market conditions have created a situation in which alternatives to medical modes of care have become increasingly …

Feminist Identities: Career Choices And Experiences Of College-Educated Women, Kerry Diekmann

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This qualitative study explored how feminism as a social identity impacts how women interpret their career and life experiences. The overarching research question that guided the study was: How do feminist-identified women make sense of their feminist identity, life experiences, and career path? The theoretical framework that provided the lens for the study included feminist, multicultural, intersectionality, and career development theories. Two distinct bodies of literature were reviewed to provide a foundation for the study: (a) women's career development, in particular, the supports and barriers experienced, and (b) feminist identity, including influences to adopting the feminist label and factors associated …

Voices Made (M)Other, Lizbett Benge

MAIS Projects and Theses

Voices Made (M)other is a theatrical project I created consisting of two original short plays, Momologues and ILL. This interdisciplinary project combines motherhood studies, feminist studies, whiteness studies, and theatre. One cannot have political change without revolutionizing each individual; and so I am sharing the process behind creating ILL, an autobiographical play tracing events throughout my motherline, to demonstrate the ways in which this project has helped create a more nuanced version of motherhood that incorporates mental illness, maternal abuse, and healing from trauma. This project builds upon the theory of empowered mothering (O’Reilly, 2006) by which society begins looking …

An Autoethnographical Tapestry Of Feminist Reflection On My Journey Of A Fitness Model Physique, Stephanie A. Paplinskie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Weight training and fitness competitions are increasingly popular activities for many women seeking an aesthetically fit body. This thesis entails a critical reflection of the various factors surrounding my personal decision to partake in body sculpting, examining how these factors parallel the experience of other women in the fitness industry. Using a feminist theoretical framework and autoethnography, a history of feminist theory is incorporated to demonstrate some of the various perspectives surrounding women bodies. Two challenges for women are discussed in this paper: i) the fear of fat, and how it is connected to a woman’s initial decision to attend …

Gay Emerging Adult Dating In College: A Feminist Grounded Theory Exploration, Kathryn Alexandra Conrad

Masters Theses

Research on intimate relationships has mushroomed as the definitions, practices, and contexts for dating change across generations. As an often overlooked population, sexual minorities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered individuals) have received increased scholarly attention within the social and family science research. Whereas this increased attention is warranted, still a lack of research exists regarding dating and romantic relationships among sexual minorities, particularly during emerging adulthood (ages 18-25). The purpose of this study was to explore the definitions, processes, and contexts for dating among a small, same-sex oriented sample of emerging adults (aged 18-25) currently enrolled in a large southeastern university …

Claiming Citizenship: Las Vegas' Conventional Women's Organizations Establishing Citizenship Through Civic Engagement, Cynthia Cicero

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Many historians of American women portray women's organized civic engagement and work to attain social, economic, and legal equality as feminism. American feminism has been expanded and applied in scholarship. The American feminists of the 1960s wanted to alter the male power structure and redefine conventional notions of womanhood. However, many middle-class women who participated in community and civic organizations valued their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers, expressing their citizenship and community work as an extension of these roles. Their motivation in pursuing equality was to gain full citizenship status.

In this thesis, I argue that viewing women's civic …

A Historical And Analytical Study Of Feminization In The Field Of Public Relations, Taylor U. (Flumerfelt) Beatty

Selected Honors Theses

The origin of the public relations field can be traced back more than 1,000 years. The use of its basic concepts can be seen throughout history, and increased in the 19th and 20th centuries. Until the mid-1900s, the field was largely comprised of men. World War II spurred the beginning of the feminization process, which caused public relations to experience a large influx of women. The number of female practitioners has since continued to increase. Even though feminization occurred and the field is now largely female-dominated, female practitioners experience a wide variety of gender inequalities in social, professional and economic …

"Nudge A Mexican And She Or He Will Break Out With A Story": Complicating Mexican Immigrant Masculinities Through Counternarrative Storytelling, Berenice Villela

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I explore Latino masculinities and contest their uniformity through transforming an oral history conducted with my father into a collection of short stories. Following storytelling traditions of Latino/Mexican culture, I converted an oral history interviews with my dad into a collection of short stories. From these short stories I extracted themes relating to the micro and macro manifestations of gender policing. Drawing from Judith Butler's Theory of performativity and Gloria Anzaldua's theory of Borderland identities, I rethink masculinity and offer Jose Esteban Munoz's theory of disidentification. With these theories in conversation, I analyze the themes of the …