Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Saint Brigit And Her Habits: Exploring Queerness In Early Medieval Ireland, Jacqueline K. Stephenson

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Saint Brigit's behavior and reception by society highlight an avenue by which women in the early medieval period could escape societal strictures, exercising agency over their bodies and their romantic choices, and carve out a distinct and unexpected place for themselves in a Christian patriarchal society. In Saint Brigit’s case, this is especially demonstrated by the breadth of her portrayed power as not just a nun but a saint, her extreme resistance to marriage, and her frequent comparisons to men. Indeed, her hagiography, written by Cogitosus in the seventh century, positioned her as one of the three principal and earliest …

First Comes Love, Then Comes Disparage: How The Production Code Impacted Women’S Roles In Romantic Comedies, Emma Hoback

Honors Projects

Through the analysis of twelve films, I looked to see how the creation and dissolving of the Motion Picture Production Code impacted women’s representation on screen. I looked at six films from the pre-Code era of film (1930-1934) and six films from the newly defined post-Code period (1968-1972). In this paper, I break down the Production Code itself and conduct genre research. The romantic comedy sub-genre was selected for this project. The romantic comedy creates a space for women to have leading roles and have comedy make fun of or reinforce gendered stereotypes. This paper looks at how women went …

The Women Of Justice: Narratives Of Women Attorneys In California During The 1960s And 1990s, Sarah Zion

Master's Theses

This thesis interviews two women attorneys who have not previously shared their stories to relate their experience of going to law school and entering the field after graduation. The study of women lawyers and their stories is not a new topic, however, there is a focus in the scholarship to only explore the tales of the women who reached the big firsts, such as first female lawyer or first female judge. By providing interviews of women who have not reached these big accomplishments, the field gains a more rounded understanding of the history of female lawyers. The two women interviewed …

Exposing The Governmental Amnesia Of The Human Rights Violations That Occurred In The Magdalene Laundries, Sarah G. Gallagher

Student Theses

Throughout history, Ireland is not regarded as a champion in the area of human rights discourse, but in recent years it has found itself present in it. Pre-secularized Ireland violated human and women’s rights in institutions such as the Magdalene Laundries. Within these institutions, girls and women were subjected to various types of abuse (e.g., sexual, physical, emotional, and mental). After their time in the Laundries, they faced a life of silence and shame due to the stigma of being incarcerated in a Laundry. Due to the stigma, survivors were unable to discuss their experiences in the Laundries as they …

Women And Religion In The Mongol Empire, Karlie Barnett

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Aspects of the Mongol Empire have been well studied in academia, but these analyses, like much of our recording and analysis of world history overall, have largely excluded women. This thesis seeks to contribute to the effort to restore women to Mongol history, focusing on how the relationship between Mongol women and religion impacted the development of the Mongol Empire and Eurasian religions during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. With a focus on elite women due to the nature of the sources, I draw upon historical chronicles, traveler accounts, artwork, and contributions from scholars in this field to assert that …

Translating The Enlightenment: Women Translators In Eighteenth-Century France, Marissa Gavin

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines women translators in Enlightenment France for their strategies to achieve publication. Elite, French Enlightenment women appropriated oppressive structures and norms, redeploying them to expand their own roles. This paper examines Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, Louise d’Epinay, and Anne LeFevre Dacier as exemplars of elite women translators who exploited gendered assumptions to gain access to print. Each of these women came from differing backgrounds, received differing levels of support from their patriarchal relations and expressed differing societal concerns through their writing. Despite such differences, Riccoboni, Dacier and d’Epinay all utilized similar strategies alongside translation to disseminate their concerns. Operating within …

Community In The Cell: Queer Women’S Space And Place In New Orleans, Jordan Hammon, Jordan Hammon

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines queer women’s history and space/places of community in New Orleans using spatial analysis and feminist theory to fill the silences. The Special Citizens Committee for the Vieux Carré laid the foundation for regulating queer women and transmasculine people starting in the 1950s. Even after the committee ended, New Orleans Police Department and the Vice Squad had the power to invade and harass places of community for queer women and transmasculine people. Despite this hostility, queer women and transmasculine people resisted and made a place for themselves in New Orleans. As a result of their persistence through visibility …

The Women Of Salò: Roles And Expectations In The Italian Social Republic, Johnathon N. Keller

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This thesis aims at investigating the national discourse around women in the Italian Social Republic (RSI) in three distinct spaces: urban, family, and rural. During the RSI, women were primarily constructed as one of three symbols: exemplary wife and mother, militant woman citizen, and woman soldier. The re-emergence of the urban, working-class woman was accelerated by the socializzazione program and the crisis the Italian nation faced. The RSI saw a shift away from family planning and a new emphasis was placed on family assistance and care of the existing young. Finally, during the RSI, rural spaces, central during the 1930s …

Evil No More: The Image Of The Witch And Women In The United States From Seventeenth And Twentieth Centuries, Morgan Taylor Peacha

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Women in both colonial America and the twentieth century United States were impacted by the notions of witches and witchcraft. There was an integral change in witchcraft during the era of growing feminism and equality in political status. In the colonial period, what was once a disguise for women's oppression, has become a tool for women's liberation.

White Womanhood: Finding Oppositional Epistemologies And Community At The Intersection Of Whiteness And Womanhood, Hannah Joy Fischer

Doctoral Dissertations

White women continue to contribute to the reproduction and maintenance of White supremacy even when they attempt to pursue antiracism. To better understand their antiracist agency, this study analyzed White women’s experiences and comprehension of White womanhood. Using phenomenology and critical autoethnography, this qualitative study invited six self-proclaimed antiracist White women to participate in individual interviews, attend two focus groups, and reflect on five guided prompts on White womanhood and antiracist action. The study revealed antiracist White women’s feelings of responsibility and lack of perceived agency for antiracist action. Participants demonstrated attempts to disengage from whiteness while also expressing desires …

Women’S Bodies, Government’S Vessels: Control Of Women’S Reproductive Capacity In U.S. Policy, 1837 - 1924, Shana Clapp

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the changing boundaries of women’s property rights in the nineteenth and early twentieth century with a critical eye on the intentions of white male policymakers. I analyze the development of laws regarding married women’s property rights, homesteading, and workplace relations to understand how lawmakers and judges viewed white women's reproductive capacity as a state policy tool in varying ways. The expansion of women’s property rights in the U.S. revolved around women’s reproductive labor and funneled women into their assumed roles of wives and mothers. Weaving together historical moments across a century of great advancement for women, I …

“Monstrous Regiment Of Women”: Catholic Women’S Reactions To Reform In Sixteenth Century Scotland, Maeghan O'Conner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Reformation in Scotland brought with it a substantial theological shift in perspective toward the place of women in religion, society, and politics. Women under Catholicism had established a pseudo-realm of agency as religious heads of the household and religious guidance from leaders outside their husbands and fathers, which changed drastically in the wave of Protestantism. The contemporary theological arguments most relevant in Scotland from John Knox and John Leslie are discussed to establish the basis of thought with which society would adjust women's roles. This thesis will ultimately emphasize the reactions and negotiations of Catholic women to this new …

Gendered Citizenship: Understanding Violence Against Women In Pakistan, Taqdees M. Mela, Taqdees Mela

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

From 2020 to 2021, there has been an increase in violence against women by 255 percent in Pakistan.1 As a democratic state, Pakistan constitutionally recognizes its women as equal citizens but the fear of gendered violence acts as an effective deterrent to women to exercise their rights. My thesis explores the question, why Muslim women who exercise their rights are potentially subject to violence in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. An examination of this question demonstrates the historical roots of violence and their continued effect on the Pakistani Muslim woman as a citizen. Starting from the colonial period, this thesis …

Taking Aim: The Evolution Of Women In Competitive Shooting Sports In The 20th Century United States, Alena Rose-Marie Buczynski

Masters Theses

Throughout history, women have been overlooked, discounted, and ignored for their skills and abilities as competitive and professional athletes. Competitive shooting sports were popular in the United States; however, men excluded women from participating in many of these activities until the early 19th century, when America saw the rise of famous markswomen such as Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, and Lillian Smith. These women challenged the masculinity of the sport of shooting and bested many of their male counterparts as they traveled and performed across the United States. In the 1970s, women found themselves entering the Olympic arena of competitive shooting …

Puritan Patriarchal Construction Of American Sexual Morality And Woman's Worth: A Daughter's Response, Savannah Mather

Honors Projects

While modern conceptions of Puritanism regard it as an artifact of American history, whose woman-killing theologies are long buried and forgotten, the bible in my father’s closet and the recently leaked Supreme Court draft to overturn Roe. Vs. Wade would argue otherwise. Cotton Mather’s favorite book Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion outlined both the ideals and detriments of the Anglo-American female identity. In this text, white women were taught to absolve themselves of the “nakedness” in dress Puritan settlers associated Indigenous people with. A woman’s ability to align herself to the ideals of chastity determined her own and her …

The Feminine Harp As Feminist Tool: Early Professional Footing For Women In Mid-Twentieth-Century America, Chelsea Lane

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1930s North America, women—for the first time—were accorded permanent principal positions in significant American orchestras. Edna Phillips, Alice Chalifoux, and Sylvia Meyer, all students of the legendary harp pedagogue Carlos Salzedo, have been celebrated as pioneers for the prestigious employment they obtained in the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra, respectively, between 1930 and 1933. Despite the impressiveness of these accomplishments, however, the narrative of their “firstness” is not wholly accurate. In actuality, female harpists have occupied orchestral posts as acting principals, substitutes, and second harpists since the very inception of orchestras. The cause for their early …

Fighting For Home: Northern New England Women And The Civil War, Savannah A. Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the experiences of Northern New England women during the Civil War. Though these women were physically distant from the frontlines, the war came to their doorsteps. The war challenged and changed the physical and idealized space of the household and women’s role within it. This thesis examines how women experienced, resisted, or enacted wartime changes to household space. Through an examination of letters written by women, this study argues that, despite the disruptions of the war and the absence of male family members, Northern New England women fought to protect their homes from change.

Women used a …

Causal And Contributing Factors In Lynching Women, Cecelia Smith

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The violent act of lynching has mostly been identified as a method of vigilante justice perpetrated against African American men. During the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) in the south, these efforts of terror by violent mobs were employed to instill fear, to preserve an economy that had been fortified by a now-extinct slave industry, and to facilitate a white supremacist ideology. Initial lynching and data analyses have often seen scholars focus explicitly on male experiences. Women, however, were also victimized by this type of mob violence. African American women, White women, and Mexican women were lynched, but justification for such actions …

A Cold War On The Dark Knight: Batman And American Culture 1939-1975, Angelica Cantrell

Honors Theses

In 1930, Batman fought the prevailing fears of urban America. With the addition of Robin in 1940, the comics changed to appeal to children and continued to follow the cultural trends of America during World War II and into the Cold War. Fear and paranoia during the Cold War influenced American culture and domestic policy. Anticommunism was ingrained in American social structure and initiated efforts at social containment in the 1950s. American culture shifted to emphasize morality and domesticity, and many Americans actively sought to protect traditional Christian values in their society.

Among the rising concerns, Americans became increasingly worried …

Building A Coalition In California: The 1911 Campaign For Women's Suffrage, Kristina A. Cardinale

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Women in California gained the right to vote in 1911 after a mass-organized campaign across the state. Suffrage, labor, and temperance organizations were driving forces behind the women’s suffrage proposition passing and being amended to the state constitution. The women figureheads and membership of these associations were responsible for organizing politically and reaching across class lines in order to build a coalition for women’s suffrage in the state. This research serves as a compilation and analysis of the female-driven clubs, leadership, and strategies behind the Campaign of 1911.

The Forgotten Activists Of Georgia: The Black Women Of Savannah, Emily Zanieski

Honors College Theses

Historians of the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia have primarily focused on how the national movement unfolded in the city of Atlanta. More recent scholarship has highlighted the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in Albany; however, many of these analyses focus on figures within the larger movement rather than focusing on local, grassroots organizers. Additionally, their primary focus tends to be on the role of Black men, leaving behind the voices of Black women who led alongside them. Through a Long Civil Rights Movement (LCRM) approach, I argue that Black women in Savannah, Georgia played an instrumental role in …

The Making Of Everyday Hollywood: 1930s Film Influence On Everyday Women’S Fashion In Nebraska, Anna Naomi Kuhlman

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research examines the influence of film fashions on middle-class, Nebraskan women’s dress during the Great Depression (1932-1940). The Great Depression challenged the middle class: while standards of living remained high, the economic means to achieve those standards diminished. Despite the crisis, women strove to keep up with current fashion trends. While previous literature has examined how Hollywood directly affected trends and styles of the 1930s in major American metropolitan contexts, the manifestation of trends in the dress of middle to lower socio-economic classes in Middle America remains under-examined. Against the backdrop of Depression-era hardships specific to Nebraska’s agricultural economy, …

“Worthy Of Emulation:” Mira Behn And Indian Independence, 1925-1959, Tamala Malerk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is lauded for his work in helping to bring independence to India. Historians and authors are correct in asserting Gandhi’s importance to the independence movement of India, but he did not do it alone. Gandhi was helped by followers, foreign and domestic, who believed in his vision of an independent India. One of these disciples was Madeleine Slade, or as she would later be known, Mira Behn. Behn was born into an upper-class British family: her father an Admiral in the Royal Navy and her mother a housewife. Behn came upon a copy of French philosopher, Romain …

Sweetness And Femininity: Fashioning Gendered Appetite In The Victorian Age, Michael Krondl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since at least the nineteenth century sweetness and a preference for sweet foods has been linked to femininity. Western, middle-class women learned and reproduced normative gendered dietary behavior due to both private and public pressure to control their appetites and those of their children. In performing their gendered roles, they came to embody them through everyday rituals such as teatime. Sugary foods and drinks served as necessary props in these performances. Theorists, most prominently Jean-Jacques Rousseau, began to propose a linkage of sweet foods with femininity in the seventeen hundreds. In the following century, the medical profession explained women’s tastes …

Healing Through Mother Earth, Taylor A. Russell

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis deals with mental health, with a focus on Black women. Historically, Black women are often so compromised, being constant caregivers and helping everyone else, that they forget to help themselves, not having the time and financial means to do so. If we go back in the time of slavery, many Black women were taking care of slave owners' children and suckling the white women’s babies instead of their own. By the time they got home and after diligently caring for other people’s children they were focused on their own children, who they had been away from for hours …

Housewives To Heroines: Continuing Education For Women At The University Of Kentucky, 1964-1988, Allison L. Elliott

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Beginning in the early 1960s, the movement for the continuing education for women (CEW) brought together a seemingly unlikely alliance of American activists, educators, philanthropists, and government agencies. Fueled by philanthropic funds, accelerated by the quest for “womanpower” to bolster national defense, and aligned with regional workforce needs as well as the personal goals of individual women, CEW programs pioneered new models of academic advising and student support that continue to influence higher education practitioners today. By studying the experiences of both administrators and students involved with CEW at the University of Kentucky, this study sheds light on how one …

Nothing But Hype: Sex Trafficking And The Super Bowl, Kateca Wyette

Women's History Theses

Americans love sports and part of that love for sports is seen in its biggest sporting event of the year, the Super Bowl. Media, Journalists, Christian Groups, and some Governmental Agencies use this sporting event to hype up the idea that sex trafficking is rampant in cities where the Super Bowl is held or around the time this sport is held. This creates a problem for the nonprofit groups and other think tanks trying to end the illicit trend of sex trafficking. This not only affects women but men and children all over the world including the US. This thesis …

Women Under Colonial Coverture: Divorce, Property Rights, And Inheritance In Early Massachusetts, Sarah Anne Hogue

Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on the evolution of women's legal rights - property, inheritance, and divorce- in colonial Massachusetts between 1630 and 1690. The project explores how and to what extent the legal doctrine of coverture- which severely limited married women’s legal rights- functioned in the Massachusetts Bay Colony under its Puritan government. This study examines how coverture directly impacted women’s property and divorce rights in the courts of law in the colonial Massachusetts legal system. It uses primary documents, such as official court records and Puritan sermons, to examine women’s legal rights in that colony through the intersecting lenses of …

Oral Testimonies Of Female Emigrants From Northern Ireland: Finding The The Universal And Unique Stories Of Migration, Lisa Ahmed

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

The purpose of this paper is to add a nuanced understanding to the study of women and migration. By using oral testimonies to conduct this narrative research study I was able to add to growing body of knowledge on women and migration. This study focused on women who arrived in the United States from Northern Ireland, for family the migration process started in Germany. The terms migration, emigration and immigration are used in the paper to describe people in movement within and across national borders. This narrative illustrates some of the consequences when nation states use their power to facilitate …

"Gone, But Never Forgotten:" Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women And Girls In The United States, Julianna Kramer

Honors Theses

Native women and girls in the United States are twice as likely to be sexually assaulted compared to white women, and murder rates on certain reservations can be tenfold higher than the national average. This pervasive violence traces back to colonialism. Native women have historically been abused, exploited, and neglected by America’s institutions, and lasting prejudice against Native peoples endures.

The United States government has stripped tribal governments of their ability to seek justice for their women. The Major Crimes Act of 1885, Proclamation 280, and the Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe (1978) decision place responsibility for investigating and prosecuting …