Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Whose Birthright? Evaluating The Impact Of Birthright Trips To Israel On American Jewish Identity In The #Metoo And #Boycottbirthright Era, Christy David

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis critically examines both the impact of Birthright Israel trips on the formation of Jewish American identity but also confronts disparities in the participants’ experiences and the current evaluation methods being used to judge the ‘success’ of the trips. In 2018, the rise of the #MeToo and #BoycottBirthright movements coincided, and both participants of the trip and female educators called for a change in both the Birthright itinerary and supposed “goals” that were seeped in misogyny and an erasure of the Palestinian narrative. This research brings the two seemingly separate issues together by looking at the issues with the …

Trans Stories, Trans Voices: How The Internet Empowers Transgender Creators To Have Agency In Trans Fiction, Pepper J. Heifner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Although many advocates believe that the increased representation of transgender people in mainstream fiction will lead to more understanding for the transgender community, many transgender scholars (Page, Richards) are critical of representation that is created without any involvement of actual transgender people. Some fear that the more radical perspectives of trans lives are being erased and replaced with a homogenous idea of the kinds of trans people who are “acceptable” (cárdenas). To avoid this homogeneity, it is important to allow for a multiplicity of trans perspectives and empower transgender people to have agency over their own narratives.

The goal of …

An All-Female Hamlet, Madisen Jade Evans

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A semester spent studying gender through the eyes of a female Hamlet.

“Country Faggots” Are Everywhere: Gay And Lesbian Life In Rural America, Katie Taylor

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will challenge many scholarly works that define being “out” and visibility as the ultimate expression of gay resistance. To define outness as the ultimate expression of resistance is to erase a group of people who did not have the privilege of always being able to be out and any contributions they made towards LGBT resistance. When studying LGBT resistance, it is important to acknowledge the necessity of political resistance, but that does not mean that other forms of resistance should be ignored. To analyze the importance of LGBT resistance outside of the public sphere means to re-examine the …

Limitation, Liberation, And The Latter-Day Saints: The Establishment Of Mormon Womanhood In The Woman’S Exponent, 1872-1890, Meaghan Harrington

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Navigating the establishment of Mormon womanhood from 1872-1890 in the Exponent shows how Mormon women related to their outer world, their inner world, and themselves. This thesis analyzes the thoughts, feelings, and desires of a complex sociocultural grouping, and asks the reader to question their own attitudes towards gender and culture. The rhetoric of Mormon womanhood in the Exponent and the culture from which it stemmed have implications for understanding both “the rights of the women of Zion, and the rights of the women of all nations.”

Printing Profanity: How The Homophiles Sought To Organize An American Gay Movement, Gina Wiese

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Gay history, as it is currently taught in America, centers the Stonewall Riots of 1969 as a cataclysm of social change for gay rights, and as the beginning of gay resistance. Most histories of gay resistance in America will mention efforts of early homophile organizations, and credit the Stonewall riots as a cumulation of those earlier efforts. But this is an inaccurate interpretation of gay history. The homophile movement deserves vastly more credit for how gay Americans navigate the world today than do the riots at the Stonewall Inn. This paper will identify these individuals and the several early organizations …