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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The Impact Of Empire On Native American Women And Mothers, Rebecca J.M. Yowan Oct 2014

The Impact Of Empire On Native American Women And Mothers, Rebecca J.M. Yowan

Student Publications

No one doubts that the colonizing forces of the dominant, Euro-American culture have had an extreme and enduring impact on Native American cultures. However, the specific impact that empire has had on Native American women is a salient topic for research. Drawing on examples of environmental degradation, stolen agency, and psychological suffering, this essay illustrates the numerous and distressing effects that the philosophy and practice of empire have had and continue to have on Native American women.


Queen Of The Underworld: The Biography Of Sophie Lyons (1848-1924), Barbara M. Gray Oct 2014

Queen Of The Underworld: The Biography Of Sophie Lyons (1848-1924), Barbara M. Gray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sophie Lyons was a nineteenth-century American pickpocket, blackmailer, con-woman, and bank robber. She was raised in New York City's underworld, by Jewish immigrant parents who were criminals that trained their children to pick pockets and shoplift. "Pretty Sophie" possessed a rare combination of skill at thievery, intellect, guts and beauty and became the woman Herbert Ashbury described in Gangs of New York as, "the most notorious confidence woman America has ever produced." Newspapers around the world chronicled Sophie's exploits for more than sixty years, because her life read like a novel. Her mentor was another forgotten woman who held a …


Breaking Social Confinement: An Analysis Of Eighteenth-Century Women In The French Economy, Meghan Turok Aug 2014

Breaking Social Confinement: An Analysis Of Eighteenth-Century Women In The French Economy, Meghan Turok

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The study of single women in early modern Europe (1500-1800) has become a focus of scholarly examination during the past ten years. Historians have recognized that female singleness was often detested as it rejected the societal expectations of women that included domesticity and submission. But what they have yet to identify are the valuable economic contributions single women as a whole provided to society. In order to offer further research to this study, I examined 1795 census records from the Archives départementals de la Côte d’Or in Dijon, France that I translated from French to English. The census I examined …


Jewish Women In The Ghettos, Concentration Camps, And Partisans During The Holocaust, Sara Vicks Jun 2014

Jewish Women In The Ghettos, Concentration Camps, And Partisans During The Holocaust, Sara Vicks

Honors Theses

Men like, Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel, have provided us with valuable insight on the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Only until recently, was there a disproportion of female memoirs of the Holocaust beyond the story Anne Frank. The purpose of this study was to research the Jewish women’s experience in the ghettos, the concentration camps, and the partisans to add to a broader understanding of the Holocaust and its female victims. The hostile environment for Jewish males after Hitler’s rise to power led to a complete role reversal for Jewish men and women. Jewish …


The Moroccan Women's Rights Movement, Amy Y. Evrard Jun 2014

The Moroccan Women's Rights Movement, Amy Y. Evrard

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Among various important efforts to address women’s issues in Morocco, a particular set of individuals and associations have formed around two specific goals: reforming the Moroccan Family Code and raising awareness of women’s rights. Evrard chronicles the history of the women’s rights movement, exploring the organizational structure, activities, and motivations with specific attention to questions of legal reform and family law. Employing ethnographic scrutiny, Evrard presents the stories of the individual women behind the movement and the challenges they faced. Given the vast reform of the Moroccan Family Code in 2004, and the emphasis on the role of women across …


Sex-Crazed And Bloodthirsty: The Misrepresentation Of Female Nazis In American Popular Culture, Catherine L. Jones May 2014

Sex-Crazed And Bloodthirsty: The Misrepresentation Of Female Nazis In American Popular Culture, Catherine L. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Nazisploitation trope of the Ilsa-type within its political, social, and cultural context. A product of the 1950s men's adventure magazines, the Ilsa-type continues to be a familiar and popular character within American pop culture. Popularized through the 1970s torture porn, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, the character has since influenced mainstream film, fashion, and various other popular culture outlets. This thesis discusses why such an ahistorical figure has seized hold of public imagination, how she has developed in the decades since her first appearance, and why she matters. A work of feminist historical scholarship, this thesis …


Sex-Trafficking In Cambodia: Assessing The Role Of Ngos In Rebuilding Cambodia, Katherine M. Wood Apr 2014

Sex-Trafficking In Cambodia: Assessing The Role Of Ngos In Rebuilding Cambodia, Katherine M. Wood

Senior Honors Theses

The anti-slavery and other freedom fighting movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not abolish all forms of slavery. Many forms of modern slavery thrive in countries all across the globe. The sex trafficking trade has intensified despite the advocacy of many human rights-based groups. Southeast Asia ranks very high in terms of the source, transit, and destination of sex trafficking. In particular, human trafficking of women and girls for the purpose of forced prostitution remains an increasing problem in Cambodia. Cambodia’s cultural traditions and the breakdown of law under the Khmer Rouge and Democratic Kampuchea have contributed to …


A Changing Force: The American Civil War, Women, And Victorian Culture, Megan E. Mcnish Apr 2014

A Changing Force: The American Civil War, Women, And Victorian Culture, Megan E. Mcnish

Student Publications

The American Civil War thrust Victorian society into a maelstrom. The war disrupted a culture that was based on polite behavior and repression of desires. The emphasis on fulfilling duties sent hundreds of thousands of men into the ranks of Union and Confederate armies. Without the patriarchs of their families, women took up previously unexplored roles for the majority of their sex. In both the North and the South, females were compelled to do physical labor in the fields, runs shops, and manage slaves, all jobs which previously would have been occupied almost exclusively by men. These shifts in society, …


Reproductive Rights And State Institutions: The Forced Sterilization Of Minority Women In The United States, Maggie Lawrence Apr 2014

Reproductive Rights And State Institutions: The Forced Sterilization Of Minority Women In The United States, Maggie Lawrence

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.


The Patriarchy’S Role In Gender Inequality In The Caribbean, Erin C. O'Connor Apr 2014

The Patriarchy’S Role In Gender Inequality In The Caribbean, Erin C. O'Connor

Student Publications

While gender equality in the Caribbean is improving, with women’s growing social, economic, and political participation, literacy rates comparable to those in Europe, and greater female participation in higher education, deeply rooted inequalities are still present and are demonstrated in the types of jobs women are in and the limited number of women in decision-making positions. Sexism, racism, and classism are systemic inequalities being perpetuated in schools, through the types of education offered for individuals and the content in textbooks. Ironically, the patriarchy is coexisting within a system of matrifocal and matrilocal families, with a long tradition of female economic …


A Case Study Of Melita Maschmann: Women And The Third Reich, Lynda Maureen Willett Mar 2014

A Case Study Of Melita Maschmann: Women And The Third Reich, Lynda Maureen Willett

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The case study of Melita Maschmann shows that despite the deep manipulation and gender discrimination she was subject to in her youth by National Socialism Maschmann made her own free choices as an adult and chose to zealously absorb its political ideology. The general assumption is that National Socialism, and fascism, were male dominated political ideologies in which women played a passive role, such as that professed by Gertrude Scholtz-Klink. However, many women found National Socialism appealing and became active supporters of its ideals. The purpose of this paper is to explore that appeal and analyze why certain women such …


Love For Sale: Prostitution And The Building Of Buffalo, New York, 1820-1910, Rachel V. Nicolosi Mar 2014

Love For Sale: Prostitution And The Building Of Buffalo, New York, 1820-1910, Rachel V. Nicolosi

The Exposition

Generally referred to as “the oldest profession in the world,” prostitution often earns nothing but derision when spoken about in mainstream media. Women who find themselves in this line of work are often thought to be classless, uneducated, and sexually promiscuous outside of their occupation, and are generally considered to be an example of morally unfit behavior. Despite evidence pointing otherwise, this view of prostitution is one which has unfortunately prevailed since the 1800s. On the American Frontier, prostitution was one of the only legal means a woman could survive, and in east coast cities like Buffalo, New York, one …


No Blood In The Water: The Legal And Gender Conspiracies Against Countess Elizabeth Bathory In Historical Context, Rachael Leigh Bledsaw Feb 2014

No Blood In The Water: The Legal And Gender Conspiracies Against Countess Elizabeth Bathory In Historical Context, Rachael Leigh Bledsaw

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explains and discusses the conspiracies reported against the Hungarian noblewoman, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, regarding her confinement and the arrest of her accomplices in December 1610. The conspiracies state that the Countess was unjustly targeted and charged not because she was guilty of the deaths of several dozen girls from torture, but because she represented a threat to the Hapsburg Empire due to her wealth, her political influence, and her widowhood. This thesis explores the rationality of these two conspiracies using historical context regarding the position of noblewomen in Central and Eastern Europe and the function and use of …


The Comparison Of Power And Authority Of Women In China And Minangkabau Societies, Arif Rohman Jan 2014

The Comparison Of Power And Authority Of Women In China And Minangkabau Societies, Arif Rohman

Arif Rohman

The power and authority available for women are very important in measuring the cultural system in each society contains a gender bias or not. This study will examine whether the matrifocal and matrilineal society guarantees gender equality rather than the patriarchal and patrilineal society and to what extent these societies provide power and authority to women in both domestic and public spheres. To support analysis, this article will compare two Asian societies; those are China as a representative of the patriarchal and patrilineal society and Minangkabau as a representative of the matrifocal and matrilineal society. The analysis will be focused …


Critical Spaces: Processes Of Othering In British Institutions Of Higher Education, Aretha Phiri Jan 2014

Critical Spaces: Processes Of Othering In British Institutions Of Higher Education, Aretha Phiri

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Global recession and the economic crisis have affected contemporary British society in predictable ways. But this age of austerity has also unveiled the continued sinister machinations of whiteness. While not necessarily homogeneous, austerity rhetoric, as it is currently conventionally deployed, works to perpetuate white masculinist privilege and further entrenches the normative value of whiteness, while simultaneously masking and marginalizing those ethnic minority populations traditionally othered from mainstream sociopolitical discourse. More specifically, recent austerity measures adversely affect the situation of women and the future of feminist theory and practice in British higher education. This paper investigates and problematizes the deployment of …


TodavíA Bailamos La Cueca Sola : From Local Protest Practice Against Chile's Dictatorship To (Trans)National Memory Icon, Karolina Sonja Babic Jan 2014

TodavíA Bailamos La Cueca Sola : From Local Protest Practice Against Chile's Dictatorship To (Trans)National Memory Icon, Karolina Sonja Babic

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation is a multi-sited cultural-historical ethnography about the cueca sola, a dance that was created to denounce the disappearances of citizens during Chile's dictatorship in the 1970s. Some women with missing relatives, who belonged to the music group Conjunto Folclórico of the Association of the Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared (AFDD), created a variation on the Chilean national dance (the cueca - traditionally a courtship dance between a man and a woman) which did not involve a male partner. Instead, they performed it alone. In so doing, these women, who were among the first to denounce the military's …


Atatürk's Balancing Act: The Role Of Secularism In Turkey, Patrick G. Rear Jan 2014

Atatürk's Balancing Act: The Role Of Secularism In Turkey, Patrick G. Rear

Global Tides

The intersection of religion and politics in the form of a civil religion has been present since time immemorial. This paper looks specifically to the relationship between Turkey’s development of a secular civil religion after gaining independence and the advancing of women’s rights and democratic values. In examining the intersections of state and religion in a secular Islamic society, it draws parallels to the French civil religion as it came to be following the French Revolution. Though Atatürk and other secularists were strong forces in developing the civil religion, the paper also examines liberal democratic and conservative Islamic groups in …