Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Tracing The Dispossession Of The Enslaves Black Woman And A Potential For Resistance., Lila R. O'Conell

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Women’S Sexuality And The State: A Beginning Look At Virginity’S Relationship To The Law, Ariana Strieb

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This is a beginning look at the relationship the state has with women's sexuality in the United States, specifically looking at how virginity animate the way rape trials are prosecuted.

Women’S Sexuality And The State: A Beginning Look At Virginity’S Relationship To The Law, Ariana Strieb

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This is a beginning look at how concepts about virginity animate the United States’ handling of rape cases.

The Public Bathroom: Tracing A History Of Architectural Symbolism And Social Control, Mayim Frieden

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Through a cross-disciplinary analysis of New York City's urban, architectural and infrastructural histories, this thesis explores the various sociocultural beliefs, dynamics and tensions that led to the architectural typology of the public bathroom. In turn, the controversies often associated with public bathrooms are contextualized, and the demarcating and influential capabilities of architecture are made apparent. This work spans from the 19th century and into the 2010s, demonstrating how architectural and urban design and planning can contain and uphold determinations made hundreds of years prior.

Les Six Continents: An Exploration Of Political Visual Rhetoric In Public Sculpture, Olivia Liu Guillotin

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Les six continents series stands as remnants of the 1878 Exposition Universelle and as a visual marker of the cultural, social, and economic culture of the time period. The series, serving as public art, continues to inform and participate in its environment and space, as it is on display by the entrance of the Musée d’Orsay today. Personified representations of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Oceania as allegorical female figures, the series offers insight into the colonial world where it emerged, and how its impact has visually been ingrained in contemporary society. By using these six statues …

The Immigrant Nannies Of New York City: An Examination Of The Friendships Between Nannies And Mother-Employers, Esmeralda Paula

Senior Projects Spring 2022

This ethnography focuses on the emotions of the women of color who elaborated on their experiences working for wealthy, white families in ethnographic interviews. This project is interested in the connections formed between nannies and mother-employers with the goal of better understanding the positionalities of female domestic workers of color. Immigrant populations are frequently depicted by news outlets as overworked, underpaid, and poor. When interacting with nannies, I realized that these women did not consider themselves impoverished despite working in a role that is identifiable with servanthood. The labor that nannies perform calls back to a long tradition of women …

Thawra, Olivia Snow Smith

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

A History And Analysis Relevant To The Us Border: A.K.A. "Fuck The Border”, Cole Rainey-Slavick

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Borders are proliferating throughout the world today; dividing the core from the periphery, racially excluding vulnerable peoples, and facilitating the exploitation of labor. But, it has not always been like this. Borders were once limited only to a small scattering of city states, and even these borders looked little like those of today in terms of their enforcement or function. Where do borders come from? What do they do? What social forces produce and alter them? What is the history of the US border? What is the border …

Constructing The Transsexual: Medicalization, Gatekeeping, And The Privatization Of Trans Healthcare In The U.S., 1950-2019, Erin Gifford

Senior Projects Spring 2019

This project details the medicalization of gender variance in the United States that began in 1950, both in medical discourse and popular culture, and analyzes how this phenomenon has impacted the contemporary landscape of trans healthcare, paying particular attention to issues of access and autonomy.

Punishing Assemblages: A Queer, Decolonizing Theory Of The American Prison, Liam Hopkins

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Creation Of Power: Leaving The Closed Space Of Voluntary Servitude, Isabel Mae Torgove

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This project is a collection and absorption of concepts and frameworks drawn from centuries of thought. Indebted to the past, this philosophical and literary journey seeks to elucidate a productive path to follow in the wake of the “moment,” derived from Du Bois’ “double consciousness.” This split second explosion, resulting in the severance of the conception of the self from the world’s perception of the self, places one in the position of either submitting voluntarily to the dominant forces or producing and creating something, anything, to aid in the search for understanding the self. The transitive property of a split …

The Delicatessen Kids, Raina Nicole Dziuk

Senior Projects Spring 2018

The Delicatessen Kids is a collection of short stories that follows 4 Ukrainian-American siblings as they grow up in 1960s Brooklyn, New York.

Sentimentality Has Its Place In Human Rights Activism: Nadia Murad Basee Taha’S Testimony And The Yazidi Story, Miranda Rose Shulman

Senior Projects Spring 2017

This project tells the story of Nadia Murad and the Yazidi genocide of 2014 through analysis of her own testimony and considers the success and the intricacies of her approach to aiding the Yazidis who suffer to this day. It discusses the power of using sentimentality and emotion in human rights activism.

Naturalized Women And Womanized Earth: Connecting The Journeys Of Womanhood And The Earth, From The Early Modern Era To The Industrial Revolution, Maggie Rose Berke

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Unintended Consequences Of The International Women's Movement: Medicalizing Rape In The Democratic Republic Of Congo, Faye N. Forman

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The legal advancements made by western feminists from the 1960s continuing today mark a distinct shift for both the women's movement and mainstream radical feminist philosophy. This project examines the unintended consequences of the rise of the international women's movement as American feminists brought the law to bear as the primary instrument for reform to eradicate rape and violence against women. As contemporary political scholars demonstrate, legal remediation further codifies gender inequality and protective tropes that sexualize women's injury. Chapter 2 and 3 examines the intensified feminist efforts to criminalize domestic abuse at an international level, first at the United …

The Government Facilitation Of North Korea's Human Rights Abuses Eclipsed By The Threat Of Nuclear War, Kim Kathryn Angstro Doom

Senior Projects Fall 2015

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

A Contested Future: Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Native American Performers, And The Military's Struggle For Control Over Indian Affairs 1868-1898, Alexander Erez Echelman

Senior Projects Spring 2015

My project explores how and why William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody glorified the military's wars against Native Americans on the Great Plains through his career as a showman in the United States and in Europe. The military's and the Interior Department's competition for control over Indian Affairs allowed Buffalo Bill to support the army's image by adhering to popular white supremacist ideas in the nation. I look at how Buffalo Bill used his Native American performers to exemplify the military's peace keeping skills in the West while devaluing the Interior Department's authority in Indian Affairs.

“Human Betterment”: The Fight For And Against 50 Years Of Sterilization In North Carolina, Kay Bielak Schaffer

Senior Projects Spring 2014

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.