Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

The Evolution Of Revenge: Genre, Feminist Theory And Jennifer’S Body, Sophia Birks

Capstone Showcase

The representation and proliferation of violence against women in media, when applying genre theory, reflects the social climate of rape culture and the social response to sexual violence. Looking at the Rape-Revenge genre through the scope of Feminist Theory, the only way to reintroduce female agency into a trauma led narrative is to reclaim the tropes used to perpetuation female exploitation and a popular culture ambivalent to male on female violence. Within this subversion and deconstruction, a genre benefiting from female trauma finally includes an honest artistic retelling of that female experience. With the intention of the creator in line …

Luce Irigaray, Radical Feminism, & The Me Too Movement, Allie Nye

Capstone Showcase

Luce Irigaray, a French feminist theorist, used her writing as a tool to further the postmodern feminist movement and her theory of sexual difference. Her work highlights the divergence from traditional, modernist thought and the dream of a well rounded western society that is grounded in the recognition of sexual difference. The #MeToo Movement, the defining feminist movement of present day, proves Irigaray’s point of a need for the recognition of sexual difference. The importance of women being able to speak their mind is one the foundations of Irigaray’s work and a pillar of the #MeToo Movement. Moving beyond the …

Humayun Ahmed And Archival Hauntings: The Subaltern Experience Of The 1971 Liberation War Of Bangladesh As Portrayed In Debi, Nilima Islam

Dissertations and Theses

In this paper, I argue how Humayun Ahmed's Debi offers insight into the function that archives play in creating radical nationalism in a country like Bangladesh; how these archives work to consolidate political power for a select few, and how they further subjugate and silence the country’s subalterns.

Feminism And Message Alignment Within Girl Scout Camps, Emily Susan Hinrichsen

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

There has been a recent move in the United States for individuals and organizations toactively empower girls and women, provide them with equal opportunities, and help them build confidence. One organization that has been pursuing these goals is Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA), and Girl Scout camp is a specific setting in which the organization communicates empowerment, leadership, and inclusion to its members. This study utilized a feminist lens to explore message alignment within GSUSA, focusing on Girl Scout campers and Girl Scout camp staff as two important stakeholders who receive messaging from the organization. The researcher evaluated the …

“The Cause, It Just Comes First”: Tori Amos And Third-Wave Feminism, Amanda S. Roberts

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is a textual analysis of Tori Amos as a feminist artist. Because Amos has had a successful and enduring career, she presents a unique opportunity to explore the ways third-wave feminism has influenced popular culture and vice-versa. This dissertation utilizes both a feminist and cultural studies lens to understand Amos, her work, and her fan community as texts. Through a chronological study of Amos’s catalog, I will demonstrate how Amos’s works have adapted to the demands and interests of third-wave feminism, moving from emotional non-narrative, to active political engagement with some mis-steps, and finally to an understanding of …

Queering The Carceral Cycle: Women's Resistance To The Carceral State, Ashley Ruderman-Looff

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

Building upon feminist and queer scholarship that recognizes mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex as elements of an inherently violent carceral state, Queering the Carceral Cycle excavates and analyzes twentieth-century incidents in which women resisted the state’s criminalization and/or punishment of multiply marginalized women. I argue that the state’s response to women’s acts of resistance prompted the development of new carceral strategies and technologies that expanded the carceral state’s investment in control and punishment. Moreover, by critically embracing a Foucauldian scheme known as the “carceral cycle,” I demonstrate how the state traps multiply marginalized women in a seemingly endless recurrence …

Las Líderes En Las Calles: Una Investigación De Las Madres De Plaza De Mayo Y #Niunamenos En Argentina, Brooke M. Seigars

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Through Her Eyes: The Gendering Of Female First-Person Shooters, Elizabeth Renshaw

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

While the video game industry has attempted to address their years of mistreatment towards women, within games and how they are produced, by hiring more women and including more female characters as playable options, these fixes have been superficial at best. Not only are there still few females as main characters in video games, but that there are so few female video games. By this I refer to the fact that video games told through the eyes of female characters often do not feature a gendered narrative, unlike multiple games with male POVs in which the storyline directly reflects their …

Hear Me Roar, Abigail R. Seethoff

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Hear Me Roar, a compilation of personal essays interspersed with short forms, grapples with the nuances of compliance versus autonomy in the context of the male gaze, beauty standards, and pop culture. The collection also explores what it means to treasure something—another person, an object—and how to express and deepen that affection.

The Miss America Pageant Should Restore Prioritizing The Evening Gown Segment, Keishel Williams

Capstones

Evening gown in pageants, as in society, has always represented a woman's way of expressing her personality and femininity through fashion. Miss America's attempt to stop requiring evening gowns implies that wearing formal gowns does not equate to being a modern, empowered woman.

Instead of attempting to erase the evening gown as an outdated part of a modern woman’s wardrobe, the Miss America pageant should restore the original gown segment and use this opportunity to reshape America’s perspective on how modern women can choose to wear gowns and still be empowered.

https://keishelawilliams.wordpress.com/

Healing Through Creativity And Creation: Drama Therapy As Treatment For Individuals With Eating Disorders, Hayley Werner

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

For those living with eating disorders, intervention and effective treatment can mean the difference between life and death. Conventional treatments, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, forms of talk therapy, and Nutritional Counseling, focus solely on the psychological patterns or nutritional science of eating disorders. Though these treatments are effective for some individuals, there is a gap in treatment options that address both the mind and body as one and appeal to the humanity of patients outside of their disorder(s). Herein lies the power and potential of integrating drama therapy as a widely available treatment. Drama therapy …

Contradictory Shakespeare: An Investigation Of Female Protagonists In Othello, Measure For Measure, And Pericles, Mingyue Xu

Student Theses and Dissertations

Unlike the stereotyped image of women in the Elizabethan era, in which women should submit to men’s control, Desdemona in Othello, Isabella in Measure for Measure, and Marina in Pericles present their powerful and brave characteristics when facing male dominance. More specifically, all three young women — Desdemona, Isabella and Marina — negotiate sexual and marital arrangements with their language intelligently, despite the fact that they sometimes lack self-determining power in the plays. That is to say, Shakespeare gives women rhetorical power while in certain circumstances, men cannot be persuaded. Such contradiction within how Shakespeare depicts his female …

Human Rights And Justice Rights Approaches To Gender-Based Violence (Gbv): The Case Of Kenya’S Sexual Offenses Act (Ksoa), Maryanne W. Kamunya

Graduate Masters Theses

Sexual violence produces detrimental and long-lasting physical and psychological trauma that deters a victim’s ability to fully participate in the economic, political and social development of their community and nation-state (Legal Action Worldwide, 2014). To fight this crime, the UNDP has developed an International Sexual Violence Protocol. This Protocol recommends consolidation of sexual violence legislation into one document called the Sexual Offense Act. These laws tend to use a justice through rights approach to effectively criminalize and prosecute sexual violence within a comprehensive human rights-based model. By using a justice over human rights-based approach; Kenya’s Sexual Offense Act (KSOA) deviated …

Lindsey, Ian-Meredythe, Zackary Caron

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Ian-Meredythe Lindsey moved around often during their childhood due to their parents being transferred for jobs. They lived in Oregon, Colorado, and finally Maine. Ian-Meredythe identifies as a non-binary transgender individual who considers themselves pansexual. Ian-Meredythe speaks in depth about their experiences with the erasure of themselves due to their gender identity and sexuality due to those not fitting within the gender-binary. Ian-Meredythe also focused on their experiences within the theatre, as they see very little room for non-binary individuals and storylines within the mainstream theatre productions. Ian-Meredythe focused on their involvement with Equality Maine, as well as their own …

The Divine Double Voice: How Female Christian Rhetors Found Rhetorical Agency Through The Voice Of God, Cara Ryfun

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This piece discusses the ways in which three specific Christian female rhetors--Teresa de Avila, Frances Willard, and Maria W. Stewart--utilized the voice of God through biblical scriptures and divine revelations in order to empower themselves. Through the voice of God, these women found agency for their own beliefs and messages, and utilized a variety of rhetorical maneuvers in order to share their messages and quietly subvert patriarchal constructs within the church. These women found agency for their feminist messages within their Christian patriarchal constructs, and they set precedents for Christian feminist rhetors to follow.

Politics Versus Policies: Fourth Wave Feminist Critiques Of Higher Education’S Response To Sexual Violence, Rita A. Gardiner Ph.D, Michelle Shockness, Jennifer Almquist, Hayley Finn

Education Publications

This article uses the lens of fourth wave feminism to examine media accounts of institutional and student responses in two cases of sexual violence at institutions of higher education. Competing discourses reveal a disconnect between what institutions say they do and students’ actual experiences of the institutional handling of sexual violence cases. When policies, actions, and values are not fully aligned, institutions of higher education are unable to respond to societal and institutional injustices. Hence, recommendations for better alignment between institutional values and actions are proposed.

Reflections On A Transnational Project: Suffrage In The Americas, Patricia Harms, Stephanie Mitchell

Journal of International Women's Studies

Suffrage is the most significant political development within modern Liberal states. Despite this fact, it is curious as to why suffrage movements have so little history. This article focuses on the creation of an edited volume that seeks to address the women’s suffrage story across the Americas. While the intellectual process of the project is discussed in some detail, this article is predominantly a reflection on the process of developing a collaborative project and the challenges inherent to a transnational approach. This project reveals both the significance of suffrage and simultaneously the fractured landscape within individual countries, suffrage movements and …

“Me Gritaron Negra”: The Emergence And Development Of The Afro-Descendant Women’S Movement In Peru (1980-2015), Eshe Lewis, John Thomas Iii, Spanish Translation: Https://Revistasinvestigacion.Unmsm.Edu.Pe/Index.Php/Sociales/Article/View/19567

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines the evolution of the Afro-descendant women's movement in Peru between 1980 and 2015. We examine the development of women’s conscious through other movements, specifically through the national Afro-Peruvian movement and the regional feminist encounters that have been taking place since the 1980s. Our study outlines the tensions, and points of convergence and divergence that have existed for Afro-Peruvian women in these movements. We demonstrate how these issues characterize the nature of Afro-Peruvian women's struggle and their social and political position within the realm of race- and gender-based activism. We show that this friction has prompted women to …

Faking The News: Antiwar Activists, The Italo-Ethiopian War, And The Practice Of Human Rights, Caroline Waldron Merithew

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In “Faking the News,” I bring past and present together to underscore lessons already learned by antifascist antiwar activists from the 1930s. These activists used, what they termed, "Authentic News," to combat the propaganda Benito Mussolini's regime was making up about the Italo-Ethiopian war. How might knowing about how people faked the news,and faked out fascism, in the past shape current and future human rights actions and help us go against the grain today for a better world tomorrow?

Film On Paper, Graphics On Screen, Feminism In Story: An Exegesis Of A Feminist Graphic Novel Project, Jingwei Xu

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This research is the second stage of my entire graphic novel practice looking at a feminist topic – women’s awakening from marriage. In this phase, the study carries out the practical process of the creative work, involving a graphic novel (body), an opening title (hook) and a package of visual communication design (promotion), in order to convey my feminist claim that women’s real emancipation depends on whether they can rouse their subject awareness and break through the chain of marriage. Based on this practice-led research, my personal knowledge is generated, including the value of combining graphic novels and title sequences, …

"We Neither Are Of The Past Nor Of The Future" : Analyzing The Two Opposing Aspects Of A Female Character Through Four Modern Works Of Persian Fiction", Ronak Karami

Journal of International Women's Studies

Under Iran’s growing contact with the West from 1925 until 1979, which caused cultural changes, modern writers were stuck between two realities: the vanishing culture of the past with its unified view of women and the modern Western-oriented culture of the present with its doubting, ironic, and fast-changing view of women. Both labels, the ‘ethereal’ (or inaccessible paragon) and the ‘whore’ (or accessible temptress) for female characters emerged in a major literary work of the 20th century in Iran, The Blind Owl (1937), by Hedayat due to these cultural changes. Furthermore, the labels appeared within some later modern Persian fictional …

Traveling Feminista: A Blog About Traveling As A Pakistani/American/Muslim/Feminist Scholar-Art-Ivist, Fawzia Afzal-Khan

Journal of International Women's Studies

At the heart of my blogging lies the desire to be a traveler moving through the world in a body marked as female, a woman whose evolving feminism can help heal herself and in so doing, inspire others to do the same. Journeying without and within, allows for the self to turn toward its other, to recognize the other in oneself; in so doing, one can learn to connect across the divides that threaten to engulf us, dissolving boundaries that keep us from loving our multiple selves.

Media Empowers Brave Girls To Be Global Activists, Gayle Kimball

Journal of International Women's Studies

A surprising way to silence young women globally, in addition to overly protective families, is by scholars of youth studies and development professionals. Ageism against youth is rarely discussed, so this article reveals this academic bias that ignores or discounts youth voices—especially young women. However, in the safe space of their bedrooms, the Internet and the cell phone enable young women to express their voices, even to organize uprisings. They can get around family restrictions and desires to protect them by speaking publicly from a private space. Some media provide empowering images for young women activists and informative networks of …

Exploring Gender Through Art In Myanmar, Allison E. Joseph

EnviroLab Asia

No abstract provided.

Gendered Subjectivity And Resistance: Brazilian Women’S Performance-For-Camera, 1973–1982, Gillian Sneed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers the work of a group of women artists in Brazil during the period of the military dictatorship (1964–1985), working in the genre of “performance-for-camera” (i.e., performance for film and video, rather than for a live audience). The artists are Lygia Pape (1927–2004), Letícia Parente (1930–1991), Anna Bella Geiger (b. 1933), Sonia Andrade (b. 1935), Anna Maria Maiolino (b. 1942), and Regina Vater (b. 1943). Some of these women were friends and colleagues who collaborated with each other; all of them contributed significantly to the development of film and video art in Brazil. Their works share an impulse …

Just Between Us Girls: Discursive Spaces From America's First Gay Magazine To The World's Last Website For Queer Women, 1947-2019, Josie Rush

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Just Between Us Girls charts the diffusion of queer theory outside of the academy, using convergence theory to examine communication technologies like periodicals and the Web to argue for a conception of queer theory that includes discourse between queer women about queerness. In making this argument, this project creates a lineage of discursive spaces by, for, and about queer women, putting content from these spaces in conversation with canonical queer theorists like Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, and Jack Halberstam. Analyzing and contextualizing discursive spaces like Vice Versa (1947-1948), The Ladder (1956-1972), The Furies (1972-1973), AfterEllen, and Autostraddle demonstrates not …

Once Upon A Time On Mango Street, Drake Deornellis

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

This paper examines how the use of fairytale allusions in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street critiques and recreates standard constructions of female identity. Narrated by the young main character Esperanza, the novel explores the experiences of a variety of Latina women living on Mango Street. As Esperanza retells these stories, she frequently compares these women to fairytale characters, such as Cinderella and Rapunzel. These fairytales often define women as either “angels” or “monsters”: either they are perfect, or they are evil. Furthermore, this perfection for women is associated with dependence and passivity. As the women in the novel …

Licentious Legends: A Folklore Podcast, Alexandra L. Haynes

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Licentious Legends was created out of a need to both understand and educate about sexual contemporary legends; not just what they are and what defines them, but the effect that they have on those who experience them. The purpose of this podcast is not to shame, but to take what has been found and educate about the joys and dangers of these legends. These legends range from the everyday (such as "The Hook"), to legends about a young man killing himself with a plunger. In an effort to gather as many examples as they could, Faye interviewed several of their …

The South African Women's Movement: The Roles Of Feminism And Multiracial Cooperation In The Struggle For Women's Rights, Amber Michelle Lenser

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the historiography of South Africa’s recent past, focus has been most heavily placed on apartheid and the anti-apartheid movement, with much emphasis placed on male involvement and men as the primary agents of change in the country. Women are largely viewed as playing a supportive role to male activists throughout the movement, and far less has been written on female involvement or women’s activism in its own right. Running parallel to the anti-apartheid movement, however, was a women’s movement characterized by women across the racial and socioeconomic spectrum struggling to secure their own rights in a very hostile and …

Academic Feminists Analyses Of Female Celebrities From The 1980s To Today, Brittany A. Carey

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the history of academic feminists and their changing debates over race, class, sexism, and sexual preference from the 1980s to the present. In the 1980s, white feminists tended to focus on sexism in the workplace and class discrimination, while black feminists focused instead on the racism and classism that black women faced both inside and outside of academia. More recently, millennial feminists, in both third- and fourth-wave feminism, have continued to focus on racial discrimination within feminism (and broader society) while also examining women’s sexual preferences. However, they have stopped focusing on sexism in the workplace and …