Women's Studies Commons^™

The Use Of Rhetoric In Anti-Suffrage And Anti-Feminist Publications, Artour Aslanian

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

After decades of struggling to gain the right to vote, women were finally granted that right with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 18, 1920. While it would seem that most, if not all, women would be in favor of gaining the right to vote, the women’s suffrage movement did not represent the wishes of all women within the United States. Scholarship in this area largely focuses on the historical developments of the suffrage movements, with the presence of female opponents of suffrage and anti-suffragist organizations receiving less attention.1 These anti-suffragists were vocal in their opposition to the …

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 …

Why Don't I Look Like Her? The Impact Of Social Media On Female Body Image, Kendyl M. Klein

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of this paper is to understand and criticize the role of social media in the development and/or encouragement of eating disorders, disordered eating, and body dissatisfaction in college-aged women. College women are exceptionally vulnerable to the impact that social media can have on their body image as they develop an outlook on their bodies and accept the developmental changes that occurred during puberty. This paper provides evidence that there is a relationship between the recent surge in disordered eating and high consumption of social media. I examine the ways in which traditional advertising has portrayed women throughout history, …

Explaining The “Explained”: An Examination Of The Gender-Based Education Gap In India And Its Impact On The Wage Gap, Kanupriya Rungta

CMC Senior Theses

Analysis of the National Sample Survey Data from 2011-2012 shows that a gender-based education gap exists. Women are more likely than men to be illiterate. Some parents continue to view household duties as more important than education in the case of girls, causing some to drop out in primary and middle school, which leads to lower experience accumulation. However, females are almost equally as likely as males to be enrolled in school, and an equal proportion of males and females earn higher education degrees. More importantly, the difference in resource allocation seems to be minimal. Although education has a strong, …

Women And Video Games: Pigeonholing The Past, Allison Perry

Scripps Senior Theses

Academic work dealing with the overlap between video games and female representation is limited in both volume and proper research. Most texts agree on three supposed flaws with video games: they alienate female participants, there are no games for female players, and female players cannot relate to female characters. This thesis sheds light on these points, not only citing specific counter-examples, but also showing how many of these issues reflect on a larger societal problems.

(R)Evolution Grrrl Style Now: Disidentification And Evolution Within Riot Grrrl Feminism, Lilly Estenson

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines the evolution of feminist praxis within the riot grrrl movement, focusing on two specific riot grrrl demographics - founding riot grrrls in the early 1990s and currently active riot grrrls in southern California. This thesis argues that riot grrrl activism is still thriving but in diverse, strategically modified ways. Using José Muñoz’s concept of “disidentification,” it analyzes how contemporary riot grrrls have appropriated and adapted the original movement’s tenets to allow for greater accessibility and diversity.

Fetuses Are People, Too?: How Images Of Sonograms In Popular Culture Affect Our Conception Of Fetal Personhood, Shayna L. Orent

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the way popular culture imitates and reinforces a sentimentalized reading of sonogram images that has been established by the conservative Right as the proper way to view this image. It analyzes several popular culture texts to expose the way their use of sonogram images personifies the fetus. It aims to problematize the way this image has become a symbol of fetal personhood and initiate a discussion about our roles as consumers of popular culture and images. Finally, it connects the use of this image to recent legislation surrounding mandatory ultrasounds and personhood initiatives, and argues that the …

La Valorisation De La Maternité En France Contemporaine Et Ses Conséquences, Margaret P. Matlock

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the effects of pronatalist policies and social pressure to have children on the role of women in society. Written in French.

Die Frauen, Der Strafvollzug, Und Der Staat: Incarceration And Ideology In Post-Wwii Germany, Andrea Moody Kozak

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how the material reality of Germany's women's prisons has been largely determined by their ideological foundations, and by the historical developments that have produced these ideologies. The German women's prison system is complex and imperfect, yet in many ways very progressive. It is the result of the last sixty years of tumultuous German history, and has been uniquely shaped by the capitalist and communist histories of the once-divided state. In its current state, it seems to have incorporated elements of a supposedly “rational” or individualistic conception of humanity as well as one that is relational and interdependent, …

Gender Analysis Of Politics, Economics And Culture Of Korean Reunification: Toward A Feminist Theological Foundation For Reunified Society, Jin Sung Cholee

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In this study, I have focused on the process for an eventual reunification of North and South Korea. In this process, Korean political, economic, cultural and religious issues are necessarily present. My study focuses on cultural and religious factors. I adopt the German reunification as a case study. The German reunification process provides Koreans with lessons about the negative changes in the status of German women since the German reunification caused extreme instances of the loss of status and economic opportunity for women. German reunification shows that the unequal situation and systems in society were not only due to political …

Teaching Activist Intelligence: Feminism, The Educational Experience And The Applied Women's Studies Department At Cgu, Tara Chaffee Robinson

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The need to teach students how to be community activists becomes increasingly relevant as women's studies continues to evolve from its activist roots. Living in a culture that discourages activist work, many women's studies students feel passionately about activist issues, but with frustrating paralysis. For this reason, many of them pursue graduate degrees to equip themselves for an activist-oriented life, since they are not sure how to do this themselves. Without the presence of a concrete social movement, women's studies students need activist behavior and community modeled for them through the institution of the university. Teaching feminist activism to women's …

Bolshevik For Capitalism: Ayn Rand & Soviet Socialist Realism, Peter Jebsen

CMC Senior Theses

Since the late 1950s, Russian-American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand has been “the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right.” Her philosophy – “Objectivism” – combined militant atheism, libertarian natural rights, and a philosophical commitment to what she called “the virtue of selfishness,” and earned her the admiration of such luminaries as Alan Greenspan: a remarkable achievement for an immigrant woman who learned to speak English in her late 20s. What is less-often observed is that Rand’s work, especially her mature novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), bear a close stylistic resemblance to the Soviet Socialist Realist …

Bartleby The Original The Queer, Rebecca Epstein

Pomona Senior Theses

Insofar as human beings try to “know” we must define concepts, objects, actions. We label, we distinguish between one concept and another, and in doing this, we make categories. Labels are categories. Our categories are imperfect. Our labels are always relative, defined by and dependent on that which they exclude. The boundaries of our terms, what “counts” as something or what is considered to be within a certain term, are always shifting. Our definitions change based on our method of analysis. For instance, the definition of “human” is different in different disciplines, like science, philosophy, sociology, economics, etc. Given their …

Inequities Of Contemporary French Women, Olivia Kuhlman

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the current situation of women in contemporary France. It analyzes the current situation of French women in education, the work force, politics, and French society, with the intent of uncovering the gender inequalities French women encounter in contemporary France.

La Mujer Guerrillera En Recuerdo Y Texto: Nicaragua Y El Salvador, Berta Avila

Pitzer Senior Theses

La mujer guerrillera en Latinoamérica es un fenómeno del siglo veinte. Los conflictos armados de Centroamérica crearon condiciones donde la mujer se vio obligada a salir de su rol femenino tradicional para asistir en la lucha armada. Nicaragua y El Salvador son dos países donde los conflictos llegaron a un final, sea por medio de un derrocamiento exitoso del gobierno o por acuerdos de paz. Las mujeres que decidieron participar activamente en la lucha contra el gobierno llegaron a ese punto por vías diferentes y con diferentes metas, pero la experiencia de ser mujer en un ambiente tradicionalmente dominado por …

The Sanctified ‘Adultress’ And Her Circumstantial Clause: Bathsheba’S Bath And Self-Consecration In 2 Samuel 11, J. D'Ror Chankin-Gould, Derek Hutchinson, David H. Jackson, Tyler D. Mayfield, Leah Rediger Schulte, Tammi J. Schneider, E. Winkelman

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Bathsheba's actions in 2 Sam. 11.2-4 identify crucial aspects of her character. Past commentators interpret these words in connection with menstrual purification, stressing the certain paternity of David's adulterine child. This article demonstrates that the participles rōheset and mitqaddesšet and the noun mittum'ātāh do not denote menstrual cleansing. Bathsheba's washing is an innocent bath. She is the only individual human to self-sanctify, placing her in the company of the Israelite deity. The syntax of the verse necessitates that her action of self-sanctifying occurs simultaneously as David lies with her. The three focal terms highlight the important legitimacy of Bathsheba before …

Women And Technology: Reversing The Trends Of Attrition And Obtaining A Balance, Gondy Leroy, Kristin M. Tolle, Linda Perkins

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Many reports and technical news bulletins presented by organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) highlight that few female and minority college students are choosing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields of study or careers. For those who choose STEM fields, attrition both during education and in the workplace is pervasive. NSF reports in its 2006 Science Indicators that women account for only 27% of the bachelor’s degrees in computer sciences. And although the …

Sex, Drugs, And Mingling Spirits: Teaching Nineteenth-Century Women Poets, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Book abstract:

Twentieth-century modernism reduced the list of nineteenth-century American poets to Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and (less often) Edgar Allan Poe. The rest were virtually forgotten. This volume in the MLA series Options for Teaching marks a milestone in the resurgence of the study of the rest. It features poets, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Lydia Huntley Sigourney, who were famous in their day, as well as poets who were marginalized on the basis of their race (Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alexander Posey) or their sociopolitical agenda (Emma Lazarus, John Greenleaf Whittier). It also takes a fresh look at poets …

Book Review: Ed. Musa W. Dube, Other Ways Of Reading: African Women And The Bible, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

I take great delight in having the opportunity to review this collection ofthirteen essays having to do with contemporary African women and their engagements of the Bible. Ably edited and introduced by Musa W. Dube, Senior Lecturer in the New Testament in the Department ofTheology and Religious Studies at the University ofBotswana, the essays have been long awaited. They fill a tremendous need--among and beyond the women of Africa. They inform and challenge and inspire communities far beyond the circle ofthe discussants in the book. They make a dramatic statement about the powerful voices and sentiments and creative impulses of …

Book Review: Musa W. Dube, Ed., Other Ways Of Reading: African Women And The Bible, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

This is a book review.

Announcement: Association For Women In Mathematics Mentor Network

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Women In Mathematics By Claudia Henrion, Natasha Keith, Sandra Z. Keith

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Announcement: Women, Art And Geometry In Southern Africa, By Paulus Gerdes

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Thinking About The Preparation Of Teachers Of Elementary School Mathematics, Jane Wenstrom, Kathleen Martin, Susan King

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Reading Elizabeth Bishop As A Religious Poet, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Elizabeth Bishop is usually described as a modernist poet with a skeptical mind. This essay contests the critical tendency to dismiss religion as a serious concern in her poetry, by first challenging the widespread dismissal in the United States of all religious approaches to modern poetry and then challenging the tendency to disclaim attempts to read Elizabeth Bishop in religious terms. The essay includes a close reading of “The End of March” as a text which invites intertextual commentary from a Christian perspective.

Antimodern, Modern, And Postmodern Millay: Contexts Of Revaluation, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

In this chapter, Walker examines questions concerning renewed scholarly interest in Edna St. Vincent Millay toward the end of the twentieth century. Specifically, these questions center on whether to rethink the principles of establishing the canon of American literature--indeed, whether the poet changes literary fashions or literary fashions change the poet. Walker's answer is the latter, and her essay examines how Millay is different received through three different periods: antimodern, modern, and postmodern. She argues that whether a poet becomes central to literary study has less to do with the "quality" of the poetry than with complex cultural factors that …

The Female Body As Icon: Edna Millay Wears A Plaid Dress, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

The female body has never been so prominently displayed or so critically examined as it is today under the dominance of late capitalism. The results of this display, we can now see, have been mostly negative: women regard themselves at best self-consciously, at worst with disgust. Given this emphasis on self-scrutiny, it comes as no surprise that middle-aged women experience a reduction of self-confidence regarding their physical presences and a concomitant increase in self-dissatisfaction. It is also worth noting that a querulous tone often afflicts them as they grow older, suggesting that they are at odds not only with others …

Female Voices In Mathematics: A New Course, Shobha Gulati

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.

Teaching Dickinson As A Gen(I)Us: Emily Among The Women, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

In this article, Walker argues that those who teach the poetry of Emily Dickinson should not only compare her to other recognized and lauded American poets, such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore. This method offers no cultural context to provide ligature. It views high art as to be only about language and, on the score of tropological discourse, any two poets could be connected, even across vast expanses of time and distance. While it's useful for students to see how elements of her work connect her not only …

Epistemological Pluralism: Styles And Voices Within The Computer Culture, Sherry Turkle, Seymour Papert

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal

No abstract provided.