Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

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) …

Academic Women's Studies: An Institutional Failure For Scholarship On Violence Against Women, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Military Women In World Cinema: A 20th Century History And Filmography, Introduction, Deborah A. Deacon, Stacy Fowler

Faculty Articles

From British soldier Flora Sandes to the fame World War II Night Witches of the Soviet Air Force, women across the globe stepped up to defend their countries during every major and minor conflict of the twentieth century, and filmmakers have long attempted to capture their stories.

This book analyzes real and fictional military women's portrayals in world cinema, including movies from Israel, the United Kingdom, Italy, China, France, the Soviet Union, and others. It includes theatrical releases, direct-to-video productions, and made-for-television films.

Chapters, organized by decade, address topics including the women's sexuality, maternal and marital status, leadership skills, actual …

Woman, Queer, Jewish: The Sociopolitical Importance And Impact Of Identity Labels, Megan Polun

Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies

In this thesis, I trace and analyze the historical, social, and political uses of three identity labels: woman, queer, and Jewish. These three identity categories are personally important to me because I identify as a queer, Jewish woman. The questions motivating this analysis are as follows: How have these words been defined and who gets to define them? What has it meant historically to move through the world with one of these labels, and what does it look like today? What qualifies someone to identify with one of these labels, and what experiences or qualities do we share? What challenges …

Female Politicians And The Way That Gender Stereotypes And The Male-Dominated Power Structure Influence The Way They Run Their Campaigns, Morgan Marckres

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

Women only make up 28.5% of Congress even though they make up 50.5% of the population of the United States. This disparity indicates that there are significant barriers that female politicians face when they are running for office. To look for why, an extensive literature review was conducted that gave context about the gender stereotypes that female candidates face and how they navigate the male template of power. Using the material from the literature review, the campaigns of three women and three men who won their election in the recent 2022 midterms were analyzed. The candidate’s campaigns were then compared. …

Women In The Construction Industry, Olivia Emond

Honors Projects in Management

The construction industry is a male dominated field that has been known for its masculine culture. Women have faced many barriers when entering this field of work due to this culture and being the minority. This study will look into the motivational factors that make women want to pursue a career in the construction industry. This research will look at female construction workers and how their experiences have helped shape their perception on the industry. The following study will analyze how females have combated the masculine culture in the industry and what makes females want to obtain leadership positions. This …

Anti-Woman Invective On The Early Modern Stage: Abuse, Degradation, And Resistance, Savannah Xaver

Dissertations

On the early modern stage, gendered epithets like “strumpet,” “mermaid,” “minx,” “hobby horse,” “courtesan,” “drab,” and “whore” are not just markers of misogyny. Instead, these insults harm the male user as well as their female target. My cross-playwright and cross-genre connections show the complex, wide use and impact of anti-woman terms. A wide-ranging study of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries reveals that gendered insults signify masculine mental decline in tragedies as well as comedies and tragicomedies. In tragedy, the increasingly violent language of male slur users – like, for example, the frustrated Othello, who declares, of his wife, …

“Yellow Fever” + Pornhub Statistics: A Sociological Sickness, Patricia Plachno

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

This essay was written to explore the complexities behind "Yellow Fever," or the fetishization of Asian women. In further understanding the origins of "Yellow Fever", shining a light on historical stereotypes and microaggressions assist in problematizing this phenomenon. Pornhub's yearly statistics provide a tangible outline of the sheer volume of participants in racial fetishization.

Análisis De La Mujer: Revista Mensual De Literatura Y Variedades, La Primera Revista Ecuatoriana Escrita Por Mujeres (1905-1906), María Alejandra González Pástor

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The first magazine written by women in Ecuador is a time machine that allows knowing firsthand the thinking of women in the early twentieth century. It is also a catalyst to promote writing and searching for female identity. La Mujer: Revista Mensual de Literatura y Variedades is an unprecedented project conceived by the first Ecuadorian journalist, Zoila Ugarte. She was a multifaceted woman with feminist ideas who encouraged a group of women to express their ideas through literature and journalism.

This research analyzes the literary texts and articles of the magazine from a gender perspective and addresses historical aspects of …

Market Feminism In Morocco, Claire Madsen

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Despite widespread views of “Moroccan Exceptionalism,” Morocco continues to rank poorly on international evaluations of gender equality. This project seeks to understand the extent of the influence neoliberal economic forces in Morocco have had on the feminist landscape. Analysis of Moroccan political history, Foucauldian theories of power relations, and relevant literature on state feminism set the groundwork for the evaluation of the extent state feminism in Morocco can be understood as market-based, in accordance with the definition from From State Feminism to Market Feminsim (2012) by Kantola and Squires. Through interviews of three experts, three meetings with women’s empowerment NGOs, …

Gender Roles And The Social Agent: Framing The Women’S Movement(S) In Postcolonial Morocco, Lily Ross

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

For my Independent Study, I conducted a four-week research project on what I will refer to as the “Women’s Movement” in Morocco. My initial goal was to understand the framing and aims of this movement. To do so, I sought to explore the different forces impacting the movement – such as local cultural contexts, religion, globalization and colonization – and to analyze the impact of these forces on how different women conceptualize their goals surrounding gender. I studied a variety of scholarship on the Moroccan Women’s Movement, focusing on a critical analysis of the state, international interests and non-profit organizations. …

Gender Perspective On Tourism's Influence On The Local Community: A Literature Review, Nuria Abellan Calvet, Jordi Arcos-Pumarola, Laia Encinar-Prat

Journal of International Women's Studies

The tourism industry integrates multiple actors interrelated through a variety of dynamics and characteristics. To address this complexity, tourism studies integrate different disciplines and perspectives in order to comprehend the tourism phenomenon. One of the main topics of tourism studies has been its impact on local communities. The conjunction of these research lines with the gender perspective discloses how tourism interrelates with the host territory's particular gender dynamics. In this context, the present study aims to explore and analyse the current state of academic research on tourism's influence on the local community from a gender perspective. In this way, we …

Violette Leduc's Feminist Flâneries, Kaliane Ung

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Popularized by Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, the modern figure of the flâneur disrupts the pace of the city as he strolls the streets, making his way into the world through wandering and daydreaming. Assimilated to an available body to seduce, a woman walking alone does not have the same experience. However, in spite of constant interruptions in her outward and inward exploration, the flâneuse reinvents the act of walking through a form of solidarity that enables her to transcend the limits of her own body. Focusing on Violette Leduc who wrote on female sexuality in a daring way, I …

Wgs 200: Introduction To Gender Studies Oer Curation, Chealsye Bowley

Curated OER Collections

This OER curation is an annotated bibliography of prospective OER for the GVSU course WGS 200: Introduction to Gender Studies, assembled by request from the instructor.

More Than The Defiant Few: Lost Womanhood And Necro Women Dismantling Nineteenth-Century Gender Ideologies, Vicki Vanbrocklin

English Language and Literature ETDs

Too many scholars still rely on adjectives such as deviant, unruly, dangerous, and wild to describe women who interrogate rigid forms of womanhood, especially women of color. My project intervenes in nineteenth-century womanhood discussions, which have traditionally solidified three main categories: Republican, True, and New Womanhood. Between True Womanhood in the mid-nineteenth century and the late nineteenth-century concept of New Womanhood lies an overlooked category aptly understood as Lost Womanhood. I focus on newspaper archives, archival research, and imaginative literature to find “lost” women who critiqued a patriarchal system that thrives on women living in a status akin to being …

Women’S Studies, Gender Studies, And Lgbt/Queer Studies: Defining And Debating The Subject Of Academic Knowledge In India, Virginie Dutoya

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women’s Studies is first introduced in Indian academia in the 1970s. There are now more than 150 centres conducting research on women and gender as well as numerous teaching programmes on these topics in India. Research on sexualities and non-heterosexual identities and practices, while less developed, also emerged in the 1990s. As in any academic field, research on Women’s Studies, gender, and sexuality has been marked by epistemic debates, in particular “terminology debates” (i.e., debates about the proper concepts for discussing gender and sexuality in India). Using a corpus of academic texts, course syllabi, and other academic documents as well …

Gender Studies In Nigeria: Growth And Institutional Contexts Of Semi-Autonomous Centres, Adedeji Adebayo

Journal of International Women's Studies

The study discussed a micro-level dimension of the institutionalization of Gender Studies (GS) in Nigeria, emphasizing the growth of semi-autonomous centres over the last two decades. It focused on a case study of one particular centre; the Centre for Human Rights and Gender Education (CHURGE), based in Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED) in the southwest of the country, offering an analysis of how funding, institutional politics, and a dearth of specialist researchers have shaped the evolution of GS in 21st century in Nigeria. The study employed a qualitative research approach with samples purposively selected among researchers at CHURGE. Although …

Beyond Victimhood: Female Agency In Nigerian Civil War Novels, Enajite E. Ojaruega

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Enajite E. Ojaruega discusses in her “Beyond Victimhood: Female Agency in Nigerian Civil War Novels” the agential roles women played during the Nigeria-Biafra war as reflected in selected fictional narratives. Female characters are generally impacted negatively by their individual and collective war-time experiences. However, there is another important aspect of women's war-time experiences that has largely been underplayed in most historical or literary accounts on war. Female agency recognizes this gender’s participatory roles during the conflict as they reconstruct their subjectivity in more beneficial ways in the unfolding circumstances of war. Women are depicted as being able to explore their …

Nsfw: Not So Feminist Women - A Media And Cultural Studies Analysis Of Working Women In Popular Media, Josephine Schofield

Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies

Even though gender diversity of characters has increased in television shows and films, this study hypothesized that female characters who are presented as feminist icons function as feminist backlash and perpetuate negative and harmful stereotypes. This was found to be especially true for career-focused women. Applying a cultural studies approach to reading television and film studies through a feminist lens identified the antifeminist factors that continue to cause the perpetual loop of independent women reverting to dated social roles. This research connects what audiences consume through popular media to how they perceive their female co-workers. The findings of this study …

The Women Organizations And Activism In Combating Domestic Violence In The North Caucasus, Saida Sirazhudinova

Journal of International Women's Studies

There are a wide range of forms of domestic violence in the North Caucasus. Recent years have shown the scale of its spread and the complexity of the fight against domestic violence in the region. The spread of domestic violence in the region is facilitated by the residents themselves, traditional institutions, and religious structures that increase their influence. In addition, the authorities are not interested in solving the problems of domestic violence, and they hinder the work of human rights organizations and activists in every possible way. This article describes the features of the fight against domestic violence in the …

The Influence Of Gender Stereotypes On The Growth Of Gender Inequality And Domestic Violence In Russia In The Context Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Pisklakova-Parker Marina, Efanova Olga

Journal of International Women's Studies

The present article is concerned with the influence of gender stereotypes on gender inequality and violence against women in modern Russia as well as the response of government institutions and civil society organisations to domestic violence incidents under lockdown. Conclusions on the role of stereotypes in the growth of inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic are based on findings of the research carried out by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) and the Institute of Socio-Economic Studies of Population of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed profound vulnerabilities …

Women’S Studies And Interdisciplinarity, Eve Oishi, Jennifer Abod

Journal of International Women's Studies

A section of a Special Issue of the Journal of International Women’s Studies dedicated to pioneering Black Lesbian Feminist scholar, activist, artist, teacher Angela Bowen, Ph.D. (1936-2018), one of the first scholars to receive a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies. The special issue contains sample materials from Bowen’s archive, which will be housed at Spelman College, including writings, audio and video of speeches, and photos documenting her career as a dancer, her friendship with and scholarship on Audre Lorde, her activism on Black lesbian and gay issues, and her career in Women’s Studies, among other topics. This section focuses on Bowen’s …

Strategies Of (In)Visibility And Resilience: Women Writers In A Digital Era, Miriam Borham-Puyal, Daniel Escandell-Montiel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Women’s presence in literary history has been particularly conditioned by their place in society and by the limited spheres in which their production was expected to appear (e.g. the sentimental novel, romances or children’s literature). In today’s digital, open and connected society, women continue to face visibility problems in the publishing industry and in the online spaces that grant presence and agency. Their role in cultural creations is still hindered by vertical powers that operate as main censors. This circumstance takes place even in a rhizomatic and decentralized virtual space, where dissident discourses have highlighted it, although without enough discursive …

“No Roses, White Nor Red, Glow Here”: The Motif Of The Garden In Two Proserpine Poems By A. Swinburne And D. Greenwell, Cristina Salcedo González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In this article, I discuss Algernon Swinburne’s and Dora Greenwell’s engagement with the myth of Proserpine through an analysis of the motif of the garden, which takes central stage in both accounts. The examination will illustrate how the authors’ outlined images of the garden challenge the dominant representation of the motif within Western literary tradition, offering a re-interpretation of the myth as social commentary.

Transgression, Essentialism And Literary System: An Approach To The Viability Of The Female Fantastic, Alfons Gregori

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The main aims of this article are firstly to find out whether the concept of “fantastic female” is a contradictory and ambiguous construct, and secondly to challenge the feasibility of applying it to literary studies. The matter of the existence of the “female fantastic” refers to the theoretical approaches made to undertake a double-edged task in the 1970s and 1980s: the conceptualization of a dual scheme establishing a female aesthetic opposed to the dominant patriarchy on the one hand, and on the other, the promotion of non-mimetic narrative modes as formulas for transgressing the patriarchal system. However, the crystallization of …

What Does It Mean To ‘Decolonise’ Gender Studies?: Theorising The Decolonial Capacities Of Gender Performativity And Intersectionality, Julianne Mcshane

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper argues for an understanding of Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality as decolonial methodologies, alternative epistemologies, and forms of political praxis within gender studies, specifically focusing on the field’s institutionalisation within Western universities, given both their historic complicity in naturalising imperialist ideas and my own lived experience studying within them. I argue that gender performativity and intersectionality act as decolonial methodologies by revealing the respective erasures of constructedness and situatedness within certain dysconscious, imperialist conceptions of ‘gender’ grounded in Whiteness, as well as how these erasures remain otherwise hidden and/or naturalised (to …

A Bibliometric Analysis Of Journal Of International Women’S Studies For Period Of 2002-2019: Current Status, Development, And Future Research Directions, Rohail Hassan, Meghna Chhabra, Arfan Shahzad, Diana Fox, Sohail Hasan

Journal of International Women's Studies

This research paper aims to present a thorough overview of the Journal of International Women’s Studies (JIWS). The Scopus database has been used to study the most prolific writers and frequently cited papers of the JIWS. This article considered 907 papers, which offers a map of the knowledge produced and circulated by the JIWS. It offers insights into publication activities, prominent themes, citation trends, and the state of collaborations among the contributors to the JIWS and the journal’s aggregate contributions to the area of Women’s Studies. Moreover, by analyzing the correlation of keywords and how they are clustered together, the …

#Aminext: The Link Between European Colonization And Gender-Based Violence In Contemporary South Africa, Jenna Meredith Pagel

Capstone Showcase

Alarmingly, the female murder rate in South Africa is five times the global average (BBC News 2019). According to data from 2017 and 2018, a woman is murdered every four hours in South Africa (Wilkinson 2019). More than 30 women were killed by their spouses in August 2019, and at least 137 sexual offenses are committed per day in South Africa (Francke 2019).

For this thesis, and in order to understand why South Africa has some of the highest rates of violence against women in the world, I consult a number of scholars who conclude that the overall issue of …

The Bloody Truth, Elizabeth Fulkerson

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The Monstrous: Gender, Otherness, And Space In The Cinematic Storytelling Of Arrival And The Shape Of Water, Edward Chamberlain

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Through comparing the Hollywood films Arrival and The Shape of Water, this article explicates the films’ similar portrayals of gender, social collaboration, and monstrosity. Although the mainstream media in the United States has linked the idea of the monstrous to larger global forces, the two films suggest that “the monster” exists much closer to home. Hence, this article makes the case that monstrosity occurs in a variety of formulations such as the actions of national authorities like governmental officials that oppress and endanger a myriad of American citizens as well as newcomers. Further, this article makes the case that …