Women's Studies Commons^™

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 …

Dante’S Volgare And The Pastoral Presence: An Analysis Of The Concept Of Language In The Divina Commedia, Paola M. Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dante’s conception of the Italian vernacular, the “volgare illustre”, is a central concern of his work and one which catalyses and nurtures, both overtly and covertly, his creation of the Commedia. Although Dante positions himself in his writings as the continual defender and most prolific poet of the vernacular, isolating a specific linguistic use and structure, a coherent definition of what vernacular Dante privileges or what appropriate usage he adheres to, is a difficult and often confusing task. The existence of two eclogues, the only works by Dante to have been written after the majority of the Commedia had been …

Maternal Subjectivities In The 18th And 19th Century British Novel, Anastasia Vahaviolos Valassis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How is the maternal subjectivity narrated in the pages of the 18th and 19th century British novel? This dissertation examines this question. The novel’s close connection to the child’s subjectivity and perspective is something woven into its very fabric, and so the mother is often a side character, an object in the story. She is an obstacle to be overcome, a distant idea, an absent figure, or even someone too perfect to be represented on the page. The novel often reflects or mirrors this culturally and psychologically accepted way of viewing the mother. The tracing of the narratives in which …

A Journey To A Black Woman’S (Read Black Girl’S) Joy And Her Story Of Coming Home, Brittany Lauren Brock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an auto/ethnography about the self-actualizing journey of reclaiming storytelling as my native tongue and my journey to joy. Throughout, using my story and the stories of so many others, I not only lay out the wounds (the pain, the loss, then the hope that comes) within the academy and outside in the world but I also use storytelling as a tool of healing—my tool of healing—to show how I wrote myself free.

When Black women (read Black girls) go through The Reckoning (the moment we realize something isn’t right with how we are perceived by others) …

Queer Impersonality: Compulsory Visibility And The Politics Of Form In Modernist Women's Life Writing, Margot Kotler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Modernist impersonality is an aesthetic practice typically associated with Anglo-European formalism and the doctrine of artistic autonomy. Although central to the modernist canon, impersonality has not been taken up by queer and feminist studies because critics have considered its implied evacuation of emotion and personal identity to be apolitical, and even dangerous. At its worst, impersonality reproduces an unmarked, white, and masculine subjectivity, yet it also questions the parameters of selfhood, posing a radical challenge to liberal-humanist conceptions of identity. Queer Impersonality moves beyond this critical impasse by tracing impersonality’s queer and feminist histories among modernist women writers whose engagement …

Uses Of The Intuition: The Role Of Intuition In Birth Work (Towards An Intuitive Epistemology), Kayla R. Reece

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Intuitive knowledge ought to be esteemed, practiced, and integrated alongside traditional forms of knowledge. The coloniality of knowledge has structured our society’s ways of thinking to suppress knowledges which reside in non-hegemonic formations and sources, such as our bodies and intuitions. This paper assesses the uses of the intuition as potential sites of an intuitive epistemology through the author’s experience as an intuitive tarot card reader and through the experiences of six BIPOC birth workers living and working in the United States. I conceptualize the intuition as embodied, relational, and predictive, which offers a framework that privileges information one can …

Antisocial Femininity: Writing The Relational In Isolation, Chelsea K. Largent

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates a trope and positionality I call antisocial femininity as a way to see how it may be a useful positionality and not antisocial at all. The point of departure for my project is located in 19^th century French decadence and responds to two complementary aspects of decadent subjectivity against which antisocial femininity is defined: the need to withdrawal from the natural world and a retreat into intellectual abstraction. These definitions demand an explicit withdrawal from society and extol a self-imposed isolation that allows the subject to recreate oneself uniquely outside of the structures of modernity. This …

Looking For A Better Chair: The L Word And Learning How To Sit, Beans Fernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the 20 years since the initial airing of Showtime’s The L Word, the series has garnered a massive following among the sapphic and queer community and has cemented itself as a staple of queer media canon. Beyond the basic queer plotlines, though, The L Word captures lesbian and queer identity, politics, and livelihoods while using a seemingly superficial medium to portray queer bodies in a way that brings it to mainstream and cisheteronormative culture. Further, queer media like The L Word is able to guide members of the LGBTQ community into a queer consciousness and existence.

Grieving: A Record Of My Becoming, Neyshka Diaz Maldonado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This memoir travels into my experience growing up in Puerto Rico throughout moments of joy, sorrow, triumph, and growth. Through memorable recollections and introspective thoughts, the memoir navigates memory, offering insights into my relationships, aspirations, and struggles. Each chapter unfolds and captures the essence of my life up until this moment.

I explore my ability to overcome challenges with resilience and grace, discovering strength in vulnerability and wisdom in the face of adversity. Through moments of self-discovery and profound transformation, they unearth the threads of my resilience, embracing both the light and shadow that define my life experience.

This memoir …

Eng 155: Introduction To Literary Studies, Joseph Donica

Open Educational Resources

An OER syllabus covering the ways humans have read and continue to read literature from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives. An emphasis is placed on the application of critical thought to writing expository essays and responding to readings.

The Golden Age Of Mexican Cinema, Daniel Galindo

Publications and Research

This presentation is about the film called María Candelaria (1943), a film of the cinema of the golden age of Mexico that shows the lifestyle of the people of that time, more than anything it shows how women were reviled in the macho society. The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema is a period of brilliance in the history of Mexican cinema, which began in 1936-1956.

“Liberté, Égalité, Sororité”: The Revolutionary All-Female Studio Of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Julia Oxman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers the first in-depth exploration of French portraitist Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s all-female studio. It argues that her efforts toward expanding access to women’s arts education played a key role in the foundation of a larger movement for gender equality in the wake of the French Revolution.

Container Film, Dena Kopolovich

Theses and Dissertations

Container Film is an experimental nonfiction short film that explores the theme of carrying. Drawing inspiration from a blend of anthropological, religious, and artistic sources, the film is guided by an unknown narrator who contemplates the origins of humanity. Unlike conventional storytelling, the narrator’s uncertainty and inner dialogue punctuate the narrative, challenging a traditional linear structure. Jumping between diverse thoughts, she resists depicting human history with a singular hero or linear trajectory. Visually, the film unfolds through vivid tableaux vivants, dance sequences, and curious object arrangements, illustrating the subtle relationship between human cognition and materiality. Through its nuanced, tactile approach, …

Rgb Root Matriz Color Dance, Danielle E. Gauthier

Theses and Dissertations

RGB Root Matriz Color Dance (Color Dance) is an immersive, interactive experience that combines poetic phrases and color filters to create a womb-like environment. Designed by Danielle Gauthier, this artistic piece uses a webcam to respond to users’ movements in real time, allowing them to confront and express their emotions through metaphor and dance. Color Dance creates a unique platform for self-discovery and empowerment by fostering a connection between the body and discomforting emotions.

Mixed Feelings: The Emotional Appeals Of Zitkala-Ša’S American Indian Stories, Kayla Joan Baur

Publications and Research

Zitkala-Ša (Lakota: Zitkála-Šá, meaning Red Bird) was among the first to write about the experiences of Native American children in the U.S. Indian boarding school program to an English-speaking audience. As a writer and political activist, Zitkala-Ša uses emotional appeals and cultural ideas she learned through her white education to expose the very boarding school institutions that taught her. In American Indian Studies (1921), Zitkala-Ša critiques the violence that the Indian boarding school system inflicts on young Native Americans. She presents these critiques through emotional appeals that take two forms: one, a more traditional sentimental appeal associated with middle-class white …

‘The Power Of Three Will Set Us Free': Witchy Womanist Readings Of Toni Morrison’S Sula, Opal Palmer Adisa’S It Begins With Tears, And Migdalia Cruz’S The Have-Little And Miriam’S Flowers, Anamaría Flores

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Witchy womanism is a critical methodology for reading, teaching, and writing about literature in order to generate emancipatory knowledge, activate Queer, Black, and Indigenous consciousnesses, contribute to 21^st century women’s, Black, and Indigenous liberation movements, and foster (re)connections to ancestral rituals and knowledge. Born at the intersections of Black Studies, BIPOC Queer and Gender Studies, Caribbean Studies, English, Hip-Hop Studies and Latinx Studies, “‘The Power of Three Will Set Us Free’: Witchy Womanist Readings of Toni Morrison's Sula, Opal Palmer Adisa's It Begins With Tears, and Migdalia Cruz's The Have-Little and Miriam's Flowers" is a multidisciplinary …

Racial-Sexual Normativity In/As Narratives Of “The Human”, Jeri Brand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis synthesizes Sylvia Wynter’s and Judith Butler’s models of identity-formation to analyze discourses of racialization and sex/gender difference in normative scientific theories of “the human.” I argue that eugenicist white supremacism and sex/gender normativity form a single conceptual framework – what I call “the racial-sexual matrix” – throughout these scientific narratives. I then trace an epistemological consistency across 18^th- through 21^st-century scientific literature as evidence for the ongoing legacies of coloniality, white supremacy, and eugenics in current hegemonic sex/gender ontologies. Finally, I contend that the racial-sexual matrix functions as an index of proper humanness not …

"My First Best Love": Women's Writing On College Friendships 1880–1905, Alyssa J. Kayser-Hirsh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, American society encouraged strong bonds between women. As separate sphere ideology took hold, highly-structured female relationships were created and maintained through shared rituals, language, and expectations. The resulting friendships enabled women to build a range of emotional ties with one another. At the same time, an expanding array of gender segregated educational institutions further promoted homosocial networks. Women’s college students built community through their shared experience inhabiting a collective space, forging social circles as well as one-on-one intimate relationships. This thesis examines women’s experiences of friendship within the college setting between 1880 …

No Ela Without Ella: Understanding The Naming And Crafting Of Gendered Subjectivities In Puerto Rico, Carmín Quijano Seda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the beginning of the 20th century, the official metadiscourses about gendered job titles sedimented the idea that names or indexes pointing to women should be interpreted as unskilled, cheap, or even free labor in Puerto Rico (Azize, 1985; Muñiz Mas, 1998; Baerga-Santini, 1999). For this reason, Puerto Rican women organized and fought for equality in work settings. Furthermore, they became more active in politics and the government. Nevertheless, the Estado Libre Asociado (ELA) and local media discourses and interpretations about women’s labor discouraged them from participating in more senior positions (Acevedo Gaud, 2012).

However, this interpretation seemed to have …

The Romanticism Of The Patriarchy Versus Poems By Emily Dickinson, Anamelissa Carrion

Dissertations and Theses

Using poems by Emily Dickinson I will disect the closeting of the poet herself, meaning the hidden identity of the author from within her own work. The poems used here reference a writer hiding in plain sight, comparison to womens equality and how women have over centuries hidden their true identities in order to fit into the mandated social role of "feminine" as defined by men. The cyclical progression of womens rights movements.

This paper discusses how women will change their character and fundamental self development creating "closeted selves" or hidden selves they share to the world while hiding their …

Survivor-Shaped Specters And Gaps, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

...survivors are disappearing from academia. Our schools, our syllabi, our classrooms, our bibliographies, our campuses, our research labs, our thesis committees, our libraries, our conference panels, our departments, our programs, and our monographs are riddled through and through with survivor-shaped gaps. Each gap is a place in academia where someone has gone missing due to bullying, harassment, retaliation, predation, sexual assault, mobbing, and/or other abuses of power. Some of these gaps are shaped like allies who have left academia due to moral injury. Not every gap, moreover, is shaped like a survivor. Not every victim survives.

Romancing The University: Bipoc Scholars In Romance Novels In The 1980s And Now, Jayashree Kamble

Publications and Research

English-language mass-market romance novels written by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) writers and starring BIPOC protagonists are a small but important group. This article is a comparative analysis of how recent representations of diversity in this sub-set of the genre, specifically the character of the Black academic and the language of racial justice, compare with the first group of BIPOC novels that were published in 1984 (Sandra Kitt’s Adam and Eva and All Good Things as well as Barbara Stephens’s A Toast to Love). In Adrianna Herrera’s American Love Story (2019), Katrina Jackson’s Office Hours (2020), and …

Ambivalent Scales: Methods For Reading Scenes Of Sexual Violation, Natalie Ruby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The importance of unveiling rape in the #MeToo era has unintentionally obscured encounters that lack the clarity of “yes” or “no.” However, desire can be ambiguous even in unambiguous cases of assault. Feminist activists and scholars have started to address ambiguity by arguing for a new epistemology of rape, what Linda Alcoff calls “grey rape.” In this thesis, I interrogate the “grey” embedded in ordinary sexual encounters by looking at ambivalence as an example of everyday desire evident across the seduction plot and the novel tradition. Rather than seeking to make consent more inclusive to oppressed groups, I read between …

Politics Of Refusal: Justice And Liberation For Black Trans Lives, Quincy Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the challenges faced by Black trans people. In this thesis, I will explore how protest is used to highlight and confront the obstacles faced by the Black trans community. I will also examine the cultural work of Black trans people and what they teach us. The Brooklyn Liberation march and the TV show Pose is an important part of Black trans legacy. They both look at the complications surrounding Black trans lives and contributes to Black trans representation in protesting and fighting marginalization. This thesis will argue the importance of allyship to create safe space for Black …

Confronting The Doppelganger: Mapping The Ontological Terrain Of An Afro-Caribbean Woman As She Rebrands Diasporic, Feminine Identity Politics: An Autoethnography, Aysha E. Todd-Stone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis seeks to interrogate the intricacies governing the intra-racial\ intra-gendered relationship of an Afro-Trinidadian woman as she commandeers professional spaces in North America. The intent is to challenge the instrument of Black sisterhood deeming it as an incomplete, social instrument, and to prove using an auto-ethnographic approach how Diasporic, feminine trauma leads to psychically induced, episodic violence that is highly suggestive but subtle to the naked eye which in turn irretrievably damages intra-interpersonal relations. Quantitative studies have produced a composite from the white\black perspective (Goosby et al., 2015, Sims et al., 2012) and others dealing with gender (Braithwaite., 1981, …

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-One. Twenty-One. Twenty-Three. Twenty-Four. Twenty-Five. Twenty-Six., Liza Lacroix

Theses and Dissertations

"One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-one. Twenty-three.Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six." is a biographical fiction of violence toward the protagonist. Comprised of writing, audio, documentation and intervention. This text is the first iteration, and the thesis work is the second iteration of the same.

The Avenging Women: Grendel’S Mother, Signy, And Kriemhild, Kayla J. Baur

Publications and Research

The three respective texts, the Old English poem Beowulf, the Old Norse The Saga of the Volsungs, and the Middle High German text Nibelungenlied, feature female characters who fulfill the avenging woman archetype. In each of the three works, the female character uses unfeminine strength or cunning to exact vengeance for being wronged. In Beowulf, the avenging woman takes the form of Grendel’s mother, whose descriptions of monstrosity are owed to her acts of bloodshed to avenge the death of her son. In The Saga of the Volsungs, the vengeful plot enacted by Signy reveals her unusual display of cunning …

Muscling Through: Athletic Women In Victorian Popular Representation, 1864–1915, Julia G. Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Muscling Through” reconstructs an overlooked history of strong female bodies in the nineteenth century. It argues that popular representations of athletic women introduced a new category of identity that was distinct from women’s traditional relational and social roles. The project’s central figure is the hyper-able “Sportswoman,” who bridges the gap between two familiar versions of the Victorian woman’s body: the mid-century ideal of docile, domesticated femininity and the sturdy, capable women who enter universities, professions, and public spaces en masse just before the turn of the century. Representationally, the Sportswoman figures a range of attitudes, from anxious to aspirational, toward …

“Girl Power, Selfies, And Sexiness”: An Investigation Into The Neoliberal And Postfeminist Era Of Influencer Marketing, Amalie A. Werenskiold

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In today’s social media-centered popular culture, fashion, and lifestyle influencers maintain rigid and sexist forms of femininity which are spread to a large consumer base through influencer marketing. Research on postmodern feminism has revealed that the standardized modern woman is supplied with freedom, fun, and sexiness, allowing women to live their lives as they best see fit. Yet not all women are able to experience similar feelings of liberation and gender inequality is still a regular feature of society. This study observes Instagram images, captions, and comment sections of 61 distinct female influencers from the Instagram explore page. The evidence …

The Queer Life Of Lorena Hickok, Samantha D. Leyerle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life of Lorena Hickok, a remarkable woman whose story has been glossed over throughout history. Hickok was an accomplished journalist and writer, and her life offers a fascinating glimpse into being queer in the early twentieth century. While much has been written about Hickok’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, this thesis aims to go beyond their connection to examine Hickok’s entire life and experiences in greater detail. Through analyzing her work as a writer, as well as her personal correspondence and unpublished autobiography, this thesis illuminates the quiet details of defining moments in history, including the Great …