Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Elegy Of A Student Mother: On Miscarriage, Emily Lefevre Smith

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Dear baby,

It is amazing how much a single word can change one’s life forever. For me, it was a word on a test that I read alone in the bathroom on a Friday night in October. I was kneeling on the ground, trembling and praying that, just maybe, I would get lucky this time. Deep breath, shaking hands reaching forward, eyes opening with fearful anticipation to see what fate had dictated the test would say.

The Onus Of Belonging: A Woman’S Perspective, Emily Richael

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

In the fall of 2022, the BYU philosophy department offered a new feminist theories course. After a YouTube video attacking the course received nearly eight thousand views, a professor from the Global Women’s Studies program offered to stand guard outside the door on the first day of class.

Time To Go, Sophie Graham

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

INT. ANDREW’S ENTRY WAY - EVENING

LAUREN (early twenties) puts a key and a silver, diamond-studded letter “A” necklace on the counter. As she starts to leave, ANDREW (late twenties) walks in the door with takeout. Lauren freezes. Andrew kisses her and puts the food on the counter. He stops and inspects the discarded necklace.

Front Matter

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

The Untold Story Of Amy Beach, Alissa Dorman Ruff

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Minerva Teichert Award 2024

Honorable mention

I discovered the music of Amy Beach by chance while deciding on a program for an upcoming recital. While perusing the internet for repertoire, I stumbled upon a piece of hers entitled “Dreaming” from her Four Sketches, Op. 15. I was instantly entranced! I fell in love with the Brahmsian harmonies, the lulling triplets, and the yearning melody on the spot. I was also shocked that, as a piano performance major with several semesters’ worth of music history classes, I had never heard of her before. Intrigued, I visited the library to find her …

Marimba Spiritual— Minoru Miki, Anna Judd

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Minerva Teichert Award 2025

Honorable mention

Marimba Spiritual (1984) by Minoru Miki is a staple piece of marimba literature that is highly regarded amongst marimba players all around the world. The male composer, Minoru Miki, often wrote his pieces with one person in mind: Keiko Abe. Ms. Abe is considered one of the most virtuosic marimba players and is an inspiration to not only up-and-coming female marimbists but to all young musicians pursuing marimba performance. Minoru Miki saw and respected what Keiko Abe had to offer, and wrote many pieces either dedicated to her or written for her to play. …

Why Are Men So Obsessed With Pornography? Andrea Dworkin Was Right, Robert Jensen

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

The Lived Experience Of Religious Trauma Among Transgender And Gender Diverse People: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Patrick T. Meyer

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Religion has served as a framework to support the psychological well-being of people across cultures throughout human history, yet there is growing scholarly and public interest in how religious institutions and people inflict harm on members through spiritual means. Extant literature demonstrated that transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people experience gendered microaggressions in religious spaces, and their social position within the church likely holds unique insights into the subjective experience of religious trauma. Even though research with people who have had adverse religious experiences has increased over time, little is known about TGD people who experience lasting psychological damage due …

Queer Ga(Y)Ze And Desire In Flesh And Pink Narcissus, Kel R. Karpinski

Publications and Research

Through their portrayals of gay-for-pay hustlers, the films Flesh and Pink Narcissus, offer an expansive view of queerness and illuminate the queer history of Times Square.

Making The Margins Visible: Dignity At Work And The Promise Of Puttaswamy—Review Of Gendered Bodies And Worlds Of Labour: Reconceptualizing Dignity After Puttaswamy Vs Union Of India, Shreya Shree

National Law School Journal

This review examines Kalpana Kannabiran and Devi Jagani’s reimagination of dignity as a framework for securing justice in gendered labourscapes. By centering a broad and dynamic understanding of dignity as a right, an inherent characteristic, and an enabling condition for rights-talk, the book advances new ways of articulating rights-claims through an intersectional and interdisciplinary reading of the Indian Constitution. The review highlights the significance of this approach in renewing understandings of the worker, labour, discrimination, and rights, while exploring its possibilities and limits in confronting violence and injustices embedded in gendered labour relations within the domestic sphere and beyond.

For The Enemy Is No Longer Men, But Our Own Sisters: Anti-Era Activists Within The Feminist Narrative, Grace Chipman

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

When Alice Paul drafted the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923, she had hoped it would become a unifying document for women across America. However, forty-nine years later, when Congress passed the amendment, radical feminists led the charge for its ratification. Paul, a prominent feminist, feared that the amendment became so politicized it was tearing apart the women’s movement. Dianne Fife Kay, an anti-ERA activist, described the period as a time in which “the enemy was no longer men, but our own sisters.” As Paul had feared, radical feminism had ruptured the sisterhood that first-wave feminism created.

Full Issue

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Entr’Acte By Caroline Shaw, Elizabeth Thorup

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Minerva Teichert Award 2024

Winner

Caroline Shaw is one of the most prominent up-and-coming composers of our day, so playing her music felt relevant and exciting.

Feminine Fragility, Megan Bentley

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Mother, Megan Bentley

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Take My Joy, Abbie Calhoun

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Botanical Blue: The Legacy Of Anna Atkins, Zoë Kate Leatham

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

You Glow Girl, Kyli Fox Soug

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

An Examination Of Katherine Philips And Aphra Behn: Differing Approaches To Male Authority Inside And Outside The Private Sphere, Sophie Hirtle

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Susa Young Gates Award 2024

Winner

The mid to late 1600s were a time of intense societal change in England as a result of the English Civil War and the abdication and restoration of the English monarchy. During this time of religious and political upheaval, those who had historically been silenced found more opportunities to speak up regarding recent changes. This was the case for Katherine Philips and Aphra Behn, two female writers who had their own distinct views on the recent political and religious upheaval. In past studies concerning these two women, there has been a trend of either …

Obstetric Fistula Prevalence Among Internally Displaced Women In Sub-Saharan Africa, Kyli Fox Soug

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Obstetric fistulas are rare in the West but common for women in the Global South, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Fistulas are caused by prolonged or obstructed labor which forces downward pressure on the baby’s head and the mother’s pelvis. This pressure creates a non-natural opening in the genital region. Fistulas cause leakage of waste and therefore are often accompanied by unwanted odors. As of 2021, the prevalence of obstetric fistulas was 2 million women in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and 3 in every 1000 women of reproductive age in the world have a fistula. In the …

Wearing The Pants: Patriarchal Breeches Roles In Oroonoko And The Rover, Emmalee Collyer

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Oroonoko and The Rover, or, the Banished Cavaliers are set in very different locations with a variety of colorful characters. Oroonoko features a split plot set in Suriname exploring the relationships between commerce, slavery, and marriage; whereas The Rover features the collision of three women and a group of cavaliers at Carnival in Naples. But these seemingly disparate plays do have something in common; both are popular adaptations by arguably progressive playwrights. Thomas Southerne adapted a novel by Aphra Behn into Oroonoko, and Aphra Behn adapted Thomas Killigrew’s Thomaso, or The Wanderer into The Rover. Both Southerne and …

Our Mothers In Science, Alexis Bass

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Oh To See Me Like You Do, Tala Alnasser

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

I have no perception of how I look, and I mean this in the literal sense. I get complimented for the eyes and smile of my mother and the wit and curiosity of my father. It is not that I don’t believe in their beauty. I do—in fact, if I could tell my ten-year-old self that people find me beautiful, she might not believe it.

Mental Palace, Emily Orton

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

It was a beautiful mess—until you burned it all down and expected me to rejoice in the flames. Every small detail crumbles beneath my feet. Every reminiscent piece of the picture I could once comprehend. All of it, reduced to the ash of what once was. Lost. Gone. And now I’m expected to rebuild it into what they deem it to be. I don’t like this new feeling. The smell of it burns my nostrils. It’s unfamiliar, devoid of every precious memory that once held it together. The concrete and plaster now sealed by the alms of everyone else’s wishes.

Waiting, Kennedy Kleinman

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

I was six years old when a well-intentioned neighbor told my mom about a diet her daughter had started that she believed I should also try. She said, “It really works, you just have to wait.”

Mutualistas: La Sociedad Auxiliar De Mutua Beneficiaria, Antonito Colorado, 1937-1994, José A. Rivera Ph.D

Faculty Publications

Mutual Aid Societies proliferated in the American Southwest during a period of rapid social change, 1880-1930. In Hispanic towns, these societies were referred to as mutualistas, with a large number concentrated in the San Luis Valley of Colorado and rural counties of northcentral New Mexico. One of the men’s organizations, La Sociedad Protección Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos (SPMDTU), started in Antonito, Colorado, and quickly spread to other communities of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico and eventually to a few mining towns in Utah. With a tri-state model in place, women formed their own mutual protection societies: Sociedad Protectora …

Acting Religion: Analyzing The Aids Crisis Through A Religious Lens, Anya Thaovan Nguyenkhoa

Voces Novae

No abstract provided.

Where Do I Belong? What Should I Call Home?, Viplav Bhaskar Subramanian

Deliberately Queer Journal

Employing autoethnography, this reflection explores the contestations of home-place for queer racialized identities. Tony Adams asserts the vitality of such an embodied investigation when speaking about intersectionally assembled marginalized communities and identities through stating, “I turned to writing stories that others could use in times of relational distress […] by doing and living autoethnography” (Jones et al., 2013, p. 21). In this piece, I delve into my lived experiences, chartering conceptions of belonging while integrating personal stories and theoretical discourses. Such an embodiment, as expressed by Ellingson (2017), considers the body as “simultaneously physical and affective, social and individual, produced …

Pretty And Problematic: The Use Of Music In Guadagnino's 'Call Me By Your Name', Brandon L. Foskett

Deliberately Queer Journal

Tension in the reception of the American-Italian film Call Me by Your Name (dir. Guadagnino, 2017)—as a beautiful film that implicitly condones a problematic narrative—is shaped in part by its compilation soundtrack. Already lauded as a timeless masterpiece in cinematography, sensuality, and music, the film also receives steadfast criticism regarding its portrayal of homosexuality and alleged condoning of interage desire between Elio, a 17-year-old Italian-French boy, and Oliver, a 24-year-old American man. In this paper, I analyze five musical episodes from the film, including The Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Way,” Ravel’s Une barque sur l’océan, and Sufjan Stevens’s “Mystery …

Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Under Siege Worldwide: Moving Beyond Limiting Notions Of Gender And Sexuality In Education Organizations And Leadership, Margaret Grogan

Education Faculty Books and Book Chapters

As 2025 gets underway in the United States, educators across this country, like in many others, are bracing for unprecedented opposition to their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies. Newly elected President Trump is rapidly dismantling many federal agencies, cutting off aid to foreign entities, and causing major apprehension across the globe. His stated agenda to eradicate progressivism echoes many other international ultraconservative and far-right movements, who applaud his authoritarian regime. To mount the best possible resistance to these disturbing developments, and, indeed, to expand and strengthen DEI work, this chapter argues for collective action across all the …