Digital Commons Network^™

Zine And Collage-Making As An Engine For Queer Self-Making: Cutting, Pasting, And Seeing What Sticks, Robin Lao

Postgraduate

The purpose of this project aims to explore the potential of graphic design as a means of discovering and expressing queer identity on both a personal level and as a form of public engagement- to connect the individual to community and discover new knowledge of the self.

This project aims to add to the conversation and representation of queer identity so that both current and future generations can exist comfortably in their bodies and the spaces they occupy in the world. The necessity of more queer, more diverse and nuanced perspectives within studies of queer identity is more important than …

Mentoring Latinas On Doctoral Journeys: Testimonios Of Cultural And Gender Identity, Jacqueline Rangel

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In the United States, Latinas are underrepresented in obtaining PhDs that lead to high level professional careers and academia. This may be due, in part, to patriarchal academic institutions and approaches that have historically devalued the cultural experiences and identities of marginalized populations, including Latinas in higher education. However, research suggests that mentorship can support Latinas in successfully obtaining PhDs and disrupt institutional norms and practices. Framed by LatCrit, Mestiza Consciousness, and Mujerista Mentoring, this study sheds light on the experiences of twenty-four Latinas who earned PhDs-with or without mentors during their doctoral journeys. As such, the purpose of this …

The Dating Experiences Of Black Women, Sarah Ish

Women's and Gender Studies Theses

My thesis centers around Black women’s dating and hookup experiences at Loyola Marymount University (LMU). I distributed a survey with 44 questions; five demographic questions and eight factors that include questions revolving around being romantically and/or sexually rejected based on their race/ethnicity. After three weeks of collecting data, my research has revealed patterns involving negative attitudes towards dating apps, admissions of hopelessness in finding an intimate partner, being fetishized by white people, and feelings of betrayal when/if a person of color expressed rejection based on their race/ethnicity. The implementation of feminist theory and feminist scholars such as Audre Lorde, Patricia …

Describing Dictee, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

The visual images in Dictee are famously captionless. They resist straightforward explanation. In writing image descriptions of the images in Dictee, I have tried to preserve the "captionlessness" of the original. The point here is not to explain the pictures—an image description is not identical to a caption—but to make Dictee more accessible to readers who are blind and visually impaired. I realize, of course, that in trying to make Dictee's captionless images more "legible," I have inevitably "mistranslated" Dictee as it was originally designed to be experienced. Its captionlessness is lost in translation despite my efforts to preserve it. …

‘Poetry Is Not A Luxury’, Rage Should Not Be A Privilege: The Potential Power Of The ‘Racial Imaginary’, Georgia Mcgovern

CMC Senior Theses

Female rage exists outside of the constructed masculine ideal of anger. To examine female rage, one must analyze the intersections between gender and race. I examine white women's privilege and access to female rage in reality and the fictional world. I explore Black Feminist poetry as a form of storage for rage at gender-based prejudice, racial injustice, and their intersection. Using Myisha Cherry’s term “Lordean Rage”, I recognize this specialized manifestation of female rage as an artistic, intergenerational source of energy for change.

I examine Claudia Rankine’s term “racial imaginary” as an imaginative space in which white people draw lines …

Profiles Of Activism In The Lives Of Writing, Rhetoric, And Literacy Studies Scholars, Ruth Osario

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

[Introduction] When I was an undergraduate student, I dreamed of being a badass scholar-activist like Angela Davis the way that young kids dream of being a princess or a dragon. As a baby feminist and scholar, I admired Dr. Davis for her powerful writing and speaking on Black feminism and class struggle, and her impeccable style. When I decided to apply to graduate school, I did so with Angela Davis in mind, imagining a future career where I meandered in a labyrinth of books one day and shut down the streets in a protest the next.

It’S Giving Genocide: What Feminist Theory, Indigenous Thought, And Queer Theory Have To Say About Climate Change, Owen George

MS in Environmental Studies Master's Theses

Climate change is having profound impacts on communities around the world. In some cases, and with time, more and more, the impacts of climate change are happening on a level that constitutes genocide. Raphaël Lemkin’s and Claudia Card’s definitions of genocide are most applicable to climate change as they have broader understandings of victim groups and social death, and they recognize that inaction to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm constitutes genocidal intent. The UN’s more rigid definition does, to a lesser extent, also apply to climate change. Across the three definitions examined here, the argument of climate change as genocide is …

Contents And Editor's Forward, Lara Martin Lengel, Rachel Ann Walsh

International ResearchScape Journal

No abstract provided.

Writing White Women: White (Supremacist) Feminism In American Literature And Culture, Post Suffrage To Post Hillary (1920–2020s), Jannell C. Mcconnell Parsons

Theses and Dissertations--English

Recent critical texts by Jessie Daniels, Mikki Kendall, and more frame the histories of mainstream white feminism in ways that highlight its ongoing complicity with white supremacy and its maintenance of racist structures and systems. In conversation with these current scholarly as well as mainstream cultural conversations about white feminism that have been happening with more frequency since 2016, this project turns to post-suffrage narratives of white womanhood to historicize the modern narratives we tell about feminism’s history. Each chapter of this project considers a 1920s or 1930s literary narrative alongside current literary and cultural narratives as I explore the …

The Power Of Females And Femininity In The Silmarillion, Madeline Shelly

Joyce Durham Essay Contest in Women's and Gender Studies

J.R.R. Tolkien is unarguably the most influential fantasy author of modern literature. The modern fantasy genre, from Harry Potter to Game of Thrones, would not exist without him. The motifs in Tolkien’s works, from elves to dwarves to the epic quest to save the world, have been retold and ingrained into the subconscious of the western world, so that a work of fantasy would not be fantasy without displaying at least some elements originating from Tolkien. His major works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, have become staples of Western literature and film. However, some criticism has been …

Testing The Psychometric Properties Of The Turkish Vesion Of The Lgbt Community Connectedness Scale, Yusuf Barburoğlu, S. Burcu Özgülük Üçok, Eda Çürükvelioğlu Köksal, Yuvamathi Gandhi, Pamela J. Lannutti

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

The feeling of belonging to a community that adopts a protective stance for the well-being of its members is an essential human need. It is well known that LGBTQ+ people experience more stress than other social groups because of discrimination, stigmatization, and self-stigmatization. Therefore, their connectedness to the LGBTQ+ community functions crucially in receiving social support. However, no study in Türkiye has yet comprehensively investigated the community connectedness of people identifying as LGBTQ+. Thus, the current study adapted Frost and Meyer’s (2012) LGBT Community Connectedness Scale to Turkish. This scale was designed to measure the connectedness of LGBT individuals to …

Measuring Positive Lgbtq+ Identity: Psychometric Properties Of The Turkish Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Positive Identity Measure, Yusuf Barburoğlu, Eda Çürükvelioğlu-Köksal, S. Burcu Özgülük Üçok, Yuvamathi Gandhi, Pamela J. Lannutti, Ashley K. Randall

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

Previous research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and various sexually and gender diverse (LGBTQ+) people has largely highlighted how experiences of discrimination and marginalization, and mental health outcomes are related. However, it is important that researchers operate from a strength-based approach to identify how aspects of one's identity may foster resilience. It is crucial that people working with LGBTQ+ individuals have empirically supported and culturally verified measures to assess such constructs. In this regard, the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Positive Identity Measure (LGB-PIM) developed by Riggle et al. (2014) was aimed to be translated into Turkish, examining its psychometric …

"Flowers In The Concrete”: Anti-Violence Nonprofit Leadership And Primary Prevention In Minnesota, Kim Lohse

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The grassroots origins of the American anti-violence movement have evolved to rely on institutions that perpetuate cycles of violence including law enforcement, criminal justice, and government funding programs. These systems do not meet the needs of most survivors and, in many cases, increase the physical violence and emotional abuse they experience. While the anti-violence movement has had success in shifting perceptions of gender-based violence, systemic responses have proven inadequate to prevent cases of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. This thesis study will analyze various forms of anti-violence response in the state of Minnesota using qualitative interviews with anti-violence advocates …

Improving American Men's Quality Of Life By Economically Empowering American Women, Margot Rosenblatt

Scripps Senior Theses

In this paper, I explore the relationship between women’s economic empowerment and men’s quality of life in the United States. I created an index of women’s economic empowerment based on county-level data on labor force participation rates, rates of pay, teen birth rates, and families in which a woman is the primary income earner. I then created an index of men’s quality of life based on financial, physical, and mental health indicators. Adjusting for income, dominant industry type, age, population density, race variables, and environmental factors, I found a statistically significant positive correlation between women’s economic empowerment and men’s quality …

“Even The Hardest Stone Can Fracture:” Racialization, Reproductive Control, And The Wake Of Slavery In N.K. Jemisin’S The Fifth Season, Elsbeth Sanders

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

When the science fiction and fantasy novel The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin won the Hugo Award in 2016, Jemisin became the first Black author to win the prestigious literary science fiction award. A departure from similar novels at the time, The Fifth Season has a strong understanding of systems of oppression and how they are built and upheld. This thesis argues that The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin follows the conventions of the neo-slave/meta-slave narrative to explore themes of racialization and reproductive control under enslavement and oppression. I conduct a feminist literary of the novel, focusing on these themes, …

Rivers Of Language Across Oceans: Review Essay Of River In An Ocean: Essays On Translation, Edited By Nuzhat Abbas, Luise Von Flotow

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article presents an academic review of the collection of articles “on translation” and entitled river in an ocean. It engages with the foreword by Françoise Vergès and the introduction by editor Nuzhat Abbas, which set the tone of ‘decolonial feminism’ that permeates the essays. The reviews of the eleven essays—by women from southeast Asia, Africa, Palestine and Saudi Arabia—come from the perspective of feminist translation studies but pay careful attention to their very specific concerns around exile and life in diaspora.

Beauvoir, “French” Feminisms, And “Translation Work:” A Roundtable Conversation, Sandrine Sanos, Judith G. Coffin

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This conversation featuring four scholars—Sandrine Sanos, Judith G. Coffin, Lorraine Delavaud, Marine Vaslin—took place on zoom on December 1, 2023. It was organized, transcribed, and edited by Sandrine Sanos who also wrote the introduction to contextualize the conversation. The roundtable reflects on the making of the translation of Judith Coffin’s book on Beauvoir; and how it became a collective object, and the challenges and productive limitations that it involved, showing how such a project helped forge and relied upon transnational, transdisciplinary, and transgenerational feminist solidarities. The ways Beauvoir became a transatlantic object sheds light on the ways that the book …

Shifting Shapes: Transnational Tactics Of The Authoritarian Right In Brazil And Russia, Erin Katherine Krafft, Caroline De Souza

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Global right-wing anti-gender movements have developed a transnational pattern in their uses of language as a means of subjugation and of control, and this article examines manifestations of this pattern in two specific states: Brazil and Russia. By exploring the anti-gender languaging, rhetoric, and legislation advanced by Jair Bolsonaro (President of Brazil 2019–2022) and Vladimir Putin (President of Russia 2000–2008 and 2012 to the present) and their supporters, we find that, in both contexts, anti-gender campaigns are reactions to and also drivers for increasingly dramatic political and social conflicts, and in each case, anti-gender ideologies are embedded in larger right-wing …

How We Make It: Disability Justice, Autoimmunity, Community, A Multimedia Project, Alexandra Juhasz, How We Make It Collective

Publications and Research

How We Make It: Disability Justice, Autoimmunity, Community is a born-digital multimedia piece that lives on the Scalar platform and that was submitted and eventually accepted into the Special Section on Autoimmunities in the Wake of COVID-19. The text below is a close reproduction of the Navigation page within the Scalar piece. While reading this text, one cracks open the door to glimpse the ten-person collective behind this project.

Autoimmunities After Covid: An Interview With Cindy Patton, Cindy Patton, Travis Alexander, Nishant Shahani

English Faculty Publications

Taken collectively, Patton’s scholarship and activism has laid the foundation for insights in the health humanities, particularly AIDS studies, that consider the inextricable connections between epidemiology and ideology. Patton’s theorizations of stigma and discrimination patterns, her deconstruction of “truth” discourses subtending science, her critical re-evaluations of axioms associated with risk, safe sex, community, and knowledge production have been crucial interventions in the understanding of health and illness as cultural and discursive scripts. Among Patton’s most enduring contributions has been her theorization of how “African AIDS” was invented and circulated—that is, the notion of geographically bifurcated HIV pandemics split by the …

Abortion Pills: Us History And Politics, Carrie N. Baker

Open Educational Resources: Textbooks

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive history of abortion pills in the United States. Public intellectual and lawyer Carrie N. Baker shows how courageous activists waged a decades-long campaign to establish, expand, and maintain access to abortion pills. Weaving their voices throughout her book, Baker recounts both dramatic and everyday acts of their resistance. These activists battled anti-abortion forces, overly cautious policymakers, medical gatekeepers, and fearful allies in their four-decade-long fight to free abortion pills. In post-Roe America, abortion pills are currently playing a critically important role in providing safe abortion access to tens of thousands of …

Exploring The Nexus Gender Equality And Economic Development In China: A Comparative Analysis, Hejie Liu

Honors Theses

This study will document the extent to which China continues to be affected by the influence of traditional gender norms, and the degree to which gender relations in China are changing in terms of culture, behavioral norms, labor force participation, and family structure. The study will also document the Chinese government’s family planning policy and marriage law that reflect traditional gender norms. In establishing the current state of gender equality in China, this study will assess the current and potential future impact of gender norms on economic growth and population growth. Subsequently, the Chinese experience will be contrasted with Japan …

Global Communities: The Potential Of Street Art And The Public Space, Elena Picech

The Coastal Review

This paper highlights the significance of physical proximity and the potentiality of socio-spatial situations as tools to enrich study abroad programs. Particular attention is given to street art and the public space. While, studying on-site can be somewhat uncomfortable, it can potentially prompt unique reflections, enhance student’s learning and encourage introspection. Being on-site provides the opportunity to come into contact and to connect with the physical objects and their environment. It enables a multisensory and immersive embodied experience. Leveraging art for communicative educational activities can facilitate a participatory experience, promote critical thinking and enhance cultural understanding.

State Politics And Stress Amongst Lgbtq+ Students At Florida’S Private Colleges: A Psychological And Normative Analysis, Alise Fortune

Honors Program Theses

The recent wave of anti-LGBTQ+ politics and policies in Florida pose potential risks to the mental health and well-being of Florida’s LGBTQ+ students. The present study surveyed LGBTQ+ students attending private colleges in Florida to measure their self-reported stress levels in comparison to non-LGBTQ+ students, the level at which they believed specific sources of stress contributed to their stress levels, their level of distress upon experiencing discrimination, their sense of sexual identity distress, and their awareness of and involvement in advocacy against Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Survey results suggested that anti-LGBTQ+ politics in Florida and the personal lives (social and family …

Looking At The Past To Change The Future: Showcasing Featured Collections, Building Communities, And Co-Creating, Sherry Buchanan

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Academic libraries have the opportunity and the responsibility to promote and advance content that creates transformative and iterative learning opportunities. To that end, and in an effort to build communities and facilitate co-creation, Portland State University showcases three main Featured Collections in our open access repository, PDXScholar: Climate Justice, COVID-19, and Racial and Gender Equity, with a fourth pilot collection—Student Work: An Open Showcase of Outstanding Student-Created Research & Creative Work—under development. The collections include a broad range of audiovisual materials, such as podcasts and webinar series, as well as sustainability and equity work, student-created content, and numerous future-focused multidisciplinary …

“Muchakang Pangkalawakan”: Queering Engagements With Bakla Of The Philippine Tropics, Artemio P. Millo

Sociology & Anthropology Department Faculty Publications

The performance of participants in the Miss Gay Muchakang Pangkalawan [Miss Ugly Gay Universe] in Quiapo, Manila, reflects characteristics of the flamboyant and effeminate bakla. However, these stereotypical depictions may not always be consistent with how participants view themselves. This study argues that an introspective understanding of how participants make sense of their identity work engendered by ever-turning tropes reveals slippages that can liberate them from existing oppressive stereotypes. By utilizing personal narrative and ethnographic reflexivity, this study deconstructs the participants’ performances, revealing identity-making that may reinforce or resist dominant discourses on the bakla under which these narratives are …

The Mediation Of Critical Themes Of Motherhood Studies In Storytelling: The Case Of The Girl Who Drank The Moon, Catalina Millán Scheiding

Faculty Works

By contemplating the emotional and intellectual link between the reader and the book, this article considers how a contemporary text might respond to current motherhood studies’ issues, and how these studies are mediated to be considered appropriate for an audience of young readers. A psychosocial research strategy is used, through a feminist theoretical framework, to analyze how the young adult novel The Girl Who Drank the Moon incorporates key ideas of motherhood studies through characters’ agency and the storytelling arch. Motherhood is represented as an institution, an individual identity and an emotional experience, and the novel offers the young reader …

Understanding The Effects Of Hormone Treatments On The Transgender Singer: A Pedagogical Study And Voice Studio Guide, Erin M. Hannon

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Transitioning from one gender to another can be an arduous and emotionally charged experience, accompanied by many physical and mental transformations. The journey of self-discovery and vocal explorations is both unique and deeply personal. Modifications that emerge in an individual's vocal characteristics have a profound influence on their capacity to communicate and express themselves.

Transgender vocal students and professional singers must navigate the delicate balance between their vocal and gender identities while considering the possible risks of Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy. Though these therapies may significantly alter one's appearance and overall well-being, they are also capable of causing notable declines …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Development Toward Teaching Mathematics For Social Justice, Catherine Lynne Manley

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

While some might say that mathematics is neutral, free from political and social bias, social justice concerns can be found in the day-to-day actions of teachers in mathematics classrooms. Teaching mathematics for social justice requires teachers to gain knowledge of the world and systems of oppression as well as current efforts to both address systemic issues as well as the fight for those in power to maintain their cultural capital. Mathematics teachers also need to learn the pedagogical practices that support social justice in education and the specific ways in which mathematics content can be used as a tool to …

Learning Chinese Vocabulary: Understanding Students' Perspectives, Austin Gasiecki, Zuotang Zhang

The Coastal Review

This study used a survey to investigate self-study and university-enrolled Chinese learners’ habits in studying Chinese vocabulary in order to determine what study methods influence a.) learners’ confidence in learning Chinese vocabulary and b.) what aspects of Chinese vocabulary they consider easy or difficult. We were particularly interested in seeing what the data had to say about students’ attitudes towards characters and the written language, given that the field of Chinese language pedagogy is known for a stronger focus on the written language as opposed to the spoken language. We found that aspects of Chinese vocabulary associated with the spoken …