Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Saint Brigit And Her Habits: Exploring Queerness In Early Medieval Ireland, Jacqueline K. Stephenson

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Saint Brigit's behavior and reception by society highlight an avenue by which women in the early medieval period could escape societal strictures, exercising agency over their bodies and their romantic choices, and carve out a distinct and unexpected place for themselves in a Christian patriarchal society. In Saint Brigit’s case, this is especially demonstrated by the breadth of her portrayed power as not just a nun but a saint, her extreme resistance to marriage, and her frequent comparisons to men. Indeed, her hagiography, written by Cogitosus in the seventh century, positioned her as one of the three principal and earliest …

Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer

Art Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is situated within and around vessels and the Queer Homoerotic World and explores sexuality as a Demisexual within them. This is accomplished through the two processes of my creation, Minivague and Queerform/ing: balancing sexual tension and explicit expression, while subverting traditional norms and stereotypes with queerness to distance oneself from stereotypical Gay Art. Altering/emphasizing makes the artwork more romantic, lighter, whimsical, softer, and tender than the figure/s and the situations actually are. The process is also emphasizing what one sees or wants to be seen. The Pink Boy becomes a celebration of intimacy of any form. I discuss …

Lay It On The Line: The Life And Music Of Gladys Bentley, Bianki Torres, J.

Doctoral Dissertations

This work is a historical biography of Gladys Bentley and her blues music. She was a cross-dressing entertainer from the Harlem Renaissance and performed popular songs with added, sometimes improvised sexual innuendo. This study considers the performances of her recorded and written material as trans music, meaning, that black music provided a platform to determine racial, gendered, and sexual cultural expressions changing over time, however, always rooted in black vernacular culture. Using showbills, promotional material, studio recordings and short autobiography, this study follows Bentley’s career as “male impersonator” and the effects lesbian/gay (queer) culture had on her blues. Also, I …

"Girls Don't Strike Without Provocation.": African American Women, The General Strike, And The Good Samaritan Hospital School Of Nursing, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1956-1959., Francena F.L. Turner

Sociology Department Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Preservando La Playa Del Pueblo, Tasha A. Sandoval

Capstones

After more than 80 years, the only queer beach in New York City, the People’s Beach at Jacob Riis, is in danger. In 2022, the city announced the demolition of the Neponsit Hospital, a long-abandoned structure that shelters the beach from the street, creating a sense of privacy and safety. Can Riis Beach live on as a safe and joyous utopia for queer communities without the presence of the hospital buildings? Some beach-goers are campaigning to ensure that whatever replaces the hospital space centers the queer community and preserves the beach’s queer history, including the legacy of Ms. Colombia, a …

Masculinity In American Movie-Musical Films, Christopher Sparks

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

My presentation explores the relation between American masculinity and film musicals. I demonstrate how the dominance of the musical at the box office in the middle of the 20^th century reflects historical events and technological change. Drawing on both scholarly and popular criticism, I show how the images of masculinity that Americans once encountered on the silver screen have transformed as musicals became marginal to popular culture in the United States. My research considers both classic 20^th century musicals, such as Wizard of Oz (1939) and 42^nd Street (1933), and more recent experiments with the genre, including …

The Still Unfathomed Trans+Oceanic, Daze Jefferies

The Goose

For centuries, violence against mermaids has coexisted alongside slippery sexualizations in much of Newfoundland’s folk and popular cultures. This is demonstrated most grievously in colonist Richard Whitbourne’s 1620 text, A Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland. The fishy reality of simultaneous disposability and desirability also mirrors the life histories of trans women and sex workers in the capital port city of St. John’s. Imagining mermaids as trans and sex-working ancestors in a province that has been structured by ecologies of fish trade, this work of research-creation drifts through precarious survival in the North Atlantic.

The Malleability Of Home: A Genealogy Of Clark University's English House, Christina Rose Walcott, Justin Shaw

English

This essay details the history of the land and structures that occupy the property currently located at the corner of Hawthorne and Woodland Streets in Worcester, Mass. Covering over 300 years, it begins with the legacies of the Nipmuc and the early English colonialist settlers before moving into a discussion of Worcester's 19th Century industrialists and 20th Century acquisition by the University. The essay builds on extensive archival research using materials from both physical and digital collections such as atlases, censuses, biographies, directories, criticism, and more. To further develop the story of the English Department and its home, the essay …

Trauma, History, And Terror In The Poetry Of Yusef Komunyakaa And Sinan Antoon, Reema Binghadeer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her comparative study “Trauma, History, and Terror in the Poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa and Sinan Antoon,” Reema Binghadeer considers the work of the African American poet Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1941) and the (Arab) Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon (b. 1967) through the lens of trauma theory of some notable theorists including; Freud, Cathy Caruth, Jean Laplanche, Roger Luckhurst, and Shoshana Felman—have negotiated in this field. The article explores the literary manifestations of trauma in two distinct historical periods and geographical settings to show the specificities of each prototype and how the historical-cultural significance and textual meanings of trauma have intertwined …

The Forgotten Activists Of Georgia: The Black Women Of Savannah, Emily Zanieski

Honors College Theses

Historians of the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia have primarily focused on how the national movement unfolded in the city of Atlanta. More recent scholarship has highlighted the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in Albany; however, many of these analyses focus on figures within the larger movement rather than focusing on local, grassroots organizers. Additionally, their primary focus tends to be on the role of Black men, leaving behind the voices of Black women who led alongside them. Through a Long Civil Rights Movement (LCRM) approach, I argue that Black women in Savannah, Georgia played an instrumental role in …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

Celluloid Subversion: A Queer Reading Of 1980s Teen Slasher Cinema, Yates Diaz

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Celluloid Subversion” examines the slasher film genre, specifically how it came to prominence in the early 1980s at the dawn of Ronald Reagan and the New Right’s takeover of American political and social life. With its violence against women and individuals who engage in allegedly immoral acts, the genre is commonly perceived as a cinematic representation of patriarchal values writ large on screen. However, its propensity for challenging gender norms and its adherence to tropes such as that of the Final Girl – where a woman survives the killer’s carnage before defeating him – imbue it with subversively queer qualities …

The Impact Of Women On The Life And Legacy Of Mark Antony, Lauren E. Yaple

Honors Theses

Throughout the life of Mark Antony, the women he became involved with had a large impact on his political career, life, and legacy. These women, such as Fulvia and Cleopatra, used Antony as a means to achieve their own political, economic, and personal goals and were able to gain power in a very anti-feminist society through their relationships with and manipulations of him, affecting the career of Antony in many ways including his politics and his actions as a military commander, as showcased by the examination of primary sources from the late Roman Republic and early Roman empire periods. This …

Toward A Crip Provenance: Centering Disability In Archives Through Its Absence, Gracen M. Brilmyer

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Using the records that document the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition as a case study, this article discusses the messiness and unknowability of provenance. Drawing attention to how the concept of provenance can emphasize the reconstruction of a fonds when records have been moved, rearranged, and dispersed, this article draws attention to the ‘curative’ and ‘rehabilitative’ orientations of established notions of provenance. Put in conversation with disability studies scholarship, which critiques rehabilitating, curing, and restoring, this article outlines the theoretical scaffolding of a crip provenance: a disability-centered framework of resisting the desire to restore and instead meets records where they are …

Life Stories Of Older Chinese Immigrant Women In The U.S., Lijun Li

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

This study is an effort to turn to older Chinese immigrant women aged 60 and above, one of the most marginalized groups in American society, to recognize their humanity and rediscover the unseen and unheard. It asks what we can learn from their life stories, particularly from the ways in which each experience(d) being a woman in different societal systems. Using in-depth life story interviews supplemented with secondary sources of information, this study crafts four women’s stories that are first read and interpreted individually to capture the whole person in context, and then are looked at thematically. Nine themes are …

In The Shadow Of The Atomic Cloud: Masculinity, Modernity, And The ‘Bomb’ In The Electoral Politics Of Canada And The United States, 1949-1963, Allen G. Priest

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the impact of hegemonic masculinity, in the early Cold War era, on the electoral politics of Canada and the United States. It situates itself in the years between 1949 and 1963, arguably the height of nuclear fear, at a time when masculine ideals were adjusting to an uncertain postwar reality. Previous scholarship has established that the Cold War brought with it a retreat into domesticity, followed by an emergent “crisis” of masculinity. This monograph contributes to the historiography by demonstrating that the masculine architypes of the early Cold War are frequently reflected in electoral discourse. It also …

Dalit Women In History: Struggles, Voices, And Counterpublics, Tarushikha Sarvesh, Rama Shanker Singh, Tehzeeb Alam

Journal of International Women's Studies

History is a projection of realities from the historian's lens and parameters. The popularity and acceptance of historical accounts depend much on hegemonic structures and knowledge. The Dalit community was marginalized within the Indian economic, social, and political historiography. Gradually, with the rise of Dalit consciousness, men—the better-positioned gender of the community—tried to express their vulnerabilities from a masculinist perspective. The literature written also projected women only as extensions of male protagonists. Though the traumas Dalit women have faced due to intersectional realities are separate from that of men, they could not find a place in early literature as complete …

From The First Coeds To Our First Woman President - Why Gender Matters At Depauw, Sarah Ryan, Ian Brundige '22, Hyejin Jang '24, Isaiah Spears '22, Luna Tomlin '22

President Lori S. White Inauguration Symposium

Gender has long been an important issue at DePauw, from the first women students who were admitted in 1867 to our first woman president over 150 years later. In this presentation, we will take a close look at the impetus for creating a gender resource center in 2004 and what current students need in 2021. Join us as we share how the programs, services and advocacy of the DePauw Women's Center work to provide relevant resources and how we can continue to educate, celebrate and advocate into the future.

Unpacking The Imposed: The Colonial Binary, Hijras, And The Queering Of India, Eric Cortes-Kopp '22

Student Scholarship

Most scholarship concerning hijras and other queer groups in India are limited to the late 1990s and early 2000s. Originally, my project sought to rely on primary source materials mainly from the National Archive located in New Delhi. I requested that some key documents be digitized prior to the second Indian lockdown early in the summer. Therefore, my project became more of an historiographical project, relying on two main monographs, several scholarly articles, and interviews with leading scholars of hijras. Three main sections comprise this work: précis of the two main monographs that have been published to date on hijras, …

'A Deadly Menace To All Young Womankind': Seduction And Protective Legislation In America, 1850-1923, Elissa Michelle Isenberg

Dissertations - ALL

"A Deadly Menace to All Young Womankind": Seduction and Protective Legislation in America, 1850-1923 looks at sexual harassment before it was an actionable offense. Although female domestic servants have endured unwanted sexual attention for most of American history, the entry of women into wage labor in factories and offices during the late nineteenth century dramatically increased the number of girls and women that were subjected to what we today call harassment. Careful examination of American newspaper archives, court records, and reformers' personal papers have uncovered cases of unsolicited sexual advances toward women, and have demonstrated that sexual harassment was considered …

‘A Deadly Menace To All Young Womankind’: Seduction And Protective Legislation In America, 1850-1923, Elissa Michelle Isenberg

Dissertations - ALL

“A Deadly Menace to All Young Womankind”: Seduction and Protective Legislation in America, 1850-1923 looks at sexual harassment before it was an actionable offense. Although female domestic servants have endured unwanted sexual attention for most of American history, the entry of women into wage labor in factories and offices during the late nineteenth century dramatically increased the number of girls and women that were subjected to what we today call harassment. Careful examination of American newspaper archives, court records, and reformers’ personal papers have uncovered cases of unsolicited sexual advances toward women, and have demonstrated that sexual harassment was considered …

The View From Somewhere: A Review, Robert S. Boynton

RadioDoc Review

Lewis Raven Wallace was fired from Marketplace for questioning the mainstream media's conception of journalistic neutrality. He developed his critique in his 2019 book, The View From Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, a podcast of the same name, and in several ancillary products. Wallace concludes that “objectivity is a false ideal that upholds the status quo”, and news judgement has less to do with objective criteria than with “who controls the narrative, whose narratives matter, and how the appearance of mattering is created in a society rife with entrenched inequality”.

The Nana Yaa Asantewaa War: Analysis Of The Political Institutions Of The Asante During The War Of The Golden Stool And The Existing Narratives, Angela Danso Gyane

Senior Independent Study Theses

The War of the Golden Stool was the last in the Anglo-Asante Wars, where the Asante fought against the British colonial agenda. According to the Asante oral history, Nana Yaa Asantewaa was at the forefront of this war. She was the commander, but most of the literature to not reflect this oral history. Therefore, this study seeks to address two essential questions: how did gender dynamics in the Asante Kingdom's political system shape their Resistance against the British in 1900- 01? Moreover, how does the analysis of oral histories from the matrilineal culture of the Asante decenter Western narratives of …

Ladylike: The Necessity And Neglect Of Camp Followers In The Continental Army, Emma Ward

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The contributions of female camp followers to the Continental Army are often overlooked in the study of the American Revolution. The lower-class women who followed the army performed services absolutely necessary for its operation and created a vital support network for the fledgling army that could not care for its own needs. Camp followers were therefore integral to the success of the American Revolution, but they rarely receive due credit for their contributions because they acted outside the bounds of eighteenth-century feminine values.

The intent for this thesis is to pull camp followers out of the footnotes of history and …

A Noble Duty: Ladies’ Aid Associations In Upstate South Carolina During The Civil War, Elizabeth Aranda, Carmen Harris

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

The contributions of women during the American Civil War have been typically examined within the broader picture of a nation or state-wide mobilization of citizens during a time of war. In this paper, I seek to show the mobilization of women during the Civil War from a regionalized perspective limited to the Upcountry of South Carolina and the effect their development of aid societies had on the war as well as on their place as white women in the Confederacy. Female-run aid societies began for the purpose of gathering supplies for soldiers. Within two years they had founded hospitals and …

Barbara Powers: Witch Or Myth? The Last Case Of Witchcraft In South Carolina, Brandon Smith, Bobbie Jo Wimberly, Courtney Mcdonald

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

Was an elderly woman from the upstate of South Carolina the last to be accused of and put on trial for witchcraft in the United States? In this paper, we investigate claims from an old letter sent to the president of South Carolina College to determine whether or not Barbara Powers was truly accused of witchcraft during a criminal trial. After thoroughly investigating census data, court records, marriage records, and other historical data in the named counties and those surrounding them, we were unable to determine conclusively if the trial was real or fabricated. Despite not knowing if the case …

A Civil Society: The Public Space Of Freemason Women In France, 1744–1944, James Smith Allen

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

A Civil Society explores the struggle to initiate women as full participants in the masonic brotherhood that shared in the rise of France’s civil society and its “civic morality” on behalf of women’s rights. As a vital component of the third sector during France’s modernization, freemasonry empowered women in complex social networks, contributing to a more liberal republic, a more open society, and a more engaged public culture.

James Smith Allen shows that although women initially met with stiff resistance, their induction into the brotherhood was a significant step in the development of French civil society, including the promotion of …

We're All A Little Bit Gay: Female Homoeroticism In Greek Art, Devon A. Matson

Senior Independent Study Theses

This study provides a close analysis of women in artwork from Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece (700-30 BC). Such images have traditionally been considered from exclusively heteronormative and androcentric perspectives. I employ queer and feminist theory in an attempt to provide a new understanding of the images present on these examples of ancient art which showcase women’s relationships. I examine a terracotta figure, a stamnos, a psykter, and a cup that display women interacting with one another. Their interactions demonstrate both homosocial and homoerotic relations. In an effort to reach a broader audience, I have curated a digital exhibit that …

Historically Informed Nursing In The Time Of Reconciliation, Sylvane Filice, Michelle Spadoni, Patricia Sevean, Sally Dampier

Quality Advancement in Nursing Education - Avancées en formation infirmière

In this article, the authors offer that the 2017 publication of Dr Sonya Grypma’s article entitled Historically informed nursing the untapped potential of nursing education was the catalyst for discussion of how historical content is addressed in nursing curricula and how it should be further enhanced. It offers perspectives on approaches used in undergraduate education to incorporate history in nursing curricula. Additionally, it suggests envisioning historically informed nursing through a relational lens. It will be of interest to readers as the area of pedagogy of historically informed nursing in the global environment of today is an urgent discussion in particular …

Not Your Average Rose: Cultural Inversion In Pizan’S 'City Of Ladies', Alex Donley

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

This research addresses Le Livre de la Cité des Dames—translated into English as The Book of the City of Ladies—as an outstanding work of proto-feminist literature from 1405. It is written by a woman, in defense of women. Christine de Pizan plays the central character in her own work, in which she combats misogyny with a revised account of history. She battles prevalent ideals of courtly love and gender inequality as things that are not merely repulsive or immoral, but wholly heretical. Rather than focusing on historical accuracy, de Pizan uses the literary power of her narrative to …