Women's History Commons^™

Archivo Y Memoria: Una Mirada A Tres Historias De Mujeres Esclavizadas En El Virreinato De La Nueva Granada De Finales Del Siglo Xviii, Luisa Carolina Julio Gomez

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Colonial documents preserve information that allows us to know the local Andean history of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. These manuscripts reveal forms of violence that shaped the subjectivities of the time and the resistance of oppressed women. This dissertation examines the effects of slavery and the response of three enslaved women to that colonial violence. This analysis seeks to better understand and make visible how the intersection between racism and patriarchy impacted the lives of three racialized women in the colonial context.

This dissertation focuses on the experiences, struggles, and resistance of three women present in the manuscripts consigned …

Back To Nature: Marie Antionette And The Cottagecore Fantasy, Rose Caughie

Anthós

This essay is an examination of the legacy of Marie Antionette's Chemise a la Reine. At the end of the 18th century, a portrait of the queen in this dress caused scandal and outrage. Despite, or perhaps because of this, the Chemise a la Reine became a staple in the wardrobe of the Western woman. Today, this style continues to be popular. This is particularly notable in the Cottagecore aesthetic movement. Much like Marie Antionette's use of this style, Cottagecore fashion carries deep ties to an escapist pastoral fantasy. However, more important is the continued legacy of Neoclassicism and the …

A Vision Without Borders: Magonismo And Mexican Women, Nallely Lozoya

Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal

Recent scholarship on the Magonista movement centers around the actions of the male leadership, without fully exploring their acceptance of women’s involvement. In fact, Mexican women, through this intelligentsia movement, were able to challenge social expectations and fully participate in political activism during the Mexican Revolution. As a result, Mexican women understood their political power, and were motivated to create radical movements of their own. In the end, Mexican women practiced a feminism that was concerned with multiple issues that impacted Mexican communities on both sides of the U.S-Mexico border. In this work, I closely analyzed contemporary speeches, correspondence and …

Craftivism And Cottonian Bindings: “The Handiwork Of Greta Hall”, Helen Williams

Criticism

Edith Southey, Edith May Southey, and Sara Coleridge Jr. covered Robert Southey’s books in vibrantly printed dress fabrics, creating a collection that came to be called “the Cottonian Library.” This article is a manifesto for Cottonian bookbinding to be studied as feminist literary activism. It argues for the importance of looking beyond the book trades to the domestic and unremunerated ways in which women contributed to Romantic period book design, suggesting that the new feminist Craftivism can prompt us to historicize and to acknowledge the significance of Cottonian bookbinding as a practice that cannot be omitted from any history of …

Survivor Accounts Of Sexual Violence In The Holocaust And Rwandan Genocide: A Comparative History, Marisa Silva

Honors Projects

This research seeks to analyze and understand the approach and treatment of victims of sexual assaults stories and accounts using case studies of the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. Research was conducted by collecting and reading first-hand accounts of survivors and their experiences of sexual assault, then analyzing the historical response following the events. The two case studies are synthesized and compared in this project to understand which attributes of political and social policy effected the reception of stories of victims and witnesses of rape and assault. Both genocides are affected by unique struggles in collecting witness accounts, as well …

The Women Of Justice: Narratives Of Women Attorneys In California During The 1960s And 1990s, Sarah Zion

Master's Theses

This thesis interviews two women attorneys who have not previously shared their stories to relate their experience of going to law school and entering the field after graduation. The study of women lawyers and their stories is not a new topic, however, there is a focus in the scholarship to only explore the tales of the women who reached the big firsts, such as first female lawyer or first female judge. By providing interviews of women who have not reached these big accomplishments, the field gains a more rounded understanding of the history of female lawyers. The two women interviewed …

The Queer Life Of Lorena Hickok, Samantha D. Leyerle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life of Lorena Hickok, a remarkable woman whose story has been glossed over throughout history. Hickok was an accomplished journalist and writer, and her life offers a fascinating glimpse into being queer in the early twentieth century. While much has been written about Hickok’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, this thesis aims to go beyond their connection to examine Hickok’s entire life and experiences in greater detail. Through analyzing her work as a writer, as well as her personal correspondence and unpublished autobiography, this thesis illuminates the quiet details of defining moments in history, including the Great …

Writing As Liberation: Challenging Yemeni Patriarchal Practices, Sheema Alamari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Patriarchal societies create an environment where men hold power and women are often treated as second-class citizens or are often held as having an inferior status. Throughout history and across cultures, literature has provided a platform for writers to share their stories and express themselves. However, Yemeni women have often been silenced and marginalized due to limited education and censorship. In recent times, Yemeni and Yemeni-American women have turned to storytelling as a means of creative expression and emotional release. This thesis analyzes Zubaida “Jasmine” Sharif’s memoir, Caged in America: One Woman’s Journey Through the Veil, and Nadia Al-Kowkabani's …

Myths, Museums, Mothers, And The Power Of Letitia Carson, Hailey Brink

University Honors Theses

Letitia Carson was a trailblazing Black Oregon pioneer woman whose life offered remarkable and unprecedented departures from the white pioneer status quo. Letitia's story presents numerous points at which she could be heralded for her successes; her pregnant journey across the Overland Trail, giving birth in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, cultivating and maintaining two separate homesteads, challenging and conquering two lawsuits against administrator Greenberry Smith, her midwifery and community involvement, and lastly, becoming the first Black woman to own land in Oregon in 1862. And yet, her story fell to obscurity, only to be revived nearly a century …

Haunted Homelands: Mary Hunter Austin's Search For Belonging In California's Central Valley, Aimee M. Maddalena

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From childhood, Mary Hunter Austin resisted the social conformity expected of a young girl in 1850’s Carlinville, Illinois. Instead, causing her mother to “shed tears of vexation,” she was outspoken, opinionated, and read the “wrong” books, which, according to her mother, “was what made you queer so that people didn’t like you.” Young Mary had a rich inner life and was drawn in a spiritual, mystical way to the minutiae of the natural world. Also, she questioned the strict social structure that caused her mother to be outcast as a widow, while, at the same time, young women were beginning …

“Such An Immoral Creature”: Widowed Women And The Board Of Pension Commissioners, Lyndsay Rosenthal

Canadian Military History

Widows’ pensions were a vital source of income following the loss of a spouse during and after the war. While soldiers enlisted with the promise that their families would be taken care of, accessing state assistance could be exceedingly difficult. In addition to proving their husband’s death was connected to their wartime service, widows also had to meet contemporary ideals about gender, sexuality and motherhood. These pensions provided more financial support than any other social welfare system available at the time. However, pension regulations governed widows’ daily lives and influenced major life events such as marriage and childrearing.

Reproduction: The Ultimate Enemy Of Racial Passing In Harlem Renaissance Literature, Veronica Kordmany

Student Theses

"In this essay, I examine three texts that consider the repercussions of passing for Black Americans. Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) serves as a namesake for this general idea, as two light-skinned African American women represent the divisionary approach to racial passing. In George S. Schuyler’s Black No More (1931) we see a passing Black man’s virility being tested as he enters an ‘alternate universe’, in which a scientific invention grants him full access to the wondrous white world he’d always dreamed of entering. Finally, in the middle of this textual spectrum is Angelina W. Grimké’s 1919 short story, “The Closing …

Woman Flytrap, Brianna Jo Hobson

Student Theses and Dissertations

Woman FlyTrap is a short story zine collection that explores the topic of sexual violence through the perpetrator and victim relationship with an explicit lens. Replete with cultural and entomological themes and motifs, Woman Flytrap seeks to remind survivors that we are not alone. In our bodies or in our lives. Neither in the world. There are over a million insects to every human, proving that there is strength in numbers. All five stories in the collection present different abstracts: revenge, transformation, justice, healing, body image, self-harm, mourning, etc. There is also a playlist and a section about the author. …

The Working Class Birth Of Birth Control, Jake Whitney

Great Plains Graduate Review

The most popular image of the historic fight for birth control is connected to the Women's Liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s. Prior to that, the struggle is tied to Women’s suffrage. Regardless of the starting point, the common understanding of the fight for birth control is one along gendered lines. Historians like Linda Gordon in the book Women’s Body, Women’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America keep with this line of thought. Although most historians currently view the struggle for birth control through a gendered lens, the organized discourse of birth control began as a …

Silent Voices, Stolen Imagery, And Subjected Violence: Plains Native American Women In Historiography, Bobbie J. Roshone

Great Plains Graduate Review

This paper delves into the historiography of Indigenous women’s history and experiences on the Great Plains have been recorded. The main question when approaching this subject was, “what does a review of the historiography reveal about how historians have addressed Indigenous women’s history in the Great Plains?” The overwhelming consensus was that Indigenous women’s history of the Great Plains was minimal in regard to articles, however, there was a growth of autobiographies and other historiographical works throughout the same time period. This would lead to a directed look at how individual women in Indigenous Plains history had a larger impact …

The Impact Of Gender Roles, Political Environments, And Social Environments On Women Activists In Peru From The Mid-1800s To The Mid-1900s, Kathleen Johndrow

Great Plains Graduate Review

Going back into the colonial era, and certainly post-independence, women in Peru were discussing their political and civil rights, and questioning not only their status, but the status of workers, indigenous people, and those in poverty. In fact, within the handful of names that have appeared as well-known Peruvian women activists, they all concentrated on class as well as gender, and incorporated race in terms of indigeneity as well. In doing so, the women involved in working for increased equality created or joined different organizations over time. What led women to join one group versus another, and were there groups …

Kathleen Hanna: An Investigation Into Riot Grrrl, Elena Haffner

Audre Lorde Prize

A zine on the third-wave feminist movement riot grrrl and one of its most prominent members, Kathleen Hanna.

The Railsplitter And The Pathfinder: The Relationship Between Abraham Lincoln And John C. Frémont, Kourtney Yantis

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This study serves as an analysis of the connections between Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States and John Charles Frémont as a Civil War general. Lincoln’s position within history is solid, unlike that of John C. Frémont. The thesis will elevate Frémont to a higher status as a historical figure by arguing that the emancipation edict that he issued for Missouri in August of 1861 would influence Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary emancipation proclamation of September 1862, even though Lincoln repealed Frémont’s decree. In biographies of each man, their interactions are merely a small part of the stories of their …

"If These Walls Could Speak": Judson College And The Formation Of The New Baptist Woman, 1838-1930, E.Gabrielle Walker

Dissertations

Southern Baptist women’s collegiate education and experiences led to their questioning traditional Baptist gender roles and interpreting religion to fit a modern, progressive worldview. Judson College established in 1838 in Marion, Alabama, created a space for its Baptist students to consider socially appropriate ways, outside of doctrinal boundaries, to serve God, themselves, their families, and humanity. Judson remained theologically and culturally conservative, perpetuating inherited religious and social notions of female subordination to men, while increasingly offering students more progressive curricula to meet changing economic and cultural realities. In compliance with white Southern and Baptist conservative values, Judson’s students generally accepted …

Working For The Benefit And Advancement Of Women: Three Women's Organizations That Commemorated The American Civil War, 1880-1920, Annette F. Guild

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In the past forty years, scholars and members of the public alike have obsessed over the complex legacy of the American Civil War (1861-1865). As debates over Confederate monuments and the United States’ racial past have frequently emerged in politics, many Americans have disagreed as to how the Civil War should be remembered. In examining the evolution of Civil War memory in American society, numerous scholars have noted the important role that women’s organizations played in influencing the Civil War’s collective memory in the fifty years following the conflict. However, while scholars have noted the significance of these organizations for …