Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Muslim Enough? Egyptian Enough? American Enough?, Essraa Nawar

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Essraa has studied, lived and worked in many places, including the Gulf area (Qatar), Washington D.C., where she worked for The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, and Alexandria, Egypt where she worked for Bibliotheca Alexandrina. In 2002, she moved with her husband and family to the United States where they have been studying, working, and living for 20 plus years. In this vulnerable presentation, Essraa will share for the first time her journey navigating motherhood as an immigrant, Muslim women while thousands of miles away from her family in Egypt. Everyday Essraa will ask herself: Is …

Marina Abramović: Conveying Pain Through Performance, Danielle Filiowich

Student Academic Conference

A speech about Marina Abramović, some of her most well known pieces, and how that by being a woman performance artist, she injects a deeper meaning within her work.

Review Of A Sword Between The Sexes? C.S. Lewis And The Gender Debates, Sørina Higgins

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Sørina Higgins: Review of Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, A Sword between the Sexes? C. S. Lewis and the Gender Debates (Grand Rapids, 2010). 264 pages. $19.99. ISBN 9781587432088.

Masculinity, Empire, And The Boyhood Companion In Mary Shelley’S Frankenstein And Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Ruth Rempart

Campus Research Month

In 19th-century Britain, rigid social hierarchies and gender roles play a largely unseen role in the rise of the empire. In a society that relies upon the myths of heroic or self-sustaining masculinity to maintain the public sphere, how a “nontraditional” gentleman decides to affirm their masculinity can have a significant impact on the country’s cultural consciousness. As seen in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, young men tend to reassert their gender identities by pursuing careers that further British imperialist agendas. This paper examines the intersection between gender studies and postcolonial theory in 19^th-century …

Disrupted Ambitions And Unmasked Identities: An Analysis Of Doubleness In Sylvia Plath’S The Bell Jar And Ralph Ellison’S Invisible Man In Cold War America, Laura Anderson

English Language and Literature ETDs

This thesis conducts a literary analysis on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) with a primary investigation on the protagonists and their convergence of identity in Cold War America. One of the critical discourses evaluated throughout the project’s literary analysis includes the protagonists’ complications of doubleness. This essay argues that since these two texts sit between W.E.B DuBois’s “Double Consciousness” and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1988 theory on intersectionality, these protagonists are forced to contend with an identity crossroads. Secondary to the context of this analysis is the use of “post-war” and “Cold War,”; neither are …

Demons In The City Of Angeles: Gay Neo-Nazis In Southern California, Emma Bianco

Madison Historical Review

This article explores the perplexing history of self-proclaimed “Aryan homophiles:” the National Socialist League of Los Angeles. A neo-Nazi group made up of exclusively gay men, this organization’s reign from the 1970s to mid-1980s offers an atypical perspective into Southern California’s racial and political settings. Garnered from the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, this story showcases how far from utilizing a “paranoid style,” the NSL’s brand of hate did not stray too far from that already clearly established in the mainstream environment. The NSL forces us to challenge our preconceptions about what makes up the “typical” racial extremist.

Figures Du Père Et Parenté Littéraire Dans La Vie De Saint Alexis Et Le Livre De La Cité Des Dames, Marie Bellec

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Cet article examine la figure paternelle dans trois récits de la vie des saints, La Vie de Saint Alexis, « Sainte Marine » et « Sainte Euphrosine » dans Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, de Christine de Pizan. Les pères respectifs des saints incarnent certaines attentes sociales et familiales, ils exercent notamment sur leurs enfants une pression pour qu’ils se marient. Les contraintes ne sont pas les mêmes selon le genre des saints : alors que la piété d’Alexis l’empêche de convoler, l’oppression sociale se déplace vers celle du genre pour nos hagiographies au féminin. Par …

Writing Through The Body, Eileen Dipofi

Criticism

A Review of The Small Book of Hip Checks: On Queer Gender, Race, and Writing by Erica Rand. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. Pp. 152. $89.95 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Desire In Bridgerton: Defining The Female Gaze, Hailey C. Coles

Honors College Theses

Feminist literature is rife with multiple, sometimes conflicting, sometimes partial, definitions of the female gaze. A definitive understanding of the female gaze incorporates the literature but includes other modes of thought and analysis appropriate for a number of different media. Bridgerton articulates this understanding as it privileges female sexuality not just through dialogue, but through its focus on multiple characters’ bodily awareness. Non-verbal elements like blocking, the physical articulation of bodies, changes in camera angles and foci that privilege subtle and nuanced movements, and even the pervasive use of music all contribute to the form and characterization of the female …

Lg Ms 160 Dale Mccormick Gay Side Story Interview, Jill Piekut Roy

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

Collection includes two copies of an oral history interview (one edited) and an automatically generated transcript.

In the edited version of the interview, Dale McCormick recalls her role as producer of "Gay Side Story," an adaptation of the musical West Side Story, with Diane Elze, Miles J. Rightmire, Cheryl Ring, and others. The play was performed for two nights in Luther Bonney Hall at University of Southern Maine during the 10th Maine Lesbian & Gaymen's Symposium in May 1983. McCormick discusses her work on the writing team, the set design, and the positive reception of the production during a …

Giving Voice To The Body: Slam Poetry In The Poet X, Stefanny Leung Yu

Student Theses

When the world silences her, can slam poetry become her voice? Elizabeth Acevedo, an author and poet, uses her beautiful piece of slam poetry to explore how language can empower marginalized voices, speaking on behalf of those who are usually silenced. The Poet X is a verse novel that narrates the powerful story of a young Afro-Latina girl, Xiomara Batista, who navigates the intersecting pressures of school bullies, family issues, religious conservatism, patriarchal rules, and racialized body politics in her Harlem community. This research engages with Acevedo’s work to focus on how slam poetry serves as a powerful outlet and …

La Ausencia/Presencia De La Asexualidad Y La Sexualnormatividad En La Educación Sexual Integral En Las Escuelas Secundarias En La Ciudad Autónoma De Buenos Aires / The Absence/Presence Of Asexuality And Sexualnormativity In Comprehensive Sexual Education In Secondary Schools In The Autonomous City Of Buenos Aires, Marin Hart

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este proyecto investiga el lugar de la asexualidad en la Educación Sexual Integral en el nivel medio en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Desde una mirada basada en la teoría queer, este trabajo analiza los lineamientos curriculares del nivel medio y entrevistas a personas involucradas en la ESI, y concluye que la asexualidad, como todas las identidades queer, no aparece en los lineamientos y aparece muy poco en la ESI en general. Además, cuando aparecen las identidades queer en la ESI, se presentan dentro del marco de la tolerancia y no discriminación, y por el modo de hacerlo, terminan …

Consent In Conversation: Education Of Sexual Violence In Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Emily Benning

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

Maya Angelou’s memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is just one of many titles challenged and banned in public schools for “sexually explicit” content. On page 71 of her 281 page autobiography, Angelou discloses that she was raped at 8 years old by her mother’s boyfriend, and despite it being followed with scenes that emphasize the value of healing through literature, public attention has been directed to the (non-consensual) intercourse itself as a reason for censorship. As censorship efforts have expanded in the past two decades, challengers have continued to add more ban-worthy qualities to the list …

“Yellow Fever” + Pornhub Statistics: A Sociological Sickness, Patricia Plachno

Audre Lorde Prize

This essay was written to explore the complexities behind "Yellow Fever," or the fetishization of Asian women. In further understanding the origins of "Yellow Fever", shining a light on historical stereotypes and microaggressions assist in problematizing this phenomenon. Pornhub's yearly statistics provide a tangible outline of the sheer volume of participants in racial fetishization.

The Postmodern And The Personal In Edna St. Vincent Millay’S Aria Da Capo, Roxanne Rankin

Munn Scholars Awards

Aria Da Capo, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1919 play, has thus far been largely ignored in literary criticism. This essay, through a historical survey of Millay’s previous critical reception followed by a close reading of Aria Da Capo, attempts to explain and then bridge this gap in academic scholarship. A postmodernist reading of the play will then illustrate why Millay’s work still confounds scholars today and how Aria Da Capo specifically continues to be relevant more than 100 years after it was first produced.

Rape Jokes, Sexual Violence, And Empire In Revelation And This Is The End, Meredith J.C. Warren

Journal of Religion & Film

The Book of Revelation is one of the most borrowed-from texts of the New Testament when it comes to popular culture. Although there are dozens of other ancient apocalyptic writings, it is John’s apocalyptic visions that directly inform contemporary ideas of apocalypse. The apocalyptic comedy This Is The End (Dir. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, 2013) not only invokes imagery from Revelation but also adapts portions of the text in its portrayal of the end times. However, it also reproduces and expands upon the use of sexual violence as a means of punishment found in Revelation. This paper will examine …

An Undergraduate Consortium For Addressing The Leaky Pipeline To Computing Research, James C. Boerkoel Jr., Mehmet Ergezer

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Despite an increasing number of successful interventions designed to broaden participation in computing research, there is still significant attrition among historically marginalized groups in the computing research pipeline. This experience report describes a first-of-its-kind Undergraduate Consortium (UC; https://aaai-uc.github.io/about) that addresses this challenge by empowering students with a culmination of their undergraduate research in a conference setting. The UC, conducted at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), aims to broaden participation in the AI research community by recruiting students, particularly those from historically marginalized groups, supporting them with mentorship, advising, and networking as an accelerator toward graduate school, AI research, …

The Owl House: Queerness And Witchcraft In Modern Media, Gray E. Takahashi

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

The Owl House is a groundbreaking television series on Disney Channel created by Dana Terrace. The show follows Luz, a young human, as she makes a new home for herself in a magical realm called the Boiling Isles. (Vorrasi-Banis 102). Within the series, there are many queer elements, in terms of literal LGBTQ+ representation as well as in a more expansive and critical sense. The Owl House is unique because of its willingness to break and queer a multitude of social conventions. This paper examines the evolution of the witch as both figure and trope of patriarchal resistance as well …

Loving Blackness: A Sense Experience, Ricardo J. Millhouse

Feminist Pedagogy

The late bell hooks framed feminist pedagogies as a set of practices and systems that provide a description of feminism, a feminist learning environment, and ways to cultivate a community that is ready for feminist instruction. Using intersectionality, hooks (1992) discussed “loving blackness” as a representational and destabilizing practice to de-center whiteness. hooks (1992, 20) writes, “loving blackness as a political resistance transforms our ways of looking and being, and thus creates conditions necessary for us to move against the forces of domination and death and reclaim black life.” I propose a black feminist praxis teaching tool, “a sense experience,” …

When Sexuality Becomes Healing: An Interview With Elsbeth Fraanje On Her Documentary Sexual Healing, Johan Roeland

Journal of Religion & Film

This is an interview with Elsbeth Fraanje, the director of Sexual Healing.

Sexual Healing, Johan Roeland

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Sexual Healing (2022) directed by Elsbeth Fraanje.

Malintzin: La Mujer Americana, Alma D. Elías Nájera

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

Malintzin was a controversial Indigenous woman whose contributions to the Aztec conquest raised questions about what it meant to be a traitor with a limited agency. This essay recontextualizes Malintzin’s demonized identity and challenges masculinist sociocultural curations of gender, history, and knowledge production by infusing feminist theory into the cultural imaginaries of gender and racial stratification. By reintroducing Malintzin as a feminist emblematic figure trying to regain selfhood within an exploitative White cisheteropatriarchal society, her existence gives voice to those silenced by the violence of colonization, Manhood, and gender oppression. To do this, the author takes up the work of …

Queer Ecologies: A Final Syllabus/Zine Product Of Our Independent Study, Yeh Seo Jung, Ray Craig

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This zine is the product of our independent study course Queer Ecologies, which is an exploration of bio-social systems using a queer and feminist theoretical lens. We aim to look critically at knowledge formation and construct alternative visions for more just and sustainable relationships between science, nature, and ourselves. While queer theory most directly interrogates the normative structure of heterosexuality both in humans and in biology more broadly, these studies include analyses of hierarchy, power, and value. Queer Ecology can be used to examine phenomena such as climate change, extinction, pollution, species hierarchies, agricultural practices, resource extraction, and human population …

Masculinized Sovereignty: Understanding Violence Towards Mice And The Nonhuman, Anisha Prakash

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This paper attempts to analyze how the definition of the normative “human” categorizes bodies that represent alternative political order against settler colonialism, and how the subjects that go against the dominant ideal of human are prohibited from living a free life, if not altogether eliminated. While conducting research, I view the lab as a site of social advancement where the differences between humans and nonhumans create a community of shared purpose. An interrogation of the laboratory as a site of violence can help us better understand how the State’s capitalist modes of advancement and production harm those of indigenous people, …

Contagious Animality: Species, Disease, And Metaphor In Early Modern Literature And Culture, Jeremy Cornelius

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, Contagious Animality: Species, Disease, and Metaphor in Early Modern Literature and Culture, I close read examples of Renaissance drama alongside their contemporary cultural texts to examine anxieties around social differences as constructed and mediated through what I call “contagious animality” in early modern English culture. Animal metaphors circulated anxieties around social differences on the early modern cultural stage in English drama where animality elicits uncertainties about identitarian constructions of difference. In this vein, I close read formal elements and their interactions with early modern culture to argue that animal metaphors transmit modes of speciating difference in …

Identifying Gendered Language, Shweta Soundararajan, Sarah Jane Delany

Academic Posters Collection

Gendered language refers to the use of words that indicate the gender of an individual. It can be explicit, where the gender is directly implied by the specific words used (e.g., mother, she, man), or it can be implicit, where societal roles and behaviors convey a person's gender. For example, expectations that women display communal traits (e.g., affectionate, caring, gentle) and men display agentic traits (e.g., assertive, competitive, decisive). The presence of gendered language in natural language processing (NLP) systems can reinforce gender stereotypes and bias. Our work introduces an approach to creating gendered language datasets using ChatGPT. These datasets …

Constructing (Un)Situated Women: Situated Knowledges In Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things (1997) And Balli K. Jaswal's Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows (2017), Necole T. Deloach

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis applies Donna Haraway’s concept of “situated knowledges” to postcolonial feminist novels such as Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Balli K. Jaswal’s Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows in order to illustrate why there needs to be a new framework for analyzing literary postcolonial women. Despite the applicability of Donna Haraway’s “situated knowledges” to postcolonial feminist literary studies, there has been little research published that analyzes not just the intersection of “situated knowledges” and postcolonial feminist literature, but also the problems that occur when Western scholars approach postcolonial texts without completely acknowledging their own worldview. I argue …

The Kin-Ship, Zheng Moham Wang

Comparative Woman

This is a group of two English poems the author composed separately in 2019 and 2021 about the imaginary scenes of his grandpa and mother from a Iu-Mien family of Southeast Asia and Southwestern China. The group was submitted to the upcoming Kinship volume of the Comparative Woman journal of Louisiana State University.

Response To Professor Dinner, Martha Albertson Fineman

Faculty Articles

I want to thank the Texas A&M Law Review for including my work in this special Issue and express my appreciation to Professor Dinner for her thoughtful comments concerning the evolution of my scholarship. Professor Dinner raises the question of whether that earlier work is relevant to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion, specifically, and to broader issues of reproductive justice, more generally. For me, Dobbs illustrates—once again—how our American obsession with both individual rights and Supreme Court jurisprudence can distort our sense of the possibilities for achieving social (or reproductive) justice. I see my work as an …

Masculinidades Insubordinadas Y Subversivas. La Construcción De La Figura Del Gaucho Rebelde En La Literatura Rioplatense A Través De La Representación De Tres De Sus Tipos Humanos Más Característicos: El Cantor, El Matrero Y El Caudillo, Miguel Angel Martos Maldonado

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This research work explores the construction of the masculinity of the rebellious gaucho in several literary works written by authors from the River Plate, and how it serves as a vehicle for the transmission of ideas –often of political content– of their creators. The basic concept underlying this study is that some writers of works set in the rural world show a serious social commitment, and often combine their literary activity with politics. For this reason, they choose as a key figure in their writings a gaucho who rebels against authority and, emphasizing in him the traits traditionally considered as …