Women's Studies Commons^™

In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past October, CLAGS hosted a historic conference to commemorate, celebrate, and evaluate the diverse contributions of lesbians over the course of the 1970s. The conference culminated a semester-long series of events that unfurled over the Spring 2010 term. In planning for the conference, the organizing committee (made up of Melissa Gasparotto, Andrea Freud Loewenstein, Roberta Sklar, Urvashi Vaid, and myself) imagined this conference as embracing as broad a field of lesbian lives as it could.

Gender Stereotypes In The American Electoral Process, Samantha Stinedurf

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Gender stereotypes can increase the negative perception of female candidates during an election. This can decrease a female politician's chances of running for office and/or being elected to office. When these stereotypes are attached to female candidates, it can cause bias against them which then effects voting behavior among both men and women voters. Many of these stereotypes include looking at the typical personality traits as well as the perception of competency when dealing with social, economic and foreign policy issues. How do gender stereotypes present bias against women? Using data from the American National Election Study I assess the …

Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp

Faculty Publications

Though not well known, Rowson's Mentoria-a curious conglomeration of thematically-related pieces from multiple genres, including the essay, epistolary novel, conduct book, and fairy tale-offers particularly fertile ground for thinking about the nexus between eighteenth-century didactic books and earlier works for young readers.2 At the heart of Mentoria is a series of letters describing girls who yield, with dire and frequently deadly consequences, to the passionate pleas of male suitors.3 Fallen women populate Rowson's world, and scholars have traditionally read Mentoria within the familiar bounds of the eighteenth-century seduction novel.4 However, Rowson's creation transforms the older tradition of didactic, child-centered conversion …

Kiss The War Good-Bye, Hello Return To Normalcy, Marisa Francesca Benfanti

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Imperial Domesticity: Native American Gender Ideology And Conformity In The Late Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Centuries, Christina Moehrle

American Studies Senior Theses

This project is informed by the history of Native American removal across Western lands, and the sociological and economic strategies that forced the assimilation of distinct native tribes into a mass, dominant white culture. Considering this assimilation through the imposition of domesticity and European gender ideology, this project aims to explore the political over and undertones of the cult of domesticity, and to analyze how domesticity and domestication were used to construct gender, social, and economic conformity. Post-bellum American politics regarded the women’s experience and domestic ideals as prototypes for national values. The importance of home production for the …

Engendering Injustice: Drug Laws, Drug Economies, And The Marginalization Of Women In New York State, Kate Mcgee

American Studies Senior Theses

On November 8, 1983, Elaine Bartlett left her apartment in Harlem, and headed to Grand Central Station. There, she met her boyfriend, Nate. They were headed to the Monte Mario Hotel in Albany. To any bystander, they may have looked like any other couple. But Elaine Bartlett knew different. That’s because she had a four-ounce bag of cocaine stuffed down the front of her pants. In 1983, Bartlett was a twenty-six year old woman with four children. A male friend, George Deets—although she knew him as Chris at the time—told her that if she delivered the drugs, she could earn …

Willa Cather [From Blackwell Encyclopedia Of Twentieth-Century American Fiction], Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Willa Cather is known primarily for her novels representing the experiences of women immigrants on the Nebraska prairies in the late nineteenth century, but Cather’s 10 novels and scores of short stories’ produced over a career spanning 50 years actually range widely over space and time, from seventeenth-century Quebec to twentieth century New York. A social conservative who proudly identified herself as one of the backward-looking, her experiments with fictional form and her approach to culture nevertheless ally her with modernism. It is, perhaps, the depth and diversity of Cather’s body of work and the impossibility of reducing her achievement …

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Nature, Domestic Labor, And Moral Community In Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours And Elinor Wyllys, Richard M. Magee

English Faculty Publications

Cooper's argument for a domestic ideal situated within a rural setting reinforces the importance of community connections through a shared sense of morality, as well as understanding of the natural world. Community alone—the human connections—never seems to be enough in Cooper's formulation, but must always exist with an awareness of the world outside the narrow confines of one's own domestic sphere. Concern for one's fellow-beings necessitates a concern for the world in which these beings live, and Cooper understands that when any bonds are broken—such as the bonds that connect us to the natural world—other bonds are threatened. Thus, when …

Introduction To Willa Cather And Modern Cultures [Cather Studies 9], Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

To some, linking Willa Cather to "the modern" or more narrowly to literary modernism still seems an eccentric proposition. As Richard Millington has pointed out, "one will look in vain for Cather's name in the index of most accounts, whether new or old, of the nature and history of Anglo-American modernism" (52). Perhaps she fails to feature in these accounts because in her public pronouncements and certain recurring motifs in her fiction, she appeared to turn her back on modernity. Cather was skeptical about many aspects of the culture that took shape around her in the early decades of the …

Delta Woman With Faulkner And Hitchcock, Mi-Jeong Kim

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Lacan, as a post-structuralist, combined Saussure's linguistics with Freud's psychology and linked Derrida's notion of "the other" to his notion of "objet petit a" as the impossible object of the subject's phallic desire, in order to re-think the modern consciousness of "the self." In the Lacanian account, "the other" does not exist as the 'absolute' transcendental without involvement, but ex-sists as the traumatic and 'extimate' exteriority with-in "the self." The ex-centric other is epitomized by the iconic (inverted) triangular center of Lacan's Borromean Knot. As the immanent exteriority of both the subject and the Symbolic, the feminine (w)hole, resembling vaginal …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 32 (2011), Laurel Horton, Loretta B. Chase, Jan Coor-Pender Dodge, Aimee E. Newell, Phyllis S. Herda, Margaret M. Bingham, Valerie J. Davis, Jackie (Jacqueline) Schweitzer, Carolyn K. Ducey, Deborah E. Kraak

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Laurel Horton

The Dublin Quilt: A Civil War Textile Document by Loretta B. Chase and Jan Coor-Pender

Dodge Seeking Enlightenment: A Quilt Historian's Guide to Freemasonry Aimee E. Newell Tivaevae: Women's Quilting in the Cook Islands by Phyllis Herda

The Collaborative Relationship between Professional Machine Quilters and Their Customers in the Contemporary Quilt Movement by Margaret M. Bingham

The Policy of Good Design: Quilt Designs and Designers from the WPA Milwaukee Handicrafts Project, 1935-1942 by Valerie J. Davis and Jackie Schweitzer

Reminiscences of Women's Work: Chintz Applique Album Quilts of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia by Carolyn …

Mentoring Experiences Among Female Public Relations Entrepreneurs: A Qualitative Investigation, Sabina Gaggioli

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This phenomenological study expands from current mentoring literature within the mass communication field in understanding how mentoring can contribute to the successful careers of public relations entrepreneurial women. While many scholars indicate that mentoring is effective for women, the present study describes how mentoring has affected the women participants' public relations careers and personal lives. In-depth interviews focused on following five research questions: What have been the key contributing factors in the success of public relations women entrepreneurs? How has mentoring helped the women participants achieve their goals in a public relations career and in starting their own company? Which …

The Culture Of Mean: Gender, Race, And Class In Mediated Images Of Girls' Bullying, Emily Davis Ryalls

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines narratives about female bullying and aggression through mediated images of "mean girls." Through textual analysis of popular media featuring mean girls (television shows such as Gossip Girl and films like Mean Girls), as well as national news coverage of the case of Phoebe Prince, who reportedly committed suicide after being bullied by girls from her school, this feminist examination questions how the image of the mean girl is raced and classed. This dissertation values an interdisciplinary approach to research that works to make sense of the forces that produce bodies as gendered, raced, and classed.

One of …

Women As Subject And Audience In World War Ii Venereal Disease Posters, Kyra Whitton

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

Internationally, venereal disease first became a major health concern during World War I. Venereal diseases were some of the most common infections and led to more hospitalizations among soldiers than wounds or battle-related illness. The Selective Service discovered that almost fifteen percent of those who were eligible for the draft were already infected with a venereal disease, sparking an intense anti-venereal disease campaign across America. Red-light districts were shut down, and American cities sought new laws that would criminalize prostitution to protect young men from contracting a venereal infection.

Though venereal disease rates were still high during World War II, …

Mirabai Comes To America: The Translation And Transformation Of A Saint, Nancy M. Martin

Religious Studies Faculty Articles and Research

The story of the sixteenth-century Hindu saint Mirabai is told and performed in a multitude of genres in India across the centuries, and her songs generate a tradition of continuing composition in her name. Her popularity readily moves across boundaries of language, caste, class, religion, and culture not only within India but also beyond, taking root in American culture more broadly in the latter decades of the 20th century, as Americans begin looking for figures for inspiration and canonisation within an emerging non-institutionalised global spirituality and women around the world mine the past to find their spiritual foremothers. Her popularity …

Lesbians In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The 1970s was a period of intense excitement, change, activism, and activity for lesbians. As lesbian feminism redefined what qualified as a "political issue" and challenged every assumption about gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and any number of other social categories, lesbians of all kinds created cultural, social, political, economic, and regional organizations and networks.

Did A Woman Write “The Great American Novel”? Judging Women’S Fiction In The Nineteenth Century And Today, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

In the fall of 2009, as I was preparing to teach a senior capstone course for English majors on the nineteenth-century American novel and questions of literary value and the canon, I went trolling for suggestions of recent secondary readings about canonicity. The response came back loud and clear: “The canon wars are over. We all teach whatever we want to teach, and everything is fine.” My experiences with students suggest that, at least in American literary studies before 1900, the canon wars are not over, or, perhaps, they have entered a new stage. Most of my students had heard …

Bibliography For Work In Travel Studies, Carlo Salzani, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Laurie S. Sutherland

Publications & Research

Dr. Mary Edwards Walker is America's first and only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service for her contributions to the American Civil War as a field surgeon. This article provides an overview of her life and many roles: surgeon, feminist, abolitionist, social reformer, suffragette, nonconformist and eccentric.

Bibliography For The Study Of Cultural Discourse In Taiwan, Yu-Chun Chang, I-Chun Wang, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Selected Bibliography Of Work On Identity, Migration, And Displacement, Li-Wei Cheng, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, I-Chun Wang

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

[Introduction To] When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits Of Women Combat Veterans, Laura Browder, Sascha Pflaeging

Bookshelf

While women are officially barred from combat in the American armed services, in the current war, where there are no front lines, the ban on combat is virtually meaningless. More than in any previous conflict in our history, American women are engaging with the enemy, suffering injuries, and even sacrificing their lives in the line of duty.

When Janey Comes Marching Home juxtaposes forty-eight photographs by Sascha Pflaeging with oral histories collected by Laura Browder to provide a dramatic portrait of women at war. Women from all five branches of the military share their stories here--stories that are by turns …

Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai Interview, Flor Sigaran

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based Chinese Taiwanese American spoken word artist who fights for cultural pride and survival through how she spits and how she lives.

Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai has been featured in over 400 performances worldwide at venues including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the House of Blues, the Apollo Theater, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and three seasons of the award-winning “Russell Simmons Presents HBO Def Poetry.” The author of Inside Outside Outside Inside (2004) and Thought Crimes (2005) and the CD Infinity Breaks (2006), Tsai has shared stages with Mos Def, KRS-One, Sonia Sanchez, Talib Kweli, Erykah …

The (Inter)Active Soap Opera Viewer: Fantastic Practices & Mediated Communities, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

In today’s cultural realm, everything exists within a hierarchy of sorts – fandom has not escaped this process of judgmental ranking and social stratification. Admitting to be a “fan” of something often earns people mixed responses depending on the subject of their devoted following. The more one’s object of choice strays from the mainstream, the lower one exists on the fan hierarchy. If the masses find the fan subject matter to exist on the cultural periphery, fans are often quite ridiculed. This has historically been the case for soap opera fans. What is often overlooked, however, is the utility of …

The (Inter)Active Soap Opera Viewer: Fantastic Practices & Mediated Communities, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

In today’s cultural realm, everything exists within a hierarchy of sorts – fandom has not escaped this process of judgmental ranking and social stratification. Admitting to be a “fan” of something often earns people mixed responses depending on the subject of their devoted following. The more one’s object of choice strays from the mainstream, the lower one exists on the fan hierarchy. If the masses find the fan subject matter to exist on the cultural periphery, fans are often quite ridiculed. This has historically been the case for soap opera fans. What is often overlooked, however, is the utility of …

Women Of New France 2: Needle Arts, Stacey Moore, Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project

Panel 2. Clothing Production and Repair, Weaving, and Sewing.

Women Of New France 3: Clothing And Dress, Stacey Moore, Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project

Panel 3. Adornment, Articles of Dress, Caps and Hats, Garments and Shoes.

Autobiography As Self-Defense In The Works Of Agnes Newton-Keith And Michelle Kennedy, Robin Heim

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis examines the captivity narrative, Three Came Home, written in 1947 by Agnes Newton-Keith, and the poverty narrative, Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America: My Story, written in 2005 by Michelle Kennedy. When examined together through the lens of Trauma Theory, these narratives provide evidence of how similar the survival skills and strategies are between the American female POW's and the American females experiencing downward mobility. This thesis will also show how language uncovers and decodes the presence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder not often associated with women in poverty.