Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Chess As A Visual Language: Women Playing Love In The Medieval Courts Of Spain And France, Zoe Kobs

Undergraduate Theses in Art History

This thesis explores the visual representations of the game of chess in two case studies during the medieval period in the courts of Europe: manuscript illustrations in Spain, and a carved ivory mirror case in France. These case studies reveal how visual objects were used to construct cultural realities. Specifically, they illustrate how depictions of chess combined with the presence of women not only alluded to romantic possibilities, but also dictated the role, conduct, and perception of women in the medieval courts. The imagined woman’s adherence to expected court rules, rules stemming from chess games, and the art of love …

Gender And Climate Change, Amanda Roth

Climate Change and the Individual, 2025-26

This recorded lesson explores how and why climate change is a feminist issue with attention to how climate change disproportionately impacts women globally, how some theoretical approaches to feminism center climate change as a feminist issue, and how women are acting as change-makers around climate.

Homeplace As A Methodology Of Care: Conducting Critical Qualitative Research With 2slgbtqia+ Youth In Higher Education, K. Rende Mendoza, Ferial Pearson, Isa Manhart

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This paper addresses the alarming trend of policies and legislative actions targeting diversity, equity, inclusion, and affirmation/accessibility (DEIA) efforts in higher education, particularly those affecting 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. These policies not only pose a direct threat to the physical and psychological safety of marginalized students but also undermine the institutional support systems essential for their personal and academic development. Authored by a nonbinary undergraduate and two 2SLGBTQIA+ teacher education researchers, our paper explores student-led critical qualitative research as a countermeasure to these regressive policies. Building from bell hooks' conception of homeplace, we offer our suggestions for establishing safe, supportive, and liberatory …

Poetries Of Abandonment: A Study Of Plath And Glück, Yara Abdelmoneim

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersection between literature and trauma, which can be discerned in the key works of two poets, Sylvia Plath and Louise Glück. While offering readings of crucial poems, the thesis also examines the interrelations among trauma, memory and narrative as theorized by two contemporary psychiatrists, Bessel van der Kolk and Judith Herman. Both Plath and Glück wrote about personal and generational trauma after going through different experiences of abandonment. Absence, indirection and repetition provide the basis for literary techniques that allow their traumas to be better understood by authors and readers alike. The degree to which each …

Reproductive Health In America: A System Ran By Sexism And Male Control, Hailey Mccool

Merge

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of The Final Girl, Emma C. Brown

Merge

No abstract provided.

Leaving The (Mother)Land: Nationalist Entrapment Of The Doubly Colonized Irish Woman In Joyce’S Dubliners And Boland’S Poetry, Blake Harrsch

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This paper explores how James Joyce’s “A Mother” and “Eveline” and Eavan Boland’s “The Lost Land” and “Mother Ireland” illuminate the gendered sacrifices underpinning Irish nationalism through the lens of double colonization. Joyce’s female protagonists are caught between personal desire and cultural obligation: Mrs. Kearney’s assertiveness leads to public dismissal, while Eveline’s paralysis reveals the psychic toll of conflating domestic labor with patriotic duty. Boland’s poems, in turn, demonstrate how both staying and leaving reinforce women’s entrapment within nationalist ideologies. In “The Lost Land,” the mother’s grief is naturalized as part of her expected role in preserving the homeland, while …

A Seat At The Schoolhouse Table: Reimagining Education Through Afrofuturist And Womanist Theory, Natasha M. Capers

Student Theses

“A Seat at the Schoolhouse Table: Reimagining Education Through Afrofuturist and Womanist Theory” critically examines how curriculum, even when well-intentioned, can perpetuate harm by excluding the lived experiences of marginalized communities—especially Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ students. Using a real middle school immigration assignment given to the author's son as a case study, this capstone deconstructs the structural biases embedded in curriculum design and proposes a radical reimagining through the liberatory lenses of Afrofuturism and Womanism. Blending scholarly inquiry, personal narrative, and community-based interviews, this project offers a restructured assignment that centers joy, identity, and speculative storytelling as tools for educational …

Revolution Beneath The Burqa: Afghan Women’S Grassroots Resistance And A Goal Of Sustainable Change Under The Taliban (1990s-2000s), Ava Stover

Senior Theses

This case study examines two juxtaposing initiatives; The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and Beauty Without Borders, and their differing approaches to addressing systemic oppression and empowering Afghan women post-Taliban takeover in 1996. RAWA employs a grassroots model while Beauty Without Borders, a Western-led initiative, emphasizes beautification. The study considers RAWA’s effectiveness in addressing structural inequalities while highlighting the limitations of externally driven programs like Beauty Without Borders. This analysis contributes to understanding how grassroots movements can achieve sustainable systemic change, while the West’s continuous misinterpretation of cultures and lifestyles different from their own has perpetuated failed …

Transgender & Gender-Diverse Interpreter Experiences, Atlas Rideout

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

Transgender and gender-diverse ASL interpreters face unique challenges in their professional lives that remain largely unexamined in interpreting research. This investigational research project addresses this gap by exploring their individual lived experiences through analysis of both anecdotal and numerical data collected via a survey. Through this survey, participants were invited to share their narratives, highlighting issues such as discrimination, self-disclosure, and gender identity within professional practice. At the time of writing, very minimal research has been done on the experiences of transgender and gender-diverse ASL interpreters. The research that has been completed has either lumped transgender individuals in with the …

The Algorithm Of Inclusion: Homonationalism, Queer Advocacy, And Digital Marketing Of Un Ecosoc Ingos And Indian Ngos, Dewansh Chauhan

Master's Theses

Advocacy organizations have increasingly turned to social media as digital platforms become integral to contemporary activism, shaping public discourse and securing institutional legitimacy. This thesis examines the organizational communication of organizations that support marginalized sexualities within a neoliberal and homonationalist context. Employing Critical Content Analysis (CCA), the study analyzes a representative sample of 200 Instagram posts from 2024, comparing two international NGOs with ECOSOC status at the UN (Outright International and ILGA) and two national NGOs in India (Humsafar Trust and Naz Foundation). The findings reveal how homonationalist tendencies may manifest at the intersection of engagement metrics, identity-centric rhetoric, brand …

You Are Not The Hero: Women’S Role In “Rapunzel”, Amber L. Budd

The Confluence

This paper uses the Feminist literary theory to examine the roles and presentation of characters in the fairy tale “Rapunzel” and how the women reinforce patriarchal ideals by conforming to either angelic or monstrous behaviors.

Misidentified Bodies And Missing Data: Exploring Forensic Disempowerment And Skeletal Narratives Of Transgender And Gender-Diverse Individuals In The United States, Taylor M. Flaherty

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The bodies of transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals represent a physical nexus of contempt and scrutiny. In the United States (U.S.), TGD people experience disproportionate levels of violence and premature death, contributing to a persistent epidemic of harm. Institutionalized anti-TGD biases have reinforced systemic neglect, leading to the routine exclusion of TGD individuals from research, data collection, and historical archives. The absence of state or federal initiatives to track mortality trends and risk factors among this population further exacerbates their systematic erasure. In particular, forensic scientists have traditionally relied on dichotomous indicators of sexual expression which may fail to account …

Unmasking Masculinities In Counseling: From Conformity To Connection, Kyle R. Rose

Dissertations, 2020-current

This dissertation explored the entanglements of professional counseling and masculinities across three manuscripts, to contribute to (1) healthier forms of gender expression within and beyond the spectrum of masculinities for individuals, (2) the counseling profession’s role in transforming hegemonic masculinity within communities, and (3) larger movements to subvert the patriarchy throughout society. The first manuscript is a conceptual article that presented the Relational Cultural Privileged Identity Counseling (RCPIC) model, an integrative framework designed to help counselors address hegemonic masculinity within the therapeutic relationship. Drawing from Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) and Privileged Identity Exploration (PIE), this model provided a roadmap for compassionate …

The Performance Of Gender In Sound And Screen: Unpacking And Countering The Double Standards Of Women In Taylor Swift’S “The Man,” Brienne Of Tarth, And The Substance, Alexandra C. Ali

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This rhetorical analysis examines how femininity is constructed, policed, and resisted in popular culture through three case studies: Taylor Swift’s “The Man,” Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones, and The Substance, using the lens of Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. “The Man,” both the song and the music video, reveals the double standards working against women, incorporating an additional layer of analysis through Kenneth Burke’s perspective on incongruity. Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones defies gender expectations, blurring the line between the performance of masculinity and femininity. Additionally, this analysis embodies archetypes of women, such …

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Contextualizing Historical Bioarchaeological Accounts With Contemporary Social Issues, Katharine Chiyono Woollen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The very existence of women has been taken for granted throughout history. Their domestic roles are viewed as biologically fixed, resulting in a general lack of information recorded or researched relating to their lived experiences, life histories, and narratives. Instead, it is the history of white men that has been standardized as the norm, creating visible gaps in our understanding of women’s experiences. Additionally, the majority of existing literature centers on female reproduction, their roles as mothers, and violence enacted against women. While this information contributes towards a greater understanding of women’s experiences in bioarchaeological investigations, these data often lack …

'We Owe, You Know, The World Our Perfection': How The Neurodiversity Paradigm Informs Autistic Women's Self-Perceptions, Katybeth Adamo

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This qualitative, phenomenological study examines how autistic women characterize and interpret their experiences, beliefs, and self-perceptions within the framework of the neurodiversity paradigm. Guided by a social constructivist epistemology, this study explores the complex intersections between autistic women’s experiences of diagnostic processes, gendered socialization, and identity formation in autistic women. Through semi-structured interviews with ten autistic women, themes emerged around gender differences between autistic men and women, external versus internal self-perception, diagnostic age and self-perception, sensory overload and its consequences, and the journey from feeling othered to finding one’s place socially. Findings suggest that delayed diagnosis and persistent societal pressures …

Collisions: The Enlivened Entanglements Of The Object-Self, Grace P. Smith

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This piece is a performance collage centered around objects and our entanglements with them. Through unpacking five objects in my life and their histories and interrogating three interwoven levels of narrative (the historical, the personal, and the aesthetic), I playfully displace the subject/object hierarchy to contribute to broader theoretical discussions regarding the agency of objects, resulting in novel insights through the collisions produced from the performance collage.

Grief As Slip: (How Little I Show) An Exploration In Clay, When Words Are Not Enough, Michelle A. Smith

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Grief as Slip (how little I show) implies that even as we acknowledge our mortality and the fleeting nature of life, we still only reveal a fraction of our true selves or our deeper realities. The ceramic artwork in this exhibition carries and conveys a journey through the present and remembered emotions of the artists’ personal narrative. By juxtaposing the tactile nature of clay with the ethereal quality of human experience, Smith contemplates the profound interplay between material transformation and emotional resilience. The exhibition’s intent is to translate the essence of complex emotional states into abstracted forms so they can …

Ritual And Revolution: Rethinking Roman Women’S Influence On Religion, Katlin Smith

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis challenges the long-standing portrayal of Roman women as passive figures. Focusing on the mid-to-late Roman Republic and early Empire (264 B.C.E.–180 C.E.), it argues that women were active participants in Roman society, particularly through their engagement in religious life. Drawing on the theory of “lived religion,” this study highlights how religion offered Roman women opportunity to interact with both domestic and public spheres in socially acceptable means. Religion allowed women to exercise influence, power, and autonomy otherwise denied to them in political or legal contexts. Through a combination of textual analysis and material evidence, such as inscriptions and …

Preventing Female Inmates’ High Recidivism In One Parole Reentry Program, Erika Galarza

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Recidivism among formerly incarcerated women is a challenging issue for one state prison system. Effective and fully enrolled programs to support recently released women are essential to stopping recidivism, as women often face problems such as trauma, abuse, or mental health disorders, all of which may require special care. The purpose of this study was to determine the primary outcomes of the One Parole Reentry Program’s (OPRP) effectiveness in preventing female recidivism at prison facilities and what improvements may enhance future outcomes. The state’s parole program curriculum assessment guidelines and their rehabilitation model were used as the framework to assess …

The Interconnectedness Of Fun Home On Page And Stage, Livia M. Nocito

English and Creative Writing Independent Study Projects

In Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel, instances of Alison’s emotional “rise,” or openness in being queer, and Bruce’s “descent,” or need to conform, in the book are further supplemented by translations made into the musical through leitmotif and musical composition. This cements not only their roles as Daedalus and Icarus respectively in the metaphor Alison presents in her memoir, but also highlights their lived experiences in a way that truly extends Alison’s liberation as a lesbian to be elevated in grandeur and Bruce’s stifling life to be as damning as Icarus’s fall into the sea.

A Movement In Process: The Effects Of Post-Dictatorship Politics On The Legalization Of Abortion In Argentina, Corinne J. Robbins

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

Access to abortion is an inherently critical aspect of sexual and reproductive rights. That is to say that access to safe abortions is of equal importance to guaranteeing a person’s right to safety during the pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum period. This research primarily focuses on the trajectory of the legalization of abortion in Argentina after the end of the last military Dictatorship (1976-1983), the factors that impacted the movement, and how the movement is received in Argentina today. Argentina’s current administration has been unsupportive of the current abortion law, but past successes demonstrate that abortion rights activists in Argentina are …

The Hagiography Of Trinity Sparkle, Emma Marie Schwartz

Theses - ALL

Through painting and soft sculpture, I create a theoretical realm intertwined with my lived reality pushing against norms perpetuated by religious and secular heteronormativity. I mobilize my desire and dualistic experiences to initiate and recognize the uneasy and necessary conversations surrounding the ways we search for and live out our sexualities and identities in relationships and communities. Themes of acceptance stem from my personal life and are applied in the fictional realm through figuration, cropped imagery, and highly saturated colors in my paintings and soft sculptures. I rewrite art historical Biblical imagery and interweave them with my personal experiences, in …

Japan And Its Hesitation In Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage, Morgan R. Lewellen

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Japan is the only state in the G7 that has not legalized same-sex marriages despite increasing support of LGBTQ+ rights and norms for respecting human rights. While some local governments and constitutional courts have made progress with recognizing same-sex partnerships and deeming the ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the Japanese national government has not enacted comprehensive pro-LGBTQ+ policy. Instead, the Diet (Japan’s legislative body) passed the “LGBT Understanding and Enhancement Bill” in 2023, which is a law that fails to legally recognize same-sex marriage or provide protections. This project aims to explore Japan’s hesitancy by examining politics, culture, history, and …

Voices In The Borderlands: Reimagining Identity, Cultural Belonging, And Dystopian Spaces In Anzaldúa’S Borderlands And Viramontes’S “The Cariboo Café”, Oralia G. Ramos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) and Helena María Viramontes’ short story “The Cariboo Café” (1985) portray marginalized individuals navigating liminal spaces of identity, oppression, and survival. Borderlands/La Frontera and “The Cariboo Café” show how systematic violence and displacement shatter the self, pushing characters to navigate trauma in a dystopian space. Sonya, Macky, the café owner, and the grieving mother represent Anzaldúa’s concepts of borderland subjectivity, betrayal, and spectral haunting.

Sonya and Macky, two undocumented children, represent Anzaldúa’s borderlands subjects and reside in a state of nepantla, an in-between space of cultural dislocation. The café owner …

The Pathologization Of Fatness Through Popular Culture, Isabelle A. Van Winkle

Honors Capstones

In an increasingly technologically connected society, and in a society that lacks fundamental legal protections for weight- or size-based discrimination, it is crucial research examines how and why fatness is being pathologized in digital popular culture spaces. The present research aims to examine this question by analyzing various social media posts and advertisements for patterns of anti-fat bias indicating pathologization. Advertisements and posts were sourced from Snapchat and X, respectively, and a goal of this research was to remove my personal social media algorithms and their output from their intended context (the screen) and into the space of higher education …

What We Don't Say Out Loud, Antwan Bowen

Master's Projects

What We Don’t Say Out Loud is a collection of original short stories that explore themes of identity, race, family, queerness, humor, and emotional vulnerability through the lens of Black and marginalized voices. These narratives blend literary realism with elements of magical realism, satire, and personal essay to reflect the emotional truths and unspoken complexities that shape everyday life. Central to the collection is a commitment to portraying characters in their full humanity, often resisting trauma-centered tropes in favor of layered, internal storytelling. From the raw, personal account of Black fatherhood in “The Best Day and the Worst Night,” to …

Reproductive And Sexual Autonomy In Hillary Jordan’S When She Woke, U. H. Ruhina Jesmin

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper uses the content analysis method and theory of reproductive politics to explore how state-sponsored reproductive policy criminalizes reproductive rights and erodes sexual autonomy in Hillary Jordan’s 2011 dystopian novel When She Woke. The novel depicts a future world in which abortion is criminalized and a genetic technology called “melachroming” is used by the federal government to violate the human rights of the main character, Hannah Payne. The fundamentalist interpretations of religion, coupled with political agenda and public policy, equate abortion with genocide, thus criminalizing the act and punishing women with a genetic alternation of skin color. These …

How Did Women In India Fare During The Covid-19 Pandemic? A Study Of Work-Life Balance, Bigi Thomas

Journal of International Women's Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted women globally, resulting in numerous work-life balance (WLB) challenges. The intersection of paid employment and familial obligations inside the household has compelled Indian women to assume many tasks. Married women encounter heightened stress due to the specific gender roles that society imposes upon them within a patriarchal sociocultural context; these gender roles were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, hindering Indian women in their management of domestic duties and reconciliation of personal and professional disputes. The pandemic’s fusion of professional and familial domains disrupted Indian women’s transition between home and work environments, leading to indistinct …