Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

"Concealing The Excess Of Her Pleasure": A Queer Reading Of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Josie Anne Blubaugh

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This queer reading of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey uses critical frameworks from queer theory, feminist theory, trans theory, and Black Romanticism to analyze female-female relationships between the characters in the novel as a product of the social norms, conventions, and discourses of Romantic-era Britain. By using literary analysis and close reading, I study the many ways in which Northanger Abbey can be read queerly, specifically where gender and sexuality intersect with race and ethnicity.

Though queer readings of this novel have been done in the past, my own analysis focuses on female-female relationships and takes race into consideration when I …

Muele Las Palabras Con Canela: How Queer Xicanx Writing Practices Reclaim Indigeneity, Karen Zurita

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

My thesis project is a multi-genre story in itself, dedicated to my community. By using Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Luz Calvo and Catriona Rueda Esquibel’s Decolonize Your Diet, I emphasize the importance of Xicanx writing needing to reflect their Indigenous identity by intertwining the spiritual and physical in their writing practices. In the process of creating this thesis project I was able to heal my own writing and have it shapeshift into creating a summer poetry class for high school students in the Humboldt County Area. In all, I found these writing practices to be crucial …

Adding Women To The Conversation On Safe Consumption Sites: A Qualitative Interview Study With Poor And Marginalized Women Who Use Illicit Substances, Kaitlin Waechter

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Women’s erasure from discourses pertaining to substance use and safe consumption sites (SCSs) means harm reduction efforts are developed through the male lens. This research seeks to discover why women do (or do not) access SCSs so as to determine if and how SCSs address the unique gendered needs of women who use illicit substances. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 14 women-identified individuals who use illicit substances. Participants were recruited from a non-profit organization that offers harm reduction, but is not itself a SCS in order to capture a full range of perspectives on the SCS in their community. …

Anti-Queer Policy As It Translates To Violence Against The Lgbt Community, Kendall Bush

Honors Theses and Capstones

In recent years, the amount of anti-LGBT policy introduced is rapidly increasing (ACLU, 2023). Contemporary policy focuses mainly on queer youth and gender identity, attacking gender-affirming health care and limiting LGBT discussions in public schools. Although these policies are particularly insidious, they follow a trend of queer persecution in the United States. Within federal policy and across state legislation, the panopticon of anti-LGBT policy ensures that queer bodies are policed and monitored. This paper posits that the increase in anti-queer policy translates to an increase in experiences of external and indirect violence. Based on findings from the UCR and various …

Lookism, Social Media, Beauty Prejudice, Diana Saiki, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis

Publications and Research

"Lookism” is a term to describe appearance discriminationor “the practice of discrimination on the basis of physical appearance in the workplace” (Ghodrati, Joorabchi, & Muati, 2015, p.1). In popular literature, it has been called “beauty prejudice” (Etcoff, 1999, p. 1). The notion that a pleasing appearance results in favorable outcomes (e.g., higherwages, promotions) from others is not necessarily new, as literature on physical attractiveness is rather extensive. The Washington Post Magazine first used the term “lookism” in 1978 (e.g., Ayto, 1999), however, the term “lookism” was first recognized as a form of discrimination by authors of the Oxford English Dictionary …

Public Feminisms: From Academy To Community, Carrie N. Baker, Aviva Dove-Viebahn

Open Educational Resources: Textbooks

The field of feminist studies grew from the U.S. women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s and has continued to be deeply connected to ongoing movements for social justice. As educational institutions are increasingly seeing public scholarship and community engagement as relevant and fruitful complements to traditional academic work, feminist scholars have much to offer in demonstrating different ways to inform and interact with various communities. In this collection, a diverse range of feminist scholar-activists write about the dynamic and varied methods they use to reach beyond traditional classrooms and scholarly journals to share their work with the public. Here …

“It Is Her Decision, Not Mine” The Problem Of Choice In Abortion Consultation Services In Norway, Franceline Anggia

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Since 1978, women have been granted legal rights to self-determined abortion, from which the idea of women’s right to choose achieves its victory in the current Norwegian abortion law. Behind this notion of choice lies an assumption that perceives women as subjects of choice who should personally decide whether or not having an abortion would be the proper way to overcome difficult decisions on their pregnancies. Women’s right to choose is celebrated as an ideal concept in consultation services for women who face difficult decisions on whether or not to have an abortion. Counselors and health workers I interviewed used …

Book Review Essay: Korean “Comfort Women”: Military Brothels, Brutality, And The Redress Movement, Ñusta Carranza Ko

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Comfort Women: A Movement For Justice And Women’S Rights In The United States, Angella Son

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Listen To The Voices Of The Women, Judith Mirkinson

Journal of International Women's Studies

Using survivor testimonies, military records and statements from human rights organizations, this paper lays out the undeniable truth of the “comfort women” system. This truth is recognized by the international community and maintains that the Japanese government and Japanese Imperial Army instituted and maintained the largest system of sexual slavery in the 20th century. These testimonies provide the factual counterpoint to the historical denialism of Harvard Professor J. Mark Ramseyer as well as the Japanese government. The “comfort women” survivors’ experiences, since breaking a 40-year silence in the 1990s, manifest a resilience and sense of purpose in demanding an accounting …

Ramseyer, The Japanese Right-Wing And The “History Wars”, Tomomi Yamaguchi

Journal of International Women's Studies

J. Mark Ramseyer’s publications on the topics of wartime “comfort women” and Japan’s minorities have become the focus of intense controversy. His article on “comfort women” in the International Review of Law and Economics gained global scrutiny following its coverage in Japan’s right-wing newspaper, Sankei Shimbun, and its English-language publication, Japan Forward. Ramseyer claims that “comfort women” willingly entered into sex-work contracts, denying responsibility by Japan’s military and government for the “comfort station” system. He also insists that naming this system “sexual slavery” is “pure fiction” – a stance shared by Japanese history denialists in Japan. Since the controversy over …

Ramseyer’S History Denialism And The Efforts To “Save Ramseyer”: Focusing On Critique Of “A Response To My Critics” (2022), Sung Hyun Kang

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article focuses on Ramseyer’s “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War: A Response to My Critics.” Ramseyer did not accept critiques that evaluated his claims, logic, and empirical methods for denialism in document analysis as lacking academic integrity and research sincerity. His response is mostly limited to the issue of “contractual structure at the wartime ‘comfort stations,’” and addressing the idea that women were never “forcibly conscripted at gunpoint or hauled away against their will.” He continues to argue that women were not “forcibly conscripted” because they agreed on “indentured servitude” contracts based on “credible commitments,” which represent “choices” …

My Response To Ramseyer’S Effort To Deny The History Of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery, Pyong Gap Min

Journal of International Women's Studies

The main objective of this paper is to critically evaluate as many of Ramseyer’s arguments as possible included in his 2022 paper. It consists of three sections in addition to the introduction and concluding remarks. The first section summarizes the expanded literature that interpreted the “comfort women” system as sexual slavery, judgments, and recommendations to the Japanese government given by scholars, international human rights organizations and the legislative branches of four Western countries. Since Ramseyer published his article denying the “comfort women” system as sexual slavery without introducing this literature, we cannot consider his article as an academic work. The …

Introduction: A Critical Evaluation Of Mark Ramseyer’S Arguments For “Comfort Women” As Voluntary Prostitutes With Labor Contracts, Pyong Gap Min

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Never Silent: Development Of Gay Activism In The Cold War Midwest, Braydon Conell

History Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

Though not typically seen as a burgeoning environment for gay life, the Midwest nevertheless has a rich history of queer culture. Focusing on gay activism during the Cold War era, this thesis discusses the rise and influence of homophile organizations in the Midwest. Homophile organizations and the movement's ideals of accommodation and integration played an integral role in the activism coming out of World War II. The homophile movement, though, did not wane with the development of the more radical gay liberation movement. Instead, the homophile movement in the Midwest evolved and played its own part alongside radical activists. Historically, …

The Impact On Gay Men Of Support And Enforcement Of Workplace Dei Policies: A Meta Analysis, Steven M. Vega

Student Theses and Dissertations

The poor enforcement of workplace DEI policies affects gay men in ways that are unique and invite close attention. The nature of the impact of missing or unsupported DEI policies on gay men has been widely debated in the field of human resources and communication studies, with scholars such as David Wicks, Helen Seitzer, James Ward, and Diana Winstansley arguing that these effects include lasting negative mental and physical health effects and discomfort with self-disclosure in the workplace. However, the existing research on this topic has not sufficiently considered the effects of the poor enforcement of workplace DEI policies side …

Bioinsecurities: Disease Interventions, Empire, And The Government Of Species By Neel Ahuja, Amrita De

Critical Humanities

In lieu of an abstract:

There is no better way to preface this review of Neel Ahuja’s rich analysis of the “government of species” in his book, Bioinsecurities: Disease interventions, Empire, and the Government of Species than to dive right into the heart of the ongoing interconnected infectious dis-ease crisis.

The Feminization Of Mexico City In The Late Twentieth Century: Polvo De Gallina Negra, Pola Weiss, And Lourdes Grobet, Alexis N. Corral

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis centers on select artworks in public intervention, photography and video as an exploration of female's relationship to Mexico City's social landscape and urban space during the late 1970s into the early 1990s. In three case studies, I explore historical urban planning, gender relations, and the effects of modernization.

Wise As You Will Become, Meghan E. Hodges

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Review Of A Revolution In Canvas: The Rise Of Women Artists In Britain And France, 1760-1830, By Paris A. Spies-Gans, Gabrielle Stecher

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

A review of Paris A. Spies-Gans, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830 by Gabrielle Stecher

Review Of Placing Charlotte Smith, Eds Elizabeth A. Dolan And Jacqueline M. Labbe, Heather Heckman-Mckenna

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

A review of Placing Charlotte Smith edited by Elizabeth A. Dolan and Jacqueline M. Labbe, written by Heather Heckman-McKenna

Review Of Female Husbands: A Trans History, By Jen Manion, Jeremy Chow

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

This review evaluates Jen Manion's Female Husbands: A Trans History.

Review Of The Life And Legend Of Catterina Vizzani: Sexual Identity, Science And Sensationalism In Eighteenth-Century Italy And England, By Clorinda Donato, Ula E. Lukszo Klein

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

Review of The Life and Legend of Catterina Vizzani: Sexual Identity, Science and Sensationalism in Eighteenth-Century Italy and England, by Clorinda Donato, written by Ula Lukszo Klein. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, Liverpool University Press, 2020, 347 pp., 3 b/w images. ISBN: 978-1-789-62221-8

Review Of The Novel Stage: Narrative Form From The Restoration To Jane Austen, By Marcie Frank, Kathleen E. Urda

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

A review of Marcie Frank's The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen by Kathleen E. Urda

Negotiating Gender, Representing Landscape: Teaching Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard’S Letters, Journals And Watercolours From The Cape Colony (1797–1801), Lenka Filipova

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

The article focuses on Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard’s letters, journals and watercolours that she produced during her stay at the Cape Colony (1797–1801). Combining a series of tasks focused on close reading of Barnard’s work and a critical discussion of the historical context, the article provides a teaching strategy to examine her work with respect to the gendered discourse of the eighteenth century, and her approach to the Cape landscape and its inhabitants which both employs and, significantly, subverts contemporaneous conventions. More specifically, the tasks draw attention to Barnard’s use of ‘the modesty topos’ and the way she uses rhetorical …

Teaching Mary Wollstonecraft's Travelogue Of Historical Trauma, Annette Hulbert

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

Abstract: I teach Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) in an undergraduate English literature course on “Survival Narratives of the Eighteenth Century” at the University of California, Davis. The aim of this course is to show how significant perilous voyages were to the ways in which writers in eighteenth-century Britain imagined and interpreted their world. The course draws from the burst of new scholarship on rethinking the traditional “rise of the novel” narrative in imperial, oceanic, and global contexts and develops interpretive frameworks for the eighteenth century’s changing relationship to commerce and …

Ripped From The Headlines: Teaching Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Letters In The Context Of 21st-Century Controversies, Susan Spencer

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

In the long shadow of 9/11 and the ongoing COVID pandemic, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters connect with the lived experience of today’s students, especially the cluster of eight letters dated 1 April 1717. By emphasizing parallels between Montagu’s observations and the students’ own lives, The Turkish Embassy Letters can add a modern dimension to the eighteenth century in general, challenges of gender, and texts written in and about the Muslim world.

Teaching Eliza Fay's Original Letters From India (1817) Through Classroom Editing, Lacy Marschalk

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

Travel writing is an ever-growing area of interest in eighteenth-century studies, but it can be difficult to teach. Students often find the writing dry and unrelatable, and faculty who have had little experience with travel writing in their own educations may not know which texts would prove useful to their courses. In this article, I discuss the travel narrative with which I've found the most pedagogical success, Eliza Fay's Original Letters from India (1817). Fay's initial journey to India includes a range of captivating adventures, including encounters with Marie Antoinette in Paris, bandits in Egypt, and Hyder Ali in Calicut, …

Concise Collections: Teaching British Women Travelers, Tiffany Potter

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

No abstract provided.

Cooking Up Knowledge: Materiality, Recipes, And Jane Barker’S A Patch-Work Screen For The Ladies, Carolin Boettcher

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

The recipes included in Jane Barker’s A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (1723) appear to be some of the most jarring and out-of-context inclusions in the narrative. This article explores the relationship between Barker’s novel and the form of the recipe collection in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on both a material and an epistemological level. The entanglements between recipes and the patchwork screen not only point to the processes of constructing and conveying knowledge, but also to the materiality of these processes as Galesia and the Lady build the patchwork screen. Her focus on the materiality of …