Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

The Death And Rebirth Of The Feminine Muse: Edgar Allan Poe And Sylvia Plath, Noha Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

While drawing on mythology and a literary history that associated women with death as well as creativity, Edgar Allan Poe and Sylvia Plath experimented with binary oppositions such as masculine/feminine, composition/decomposition, and death/(re)birth. They gained inspiration from the same source, the dead muse, but how do they transform traditions that derive from classical and medieval literary precedent, perhaps in ways that are inherently critical of patriarchal modes of gender dynamics? Why is Poe fixated on a feminine dead muse while Plath is inspired by what she calls her “father-sea-god muse”? How do both authors represent the female body, and how …

For What Is A Man?: Towards Languaging Contemporary Dance In A Black, Queer, Male-Presenting Body, Thomas Ford

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines Queering Blackness: Solo on a Theme of Reconciliation, a performance event that invokes movement, spoken text, projections and sound to explore the mechanisms of identity. Engaging performance, Black, queer and dance studies, the paper contextualizes cultural identity markers, towards an understanding of what it means to be Black, queer and male-assigned in Black spaces.

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

Womanist Poetics: Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, And Audre Lorde, Aya Telmissany

Theses and Dissertations

Today, the sentimentality associated with poetry is often condescendingly dubbed in a patriarchal society as “feminine poetry.” The first women poets who dared to attempt the pen were often met with attacks on their femaleness and harsh critiques of their writing which was likened to sorcery and witchcraft. Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Audre Lorde are three American women poets who countered these attacks and turned them inside out in favor of their own womanist poetics. They wrote about experiencing the world as women and most importantly about experiencing poetry as women. What happens to poetry when a woman appropriates …

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Examining The Power And Privilege Of Escapism In Young Adult Literature And Its Culture, Stacey Watson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will explore the systematic biases embedded within this genre, highlighting the ongoing battle between tokenism and inclusive storytelling. Thesis will also emphasize the importance of this genre, its tight grasp on popular culture, and showcase positive representations introduced by new creators over the years.

Campy Musical Black Queer Forms: Finding Utopia In Lil Nas X’S World Of Montero, Jaymi Leah Grullon

Theses and Dissertations

Lil Nas X, a breakout music star has broken into the mainstream and has stirred up controversy and moral panic among conservative Christians as well as those who are not in support of over Black queer representation in media. Moreover, I am interested in which ways he queers the forms of pop, hip hop and camp through his music videos, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” “Industry Baby,” featuring Jack Harlowe, and his performative skits. In my first chapter, I will be laying down the theoretical framework that I will be connecting from various scholars to define campy musical Black …

Kinstitution: A Topia Between Archive And Proposal, Christopher Lineberry

Theses and Dissertations

Situating Topher Lineberry's work, this paper offers a primer on institutional critique, preliminary developments of "kinstitutional critique," and the cultivation of family-derived art history through the work of the artist's grandmother, Helen Lineberry. Feeding into a working understanding of family-and-kin-as-institution, the paper ultimately locates Topher Lineberry's work between relations to place, historical archives, and speculative proposals.

Theorizing #Girlboss Culture: Mediated Neoliberal Feminisms From Influencers To Multi-Level Marketing Schemes, Frankie Mastrangelo

Theses and Dissertations

I define girlboss feminism as emergent, mediated formations of neoliberal feminism that equate feminist empowerment with financial success, market competition, individualized work-life balance, and curated digital and physical presences driven by self-monetization. I look toward how the mediation of girlboss feminism utilizes branded and affective engagements with representational politics, discourses of authenticity and rebellion, as well as meritocratic aspiration to promote cultural interest in conceptualizing feminism in ways that are divorced from collective, intersectional struggle. I question the stakes involved in reducing feminist interrogations and commitments to discourses of representation, visibility, and meritocracy. I argue that while girlboss feminism may …

"With The Commodity In The Hand": A Practical Investigation Of The Intersection Of Material Culture With Performance Theory, Katharine M. Given

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the intersection of performance theory and material culture through the practices of garment reconstruction. In chapter 1, I examine key theorists in the fields of material culture and performance studies and articulate the connections between the two fields. In chapter 2, Using practice as research, I recount the experience of building reproduction garments from the eighteenth century using historically appropriate tools and methods, as well as the experience of wearing those garments. Finally, in Chapter 3, I walk through a possible historical examination of my encounter with these reconstructed garments, and consider the way in which feminine …

Constraint And Control, Patricia Ayres

Theses and Dissertations

I have long considered themes of the body. Drawing on my knowledge as a fashion designer, I bring materials and hardware from the fashion industry into my artwork transforming and rendering them non-functional. My sculptures relate to stories of isolation, separation, and confinement. The following pages will analyze how the United States penal system controls, constrains and restricts the body through physical and psychological wounds. Furthermore, they will examine how the Catholic Church controls people’s minds and behavior through a ritualistic belief system.

Black Lives Examined: Black Nonfiction And The Praxis Of Survival In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Ariel D. Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

The subject of my thesis project is black nonfiction, namely the essay, memoir, and autobiography, written by black authors about and during the Post-Civil Rights Era. The central goals of this work are to briefly investigate the role of genre analysis within the various subsets of nonfiction and also to exemplify the ways that black writers have taken key genre models and evolved them. Secondly, I aim to understand the historical, political, and cultural contributions of the Post-Civil Rights Era, which I mark as hitting its stride in 1968. It is not my desire to create a definitive historical framework …

Negotiating Desire: Resisting, Reimagining And Reinscribing Normalized Sexuality And Gender In Fan Fiction, Charity A. Fowler

Theses and Dissertations

Fan studies has examined how fan fiction resists heteronormativity by challenging depictions of gender and sexuality, but to date, this inquiry has focused disproportionately on slash, to the exclusion of other genres of fan fiction. Additionally, scholars disagree about slash’s subversive effects by setting up a seemingly stable dichotomy—subversive vs. misogynistic—where one does not necessarily exist.

In this project, I examine multiple genres of fan fiction—namely, slash arising from bromances; femslash from female friendships; incestuous fan fiction from dysfunctional familial relationships; and polyamorous fics. I chose fics from four televisions shows—NBC’s Revolution, MTV’s Teen Wolf, the CW’s The …

Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Zora Neale Hurston, And The Creation Of "Authentic Voices" In The Black Women's Literary Tradition, Anna Storm

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on African American women’s literature from the 1890s through 1948, covering the New Negro movement and sentimental domestic novel, the folk writings of the early twentieth century, and white-life fiction. The study investigates writers and texts that at various points in the creation of a black women’s literary tradition have been labeled “inauthentic” or have otherwise received comparably little attention by scholars of the tradition. In particular, I examine the work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Zora Neale Hurston, placing them in conversation with one another and within the broader context of black women’s writing at the turn …

The Color Of Memory: Reimagining The Antebellum South In Works By James Mcbride Through The Use Of Free Indirect Discourse, Janel L. Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of interior narrative techniques such as free indirect discourse and internal monologue in two of James McBride’s neo-slave narratives, Song Yet Sung (2008) and The Good Lord Bird (2013). Very limited critical attention has been given to these neo-slave narratives that illustrate McBrides attention to characterization and focalized narration. In these narratives McBride builds upon the revelations he explores in his bestselling memoir, The Color of Water (1996, 2006), where he learns to disassociate race and character. What he discovers about not only his mother, but also himself, inspires his re-imagination of the people who …

Women At The Crossroads, Women At The Forefront, American Women In Letterpress Printing In The Nineteenth Century, Dianne L. Roman Ms

Theses and Dissertations

The significant role of the female printer in the American home-based print shops during the colonial and early republic periods has been documented in print history, socioeconomic, labor, and women studies, yet with the industrialization of the printing trade, women’s presence is thought to have disappeared. Contrary to the belief that industrialization of the print shop eradicated women’s involvement in skilled employments such as typesetting, the creation of the Women’s Cooperative Printing Union in California and the creation and chartering of the Women’s Typographical Union in New York, both in the late 1860s, clearly indicate that women continued to work …

"Tales" Of Text And Culture: Tropes Of Imperialism, Women's Roles, Technologies Of Representation, And Collaborative Meaning-Making In Rita Golden Gelman's Tales Of A Female Nomad, Female Nomad And Friends, And Personal Website, Michelle Lynne Van Wert Kosalka

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines contemporary travel writing specifically created for a popular reading culture, Rita Golden Gelman's Tales of a Female Nomad, Female Nomad and Friends, and personal website. The project is concerned with how culture is continuously represented and shaped through the dialogic interaction between writer and reader, and the subsequent liminal spaces which emerge in moments of meaning-making. Chapter 1 is a close reading of how Gelman's works reinforce and, in some cases, resist, tropes of imperialism. Chapter 2 examines patriarchal gender roles in Gelman's works and the ways in which recent advances in feminist psychiatry and psychology can …

Tammy Rae Carland's Queer Riot Grrrl Zine"I ( Heart ) Amy Carter": A World Of Public Intimacy, Annah-Marie Rostowsky

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Tammy Rae Carland's queer Riot Grrrl zine I (heart) Amy Carter as a counterpublic sphere engendered by acts of public intimacy that make visible the intersectional complexities of gender, sexuality, class, and race that insidious traumas continually work to conceal. It looks to Ann Cvetkovich's inquiries into the positive aspects of public cultures in the book An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (2006) as well as Mimi Thi Nguyen's investigation of the Riot Grrrl race crisis in the article "Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival" (2012) as frameworks to critique Carland's visual and textual …