Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Black Feminist Discourse Analysis Of Portrayals Of Gender Violence Against Black Women: A Social Work Dissertation, Avina Ross

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored media discourse of gender violence against Black women in Black contemporary films. Four Tyler Perry films were examined using a novel, qualitative and analytical framework: Black Feminist Discourse Analysis. Discourses that were studied include, but were not limited to: portrayals of gender violence and victims, character dispositions and interactions, stereotypes, relationship dynamics as well as portrayals of race, gender, sexuality and religion. The use of new and existing controlling images based on systems of race, gender, sexuality and religion were revealed in a transitional and systemic model. Common themes across the films are provided. This research closes …

Women At The Crossroads, Women At The Forefront, American Women In Letterpress Printing In The Nineteenth Century, Dianne L. Roman Ms

Theses and Dissertations

The significant role of the female printer in the American home-based print shops during the colonial and early republic periods has been documented in print history, socioeconomic, labor, and women studies, yet with the industrialization of the printing trade, women’s presence is thought to have disappeared. Contrary to the belief that industrialization of the print shop eradicated women’s involvement in skilled employments such as typesetting, the creation of the Women’s Cooperative Printing Union in California and the creation and chartering of the Women’s Typographical Union in New York, both in the late 1860s, clearly indicate that women continued to work …

The New Gatekeepers: How Blogs Subverted Mainstream Book Reviews, Rebecca E. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Book reviewing has a fraught history in the United States. Reviewers have long been accused of not being analytical enough. It should be no wonder then with the emergence of social media that online book reviewing has become increasingly popular. Online reviewers, especially book bloggers, are no literary gatekeepers in their own right, shaping the tastes of readers across the world. Book blogs in particular pay special attention to titles which have long been derided by institutions such as libraries, academia, publishers, and bookstores. These literary gatekeepers typically ignore romance, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, young adult fiction, comic books, and …

“I Am Not Free While [Anyone] Is Unfree”: A Proposal And Framework For Enmarginalized Feminist Policy Analysis, Avina Ross

Social Work Student Works

This paper introduces a new feminist approach and framework to policy analysis. As an integration of intersectionality, Black feminist thought and endarkened feminist epistemology, enmarginalized feminist policy analysis (EFPA) offers an intersectional and flexible scope in a framework to assess policy for a diversity of populations, focusing on groups who are forced to live marginal and oppressed lives. Discussion is provided on existing approaches and frameworks in addition to an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of EFPA. A nine-component framework, which includes a section for analyst reflexivity, is provided to guide users in conducting EFPA. The author concludes with implications …

Queer-Baiting On The Bbc’S Sherlock: Addressing The Invalidation Of Queer Experience Through Online Fan Fiction Communities, Cassidy Sheehan

Undergraduate Research Posters

Fans of a particular media source often write fan fiction to build on, deviate from, and transform original source material. The BBC’s Sherlock is not exempt from this common practice; in fact, the homoerotic subtext which persistently endures within the show lends itself to the production of slash fan fiction. Many perceive this subtext as a method of queer-baiting, or an ultimately harmful tactic used by writers and producers to lure in queer viewers. In this paper, dialogue and scenes from the show itself are compared to excerpts from works of fan fiction in order to explore reactions to queer-baiting …

Progression Of The Representation Of Female Protagonists In The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Genres, Dakota S. Becker

Undergraduate Research Posters

Broadcast television has been plagued by the misrepresentation and absence of progressive female protagonists. Contemporary television programs have begun to address issues of diversity and empowerment, but it is questionable whether substantial strides in the representation of women have truly been made. The science fiction and fantasy genres in particular are infamous for perpetuating rampant sexism and the objectification of female characters. I analyze aspects of the television shows Orphan Black and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, two broadcast television series which aired over ten years apart, to broadly evaluate whether the science fiction and fantasy genres have progressed or …

“Rip It!”: A Juxtapositional And Critical Discourse Analysis Of Gender Violence In 3 Tyler Perry Films, Avina Ross

Graduate Research Posters

This qualitative study uses juxtapositional, intersectional and critical discourse analyses as one composite framework to assess Black female victimness and matriarchy in three Tyler Perry films. Findings exposed a transitional archetype model consisting of 5 domains (Victim, Bitterfruit, Matriarch, Forgiver and Princess) whereby victimized characters are portrayed using racist and sexist stereotypes. Additionally, rich juxtapositions in the films with regard to Black female victimness and matriarchy were also revealed. These juxtapositions play out in the transitional archetype model and reiterate a harmful racist gendered stereotype: strong, Black women (matriarchs) are not and cannot, by way of their strength, aggressiveness and …

Women Surrealist Photographers And Their Response To The Objectification Of Women In Male Surrealist Art, Lois X. Nguyen

Undergraduate Research Posters

Objectification of women in Male Surrealist art depicted the male gaze in its darkest form, through the ideas of the uncanny, fetish, and convulsive beauty. Women were treated as objects throughout Surrealist photography and painting instead of as human subjects. Their femininity and beauty were valued to the extent of held belief that a woman’s destiny is to be beautiful and be present for the male gaze. Women Surrealists have gained notoriety in the last sixty years for their presence in the Surrealist movement and for their diligence in providing the female perspective in opposition to the male perspective.

This …

Queer Mysticism In The High Middle Ages: Pain, Love, Earth, And The Female Body In The Illustrations Of Hildegard Of Bingen’S Scivias, Becky Bushnell

Undergraduate Research Posters

Many view Hildegard of Bingen as one of the most important female theologians of the 12th century, and her writing and sphere of influence is remarkable considering her gender. Many scholars, like Barbara Newman, Caroline Walker Bynum, and Carolyn Worman Sur, agree that Hildegard’s portrayals of God in Scivias are distinctly feminine. Scholars like Karma Lochrie, Sheryl Chen, and Flora Lewis have written on Christ’s wound as a metaphor for the womb or vulva. Yet what scholars don’t seem to focus on, as Lochrie writes in “Mystical Acts, Queer Tendencies,” is the ways that the work of many female mystics …

Disproportion Of Women In General Surgery And Obstetrics-Gynecology Professions, Nidhi H. Patel

Undergraduate Research Posters

An increasingly number of women have been enrolling in U.S. medical schools recently and the field of obstetrics-gynecology has become predominantly female, but the profession of general surgery still remains largely unequal between the two genders. There is an observable pattern of gender inequality in both of these specialties, which is a result of several different factors which affect all women regardless of their profession. I studied how the stark difference in the percentages of female surgeons versus the percentages of female obstetricians-gynecologists compared to men has been created due to the prescribed gender roles of women in society. I …

“Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman”: Depictions Of Female Madness, Julianna Little

Theses and Dissertations

Concepts of mental health and normality cannot be understood apart from cultural norms and values. The most significant of cultural constructions that shape our view of madness is gender. Madness has been perceived for centuries metaphorically and symbolically as a feminine illness and continues to be gendered into the twenty-first century. Works of art and literature and psychiatric medicine influence each other as well as our understanding and perception of mental illness. Throughout history, images of mental illness in women send the message that women are weak, dangerous, and require containment. What are the cultural links between femininity and insanity, …

Cute As A Button, Marta R. Finkelstein

Theses and Dissertations

Cute As A Button explores powerlessness, vulnerability, illness and addiction all wrapped up in tender buttons and a cute, cuddly creature. Using animation, sculpture, sound and an intimate space, I surround the viewer in a saccharine nightmare, one that references the dark underbelly of the cute and the sweet. The visual and aural elements are representative of the psychological and emotional states of powerlessness, which are overcome by the act of making and exploring a medium over which I can have complete control.

New Patriarchies: A Turbulence Of Source And Subject, Stephen Fuller

Theses and Dissertations

Experiencing a turbulence of source and subject in the variable inversions and supports of one source to another--the wreck of the U-352, Carpeaux’s Ugolino and his Sons, a movie poster for J.A. Bayona’s The Impossible, and Cassiopeia mythology--these four sources as sons, in sacrifice to and surviving by way of “daddy” documentation, are here refigured to reenact and critique the patriarchally recreational, monumental, cinematic, and mythological infrastructures supporting the sources of this work and thereby serving to critique the newer patriarchies to which these sources and their subjectifications here seek to cross consumptively dead end. Following three public …

Queer Alchemies: Radical Futurity In The Shell Of The Now, Elizabeth R. Canfield

Theses and Dissertations

This work operates at the intersection of academics, art, and activism. Within queer studies there is a tension between assimilation and liberation, sometimes situated as between pragmatism and utopia. This work re-examines Frankfurt school Marxist views of utopia through a queer theoretical lens in order to employ the radical imagination and queer futurity to examine new ways of practicing liberation. Drawing from theorists like Judith Butler, Jose Esteban Munoz, and Gloria Anzaldua, this work uses art (film, writing, zine-making, and sound) as a way to envision and enact a better world situated in the present.