Women's Studies Commons^™

Chandara’S Power, Amy Kasten

Best Integrated Writing

Amy Kasten analyzes the struggles of women against oppression in Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Punishment” in this essay written for ENG 2040: Great Books: Literature, taught by Ms. Carolyn Stoermer at Wright State University.

Reflection On Pema Chödrön’S When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice For Difficult Times, Carol Jones

Best Integrated Writing

Carol Jones reflects on suffering, self-knowledge, and enlightenment as presented in Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times in this essay written for CST 2320: Non-Western Religions, taught by Dr. Sharon A. Showman at Wright State University’s Lake campus.

Reflection On Michael Coogan’S God And Sex, Sierra Garwood

Best Integrated Writing

Sierra Garwood reflects on themes of love, sex, and the bible in Michael Coogan’s God and Sex in this essay written for REL 2040: Great Books: Bible and Western Culture, taught by Dr. Sharon A. Showman at Wright State University’s Lake campus.

The Conflict Of Time: Tradition Vs. Modernity In Love In The Time Of Cholera, Rachel Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Rachel Smith analyzes themes of time, tradition, and modernity in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course CST 2310: Non-Western Cultures, taught by Dr. Alpana Sharma at Wright State University.

Trends Of The Portrayal Of Yahweh In The Hebrew Bible, Kenneth Price

Best Integrated Writing

Kenneth Price explores trends of the portrayal of Yahweh in the Hebrew bible in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course ENG 2040: Great Books, Bible and Western Culture, taught by Dr. Heidi Wendt at Wright State University.

Contents And Acknowledgements

Best Integrated Writing

Table of Contents and acknowledgements for Best Integrated Writing: Journal of Excellence in Integrated Writing Courses at Wright State. Fall 2014. 1st Edition. Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

Tammy Rae Carland's Queer Riot Grrrl Zine"I ( Heart ) Amy Carter": A World Of Public Intimacy, Annah-Marie Rostowsky

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Tammy Rae Carland's queer Riot Grrrl zine I (heart) Amy Carter as a counterpublic sphere engendered by acts of public intimacy that make visible the intersectional complexities of gender, sexuality, class, and race that insidious traumas continually work to conceal. It looks to Ann Cvetkovich's inquiries into the positive aspects of public cultures in the book An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (2006) as well as Mimi Thi Nguyen's investigation of the Riot Grrrl race crisis in the article "Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival" (2012) as frameworks to critique Carland's visual and textual …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 35 (2014), Lynne Zacek Bassett, Nancy C. Bavor, Joyce D. Hammond, Marin F. Hanson, Laurel Horton, Christine E. Humphrey

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Lynne Zacek Bassett

Knockers, Pickers, Movers, and Shakers: Quilt Dealers in America, 1970-2000 by Nancy C. Bavor

Tlfaifai in Tahiti: Embracing Change by Joyce D. Hammond

"One Hundred Good Wishes Quilts": Expressions of Cross-Cultural Communication by Marin F. Hanson

Weft-Loop Woven Counterpanes in the New Republic: The Rediscovery of a Textile Legacy by Laurel Horton

Quilt Documentation Projects, 1980-1989: Exploring the Roots of an National Phenomenon by Christine E. Humphrey

Contributors

Index

“It Made The Ladies Into Ghosts”: The Male Hero's Journey And The Destruction Of The Feminine In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! And Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon, Catherine Ruth Schetina

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is a consideration of the intertextual relationship between William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. It considers the objectification and destruction of women and female-coded men in the service of the male protagonist's journey to selfhood, with particular focus on the construction of race, gender, and class performances.

The Power Of Multiplying: Reproductive Control In American Culture, 1850-1930, Virginia B. Engholm

Theses and Dissertations--English

Prior to the advent of modern birth control beginning in the nineteenth century, the biological reproductive cycle of pregnancy, post-partum recovery, and nursing dominated women’s adult years. The average birth rate per woman in 1800 was just over seven, but by 1900, that rate had fallen to just under than three and a half. The question that this dissertation explores is what cultural narratives about reproduction and reproductive control emerge in the wake of this demographic shift. What’s at stake in a woman’s decision to reproduce, for herself, her family, her nation? How do women, and society, control birth?

In …

Knowing And Being Known: Sexual Delinquency, Stardom, And Adolescent Girlhood In Midcentury American Film, Michael Todd Hendricks

Theses and Dissertations--English

Sexual delinquency marked midcentury cinematic representations of adolescent girls in 1940s, 50, and early 60s. Drawing from the history of adolescence and the context of midcentury female juvenile delinquency, I argue that studios and teen girl stars struggled for decades with publicity, censorship, and social expectations regarding the sexual license of teenage girls. Until the late 1950s, exploitation films and B movies exploited teen sex and pregnancy while mainstream Hollywood ignored those issues, struggling to promote teen girl stars by tightly controlling their private lives but depriving fan magazines of the gossip and scandals that normally fueled the machinery of …

Can Women Have It All?: Hesitant Feminism In American Women's Popular Writing, Anne Aramand

Graduate Masters Theses

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins are two of the bestselling series of our generation. These series are meeting widespread popularity just as the contemporary feminist debate of: "Can women have it all?" is occurring around the country. Although Twilight and The Hunger Games are not considered overtly feminist texts, they have emerged in a time when women are reexamining the possibility of empowering themselves both in the public and the domestic sphere. Meyer and Collins have introduced female protagonists that deal with precisely this issue.

First, I will be outlining why cultural studies are …

‘Maybe It Was Too Much To Expect In Those Days’: The Changing Lifestyles Of Barnard’S First Female Students, Jennifer Prevete Fcrh '12

The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal

From 1890 to 1920 higher education witnessed a marked increase in female matriculation among select East Coast institutions. This paper explores the personal narratives of these pioneering women to illustrate how societal forces strongly influenced these women’s college experiences. Existing discourse emphasizes the difficulties female university students faced as they tried to pursue both careers and families. Scholars claim that an unusual number of college-educated women did not marry or married at a later age. This paper examines first-hand perspectives drawn from the Barnard College Archives to supplement current secondary data. Alumnae biographical questionnaires reveal how women reconciled opportunities with …

Occupying The Pedestal: Gender Issues In Ellen Gilchrist, Karon Reese

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ellen Gilchrist's works shows the struggles of women living in a postmodern South. This dissertation explores Gilchrist's representations of southern women as they transition from the old South to modernity. Gilchrist's work depicts women who attempt to break off the pedestal of white Southern womanhood, but never quite do, often simultaneously disrupting and confirming traditional notions of a "good Southern lady." Gilchrist shows how women occupy the pedestal as a form of refuge and also as a form of protest. These are women who, as they navigate the transition to a new South, are reluctant to surrender the privilege of …

"I Have Thought Proper To Inform The World": Reading Unconventional Testaments Of 18th-Century New England Women, Elyssa Tardif

Open Access Dissertations

Early New England women chose to pass down what they owned and valued: clothing, cupboards, pewter dishes, commonplace books, etc. But some women passed down something more: a written testament, which sought to shape public opinion in colonial New England. A "testament" usefully suggests a text that both serves as a witness to lived experience as well as the means by which the individual herself can frame the narrative for those who come after. This project aims to examine not only written records but also their audience: who were the heirs to these testaments and how were the records preserved …

Queer Pedagogical Desire: A Study Guide, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

This essay explores the queer pedagogical desires that attended my writing of the Study Guide for the documentary film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Jim Hubbard, 2012). The analysis takes up Robyn Wiegman’s central question in Object Lessons, “What is it we expect our relationship to our objects of study to do?”, which is of particular importance to the discipline of queer studies insofar as the field is oriented around the desire to meld social justice with critical pedagogy. The queer professor’s desire in the case of the Study Guide-as-object was to create a text that …

Theoris, Jeanne. The Rebellious Life Of Mrs. Rosa Parks., Carol Shelton

Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Feminists Who Like Fashion, Margarita C. Delgado

SURGE

I’m sitting on the downtown R train one night in Manhattan, a copy of Vogue resting on my crossed legs. It is late and I am clearly unwinding peacefully as I thumb through page after glamorous page of my magazine. The train stops at Prince Street and there’s the usual flux of people in and out. Those left inside settle as the train pulls out of the station.

“Ugh. Fashion is stupid,” remarks one young man to another, both of whom are sitting diagonally from me and well within earshot. He’s watching me ignore him as I continue enjoying my …

Book Review: Mediating Moms: Mothers In Popular Culture, Kristi Branham

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Contesting The Marginalization Of Female Leadership In Sports: The Struggle For Equal Opportunities In Men's Collegiate And Professional Basketball, Caitlain Tinker

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This feminist critique interrogates the discourses and practices of gender discrimination in men's professional and collegiate sporting institutions in the United States. This study focuses on delineating and 'naming' the discriminatory ideologies that are (re)produced by dominant social and cultural institutions, revealing in the process how these practices (over)determine gender equality in the professional and collegiate sporting field. To this end, I perform a post-structuralist discourse analysis of what Louis Althusser calls the dominant 'ideological state apparatuses,' namely schools, the media and sporting institutions. I argue that these institutions coalesce to form a network of power that produces, reproduces, and …

The Akron Offering: A Ladies' Literary Magazine, 1849-1850, Jon Miller

University of Akron Press Publications

FREE FULL-TEXT PDF DOWNLOAD

From 1849 to 1850, Calista Cummings edited and published Akron's first literary magazine, The Akron Offering. At the time, Akron was a booming canal town on the verge of even greater prosperity. By turns religious, comic, romantic, and political, this extraordinary collection of early midwestern creative literature expresses a wide range of sometimes contradictory opinions on both the important questions of its day and the important questions of today: historical events such as the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the 1848 revolutions in Europe are considered alongside more timeless contemplations on truth, justice, and …

[Sabbatical Report], Dawn Hall

Sabbatical Reports

Using a feminist and cultural studies perspective, my project discusses the independent film industry and its treatment of women directors and female oriented narratives. It begins with a snapshot of male filmmakers' challenges and opportunities with a focus on Kelly Reichardt's career, definition of success, and specific model of filmmaking, with a brief comparison to other female filmmakers whose definitions are different and who have chosen a more commercial path. In addition to discussing industry data and feminist film theory, the body of the work focuses on Reichardt's feature films (one per chapter) framing each within her larger political statements. …

Style Watch: Blackface Edition, Rashida Aluko-Roberts

SURGE

The above quote is from a statement/apology offered by Sebastian Kim, a photographer, whose recent editorial, “African Queen,” which featured a 16-year-old white female made to appear black, was marred with controversy. According to the photographer, dousing a young white female in deep bronze, accessorizing her in elaborate head wraps and heavy jewels (symbols that are often associated with Africa), was in no way an attempt to depict what an “African queen” looks like. Rather, his spread was attempting to showcase “the beauty aesthetic of his shoot” by using a “tanned or golden skin” model. [excerpt]

Mike & Molly -- An Other World, Maureen Elizabeth Johnson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis explores the impact of the television show Mike & Molly on the modern debate related to fat in America. The thesis uses the work of Michel Foucault as well as disability scholars such as Lennard Davis and feminist scholars such as bell hooks to examine how a comedy show like Mike & Molly can further disenfranchise fat people in society. The thesis shows that fat makes people an Other in society, and television shows and other forms of comedy that mock those who are fat just reinforce that Other status.

Wallpaper Mania, Ellen Corrigan

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

Text panels from "Wallpaper Mania," a local exhibit in support of the Booth Library installation of the National Library of Medicine traveling exhibition The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Yellow Wall-Paper," on display September 23-November 2, 2013.

Zora Neale Hurston As Womanist, Cheryl Hopson

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Zora Neale Hurston is today recognized as an American and African American literary great. What Hurston has come to mean for black women writers such as Alice Walker can be gleaned from an assertion made by Walker in her canonical essay, “Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and Partisan View” (1979), included in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. Walker writes, “I became aware of my need of Zora Neale Hurston’s work some time before I knew her work existed” (83). Alice Walker is greatly responsible for the resurgence of interest in, and the creative and critical reassessment of, …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 34 (2013), Lynne Zacek Bassett, Hallie E. Bond, Cheryl Cheek, Sharon Fulton Pinka, Merikay Waldvogel, Sarah Bliss Wright

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Lynne Zacek Bassett

Adirondack Quilts and Comforters: A Regional Study by Hallie E. Bond

The "Cooish" Rescue of the Quilt in Harry Kelly's Cottage by Cheryl Cheek

Lowcountry Chintz: The Townsend/Pope Quilt Legacy by Sharon Fulton Pinka

Printed Panels for Chintz Quilts: Their Origin and Use by Merikay Waldvogel

Alabama Cotton and Bemis Bags: Pieced into Quilt History by Sarah Bliss Wright

Contributors

Index

Makers: Women Who Make America [Film Review], Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

The three-hour documentary MAKERS: WOMEN WHO MADE AMERICA, promises to tell “how women have helped shape America over the last fifty years…in pursuit of their rights to a full and fair share of political power, economic opportunity, and personal autonomy.” However, rather than provide a historical analysis of the reemergence of feminism as produced by social movements and social change, MAKERS, according to the film’s press release, focuses on “unforgettable moments in history” told through stories of “exceptional women whose pioneering contributions continue to shape the world in which we live… stories of women who led the fight, those who …

Dirty Pictures—Not For Sale: Re-Reading Bellocq’S Storyville Portraits, Mollie S. Le Veque

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In this paper, I examine E.J. Bellocq's "Storyville Portraits" within art historical and feminist historiographies. One of the most infamously alluring parts of New Orleans at the turn of the century, the Storyville red light district is hardly part of contemporary American consciousness today. Part of my work involves an evaluation of what a lack of archival resources does to perceptions of Storyville and more broadly, the stereotypical late Victorian “fallen women” that has been read into history - both by historians and popular culture. However, my focal point is indeed the portraits and how they might be re-read and …

The Fall Of The Yellow Wallpaper, Rachel Payne

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

Many have acknowledged the Gothic influence of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” on Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Critics often examine the opposition of genres in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” arguing it as either a feminist movement or Gothic tale. However, the Female Gothic genre centers the female role inside a Gothic tale. This genre typifies a criticism of oppressive patriarchies and support for female independence. Both “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” demonstrate women who overcome repressed voices by finding their expressions through writing.