Women's Studies Commons^™

The Battle Is Not Ours!: The Impact Of Racial Battle Fatigue On The Career Trajectory Of Black Women Administrators At Predominantly White Institutions, Tonishea M. Jackson

Dissertations

This qualitative narrative inquiry examines the impact of Racial Battle Fatigue (RBF) on the career progression of Black women administrators at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs). While RBF has been studied extensively among students and faculty, there has been little research exploring its influence on Black women leaders who navigate both racial and gendered power structures in organizations where they are often underrepresented and unsupported. Grounded in the theoretical framework of Intersectionality, this study explores one primary research question: What is the relationship between RBF and the career paths of Black women administrators at PWIs, including the stages in their careers …

Cultural Shadows: Vampires And The Shifting Fears Of The West, A Creative Exploration Of Vampire Media And Its Reflection Of Evolving Social Anxieties, Tasha Sayre

University Honors Theses

Cultural Shadows: Vampires and the Shifting Fears of the West is a creative-critical thesis that explores vampire media as a reflection of evolving social anxieties in Western culture. Focusing primarily on film and television, with reference to key literary texts, this study examines how the vampire figure is used to articulate and dramatize recurring societal fears—particularly those surrounding women's sexuality and autonomy, queer identity, and class-based inequality. Through close readings of influential vampire narratives, the thesis demonstrates how these stories mirror cultural tensions and moral panics, transforming the vampire into a symbol of both fear and fascination. Drawing on gender …

Re/Inventing Desire: Asexuality As A Tool For Utopian Intimacies, Amaranta Martinez Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Asexuality became widely known in 2001 when David Jay, launched the Asexuality, Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), however, it’s been just throughout the last decade that it has gained popularity among LGBTQ studies. This thesis explores asexuality beyond its conventional framing as a sexual orientation, positioning it instead as a theoretical framework with the potential to challenge hegemonic understandings of sexuality. It does so by tracing the historical construction of sexual desire through the discipline of sexology, demonstrating how its discourses helped reinforce compulsory sexuality—the expectation that individuals must experience and act upon sexual desire (Emens 2014). Building upon this …

The "Self" In Crisis: A Study Of Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals, Golnaz Salehkarimi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, I focus on The Cancer Journals and explore how Audre Lorde articulates the chaos followed by breast cancer in her life: what is the nature of the crises? What aspects of her life are largely affected by it? How it unsettles her understanding of time and place, how her daily life, work, relationships, and future plans get affected, and how her self-image and her agency and subjectivity are threatened. Relying on theories of women’s autobiographies, women’s writings, and illness narratives, I explore Lorde’s ways of writing about her body and emotions to regain her sense of self …

Not Meant To Be Read: The Stories They Silence, The Resistance That Speaks, Cristina Onea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I trace the evolution of surveillance from overt state violence to the more insidious forms of ideological policing embedded in everyday life. Through lived experience, oral history, and critical autoethnography, I explore how surveillance moves through bodies, families, institutions, and memory—not simply as external control, but as internalized rhythms of fear, vigilance, and self-surveillance. I move between my father's life under Romanian dictatorship, my own embodied inheritance, and the contemporary struggles of librarians facing ideological suppression to reveal surveillance as a structure that persists through generations, mutates across contexts, and demands new forms of resistance.

I argue …

Tradwives: The Housewifization Of The Girl Boss, Gagan Kaur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the reemergence of a particular performance of domesticity in the post-pandemic era, focusing on the rise of the "tradwife" (traditional wife) movement alongside the normalization and spread of Alt-Right ideology through popular social media platforms. It argues that the tradwife is not a return to tradition, but a commodified performance of domesticity built on the erasure of social reproductive labor. Tracing the lineage of the “housewife” from the enclosure of the commons to imperial domesticity and from the “girl boss” to tradwife influencer culture, this project situates the tradwife within a longer history of "housewifization"—wherein women's labor …

Nature Et Relations Dans La Littérature Caribéenne Francophone De Fin Du Xxe Siècle Et Contemporaine, Louise Bonastre-Fajardo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My research project argues that literature novels from the french-speaking Caribbeans contribute to testifying to relationships with the environment, with others, and with oneself. By recognizing nature as a subject of rights under Latin America's new constitutionalism to prevent environmental harm caused by humans, politics can acknowledge that nature is actually a part of a domination system. This study addresses a range of issues within existing power structures, by articulating the notion of "nature" with the notions of "natural" and "supernatural" in a selection of francophone late XX’s century and contemporary Caribbean novels.

An important literature on Latin American and …

Unframing Venus: Redefining The Female Nude, Sage Leafsong

Masters Theses

Historically women have been excluded from becoming acclaimed artists due to societal, educational, and institutional barriers. This exclusion has had many repercussions in Western art––in a large part it has made celebrated male artists the norm, while celebrated female artists are the exception.

These same barriers often precluded women from depicting themselves in art. When women did paint, they were encouraged to paint domestic scenes such as flowers or still lifes and were prohibited from studying or depicting the nude form. This gap of representation was filled by male artists who have felt empowered to sexualize women with no consequence. …

Covered In Snow, Katelynn M. Rogers

Masters Theses

Covered in Snow is a photographic exploration into the ripple effect of maternal loss and environmental decay in my hometown of Canton, Ohio. In the wake of a miscarriage, the woods I had grown up within began calling to me, urging me to return. Unbeknownst to me, a series of accidental deaths of women had been happening throughout these trees my entire life, their stories only coming to the surface as I looked to the trees for solace. This series of inexplicable deaths in the woods I so desperately loved began to alter my relationship to the trees, a distrust …

Gust, Stroll, Veil, Jungeun Park

Masters Theses

I witness the unsettling and chaotic moments of everyday life:

blood clots in fried eggs, a dead rat on my porch, mites crawling on our skin . . .

These quiet tragedies exist with almost brutal indifference!

We eat, digest, excrete. We menstruate. We parasitize. We coexist.

I seek the intersection of repulsion and wonder in my daily experience and body sensations, visualizing unseen stimuli. I employ veil as a strategy. It conceals yet reveals. Sometimes, it acts as a transparent layer, sharpening what lies beneath. Other times, it blurs colors and forms, rendering them ambiguous. Veil transforms, entices, and …

Welcome To My Mind Palace: The Power Of Fantastical Thinking, Sadie Levine

Masters Theses

What follows is a record of my efforts to make the magic and horrors of my internal world tangible and shareable. The brain constructs hyper-specific fictional realities from childhood to adulthood, yet the scientific study of the mind often forgoes the subjective and the visual. I offer a complementary exploration of the mind - one that is highly visual and based on my own experiences, yet still contextualized in psychological research. Finding the magic in everyday life, and by extension, retreating into alternate realities, is a conscious choice I make, but I have not always had the option to choose. …

The Dialectic Of Airless Space, Ophelia Arc

Masters Theses

The Dialectic of Airless Space is a cumulative, cross-disciplinary research project that explores ‘airless space’ as a somatic and psychological condition shaped by institutional environments. Unfolding over time through five interrelated books, the project weaves together writing, ephemera, textile sculpture, and drawing to archive the invisible architectures of bodily and mental experience.

Poetries Of Abandonment: A Study Of Plath And Glück, Yara Abdelmoneim

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersection between literature and trauma, which can be discerned in the key works of two poets, Sylvia Plath and Louise Glück. While offering readings of crucial poems, the thesis also examines the interrelations among trauma, memory and narrative as theorized by two contemporary psychiatrists, Bessel van der Kolk and Judith Herman. Both Plath and Glück wrote about personal and generational trauma after going through different experiences of abandonment. Absence, indirection and repetition provide the basis for literary techniques that allow their traumas to be better understood by authors and readers alike. The degree to which each …

Leaving The (Mother)Land: Nationalist Entrapment Of The Doubly Colonized Irish Woman In Joyce’S Dubliners And Boland’S Poetry, Blake Harrsch

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This paper explores how James Joyce’s “A Mother” and “Eveline” and Eavan Boland’s “The Lost Land” and “Mother Ireland” illuminate the gendered sacrifices underpinning Irish nationalism through the lens of double colonization. Joyce’s female protagonists are caught between personal desire and cultural obligation: Mrs. Kearney’s assertiveness leads to public dismissal, while Eveline’s paralysis reveals the psychic toll of conflating domestic labor with patriotic duty. Boland’s poems, in turn, demonstrate how both staying and leaving reinforce women’s entrapment within nationalist ideologies. In “The Lost Land,” the mother’s grief is naturalized as part of her expected role in preserving the homeland, while …

A Seat At The Schoolhouse Table: Reimagining Education Through Afrofuturist And Womanist Theory, Natasha M. Capers

Student Theses

“A Seat at the Schoolhouse Table: Reimagining Education Through Afrofuturist and Womanist Theory” critically examines how curriculum, even when well-intentioned, can perpetuate harm by excluding the lived experiences of marginalized communities—especially Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ students. Using a real middle school immigration assignment given to the author's son as a case study, this capstone deconstructs the structural biases embedded in curriculum design and proposes a radical reimagining through the liberatory lenses of Afrofuturism and Womanism. Blending scholarly inquiry, personal narrative, and community-based interviews, this project offers a restructured assignment that centers joy, identity, and speculative storytelling as tools for educational …

You Are Not The Hero: Women’S Role In “Rapunzel”, Amber L. Budd

The Confluence

This paper uses the Feminist literary theory to examine the roles and presentation of characters in the fairy tale “Rapunzel” and how the women reinforce patriarchal ideals by conforming to either angelic or monstrous behaviors.

The Performance Of Gender In Sound And Screen: Unpacking And Countering The Double Standards Of Women In Taylor Swift’S “The Man,” Brienne Of Tarth, And The Substance, Alexandra C. Ali

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This rhetorical analysis examines how femininity is constructed, policed, and resisted in popular culture through three case studies: Taylor Swift’s “The Man,” Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones, and The Substance, using the lens of Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. “The Man,” both the song and the music video, reveals the double standards working against women, incorporating an additional layer of analysis through Kenneth Burke’s perspective on incongruity. Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones defies gender expectations, blurring the line between the performance of masculinity and femininity. Additionally, this analysis embodies archetypes of women, such …

Grief As Slip: (How Little I Show) An Exploration In Clay, When Words Are Not Enough, Michelle A. Smith

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Grief as Slip (how little I show) implies that even as we acknowledge our mortality and the fleeting nature of life, we still only reveal a fraction of our true selves or our deeper realities. The ceramic artwork in this exhibition carries and conveys a journey through the present and remembered emotions of the artists’ personal narrative. By juxtaposing the tactile nature of clay with the ethereal quality of human experience, Smith contemplates the profound interplay between material transformation and emotional resilience. The exhibition’s intent is to translate the essence of complex emotional states into abstracted forms so they can …

Ritual And Revolution: Rethinking Roman Women’S Influence On Religion, Katlin Smith

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis challenges the long-standing portrayal of Roman women as passive figures. Focusing on the mid-to-late Roman Republic and early Empire (264 B.C.E.–180 C.E.), it argues that women were active participants in Roman society, particularly through their engagement in religious life. Drawing on the theory of “lived religion,” this study highlights how religion offered Roman women opportunity to interact with both domestic and public spheres in socially acceptable means. Religion allowed women to exercise influence, power, and autonomy otherwise denied to them in political or legal contexts. Through a combination of textual analysis and material evidence, such as inscriptions and …

'We Owe, You Know, The World Our Perfection': How The Neurodiversity Paradigm Informs Autistic Women's Self-Perceptions, Katybeth Adamo

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This qualitative, phenomenological study examines how autistic women characterize and interpret their experiences, beliefs, and self-perceptions within the framework of the neurodiversity paradigm. Guided by a social constructivist epistemology, this study explores the complex intersections between autistic women’s experiences of diagnostic processes, gendered socialization, and identity formation in autistic women. Through semi-structured interviews with ten autistic women, themes emerged around gender differences between autistic men and women, external versus internal self-perception, diagnostic age and self-perception, sensory overload and its consequences, and the journey from feeling othered to finding one’s place socially. Findings suggest that delayed diagnosis and persistent societal pressures …

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Contextualizing Historical Bioarchaeological Accounts With Contemporary Social Issues, Katharine Chiyono Woollen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The very existence of women has been taken for granted throughout history. Their domestic roles are viewed as biologically fixed, resulting in a general lack of information recorded or researched relating to their lived experiences, life histories, and narratives. Instead, it is the history of white men that has been standardized as the norm, creating visible gaps in our understanding of women’s experiences. Additionally, the majority of existing literature centers on female reproduction, their roles as mothers, and violence enacted against women. While this information contributes towards a greater understanding of women’s experiences in bioarchaeological investigations, these data often lack …

Preventing Female Inmates’ High Recidivism In One Parole Reentry Program, Erika Galarza

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Recidivism among formerly incarcerated women is a challenging issue for one state prison system. Effective and fully enrolled programs to support recently released women are essential to stopping recidivism, as women often face problems such as trauma, abuse, or mental health disorders, all of which may require special care. The purpose of this study was to determine the primary outcomes of the One Parole Reentry Program’s (OPRP) effectiveness in preventing female recidivism at prison facilities and what improvements may enhance future outcomes. The state’s parole program curriculum assessment guidelines and their rehabilitation model were used as the framework to assess …

A Movement In Process: The Effects Of Post-Dictatorship Politics On The Legalization Of Abortion In Argentina, Corinne J. Robbins

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

Access to abortion is an inherently critical aspect of sexual and reproductive rights. That is to say that access to safe abortions is of equal importance to guaranteeing a person’s right to safety during the pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum period. This research primarily focuses on the trajectory of the legalization of abortion in Argentina after the end of the last military Dictatorship (1976-1983), the factors that impacted the movement, and how the movement is received in Argentina today. Argentina’s current administration has been unsupportive of the current abortion law, but past successes demonstrate that abortion rights activists in Argentina are …

The Hagiography Of Trinity Sparkle, Emma Marie Schwartz

Theses - ALL

Through painting and soft sculpture, I create a theoretical realm intertwined with my lived reality pushing against norms perpetuated by religious and secular heteronormativity. I mobilize my desire and dualistic experiences to initiate and recognize the uneasy and necessary conversations surrounding the ways we search for and live out our sexualities and identities in relationships and communities. Themes of acceptance stem from my personal life and are applied in the fictional realm through figuration, cropped imagery, and highly saturated colors in my paintings and soft sculptures. I rewrite art historical Biblical imagery and interweave them with my personal experiences, in …

Japan And Its Hesitation In Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage, Morgan R. Lewellen

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Japan is the only state in the G7 that has not legalized same-sex marriages despite increasing support of LGBTQ+ rights and norms for respecting human rights. While some local governments and constitutional courts have made progress with recognizing same-sex partnerships and deeming the ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the Japanese national government has not enacted comprehensive pro-LGBTQ+ policy. Instead, the Diet (Japan’s legislative body) passed the “LGBT Understanding and Enhancement Bill” in 2023, which is a law that fails to legally recognize same-sex marriage or provide protections. This project aims to explore Japan’s hesitancy by examining politics, culture, history, and …

Voices In The Borderlands: Reimagining Identity, Cultural Belonging, And Dystopian Spaces In Anzaldúa’S Borderlands And Viramontes’S “The Cariboo Café”, Oralia G. Ramos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) and Helena María Viramontes’ short story “The Cariboo Café” (1985) portray marginalized individuals navigating liminal spaces of identity, oppression, and survival. Borderlands/La Frontera and “The Cariboo Café” show how systematic violence and displacement shatter the self, pushing characters to navigate trauma in a dystopian space. Sonya, Macky, the café owner, and the grieving mother represent Anzaldúa’s concepts of borderland subjectivity, betrayal, and spectral haunting.

Sonya and Macky, two undocumented children, represent Anzaldúa’s borderlands subjects and reside in a state of nepantla, an in-between space of cultural dislocation. The café owner …

Reproductive And Sexual Autonomy In Hillary Jordan’S When She Woke, U. H. Ruhina Jesmin

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper uses the content analysis method and theory of reproductive politics to explore how state-sponsored reproductive policy criminalizes reproductive rights and erodes sexual autonomy in Hillary Jordan’s 2011 dystopian novel When She Woke. The novel depicts a future world in which abortion is criminalized and a genetic technology called “melachroming” is used by the federal government to violate the human rights of the main character, Hannah Payne. The fundamentalist interpretations of religion, coupled with political agenda and public policy, equate abortion with genocide, thus criminalizing the act and punishing women with a genetic alternation of skin color. These …

How Did Women In India Fare During The Covid-19 Pandemic? A Study Of Work-Life Balance, Bigi Thomas

Journal of International Women's Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted women globally, resulting in numerous work-life balance (WLB) challenges. The intersection of paid employment and familial obligations inside the household has compelled Indian women to assume many tasks. Married women encounter heightened stress due to the specific gender roles that society imposes upon them within a patriarchal sociocultural context; these gender roles were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, hindering Indian women in their management of domestic duties and reconciliation of personal and professional disputes. The pandemic’s fusion of professional and familial domains disrupted Indian women’s transition between home and work environments, leading to indistinct …

Setting The Record Straight: Recording The Global Contribution To Education Research Of Panamanian Scholar Etilvia Arjona Chang, Nanette Archer Svenson

Journal of International Women's Studies

As documented extensively, the academic publications and accomplishments of women scholars—particularly those from developing regions—are underrepresented in global and national literature, databases, and indices. This feminist biographical case study explores and makes visible the life and work of Panamanian Dr. Etilvia Arjona Chang and her global contribution to education research. This article describes her earlier decades devoted to expanding and modernizing the translation and interpretation (T&I) discipline worldwide. It also examines her development of Panama’s first education research programs in later decades of her career and how her previous T&I experience provided the foundation for present-day Panamanian education research. This …

Women’S Stories Of/In Athens, Greece: Reflections For Future Cities, Christina Marouli

Journal of International Women's Studies

In a continuously urbanizing world, developing cities that support a good and full life for women—an issue with implications for families and communities at large—should be a concern in the planning of human settlements. This is particularly important for the transition to sustainable cities, which is a priority in most contemporary societies. This study focuses on women’s everyday lives in Athens, Greece, particularly the suburb of Nea Smyrni. It builds on the stories of five women shared through in-depth interviews that were conducted between spring 2023 and winter 2024. These stories have been selected because they represent women of diverse …