Feminist Philosophy Commons^™

“My Voice Is Trauma, My Voice Is Healing:” A Feminist, Trauma-Informed Embodied Study On The Impact Of Gender-Based Violence In Classical Music Communities, Sarah Pearson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This Social Work doctoral dissertation explores the impact of gender-based violence (GBV) in classical music communities on survivor-artists. This is an intersectional feminist, trauma-informed, embodied study that draws on these three theoretical concepts to conceive of classical music as an institution of both colonial patriarchal power and a site of spirituality and meaning-making. The issue of systemic GBV in the performing arts has been a focus of headline news and sensational celebrity stories in the last decade following the MeToo hashtag and is slowly gaining some attention in academic research.

For this qualitative study, the sample consisted of 14 participants …

A Burlesque: The Shimmering Body Of Revealing, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

A Burlesque: The Shimmer Manuscript is a hybrid critical–creative work that examines burlesque as an embodied methodology and a mode of knowledge production. Drawing from my two decades as a performer–scholar, the work reframes glamour, desire, and adornment as epistemological practices rather than theatrical ornamentation. The project is significant in that it expands understandings of performance studies, autotheory, and feminist aesthetics by foregrounding the performer’s body as an intelligent, sensing, world-making apparatus.

The methodology is creative practice research and archive-driven, integrating backstage documentation, AI-assisted photomontage, and theoretical reflection. The work draws from poststructuralist and feminist frameworks (Irigaray, Deleuze & Guattari, …

An Impact Study Of Young Women's Leadership Development: A Case Study Of Kosovo, Linda Gjergji

Theses & Dissertations

This study explores the leadership development trajectories of young women in Kosovo engaged in a global leadership program, offering significant insights into their capabilities, aspirations, and the barriers they face in pursuit of leadership roles. Using a qualitative instrumental case study approach, this study examines how participation in global leadership initiatives fosters skill development, self-awareness, and civic engagement among young women in a traditionally male-dominated society. The conceptual framework of the study is comprised of Erikson's theory of Psychosocial Development (Erikson, 1968) and Positive Youth Development (Lerner, 2005). Data was collected through online semi-structured interviews and an arts-based method, revealing …

Simone De Beauvoir’S Influence On “The Handmaid’S Tale”, Hailee Jones

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Using the theories that Simone de Beauvoir presents in The Second Sex, this paper will analyze Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Discussing how Gilead reflects the oppression women face, and the idea of women as “other,” and Beauvoir describes. She spends much time discussing the Hegelian master-slave dialectic, which is seen in The Handmaid’s Tale through Gilead’s laws. Forcing the Handmaids to not only be an incubator for the commander, but also forcing them to do the shopping for the household, and not allowing them basic human rights such as reading. Mussett analyzes this and gives further analysis on women …

Reimagining Democratic Education With Care Ethics—Toward Care-Full Democratic Education, Selja Koponen, Tuija Kasa

Democracy & Education

In an era of democratic crises, democratic education in basic education is considered crucial. However, recent studies show that young people perceive their influence both at school and in society as limited, which decreases their civic activity later in life. The aim of this theoretical study is to reevaluate democratic education through feminist care ethics, which is an under-researched topic in the current theoretical debate. In our article, we outline a novel approach to caring democratic education (i.e., care-full democratic education), which presents a complementary stance toward current democratic education, which relies heavily on the theories of liberal democracy and …

Woman, Motherhood, And Home: Grappling With Gendered Dwelling, Pamela Joy M. Capistrano

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

Though ostensibly gender neutral, the word “home” carries with it the baggage of gender, particularly womanhood and motherhood. In English, for instance, “homemaking” is synonymous with “housewifery;” in Filipino, the mother is described as ilaw ng tahanan (“light of the home”). Housing, as well, has a similar neutral connotation; yet, when we consider the impact of urban housing crises, women are disproportionately affected. In this paper, I want to grapple with the broader implications of the gendered baggage of the idea of “home,” its impact on individuals, on how we conceive of houses, homes, and dwellings, and ultimately its impact …

Love Amid The Rage: Feminist Affect In Women's Life-Writing, Genesis Siverio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this thesis is to show the ways women’s emotions or affect, particularly rage and love, are described by women writers in their most intimate stories. I discuss the way emotion has been demeaned, and how feminist scholars have instead viewed the body as a place of insight, reclaiming a knowledge from the senses. In the midst of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, women give voice to their affectual experiences and cultivate the feelings they have so often been denied. Focusing on the particular ways women’s anger manifests in their lives and in their bodies, I zoom in on …

Elizabeth Female Academy: A Historical Case Study Revealing Antebellum Mississippi's Role In Shaping The Southern Belle, Summer Cutrer Tierno

Dissertations

Historians and educational scholars have extensively examined the subject of women's education, resulting in a rich body of literature that traces its evolution over the centuries. Moreover, this body of work encompasses significant movements advocating for women's rights to education and the establishment of colleges specifically for women. Scholars have also analyzed the challenges women encounter in accessing educational opportunities, including societal norms, economic barriers, and institutional discrimination. Notable works highlight the contributions of key figures, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who advocated for women's education in both historical and contemporary contexts. Overall, this comprehensive scholarship not only documents the advancement …

Hope Against Hope: Problems, Possibilities, Agency, And Survival, Erin Kay Chambers

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In response to a critique of hope put forth by queer theorist Jack Halberstam, this thesis is a reassessment of what makes us capable of response—to “stay with the trouble,” in the words of Donna Haraway—in the face of overwhelming collapse. If not hope, then what? This thesis explores a number of questions about hope and its absence, opposites, and various deployments: is hope always an effective tool for survival? Does hopelessness always spell doom? Are hope and its apparent opposites necessarily incompatible? And if there is no hope, how do we keep going?—how do we survive? I explore these …

Not Meant To Be Read: The Stories They Silence, The Resistance That Speaks, Cristina Onea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I trace the evolution of surveillance from overt state violence to the more insidious forms of ideological policing embedded in everyday life. Through lived experience, oral history, and critical autoethnography, I explore how surveillance moves through bodies, families, institutions, and memory—not simply as external control, but as internalized rhythms of fear, vigilance, and self-surveillance. I move between my father's life under Romanian dictatorship, my own embodied inheritance, and the contemporary struggles of librarians facing ideological suppression to reveal surveillance as a structure that persists through generations, mutates across contexts, and demands new forms of resistance.

I argue …

Echoes Of Longing, Mahalexmi Mohan

Masters Theses

Loss lingers like a shadow, a weight no time can lift. Longing becomes a silent scream, echoing within, unanswered. Internal pain festers in the quiet, where unhealed wounds weave themselves into the fabric of being. Each breath is both survival and surrender, a fragile balance between hope and the hollow ache of what was, what will never be, yet could be.

Abstract

My work is deeply influenced by my experiences within a dysfunctional family structure and is explored through the relationship of emotional vulnerability and its effect on self-worth. Layered into the work is a confrontation with the scars, conflict …

The Dialectic Of Airless Space, Ophelia Arc

Masters Theses

The Dialectic of Airless Space is a cumulative, cross-disciplinary research project that explores ‘airless space’ as a somatic and psychological condition shaped by institutional environments. Unfolding over time through five interrelated books, the project weaves together writing, ephemera, textile sculpture, and drawing to archive the invisible architectures of bodily and mental experience.

Voices In The Borderlands: Reimagining Identity, Cultural Belonging, And Dystopian Spaces In Anzaldúa’S Borderlands And Viramontes’S “The Cariboo Café”, Oralia G. Ramos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) and Helena María Viramontes’ short story “The Cariboo Café” (1985) portray marginalized individuals navigating liminal spaces of identity, oppression, and survival. Borderlands/La Frontera and “The Cariboo Café” show how systematic violence and displacement shatter the self, pushing characters to navigate trauma in a dystopian space. Sonya, Macky, the café owner, and the grieving mother represent Anzaldúa’s concepts of borderland subjectivity, betrayal, and spectral haunting.

Sonya and Macky, two undocumented children, represent Anzaldúa’s borderlands subjects and reside in a state of nepantla, an in-between space of cultural dislocation. The café owner …

Internalisasi Misogini: Kekerasan Seksual Sebagai Senjata Perang, Umanitya Fitri Hanryana, Lg. Saraswati Putri

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This study examines the role of internalized misogyny in sexual violence used as a weapon of war. Misogyny in patriarchal cultures fosters hatred towards women, facilitating sexual violence in armed conflicts. Cases in the Congo, Rwanda, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia demonstrate how sexual violence is systematically employed to demean and destroy women. Through a feminist critical approach and qualitative analysis, this research reveals that sexual violence in war is often not recognized as a weapon of war due to the inferior position of women in patriarchal societies, being merely seen as ordinary crimes despite being systematic and structured human rights violations. …

Human Dignity And Prostitution, Clara Kernodle

Harding Undergraduate Research Conference

In the twenty-first century, it is common to see feminists and pro-sex work voices lauding prostitution and other forms of the sex industry as viable expressions of women’s sexual and financial agency. As long as every participating party consents, they argue, sex work is not only tolerable, but admirable and positive – a form of transaction or service deserving license, protection, and respect in the name of individual freedom and female agency. Such voices argue that prostitution can even be dignified, as the sex industry supposedly allows participants full freedom to express their sexuality. In this paper, I offer an …

Masculinity As Capitalism: Abuse, Control, And Domination Of The Earth In The Construction Of Gender Identity, J Guadalupe Dimayuga

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2025

This presentation explores the intersection of masculinity, capitalism, and ecological domination, arguing that hegemonic masculinity cannot be dismantled without addressing the capitalist system perpetuating it. Western feminist literature critiques masculinity and its manifestations but often overlooks capitalism as the root cause, thus failing to dismantle it and provide meaningful alternatives. Through an analysis of ecological and Marxist feminist texts, this presentation argues for a feminist philosophy that integrates the two for a more nuanced understanding of masculinity. This philosophy is supported by highlighting the ways in which capitalism enforces exploitation, control, and domination within gender identity. By integrating Indigenous perspectives …

What's The Art In Artificial Intelligence?, Emily Verla Bovino

Open Educational Resources

This workbook learns from Black and Indigenous artists working with Artificial Intelligence to confront issues of ethics and aesthetics in its technologies. It features guided learning activities with links to publicly available video lectures and online articles, and includes options for experiential learning through both a tutorial in Midjourney and a visit to the public art collection at York College in Jamaica, Queens. Featured artists include: American Artist, Rizvana Bradley, Beth Coleman, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Suzanne Kite, Sondra Perry, Mimi Onuoha and Alisha B. Wormsley. Works by Martin Puryear and Maren Hassinger are explored in the Midjourney exercise.

About …

A Reconstruction Of Gender: Implications Of Social Construct And Gender Structure Theories, Bethany Rozario Steinhagen

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The relationship between gender and social construction has long been discussed in feminist and gender studies scholarship. However, the current discussion on gender has run up against a blockage of misapplication of social construct theory. To untangle this blockage, my analysis applies the philosophy of social construction as explained by Ian Hacking in his 1999 book The Social Construction of What? and the framework of gender as a social structure as put forth by feminist sociologist Barbara Risman since the early 2000s. I apply these frameworks to elucidate better the logical implications that follow from a social construct thesis about …

Navigating Climate Action: The River As Teacher For Eco-Literacy, Educational Regeneration And Creative Participation, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cultures' engagements with land and its more-than-human elements reveal their attitudes toward these dimensions, spanning a spectrum from reciprocal to transactional practices. In time, these engagements form a body of knowledges that nurtures the culture and its land, or arrests their vital and diverse qualities. This research project aims to bring to light how the different ways of engaging with and relating to land are embedded in knowledge production, distribution and communication—in short, in general educational endeavors and their philosophies—to promote a better understanding of the principles of eco-literacy. Additionally, a purpose of this project is to provide insights into …

Navigating Cultural Differences In Community-Based Conservation: A Malagasy Case Study, Austin J. Cheng

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

This SIP explores the tension between avoiding cultural imperialism and remaining true to ideals, particularly of gender equality in the creation and funding of community-based conservation organizations in patriarchal societies. To tether these loftier ideas to practice, I use my internship with Planet Madagascar in Ankarafantsika National Park as a case study, and explore it through the lenses of feminist, pragmatist, and post-colonial philosophers.