Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Obergefell V. Hodges And Support For Same-Sex Marriage : Changes In National And State Public Opinion., Adria Neal

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Many have argued that Supreme Court decisions on culture war issues, issues that cause conflict between conservative and liberal values, stifle public progression on the very problems they are meant to resolve. They often cite political and electoral backlash following a decision as evidence of this stagnation in opinion. However, this backlash may not be representative of widespread public opinion. In order to understand the relationship between Court decisions and public opinion, changes in opinion on culture war issues following a Supreme Court ruling must be measured. This study utilizes national and state survey data in order to examine this …

Prevalence Of Sexual Harassment And Assault In Uri Stem Graduate Students, Ivy Burns, Holly Dunsworth

Senior Honors Projects

There are many barriers for women in STEM careers (science, technology, engineering, and math); one, often untalked about, barrier is the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault. In the summer of 2014 the paper “Survey of Academic Field Experiences (SAFE): Trainees Report Harassment and Assault” by Clancy, et. al. was released and shed light on an issue facing many young women and men in science. According to the SAFE survey, a shocking amount of sexual harassment and assault was experienced by the, primarily female, researchers and very few knew how to report an incidence of assault. With this project I …

I Preferred, Much Preferred, My Version: Exploring The Female Voice And Feminine Identity Within Memoirs Of The 20th And 21st Centuries, Alexandra Fradelizio

Senior Theses

Memoirs have long been a valuable way in which individuals share and reflect on their past experiences. The genre of memoir writing especially had a tremendous impact on a range of American female writers. This thesis explores memoirs written by women throughout the 20^th century. With the shift in women’s roles during the 1900s and early 2000s, the memoirs examined emphasize the importance of feminine identity. The analysis provided within this thesis centers on each memoirist’s unique path in determining her sense of self. Moreover, the memoirists each use the process of writing to relay the value of personal …

Identities Without Origins : Fat/Trans Subjectivity And The Possibilities Of Plurality., Mc Lampe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project draws upon the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Donna Haraway to critically analyze the political power and utility of origin stories as they are used within discourses of identity. I specifically examine the dominant cultural and counter-origin stories of transgender and fat bodies and argue that the counter origin stories constructed by both trans and fat studies/activism continue to engage with norms that regulate identity. These regulations create an impossible situation for individuals who are both trans and fat as they are not recognized as intelligible subjects within either category due to their lack of appropriate …

Jazz Epidemics And Deep Set Diseases: The De-Pathologization Of The Black Body In The Work Of Three Harlem Renaissance Writers, Shane C. Hunter

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation argues that the Harlem Renaissance was, in part, a response to Victorian-era medical and scientific racism, and that the three writers on which it centers, Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Wallace Thurman (1902-1934), and Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987), participated in subverting these racist discourses. I focus on elements of their creative work that de-pathologize the black body. Specifically, I consider how these writers undermine Victorian-era medical racism that had, by the 1920s, come to inform American racial politics. Hughes’s, Thurman’s, and Nugent’s work from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s is at least partly concerned with undermining medically racist ideology …

Check The Box Marked Other: Exploring Gender In Family Life, Serenity E. Dougherty

All NMU Master's Theses

The concept of a traditional family structure has been fading over the last 50 years and with this decline the notion of responsibilities being determined by gender is also losing ground, though it still has a long way to go. This short story collection works to continue to normalize the increasing variety of family structures, especially variety that has its roots in new notions of gender challenging old conventions. The stories are all set in Nebraska, an ideal landscape for exploring tradition versus modernity. Though there are major cities in NE, most of the state is composed of smaller rural …

Classical Masculinity In Shakespeare’S Antony And Cleopatra, Timothy N. Grams

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis uses the formula of classical masculinity to examine Marc Antony’s value as a Roman man in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Examining Antony’s history as a Roman hero, I distinguish how his reputation is destroyed through his romantic involvement with Cleopatra. Furthermore, I consider the divine representations of Cleopatra and Octavian Caesar as they oppose each other, and how Antony’s role within their conflict defines his value as a classical Roman man. I then deliberate his sexual fetishism for the matriarch pharaoh, and how their relationship functions as sadomasochistic, defining Antony as the masochist and Cleopatra as the …

New Appalachians Of The Twenty-First Century: Reinventing Metanarratives And Master-Images Of Southern Appalachian Literature, Kelsey Alannah Solomon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Appalachian studies tradition ascertains that Appalachian people politically, socially, and academically represent a heterogeneous minority group of our own. In post-capitalistic America, however, the Appalachian region serves as a hotspot for media misrepresentation and tourism that perpetuate through works of fiction, nonfiction, and scholarship both negative and positive stereotypes in the overall American consciousness. Twenty-first-century Appalachian authors, I contend, are reinventing Appalachia from its postmodern rubble through fictionalized reconceptualizations of our region’s history, shifts in our collective consciousness from anthropocentric to ecocentric, and subversions of the heteronormative discourse of our internal colony through explorations of the psychosexual. The contemporary …

Gi Jane Versus Sergeant Jane Doe: How Women’S Images In War Movies Contribute To Conflicting Expectations Of Women In Combat, Sawyer Marie L. Alberi

All Theses And Dissertations

Research on women’s portrayal in media generally suggests that women continue to be sexualized and objectified as war trophies in the classic Hollywood warrior culture film. The age old question of whether life imitates art or vice versa is important to consider when examining the question of how this popular culture medium contributes to the conflicting expectations of today’s women in combat roles. What is the reality of women’s roles in the US Military compared to the roles portrayed by warrior film media? History tells us that women have been on the battlefield in one way or another since there …

Dollhouse, Whitney Goller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the work in DollHouse, her Master of Fine Arts exhibition on display at Tipton Gallery, Johnson City, Tennessee from January 25 to February 5, 2016. The exhibition was an installation consisting of five sets, each containing furniture - both 2D and 3D - and a mask with instructions relating to a room found within a dollhouse.

The sets and supporting thesis explore the ideas of social norms, feminism, and identity, and how submission to ideologies can create emptiness, while engagement can prompt social change. Topics include the process and evolution of the work and the artists who …

Gender In Stem: An Intersectional And Interdisciplinary Feminist Ethnography, Michelle Chouinard

Honors College Theses

While contextualizing the history of women in educational spheres, it is no surprise to learn that women have faced significant obstacles in sciences and mathematics since the inception of higher education. In her revolutionary challenge of patriarchal historical narratives surrounding knowledge production, historian Londa Schiebinger’s Has Feminism Changed Science? (1999) demonstrates that women have long been influential in the sciences. Christine de Pizan was documenting contributions made by women to the arts and sciences beginning in 1405; however, widespread acknowledgement of women in the sciences did not appear until the dawn of the 20th century, around the time of the …

Spaces Of Visibility And Identity, Shelby R. Purdy

Undergraduate Honors Theses

“Spaces of Visibility and Identity” is an exploration on how being immersed in constant visibility has an effect on an individual’s identity. Visibility is not a narrow term meant to signify solely observation; rather, visibility is the state of existing within a world that does not allow for total isolation. To exist within the world is to be visible to others, and this visibility is inescapable. Visibility can be seen as a presentation or a disclosure of oneself to other beings. Existing within the world inevitably implies that one is presenting oneself to others, whether or not the presentation is …

“Deliberate Voluptuousness”: The Monstrous Women Of Dracula And Carmilla, Judith Bell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Vampire women play a culturally significant role in films and literature by revealing the extent to which deviation from Socially accepted behavior is tolerated. In this thesis, I compare the vampire women of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla to their depictions in recent adaptations. In Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire sisters are representative of the shortcomings of 19th century gender roles, especially in regard to women’s communities. In recent adaptations, the vampire sisters’ revealing clothing, promiscuity, and lack of characterization are still closely connected with villainy, and as in Stoker’s novel, the women’s violent deaths in the …

Men Who Coach Women, Shannel Blackshear

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although Title IX helped to shape athletics in educational settings, the legislation also transformed the world of coaching. Due to the growing demand for competitive female athletics at the collegiate level, the need for qualified individuals to coach women’s sports continues to grow. As colleges and universities continue to create women’s athletic opportunities, coaching collegiate female teams has become equally competitive to coaching male athletes in terms of pay, benefits, compensation packages, and national attention (Welch & Sigelman, 2007). Despite the fact that 57% (Pilon, 2015), of female collegiate athletic teams are coached by male coaches, there is a gap …

Dandy As Disease: Gender Hygiene And British Nineteenth-Century Literature, Sharon Louise Fox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Dandy as Disease: Gender Hygiene and British Nineteenth-century Literature” explores the link between the nineteenth-century dandy, ideas of hegemonic masculinity, and Walter Besant’s The Revolt of Man, a dystopian text in which women have usurped all traditionally-masculine roles, while men are the caretakers and manual workers. The first chapter deals with the historical role of the dandy in the nineteenth-century and how he might be viewed as the cause of the fall of Britain. The second chapter revolves around Besant’s novel, exploring how men are shown to be at fault for Britain’s fall in the eyes of the rest of …

Love On - The Life Of A Suicide Survivor: A Performance Autoethnographic Study, Patricia R. Wheeler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Suicide touches the lives of millions of people each year in this country alone, yet conversations about suicide loss and survival after a loss remain taboo and often do not happen. The story I performed for this performance autoethnographic study centers on my life as a survivor of suicide. It provides a starting point for dialog regarding trauma, grief, and suicide loss. The narrative was constructed directly following the sudden death of my father, which had a direct effect on my ability to produce artistic work. The development, staging and performance of the story were altered to account for the …

Defining Afghan Women Characters As Modern Archetypes Using Khaled Hosseini’S A Thousand Splendid Suns And Asne Seierstad’S The Bookseller Of Kabul, Alexandra Andrews

Masters Theses

Middle-Eastern women, specifically Afghan women, are often misunderstood. Yet, authors Khaled Hosseini and Asne Seierstad use the method of storytelling to show that Afghan female characters are not completely subjugated, voiceless, and powerless—despite how they are often depicted in media. Instead, in Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Seierstad’s The Bookseller of Kabul, Afghan female characters are represented as assertive, risk takers, and heroic. By applying Joseph Campbell’s theory regarding the archetypal heroine to the lives of Mariam and Laila from A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Sharifa and Leila from The Bookseller of Kabul, it is clear that these Afghan …

Family, Housing, And The Political Geography Of Gay Liberation In Los Angeles County, 1960-1986, Ian M. Baldwin

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines the gay liberation movement in Los Angeles County through the lens of housing rights. It illustrates how sexual justice activism evolved in tandem with the fates of the welfare state and urban politics. Like racial minorities, queers have been stymied by economic barriers. Beginning in the 1930s, federal housing agencies established “family” requirements to housing subsidies, which the state defined through biology or marriage. In L.A. County, activists worked to overcome this heteronormative barrier at the grassroots and within the political establishment. Binding gay liberation to economic and family justice, queers opened housing shelters and social service …

How Queer!: Camp Expression In Francis Poulenc's Trio For Oboe, Bassoon, And Piano, Kevin Ryland Eberle

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The music of Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) contains a great deal of humor, irony, and drama. These elements have mostly been attributed to Poulenc’s personal frivolity and associations with over-the-top figures such as Jean Cocteau. Poulenc’s homosexuality, until recently, was marginalized by a discourse shaped by Claude Rostand’s 1950 binary of “monk” (moine) and “bad boy” (voyou). In the early 21st century, Richard Burton notes that this cliché focused the discourse of a sacred/profane binary instead of a heterosexual/homosexual binary. The sacred/profane binary is used by scholars such as H. Wendell Howard to explain the distinction between Les Mamelles de Tirésias …

"Mother, I Will": Female Subjectivity And Religious Vision In The Brontës Novels, Amanda Scott

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë have long attracted sustained critical attention, in

large part because of their strong female protagonists. These strong-willed women self-assuredly reject oppression and model new paradigms for the Victorian woman to empower her subjectivity. This subjectivity serves, in turn, not only as the ability to form and express views counter to outworn social prescriptions, but it also serves as the centralized interior focus that allows their protagonists to think of themselves as the foremost subjects of their lives, rather than see themselves as pawns to be moved about in the games of patriarchal hierarchy. This study …