Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Almost Mother, Blake Knecht

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Minerva Teichert Award Winner

First Place Winner

I have always found myself inspired by the work of other female filmmakers, specifically those who portray common themes of motherhood. In the creation of my short documentary film “Almost Mother,” I chose to represent the concept of motherhood through the lens of miscarriage.

Anorexic Behaviors And Spirituality In Medieval Holy Women, Amanda Reece

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

This body of mine remains without any food, without even a drop of water: in such sweet physical tortures as I never at any time endured; insomuch that my life hangs by a thread.” At only thirty three years old Saint Catherine of Siena lay in an almost constant state of hallucination, unable to stand, and on the verge of death. Saint Catherine lived the majority of her life in a near constant state of starvation as a form of suffering for religious worship, but four months before her death, she expressed she had lost the ability to take water …

On Divinity, Amy Griffin

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

It’s a world-famous cathedral, and I’m there, alone. Alone except for the tourists around me, who don’t count because I didn’t come here with them. Didn’t fly over the Atlantic with them. Alone except for the Instagram influencers next to me at the prayer candles, one onscreen talent and the other there to make the magic happen. On-screen has taken off her cardigan to reveal large breasts, leaning forward to make them pop. She opens her mouth slightly to let the candle glow reflect off her lip gloss. She turns her head from side to side, letting her camera-woman’s phone-in-hand …

Claiming Power In African American Women Storytelling, Heather Bergeson

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Beginning with slave narratives and continuing to the contemporary day, black autobiographers have shared and perpetuated the values and experiences of their communities through the medium of stories, which seek to expose perspectives that are often withheld or overshadowed by white voices. Tracy K. Smith’s memoir Ordinary Light participates in this tradition as she writes about her experiences as an African American woman in the United States. Near the text’s close, Smith asserts that storytelling is an act of “claiming the power to name and state and face the events, even the most awful events, making up a life” (279). …

Full Issue

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Dear Mother, Danielle Kemp

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Judith: A Literary Analysis Of A Female Legend, Contrasting Biblical And Medieval Elements, Celisa Fullmer Young

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

It’s not every day that a youthfully beautiful maiden commits manslaughter. Then again, it’s not every day that an unarmed, outnumbered band of would-be martyrs conquers world-class military threats. And it’s not every day that violence promotes peace, or that vice masks the victory of virtue. Yet these are the ageless anachronisms that have shaped both our social reality and our beloved legends, the unanticipated underdogs. “Ic him ealdor oðþrong,” Judith said humbly of her malignant captor, “I took his life” (Cooper 9). This eponymous, 10th century war- hero—a seemingly obscure Hebrew woman—turned the tide of a critical battle between …

Baby #3?, Amber E.F. S.

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

White Male Privilege In The Perpetration Of Sexual Violence: An Exploratory Study Of Young Adults, Emily Elizabeth Camp

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This exploratory study examined how racism and sexism among privileged White men intersect and vary to influence factors associated with sexual violence (SV) perpetration. Specifically, this study examined the interconnection of racism and sexism via latent profile analysis (LPA), how profile groups differentially predict attitudinal responses to a victim in an acquaintance rape SV vignette regarding victim blame and rape minimization (e.g., rape myth acceptance), rape proclivity, and bystander intentions to help, and whether or not these attitudes change based on the victim’s race (i.e., White or Black). The sample included 628 young adult, White, heterosexual, cis-gender men currently living …

A Labor Of Livingness: Oral Histories Of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women, Robin Mcginty

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Anchored in the political subjectivity of formerly incarcerated Black women, “A Labor of Livingness: Oral Histories of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women” is a project situated at the intersections of Black geographies and Black Feminist thought that considers a re/imagination of the ‘living prison’ experiences of formerly incarcerated Black women. I offer the term “a labor of livingness” as the liberatory articulation and everyday practices of resistance to the prison as a site of ‘living death’ that is reflective of the carceral experiences of currently and formerly incarcerated Black women. Attentive to the prison as a repository of epistemological knowledge production, …

From Perfect Victims To Collateral Damage: How Nigerian Women Are Implicated In And Impacted By Contemporary French Anti-Trafficking Policies And Discourse, Oladunni Patricia Oduyemi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although the Nordic Model has been embraced by the international anti-trafficking movement, recent studies, and closer examinations of France’s approach to the issue of sex trafficking reveal a strong anti-migrant and anti-sex work bias. In this thesis, I use studies of the impacts of France’s 2016 anti-trafficking bill on migrant sex workers, feminist critiques of neo-abolitionism and the Nordic Model, and examples of France’s hypocritical anti-migrant position, to explore how Nigerian women are harmed by the contemporary French fight against sex trafficking. The pervasive influence of anti-sex work radical feminism on anti-trafficking protocols which define the sex industry as analogous …

Decolonizing Genderqueer: An Inquiry Into The Gender Binary, Resistance, And Imperialistic Social Categories, Lauren E. Abruzzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines core metaphysical properties of nonbinary and genderqueer categories in dominant U.S. contexts. I address a prevailing argument that these categories, by definition, resist the gender binary and are therefore radical modes of existing. In response, I put forth a view of ‘nonbinary’ and ‘genderqueer’ that I call the Diachronic Approach, which describes these categories as yet another set of tools within an imperialistic gender system, much like ‘man’ or ‘woman.’ In other words, they are what I refer to as imperialistic social categories. While nonbinary and genderqueer people do not fall perfectly within the U.S. gender …

The Important Role And Contradictions Of Italian Women Image In Fashion, Magazines And Cinema During The Fascist Period, Lu M. Gomezdelatorre

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper discusses the tools of propaganda used by the fascist regime in fashion and cinema, and it focuses on the sets of opposing images used within these tools, and how they contributed to shaping the identities of Italian women during the time of the fascism in Italy. Moreover, this thesis attempts to demonstrate that fashion and films that aligned with the values of the regime and were seen as models of the fascist culture were also full of contradictions. Therefore, instead of unifying the nation, increasing national pride, and eliminating social gaps, they engulfed the regime in a series …

Homotextualité Réaliste: Cryptosexualité Et Subculture Homosexuelle Masculine Chez Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Vincent Sallé

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cette thèse étudie les romans du canon réaliste français, en particulier Le Rouge et le noir et L’Éducation sentimentale, sous l’angle d’une textualité parallèle ancrée dans la langue érotique et les pratiques et les lieux de la subculture pédéraste. Principalement étudiée jusqu’ici dans des corpus identifiés comme érotiques ou dans des passages représentant l’homosexualité, cette homotextualité est ici inscrite dans la diégèse hétérosexuelle qu’elle permet de relire de manière située et historicisée.

La période de 1830 à 1870 est perçue par l’histoire et la littérature comme un hiatus sur le thème de l’homosexualité, pris entre son histoire moderne à …

Latinas In The Labor Market, Lorna Rivera, Vishakha Agarwal, Phillip Granberry

Gastón Institute Publications

In Massachusetts, the share of Latinas in the overall population has been rapidly increasing. From 2000 to 2019, the number of Latinas increased by 81.5%1 even as the number of Non-Latina women declined by about 5.8% during that same period. The share of Non-Latina White women in the Massachusetts female population dropped from approximately 82% in 2000 to 71% in 2019.

This report offers an in-depth look at the difference between the median wage income and other labor market outcomes of Latina and Non-Latina women in the Massachusetts workforce. (A great majority of Non-Latina women workers in Massachusetts are White …

Gendered Citizenship: Understanding Violence Against Women In Pakistan, Taqdees M. Mela, Taqdees Mela

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

From 2020 to 2021, there has been an increase in violence against women by 255 percent in Pakistan.1 As a democratic state, Pakistan constitutionally recognizes its women as equal citizens but the fear of gendered violence acts as an effective deterrent to women to exercise their rights. My thesis explores the question, why Muslim women who exercise their rights are potentially subject to violence in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. An examination of this question demonstrates the historical roots of violence and their continued effect on the Pakistani Muslim woman as a citizen. Starting from the colonial period, this thesis …

Téacsúil Fionnachtain, Alan Delozier

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Gothic Girlhood And Resistance: Confronting Ireland’S Neoliberal Containment Culture In Tana French’S The Secret Place, Mollie Kervick

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

The Secret Place (2014) exposes a persistent Western cultural impulse to contain the emotions of teenage girls when they demonstrate control over their lives. In the Irish context, the dismissal of teenage girls is resonant of a containment culture in which controlling women’s bodies and minds has been essential to upholding heteropatriarchal ideals. Resistance to the novel’s unresolved supernatural elements by readers and critics and the lack of sustained academic scholarship also point to an unsettling complacency with the neoliberal impulse to contain female emotion and lived experience in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Crime On The Periphery: Tana French’S Criminal Geography, Deirdre Flynn

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

This article will analyze how Tana French conceptualizes spatiality, focusing on her use of liminal spaces, edgelands and peripheries, as the settings for her crime scenes. Instead of more traditional Irish literary urban-rural binaries, French exploits the interface of both places, reflecting a contemporary post-industrial, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. In particular, in In the Woods (2007) the untamed woodland behind the housing estate in Knocknaree becomes an interfacial zone between the rural and urban, past and present. In The Likeness (2009), Whitethorn House sits at the edge of the village geographically, politically, and historically. In French’s first two novels peripheral spaces …

Tana French: An Interview With Brian Cliff, Brian Cliff

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Socio-Cultural Determinants Of Women’S Homelessness: A Study Of Dar-Ul-Aman, Multan, Mahwish Rasheed, Tayyaba Batool Tahir, Zahid Zulfiqar

Journal of International Women's Studies

Home is an integral element of the Pakistani family system, and the idea of home is deeply embedded in Pakistani women’s consciousness. The prime objective of this study is to explore the socio-cultural factors responsible for women’s homelessness. This study highlights various determinants that lead women to leave their homes. The issue of women fleeing from their homes is a matter of disregard in Pakistan’s culture, such an action is considered as an issue of family’s self-image, respect, and honour. In the present study, Marxist and feminist lenses have been used to indicate women’s secondary status that is responsible for …

A Review Of The Cultural Gender Norms Contributing To Gender Inequality In Ghana: An Ecological Systems Perspective, Portia Nartey, Ozge Sensoy Bahar, Proscovia Nabunya

Journal of International Women's Studies

While significant progress has been made in improving the wellbeing of women and girls around the world, a gender gap still exists between men and women which is very evident in Ghana. Gender inequalities continue to persist in Ghana because of cultural gender norms that exalt and favor men and put women in subordinate and subservient roles. These cultural gender norms hinder women’s development and widen gender inequality between men and women in different system levels of society. Therefore, there is a need to examine the influence of these cultural gender norms on women’s lives using a systems framework to …

Book Review: Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That A Movement Forgot, Shauntey James

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Education Trap: Schools And The Remaking Of Inequality In Boston, Gisselle Rodriguez Benitez

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Film Review: Gaza Mon Amour, 2020. This Palestinian, Drama Film With Spanish Subtitles Was Directed By Brothers Arab Nasser And Tarzan Nasser And Written By The Brothers And Fadette Drouard. Produced By Rani Massalha, Marie Legrand, Michael Eckelt. Distributed By Versatile Films., Tucker Nadeau, Manal Al-Natour

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Our Slaps, Meenakshi Verma

Journal of International Women's Studies

"Our Slaps" raises the question of whether and at all traumatized mothers, who once used to be abused daughters, can confess and escape their psychic hinterlands without being tricked into becoming abusive by subconsciously switching their role identity from a victim to a persecutor. The poem achieves this by boldly offering that rare chance to one such mother who ultimately dares to lay the first cornerstone of intention for a healthy legacy of unabused women. Despite being trapped in a hopeless vicious cycle, this mother struggles to allow her young daughter to keep her innocence intact by deliberately curbing her …

Grandma, Widowhood And Her Family, Prateeti Ghosh

Journal of International Women's Studies

The Sati Abolition Act (1829) followed by the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act (1856) could not wholly eradicate the discrimination against Bengali widows in their own families. After almost 300 years, in the 21^st century, as it is witnessed by the narrator, in a few Hindu Bengali patriarchal traditional families, widows are deprived of their basic human rights such as choice of food, clothing etc. Discrimination against widows i.e., gender inequality, as a matter of fact, originates from her own family or the in-laws’ family. To eradicate inequality, awareness education should be given to both the victims as well as …

Pakistan’S Heuristic Her-Story Via Lahore, Afiya Shehrbano Zia

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite the reference to the ‘long Partition,’ the idea of Pakistan has a hurried history: the word originated in the 1930s, the Lahore Resolution of 1940 pledged to realize the Two-Nation Theory and shortly after, in 1947, Pakistan was created. Seventy-five years on, unresolved questions of national identities and the ‘woman question’ remain large and elusive and I propose, the palimpsest city of Lahore is deeply and symbolically representative of these irresolute matters. Regardless of the veracity of the claim that Lahore is Pakistan, the core struggles, victories and losses of the country’s her-story can easily be recalled through the …

Women And Land Snails Consumption In The Southwest Region Of Cameroon, Forka Leypey Mathew Fomine

Journal of International Women's Studies

Both marine and terrestrial species of snails are consumed in most countries worldwide, including Southwest Cameroon where it is an age-old practice among various ethnic groups. Before the introduction of snail farming in the Southwest Region of Cameroon in the 1990s, all the residents who ate snails acquired them through gathering.

There is significant internal variation in the history of land snail consumption among four ethnic groups: the Banyang, Mbo, Balung, and Bakweri. The long history of land snail consumption among the Banyang and Mbo can be attributed to their geographical proximity to the eastern region of Nigeria, where the …

Mothers And Daughters: Reclaiming The Besieged Body Of Woman In Ashapurna Debi’S Trilogy, Subhadeep Ray, Goutam Karmakar

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper offers a close reading of the intergenerational trilogy by Ashapurna Debi, one of the first-canonized women-novelists of post-independence India: Pratham Pratisruti (The First Promise), 1965, Subarnalata, 1967, and Bakul Katha (Bakul’s Story), 1974. Reconstituting a history of almost two centuries and countering the colonial/postcolonial grand narratives, these novels act as a saga of Bengali Hindu lower and middle-class women’s plight under and resistance against a patriarchal social order operating at the most intimate levels of domestic relationships. Ashapurna Debi’s treatment of the intricacies of gender inequality and a woman’s response to the violence …