History of Gender Commons^™

Fornication Prosecutions Beyond The Mainstream Community And The Role Of Community Policing In Early Colonial New England, Bridget Sciscento

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

During the seventeenth century, New England was composed of several independent colonies of varying size and success. In the Puritan and separatist colonies of Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, and Plymouth, entire communities, including “others,” those who were relegated outside of the community on the basis of their status or faith, worked with the theocratical legal system to police sexual morality and preserve social hierarchies that colonists understood to be fundamentally intertwined. This commitment was so strong that these colonies overlooked centuries of English legal custom when drafting harsher fornication laws, relied on the expert testimony of midwives over that of …

Female Cyclists: Two Essays From The 1869 Hancock Jeffersonian, Paige Zenovic

Nineteenth-Century Ohio Literature

Paige Zenovic introduces and explains two nineteenth-century essays from the Findley, Ohio Hancock Jeffersonian on the subject of women riding bicycles from the time when they were first being introduced to Ohio.

Listening To An/Other Voice: Gender, Creativity, And The Divine In The Works Of Female Christian Mystics And Women Surrealists, Stephanie Garboski

Honors Theses

This thesis will compare two groups, Christian women mystics and women surrealists, by analyzing select works by Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning. This analysis will involve a comparative, theoretical approach that draws connections between the way in which both groups utilize varying literary and artistic forms, symbols, and polyglottery. I will utilize Bourdieu’s terms of cultural production as a framework in which to better understand how women of both fields are used for their creativity and supposed connection to an/other, which is the source of inspiration native to each field, God and the unconscious. …

Modernizing Midwifery: Managing Childbirth In Ontario And The British Isles, 1900–1950, Gwenith Cross

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation considers the differences, as well as the similarities, between midwifery and childbirth practices in Ontario and in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. Addressing the modernization of medical practices on either side of the Atlantic, the periodization of this project reflects the increasing concerns about maternal and infant morbidity and mortality alongside medical and political attempts to ensure the involvement of trained medical professionals during pregnancy and childbirth. In Britain, the establishment of the 1902 Midwives Act regulated midwifery so that only midwives approved by the Central Midwives’ Board were allowed to practice. British midwives …

Helene Stöcker, Weimar Germany And Prophylactics: An Investigation Into The Context And Effects Of The Reichsgesestz Zur Bekämpfung Geschlechtskrankheiten, Joshua Stern

Dissertations and Theses

This paper investigates German gender studies in the Weimar Era. It looks at a specific law, passed regarding contraceptive devices. It seeks to show how women were presented with a guise of freedom, while living in a truly paternalistic society.

Midwifery And Rhetoric: The Power Of Rhetoric In Influencing Social Attitudes About Authority In Female Reproductive Care, Mei Chan Lund

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Nowhere are the effects of that rhetoric on the practice of midwifery more evident than in the reactionary works of midwives themselves, such as those of Justine Siegemund and Jane Sharp in the seventeenth century. This paper will explore how the strategies and allusions used in Siegemund's The Court Midwife of the Electorate Brandenburg and Sharp's Midwives Book allow for the conclusion that gendered literary rhetoric was the primary cause of the shift from female to male authority in the practice of midwifery.

Representations Of García Lorca In American Poetry: Articulating And Floating Metaphor Of The Historical Connections Between Spain And The United States, Carlos Aguasaco

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

"To Conceive With Child Is The Earnest Desire If Not Of All, Yet Of Most Women": The Advancement Of Prenatal Care And Childbirth In Early Modern England: 1500-1770, Victoria E.C. Glover

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes medical manuals published in England between 1500 and 1770 to trace developing medical understandings and prescriptive approaches to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. While there have been plenty of books written regarding social and religious changes in the reproductive process during the early modern era, there is a dearth of scholarly work focusing on the medical changes which took place in obstetrics over this period. Early modern England was a time of great change in the field of obstetrics as physicians incorporated newly-discovered knowledge about the male and female body, new fields and tools, and new or revived …

Speaking, Writing, Organizing: Matilda Gage’S Parrhesiastic Acts, Caitlin Martin

Publications

Drawing on a rhetorical framework of parrhesia, this article discusses the work of nineteenth century feminist Matilda Gage, who was largely lost to history until recently when women’s studies and rhetoric scholars began to uncover her part in the woman suffrage movement. Gage considered speaking out against organized religion to be her life’s work, but little research has concerned her beyond woman suffrage activism. Through a framework of parrhesia, Gage’s forgotten anticlerical work opens new doors for understanding women rhetors and activists, as well as for research on the rhetorical practices of nonreligious individuals.

A Happy Marriage Of Inconvenience: The Power Of Adrienne De La Fayette Over Her Destiny In Eighteenth-Century France, Brittany I. Fox

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Extensive analysis and interpretation have occurred concerning the Marquis de Lafayette and his contributions to the American War for Independence and the Revolutionary French era. However, the discourse on his wife, Adrienne de Noailles, the Marquise de La Fayette, has been confined to a chapter within her husband's larger narrative. Examining her agency over her circumstances, Adrienne proves to be more than an idealistic angel suffering from a tumultuous time period.

Lessons For Legalizing Love: A Case Study Of The Naz Foundation's Campaign To Decriminalize Homosexuality In India, Preston G. Johnson

Capstone Collection

In 1860, British colonizers codified Section 377 into the Indian Penal Code. 377 is an anti-sodomy law based on Victorian/Judeo-Christian values which criminalizes homosexuality through judicial interpretation and the manipulation of ambiguous language. On August 15^th, 2017, India celebrated 70 years of independence from British control, yet 377 still exerts oppressive control over the safety and freedom of Indian LGBTQI communities. Defining queerness as perversion has caused LGBTQI individuals to become victims of false accusations, blackmail, harassment, housing and workplace discrimination, familial rejection, forced “conversion therapy”, assault, rape, torture, and even murder because of this power imbalance and …

An Exploratory Study Of The Five-Factor Personality Traits Model As Predictors Among Women In Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics Fields At Indiana State University, Sowmya Challa

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to identify any trends in personality traits of students at a mid-western university along with the influence of gender, choice of STEM or non-STEM academic major, and level of education on personality traits. The chosen mid-western university is Indiana State University (ISU) located in Terre Haute, Indiana. This study investigated the personality traits of student’s through administering Goldberg’s (1999) International Personality Item Pool of the Big Five Broad Domains of Personality. The personality profiles of students at ISU who have taken the questionnare are summarized. The personality profiles of female students were analyzed further …

Joy, Drew, Andrew Volkers

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Drew Joy is a 37 year old living in Portland, ME. They are the executive director of the Southern Maine Workers Center. They have been organizing and participating in activism since early adulthood. They have participated in public housing activism with Survivor's Village in New Orleans, anti-racism work in San Francisco with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), and now working class issues such as healthcare for all with SMWC.

Drew has a very 'do it yourself', anarchism grounded ideology in their political beliefs. Their peer environment was in punk music, specifically the radical political sub-genres of queercore punk …

Strange Women: The Evaluation And Comparison Of Female Characters In Akira Kurosawa's Films, Alice Jiron Jang

History

The successes of Akira Kurosawa’s films have shaped and influenced Western views on Japan after World War II. While the male characters in Kurosawa’s films have been analyzed extensively, there is a focus on the subservience of this female characters. With the growing number of independent working women in a seemingly patriarchal society, it is important to study what has caused these women to break free from their traditional roles as housewife and mother. While some of Kurosawa's female characters are designed to be powerful and independent, others are submissive and obedient. The events that occur in postwar Japan have …

Life Among Good Women: The Social And Religious Impact Of The Cathar Perfectae In The Thirteenth-Century Lauragais, Derek Robert Benson

Masters Theses

This Master’s Thesis builds on the work of previous historians, such as Anne Brenon and John Arnold. It is primarily a study of gendered aspects in the Cathar heresy. Using inquisitorial registers from the mid-thirteenth century to the early-fourteenth, as well as a few poetic and prose sources, it seeks to understand how the Cathar “Good Women” were perceived by their lay believers. The methodology of prosopography is utilized throughout to measure witness testimonies against one another and to compare the connections between the Cathar constituency and the female ministers.

Two main inquiries are investigated: the sacerdotal and pastoral roles …

In The Field The Women Saved The Crop: The Women’S Land Army Of World War Ii, Denna M. Clymer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Women’s Land Army brought together rural and urban sectors of the United States in a climate of national and regional crisis. By the time the country was cast into war, the agricultural sector was already caught in a downward economic spiral that drove away laborers. With demand falling, and farms propped up only by experiments in subsidy and parity, when military and industrial jobs emerged in urban areas, farm laborers became scarce. At the same time the war created jobs for men outside of the agricultural sector, farm prices recovered and demand soared, forcing farmers to look to women …

Since The Time Of Eve : La Leche League And Communities Of Mothers Throughout History., Joanna Paxton Federico

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

La Leche League International (LLL) is the oldest and largest breastfeeding support group in the world. This thesis examines how, beginning in 1956, seven Catholic housewives from suburban Chicago built up the institutional knowledge to sustain a cohesive global network of breastfeeding mothers. It also explores how LLL managed this knowledge over time in response to developments in scholarship and changing social conditions. Based on a narrative analysis of LLL publications, this thesis argues that the League’s founders drew selectively from existing bodies of knowledge and from their own cultural perspectives to establish a sense of community among breastfeeding women. …

Southern Veils : The Sisters Of Loretto In Early National Kentucky., Hannah O'Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the experiences of Roman Catholic women who joined the Sisters of Loretto, a community of women religious in rural Washington and Nelson Counties, Kentucky, between the 1790s and 1826. It argues that the Sisters of Loretto used faith to interpret and respond to unfolding events in the early nation. The women sought to combat moral slippage and restore providential favor in the face of local Catholic institutional instability, global Protestant evangelical movements, war and economic crisis, and a tuberculosis outbreak. The Lorettines faced financial, social, and cultural pressures—including an economic depression, a culture that celebrated family formation …

Women And Carriages In 17th-Century Aragonese Burlesque Poetry, Almudena Vidorreta

Publications and Research

During the 17th century, literature turned the growing number of carriages into a burlesque topic. There were countless poems written about traffic jams, accidents, or the proper way to ask a friend for a carriage, often considered a symbol of status. Literary references to carriages can tell us many things about the men and women who used them, as well as about gender stereotypes. Women and carriages were understood as interconnected elements in Early Modern Spain; carriages appear as a means to conquer feminine muses as well as a recurrent satirical topic even for women poets. This article analyzes some …

Ellison, Marvin, Elyssa Pennell

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Marvin Ellison is a 69 year old gay man originally from Knoxville, Tennessee. He earned his bachelors degree in Religion at Davidson College. He then went on to get his Masters in Religion and Society at The Divinity School at the University of Chicago. Ellison then got his PhD in Christian Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was a professor of Christian Ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary from 1981-2012. He was also an Ordained member of the Presbyterian Church (USA) until he retired. In 1988 Ellison was on the Presbyterian Special Committee on Human Sexuality and …