Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Gender, Politics, Market Segmentation, And Taste: Adult Contemporary Radio At The End Of The Twentieth Century, Saesha Senger

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This dissertation explores issues of gender politics, market segmentation, and taste through an examination of the contributions of several artists who have achieved Adult Contemporary (AC) chart success. The scope of the project is limited to a period when many artists who figured prominently in both the broader mainstream of American popular music and the more specific Adult Contemporary category were most commercially viable: from the mid-1980s through the 1990s. My contention is that, as gender politics and gendered social norms continued to change in the United States at this time, Adult Contemporary – the chart, the format, and the …

Waiting For A Queer Change: Gender Identity Through Performative Waiting And The Boudoir Chronotope In Call Me By Your Name, Gregory R. Clarke

Theses : Honours

This thesis analyses André Aciman’s novel, Call Me By Your Name (2007), in light of its portrayal of a nineteen-eighties gay relationship that is not entirely defined by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Rather than the abjection associated with illness and death, I focus on the narrative’s evocation of pleasure and love for its protagonists, Elio and Oliver, who do not identify as exclusively gay. My argument focuses on Elio exemplifying and undermining Roland Barthes’ trope of the lover-who-waits as historically ‘feminine’ in A Lover’s Discourse. In doing so, I demonstrate how Barthes’s work prefigures Judith Butler’s gender performativity theory.

First, …

Uncovering Alice Bag: An Alternative Punk History, Emily Macune

Scripps Senior Theses

The intention of this thesis is to provide an alternative counter-narrative to the mainstream histories of punk that center white men. By focusing on the contributions of fem queer and POC punks, I aim to legitimize punk music as a form of resistance against systems of oppression that are oppositional to the commodified forms of mainstream punk. Using Alice Bag, as my central case study as a fem queer punk that is often left out of punk historical narratives, I contextualize her work through feminist, queer, and media studies lenses to bridge the gap between academia and forgotten personal experience.

Globalized Interfaces And Anticolonial Engagements With Material Technologies Of Empire: Tabita Rezaire And Morehshin Allahyari’S Works, Neelufar Franklin

Scripps Senior Theses

The virtual is far from immaterial and its expressions are multifarious. The infrastructure of a technologic-globalism has opened new pathways of desecration, created new networks of exploitation, and reinforced fraught foundations. Tabita Rezaire and Morehshin Allahyari are two artists whose radical technofeminist and new materialist practices engage with counterdiscourses in the face of the globalized interfaces of technology; from mappings of submarine fiber optic network cables or understanding water as a knowledge repository, to 3D printed queered figures of Islamic mysticism and hypertext narratives. In these anachronistic approaches to technological use and analyses, archives become possibilities for renderings of futurity …

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 …

Conjurer La Révolution : Sorciers, Païens Et Justice Sociale Dans La France Contemporaine, Alexandra Rivera

Scripps Senior Theses

Witches and pagans have long faced historical persecution from the Catholic church and other patriarchal systems of power. In the eyes of mainstream society, they have been reduced to fragments of ancient history and entertaining media stereotypes. Real practitioners of witchcraft and paganism have remained fairly marginalized and trapped in the shadows, but this is starting to change. Witches and pagans have begun to involve themselves in large-scale political movements, combining spiritual power with direct action. While this phenomenon has a longer track record in the United States, in France it is extremely new. France is a country that has …

Comandantas And Caracoles: The Role Of Women In The Life And Legacy Of The Zapatista Movement, Roxanne Rozo-Marsh

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis delves into the role of women in the Zapatista movement and how that role has changed over time in the private, public and political spheres. It also draws parallels between the struggle for female liberation within Zapatismo and the struggles of working-class, women of color movements in the United States. Chapters are focused on topics including women's involvement in the San Andrés Accords, the Women's Revolutionary Law, the Other Campaign and Marichuy's electoral campaign as well as personal observations from time spent in Oventik, a Zapatista caracol. As complement to the text, the thesis includes a visual zine.

Disciplining The Female Body Through Fitness: "Women Participating In Crossfit And Perceptions Of The Body", Noemi Dimuzio

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Women's self-surveillance has been shaped through nutrition, technologies, social media and fitness. Women are constantly struggling with disciplining their bodies to produce a particular body image. The use of technologies has produced images of ideal bodies of beauty, perfection and constant awareness of body parts. The body can be shaped and molded in a variety places, most notably the gym. Fitness allows for the construction of the perfect body. Fitness creates a constant urge to develop and change the body and produces self-surveillance and discipline. There has been a shift from the Western thin ideal image to a new fitness …

Stratified Access On The Border: Examining Experiences Of Reproductive Care, Maralyn Doering

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Patient care experiences shape and affect the way that patients perceive and contextualize health care (Koenig 2011). Prior care experiences can change how patients choose to receive care in the future. In Texas, reproductive health care research has primarily focused on troubling trends in reproductive health care outcomes. This can be noted by the high cervical cancer rate (CDC 2019), the high unintended pregnancy rate (Kost 2015), and the limited access to reproductive care, particularly preventative care (Hopkins et al. 2015). The focus of this research has been on structural barriers, such as funding cuts (White et al. 2012), barriers …

The Female Nature: Representations Of Motherhood And Nature In Dystopian Films, Veronica Andrea Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study will explore female representation and conceptualization of nature in dystopian narratives by examining dystopian films. The study is guided by film theory and ecofeminism to investigate themes of domination of both nature and women. The main goal is to examine the structure, themes, dialogue, and visuals in the films to explore the underlying essence of dystopian narratives and examine roles of reproduction and motherhood of female characters. The study contributes to previous studies on female and nature representation in media.

Skirting The Law: Women In Vice During U.S. Prohibition In South Texas, 1900-1933, Carolina Monsivais

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation explores both women's participation in the vice industry north of the U.S.-Mexico border in South Texas and the ways in which women were policed. The Dissertation analyzes the interactions that occurred between law enforcement agents and the women they arrested, primarily ethnic Mexican women. This analysis illuminates law enforcement tactics that were honed during this era through the interactions that agents had with women who worked in vice industries. I also argue that women in this industry demonstrated knowledge, agency, and resistance. In addition, it created avenues of work for women, particularly in South Texas. However, studies examining …

Las Mujeres Sinarquistas (1937-1962): Las Manos Ocultas En La Construcción Del Sentimiento Nacionalista Mexicano De Derecha, Eva Nohemi Orozco-Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Unión Nacional Sinarquista (UNS) was perhaps the most influential right-wing opposition movement in Mexico when it was founded in 1937. The UNS regarded the Mexican Revolution as the source of many of the country’s problems and championed Catholic nationalism as the solution. Women were actively involved in advancing the goals of the movement and they played an especially prominent role in developing and implementing Sinarquista social and educational programs. In contrast to some other right-wing organizations, women from lower economic strata formed the backbone of the Sinarquista women’s organization, known as the Sección Femenina. These women protested in the …

Transgender And Gender Nonconforming Individuals' Perceptions Of The Criminal Justice System, Delisa Shundra Hamilton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This study explored the perceptions and lived experiences of 10 transgender and gender nonconforming individuals who had interacted with the various sectors of the criminal justice system (i.e., law enforcement, the prison system, and the court system). The focus of this phenomenological qualitative study was providing insight into how sexual orientation and gender identity influenced transgender and gender nonconforming individuals' experiences and perceptions of the criminal justice system. Procedural justice theory guided this study by providing an understanding of how the behavior of the actors in the criminal justice system shaped the cooperation or resistance of transgender and gender nonconforming …

Women's Empowerment As A Policy For Poverty Reduction In Haiti, Flore Saint.Louis Weinstein

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Women represent more than 50% of the population of Haiti and embody the poorest group due to their lack of socioeconomic development. Numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) including diaspora NGOs (DINGOs) have engaged in the fight to reduce poverty in Haiti by enabling empowerment programs to help women become self-reliant. The programs appear to be ineffective because the level of poverty remains high and there has been little research on the relative effectiveness and sustainability of the programs implemented by the DINGOs. Using the feminist theories of DeBeauvoir and Friedan in conjunction with the empowerment theory of AlMaseb and Julia as …

Show Her It's A Man's World: How The Femme Fatale Became A Vehicle For Propaganda, Leann Bishop

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

During World War II women joined the workforce in droves due to propaganda such as Rosie the Riveter. When Soldiers began returning from the war they wanted stability and normalcy. They wanted to return to the America they left where women ran the household and men went to work. Women, however, experienced a new sense of freedom from working and wanted to continue their liberation. It was during this time that femme fatales, the sultry women of film noir became popular. They represented the liberated women of the 1940s. The film industry saw an opportunity to use these women found …

Gender And Work: An Analysis Of Mid-Level Women Administrators In Student Affairs, Eboni Turnbow

Wayne State University Dissertations

Research has examined the experiences of women faculty in higher education. However, the experiences of non-faculty mid-level women administrators within higher education continues to be understudied. Women are often the majority in non-faculty positions, yet men dominate senior level positions. Instead, women are frequently clustered in entry and mid-level administrative roles within student affairs divisions or departments, often with limited access to career ladders. Drawing on the theoretical framework of gendered work organizations, this study explores the experiences of women working in non-academic departments, and analyzes how these experiences impact their career advancement at four-year public universities. More specifically, I …

Self-Defined: A Womanist Exploration Of Michelle Obama, Viola Davis, And Beyonce Knowles, Idrissa Nichelle Snider

Wayne State University Dissertations

Intersectional research that focuses on the experiences and representations of Black women should place emphasis on examining the communication of resistance. This dissertation builds upon the work of Womanist (Walker, 1983) and Black Feminist scholars (Collins, 1991; Harris-Perry, 2011) in order to identify and interrogate the harmful systemic nature of various stereotypes and controlling images of Black women. These controlling images historically include representations such as the Mammie, Sapphire, Jezebel, tragic mulatto, and even newer images like the angry black woman. Through a close reading of Josephine Baker’s “Danse Sauvage" performance, the research points to modern day examples of when …

From Talking Softly To Carrying A Big Shtick: Jewish Masculinity In Twentieth-Century America, Miriam Eve Mora

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation follows the progress of American Jewish men in the difficult and often backsliding process of acculturation into American life. Jewish men have historically been held to a different standard of masculinity, one which both Jews and non-Jews throughout American history have ascribed in both positive and negative ways, often depicting Jewish men as bookish, gentle, weak, and even effeminate. Those Jews who strove to attain American manhood engaged in masculine American endeavors to the extent of their access and ingenuity. Their struggle to enter institutions of American masculinity reveals a great deal about Jewish acceptance in the United …

Subverting The Patriarchal Panopticon: Challenges To Eugenics Rhetoric In The Novels Of Mccullers And Welty, Regina Marie Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis takes into consideration the scope of eugenics ideologies and their influence on literature specifically two mid-twentieth century authors from the U.S. South Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty. I contend that both writers engage with eugenics rhetoric challenging and subverting the prevailing ideology of the day albeit in differing ways. McCullers and Welty address different facets of eugenics rhetoric in their novels— namely the nature of “defect” and the criteria for “fitness” for “citizenship.” This thesis interrogates the ways in which these writers develop rhetorical strategies for resisting eugenics ideologies in their respective novels Reflections in a Golden Eye …

The Evolution Of Sunset Magazine's Cooking Department: The Accommodation Of Men's And Women's Cooking In The 1930s, Jennifer Hoolhorst Pagano

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The Western regional magazine Sunset has been published under a series of owners and publishers since 1898. In 1928, Sunset was purchased by Lawrence Lane, a Midwestern magazine executive who transformed it from a failing turn-of-the-century, general interest publication about the West, into a successful magazine about living in the West for the Western middle-class. Sunset had always been a magazine for men and women, and one that appealed to both male and female intellectuals at the time Lane purchased it. Lane and his editors attempted to interject more rigid middle-class ideals into a magazine that had espoused ideas that …