Women's Studies Commons^™

Sex-Specific And Regional Analysis Of Heart Disease Prediction Using Machine Learning Algorithms: Insights From The Uc Irvine Public Heart Disease Datasets (Cleveland And Long Beach), Jonathan Asanjarani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For this capstone project, I investigated how well machine learning models can predict heart disease, while also studying how the patient’s gender affects these predictions, as well as determining how well the same model performs across different regions. This project utilizes two clinical datasets from the publicly accessible UCI Machine Learning Repository under the collection "Heart Disease." This repository is composed of data from patients across four distinct locations, capturing varying levels of heart disease severity. These datasets are part of a collection of databases, open to the public, and can be used by anyone looking to conduct empirical analysis. …

The Role Of Social Support In Protecting Against Perinatal Depression Among Egyptian Women, Radwa Raafat Abdelshafi

Theses and Dissertations

Perinatal Depression (PND) is a global public health issue affecting many women as they transition to motherhood, and carrying detrimental consequences for both mothers and infants. Research in low and middle-income countries shows higher PND prevalence rates than in high-income and Western countries. In addition, social support has been shown to strongly protect or reduce the impact of PND. This study aimed to address a gap in research on PND in Egypt, and to build an understanding of the social support ecological system of new mothers. A survey was conducted with 81 first-time middle-class mothers living in Greater Cairo between …

Digital Zines As Mental And Sexual Health Communication Tools For Latina Teens: Format And Content Acceptability And Initial Findings, Jenn M. Lilly, D'Andrah Almanzar, Susan R. Pace, Dante D. Bryant

Social Service Faculty Publications

Recognizing the potential of digital zines (defined as selfpublished,

online publications combining artwork and

text) as culturally tailored health communication tools,

this article examines the acceptability and impacts of two

digital zines about mental and sexual health created by

Latina young people for Latina teens as a health communication

strategy. We conducted an anonymous online

survey completed by Latina teens who read the zines (32

for sexual health and 33 for mental health). Data analysis

aimed to explore, summarize, and interpret the collected

data using an artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced

approach. Survey participants found the zine format and

content acceptable and …

Essential Caretaking For Artists With Disabilities: Exploring The Overlooked Histories Of Hazel Knapp And Grandma Moses, Bryan P. Martin

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the intersection of disability studies and art history, addressing the underrepresentation of disability in scholarship, especially concerning medical sociology and caretaking. Focusing on two early-twentieth-century self-taught American artists, Hazel Knapp (1908–95), who fell into obscurity, and Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961), best known as Grandma Moses, this is a comparative analysis of how disability influenced their artistic practices and shaped their divergent career outcomes. Knapp was born with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a neurodegenerative disorder, and fell into obscurity due to a lack of support for her condition, but experienced a promising start to her career that included patronage …

My Body My Choice: A Qualitative Study Of Volitional Female Sterilization In The U. S. Latina And Hispanic Female Population, Heather Morris Tuip

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This qualitative study, utilizing an interpretative phenomenological analysis methodology, elucidates the experience of Latina and Hispanic women living in the United States who have volitionally undergone sterilization or have sought the procedure out for birth control. Understanding the rich, contextual, lived experience of Latina and Hispanic women through an intersectional framework highlights how cultural influences and contemporary policies on reproductive rights informed their personal choice to undergo a female sterilization procedure. The participants of this study shared how they made meaning of their experiences. Within a homogenous sampling of study participants who share ethnicities and genders, six group experiential themes …

Black Birth Work As Radical Praxis: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Inquiry Of Leadership Among Black Birth Workers, Lesa C. Clark

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This hermeneutic phenomenological study explores the leadership experiences of Black birth workers (BBWs), revealing critical insights into leadership dynamics within maternal healthcare. Through a theoretical framework integrating African feminism, Black feminism, and anti-racist feminism, the research examines how BBWs conceptualize and enact leadership through embodied, relational, and liberatory approaches. This study addresses a significant gap in leadership literature, particularly regarding generational knowledge and practices of BBWs, which remain understudied despite their vital role in Black maternal healthcare. This study reveals distinct leadership perspectives and methodologies through in-depth interviews with eight BBWs and a detailed interpretive analysis. The findings contribute to …

"Does Anyone Believe Me"?: The Traumatization Of Domestic Violence Survivors In The Criminal Justice System, Olivia Depalma

Master of Arts in Human Services

Survivors of domestic violence are often subject to chronic trauma as well as a heightened risk of injuries and mental health problems and disorders. The intention of the author is to focus on how trauma impacts a survivor’s ability to maneuver and interact with the criminal justice system (CJS). Prior studies have shown how survivor’s behaviors, usually the result of trauma, can lead to misconceived notions and beliefs in court officials and those involved in the CJS. Survivors will often face judgment, doubt, and criticism in the CJS, and this can impact their willingness to come forward, report the abuse, …

Hans Holbein's Portrait Of Henry Viii: England's Own Personal Jesus, Amy Pitsor

Best Integrated Writing

Pitsor explores the possibility that Holbein’s late-stage change in the composition of the portrait from a three-quarter view of Henry to a frontal view held a motive to present Henry as the head of the newly established Church of England and as equal to the pope, and possibly to Christ himself.

La Falta De Los Supermercados En El Oeste De Dayton: Cómo Obtienen Los Estudiantes Comida Fresca En Los Desiertos Alimentarios (Un Ensayo Expositivo-Argumentativo, Catherine Iacobacci

Best Integrated Writing

After having learned about how poverty can affect children’s educational outcomes in one of her classes, Iacobacci wanted to learn more about how the issue affected the area where she lived and went to school. What she found out was incredibly shocking, and only furthered the idea that students are struggling with opportunity gaps, not achievement ones. Unfortunately, due to discriminatory loan practices from long ago, children from the 21st century are suffering physically, emotionally, and academically.

The Journey Within: My Travel Journel, Devonique Jones

Best Integrated Writing

This project is a multigenre research exploration that delves into Jones's personal journey of self discovery and growth during her first solo trip.

Investigation Of Ndv In Southern African Waterfowl Reveal Insightful Geographic And Biodiversity Trends To Help Contain The Virus, Lauren Goodwill

Best Integrated Writing

This study assesses the infection rates and trends of Newcastle disease in southern African waterfowl, a project carried out by Emily Murphy in Dr. Jeffrey Peters’ laboratory

Analysis Of The Integration Of Race And Cultural Concordant Doulas Into The Birth Experience Of African American Women, Cherissa Garcia

Best Integrated Writing

Garcia's study looks at how integrating race and cultural-concordant doulas into the birth experience of African American women would impact outcomes. She found similar studies that provided strong evidence to support doula integration. However, most did not select study populations that appropriately reflected the African American women at increased risk of poor outcomes. As a result, Garcia designed a study that looked at race and cultural concordance between doulas and patients from a wide range of SES backgrounds and varying degrees of pregnancy risk.

The Foreigner In Our Midst: Jewish Rights Debates In Revolutionary France, William Evans

Best Integrated Writing

The debates surrounding Jewish rights during the French Revolution concerned many of the same subjects that divide the Western world today. The fear of the other, immigration as a political tool, and the disagreements over assimilation are all subjects which feature prominently today. In this essay Evans sets out to explore these debates while fairly assessing the historical informants.

Junebug In January: A Novel Excerpt, Hannah Carson

Best Integrated Writing

This section of Junebug in January is the beginning of a much longer story that follows eighteen-year-old June and her small family as she attempts to survive the harsh reality of living in the era of the Great Depression and her attempts to survive her Papa’s tasks for her. This story challenges the boundaries of family loyalty, investigates the concept of “saving yourself,” and explores the limits of redemption.

Best Integrated Writing Fall 2024 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan, Tracy Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University.

I’Ll Just Weight On The Lord: The Lived Experience Of Obesity, Spirituality, And Health Behaviors In African American Women, Andrea S. Poynter, Florence M. Weierbach

International Journal of Faith Community Nursing

Obesity is one of the fastest growing health concerns impacting all racial, ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic groups in the United States of America. Obesity has gained nationwide attention due to its health-related disorders such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and various cancer types that increase the annual medical cost on a financially stressed health system (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2022). Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in all races and genders within the US with African American women comprising a majority of those impacted by this chronic health condition (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Offices of …

An Examination Of Food And Alcohol Disturbance Based On Sexual Orientation In A Sample Of Women Who Binge Eat, Alicia M. Moulder

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Food and alcohol disturbance (FAD), characterized by disordered eating behaviors in the context of drinking alcohol to enhance intoxication, counteract alcohol’s calories, or both, is associated with increased risk of negative drinking consequences. Previously established as a phenomenon occurring in college students, research has begun to support that FAD may also occur in nonstudents. Three particularly vulnerable groups for FAD may include women, individuals with history of binge eating, as well as sexual minority individuals. Consequently, the goals of the current study were to elucidate differences in FAD engagement between sexual minority women (SMW) and heterosexual women using a sample …

Reviving Hysteria: The Nineteenth Century At The End Of The Twentieth, Christina Quintana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores popular and medical representations of female madness in two time periods: the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. I argue that 1990s American culture produced an abundance of texts, images, and narratives that revitalized the iconography and medical discourses of late nineteenth-century hysteria. Analyzing popular texts, films, and cultural touchstones of the 1990s, I explore how Victorian ideas about women’s minds—such as the inherent feebleness of the female brain and nervous system; the fatalistic, life-altering effects of female puberty; the association between hysteria and deviant female sexuality; and the implicit racialization of hysteria and female madness more …

Rural Cervical Cancer Survivors’ Experiences Of Gender Roles: An Application Of Social Constructionism, Olivia K. Pointer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rural cervical cancer survivors, or individuals with a form of cancer that originated in the cervix of the reproductive system, may be uniquely impacted by socially constructed gender roles. The present study utilized the term “females” to describe those who self-identify as having a cervix, which may include cisgender, transgender, intersex, and non-binary gender identities. Rural females have been indicated to hold salience in traditional gender expectations as partners, mothers, community members, and more, which may add survivorship complexity for cervical cancer survivors within this population by to attempting to fulfill gender roles to the pre-cancer level. Moreover, rural cervical …

The Women Of The Oregon State Insane Asylum: 1900-1910, Rebekah Catherine Averette

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the lives of female patients at the Oregon State Insane Asylum between 1900 and 1910 and examines the significance of that decade as a period of transition in asylum care from a moral treatment model to a focus on moral hygiene practices to subvert insanity before it took root and medicalized psychiatric treatment for severe or chronic cases requiring institutionalization.

At the turn of the twentieth century, state insane asylums were in the aspirational early stages of transforming into specialized psychiatric and medical hospitals. Ultimately, the hoped-for transformation would not materialize in a meaningful way until well …

Casar Auc Community Only Lecture: Men, Women’S Body Autonomy & Gbv Crimes In Egypt, Us & Canada: Why Men Need To Step Up For The Education Of Women's Body Autonomy, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar

Performances, Events, and Presentations

This was a hybrid CASAR AUC community only lecture titled: ‘Men, Women’s Body Autonomy & GBV crimes in Egypt, US & Canada’: Why men need to step up for the education of women’s body autonomy.

This lecture featured Tadwein from Egypt, Women’s Advocates from the US & London Abused Women's Counseling Center from Canada (via Zoom). This lecture was part of course AMST 1091 ‘Exploring Feminist Perspectives in Egypt & the US’ (core curriculum pathways two- American studies) taught by Yasmeen El-Ghazaly, CASAR Assistant to Director & Adjunct Faculty - Wednesday May 15th, 2024

The lecture pondered on the following …

Youth Interest In Reusable Menstrual Hygiene Products: An Opportunity For Improving Menstruation Management, Makenna R. Eccles

College Honors Program

Adolescents experience inconsistent menstrual hygiene material access that is exacerbated by poverty and results in menstruation management difficulty, health risks, and interruptions to school attendance. The study centered the adolescent menstruation management experience through qualitative interviews to identify management difficulties and to assess knowledge, interest, and perceived feasibility of implementing reusable menstrual hygiene materials such as reusable sanitary pads, period underwear, menstrual cups, and menstrual disks to improve both menstrual hygiene access and menstrual management experiences. Inductive and deductive coding was used to analyze interview data and identify key themes. Adolescents expressed interest in reusable menstrual hygiene materials due to …

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Breaking The Rule Of Silence: Childbirth And Gendered Power In Efuru And The Joys Of Motherhood, Sunday Elliott Uguru

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines the thematic preoccupation of childbirth in the formative period of feminist discourse in African literature through a critical study of selected novels of Igbo women of southeastern Nigeria. The novels studied represent the earliest published African texts in English by women. The period under focus falls within the emerging stage of Nigerian literary tradition in its written form with a dominant presence of men. This study investigates the women novelists' perspective toward the failure of male authored works to represent women's childbirth experience. Through a critical reading of Flora Nwapa's Efuru and Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of …

The Sexual Trauma Of The Female Body: Violence Against Women In Contemporary Spanish And Latin American Cultures, Lara Armenteros Garrido

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation focuses on the idea that women’s bodies have a sexual stigma attached to them as a consequence of different forms of heteropatriarcal violence inflicted on them. From violence in public spaces, such as street harassment or the sexual exploitation of women, to the intimacy of the relationship, like intimate partner violence or the orgasm gap, it becomes increasingly difficult for women to escape violence. Through the analysis of films, documentaries, narratives, and the testimonies of women from Spain and Latin America, I argue there is still a lack of adequate sexual and emotional knowledge to help complete agency …

“Pro-Woman, Pro-Life”: Framing Of The Anti-Abortion Movement, Olivia Rivet

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This project on the “Pro-Woman, Pro-Life" framing of the Anti-Abortion Movement uses James Paul Gee's theoretical lens on discourse analysis. My research corpus is comprised of historical, legislative, news, editorial, and film data. This project focuses on when the term "Pro-Woman" first appeared in the anti-abortion discourse and how it has been used to reinforce the Pro-Life stance. I argue that the phrase -- "Pro-Woman" -- is a discoursal strategy to appeal to women who are ideologically aligned with the Pro-Choice movement. According to the Pro-Woman, Pro-Life framework, no "feminist" would want to support a practice, such as abortion, that …

Reproductive Justice In Mississippi: A Call For Reform And Acknowledgement, Andie Udziela

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I apply the values of the Reproductive Justice Movement to reproductive healthcare resources in Mississippi to advocate for reproductive policy reform. I begin by navigating the historic racial discrimination in gynecology and how it manifested in Mississippi. Dr Sim’s abusive experimentation on Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy depict how Anti-Black racism took root in gynecology and obstetrics and was later expanded on by the eugenic goals of white supremacy and the feminist movement through Margaret Sanger and the Mississippi Appendectomy. Then I discuss the current availability of reproductive care in Mississippi to low-income individuals to emphasize socioeconomic and …

Los Determinantes Sociales Y El Acceso A La Salud De Las Mujeres Migrantes: Desde La Perspectiva De Las Usuarias Y Los Trabajadores De Salud, Vanessa Gutiérrez

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

For the past few years, Chile has developed laws and programs, such as the Program for Access to Healthcare for Immigrants, Decree N° 67, and recently Law N° 21.235, to improve the access that migrants have, however, there has been a failure to comply with these regulations. In this qualitative and descriptive investigation, the main objective is to find out how accessible, adequate, and effective the health resources offered by clinics are for migrant women. In order to carry out the investigation, eight semi-structured interviews were held with five primary healthcare workers who frequently work with the migrant population and …

El Derecho A La Interrupción Voluntaria Del Embarazo A Inicios Del Gobierno De Javier Milei (Argentina, 2024) / The Right To The Voluntary Interruption Of Pregnancy At The Beginning Of The Government Of Javier Milei (Argentina, 2024), Willa Rudel

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

El objetivo de esta investigación fue entender las realidades del activismo en relación con el derecho al aborto en Argentina en el período después de la aprobación de la ley 27.610 del derecho a la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo, particularmente en 2020 y durante el gobierno actual de Javier Milei. Para responder la pregunta que articula la presente investigación, realicé seis entrevistas con activistas procedentes de una variedad de formaciones y con distintos tipos de participación en el movimiento. Primero describo la historia del activismo a favor del aborto en Argentina hasta la aprobación de la ley y el estado …

Conceptualizando La Movilidad Y Movimiento De Mujeres Indígenas Embarazadas En Búsqueda De Servicios Médicos Bajo Una Perspectiva Migratoria, Nazareth Castro

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

El traslado de mujeres indígenas embarazadas en Oaxaca hacia la ciudad de Oaxaca de Juárez debido a la falta de centros de salud en sus localidades se ha convertido en una realidad arraigada, impulsada en gran medida por el impacto del flujo migratorio por razones económicas durante finales del siglo XX. Sin embargo, este proceso de migración plantea una serie de complejidades para las mujeres, quienes enfrentan experiencias negativas debido a sus múltiples identidades que resultan en una exclusión social tanto dentro como fuera de sus comunidades de origen. Esta dinámica puede entenderse desde una perspectiva feminista multicéntrado, que las …