Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

(De)Constructing Desperation: The Dargah Of Bu Ali Shah Qalandar As A Site Of Emotional Wellbeing For Infertile Women, Shahida Shahida

Journal of International Women's Studies

Infertility is a health issue that requires serious consideration due to its impact on the social, emotional, and economic wellbeing of the affected individual. Despite the development of assisted reproductive technology (ART) that has successfully enabled conception, these methods are not universally accessible to all women. There can be many roadblocks in an individual’s journey that go beyond medical domains. Studies have indicated that, when paired with medical treatment, spiritual healing practices and religious interventions can have a positive effect on the emotional health of those struggling to conceive. This study employs a narrative approach to document the lived experiences …

Introduction To The Special Issue: Reproductive Justice Across Disciplines And Demographics, Priyanka Tripathi, Laura Lazzari

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Stereotypes Of Female Characters In Disney, Merouge Hazem Elboraie

The Undergraduate Research Journal

The depiction of female characters in Disney films has undergone a significant transformation throughout the decades, reflecting societal shifts and changing perceptions of gender roles. As young girls tend to idolize fictional female characters, ensuring a healthy portrayal of women in animated films is crucial. This paper aims to discuss the portrayal of female characters in Disney movies within certain frames and their impact on the general public through a case analysis of literature reviews. It underscores the dynamic interplay between societal change and cinematic narratives, particularly in Disney. The research’s findings indicate that the negative portrayal of Disney female …

Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting, Monica Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a review of the short film, Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting (2025) directed by Alex Thompson.

Cutting Through Rocks, Sheila Nayar

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Cutting Through Rocks (2025), directed by Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni.

“Change Is Brewing”: Women Finding Liberation In The Performative Rituals Of Modern Paganism And The Witch Organization, Katie Nelson

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

This project analyzes elements of performative Modern Paganism and Wiccan rituals used by the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH) group to determine how these performance practices can provide comfort and agency to those who have been systemically oppressed, particularly women in the United States. The project will focus on WITCH’s activist work, especially during the second wave feminist movement of the 1960-1970s, which used elements of Modern Paganism for social justice purposes by implementing them through guerilla theatre and zap actions. Methodologically, I will be reviewing sources such as performance photos, news articles, and testimonies from the women …

Mad At The System: The Mental Health Act Uk: Power And Control Of Racialized Women, Maithreyi Rajeshkumar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Whilst experiences of madness are multiple, fluid and multi-dimensional across spiritual and collective dimensions globally, the categorization and regulation of ‘madness’ have direct foundations in European colonial-capitalist-patriarchal frameworks, policies and systems. This work focuses on the institutions and structures of power, turning UK legislation and those who are trying to reform or change it, into objects of study. A particular piece of United Kingdom legislation is the primary case study for this work – the Mental Health Act 1983 which covers the rights, assessment and treatment of people diagnosed with a ‘mental disorder’. Women, who are detained under this Act …

The Material Folklore Of Occult Zines, Jacqueline G. Coffey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone is a paper on and catalog of contemporary occult zines. Through the collecting, arranging, and analyzing of about one hundred zines, I stipulate that these zines draw from the rich and rebellious histories of both the occult and zines. With the dominating influence of multi-industry corporations on our lives, these often independently produced and handmade texts are evidence of the mystical and mysterious forces with which we still grapple. Not only do zines showcase the breadth of spiritual possibility, they can also be used to integrate new metaphysical awareness into mundane reality.

The catalog is also intended to …

Sex-Specific And Regional Analysis Of Heart Disease Prediction Using Machine Learning Algorithms: Insights From The Uc Irvine Public Heart Disease Datasets (Cleveland And Long Beach), Jonathan Asanjarani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For this capstone project, I investigated how well machine learning models can predict heart disease, while also studying how the patient’s gender affects these predictions, as well as determining how well the same model performs across different regions. This project utilizes two clinical datasets from the publicly accessible UCI Machine Learning Repository under the collection "Heart Disease." This repository is composed of data from patients across four distinct locations, capturing varying levels of heart disease severity. These datasets are part of a collection of databases, open to the public, and can be used by anyone looking to conduct empirical analysis. …

Struggles Around Transgenderism In Hungarian Feminism: An Autoethnographic Account, Dalma Feró

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In this autoethnography, I am using my personal experiences as data to examine the inextricable personal, political, social, and cultural aspects of one of the most decisive ruptures in Hungarian “progressive” activism of the second half of the 2010s. In the mid-2010s, I was part of an informal collective of women that started to outline a feminist approach critical of mainstream individualistic renditions of women’s rights as social progress, thereby diverging fundamentally from the country’s institutionalised feminism. As I and the circle of women I worked with focused on women’s reproductive autonomy, we encountered central feminist questions about sex and …

The Role Of Social Support In Protecting Against Perinatal Depression Among Egyptian Women, Radwa Raafat Abdelshafi

Theses and Dissertations

Perinatal Depression (PND) is a global public health issue affecting many women as they transition to motherhood, and carrying detrimental consequences for both mothers and infants. Research in low and middle-income countries shows higher PND prevalence rates than in high-income and Western countries. In addition, social support has been shown to strongly protect or reduce the impact of PND. This study aimed to address a gap in research on PND in Egypt, and to build an understanding of the social support ecological system of new mothers. A survey was conducted with 81 first-time middle-class mothers living in Greater Cairo between …

Breaking Taboos: Syrian Women Reshaping Gender Roles In Zarqa, Jordan, Farah Qonaish

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the changes in gender roles among Syrian refugee women in Jordan. Since 2011, more than a million Syrian refugees have settled in Jordan. Around 83% of Syrian refugees have resided in host communities in Jordan and around 70% of the Syrian population come from the rural areas in Syria refugees. Syrian refugees have experienced change on different levels of their lives since the beginning of the displacement. This ethnographic study was conducted in Zarqa, a major city in the middle region of Jordan, and a major host community for Syrian refugees in Jordan. The city is known …

Oh, Hi!, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Oh, Hi! (2025) directed by Sophie Brooks.

Two Women, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Two Women (2025), directed by Chloé Robichaud.

P*Law 2025: What’S Next? Reproductive Justice Under The Trump Administration, Center For Public Service Law, Shayna Medley, Jenny Ma, Chelsea Williams-Diggs, Bella Pori

2024–2025 Flyers

Hosted by Cardozo P*LAW 2025, this January 28 event explored abortion rights and reproductive justice under the Trump administration. Panelists discussed litigation, nonprofit advocacy, and policymaking at both state and federal levels, with a focus on how New York-based law students can support local efforts. Moderated by Bella Pori ’21.

East Of Wall, Chris Deacy

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of East of Wall (2024), directed by Kate Beecroft.

Brides, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Brides (2024), directed by Nadia Fall.

Suburbanization As A Post-Industrial Essentiality: Revisiting Sweden's Miljonprogrammet, Colin Wood

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Definitively speaking, suburbanization does not equate to post-industrialism in the same limelight as would urbanization and industrialism. However, anomalous cases, such as the one being discussed in this paper, tangentially interlink on a socioeconomic basis. In 1965, Sweden began construction of the Miljonprogrammet (Million Programme), where over the next ten years, over one million domiciles were built in a suburban setting leading to a mass diaspora of ‘slum living’ Swedish industrial workers. The nation’s renowned welfare state, built on a collaborative system between public and private sectors as well as federal and municipal actors, overlooked housing in its social …

Towards The Non-Spectacle: Responses To Necropolitics In The Artwork Of Teresa Margolles And Maya Watanabe, Leslie Anne Condon

Masters Theses

How do we engage with artwork that addresses complicated histories

of colonialism and political violence, specifically intangible and

incomprehensible violence? Mexican artist Teresa Margolles’ 2005 work, Lote

Bravo, is named after and composed of the soil from a mass grave site

discovered in 1995 in the southeastern corner of Ciudad Juárez, a city known

internationally for the femicide that has continued to haunt its streets and

peripheries since the 1990s. Peruvian filmmaker Maya Watanabe’s 2019 film

Liminal cinematically documents the official exhumation of two mass graves

in the Ayacucho and Huánuco regions of the Andes highlands, where

thousands of …

Rainbow Road To Prismatic Playwriting: Black Women's Dramatic Praxis In Practice, Taren Wilson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the lived experiences of Black women in academia, uplifting those interested in non-traditional or creative scholarship. Underrepresentation and attrition due to exclusionary academic practices is a systemic problem. What can Black feminist playwriting as research do for Black women in academia hoping to resist and connect to themselves and their community? What can playwriting as a Black woman doctoral student elucidate about the utility of playwriting as research, culturally informed epistemologies, and African American women's drama? By merging African American women's drama, Black feminist epistemologies, Practice as Research, and playwriting as research, I developed an onto-epistemological method …

Queen's Pride: A Queer Reading Of Star Wars Character Padmé Amidala, Madeleine Loewen

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Ever since Luke Skywalker and Han Solo first appeared onscreen together in 1977, LGBTQ+ Star Wars fans have harnessed the power of queer reading to write themselves back into a galaxy far, far away, despite Lucasfilm’s long-term disapproval of such practices. Nonetheless, there exists little scholarly literature on queerness in the franchise, and even less on the potentially sapphic characters. Queen Padmé Amidala, first introduced onscreen in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, proves a surprising—but no less salient—queer figure in Star Wars. From her intimate relationships with her handmaidens, to her experimentation with gender performativity, to her quiet yet …

Uncovering Maria Edgeworth’S Strategic Political Influence Through Her Unpublished Letters, Autumn G. Hall

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) was one of the most prolific Anglo-Irish novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While Edgeworth’s novels are regularly discussed among Regency-era scholars, researchers have rarely considered her letters and correspondence, especially in relation to her role in contemporary politics. During my time on the Maria Edgeworth Letters Project team, I researched Edgeworth’s previously unpublished letters, which provided a unique view of her strategic political correspondence network. Through her writing, Edgeworth was able to voice her thoughts while also remaining publicly complacent with restrictive societal norms imposed on women. In my article, I argue that through her …

Recasting Gender Roles: A Study Of Indian Television Commercials (2011– 2020), Himika Akram, Alicia Mason

Faculty Submissions

On media, television commercials (TVCs) play a significant role in shaping societal perceptions of gender roles. This study examines gender depictions in Indian TVCs, focusing on key dimensions such as gender ratio in primary characters, voiceovers, settings (home, outdoor, workplace), and product categories. A content analysis of 120 TVCs from Indian brands (2011–2020) was conducted, with coding performed by the researcher. Findings reveal that men were primary characters in 54.6% of the advertisements, while women featured in 45.4%. Male voiceovers dominated at 70.1%, compared to 29.9% for females. Women were portrayed in home settings in 66.7% of TVCs, while men …

Shapes That Hide Their Shadows, Jennifer Blaine

Theses and Dissertations

shapes that hide their shadows concerns itself with the mutability of memory. The complexities of girlhood to womanhood, and the way we are shaped by place and space, are explored through the artist recounting childhood memories connected to her grandparents' hometowns. Divided into three different sections, the artist discusses drawing as medium, creating a lexicon through using visual symbols, and the logistics of building your own archive.

Serious Music With Bea Witkin: An Upper West Side Audio Walk, Megan Hattie Stahl

Theses and Dissertations

Serious Music with Bea Witkin is a site-specific audio walk on New York City’s Upper West Side produced by Megan Hattie Stahl. This immersive, musical documentary explores and extends the life and work of composer Beatrice Witkin (1916-1990). Across four stationary chapters and three walking interludes, participants follow a one-mile route from Riverside Park to Straus Park by way of Witkin’s longtime residence on West End Avenue. Through guided narration, archival music, interviews and recordings of contemporary musicians sight-reading a 1985 string quartet piece by Witkin, Serious Music invites listeners to consider where music begins and ends.

Witkin, who graduated …

Ua68/6 Newsletter, Wku Gender & Women's Studies

WKU Administration Documents

Newsletter created by and about the WKU Gender & Women's Studies program.

Between Sangate Aika And Bhumika: Finding Hansa Wadkar, Aarti Wani

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Hansa Wadkar was a popular film star of Marathi cinema, who had established herself as an actress with considerable histrionic skills, essaying a range of roles in films belonging to a variety of genres during a career spanning several decades, before and after Indian Independence. Despite the success, Wadkar’s unconventional personal life was troubled and difficult. In the early seventies her autobiography, Sangate Aika (1970), was published. Subsequently, Shyam Benegal, a stalwart of the Indian New Wave, made Bhumika (1977) broadly based on Wadkar’s autobiography. The film’s realist framework underscored by its critique of patriarchy, succeeded in bringing Wadkar’s journey …

Examining How Task Forces Utilize Intelligence Methods During Anti-Human Trafficking Operations: Mitigating The Threat Of Human Trafficking Among Native American Women And Girls, Jessica Shockness

Theses and Dissertations

Native American women and girls, including First Nations people, have been disproportionately targeted due to centuries of marginalization, severe maltreatment, and gender inequality. To mitigate these violent acts, law enforcement and intelligence agencies should use various intelligence methods to identify and locate traffickers, victims, and high-risk locations. The intelligence methods that are analyzed in this study include open-source, geospatial and human intelligence. The lack of utilizing these methods can hinder the ability to mitigate human trafficking effectively. According to a study conducted through Northwestern University, Farrell et al. (2019) provided evidence showing that the Uniform Crime Reporting program continuously displays …

“Et Les Filles”: Le Féminisme Subtil De Françoise Hardy, Charlotte Aexel

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This article focuses on “yéyé” music, in particular the music of Françoise Hardy. I examine the feminist themes in the songs found on her first album, Tous les garçons et les filles. The majority of critics view her first album as immature, but I suggest that it shows a subtle but powerful feminism. For me, Françoise Hardy’s first album shows depth and advanced perception of social dynamics. In particular, Hardy demonstrated an awareness of the experiences of young women in her time. From her first album, Hardy presented herself as independent and intelligent. I cite critics from Hardy’s time and …

La Movida Madrileña: Pedro Almodóvar Y La Representación De Las Mujeres, Jack Licata

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This paper is an exploration in the connection between La Movida Madrileña, Pedro Almodovar and the representation of women. This paper looks at what the Movida was, and what it meant for the people in Spain during the height of the movement. Following an introduction, the paper explores who Almodovar was and the role that he played during the movement, with several examples of his contributions and the way that his works demonstrates the ideas and thoughts of the movement. Finally, this paper mentions the connection between the movement and how women were represented during this time with examples of …