Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Shaping Western Views Of Homosexuality In 20th Century Europe Through Community, Sarah Palluconi

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will discuss a community of transnational sexual reformers and their influence on public and private views of homosexuality between the 1890s to the 1930s. This community of sexual reformers had ties to the World League for Sexual Reform (WLSR), an international organization that operated from 1928 to 1935. The WLSR discussed birth control, sexual education, prostitution, venereal disease, and, of course, homosexuality in terms of the law and society. By analyzing the few leading figures who studied homosexuality and sexology at the beginning of the 20^th century, I have found that the correspondence and discussion of homosexuality …

The Cult Of The Nymphs: Identity, Ritual, And Womanhood In Ancient Greece, Ivana Genov

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Examining archeological and epigraphic evidence in its historical context, in this thesis I explore the Cult of the Nymphs venerated across ancient Greek poleis. I analyze the nymph’s profound cultural and historical impact that is often overlooked in the study of ancient Greece. Nymphs were female deities thought to embody ecological sites, such as fountains and springs, and became fundamental to polis identity. Their locations were often central to city plans, and their faces, depicted on coinage, became representative of the city itself. In the community, nymphs were integral to rituals for major life events, most often in the lives …

To Have Sex Or Not To Have Sex: An Exploration Of Medieval Christian And Jewish Sexual Values, Rachel Zaslavsky

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of Medieval Jewish and Christian conceptions of sex and aims to challenge the notion of Judeo-Christian values. Medieval Judaism and Christianity are at odds with each other in their understandings of sexuality. By considering Judaism, the belief that medieval religion was averse to sexuality and sexual pleasure is disproven. An analysis of religious works, such as those produced by Christian theologians and Jewish rabbis, yields the following conclusion: medieval Christianity restricted sex on the basis of abstinence, while medieval Judaism restricted sex on the basis of ritual impurity but mandated sex for procreation and female …

The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This essay examines and critiques the ways in which Black, Queer, and Black Queer people's culture, politics, and lived experiences are experienced in the United States, historically and in the present day. The Bodies Politics calls for American history and culture to be reoriented to acknowledge and center the contributions of Black Queer people to the nation.

“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I situate Edith Wharton’s guiding idea of “garden-magic” at the center of my thesis because Wharton’s fiction shows how a garden space could naturalize otherwise inadmissible behaviors within upper-class society while helping a character tie such behavior to a greater possibility for escape. To this end, Wharton situates gardens as idealized touchstones within the built environment of New York City, spaces where characters believe they can reach self-actualization within a version of nature that is man-made. Actualization, in this sense, stems from a character’s imaginative escape that is enabled by a perception of the garden as a kind of natural …

Uniting Interests: The Economic Functions Of Marriage In America, 1750-1860, Lindsay Mitchell Keiter

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation, "Uniting Interests: Money, Property, and Marriage in America, 1750-1860," examines how marriage was an essential economic transaction that responded to the development of capitalism in early America. Drawing on scholarship on the history of economic development, household organization, law, and gender, I argue that families actively distributed resources at marriage as part of larger wealth management strategies that were sensitive to regional and national economic growth. I focus particularly on women's property holding and how families deployed the legal protection of women's property as bulwarks against financial disaster. This project restores the family and women to the narrative …

A Widow's Purview: A Microhistory Of Widowhood And Gender Relations In The Late Eighteenth-Century Virginia Backcountry, Eve Bourbeau-Allard

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

"Strength For The Journey": Feminist Theology And Baptist Women Pastors, Judith Anne Bledsoe Bailey

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation grows out of an interest in the women who are pastors in formerly Southern Baptist churches. Because they continue to face opposition to their role as pastors I wanted to know the sources of their strength and determination. Specifically, how did feminism and feminist theology influence their decision to be pastors and their continuing ministry?;I interviewed twenty woman pastors in five different states representing two generations of pastors. These women are among the very few who grew up in Southern Baptist churches and are now pastors, since the Southern Baptist denomination has officially banned women from the pulpit …

"Handing Down Remarkable And Interesting Circumstances": Elizabeth Carrington And Female Intellectual Inheritance In The Early American Republic, Hannah Emily Bailey

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Peopling The Cloister: Women's Colleges And The Worlds We've Made Of Them, Caroline Simmons Leigh Hasenyager

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

"You Can't Say 'No' To A Soldier": Sexual Violence In The United States During World War Ii, Michaele Katherine Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Between 1939 and 1946 the number of rapes in the United States increased approximately 45 percent. This project strives to explain the cultural factors the fueled this increase. Existing societal beliefs and the legal system of this period held rape victims responsible for their own victimization. Additionally, the wartime mobilization of the 1940s liberated millions of young men from community and family moral surveillance. Some men experienced this liberation as license to coerce sex from women. Popular culture accepted and even praised sexual aggressiveness in men, especially military men, and linked women's sexuality to their patriotism. The combination of all …

Outlaw Reproduction: Childbearing And The Making Of Colonial Virginia, 1634-1785, Andrea Kathleen Westcot

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation examines discourses and experiences of reproduction in Virginia, 1630-1785. I define reproduction as an experiential reality that contoured women's lives in specific ways, as a central demographic phenomenon that shaped colonial populations, and as a discourse of power in the colonial project. Informed by feminist theory, queer theory, and postcolonial theory, the dissertation examines the relationship between reproduction and colonialism in the development of a plantation economy in Virginia. I draw on a varied archive of court documents, colonial records, newspapers and other print culture, plantation records, diaries, letters, and medical texts. Chapter 1, "'A considerable parcel of …

Deviants Of Great Potential: Images Of The Leopold-Loeb Case, John Carl Fiorini

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Deviants of Great Potential analyzes the 1924 Leopold-Loeb case as a cultural narrative with important effects on the marginalization of same-sex sexuality in men throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. After Chicago teenagers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were arrested for the United States' first nationally recognized "thrill killing," the apparently motiveless murder of fourteen-year-old Robert Franks, the Leopold-Loeb case became an instant cause celebre. The popular fixation on the case continued in the decades after 1924, as journalists and behavioral scientists treated it as a precedent for understanding a certain type of crime and criminal. Meanwhile---especially after …

Letters To Annie: Ordinary Women In Late Nineteenth Century Maine, Rachel Catherine Thomas

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

"Her Correspondence Is Dangerous": Women In The Fashion Trades Negotiating The Opportunities And Challenges Of Doing Business In The Chesapeake, 1766-75, Kaylan Michelle Stevenson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Changing Girl: Sex Education And Prescriptions Of White Girlhood, Laura M. Ansley

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Black Female Landowners In Richmond, Virginia 1850-1877, Hannah Catherine Craddock

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Unsung Heroes: Lesbian Activists In The Aids Epidemic In North Carolina And California, 1981-1989, Maggie Shackelford

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The "Extraordinary" Case Of James Allen: A Study Of Gender And Sexuality In Early Nineteenth-Century Britain, Maria Dale Booth

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Ghent Gayland: A Case Study Of The Gay And Lesbian Community And Media Of Norfolk, Virginia, Michael Anthony Lusby

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Honor, Gender And The Law: Defense Strategies During The Spanish Inquisition, 1526-1532, Katy Iverson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

"--All United Like Sisters--": Education, Friendship, And The Bonds Of Womanhood At Litchfield Female Academy, 1782--1833, Amy E. Whelan

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Introduction To "Terror In The Heart Of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, And The Meaning Of Race In The Postemancipation South, Hannah Rosen

Arts & Sciences Book Chapters

The meaning of race in the antebellum southern United States was anchored in the racial exclusivity of slavery (coded as black) and full citizenship (coded as white as well as male). These traditional definitions of race were radically disrupted after emancipation, when citizenship was granted to all persons born in the United States and suffrage was extended to all men. Hannah Rosen persuasively argues that in this critical moment of Reconstruction, contests over the future meaning of race were often fought on the terrain of gender.

Sexual violence--specifically, white-on-black rape--emerged as a critical arena in postemancipation struggles over African American …

"Let All Things Be Done Decently And In Order": Gender Segregation In The Seating Of Early American Churches, Caroline Everard Athey Warner

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Teaching Incest In Medieval Literature, Culture And Law, George D. Greenia

Arts & Sciences Articles

No abstract provided.

"From Eager Lips Came Shrill Hurrahs": Women, Gender, And Racial Violence In South Carolina, 1865--1900, Kate Fraser Gillin

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

In the years following the Civil War, southerners struggled to adapt to the changes wrought by the war. Many, however, worked to resist those changes. In particular, southern men fought the revised racial and gender roles that resulted from defeat and emancipation. Southern men felt emasculated by both events and sought to consolidate the control they had enjoyed before the war. In their efforts to restore their pre-war hegemony, these men used coercion and violence with regularity.;White southern women were often as adamant as their male counterparts. Women of the elite classes were most eager to bolster antebellum ideals of …

Indian Woman And Revolutionary Men: Representing The Body Politic In The Satirical Prints Of The American Revolution, Andrea Kathleen Westcot

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Paternalism On The Interactions Of Women In The Plantation South, Jessica Lynn Walsh

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Honorable Women Of Williamsburg: Resistance To Union Occupation And Female Honor, Rebecca Sommers

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Screen Strife: Race, Gender, And Movie Censorship In The New South, 1922--1965, Melissa D. Ooten

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

In 1922, Virginia's General Assembly created a Motion Picture Censorship Board, which viewed every movie seeking legal exhibition in Virginia until 1965. This cultural regulation of popular culture complemented other economic and political policies of the state designed to buttress the power of white, middle-to-upper class elites within the state. to this end, the censors, empowered by the authority of the state, were particularly concerned with regulating certain images of African Americans and female sexuality on-screen.;Yet the process of censorship was a contested, fluid practice, and individuals and community groups protested formal censorship decisions. Furthermore, filmmakers whose films were not …