History of Gender Commons^™

Promesas Incumplidas: The Reconfiguration Of Gendered Expectations And Relationships During The Bracero Program (1942-1964), Adriana Justo Ortiz

Undergraduate Research Awards

The Bracero Program led to the breakdown of domestic roles, disruptions of female and Braceros’ partnerships with women, and the creation of new friendships among the male Braceros themselves. After the Braceros left for their work contracts in the United States, Mexican women took on additional responsibilities that were customarily done by their husband. In contrast, the Braceros had to undertake domestic chores in their temporary labor camps that their wives would have generally done in Mexico. Because Anglo- American employers and entrepreneurs, specifically those from Tulare, California, as demonstrated by the work of historian Ana Elizabeth Rosas, had certain …

Defining ‘Un-Americanism’ In Culture And Art: The Dies Committee’S Investigation Of The Federal Theatre Project, Matthew G. Summers

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the House Un-American Activities Committee’s (HUAC) expansive definition of ‘Un-Americanism’ through the body’s 1938 investigation of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). The committee, then known as the Dies Committee after its chairman Martin Dies (D-TX), publicly presented the hearings as an attempt to root out communism in a deeply compromised government program. And indeed the FTP, an ambitious New Deal Program to provide work for unemployed professionals in the theatre, had an undoubtedly leftist bent. However, the hearings were consistently focused on the project's progressive stances on issues of race and gender, and effectively exposed the underlying …

Rifles And Riflemen: Material Culture, Violence, And Early American Identity, 1720 -- 1820, John Bradstreet Weaver

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The rifle was one of many material objects which colonists of British North America brought with them from Europe. Starting in the early eighteenth century, German-speaking settlers in Pennsylvania began to manufacture rifles from locally made and imported parts. These rifles became associated with other material objects – namely a system of dress, which included wearing a whitetail deer’s tail in the hat, the hunting shirt, and forms of Native American dress – which became emblematic of some British colonists who used rifles in hunting and war. Rifles became militarily important in the Seven Years’ War, where Native American warriors, …

Virginia Woolf And The Lesbian Literary Tradition, Hunter Candrian-Velez

English and Creative Writing | Senior Theses

Modernist English authors, such as Virginia Woolf in her novel Orlando: A Biography, built upon a pre-existing and long tradition of underground lesbian literature dating back to Sappho in Ancient Greece. Before Woolf, female writers of the 19th century continued this tradition by establishing the literary trope of the “Victorian Romantic Female Friendship,” which would later take on different shapes and connotations with discoveries made in the early 1900s related to sexology and homosexual inversion. These discoveries would lead writers to code their work in the hopes of avoiding censorship and government punishment. Writers such as Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Gaskell, …

The Horrors Of History: Gender, Folklore, And Puritanism In Robert Eggers’ The Witch, Trinity Stuckey

Undergraduate Scholarship

This paper examines Robert Eggers' 2015 folk horror film The Witch as a legitimate form of historical interpretation that illuminates the intersection of gender, folklore, and religious belief in 1630s colonial New England. Through analysis of primary sources including Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences, Samuel Willard's possession accounts, and Salem witch trial records, this study demonstrates how Eggers' meticulous attention to historical detail creates a narrative that captures the psychological and sociocultural dimensions of Puritan experience. The paper argues that by taking seriously the theological worldview of its subjects rather than dismissing supernatural elements as superstition, The Witch achieves a …

Feminine Felons: Violent Offenders' Intersectional Experiences In Twentieth-Century Montana, Cassidy Ann Vander Voort

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper explores the treatment of violent female offenders in Montana in both the media and prison system from 1900-1960. Women of all races faced gender discrimination from both the carceral system and popular media. Local newspapers sensationalized crimes committed by female offenders, portraying them as women who lived outside of the expectations of womanhood in the twentieth century. Newspapers and courts placed women into two categories: “mad/sad” female offenders, who received forgiveness for their crimes; or unforgivable, “bad” offenders. Crime did not determine these categorizations; instead, gender expectations of the white middle class shaped female criminals’ treatment. If these …

"A Changed Understanding Of Our Present": Moby-Dick As Prophetic Ecological Activism, Katie Ann Schini

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale is a classic of American literature, spanning multiple genres and remaining culturally relevant nearly 175 years after its original publication. Though on the surface Moby-Dick reads as an adventure story of a man who experiences the whaling industry firsthand, Herman Melville’s text continues to invite new generations of readership through the framework of the twenty-first century climate crisis.

In this thesis, I position Moby-Dick as a text that can be used to understand our modern society’s current dispositions of ecological grief. My thesis operates at the intersection of three main literary critical theories: ecocriticism, affect, and …

Enfilade And Variations: Interpreting Salon Music Through Residential Architecture In Eighteenth-Century Paris, Nicole Vilkner

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

In eighteenth-century Parisian salons, theme and variations on popular melodies proliferated. Elaine Sisman’s seminal study of variation form provides a foundational approach for understanding variations as rhetorical exercises that persuade through differences in syntax and expression. In this vein, scholars have comprehensively affirmed the ways that salon music reflects the dialogic and sociable practices of Enlightenment receptions (Hanning, Sutcliffe, and Zohn). I suggest that theme and variation form is not only connected to the rhetoric of the salon, but that the concept of sequential elaboration is a principle that was also prized in residential architecture.

Drawing from theoretical writings of …

Introduction: The Salon And The Senses In Eighteenth-Century France, Jennifer M. Jones, Rebecca Cypess

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

An introduction to a special collection of essays exploring the salon and the senses in eighteenth-century France. Provides an overview of the critical historiography on the salon and the role of salon hostesses. Explores new approaches to salon within the context of the history of the senses, with attention to the role of art, music, and sociability in salon culture. Provides an overview of the essays in the collection.

Performing Masculinities: The Assumption Of Men’S Roles By Women Left Behind By Male Migrant Labourers In Southern Tanzania, Nives Kinunda, Angelus Mnenuka, Samwel Mhajida

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This article examines the empowerment of female farmers in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania due to male labour migration during the British colonial rule. The study sought to highlight the history of gender-based division of labour, the dynamics of labour division during the colonial period, the trend of females’ adoption of males’ activities, and women’s empowerment resulting from their assumption of males’ responsibilities. Data were collected through oral interviews, documentary reviews, group-focused discussions, and archival sources. The data were analysed and interpreted using a gender framework theory, which includes, among other things, gender roles and gender relations. Findings show that …

African Women Custodians: Teaching, Toponymy And Tacit Reverie In Heritage Education, Tokie Laotan-Brown

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper investigates the critical role of women in African cultures as guardians of cultural heritage. It explores their central function in transmitting traditional ecological knowledge and practices across generations through established pedagogical methods, toponymic knowledge systems (place-names within cultural landscapes), and the cultivation of tacit knowledge. The paper emphasizes the significance of women's contributions to environmental education, often overlooked or undervalued within Western scientific paradigms. This marginalization restricts access to resources and participation in decision-making processes. It argues for the integration of traditional knowledge systems, informed by women's expertise, into formal education and pedagogy. This inclusion serves to validate …

Editorial: Defying Heteropatriarchal Currents, Bekeh Utietiang Ukelina

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The strong cultural and political systems that constrain women's autonomy and progress, often rooted in colonial and imperial histories, have shown troubling resilience despite over a century of diverse women's global activism to dismantle them. In the face of these multifaceted attacks on the rights and self-determination of women and LGBTQIA individuals, particularly in the Global South and within marginalized communities globally, it is not the time to retreat into familiar frameworks. Instead, we must resist by taking strong intellectual positions that center postcolonial feminist frameworks, recognizing the diverse and often interconnected forms of oppression women face.

Challenging The Glass Ceiling: Gender And Identity In Kanan Devi’S My Homage To All (2013), Raju Rana, Lipika Kankaria, Sutanuka Banerjee

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper deals with the Bengali stage and screen actor Kanan Devi’s autobiography titled Shobarey Aami Nomi (originally published in 1973) which was translated as My Homage to All (2013) and tries to analyse the concept of glass ceiling in terms of her myriad experiences over the course of her career. The paper situates the transitions taking place in the 1920s and 1930s in the cinematic space and the emergence of female actors in the public sphere. Against this background, the paper attempts to examine how Kanan Devi defied the prevalent patriarchal set up of the theatres and studios and …

Bechen-Rivera, Liam, Devon Rosano

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Liam Bechen-Munoz is a 38-year-old trans man living in Portland, Maine. He grew up in a conservative Catholic town in Massachusetts before attending the University of Maine in Farmington, where he performed and did activism as a member of the Queer Student Alliance. After coming out, Bechen-Munoz faced discrimination and experienced getting fetishized online. He is a queer musician who has dealt with substance abuse but became sober in November of 2023. In this interview, Bechen-Munoz discusses some of the challenges he has faced, especially around coming out.

Italians, Finns, Methodists, And The Klan: A Look Into The Complex Identities And Relationships That Were Prominent In The Upper Peninsula During The 1920s, Piper R. Kraft

HS 390 Primary Research Papers

This essay focuses on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the 1920s and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Using interviews from the Italian Oral History Collection, this essay explores the relationship between Italians, Finns, and the KKK. Rather than focusing on labor relations, this essay explores how these groups saw exogamy, the value placed on maintaining one’s religious connection and perceived racial identity. This research touches on the intersectionality of racialized ethnicity, religion, and class, concluding that the predominantly Methodist KKK would be more open to relationships, both personal and professional, with Finnish immigrants, even though they do …

Señoritas On And Off The Silver Screen: How Chicana Women Organized For Equality And Challenged The Cultural Prison Of Sexualized Media Representations In The First Half Of The Twentieth-Century, Rossandra Paloma Martinez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research is personal for me due to lived experience and day-to-day situations where I have felt the pressures of unattainable beauty standards and society’s fluid definition of beauty and femininity surrounding Chicana, Latinas, Mexican, and Mexican-American women. What inspired me to pursue these issues and topics was the work of Dr. Vicki Lynn Ruiz in her book From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America. This research focuses on rival and contested images of Chicana, Mexican, Mexican-American and Latina labor advocates and activists from the early twentieth as opposed to sexualized and eroticized packaged caricatures that Hollywood …

Urban Japanese, Rural American: How Regionality Shaped Nisei Girlhood In Prewar America, Lauren Reiko Yanase

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores Nisei girls' racial and cultural identity formation in the American West before their forced removal to the World War II Japanese American mass incarceration camps. Japanese American history has long been dominated by male narratives, from labor histories of the 1880's first-generation Issei to the American patriotism of the 1930's second-generation Nisei. Japanese American women are generally considered through generational categories, promulgating a linear story of American progress. I argue that regionality is the main factor that shaped Nisei girls' self-identity, employing transcribed interviews with Nisei women born 1924-1929 as primary sources to write narrative histories differentiated …

Rai, Shaunna, Kylie Cloutier

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Shaunna Rai, or Daniel Shackley, was born in Killeen, Texas in 1972 to a military family and moved near the Augusta, Maine area during their school years. They grew up as a cisgender man in Bridgeton, Maine and attended Lakes Region High School. Shaunna fathered a child as a teen in high school and is now a grandparent. Shaunna moved out to live independently at 16 and utilized the group Outright! In the Lewiston/Auburn area as a support group for LGBTQ+ youth. Shaunna discovered drag in their early 20’s because of roommates, friends, and the active gay bar scene in …

Kidman, Cathy, Sadie Mcnish

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Cathy Kidman, is a 60-year-old lesbian activist who has been involved in LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS advocacy work in Maine since the 1990s. Kidman first became involved in activism through her work at The AIDS Project in Portland in the late 1980s, during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This led her to become an adult advisor for the LGBTQ youth organization Outright, which she helped build into a nonprofit organization. Kidman describes how the AIDS epidemic catalyzed LGBTQ activism, bringing together the gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities that had previously been more separate. She talks about the importance of creating …

Penny, Pollard, Sarah Winn

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Penny Pollard is a 71-year-old lesbian, who grew up in a middle-class Catholic family in Massachusetts and is the youngest of three children. She discusses her coming out process, her experiences in the LGBTQ community in San Francisco during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and her career path which included various jobs such as furniture making, and speech-language pathology. Penny describes facing some discrimination and backlash when coming out, particularly from old friends and coworkers but also finding acceptance and community, especially after moving to Portland, Maine. She shares the story of how she met her now-wife when moving to Portland Maine. …