Digital Commons Network^™

Sui Sin Far Vs. Dehumanization, Hannah Swenson

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

In 1882, Chinese immigrants were deemed by Congress to be a corrupting influence in America; thus the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, barring Chinese laborer immigration and the naturalization of Chinese immigrants. Their foreign cultural customs made them “unassimilable,” and their strong work ethic and acceptance of extremely low wages “rendered them an economic threat and thus targets of racial violence”. In 1889, the United States Supreme Court upheld the act, stating that Chinese immigrants were “‘a different race . . . dangerous to [America’s] peace and security’”. Subsequent laws further marginalized Chinese residents, depriving them of legal rights and …

Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Under Siege Worldwide: Moving Beyond Limiting Notions Of Gender And Sexuality In Education Organizations And Leadership, Margaret Grogan

Education Faculty Books and Book Chapters

As 2025 gets underway in the United States, educators across this country, like in many others, are bracing for unprecedented opposition to their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies. Newly elected President Trump is rapidly dismantling many federal agencies, cutting off aid to foreign entities, and causing major apprehension across the globe. His stated agenda to eradicate progressivism echoes many other international ultraconservative and far-right movements, who applaud his authoritarian regime. To mount the best possible resistance to these disturbing developments, and, indeed, to expand and strengthen DEI work, this chapter argues for collective action across all the …

Cinematic Abuse: A Critical Analysis Of Disney’S “Happily Ever After” In The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, And The Princess And The Frog, Erin Michelle Gough

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the manner in which three animated Disney princess films cultivate stereotypes and gendered behaviors consistent with domestic violence and thereby encourages viewers to accept and tolerate abuse against women. I argue that due to the dangerous, constricting, and sexist gender roles encouraged by the Walt Disney Corporation, films prime young girls and boys to react to social situations and encounters in a way that mirror the characters’ reactions. Because of the films’ entertainment value, most of the characters’ inappropriate, stereotypical, and often violent behaviors either go unnoticed or are passively accepted. The violence does not have to …

Creating And Re-Energizing Communities Of Meaning Throughout A Course, Nancy A. Heise, Anum Ahmed

Feminist Pedagogy

We propose a feminist course approach wherein instructors build what Amie Macdonald (2002) called "communities of meaning" in their classrooms (p.120). Through an intentional focus on supporting students' 1) individual identities, 2) holistic well-being, and 3) epistemic "buy-in" to classroom content, students will connect more deeply not only to themselves and their classmates, but also to the course material. We suggest four community-building touchpoints as a starting point for instructors looking to integrate this course approach. We start with an activity to lessen awkwardness around first-day name pronunciation. We emphasize the importance of creating collaborative classroom expectations with students, and …

E Ho’Omau Mākau, We Will Continue: The Living Sovereign Entities Of Contemporary Hawaiian Songs, Kēhaulani Lagunero

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between contemporary Hawaiian mele (songs) and Hawaiian ea (sovereignty), focusing on how mele acts as sovereign living entities representing cultural resilience, identity, and resistance to settler-colonial influences. Through semi-structured interviews with Kānaka Maoli, participant observation at cultural events, and close analysis of mele, I identify that these songs are not only expressions of cultural memory, but also living embodiments of ea—sovereignty because they are alive, and they are alive because they are ea. Drawing from the frameworks of cultural survival, survivance, symbolic power, and defiant indigeneity, I explore how mele actively engage …

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 …

Embodied Archives, Emerging Futures, Xuân-Lam Nguyen

Masters Theses

Fifty years after the end of the U.S.–Vietnam War, this thesis reflects on the entangled relationship between the two nations, inspiring hope while challenging dominant representations of trauma and tragedy. Drawing from autobiography, family history, folk art traditions, colonial photographs, hierarchies within art history, archives of student activism, and key geopolitical events, the work explores the complex intersections of queer identity and glitchy historical narratives. Combining research-based inquiry with time- and labor-intensive processes, it reimagines historical materials to construct alternate possibilities for the future.

Disability: A Dirty Word? How Language Historically Perpetuates Exclusion And Systemic Oppression, Kelly E. Imm

Graduate Masters Theses

In 1990, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) marked a pivotal moment in the American disability rights movement, which began in the 1960s and sought to secure civil rights for people with disabilities. Despite this monumental achievement, this thesis considers how the language used throughout American history and culture to describe people with disabilities, even within the confines of progressive legislation like the ADA, remains deeply rooted in ableist and oppressive historical attitudes. At the heart of this issue, this thesis demonstrates how the medicalization of disability, which has dominated American culture for centuries, continues to frame …

"I'M Strictly T4t": Trans For Trans Connections In The Contemporary, Madi Lou Alexander

Dissertations and Theses

Trans for trans relationships, referred to as "t4t", are a relationship type specific to trans individuals. Linguistically originating from Craigslist personal ad spaces, t4t indicates a trans person seeking out and engaging with another trans person. The scope of relationships under the t4t label are often largely associated with sexuality and dating scenes due to their conception in online cruising spaces. Through qualitative analysis, I assess the range of what t4t relationships are through 30 in-depth interviews with participants identifying as trans. This work moves away from focusing on the deficits of holding a marginalized identity, instead aiming to center …

Transgender & Gender-Diverse Interpreter Experiences, Atlas Rideout

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

Transgender and gender-diverse ASL interpreters face unique challenges in their professional lives that remain largely unexamined in interpreting research. This investigational research project addresses this gap by exploring their individual lived experiences through analysis of both anecdotal and numerical data collected via a survey. Through this survey, participants were invited to share their narratives, highlighting issues such as discrimination, self-disclosure, and gender identity within professional practice. At the time of writing, very minimal research has been done on the experiences of transgender and gender-diverse ASL interpreters. The research that has been completed has either lumped transgender individuals in with the …

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 …

Setting The Record Straight: Recording The Global Contribution To Education Research Of Panamanian Scholar Etilvia Arjona Chang, Nanette Archer Svenson

Journal of International Women's Studies

As documented extensively, the academic publications and accomplishments of women scholars—particularly those from developing regions—are underrepresented in global and national literature, databases, and indices. This feminist biographical case study explores and makes visible the life and work of Panamanian Dr. Etilvia Arjona Chang and her global contribution to education research. This article describes her earlier decades devoted to expanding and modernizing the translation and interpretation (T&I) discipline worldwide. It also examines her development of Panama’s first education research programs in later decades of her career and how her previous T&I experience provided the foundation for present-day Panamanian education research. This …

Feminist Rehabilitation Counseling: Vocational Rehabilitation For Women With Disabilities In Global Contexts, Abigail O. Akande

Journal of International Women's Studies

People with disabilities are the most unemployed and underemployed minority group in the world, and women with disabilities (WWD) are further marginalized. Vocational rehabilitation (VR) is a human services discipline designed to support people with disabilities in obtaining and maintaining their employment goals. Competitive employment is a potential means for WWD to be empowered and to flourish by fostering a sense of economic security, encouraging community engagement, facilitating optimum levels of independence, contributing to the local economy, subverting the implications of poverty (e.g., limited healthcare, rehabilitation, and education access), and developing identities rooted in pride that often accompany the status …

The Representation Of Women Politicians In Pakistani English-Language Newspapers, Awais Rubbani, Sharifah N. H. Alkaff

Journal of International Women's Studies

Gender representation, in terms of both narratives and images of women in the public sphere, is an indicator of gender equality in a society. In particular, mass media plays a significant role in shaping the perceptions of the public towards women. Our present study aims to investigate the representation of women politicians in two Pakistani English-language newspapers in 2012, 2017, and 2022: Dawn and The Nation. With the rise of quotas reserved for women in both the National and Provincial Assemblies in Pakistan, our study hopes to analyze how often and in which news genre that women politicians are …

Bama’S Sangati: A Collective Resistance To Oppression And Attitudinal Ambivalence Towards Dalit Women, Sarani Ghosal Mondal

Journal of International Women's Studies

Originally published in Tamil in 1994 and translated into English by Lakshmi Holmström in 2005, Bama’s^[1] Sangati: Events is a collection of life narratives from Dalit women of the Paraiya community in Tamilnadu, South India. Each narrative depicts an event of exploitation from the perspective of an adolescent girl, Sevathi. Her myriad questions to her grandma uncover Dalit problems in India. These agonized questions relating to injustice, caste-based discrimination, and violence mirror Dalit women’s vulnerability in Indian society. This study analyzes the narratives of strife, anger, and forced negotiation in a caste/class-ridden patriarchal society. Premised on gender-caste-class dynamics, …

Sociocultural Impediments To The Economic Empowerment Of Women: An Analysis Of The Toy Industry In Etikoppaka, Balireddy M. N. Teja, Moksha Singh

Journal of International Women's Studies

Research indicates that women’s involvement in income generation does not always result in gender equality or empowerment. With this understanding in mind, this qualitative study delves into the socioeconomic changes created by the highly regarded toy industry in Etikoppaka village in India, which predominantly relies on women’s labor. Exploratory research was designed to gather information from forty primary respondents who are women actively employed in the industry. We applied Hakim’s preference theory and Malhotra’s model of empowerment to construct comparison criteria for theoretical underpinning. The study’s outcomes reveal that a significant number of women in the village are employed in …

"You Know The Rules": A Dramatic Experiment In Aromantic Literary Theory, April Chronowski

English

This paper proposes a new literary theory framework based on the zine "an aromantic manifesto" by yingchen and yingtong, as well as the work of Erving Goffman, using theater as a device to examine romantic relationships. Blending English and sociology, I focus each chapter on a different literary period and examine two plays each: early modern (Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing), modern (Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Djuna Barnes' "To The Dogs"), and contemporary (Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 and Margaret Edson's W;t). In tandem with analysis of formal elements---like …

Folds, Bayan Abukiwan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses the fold as an orienting metaphor and material gesture to linger on the minor details of intimacy that are severed by occupation and political violence. Through painting, drawing and ceramics, the work traces the more implicit modes of dehumanization—particularly in relation to Palestine—while engaging the domestic as a site of quiet and complexity. Influenced by artists like Jennifer Packer and Beatriz González, the practice embraces slowness, touch, and opacity to fold the viewer into a haptic encounter with the work.

Apocalypse As Utopia: The Exorcisms And Memorials Of Las Yeguas Del Apocalipsis And Queer Liberation In Chile, 1987-1997, Nicolas Poblete

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of the queer activist-art collective Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis (1987-1997) and their performance-based resistance to the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990), cultural homophobia, and the HIV/AIDS crisis. Through art actions blending ritual, protest, and queer poetics, the collective redefined public space and national identity, envisioning a utopian queer apocalypse rooted in memory.

“Bottom Nature”: Embodying History In Gertrude Stein’S The Making Of Americans, Yasmin Tehrani

Theses and Dissertations

This paper attempts to connect Gertrude Stein’s conception of being in The Making of Americans with her vision of the production of history. This paper then concludes that for Stein, historical subjects themselves, both individually and collectively, and the imbued qualities in their being, shape history.

Cartoon Kinship, Kelsey Bell Quinn

Master's Theses

Most people view cartoons as mindless entertainment exclusively for children. They dismiss the genre as if it only contains zany and overzealous characters who deal with simple, predictable challenges, easily resolved by the end of the episode. The negative attitude towards cartoons—or seemingly anything animated—undermines the importance of the lessons and the themes many shows do impart on their viewers, regardless of their age. Shows like Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender cover a plethora of complex themes, but due to its status as an animated work, it has been disregarded as a show for children rather than being appreciated as …

Fugitive Colors, Natalie Rose Eddings

Theses and Dissertations

My objects are meditations on intertwining themes of labor, rest, and interiority and their shadow sides—power, subjugation and the gaze. I couple materials that have millenia-long histories such as metals, glass, paper and clay with found objects and plat materials to illustrate narratives and exhume memories. Drawn from nature and technologies of land, plant stewardship and the domestic realm, I imagine my sculptures as life supporting vessels or magical enclosures.

Through sculpture, photography and printmaking, I build structures that are space of quiet to be filled with thought, healing and development. Like incubators and seed pods, my work is protective …

The Prescribing Of Gender, A Scope On The Societal Ideologies Showcased Within Le Roman De Silence, Derrian Fernandez

Master's Theses

Culture is constantly evolving, its ideologies cementing themselves within our minds, shaping how we as a society guide ourselves through living in such. Social class, religion, gender, all are forms of identity that have a place, and a certain understanding and standing within our culture and society. Through this understanding of ourselves, we are defined, creating multiple forms of distinct expression to help differentiate our place further. A pope is expected to wear a certain attire just as a bride is expected to. The same ideology trickles down, creating demarcations of attire that subsequently ingrain themselves into our culture and …

Gaslight, Gateway, Girlboss: The Empowering Possibilities Of Bimbo Feminism, Nicole Raine Foster

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a new trend arose from the social media platform TikTok called Bimbo Feminism. Bimbo Feminism is marked by an authentic embrace of femininity and the democratization of knowledge through generational slang. Through the explanation and analysis of Bimbo Feminism’s three spearheads, Chrissy Chlapecka, Nikita Redkar, and Scene Queen, this thesis defines Bimbo Feminism and explains its possibilities as a gateway feminism. Through its position on TikTok, Bimbo Feminism is able to bring new people into the world of activism. However, Bimbo Feminism must address its internal issues before it can be used as a catalyst for …

Countering The Traditional Feminine: The Abject In The Works Of Johanna Hamann, María Evelia Marmolejo, And Regina José Galindo, Sierra Myers

Theses

This thesis explores the ways in which Contemporary Latin American feminist artists have been able to subvert the Western constructed ideas of gender that work to locate the feminine Other as subordinate and inferior. Focusing on the installations and performances by Johanna Hamann, María Evelia Marmolejo, and Regina José Galindo, there is an emphasis on the role of the abject which is used to defamiliarize our established concepts of the traditional feminine in order to allow space for a redefinition and portrayal that excludes a detrimental modern semiology rooted in a zero point epistemology. By analyzing these artists' works in …

Migration And Diaspora: An Intersectional Feminist Reading Of Lucy By Jamacia Kincaid., Benjamin Oluwakayode Akinlabi

All Theses

This thesis explores how migration and diaspora shape the intersectional experience of Black women through a close reading of Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy. Drawing on Black feminist thought, I make a case using analytical and theoretical frameworks to expand intersectionality to account for global movement and memory. Intersectionality must move beyond national borders to account for how power travels with people. I argue that migration works externally through movement and displacement, and diaspora works internally through memory. There is a location in the United States, but there is always a look back through memory and the two conflict. Lucy's migration …

Chasqui, Nicole Lachat

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Chasqui is a creative dissertation comprised of a thirteen-page critical introduction and a series of poems which consider varying forms of migration, including that of border crossings. The internalization of displacement through longing and alienation is examined in these poems. The author considers questions of inheritance through an exploration of personal, familial and sociopolitical bonds. Varying forms of violence, including colonial and gendered violence are reflected upon in the work.

Advisor: Kwame Dawes

Examining Portrayals Of Gender In The Design Of Ai Voice Assistants, Olivia Fratangelo

Student Theses

This capstone project provides a theoretical framework for shifting the ways in which we think about and discuss anthropomorphized features of technological products, focusing specifically on applying this framework to the gendered design of AI voice assistants. The goal in providing this framework is to prompt readers to consider how we can think more critically about technology beyond our “preferences” and biases. Our roles as consumers of technology do not have to be passive ones. In fact, the dialectical relationship between humanity and technology makes everyone who contributes to society not just a consumer, but a developer of technology in …

The Politics Of The Black Womb: How Education And Power Reinforce The U.S. Black Maternal Health Crisis, Foluke Akinkunmi

Honors Scholar Theses

This study investigates the alarming maternal mortality rates among Black women in the U.S. today first by exploring the historical exploitation of Black maternal bodies during enslavement and with the rise of professionalized gynecology. It challenges the narrative that attributes these outcomes to individual choices or supposedly inherent biological factors, arguing instead that the devaluing of Black women’s well-being and authoritative knowledge have been constructed along with the United States itself. To advance a constructive response, the paper analyzes curriculum competencies for obstetric and midwifery healthcare providers, surveys of Black women's birthing experiences in the previous 20 years, and interviews …

Queer Hope And Asexual Desire In Nella Larsen's Passing And Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Jeremy Buckner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This project examines Nella Larsen’s Passing and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse together as queer artifacts in hopes of shedding new light on how race and sexuality can be reexamined across national modes of thinking. Although these writers’ backgrounds provide them with different bodies of knowledge, Larsen’s Irene and Woolf’s Lily have much more in common than might first appear. For one, even if racialization is more explicit—and presents more of an obstacle—for Irene, race is an important factor for both characters. Additionally, Irene and Lily both express profound discontent with marriage, Irene in her marriage to Brian and Lily …