Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Allyship And Affect: Qualitative Investigations Into Social Transformation, Michael Lucinda Jane Greer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Allies have faced several critiques in feminist philosophy. Some have argued that they lack the requisite political interests to be motivated to dismantle the social structures from which they stand to benefit. Others have argued that the epistemic limitations resulting from their social privilege are insurmountable. Yet others have argued that allyship is too individualistic a concept, preferring a more collectivist concept like solidarity. However, there remain privileged individuals who understand themselves as complicit in perpetuating oppressive forms of life, and who wish to transform themselves and work in coalition across difference to dismantle structural oppression. How ought these individuals …

Possibilities Of Being: Black Women's Storytelling As Archival Undoing, Dasharah Green

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation constructs a discursive genealogy of Black women’s storytelling, positioning its art and aesthetics as a form of colonial archival undoing. Each chapter explores how transmission and documentation can transform—and circumvent—traditional colonial archives. Beginning at the start of the twentieth-century to present, this project traces the discursive legacies of Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff, and Staceyann Chin, examining each writer as a site of becoming as they individually (and collectively) seek to articulate an expansive idea of a Black world that constitutes a broader understanding of Black freedom. They each share a common goal of creating a …

Dancing In Circles: Bon Dance As Performance Of The Past, Travis Robb Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project traces the contours of the Japanese folk dance tradition of Bon Dance in Hawaiʻi through the nuances of public scholarship, diaspora, and racial capitalism by producing an original play which aims to perform the knowledge and praxis which the performance ritual puts forward. Treating Bon Dance as muse, the original play examines the necessity of turning to the past in order to disrupt a future made inevitable by oppressive systems; a fiction that comments on and critiques the predictive and generative technologies that have embedded themselves into society at large. Through intertwining conversations that explore prophecy and …

Who Is Invited To The National Family? A Brazilian Autoethnography Of Being A Woman Under The U.S. O-3 Visa, Bruna Lauermann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis lives in the borderlands between Brazil and the United States, during the nine years of my immigration to the United States. Using autoethnography, I analyze the O-3 visa as a tool that controls and alienates foreign women and devalues knowledge produced outside U.S. borders. This visa, for spouse or children of O-1 holders, which are people considered to have extraordinary abilities to work in the U.S. showcases the reasons why one is invited to be part of the national family and under what obligations and circumstances. A decision that is shaped far more by the interests of the …

Trans-Cyber Cinema: Digital Embodiment In Science-Fiction Films, Sophia R. Schrock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis aims to define the trans-cyber genre within cinema. By looking retroactively at a selection of nine films made across various decades and countries, this genre connects these films through their visualization and thematization of both trans and cyber embodiments, whereby the trans-cyber being emerges. Before the cinematic analysis and explanation of the three generic conventions selected for this thesis – transformation of body/gender; altered reality, memory, and temporality; and, radical death – the two intertwining theoretical frameworks will be established. This includes a brief summary of applicable transgender theory, and an introduction to cyborg theory (using Donna Haraway’s …

Monsters In The Gutter: Queerness And Family In Graphic Novels, Maren Beriss

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis I read two graphic novels together: My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris and Black Hole by Charles Burns. Although the stories are quite different, they mirror each other quite closely: Burns’ story takes place in a homogenous suburb; Ferris’ is set in a diverse part of Chicago. Both deal with what it means to be a monster, but in different ways. Ferris has a clear framework of the different kinds of monsters – good, bad, and villager – which is at times helpful but often too narrow. Yet reading Burns with this lens in mind …

An Investigation Of The Impact Of Privacy On Sexual And Reproductive Health Using Reports On The 2010 Earthquake In Haiti, Jillian E. Myers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2010, a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the capital city of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, causing great destruction of infrastructure and the devastating loss of about 316,000 lives and over a million homes. The earthquake destroyed agricultural production and clean water sources, causing severe resource scarcity along with the overcrowding in the relief camps. Following the earthquake, international aid organizations flooded into Haiti in an effort to help provide immediate relief. The relief efforts were unprepared and lacked coordination among each other to efficiently implement the needed aid services. Without strategic planning to ensure all people’s needs are met, women and …

Kanak-Ish Misfits: Queer Imaginaries, Racialized Borders, And The Politics Of Care In Berlin, Germany, Faruk Seref

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines queer Muslim experiences of border politics, racialization, and care in Berlin, Germany. By formulating bordering as a domineering and oppressive practice of boundary-making, I study how global bordering mechanisms shape and disrupt structures of care, caring, and being cared for. With an intersectional focus on race, gender, sexuality, and sex, I argue that borders are simultaneously materialized and challenged in varying localities, including the nightclub, the queer scene, the diasporic neighborhoods, and households. Ultimately, viewing collective care as fundamental to survival, healing, resistance, and building non-punitive lifeworlds, I theorize the counter-hegemonic practices of queers of color through …

Vestigial Choreographies: Climate Consciousness In The Long Nineteenth Century, Alexandra A. Rego

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aims of this project are twofold: (a) to develop a method of theoretical analysis and (b) to put this method into pointed use. In service of (a), I propose a method of choreographic analysis. This method operates relationally, highlighting the production of movement and stillness among and between bodies, objects, and encounters. Choreographic analysis draws from methods typically sequestered to dance studies. Towards aim (b), this project demonstrates the relevance and breadth of choreographic analysis by connecting it to ecocriticism. Throughout this project, I apply choreographic analysis to a diverse set of case studies. I use choreographic analysis to …

Roe V. Wade With Audre And Nikki: Their Social And Political Impacts Following The Landmark Decision, Sharon L. Eaddy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes how the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade shaped public understandings of reproductive rights and how those understandings diverged across race, gender, class, and sexuality. Using a qualitative, interdisciplinary design, the study pairs close textual analysis of Nikki Giovanni’s and Audre Lorde’s poems and essays with socio-legal and historical context on constitutional privacy doctrine, the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the Reconstruction legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The central research question is: what kinds of reproductive “freedom” become legible through Roe’s rights-based framing, and what forms of constraint remain visible when Black …

“A Chill Wind Sweeps The High Places”: Audre Lorde’S And June Jordan’S Black Feminist Pedagogies For Remaking Higher Education, Maddie Albanese

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this paper, I center the University as one site for radical pedagogy towards social justice.  This paper examines texts written on anti-racist, anti-sexist educational movements within the City University of New York, as well as archival materials from CUNY professors on the topic of radical, social justice-oriented learning. Conor Tomás Reed’s 2023 book New York Liberation School is one recent text on how CUNY activists dismantled the distinction between the University and its surrounding community, inextricably linking academic work with social-political activism. I take his extensive history of CUNY in tandem with various pedagogies developed by CUNY feminist educators …

Aphrodite In Movement And Miniature: Knidian Statuettes Of The Ancient And Modern, Jacqueline M. Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines Hellenistic statuettes of the Knidian Aphrodite as independent works of art with distinct ancient contexts and modern collecting histories. Drawing on archaeological evidence from Delos, archival and public records from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a comparative framework that places Hellenistic and modern collecting cultures in dialogue, this thesis aims to present the Knidia within the dynamic, interactive history of statuettes. Evaluated on its own terms rather than in relation to a lost original, Knidian Aphrodite statuettes illuminate both the richness of Hellenistic domestic religious life and …

Erosion And Accretion: Mobilities Of Sand, People, And Memory At Queer Riis Beach, Jah Elyse Sayers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York, is a vibrant place of queer and trans public-space placemaking—and especially Black and working class queer and trans placemaking. A distinct queer ecology emerges in the interplay of the dynamic movement of the barrier island, queer and trans—especially queer and trans Afro-diasporic—mobilities. This queer ecology, while articulated with, also defies and exceeds logics and workings of private property. In response to a convergence of pressures on Black, queer, trans, and working-class placemaking on the beach site in the 2020s, beachgoers have mobilized longstanding provisional socialities …

Kitchen Table Press: A Case Study Of Regression To The Neoliberal Mean, Alaina Disalvo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the idealistic founding of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980 and its slow downfall, culminating in the cession of ownership of the Press to a university in 1992. It traces the ideological development of Kitchen Table Press’s key founders, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde, and their respective relationships to the ideologies of other renowned feminist figures of the era, specifically June Jordan and Adrienne Rich. It examines the history of the Press through historical, intersectional, affective, and socialist lenses. This thesis argues that neoliberal pressures can bend even the most radical organizations away from their …

Policing Sex Trafficking: 'They’Re Never Taught, You Know', Anila S. Duro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research shows that victims of sex trafficking are most likely to first come in contact with the police (Baldwin et al, 2011; Twigg, 2017) and at times police have not been able to categorize cases of prostitution as trafficking even when trafficking elements were very clear (Dank et al, 2017; Dempsey, 2017; Farrell & Cronin, 2015). Despite the legal definition of trafficking, the terms prostitution, sex work, and sex trafficking are sometimes used interchangeably by law enforcement, whereas at other times, these words refer to different sets of circumstances and have different criminalization outcomes.  Research in this area is limited …

Three Degrees Of Representation: How Genai Filters, Retrieves, And Remixes Lesbian Film Data, Maria G. Baker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project investigates how generative AI systems assemble, filter, and represent Lesbian film data. Through auditing GenAI outputs across multiple dimensions (text, images, metadata), 3°R explores what gets included, excluded, and transformed in the process.

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Three Degrees of Representation is a public website (https://mgb513.github.io/lesfilm-meets-AI/) featuring an investigation of AI-generated images and texts in response to Lesbian film data. Filtering simple prompts based on Lesbian film titles through the algorithms of AI image and text generators makes visible how these systems digest and remix existing (training) data, and how aspects of Lesbian representation are either amplified or suppressed …

The Rhetorical Agency Of Student-Parents: Assembling, Archiving, And Naming Practices And Interpretations That Transform Worlds, Dhipinder Walia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary project that uses interview data collected from six student-parents attending Bronx Community College during 2024 to 2025. Using rhetorical and critical discourse analysis, this dissertation argues student-parents enact their rhetorical agency to transform their college experience. Specifically, student-parents use their rhetorical agency to interpret time and place in a way that centers their own wellbeing as well as the wellbeing of their children. This dissertation focuses on interpretations and ordinary practices that reimagine what time and place can look and feel like on a college campus. Additionally, student-parents enact their rhetorical agency through ordinary practices …

The Radical Political Possibilities Of Asexuality And Aromanticism, Kirty Singh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explores the radical political potential of Asexuality and Aromanticism within queer theory, emphasizing their roles in destabilizing normative constructs of sexuality and romantic relationships. Employing mixed methods, including literature review, digital ethnography of online communities, and analysis of graphic narratives, the research examines how these identities challenge systemic systems such as compulsory sexuality, amatonormativity, and racialized discourses. Findings reveal that Asexual and Aromantic communities utilize flexible definitions and taxonomies to assert their identities, disrupt hegemonic gender and sexual norms, and foster coalitional politics that advocate for systemic change. The study underscores the importance of recognizing Asexuality and Aromanticism …

The Crisis Of Safety, Well-Being, And Belonging Facing Lgbtq Children: Mad/Crip Of Color Critique Towards A Curriculum Of Radical Care, Jameson Goetz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, I turn toward the study of educational experience, defined broadly to include lived experiences both within and outside of formal schooling institutions. I approach curriculum as an ongoing project of self-understanding in which one becomes mobilized for engaged pedagogical action alongside others in the pursuit social justice. I am guided by the following question, foundational to the field of curriculum studies: for those of us who work alongside LGBTQ children, what knowledge is of most worth? Critically reflecting on ways of working alongside LGBTQ children in the pursuit of social justice, I formulate a mad/crip of color …

Love Amid The Rage: Feminist Affect In Women's Life-Writing, Genesis Siverio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this thesis is to show the ways women’s emotions or affect, particularly rage and love, are described by women writers in their most intimate stories. I discuss the way emotion has been demeaned, and how feminist scholars have instead viewed the body as a place of insight, reclaiming a knowledge from the senses. In the midst of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, women give voice to their affectual experiences and cultivate the feelings they have so often been denied. Focusing on the particular ways women’s anger manifests in their lives and in their bodies, I zoom in on …

Re/Inventing Desire: Asexuality As A Tool For Utopian Intimacies, Amaranta Martinez Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Asexuality became widely known in 2001 when David Jay, launched the Asexuality, Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), however, it’s been just throughout the last decade that it has gained popularity among LGBTQ studies. This thesis explores asexuality beyond its conventional framing as a sexual orientation, positioning it instead as a theoretical framework with the potential to challenge hegemonic understandings of sexuality. It does so by tracing the historical construction of sexual desire through the discipline of sexology, demonstrating how its discourses helped reinforce compulsory sexuality—the expectation that individuals must experience and act upon sexual desire (Emens 2014). Building upon this …

The "Self" In Crisis: A Study Of Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals, Golnaz Salehkarimi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, I focus on The Cancer Journals and explore how Audre Lorde articulates the chaos followed by breast cancer in her life: what is the nature of the crises? What aspects of her life are largely affected by it? How it unsettles her understanding of time and place, how her daily life, work, relationships, and future plans get affected, and how her self-image and her agency and subjectivity are threatened. Relying on theories of women’s autobiographies, women’s writings, and illness narratives, I explore Lorde’s ways of writing about her body and emotions to regain her sense of self …

Menstrual Math: The Price Of Bleeding, Gabrielle Langston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project examines the landscape of menstrual equity in the United States through a data storytelling lens, focusing on state-level policies regarding taxation and access to menstrual products. The analysis explores which states impose sales tax on menstrual products, if state schools provide free menstrual products, and which states ensure access for incarcerated individuals using publicly available datasets from advocacy groups. Additionally, there is an investigation into potential correlations between the gender wage gap and states that tax menstrual products, shedding light on economic and policy disparities.

Through its data visualizations, this project aims to provide a clear, although not …

Not Meant To Be Read: The Stories They Silence, The Resistance That Speaks, Cristina Onea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I trace the evolution of surveillance from overt state violence to the more insidious forms of ideological policing embedded in everyday life. Through lived experience, oral history, and critical autoethnography, I explore how surveillance moves through bodies, families, institutions, and memory—not simply as external control, but as internalized rhythms of fear, vigilance, and self-surveillance. I move between my father's life under Romanian dictatorship, my own embodied inheritance, and the contemporary struggles of librarians facing ideological suppression to reveal surveillance as a structure that persists through generations, mutates across contexts, and demands new forms of resistance.

I argue …

Tradwives: The Housewifization Of The Girl Boss, Gagan Kaur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the reemergence of a particular performance of domesticity in the post-pandemic era, focusing on the rise of the "tradwife" (traditional wife) movement alongside the normalization and spread of Alt-Right ideology through popular social media platforms. It argues that the tradwife is not a return to tradition, but a commodified performance of domesticity built on the erasure of social reproductive labor. Tracing the lineage of the “housewife” from the enclosure of the commons to imperial domesticity and from the “girl boss” to tradwife influencer culture, this project situates the tradwife within a longer history of "housewifization"—wherein women's labor …

Nature Et Relations Dans La Littérature Caribéenne Francophone De Fin Du Xxe Siècle Et Contemporaine, Louise Bonastre-Fajardo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My research project argues that literature novels from the french-speaking Caribbeans contribute to testifying to relationships with the environment, with others, and with oneself. By recognizing nature as a subject of rights under Latin America's new constitutionalism to prevent environmental harm caused by humans, politics can acknowledge that nature is actually a part of a domination system. This study addresses a range of issues within existing power structures, by articulating the notion of "nature" with the notions of "natural" and "supernatural" in a selection of francophone late XX’s century and contemporary Caribbean novels.

An important literature on Latin American and …

Visualizing The Rise Of American Women's Soccer, Hoi Wah Tang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The rise of American women’s soccer is a compelling narrative of determination, talent, and triumph on the global stage. From the inaugural FIFA Women’s World Cup in 1991 to the ongoing dominance of the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT), this journey encapsulates not only athletic excellence but also the broader struggles for equality, representation, and respect in sports.

This project aims to bring this story to life by presenting a rich tapestry of data visualizations, timelines, and multimedia elements that showcase key moments, players, and milestones. Through engaging graphics and interactive features, users will explore how the sport evolved, the …

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 …

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. …

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 …