Women's Studies Commons^™

Alison Place, Ed., Feminist Designer: On The Personal And The Political In Design, Anmol Shrivastava

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

"Everyone Leaves Me Behind”: How Harmful Tropes In Fiction Impact Autistic Women, Sara E. Allard

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Until now, females with ASD have been ignored by healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the general public. The unique presentation of autistic women and girls is now in the cultural spotlight within not just the advocacy and scientific community, but also the arts. Female autistic characters are getting increased representation across literature and television, yet their narratives are still often stuck in the past. Most authors and screenwriters have yet to understand the specific struggles that female autistics face compared to their male counterparts, relying on the outdated, reductive perceptions that have plagued them for decades.

This article outlines three harmful …

Intersectionality And Insurgent Citizenship: Women Of Color Feminism In 1970s New York City, Genevieve Bonner Davis

Dissertations and Theses

Not since the phrase "Ain't I a Woman" has African American women's intellectual leadership and insight been as visible and influential as the contemporary concept of intersectionality. Like Sojourner Truth's iconic intellectual intervention in the anti-slavery movement, intersectionality has experienced a similar trajectory of dissolution, distortion, appropriation, and popularization. Since its articulation by Black legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality theory has had a bumpy road to its buzzy, if controversial, status in the firmament of twenty-first-century political thought.

This thesis traces the origins of intersectionality theory through three distinct but intertwined phases. Phase one is the genealogy of …

Her Body Broken: Wrestling And Reconciling With Judges 19 Through A Feminist Lens, Elisabeth Edmonds

Honors Projects

Nestled within the story of Israel in the Christian Old Testament, lies the events of Judges 19 - one of the most violent, disturbing, and traumatic stories of the Christian sacred text. Employing a feminist lens, this paper engages with Judges 19 in three sections by 1) discussing the events of Judges 19, 2) overviewing general Christian responses to the text historically, and 3) featuring specific ideological responses to Judges 19 (feminist theology, intertextual and structural biblical responses, and reconciliation studies). By highlighting a wide array of responses and ideological readings of Judges 19, this paper defends a holistic approach …

Eat Or Be Eaten: A Posthuman Ecofeminist Reading Of The Vegetarian And Organ Meats, Erin Grace Elizabeth Kostic

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

As two novels that feature the reformation and reconstruction of the female body, both Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and K-Ming Chang’s Organ Meats emphasize the posthuman existence of women seeking to break free from the gender-based shackles that constrain them, leading to a striking rejection of the anthropocentric and patriarchal worldviews that plague contemporary society. My thesis comparatively examines each novel through an ecofeminist lens in an attempt to prove that it is only when a woman is able to reframe her existence outside of a male-centric worldview that she can truly find freedom. The Vegetarian’s Yeong-hye loses her …

Nathaniel Hawthorne And The Limits Of Half-Feminism, Jessica Mckenzie

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This project argues that while Nathaniel Hawthorne creates intellectually complex and emotionally resilient female heroines in The Scarlet Letter and The Blithedale Romance, he ultimately reinforces the patriarchal structures he appears to critique. Through the figures of Hester Prynne and Zenobia, Hawthorne demonstrates a deep awareness of women’s societal oppression and the limitations imposed upon them within nineteenth-century America. However, despite moments of resistance and autonomy, these women are never permitted full liberation, agency, or lasting fulfillment. Their narratives ultimately become constrained by the patriarchal power that denies them independence and sustaining love. Thus, Hawthorne’s work coincides with the …

Trad Lives Of Tiktok Wives: Rhetorical Strategies Of Mormon Wives On Tiktok, Makena L. Colson

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Recently in the United States there have been debacles over gendered spaces in the home and workplace as debates spark over who a homemaker can be in a modernized society. TikTok, a short-form video social media app, is a way members of the younger generation communicate with one another over political and world events and discuss with one another in real time. The “tradwife” phenomenon on TikTok is examined here by using Walt Fischer’s Narrative Paradigm to show how what popular tradwife influencers’ words matter to a generation of adolescent girls and young mothers. Three popular influencers, Nara Smith, Hannah …

Taylor Swift, Gender, And Feminism: What Do The Data Say?, Maxine Lewis

The Manuscript: Journal of Taylor Swift Studies

In the world of Swiftian scholarship, several scholars have credited Taylor Swift with feminist impact, while others have criticized both her type of feminism and claims to be a feminist. Many arguments rest on a narrow group of protest songs (“The Man”, “You Need To Calm Down”, and “Only The Young”) and a short period of Swift’s career in which she made many paratextual political gestures (2019-2020). However, claims about a songwriter’s feminism (or lack thereof) will be more accurate, robust, and nuanced if they draw on data from her whole career.

This article provides the first systematic survey of …

Addiction And Dalits: The Impact Of India’S Caste System, Ava Jackson

Audre Lorde Prize

Across global public health and psychology, addiction is defined as a chronic condition that involves compulsive seeking and taking of a substance. In Western frameworks, addiction is often treated as an isolated condition, where the individual is blamed for their actions. In reality, addiction is rooted in biological, psychological, and social factors and is more complex than an individual level. Looking at the Global South, addiction is prominent in Dalit or “untouchable” individuals in India’s caste system, who face exclusion from all forms of society, including education, work, and social experiences. Addiction among Dalit women in India, Bangladesh, and the …

Rhetorical Violence: The Rhetorics Of Women's Counter Political Violence, Kylie Rowland

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Protest is omnipresent, and yet not much is known about the efficacy and impacts of its different rhetorical strategies—particularly so for marginalized populations, whose available means of protest are already limited by both material realities and assumptions that govern who and what can make waves. This bind is further exacerbated by gendered and racialized civility politics that determine which bodies can be disruptive and which already are considered “violent.” To address this gap, I turn toward the under-researched rhetorical potentials of marginalized people’s—specifically women and queer folks’—use of symbolic protest “violence,” which works to strategically make evident the larger ongoing …

Review Of Nevertheless, We Persist: A Feminist Public Theology, Tiffany Hunsinger

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Little Red Riding Hood Rewritten: The Abject In Angela Carter’S “Company Of Wolves”, Samantha Frohring

CAFE Symposium 2026

This project considers Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection to bring attention to the content within Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves." This postmodernist rendition of "Little Red Riding Hood" brings attention to feminist topics such as female sexuality and agency. In consideration with Kristeva's theory of abjection, it sheds light on potentially cringeworthy aspects of our bodies and embraces all of the "filth."

“No Ifs, Ands, Or Butts”: Analyzing Race And Gender In Sex And The City Through Black Feminist Theory, Daniella Orias

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article analyzes Season 3, Episode 5 of Sex and the City, “No Ifs, Ands, or Butts,” through the lens of Black feminist theory. It investigates how race and gender are constructed, stereotyped, and selectively represented within the episode’s narrative. The analysis focuses on two Black characters who were featured only in one episode of the series, Adeena and Chivon, and examines how the show portrays harmful stereotypes such as the angry Black woman (Adeena) and sexualized Black male (Chivon) in the episode. These limited and harmful representations are further scrutinized by the fact that the show is often …

Ayer Y Hoy De España En Guinea Ecuatorial. Construcción De La Colonia Africana Y Sus Consecuencias En La Actualidad A Través De Las Voces Femeninas En La Literatura En Español, Jesús Ponte Bernal

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Equatorial Guinea was a Spanish colony until 1968. Despite this, it has never received much attention from the Iberian Peninsula, so its literature and history remain unknown to much of the Spanish-speaking population. This has been due to historical factors, such as the Franco dictatorship, which classified everything related to the African colony as confidential, but also due to the racial exclusion experienced by the Black population throughout history. Generally, only some Equatorial Guinean male authors have managed to carve out a place for themselves in the cultural canon.

This study analyzes eight books whose plots take place in Equatorial …

Women’S Movement And Mobility In New York City: Restriction, Rejuvenation, And Resistance In The Progressive Era, 1900-1920, Helene Martinez Erlbaum

Undergraduate Research Awards

In this thesis, I aim to explore the implications of women and girls travelling unaccompanied in New York City during the time before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (circa 1900-1920). By exploring specific examples of societal measures and responses to the phenomena of widespread female mobility – including responses to these original measures by both affirming and opposing parties – and increasing existence in the public sphere, I hope to discern the public attitude towards the growing social freedoms of women as they possibly move beyond the more strict Victorian or Edwardian social rules of the previous generation. Of …

The Divine Feminine Reframed: Dogma And Doctrine, Icon And Flesh, And The Sacred Embodiment Of Reclamation, Natasha Keckley

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis interrogates Marian iconography and its role in constructing a moral binary that marks female bodies as either sanctified or sinful. Drawing on feminist and postcolonial theory, iconographic analysis, and historical case studies, the research analyzes how Christian symbology established the Marian Mold: a theological aesthetic apparatus that exalts feminine sanctity through ideals of virginity, obedience, and maternal receptivity while constraining feminine expression. This paradigm, propagated through the British Empire’s colonial regimes, shaped the regulation and reinterpretation of embodied traditions. The thesis investigates these dynamics through two case studies: the Devadasi tradition and Bharatanatyam’s reformulation in South India, and …

Exploring The Principles And Values Of Co-Operative Economics And Sustainability To Inform Positive Solutions With Communities Impacted By Incarceration, Mary A. Sutton

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country. Each month, tens of thousands of people across the country are released from prison or jail. Most return to communities that are economically, socially, and environmentally disenfranchised. The cycling of targeted populations in and out of the carceral system has imposed devastating consequences and inequities on poor Black and Brown communities, consequences that will reverberate for generations. The literature indicates a need for a critical sustainability assessment tool to examine incarceration policies and measure their real impacts on individuals, families, and communities. There is a need for sustainable solutions to …

From Motherhood To Sisterhood: Women Strike For Peace And The Transmission Of Feminist Consciousness, Olivia R. Aldrich

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

Women Strike for Peace (WSP) has traditionally been understood as a maternalist peace movement that emerged in response to atmospheric nuclear testing during the early Cold War era. This thesis argues that WSP’s history reveals a more nuanced relationship between motherhood, feminism, and political activism than existing scholarship has suggested. Rather than operating in distinct stages, maternalism and feminism operated simultaneously, working alongside one another throughout the organization’s history. Furthermore, this thesis builds upon Ednie Kaeh Garrison’s concept of feminist “radio waves,” arguing that WSP functioned as a transmitter of feminist consciousness, where ideas, organizational practices, and different political identities …

Good Girl Bootcamp: Performative Femininity, Purity Culture, And Other Things Girls Are Taught, Kiersten Holland

Masters Theses

Performative femininity is a dangerous and controlling idea that subjugates women and places their inherent worth on how well they can conform to societal standards in male dominated spaces. Consequently, the reactionary messaging that surfaced as a result of these social pressures created a series of stereotypical female characterizations often depicted in the material and visual cultures of each period. By comparing contemporary literature with literature from the Victorian time period, it emphasizes the longstanding and controlling gender stereotypes pervasive throughout the past few centuries. This thesis attempts to understand and analyze the way that literature both critiques and supports …

From Universities, Streets, To Modern Contemporary Society: Becoming, Being, And Living As "Babaeng Aktibista", Mariah Alyssa Lorico Ampat, Jameelah Mikaellah Ahliya C. Robles, Zedrick Sombria Roa, Jessica Louise Cruz Clauna, Leo Vicentino

Sinaya: A Philippine Journal for Senior High School Teachers and Students

Historically, women faced patterns of prejudice and gender-based oppression, resulting in the denial of their fundamental rights. Through years of ingrained subordination under authoritarian regimes, activism birthed various movements and organizations that sought liberation. As militant groups gained traction, withstanding large-scale issues, women’s struggles were seldom addressed within nationalist movements. Literature has documented the roots of activism, women’s organizations, and the socio-political conditions throughout Philippine history. However, there is a narrow understanding of women’s experiences and how these mold their individual identities in response to shared struggles. This study attempts to design a local framework elucidating the motivations and drivers …

From Prometheus To Pygmalion To Pandora: Teaching Greek Mythology With Frankenstein’S “Dark Brides”, Kyle William Bishop

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

As Mary Shelley unambiguously informs readers on the title page of her 1818 novel Frankenstein, her tale of Victor’s discovery of the secret of non-biological reproduction represents the Promethean myth, a morality tale warning against the usurpation of divine authority. In Shelley’s novel, Victor ultimately recognizes the dangerous path he has discovered, and he refuses to create a female companion for his hideous progeny, risking his own life to protect the world from a potential race of monsters. In the cinematic tradition, however, this unrealized “bride” often has been created, and these fantastic narratives realize the Pygmalion myth, that …

The Making Of Jewish-American Progress In Gertrude Stein’S, The Making Of Americans: Being A History Of A Family’S Progress, Rochel L. Gasson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation provides a comprehensive reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (TMOA), situating the novel at the intersection of literary modernism, Jewish American identity, and feminist thought. It argues that Stein reconceives American progress not as linear advancement but as a recursive, relational, and culturally grounded process. Through experimental form, repetitive syntax, and a sustained present tense, TMOA dramatizes the psychological and social complexities of immigrant families navigating assimilation while maintaining heritage. Characters such as the Old Man, his son, and the Dehning and Herland families reveal generational tensions, moral labor, and the ambivalences of upward …

"The Yellow Wall-Paper": Decoding Medical Patriarchal Structures (A Common Theme Within Gothic Literature/Horror), Yvonne T. Samuels

Masters Theses (Archived)

This paper makes the claim that Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” encoded the medical system as part of the patriarchy used to control and harm women, especially within the 19^th Century, and how this is a common theme within gothic literature and modern-day horror. Through the Feminist Literary Criticism framework and the methodology of textual analysis, certain literary devices Gilman uses, including the Gothic trope of the narrator’s environment in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is analyzed to reveal women living in a patriarchal society during the 19^thCentury and the medical system being a source of power. “The …

“Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into The Met. Museum?”: An Exploration Of Contemporary Feminist And Women’S Exhibitions And Collectives, Demi R. Dauterive

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the creation and evolution of feminist art exhibitions and collectives in the United States from the early 1970s through the 2020s. These exhibitions and the work they contain are analyzed alongside each wave of feminism that ran parallel to their existence. Beginning with the 1970s and Second Wave Feminism, Chapter One explores Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro’s Womanhouse in addition to Lucy Lippard’s Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists and the work of other smaller collectives. Chapter Two explores the DIY initiatives and subversive ideologies of Third Wave Feminism through artist groups such as the Guerrilla Girls and …

Reading Romance As An Act Of Resistance, Amy K. Krug

English Faculty Publications

A podcast discussion about how popular romance represents many different populations, including people of color, people with disabilities, and people who are LGBTQ+. Reading these romances with diverse characters can be a powerful mode of resistance against current anti-diversity efforts becoming more prevalent in society.

Listen to the episode. The transcript is available for download.

Film Review: A Feminist Critique Of The Representation Of Women In 21st-Century Bollywood Sports Biopics, Amitabh Roy

Journal of International Women's Studies

This review critically analyses the portrayal of women in Bollywood sports biopics using a feminist perspective, with reference to three influential 21st-century films: Mary Kom (2014), Saina (2021), and Shabaash Mithu (2022). While these movies ostensibly celebrate women’s sporting achievements, a close reading discloses the durability of patriarchal currents in the narrative, visual composition, and character construction. Using feminist theories like Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze,” Judith Butler’s “gender performativity,” and bell hooks’s intersectionality, this work contends that these films simultaneously empower and limit their heroines. Exploring how femininity, family, and national pride are performed in these films, this review examines …

Love Amid The Rage: Feminist Affect In Women's Life-Writing, Genesis Siverio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this thesis is to show the ways women’s emotions or affect, particularly rage and love, are described by women writers in their most intimate stories. I discuss the way emotion has been demeaned, and how feminist scholars have instead viewed the body as a place of insight, reclaiming a knowledge from the senses. In the midst of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, women give voice to their affectual experiences and cultivate the feelings they have so often been denied. Focusing on the particular ways women’s anger manifests in their lives and in their bodies, I zoom in on …

Merawat Tulisan Dan Perlawanan Perempuan: Terbitan Berkala Sebagai Ruang Dan Praktik Feminis, Asri Pratiwi Wulandari, Mia Siscawati

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Women writers have always contributed to literary development, but their works and thoughts have been structurally forgotten and erased. We conducted this research to unearth women writers' lives, works, and thoughts, which continue to be ignored in literary studies. We use feminist qualitative method and literature review technique to study literary initiatives from women writers in the past such as women-only periodicals. This research uses Virginia Woolf's thoughts as an analytical tool, and our findings show that the women-only space initiative was a response to the mainstream literary ecosystem's lack of support for women writers in various eras and countries. …

Film Review: Motherhood And Mathematics: Hegemonic Femininity And Deviance In Shakuntala Devi (2020), Bharat Dhiman

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

From The Margins To The Center: A Discourse Analysis Of Vietnamese Feminism On Facebook Confession Pages, Phan Van Kien, Dao Quang Trung, Tran Bao Son, Nguyen Le Dinh Quy

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study investigates how feminist ideas are taking shape in contemporary Vietnam, focusing on how young women engage with social media—particularly university confession pages—as sites for emotional expression, identity negotiation, and resistance to traditional gender norms. In a society marked by rapid modernization, increased digital connectivity, and the enduring influence of Confucian values, online platforms have emerged as significant cultural spaces where new meanings of femininity, desire, and agency are constructed and contested. Using a qualitative approach, this study combines semi-structured interviews with discourse analysis to explore how university-aged women express themselves in digital spaces that are anonymous, performative, and …