Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Towards Textile Narratives: A Cross-Over Perspective On Textile Imagery In Statuary, Iconography, And Literature, Leyre Morgado-Roncal, Juliane Müller, Marisa Kerbizi

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

Textiles and clothing constitute a fundamental element of our cultural past, present, and future. Therefore, they were also represented in many mediums, such as iconographic depictions and literature. Images are a source of visual and mental illustration and are often dependent on the viewer’s perspective. As a result, the representations of textiles convey social constructions and their cultural perception. Their study is the focal point of this article: The ways in which textiles and clothing are described by the imagery shown in Greek and Roman statuary and iconography, as well as in contemporary Albanian literature and mythology.

Representations illustrate the …

Young Romans: Status, Dress, And Gender, Mary Harlow, Lena Larsson Lovén

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

The demographics of the Roman world suggest that it was a world full of children. Demographers argue that in order simply to maintain population levels in a period where life expectancy was very short by modern standards, and infant mortality high, a woman should, on average, have six children, on the assumption that not all would live to adulthood. Despite much research in the last fifty years, children still remain partly invisible in the Roman world. This is primarily because they leave little evidence produced by themselves and are seen through the prism of adult eyes. Inevitably, given the nature …

Narrative And Material Tools Of Resistance: Mobilizing Textile Crafts, Heritage, And Fashion In The Context Of The Invasion Of Ukraine (2022–2023), Magali-An Berthon, Sophia Hayda, Tetiana Krupa, Yuliia Lazorenko, Marie-Louise Nosch

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

In 2022–2024, textile and fashion scholars came together to write an anthology sharing a new vision of European history as seen through textiles, in the COST Action EuroWeb. During this period, the continent was still dealing with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and was then faced with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Contemporary European history will be markedly defined by the ongoing war in Ukraine. One remarkable aspect of this conflict is the way textiles and dress appear daily in a variety of media outlets, mobilized as visual and semiotic means to communicate issues of war …

A Sensory Perspective On High-Ranked Women’S Dress In The 8th To 4th Century Bc In The Mediterranean And Central Europe, Karina Grömer, Susanna Harris, Audrey Gouy, Cecilie Brøns

Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia

In the late 20th century, the study of western science was dominated by a philosophical approach to evidence as text and meaning. In archaeology, material culture was treated like text, to be read through systems of signs, symbols, and indices put together in syntax. For studies of dress, this was influential in understanding dress as a cognitive system compiled to create identities and meaning. In this approach, textiles, fastenings, hairstyles, and gestures are presented as signs and symbols used to form a statement about identity, to be read by others. There was a focus on the visuality of dress and …

Stitches Of Sustainability: Empowering Women And Preserving Culture Through Pakko Embroidery, Rajesh Kumar, Dharmendra Bana, Deepali Bhatnagar

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Pakko embroidery, originating from Gujarat’s Kutch district, stands as a testament to the area's rich textile tradition, marrying exceptional craftsmanship with profound cultural narratives. Currently facing the challenge of conserving its heritage while adapting to the evolving demands of the modern world, this study aims to identify pathways for cultural and economic resurgence.

Pakko embroidery, renowned for its sturdiness and the detailed cheereli saankdi stitch, finds itself at a critical crossroads, battling declining engagement and integration into modern design paradigms. Initiatives to rejuvenate interest and establish sustainable practices for artisans are deemed critical for preserving this ancient art for future …

Public Patriotism, Silent Dissent: Women And The Making Of Senninbari In Wartime Japan, Mariko Nagai

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the early years of the so-called “Fifteen Year War” (1931–1945), Japanese women and girls created senninbari when men received draft notices to serve. Often worn around soldiers’ waists underneath their uniforms, these sash-shaped talisman were embroidered with 1,000 red knots, each knot made by a woman. In a time when the Japanese government censored dissenting voices against its militaristic and nationalistic foreign and domestic policies, this government-encouraged gesture of stitching senninbari became one of the few ways in which women could voice their personal protests within patriarchal gender expressions (良妻賢母 “good wife, wise mother”). Senninbari’s design evolved with regional- …

The Dating Experiences Of Black Women, Sarah Ish

Women's and Gender Studies Theses

My thesis centers around Black women’s dating and hookup experiences at Loyola Marymount University (LMU). I distributed a survey with 44 questions; five demographic questions and eight factors that include questions revolving around being romantically and/or sexually rejected based on their race/ethnicity. After three weeks of collecting data, my research has revealed patterns involving negative attitudes towards dating apps, admissions of hopelessness in finding an intimate partner, being fetishized by white people, and feelings of betrayal when/if a person of color expressed rejection based on their race/ethnicity. The implementation of feminist theory and feminist scholars such as Audre Lorde, Patricia …

Describing Dictee, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

The visual images in Dictee are famously captionless. They resist straightforward explanation. In writing image descriptions of the images in Dictee, I have tried to preserve the "captionlessness" of the original. The point here is not to explain the pictures—an image description is not identical to a caption—but to make Dictee more accessible to readers who are blind and visually impaired. I realize, of course, that in trying to make Dictee's captionless images more "legible," I have inevitably "mistranslated" Dictee as it was originally designed to be experienced. Its captionlessness is lost in translation despite my efforts to preserve it. …

The Lynching Of Perry Norman: Anti-Queer Violence In Early Twentieth Century America, Sydney Rigdon

Honors College Theses

For the purpose of this thesis, I examine the violence inflicted upon Perry Norman and the factors that led to his tragic death by lynching in 1915. My research includes an assessment of nationwide components that contributed to the perception of Queer individuals and the violence inflicted upon Queer people during this time period in the United States. In addition, the thesis will interrogate the public’s perception on a more local scale by examining the reaction of Dent County, Missouri in the wake of Perry Norman's murder through careful research of available local records of the time. It is a …

Reclaiming & Reasserting Third World Womanhoods In U.S. Higher Education, Bhavika Sicka

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

This study combines narrative inquiry with Third World feminism to bring a nuanced and scopic perspective of Third World women student experiences in US higher education. Specifically, it utilises Talpade Mohanty's concept of Third World womanhood to visibilise the experiences of five Third World international female students. Understanding womanhood as transnationally fluid and contextual, I investigate how women international students from the Third World perceive themselves to be misrepresented or homogenised in Western higher education. I also examine how gender and foreignness act as dynamic, interrelated categories in doubly‐othering this population. The purpose is to identify how Third World women …

It’S Giving Genocide: What Feminist Theory, Indigenous Thought, And Queer Theory Have To Say About Climate Change, Owen George

MS in Environmental Studies Master's Theses

Climate change is having profound impacts on communities around the world. In some cases, and with time, more and more, the impacts of climate change are happening on a level that constitutes genocide. Raphaël Lemkin’s and Claudia Card’s definitions of genocide are most applicable to climate change as they have broader understandings of victim groups and social death, and they recognize that inaction to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm constitutes genocidal intent. The UN’s more rigid definition does, to a lesser extent, also apply to climate change. Across the three definitions examined here, the argument of climate change as genocide is …

Framing Femininity: Opportunities For Gender Non-Conformity At U.S. Women's Colleges At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Natté Fortier

Undergraduate Research Awards

Cross-dressing and same-sex attractions were common occurrences at historically women’s colleges (HWCs) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the majority of these institutions came into their own. When examining typical characteristics of HWC campus cultures in their formative years, one might be surprised to see misalignment between common and accepted behaviors by college women versus outside social expectations for women of their class and time period. Thus we might ask: what unique opportunities existed in the early era of HWCs that permitted students to transcend elite patriarchal expectations for gender and femininity? This paper aims to explore …

Contents And Editor's Forward, Lara Martin Lengel, Rachel Ann Walsh

International ResearchScape Journal

No abstract provided.

The Dark Sides Of Giving: Representations Of Philanthropy And Gifts In Eighteenth-Century Literature, C.1750-1820, Jillian Winter

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation explores representations of the gift in popular women’s novels of the long eighteenth century. Gift transactions in women’s fiction from this period reveal larger cultural reflections about the limitations placed on women who try to give and to help others. The primary works discussed in this project include Frances Burney’s Cecilia; or, Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), Eliza Haywood’s The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751), Mary Hays’s Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796), Sarah Fielding’s The History of Ophelia (1760), and Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801). Frequently, the novels considered in this dissertation showcase the complicated conditions, oftentimes troubling …

Writing White Women: White (Supremacist) Feminism In American Literature And Culture, Post Suffrage To Post Hillary (1920–2020s), Jannell C. Mcconnell Parsons

Theses and Dissertations--English

Recent critical texts by Jessie Daniels, Mikki Kendall, and more frame the histories of mainstream white feminism in ways that highlight its ongoing complicity with white supremacy and its maintenance of racist structures and systems. In conversation with these current scholarly as well as mainstream cultural conversations about white feminism that have been happening with more frequency since 2016, this project turns to post-suffrage narratives of white womanhood to historicize the modern narratives we tell about feminism’s history. Each chapter of this project considers a 1920s or 1930s literary narrative alongside current literary and cultural narratives as I explore the …

The Power Of Females And Femininity In The Silmarillion, Madeline Shelly

Joyce Durham Essay Contest in Women's and Gender Studies

J.R.R. Tolkien is unarguably the most influential fantasy author of modern literature. The modern fantasy genre, from Harry Potter to Game of Thrones, would not exist without him. The motifs in Tolkien’s works, from elves to dwarves to the epic quest to save the world, have been retold and ingrained into the subconscious of the western world, so that a work of fantasy would not be fantasy without displaying at least some elements originating from Tolkien. His major works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, have become staples of Western literature and film. However, some criticism has been …

Lgbtq+ Clothing Habits In Appalachia, Kirstyn Korte

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study investigated clothing preferences among cisgender queer women within Appalachia and whether they used these preferences to identify their own peers. It also further investigated whether they use clothing as a tool to conceal or reveal their own LGBTQ+ identity. Participants were invited for two interviews each. Between interviews, there was a one-week rumination period for each woman. The women reported themes of using clothing to blend in with their hetero-normative surroundings as they grew up and now lean into a more alternative style and less narrow-minded view of clothing. Perspectives gained from interviewees lined up with current knowledge …

"Flowers In The Concrete”: Anti-Violence Nonprofit Leadership And Primary Prevention In Minnesota, Kim Lohse

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The grassroots origins of the American anti-violence movement have evolved to rely on institutions that perpetuate cycles of violence including law enforcement, criminal justice, and government funding programs. These systems do not meet the needs of most survivors and, in many cases, increase the physical violence and emotional abuse they experience. While the anti-violence movement has had success in shifting perceptions of gender-based violence, systemic responses have proven inadequate to prevent cases of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. This thesis study will analyze various forms of anti-violence response in the state of Minnesota using qualitative interviews with anti-violence advocates …

The Lighthouse Keepers Daughter: The Life And Work Of Celia Laighton Thaxter, Haley J. Parker

Honors Theses and Capstones

Living on the edge of the American empire, Celia Thaxter explored the dimensions of her life in ways that transcended, yet never fully abandoned traditional gender boundaries by cultivating her lifelong relationship with nature through creative expression. The lighthouse keeper's daughter constructed her identity based on the experiences that shaped her on the very edge of civilization. Coming of age on the Isles of Shoals, Celia reveled in flexibility and unrestricted freedom of her natural environment isolated from the cultural spheres on the mainland that reinforced the ideology of domestic femininity. This ideology was dominant in the 19th century in …

A Litany For Survival: Exploring Activism, Feminism, And Collective Identity In Women's Movements In Pakistan, Nida Zehra

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Beginning from the history of women's activism and movements in Pakistan, to how differing forms of activism between the old and young generations are shaping the women's movement, this thesis sheds light on the Aurat (Woman) March in Pakistan, that first began in 2018 as an occasion to celebrate International Women's Day, that has heralded a fourth wave of feminism, began a new form of activism, and has been seen as a continuation of the women’s movement in modern-day Pakistan. My research studies its dynamics and the young Pakistani movement actors of today. It analyzes interviews of Aurat March participants …

Ukrainian Beauty, Daryna Gladun

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

‘Ukrainian Beauty’ is a collection of poetry that emerged from my two years in MALS. It confronts the misrepresentation of a female body and experience in a male-dominant society of a rising democracy.

The poetry collection commences with an essay, ‘Ukrainian Beauty—91’ and beyond,’ which delves into the historical and political backdrop of the first national pageant, ‘Ukrainian Beauty,’ held in February 1991, a pivotal year marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The 20 poems in the collection reference the late 1980s-1990s artworks by the Kharkiv School of Photography and Odesa Conceptual Artists, Les Podervianskyi’s radio plays, texts …

Transnationalizing Feminist Translation Studies? Insights From The Warwick School Of Feminist Translation: A Roundtable, Olga Castro, Emek Ergun, Maud Anne Bracke, William J. Spurlin, Luciana Carvalho Fonseca

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This roundtable article features a conversation among the five scholars who delivered keynotes at the Warwick School of Feminist Translation, held at the University of Warwick, UK, in May 2023: Olga Castro, Emek Ergun, Maud Anne Bracke, William J. Spurlin, and Luciana Carvalho Fonseca. Drawing on their uniquely interdisciplinary expertise on the politics of translation and interpreting, the authors explore the urgent role that translation and translators, as well as the fields and scholars of feminist and queer translation and interpretation studies, play in distrupting and dismantling heteropatriarchal, racist, homonationalist, and colonial regimes of power. Their conversations reveal the urgent …

Rivers Of Language Across Oceans: Review Essay Of River In An Ocean: Essays On Translation, Edited By Nuzhat Abbas, Luise Von Flotow

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article presents an academic review of the collection of articles “on translation” and entitled river in an ocean. It engages with the foreword by Françoise Vergès and the introduction by editor Nuzhat Abbas, which set the tone of ‘decolonial feminism’ that permeates the essays. The reviews of the eleven essays—by women from southeast Asia, Africa, Palestine and Saudi Arabia—come from the perspective of feminist translation studies but pay careful attention to their very specific concerns around exile and life in diaspora.

Beauvoir, “French” Feminisms, And “Translation Work:” A Roundtable Conversation, Sandrine Sanos, Judith G. Coffin

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This conversation featuring four scholars—Sandrine Sanos, Judith G. Coffin, Lorraine Delavaud, Marine Vaslin—took place on zoom on December 1, 2023. It was organized, transcribed, and edited by Sandrine Sanos who also wrote the introduction to contextualize the conversation. The roundtable reflects on the making of the translation of Judith Coffin’s book on Beauvoir; and how it became a collective object, and the challenges and productive limitations that it involved, showing how such a project helped forge and relied upon transnational, transdisciplinary, and transgenerational feminist solidarities. The ways Beauvoir became a transatlantic object sheds light on the ways that the book …

(Another) Introduction: Translating Transnational Feminisms, Erin Katherine Krafft, Caroline De Souza

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In this introduction to part two of the special issue “Translating Transnational Feminisms,” we examine the position of feminist translation practices and the theories of Feminist Translation Studies within transnational cultural and geopolitical contexts. We again explore translation as a core component of transnational feminist solidarities, focusing particularly on Feminist Translation Studies (FTS) as containing frameworks that allow for forms of and approaches to analysis that, due to the multidisciplinarity of the field, offer sight and insights that are unique in their depth and breadth.

Shifting Shapes: Transnational Tactics Of The Authoritarian Right In Brazil And Russia, Erin Katherine Krafft, Caroline De Souza

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Global right-wing anti-gender movements have developed a transnational pattern in their uses of language as a means of subjugation and of control, and this article examines manifestations of this pattern in two specific states: Brazil and Russia. By exploring the anti-gender languaging, rhetoric, and legislation advanced by Jair Bolsonaro (President of Brazil 2019–2022) and Vladimir Putin (President of Russia 2000–2008 and 2012 to the present) and their supporters, we find that, in both contexts, anti-gender campaigns are reactions to and also drivers for increasingly dramatic political and social conflicts, and in each case, anti-gender ideologies are embedded in larger right-wing …

How We Make It: Disability Justice, Autoimmunity, Community, A Multimedia Project, Alexandra Juhasz, How We Make It Collective

Publications and Research

How We Make It: Disability Justice, Autoimmunity, Community is a born-digital multimedia piece that lives on the Scalar platform and that was submitted and eventually accepted into the Special Section on Autoimmunities in the Wake of COVID-19. The text below is a close reproduction of the Navigation page within the Scalar piece. While reading this text, one cracks open the door to glimpse the ten-person collective behind this project.

Looking At The Past To Change The Future: Showcasing Featured Collections, Building Communities, And Co-Creating, Sherry Buchanan

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

Academic libraries have the opportunity and the responsibility to promote and advance content that creates transformative and iterative learning opportunities. To that end, and in an effort to build communities and facilitate co-creation, Portland State University showcases three main Featured Collections in our open access repository, PDXScholar: Climate Justice, COVID-19, and Racial and Gender Equity, with a fourth pilot collection—Student Work: An Open Showcase of Outstanding Student-Created Research & Creative Work—under development. The collections include a broad range of audiovisual materials, such as podcasts and webinar series, as well as sustainability and equity work, student-created content, and numerous future-focused multidisciplinary …

Feminist Environmental Ethics: A Modern, Intersectional Approach, Suzanne E. Scharff

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group - Volume 45 (2024), Joanna E. Evans, Sarah L. Schameloh, Michelle M. Marciniak, Kristin Barrus, Cathy Erickson, Mary Fons, Sharon Fulton Pinka, Kathleen L. Moore, Terry Tickhill Terrell, Nancy Curry Bavor

Uncoverings Journal

Contents

Preface

Lapis Prints: A Forgotten Beauty, Sara L. Schamerloh and Michelle M. Marciniak

Ways of Seeing the Rotary Cutter: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Technology’s Impact on Quiltmaking, Kristin Barrus

Southeast Pennsylvania Papercut Quilts: Mary Worrall Parry’s Quilt and Related Appliqué Quilts, 1844 to 1852, Cathy Erickson

Who’s That Girl? The Shifting Identity of Use-Quilts in the Fine Art System, 1900–2024, Mary Fons

William Pinch and the Rainbow Quilt Block Company (An Update), Sharon Fulton Pinka

The Mystery of the Harlequin Star Quilts: Finding and Naming a Previously Unidentified Regional Design (An Update), Kathleen L. Moore

Peacock among the Ruins …