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Lg Ms 023 Roland Blais Papers Finding Aid, Julie Cismoski

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

Roland Blais was born in Rumford, Maine in 1939, and knew by the time he was in high school that he was "different". He saved money and moved to Los Angeles in 1958, where he got a job with Broadway Department Store, and went to gay bars for the first time. He joined the Navy and served from 1959 to 1963, leaving with an honorable discharge. He then enlisted in the Army, serving 1963-1966, stationed at Walsrode, Germany, working with missiles. He returned to the United States, retrieving the car he bought in Germany from Newark Port, New Jersey, …

Female Autistic Perspectives: Limits In Diagnosis And Understanding, Alexandra Helmers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder has increased dramatically within the last two decades, with males being diagnosed, on average, four to five times more than females. Although researchers in the medical community have searched for a biological explanation for this discrepancy, no definitive cause has been found. I argue that our understanding of autism is primarily a social and cultural construction, in addition to a diagnosable medical disorder. The gender disparity in diagnosis reflects cultural narratives surrounding social interaction and the widespread belief in two distinct gender roles. Furthermore, narratives surrounding the topic of autism tend to unintentionally highlight …

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 …

Queer Repurposed Artifacts: The State Of New York City’S Contemporary West Village Bars, Stephanie Debiase

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, there has been a shift in queer bar culture in New York City’s West Village, and this thesis aims to explore what these changes are and why they are happening now. How do West Village bars survive when queer populations are forced out? While there are various ways to consider how and what survives in the Village, three variables will be addressed: queer history, or the history queer-identified groups using activism, safety measures, or collaborating with outside sources to secure their rights and overall wellbeing; (post)gentrification, beginning with the 90s when mainstream LGBT groups teamed up with …

My Sets And Sexuality, Andres Sanchez

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

It was only with the application of set theory to my own personal life that I discovered my true identity and sexuality. In this exploratory, personal essay, I detail my own discovery of my sexuality through mathematics and how this math has become a lens through which I view the world. And, with new knowledge of literary criticism in hand, I can now retroactively describe the thoughts I had in this discovery process.

Intersex And The Pardoner’S Body, Kim Zarins

Accessus

Most scholars today have retreated from reading into the Pardoner's body in favor of more figurative readings that emphasize his lack of masculinity, and such lack is then linked to his dejection and despair. Other, more affirming readings center the Pardoner's performance, which allows him to model any sort of body desired through figuration. While such positions dominate and older theories like Beryl Rowland's proposal of an intersex Pardoner are dismissed, in fact, an intersex reading might be a more life-affirming interpretation, not only in terms of reframing the Pardoner's body as manifesting variation as opposed to lack, but also …

The Floating Head Of Feminism: The Domesticated Domain And Erasure Of The Female (No)Body In Contemporary Television And Cinema, Alicia Brooke Turner

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The Floating Head of Feminism is a project that seeks to examine the concept of the abject as that which disobeys borders and blurs boundaries and to subsequently look at this conception through female-coded artificial intelligence. The AI abject is the part of the self that is cast off or removed so that one can claim an identity, which the abject, in turn, threatens. I discuss the importance of the female-coded AI’s digital embodiment in virtual spaces, and this idea is expanded on through an examination of the science-fiction film genre. This thesis serves to reveal the relationship of resistance …

What Is My Role In Changing The System? A New Model Of Responsibility For Structural Injustice, Robin Zheng

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Faculty Publications

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the Role-Ideal Model is that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles …

Central State Communication Top Paper Award For Different Rights (In)Different Times: Rendering The Invisible Visible Through A Comparative Iconographic Analysis Of The Women’S Suffrage Parade Of 1913 And The 2017 Women’S March On Washington, Sara Potter

Awards

CSCA Top Paper in Communication Ethics, Activism, and Social Justice
Understanding the differences between Mirzoeff’s (2012) usage of visuality and Ball’s (2016) usage of invisibility can help us understand how various women’s movements throughout history have shaped and reshaped women’s roles, identities, and power. The women’s suffrage movements at the turn of the 20^th century are a provocative place for identifying this shift. Women within the 1912 and 1913 suffrage movements understood the boundary points between (the history of) a women's place within society and the potential for a shift in the engendered power structures, from a patriarchal society …

Let’S Escape Into The Music: A Cross-Generational Oral History Of Orlando Lgbtq+ Spaces, Hannah Powell

Honors Program Theses

Since Orlando’s first gay bar, The Palace Club, opened in 1969, LGBTQ+ spaces have played an essential role in the Orlando queer community. They have acted as loci of gathering, solidarity, identity-formation, recreation, and even healing. There is an absence of literature on the LGBTQ+ community in Orlando and, more generally, in Central Florida as a whole. The legacy of LGBTQ+ spaces in Orlando is worthy of study due both to the city’s rich queer history and Orlando’s singular experience of the deadliest act of hate-motivated violence against the LGBTQ+ community in the history of the United States. Through documenting …

In-Terracial Conversation, Cheryl Dunye, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Masculinity And Men’S Bodies In Fairy Tales: Youth, Violence, And Transformation, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The study of masculinity in fairy tales lags behind the study of femininity, a lack this article addresses by reviewing the intersections of masculinity studies and feminist theory and using a dataset based on canonical fairy-tale collections to empirically tease out representations of men's bodies in fairy tales. Crucial findings include the significance of youth, physical stature, violence, and transformations in depictions of men's bodies in fairy tales, which contribute to a construction of hegemonic masculinity as fragile yet the unmarked norm.

The Glass Ceiling: Female Artists' Gallery Representation In The New Millennium And A History Of Imbalance, Caroline Currier

MA Theses

The concept of the “glass ceiling” means that an acknowledged barrier to advancement in a profession exists. This paper discusses the state of gender inequality in contemporary New York galleries today, and how they have changed over the past 10 years as well as contextually, throughout history. Often, gender inequality in the art world is made visible by the lacking number of female artist museum shows or through comparing auction prices. Statistics regarding gallery representation is less common, in part due to the fact that artist representation is a fluid process and it is difficult to track these figures over …

Crafting Oppression Of Women In Novels By Writers Of Color, Jacqueline Annette Phillips

Dissertations and Theses

CRAFTING OPPRESSION OF WOMEN

IN NOVELS BY WRITERS OF COLOR

Abstract:

This thesis explores methods used by the writers of five realist novels, to create oppressive situations for female characters in their work. In writing about these novels, the aim is to see how authors use fictional characters to illustrate actual female oppression. The novels drawn from different cultures, share the depiction of female oppression.

Specific situation: INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL Harriet Jacobs

Domestic / Social: THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD Bucchi Emecheta

COMING TO BIRTH Marjory O. Macgoya,

Violent Oppression: THE COLOR PURPLE Alice Walker

PURPLE …

Systems Of Expression: Counter-Discourse In Online Intersex Communities, Jasmine Shirey

CMC Senior Theses

Individuals who do not fit neatly into the expected genetic and phenotypic XX/XY binary have been misrepresented, ignored, operated on without consent, denied legal rights, and gaslighted by multiple spheres of dominant society including, but not limited to: medicine, popular culture, and the justice system. Using Michael Foucault’s conception of 'counter-discourse' in conversation with the work of Gayatri Spivak, I ask how online intersex communities (OICs) have participated in counter-discourse by examining forums, blogs, comments, organization websites, memoirs and social media pages.

Major examples of phenomena OICs respond to, engage with, and critique include: surgery on intersex infants; the introduction …

Tracing Writer/Reader Identity In, And In Response To, Queer Latinx Autohistoria-Teorìa, Corrina Wells

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project examines how diverse representation changes the discourse around queer latinx identities. This project extends theories of representation that show how a text changes the imaginary of the reader through a two-part methodology. First, through explicating Spit & Passion and A Cup of Water Under My Bed, this project examines how these texts construct a readers’ imaginary. Then, through a corresponding qualitative assessment on readers’ responses to the texts, this project identifies the extent to which the texts change the beliefs and understandings of a small group of students. Articulating an ecology of identity using the texts under examination, …

Black Lives Examined: Black Nonfiction And The Praxis Of Survival In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Ariel D. Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

The subject of my thesis project is black nonfiction, namely the essay, memoir, and autobiography, written by black authors about and during the Post-Civil Rights Era. The central goals of this work are to briefly investigate the role of genre analysis within the various subsets of nonfiction and also to exemplify the ways that black writers have taken key genre models and evolved them. Secondly, I aim to understand the historical, political, and cultural contributions of the Post-Civil Rights Era, which I mark as hitting its stride in 1968. It is not my desire to create a definitive historical framework …

"It Came In Little Waves": Feminist Imagery In Chantal Akerman's Je, Tu, Il, Elle +, Staci C. Dubow

Honors Theses

Chantal Akerman writes, “she who seeks shall find, find all too well, and end up clouding her vision with her own preconceptions.”[1] This thesis addresses the films of Chantal Akerman from a theoretical feminist film perspective. There are many lenses through which Akerman’s rich body of work can be viewed, and I would argue that she herself never intended for it to be understood in just one way. I wish to situate Akerman’s films, in particular her 1974 Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1h 30m), within a discourse of other feminist film theorists and makers that were further rooted in …

The Power Of Queer Representation In The Media, Jack Harris

Audre Lorde Prize

This paper examines the lack of representation of the queer community in today's film and television productions. Recent work such as The CW's The 100 and Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra are used to create an intersectional analysis of the tropes associated with queer characters and the effect that queer representation has on viewers. The intersectionality of queer rights and feminism is mapped out in an effort to understand the root of the issue and, in that discovery, find solutions for the future.

Dorothy Moser Medlin Papers - Accession 1049, Dorothy Moser Medlin

Manuscript Collection

(The Dorothy Moser Medlin Papers are currently in processing.)

This collection contains most of the records of Dorothy Medlin’s work and correspondence and also includes reference materials, notes, microfilm, photographic negatives related both to her professional and personal life. Additions include a FLES Handbook, co-authored by Dorothy Medlin and a decorative mirror belonging to Dorothy Medlin.

Major series in this collection include: some original 18th century writings and ephemera and primary source material of André Morellet, extensive collection of secondary material on André Morellet's writings and translations, Winthrop related files, literary manuscripts and notes by Dorothy Medlin (1966-2011), copies …