Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Facing Uncertainty, Proceeding With Caution, Living With Joy: Women With Multiple Sclerosis And The Motherhood Decision, Anne L. Van Acker

MALS Final Projects, 1995-2019

Multiple sclerosis is a degenerative neurological disorder, affecting approximately 250,000-350,000 persons in the United States. Women are diagnosed twice as frequently as men, with the majority of those diagnoses occurring during their childbearing (typically between the ages of 20 and 40) years. For women with multiple sclerosis, the decision to bear children is complicated by numerous factors. First, conventional cultural images of motherhood rarely acknowledge women with disability of any kind as "fit" mothers. For a disabled woman to pursue motherhood often means confronting predominant ideals and frequently having to justify her decision. Second, multiple sclerosis has proven to be …

Institutionalization Of Women's Studies Programs: The Relationship Of Program Structure To Long-Term Viability, Ann Froines

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined the institutional viability of three interdisciplinary women's studies programs in public universities to determine whether interdisciplinary programs are marginal or fragile. The research question has three related parts: (a) What factors influence assessments of institutional viability? (b) do assessments of institutional viability vary significantly according to differences in program structure? and (c) what strategies have emerged to maintain program viability over the next ten or 20 years?

A conceptual framework of three domains was utilized in this qualitative case study: (a) program history, (b) organizational effectiveness of program, and (c) alliances built by program leaders. Organizational effectiveness …

Ghetto Feminism: Neo-Black Feminism For The Black Hip-Hop Generation(S), Chyann L. Oliver

Senior Scholar Papers

"Ghetto Feminism: Neo-Black Feminism for the Black Hip-Hop Generation (s)" is a feminism that addresses the simultaneity of race, sex, and class oppressions that subjugate black people of the hip-hop generation who reside in the urban ghetto or ghetto like conditions. It is a feminism that deconstructs the hypersexualized, racialized and classist representations of black people in hip-hop culture. The goal of this feminism or feminist thought is to raise the black hip-hop generationer's critical consciousness in order to encourage resistance to distorted images of themselves. Continuing with the tradition of multivocality or heteroglossia, Ghetto Feminism uses poetry, scholarly essays, …

Mom Or Manager?: How Social Factors And Personal Choice Affect The Work/Family Balance In The United States, Japan And Germany, Christine E. Mueller

Honors Theses

This report investigates the work/family balance based on two factors: social influence and personal choice. The first factor is significant because society dictates and enforces the prescribed roles for women. The degree of career progression a woman can achieve is partly bound by restrictions of society. The other factor, personal choice, is the factor that only each woman can determine for herself. A woman can only progress as far as her personal goals determine. In addition to the relationship between society and personal choice, this report examines the barriers to pursuit of a management career inherent in these factors.

An Exploration Into Gender Role Conflict, Attitudes Toward Females, And Relationship Beliefs, Julia M. Wood

Doctoral Dissertations

Gender role conflict and negative attitudes toward females have been areas of increasing concern since the early 1970s. Research has shown that both gender role conflict and negative attitudes toward females cause complications for the person with such perspectives. Relationships are an area that has been impacted by gender role conflict and attitudes toward females. Determining the impact that gender role conflict and attitudes toward females have upon each other and upon relationship beliefs will increase awareness of the seriousness of these complications allowing clinicians to focus therapeutic interventions on methods that will increase relationship quality.

Using the Gender Role …

The Rhetoric Of The Frontier And The Frontier Of Rhetoric, Carly Kay Paul

Theses and Dissertations

The definition of rhetoric has recently been expanded to include elements of experience, particularly the experiences that landscape provides. One landscape that has rhetorical significance is the American frontier, both in Colonial times and in the nineteenth century. The frontier had a rhetorical impact on women, in particular, giving them freedom to change their roles and achieve economic, political, and social success. Because of the tremendous significance of the frontier in women's lives, a new definition of frontiers emphasizes conditions such as opportunity for change, a dangerous and uncertain atmosphere, a freedom of thought and action, and an ability to …

Picturing Home: Domestic Painting And The Ideologies Of Art, Mark E. Sprinkle

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation describes domestic painting in Atlanta, Georgia between 1995 and 2004 as a market defined by its intentional connection of the ideologies and spaces of art with those of bourgeois domesticity. The first half of the work seeks to contextualize the market's various objects and texts within public and academic discourses on culture that commonly posit an antithesis between the practices of bourgeois women (especially decoration) and "high" or avant-garde art, as suggested by the sentiment, "GOOD ART WON'T MATCH YOUR SOFA." Thus, Chapter 1 addresses the promises and pitfalls of sociological approaches to understanding art in general, Chapter …

A Study Exploring The Educational Needs Of African-American Pastors' Wives Within Baptist Congregations, Jocelyn Georgette Henry-Whitehead

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

For many years, the role of the pastor's wife has been an emerging role in American religious history (Sweet, 1983). While on their journey in building and nurturing their relationship with God, supporting their husbands, families, congregations, and communities, pastors' wives have experienced joys and blessings as well as challenges and issues. A tremendous joy for some pastors' wives has been the privilege, the opportunity, and the honor to serve, minister to, assist and care for others. However, one major challenge for many pastors' wives has been preparedness, or the lack of preparedness, knowledge, and instruction (Obleton, 1996). Wives of …

"They've All Come To Look For America": Constructing Self And Nation In Women's Travel Narratives 1870-1890, Sarah Elizabeth Mclennan

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Among Disclosure, Internalized Homophobia, Religiosity, And Psychological Well-Being In A Lesbian Population, Sharon Lyn Clayman

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study investigated the relationship among disclosure, internalized homophobia, and religiosity in a lesbian population and how these three variables are related to psychological well-being in order to build upon the scant amount of empirical research on these variables in the lesbian psychological literature. A total of 679 women, 18 to 70 years old, and from all across the country were recruited via the internet to participate in a web-based survey. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Lesbian Internalized Homophobia Scale (Szymanski & Chung, 2001), the Outness Inventory (Mohr & Fassinger, 2000), the Behavioral Self-Disclosure Questionnaire (Carroll & Gilroy, 2000), …

"An Object Best Worthy Of Succor": White Virginia Women And The African Colonization Movement, 1825-1840, Caroline Simmons Hasenyager

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Women's Agency In The Development Of Hybrid Social Spaces: The Trials Of Sarah Ballenden And Maria Thomas In Canada's Red River Colony, 1850 And 1863 (Manitoba), Sharron A. Fitzgerald

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In 1850 and 1863, the British Hudson's Bay Company's Red River colony (current day Winnipeg) witnessed two sensationalized lawsuits. These lawsuits focused on two women of mixed First Nations and British extraction, namely Sarah Ballenden and Maria Thomas. Using these legal cases as a backdrop, this study aims to destabilize the notion that British claims to power and authority in the "contact zones" in the Red River colony were "fixed" and that women were the passive victims of history. I argue that British women developed defensive strategies based on their situated knowledges of social and spatial relations in that place. …

Exploring Emotional Intimacy Among African American Female Survivors Of Childhood Sexual Abuse Who Utilize Black Church Support Services, Angela Oubre

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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