Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Cripping Girlhood On Service Dog Tok, Anastasia Todd

Gender and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

This article explores how disabled girl handlers crip girlhood on service dog tok, the emergent subculture on TikTok comprised of disabled handlers who upload and post videos about their everyday life in partnership with a service dog. Looking at the TikTok accounts and self-representational practices of three disabled girl handlers—Ava of @avaandcheddar, Claire of @rosie.the.sd, and Lexy of @muslimservicedogmom28—this article traces how their videos evince an audio–visual representation of interspecies intimacy, a becoming with, that complicates the familiar story of the disabled girl handler/service dog dyad that one might see or scroll past online—one of rehabilitative exceptionalism, disability disavowal, and …

Ciis Dissertation Abstracts, 2022-2023, California Institute Of Integral Studies

CIIS Dissertation Abstracts

This compilation of dissertation abstracts reflects the exciting research completed by the 2022-2023 graduates from PhD programs in the School of Consciousness and Transformation and the Clinical Psychology Doctorate (PsyD) in the School of Professional Psychology and Health at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

The original and impactful doctoral research presented here spans diverse areas of scholarship from anthropology and social change to human sexuality, philosophy and religion, and whole person approaches to psychology, demonstrating the breadth and depth of transformative and integral inquiry happening at CIIS. The transdisciplinary nature of these dissertations reflects the richness and complexity …

Queer Students: Issues In Public Schools, Hope Philea Henning

Lincoln LGBTQ+ Resource Center Student Work

A brief overview of issues queer students face in American public schools, for the purpose of the Out to Lunch with Allies presentation series from the Gonzaga Lincoln Center.

Cinema And Ritual: Decolonial Feminist Approaches To Image-Making In The Americas And The Caribbean, Natalie M. Erazo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis project is composed of an open-access syllabus hosted on a CUNY commons site, as well as a paper that examines various films and texts responding to the theme of cinema and ritual. Referenced films will focus on ritual as a decolonial feminist methodological framework, rooted primarily in Afro-descended and Indigenous cosmovisions within Latin America and the Caribbean. From a dance ritual spell warding off U.S. imperialism in present-day Puerto Rico, to a poetic visual eulogy for murdered women in rural Mexico, to a community prayer to Yemaya bringing relief for water scarcity in Cuba to a cautionary tale …

Racial-Sexual Normativity In/As Narratives Of “The Human”, Jeri Brand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis synthesizes Sylvia Wynter’s and Judith Butler’s models of identity-formation to analyze discourses of racialization and sex/gender difference in normative scientific theories of “the human.” I argue that eugenicist white supremacism and sex/gender normativity form a single conceptual framework – what I call “the racial-sexual matrix” – throughout these scientific narratives. I then trace an epistemological consistency across 18^th- through 21^st-century scientific literature as evidence for the ongoing legacies of coloniality, white supremacy, and eugenics in current hegemonic sex/gender ontologies. Finally, I contend that the racial-sexual matrix functions as an index of proper humanness not …

Algorithmic Love: Twenty-First Century Organizations Of The Romantic, Sandra Moyano Ariza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the highly computed and accelerated experiences of digital love as well as their cultural and artistic representations in order to shed light on the human and more-than-human entanglements producing the algorithmic love experience. The recent turn to love in critical theory and cultural studies examines how love circulates in neoliberal societies and in the subjective processes of the users, foregrounding the control of populations and the very much lamented “end of love” (Illouz 2019). My study of love supplements the neoliberalist critique of algorithmic love with a posthuman and media theory approach that attends to the material …

No Ela Without Ella: Understanding The Naming And Crafting Of Gendered Subjectivities In Puerto Rico, Carmín Quijano Seda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the beginning of the 20th century, the official metadiscourses about gendered job titles sedimented the idea that names or indexes pointing to women should be interpreted as unskilled, cheap, or even free labor in Puerto Rico (Azize, 1985; Muñiz Mas, 1998; Baerga-Santini, 1999). For this reason, Puerto Rican women organized and fought for equality in work settings. Furthermore, they became more active in politics and the government. Nevertheless, the Estado Libre Asociado (ELA) and local media discourses and interpretations about women’s labor discouraged them from participating in more senior positions (Acevedo Gaud, 2012).

However, this interpretation seemed to have …

'Since No Expressions Do': Queer Tools For Studying Literature, Filipa G. Calado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how digital methods and tools for studying text engage with queer literature. I critique digital methods and tools by posing computation, where textual data is cleaned and structured for electronic processing, against the complexity of queer subjecthood and affects expressed in textual style, form, and voice. While tools like quantitative text analysis, for example, transform, and necessarily reduce, qualitative elements of gender and sexuality into numerical data such as word frequencies or concordances, I argue that this reduction opens up possibilities for interpreting the formal qualities of queer literature. Just as digital formats transform and manipulate text …

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations Of “Peau D’Âne” In Contemporary French And English Texts, Amy M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations of “Peau d’Âne” in Contemporary French and English Texts explores trans-genre and transmedia adaptations of Charles Perrault’s seventeenth-century fairy tale using feminist and narratological theories to examine gendered aspects of storytelling and the treatment of father-daughter incest and blame in the work of selected French, British, and American creators. Texts are read comparatively, with analyses of the adaptations’ plots, motifs, characterizations, and modifications, both in relation to Perrault and to the other adaptations. This dissertation features prose and poetry texts by female authors—including Christine Angot, Catherine Cusset, and Emma Donoghue—in the first two chapters. Reading these …

Doenjang In The Air: Maangchi And The Mediation Of Korean Cultural Authenticity, Justin Sprague

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

In this article, I explore the ways that women of the Korean diaspora engage in cultural meaning‑making through material culture in efforts to redefine what it means for people, things, and ideas to be considered “authentically Korean”. Using the case study of famous internet chef Maangchi, I examine one of her best‑selling cookbooks and her digital presence to identify the tac‑ tics she uses to exert agency in the meaning‑making and community‑building process, using Korean food and her role as a maternal figure as vehicles for analysis. Due to her roles as a mother and her positioning as a quintessential …

[Introduction To] Tendings, Nathan Snaza

Bookshelf

In Tendings, Nathan Snaza brings contemporary feminist and queer popular culture’s resurging interest in esoteric practices like tarot and witchcraft into conversation with Black feminist and new materialist thought. Analyzing writing and performances by Maryse Condé, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Starhawk, Christina Sharpe, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and others, Snaza introduces his theory of tending as a concept that links ontology, attunement, care, and anticipatory action to explore how worlds persist through everyday acts of participation. In contrast to the universalizing presuppositions of the enlightenment, Snaza shows how certain feminist occult and esoteric practices.

"My First Best Love": Women's Writing On College Friendships 1880–1905, Alyssa J. Kayser-Hirsh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, American society encouraged strong bonds between women. As separate sphere ideology took hold, highly-structured female relationships were created and maintained through shared rituals, language, and expectations. The resulting friendships enabled women to build a range of emotional ties with one another. At the same time, an expanding array of gender segregated educational institutions further promoted homosocial networks. Women’s college students built community through their shared experience inhabiting a collective space, forging social circles as well as one-on-one intimate relationships. This thesis examines women’s experiences of friendship within the college setting between 1880 …

Digital Rhetoric Of The Invisible: Bisexual Literacy Practices On Tiktok, 2020–2021, Olivia Wood

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation uses auto- and digital-ethnographic methods to analyze the literacy practices of bisexual TikTok users primarily during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, during which time TikTok exploded in popularity among U.S. social media users, especially among young adults. It is also an exercise in neuroqueer composing, diverging at times from the norms of academic writing and the dissertation genre to perform and intentionally draw attention to neuroqueer styles of thinking and communication. I argue that bisexual invisibility and contemporary bi+ rhetorical activity must be understood within the context of LGBTQ+ political history, particularly …

‘The Power Of Three Will Set Us Free': Witchy Womanist Readings Of Toni Morrison’S Sula, Opal Palmer Adisa’S It Begins With Tears, And Migdalia Cruz’S The Have-Little And Miriam’S Flowers, Anamaría Flores

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Witchy womanism is a critical methodology for reading, teaching, and writing about literature in order to generate emancipatory knowledge, activate Queer, Black, and Indigenous consciousnesses, contribute to 21^st century women’s, Black, and Indigenous liberation movements, and foster (re)connections to ancestral rituals and knowledge. Born at the intersections of Black Studies, BIPOC Queer and Gender Studies, Caribbean Studies, English, Hip-Hop Studies and Latinx Studies, “‘The Power of Three Will Set Us Free’: Witchy Womanist Readings of Toni Morrison's Sula, Opal Palmer Adisa's It Begins With Tears, and Migdalia Cruz's The Have-Little and Miriam's Flowers" is a multidisciplinary …

Final Report: Media Intern Position At Clags, Nicolle Marquez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the Fall 2023 semester, I completed my capstone requirement in partial fulfillment for the completion of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The capstone project consisted of an internship position at CLAGS as a media producer, director and editor. The Media Intern opportunity allowed me to create digital media by way of being commissioned to pre-produce, produce, direct, edit and post-produce a crowdfunding audio-visual video for CLAGS. This paper documents my last semester on the Women’s and Gender Studies program while completing the 140-hour internship requirement from August …

Conflict And Race In Literature & Law. The Case Of Americanah, Emanuela Ignatoiu Sora

Comparative Woman

In Americanah, the 2013 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there is a scene when one of the characters, Laura, speaks of her Ugandan classmate who did not get along with an African-American colleague. Laura is surprised as, for her, all persons of color are similar, with no understanding for their differences in background, personal stories and experiences. The novel depicts and critiques this very categorization of race, which flattens differences, conflating groups and individuals who might share very little, if anything. For a long time, law (with its stipulations, precedents and rulings) has operated in a similar manner, disengaging …

“Kamli”, Ayesha Perveen

Journal of International Women's Studies

The poem sketches the landscape of a resilient South Asian woman’s un/conscious as she resists socio-religious norms that condemn her to be bereft of love. The woman is thirsty for love due to unreflective customs of a society that makes women crazy by refusing to consider the significance of love for a normal happy life. The poem embeds Urdu words within English to convey the indigenous intensity of emotions, from different levels of craziness on one hand and multiple levels of intensity of love on the other hand. The poem’s title “Kamli” conveys a higher level of craziness in which …

Professor Mali Romantic-Longhair And The Girl, Fatma Fulya Tepe, Per Bauhn

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Surgery And Salvation: The Roots Of Reproductive Injustice In Mexico, 1770-1940, Madhavi Venkatesan

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Gender Order Of Neoliberalism, Jamin A. Hübner

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Gendered War: Evaluating Feminist Ethnographic Narratives Of The 1971 War Of Bangladesh, Prashant Maurya

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Organized Muslim Women In Turkey: An Intersectional Approach To Building Women’S Coalitions, Shruti Das, Ranjit Mandal

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Maria W. Stewart And The Roots Of Black Political Thought, Jennifer Rycenga

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Film Review: Beyond Men And Masculinity–Exploring The Detrimental Effects Of Masculinity And Envisioning A New Paradigm, Raheleh Akhavizadegan

Journal of International Women's Studies

The documentary Beyond Men and Masculinity explores the negative impact of traditional masculinity on men’s mental and emotional health, as well as its broader societal implications. It advocates for a redefined version of masculinity based on vulnerability, compassion, and equality. The experts in the documentary emphasize the need for men to express their emotions, challenge traditional gender norms, and create a more just and equitable society. By redefining masculinity, the documentary envisions a future where men can thrive beyond rigid expectations and embrace their authentic selves, leading to improved mental health, reduced violence, and stronger communities.

Film Review: No Straight Lines—The Rise Of Queer Comics, Peter Tshetu Jr., Brian Pindayi

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Film Review: Street Heroines—Women Artists Shattering The Glass Walls Of Graffiti Culture, Aditi Magotra

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Film Review: Finding Her Beat 彼女たちの太鼓―蘇る鼓動: A Journey To Discover An Identity As A Taiko Artist, Minae Savas

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Attitudes Of Unmarried Men And Women Towards Stay-At-Home Husbands In Indian Society, Rasabattula Srinivas

Journal of International Women's Studies

Although at a slow rate, the gender roles of women are changing in India. Today, Indian women are assuming responsibilities far beyond those of a traditional household. However, the question arises: are the gender roles of men changing? Is Indian society open to the idea of a stay-at-home husband? To address these concerns, we conducted interviews with unmarried women and men, followed by a thematic analysis. Ninety-seven percent of male respondents expressed reluctance towards becoming a stay-at-home husband, while 86% of female respondents indicated a hesitancy to marry someone with that inclination. Major reasons cited by males included “gender role …

Communication Strategy Evaluation Of The Empowerment Program For Women Ex-Migrant Workers In Indonesia, Moh Faidol Juddi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Domestic migrant workers living with their employers is one of the major causes of cases of high inequality globally. To ease this problem, the Indonesian government has attempted to empower women ex-migrant workers by prohibiting them from returning to work in the domestic sector abroad. This empowerment program was implemented through the sustainability training program of the Community of Migrant Worker’s Families (KKBM) from 2017 to 2019. The government hoped that by focusing on entrepreneurship, former migrant laborers would be able to achieve financial independence. Most of them, however, decided to return to their previous jobs or to work overseas …

Jordanian Women In Academia: Barriers And Motivators In Scientific Research And Promotion, Abeer Al Bawab, Rana Dajani, Lubna Akroush, Rania Ahmad Jaber, Abeer Bashier Dababneh, Muna Yacoub Hindiyeh, Fairouz M. Aldhmour, Sabha Alkam, Zaina Muqbel, Yazan A. Al-Ajlouni

Journal of International Women's Studies

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the research output and status of women academics in science fields in Jordan. The rationale is to identify trends as well as challenges to advise policy makers and university administrators on how to promote more involvement of women academics within the university. A survey of two sections was developed. The first section included 36 items that measure demographics and challenges in academic, research, administrative, and family contexts. The second section included questions regarding motivators and barriers to academic research. Participants were prompted to respond per the Likert’s Scale, where the responses were …