Women's Studies Commons^™

I Am Not Your Felon: Decoding The Trauma, Resilience, And Recovering Mothering Of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women, Jason M. Williams, Zoe Spencer, Sean K. Wilson

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Black women are increasingly targets of mass incarceration and reentry. Black feminist writers call attention to scholars’ need to intersectionalize analyses around how Black women interface with state systems and social institutions. This study foregrounds narratives from Black women to understand their plight while navigating reentry through a phenomenological approach. Through semi-structured interviews, narratives are analyzed using critical frameworks that authentically unearths the lived realities of participants. Themes reveal that for Black mothers, reentry can be just as criminalizing as engaging crime itself. These women face dire consequences around their mothering that induce them into tremendous bouts of trauma. Existing …

“When Someone Sees Me, I Am Nothing Of The Norm”: Examining The Discursive Role Power Plays In Shaping Lgbtq+ Health Information Practices, Vanessa L. Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, A. Nick Vera

Faculty Publications

This paper examines how discursive power shapes LGBTQ+ community health information practices. Informed by analysis of 10 information world maps drawn by SC LGBTQ+ community leaders, our findings indicate that while community can be a valuable construct to reject mainstream discourses of regulation and correction, it inevitably is fraught and not representative of all LGBTQ+ individuals. Findings can inform strategies for community leaders to facilitate more equitable information flow among members by identifying key structural elements impeding this flow at the community level.

Black Women’S Lives Matter, Judith Ezekiel

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sartorial Subversion: Eliza Haywood’S Fantomina And The Literary Tradition Of Women’S Community, Ruth Garcia

Publications and Research

This article locates Fantomina in a literary tradition that proposes all-female communities, such as convents and monasteries, as liberating and empowering spaces. I argue that the novella implies a virtual community rather than an actual one, as the heroine collectively embodies many different women, all of distinct social ranks: the heroine is both one woman and a variety of women brought together under the auspices of a single body, much the way discrete individuals together compose a community. Then, too, Beauplaisir, the object of the heroine’s desire, treats all the personae the same, no matter their social station. This emphasis …

Iron Manicures: Sex, Power, And Sedition In Margaret Atwood's Writing, Anna Zarra Aldrich

Honors Scholar Theses

Margaret Atwood has often been criticized as a bad feminist writer for featuring villainous, cruel women. Atwood has combatted this criticism by pointing out that evil women exist in life, so they should in literature as well. Every story requires a villain and a victim, for Atwood these roles are both usually played by women. This thesis will explore the idea of the woman as spectacle in both behavior and body. Women are controlled by the idea that they must care. When they stop caring, they become a threat. At the heart of Atwood’s writing are the relationships between women …

An Examination Of Non-Traditional Bridal Wear And Its Primary Consumer, Erica Thalmann, Kristina Dimaria

Senior Honors Projects

Bridal wear has traditionally been viewed as big white dresses. But as times change, so do brides’ preferences for bridal wear. Jumpsuits, rompers, short dresses, and other “non-traditional” choices are experiencing an increased demand in the market. Unfortunately, brides who seek these options are often not met with a promising assortment. This study examined primary consumers of non-traditional bridal wear. Specifically, we sought to find out whether women who belong to the LGBTQ community choose to consume more non-traditional bridal wear compared to heterosexual brides. The study also examined through which channels (e.g., online, in store, etc.) consumers predominantly purchase …

(Un)Filtered Females: Exploring The Changing Representation Of Women In Cigarette Advertising, 1920-1940, Sophia Belyk

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

Throughout the first half of twentieth century, the act of smoking transitioned from being an exclusively male to a predominantly female practice. Indeed, by the end of the twentieth century merely being female was considered a serious risk to developing a smoking habit. This cultural shift is reflected in contemporary cigarette advertising, in which women begin as attractive accessories to male smokers and gradually become depicted as smoking independently. These advertisements were actively engaged with the social worlds of the women they targeted, drawing upon their contemporary concerns and values, namely those of women’s liberation and an increased attention placed …

Masked Marginalization, Moreen Akomea-Ampeh

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

"I was inspired to write this reflective piece after a personal encounter with a close female relative and wanted to demystify the notion that marginalization of women no longer exists. This thoughtful piece presents a vivid description of the objectification of women concerning women's physique in this twenty-first century. Therefore, this piece acts as a wake-up call to our blindness to this 'normalized' issue. It also shows the traumatic experiences of women and the various hurdles they face.

The Bloody Truth, Elizabeth Fulkerson

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

No abstract provided.

Middle Eastern Women Between Oppression And Resistance: Case Studies Of Iraqi, Palestinian And Kurdish Women Of Turkey, Yasmin Khodary, Noha Salah, Nada Mohsen

Political Science

Wars and conflicts have had a profound impact on women and gender in the Middle East. In this article, we aim to highlight the various ways in which the ongoing oppression and conflict in the Middle East shape the responses of the Iraqi, Palestinian and Kurdish women of Turkey and the object of their struggles. We go beyond the ‘Orientalist’ discourse, which depicts Middle Eastern women in armed conflicts as solely vulnerable and helpless victims, to discuss the resisting roles played by the Iraqi, Palestinian and Kurdish women of Turkey. Middle Eastern women have played and continue to play major …

Urban Contacts: Orientalist Urban Planning And Le Corbusier In French Colonial Algiers, Delaney Tax

Copley Library Undergraduate Research Awards

Algiers, the first French colony in Africa, was conquered in 1830 and gained independence in 1962. During this period, Algiers was constructed into an Orientalist acting ground that was shaped through political, social, economic formations in the built environment. The French colonial fascination with Algiers centered around the casbah, and thus the casbah became a laboratory for ethnographic and urban reflections. The French process of urban planning included military intervention, preservation motivated by exoticism and museology, and superstructure master plans dictated by the present benefit of indigenous communities to the colonial regime. Le Corbusier’s contact with Algiers further expresses the …

Translator Of Soliloquies: Fugues In The Key Of Dissociation, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Chu, Seo-Young. “Translator of Soliloquies: Fugues in the Key of Dissociation” (chapbook). Black Warrior Review 46.2, Spring 2020.

"If You're Ugly, The Blackpill Is Born With You": Sexual Hierarchies, Identity Construction, And Masculinity On An Incel Forum Board, Josh Segalewitz

Joyce Durham Essay Contest in Women's and Gender Studies

The manosphere is one new digital space where antifeminists and men's rights activists interact outside of their traditional social networks. Incels, short for involuntary celibates, exist in this space and have been labeled as extreme misogynists, white supremacists, and domestic terrorists. This project aims to understand discussions happening among incels and situate them within social understandings of masculinity. I downloaded 4,532 threads posted on incels.is and randomly sampled 100 for analysis. Through grounded coding methodology, I identified the importance of making meaning of manhood on this site, particularly with respect to sexuality. Further, I found that incel ideology rests on …

How Cultural Orientation And Self-Compassion Shape Objectified Body Consciousness For Women From America, Belgium, Russia, And Thailand, Robin Wollast, Abigail R. Riemer, Sarah Gervais, Lusine Grigoryan, Philippe Bernard, Olivier Klein

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

According to objectification theory, being treated as an object leads women to engage in self-objectification, which in turn increases body surveillance and body shame, impairing women’s mental health. While most studies focusing on self-objectification rely heavily on Western populations that emphasize individualism, the current work investigates the phenomenon of body surveillance and body shame in a cross-cultural framework, involving a comparison between American, Belgian, Russian, and Thai women (N = 605). This study aims to highlight two predictors – cultural orientation and self-compassion. Results indicate that greater endorsement of vertical individualism is related to body surveillance for American, Belgian, …

"Torture The Women": A Gaze At The Misogynistic Machinery Of Scary Cinema, Sarah Hankins

Copley Library Undergraduate Research Awards

A frightening truth remains that within horror-thriller films the experience of women is at the heart of the horrifying. This project analyses the effects of film media on the construction, fetishization, and destruction of female figures and engages with feminist critical concepts, such as Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze” and Linda Williams’ “body horror,” to evaluate Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo (1958) and Satoshi Kon’s anime Perfect Blue (1997). Importantly, this essay critiques the misogynistic inner-workings of the horror-thriller genre typified in Vertigo—that evokes visual pleasure from objectification, victimization, and physical, often sexual, violence—and contrasts it with Kon’s anime. This paper finds …

Relationships Between Dress And Gender In A Context Of Cultural Change, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Diana Saiki, Kim K. P. Johnson

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.