Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons^™

Introduction: The 1970s, Shelly J. Eversley, Michelle Habell-Pallán

Publications and Research

Introduction to special issue, "The 1970s," of WSQ (Women's Studies Quarterly), edited by Shelly Eversley and Michelle Habell-Pallán.

Two-Spirit Indigenous Americans: Fact Not Fiction, Casey S. O'Higgins

Student Publications

This paper examines the narratives of Two-Spirit Indigenous Americans who have been oppressed by heteropatriarchal norms of colonization. Two-spirit creation stories are explored to show the prevalence and importance of their identities prior to contact with Euro-American settlers and the evolution of violence, exclusion, and marginalization due to colonization.The term "Two-Spirit" is examined as a cultural identity of the Indigenous Americans. Finally, the paper looks at how Two-Spirit scholars are looking to combine Queer Theory with Indigenous Studies to deconstruct colonial heteropatriarchal America.

“Ain’T No Real Pimps Out There No More”: Street-Involved Women’S Characterizations Of Men Who Facilitate Street-Based Sex Work, Susan Dewey, Rhett Epler

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Drawing upon five years of ethnographic research with over 100 Denver, Colorado women involved in street­‐based sex work and drug use, this paper explores what the women's discursive framings of men who facilitate women's sex work activities reveal about the exclusionary social and criminal justice practices that shape their lives.

Here I Am And Here I’M Not: Queer Women’S Use Of Temporary Urban Spaces In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Vigdís María Hermannsdóttir

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis builds on previous work on the relationship between queer identities and urban space. Drawing from an analysis of two recurring New Orleans-based queer women’s events, I examine how lesbians and queer women not only use but also actively produce social spaces of their own through participation in events organized specifically for lesbians and queer women. Using qualitative methods, I examine the ephemeral and transient quality of lesbian and queer women’s social spaces in post-Katrina New Orleans and the processes through which such spaces come into being. I argue that lesbian and queer women’s production of ephemeral social spaces …

Love, A Dream, Brittany A. Cordaro

Symposium of Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

Darlings In Love: A History Of Romance Between Women At Hollins In The Early 20th Century, Antonia Nagle

Hollins Student Conference (2012-2016)

This paper and accompanying sources hope to provide a detailed examination of the world of darlings at Hollins between the years 1900 and 1921, using primary sources gathered from The Spinster, the college’s yearbook. As a small, single-sex institution established in 1842, Hollins has a history of romantic relationships between students. Students who participated in these relationships between the years of 1900 and 1921 were called “darlings.” These same-sex relationships flourished at Hollins in the early 20th century and were a well-known and accepted part of life at Hollins. For this study, over a hundred primary sources were gathered …

Investigating Sex Positivity: Does Education And Socialization Increase Sexual Satisfaction In Young Adults, Kendall Coffman

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate a proposed association between exposure to sexual education, positive information, and materials, and an individual’s level of comfort, sexual satisfaction, and willingness to discuss sexual topics. This study also looked at the influence of various other variables such as gender, sexual orientation, and relationship status. Undergraduates at a small, private Midwestern college were surveyed with questions regarding the context in which they were exposed to various sexual topics as well as their current levels of sexual satisfaction and willingness to discuss sexual material with a friend, family member, intimate partner, or a stranger. …

Being A Lesbian Librarian, Collection Development In Lesbian Librarianship, And Archives As Lesbian Spaces, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Edited talk From Pratt SILS Gender LIS Panel curated by Dinah Handel on March 27th, 2015
Co-presenters include: Sian Evans; #artandfeminism Wikipedia Editathon & Jen LaBarbera; Filling in the Margins: The use of Queer Theory, Feminist Standpoint Theory, and Critical Race Theory to build inclusive archival collections
This talk remarks on the role of the librarian to provide lesbian-specific content.

Tape-By-Tape: Digital Practices And Cataloguing Rituals At The Lesbian Herstory Archives, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This essay will outline the digital collections of the Lesbian Herstory Archives with an emphasis on process and workflow. The paragraphs below will describe the efforts put forth by the all- volunteer collective, and their dedication toward making materials accessible through the use of digital technology to preserve, catalog, and exhibit lesbian herstory. Interviews with Archive Coordinators, called “Archivettes”, Rachel Corbman on the Online Public Access Catalog, Saskia Scheffer on Photos, and Maxine Wolfe on Audio, will provide examples of LHA digital practices in the creation and maintenance of the Photo Collection, OPAC, and Audio Tape Digitization projects. Additional mention …

Emerging Feminist Voices On Media And Representation, Diana Depasquale, Cassie Tenorio, Alyssa Wells, Savannah Fulmer

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

The work featured in this panel is from students in WS2000, Introduction to Women's Studies. I created an assignment called "Choose Your Own Adventure." These projects include: an examination gender in film, and a revised version of the Bechdel Test, sexism and misogyny in gaming culture expressed through a series of comics, a painting on canvas using a variety of materials and techniques representing the control of women's reproductive rights and the damage done to female bodies by patriarchal language and rhetoric, and an analysis of womanism, scripture and Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

Each student engaged with issues related …

Sexual Minorities In Sports Book Review, Kristy Mccray

Health and Sport Sciences Faculty Scholarship

A Book Review of Sexual Minorities in Sports by Melanie L. Sartore-Baldwin

Ua12/2/2 2015 Talisman: Resurgence, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

2015 Talisman yearbook.

• Osborne Sam. Into the Woods – Big To-Do Music & Arts Festival
• Spalding, Shelley. The Outliers – Greeks
• Badjie, Haddy. The Right to Live – Racism
• Gibson, Helen. Net Worth – Soccer
• Greer, John. Sustaining Seasons – Sustainability
• Wegert, Sally. Bloom – Eva Ross
• Cislo, Everett. Harvest – Hemp
• Kolb, William. Preserve – John All
• Voorhees, Jessica. Making Strides – Track & Field
• Greer, John. The Science Guy – Bill Nye
• Cole, Tanner. Lip Service – Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Belknap, Abby. Race to the Senate
• Gibson, Helen. Game of Loans – Student Financial Aid
• Belknap, Abby. …

Treasure Hunt Without A Map: Archival Research At The University Of Pennsylvania, Meghan Strong

English and Creative Writing Independent Study Projects

Under the supervision of Meredith Goldsmith in the English Department, I spent this semester developing archival research projects for lower level students in the humanities. My project corresponded with the aims of the Council for Undergraduate Research, which works to develop undergraduate research skills throughout the disciplines. The Kislak Center is a nearby resource that has the potential to provide students with opportunities to develop crucial research skills while discovering little pieces of history that are hidden away in the archives. The final exercises presented here focus on the subjects of Walt Whitman, Marian Anderson, and Michel de Montaigne.

Darlings In Love: A History Of Romance Between Women At Hollins University In The Early 20th Century, Antonia Nagle

Undergraduate Research Awards

This paper and accompanying sources hope to provide a detailed examination of the world of Darlings at Hollins University between the years 1900 and 1921, using primary sources gathered from The Spinster, the university’s yearbook. As a small, single-sex university established in 1843, Hollins has a unique history of romantic relationships between students. Students who participated in these relationships between the years of 1900 and 1921 were called Darlings. These same-sex relationships flourished at Hollins in the early 20th century, and were a well known and accepted part of life at Hollins. For this study, over a hundred primary sources …

Cumulative Index Of Clcweb: Comparative Literature And Culture (1999-), Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Emotional Distress, Alcohol Use, And Bidirectional Partner Violence Among Lesbian Women, Robin J. Lewis, Miguel A. Padilla, Robert J. Milletich, Michelle L. Kelley, Barbara A. Winstead, Cathy Lau-Barraco, Tyler B. Mason

Psychology Faculty Publications

This study examined the relationship between emotional distress (defined as depression, brooding, and negative affect), alcohol outcomes, and bidirectional intimate partner violence among lesbian women. Results lend support to the self-medication hypothesis, which predicts that lesbian women who experience more emotional distress are more likely to drink to cope, and in turn report more alcohol use, problem drinking, and alcohol-related problems. These alcohol outcomes were, in turn, associated with bidirectional partner violence (BPV). These results offer preliminary evidence that, similar to findings for heterosexual women, emotional distress, alcohol use, and particularly, alcohol-related problems are risk factors for BPV among lesbian …

Undergraduate Catholic Lesbians: The Intersection Of Religious And Sexual Aspects Of Identity, Christina Marie Chestna

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The following is a qualitative study designed to shed light on the experiences of undergraduate Catholic lesbians. The study focused on the unique ways in which these women negotiate the intersection of the religious and sexual aspects of their identities. Research shows that religious and sexual aspects of identity often conflict. In-depth research aimed specifically at the negotiation of religious and sexual identity dimensions is needed. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with undergraduate Catholic lesbians who had the opportunity to speak about the ways in which they negotiate the potentially conflicting religious and sexual aspects of their identities. …

The Complexities Of Female Sexuality: Narratives Of Women Who Have Experienced Both Heterosexual And Same-Sex Marriages, Krista Anne Butland

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Due to social stigma, millions of sexual minorities have concealed their true sexual identities by entering into heterosexual relationships and marriages. Eventually, some transition to same-sex relationships and are able to live authentic lives. This latter group had identified as genuinely heterosexual, never questioning their sexuality until a particular time in their lives when same-sex desires spontaneously appeared. The experiences of transitioning from heterosexual to same-sex partners are not well known, particularly for women who have been legally married to both men and women. Diamond's dynamical systems theory for same-sex sexuality and McCarn and Fassinger's lesbian identity formation model provided …

Privilege And Marginalization In Drag Communities In The United States, Dustin Satterfield

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Within the gay and lesbian community, there is a smaller community of drag performers. These entertainers make a performance of gender stereotypes. Non-male performers have observed that male privilege is reproduced in this community despite a hyper awareness of oppressions and gender status. Using an online questionnaire I examined male privilege and non-male marginalization in United States drag communities. I asked drag performers about their perceptions of themselves and their perceptions of other performers within their local drag communities. I find that self-perceptions of privilege are highest for male performers and self-perceptions of marginalization are higher for non-male performers. I …

The Queer And The Bodily: Explorations Of Power In Women's Visionary Writing In The Book Of Margery Kempe 2014, Jayne Emerson Stacconi

Master's Theses

The provocative Book of Margery Kempe is a seminal text in the history of female authorship. Claiming to be the first written autobiography, The Book serves as a literary representation of womanhood during the late fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries when Margery was writing, and also speaks to circulating medieval discourses of religion, pilgrimage, and sexuality. Participating in medieval women’s visionary writing as a genre, Margery’s visionary power is a tool by which she is able to emancipate herself from the limiting roles of wife and mother. Additionally, by working within the conventions of visionary writing, Margery is able to …

Finding The "T" In Lgbtq: Esl Educator Perceptions Of Transgender And Non-Binary Gender Topics In The Language Classroom, Teresa Lynn Witcher

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

While there is a “T” in the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ), the focus in both academia and the real world often shifts solely to sexuality. Even though the real world discussion of sexuality (and perhaps academia’s as well) is also much lacking in both attention to all sexualities (not simply heterosexual and homosexual), there is also a distinct lack of awareness about subtleties all along both the sexuality and gender spectrums. Although sexuality can depend on gender to some extent, particularly where limiting prefixes related to the preference for a specific binary gender (such as …

Sex: The Zine, Chapman University

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

Writings and art about sexuality and gender identity, including sexual fluidity, bisexuality, masturbation and self-care, sex-positive feminism, and gender stereotyping.

Framing Identity: Repudiating The Ideal In Chicana Literature, Michael A. Flores

All NMU Master's Theses

In the 1960s Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez penned his now canonical, epic poem “I Am Joaquin.” The poem chronicles the historic oppression of a transnational, Mexican people as well as revolutionary acts of their forefathers in resisting tyranny. Coinciding with a series of renewed, sociopolitical campaigns, collectively known as the Chicano Movement, Gonzales’ poem uses vivid imagery to present an idealized representation of Chicanos and encouraged his reader to engage in revolutionary action. Though the poem encourages strong leadership, upward mobility, and political engagement the representations of women in his text are misogynistic and limiting.

His presentation of the “black-shawled …

Review Of Just Queer Folks: Gender And Sexuality In Rural America By Colin R. Johnson, Emily Kazyak

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Colin Johnson’s book Just Queer Folks provides a powerful corrective to the faulty assumption that gender and sexual nonnormativity and rurality are incompatible. As a historian, Johnson focuses on both the discourses about sexuality emerging and the wide array of sexual practices occurring in the first half of the twentieth century in rural America. He analyzes a wide range of sources to make two central points: first, that heterosexuality and heteronormativity are not “indigenous to rural areas,” but were constructed there (p. 18); second, that same-sex sexual behavior and gender nonconformity were commonplace in rural America in early twentieth century. …

Transformational Learning: Influence Of A Sexism And Heterosexism Course On Student Attitudes And Thought Development, Judy Ouellette

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The current study investigated whether a course regarding prejudice toward homosexuals and women impacted student attitudes and thought development (compared to a controls). Students completed measures of social dominance, attitudes toward homosexuals and obese persons, and modern sexism. Compared to controls the experimental group had less negative attitudes post course.

Opening Remarks To Outing Lorraine At The Schomburg Center, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This article is an edit of the opening remarks for the event held on May 22nd, 2014 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as part of the In The Life Series supplying Black LGBT programming coordinated by Steven Fullwood. Outing Lorraine included panelists: Alexis DeVeaux, Joi Gresham, and Steven Fullwood and was moderated by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz. Opening remarks provide a biographical description of Lorraine Hansberry's life, prepare the audience for a conversation on the implications for "outing" a black iconic figure, details the purpose for use of primary and secondary sources when, and provides a bibliography for …

Imagining Female Tongzhi: The Social Significance Of Female Same-Sex Desire In Contemporary Chinese Literature, Ashley Mangan

Asian Languages and Cultures Honors Projects

In the wake of shifting cultural attitudes about gender and sexuality in Post-Mao China, new discourses have emerged about desires and subjectivities that had previously been denied visibility. This thesis takes one such emerging discourse as its focus, the discourse of female homoeroticism in contemporary Chinese literature. The project has three major purposes: (1) to investigate the historical and cultural conditions that have contributed to the emergence of this discourse in the 1990s, an era of profound ideological and cultural change in China, (2) to explore the local and global analyses that contribute to the discourse, and (3) to discuss …

An Exclusionary Revolution: Marginalization And Representation Of Trans Women In Print Media (1969 – 1979), Emylia N. Terry

Honors College Theses

Stonewall, the act most associated with sparking gay liberation in 1969, was preceded by several events of queer insurrection. These events, which often featured trans people of color playing central roles, are not widely known. Similarly, Stonewall itself has been mythologized in order to be palatable within mainstream society, effectively whitewashing its history. This research utilized archival investigation and discourse analysis, as well as the concepts of symbolic annihilation and trans-misogyny, in order to examine certain publications’ representations of trans women from 1969 – 1979. I found that mainstream publications such as the Chicago Daily Tribune and the Los Angeles …

"A" Is Not For Ally, Ellen I. Henry

SURGE

Most people can recall their first crush. They think fondly back to age ten or eleven when they first “went boy-crazy” or couldn’t focus on sixth-grade English because that cute girl was in their class.

This did not happen for me. I do, however, vividly remember it happening for everyone around me. [excerpt]

A Genealogy Of The Lesbian Herstory Archives, 1974-2014, Rachel F. Corbman

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This paper traces the collection development of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, a community based repository founded in 1974. I argue that the collection grew organically as a reflection of a dialogue between an evolving cohort of volunteer archivists and a community of donors. Primarily focusing on the first five years, this paper pinpoints key early decisions made by volunteer archivists. Specifically, I examine the Archives’ early collecting priorities and the introduction of the special collections in 1978. These decisions, I argue, laid the foundation for the Lesbian Herstory Archives and continue to shape it today, forty years later.