Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

The Politics Of The Black Womb: How Education And Power Reinforce The U.S. Black Maternal Health Crisis, Foluke Akinkunmi

Honors Scholar Theses

This study investigates the alarming maternal mortality rates among Black women in the U.S. today first by exploring the historical exploitation of Black maternal bodies during enslavement and with the rise of professionalized gynecology. It challenges the narrative that attributes these outcomes to individual choices or supposedly inherent biological factors, arguing instead that the devaluing of Black women’s well-being and authoritative knowledge have been constructed along with the United States itself. To advance a constructive response, the paper analyzes curriculum competencies for obstetric and midwifery healthcare providers, surveys of Black women's birthing experiences in the previous 20 years, and interviews …

These Things Happen, Keleigh E. Mcmullen

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My artwork emerges from moments of emotional and physical violence—both small and large. Although rooted in my lived experience, the truths I tell in my work are far from unique. Violence often hides in plain sight, buried in the mundane spaces of daily life. Through ceramic sculpture, I spotlight these moments, inviting viewers into a world that is familiar and simultaneously unsettling.

Scale plays a crucial role in this narrative—objects shrink or expand based on their emotional gravity, their object authority, or my own relationship to them. By amplifying the small and shrinking the overwhelming, I reshape how viewers interact …

Race, Sex Work, And Spatial Segregation In Storyville, New Orleans, Paige M. Magoto

All Theses

Storyville, New Orleans, operated as a legalized vice district from 1897 to 1917. This 38-block area facilitated sex work and prostitution “across the color line,” perpetuating and encouraging the practice of white men seeking sexual acts from Black women and women of mixed-race descent. I engage with multiple interacting subsections of historiography within this thesis project. The historiography spans Southern history from the early nineteenth century in the Old Antebellum South until the early twentieth century in the Progressive Era. The broader historiographic dimensions of labor and sexuality were also influential in curating this research project, engaging with the evolving …

Migration And Diaspora: An Intersectional Feminist Reading Of Lucy By Jamacia Kincaid., Benjamin Oluwakayode Akinlabi

All Theses

This thesis explores how migration and diaspora shape the intersectional experience of Black women through a close reading of Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy. Drawing on Black feminist thought, I make a case using analytical and theoretical frameworks to expand intersectionality to account for global movement and memory. Intersectionality must move beyond national borders to account for how power travels with people. I argue that migration works externally through movement and displacement, and diaspora works internally through memory. There is a location in the United States, but there is always a look back through memory and the two conflict. Lucy's migration …

Unsettling Femininity In Ottessa Moshfegh’S My Year Of Rest And Relaxation, Audrianna Witcher

All Theses

This thesis covers how Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation critiques traditional understandings of femininity and the inadequacy of neoliberal feminism to address the systemic issues that women face. Using Lauren Berlant’s concept of femininity as a genre, this thesis traces how Moshfegh implements disgust and abjection to reject mandates of cleanliness and emotional labor that are central to traditional femininity. Moshfegh also utilizes disgust and the narrator’s attempt at a year-long sleep to resist the ideals of productivity and self-care that are central to neoliberal feminism. In employing these affects, Moshfegh resists the social structures that exploit …

From Tragedy To Triumph: Maine’S Lgbtq+ History (1984-2005), Aidan King '25

All Student Scholarship

Maine’s LGBTQ+ history may be very rich, but true acceptance was an uphill battle. For decades, queer residents of Maine fought for equal rights in the state. The Stonewall riots in 1969 in New York City were an early sign that LGBTQ+ citizens were not going to continue to let their identities be suppressed, but as the years progressed, so too did the confidence of queer people to be open about their identities, including in Maine. In 1973, at the University of Maine, the Wilde-Stein Club was established, to the deep chagrin of homophobic fundamentalist preachers whose protests against the …

The Marginality Of Women In Narratives: Reflections On Iranian Women's Struggles Through Saeed Roustayi's Films, Narges Azami

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Using the concept of intersectionality, this thesis explores how women are marginalized in three post-revolutionary Iranian films (made after 1979), directed by Saeed Roustayi. In these three films, Life and a Day (2016), Just 6.5 (2019), and Leila’s Brothers (2022), the intersectional lens helps investigate how different types of oppression, such as gender and class, often come together to affect women’s lives. In the analysis, four main themes emerge, including emotional labor, symbolic erasure, limited visibility, and intersectional oppression. Roustayi’s films point out how systems like patriarchy, poverty, and tradition hold women back. The study also explains how multiple social …

Exploring Full-Time Female Faculty Members’ Experiences With Institutional Climate In Rural Arkansas Community Colleges: A Preregistered Study, Gabrielle Patterson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current literature implies that female faculty in community colleges often endure a chilly organizational climate of marginalization. This marginalization makes female faculty more likely to leave higher education than male colleagues because of a lack of appreciation and recognition. This qualitative exploratory multiple-case study (preregistered study) uses the Job Embeddedness Theory as its conceptual framework. It explores full-time female faculty members’ (F-TFFMs) experiences with institutional climate in rural Arkansas community colleges to understand their motivations to teach in the setting and the reasons they choose to stay in their position. Findings from this study will show F-TFFMs motivations to …

The Bones: A Novel-In-Progress, Chris Stark

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Student Performance And Course Modality: The Relationship Between Outcomes, Modality, And Course Subject, Olivia Baxley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify if a significant relationship existed between teaching modality and student performance outcomes while also considering the factor of course subject being taught during the 2021-2023 academic years. Three courses were included in the research: Math 1630 Finite Mathematics, English 1010 Composition I, and Biology 1110 General Biology. Each of the three courses are introductory level courses in the math, English, and science subject. The study also included statistical analysis on gender as related to student performance outcomes.

The findings presented of this research showed a significant relationship between teaching modality and …

Held On By A Thread, Annie M. Hutchins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist, Annie Hutchins, discusses her Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, Held on by a Thread, which was installed at Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, TN, from March 6, 2025, through March 28, 2025, with a public reception held on March 7, 2025. The exhibition is a collection of textile works containing repurposed material artifacts of the life she shared with her maternal family since childhood. The artwork incorporates found objects from the artist’s home, including domestic textiles, clothing, handmade sewing projects, family photographs, and sewing notions. The artworks are made using the printmaking technique of photo emulsion screen …

President's Commission On The Status Of Women: 2024-2025 Annual Report, University Of Dayton. Women's Center

Women's Center Reports, Commentaries and Other Resources

No abstract provided.

In Memoir And Memory: Us Servicewomen Narrating 21st Century Combat, Kelly A. Taylor

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Over twenty years after the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, much work remains to uncover the stories of US servicewomen. As the collection of oral histories continues and in the absence of letters, postcards, and other mail for analysis, their memoirs provide some of the first glimpses of the ways 21^st century warfare impacted their experiences in the US military. With shifting “front lines,” the prevalence of improvised explosive devices, and the need for new search tactics, women participated in high rates of combat. Nevertheless, the combat exclusion policy remained in place until 2015. …

Queer Hope And Asexual Desire In Nella Larsen's Passing And Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Jeremy Buckner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This project examines Nella Larsen’s Passing and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse together as queer artifacts in hopes of shedding new light on how race and sexuality can be reexamined across national modes of thinking. Although these writers’ backgrounds provide them with different bodies of knowledge, Larsen’s Irene and Woolf’s Lily have much more in common than might first appear. For one, even if racialization is more explicit—and presents more of an obstacle—for Irene, race is an important factor for both characters. Additionally, Irene and Lily both express profound discontent with marriage, Irene in her marriage to Brian and Lily …

Language, Equity, And Power: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Student Conduct Policies At Unl, Mandi Laib

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study conducts a Critical Discourse Analysis of student conduct policies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 1977 to 2003 to examine how language reflects and reinforces institutional power structures. Utilizing Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory, this research investigates how conduct policies have historically marginalized Students of Color, LGBTQ+ students, and those facing economic hardship. Through a deductive coding process, themes such as institutional control, surveillance, and punitive framing were identified across four decades of student handbooks. While there are moments where student rights and restorative justice are acknowledged, these are often overshadowed by dominant discourse that prioritizes compliance …

Intersectionality In Tennis (Wta) Sports Media, Emily Stoner

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This “applied knowledge” project investigates and observes intersectionality in tennis sports media via the women’s professional tour (WTA). Intersectionality in Tennis (WTA) Sports Media analyzes how intersectionality as a concept and social justice lens impacts and is impacted by media. By considering intersectional identities and their implications in sports media narratives and coverage, this piece displays some telling patterns and perpetuations.

At the professional level, tennis certainly does not garner the most profit or attention, but it provides a unique world of intersecting identities, cultures, geography and tradition. This work aims to shed light on the state of sports media, …

Internalized Homophobia In Midwestern Sexual Minorities, Charissa Farr

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Research into internalized homophobia in sexual minorities has identified several factors that tend to lead to higher levels of internalized homophobia. These factors are parental acceptance or rejection, religion, urban versus rural environment, and societal attitudes. There are, however, few studies that have been done on these factors specifically in Midwestern sexual minorities. Twenty participants that identified as non-heterosexual were interviewed for this study. Participants completed a short quantitative survey on internalized homophobia before being interviewed with questions that looked at the known factors of internalized homophobia as well as what they thought needed to happen for future generations to …

A Secluded Cabin On The Outskirts Of Riverside: A 1937 Trial For Conspiracy To Have Gay Sex, Randall Stoner, Randi Stoner

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 14, 1937, a group of deputy sheriffs and military police surrounded a secluded cabin on the outskirts of Riverside and forced their way inside, arresting everyone on the premises for conspiracy to violate California Penal Code sections 288a and 286: oral copulation and sodomy. Though same-sex relations were outlawed, these men had sought to create a place of privacy for themselves—only to have it surveilled and raided by members of law enforcement. The subsequent trial, People v. Jordan, was a landmark case for the city of Riverside. Many histories of LGBTQ …

Pedro Aceves Mfa Thesis, Pedro M. Aceves

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My Work is about looking at Cruising through a queer decolonial lens. Using multiple mediums such as photo, glass, Augmented reality, and film, I explore these queer histories and aesthetics through not just an anthropological approach but also an artistic epistemological approach weaving together narratives of prehispanic and modern queer Latinidad.

Odd Girls, Pulp Fiction And Lesbians, Natalie Aronson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

1957’s Odd Girl Out, a novel written by Ann Bannon, reminds readers, past, present and future, of the ever-growing need for positive queer representation. This project’s main goal is to take a look at the genre of Pulp Fiction novels of the 1950s, and examine how queer representation – specifically lesbian representation – has been written. Paul Thompson’s Masculinity in Lesbian “Pulp” Fiction is a text I use throughout, as it not only examines the genre overall, but also delves into Bannon’s ever-growing impact, providing much-needed context for the novels. While the genre of Pulp Fiction novels, queer or not, …

The Masc Of Masculinity: Multimodal Analysis Of Contemporary Punk Music, James L. Stanfield Iii

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis establishes a multi-genre framework of various theories from different academic fields that is then used to view the multimodal elements of punk and hardcore music performances. The analyses are tailored towards the dissection of traditional masculinity with the goal of constructing masculine avatars that are prosocial and moral. Reworking traditional masculinity is a portion of the larger fight for social reform that is taken up within the field of the humanities. Existing critical approaches to masculinity often establish the need for a rewriting of normative masculinity in society but often do not provide methods for such a rewriting. …

La Narcocultura In Mexico: Analyzing Representations Of Gender, Religion, And Law Enforcement Through The Silver Screen, Emma M. Plutnicki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work analyzes the ways in which la narcocultura is represented in films about Mexican drug trafficking through the lens of gender, religion, and law enforcement. The four selected films Savages (2012), Heli (2013), Sicario (2015), and Emilia Pérez (2024) are used to assess how stereotypical images of the Mexican narco world are consumed by the public. The aim of this work is to bring attention to potential misrepresentations within the Mexican drug trafficking world. By exploring the portrayal of gender, religion, and law enforcement, this work highlights the ways in which filmmakers perpetuate and reinforce damaging stereotypes. The consumption …

Internalisasi Misogini: Kekerasan Seksual Sebagai Senjata Perang, Umanitya Fitri Hanryana, Lg. Saraswati Putri

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This study examines the role of internalized misogyny in sexual violence used as a weapon of war. Misogyny in patriarchal cultures fosters hatred towards women, facilitating sexual violence in armed conflicts. Cases in the Congo, Rwanda, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia demonstrate how sexual violence is systematically employed to demean and destroy women. Through a feminist critical approach and qualitative analysis, this research reveals that sexual violence in war is often not recognized as a weapon of war due to the inferior position of women in patriarchal societies, being merely seen as ordinary crimes despite being systematic and structured human rights violations. …

Transformed Images Of Women In A Sundanese Magazine; A Corpus Linguistics Perspective, Susi Yuliawati

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

In this paper, I examine the evolving portrayal of women in Sundanese society through a close analysis of certain nouns denoting women in the magazine Manglé. Using corpus linguistics, specifically word frequency and collocation analyses, I aim to investigate the evolving images of Sundanese women in relation to Indonesia’s political context over time. I argue that the evolution shown can be seen as a detailed overview of how the images of Sundanese women have been transformed. The results indicate that the trend in constructing women’s images is predominantly through the use of the noun wanoja, in contrast to …

A Scholar At The Round Table: The Academic Influence Of Professor Raluca L. Radulescu, Brenda L. Schurrer

Honors Capstones

This research biography explores the academic contributions of Professor Raluca L. Radulescu, a leading scholar in medieval and Arthurian literature. The project examines her role in connecting traditional and contemporary literary analysis, focusing on her scholarship's influence on political, gender, and manuscript studies. Using a literary-historical methodology, I analyzed Radulescu’s major works, including The Gentry Context for Malory’s Morte Darthur and her chapter in The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature, supplemented by secondary sources such as reviews and dissertations citing her research. The study emphasizes her interdisciplinary approach and her impact on reinterpreting medieval texts for modern audiences. Findings …

Crip Queer Storytelling: An Intersectional Analysis, Audrey T. Heffers

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Abstract

Where are queer disabled characters, and how do they avoid tokenization? This particular approach will use the following criteria as its foundation:

1) The story has a character who is both disabled and queer. (This must be explicit in some way and not ambiguously coded within the text, or solely paratextual.)

2) The character is central to the narrative. (If the character were removed, would the story change significantly?)

3) The story can be affected by disability, but (with due respect to making space for such stories) the story isn’t solely/centrally about disability/overcoming ableism.

The hope with these criteria …

Archival Presence Of The Queer Experience: An Analysis Of Power In Information Management, Emmett Myers

The Compass

“Who controls the past, controls the future; controls the present, controls the past.”1 Archives, places in which historical records are kept, play a role in controlling the past, future, and present of society. Exploring archives and their relationship with power and authority allows us to understand their impact on documenting intersectional identities, especially those of the LGBTQ+ community. In this paper, I will examine the presence of the LGBTQ+ community within archival spaces, analyze literature regarding the three main principles of archival theory, and offer a new model for a more inclusive and queer framework for archival theory. My research …

Sister, Lover, Monster: Gender, Sexuality, And Monstrousness In Batwoman, Carter Click

Honors Projects

Introduced in 2006, Kate Kane is the modern iteration of Batwoman, who is an out lesbian woman, in contrast to her 1950s counterpart that was created to alleviate concerns that Batman was gay. She would go on to star in stories by Greg Rucka, J.H. Williams III, and W. Haden Blackman that were published from 2009 to 2013. This run established core aspects of Kate’s character, supporting cast, and origin story. Though Rucka and Williams’ work has received some scholarly focus, Williams and Blackman’s work has received very little. This project attends to how these Batwoman comics facilitate queer representation …

The Icarian Dilemma: The Battle Of Faith Versus Identity Addressed With Scenic Design, Allistar G. Barrett

Senior Honors Theses

American Christians and the LGBTQ+ community have long been in a cultural war with one another. However, queer Christians – individuals who are both LGBTQ+ and Christian – have rarely found solace in either community, instead being shunned and ostracized for their beliefs and identities. Using the transformative art of theatre to address cultural divides, a theatrical scenic design was developed for Joe Calarco’s Shakespeare’s R & J, a retelling of the traditional Romeo and Juliet script through the lives of four Catholic school girls. This design uses the Greek mythology of Icarus, Catholic culture, the original Romeo and Juliet, …

Theorizing The Body In The Asl Interpreting Field: Promising Dimensions For Further Research, Taylor L. Woodall-Greene, Lucy E. Bailey

Journal of Interpretation

This paper theorizes body politics in the American Sign Language Interpreting profession. The field is facing problems with burnout and attrition. We focus on the interpreting body and present four themes, including the embodied demands, the limited available scholarship over “the body” in ASL, the fluctuating meaning of the interpreter’s bodily labor, and the educational implications of our analysis. We argue that attention to body politics matters, and more research is needed on the intersections between the body and the ASL interpreting profession. Continuing the research into these theoretical dimensions and interpreters’ self-care given the embodied demands of the profession, …