Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

[Un]Seen, Al Benbow

Honors Projects

[un]seen is a community-centered project and installation that consists of a collection of portraits and statements from underrepresented members of the LGBTQ+ community. Each subject submits their own action item that depends on their identity and response to the question, “what do you wish people understood about the experience of being [your identity]?”

This project was initially born out of research into the commodification of LGBTQ+ identities, and the realization that corporations tend to market to members of the LGBTQ+ community who they believe have the most spending power: white, cisgender, able-bodied, upper class, gay men, and therefore most often …

More Than The Defiant Few: Lost Womanhood And Necro Women Dismantling Nineteenth-Century Gender Ideologies, Vicki Vanbrocklin

English Language and Literature ETDs

Too many scholars still rely on adjectives such as deviant, unruly, dangerous, and wild to describe women who interrogate rigid forms of womanhood, especially women of color. My project intervenes in nineteenth-century womanhood discussions, which have traditionally solidified three main categories: Republican, True, and New Womanhood. Between True Womanhood in the mid-nineteenth century and the late nineteenth-century concept of New Womanhood lies an overlooked category aptly understood as Lost Womanhood. I focus on newspaper archives, archival research, and imaginative literature to find “lost” women who critiqued a patriarchal system that thrives on women living in a status akin to being …

Sex With Robots And Human-Machine Sexualities: Encounters Between Human-Machine Communication And Sexuality Studies, Marco Dehnert

Human-Machine Communication

Sex robots are a controversial topic. Understood as artificial-intelligence enhanced humanoid robots designed for use in partnered and solo sex, sex robots offer ample opportunities for theorizing from a Human-Machine Communication (HMC) perspective. This comparative literature review conjoins the seemingly disconnected literatures of HMC and sexuality studies (SeS) to explore questions surrounding intimacy, love, desire, sex, and sexuality among humans and machines. In particular, I argue for understanding human-machine sexualities as communicative sexuotechnical-assemblages, extending previous efforts in both HMC and SeS for more-than-human, ecological, and more fluid approaches to humans and machines, as well as to sex and sexuality. This …

Lg Ms 141 Artistic Amazon Bookstore Collection, Emily Newell

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

The Artistic Amazon Bookstore was a feminist bookstore operated by Cherie Monnell
and Dottie Logue in New Hampshire and Maine from the early-1990s through the mid-2000s. The store was first located at 28 Chapel Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire before it moved to 182 Clay Hill Road, Cape Neddick, Maine in late 2001, when it became the only feminist bookstore in Maine. In addition to books, the store sold jewelry, clothing, artwork, and gifts.

The store’s website, artisticamazon.com, is archived on web.archive.org through 2008. The website lists examples of merchandise include pages for news and events in the local feminist and …

To Put Her In Her Place: An Interrogation Of Death And Gender In Shakespearean Tragedy, Isabella A. Zentner

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This analysis investigates the gendered implications of Shakespearean heroines' deaths. Using Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Titus Andronicus as case studies, evidence is drawn from the text. This evidence is then supported by extensive historical research and reference to external critical studies of these tragedies. By identifying the gendered aspects of these heroines’ deaths, one can gain a greater understanding of Shakespeare’s view of female autonomy and power. The deaths Shakespeare inflicts often act as a punishment for the heroines' betrayal of traditional gender roles and forcibly return the heroines to the feminine sphere.

How Gender Affects Writing: Jackson’S And Fitzgerald’S Portrayals Of Mental Illness, Cryslin A. Ledbetter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Cryslin Ledbetter's essay, "How Gender Affects Writing: Jackson’s and Fitzgerald’s Portrayals of Mental Illness" examines the similarities and differences between Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. Through a careful comparison of male and female writers, the author analyzes defining factors that effect the final product of each novel.

Flippin' Medicine: Reflection And Action In Medical Education, Alison Lawrence

Audre Lorde Prize

Historically, medicine has centered around a single model: that of the white, cisgender, heterosexual, abled, middle-class male body. While it is well known that patients of diverse identities often present differently, medical education continues to use this dominant, normative model as the standard for all patients while ignoring marginalized groups in their descriptions. "Flippin' Medicine" reflects on the prevalence of normative models in medicine, as well as the ways in which these models slip past the notice of providers with privileged identities. The author then describes the process behind creating a resource, titled Flipped Medicine: A Guide to Deconstructing the …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

We Are All Eve: Rescuing The Mother Of All Things From Patriarchal Interpretation And Its Implications For Modern Christian Women, Maeve Pioli

Senior Theses

For centuries, the traditional Christian understanding of the Genesis narrative has relied heavily on the patriarchal biases of historic church figures to enforce a gendered hierarchy where women are deprived of authority, voice, and agency. My thesis deconstructs these misogynistic interpretations to provide liberating, alternative readings for the Garden of Eden as well as New Testament verses that utilize Eve’s transgression to justify women’s secondary status. As a former Christian, I have witnessed the persistence of this oppressive theology, often repackaged as a “complementary” relationship between sexes where women must dutifully submit to the headship of men. Therefore, by building …

A Transgressive Pedagogy Of Tenderness In Hybrid Education, April M. Jones, Stephanie Anne Shelton

Feminist Pedagogy

In the midst of the dual/dueling pandemics COVID-19 and anti-Black racism, the instructors considered how best to have the course requirements for a qualitative research course meet students' personal and academic needs, while managing students' and their own exhaustion and fear. Through hybrid Zoom-based focus groups, instructors and students applied a "pedagogy of tenderness" that centered care and humanity as essential to classroom interactions and learning.

Dignity Norfolk: How One Tidewater Group Enabled Gay And Lesbian Catholics To Form Long Lasting Friendships And Chosen Families, Chelsea Lembert

Undergraduate Research Symposium

In the past decade, research has been conducted to look into the history of the Queer Community of the Tidewater Region. Students and community volunteers have conducted interviews and gathered documents connected to the queer community to grow the study and breadth of available information for future researchers. However, more in-depth knowledge of community connections and familial ties within the queer community in the Tidewater Region was needed. Through research into Our Own Newspaper, local historical background information, and in-person interviews, I pieced together first-hand accounts of life through the eyes of a gay man or lesbian woman living in …

Has Feminism Changed Women’S Realities In Africa? An Interrogation Of The Poems Of Ogundipe And Shire, Edith Weseja Bwana

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

African feminist movements of the 1960’s marked the starting point of debates from the origin of feminism in Africa to its impact on women and the society at large. Literature has from the go been used as a vehicle to reflect the life and its vicissitude on African women. African women writers have used literature as a platform to challenge and re-imagine gender relations within their societies and the continent as a whole. Yet, the question arises: despite half a century’s worth of literary production, has the reality of women, as reflected in literature, changed? This paper thematically interrogates the …

Anti-Pornography Feminism, Kinktok, And Consent: What We Can Learn From The Sex Wars And Leather/Sadomasochistic History, Nic Cloyd

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Sex education and LGBTQA+ history have long been censored and removed from curriculums across the United States. As this information has disappeared from our education systems, important values like consent and boundary setting have become increasingly obsolete despite the modern body autonomy movement. Leather and SM culture, which began post-WWII and reached their peak in the 1970s during the sexual liberation, have become increasingly important as their ethical and moral codes have been lost over time to the HIV/AIDs epidemic and censorship from second and third wave feminsism. Two prominent movements, anti-pornography and sex-work exclusionary radical feminism, have worked to …

Sexual Coercion, Unintended Pregnancy, And Poor Reproductive Health Among Adolescent Girls (Aged 13 - 19) In Mexico, Arun Kumar Acharya, Maria Luisa Martinez

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In Mexico, nearly 23,000 adolescents between the ages of 12-17 years suffer sexual coercion every year. This group also has a high birth rate of 77/1,000 adolescents, which indicates that one in every five pregnant women is an adolescent. This study describes the sexual coercion of victims and their views regarding the experience based on data collected from 37 Mexican girls between the age of 13 to 19, selected purposively using the snowball method in Monterrey city, Mexico. Results indicate that sexual coercion among adolescents is a serious problem, where 70% of adolescents experienced vaginal sexual coercion, nearly 22% experienced …

Human Papillomavirus Associated Prevention: Knowledge, Attitudes, And Perceived Risks Among Men Who Have Sex With Men And Transgender Women In Pakistan: A Qualitative Study, Muslima Ejaz, Anna Mia Ekström, Alyan Ahmed, Aymen Haroon, Dania Ali, Tazeen Saeed Ali, Mariano Salazar

Community Health Sciences

Objectives: Men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender individuals are at higher risk of genital warts and anal cancer due to sexually transmitted human papillomavirus infection. This study explores MSM and transgender women's perceptions of Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and HPV prevention strategies (screening and vaccination) in Pakistan.
Design: A qualitative study using focus group discussions (FGD) with self-identified MSM, male sex workers and transgender women were conducted between March 2019 to August 2019 in Karachi, Pakistan.
Methods: Participants were recruited from community-based organization (CBO) working for MSM and transgender women. A total of 38 men and 10 …

Toward A Crip Provenance: Centering Disability In Archives Through Its Absence, Gracen M. Brilmyer

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Using the records that document the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition as a case study, this article discusses the messiness and unknowability of provenance. Drawing attention to how the concept of provenance can emphasize the reconstruction of a fonds when records have been moved, rearranged, and dispersed, this article draws attention to the ‘curative’ and ‘rehabilitative’ orientations of established notions of provenance. Put in conversation with disability studies scholarship, which critiques rehabilitating, curing, and restoring, this article outlines the theoretical scaffolding of a crip provenance: a disability-centered framework of resisting the desire to restore and instead meets records where they are …

“Oh, I’M A Damsel In Distress”: Women Higher Education Leaders’ Narratives, Jill Channing

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

This study focused on women higher education administrators’ experiences related to intersections of gender and work lives, using a narrative analysis research methodology. Women administrators shared stories of the influence of gender on their work lives. Participants “violated” gender norms by pursuing traditionally male-dominated careers, and some shared experiences of sex discrimination and/or witnessed phenomena such as the glass ceiling, sexual harassment, and various double binds related to gender stereotypes. Participants’ stories challenge the literature’s focus on barriers and gender-related challenges for women higher education administrators. Social constructions of gender, contexts, individual personalities, critical life events, among other factors inform …

Surveilling The Fat Disidencia: Policing The Bodies Of Plus-Size Black Women On Instagram, Daniela V. Verdejo Salazar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Instagram has shaped how we network and share content with others, making interactions far more accessible for everyone who uses this platform daily. Unfortunately, it has also given space to some surveilling mechanisms that tend to police and norm how users and their bodies should present themselves to the rest of the world.

The body can be understood as a manifestation, a presence, and a performance. As Judith Butler argues, the body is also a political space where ideas of resistance and vulnerability take place, and I will understand the body as a combination of the physical manifestation of it …

“She Too ‘Omanish’”: Young Black Women’S Sexuality And Reproductive Justice In Bluefields, Nicaragua, Ishan Elizabeth Gordon-Ugarte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Most never-married young “Creole” (Afro-Caribbean) women in Bluefields, Nicaragua are raised in fundamentalist Protestant families and institutions that emphasize sexual abstinence before marriage. In this context, abstinence is required to maintain social standing and “respectability.” Nevertheless, women in Bluefields, the administrative center of Caribbean Nicaragua, exhibit what Creoles themselves understand to be high rates of sexuality and pregnancy among post-menarche unmarried teenaged women (USAID, 2012; Mitchell et al. 2015). Such young women’s pregnancies occur at an important developmental stage of their lives and have long been associated by social scientists with adverse social, emotional, and health situations. These scholars have …

Historical Sisters: Black Feminist Actions Across History And Literary Studies, Jazz A. Milligan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis seeks to understand how the actions of Black women from the past have inspired the modern Black female literary movement. This thesis focuses on three historical women: Phillis Wheatley, Elizabeth Freeman, and Cathay Williams, and their literary sisters: bell hooks, Barbara Smith, and Patricia Hill Collins. By viewing the lives of these historical women through a modern-day lens, we can understand how their actions created a ripple effect that Black women are still discussing today. Black feminism did not start in a vacuum, and the actions of everyday Black women have pushed us forward to being more accepting …

Review: Comics And The Body, Chase Gregory

Other Faculty Research and Publications

Comics and the body: drawing, reading, and vulnerability. Studies in comics and cartoons by Szép, Eszter, Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 2020. ISBN: 978-0-8142-5772-2.

Link to original version published in Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, volume 14 issue 1

Virility And Defeat: Masculinities In Italy Between Fascism And The Sexual Revolution, Davide Giuseppe Colasanto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is the history of how masculinity evolved in a postfascist western European country. Militaristic virility was a core tenet of fascist Italy. World War Two weakened it profoundly, as men’s and women’s conceptions of their own sexual identities were fundamentally reshaped by violence and defeat. At the same time, consumer culture, exemplified by American GIs and expanding continuously through the 1950s and 1960s, encouraged the emergence of a new kind of man, only for this type, too, to be contested in turn in the wake of the New Left rebellions of 1968 and through the tumultuous 1970s. In all …

Women Of The Dalit Unrest: Rewriting Bodies, Reinforcing Resistance, Suddhadeep Mukherjee

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The paper aims to take the scholarship on corporeal feminism and Dalit Studies forward by focusing on the Dalit woman’s body. The body is not treated as an inert surface in this paper but is considered as a transformative medium that can alter its embedded codifications and significations through transgressive performances in the face of systemic and systematized caste violence. In doing so the gendered body not only challenges to rewrite the Dalit epistemology from the vantage of resistance but also initiates a rethinking of Indian feminism. The paper begins with a discursive discussion on the importance of the gender …

The Affective Construction Of Plurality Of Nationalism And Citizenship, Aparajita Dutta

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Italian Studies In Southern Africa, Vol. 35 No. 1 (2022): Diversity, Decolonisation, And Italian Studies, Simone Brioni Dr., Marie Orton, Graziella Parati, Gaoheng Zhang

Department of English Faculty Publications

This special issue explores the intersections of diversity and decolonisation within the field of Italian Studies. By engaging with postcolonial theory, migration, and critical race studies, the contributors reframe traditional narratives of Italian culture and history. The issue investigates the legacies of colonialism, the experiences of racialized communities in Italy, and the role of Italian Studies in fostering inclusive and equitable academic practices. Through interdisciplinary approaches, the essays call for a critical re-evaluation of the field, advocating for a more diverse, decolonial, and globally conscious understanding of Italy's past and present.

Creole Sketches, Lafcadio Hearn, Charles Woodward Hutson

Zea E-Books Collection

New Orleans in 1878 was the most exotic and cosmopolitan city in North America. An international port, with more than 200,000 inhabitants, it was open to French, Spanish, Mexican, South American, and West Indian cultural influences, and home to a thriving population descended from free African Americans. It was also a battleground in the fight against yellow fever (malaria) and in the political upheavals that followed the end of Reconstruction. The continued influx of Anglo-Americans and the renewed ascendancy of white supremacists threatened to overwhelm the local blend of languages, races, and cultures that enlivened the unique Creole character of …

The Epic Journey Of Pepe The Frog: A Study In Post-Truth, Jaq Webb

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Abstract

The internet meme Pepe the Frog is an excellent avenue for exploring the relationship between post-truth politics, new media, and viral ideas. While memes as conceptualized by Richard Dawkins are essentially timeless components of human society, internet memes as exemplified by the hijacking of Pepe the Frog by the Alt-Right and the Trump campaign are a novel force with uniquely dark implications for liberal democracy. In this study, I attempt a leftist analysis of the best thinking about Post-Truth Trump-era politics and the communication tactics of the Alt-Right, which suggests that some of the same cultural and material forces …

Mei Lan-Fang: The Masculinist Idealization Of Femininity, Yangzhou Bian

Theatre Student Scholarship

Mei Lan-fang was the most well-known Beijing Opera practitioner specializing in the impersonation of historical and mythological female characters. His captivating performance style is known as “The School of Mei”. It balances the external stage presence and internal precision and attends to the minutiae. His performances were drawn predominantly from the classic repertoire, and they have won him the position that “no other Chinese actor attained and retained” (Scott ii). Despite the general perception of Mei’s contribution to the emancipation of women through his work and his self-assertion of sympathy towards their suffering, the underlying motivation may not be as …

The Digital Age: Giving Sex Work A New Meaning, Allison Garvey

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prison Periods: Bodily Resistance To Gendered Control, Malaka M. Shwaikh

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Prisons are places of power and resistance. This article is based on original research material derived from Arabic, English, and Hebrew sources, including interviews with menstruating prisoners from Palestine, Northern Ireland, England, and the United States. I document and translate stories, including those of minors who had their first periods behind bars. I then show how several global prison structures fail to provide minimum support, from offering adequate sanitary products to accessing toilets and showers. I also ask what the menstruating body—and its treatment by prison guards and by prisoners—enables us to understand about the gendered realities of detention, and …