Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Polyamory - The Multiple Complexities Of Multiple Partners, Vianna Isbister

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study is an exploration of the relationship between polyamory and how polyamorous people communicate about their relationship dynamics. Drawing from six individual interviews and one focus group, the author compares key language that appears in previous research to the language created by the study participants. Utilizing grounded theory for the analysis, results indicate that the language choices of sexual identity, sexual orientation, and/or relationship model are not sufficient for singularly encompassing a poly experience. Findings indicate that individuals who identify under the umbrella of consensual non-monogamy (CNM) may use the term "polyamory" to describe their own relationship dynamic or …

Anticolonial Feminism, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, And The Female Gothic: A Textual Analysis Of Mexican Gothic, Hana Vega

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Latinx authors writing in English are challenging the western literary canon and the way stories are told through a western-centric lens. I argue that Mexican Canadian author Sylvia Moreno Garcia and her novel Mexican Gothic redefines the genre by telling the story of a British family living in 1950’s Mexico from an anti-colonial feminist lens. After a review of the literature on the gothic genre and how authors of color use it to respond to western-centric ideas in their own gothic novels, I am approaching the text using postcolonial and decolonial feminist theories to conduct a textual, genre, and ideological …

Powerful And Powerless: Reconfiguring The Agency And Supremacy Of Women In Selected Festivals In The Yoruba Town Of Isaga Orile, 1900-1958, Olusegun Olatunji

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses how the gender dynamics and religious festivals of the Yoruba people in Isaga Orile were not affected by colonialism. The study draws on various accounts, particularly from the Church Missionary Society’s journals, to attest to colonialism's restructuring of male political hegemony. Focusing on two major festivals, Gelede and Oro, the study argues that men's inclusion in Gelede reinforces female supremacy, while the Oro society shows men's hegemony and restrains women from its activities. The study found that gender dominants in these festivals played complementary roles by mirroring female and male roles within the Isaga Orile political system. …

Power, Pleasure, And Privilege: Defining Depauw’S Hookup Culture And Its Mental Health Implications, Reanna Stiehler '23

Honor Scholar Theses

Hookup culture is not primarily about sex, pleasure, connection, or freedom. Hookup culture is about power—how power is used, distributed, and desired. Previous work in hookup culture discusses a discourse of desire; however, the root and nature of this desire are unclear. I posit that hookup culture, as it currently exists, is strongly related to rape culture. In this thesis, I will explicate my anecdotal, qualitative, and quantitative evidence supporting this hypothesis.

“I Chose To Look Like This”: Body Modification And Regretting Visibility, Stephen Ross

All Theses

I began collecting tattoos and piercings just after I turned eighteen. As my collection grows and it becomes harder for me to conceal my modifications, I must contend each and every day with the ways in which my body is Othered by my choice to look different. Body modification is self-actualizing for so many, but it can position someone to be stared at, to be physically violated, to be tokenized, or to be vilified. This current project dissects a few key literature areas, from body modification history to the contemporary politics of modification to aesthetic and spectacular philosophy, with the …

Steps Toward Healing From The Possessive Other: The Vital Role Of Fantastical Literature In Trauma Theory, Rebekah Izard

English (MA) Theses

Fantastical narratives such as fairy tales and magical realist literature utilizes fantastic and intangible spaces to unpack that which is often beyond the limitations imposed on our understanding by reality: the stunting experience of individual and generational traumas. This study aims to contribute to the current literary discourse’s understandings of fantastic literature and its subgenres as a tool for healing from trauma through the application of ontological notions of Selfhood and Otherness supplied by 20th century philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, and the notion of Orientalism by postcolonial scholar, Edward Said. The dialogue generated by these schools of thought provide a space …

The Gray Area: Sexuality And Gender In Wartime Reevaluated, Natalie Pendergraft

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

These three works, two academic papers and one screenplay, challenge traditional notions of gender and sexuality during wartime. Queer Vietnam service members did not all experience oppression, all the time, but rather carved out a space for themselves amongst their peers. Female nurses in the early cold war could keep their careers in the medical field due to its unique gendered history despite demobilization efforts across the country in different industries. Finally, through the medium of historical fiction, a Civil War soldier’s fears and desires are questioned as he experiences the phenomenon of the Angel’s Glow, a blue light that …

Social Reproduction And Covid-19, Caroline I. Donovan

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

As Covid-19 rips across the world we are collectively asked to examine the structures of society to see what is working and what we can change. What can we learn from the roughly 6.9 million deaths (and counting) worldwide? How can we prevent something like this from happening again? This paper follows the course of Covid-19 from its birth in Wuhan, China, to the present day of mid-April 2023. By looking at the ways in which we have reacted to the pandemic, we are able to look forward and imagine new ways of tackling future pandemics and other pressing problems …

"Enlightened Motherhood": Frances Ellen Watkins Harper And The Conception Of Black Womanhood, Christina Rose Walcott

History

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an influential nineteenth-century activist and writer. She was active in the antislavery lecture circuit and the suffrage movement. She developed a conception of Black womanhood through her writing that culminated in a richer understanding of equal rights in the United States. This thesis reexamines her work from an interdisciplinary standpoint. She developed her vision of Black womanhood over time through the character of the enslaved mother in the Antebellum era, the nuances of freedom during the Civil War and Reconstruction era, and finally through home as a personal space and as a nation in the …

Espacio, Edgar Perez Peña, Edgar Perez Peña

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Edgar Perez Peña (He, Him, His) is a Queer, Chicanx contemporary figurative painter, who lives and works in the Los Angeles County. A native of Los Angeles, California, his paintings, and assemblages are a strong combination of process, materials, and content that displays his fascination on how physical/psychological space (from where he resides), reflects on the Queer Brown body and its comfort/discomfort in relation to public and private space.

Peña looks at his artistic practice as an opportunity to explore the human condition from the Queer and Brown perspective as well the beginning of healing through the meditative process of …

Magic Mirrors, Jamie Ho

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

When a beam of bright light hits the convex and polished surface, an image is reflected back onto the wall. This is a description of a magic mirror, an object from the Han Dynasty (206 BC -24 AD), that embodies how Euro-America views China: both technically advanced and shrouded in mystery. The magic mirror also points to the history of photography, as this term was often used in the Victorian era to describe a camera. The image created by a camera is a mimic of reality, both all too familiar and unfamiliar.^[1] Like magic mirrors, the GIFs I create …

Argentine Women’S Narratives Of Leadership, Ileana Andrea Mocciola

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigated and examined the narratives of Argentine women leaders while obtaining and exercising leadership positions. This research was based on narrative theory and the feminist standpoint theory. Argentine female participants (N = 10) were subject to interviews that overall lasted 600 minutes and were conducted through the Zoom platform. Fifty-five pages of single-spaced transcripts were analyzed and studied. The results of this study revealed that Argentine women face major challenges when it comes to tokenism, exclusion, mentorship, and stereotypes that prevent and limit them from reaching and succeeding in leadership positions.

Tea Service: Queering Time And Creating Community, Lauren Wheeler

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the concept of queer temporality and the importance of community in a person’s quality of life. Contrast between traditional English tea service and unconventional, queered tea service is used in dualistic metaphor to explore the contrast of community with people who seek to uphold cisheteronormativity and with people who disrupt it. Further, tea can be seen in various contexts as a site of social resistance. Queer temporality can be defined as the nonlinear and unconventional uses of time which are experienced in opposition to cisheteronormative temporalities. The importance of community amongst queer individuals is emphasized through shared …

Becoming “Living Matter”: Alive Things In Octavia Butler’S Xenogenesis Series, Zackary Gregory

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This project seeks to explore the ways Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy complicates humans' understandings of subjectivity and human exceptionalism by challenging the concept of Otherness. Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series focuses on adaptability and acceptance of the nonhuman Other by depicting a forced encounter between humans and an alien species called the Oankali. Characters within the series grapple with a dynamic understanding of themselves, having to renegotiate the concept of the Other as they deal with intelligent nonhuman Beings and animate objects. Further, characters in the series are coerced into accepting the transformation of humanity into something other than human as …

Inner Portraits, Bethany Salisbury

Graduate Theses

This paper investigates the many interconnected layers of women’s mental health through portraiture and how animal and plant symbolism can represent the way women's hormones and bodily health affect their mental health. I reveal how the artwork created presents these connections and inner mental health narratives to the viewer, creating a space of empathy, destigmatization, and self-reflection. This body of portraiture art connects five women through a series of both two-and three-dimensional portraits based on interviews using my own adaptation of Sara Lawrence-Lightfoots’ (1983) portrait methodology.

Women and non-binary individuals have always dealt with difficult interactions of bodily and mental …

The Strong Black Woman ≠ Superwoman: Shattering Stereotypes Of Strength In Black Literature, Tricia Inez Thomas

English Theses & Dissertations

That the Black woman must be strong in order to endure the oppression she has been forced to withstand is a double-edged sword that equally contributes to both her dehumanization and willpower to survive. This project interrogates the patterns and characteristics that contribute to the schema of the strong Black woman through the examination of cultural texts foregrounded in biblical scriptures against literature written by prominent Black women through Beyoncé. Specific tropes explored include the jezebel, the mammy, and the sapphire with a conclusion that these harmful and dehumanizing stereotypes have cultivated a fallacious assumption of supernatural strength and resiliency …

The Effect Of Minority Stress On Sexual Minority College Students' Mental Health: The Role Of General Social Support And Sexuality-Specific Social Support, Lee A. Golembiewski

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Sexual minority (SM) college students continue to face greater mental health problems relative to their heterosexual peers (Woodford et al., 2014; Wilson & Liss, 2022). According to minority stress theory, SM individuals face distal (e.g., heterosexist discrimination) and proximal (e.g., expectations of rejection, internalized homophobia, and concealment) stressors related to their SM identity which can have negative effects on their mental health (Douglass & Conlin, 2020; Meyer, 2003). However, social support has been hypothesized to help protect against the effects of minority stress experienced by SM individuals (Cohen & Wills, 1985; Moody & Smith, 2013). Most of the existing research …

Factors Influencing African American Women To Attend A Rural Community College And Persist To An Associate Degree, Lorraine Anita Justice

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

African American women utilize the community college environments as an avenue to attain an education and eventually pursue career and educational goals while remaining in their own communities. However, not much is known about the unique perceptions and experiences of African American women impacting their enrollment and persistence at rural community colleges. The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive research study was to examine the reasons African American female students choose to enroll and attend a rural community college to further their education and persist towards graduation with an Associate degree.

The data were collected using semi-structure individual interviews. Twelve African …

Men, Women, And Italians: The Masquerade Of Narrative And Identity In Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, Ruth A. Holmes

English Theses & Dissertations

The chaotic masquerades that proliferated during the British long eighteenth century punctuated the period’s preoccupation with order and categorization. The identity categories that the masquerade disrupted, the novel reinforced, or perhaps even created. It was in the middle of this period, in the political center of Britain, that Samuel Richardson published his third and final novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), a novel which centers England and was also centered by England, a national treasure entangled in literary and cultural history. Tracing the nexus of gender and nationalism in Grandison then becomes important given the novel’s active entanglement …

Seeing Me: Influential Queer Black Men In Entertainment, Jay Gaskin

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Queer black men have had an incredible impact on society in many areas, from politics, fashion, and especially entertainment. However, they are often overlooked or disregarded. In recent years, there have been more who have gained the attention and recognition that they deserve. Jay Gaskin celebrates several influential queer black men in entertainment through a paper and presentation. And will discuss their backgrounds and why their representation matters for him and others within the LGBTQ community, particularly queer black men.