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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Flesh In Line With The Mind : Gender In Caitlin Kiernan’S The Drowning Girl., Sarah Buckley May 2017

Flesh In Line With The Mind : Gender In Caitlin Kiernan’S The Drowning Girl., Sarah Buckley

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This paper analyzes how Caitlyn R. Kiernan in her novel The Drowning Girl characterizes gender identity, particularly in regards to women, both transgender and cisgender. The book's characterization of gender roles for cisgender men, cisgender women, and transgender women, while seeming on the surface to subvert sexist stereotypes, reproduces the pitfalls of feminist literary criticism popularized in the 1970s and 1980s. Notably, such themes include viewing women's madness as a method of transcending masculine rationality, a dichotomized essentialism of masculinity and femininity, and universalizing women's experience without regards to race, class, and nationality. Transgender autobiographical and literary archetypes employed in …


Making Sex Work For The State : The Policing Of Sex Work In The United States., Madeline A Clabough May 2017

Making Sex Work For The State : The Policing Of Sex Work In The United States., Madeline A Clabough

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the ways that sex work is regulated within the United States, and analyze the ways that regulation is shaped by contemporary feminist discourse. To do so, it analyzes the ways in which sex workers have been and pathologized since the 19th century, and address the ways that these conceptualizations have been incorporated into the legal regulation of sex workers. Finally, this thesis will look to contemporary practices in the state regulation of sex workers, and argue that the relationship between neoliberalism, the carceral state, and what has come to be termed “carceral feminism” operate in conjunction to …


Unthink Pink : Master Narratives And Counterstories Of Breast Cancer., Jessica C. Hume May 2017

Unthink Pink : Master Narratives And Counterstories Of Breast Cancer., Jessica C. Hume

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work examines the construction and impact of the master narrative breast cancer which is supported and reified by the contemporary breast cancer awareness movement. I contend that historical problematic constructions of the female body were interwoven with the beginning of the movement around the turn of the twentieth century. As a partial result, the female body with breast cancer is abject, and therefore subject to policing and discipline. The master narrative of breast cancer, through pinkwashing, enacts this policing and discipline. The master narrative expresses several distinct messages which may be exclusive of the experiences of many people, causing …


Breaking The Cycle Of Silence : The Significance Of Anya Seton's Historical Fiction., Lindsey Marie Okoroafo (Jesnek) May 2017

Breaking The Cycle Of Silence : The Significance Of Anya Seton's Historical Fiction., Lindsey Marie Okoroafo (Jesnek)

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the feminist significance of Anya Seton’s historical novels, My Theodosia (1941), Katherine (1954), and The Winthrop Woman (1958). The two main goals of this project are to 1.) identify and explain the reasons why Seton’s historical novels have not received the scholarly attention they are due, and 2.) to call attention to the ways in which My Theodosia, Katherine, and The Winthrop Woman offer important feminist interventions to patriarchal social order. Ultimately, I argue that My Theodosia, Katherine, and The Winthrop Woman deserve more scholarly attention because they are significant contributions to women’s …


Man/Boy., Nick Hartman May 2017

Man/Boy., Nick Hartman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Verisimilitude, or the appearance of being true, is a concept I turn upside down; relating it to a guise I wear as a contemporary male in a society dictated by learned social behavior and gender norms. Cultural iconography and expected gender norms are tropes I confront within my artwork. Drawings of seemingly everyday objects act as meditations or a fetishized repetition of supposed unobtainable objects and ideals that deal with masculine societal norms. Manliness, machismo, masculinity… it is all a culturally learned and expected pose placed on all men. Coming to the realization that I do not necessarily fit …