History of Gender Commons^™

Do Clothes Make The Man? Ftm Crossdressing In The 18th-19th C. Anglo-American World, Aidrian Graber

Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to analyze the legacy of "Female Husbands" and other female-to-male crossdressers in the 18/19th c. Anglo-American world and how such people can illuminate the field of transgender history.

The Consumptive Female Ideal: The Case Study Of “Snow White”, Nayla G. Torres Ruiz

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Tuberculosis (TB), also known as “consumption” or “phthisis,” was one of the most pervasive and culturally significant diseases of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite its high mortality rate—claiming more lives than cholera and smallpox combined—TB was widely romanticized in art, literature, and popular culture, particularly as a feminine disease associated with beauty, purity, fragility, and moral virtue. The physical traits of consumption—pale skin, rosy cheeks, red lips, glassy eyes, and a slender, delicate frame—became an ideal of female beauty, one that many women sought to emulate through restrictive diets, toxic cosmetics, and evolving fashion trends, such as increasingly tight …

Elizabeth Blackwell And Her Heirs: America And Great Britain’S First Female Physicians, Charleigh E. Sprawls

All Theses

This thesis seeks to explore the varying historical themes surrounding America and Great Britain’s first female physicians. Studying 1849-1894 allows for the exploration of not only the nineteenth century, but also the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras of American History. Professionalization played a crucial role in the lives of these women, as it drastically altered the makeup of the medical career, making it more difficult to enter and become qualified as a licensed physician. There were significant barriers to entering the medical profession for these women, including elements like race, class, and most importantly, gender. This thesis argues that while …

Res Historica, Volume 5, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta, Lindsay Rae Smith Privette Phd

Res Historica

The 2026 journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lindsay Rae Smith Privette, Julia Ackerman, Callyn Wright, Logan Davis, and John Hinton. Cover art by Mary Beth Lee.

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 …

Fear And Freedom: California Gay Bars In The 1960s, Bridget L. Kelley

The Cardinal Edge

This article explores the interactions between gay bars, queer people, and police in California in the 1960s. The gay bar served as both a place of community and safety while paradoxically being a site of oppression suffered at the hands of law enforcement. These conflicting experiences made gay bars sites of both fear and freedom. Arrest practices, plain clothes policing, raid practices, and monetary manipulation made the gay bar a space of danger. However, the resistance of queer patrons against police brutality made it a space where one could express their queerness and fight for change.

Recovering The Unobserved Works Of Feminist Educators Using Digital Archival Approaches, Jacquelyne Thoni Howard, Clare Daniel

Feminist Pedagogy

In 2020, we curated a bibliography about applying feminist pedagogical principles to online and hybrid learning environments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The bibliography demonstrated that feminist educators, though largely unobserved in the national discourse around online learning, were already in conversation about how to apply feminist pedagogy online. This initial bibliography would later become the foundation of the Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online Guide, a digital humanities recovery project that has had lasting implications on our classrooms, communities, and teaching philosophies. The guide now serves as a digital archive that documents how feminist educators are adapting to new …

Hercules In Myth And Animation: Masculinity And Heroism, Noah Bautista

CAFE Symposium 2026

Disney's Hercules is a model man in today's society who combines the best aspects of both masculinity and femininity. In the myths, however, Hercules was much different and did not act as such a bridge between femininity and masculinity at the time. Through other scholarly works, the way that masculinity, heroism, and instrumentalization are presented and used is examined. Mythological Herakles is found to be a much more aggressive archetype of a man rather than Hercules, who is based upon strength in moderation and a more social society. Each fit into the ideals of the society they come from, perpetuating …

The Gendered Duality Of Coldness In The Portrayals Of Eliza Hayley, Francesca Blanch-Serrat

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

In the eighteenth century, coldness was defined, on the one hand, in relation to the body and the senses (a body that is lacking in heat) and on the other, to emotion (an individual lacking in passion). It was linked to illness and disability (Turner, 2012), equated to death, seen as both a cause and effect of physical decline and older age, and used as a synonym for low libido and infertility (Toulalan, 2015). In contrast to these negative connotations, coldness was also regarded as a remedy to temper the passions and to ensure longevity (Yallop, 2015), and taking cold …

History Of Women At Holy Cross Art Piece, Lucia Hathaway

Visual Arts Department Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

“Be Only A Man": Authority, Dependency, And Masculinity In Geniza Letters Of Mothers To Their Sons, Oded Zinger

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

One of the most exciting discoveries among the Cairo Geniza, a rich trove of ancient manuscripts discovered in the Ben Ezra Synagogue at Fustat (Old Cairo), is women’s letters. Up until the early modern period, we have no text written by a Jewish woman preserved in traditional channels of transmission—that is, manuscripts copied by scribes and preserved in libraries or personal collections. Yet the Geniza documents preserve over two hundred letters written by women in different languages and spanning several centuries. Twenty-nine of these letters are from mothers to sons. Letters from mothers to sons have some distinctive characteristics when …

Gender And Historiography In The Construction Of The Image Of King John And Queen Violant Of Aragon, Oriol Catalán

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The reign of John I of Aragon (r. 1387–1396) and his second wife Violant de Bar has been often denigrated by Catalan historiography with political arguments but also because of ensuing gender debates associating the shortcomings of his reign with his supposed manly weakness. This article deconstructs both political and gendered representations of the Aragonese monarchs by distinguishing what is reasonably attributable to them from accusations motivated by the conflicts of the time and later contexts. Drawing upon the concepts of “hegemonic masculinity” and “multiple masculinities,” the article compares the gender representations of King John I and Queen Violant in …

“Softer Than A Woman?" Gendered Images In Odo Of Cheriton’S Anti-Judaic Sermon, Jussi Hanska, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article analyzes the intersection of the anti-Judaic and gendered motifs presented in English theologian and preacher Odo of Cheriton’s (d. 1246–1247) sermon for the tenth Sunday after the Holy Trinity. The sermon features an exemplum that is a distorted reinterpretation of a story originally found in Jewish historian Flavius Josephus’s Bellum iudaicum, which describes the siege and fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. In one memorable passage Josephus tells how a Jewish woman named Mary loses her mind because of the hardships of the siege and hunger, kills and roasts her baby boy, and eats it. Yet Odo …

Conversion And The Reconfiguration Of Religious Gender Roles: Conversas And Moriscas In Late Medieval Iberia, Ivana Arsić

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This study addresses the impact of the cultural homogenization policy in late medieval Castilian and Aragonese societies by analyzing Spanish Inquisition documents through a gendered lens. Specifically, this article illustrates how these records depict the religious experiences of Conversas and Moriscas (Christian women of Jewish and Muslim origin, respectively). Whereas recent investigations within cultural studies have engaged in descriptive analysis of female conversion, this article will provide a causal explanation through a comparative gendered perspective, arguing that women’s heightened involvement in religion was particular to the context of forced conversion. Toward this end, I first examine how Jewish and Muslim …

Fashioning The Body Politic: Explorations Of The Political Semiotics Of Fashion In France And England During The French Revolution, Annika F. Gauthier

Scripps Senior Theses

In the midst of the French Revolution, women’s fashion underwent a complete revolution, moving from the multi-layered elaborate gowns of the ancien regime, to light, form-fitting dresses. These gowns reveal the way clothing reflects the political positions of women and the ways the French and the British used clothing to construct national identity and politics. Following research on the political symbolism and role of clothing across France and Britain, this thesis reviews fashion’s overarching connection to politics, revealing its role in the early French Revolution’s conception of women and patriotism, women’s responses to political exclusions, and rival nations’ adaptations of …

‘She Dared Not’: Authority In The Monasteries Of The Diocese Of Lincoln, 1400-1540, Morgan Mcminn

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Within monastic life, the Benedictine Rule prioritized the role of the abbot, and much of the everyday running of the house was left to his discretion. He was the elected father of the community, the pastor of the flock, the educator who instructed by word and example. He should discipline firmly but be loved and not feared, and he should play no favorite but rather adapt to the situation at hand. His brethren should obey him without question as the representative of Christ in the monastery, their self-will and earthly possessions submitted to him. These elements are also present in …

The Coal Mining Kids: Constructing A Working-Class Gay World In West Virginia (1900-2001), Hannah Ford

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Located in southwestern West Virginia, Bluefield has been the site of Bluefield State University, the Norfolk & Western Railway headquarters, the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, and the Shamrock Bar. The Shamrock was a gay bar opened by Helen Compton, in operation from the late 1960’s until 2001. Bluefield’s early industrial success in coal mining and the railroad quickly urbanized the space between 1900 and 1930, facilitating a diverse, working-class cultural foundation for Bluefield’s gay world. In the 1960’s, urban renewal efforts initiated by the War on Poverty, in combination with public awareness of homosexuality induced by the Lavender Scare, set the …

Crafting The Right To Vote, Breana M. Mosher

Knowledge and Creativity Expo

This paper examines how British Suffragists between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used traditionally feminine domestic crafts as tools of political protest and communication. Excluded from formal political speech and subjected to censorship, violence, and imprisonment, women in the suffrage movement transformed textiles such as banners, posters, embroidery, and postcards into powerful tools of visual propaganda. Through close evaluation of suffrage-era material culture, this paper argues that domestic crafts enabled women to reclaim their voices and publicly expose state violence and political repression. By employing symbolism, color, and slogan-based design, suffragists created a recognizable visual identity that countered …

Missionary Body Politics: Physical Education In West China, 1905-1950, Cory Willmott

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Republican Era China saw a radical transformation in Chinese physical culture as it aimed to compete in the global geopolitics of nation-states. Employing an historical ethnographic approach, this paper outlines how the unique conditions of Sichuanese warlordism and secret societies affected missionary relations with the Guomindang (GMD) as they implemented increasingly militarized physical education programs. Before the 1928 GMD consolidation of power, missionaries and GMD educators aligned with the YM/ WCA in physical education programs. After the GMD moved their headquarters to Chongqing in 1938, relations soured between the GMD and the Sichuan missionaries. Although the latter had been the …

“An Extremely Dangerous Institution:” The Cultures And Controversy Of Public Social Dances In Montana, 1900-1930, Danielle Allison Brown

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper explores public social dances east of the Continental Divide in Montana from 1900 to 1930. Rural social dances in schoolhouses and urban dances in dance halls created two different dance cultures. The relaxed nature of rural dances preserved the traditional values of nineteenth-century social dances, which reinforced community and family ties. Urban dances reflected the modern fads of the roaring twenties and challenged traditional values with sexual suggestiveness. Progressive Era moral reformers concerned about the possibility that social dance promoted illicit sexuality participated in an anti-dance movement and pushed for regulations of social dances. The anti-dance movement in …