Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Open Access Articles

A Review Of Annika Mann, Reading Contagion, By Michael Edson, Michael Edson

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

A review of Annika Mann, Reading Contagion, by Michael Edson

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Review Of Novel Ventures: Fiction And Print Culture In England, 1690-1730 By Leah Orr, Susannah Sanford

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

A review of Novel Ventures: Fiction and Print Culture in England, 1690-1730 by Leah Orr by Susannah Sanford

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Review Of Margaret Cavendish’S Poems And Fancies, James Fitzmaurice

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

Liza Blake’s free website is sure to become the first stop for anyone beginning work with Poems and Fancies. Most importantly for those who want to explore Cavendish's poetry in depth is that fact that Blake’s website provides an easy means of comparison of versions of poems printed in the 1653, 1664, and 1668 editions.

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The Strength Of Weak Ties: Eliza Haywood’S Social Network In The Dunciad In Four Books (1743), Ileana Baird Dr.

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

This article uses visualizations of Eliza Haywood’s social networks, as described in The Dunciad in Four Books (1743), to make visible her relations with the other characters in the poem, and the nature of these affiliations. The tools used to generate these visualizations are GraphViz, an open source visualization software that creates topological graphs from sets of dyadic relations, and SHIVA Graph, an application used to visualize large sets of networks and navigate through them as through a map. In Eliza Haywood’s case, this model of social network analysis sheds new light on the nature of Pope’s attack on women …

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Societal Polyphony In Burney And Austen: Using Digital Tools To Invite Students Into The Conversation, Bethany Williamson

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

How can we invite our students to experience the social wit and wisdom of the eighteenth-century novel, on an interactive level? Addressing challenges faced by those who teach eighteenth-century novels in General Education surveys or seminar classes, this essay offers two lesson plans--easily adapted for different texts and courses--that use digital technology to engage students' imaginations and cultivate skills of reading comprehension and interpretation. The first, "Evelina Tweet Fest," invites students to participate in a collaborative conversation on a simulated Twitter platform, translating the literary polyphony of Frances Burney's epistolary novel into the language of our own, status-conscious milieu. …

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Knowledge Networks: Contested Geographies In The History Of Mary Prince, Leah M. Thomas

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

The History of Mary Prince, a West-Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) is the first published woman’s slave narrative. In her History, Prince describes horrendous physical violence to which she and other enslaved peoples of African descent are subjected as well as the corresponding psychological and sexual abuse they endure. While Prince “speaks” the sexual abuse to some extent, how she knows what she knows goes unspoken. She expresses her knowledge of reading and writing and, at times, of the law, but she does not explain how she obtains this knowledge or knows what she knows. Her optimism to …

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“The Tranquility Of A Society Of Females”: Mary Morgan’S A Tour To Milford Haven, Elizabeth Montagu, And The Transformative Politics Of Female Governance, Linda J. Van Netten Blimke

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

This paper explores the political function of Elizabeth Montagu’s Berkshire estate in travel writer Mary Morgan’s 1795 publication A Tour to Milford Haven, in the Year 1791. The travelogue is politically invested both in problematizing radical ideologies and the British government’s wartime policies and in providing an alternative model of governance based on the relational leadership found within Montagu’s Sandleford community. Of central importance to Morgan’s political argument is the contrast she creates between the socioeconomic philosophies manifest in Montagu’s perfectly ordered estate in Berkshire and in the Duke of Marlborough’s imposing palace in Oxfordshire. Whereas Montagu’s relational approach …

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Contradictory Shakespeare: An Investigation Of Female Protagonists In Othello, Measure For Measure, And Pericles, Mingyue Xu

Student Theses and Dissertations

Unlike the stereotyped image of women in the Elizabethan era, in which women should submit to men’s control, Desdemona in Othello, Isabella in Measure for Measure, and Marina in Pericles present their powerful and brave characteristics when facing male dominance. More specifically, all three young women — Desdemona, Isabella and Marina — negotiate sexual and marital arrangements with their language intelligently, despite the fact that they sometimes lack self-determining power in the plays. That is to say, Shakespeare gives women rhetorical power while in certain circumstances, men cannot be persuaded. Such contradiction within how Shakespeare depicts his female …

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A Space Of Her Own: Genderfluidity And Negotiation In The Life Of Christina Of Markyate, Meghan L. Nestel

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper draws on transgender studies and theories of gender performativity and genderfluidity to consider how twelfth-century holy woman Christina of Markyate resists traditional and third-gender binary policing. It argues that Christina is genderfluid, and that as a secular, masculinized, and religious virgin, she co-exists within and moves among multiple gender spaces that allow her to establish her own authority.

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Imperatrix, Domina, Rex: Conceptualizing The Female King In Twelfth-Century England, Coral Lumbley

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article draws on methods from transgender theory, historicist literary studies, and visual analysis of medieval sealing practices to show that Empress Matilda of England was controversially styled as a female king during her career in the early to mid twelfth century. While the chronicle Gesta Stephani castigates Matilda’s failure to engage in sanctioned gendered behaviors as she waged civil war to claim her inherited throne, Matilda’s seal harnesses both masculine and feminine signifiers in order to proclaim herself both king and queen. While Matilda’s transgressive gender position was targeted by her detractors during her lifetime, the obstinately transgender object …

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Nailing Jell-O To A Tree, Jayson Lozier

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains papers addressing writing instruction, women's studies, queer theory, and literary analysis. “Mr. L 2.0 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love English Composition” details the implementation of more effective techniques to teach writing in the secondary English classroom. “Educating Women in Afghanistan: Power, Revolution, and Rebellion” examines the feminist struggles around education and the efforts of the Afghan Institute of Learning to bring about change. “Out of the Closet and into the Classroom: Introducing Queer Reading Strategies to the Secondary English Classroom” examines the importance of queer theory and queer reading techniques in high school …

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Jerusalem’S Song: William Blake As Forerunner To Jung’S Feminist Psychology, Trudy D. Eblen

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

William Blake's final epic poem, The Song of Jerusalem, consists of two textual narratives: the verbal (let me call it the conscious state) and the visual (the unconscious). I primarily focus on the visual, where the eponymous heroine psychically matures along the trajectory of a Jungian process of individuation (somewhat similar to the ancient universal initiation rite of maturation, as most famously described by Joseph Campbell). Preceding in Blake's corpus is a succession of his other female poetic characters, who represent various stages of successful and failed individuation—Thel, Lyca, Oothoon, and Ahania; these culminate in Jerusalem, Blake’s apotheotic female. …

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The Notions Of The "Closet" And The "Secret" In Oscar Wilde's, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Jessica Maria Oliveira

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will discuss the notions of the “closet” and “secret” within Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as offer a clear and precise definition of queer theory to assist in elucidating many of the concepts being discussed. Close reading techniques will be utilized to further uncover the metaphoric, symbolic, and otherwise figurative importance of certain aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray and supporting texts. Through Judith Butler’s conceptualization of sex and gender, as well as Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the “secret”, this paper will explicate the intricacies of Wilde’s work and unveil queered aspects …

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A Revolution In Gothic Manners: The Rise Of Sentiment From Walpole To Radcliffe, Katherine E. Stein

Lawrence University Honors Projects

In this study, I assert that prior to the French Revolution, early eighteenth-century Gothic works such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron attempt to understand the potential consequences revolution could have on British society and that both texts conclude that society can only be maintained by upholding behavioral expectations through proper manners. However, the French Revolution acted as an inflection point within the genre, and—through the analysis of the polemic texts Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman—I argue that the …

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Van Gogh’S Yellow Flowers: The Influence Of Post-Impressionism On Mansfield And Woolf, Gabriella M. D'Angelo

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In a letter to Dorothy Brett, Katherine Mansfield responds to Van Gogh’s painting of sunflowers explaining, “That picture seemed to reveal something that I hadn't realised before I saw it. It lived with me afterwards. It still does... They taught me something about writing, which was queer—a kind of freedom—or rather, a shaking free” that she felt after experiencing his painting (O’Sullivan, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, 4: 333). The aesthetic emotion resided with her thereafter, as she claimed: “I can smell them as I write” (O’Sullivan, TCLKM, 2: 333). French paintings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth …

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Mansfield Park By Kate Hamill (And Jane Austen), Christopher Nagle

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

This article reviews the world premiere of Kate Hamill's Mansfield Park directed by Stuart Carden and produced for the Northlight Theatre in Chicago in November and December 2018. Hamill’s bold new adaptation is notable for foregrounding the contexts of empire and the slave trade undergirding the novel, and in ultimately offering a feminist fairy-tale of radical self-assertion and self-determination for its heroine.

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Jane Austen Camp, Devoney Looser

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

Austen camp has become prevalent, even omnipresent, today, in visions and versions of her and her fiction, using them as a canvas for zombies, porn, or roller derby. Some of it may be kitsch, but it’s arguably camp. Investigating Austen as camp is a valuable way to understand her humor and her social criticism, as we now understand camp as a positive literary and social practice. But rather than asking if and when camp is “there,” for Austen or for her past readers, we might instead investigate what aspects or elements of her reputation or her writing we notice differently …

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Neoclassicism And Camp In Sir William Hamilton’S Naples, Ersy Contogouris

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

Susan Sontag, in her now-classic “Notes on Camp” (1964), traces the origins of camp to the eighteenth century (13, 14, 33). And although it is precisely the baroque and rococo art movements against which Winckelmann rebelled that Sontag identifies as camp, it is worth reflecting on whether the notion of imitation that is central to both movements – imitation of ancient works in the case of neoclassicism, and imitation as parody in the case of camp (Meyer 7) – might not bring the two closer. Once the conceptual chasm separating neoclassicism and camp has begun to be bridged, we can …

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Sterne’S Sentimental Temptations: Sex, Sensibility, And The Uses Of Camp, Julie Beaulieu

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

Laurence Sterne’s lack of commitment to the tenets of sentimentality in A Sentimental Journey—present in his ability to mock and praise the individual capacity to feel, and more precisely, in his satirical reading of the “cult of sensibility,” the new ideological imperative to have and to showcase deep, sentimental feelings—remains as one of the central challenges for readings of the novel. To explore Sterne’s portrayal of sensibility in A Sentimental Journey, I turn to camp sensibility, and the discussions that followed Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp.” Sterne’s novel could be read as camp, perhaps most notably in his …

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Eighteenth-Century Camp Introduction, Ula Lukszo Klein, Emily Mn Kugler

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

A blend of the silly and the extravagant that puts the serious into conversation with the ridiculous, camp today is often signified by elements of eighteenth-century Europe with its elaborate hairstyles, exaggerated silhouettes, affected courtiers, and a rise in the consumption of exotic goods, candelabras, masks, and other markers of elite excess (often with a nod to the era’s demise in the form of either the French Revolution or subsequent Victorian strictures). Camp’s relation to queer modes of performance and its prioritization of style over (or in conjunction with) substance offers a queer aesthetic lens to re-evaluate the eighteenth century …

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Demonic Pedagogy And The Teaching Saint: Voice, Body, And Place In Cynewulf's Juliana, Christina M. Heckman

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In Cynewulf’s Old English poem Juliana, the saint frames her encounters with her adversaries as pedagogical confrontations, refusing the lessons they attempt to “teach” her and ultimately adopting the identity of a teacher herself. These confrontations depend on three key tropes in the poem: Juliana’s voice, as a material manifestation of language deployed by the saint; her body, both as living body and as relic; and place, especially the place of the saint’s martyrdom and/or burial. Viewed through theories of material feminism, these tropes reveal diverse forms of agency in the poem, as both human and non-human agents make …

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Chaucer's Pardoner: The Medieval Culture Of Cross-Dressing And Problems Of Religious Authority, Larissa Tracy

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

One of the most ambiguous and contentious characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales is the Pardoner, the last (and arguably worst) of the pilgrims described in the General Prologue. The Pardoner accused of being a gelding or a mare endowed with several effeminate traits, plays on multiple gendered associations—including that of a cross-dressing woman. Throughout the Canterbury Tales Chaucer manipulates gender expectations and assumptions in the figure of the Pardoner without fully clarifying the Pardoner’s sex, sexuality or gender, leaving the text open to potentially subversive interpretations. By the fourteenth century, cross-dressing was a relatively common literary motif, …

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“A Drunken Cunt Hath No Porter”: Medieval Histories Of Intoxication And Consent, Carissa M. Harris

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay traces medieval representations of intoxication and consent and links them to contemporary cases, including Brock Turner’s 2016 rape trial and the 2017 slew of lawsuits filed against Baylor University. Through an examination of medieval texts from a range of genres, including the Biblical stories of Lot and Noah, the Digby Mary Magdalene play, proverbs, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the 1292 legal case of Isabella Plomet, and Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne, this essay explores past views of gender, perpetrators, culpability, alcohol, and consent. It argues that victim-blaming those who have been assaulted while intoxicated has …

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“A Woman’S Story”: Lady Macbeth And Performing Femininity In The Early 1600s – Late 1900s, Phyllis Lebert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper uses gender studies to understand the themes of gender performance further, and more specifically, femininity, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It also explores the many ways feminine gender performance has changed as society has changed. Thus, proving gender is performative rather than innate. It does this by examining first the text within the context of Elizabethan society. Moreover, by examining three pivotal performances of Lady Macbeth through history within the context of their social structures as well. The three performances are that of Sarah Siddons in the Late 18th Century, Ellen Terry in the 19th Century, and Judy Dench in …

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The Dangerous Women Of The Long Eighteenth Century: Exploring The Female Characters In Love In Excess, Roxana, And A Simple Story, Jillian Bailey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Long Eighteenth Century was a period in which change was constant and proceeding the Restoration Era; this sense of change continued throughout the era. Charles II created an era in which women were allowed on the theatre stage, and his mistresses accompanied him to court; Charles II set the stage for the proto-feminist ideas of the eighteenth century that would manifest themselves in Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess, Daniel Defoe’s Roxana, and Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story. These novels showcase the enlightenment of women and some of their male contemporaries and the beginning struggles of female …

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Feeling Clumsy, Feeling Alien: Gender And Affect In Victorian Sensation Fiction, Gracie Mae Bain

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Feeling Clumsy, Feeling Alien: Gender and Affect in Victorian Sensation Fiction” explores the interactions between the shock of reading sensation fiction and the affective potential of the genre using Sara Ahmed’s definition of the killjoy and the affect alien. The sensation genre, as explained in its name, is potentially useful when thinking about affective ties in the Victorian period. The first chapter, “Tracing Sensations: Finding and Following the Killjoy” explores the affective footwork that readers of sensation fiction are asked to perform in their sympathetic process with the female villains and fallen heroines. Affective tools employed by sensational fiction create …

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Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

History Honors Papers

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure poses questions about sexual coercion and governmental corruption that resonate today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context regarding Isabella. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the value of abstinence. I put these characters’ claims into dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and extensive scholarship on Shakespearean England. I argue that abstinence is the axis around which Measure’s main characters revolve, and that Measure locates these characters’ abstinences as competing performances of manhood and …

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“More Free Than He Is Jealous”: Female Agency And Solidarity In The Winter’S Tale, Stacey K. Mooney

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

No abstract provided.

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Politicized Identity In Peter Ho Davies's The Welsh Girl And The Fortunes, Savanna S. Batson

English Department Theses

This thesis explores the effects of politicized identities on the basis of particular aspects of an individual’s being, such as gender, ethnicity, or nationality in Peter Ho Davies’s novels The Welsh Girl (2007) and The Fortunes (2016). By carefully studying each of his protagonists within the context of the particular time and place in which they have come of age, and are now living, this thesis demonstrates how Davies engages with themes of identity, community, and alienation relative to the specific socio-cultural matrix that informs the politicization of identities at their time. It explores how Davies’s characters undergo the process …

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On The Shoulders Of Humphrey Carpenter: Reconsidering Biographical Representation And Scholarly Perception Of Edith Tolkien, Nicole M. Duplessis

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

In his obituary for Carpenter, Douglas A. Anderson reviews Carpenter’s “long and complex” involvement with the subject of his 1977 authorized biography, indicating that “with [Carpenter’s] passing it is time to begin to assess his changing perspectives on Tolkien and on his own Tolkien-related work.” Since its publication, Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien, which Anderson calls “an excellent book. . . unusually accurate more than a quarter of a century after it was written, despite many advances in Tolkien scholarship” remains a largely unquestioned authority, its influence so entrenched as to be virtually invisible. As a result, scholarship on Tolkien, from …

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

A Review Of Annika Mann, Reading Contagion, By Michael Edson, Michael Edson

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

Review Of Novel Ventures: Fiction And Print Culture In England, 1690-1730 By Leah Orr, Susannah Sanford

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

Review Of Margaret Cavendish’S Poems And Fancies, James Fitzmaurice

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

The Strength Of Weak Ties: Eliza Haywood’S Social Network In The Dunciad In Four Books (1743), Ileana Baird Dr.

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

Societal Polyphony In Burney And Austen: Using Digital Tools To Invite Students Into The Conversation, Bethany Williamson

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

Knowledge Networks: Contested Geographies In The History Of Mary Prince, Leah M. Thomas

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

“The Tranquility Of A Society Of Females”: Mary Morgan’S A Tour To Milford Haven, Elizabeth Montagu, And The Transformative Politics Of Female Governance, Linda J. Van Netten Blimke

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

Contradictory Shakespeare: An Investigation Of Female Protagonists In Othello, Measure For Measure, And Pericles, Mingyue Xu

Student Theses and Dissertations

A Space Of Her Own: Genderfluidity And Negotiation In The Life Of Christina Of Markyate, Meghan L. Nestel

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Imperatrix, Domina, Rex: Conceptualizing The Female King In Twelfth-Century England, Coral Lumbley

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Nailing Jell-O To A Tree, Jayson Lozier

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Jerusalem’S Song: William Blake As Forerunner To Jung’S Feminist Psychology, Trudy D. Eblen

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Notions Of The "Closet" And The "Secret" In Oscar Wilde's, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Jessica Maria Oliveira

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Revolution In Gothic Manners: The Rise Of Sentiment From Walpole To Radcliffe, Katherine E. Stein

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Van Gogh’S Yellow Flowers: The Influence Of Post-Impressionism On Mansfield And Woolf, Gabriella M. D'Angelo

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Mansfield Park By Kate Hamill (And Jane Austen), Christopher Nagle

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

Jane Austen Camp, Devoney Looser

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

Neoclassicism And Camp In Sir William Hamilton’S Naples, Ersy Contogouris

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

Sterne’S Sentimental Temptations: Sex, Sensibility, And The Uses Of Camp, Julie Beaulieu

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

Eighteenth-Century Camp Introduction, Ula Lukszo Klein, Emily Mn Kugler

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

Demonic Pedagogy And The Teaching Saint: Voice, Body, And Place In Cynewulf's Juliana, Christina M. Heckman

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Chaucer's Pardoner: The Medieval Culture Of Cross-Dressing And Problems Of Religious Authority, Larissa Tracy

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

“A Drunken Cunt Hath No Porter”: Medieval Histories Of Intoxication And Consent, Carissa M. Harris

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

“A Woman’S Story”: Lady Macbeth And Performing Femininity In The Early 1600s – Late 1900s, Phyllis Lebert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Dangerous Women Of The Long Eighteenth Century: Exploring The Female Characters In Love In Excess, Roxana, And A Simple Story, Jillian Bailey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Feeling Clumsy, Feeling Alien: Gender And Affect In Victorian Sensation Fiction, Gracie Mae Bain

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

History Honors Papers

“More Free Than He Is Jealous”: Female Agency And Solidarity In The Winter’S Tale, Stacey K. Mooney

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Politicized Identity In Peter Ho Davies's The Welsh Girl And The Fortunes, Savanna S. Batson

English Department Theses

On The Shoulders Of Humphrey Carpenter: Reconsidering Biographical Representation And Scholarly Perception Of Edith Tolkien, Nicole M. Duplessis

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature