Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Building Our Own Houses: Aapis In Congress, Daenerys Pineda

CMC Senior Theses

During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian hate peaked and came to national attention. Given the country-wide scope of this issue, a potential avenue for its address is through federal representatives, and particularly through those representatives who identify as Asian-American. This community’s political participation began long before 2020, and this thesis evaluates how Asian-American representatives have provided meaningful political representation in various situations for a national Asian-American constituency. For the purpose of this thesis, I define substantive representation as an action of a representative, using their particular political powers and privileges, in the interest of their constituents. I conduct three case studies …

Carnivalizing The Nation: Reassessing The Trinidad And Tobago Carnival As An Inclusive Platform For Local And Diaspora Cultural Identity, Shari Bissoondatt

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Trinidad and Tobago's 2020 National Cultural policy ostensibly seeks to build the twin islands’ cultural confidence through the development of a unifying and empowering national cultural identity. However, this research asserts that the current policy undermines these national goals by approaching its community through problematic colonial, nationalist frameworks and through centralizing the annual carnival festival. This positioning poses several key problems. First, it reinscribes the colonial cultural identity of the island. Second, this nationalist, Christian colonial approach reinforces a binary of belonging and non-belonging that excludes minoritized, diasporic, and non-conforming gender communities. Third, by centralizing carnival in cultural policy, the …

Indigenous Climatic Perspectives: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Environmental Discourse Analysis, Linda G. Claros

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation presents a multidisciplinary analysis of climate discourse from Indigenous Climatic Perspectives (ICP). This research highlights how the manner in which we relate intellectually, culturally and spiritually to the environment has been dictated by economic ideology developed within Euro-American capitalistic paradigms. Hence, the origin of our climate disaster is traced to religious and philosophical assumptions about Nature and the environment, that operate unchallenged within spheres of discourse- scientific, religious and cultural. This dissertation presents an alternative means of analysis, Indigenous Climatic Perspectives, by which we can come to understand our place in the biosphere by embedding new theoretical and …

Choreographing The Line: Exploring The Art/Obscenity Paradox Of Feminine Sexuality Within The Context Of Recreational Pole Dance, Cameron Boucher-Khan

Scripps Senior Theses

This project seeks to explore the relationships between pole dance and pole fitness, art and obscenity and respectability as it relates to work, class, and social systems. It analyzes the way female sexuality is accepted or rejected within society and explores the boundaries between the two through the staging of pole and contemporary dance. The dichotomy between art and obscenity is explored in the relationship between stripper pole dance, and the fast-growing pole fitness community. Within this relationship, strippers are demonized as obscene, while pole fitness dancers' labor is viewed as artistic, despite the sexuality present in both. The difference …

Family Tree, Yumeng Zhang

CGU MFA Theses

For the past two years I have been making works that attempt to describe the world from a subjective perspective as much as possible, striving to move beyond what I see around me to what I know. I create through my body, my memory and my subconscious, which is the truest expression of my inner self.

Protest Music In Response To The United States’ Oppressive Political Culture: An Analysis Of Beyoncé'S "Freedom" And Janelle Monáe's "Americans", Jessica Torrey

HMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to study a popular musical artist’s responsibility towards the empowerment of marginalized communities in the United States through an analysis of the songs “Freedom” by Beyoncé and “Americans” by Janelle Monáe. These songs will be analyzed in conjunction with the political climate during the time of their fabrication and release as well as the political climates discussed in the songs themselves. This paper presents a thorough analysis of the lyrical and musical components of both songs as well as an analysis of a specific performance of both songs. These analyses will be presented in conversation with many …

Building The Fat Girl Table: Excavating Cultural Memory Of Queer Fat Activism In The ‘90s, Rose Gelfand

Scripps Senior Theses

When we recount the histories of social movements, there is a tendency to imagine either a steady, linear march towards progress or a slow descent from radical ideas into complacency. The feminist movement gets painted in waves, progressing from white to intersectional, while in the LGBTQ+ rights movement the contrast of the Stonewall Riots & ACT UP with late 2010s focus on gay marriage and the corporatization of Pride is understood as a watering down and betrayal of the movement’s origins. Cultural memory is a constant process of construction and revision, and of course the truth of movements’ trajectories are …

Mothers Behind Cameras: Mother-Artist, Mother-Child Dyads In Sally Mann’S Immediate Family And Elinor Carucci’S Mother, Hayley A. Pierpont

Scripps Senior Theses

Women, particularly mothers, are often made invisible within narratives of their own family and domestic spaces, despite their role as creators and maintainers of those spaces. This perpetuation of invisibility is threaded throughout the history of artistic practices, (photography especially). Contemporary mother-artists Sally Mann and Elinor Carucci confront and unapologetically reflect their singular experience(s) with motherhood through their photography, which addresses the symbiotic dyads of mother-child and mother-artist. This thesis focuses on an analysis of four images: Mann’s The Wet Bed and Lee’s Dirty Hands, and Carucci’s Trying to Protect Emanuelle and I Will Protect You. In both …

The Intersection Between Black Hair And The Environment: Hair As A Site For Environmental Justice And Sustainability, Dafina Matiku

Scripps Senior Theses

Currently, we are facing several global crises that include but are not limited to climate change, food insecurity, pollution of the body and environment, as well as racial, gender, and class inequities. This thesis seeks to understand how the natural hair movement, which strives to omit toxic chemicals while embracing textured hair, can be a tool of reconnecting to nature. As humans we are intrinsically part of ecosystems and nature, we must find our niche in it instead of occupying and destroying our environment entirely. The methodology includes compiling a small array of experiences that show the nuance of hair …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

The Joy Of Listening: Three Voices In The Poetry Of Wisława Szymborska, Mimi Thompson

CMC Senior Theses

One of the greatest feats that a poet may achieve in his or her lifetime is to develop a voice so characteristic of themself, it would be impossible to confuse it with that of any other poet. Polish-speaking and non-Polish-speaking scholars alike have agreed that the voice of 1996 Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska is utterly distinct, despite the fact that her poems explore a wide range of topics and are told from multiple narrative perspectives, rarely featuring herself through any personal details. How, then, is it possible for hundreds of poems, each with their own narrator, to still be “heard” …

The Women Of The Bauhaus Weaving Workshop: Anni Albers' And Gunta Stölzl's Impact, Sophia Silane

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis discusses two female weavers, Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers, and their critical works from 1920-1935 that shaped Bauhaus weaving and the artistic significance of the medium. Over the course of three chapters, the thesis discusses Stölzl's shift from pictorial to material interests, Albers' themes of mass production and industry, and the women's post Bauhaus years which involved Stölzl blending work and art and Albers expanding the capabilities and fine art presence of textile.

Tracing Biometric Assemblages In India’S Surveillance State: Reproducing Colonial Logics, Reifying Caste Purity, And Quelling Dissent Through Aadhaar, Priya Prabhakar

Scripps Senior Theses

Tracing Biometric Assemblages in India’s Surveillance State seeks to understand the historical conditions that rendered the nation-state of India as having the world’s largest biometric surveillance system: Aadhaar. Surveillance practices used by the British Raj mirrors the current social order of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as they use surveillance to similar ends in today’s political economy, through the intersecting forces of neoliberalism and ethnonationalism. This thesis is an exploration into how India’s current surveillance regimes cultivate biometric surveillant assemblages through Aadhaar. Contrary to claims that Aadhaar was created to empower the poor, I argue that these surveillance regimes …

The Power Of Coptic Women Saints: Historical And Analytical Study Of Coptic Women Saints As Spiritual Models For Coptic Women In The Usa And Egypt, Trevena Adeeb Eskandar Hanna

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This study addresses the lack of research concerning Coptic female experience and Coptic female saints through the use of in-depth interviews of 21 Egyptian Coptic women living in Southern California and 21 Egyptian Coptic women living in Egypt. The interviews explore women’s relationships with, and knowledge of their female saints, as well as their gendered experiences within the Coptic Church, as it relates to gender and the relative importance or honor of female saints. Results show that Coptic women have a special and unique relationship with the female saints of their tradition, who act as role models, intercessors, and friends. …

"May We Be Buried Alive Together": Towards An Intersectional Feminist True Crime Praxis, Alexandra White

Pomona Senior Theses

Most mainstream true crime narratives revolve around a corpse. It is usually the body of a woman. The body is most often white. Not always, but in the cultural imaginary, she is blonde. She comes from a good family. She was a sweet girl. What happened to her? While this question haunts the general public, it also animates true crime communities as the victim becomes a symbol of innocence, a site of spectacular violence, and evidence of the incomprehensible extreme of human behavior. The question brings (primarily) white, cis women true crime fans together in the name of fascination, fear, …

"And All Were Welcome": An Analysis Of The Transgender Child In Contemporary Picture Books, Isaac Prestwich

Pomona Senior Theses

This paper constitutes an interrogation of children’s picture books that feature trans and gender non-conforming child protagonists. In these books, the audience, presumed to be a child, whose experience of the narrative is mediated through the adult or older figure reading the picture book, is brought to empathize and identify with the book’s characters, whether they be the protagonist themselves, or those auxiliary figures who surround the main character. My goal is to identify consistent themes across the genre, as well as within the field of critical childhood studies, particularly as they pertain to the rhetorical value of the Child, …

La Terreur Insidieuse : Une Relecture De La Logique De L'Esclavage Dans Ourika, Joslyn Gardner

Pomona Senior Theses

Slavery is commonly characterized by its exceptional violence. La Terreur insidieuse reveals how the physically brutal domination associated with slavery was transformed and reconfigured into a form of benevolence in the novel, Ourika, by Claire de Duras. It has generally been accepted by critics, such as Joan DeJean, Françoise Massardier-Kenney, and Adeline Koh that le Chevalier de B “saved Ourika from the terrible fate of slavery” (Massardier-Kenney 191). However, I argue that Ourika was not rescued from captivity, rather she experiences a benign form of domination, cruelty shrouded as love, which works to render her docile.

I first explore …

Hear For You: Engaging With Vocal Authority And Vulnerability Through Podcasting, Rowen Light-Wills

Scripps Senior Theses

Through applications of literary and film theory, cultural analysis, and historical context this thesis project will deconstruct the text of the physical and metaphorical gendered voice. The podcast medium allows for exploration of the physical voice in a spontaneous format, which makes it the ideal platform for hosting conversations between college-aged students that examine cultural conceptions of the voice. Focusing primarily on the feminized[1] voice as a site of cultural tension, participants can tell the story of their voices, talking about experiences that have shaped their auditory self-perception. The work of this project is to demonstrate that the medium …

Benevolent Feminism And The Gendering Of Criminality: Historical And Ideological Constructions Of Us Women's Prisons, Emma Stammen

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis aims to connect and analyze primary sources that contain untold histories and experiences of people incarcerated in women’s prisons in the US and Britain, from the Victorian period to the modern era. By exploring, compiling and sharing various secondary and primary texts as evidence, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of the historical and ideological constructions of the American women’s prison as we know it today. In this thesis, I argue that analyzing and understanding the historical and ideological constructions of the modern women’s prison are critical practices for theoretical and activist frameworks that seek prison …

Migration And Women’S Relationships To The Land And Food In Myanmar, Allison Joseph

Scripps Senior Theses

Abstract

In the 21st century, Myanmar has become the largest migration source country in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. To achieve its economic and political goals, the government has conducted extensive confiscation and reallocation of communal lands, which has resulted in a growing class of landless and dispossessed citizens. Under the new laws, rural women are disproportionately impacted and more vulnerable to the processes of dispossession, often lacking the rights or resources of their male counterparts to fight for the land of their ancestors. This has resulted in the wide-scale disinheritance of Myanmar’s rural women from their land and food, as …

Indominable, Kathleen A. Fox

CGU MFA Theses

INDOMINABLE, Kathleen A Fox

The reformation of the feminine portrait from that of idealistic sexual beauty into a portrait of strength, community, longevity, transformation, and inane human foundational essence of societal value. This collection of portraits illustrates the uniqueness that is often overlooked for the fast, idealistic and instantly read images of women hailed as beautiful. These women contain a space they have earned with their strength of character, spirit, and unwillingness to be moved from their places of significance. Created with an expressive abstractive edge to traditional portraiture, these female portraits refuse to be easily glossed over, for their …

Negotiating Political Identity In Community-Based Film Festivals: Reflexive Perspectives From Curator-Scholar-Activists, Eve Oishi, Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz

Faculty Papers and Conference Presentations with CGU Graduate Co-authors

This article is a cross-generational exchange of ideas and experiences that explores the intersections of film curating and activism. Its authors set forth accounts of their own experiences as scholars who have worked as film festival curators “on the side” from the 1990s to the present within the context of the new yet rapidly growing field of film festival studies, which provides a useful set of perspectives and methods for understanding how film festivals function and what significance and impact they can have on the multiple stakeholders involved, including but not limited to the filmmakers, festival organizers and staff, and …

Exploring Gender Through Art In Myanmar, Allison E. Joseph

EnviroLab Asia

No abstract provided.

Growing Up Gay And Latino, Sharon Wyatt Saxton

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the experiences of LGBT students attending high school in a predominantly Latino area to determine if their experiences are different in a Latino-inflected environment than those of students in a predominantly Anglo environment. Although the experiences of LGBT students are well documented in academic journals and popular press, this dissertation insinuates that those experiences are inflected by the Anglo setting in which students attend school. This study investigates the experiences using a multiple choice and open-ended survey and a personal interview with the investigator. Certain experiences appear to be common among LGBT students who attend Anglo-inflected high …

Human Monsters: Examining The Relationship Between The Posthuman Gothic And Gender In American Gothic Fiction, Alexandra Rivera

Scripps Senior Theses

According to Michael Sean Bolton, the posthuman Gothic involves a fear of internal monsters that won't destroy humanity apocalyptically, but will instead redefine what it means to be human overall. These internal monsters reflect societal anxieties about the "other" gaining power and overtaking the current groups in power. The posthuman Gothic shows psychological horrors and transformations. Traditionally this genre has been used to theorize postmodern media and literary work by focusing on cyborgs and transhumanist medical advancements. However, the internal and psychological nature of posthumanism is fascinating and can more clearly manifest in a different Gothic setting, 1800s American Gothic …

"The More They’Re Beaten The Better They Be": Gendered Violence And Abuse In Victorian Laws And Literature, Danielle T. Dominguez

CMC Senior Theses

During the Victorian age, the law and society were in conversation with each other, and the law reflected Victorian gender norms. Nineteenth-century gender attitudes intersected with the law, medical discourse, and social customs in a multitude of ways. Abuse and gender violence occurred beneath the veneer of Victorian respectability. The models of nineteenth-century social conduct were highly gendered and placed men and women in separate social spheres. As this research indicates, the lived practices of Victorians, across social and economic strata, deviated from these accepted models of behavior. This thesis explores the ways that accepted and unaccepted standards of female …

Burning, Drowning, Shining, Blooming: The Shapes Of Aging In W.B. Yeats’ Poetry, Malea C. Martin

CMC Senior Theses

Love and growing old are thematically inseparable in W.B. Yeats' poetry, yet it is the former with which this great Irish poet is often associated. The poet's attitudes toward aging are made clear through his symbolism, complicated Irish allusions, and a sometimes jarring treatment of women. As it turns out, these devices have as much to do with Yeats' concern over aging as they have to do with the infamous Maud Gonne. This thesis attempts to not only expose and analyze these intricacies, but also challenge the way the literary canon typically isolates Yeats’ more famous poems without the context …

Love At First Byte: An Economic Analysis Of The Internet Dating Apocalypse, Hamsa Srikanth

CMC Senior Theses

We’re often warned that the internet will hasten the dating apocalypse. The internet (it is posited) is depriving us of the elusive in-person magic, and modern courtship is now little more than love at first byte.

There remains uncertainty, however, about what the independent impact of the internet on the dating market has been. Similar to the internet, the telephone also changed the way we communicate, but its effect on the dating market was mostly complementary to the 'traditional' ways of meeting – i.e. calling your school crush at home. So the question remains: Is the effect of the …

Uncovering Alice Bag: An Alternative Punk History, Emily Macune

Scripps Senior Theses

The intention of this thesis is to provide an alternative counter-narrative to the mainstream histories of punk that center white men. By focusing on the contributions of fem queer and POC punks, I aim to legitimize punk music as a form of resistance against systems of oppression that are oppositional to the commodified forms of mainstream punk. Using Alice Bag, as my central case study as a fem queer punk that is often left out of punk historical narratives, I contextualize her work through feminist, queer, and media studies lenses to bridge the gap between academia and forgotten personal experience.

Globalized Interfaces And Anticolonial Engagements With Material Technologies Of Empire: Tabita Rezaire And Morehshin Allahyari’S Works, Neelufar Franklin

Scripps Senior Theses

The virtual is far from immaterial and its expressions are multifarious. The infrastructure of a technologic-globalism has opened new pathways of desecration, created new networks of exploitation, and reinforced fraught foundations. Tabita Rezaire and Morehshin Allahyari are two artists whose radical technofeminist and new materialist practices engage with counterdiscourses in the face of the globalized interfaces of technology; from mappings of submarine fiber optic network cables or understanding water as a knowledge repository, to 3D printed queered figures of Islamic mysticism and hypertext narratives. In these anachronistic approaches to technological use and analyses, archives become possibilities for renderings of futurity …