Women's History Commons^™

Gendered And Racial Nostalgia In The Protection Of Topographies | Progressive Era Rhetoric In The Conservation And Preservation Efforts Of The Hetch Hetchy Valley, Gabriela Phend

Women's History Theses

No abstract provided.

The Art Of Misogyny: The Struggle Of Female Tattooists In An Industry Of Men, Alison Waller

Women's History Theses

No abstract provided.

Lone Voice In The Wilderness: Centering Sex Workers’ Rights In Prostitution Policy, Emily A. Parker

Women's History Theses

Sex work and its legal status is a controversial and divisive subject amongst feminist scholars and lawmakers alike. While sex workers are often subject to violence and discrimination simply by virtue of their labor, legal institutions designed to protect individuals from such experiences tend to exacerbate their impacts on sex workers. Sympathetic lawmakers and scholars have attempted to implement laws to the benefit of sex workers but have struggled to successfully ameliorate the harms they experience both at work and during their everyday lives. This paper attempts to explicate the ways in which purportedly beneficial laws actually work to the …

No More Silence: How Federal Policies Address The Culture Of Sexual Violence On College Campuses, Michelle Kathryn Guile

Women's History Theses

No abstract provided.

Belle Versus Or Tramp Versus Child?: Contested Representations Of The Scottsboro Trials, Henry Guston Kemp Broege

Women's History Theses

No abstract provided.

Challenging Silence: Traditions Of Sex Education And The Mexican Immigrant Experience In The United States, Anita Botello Santoyo

Women's History Theses

This thesis looks at the impact of rural to suburban immigration on traditions of sex education among Mexican women living in California. Through the intimate life histories of a small group of women from two generations, this project examines the ways that silence, public education, and community networks worked together to create and adapt traditions of sex education. At the center of this project are the oral narratives of mothers and daughters that came of age in different spaces and periods of time. The older generations of women were raised in Mexico’s rural regions during the 1970s and ‘80s, while …

Butterflies With New Wings Building A Future, Maria Camila Martinez Valasco

Women's History Theses

This thesis presents sites of violence and despair as engines of opportunity and social transformation through the endeavors of the Butterflies with New Wings Building a Future, an organization that works to improve the lives of women victims of violence in Buenaventura, Colombia. This thesis places the Butterflies in the broader context of the Colombian armed conflict, in and beyond Buenaventura, and uses their own words and experiences to explain their perspectives, experiences, and strategies for change. This thesis explores the ways in which this organization is awakening hope in individuals and communities who have lost it, rebuilding bonds that …

Cultivating Solidarity: Leonora O'Reilly, Working-Class Women, And Middle-Class Allies In The American Woman Suffrage Movement, Jacklyn Collens

Women's History Theses

This thesis examines the process of forming strategic activist alliances, and the complications of maintaining them, by looking at the life of Leonora O’Reilly, a progressive era labor organizer and suffragist. It traces the development of O’Reilly’s understanding of the need for alliances, which began with her early years as a young factory worker coming of age in the midst of the New York City labor movement in late nineteenth-century. The thesis then follows O’Reilly into adulthood, as she turned her attention to the American woman suffrage movement and was met with the task of finding new allies while maintaining …

“Venus To The Hoop,” But Not To The Bank: Gender Inequity In Professional Basketball, Mercedes Ann Townsend

Women's History Theses

“Venus to the Hoop," But Not to the Bank: Gender Inequity in Professional Basketball, is an interdisciplinary investigation on the causes of pay inequity in professional basketball. Using the Women’s National Basketball Association’s New York Liberty and the National Basketball Association’s New York Knicks as cases in point, this thesis analyzes the ways in which consumer markets and, subsequently, labor markets are created and maintained in professional basketball. Through an analysis of league and team promotional materials, commercials, and player interviews, I argue that the marketing narrative established by the WNBA is one that largely promotes its players in traditional …

Power Dynamics Of A Segregated City: Class, Gender, And Claudette Colvin’S Struggle For Equality, Samantha Gordon

Women's History Theses

In the summer of 2014 I stumbled upon a comedic television program called Drunk History. On this television show, inebriated narrators recall historical events while actors interpret the scene. The program makes it very clear in the beginning that the narrators are drunk and this is for entertainment purposes only. The accuracy of the events is up for debate and the audience is compelled to do further research if interested.

Drunk History’s segment on Montgomery, Alabama, struck me because it introduced a “new” character to the established narrative of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: a fifteen-­‐year-­‐old girl named Claudette Colvin. Months …

Radical Genealogies: Okie Women And Dust Bowl Memories, Carly Fox

Women's History Theses

This paper complicates the existing historiography about dust bowl migrants, often known as Okies, in Depression-era California. Okies, the dominant narrative goes, failed to organize in the ways that Mexican farm workers did, developed little connection with Mexican or Filipino farm workers, and clung to traditional gender roles that valorized the male breadwinner. This thesis tells a story that the dominant narrative obscures. Centering on exceptions, I highlight the life and political work of three, relatively unknown Okie women: union organizer Lillie Dunn, radical writer Sanora Babb, and Dust Bowl poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel. Together, their stories stand outside and …

“You’Re Not Going To Continue To Set My Kids Up”: Gendering Neoliberal Education Reform And Teacher Activism, Erin C. Hagen

Women's History Theses

“You’re Not Going to Continue to Set My Kids Up”: Gendering Neoliberal Education Reform and Teacher Activism explores why teachers have been excluded from creating education policy in the United States, and how this relates to the proliferation of forprofit education companies benefiting from neoliberal education reforms. In addition, this thesis examines why the American Federation of Teachers has not been effective in preventing reforms teachers believe are harmful to themselves and their students, while also providing successful examples of teacher activism that addresses neoliberal education reforms.

A New Force In Politics: The Suffragists' Experience In Connecticut, Carole Artigiani Nichols

Women's History Theses

A great deal has been written on the women's rights movement of the early twentieth century from the perspective of its national leadership and the national suffrage organizations. Less research has focused on suffrage activities on the state level. The purpose of this essay is to examine the efforts of women in Connecticut to extend their political power; to analyze their ideas, goals, and tactics; to make some observations about feminist leadership; and to investigate the activities of politically-minded women in the years immediately following their enfranchisement.

As a result of this study, we may question the characterization of suffrage …