Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Separate But Found: An Ontological Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Byron Haynes

Posters - 2026

In Toni Morrison's Beloved, separation becomes the ideal solution for African American women to recover their humanity and build a future. These women understandably harbor for their oppressor and would be unable to foster a coexistence with them, given their suffering after being the victims of sexual assault, lynchings, hard labor, substandard living circumstances, and death regularly. By illustrating the methodical methods in which women are dehumanized under Whiteness, this essay examines how each woman reclaims their humanity through the separation of Whiteness in their lives through Baby Suggs’s preaching, Sethe’s choice to kill her daughter, Denver’s exploration of reality …

Embodied Horror: Women And Medical Authority In Video Games, Jocilynn Denise Colombo

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Through a critical analysis of interactive horror, this paper argues that video games can function as ethical diagnostic narratives that uniquely expose systemic failures surrounding women’s bodies and medical authority. Focusing on Silent Hill 3 (2003) and Alice: Madness Returns (2011), I examine how these games render harm legible through player participation. By requiring players to move characters through hostile environments and make decisions within systems that simultaneously grant and restrict control, these games foster identification and complicity by positioning players directly within the structures they critique.

While feminist horror scholarship—notably from Julia Kristeva and Barbara Creed—has explored societal anxieties …

Beyond The Individual: Exploring Structural Explanations Of Homelessness Through Thematic Analysis Of Extant Research, Madison R. Mcclain

Senior Theses

This thesis examines how homelessness is defined, explained, and addressed within contemporary U.S. research using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Intersectionality as guiding frameworks. Through a qualitative, deductive thematic analysis of 16 peer-reviewed articles, this study identifies six key themes related to structural causation, policy governance, measurement practices, racial inequality, dominant narratives, and intersecting systems of disadvantage. Findings reveal that while structural explanations of homelessness are widely acknowledged, they are inconsistently defined and often insufficiently theorized. Institutional systems primarily function to manage rather than resolve homelessness, while measurement practices and definitions actively shape who is recognized and prioritized. Additionally, structural …

Modernity And Transcendence: Gendered Subjectivity In Miss Lonelyhearts And A Spy In The House Of Love, Rachel Loging

Senior Theses

This thesis examines how Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and Anaïs Nin’s A Spy in the House of Love (1954) represent gendered subjectivity under the conditions of modernity. Drawing on Ben Singer’s account of modern experience and Rita Felski’s analysis of modernity as a masculine structure organized around autonomy and production, it argues that both texts stage encounters between masculinity and femininity as sites of interpretive conflict. In Miss Lonelyhearts, masculinity remains tied to coherence, authority, and the paradigm of Christ, and repeatedly attempts to impose order through perception, relationships, and religion. These efforts ultimately collapse, exposing the futility and …

The Ladies' Home Journal: Dormant Seeds Of The Feminine Mystique Pre-Wwii, Isis Santos Villaça

University Honors Theses

At the turn of the 20th century, magazines were becoming increasingly available to the middle class. Throughout the 1890–1930s, the industry put forth an entire new iteration of publications that came to be popular with female readers. One of the most successful publications from this period, The Ladies' Home Journal, distinguished itself through its strong editorial presence on the page. The editors of the Ladies' Home Journal intended to create a "traditional" female identity that reflected domesticity in the journal, which countered the rising notions of the New Woman. Simultaneously, the publication aimed to create an educational product with …

Dark Wave - Comics And Transgender Studies In Practice, Mieke Vanderveen

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This is a thesis in two parts. Its goal is to provoke the intersection of superhero comics and transgender studies in order to interrogate the parallels between those two identities and explore ways in which pairing them together can strengthen each other narratively and academically. Rather than seeking an answer to a question, the project as a whole serves as a way of communicating trans internalities from a transfeminine perspective in a format that brings the issues to the forefront of the narrative in an in-depth and entertaining way. The result is hopefully a coherent artistic work that achieves those …

Women's Displacement And The Reclamation Of Identity: Navigating Landscapes Of Contestation In The Postcolonial Novel, Carol P. Harvest

English Theses & Dissertations

Landscapes affected by colonial domination are contested landscapes—places not only in danger of environmental destruction through colonial and neocolonial violence but also landscapes of struggle for people who survive in these precarious spaces. Historically, separate postcolonial and ecocritical literary analysis addressed contested landscapes; postcolonial critique centered on the lasting devastation of colonial violence on people and place, while ecocriticism, in its infancy, enjoyed the privilege of ignorance, focusing on endangered species and the preservation of land, but it did not consider the impact of landscapes on the very people who were largely forced to either leave or cross “natural” spaces. …

“Recollecting The Told Story”: Storytelling, Activism, And The Black Maternal Health Emergency, Lamaya C. Williams

English Theses & Dissertations

Storytelling is a foundational component of Black knowledge creation and transmission. This dissertation centers Black women’s stories of birth and mothering—drawing on both primary source birth stories and fictional narratives—to examine the United States’ Black Maternal Health Emergency (BMHE). The BMHE is a complex and urgent issue wherein structural racism, medical bias, and intersecting social determinants disproportionately endanger the health of Black mothers. As such, Black mothers in the United States are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related condition compared to their white counterparts.

This study examines the birth stories of women who survived the BMHE and …

Objectification And Discrimination Among Bi+ Women: Body Image Outcomes And The Moderating Role Of Relationship Type And Partner Gender, Kaitlyn E. Ryan

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Objectification theory posits that being sexually objectified by others leads to a greater likelihood of engaging in body surveillance behaviors, which in turn is associated with higher body shame (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Prior research has identified both objectification and anti-bisexual discrimination as significant predictors of body surveillance and body shame among bi+ women (i.e., bisexual, pansexual, queer) (Brewster et al., 2014; Salim et al., 2024). No studies, however, have considered the unique experiences of romantically partnered bi+ women, including the potential moderating effects of partner gender and relationship type. The present study examined whether romantic relationships are protective for …

Father Of The Bride: Shakespeare's Daughter Issues Played Out, Allison G. Lincicome

Global Tides

Shakespeare, throughout the majority of his plays, fixated on the relationship and expectation of obedience between fathers and daughters. Given the prevalence of his works in children’s media and secondary public education, recognizing the moral messaging of his works can help those who interact with his work better interpret and share this popular media in proper context. This essay analyzes three of Shakespeare’s plays, conduct literature from early modern England, and historical documents referencing Shakespeare’s own relationship to his daughters. These sources in conversation paint a more comprehensive picture of the expected behavior of daughters during Shakespeare’s time, and the …

Historic Shrouds: A New Voice For Shakespearean Women, Ashleigh E. Weinstock

Global Tides

This article presents, and seeks to remedy, the argument that Shakespeare’s female characters are deprived of equal representation as complex humans through narrative gaps, action relegated to offstage scenes, and reduced opportunities for direct-to-audience speech, mirroring the social hierarchies of early modern gender, which continue to be reflected in modern society.

While this critique is not new, this essay argues that the criticism of these theatrical inequalities is insufficient to remedy their harms. Instead, this author proposes a performance-based, generative model of restorative justice termed the Historic Shroud, which seeks to give voice to sidelined female characters by placing …

An Ordinary Hero: Examining The True Nature Of Amelia Earhart, Daniella Hernandez

Emerging Writers

This essay explores how Amelia Earhart’s perception in society has been skewed by the sensationalism surrounding her career as a female aviator and the conspiracies surrounding her mysterious disappearance. The author argues that Earhart’s true character and the impact she had on society as a whole have been overshadowed by the media’s fascination with her strange death.

The Ghosts Of Times Square: A Zine Exploring Representations Of Times Square Through Film, Kel R. Karpinski

Publications and Research

My zines are often an extension of my research—either a jumping off point or a way to create a more visual project (or both). They are in their own way a form of excess - they are often too scandalous, too smutty, too much — everything that is spilling out of the margins.

My zines and research focus on lesser known queer histories, trying to highlight them and bring them to a new audience and new generations.

Using zines as a creative form of research, I am able to reach a broader audience both inside and outside of academia. I …

Storytelling, Henry D. Juarez

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Heternormativity, Erandi Hernández Aguilar

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Sin Título, Daisy Camacho

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Journal Entry #1, Erandi Hernández Aguilar

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Pain Into Anger!, Davion Holman

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Amá Always Said. Apá Only Knew., Venus Elizalde

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

A Letter To My Juror, Michael Anthony Mariscal

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.