Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Between The Lens And The Gaze: Reflections Of Femininity In Film, Noureen Sakr

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the male gaze’s construction of femininity through the use of glass and reflective surfaces, particularly mirrors, windows, glasses, and cameras in film. Reflections and depictions of women are recurring motifs in cinema, often symbolizing dynamics of perception and power. This thesis mobilizes related psychoanalytic and feminist conceptions to examine and compare the recurring visual motifs in the following films: Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) and Rear Window (1954), Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (1992), & Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010). This thesis employs a qualitative, interdisciplinary methodology that integrates psychoanalytic theory, feminist film theory, literary criticism …

Lost In Chaos: The Battle Between Selfcare And Motherhood, Sarah Shahzad

MS Marketing Research Projects/Theses

Motherhood in collectivist societies such as Pakistan is deeply intertwined with caregiving, leaving limited space for women’s self-care or personal well-being. This study explores how young Pakistani mothers negotiate self-care within competing expectations of maternal sacrifice, cultural morality, and structural constraints. Guided by the Institutional Logics Perspective (ILP), it examines how familial norms, religious values, and market forces collectively shape women’s self-care practices, framing self-care not as an autonomous act but as a negotiated process embedded within social and institutional boundaries. This study adopts an interpretive phenomenological approach to explore how Pakistani mothers experience and negotiate self-care within cultural and …

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 …

The Negotiated Identities Of Refugee-Background Women During Resettlement, Iuliia Fakhrutdinova

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Refugee-background women experience unique challenges while resettling in the U.S. as they navigate complicated transnational gender roles, education gaps, migration trauma, learning a new language, and literacy in the adaptation process during resettlement, which can derail the productive paths they are on. Therefore, ignoring refugee-background women’s unique experiences and failing to understand their identities prevents our society from doing social justice and creating a space for a smooth adaptation to the new context. Language plays a paramount role in identity formation, as it moves away from the belief that identity is an essential concept. For refugee-background women during resettlement, their …

I Must Be Well, To Do Well: Examining The Relationship Between Toxic Stem Environments, Trauma, Stem Support, And Academic Outcomes Among Diverse Graduate Women In Stem, Aisha Farra

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Women, particularly Women of Colour (WOC), remain underrepresented in STEM. In the last two decades, research has sought to better understand women’s experiences in STEM, highlighting challenges such as isolation, sexism, and racism, which negatively impact mental health and STEM persistence. While these mental health challenges have been documented, further work is needed to examine how these experiences are related to trauma symptoms and physical health outcomes, as well as the mechanisms through which they shape academic outcomes. This quantitative study investigated the relationships among toxic STEM experiences (i.e., gendered racism, sexism, and isolation), trauma symptoms and physical health concerns, …

Cosmetic Nationalism: Fashion And Feminine Performance In Trump-Aligned America, Nicola Rountree-Williams

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

This paper examines how fashion, beauty, and feminine presentation operate as political tools within Trump-aligned American culture. Drawing on historical examples from fascist Italy, Francoist Spain, and European aristocratic fashion, it argues that aesthetics have long been used to reinforce nationalism, gender hierarchy, and political authority. The paper analyzes contemporary trends such as “Republican makeup” and “Mar-a-Lago face,” arguing that these hyper-feminine and highly racialized beauty standards function as performances of loyalty, wealth, and traditional femininity within Trump-aligned politics. Through figures such as Kristi Noem, the paper demonstrates how women’s appearances can visually legitimize masculine authority while limiting women’s autonomy …

Remixing Dialogue: A Case Study On Perceptions Of Hip Hop Pedagogy In A Professional Learning Course, Kelly J. Thelen

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This qualitative case study examines how teachers’ decision-making and professional autonomy shift while participating in a Hip Hop Pedagogy Professional Learning course supported by structured FIXIT (Lo & Wachter, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d; Wachter & Lo, 2024) game-facilitated dialogue in a rural, culturally and linguistically diverse Midwest community. Grounded in Freire’s (1970) Critical Pedagogy, Ladson-Billings’ (1995) Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris and Alim, 2017), and Adult Learning Theory (Knowles et al., 2005), the study explores the reclamation of agency by teachers in a time of constrained creativity and educator autonomy shaped by strict policy environments, an emphasis on …

A Philosophy Of Communication Response To Bullying In Corporate America, Chris A. Phillips Dr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This philosophy of communication response to bullying in corporate America follows the structure of posing research questions, synthesizing relevant literature, and offering advice to practitioners. It invites the reader to have hope in continuing the conversation through a constructive hermeneutic approach to the problem. By building on literature in oppression, silencing, bullying, incivility, and communication ethics, this dissertation reveals how (rhetoric) and why (philosophy) the problem occurs in corporate America today. This dissertation offers a new angle to an old problem, or, a rhetoric and philosophy of bullying. It responds to the following questions:

RQ 1: As a destructive communication …

The Method And The Machinery: Gloria Steinem, India, And The Cold War Making Of American Second Wave Feminsim, 1956-1972, Rashida Shafiq

History Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that Gloria Steinem became one of the most visible feminists of her generation because two political inheritances — postcolonial India and the Cold War liberal United States — converged in a single career. In 1957 and 1958, on a Chester Bowles Asian Fellowship, Steinem spent eighteen months in India, where she moved from elite intellectual circles in Delhi to Gandhian and Sarvodaya peace work in the villages of Ramnad. Walking with Bhoodan fieldworkers through caste-riot-stricken communities, she absorbed a repertoire of organizing practices — listening across difference, lateral and leaderless structure, decision by consensus, and the conversion …

The Female Gothic And Marianne Dashwood: The Gothic Heroine Of Sense And Sensibility, Samantha Cottle

English (MA) Theses

In the late eighteenth-century, the rise of the English Gothic novel propelled an extension referred to as the Female Gothic. Through the complexity of the English Gothic genre, writers—particularly women writers—explore the intersectionality of gender, class, natural horrors, and race, creating a space where the heroines of these Gothic novels exist beyond the confinement of the domestic sphere. The Female Gothic was a way for these women writers to acknowledge the natural horrors that plagued the experiences of being a woman—it addressed the oppression of a patriarchal society in which the subversion of the female body was perceived as an …

Balancing Our Capacity To Serve: A Phenomenological Exploration Of Black Women Navigating Personal, Professional, And Community Leadership Roles, Shemeka K. Brathwaite

Student Theses

This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of Black women community leaders as they navigate a balance between their professional, personal, and community leadership roles. The research design uses the theoretical frameworks of Black Feminist Intersectionality and Role Theory, specifically addressing the cultural burdens imposed by the Strong Black Woman archetype, which adds additional role strain. The study began with a questionnaire completed by 54 Black women community leaders, followed by 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews selected from this pool. The study’s key findings are illustrated in a Black Women’s Sustainable Community Leadership Framework. Black women community leaders exude high self-efficacy, …

(Re)Claiming Homeplace: Dance As Embodied Resistance & Healing For Health & Spatial Justice, Preeya G. Kannan

University Honors Theses

This thesis argues that dance functions as both an upstream public health intervention and a form of radical spatial resistance; creating healing, agency, and belonging among historically marginalized communities. Drawing on bell hooks' concept of homeplace, Jasbir Puar's assemblage theory, Nancy Krieger's eco-social theory, and Katherine McKittrick's Black geographies, I position the body as both an ecological and political landscape shaped by histories of colonialism, racial capitalism, displacement, and resilience.

Through this community-based participatory research study, Homeplace, I explore dance as a form of social prescription that centers liberation rather than pathology. Movement is often reduced in public health discourse …

The Contentious Politics Of Abortion: Understanding The Black Protests And Women’S Strikes In Poland, Taubie Sanders

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

In 1993, the Polish Parliament, the Sejm, passed a law called ‘The Abortion Compromise’ permitting abortion only in cases when there is a serious threat to the life or health of the woman, pregnancy is the result of a crime, or prenatal tests show the fetus to be severely or incurably damaged. The current abortion laws in Poland are the most restrictive in all of Europe. Poland’s abortion laws have undergone much contestation in recent years. In 2016, the Black Protests erupted across the country in opposition to a proposed total ban on abortion. In 2020, the Women’s Strikes commenced …

Gendered Justice: The Role Of Women’S Civil Society Organizations In Shaping Chile’S Truth Commissions, Frankie Stroud

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Scholarly literature has increasingly recognized that the inclusion of women and gender in formal transitional justice processes is essential for addressing the gendered nature of mass atrocities. This thesis seeks to contribute to the existing literature on how and why some transitional justice processes have come to address women and gender by specifically studying Chile’s Rettig Commission and Valech Commission. Several hypotheses have emerged from the literature for why the Valech Commission addressed gender to a greater extent, including that women’s civil society organizations, diffusion of international norms, and shifting domestic politics each played a role. Grounded in an anti-reductionist …

Trans And Gender Diverse Experiences With Healthcare Professionals, Victor N. Soto

University Honors Theses

There is a history of state powers working against the interest of Transgender and Gender Diverse (TGD) people, but since the second Trump election attacks on TGD have reached a new precedent; this suggests the state is engaging in necropolitical actions to gain and maintain power. To better understand how the current climate is impacting TGD people, and add to discussions about TGD-centered healthcare research, this thesis interviewed 15 TGD students from the Portland metro area about their experiences with healthcare providers. All fifteen of the interviews were transcribed and coded. Four primary themes were found: 1) bad provider experience; …

Neoliberalism & The Care Economy: Exploring The Gendered Impacts Of Social Protection Systems, Rachel Carruthers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how neoliberal transformation of social protection policy influences gender dynamics within the care economy. Care is necessary for well-being, but traditionally excluded from economic thinking. This thesis completes a historical overview of how care has been incorporated or excluded by different economic paradigms and is anchored in feminist political economy that emphasizes care as a central consideration. A comparative analysis across California, Texas, and Sweden demonstrates how social protection, specifically access to paid parental leave, varies across regimes and results in inconsistent care outcomes. The findings suggest that social protections can reduce some inequalities, but inadequately address …

She Believed She Could, So She Did: A Lifecycle Approach To Understanding Leadership And Self-Efficacy Development In Women Astronauts, Savanah Faith Sellars Bray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how women leaders develop and sustain self-efficacy, and develop as leaders, throughout their lives. Although decades of research document the barriers women face navigating leadership journeys, including the challenges described in the Women’s Leadership Labyrinth of prejudice, discrimination, and childcare issues, existing literature offers limited insight into how women actively build belief in their capacity to lead and accomplish their goals. Further, research consistently shows that women report lower leadership self-efficacy than men, even with comparable experience, yet the developmental processes that shape this gap, beginning in childhood, remain underexplored. Guided by self-efficacy research and its four …

More Than "Programs For Women": Centering Incarcerated Women's Voices In The Evaluation Of Prison Programming, Winter Ohara-Frantz

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines whether correctional programming in women's prisons reflects the self-identified goals and aspirations of incarcerated women. Existing research demonstrates that prison programming can provide meaningful benefits, including skill development, emotional growth, and preparation for reentry. However, much of this scholarship evaluates women based on institutional outcomes rather than asking whether available programs align with women's own educational, vocational, and personal goals. Drawing on survey responses from 23 formerly incarcerated women across the United States, this mixed-methods study explores participants' experiences with vocational, post-secondary, parenting, and other correctional programs. Quantitative findings indicate that while most respondents viewed programming as …

Who Tells Our Stories?: An Analysis Of Lgbtqia2s+ Community-Museum Collaboration In Northeastern Wisconsin, Frances Kerkhof

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, histories of LGBTQIA2S+ individuals have been excluded from mainstream conversations and censored from public records. This exclusion was evident in how LGBTQIA2S+ history is retold in museum spaces. Over the past few decades, public institutions have shifted how LGBTQIA2S+ histories are communicated, with efforts to include more diverse histories and perspectives. During the summer of 2025, I conducted a museum ethnography of the Neville Public Museum’s Telling Our Stories: LGBTQ+ Voices of Northeastern Wisconsin to answer the research question: How does community engagement enhance the representation of the LGBTQIA2S+ community in a local museum in Northeastern Wisconsin? Through this …

Becoming The Phoenix: Black Women’S Experiences And Leadership Growth Through Humanized Black Feminist Action Learning, Jovan Keith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the workplace learning experiences of Black women professionals in corporate leadership contexts. Leadership development programs often rely on standardized models that overlook the lived realities shaping Black women’s professional experiences. In response, this study introduced Humanized Black Feminist Action Learning, a leadership development intervention that integrates Black feminist scholarship, humanizing pedagogy, and critical action learning.

Using a qualitative case study design, the research examined a cohort of midcareer Black women professionals who participated in four facilitated learning sessions structured around workplace dilemmas. During these sessions, participants engaged in reflection, dialogue, and action as they examined workplace dynamics …

Defying Impossibility: Critical Qualitative Reorientations To Black Lgbtqia+ Sense Of Belonging, Olivia H. Hunte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Belonging is a human need central to survival and can be cultivated within all spheres of life. Social environments are vital for experiencing a sense of belonging. In some social environments, Black LGBTQIA+ people encounter greater impediments to their daily lives with consequences for survival, including threatening their belonging needs. Within the United States, systems of oppression create and inform conditions within social environments that can potentially thwart pathways to belonging for Black LGBTQIA+ people. Thus, fulfillment of belonging needs for Black LGBTQIA+ people is one of nuance, pain, resilience, hope, harm, trauma, resistance, and healing; scant research is available …

Women And Wars: Understanding Women’S Political Empowerment Post- Conflict In France, Lebanon, And Sierra Leone, Alaa S. Sayed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempts to discusses how conflict can be a time of change for women and how conflict can be a crucial aspect for change and improvement. Conflict provides a chance for the women to witness and experience the disruption of gender roles, which was a common practice during wartime, as women were placed in roles that were not officially theirs, according to what society adheres to or ascribes as acceptable roles for women. The conflict is presented as a “window” of opportunity. However, the reality of the situation of this “window” is not uniform across all post-conflict societies; the …

The Good Knight, Elektra Koozer

University Honors Theses

The Good Knight is a comics adaptation of Sir Galahad's story through the lens of a queer retelling. This story focuses on queer relationships, struggling with depression and isolation, and death. It begins at the end of Galahad's life, where he is forced to question his legacy and who he is after completing the quest that has dictated his whole life. The story weaves through time, reflecting upon his past, thinking about his mother's expectations of him, being chosen for the grail quest, confronting his estranged father, and trying to cope with the world on his shoulders. He has to …

Quiet Hills, Restless Hearts: An Intersectional Exploration Of Lgbtq+ Religious Journeys In Appalachia, Allison S. Monroe, Stacey L. Williams

McNair Culminating Research Projects

Many researchers have utilized Meyer’s (2003) minority stress model to examine the social factors influencing the daily lives of LGBTQ+ individuals. Previous research has looked at negative mental health outcomes for LGBTQ+ individuals (McGraw et al., 2023), the presence of religious stress for this community (Page et al., 2013), and religious journeys of these individuals (Halkitis et al, 2009).  However, few studies have examined the intersection of religion, LGBTQ+ identity, social support, and the overarching values of Appalachian culture. The proposed study seeks to add to the literature and understand the breadth of these experiences by employing qualitative semi-structured interviews. …

A History Of The Underground Comix Scene: The Seriousness Of An Unserious Genre, Harris Darcie Shugart

Master's Theses

The Underground Comix Scene of the 1960s and 1970s was born out of an age of censorship. The Comics Code Authority, a regulatory body created by the Comics Magazine Association of America in 1954, established guidelines requiring publishing houses to self-regulate following a recommendation from the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1953. Comix with an X, for their X-rated nature, represent an emerging counter-culture in the latter half of the 1960s and the 1970s, with an epicenter of San Francisco. These comix and their artists were not interested in obtaining the looming ‘Seal of Approval’ from the …

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 …

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 …