Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

My (Not So) Angry Vagina, Mary E. Maloney

SURGE

Why is feminism a dirty word? Why are celebrities from Susan Sarandon to Lady Gaga and Katy Perry explicitly rejecting the feminist label? And why is Carrie Underwood saying, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am a feminist, that can come off as a negative connotation.”

Since when was there a negativity surrounding feminism? Well, basically since forever. [excerpt]

For Love And For Justice: Narratives Of Lesbian Activism, Kelly Anderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the role of lesbians in the U.S. second wave feminist movement, arguing that the history of women's liberation is more diverse, more intersectional, and more radical than previously documented. The body of this work is five oral histories conducted with lifelong activists and public intellectuals for the Voices of Feminism project at the Sophia Smith Collection: Katherine Acey, former Executive Director of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice; Dorothy Allison, author and sex radical; Suzanne Pharr, southern anti-racist organizer and author; Achebe Powell, activist and diversity trainer; and Carmen Vázquez, LGBT activist and founding director of the …

Why We Stay, Brittany Nicole Mcintyre

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Why we stay is a piece of Creative Non-Fiction, is a work that is heavily focused on region. The narrative takes up the life of a female Appalachian. The challenges of being an Appalachian woman raising a family are analyzed alongside such issues as domestic violence, family dysfunction, and mental illness. Because the piece is set in both rural and urban Appalachia, the issue of family is examined in terms of generational conflict and the strong bonds of a matriarch.

Mother Of A New World? Stereotypical Representations Of Black Women In Three Postapocalyptic Films, Karima K. Jeffrey

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This essay explores three cinematic representations of Black matriarchs who play prophetic roles in redeeming humanity in the midst of apocalyptic change: Ika (Quest for Fire), Kee (Children of Men), and The Oracle (The Matrix trilogy). Not only do these courageous women resist the politics of domination, rebelling against a dying status quo, but they "give birth" to the leaders needed to rebuild a world in chaos and decay. One film ends with a pregnant woman rubbing her belly as she stands on the precipice of evolutionary change; another positions a mother and newborn adrift, waiting to be found by …

Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes In Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In a number of international fairy tale types, such as ATU 451 ("The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers"), the female protagonist voluntarily stops speaking in order to attain the object of her quest. In ATU 451, found in the collected tales of the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen as well as in oral tradition, the protagonist remains silent while weaving the shirts needed to disenchant her brothers from their birdlike forms. While this silence is undoubtedly disempowering in some ways as she cannot defend herself from persecution and accusations of wickedness, here I argue that the choice to remain silent …

A Post Feminist Look At Hbo's Girls: A Critical Analysis Of Characters, Career, Gender, And Sexuality, Aaliyah A. Miller

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Television plays an integral role in the lives of Americans, regardless of class, ethnicity, gender, race, or religion. Despite the fact that viewership on the major networks has decreased over the years, television continues to be a dominant cultural and informational force that does more than just entertain us -this medium has the power to influence and alter our attitudes, behaviors, perceptions, and actions. Gender bias as a result of gender stereotypes found in television has been an issue of concern for feminist, politicians, and social researchers. Research studies have found that gender stereotypes found in television negatively influence women …

Atatürk's Balancing Act: The Role Of Secularism In Turkey, Patrick G. Rear

Global Tides

The intersection of religion and politics in the form of a civil religion has been present since time immemorial. This paper looks specifically to the relationship between Turkey’s development of a secular civil religion after gaining independence and the advancing of women’s rights and democratic values. In examining the intersections of state and religion in a secular Islamic society, it draws parallels to the French civil religion as it came to be following the French Revolution. Though Atatürk and other secularists were strong forces in developing the civil religion, the paper also examines liberal democratic and conservative Islamic groups in …

Teaching Postcolonial Literature In An Elite University: An Edinburgh Lecturer’S Perspective, Michelle Keown

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This reflective essay explores some of the pedagogical challenges I have faced in teaching postcolonial literature and theory at the University of Edinburgh. There are particular social dynamics at work at Edinburgh that make engaging with intersectionality, particularly in the context of colonialism and racism, a rather complex endeavor. Edinburgh is a Russell Group university, and our undergraduate constituency is overwhelmingly white, middle class and British, with a high proportion of students coming from British public-school backgrounds. Many of these students approach postcolonial writing with well-meaning liberal intentions, but often adopt what Graham Huggan (2001) would term an exoticizing perspective …

“Of The Woman First Of All”: Walt Whitman And Women's Literary History, Vivian Delchamps

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis contemplates Walt Whitman's role in the lives of 19th and 20th century women writers and his significance to early American feminism. I consider the ways women inspired him to develop pro-feminist ideas about maternity, womanhood, and female liberation.

Undermining The Angelic Restrictions Of First-Wave Feminism: What The New Woman Did, Didn't, And Wouldn't Do, Jane Kristen Asher

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation provides an intertextual reading of Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did (1895), Victoria Cross's The Woman Who Didn't (1895), and Lucas Cleeve's The Woman Who Wouldn't (1895) in order to historically and culturally contextualize these popular New Woman novels in social-purity feminism, the marriage debate, and reticent sexual politics of the late-nineteenth century. By examining the ways that The Woman Who heroines discursively and thematically engage with first-wave feminism and by focusing on this dialectical exchange of feminist ideas and practices as they were manifested in feminist publications and campaigns at the turn of the century, I argue …

Islamist And Secularist Women In Egyptian Politics: Convergence Or Divergence?, Ahmed Bekhet Mr.

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Islam oppresses women and has many restrictions on women’s participation in politics. Women have fewer rights under the Islamic Shari‘a (law). Is this true or not? Does Islam really exclude women from political participation? Are Islamists, who have their political agenda, supporting or oppressing women? Are Islamist feminists, who are a contemporary phenomenon especially in the Middle East, politically active or inactive? Are liberal or secular women in Egypt more democratic than Islamist women or the opposite? Such questions will be addressed in the following research with emphasis on examining the role of women in Egyptian politics during Ikwhan’s - …

Can Women Have It All?: Hesitant Feminism In American Women's Popular Writing, Anne Aramand

Graduate Masters Theses

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins are two of the bestselling series of our generation. These series are meeting widespread popularity just as the contemporary feminist debate of: "Can women have it all?" is occurring around the country. Although Twilight and The Hunger Games are not considered overtly feminist texts, they have emerged in a time when women are reexamining the possibility of empowering themselves both in the public and the domestic sphere. Meyer and Collins have introduced female protagonists that deal with precisely this issue.

First, I will be outlining why cultural studies are …

Performative Gender And Pop Fiction Females: "Emancipating" Byronic Heroines Through A Feminist Education, Joy Smith

Masters Theses

"I can be a regular bitch. Just try me." With this phrase emblazoned across her t-shirt, Lisbeth Salander, pierced, tattooed, and bedecked in leather, waltzes from the pages of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This woman who subverts authority, maliciously tattoos and sodomizes a man, and intentionally distances herself from close relationships of any kind has somehow managed to capture both the attention and admiration of the American audience. This disheartening phenomenon stems from a renewed interest in the Byronic heroine, a female possessing those traits traditionally assigned to Byronic heroes and men, and the rise of …

Creating Female Space: The Feminine Sublime In The Awakening And The House Of Mirth, Emily F. Faison

Selected Honors Theses

This thesis examines the Edna Pontellier and Lily Bart, the respective protagonists of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, integrating the theoretical concept of the sublime, particularly engaging Barbara Freemans’s idea of a feminine sublime, as discussed in her book, The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women’s Fiction. In three chapters, the thesis provides an overview and brief history of the theory of the sublime, contextualizing Freeman’s argument, and measures the success of both Edna’s and Lily’s attempts to engage the sublime as they each struggle to find their place as women …

Women, Feminism, And Aging In Appalachia, Sherry Kaye Ms.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aging has become a problem for men and women in Western societies where youth is touted and revered as a standard of success by which individual value is measured and esteemed. Older women in particular find that as they age they face discrimination in the form of ageism and social diminution. The purpose of the study is to remedy a lack of scholarship on aging in Appalachia and to establish a precedent for future studies. A liberal, feminist approach is used to analyze the results of recorded interviews and to interpret transcripts of relevant data. The results of the analysis …

Building Women’S Solidarity To Advance Women’S Rights In Bolivia, Luzdary Hammad

Master's Theses

This paper takes a historical look at the deep-seated ethnic and class divisions between women in Bolivia. It also examines the cultural challenges that help explain the status of women in Bolivia and the obstacles women face to become politically active. It provides the theories of decolonization and depatriachalization as practical ways Bolivia can move past their colonial and patriarchal history. It also looks into what feminism means overall in Latin America and what strategies Latin American women have used to make change for women. It then provides a political history of Bolivia from 1994 to the present giving the …

The Affective Economy Of Marriage: Or, No Spouse Left Behind, Brooke M. Beloso

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

True to form, Dean Spade & Craig Willse deliver a fierce critique of the liberal politics surrounding same-sex marriage from the left of left in their recent "Marriage Will Never Set Us Free." Following suit on a spate of similar such critiques from such collectives as Against Equality, Beyond Marriage, and their own I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal, Spade & Willse eloquently and incisively lament the way in which "same-sex marriage advocacy... has made being anti-homophobic synonymous with being pro-marriage," and, in the process, cast "Left political projects of racial and economic justice, decolonization, and feminist liberation" …

‘A River Is Not A Woman’: Re-Visioning Finnegans Wake In Eavan Boland’S ‘Anna Liffey.’, Melissa Dinsman

Publications and Research

"This essay argues that Eavan Boland's 1994 poem “Anna Liffey” is, in part, a re-visioning of James Joyce's famous river-woman and mother, ALP. Although Joyce's deconstructive tendencies provide an added challenge for any author looking to engage with Finnegans Wake, Boland manages to reclaim ALP, both channelling and challenging Joyce's portrayal of the Liffey as “Anna Livia Plurabelle.”--From the Journal.

In Defense Of Feminists Who Like Fashion, Margarita C. Delgado

SURGE

I’m sitting on the downtown R train one night in Manhattan, a copy of Vogue resting on my crossed legs. It is late and I am clearly unwinding peacefully as I thumb through page after glamorous page of my magazine. The train stops at Prince Street and there’s the usual flux of people in and out. Those left inside settle as the train pulls out of the station.

“Ugh. Fashion is stupid,” remarks one young man to another, both of whom are sitting diagonally from me and well within earshot. He’s watching me ignore him as I continue enjoying my …

She’S Forever Present, Marina Abramović: An Artist, An Innovator, And The Grandmother Of Performance Art, Jessica Volmer

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Contesting The Marginalization Of Female Leadership In Sports: The Struggle For Equal Opportunities In Men's Collegiate And Professional Basketball, Caitlain Tinker

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This feminist critique interrogates the discourses and practices of gender discrimination in men's professional and collegiate sporting institutions in the United States. This study focuses on delineating and 'naming' the discriminatory ideologies that are (re)produced by dominant social and cultural institutions, revealing in the process how these practices (over)determine gender equality in the professional and collegiate sporting field. To this end, I perform a post-structuralist discourse analysis of what Louis Althusser calls the dominant 'ideological state apparatuses,' namely schools, the media and sporting institutions. I argue that these institutions coalesce to form a network of power that produces, reproduces, and …

Locating Linguistic Power Relationships: A Glimpse Into Transnational Feminist Dialogue Through Comparison Of Major Feminist Publications In The Us And China (2000-2012), Shuli Han

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Does the use of English as a universal language in the transnational feminist dialogue empower women globally? In what way does English shape the flow of conversation by circulating some feminist knowledge while neglecting others? Through conducting content analysis research on major feminist publications in both China and the US, this thesis probes the limitations of English as “Lingua Franca” through comparing authors, topics, and the use of references in the Collections of Women’s Studies (CWS), the most prestigious feminist journal in China, with Signs, one of the core feminist journals in the US. Through the comparison …

Feminisms At The Door: Gender And Sex At A Women's College, Susan Chappell Overton

Cultural Foundations of Education - Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation is a qualitative study of early 21st century American female college students' experiences of their gender, sexuality, and racial identities, and of institutional politics as their single-sex college transitioned to co-education. It is an ethnography that utilizes feminist theorizing to understand tensions between feminists of different generations or waves; the complexities of identities and institutions in which gender, sexuality, and race intersect (bell hooks and Kimberle Crenshaw); and the workings of dominant gender and sexual norms (Judith Butler). As the College prepared to `go coed,' the prospect of introducing male bodies into this environment generated rich discourses about …

Claiming Citizenship: Las Vegas' Conventional Women's Organizations Establishing Citizenship Through Civic Engagement, Cynthia Cicero

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Many historians of American women portray women's organized civic engagement and work to attain social, economic, and legal equality as feminism. American feminism has been expanded and applied in scholarship. The American feminists of the 1960s wanted to alter the male power structure and redefine conventional notions of womanhood. However, many middle-class women who participated in community and civic organizations valued their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers, expressing their citizenship and community work as an extension of these roles. Their motivation in pursuing equality was to gain full citizenship status.

In this thesis, I argue that viewing women's civic …

Place And Contemplative Pedagogy, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Gender & Genre, Sharon Harrow

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Dangerous Delusions, Nora Nachumi

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Accessing Liberal Education, Alison Conway

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Teaching Eighteenth-Century Literature As A Feminist Scholar In The New Millennium, Alison Conway, Sharon Harrow, Nora Nachumi, Laura Runge

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

‘The Only Beguiled Person’: Accessing Fantomina In The Feminist Classroom, Kate Levin

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.