Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Acts Of Belonging: Perceptions Of Citizenship Among Queer Turkish Women In Germany, Ilgin Yorukoglu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how people who have multiple identifications develop a sense of belonging. It focuses on those with politicized, romanticized, and stigmatized identifications which are assumed to be in conflict with one another. My particular case is that of "queer" women of Turkish descent in Germany with Berlin as my main study site.

These people embody what is considered to be an oxymoron: being queer yet also Turkish, being a lesbian yet having a Muslim background, being of immigrant origin yet also German. In short, they are between all worlds and thus, seemingly, do not belong anywhere. Their ambiguous …

Performing Modernity In Turkey: Conflicts Of Masculinity, Sexuality, And The Köçek Dancer, Brittany Giselle Haynes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis reexamines the history of the köçek dancer in Turkey and thereby opens modern heteronormative constructs of masculinity and sexuality to contestation, particularly as they have been symbolically embodied by the rural population of Anatolia. It traces the evolution of the köçek dancer from the early modern Ottoman Empire when the dancer embodied notions of divine love and the ideal of beauty as a young male object of adult men's desires. In the nineteenth century, perceptions of the köçek began to change, primarily among Ottoman elites, whose modernization efforts were influenced by the European gaze and travelers' Orientalist interpretations …

Because I Am, Ann M. Sasala

SURGE

Why?

“Because I am a Republican!”

Why?

“Because I am a Democrat!”

Why?

“Because I am a Christian!”

Why?

In America, religion and politics are not merely taboo dinner topics; it is strongly advised that you don’t discuss either one in nearly all situations. [excerpt]

Poetry Archives On The Web: Thomas Gray Archive, The Poetry Of The Gentleman’S Magazine, 1731-1800: An Electronic Database Of Titles, Authors, And First Lines, And The Poetess Archive, Kate Parker

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Recent innovations in digital scholarship have enabled new online archives, editions and bibliographies to flourish. Three such online resources--the Thomas Gray Archive, the Poetess Archive, and The Poetry of the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731-1800: An Electronic Database of Titles, Authors, and First Lines--are explored in depth in this review, with an eye to how each archive specifically encourages scholarly collaboration and makes use of crowd-sourcing technologies.

Interview Sue Williams Spurlock: Collegiate Oral History Interview, Christy L. Spurlock

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Interview with Sue Williams Spurlock about her college experience at Western Kentucky University in the late 1950s early 1960s.

Career, Education, Home & Family: Decision-Making Among Lds Women, Jennifer M. Vigil, Dr. Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill

Journal of Undergraduate Research

As women are given more and more options about the course of their lives, the choices become more complicated. When a woman’s level of religiosity becomes a factor, the decision-making process becomes even more complex. This paper will show how young women who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) make their decisions. It will look at their commitment to a single role, how they plan to follow in their mothers’ footsteps, the knowledge and certainty women feel about the decisions they make, how involved they are in the decision-making process, and the influence of …

Maybe I'M The Problem, Chelsea E. Broe

SURGE

Being raised in the United States, I internalized racist, sexist, transphobic, heterosexist, classist, ableist, and faithist ways of thinking. And by this, I do not simply mean that I was taught to hate people of color, queer individuals, working class people, or people of different religions. This indoctrination runs much deeper than that. [excerpt]

Family Planning And Human Trafficking In China, Hanna Tarbert

De/Constructing Social Justice: Past, Present, and Futures

Divisions concerning best policy practices simmer underneath the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) image as a united body with one major exception: China's Family Planning Policy or the one child per couple policy. Within the CCP, China's 1.3 billion population is accepted, without challenge as a major problem that must be addressed ever since the party took a hardline stance in 1979 to reduce the Chinese people's fertility. An unintended consequence of the population policy is the significantly skewed ratio between male and female children, causing a scarcity of women, which in turn contributes to the continuous decline in the status …

Family Affairs Newsletter 2014-01-17, Zack Paakkonen

Family Affairs newsletter (2004-2016)

FAMILY AFFAIRS was a free, twice-a-month, social activities newsletter for the GLBTQI (gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer/intersex) community, sent out around the 1st and 15th of each month. It covered the State of Maine only. The list was begun and maintained for many years by Jean Vermette in Bangor, and later operated by Zack Paakkonen of Portland. Over the years it evolved from a social activities newsletter into a business directory, classified ad service, and community bulletin board.

Gendered Classrooms And Gendered Attire: Doing Gender On A College Campus, Jeff Lockhart Fcrh '13

The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal

Gender and social identity rank as high priorities for undergraduate students, putting significant weight on their choice of apparel and accessories. In a university, students must also navigate the pressures of academic disciplines, which have their own norms of appearance and gender. Credibility in a discipline often hinges on one’s ability to conform to those disciplinary standards, but people whose social gender role does not match the gender of their discipline, such as womyn in the sciences or men in gender studies, will find these two forces at odds. This study leverages statistical observations of clothing and accessories to examine …

Sex, Power, And Women: Female Viewers’ Perceptions Of Popular Music Video Themes, Whitney Stefani, Ralf R. Greenwald

Student Published Works

Research has linked viewing highly sexual music videos with increased gender role acceptance, and concern over personal physical appearance. However, very few studies have assessed individual differences in how music video sexual content is perceived, and no studies to date have addressed non-objectifying sexual content. In the present study, fifteen college women were exposed to 21 pop music videos and asked to categorize each video on the basis of whether it depicted women a) as sex objects, b) using sex as a source of power, or c) non-sexually. At least one video achieved perfect consensus amongst the participants for each …

Female Canadian Murderers: The Public Trials Of Karla Homolka And Terry-Lynn Mcclintic Through Documentary Representation, Emma Smith

Cultural Analysis and Social Theory Major Research Papers

This paper critically examines the production of violent female offenders by analyzing their visual representations in two Canadian television investigative documentaries created fifteen years apart. Karla Homolka (offending in 1990-1992) and Terri-Lynne McClintic (transgressing in 2009) were both responsible for committing horrific and unpardonable crimes resulting in significant media coverage throughout Canada.

Despite some similarities and consistencies in both documentaries, anomalies and disparities in coverage serve as the center of my analysis. Against features of both substance and style, a comparative analysis of the documentaries with features closely associated with the production of reality television, I contend that both documentaries …

Student Leadership And College Co-Educational History, Gabriel Plummer

Psychology Honors Papers

Leadership has been described and thought of as stereotypically masculine, and consequently, leadership positions in student government have historically been dominated by men. This study compared archival data from schools that changed their admission policy from all women to coed (n = 2), changed from all men to coed (n = 1), or a school that has been coed since its founding (n = 1) to see if the history of a school was related to gender representation in the student government leadership positions. The schools that shifted to coed all made the shift at the same time (1969). The …

A Prison For Others—A Burden To One's Self, Anne Collins Smith, Owen M. Smith

Faculty Publications

Women have come a long way since the mid-1960's, both in the real world and in the world of philosophy. Given the advances in society and the developments within feminism that took place between that decade and the first decade of the 21st century, we might reasonably expect the new Prisonerseries to present a more contemporary perspective on women than the original. Such is most emphatically not the case. If we compare the original Village to the new one, it looks as if those pennyfarthing wheels are spinning backwards instead of forwards.

Oakes Smith Returns To Maine, Timothy Scherman

English Faculty Publications

In June 2014, I was invited to deliver a lecture on Elizabeth Oakes Smith as part of the Gorman Lecture Series at the Yarmouth History Center, a short distance from Oakes Smith's birthplace. I took the occasion to caution those who base their readings of Oakes Smith's works (and those of other women) on their written autobiographies--as if the life of the woman writer stood as the "origin" the woman-as-author could only "copy." Calling attention to the context of Oakes Smith's writing of her autobiography (at which point her popularity was fading, her family disgraced and most of her friends …

Scandalous Deception In The Castle: An Examination Of The Gender Performance Through The Bedtrick Trope In Arthurian Literature, Abby Louise Daniel

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The bedtrick – mistaken identity in a sexual encounter – is a comic motif employed by medieval, renaissance and modern storytellers. While modern readers tend to recognize this motif as (at best) a disturbing sexual escapade and (at worst) rape, the scholarship on mistaken identity in medieval literature still generally glosses over the bedtrick as a moment of comedy. My thesis examines the literary trope of the bedtrick through the critical lens of Judith Butler’s performativity theory, and the motives behind this form of deception and the modern implications. Furthermore, the bedtrick trope is explored in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur …

Why We Stay, Brittany Nicole Mcintyre

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Why we stay is a piece of Creative Non-Fiction, is a work that is heavily focused on region. The narrative takes up the life of a female Appalachian. The challenges of being an Appalachian woman raising a family are analyzed alongside such issues as domestic violence, family dysfunction, and mental illness. Because the piece is set in both rural and urban Appalachia, the issue of family is examined in terms of generational conflict and the strong bonds of a matriarch.

Examining The Theoretical Consequences Of A Post-Feminist Media Culture, Jedidiah N. Bailey

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Since the early 1990s, feminist scholars have declared that a post-feminist media culture has arisen throughout the Westernized world to attack the ideas and values promoted by feminists and the second-wave feminist movement that became established in the late 1960s and 70s. Consequently, this study is designed to gauge the influence that these media have in shaping the attitudes of young college women (in the 18-25 year old demographic) toward feminism and key women‟s rights issues. In order to better understand whether post-feminist media are able to detract support from the feminist movement, this study attempts to quantify the relationship …

When Speech Isn't Free: Legal Barriers And Consequences Of Reporting Sexual Violence, Kevin M. Fleming

Departmental Honors Projects

Incidents of sexual violence continue to be a serious problem for society. Likewise, acts of sexual violence impose severe consequences for survivors. The consequences initially begin at the onset of the survivor’s journey to psychological recovery following the traumatic sexual assault. The consequences take on a unique set of characteristics when the survivor attempts to use the justice system to confront the perpetrator who committed the offense. These characteristics can transform an adversarial process into an isolated battle for the survivor. In the worst cases, the justice system empowers individuals who wish to silence survivors with free speech restrictions instead …

Collection Info Tags

Sincerely Yours, Letters From The Maine Women Writers Collection (Multi-Page Items)

Informational tags used in the exhibit "Sincerely Yours" which included letters from a variety of people. The tags include biographical and hisotrical information about the writers of the letters and their holdings at MWWC.