Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Other Oceans, Other Skies, Sharlene Lee

MFA in Visual Art

I create immersive installations, performances, and time-based media artworks that delve into stories of belonging, feminism, and language as power. These stories offer a potential for transformation from viewer to participant and a shift in how our world is seen and experienced. Through an exploration of perception and affect, I challenge dominant narratives, prompting a contemplation of contemporary power struggles for control.

In this text, I examine the impact of historical borders and migration on my life while also investigating questions of home, shared values, and rituals that contribute to one’s sense of belonging. I also highlight my commitment to …

The Voice Of One Crying In The Wilderness, Megan Kenyon

MFA in Visual Art

I am a Midwestern, Christian, and feminist artist. I make work about the beautiful, broken, and absurd ways in which American evangelical culture influences lives, especially women’s lives. I’m dragging everything into the light by deconstructing and critiquing the world in which I live, move, and have my being. I do this by harnessing prophetic imagination and incarnational space to shine a light on how patriarchy infects evangelical Christian theology and practice. Using prophetic imagination through photographic self-portraiture and text (my own and found texts using the Bible), I seek to make plain the effects of white, Christian patriarchy on …

Asking For It: Gendered Dimensions Of Surveillance Capitalism, Jessica Rizzo

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Advertising and privacy were once seen as mutually antagonistic. In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans went to court to fight for their right to be free from the invasion of privacy presented by unwanted advertising, but a strange realignment took place in the 1970s. Radical feminists were among those who were extremely concerned about the collection and computerization of personal data—they worried about private enterprise getting a hold of that data and using it to target women—but liberal feminists went in a different direction, making friends with advertising because they saw it as strategically valuable.

Liberal feminists argued that in …

Skin Echoes, Andreia Santana

Theses and Dissertations

Santana’s explores the intersection of biology and identity, incorporating living matter and performative gestures into installations to reflect on social constructs of history and gender. By observing water and its qualities of defying Western dichotomies, Skin Echoes focuses on the material interchanges across bodies and the wider material world.

Gloria Rehearsal (Excerpt) A Feminist Mechanism For Metabolization, Eleanor Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Weaving embodied trauma studies with feminist theory, non-hierarchical creative structures, and research in dance improvisation, this thesis paper written by Eleanor Smith contextualizes the dance performance gloria rehearsal (excerpt). The performance piece was choreographed and performed by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, who have been co-choreographing feminist dances since 2006.

Patient Response To Find New Meaning In Familiar Language, Kelly Olson

Obsculta

This piece is a reflection of the ongoing controversy of feminism in a patriarchal society. The reflections in this essay are limited to the conversation of male versus female body but it should be understood this is not intended to overlook or undermine the diverse spectrum of gender expression. While there is much needed to be said, explored, contemplated and shared regarding gender identity in the Body of Christ, this reflection addresses the female narrative in scripture.

Feminist Retellings Of Homer's The Odyssey, 2005-2022, Brenna R. Bretzinger

Honors Capstones

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of feminist retellings of Greek mythology. These retellings serve to give voice to the marginalized female characters from ancient stories whose characterizations were deprioritized over their male counterparts. Furthermore, these stories connect the plights of ancient women with modern feminists to champion issues that women continue facing today. This study focuses on retellings of Homer’s The Odyssey, but these ideas and arguments are still largely applicable to other retellings of Greek mythology. Along with discussing The Odyssey, this project also analyzes three feminist retellings: …

Magic Mirrors, Jamie Ho

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

When a beam of bright light hits the convex and polished surface, an image is reflected back onto the wall. This is a description of a magic mirror, an object from the Han Dynasty (206 BC -24 AD), that embodies how Euro-America views China: both technically advanced and shrouded in mystery. The magic mirror also points to the history of photography, as this term was often used in the Victorian era to describe a camera. The image created by a camera is a mimic of reality, both all too familiar and unfamiliar.^[1] Like magic mirrors, the GIFs I create …

This Woman's Work: A Comprehensive Analysis Of The Domestic Workers Who Swept The Shards Of A Shattered Glass Ceiling, Grier Mcclard

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

In "This Woman's Work: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Domestic Workers who Swept the Shards of a Shattered Glass Ceiling" Grier McClard argues that the industry of Domestic Service experienced a massive shift in the second half of the 20th century, transforming from a sign of wealth and privilege, to a necessity for many. Despite the necessity of domestic workers for families, they are consistently one of the most unprotected and underpaid class of workers. McClard ties these changes in Domestic Work to Second Wave feminist ideology, and the influx of women working away from their houses.

Owning The Body: Bodily Autonomy And Consent In The Works Of Octavia Butler, Korryn Plantenberg

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

During the 1980’s the Second Wave feminist movement provided more interest in interdisciplinary movements towards equity in the case of gender. One movement that slowly grew was Womanism, which included the intersection between race and gender. Specifically, the experiences of black women in the United States. Inspired by this movement authors such as Octavia Butler was a black science fiction author who wrote literature focused on black women. Alongside her preoccupation, with race in science fiction, Butler explores the nature of consent and bodily autonomy in utopian and dystopian futures. Within her novels, she uses Womanism to engage with futuristic …

Making The Political Personal: Consciousness Raising For The Contemporary Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, Danica Fuerst

Honors College Theses

Consciousness raising (CR) typically refers to the specific small group practice pioneered by second-wave feminists, but as networked media gradually replaced the small group process, new forms that are descended from the original CR emerged. This thesis traces consciousness raising from it's origins in the late 1960s and early '70s, through third-wave feminism, to contemporary feminist uses. It analyzes the rhetorical effects and functions of CR from the perspective of Symbolic Convergence theory, considering the various media through which CR is practiced. Finally, using the understanding of CR and its functions that this provides, it analyzes how one specific contemporary …

Ricucire Il Tessuto Della Società: L’Intersezione Di Moda Femminile E Femminismo, Caroline Grace Bisese

Honors Theses

La moda è tutt'altro che una conseguenza frivola e accidentale dell'abbigliamento disponibile e del luogo in cui si va a fare shopping. L’abbigliamento è una forma di retorica corporea che evoca un ampio dialogo non verbale. Una narrazione che va ben oltre il materiale e lo stile, sebbene entrambi questi dettagli sono fondamentali, la moda al livello più elementare è essenziale per capire chi sono le persone, perché sono come sono e in cosa credono. Queste sono alcune dei capisaldi per capire una persona in relazione alla cultura e una cultura in conseguenza delle persone che la compongono. È una …

"Just Don't Frighten The Horses": Discussing Porn And Kink In Fandom Spaces, Hillary Hencely

English MA Theses

My thesis discusses why the banning of sexually explicit content is occurring in fandom spaces, who is trying to ban this content, and why it should matter to people both inside and outside of fandom. This thesis looks at these answers within the framework of feminism and fandom culture. When fanfiction is considered to be literature, it is easy to see why fanfiction matters. This is especially true when the authors of fanfiction are primarily women and are told that their content might be harmful to others through the reasoning that pornography is anti-feminist. I wanted to explore why these …

Moving Toward Global Feminism: Consciousness Of Borders And Implementing Angry Feminism, Cameron Hallman

English MA Theses

In this Thesis, I argue that in order to get to global feminism, there must be a consciousness of borders, such as racism, islamophobia, sexism, etc, and there must be an implementation of angry feminism to combat patriarchal systems. In "Chapter One: Moving Toward A More Global Feminism," I introduce theorists Said, Djebar, Spivak, and Mohanty, to lay the groundwork for understanding those borders. In "Chapter Two: Under The Western Gaze: An Example of One Arab-American Woman's Experience in the United States," I examine Laila Lalami's The Other Americans and apply the theorists' ideas from Chapter One: Moving Toward A …

Revisiting Feminist Historiography On Women's Activism In Turkey: Beyond The Grand Narrative Of Waves, Sevgi Adak, Selin Cagatay

Faculty & Staff Publications

Recent contributions in feminist historiography challenge the reading of women's movements through the waves metaphor and destabilise rigid periodisations. These contributions have triggered debates about the way feminism and women's activism are analysed in the West, but their implications for feminist historiography in non-Western contexts have yet to be discussed. New studies, including our own, on Kemalist and socialist women's activisms suggest that the agendas affiliated with the post-1980 ‘second wave’ of feminism in Turkey had been raised prior to the 1980s. These findings call for critical engagement with the long-established idea that there have been two waves of women's …

Giving Voice To The Body: Slam Poetry In The Poet X, Stefanny Leung Yu

Student Theses

When the world silences her, can slam poetry become her voice? Elizabeth Acevedo, an author and poet, uses her beautiful piece of slam poetry to explore how language can empower marginalized voices, speaking on behalf of those who are usually silenced. The Poet X is a verse novel that narrates the powerful story of a young Afro-Latina girl, Xiomara Batista, who navigates the intersecting pressures of school bullies, family issues, religious conservatism, patriarchal rules, and racialized body politics in her Harlem community. This research engages with Acevedo’s work to focus on how slam poetry serves as a powerful outlet and …

Strategies Of Liberation And Empowerment In Maya Angelou's And Audre Lorde's Black Feminist Literature, Lydia Jernigan

Student Works

The progression of second-wave feminism in America saw Black feminist writers such as Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde utilizing literature, and notably poetry, to resist against their oppression, due not only to their gender but also to their race. Lorde states in her 1977 essay, “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” that poetry, for women, “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” One of the aims of Lorde’s explicitly political poems—as …

The Postmodern And The Personal In Edna St. Vincent Millay’S Aria Da Capo, Roxanne Rankin

Munn Scholars Awards

Aria Da Capo, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1919 play, has thus far been largely ignored in literary criticism. This essay, through a historical survey of Millay’s previous critical reception followed by a close reading of Aria Da Capo, attempts to explain and then bridge this gap in academic scholarship. A postmodernist reading of the play will then illustrate why Millay’s work still confounds scholars today and how Aria Da Capo specifically continues to be relevant more than 100 years after it was first produced.

Power Dressing And Its Importance In Modern Democracy, Mansiben R. Patel, Dr. Catherine Amoroso Leslie

Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences

This research aimed to study the significance of Power Dressing in a modern democracy, by exploring the dynamics of clothing concerning the power it portrays for women holding influential positions in public office in a variety of countries throughout the world. This research accomplished its motive by collecting, reviewing, and analyzing scholarly articles, academic journals, newspapers, and current events which formed the foundation for data collection using a survey developed by the researchers. The analysis provided a platform for procuring knowledge of the association between Fashion and Politics, the concept of Women’s Power Dressing, and its significance in a modern …

To Be Necessary: The Remarkable Life Of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elisabeth Phillips

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Although overshadowed by her daughter, Mary Shelley, in the public imagination, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) stands as a significant figure in her time who left a significant legacy. Her writings advocating for women’s education, equal rights, and career opportunities established her as the progenitor of the modern women’s rights movement. Wollstonecraft’s ideas resonated in the era of the Atlantic world revolutions and laid the foundation for later advances of women in the Western world; therefore, it is important to study her contributions in the present.

Feminist Theorizing In The International Relations Discipline, Inass Abdulsada Ali

Journal of International Women's Studies

The discipline of International Relations has been a science for almost a century and has undergone considerable development and dynamism as a field of knowledge. In the aftermath of the First World War, traditional idealistic trends prevailed. Still, after the end of the Second World War, the theory of realism dominated the analysis of international relations, international politics, and its laws and mechanisms. With the inter-paradigm debate of the 1980s, a broad spectrum of theories of international relations emerged, the most significant of which are critical theories including feminism. Feminist theory has since become central to the debates about global …

Bell Hooks And Online Feminism, Hazel T. Biana

Journal of International Women's Studies

Feminist theorist and cultural critic bell hooks was known for calling out modern-day feminists for failing to take into consideration the plight of other non-privileged women. She intricately analyzed how various factors of oppression form a web, which contributes to the complexities of women’s marginalization. The vision of hooks, thus, is a revolutionary type of feminism which is inclusive and for everybody. This means that everyone, all persons of various races or classes, should become enlightened witnesses and be a part of the struggle towards eradicating what she refers to as White Capitalist Supremacist Patriarchy. Such vision, however, seems to …

Feminism In Modern Japan: A Historical Review Of Japanese Women’S Issues On Gender, Polina Lukyantseva

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study primarily illustrates the evolution of the feminist movement in Japan by comparing two waves of the feminist movement. Furthermore, this paper examines the development of gender roles and gender bias in modern Japanese patriarchal society. It also illustrates and explains traditional roles, Japanese ideologies, the system of Fu-you (Jap. 扶養, Eng. dependent), and modern trends in contemporary Japan. In this study, the following qualitative research methods were applied. A thorough historical context analysis was done to comprehend the social dynamics, issues, and specifics of feminism in Japan, and the principle of historicism was used to illuminate and compare …

Loving Blackness: A Sense Experience, Ricardo J. Millhouse

Feminist Pedagogy

The late bell hooks framed feminist pedagogies as a set of practices and systems that provide a description of feminism, a feminist learning environment, and ways to cultivate a community that is ready for feminist instruction. Using intersectionality, hooks (1992) discussed “loving blackness” as a representational and destabilizing practice to de-center whiteness. hooks (1992, 20) writes, “loving blackness as a political resistance transforms our ways of looking and being, and thus creates conditions necessary for us to move against the forces of domination and death and reclaim black life.” I propose a black feminist praxis teaching tool, “a sense experience,” …

Resisting Burnout: Bell Hooks’ Pedagogy Of Hope And Teaching Antiracist Feminism Online At The University Of Wyoming During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Samantha L. Vandermeade

Feminist Pedagogy

After earning a PhD in Women’s Studies from an urban, multicultural, R1 university in 2020, I accepted a teaching position at the University of Wyoming, where I was hired primarily to teach feminist and critical race-focused courses. When an in-person position suddenly moved entirely online, I found myself facing not only the culture shock of teaching at a rural, primarily White institution whose state legislature and general populace are largely hostile to antiracist feminism, but also the myriad daily challenges of teaching online during a global pandemic. I had felt personally prepared--as a White lesbian raised in a rural environment, …

I, Discomfort Woman: A Fugue In F Minor, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Autonomy, Post-Puberty Bacha Posh And Third World Feminism In Selected Afghan Fiction, Asma

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper examines the fictional representation of the ways in which Afghan girls attain autonomy in their post-puberty stage through the tradition of bacha posh despite the traditional constraints to switch back to their gender at birth. This analysis of bacha posh characters in Ukmina Manoori’s I Am a Bacha Posh and Zarghuna Kargar’s Bakhtawara’s Story attempts to demonstrate how the bacha posh tradition develops the potential for transgression in Afghan girls, fostering a resistance to traditional gender roles. In doing so, this paper challenges and rebuts Western feminist views regarding Afghan women, who are stereotyped as incapable, voiceless, and …

Veiled Figures: Attached Settler Women In Andaman’S Post-Colonial Archive, Raka Banerjee

Journal of International Women's Studies

Dominant discourse on India’s eastern Partition (1947) has constructed settlement as a masculine prerogative and man as the settler prototype. Women were eligible for rehabilitation on account of being “attached” to a male guardian, who would be assigned the head of the household in granting state benefits. In the case of these attached settler women transported by the state to Andaman Islands, a range of marginalities–region, gender, caste, and class–intersect with each other to create a veiled figure. The essay locates the settler women in the island’s post-colonial government archive to bring out the state’s construction of gendered settler subjecthood. …

“Am I More Than A Housewife”? An Exploration Of Education, Empowerment, And Gender Preference In Relation To Female Genital Cutting/Mutilation In The Far North Region Of Cameroon, Maurine Ekun Nyok

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

The Heart Is Not Hopeless: Pakistani Television Drama, Patriarchy, And Activism, Neelam Jabeen

Journal of International Women's Studies

A Muslim society that interprets feminism as anti-Islamic may not accept overtly feminist maneuvers to challenge patriarchy. However, there are subtle ways of steering out of the Islam vs. feminism dichotomy. What triggers anti-feminists are phrases like women’s rights, female emancipation, and women’s freedom since all these are interpreted as the agenda of the West and hence are considered anti-Islamic. In this paper, I argue that since feminists are fighting against all forms of oppression and have joined forces with other forms of activism such as child protection, human rights, animal rights, rights of the underclass and minority groups, and …