Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Virginia Woolf And Gertrude Stein’S Repurposing Of Feminine Domestic Language Through The Lens Of Bakhtinian Heteroglossia And Dialogic Theory, Samantha Ortiz

Theses and Dissertations

This essay examines the ways that Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own and Gertrude Stein in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and “The Good Anna” recapture feminine domestic language in order to produce a new form of feminist heteroglossia, a reworking of Bakhtinian heteroglossia and dialogic theory.

Behind Closet Doors: Horror And Dislocation In The Queer Closet, Corey C. Allen

Theses and Dissertations

“Behind Closet Doors: Horror and Dislocation in the Queer Closet,” is composed of a collection of sculptures, videos, and sound works that are directly associated with themes of horror and anxiety derived from the precarious space of the queer closet as detailed in this thesis of the same name.

“The Healing Balm Of Sympathy Denied”: Moral Sense Philosophy, Patriarchy, And Monstrosity In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein, Estefania Velez

Theses and Dissertations

Though Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein produces an ideology of sympathy consistent with the literary and philosophical aims of Romanticism, this essay examines Shelley’s critique of patriarchy which posits that though sympathetic companionship in Frankenstein remains an ethical necessity, it is unattainable within a social order marred by misogynist structures of power.

“The Ground On Which I Stand” Healing Queer Trauma Through Performance: Crafting A Solo Performance Through The Investigation Of Ritual Poetic Drama Within The African Continuum, Ashley W. Grantham

Theses and Dissertations

“The Ground On Which I Stand”

Healing Queer Trauma through Performance:

Crafting a Solo Performance through the investigation of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum.

By: Ashley W. Grantham

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Performance Pedagogy at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

April 16^th, 2019

Thesis Adjudicator: Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Committee: Dr. Keith Byron Kirk, Director of Graduate Studies and Karen Kopryanski, Head of Voice and Speech

How does this method of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum, by extension, solo performance, …

In A Building, A Stairwell, A Room Speaks, Tsz Wai Wallis Cheung

Theses and Dissertations

Working toward a personal definition of womanhood while progressing with my research in feminist discourse, I frame biographical events alongside the intricate use of language surrounding feminist theory. Experimenting with material specificities that speak to my personal narratives and cultural significance, my work seeks to address the interlacing operations of subjectivity expanding on the intersection of class, gender and race.

Out Of The Margins: Evolving Narrative Representation Of Women In Video Games, Rowan Lucas

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines narrative representation of female characters in video games and how game narratives and representations contribute to socio-cultural discourse. First, this thesis explores and defines the cultural background for female representation in video games. It then defines video games as a type of text and describes the features that are unique to games, such as the use of avatars, and what impacts these features have on game narratives. The thesis attempts to establish evidence of an evolutionary arc of comprehensive female representation in video games by first exploring historical female narrative tropes, and then comparing them to narrative …

Humans Aren't Boxes, Art Isn't Finite, Brianne Alta Humphreys

Theses and Dissertations

I am bored. All around me are systems that perpetuate repetitive, reductive, and mundane modes of living. In an attempt to counter a culture obsessed with singular ways of existence and bite-sized perfection, I utilize moving mediums of video and performance to dive head first into a vast array of sloppy sincerity. The crisp, white-washed, analytical, and restrictive is loudly replaced with the empirical, haphazard, and instinctual. My intention is to create and encourage raw, performative-based work that is as multifaceted as unbridled life itself. This alive and physical practice hosts a conglomeration of sweat, memories, heartbreaks, hymn singing, line …

(And I Can't Stress This Enough) In My Mouth: Extradiegetic Affect As Material, C. Klockner

Theses and Dissertations

(and i can’t stress this enough) in my mouth: Extradiegetic Affect as Material is a non-linear exploration into the structures of feeling that exist in relation to cinema in its role as a technology for generating subjectivity. In the development of this research, a proposal of cinema’s likeness to the ecological circulation of microplastics is drawn in order to illustrate cinema’s materiality and nearly invisible ubiquity. The notion of extradiegetic affect is outlined as a post-cinematic condition in which lived experience becomes secondary to cinematic representation and which, simultaneously, becomes directly shaped by engaging with these representations.

A Spectacle And Nothing Strange, Taylor Z. King

Theses and Dissertations

Working through methods of abstraction and comedic mimicry I choreograph awkwardly balanced sculpture with objects of adornment as a means to defuse personal sensitivities surrounding my experiences of gender, desire, and home. The research that follows is concerned with the adjacent, the in between, above and underneath, because I feel that this kind of looking means that you are, to some degree, aware of what lies at the edges. Maybe this is what Gertrude Stein means to act as though there is no use in a center—because this concerns a way of relating, though there are many things in the …

Adaptive Acts: Queer Voices And Radical Adaptation In Multi-Ethnic American Literary And Visual Culture, Michael M. Means

Theses and Dissertations

Adaptation Studies suffers from a deficiency in the study of black, brown, yellow, and red adaptive texts, adaptive actors, and their practices. Adaptive Acts intervenes in this Eurocentric discourse as a study of adaptation with a (queer) POC perspective. My dissertation reveals that artists of color (re)create texts via dynamic modes of adaptation such as hyper-literary allusion, the use of meta-narratives as framing devices, and on-site collaborative re-writes that speak to/from specific cultural discourses that Eurocentric models alone cannot account for. I examine multi-ethnic American adaptations to delineate the role of adaptation in the continuance of stories that contest dominant …

The Wild Beasts, Peter Cochrane

Theses and Dissertations

The Wild Beasts springs from my desire to thank my ever-expanding queer chosen family and mentors for their strength. Working through the often violent and othering aspects of the lens and photographic histories I create floral portraits responding to each person’s being and our relationship. Using the 19th century, 8x10 large format view camera—the same used by colonialists and ethnographers to “capture” the divinity of Nature—I erect each as a traditional still life studio setup at the threshold between the natural world and that constructed by humans. These environments speak both to the character of each friend and also to …

A Subversão Dos Estereótipos De Gênero Nos Contos Fantásticos De Lygia Fagundes Telles, Gabriela Oliveira

Theses and Dissertations

Em meio às mudanças políticas e sociais no Brasil da segunda parte do século XX, Lygia Fagundes Telles começa a se destacar literariamente através de seus romances e coletâneas de contos com caráter intimista. Apesar de não se considerar naquela época uma escritora militante, ela era engajada socialmente e realizava sua crítica de maneira sutil utilizando-se de táticas literárias, como a presença do gênero fantástico. Ela escreve durante uma época de extrema censura e repressão, aonde o conservadorismo impera principalmente nos moldes familiares. A sociedade continha um modelo de como cada homem e mulher deveria agir para se encaixar e …

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

Gender-Exclusive Language: Women’S Perception Of Linguistic Ostracism, Voice, And Power In Politics, Michelle Roxanne Grzybowski

Theses and Dissertations

Gender-exclusive language is a type of subtly sexist language that makes reference to a single gender group thereby excluding other gender groups (Stout & Dasgupta, 2011). Two studies examined how the use of gender-exclusive language impacts the experiences of women who were elected members of county boards. Specifically, the studies surveyed county board members in the states of Illinois and Wisconsin to determine whether the naturally occurring variation between the use of gender-exclusive language (e.g., using chairman to indicate both men and women) or gender-neutral language (e.g., chair or chairperson) was related to perceptions of ostracism and a sense of …

Trauma And The Credibility Economy: An Analysis Of Epistemic Violence And Its Traumatic Functions, Gina Stinnett

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I argue that the work done in philosophy on epistemic injustice can put pressure on the assumptions driving the work of both trauma theory and rhetorical theory. In addition to arguing how epistemic injustice can reinforce trauma, I argue that epistemic injustice has its own power to traumatize. I refer to this as “epistemic trauma,” or a trauma to one’s ability to know their experience and to make a claim based on this knowledge. Research on epistemic injustice states that when one encounters repeated epistemic injustice, they become less likely to share their experiences at all—they fall …

Private Rainbows, Mikey F. Estes

Theses and Dissertations

I make art that refers to how the self is mediated through structures, objects, and images — a kind of self-portraiture that circles around its subject, reflecting a state of simultaneous formation and disintegration. Over the past few years, I have used my iPhone as a tool to make images of everyday life. As the user of this device, I am defined by both my presence and absence. I am interested in the process of locating the self within the scattered yet ordered space of the screen.

The Archivettes, Megan D. Rossman

Theses and Dissertations

The Archivettes is a feature-length documentary film about the Lesbian Herstory Archives and the personal lives of the women involved in it. The film provides a comprehensive look at the history of the group, the materials it protects and the challenges arising as the founders face their final years.

The Lesbian Herstory Archives began in 1974, when a group of women involved in the Gay Academic Union realized that lesbian history was disappearing as quickly as it was being made (Edel). It is now home to the world's largest collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities.

Remembrances Reconsidered: Site-Specific Affective Retellings, Melanie W. Lozier

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of the ways in which strong affective feelings, trauma, and memories are written about by women through diverse narrative forms. Through storytelling, writers engage with the relationship between deep feelings, significant places, and language, such as the frequent employment of words containing the prefix "re."

Long Vacation In Bk, Doll Chao

Theses and Dissertations

The diary of a transcontinental search for self and place, a journey through obtuse politics, cultural oppression, and loneliness - this film is the document of a lost generation of Taiwanese youth and its conflict with China, swirling in a transpacific gyre of sound, image, and text.

Contesting Representations Of Gender And Womanhood In Mexico The Photomontages Of Lola Álvarez Bravo, 1935–1958, Alana Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

Lola Álvarez Bravo (1903–1993), a Mexican photographer, photojournalist, portraitist, and teacher created approximately thirty photomontages during the span of her fifty-year career. This thesis argues that Álvarez Bravo turned to photomontage during targeted periods of her career in order to contest and challenge prevailing discourses on motherhood and femininity. A close analysis of eight photomontages produced between 1935 to the last printed in 1958 make evident the manifold ways Álvarez Bravo represented gender as a contested, political, and personal concern.

Of The Crickets, Kathryn Lien

Theses and Dissertations

Of the Crickets imagines the overlapping worlds of ethical ecological solutions to climate changed sustenance and the potential for collective excellence in female exclusive environments. Using garments, furniture, site-specific installation and directed performance, the project harnesses social and material sensitivity to mine solutions for idealized living.

Converging Objects Of The Universe, Everett Hoffman

Theses and Dissertations

Reconfigured found objects shape scenes of everyday life, questioning the structural histories that go into defining an identity. Engaging in a multidisciplinary approach of making, my work reimagines the function of ornamentation and its relationship to the body. I approach new materials and found objects with the eye of a jeweler, highlighting and exploiting the subtle, and often invisible, links between material histories and their connection to identity. Material debris patinated with age like skillets, baseballs, and furniture are used to penetrate normative structures around identity, gender, and sexual desire. Using adornment as a support in my installations I propose …

Women In Music: Letting A Long Story Be Long Contemplating Women’S Sonic, Musical, And Spiritual Experiences In Prehistory, Deborah J. Saidel

Theses and Dissertations

Situated within deep history, this study explores the auditory and spiritual lives of Paleolithic women. It considers their personal agency in mediating the spiritual power of sound and how doing so contributes to a multifaceted musicality. The theoretical framework involves a wide spectrum of topics, from ways of rethinking the writing of history and reckoning with time, to sound studies and the study of acoustics in ancient sites, to a critical examination through a feminist lens of normative disciplinary scholarship in anthropology and archaeology, religious studies, and musicology. I explore potential audio-visual-lithic relationships for their implications for deepening an understanding …

Embedded In These Walls, Trish J. Gibson

Theses and Dissertations

Embedded In These Walls uses photographic imagery, archival ephemera, and written text to examine a specific history of generational trauma through the lens of a singular family of a southern tradition to point to a larger systemic breakdown of accountability and truthfulness regarding abuse

Discrimination, Mental Health, And Preparedness For Aging In Trans(Gender)/Gender-Nonconforming Adults, Richard S. Henry

Theses and Dissertations

This cross-sectional study examined relationships among discrimination, mental health (i.e., depression and anxiety), preparation for aging (i.e., familiarity and planning), social support, death attitudes, and aging anxiety among TGNC adults (N = 154). Neither discrimination nor mental health predicted preparation for aging familiarity or planning. Discrimination did, however, predict both anxiety and depression, although only the non-affirmation subscale was a unique predictor of both. As discrimination and mental health were not a significant predictor of preparedness for aging in the previous regressions, the hypothesized mediation model and subsequent moderated mediation models were not conducted. Additional exploratory multiple regressions were …

The Best Story: Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald's Return To The South Revealed Through The Analysis Of Her Articles And Fiction Published Between 1920 And 1932, Kemry H. Farthing

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’s writing published between 1920 and 1932. To date, biographers and scholars have largely failed to carefully examine and understand Zelda’s publications. During this period Zelda critiques the materialism and generational lack of respect she finds in the North in her articles, while using her imagination to discuss the possibilities of the South in her short stories. All of her works during these years culminate in her novel, Save Me the Waltz, in which much of her life and return to the South is mirrored by her heroine, Alabama Knight. This thesis examines Zelda’s …

Black Lives Examined: Black Nonfiction And The Praxis Of Survival In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Ariel D. Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

The subject of my thesis project is black nonfiction, namely the essay, memoir, and autobiography, written by black authors about and during the Post-Civil Rights Era. The central goals of this work are to briefly investigate the role of genre analysis within the various subsets of nonfiction and also to exemplify the ways that black writers have taken key genre models and evolved them. Secondly, I aim to understand the historical, political, and cultural contributions of the Post-Civil Rights Era, which I mark as hitting its stride in 1968. It is not my desire to create a definitive historical framework …

Why Katniss Everdeen Is Our Favorite Feminist – An Analysis Of The Heroine Of The Hunger Games Film Saga And Her Reception By Young Female Spectators, Paula Talero Álvarez

Theses and Dissertations

THROUGH THE FIGURE OF FICTIONAL CHARACTER KATNISS EVERDEEN, THIS DISSERTATION STUDIES HOW THE FILM INDUSTRY SIMULTANEOUSLY ENTRENCHES AND DISRUPTS GENDER, SEXUAL, AND RACIAL NORMATIVITIES. THE PROJECT USES TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND PARTICIPANT RESEARCH TO ANALYZE HOW THE FILMS AND NOVELS OF THE HUNGER GAMES SAGA ENCAPSULATE BOTH DOMINANT AND ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS RELATED TO FEMININITY, MASCULINITY, WOMANHOOD, AND MOTHERHOOD. IT ALSO EXPLORES IF AND HOW THE FEMALE HEROINE CAN BE READ AS FEMINIST AND PRODUCES A SENSE OF EMPOWERMENT. I CONCLUDE THAT ALTHOUGH THE INDUSTRY IS PRODUCING NEW MODELS OF WOMANHOOD THAT CHALLENGE TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES, IT STILL PERPETUATES ROMANTIC IDEALS AND …

Images Of Women In Refugee Drama: Eve Ensler’S Necessary Targets And Ellen Mclaughlin’S The Trojan Women, Kaitlyn Tossie

Theses and Dissertations

In the past ten years, a critique of the conceptualization of refugees in Western mass media has emerged as a developing discourse in response to post-20th century genocides. Photographs in mass media of wailing refugees began to appear in the early 1990s when reports of the Bosnian genocide appeared in the United States. These images, and the stereotypes that surround them, contribute to the universal depiction of refugees as weak. Though the way in which theatre comments on this conceptualization of refugees has largely been ignored, theatre has a unique ability to comment on, reflect, and create a culture that …

Decoding Darkmatter, Crystal J. Waterton

Theses and Dissertations

Decoding DarkMatter is a documentary film about two Asian transgender poetry performance artists: Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian. It documents their journey from Stanford University to their first large theater production; It Gets Bitter, at Joe’s Pub in New York City.