Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Women Against Dictatorship And Repression: A Comparative Study Of The Women’S Organizations Formed In Chile And Argentina Respectively Between 1973-1990 And 1976-1983, Ariana L. Awad

Honors Theses

This project is a comparative case study between the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina who formed during the dictatorship of the military junta from 1976 to 1983 and the groups of women that formed organizations in Chile under Pinochet beginning in 1973. The thesis looks at the roles of specific institutions, such as their respective governments, the United States and the Catholic Church and how they differed in each country. The thesis not only examines the institutional influences on the movements but also how both of their coalitions’ outcomes were influenced by historical factors. At first glance, …

Fashion And Cosmetic Advertising In Three Magazines In The 1950s: How Advertising Shaped Societal Expectations Of Beauty, Lindsey B. Sloan

Honors Theses

Since its creation, print advertising has affected how women perceive beauty and has shaped the trend of consumer purchasing, as well as the social status of women. This thesis analyzes three women’s magazines—Life, Ladies’ Home Journal and Ebony and evaluates how the advertising of fashion and cosmetics portrayed ideals of beauty in the 1950s and how the advertisements may have shaped or reflected class differences and racial perceptions in mid 19th century America. In order to accomplish this analysis and to evaluate how fashion and cosmetic advertising may have differed based on targeted demographic, advertisements from the months April and …

Bolshevik For Capitalism: Ayn Rand & Soviet Socialist Realism, Peter Jebsen

CMC Senior Theses

Since the late 1950s, Russian-American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand has been “the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right.” Her philosophy – “Objectivism” – combined militant atheism, libertarian natural rights, and a philosophical commitment to what she called “the virtue of selfishness,” and earned her the admiration of such luminaries as Alan Greenspan: a remarkable achievement for an immigrant woman who learned to speak English in her late 20s. What is less-often observed is that Rand’s work, especially her mature novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), bear a close stylistic resemblance to the Soviet Socialist Realist …

Gender And Justice: The Experience Of Female Lawyers In Indiananapolis, Jessica Louise Nelson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

"Gentleman M.B". is recorded in United States history as far back as 1638, and was a successful landowner, local leader, and attorney to the governor. What is not translated is that this gentleman was, in fact, a woman: Margaret Brent was the first known female attorney, and would be the only one allowed entrance to the Bar for more than 200 years. Even though centuries later, in 1869, Myra Bradwell (Illinois), Mary Magoon (Iowa) and Belle Mansfield (Iowa) gained access to the legal community, women remained an outcast minority until very recently. A mere two percent of the profession was …

A Stitch In Time: The Needlework Of Aging Women In Antebellum America, Aimee E. Newell

Open Access Dissertations

In October 1852, Amy Fiske (1785-1859) of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, stitched a sampler. But she was not a schoolgirl making a sampler to learn her letters. Instead, as she explained: “The above is what I have taken from my sampler that I wrought when I was nine years old. It was w[rough]t on fine cloth it tattered to pieces. My age at this time is 66 years.” Drawing from 167 examples of decorative needlework – primarily samplers and quilts from 114 collections across the United States – made by individual women aged forty years and over between 1820 and 1860, this …

Marriage Vows And Economic Discrimination: The Married Teacher Problem, Sabrina Thomas

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study analyzes the rapid increase of economic discrimination against married women teachers in the early twentieth century, particularly during the Depression. It challenges the notion that economic discrimination against married women teachers was simple, easy, and largely was unchallenged. I argue that the creation and proliferation of marriage bars in the early twentieth century involved a compounded and multifaceted set of economic and social concerns. Support for this argument is accomplished by examination of the national debate on marriage bars as well as careful investigation of the local debate illustrated in Huntington, West Virginia.

The Border At War: World War Ii Along The United States-Mexico Border, Winifred Baumer Dowling

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The U.S.-Mexico border, especially the shared border of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, was in many ways transformed by the effects of World War II. This study examines change or continuity brought about by the war. The border region reflected many similarities to the national reaction to the upheaval of World War II. Yet there were dramatic differences as well. Examples of continuity and change are examined through the lens of border relations, labor and the economy, Mexican Americans, border women, and health on the border.

Wartime relations between El Paso and Juarez reached a zenith of good …

“Lost In Translation?”: Women’S Issues In The Struggle For National Liberation In South Africa (1910-1985), Carly F. Bower

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the struggles of South African women from the beginning of the Union of South Africa and the period of Segregation to the period of national defiance during Apartheid, throughout all of its ebbs and flows. By contextualizing women’s struggle for political and gender liberation within the political struggle of black men in South Africa, this study broadens the picture of female involvement within the anti-Segregation and anti-Apartheid struggles. In formal organizations such as trade unions and the Federation of South African Women, by the force of grassroots movements and boycotts, and through the persistence of informal economic …

"What A Woman Can Do With An Auto" : American Women In The Early Automotive Era, Carla Rose Lesh

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

ABSTRACT

The Temperance Worker As Social Reformer And Ethnographer As Exemplified In The Life And Work Of Jessie A. Ackermann., Margaret Shipley Carr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project used primary historical documents from the Jessie A. Ackermann collection at ETSU's Archives of Appalachia, other books and documents from the temperance period, and recent scholarship on the subjects of temperance, suffrage, and women travelers and civilizers. As the second world missionary for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Ackermann traveled in order to establish WCT Unions and worked as a civilizer, feminist, and reporter of the conditions of women and the disadvantaged throughout the world.

Relays In Rebellion: The Power In Lilian Ngoyi And Fannie Lou Hamer, Cathy Laverne Freeman

History Theses

This thesis compares how Lilian Ngoyi of South Africa and Fannie Lou Hamer of the United States crafted political identities and assumed powerful leadership, respectively, in struggles against racial oppression via the African National Congress and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. The study asserts that Ngoyi and Hamer used alternative sources of personal power which arose from their location in the intersecting social categories of culture, gender and class. These categories challenge traditional disciplinary boundaries and complicate any analysis of political economy, state power relations and black liberation studies which minimize the contributions of women. Also, by analyzing resistance leadership …

Before The Second Wave: College Women, Cultural Literacy, Sexuality And Identity, 1940--1965, Babette Faehmel

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation follows career-oriented college women over the course of their education in liberal arts programs and seeks to explain why so many of them, in departure from original plans of combining work and marriage, married and became full-time mothers. Using diaries, personal correspondences, and student publications, in conjunction with works from the social sciences, philosophy, and literature, I argue that these women's experiences need to be understood in the context of cultural conflicts over the definition of class, status, and national identity. Mid twentieth-century college women, I propose, began their education at a moment when the convergence of long-contested …

"In Order To Establish Justice": The Nineteenth-Century Woman Suffrage Movements Of Maine And New Brunswick, Shannon M. Risk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study of the nineteenth-century woman suffrage movements in Maine and New Brunswick brings to light the struggles of Americans and Canadians to define a wider democracy and citizenry amid times of profound socio-economic changes. Targeting the struggle for the female vote allows the historian to explore time-honored ideas about womanhood, manhood, and membership in a national political body. In the Borderlands of Maine and New Brunswick, a place where historians see cultural connections, the border loomed large. Borderlands historians have virtually ignored women’s political behavior in this region. This study will demonstrate that although Maine and New Brunswick women …

Vibia Perpetua's Diary: A Women's Writing In A Roman Text Of Its Own, Melissa Perez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writing the history of women in antiquity is hindered by the lack of written sources by them. It has been the norm to assume that the only sources that can tell us something about them are the sources written by men. This thesis challenges this convention as it concerns the social history of Rome through the exploration of a written source by a woman named Vibia Perpetua. She was a Roman woman of twenty-two years from Roman Carthage, who was martyred on March 7, 203 C.E. The reason that we know of this Roman woman and what happened to her …

Julia Hills Johnson, 1783-1853 My Soul Rejoiced, Linda J. Thayne

Theses and Dissertations

Julia Hills Johnson, the 48-year-old wife of Ezekiel Johnson and mother of sixteen children, found spiritual fulfillment in the doctrines of a new religion called Mormonism. Her baptism in 1831 was a simple act that ultimately led her halfway across the American continent, and strained her marital relationship, yet filled her with a sense of spiritual contentment. Julia's commitment to her faith, her tenacity, self-determination and willingness to take risks to participate in this new religious movement sets her apart from other nineteenth-century farm women in New England and New York. Julia's religiosity was self-determined and tenacious. She chose to …

How Soviet Russia Liberated Women: The Soviet Model In Clara Zetkin's Periodical 'Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale', Liberty Peterson Sproat

Theses and Dissertations

Clara Zetkin was celebrated in both Germany and the Soviet Union before World War II because of her active involvement in the communist movement. She wrote prolifically and preached the virtues of socialism. She concerned herself particularly with women's needs, arguing that women would respond best to a different form of agitation than that used among men. Zetkin asserted that communism was the only way to respond to women's concerns as mothers and that only state involvement in domestic life would allow women to be fully emancipated. Women needed freedom from household work and increased training and support to aid …

Progressivism And The Mission Field: Church Of The Brethren Women Missionaries In Shanxi, China, 1908-1951, Carol Longenecker

All Theses

This thesis examines the attitudes and activities of Church of the Brethren women missionaries in Shanxi, China, between 1908 and 1951, focusing on evangelism, 'woman's work' programs, education, and relief work. This thesis presents the mission field as an expression of changing gender roles in the Church of the Brethren. In sum, Brethren women missionaries in Shanxi embodied both conservative and progressive ideologies and ultimately moved in a progressive direction, seeking growth, flexibility, and accommodation in their mission endeavor. The expansion of the Church of the Brethren mission field and the denomination's geographic and cultural boundaries has implications for the …

From Womanhood To Sisterhood: The Evolution Of The Brigham Young University Women's Conference, Velda Gale Davis Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

For over twenty-five years the Brigham Young University Women's Conference has given women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon) the opportunity to go beyond womanhood and share sisterhood. Spurred by the women's movement of the 1970s, LDS women were pressed to define for themselves what it meant to be a woman in the Church. This discovery and defining process often brought confusion, criticism and conflict. As women sought to reconcile the discrepancies between their own lives and views, their internal definition and the external definition they received from others, a reconstruction began to take …

Richmond, Virginia's Every Monday Club, 1889-1919, Maureen Elizabeth Salmon

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the formation and growth of the Every Monday Club, a woman's literary club in Richmond, Virginia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Since the group has never been researched before, most of the study concentrates on untouched archives. The study uses the extensive Every Monday Club papers which include club meeting minutes, letters, papers, pictures, yearbooks, and newspaper clippings. This information is also supplemented with obituaries, census, and other primary data. The records disclose issues of class, race and education.

The Battle For Women's Suffrage In The Old Dominion, Amanda Garrett

Master's Theses

In 1909, twenty women launched an eleven-year campaign to win the vote in the Old Dominion. In 1920, the necessary number of states ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. However, Virginia was not among these states; her General Assembly rejected the "Anthony Amendment" by a wide margin. This study attempts to answer the following question: What was the woman's suffrage movement like in Virginia? By exploring the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, its leaders, arguments for and against suffrage, the public's reaction, the reaction of the legislature and the conclusion, the answer(s) to this multi-dimensional question can be discovered. …

Insiders: Louisiana Journalists Sallie Rhett Roman, Helen Grey Gilkison, Iris Turner Kelso, Angie Pitts Juban

LSU Master's Theses

Sallie Rhett Roman, Helen Grey Gilkison and Iris Turner Kelso were three women journalists in Louisiana, active in consecutive time periods from 1891 to 1996. Their work brings up five particular questions. First, Why did these women start working and how did they negotiate public employment? Second, how did they balance the relationship between work and home since they did find employment outside of the home? Third, how did they fit into their contemporary image of women and journalists? Fourth, how did they use written language to portray a particular voice to the reader for a particular purpose? Fifth, did …

Pseudo-Democracy In America, 1945-1960: Anticommunism Versus The Social Issues Of African Americans And Women., Fashion S. Bowers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the period 1945 - 1960, the United States developed an intense fervor of anticommunism and strove to prevent the spread of communism to other nations, particularly the Indochina region. As a result, the government ignored or responded inadequately to key social events at home affecting both women and African Americans. This thesis will explore the extent of the active involvement in Indochina to prevent the spread of communism and the effects of that involvement on major social issues at home concerning African Americans and women. The United States had numerous opportunities to discontinue its involvement in Indochina, but it …

Faith, Femininity, And The Frontier: The Life Of Martha Jane Knowlton Coray, Amy Reynolds Billings

Theses and Dissertations

Through examining the life of Martha Jane Knowlton Coray, a nineteenth-century Mormon woman, this thesis establishes an analytical framework for studying the lives of Mormon women in territorial Utah. Their faith, femininity, and the frontier form the boundaries in which their lives are studied. Their faith was primarily defined by the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, such as a belief in a restored gospel and priesthood, temples, and polygamy. These unique beliefs also fostered an identity as a chosen people and contributed to hostile feelings from their neighbors. Persecution followed and the Latter-day Saint community …

The Changing Landscape: Women Of The Westward Expansion 1847-1853, Mary Ann Ricigliano Cashman

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Women At The Loom: Handweaving In Washington County, Tennessee, 1840-1860., Ann Cameron Macrae

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the evidence for handweaving in antebellum Washington County, Tennessee. The author examines probate inventories, wills, store ledgers, and census and tax materials to determine the identities of the weavers, the equipment and raw materials available to them, and the kinds of textiles that women wove. The author discusses the reasons many women continued to weave cloth at home although commercially woven textiles were available in local stores.

The author concludes that many of Washington County's antebellum weavers wove as a contribution to the country goods the family bartered at the local store. Others may have been responding …

New Jersey Women And Their Strategies For Exerting Power In Marriage, 1770-1800, Jacqueline Deyo

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

From 'Chrysler Girls' To 'Dodge Boys': The Emergence Of Women In Windsor's Automotive Industry, 1964-1976, Brandi Lyn Lucier

Major Papers

From 'Chrysler Girls' to 'Dodge Boys': The Emergence of Women in Windsor's Automotive Industry, 1964-1976 is a study of female auto workers' lack of equality in seniority at the Windsor Spring plant, a division of Chrysler Canada. While a small number of women worked in Chrysler's, Windsor, Ontario, parts plants during the 1930s and 1940s, few women worked in passenger car and truck assembly plants because collective agreements between the UAW and the auto manufacturer upheld sex-based job classifications and seniority lists which ultimately limited women's participation in the plants. Based on the idea that women were financial dependents and …

"Give It All Up And Follow Your Lord": Mormon Female Religiosity, 1831-1843, Janiece L. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1750s American women have flocked to churches. Women have consistently been the majority in church populations. Religion was the central motivation of the female life experience. Likewise, women comprised a significant portion of the membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its first decade. There exists little historical analysis of the contribution and experience of these women as a whole. As a result of this lack of research some historians have made erroneous assumptions of patriarchal oppression and a lack of commitment on the part of early Mormon women. This project closely examines the …

Fostering Flowers: Women, Landscape And The Psychodynamics Of Gender In 19th Century Australia, Pamela Hodge

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

It is said that when the Sphinx was carved into the bedrock of Egypt it had the head as well as the body of Sekhmet lioness Goddess who presided over the rise and fall of the Nile, and that only much later was the head recarved to resemble a male pharaoh. Simon Schama considered the 'making over' of Mount Rushmore to resemble America's Founding Fathers constituted 'the ultimate colonisation of nature by culture … a distinctly masculine obsession (expressing) physicality, materiality and empirical externality,… a rhetoric of humanity's uncontested possession of nature. It would be comforting to think that, although …

The Civil War And Social Change : White Women In Fredericksburg, Virginia, Edward John Harcourt

Master's Theses

This thesis concerns the white women of Fredericksburg, Virginia, during and immediately after the Civil War. Between 1861-1865, Fredericksburg existed in the no-man's land between Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia. The town was bombarded, occupied by enemy forces, and ransacked. Military control of the town changed hands 10 times. Four major battles were fought around Fredericksburg, resulting in over 100,000 casualties. Throughout the conflict, Fredericksburg's white women were in the thick of the action - supporting their troops, nursing the wounded, and managing the increasingly desperate struggle to provide food and shelter for their families. By 1865, many lives were …