Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Radical Antiracism And Anti-Queerphobia In Politicised Education Environments Through Critical Race Theory And Queer Theory, Mina Aubrey Weeks

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

In 2023, the Utah legislature passed bills that alter how secondary education teachers can talk about “divisive topics,” usually referring to topics of race, LGBTQ, or other systemic topics like classism and nationalism. Many teachers committed to anti-racism and anti-queerphobia do not want to water down topics of race and LGBTQ, but they also do not want to lose their jobs for teaching race and LGBTQ in a way that the law restricts. Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory have typically been framed as anti-White, anti-cishet, or overall divisive by State critics due to their radical ideologies, but this comes …

A Relational-Cultural Approach To Examining Concealment Among Latter-Day Saint Sexual Minorities, Samuel Skidmore, Sydney A. Sorrell, Kyrstin Lake

Psychology Student Research

Sexual minorities often conceal their sexual identity from others to avoid distal stressors. Such concealment efforts occur more frequently among sexual minorities in religious settings where rejection and discrimination are more likely. Using a sample of 392 Latter-day Saint (“Mormon”) sexual minorities, we assess (a) the effect of religious affiliation on concealment efforts, (b) the relationship between social support, authenticity, and religious commitment on concealment, and (c) the moderating effect of authenticity on religious commitment and concealment. Multi-level model analyses revealed that religious affiliation alone accounted for over half (51.7%) of the variation in concealment efforts for Latter-day Saint sexual …

Becoming “Living Matter”: Alive Things In Octavia Butler’S Xenogenesis Series, Zackary Gregory

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This project seeks to explore the ways Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy complicates humans' understandings of subjectivity and human exceptionalism by challenging the concept of Otherness. Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series focuses on adaptability and acceptance of the nonhuman Other by depicting a forced encounter between humans and an alien species called the Oankali. Characters within the series grapple with a dynamic understanding of themselves, having to renegotiate the concept of the Other as they deal with intelligent nonhuman Beings and animate objects. Further, characters in the series are coerced into accepting the transformation of humanity into something other than human as …

Paths To Equity: Parents In Partnership With Ucedds Fostering Black Family Advocacy For Children On The Autism Spectrum, Elizabeth H. Morgan, Benita D. Shaw, Ida Winters, Chiffon King, Jazmin Burns, Aubyn Stahmer, Gail Chodron

Developmental Disabilities Network Journal

Racism and ableism have doubly affected Black families of children with developmental disabilities in their interactions with disability systems of supports and services (e.g., early intervention, mental health, education, medical systems). On average, Black autistic children are diagnosed three years later and are up to three times more likely to be misdiagnosed than their non-Hispanic White peers. Qualitative research provides evidence that systemic oppression, often attributed to intersectionality, can cause circumstances where Black disabled youth are doubly marginalized by policy and practice that perpetuates inequality. School discipline policies that criminalize Black students and inadequate medical assessments that improperly support Black …

Communities Activated: Stories From Behind The Scenes Of Progress, Avery C. Edenfield, Ariel Malan, Mel Payne, Roberto Lopez, Blair L. Barfuss, Latrisha Fall

Intersections on Inclusion: Critical Conversations about the Academy

In 2020, USU received the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement, recognizing USU has great work to do in our communities; as a land grant institution we have the responsibility to the communities in which we are located to honor the mission statement of ‘serving the public through learning, discovery, and engagement and cultivating diversity of thought and culture.’ This panel will center the voices of community leaders and change-makers dedicated to advancing progress toward equity. As we learn from panelists about their community initiatives and advocacy, participants will be invited to reflect on ways they can engage in their …

The Sea Calls: A Selkie's Liminal Existence, Frances Avery

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Traditionally, the selkies (or seal people) of Scottish-Irish lore exist between spaces: the land and the sea, human and animal, childbearing and childless. Their existence at sea is voluntary but their existence on land is forced. Once the selkie has left behind its sealskin and both the literal and metaphorical sealskin has been stolen, the selkie becomes subject to human will. The lenses of body, reclamation, violation, and abuse prove that the reason why selkies have faded from popularity is because the lessons are too mature for a young audience. A feminist and queer reading and interpretation of this traditional …

Called To Serve: Understanding The Role Of The Woman’S Mission Decision Narrative In Latter-Day Saint Culture And Belief, Rachel Ross

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In my thesis I explore the role of mission decision narratives of women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Before 2012, women could not serve missions until age 21. Once the minimum age was changed to 19 in October of 2012, many more women were able to serve on mission as the opportunity was less likely to disrupt their education or romantic relationships. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, missions are seen as a priesthood duty for men but a matter of choice for women. This ability to choose and the narrative that follows …

Licentious Legends: A Folklore Podcast, Alexandra L. Haynes

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Licentious Legends was created out of a need to both understand and educate about sexual contemporary legends; not just what they are and what defines them, but the effect that they have on those who experience them. The purpose of this podcast is not to shame, but to take what has been found and educate about the joys and dangers of these legends. These legends range from the everyday (such as "The Hook"), to legends about a young man killing himself with a plunger. In an effort to gather as many examples as they could, Faye interviewed several of their …

Synthetic, Julia L. Prince

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Throughout her life, the poet May Swenson concerned herself with communicating pathways to personal improvement and self-discovery by navigating the distinct social and psychological challenges specific to her historical context, personality, and gender. Though deceased, Swenson is still able to communicate these notions successfully, as many of her poems’ speakers do not conceal their intentions, but rather “force the truth.”

Synthetic, a poetry chapbook, similarly “forces the truth,” as the speaker – like Swenson’s – craves to bare all and discover more about who she is, as she contends with her own social and psychological challenges regarding beauty-gestures, practices, …

“[Taking] Responsibility For The Community”: Women Claiming Power And Legitimacy In Technical And Professional Communication In India, 1999-2016, Breeanne Matheson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Though the field of technical and professional communication has long been saturated with the narratives of Euro-Western males, technical and professional communication as a field has a responsibility to expand the lens of study to include the experiences of global and nontraditional practitioners. This study examines the experiences of Indian women working as practitioners, building power and legitimacy in a globalized economy. Drawing from interviews with 49 practitioners as well as an analysis of historical documents, this study examines the methods that Indian practitioners have used to build power and legitimacy by founding professional organizations, leveraging their educational opportunities, and …

2017-18 End Of The Year Report, Jody Clarke-Midura, Katarina Pantic

Faculty Research

What the Issue is

In addition to recruitment, retention or persistence of women through graduation in Computer Science (CS) education has been one of the biggest challenges for the CS education field. Currently, women represent only about a quarter of the labor force (BLS, 2015) and earn only about 18% of the baccalaureate degrees (NSF, 2012) in CS. Attrition rates are highest in the first two years of CS programs (Biggers, Brauer, & Yilmaz, 2008; Miliszewska, Barker, Henderson, & Sztendur, 2006). At Utah State University, the situation is even more dire as women represent only about 10% of the CS …

The Aesthetics Of Hysteria In Feminine Melodrama; On Fang Fang's Water Under Time (2008), Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Water under Time, the novel by the reputed Chinese fiction writer Fang Fang, appropriates and reconstructs the conventions of the hysteric narrative as an affective form of feminine history telling and writing. The novel, which accounts Hankou city’s past through the heroine’s life story, illustrates how feminine hysteria provides a gendered lens of reconstructed historical authenticity via the panorama of China’s early Republican period, the anti‐Japanese War, and the present new millennium. Transcending the official historical accounts, Fang Fang’s narrative features women’s innovative reconfiguration of contesting historical discourses about the city, the community, and the nation. This study of Water …

Beyond Boundaries: Women, Writing And Visuality In Contemporary China, Géraldine Fiss, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This special issue offers explorations of women, writing, and visuality in contemporary Chinese literature and culture, following up on a previous issue titled “Nation, Gender, and Transcultural Modernism in Early Twentieth‐Century China,” which was published in Frontiers of Literary Studies in China (vol. 8, no. 1, 2014). The earlier issue addressed “the complex cultural mechanism which placed gender at the center of the nationalist discourse” in early twentieth‐century works by both male and female authors and questioned how the uncertainty of discourses on gender and nation “opens up space for creating subversive cultural imaginaries and challenging colonial discourses.” This issue …

"Reasonably Bright Girls": Theorizing Women's Agency In Technological Systems Of Power, Emily January Petersen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A woman’s experience in the workplace is an inductive process into a technological, hierarchical, and often male-dominated system. This study examines how female practitioners in technical and professional communication confront the technological system of the workplace. I trace the forces that contribute to the hierarchy and power struggles women face, I present how they claim authority and agency within such hierarchical and technological systems, and I show how these experiences can lead to activism and advocacy. In addition, my findings suggest that some women leave the workplace altogether in favor of less structured and more innovative ways of communicating about …

Women's Wartime Life Writing In Early Twentieth-Century China, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In her article "Women's Wartime Life Writing in Early Twentieth-Century China" Li Guo discusses military diaries, prison memoirs, and autobiographical reportages. These documents offer rich insights into the political endeavors and military mobility of women. Guo analyzes Bingying Xie's 1928 war diary about the Chinese nationalists' northern expedition, Langi Hu's 1937 book about anti-Japanese activism, and Lang Bai's 1939 reportage about the Sino-Japanese War and argues that these texts allow women to reconfigure the discourse of nation through experimental life writing in order to develop the genre with tales of valor, hope, struggle, and heroism. Guo argues that contrary to …

Introduction To Forum: Nation, Gender, And Transnational Modernism, Ping Zhu, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This forum, sprouted from a thematic panel at the 2013 Annual Meeting of Association for Asian Studies in San Diego, situates its theoretical focus on the intersecting relationship between gender and nation in early twentieth-century China within a transcultural framework. Viewing both "gender" and "nation" as centrifugal sites for discursive production in modern China, the five contributors of this special issue probe into the complex cultural mechanism which placed gender at the center of the nationalist discourse. Reciprocally, the authors explore how the instability of both discourses on gender and nation opens up space for creating subversive cultural imaginaries and …

Writing Women In Northeastern China: Melancholic Narrative In Mei Niang's Novellas, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Mei Niang (1920–2013), the pen name of Sun Jiarui, is a female fiction writer, translator, and editor of Funü zazhi (Ladies’ journal). In the semi-colonial Northeast China, Mei Niang’s exploration of melancholic narratives shore up manifold levels of socio-historical discourses that are constructive of women’s subjectivity. Melancholic narrative functions as an inverted mirror of both the author’s cultural displacement from her diasporic experience, and her portrayal of colonial domination of local elites by the Japanese in Northeast China. Also, the author’s depiction of feminine melancholia revokes the modernist ideology of love and its constitutive male-centered discourses, dismantles the social disenfranchisement …

Review Essay: Negotiating The Traditional And The Modern: Chinese Women's Literature From The Late Imperial Period Through The Twentieth-Century, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The three books above complement each other in their coverage of Chinese women's literary genres from the late fourteenth through the early twentieth century. The authors' theoretical inquiries invite consideration of the following questions: what meaning, if any, might a feminist imagination or approach have in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) eras, early and late Republican China (1911-1948), and beyond? What do these works have in common regarding the resituating of women's literary status, the reclamation of feminine agency, and the empowerment of female subjectivity in China's literary tradition? These books can be considered in dialogue with Western feminism …

Rethinking Female Voice And The Ideology Of Sound: A Study Of Stanley Kwan's Film Center Stage (1992), Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The article presents criticism on the film "Ruan Lingyu" ("Center Stage"), focusing on director Stanley Kwan's depiction of the female voice in terms of a feminist analysis of the body and voice of Ruan Lingyu, the silent film actress whose life is the focus of the film. Kwan's use of sound editing is highlighted, and special attention is paid to actress Maggie Cheung's portrayal of Ruan. Other topics include Ruan's suicide and China's transition to sound motion pictures.

The Legacy Of Crossdressing In Tanci: A Histoire Of Heroic Women And Men, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This essay studies a tanci work, A Histoire of Heroic Women and Men (1905), as a case which reflects the intersecting themes of crossdressing, gender representation and the literary form of tanci. Written tanci, appropriated and redeveloped by educated women to tell stories of female crossdressers, scholars, and military leaders, offers a meaningful intervention in the dominant social and cultural discourses of womanhood in late imperial China. In the fictional realm, women’s acts of crossdressing transcend the Confucian ideological prescriptions of feminine identity, displaying their heroic efforts to pursue autonomy in a patriarchal culture. This essay will analyze how these …

Making History Anew: Feminine Melodrama In Eileen Chang's Love In A Fallen City, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This essay will explore the narrative mode of feminine melodrama in Love in a Fallen City, a novella by the Shanghainese writer Eileen Chang (1920–1995). Chang has gained international fame for her depiction of Chinese women in the tumultuous transitional period prior to the modern era, especially traditional women figures that are in stark contrast with the New Woman ideal portrayed by her contemporary writers. Born in Shanghai, Chang was a descendant of an eminent late imperial official and received western education in Hong Kong under the influence of her open-minded mother. A literary sensation at the age of twenty-five, …

Examining Child Sexual Abuse And Future Parenting: An Application Of Latent Class Modeling, Kimberly W. D'Zatko

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was designed to empirically derive latent classes of mothers who were sexually abused during childhood and to assess the association between depression, alcohol/drug use, supportive intimate partner, and specific classes.

One hundred six women between the ages of 20 and 44 years (M = 27) who reported having been sexually abused during childhood (CSA) and 158 non-CSA mothers between the ages of 20 and 43 years (M = 23) were interviewed and assessed along six parenting dimensions. Logistic regression models evaluated the association between psychoemotional variables and specific classes.

The final model consisted of three classes—53.2%, …

Sex In The Kitchen: The Re-Interpretation Of Gendered Space Within The Post-World War Ii Suburban Home In The West, Philip M. Lockette

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the decades following 1945, Americans moved increasingly out of cities into suburbs. The migration illustrated the emergence of a new, broader middle class as a result of growing postwar affluence. In the previous half-century, families living in a suburb could claim middle-class status. The emerging class built its identity on the forms and values adopted from this earlier, more affluent Victorian middle class. These adopted values were played out in a home designed around Progressive era ideals of the family. Through this Progressive filter, the new concept of the home was scaled down, without servants, and ceased existing wholly …

Media Gender Bias In The 1984 And 2008 Vice Presidential Elections, Katherine Shaunesi Reeves

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Media coverage in political campaigns helps shape public opinion and can be a factor in people determining how to vote. Thus, bias evident in the coverage of political candidates should be a concern for a society which values fair elections. In the 2008 general election, for the first time in 24 years, a woman was on a major party ticket. The treatment of female candidates historically has been sexist. To understand the media coverage of Sarah Palin I chose to look at editorials in The New York Times. I compared her editorial references to Joe Biden’s in The Times. Then, …

Rereading And Rewriting Women's History, Jacqueline Harris

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In Margaret Atwood’s nonfiction book Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002), Atwood discusses the importance of the female writer’s responsibility, that to write as a woman or about women means that you take upon yourself the responsibility of writing as a form of negotiation with our female dead and with what these dead took with them—the truth about who they were. By rereading and rewriting our communal past, women writers pay tribute to our female ancestors by voicing their silent stories while also changing gender stereotypes, complicating who these women were, and acknowledging their accomplishments.

In her …

Male Out-Migration And The Women Left Behind: A Case Study Of A Small Farming Community In Southeastern Mexico, Jamie P. Mcevoy

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Until recently, rural households in southeastern Mexico have survived on subsistence and chili farming. But over the last decade, male out-migration to the United States has also become a popular livelihood strategy. This case study used data from semi-structured qualitative interviews to assess the effects of male out-migration on women's lives in three areas: households' financial and material situation, issues of infidelity and women's vulnerability to abandonment, and the gendered division of labor.

Overall, this study found that male out-migration had both positive and negative effects on the women left behind. First, the financial outcomes of migration were mixed. A …

Sex Differences In The Use And Evaluated Helpfulness Of Premarital Advice, Neal J. Sullivan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to explore sex differences in the use and evaluated helpfulness of advice received before marriage. In addition, this study explored who typically gave premarital advice. Advice is considered by some to be a form of social support which can be helpful or hurtful to the marriage relationship. The sex of the advice-giver and advice-receiver as well as the relationship quality between them was explored in order to highlight how these variables affect advice use and helpfulness. Utilizing a questionnaire and interviews with individual newlywed husbands (n = 56) and wives (n = …

Doctoral Education Among Latter-Day Saint (Lds) Women: A Phenomenological Study Of A Mother's Choice To Achieve, Jonathan Glade Hall

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) have been compellingly counseled by church leaders that motherhood should be women’s greatest ambition, and as such that it should demand mothers’ full-time in the home; at the same time they have been taught to get all of the education that they can. Mothers with young families must decide if they should continue their educational pursuits, or spend their full-time in the home. This study sought to fill a gap in the literature and understand the lived experience of these women by researching how LDS mothers with young children …

Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy: Theory And Practice For Composition Studies, Jonathan Alexander

All USU Press Publications

Despite its centrality to much of contemporary personal and public discourse, sexuality remains infrequently discussed in composition courses and in our discipline at large. Moreover, its complicated relationship to discourse, to the very language we use to describe and define our worlds, is woefully understudied in our discipline. Talk and writing about sexuality surround us. Not only does the discourse of sexuality surround us, but sexuality itself forms a core set of complex discourses through which we approach, make sense of, and construct a variety of meanings, politics, and identities. In Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy, Jonathan Alexander argues for the development …

Cultural Analysis Of The Indian Women's Festival Of Karvachauth, Puja Sahney

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The festival of Karvachauth is celebrated by upper class married women of North India and occurs in the month of October or early November. On this day married women fast to ensure the long lives of their husbands. They wake up before dawn and eat a meal. After sunrise they do not drink water or eat any food until they see the moon at night. The moon is watched through a sieve and prayed to before breaking the fast. An important part of Karvachauth is a ritual that is performed by women in the afternoon. This ritual is hosted by …