Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Treading Lightly: The Ethics Of Instructor Il/Legibility And Neutrality In The Classroom, Marcus A. Woodman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Instructors in the classroom often describe their experiences teaching as being a performance, which often combines authenticity with boundaries to keep certain aspects of the instructor’s life out of the classroom. For queer instructors, their performance may be especially complicated; since queer identity is less visible than other types of identities, instructors must also weigh whether or not to come out to their students. In our current political moment, where queerness has yet again become a scrutinized topic (especially when in proximity to youth), teachers have an even more difficult decision to make.

This thesis uses queer theory and queer …

Melanated Reflections Through Testimonios: Centering The Experiences Of African American Women Teachers Turned Leaders And Their Implications On Recruitment, Selection, Hiring, And Retention Of Women Of Color In Leadership Positions, Tanya Rochelle Santos

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2022), during the 2017–2018 academic year, only 7% of all teachers identified as Black or African American, with approximately 76% of that group being women. This qualitative study investigates the lived experiences of African American women educators who have transitioned into leadership roles within P–12 educational settings across the Great Plains Region of the United States. The research explores how their experiences intersect with issues of racial and gender equity, particularly within the broader discourse of social justice in education and educational leadership.

Framed within the theoretical lens of Black Feminist Thought, …

“As If The Devil Was In Her”: Fanny Fern’S Remaking Of Authorship In The Nineteenth Century, Rowan S. Q. Havranek

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Fanny Fern revolutionized nineteenth-century literature with her unapologetically blunt and insightful commentary on social norms, education, women’s rights, and more. As a columnist for The New York Ledger, Fern challenged the conventional boundaries placed on women, blending her personal observations and experiences with sharp social critique. Because of her unflinching style and writings that addressed a wide range of topics, she became one of the most well-paid and widely read authors of her time. Yet, she was also subjected to harsh judgment. The media, particularly in the hands of her second husband, was used to damage her reputation, yet Fern …

“Re-Storying” Anne Shirley And The Adhd Child: A Crip Genealogy Of Anne Of Green Gables, Darian Aleyna Wilson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores the contested nature of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), focusing on its cultural and historical constructions. While ADHD has been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1980, its legitimacy remains a subject of debate across medical, disability studies, and historical scholarship. Using Eli Clare’s critique of diagnosis as a tool rather than a fact, this project examines how ADHD is both pathologized and re-storied within societal and medical discourses. It highlights the tension between medical classifications and lived experiences of those diagnosed with ADHD, particularly in the context of girlhood.

The central …

Queered Tradition: Disidentificatory Practices Of Queer-Affirming Religious Space, Amanda R. Peterson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Responding to high rates of religious trauma in the United States, particularly for LGBTQ people, this study investigates the rhetorical moves made in protestant Christian spaces to consider what makes these spaces safe and affirming for queer people. Specifically, I consider the rhetorical impact these churches make through not only their space but also their liturgy and online presence, which informs the embodied experience of the space.

Through autoethnographic research, I look at three local churches—Metropolitan Community Church of Omaha, Urban Abbey, and Elevate Church–the first two queer-affirming and the third conservative. Findings show the various church elements negotiated with …

The Politics Of The Black Womb: How Education And Power Reinforce The U.S. Black Maternal Health Crisis, Foluke Akinkunmi

Honors Scholar Theses

This study investigates the alarming maternal mortality rates among Black women in the U.S. today first by exploring the historical exploitation of Black maternal bodies during enslavement and with the rise of professionalized gynecology. It challenges the narrative that attributes these outcomes to individual choices or supposedly inherent biological factors, arguing instead that the devaluing of Black women’s well-being and authoritative knowledge have been constructed along with the United States itself. To advance a constructive response, the paper analyzes curriculum competencies for obstetric and midwifery healthcare providers, surveys of Black women's birthing experiences in the previous 20 years, and interviews …

These Things Happen, Keleigh E. Mcmullen

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My artwork emerges from moments of emotional and physical violence—both small and large. Although rooted in my lived experience, the truths I tell in my work are far from unique. Violence often hides in plain sight, buried in the mundane spaces of daily life. Through ceramic sculpture, I spotlight these moments, inviting viewers into a world that is familiar and simultaneously unsettling.

Scale plays a crucial role in this narrative—objects shrink or expand based on their emotional gravity, their object authority, or my own relationship to them. By amplifying the small and shrinking the overwhelming, I reshape how viewers interact …

Untethered And Unraveled: Isolated Motherhood In The Liminal Stage, Ashton K. Wronikowski

All Theses

In examining Kate Chopin’s The Awakening alongside anthropologic theories of liminality, this paper examines the becoming women traverse as they transition between various social roles: girl, woman, mother. Edna is a maternal character attempting to unweave herself from her roles as mother and wife, and she finds this desire to go backwards to the freedom she experienced as a girl is proven to be impossible. The unmooring of her psyche and her subsequent suicide is indicative of a failure, not of her own accord, but in the social preparation and support she receives within her new identity. Social anthropologists further …

Odd Girls, Pulp Fiction And Lesbians, Natalie Aronson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

1957’s Odd Girl Out, a novel written by Ann Bannon, reminds readers, past, present and future, of the ever-growing need for positive queer representation. This project’s main goal is to take a look at the genre of Pulp Fiction novels of the 1950s, and examine how queer representation – specifically lesbian representation – has been written. Paul Thompson’s Masculinity in Lesbian “Pulp” Fiction is a text I use throughout, as it not only examines the genre overall, but also delves into Bannon’s ever-growing impact, providing much-needed context for the novels. While the genre of Pulp Fiction novels, queer or not, …

A Secluded Cabin On The Outskirts Of Riverside: A 1937 Trial For Conspiracy To Have Gay Sex, Randall Stoner, Randi Stoner

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 14, 1937, a group of deputy sheriffs and military police surrounded a secluded cabin on the outskirts of Riverside and forced their way inside, arresting everyone on the premises for conspiracy to violate California Penal Code sections 288a and 286: oral copulation and sodomy. Though same-sex relations were outlawed, these men had sought to create a place of privacy for themselves—only to have it surveilled and raided by members of law enforcement. The subsequent trial, People v. Jordan, was a landmark case for the city of Riverside. Many histories of LGBTQ …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

Examining Portrayals Of Gender In The Design Of Ai Voice Assistants, Olivia Fratangelo

Student Theses

This capstone project provides a theoretical framework for shifting the ways in which we think about and discuss anthropomorphized features of technological products, focusing specifically on applying this framework to the gendered design of AI voice assistants. The goal in providing this framework is to prompt readers to consider how we can think more critically about technology beyond our “preferences” and biases. Our roles as consumers of technology do not have to be passive ones. In fact, the dialectical relationship between humanity and technology makes everyone who contributes to society not just a consumer, but a developer of technology in …

President's Commission On The Status Of Women: 2024-2025 Annual Report, University Of Dayton. Women's Center

Women's Center Reports, Commentaries and Other Resources

No abstract provided.

Queer Hope And Asexual Desire In Nella Larsen's Passing And Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Jeremy Buckner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This project examines Nella Larsen’s Passing and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse together as queer artifacts in hopes of shedding new light on how race and sexuality can be reexamined across national modes of thinking. Although these writers’ backgrounds provide them with different bodies of knowledge, Larsen’s Irene and Woolf’s Lily have much more in common than might first appear. For one, even if racialization is more explicit—and presents more of an obstacle—for Irene, race is an important factor for both characters. Additionally, Irene and Lily both express profound discontent with marriage, Irene in her marriage to Brian and Lily …

Imperial Ideology And Subversive Practice In Arthurian Legend, Emma Katherine Keppler

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This project approaches Arthur and Arthurian legend as vital elements in British self-identification from the medieval period onward by examining narratives of national origin in legendary history, romance, and other forms of cultural production. In my readings of these texts, I am concerned with how national identity and otherness are constructed and negotiated in a literary space, how myths of utopian origins rely on the endorsement and glorification of cultures of violence that sustain and justify imperial enterprises in the Middle Ages and beyond. It is my argument that in the absence of actual voices of resistance, romance tropes often …

Mentoring Matters: Exploring The Impact Of Mentorship On The Professional Growth Of Latina Assistant Principals, Corina Rendon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Abstract This qualitative study used an interpretative phenomenological approach. The purpose of this study is to explore the mentoring experiences of Latina assistant principals in the El Paso, Texas region who have been in the role for 0-5 years and to express the need for mentorship in their professional development. While more Latinas are stepping into roles in education, they continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions. Mentorship can be a powerful support system. Through semi-structured interviews, participants shared their lived experiences with formal and informal mentorship. Their voices were analyzed using thematic coding, and several key themes emerged, including …

Intersectionality In Tennis (Wta) Sports Media, Emily Stoner

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This “applied knowledge” project investigates and observes intersectionality in tennis sports media via the women’s professional tour (WTA). Intersectionality in Tennis (WTA) Sports Media analyzes how intersectionality as a concept and social justice lens impacts and is impacted by media. By considering intersectional identities and their implications in sports media narratives and coverage, this piece displays some telling patterns and perpetuations.

At the professional level, tennis certainly does not garner the most profit or attention, but it provides a unique world of intersecting identities, cultures, geography and tradition. This work aims to shed light on the state of sports media, …

The Evolution Of The Divine Feminine: How Religious Upheaval Changed Female Devotions, Nicole M. Honeycutt

Institute for the Humanities Master's Papers, Projects, and Capstones

The transformation in the depiction of women in Christian religious art from pre-Reformation through the Counter-Reformation mirrored and molded shifting theological, cultural, and gender paradigms. While much scholarship has addressed the symbolic and doctrinal significance of female figures in sacred imagery, less attention has been paid to how such portrayals influenced women’s own devotional experiences and sense of spiritual agency. This study argues that the religious imagery was not merely a passive reflection of male-dominated ecclesiastical values, but an evolving communicative medium through which women could engage with and reshape their spiritual roles. By analyzing key artworks, patronage trends, and …

Exploring Full-Time Female Faculty Members’ Experiences With Institutional Climate In Rural Arkansas Community Colleges: A Preregistered Study, Gabrielle Patterson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current literature implies that female faculty in community colleges often endure a chilly organizational climate of marginalization. This marginalization makes female faculty more likely to leave higher education than male colleagues because of a lack of appreciation and recognition. This qualitative exploratory multiple-case study (preregistered study) uses the Job Embeddedness Theory as its conceptual framework. It explores full-time female faculty members’ (F-TFFMs) experiences with institutional climate in rural Arkansas community colleges to understand their motivations to teach in the setting and the reasons they choose to stay in their position. Findings from this study will show F-TFFMs motivations to …

Hey Barbie! There's A Lot Of Kens On My Screen: A Qualitative Analysis Of Female Gender Inequality In Media Representation And How Society’S Responses To It Have Evolved, Ania Delaney Boutin

Honors College Theses

Since Dr. Jean Kilbourne called attention to the dehumanization of women in magazine ads in her series of lectures-turned-documentaries “Killing Us Softly” vol. 1-4, the treatment of women in media has received attention from researchers and documentarians alike. Kilbourne asked audiences to take the impact of negative depictions of women seriously, encouraging women into careers where they could shape the next generation’s media. Subsequent documentaries assessed Kilbourne’s research and expanded it to include political consequences, minority voices, and various systemic issues.

Using a summative content analysis approach, this research examines the content of six documentaries, spanning 1979 to 2018, to …