Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Gatherings 3.2 (Complete Issue), Besan Jaber, Asmaa Malik

Gatherings

p. 111: Echoes of Loss: Exploring Palestine and Feminism Through Art / Ala Alshadfan -- p. 117: In-Dialogue as Feminist Praxis: Palestine, Poetry, and Affective Knowing / Besan Jaber and Natalie El-Eid -- p. 130: Kinship as Ethical Caring in Genocidal Times / Khawla Badwan and Sunny Singh --  p.150: Roots That Refuse to Die: Narratives of Displacement and Solidarity in Palestinian and Chicanx Feminist Traditions / R. K. and Lea Colchado-Joaquín -- p.169: A Poem for Palestinian Liberation from Låguas yan Gåni / Ha’åni Lucia Falo San Nicolas -- p. 171: Embodying Palestinian Freedom: Yogis for Palestine as a …

Speaking Back Through Stories: Storytelling And The Politics Of Resistance, Korka Sall

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Black women have long served as storytellers, knowledge producers, and custodians of collective memory across Africa and its diaspora. Through oral traditions, literature, and film, they have created networks for the circulation of knowledge while fostering Pan-African consciousness, preserving cultural heritage, and educating communities about identity, justice, and self-determination. Their narratives challenge systems of colonialism, patriarchy, and historical erasure by centering Black women's voices and lived experiences within transnational conversations about history, culture, and belonging. This paper examines Aminata Sow Fall's Le Revenant (1976), Bessie Head's short story "Life" (1977), and Diabou Bessane's documentary Les Mamans de l'Indépendance …

Motherhood And The Illusion Of Delayed Gratification In Gerotti Kyomuhendo’S Waiting And Secrets No More, Mopelola R. Olayiwola

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The birth of a girl child in most African societies automatically signals the arrival of another procreator. Her role is assigned long before birth: she is to be a woman, a wife, and a mother whose nurturance continues until death. Motherhood demands nurturing children alongside the husband, and most myths tie a woman’s relevance to this single role. To ensure undivided attention to this occupation, societies empower the virtue of patience. As a result, many African narratives corroborate the ideology of delayed gratification, encouraging women to give excessively toward a distant future when children may return the favour. Little attention …

Reclaiming The Silenced: West African Women, Anticolonial Activism, And Storytelling As Historical Resistance, Tahsina Nasir

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper examines the systematic erasure of West African women from dominant historical narratives of anticolonial liberation, focusing on decolonization and post-independence nation building in Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, and Nigeria. Although women played central roles in organizing, mobilizing, and educating during nationalist movements, their contributions were increasingly sidelined once state power was achieved. Drawing on feminist historiography, Black feminist thought, and archival and literary sources, this study analyzes how state actors dismantled autonomous women’s organizations, including the Federation of Ghana Women, and confined women to symbolic roles within party-controlled structures. Figures such as Hannah Kudjoe, once central to political mobilization, were …

Winnie's Feminism: A Tribute To Mama Dr. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela As A Radical Feminist From 1986-2018, Anna Lefatshe Moagi

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Growing up in South Africa and having read several “tell-all” biographies by influential women have made this researcher aware of the struggles of women to be recognised and valued within their social environments. The many names that come to mind, when speaking of women’s voices that challenged their position in our society, belong to those of struggle veterans such as Adelaide Tambo, Ruth First, Lilian Ngoyi, Albertina Sisulu, Thandi Modise, Baleka Mbethe, Leymah Gbowee, Ruth Mompati, Charlotte Maxeke, Joice Majuru, Thuli Madontsela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Their as women leaders roles remain undervalued (Shekhawat 2015). These phenomenal influential women and many …

Review Essay: The New Misogyny And The Rise Of Violent Extremism, Shannon Smith

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

A Catalyst For Change: The Extraordinary Anaka Women’S Collective During The June 2026 Belfast Pogrom, Dianne Kirby

The Journal of Social Encounters

Prompted by the pogrom that erupted in Belfast in June this year, this article explores how a women’s collective, Anaka, established by female asylum seekers, refugees and migrants (ASRMs) less than a decade previously, took the lead in ensuring the safety and welfare of the city’s migrant communities in a context where they were horrifically failed by police and politicians, by the state and the institutions meant to protect them. Anaka began as a small-scale endeavour to mitigate the difficulties confronting women struggling to navigate a harsh asylum system. It became a widely respected advocacy and campaigning group for ASRMs. …

Patterns Of Age At First Birth And Child Spacing Behaviour Among Women In Ilorin Metropolis, Nigeria, Ismaila O. Orire

The Journal of Social Encounters

Age at first birth influences the length of a woman's reproductive years and affects fertility behavior including choices of child spacing which have profound influence on future population structure and dynamics. This study examines women’s demographic and social characteristics; identified their ages at first birth and relationship with status of marriage; their child spacing behavior; contraceptive usage; and duration of breastfeeding after child birth. Primary source of data was questionnaire administered to women of reproductive age representing three age cohorts whose ages range between 35-44, 25-34 and 15-24 years respectively. Systematic random sampling technique was adopted to ensure representativeness and …

Rethinking Women, Peace And Security In Southern Africa: Patriarchy, Policies, And Perspectives, Kgomotso Komane

The Journal of Social Encounters

Southern Africa is a relatively peaceful region, however, it has witnessed a range of diverse, multiple and ongoing conflicts that have prompted various peace interventions from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), neighbouring countries and international actors. An astounding pattern is revealed when observing the involvements of all the actors in the peace interventions. What is revealed is that, till present day, women remain marginalised in peace processes despite existing structures and policies that reaffirm their rightful participation in these processes. Rethinking women’s role in peace and security is necessary because existing approaches to peace are shaped by patriarchal norms. …

The Chameleon Experience: Queer Identity, Mental Health, And Transformation, Cameron Penny

Communication and Theater Association of Minnesota Journal

In this autoethnographic piece, I examine the correlation between queer identity and mental health through reflective analysis of my own experiences within a Western socio-cultural setting. I expand external perspectives on the queer experience by highlighting the normalization of queer prejudice and its adverse impact on self-image. I share how the religious praxis of Catholicism enforces binary conformity by promoting dichotomous thinking that simultaneously constricts queer expression and subjugates implicit biases. In tandem, I utilize autoethnography as my medium because it provides a unique outlet to raise awareness for chronically stigmatized identities by centering marginalized voices (Atay, 2011; Chavez, 2013). …

Intersectionality And Institutional Power In Dystopian Cinema: Gender, Race, And Social Order In Sinners, Alexander Kilian, Amaya Baker

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This research project, Intersectionality and Institutional Power in Dystopian Cinema: Gender, Race, and Social Order in Sinners, examines how Sinners construct and represent women through intersecting systems of gender, race, and institutional power within a dystopian framework. Situated within broader discussions of equity, embodiment, and access, the project addresses how speculative media reflect and shape contemporary social hierarchies, particularly in modeling institutional authority, social organization, and identity formation. The primary objective is to analyze how these intersecting systems influence perceptions of identity, hierarchy, and social cohesion. Employing an interdisciplinary humanities approach, the project integrates film analysis, feminist theory, and critical …

Through Her Lens: The Card-Based Storytelling, Daisy Elizabeth Morales-Zaragoza

McNair Summer Research Program

Women in male-dominated roles in military environments navigate complex institutional, cultural, and interpersonal barriers throughout their military careers. This qualitative study explores the lived experiences of women serving in the United States Navy. We can accomplish this by examining how institutional culture, power dynamics, and traditional leadership definitions shape their service and career progression. The inquiry is grounded in Eagly’s Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice Towards Female Leaders, Crenshaw’s Intersectionality, and hooks’ ethics of active care and behavior. Utilizing a qualitative design, data were gathered through a novel, interactive card-based interview method designed to transfer agency to participants and cultivate …

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 …

A Case For Societal Provenance: Marguerite Harper As Told By The Men She Represented, V. Emily Cranwell Deinert

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This paper argues for making societal provenance the grounding framework for archival descriptive standards to ensure that important voices already present in archives are no longer buried. This study reclaims from archival obscurity the career of literary agent Marguerite E. Harper to illustrate the need for this expansion. Harper proves strikingly absent from some of the archives for the authors she represented. Likely an unwitting omission from archivists that uncritically accepted the narratives of these male authors, Harper’s erasure provides a potent example of the ways that archival descriptive standards may unintentionally further silence historically marginalized voices within archives. The …

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 …

A Poetic Call For And A Reflection And Commentary On Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, And Compassion, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Finding a published poem I had written as a teenager, titled “The Heavens Weep.” this article uses that poem as the basis for a commentary that reflects on the state of the world today (2026),  As a commentary, the article uses the poetic and metaphoric words in the poem as a relevant "reality check" for what is still going on today.  In essence, the commentary is about a call for Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, and Compassion, or what I call Archetypal Energies, Higher Vibrational Energies that operate deep within our individual and collective psyches to creatively urge us to "see" …

Serenade In C, Chloë M. Robinson

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

It was an abrupt event, and it deserves an abrupt introduction: I was seventeen years old when I survived a lightning strike. We were on a church camping trip with a large group that included my dad and younger sister. The first night at camp, over fifty teenagers played lawn games on a grassy field after dinner. It was drizzling on and off that day, and we were excited to take advantage of the momentarily clear skies. At about 7:45 p.m., I was under a tree with my dad, trying to set up a croquet set for everyone to use. …

Woven Into One, Elise Marie Hatch

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

A recent late-night walk to the library was joyfully interrupted by a young child. Her unique perspective framed by the diminished height and wholesome innocence of a seven-year-old, this child was eager to share what she, from her vantage point, saw, discovered, and valued. “Mom!” she yelled with brilliant curiosity, “Look at the lights!” Guided by her pointing hand, I too turned around. I saw my home city—where I wake and work and study every day—transformed, through the curiosity of a child, into a symbolic landscape of dappled lights and abstracted forms.

Christ As A Maternal Figure: Motherly Depictions Of The Son In The Met Cloisters, Cheynie Wray

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

The Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, Queen of France is a miniature book of hours—an illuminated, or illustrated, prayer book—made for its namesake, a queen of France. Crafted by the hand of French artist Jean Pucelle between 1324 and 1328, it is now held in the Treasury of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Cloisters Collection), one of the most renowned repositories of medieval art in the United States. The book pairs scenes of the Passion of Christ with scenes of the life of the Virgin. One such pairing shows the Betrayal of Christ and the Annunciation. On the Betrayal of Christ …

The Horror Of Female Autonomy: The Transformation Of Women In Vietnam War-Era Fiction And Film, Regan Roberts

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

During the Vietnam War era, cultural fears intersected with evolving gender roles, particularly as women gained greater autonomy and visibility in public and private spheres. Fears such as these are realized and explored in the horror genre. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried explores this societal tension in its short story, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” through Mary Anne Bell, a young girl whose transformation from innocent girlfriend to the monstrous Other subverts traditional femininity. I will explore this short story and its significance by contextualizing it alongside other media from the horror genre of the Vietnam War era, …

Listening, Stepping, Screaming: Feminist Interpretations Of Yoko Ono’S Art, Cordelia Lavender Mcphie

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Long before she spent her time promoting peace through music and her infamous bed-in honeymoon, Yoko Ono was breaking traditional conventions of art by creating and performing her pieces of instruction: art that requires a participating audience in order for it to be made. At the beginning of the 1960s, early in Ono’s art career and before her association with the Beatles, she was participating in new kinds of conceptual and communal art processes within (and without) the Fluxus art movement.1 She is not a solo artist in the traditional sense, because her artwork is unable to be fully realized …

Climbing Mother By Brian Kershisnik: Representing Mothers As Sacred Spaces, Elijah Clark

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Brian Kershisnik’s collection The Difficult Part is a series of artworks that includes paintings from throughout the artist’s career. A repeated theme in this collection is motherhood. One particularly striking painting, Climbing Mother, is an oil on canvas piece painted in 2013 (wall text for Climbing Mother). Brian Kershisnik is a Latter-day Saint artist known for depicting mundane things as holy and for making holy things more approachable to modern audiences. For example, Kershisnik has many paintings of the Madonna and Christ child where they are shown as real people in everyday scenarios. The normalcy of his paintings …

Persuasions And Proposals: Female Agency In Pride And Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, And Persuasion, Hannah Swenson

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

In all six of her completed novels, one of Jane Austen’s primary interests is the theme of persuasion—particularly as it relates to the lives and decisions of young women. Her final book Persuasion, published six months after her death, can therefore be read as a final culmination of the topic of accepting and exerting influence. As scholar Ann Molan has observed, Austen “penetrates the intrinsic doubleness of persuasion, its ability to destroy and fashion, its ineradicable presence in all human dealings, and the riskiness of deciding one’s lot by something uncertifiable” (108). Although the theme of persuasion and persuadability …

Patterned After Poppies, Elise Marie Hatch

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

A Self-Portrait: Staring The Male Gaze Right In The Eye, Brynne Petty

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a time of constant change. Artists were constantly finding newer and more creative, often more bizarre, ways of expressing themselves through their art. Social norms were being broken down, with the subjects of many artworks becoming increasingly unconventional, bold, and, in many cases, provocative. Women swiftly became the subject of many paintings, often portrayed in the nude. Of course, a painting of a nude woman was not a new concept, but the way in which women were depicted was increasingly more sexual and erotic. Thus, the term male gaze—defined as “a …

God’S Reflection, Shannon Lindsay

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Red Awe, Ella Marie Paligo

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Insecurity, Ana Gabriela

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

On And Off, Madison Sacriste

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Shake Hands: A Challenge And A Statement On The Woman’S Role In American Society, Brynne Petty

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Nineteenth-century America was a time ripe with change. New inventions were created every day; many felt the call of Manifest Destiny and pushed for Westward Expansion; and the country endured a brutal civil war, all while enduring the growing pains of a young nation. Every decade delivered more opportunities for artists to create paintings that told of epic battles and the courage of men as they faced the wild frontier. Yet, somewhere in the midst of all this, the American ideal shifted. Many artists turned their efforts toward creating genre paintings that depicted the everyday lives of the middle and …