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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

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Full-Text Articles in History

“Liberté, Égalité, Sororité”: The Revolutionary All-Female Studio Of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Julia Oxman May 2024

“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.

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Faithful Partner: The Role And Agency Of Pastors' Wives In The Protestant Reformation, Elizabeth M. Dubendorfer Jan 2024

Faithful Partner: The Role And Agency Of Pastors' Wives In The Protestant Reformation, Elizabeth M. Dubendorfer

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This thesis explores the critical yet often overlooked roles of pastors' wives during the Protestant Reformation, focusing on three key figures: Katharina von Bora, Katharina Schütz Zell, and Elisabeth Cruciger. It examines how these women navigated the complexities of Reformation-era Germany, blending traditional gender roles with new practices that emerged from their unique positions as clerical spouses. By investigating their personal histories, theological contributions, and community engagements, the thesis demonstrates that these pioneering women established a distinct archetype for pastors' wives. This archetype was characterized by a profound commitment to faith, an expanded view of motherhood and wifely duties, and …

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Serving With Pride: Analyzing Lgbtq+ Personnel Policy In The U.S. Military, Sonja Woolley Jan 2024

Serving With Pride: Analyzing Lgbtq+ Personnel Policy In The U.S. Military, Sonja Woolley

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the evolution of LGBTQ+ personnel policies in the U.S. military, analyzing how these changes reflect broader social transformations and the military’s role as both a mirror and catalyst in societal shifts. It traces the historical roots of discriminatory practices against queer and transgender servicemembers, identifying key periods of reform and resistance. Using institutional theory to dissect the mechanisms of policy adaptation, this paper focuses on coercive, mimetic, and normative isomorphism, which illustrate the complex interplay between external societal pressures, internal demands for legitimacy, and the professionalization of the military. Through detailed case studies, the thesis highlights how …

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Queer Frontier: Gender, Sexuality, And Intimacy In Minnesota Before 1900, Tyler J. Amick Aug 2023

Queer Frontier: Gender, Sexuality, And Intimacy In Minnesota Before 1900, Tyler J. Amick

History Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

The colonization of Minnesota brought about a sexual revolution that redefined what gender, sexuality, and intimacy meant within Minnesotan society before the turn of the twentieth century. Initial Euro-American forays into Minnesota created a hybridized society where indigenous traditions and Euro-American cultural ideas intermixed. Fur traders and early settlers broadly accepted indigenous customs, and some Euro-Americans even adopted indigenous practices. The most apparent of these practices are indigenous marriage rites. Large numbers of fur traders engaged in marriages à la façons du pays, in the style of the Dakota and Ojibwe. In some instances, these fur traders even engaged in …

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The Definition Of A Black Man: The Entanglement Of Race, Sexuality, And Space, Michael Moore Aug 2023

The Definition Of A Black Man: The Entanglement Of Race, Sexuality, And Space, Michael Moore

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Black queer men and transmasculine individuals navigate Black heteronormative and White queer spaces in New Orleans. Over the last few decades, articles, including anthropological and sociological, have focused on the relationship between race, gender performance, sexuality, and emotional expression among men such as Christian (2005), which analyzed how Black queer men expressed their masculinity within queer spaces (Christian 2005). This thesis builds on this literature to explore how societal and cultural pressures of masculinity can hinder Black queer men institutionally, socially, and romantically.

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Women And Medicine On The Gold Coast, 1880-1945, Michael Osei Jul 2023

Women And Medicine On The Gold Coast, 1880-1945, Michael Osei

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Prior to colonial rule and the imposition of western medicine and practices, several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa relied on traditional medicine to treat tropical diseases that ravaged the populace. Specialists in traditional medicine, both men and women, restored and preserved their patients' health through herbarium and spiritism. Like their male counterparts, female traditional medicine practitioners on the Gold Coast were highly respected by people for their knowledge and competence as their communities' primary healers and caregivers. This study, drawing on various primary and secondary sources, including oral traditions, colonial reports, medical journals, and historical accounts, argues that women played a …

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The Silence In America’S Classrooms: The Portrayal Of Women And Gender In United States High School History Textbooks, Allie Elizabeth Morris May 2023

The Silence In America’S Classrooms: The Portrayal Of Women And Gender In United States High School History Textbooks, Allie Elizabeth Morris

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the twenty-first century, the process of adopting statewide history textbooks has become a political battleground surrounding concepts of race, gender, and identity in American history. By contextualizing the current discussion surrounding content in American history textbooks, I examine the portrayal of women in secondary United States social studies textbooks from the 1960s to the 2010s. In doing so, I show how portrayals of women's history evolve in the most widely adopted high school post-Civil War American history textbooks in each decade from the 1960s through to the 2000s. By comparing the evolution of the women’s and gender historiography to …

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Women’S Sexuality And The State: A Beginning Look At Virginity’S Relationship To The Law, Ariana Strieb Jan 2023

Women’S Sexuality And The State: A Beginning Look At Virginity’S Relationship To The Law, Ariana Strieb

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This is a beginning look at the relationship the state has with women's sexuality in the United States, specifically looking at how virginity animate the way rape trials are prosecuted.

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Gendered Citizenship: Understanding Violence Against Women In Pakistan, Taqdees M. Mela, Taqdees Mela Sep 2022

Gendered Citizenship: Understanding Violence Against Women In Pakistan, Taqdees M. Mela, Taqdees Mela

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

From 2020 to 2021, there has been an increase in violence against women by 255 percent in Pakistan.1 As a democratic state, Pakistan constitutionally recognizes its women as equal citizens but the fear of gendered violence acts as an effective deterrent to women to exercise their rights. My thesis explores the question, why Muslim women who exercise their rights are potentially subject to violence in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. An examination of this question demonstrates the historical roots of violence and their continued effect on the Pakistani Muslim woman as a citizen. Starting from the colonial period, this thesis …

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The Feminine Harp As Feminist Tool: Early Professional Footing For Women In Mid-Twentieth-Century America, Chelsea Lane Jun 2022

The Feminine Harp As Feminist Tool: Early Professional Footing For Women In Mid-Twentieth-Century America, Chelsea Lane

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1930s North America, women—for the first time—were accorded permanent principal positions in significant American orchestras. Edna Phillips, Alice Chalifoux, and Sylvia Meyer, all students of the legendary harp pedagogue Carlos Salzedo, have been celebrated as pioneers for the prestigious employment they obtained in the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra, respectively, between 1930 and 1933. Despite the impressiveness of these accomplishments, however, the narrative of their “firstness” is not wholly accurate. In actuality, female harpists have occupied orchestral posts as acting principals, substitutes, and second harpists since the very inception of orchestras. The cause for their early …

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The Forgotten Activists Of Georgia: The Black Women Of Savannah, Emily Zanieski Apr 2022

The Forgotten Activists Of Georgia: The Black Women Of Savannah, Emily Zanieski

Honors College Theses

Historians of the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia have primarily focused on how the national movement unfolded in the city of Atlanta. More recent scholarship has highlighted the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in Albany; however, many of these analyses focus on figures within the larger movement rather than focusing on local, grassroots organizers. Additionally, their primary focus tends to be on the role of Black men, leaving behind the voices of Black women who led alongside them. Through a Long Civil Rights Movement (LCRM) approach, I argue that Black women in Savannah, Georgia played an instrumental role in …

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Jane Anger Her Protection For Women And The Emergence Of A Radical Female Voice In Late Sixteenth Century England, Ashley M. Wessel Oct 2021

Jane Anger Her Protection For Women And The Emergence Of A Radical Female Voice In Late Sixteenth Century England, Ashley M. Wessel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how women authors responded to masculine discourses of dominance in late sixteenth-century England. Directly, it concentrates on the pamphlet Jane Anger her Protection for Women, written in 1589 and published under the pseudonym Jane Anger. I argue Anger’s pamphlet was a radical voice within Elizabethan print culture which lends a view into gender politics of the time in which this piece was produced. I also argue that though Anger’s target audience was the gentlewomen of England, she crafted her pamphlet for a broad audience that included any literate man or woman across social station. The importance …

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The Pursuit Of Holiness In Early Modern Southern Italy, Mary Andino May 2021

The Pursuit Of Holiness In Early Modern Southern Italy, Mary Andino

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My research explores lay understandings of holiness and sanctity in Palermo and Naples in the period 1563-1734, with particular attention to the entanglements of religion, gender, and culture. To get at contested notions of holiness, I study putative saints, persons who in their lifetimes gained a reputation for holiness but were never formally canonized. I include both false saints (persons tried by the Inquisition for pretending to be saints) and stalled saints (those for whom a canonization process was opened but never concluded). I show how sanctity engaged local communities as well as the Church hierarchy and bring to light …

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The Political, The Personal, And The Personified: 18th Century British Political Caricature Art And The Formation Of The British Empire’S Identity, Sarah Johns Apr 2021

The Political, The Personal, And The Personified: 18th Century British Political Caricature Art And The Formation Of The British Empire’S Identity, Sarah Johns

History Honors Papers

An image is often capable of communicating a number of things to a viewer, and political caricature in the eighteenth-century British metropole is one clear example of this. Political caricature became a useful tool for the wealthy—especially white men—to engage in discussions about the power of the British Empire as it continued to expand and grow in strength in comparison to other European Empires at the time. Even so, with the coming of the American conflict, things changed. No longer could these men be sure of what a British identity entailed. A family fractured, changing gender norms, evolving concepts of …

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"Our Women Are Made Of The Right Stuff": Gender, Politics, And Conflict In Civil War West Virginia, Amanda Romain Shaver Jan 2021

"Our Women Are Made Of The Right Stuff": Gender, Politics, And Conflict In Civil War West Virginia, Amanda Romain Shaver

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

“’Our Women Are Made of the Right Stuff:’ Gender, Politics, and Conflict in Civil War West Virginia” examines the lives and contributions of white West Virginia women and argues that they were not merely victims of the war, but dynamic participants whose opinions were influential and whose actions determined the ability of both the Union and Confederate armies to wage war in Appalachia. Striking a balance between the antebellum standards of “True Womanhood” and the emerging ideals of the women’s rights movement, West Virginia women became politically engaged in both the statehood movement and the Civil War. They transformed their …

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The Space Between “Seen” And “Unseen:” Queer People And The 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance, Claudia R. Campanella Jan 2021

The Space Between “Seen” And “Unseen:” Queer People And The 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance, Claudia R. Campanella

Dissertations and Theses

In November 1926, a group of Black artists, writers, and activists created the first and only edition of Fire!!, edited by novelist Wallace Thurman. Fire!! was created by a younger generation of New Negroes and “devoted to the younger Negro artists” who dissented from the mainstream ideas of the New Negro Movement and used the magazine to spread their own views on the 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance. Fire!! and other texts speaking to this dissent against a Black intellectual middle class image of the movement will be studied in reference to showcasing the multi-faceted elements of the movement touching …

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An Analysis Of Women And Terrorism: Perpetrators, Victims, Both?, Elizabeth Lauren Miller Jun 2020

An Analysis Of Women And Terrorism: Perpetrators, Victims, Both?, Elizabeth Lauren Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will analyze women’s participation in terrorism under groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It will research the use of violence within terrorist organizations, perpetrated by female participants. What leads women to join groups like the Islamic State? There will be an analysis of the factors that attract women to joining terrorist organizations, in addition to the practices of recruitment that aid in their radicalization. There is a misconception that women who join the Islamic State lack education, which is seen as the sole reasoning for their radicalization or involvement. In reality, several reasons exist leading to their …

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“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar Jun 2020

“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how audiences engage with U.S. Latinx media representations through the practice of critical media literacy. I interrogate how media consumers construct critical media literacy through interacting with U.S. Latinx figures on digital media platforms, particularly on the social-media app, Twitter, and the user-generated video content platform, YouTube. Throughout this thesis, I argue that users on these platforms who engage with U.S. Latinx pop culture figures, like Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar (Cardi B), read, digest, and comprehend a variety of multimedia images, texts, or videos, and that this engagement becomes an accessible form of critical media literacy, …

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In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin Sep 2019

In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American girls and women used the parlor piano to reshape their lives between 1880 and 1920, the years when the instrument reached the height of its commercial and cultural popularity. Newspapers, memoirs, biographies, women’s magazines, personal papers, and trade publications show that female pianists engaged in public-facing piano play and work in pursuit of artistic expression, economic gain, self-actualization, social mobility, and social change. These motivations drove many to use their piano skills to play beyond the parlor, by studying in conservatory, working as classical and popular music performers and composers, founding and teaching at schools, working as department store …

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Mothers Of Intention: Women In The Ku Klux Klan And Massive Resistance, 1954-1968, Michele R. Johnson Aug 2019

Mothers Of Intention: Women In The Ku Klux Klan And Massive Resistance, 1954-1968, Michele R. Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines women in the Massive Resistance movement and the Ku Klux Klan of the classic Civil Rights period, 1954-1968. Specifically, it illustrates the way in which these women used their assigned gender roles as women, and specifically as mothers, to further white supremacist goals. White women have been an integral part of white supremacy in the United States from the beginning, yet are rarely portrayed as such. White supremacist movements are most often viewed through a male lens and gender in white supremacy is most often focused on how white men perform gender within the movements. While that …

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Final Master's Portfolio, Heather M. Stephenson May 2019

Final Master's Portfolio, Heather M. Stephenson

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This collection examines hegemonic responses to shifting gender norms in a series of Anglo-American novels and films in the late 19th century through the late 20th century. Beginning in the Victorian era before progressing to the 1950s, 1960s, and the 1970s—with gestures to the Jacobean era and the contemporary period—each piece in this collection examines one or more text(s) as a vignette demonstrative of changing gender issues within their context. By situating each text within its historical and cultural milieu, this collection examines efforts, in different instances, to reassert long-standing gender norms throughout the ages. Not only does the collection …

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Indigenous Masculinities And The Tarascan Borderlands In Sixteenth-Century Michoacán, Daniel Santana Jan 2019

Indigenous Masculinities And The Tarascan Borderlands In Sixteenth-Century Michoacán, Daniel Santana

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation studies the hypermasculine narratives related to the expansion of the Tarascan state and its borderlands in early colonial Michoacán. Colonial texts such as the Relación de Michoacán and the relaciones geográficas depict the ascendance of the powerful Uacúsecha dynasty whose solar deity and male rulers oversaw the conquest of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin and succeeded in holding back the Mexica (Aztecs) from penetrating their territories. The Dissertation pays particular attention to how contemporary political events, namely the Spanish conquest of Michoacán, endemic warfare in center-west Mexico, and political rivalries amongst Indigenous elites, influenced these accounts. Consequently, these narratives …

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"The More They’Re Beaten The Better They Be": Gendered Violence And Abuse In Victorian Laws And Literature, Danielle T. Dominguez Jan 2019

"The More They’Re Beaten The Better They Be": Gendered Violence And Abuse In Victorian Laws And Literature, Danielle T. Dominguez

CMC Senior Theses

During the Victorian age, the law and society were in conversation with each other, and the law reflected Victorian gender norms. Nineteenth-century gender attitudes intersected with the law, medical discourse, and social customs in a multitude of ways. Abuse and gender violence occurred beneath the veneer of Victorian respectability. The models of nineteenth-century social conduct were highly gendered and placed men and women in separate social spheres. As this research indicates, the lived practices of Victorians, across social and economic strata, deviated from these accepted models of behavior. This thesis explores the ways that accepted and unaccepted standards of female …

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Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari Aug 2018

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

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Boys, Balls, And The Blues: The Erasure Of Genderqueer Bodies, Austin Mcgrath May 2018

Boys, Balls, And The Blues: The Erasure Of Genderqueer Bodies, Austin Mcgrath

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

The goal of this essay is to re-explore the concept of gender in its relation to genderqueer and nonbinary identities. Before its examination of the gender reveal party, this essay examines male and female, masculine and feminine, and man and woman, carefully critiquing and distinguishing biological sex from gender expression and gender identity using a Queer theoretical framework to contextualize these distinctions in relation to queer identities. Through a modern contextualization, linguistic analysis, and a critical media examination of gender reveal images and footage, this essay acknowledges and analyzes the heteronormative structures that reinforce gender binaries. It challenges the deployment …

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Swimming In A Sea Of No's: Controlling And Managing The New York Public Pools, Mette L. Jensen May 2018

Swimming In A Sea Of No's: Controlling And Managing The New York Public Pools, Mette L. Jensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Swimming in a Sea of No's: Managing and Controlling the New York Public Pools traces the genealogy of the regulations, surveillance, and rules employed at New York public pools. The thesis discusses the intent and implications of the spatial strategies created to order and control the environment surrounding the swimming pools, and discusses how municipal public pools as specific, local landscapes manifest broader social and cultural processes. The main focus is on the transformation of the pools during the 1980s and 1990s, two decades after the fiscal crisis in 1975, when the pools had become defunded, dysfunctional spaces. By tracing …

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Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash Feb 2018

Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a so-called post-racial America, a new gay identity has flourished and come into the limelight. However, in recent years, researchers have concluded that not all men who have sex with other men (MSM) self-identify as gay, most noticeably a large population of Black men. It is possible that a tainted history of Black enslavement in this country that is inextricably linked with ideas of space, surveillance, subversion, and survival inform a Black male’s self-identification as being “on the down low” (DL). This begs the question: What does mainstream society view as gay-ness and how is the DL constructed …

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"Remarks On A March" : A Female Perspective On Gender, Rank, And Imperial Identities During The French And Indian War, Erica Ingrid Nuckles Jan 2018

"Remarks On A March" : A Female Perspective On Gender, Rank, And Imperial Identities During The French And Indian War, Erica Ingrid Nuckles

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation expands and complicates the study of women who accompanied and contributed to the British army in the French and Indian War (1754-1763), while also exploring the ways in which the war affected gender, rank, and imperial identities within the army and, more broadly, the British colonies in North America. This is done through the lens of Charlotte Browne, a British middling widow and mother who served as matron of the British army’s General Hospital for the entirety of the war. Browne kept a journal for much of her service that traces her journey with the army from London …

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Southern Veils : The Sisters Of Loretto In Early National Kentucky., Hannah O'Daniel Dec 2017

Southern Veils : The Sisters Of Loretto In Early National Kentucky., Hannah O'Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the experiences of Roman Catholic women who joined the Sisters of Loretto, a community of women religious in rural Washington and Nelson Counties, Kentucky, between the 1790s and 1826. It argues that the Sisters of Loretto used faith to interpret and respond to unfolding events in the early nation. The women sought to combat moral slippage and restore providential favor in the face of local Catholic institutional instability, global Protestant evangelical movements, war and economic crisis, and a tuberculosis outbreak. The Lorettines faced financial, social, and cultural pressures—including an economic depression, a culture that celebrated family formation …

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Since The Time Of Eve : La Leche League And Communities Of Mothers Throughout History., Joanna Paxton Federico Dec 2017

Since The Time Of Eve : La Leche League And Communities Of Mothers Throughout History., Joanna Paxton Federico

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

La Leche League International (LLL) is the oldest and largest breastfeeding support group in the world. This thesis examines how, beginning in 1956, seven Catholic housewives from suburban Chicago built up the institutional knowledge to sustain a cohesive global network of breastfeeding mothers. It also explores how LLL managed this knowledge over time in response to developments in scholarship and changing social conditions. Based on a narrative analysis of LLL publications, this thesis argues that the League’s founders drew selectively from existing bodies of knowledge and from their own cultural perspectives to establish a sense of community among breastfeeding women. …

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