Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Androgyny In The Ancient World: The Intersection Of Politics, Religion And Gender In The Art Of Hatshepsut, Megan N. Reimer

Student Publications

The Pharaoh Hatshepsut is one of the most well-known rulers of ancient Egypt and she has fascinated historians for decades. She ruled Egypt during the 15th century BCE, coming to power after the death of her husband, Thutmose II. Hatshepsut is particularly interesting to historians due to how she was portrayed in her art. Due to how far in the past she ruled, not many pieces of her art have survived; however, in the objects that we do have she is often shown very androgynously or even in came cases distinctly masculine. My research focuses on the many theories as …

Redefining Gender Roles In Higher Education: Women At Gettysburg College During World War Ii, Addison E. Lomax

Student Publications

Throughout the early 20th century, the role of American women began to change. The U.S. entrance into World War II and resulting draft provided women at institutions of higher education the opportunity to develop their place on college campuses. Through analyzing yearbooks, student publications, and personal testimonies, the case of Gettysburg College provides a lens to better understand the changing dynamics on college campuses during the war years. Although men remained on the campus of Gettysburg College during the war years, the changing dynamics of the College, both academically and socially, allowed women the opportunity to increase not only their …

Confirmation Bias Susceptibility: Social Domains, Metacognitive Self, And Gender, Emily N. Roush

Student Publications

Confirmation bias is a daily and commonly under-recognized cognitive bias, one in which requires more research. More specifically, confirmation bias is when individuals seek out information to confirm beliefs and reject opposing views. This phenomenon is readily studied in economics and psychology to name a few. However, confirmation bias is often neglected in an empirical setting. Thus, with a gap in the literature, this study tested the susceptibility of confirmation bias in college students, and utilized social domains, Metacognitive Self Score (MCS), and gender to predict the level of confirmation bias. Using a between-subjects design, participants were randomly assigned to …

Gender Differences In Self-Attribution And Overconfidence In Financial Decisions, Aine M. Ford

Student Publications

Behavioral finance and the study into biases is a rapidly increasing area of interest for finance professionals and academics alike. Understanding the sources of overconfidence and the self-attribution bias from a gendered framework can provide insight for managers and industry leaders to insulate their firms from underperformance losses due to these biases. Education and relevant financial experience are key controllable variables that impact overconfidence and self- attribution. Using a survey sent to around 130 students and finance professionals, gender, education, and relevant experience were tested against overconfidence and self-attributional scores to determine if there were any meaningful relationships. The results …

Popular Feminism(S) Reconsidered: Popular, Racialized, And Decolonial Subjectivities In Contention, Janet M. Conway, Nathalie Lebon

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

This issue is concerned with the salience of “popular feminism” as an analytic category for naming the myriad contemporary forms of gendered awareness and agency appearing among Latin America’s poor, working-class and racialized communities. Although we have an analytic agenda, our underlying concern here is with the politics of feminism—the construction of intersectional feminist praxes of gender, race, and economic justice and their relation to other projects for social justice. Our focus on popular feminism addresses the relationship between the subaltern subjectivities of marginalized women, their relation to feminist political agency, and the relation of both to mixed-gender efforts for …

Women’S Advocate Or Racist Hypocrite: Gertrud Scholtz-Klink And The Contradictions Of Women In Nazi Ideology, Mary C. S. Frasier

Student Publications

The Reichsfrauenführerin, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, led the National Socialist Women’s League from 1934 until she went into hiding in 1945. During her career in the Nazi Party, she created a female focused sector of the party that promoted pronatalist propaganda, discouraged women from engaging in politics, and urged women to only perform gender-suitable work. In contradiction to her message, Scholtz-Klink was the highest-ranking female political figure and a divorcee, who regularly chose her political career with the Nazi Party over her duties in the private sphere. Although she had little to no political power in the inner circle because of her …

Colonial/Modern Gender System & Femicides, Melanie Pangol

Student Publications

The research paper addresses how a decolonial feminism framework has been applied to the anti-femicides movement that are happening in Ciudad Juarez. Furthermore, the paper argues that due to the cheap and exploitative labor force status that has been imposed upon black and brown female bodies, such women have been disproportionately impacted by gender violence.

Place Me In Gettysburg: Relating Sexuality To Environment, Kylie R. Mandeville

Student Publications

This project links sexuality and environmental issues in the context of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It considers how I, a queer student at Gettysburg College, can be in “right relations” with this environment. While queer ecological scholarship defines “right relations” as relationships where all beings—people of all identities, as well as animals, plants, and the land—can flourish through their interactions, I inquire whether such flourishing is possible for me, and others like me, here in this place. To answer this question, the project links queer ecological scholarship with environmental history scholarship specific to the Gettysburg battlefield and civil war. It also involves …

Visual Weimar: The Iconography Of Social And Political Identities, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

In the Weimar Republic, images were perceived to be as unreliable as they were powerful. They helped create and codify difference while simultaneously blurring lines within the categories of gender and race. Visual culture provided a wild playground for discourses about gender presentation and sexuality that encompassed veterans, athletes, criminals, the New Woman, and androgynous figures. Despite the growing prominence of images in race science, it was widely held that images could not be trusted to convey accurate information about race. The propagandistic use of images for political purposes had the potential to be equally ambiguous. It was ultimately up …

Queering The Global Filipina Body: Contested Nationalisms In The Filipina/O Diaspora., Gina Velasco

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Contemporary popular culture stereotypes Filipina women as sex workers, domestic laborers, mail order brides, and caregivers. These figures embody the gendered and sexual politics of representing the Philippine nation in the Filipina/o diaspora. Gina K. Velasco explores the tensions within Filipina/o American cultural production between feminist and queer critiques of the nation and popular nationalism as a form of resistance to neoimperialism and globalization.

Using a queer diasporic analysis, Velasco examines the politics of nationalism within Filipina/o American cultural production to consider an essential question: can a queer and feminist imagining of the diaspora reconcile with gendered tropes of the …

Military Occupation, Sexual Violence, And The Struggle Over Masculinity In The Early Reconstruction South, Cameron T. Sauers

Student Publications

This inquiry centers on the way that sexual violence became the terrain upon which the struggles of the postemancipation and early Reconstruction South were waged. At the start of the Civil War, Confederate discourse played upon the fears of sexual violence engulfing the South with the invasion of Union armies. The nightmare never came to Southern households; rape was infrequently reported. However, Southern women, especially if they were African American, were subjected to sexual violence, which likely increased as the war dragged on. Sexual violence includes, but is not limited to, rape. Destruction of clothing, invasion of domestic spaces, and …

Primary Prevention And The Socioecological Model: An Integrated, Preventative Approach To Combat Sexual Violence, Emma G. Padrick

Student Publications

A growing body of research suggests that sex offense registries, though popular with politicians and the public, are ineffective at reducing victimization. Registries only address the individual who perpetrates after victimization occurs in an effort to prevent recidivism. They do not address the other, broader reasons that victimization transpires; they do not prevent sexual violence, and they do not improve communities’ safety. Using the socioecological framework to design primary prevention practices accounts for the interplay between the individual, relationship, community, and societal factors that lead to perpetration and should be used in place of reactive measures that fail to effectively …

Understanding Women’S Political Empowerment In A Globalized World, Jenna M. Thoretz

Student Publications

Although women comprise over half of the world’s population, there is still a considerable gap in the scholarly literature, as well as in policymaking communities, regarding the impact globalization has had on women. While scholars have attempted to examine the relationship between globalization and women’s rights and empowerment, there is little consensus on whether globalization harms or benefits women. Through my research, I seek to clarify the relationship between globalization and women’s empowerment, specifically women’s political empowerment. I divide this paper into six sections. I first evaluate the existing literature on the relationship between globalization and women’s empowerment, identifying arguments …

Feminism, Religion, And Work In The United States, Margaret R. Halpin

Student Publications

Feminism in the contemporary United States is a diverse field of thought with several strains of ideological leanings, including liberal, neoliberal, and the contested conservative feminism. Each is uniquely situated in the American context due to the heavy influence of American values and culture-specific definitions of justice, success, and progress. Entrenched in the Western conceptions of secularism and advancement, “modern” feminism in the United States prides itself as the example of peak progressivism, yet does so without critically engaging with its definition of modernity or secularism. In particular, the relationship between religion and feminism is complicated in the U.S., with …

For Life Or Choice: Abortion Views In America, Alyssa C. Ritchie

Student Publications

Abortion is one of the most controversial political topics in the United States of America at any point in time. In an election year, it is even more so. Countless Americans choose who to vote for based on whether or not the politician is pro-life or pro-choice. But why do some Americans vote pro-choice or pro-life? What variables affect their beliefs on abortion and how strong are those variables in relation to others? This paper dives into the ways in which education and religion affect abortion opinions and researches the strength of those variables in relation to one another. In …

Women Against "Women's Rights": Pro-Life Women, Jenna L. Vadinsky

Student Publications

The issue of abortion in the political arena became escapable after the 1973 ruling of Roe v. Wade. Nearly 50 years later, the issue of abortion continues to influence voting in all levels of government elections - from President to state governor. Although the restriction of legal abortion access disproportionally affects women, women are generally just as likely to support abortion as men. To research the phenomena of women voting and advocating against their own rights, I turned to religion - measured by how often a female attends religious ceremonies - as a possible explanation. In this paper, I delve …

Homosexuality During The Transition From Weimar Republic To Third Reich, Abigail Minzer

Student Publications

Homosexual communities successfully formed prominent subcultures during the Weimar Republic for a multitude of reasons: scientific research and educational outreach to the public about the inborn nature of homosexuality, less strict media censorship laws, and a vague anti-sodomy law that was difficult to enforce led police to often prefer tolerance over prosecution. The Third Reich brought about a deep cultural shift that would prove incredibly harmful to the homosexual communities. While at first, homosexuals had not been a targeted group largely thanks to Hitler’s personal friendship with a gay Nazi named Ernst Röhm, the latter’s sexuality became the center of …

Girl Talk: How Friendships Between Moravian And Native Women Sustained The Moravian Mission At Shamokin Pennsylvania, 1742–1749, Lindsay R. Richwine

Student Publications

From 1742 to 1755, Moravian missionaries attempted to establish a mission at the Indian town of Shamokin. While the Moravians failed to convert any native peoples, they succeeded where other missionaries failed by maintaining a continued presence. By using evidence from sources such as the Shamokin mission diary, this project asserts that it was the friendships forged between Native and Moravian women in the early years of the mission that integrated the Moravians into the community at Shamokin. Through an examination of the lives of the women present at Shamokin in this period, this project situates itself within existing research …

Women’S Participation And Globalization, Madeline R. Buerle

Student Publications

What effect does women’s participation in national legislatures have on the levels of globalization, specifically economic and social globalization? I contend that women’s participation in national legislatures will have differing effects on economic and social globalization. I expect that higher levels of women’s participation in national legislatures will have a negative effect on levels of economic globalization and a positive effect on levels of social globalization. I demonstrate the plausibility of these relationships through an analysis of 194 countries between the years 1990 and 2017. Interestingly, my findings suggest that women’s participation in national legislatures has a positive and statistically …

Black Female Artists Reclaiming Their Sexual Power, Nicole E. Heller

Student Publications

The emergence of hip hop in the 1980s and 90s is representative of the struggle that Black men and women face in modern society. As a result of a New York City housing crisis, crime, and poverty, hip hop arose as a coping mechanism, as many art forms do; hip hop provided a way for Black men to express their experiences and struggles. Hip hop has been used as a vehicle for self- expression, social views and political views among disadvantaged urban groups (White, 2013). However, it was and still is common for male hip hop artists to sexualize and …

Making Health Education Healthier: How Medical Schools Use Bias Training And Intersectional Theory To Reduce Implicit Bias, Madeleine N. Miller

Student Publications

Medical bias has been successfully characterized through two-way bias theory and the concept of the "normal body" and further divided into implicit and explicit bias. Yet, many individuals who go to the doctor are still given insufficient care because of their gender, race, class, sexuality, etc. Medical Education offers a unique opportunity for bias reduction both through formal and informal training. It is crucial that, as they are taught how to save a patient’s life, medical students are also taught to empathize with all patients and to give every patient, regardless of their gender, skin color, or class, the most …

The Contemporary Porn Debate - Perceptions Of Sexual Health Of Porn Actors, The 2013 Hiv Crisis, And Recognizing The Complexities Of The Porn Industry, Nasreen C. Gooya

Student Publications

Between August 2012 and January 2013, four adult film performers based in California tested positive for HIV which triggered a moratorium on production, and led the state of California to mandate condom usage in the industry under the Safer Sex in the Adult Industry Act – otherwise referred to as Measure B. The goal of this research is to explore how the discourse surrounding health in the adult film industry, specifically sexual health in relation to the adult film performers during this event, is reflective of contemporary anti-pornography sentiments. These sentiments and biases ultimately lead to regulations of the industry …

Neoliberal Feminism: The Only Approach, Alexa L. Secrest

Student Publications

Throughout its history, feminism has manifested in myriad ways; indeed, there are more than ten different categories of feminist thought, all of which seek to define the tenets and objectives of feminism as a movement. These groups include, but are not limited to: radical feminism, eco feminism, third wave feminism, postmodern feminism, liberal feminism, and psychoanalytic feminism. It is important to note that these divisions are not mutually exclusive - one can identify with multiple types of feminist thought at the same time. Given the variety of beliefs attached to the notion of feminism, academic scholarship on the subject is …

Pro-Life And Pro-Choice: What Shapes The Debate Over Abortion In America?, Kevin S. Ganjon

Student Publications

The topic of abortion in the United States of America is one that is surrounded by immense political controversy, particularly surrounding the legality of the practice. While some individuals believe in varying levels of freedom of choice, many others believe that the overall practice is unjust and wrong in most, or all circumstances. What are some of the underlying factors that may shape an individual’s stance on abortion? This research paper examines various significant factors such as religiosity, level of education, and age with regards to their potential correlation with an individual’s stance on abortion. By examining this data, this …

The Myth Of Neutrality: Linguistic Influence In The Integration Of Nonbinary Identities In English And German, Zoe A. Philippou

Student Publications

Grammatical structures that differ among languages can affect the way people of different cultures think, speak, and behave. Because of its close ties with identity, language also has the ability to manipulate the way people view themselves and others. Ethnographic research among English and German speakers shows that these differing grammatical structures affect the integration into society of nonbinary, intersex, and agender individuals through a grammatical predisposition for gender neutral language. As such, the means of increasing social integration of these groups also differs between linguistic and cultural borders.

Women In State Legislatures And State-Level Abortion Restrictions, Sydney N. Siegel

Student Publications

This research paper explores the relationship between women in state legislatures and state level abortion restrictions. This relationship is explored, and then tested against the amount of democratic legislators, the conservatism, of the public, and the religiosity of the public using a linear regression. While the findings are complex, they show that women do have an impact on state level abortion restrictions in some instances.

Blackness And Disability And How Disability Is Too Often Forgotten, Abel C. Rose

Student Publications

Disability is commonly left out of discussions on intersectional oppression, and this omission and stigmatization of disability does us all a disservice. Black people are more likely to be disabled due to the continuous violence of racism, and black people and disabled people in their status as “other” often find themselves needing to prove their worth in a society that does not see their lives as unconditionally valuable. We cannot see the full picture on issues of oppression such as racism and sexism without considering disability.

Black Women In Finance, Skylar R. Frankiewicz

Student Publications

The concept of gender has long played a role in United States’ history, greatly impacting and restructuring our economy. The push for gender equality in America has altered how organizations operate across different occupational fields. While the 2020 Equal Rights Amendment has yet to pass, many organizations are still motivated to reach total gender equality and balance within their firms. While there is a fight for feminism and gender equality, it is not a racially inclusive one. Black women face the most discrimination both in the workplace, and in social settings. Misogynoir is defined as prejudice against Black women, highlighting …

The Attack On Blackness In Fashion, Brian H. Berry

Student Publications

This paper identifies specific and general instances of anti-black sentiment in the fashion industry across the Western world, in order to demonstrate how the actions and rhetoric of this industry equates to an all out assault on blackness and black culture, despite the contemporary acceptance and commodification of some of its elements. Next, an analysis is conducted into the overall effect this trend has on black life and psyche in today’s world. Finally, the paper suggests specific changes that must be made in order to reverse and correct this trend.

Resisting The Tradition Of Sexism, Tobi N. Farbstein

Georges Lieber Essay Contest on Resistance

I stood there, or rather wobbled, standing on a plastic chair, peering over the division of a wall. Three feet away, I saw a boy reading from the Torah. There were men embracing, women cheering from across the wall, and rounds of applause on both sides. I stepped down from the chair and glanced at the sky. In my view, a large barrier towered over me, piercing the blue-- the Western Wall. My haze was then suddenly interrupted by a woman frantically mounting the chair I had previously been standing on. She was desperate to get a view of the …