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Voices Of Rebellion: A Lesson On Feminism, Identity, And Popular Music, Michelle Vasquez

ENGS 15.11: Design and Education

This lesson focuses on the rise of the feminist punk rock movement Riot Grrrl, and the political, social, and cultural conversations brought about by the band that created the genre, Bikini Kill. Students will explore the history of the genre and how its emergence had a great influence on political movements, female empowerment, the 3rd-wave of feminism, as well as the punk rock scene as a whole. Through engaging discussions, lyrical and performance analysis, and scholarly research on popular music, the lesson will highlight the ways in which artists have represented, subverted, and critiqued societal norms and politics surrounding gender …

The Rescue Of Wahutedew’Á And The Epistemological Reforestation: An Analysis Of Time In A Terra Dos Mil Povos, By Kaká Werá Jecupé, Ivo Cruz

The Coastal Review

It is estimated that in 1500, the year the Portuguese arrived in America, there was a population of 2,431,000 inhabitants, according to historian John Hemming (1978), who occupied the lands that we now know as Brazil. These peoples had their own culture whose cosmology was destroyed and erased over time by a violent process of colonization. Even though entire groups were decimated, much of their influence is still alive in Brazilian culture. This influence can be found in vocabulary, cuisine, and even religious practices. With the aim of rescuing ancestral narratives and knowledge of various native peoples, Kaká Werá Jecupé …

Light And Darkness For Aesthetic Pleasure: An Exploration Of J.M.G. Le Clézio’S Early Writings And Jun’Ichiro Tanizaki’S In Praise Of Shadows, Kenichiro Otani

The Coastal Review

Building upon comparative principles, this semantic reading of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows and J.M.G. Le Clézio’s early writings illustrates how both the Franco-Mauritian author and the Japanese writer problematize modern Western perception laden with concepts stifling flexible imagination through the mysterious worldview of light/darkness. They also simultaneously express the hope that another way of life leading to liberation is possible. Delving into the spiritual confinement of the subject, they demonstrate how keeping rich creativity within one’s heart can be an escape from a stagnant society. Albeit in very different mediums, Tanizaki and Le Clézio assert that the …

Consumptive Femininity: (De)Constructions Of Gender And Colonization In Korean Diaspora Literature, Jack Kelly

Honors Program Theses

This paper explores how two authors with Korean heritage use similar metaphors to write about the same historical traumas. I engage close readings of two novels—Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and Yu Miri’s The End of August—to interrogate how each author uses images of food/food preparation as well as images of sexual encounters to draw links between exploited bodies and exploited land. Ultimately, I find that the differences in these two authors’ approaches reflect their distance from modern centers of empire. This reminds us of the importance of having a diverse literary and historical canon that centers on authors who have …

Queer In & Out Of Montana: Oral Histories Of The Lgbtq+ Exodus From Montana, Erin T. Heaton

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This project will summarize findings from six oral histories of LGBTQ+ people who lived in Montana, but have left or are leaving in the near future. This project will explore the questions: Why are queer and transgender people leaving Montana? What are common experiences for LGBTQ+ people living in Montana? The answer to these questions will be derived from the stories of the Narrators who provided their oral histories. The questions utilized in the oral histories covered topics of identity, “coming out,” living history, cultural observations, community experiences and perceptions, well-being, healthcare, laws, and reasons for leaving. Thematic Analysis was …

Social Media Through A Binary Lens: The Impact On College Students & Their Mental Health, Piper Mallchok

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

It is important to first understand how individuals use social media so that we can then understand how and why their use will change the individual impact social media will have. Some students experience a decline in their mental health when their social media use changes. There is an abundance of research on college students and social media, respectively, that also addresses gender as a variable. In this review, the research will be studied to further understand the voices of those who are not commonly included in research that operates under a gendered framework. Additionally, these ideas will be compared …

Lilly Reich: La Mente Detrás Del Mobiliario Moderno Que La Historia Olvidó, Noa Llanas Angrill

GDI. Revista de investigación de Género, Diseño e Innovación

La historia ha sido escrita desde una perspectiva que se ha invisibilizado las contribuciones femeninas en su desarrollo. Este artículo se centra en Lilly Reich (1885-1947), figura clave del diseño moderno, cuya autoría ha sido eclipsada por la de su colaborador Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. La investigación evidencia que la diseñadora no solo contribuyó al diseño de mobiliario moderno y de espacios expositivos, sino que lideró proyectos clave y que su trabajo ha impactado en el diseño expositivo, textil y mobiliario moderno.

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 …

Eros And The Sublime: Tools For Reaching Toward An Altered Ecological Consciousness, Aineka Carlson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores connections between the Kantian sublime and Anne Carson’s ideas regarding “eros.” Since Kant’s Critique of Judgement was published in 1790, the Kantian sublime has grown in popularity and been utilized by theorists and creative writers alike. While the Kantian sublime is often associated with nature in popular culture, there are certain egocentric and phallocentric elements of this mode of thinking that might inhibit a biocentric mindset. Through a character study of Oryx from Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake, this thesis draws relations between the subjugation of women, nature, and the ways in which the popularized …

Sexual And Gender-Based Violence Against Women In Sports: Prevalence, Impact, And Interventions In East Africa, Hesbon Hansen Owilla, Nancy Achieng' Booker, George Nyabuga, Tulinagwe Mwampanga, Samantha Agasha, Liz Awino, Ella Smith

Graduate School of Media and Communications

This study investigated the prevalence, causes, and impact of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against women in sports across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study combined quantitative surveys with qualitative interviews to explore the scale of SGBV, its root causes, and the lived experiences of female athletes. A cross-sectional descriptive design was adopted, with data collected from athletes, coaches, administrators, and sports officials from federations and associations in the three countries. Stratified and purposive sampling techniques at the federations, clubs and within the clubs was used and this ensured representation at multiple levels of the sports …

Feeling Foreign / Foreign Feeling: Affect In Southeast Asian Diasporic Short Story Collections, Francys Aerin Fortes

Theses and Dissertations

Affect studies have long been saturated with scholarship investigating the fluidity of emotions, though a larger turn in the field now prioritizes the felt experiences of marginalized peoples. Sianne Ngai’s work is one part of this turn that seeks to unpack the effects of oppressive systemic forces on Black, Brown, and queer bodies. Sianne Ngai reexamined the nature of emotions in her seminal text Ugly Feelings (2005), particularly concerned with how negative feelings are disproportionately felt by marginalized bodies as a result of conditions of obstructed agency, systems of power, and wage labor capitalism. Drawing from Ngai’s writing, this thesis …

At The Mercy Of All Things: Nurturing Experimental Queer Writing On Embodied Mothering, Charley Koenig

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploration of the ability of experimental queer writing to grow and transform expressions of mothering and care. The moves made here—both in the scholarship and anchor texts examined herein and in my own contributions to this effort—work to dethatch those toxic dominating narratives on motherhood, enforced and reinforced by our current Western society and culture, that contaminate and restrict our constructions of what it means to be and do mother. The collective work of experimental queer writers makes possible more nuanced, realistic, messy, complex, varied, embodied, liberating, and literally and figuratively dirty renditions of mothering and …

Marks Of Heritage: Chicana Tattoo Artists Navigating Gender, Culture, And Artistic Expression In "Men's Work", Ryleigh Hickman

Theses and Dissertations

Art, and tattoos especially, have been fundamental in creating and articulating an identity for Chicanos within the United States. Yet, for much of the history of Chicano style tattoos, Chicana/xs were not free to engage with them in the same way that Chicanos were. In many regards, their entrance into these spaces was restricted (Santos 2009). However, recently with the growing interest in tattoo art and career opportunities, the industry has expanded significantly, creating more opportunities for a broader range of individuals. This research aims to explore how young Chicana/x and Latina tattoo artists now accessing these spaces navigate and …

Lady Macbeth's Maternity And Morality, Lauren Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the ways in which adaptations of Lady Macbeth from the seventeenth century to modern day have functioned to vilify or redeem Lady Macbeth based on her connection with her maternity as well as on the contextual, cultural, and political opinions surrounding both a woman’s place in society and the importance of maternity. This thesis examines William D’Avenant’s 1674 stage adaptation of Macbeth, Han Tae-Sook’s 1998 stage adaptation Lady Macbeth, and Lisa Klein’s 2009 novel adaptation Lady Macbeth’s Daughter to capture a range of cultures and the evolution of the character.

Skin And Bones: Transgenerational Trauma, Experimental Storytelling, And The Texture Of Hope, A Creative Dissertation, Janine Blue

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation theorizes and enacts experimental storytelling as a method for engaging transgenerational trauma, highlighting how form shapes the ways histories are remembered, embodied, and reimagined across generations. Grounded in hope rehearsal as both a theoretical and creative framework, this project examines how BIPOC writers use experimental writing techniques to navigate the afterlives of historical trauma and reclaim storytelling as an act of meaning-making, communal care, and futurity. The dissertation begins with a critical chapter that explores these experimental techniques as strategies for recovery and resistance. The dissertations’ creative chapter, Andre Lyle: Skin and Bones, expands on these ideas …

Intersectionality And The Canon Of Romanticism, Serenah Minasian

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation discusses the origins of the canon and the place it has in British Romanticism studies both past and present. This research begins unpacking what has already been done in this sector of study and takes it steps further by the use of Crenshaw’s “intersectionality” theory. The “Introduction” unpacks past scholarly work and its role in the present studies and how we must move beyond the past. “Chapter I” serves as a historical breakdown of the canon’s role and impact in both literary studies and Romanticism studies in specific. “Chapter II” provides an in depth analysis of two major …

Exploring Canadian Social Work Students' Aphobic Attitudes: The Role Of Knowledge About Asexuality And Asexual People, Brianna V. Azzoparde

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Aphobic attitudes are negative biases and prejudices against asexual individuals that can contribute to aphobic discrimination. While the Canadian Social Work Code of Ethics states that social workers should not discriminate and should provide culturally responsive services to marginalized populations, individually held aphobic attitudes have the potential to diminish one’s ability to provide culturally responsive services to asexual people. This national study examined aphobic attitudes among 326 Canadian social work students, exploring the relationship between knowledge about asexuality and aphobic attitudes, including controlling for demographic factors, social contact with asexuals, and social attitudes that previous research has identified as being …

2slgbtq+ Contact As A Vehicle For Promoting Alternative Sexual Scripts Through Exposure To Queer And Trans Ways Of Knowing, Sophie R. Landry

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Research on the Traditional Sexual Script (TSS) suggests it can have harmful repercussions, such as sexual violence, gender inequity, and the undermining of communication. My research explores the novel idea that intergroup contact with 2SLGBTQ+ individuals can promote CisHet (cisgender, heterosexual) individuals to value alternative sexual scripts that emphasize communication, authenticity, and equity, and to question the TSS. In Study 1, I found that CisHet people who had more 2SLGBTQ+ contact reported greater concern for consent and were less likely to agree with traditional gender norms relative to those who made less contact. In both Study 2 and Study 3, …

Geographies Of Trauma And Healing: Resistance, Resilience, ‘Ustawi Wa’, And The Lived Experiences Of African Women Refugees From The Ehagl Region In Canada, Rosemary Njeri Kimani-Dupuis Dr., Rosemary Kimani-Dupuis

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation explores the lived experiences of African women refugees from the East and Horn of Africa and Great Lakes (EHAGL) region resettled in Ontario, Canada, with particular focus on the complex intersections of trauma, resilience, and healing within global refugee governance. It asks: How do the gendered and spatial dynamics of refugee protection and Canadian settlement systems sustain structural violence against African women refugees, and how do their transnational experiences challenge and reshape dominant frameworks of care, well-being, and institutional response?

Through a multi-scalar analysis—macro (legal governance frameworks), meso (institutional actors), and micro (women’s narratives)—the study explores how trauma …

Exploring The Shadows: How Taylor Swift's Music Embodies Dark Sound As A Popular Music Artist, Kristyn E. Cole

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

To challenge the conceptual matter of “dark sound”, this major research paper centers around the popular music artist, Taylor Swift to demonstrate an overarching feminist wisdom in an alternative style of music to identify how Taylor Swift presents and embodies qualities of “dark sound”. Research done by D. Ferrett, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes and Paul C. Jasen are used to examine her popular music, and its intersections and influence on our culture and society. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, this research paper discusses three of Swift’s songs; “willow” (evermore, 2020) for her sound, All Too Well: The Short …

Queer-Keying: Performing Video Processes As [Trans]Gressive Resistance, Wren Tiffany

Theses and Dissertations

As part of the 2025 VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), I transformed the 'Sponge' gallery on the top floor of The Anderson, VCU’s historic thesis exhibition home, into The Green Room, a neon green, immersive video and performance space featuring mirrors, disco lights, a foam tile dance floor, makeup stations, and a functioning green-screen editing suite. This hybrid drag rehearsal and ‘Chroma-key’ green video production room deepened both my understandings of Queer performance art and process-based art making during the Spring of 2025, through two public performance activation …

“Some Vague Utopia”: Searching For Urania, Moira L. Neve

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the global pendulum swing of gender trouble marked by the United States’ President’s declaration that there are only two sexes, activists have been rejecting assimilation (ie. defining equality as gay marriage or queer people in the military) within queer studies long before 2025. In the first half of the 20th century, a journal by the name of Urania (1916-1940), privately published and circulated to their home base in the United Kingdom and beyond, five editors (Esther Roper, Eva Gore-Booth, Jessey Wade, Dorothy Cornish, and Irene Clyde/Thomas Baty), challenged the gender binary and the resulting assumptions of heterosexual marriage. This …

Liner Notes On Black Trans Girlhood: Afrofuturist Affect & Black Popular Music As A Praxis Of Self-Fashioning, Shawn J. Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Liner Notes on Black Trans Girlhood: Afrofuturist Affect & Black Popular Music as a Praxis of Self-Fashioning interprets Black musical performance in identity-making, with a focus on how music and Black trans identity intersect and informs Black trans girlhood. As such, Black trans girls render ourselves legible, i.e. understood without shame or judgment, by constructing our identities through the music by Black women we listen and dance to, or watch and sing. These musical connections affirm the possibilities of Black femme expression. This expression of Black femininity is due to what I call an Afrofuturist affect, by which I refer …

Temporary Marriage In Iraq: Views And Perceptions, Zena Al Safar

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

In July 2024, the Shia Muslim Parliament members proposed an amendment to the Personal Status Law. This amendment was passed on February 11, 2025. Per the amendment, the Shia Ja’afari School of Islamic jurisprudence has four months from the time the amendment was passed to submit a Personal Status Code for approval. It is speculated that this new Code will legalize mut’ah marriage, which is a type of temporary marriage. Temporary marriage within Islam is a heterosexual marriage that does not convey long-term commitment and usually has an end date. While scholarly written work in this field exists in other …

A Feminist Evaluation Of The Joint Programme: Assessing The Cultural Sensitivity Of Unicef And Unfpa's Strategies On Female Genital Cutting/Circumcision In Senegal And Nigeria, Coumba Soumare

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Female Genital Cutting/Circumcision (FGC) encompasses procedures involving the partial or total removal of female external genitalia or other genital injuries, performed for non-medical reasons. Typically carried out on young girls, often between infancy and age 15, FGC is widely condemned in global discourse as a harmful and barbaric practice. However, within certain cultures, it is viewed as a rite of passage or a necessary tradition. I argue that to effectively address FGC, organizations must adopt a culturally sensitive approach. This research examines the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) and the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) initiatives in Senegal and Nigeria. …

No More Pinkwashing At The Pink Pony Club: A Feminist Media Analysis Of The Potential Shift In Queer Popular Culture To Decenter Homonationalism And Pinkwashing, Taylor G. Maki

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Previous research on queer popular culture highlights the influence popular culture has had on the United States’ legal and political protections for queer people—specifically cisgender gay men and cisgender lesbians with the legalization of same-sex marriage and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” However, some scholars and queer activists critique the homonationalist and pinkwashing agendas deployed by LGBTQ popular culture activists. This research examines whether or not there has been a shift in dominant queer popular culture that decenters homonationalism and pinkwashing. Using a feminist media analysis, this research examines contemporary queer musicians’ activism against the United States’ involvement …

Modern Feminist Social Movements In Rural America: A Three- Part Study, Susan Kroger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern feminist social movement can be characterized by several distinctive features. The use of social media, the incorporation of intersectionality, and the injection of policy into modern social movements requires a broad approach to these movements that allows for examination from multiple angles. The proposed project allows for a nuanced and thorough look into an existing social movement in rural America as it unfolds and examines that movement through several lenses. Additionally, the project incorporates current social movement and feminist theory and notes the importance of examining these theoretical perspectives through an applied lens: in order for change to occur, …

"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 …

The Romanticization Of Human-Vampire Relationships: How 'Twilight' And 'The Vampire Diaries' May Prime Young Women To Accept Dating Violence, Natalie M. Bowen

UROP Posters

The first literary vampire can be traced back to 18th century Germany, with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem “Die Braut von Korinth,” but the stereotypical features of a vampire are traditionally accredited to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Modern vampires, such as Edward Cullen and Stefan Salvatore of the Twilight and The Vampire Diaries series respectively, have managed to win the hearts of teenage girls all across America with their sex appeal and charismatic nature. According to Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, individuals learn new behaviors by modeling and imitating the actions of those around them. This comprehensive literature review investigates the connection …

40 Years Passing By In (A) “Heartbeat”, Christopher Janney

Monsoon: South Asian Studies Association Journal

This article outlines the forty-year history go Christopher Janney’s iconic performance work “HeartBeat.” Trained as an architect and jazz musician, Janney combines these two disciplines to create large interactive light/sound installations and performances. On the one hand, he attempts to make architecture more like music, more “alive” using real-time sensing devices as on his “Harmonic Convergence” installation on the Miami International Airport. On the other hand, he attempts to make music more like architecture, more physical more visual. In his “HeartBeat” performance, a dancer wears a heartbeat device that amplifies his/her heartbeat in “real time.” Over this pulse, live musicians …