History Commons^™

The Notions Of The "Closet" And The "Secret" In Oscar Wilde's, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Jessica Maria Oliveira

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will discuss the notions of the “closet” and “secret” within Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as offer a clear and precise definition of queer theory to assist in elucidating many of the concepts being discussed. Close reading techniques will be utilized to further uncover the metaphoric, symbolic, and otherwise figurative importance of certain aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray and supporting texts. Through Judith Butler’s conceptualization of sex and gender, as well as Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the “secret”, this paper will explicate the intricacies of Wilde’s work and unveil queered aspects …

Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

History Honors Papers

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure poses questions about sexual coercion and governmental corruption that resonate today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context regarding Isabella. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the value of abstinence. I put these characters’ claims into dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and extensive scholarship on Shakespearean England. I argue that abstinence is the axis around which Measure’s main characters revolve, and that Measure locates these characters’ abstinences as competing performances of manhood and …

La Modernité Tunisienne Dévoilée : Une Étude Autour De La Femme Célibataire, Madison Wagner

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explains recent accounts of discrimination and cutbacks in reproductive health spaces in Tunisia. Complicating dominant analyses, which attribute these events to the post-revolution political atmosphere which has allowed the proliferation of islamic extremism, I interpret these instances as a manifestation of a deeply rooted stigma against sexually active single women. I trace this stigma’s inception to the contradictory way that Habib Bourguiba conceptualized modernity after independence, and the responsibility he assigned to Tunisian women to embody that modernity. This responsibility remains salient today, and is putting Tunisian women in an increasingly untenable and vulnerable position.

After independence, Bourguiba …

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a so-called post-racial America, a new gay identity has flourished and come into the limelight. However, in recent years, researchers have concluded that not all men who have sex with other men (MSM) self-identify as gay, most noticeably a large population of Black men. It is possible that a tainted history of Black enslavement in this country that is inextricably linked with ideas of space, surveillance, subversion, and survival inform a Black male’s self-identification as being “on the down low” (DL). This begs the question: What does mainstream society view as gay-ness and how is the DL constructed …

Reclaiming The Streets: Investigating Female Experience Of Cinematic Urban Violence, Angelica De Vido

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The spatial ideologies and narrative tropes of gendered victimhood, which are designed to induce fear and anxiety, are routinely employed to govern and restrict female access to and experience of urban spaces—both in cinematic depictions and in the real world. This paper explores how such tropes are challenged and rewritten in three screen narratives based in urban landscapes: London in Happy-Go- Lucky (2008), Paris in Amélie (2001), and New York in Sex and the City (1998–2004). Contrary to the ideologies of fear that routinely dominate urban narratives, I will argue that the texts under discussion instead display the city as …

Sexuality And Human Rights (Spring 2017), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

"What happens when we think of sexuality, with all its transgressive and individualistic energies, in terms of rationally established universal human rights? Literary texts that focus on individual cases in the context larger cultural and social traditions with a particular attention to the power of language can help us sort through some of the complex ideas that emerge from a discussion of sexual rights. In this class, we will focus on the relationship between sex and politics, especially in questions of gay, lesbian, and transgender right, as well as sex work and HIV/AIDS."

Prudery And Perversion: Domination Of The Sexual Body In Middle-Class Men, Women, And Disenfranchised Bodies In Victorian England, Ashley Barnett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research argues that with the rise of the middle-class, Victorian England saw the development of a power model in which middle-class men, middle-class women and disenfranchised bodies of children and lower-class women suffered from the demands of bodily domination. Because the bodily health of middle-class men was believed to represent national health, it was imperative that he dominate his body, particularly with regard to sexual urges. Consequently, the bodies of women with whom he sought sexual release suffered from forms of bodily domination as well. Through an analysis of journals and private writings of those living in Victorian England, …

Abdurraqib, Samaa, Iris Sangiovanni, Samar Ahmed

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Samaa Abdurraqib is a Black, queer, Muslim woman living in Portland, Maine. Abdurraqib was raised in Columbus, Ohio. She attend the University of Ohio, and later the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received a PhD in English Literature. After graduating she worked as a visiting professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Next she went on to work the American Civil Liberties Union in Maine as a reproductive rights organizer. She now works for the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. Her advocacy and organizing work has included places such as Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine, …

Toilet Talk, Michael Blake

Theses and Dissertations

Toilet Talk explores both formal and autobiographical themes related to desire, sexuality, and the relationship between public and private space. My work and research aims to reposition and queer the industrial object and its promotion of hyper masculine ideals.

A Soviet Parade Of Horribles: Conservatism In Glasnost-Era Discourses On Sex, 1987-1991, Svetlana Yuriyevna Ter-Grigoryan

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Between 1987 and 1991, Soviet filmmakers and journalists utilized Gorbachev’s glasnost reform policy to depict or discuss sexuality in cinema and the popular press. I argue that Soviet film and popular press discourses on sex in this period reveal a continuity of conservative sexual mores, which were interwoven with social and moral conservatism regarding the centerpiece of Soviet society, the Soviet family. Furthermore, these discourses take on a fundamentally misogynistic tone, in that women are tasked with defending sexual purity, and thus familial integrity, while simultaneously being cast as those most susceptible to the power of sexual enticement. Thus, the …

Dead Broets Society: Masculinity In Walt Whitman’S War Verse, Anika N. Jensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

There are two images of masculinity in Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps, his collection of wartime poetry: one, the strong, hardened soldier, the image of manliness, and the other the boyish, rosy-cheeked recruit. Whitman’s sexuality, while not the Victorian social norm, was no secret, and he wrote openly of the hospitalized soldiers during his time as a Union nurse with admiration, affection, and love. Some critics, such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, castigated Whitman’s queer themes to be overwhelming, distractingly sensual, and "unmanly," while others, like William Sloane Kennedy, dissented, arguing instead that the overt sexuality present in Whitman’s work was precisely …

An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie, And Sexuality, Margaret Lowe

Margaret Lowe

No abstract provided.

Incontinentia, Licentia Et Libido: The Juxtaposition Of Morality And Sexuality During The Roman Republic, Robert Sharp

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Sex and sexuality are important elements of the human experience but are surrounded by various taboos. Roman sexuality has traditionally been viewed in a modern context as being licentious and obscene in nature, and seemingly incongruous with the elements of propriety that are expected in an honor-shame culture. What would be considered to be moral, immoral, or obscene in a modern context would not apply to the Romans as we would understand it in a modern context. This paper examines Roman sexuality during the Republic period (509 - 27 BCE) and how they can seemingly exist alongside what can be …

As The World Turns...Gay, Not Queer: Privileging Heteronormalized Representations Of Sexuality In American Soap Operas From 1977 - Present, Brett Edward King

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project argues that American daytime soap operas, since the1970s, have adopted prevailing discursive ideas of queerness, re-articulated them, and introduced new discursive understandings of queerness into popular culture. Most often, these re-articulated representations reflect a heteronormalized model,owing to myriad historically-situated discourses related to human sexuality (e.g.,mental health, AIDS, and gender identity). This point is made through a broad examination of these shifting discourses, coupled with a direct analysis of salient queer characters and storylines that appeared concurrently within daytime serials. Building on Feminist and Media theory, this project includes Queer theory to frame a comprehensive historical-discursive understanding of queerness …

Global Freud (Fall 2013), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

In 1909, Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis went global. At the behest of Clark's president G. Stanley Hall, Freud traveled with Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi from Vienna, capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to speak at Clark University. Clark is the only university in the Americas at which Freud ever lectured and the only university in the world to have given Freud an honorary degree. Freud's visit to Clark took place at the cusp of his career -- ten years before his visit he was known only to a small group in Vienna while ten years after his visit he was …

Welcome To The Doll House, Francie Latour, Risd Xyz

RISD XYZ Fall/Winter 2013: Out of Bounds

From the Barbie dresses he made as a boy to his first splash in the New York art world, Martín Gutierrez 12 PR is working to perfect what he has always done naturally.

Breaking The Gender Binary: Feminism And Transgressive Female Desire In Lucía Etxebarria's Beatriz Y Los Cuerpos Celestes And La Eva Futura/La Letra Futura, Lauren Applegate

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The popular texts of Spanish author Lucía Etxebarria have created a polemical social phenomenon in contemporary Spain for their blatant depiction of a world of violence, drugs, and experimental sex of the late-millennium youth culture of Generación X. These topics, along with Etxebarria's public persona and feminist ideology, have fomented much public criticism and given rise to discussion of the current status of feminism, gender norms, and women's authorship in Spain today. This article analyzes Etxebarria's novel Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes and her collection of feminist essays La Eva futura/La letra futura, demonstrating that Etxebarria's depiction of female desire …

Students Teaching Students: Lgbtq History, Brian Stack

Senior Honors Projects

When the Students Teaching Students program called for submissions for student created courses I jumped at the opportunity to learn and share with a group of peers dedicated to a subject. The close to year long process culminated in the first Students Teaching Students course at URI, focusing on the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people: HPR 107: Introduction to LGBTQ History.

Just getting ready to teach was a multifaceted process, since I tend to fluctuate between ravenously seizing every book I can get my hands on and devising practical applications for that intellectual knowledge. First …

"So Much For Fond Five-Dollar Memories": Prostitution In Las Vegas, 1905-1955, Marie Katherine Rowley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Over the fifty years examined in this thesis, the interactions between federal and local officials shaped prostitution policy in Las Vegas and Clark County. At times that federal authorities were concerned about prostitution in the county, local leaders balanced tradition and economic necessity in their responses. In the early twentieth century, prostitution's benefits to the local economy outweighed fear of federal reprisals, so local officials worked to protect the city's brothels. By the start of World War II, the federal government's increased power and presence in the West made local officials more willing to abandon the tolerance for prostitution in …

Christine Jorgensen And The Media: Identity Politics In The Early 1950s Press, Emylia N. Terry

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

“Christine Jorgensen and the Media: Identity Politics in the Early 1950s Press” analyzes America’s first transgender celebrity and the interpretations of her identity by a seemingly celebratory press. Jorgensen, who rose to fame in December 1952, was propelled to stardom partly because of the cultural climate of the 1950s. The first portion of my essay begins by setting the historical context of how gender nonconforming individuals were treated in the press before Jorgensen, and then analyzes Jorgensen’s personal characteristics that also helped make her a media fixture. However, the veracity of Jorgensen’s female identity was doubted by the time she …

Deviant Desires: Gender Resistance In Romantic Friendships Between Women During The Late-Eighteenth And Early-Nineteenth Centuries In Britain, Sophie Jade Slater

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Romantic friendships between women in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries were common in British society. Young women were drawn to each other, often in romantic ways, in part because of the way in which the society was ordered. In this period, females generally socialized only with other females, from birth until marriage. Even after marriage the majority of women spent most of their time with other women. This deep intimacy between women was encouraged and accepted and is visible in correspondence between female friends. Although there is scholarly literature surrounding romantic friendships during this period, the way in which these …

"The German Discovery Of Sex", Gwen Walsh

Publications

News article by The Scarlet, Clark University's student-run newspaper on the symposium "German Discovery of Sex", held on April 16, 2011. This event was part of the Henry J. Leir Chair Programming for the 2010-2011 season, a position that Robert Tobin held from 2008 up until his passing in 2022.

Human Rights And Literature (Fall 2011), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

In this class, we will be reading literary and cultural documents to contemplate the concept of “human rights.” What rights do all humans have, simply by virtue of being human? Who counts as human? Do current understandings of human rights exclude some people? Do humans have more rights than other species? How do questions of gender and sexuality fit into the discussion of human rights?

As we seek to answer these questions, we will trace the development of human rights discourses from the Enlightenment to the present, looking at literature from a variety of cultures and human rights documents from …

The Angel And The Imp: The Duncan Sisters’ Performances Of Race And Gender, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

From 1923 to 1959 Vivian and Rosetta Duncan performed the show Topsy and Eva in front of thousands of audiences in the United States and abroad. This essay examines how the Duncan Sisters’ appropriation of blackness through a yin and yang performance of black and white womanhood, their sexualized but ultimately infantilizing routine as young girls, and their take on anarchistic comedy resulted in a particular spin on age, gender, race, and sexuality that reinforced their privilege as white women even while it pushed the boundaries of acceptable femininity in the swiftly shifting American culture of the first half of …

The German Discovery Of Sex (Spring 2011), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

In this course, we will use the tools of literary and cultural analysis, studying fictional, political, psychoanalytic and scientific works to investigate the emergence of modern sexual discourses in the German-speaking world. The Greek term “homo” (same) and the Latinate “sex” (sex) were first combined to describe someone with a sexual interest in members of their own sex in 1869 in the German-speaking world. Similar observations can be made about terms such as “heterosexual,” “masochist,” and “transvestite.” There was apparently an intense interest in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German-speaking central Europe in reconfiguring and reconsidering sexuality. Out of this …

Sexuality And Human Rights (Fall 2010), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

What happens when we think of sexuality, with all of its transgressive and individualistic energies, in terms of rationally established universal human rights? Literary texts that focus on individual cases in the context of larger cultural and social traditions with a particular attention to the power of language can help us sort through some of the complex ideas that emerge from a discussion of sexual rights. In this class, we will focus on controversial issues--like sadism, masochism, male homosexuality, lesbianism, age of consent, prostitution, polygamy and transsexuality—that bring rights conflicts to the forefront.

A photo of this Fall 2010 class …

Introduction: Homoerotic, Lesbian, And Gay Ethnic And Immigrant Histories, Horacio N. Roque Ramirez Dr.

Horacio N Roque Ramirez, Ph.D.

This essay introduces a special journal issue bringing together the well-established field of racial-ethnic and immigration history in the U.S. with the less visible but just as strong and growing field of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) and “queer” history and culture, essays exploring race and ethnicity, immigration and nation, and gender, sex, and sexuality as they inform one another, as well as the making of identities, historical subjects, communities, and policy. The contributors challenge the assumption that the history of immigration and racial-ethnic immigrant settlement take form only along heterosexual or heteronormative lines, whether people’s movements across bodies …

La Vida Sexual De Chopin, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Resumen:

La historiografía musical y la cultura popular nos han legado una imagen de Chopin como un ser débil y asexual. Este tópico incluso ha marcado la obra de pensadores como Sartre en su obra La náusea. Sin embargo, la lectura de la correspondencia del compositor nos brinda el perfil de un ser humano con unas inquietudes sexuales bastante “normales”. En su juventud, Chopin mantuvo una estrecha relación, que algunos definirían como homosexual, con Titus Woyciechowski y años más tarde frecuentó el círculo de Altolphe de Custine, erudito aristócrata de prestigio y reconocido homosexual. La correspondencia –posiblemente fraudulenta– entre Chopin …

Before The Second Wave: College Women, Cultural Literacy, Sexuality And Identity, 1940--1965, Babette Faehmel

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation follows career-oriented college women over the course of their education in liberal arts programs and seeks to explain why so many of them, in departure from original plans of combining work and marriage, married and became full-time mothers. Using diaries, personal correspondences, and student publications, in conjunction with works from the social sciences, philosophy, and literature, I argue that these women's experiences need to be understood in the context of cultural conflicts over the definition of class, status, and national identity. Mid twentieth-century college women, I propose, began their education at a moment when the convergence of long-contested …