History of Gender Commons^™

Phillis Wheatley Peters’S British Publicity Campaign, Susan Carlile

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Scholarship has tended to place its focus on Phillis Wheatley Peters’ unsuccessful efforts in America, followed by an account of one British figure, the Countess of Huntingdon, who patronized the publication of Poems on Various Subjects in London in 1773. However, the chronology of the British campaign, the modes of print publication, and the locations in which Phillis Wheatley Peters’ words were published deserve closer attention. This essay highlights previously unknown or unremarked upon British publications outside London, the Drewry Derby Mercury, the Ipswich Journal, the Hibernian, and John Gillies’s Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend George Whitefield, …

Manque De Réussite : Le Préjudice Dans Le Football Français, Will Bedell

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

Despite being called The Beautiful Game, soccer in France has a few issues that take away from its beauty. This presentation aims to identify the causes and reasons behind the issues of racism, homophobia, and sexism which plague the French soccer scene. By looking at the causes of these from within French culture, history, and their society we can hope to understand why they exist as well as to establish the sources from which these issues arise.

Medicinal Vibrations, Lauren E. Gardner

The Purdue Historian

In the course of the mid to late 20th and 21st centuries the term "vibrator" has been synonymous with sexual gratification and the female sex drive. However, its original usage is more in line with a therapeutic medical treatment administered and recommended by medical professionals. In this article the history of the vibrator discusses the roots of medicines views on the female body and the ways in which their ailments were treated, with medicine not fully understanding the female sexual gratification of clitoral stimulation until the 1920s. These previous decades are colored by ancient understandings of the female sex and …

Republican Manhood And The Disabled Revolutionary War Veteran In The Early American Republic, 1789 – 1797, Virgil Clark

Madison Historical Review

In the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War, several Disabled Continental Army soldiers scattered across the burgeoning Republic were driven by desperation to write letters, pleading with General George Washington for his support. The soldiers’ decision to draft these letters stemmed from their profound frustration and disillusionment with the post-Revolution American state. The soldiers' discontent resulted from the sense of neglect they experienced after the state rejected their petitions for a Disabled Veteran’s pension. As time passed and rent went unpaid, medical bills piled up, and the threat of vagrancy loomed over these men like a malevolent specter. Unable to …

Res Historica, Volume 3, Lynneth Miller Renberg Phd, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta

Res Historica

The 2024 journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg, Johnathan Sorce, and Samuel Sanders.

Hollywoodlandia: Celebrity Women, Movie Culture, And American Public Womanhood, 1916-1950, Skye Cranney

History Theses and Dissertations

This project proposes to study the ways in which celebrity women’s behavior may have encouraged American women to challenge, but not necessarily subvert, traditional gender roles even as Hollywood publicity continued to emphasize the importance of those same roles in women’s lives. It does that by examining three sites where celebrity women prominently lived, worked, played, and volunteered between 1920 and 1950: the Hollywood Studio Club, a boarding house only for women in the entertainment industry, in Los Angeles; the Sun Valley Ski Resort, the first modern ski resort in the American West, in central Idaho; and the Hollywood Canteen, …

Beauvoir, “French” Feminisms, And “Translation Work:” A Roundtable Conversation, Sandrine Sanos, Judith G. Coffin

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This conversation featuring four scholars—Sandrine Sanos, Judith G. Coffin, Lorraine Delavaud, Marine Vaslin—took place on zoom on December 1, 2023. It was organized, transcribed, and edited by Sandrine Sanos who also wrote the introduction to contextualize the conversation. The roundtable reflects on the making of the translation of Judith Coffin’s book on Beauvoir; and how it became a collective object, and the challenges and productive limitations that it involved, showing how such a project helped forge and relied upon transnational, transdisciplinary, and transgenerational feminist solidarities. The ways Beauvoir became a transatlantic object sheds light on the ways that the book …

It's Written All Over Your Face: A Cultural And Gender History Of The Face In The Middle Ages, 1170-1500, Lacey N. Bonar Hull

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

At a time of vast social and cultural shifts, people living in western Europe from the late twelfth to the late fifteenth centuries developed and employed methods to “read” the faces of others. This practice promoted the interpretation of inner qualities from external appearances, often used to communicate adherence to or deviation from boundaries of gendered behaviors. My project explores medieval understandings concerning this particular feature of the human body, analyzing discourses concerning the face as a site of symbolism for inner character. While scholars have studied understandings of the self and the “Other” during this period, the role of …

“A True Tower Of Babel”: Nation, Race, And Gender In The French Foreign Legion, 1831 To 1854, Nicholas Michael Charnley

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The French Foreign Legion, part of the July Monarchy’s 1831 expansion of the Army of Africa, sought to create a non-French force entirely deployable outside of the metropole. The creation of the expatriate corps intended to solve two of France’s most pressing problems at the time: an excess of foreign migrants at home, and a dearth of French soldiers abroad. The Paris government hoped to attract recruits from its considerable non-national male population, particularly political exiles and migrant workers fleeing Europe’s 1830 revolutionary wave. Initially intended as a temporary expedient for the homeland’s demographic crisis, the expatriate fighting force grew …

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

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

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 …

Working For The Benefit And Advancement Of Women: Three Women's Organizations That Commemorated The American Civil War, 1880-1920, Annette F. Guild

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In the past forty years, scholars and members of the public alike have obsessed over the complex legacy of the American Civil War (1861-1865). As debates over Confederate monuments and the United States’ racial past have frequently emerged in politics, many Americans have disagreed as to how the Civil War should be remembered. In examining the evolution of Civil War memory in American society, numerous scholars have noted the important role that women’s organizations played in influencing the Civil War’s collective memory in the fifty years following the conflict. However, while scholars have noted the significance of these organizations for …

Femininity In Medieval Scandinavia: How Paganism Forged Gender Equality, Erin M. Caffey

Graduate Theses

The brutality of the Vikings and the conquests of medieval Scandinavian men have often garnered the majority of interest from the media, the armchair historian, and the scholar alike, with the pursuits and lives of their female counterparts seldom discussed. Medieval Scandinavian women’s lives though, when examined, are just as enthralling as those of the men. And while their stories are not necessarily as full of bloodshed or glory, the lives of women, those seen in both mythology and memory, provide an insight into the secular and religious foundations of medieval Scandinavian communities. Through an examination of various mythological texts, …

"They Were Men In Those Days": Gender, Class, And Ethnicity In The Paul Bunyan Tales, Dean Schmit

Honors Capstone Projects

This paper examines the development of the Paul Bunyan stories from the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century through a gendered lens.

Powerful And Powerless: Reconfiguring The Agency And Supremacy Of Women In Selected Festivals In The Yoruba Town Of Isaga Orile, 1900-1958, Olusegun Olatunji

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses how the gender dynamics and religious festivals of the Yoruba people in Isaga Orile were not affected by colonialism. The study draws on various accounts, particularly from the Church Missionary Society’s journals, to attest to colonialism's restructuring of male political hegemony. Focusing on two major festivals, Gelede and Oro, the study argues that men's inclusion in Gelede reinforces female supremacy, while the Oro society shows men's hegemony and restrains women from its activities. The study found that gender dominants in these festivals played complementary roles by mirroring female and male roles within the Isaga Orile political system. …

The Gray Area: Sexuality And Gender In Wartime Reevaluated, Natalie Pendergraft

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

These three works, two academic papers and one screenplay, challenge traditional notions of gender and sexuality during wartime. Queer Vietnam service members did not all experience oppression, all the time, but rather carved out a space for themselves amongst their peers. Female nurses in the early cold war could keep their careers in the medical field due to its unique gendered history despite demobilization efforts across the country in different industries. Finally, through the medium of historical fiction, a Civil War soldier’s fears and desires are questioned as he experiences the phenomenon of the Angel’s Glow, a blue light that …

Wives, Warriors, And Womanhood: A Study Of Women’S War Roles, Megan Lee

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Since starting the War, Diplomacy, and Society program, my interests have included a focus on the soldier’s experience in war, women’s changing roles in war, and the study of war journalism, ranging from World War II, the Cold War, to the Vietnam War. This thesis project is a culmination of these themes.

The first article examines the crucial nature of a soldier’s connection to the Home Front by analyzing a collection of letters between a soldier and his fiancé during World War II. Filled with declarations of love and occasional expressions of insecurity, these letters reveal the importance of a …

To Be Necessary: The Remarkable Life Of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elisabeth Phillips

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Although overshadowed by her daughter, Mary Shelley, in the public imagination, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) stands as a significant figure in her time who left a significant legacy. Her writings advocating for women’s education, equal rights, and career opportunities established her as the progenitor of the modern women’s rights movement. Wollstonecraft’s ideas resonated in the era of the Atlantic world revolutions and laid the foundation for later advances of women in the Western world; therefore, it is important to study her contributions in the present.

Beginnings Of The Nuevo South: Mexican Migration In 1970s And 1980s Mississippi, Isabel Loya

Master's Theses

Mexicans and Mexican Americans have been present in Mississippi since the early twentieth century with a large increase in the 1970s. The majority of the scholarship surrounding Mexican migration focuses on the 1990s leaving a historiographical gap concerning this earlier period of significant population growth. This thesis argues that Mexican migrants during the 1970s and 1980s were uniquely affected by Mississippi’s racial climate due to their ambiguous status in a Black and white society, where they fit in neither category. The examination of tactics by businesses, like B.C. Rogers Poultry plant, show the impact recruitment had on migrants’ living conditions …

The Murder Of George Floyd: A Case Study Examining How The Policing Of Black Men And Grassroots Activism Influence The Will Of Black Women To Lead, Ella Gates-Mahmoud

Doctorate in Education

This study's objective investigates the viewpoints held by Black women in two urban areas of Minnesota about the social upheaval that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 for using a counterfeit $20 bill. In the last decade, police killings of innocent Black people in the United States have received more attention, and Floyd's death is only one example of this phenomenon. In the U.S., the likelihood of a police officer taking the life of a Black man is higher than that of a White man. Between 2013-2019 there have been 1,641 fatal shootings of defenseless Black men by …

The Rise Of Russian Peasant Witchcraft: A Response To Social Unrest In Imperial Russia, Katrina Sommer

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Imperial Russia became home to a unique form of witchcraft from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Combining its religious history, patterns of imperial expansion and governance, and social hierarchies, witchcraft accusations arose during especially troublesome economic and political times. Differing from eighteenth-century America Witchcraft trials, these trials were not only femicide. Targeting anyone who might subvert established social or cultural norms, these accusations often led to violent expungement, ending with a ritual of communal bonding.

Paternal Affliction: Emotions And Masculinity Among Eighteenth-Century Italian Jewish Merchants, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

This essay focuses on the “rhetoric of paternal affliction” that late eighteenthcentury

Italian Jewish merchant patriarchs employed in letters and supplications

addressing threats to their intertwined paternal and commercial authority,

particularly when filial disobedience or apostasy was involved. I examine this

rhetoric as an emotional style that illuminates Jewish merchant masculinity.

Although the image of a suffering father seems to deviate from known early

modern models of hegemonic masculinity, within the context of the eighteenthcentury

culture of sensibility this rhetoric emphasized Jewish patriarchs’ honesty

and righteousness, beseeching male compassion and sympathy. By performing

vulnerability vis-à-vis Jewish associates, as well as …

Navigating Femininity: Queen Elizabeth I And The Armada Portrait, Julia Maurer

Capstone Showcase

By analyzing the iconographic program of the Armada Portrait, this essay demonstrates the various visual strategies that Queen Elizabeth I employed in order to navigate certain gendered, cultural barriers present in Early Modern England. I argue throughout this essay that Elizabeth was meticulous in her delicate dance of bolstering her individual authority, while not radically undermining the patriarchal dispensation in which she lived and ruled. In particular, I demonstrate that Queen Elizabeth I effectively utilized the visual arts to control the public perception of her reign in ways unique to female regnants, as she both confirmed and denied her femininity. …

Re-Curation And Recognition: Addressing The Curation Crisis Through The Garnet Ghost Town, Jocelyn A. Palombo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As universities, federal curation facilities, public museums, and private collections struggle to create space on their shelves curators and archaeologists continuously evaluate what must continue to be stored and what needs to be deaccessioned. Utilizing a collection housed at the University of Montana I explore strategies for combating this issue. The collection originates from the Garnet Ghost Town and has been in the university’s care since its excavation. The objectives of this project are to obtain new information and incorporate innovative techniques to learn more about the collection itself and provide an updated analysis to one of Montana’s most complete …

Diversification Of Suffering: An Analysis Of The Historiography Of The Home Fronts Of First World War Germany And Austria-Hungary Of The Past Quarter-Century, Gage Overton

Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The scholarship analyzing the home fronts of Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War has grown sharply in the past quarter-century. These studies revealed many details that were scarcely known to many historians and introduced perspectives of the home front that were largely ignored beforehand. The scholars highlighted in this analysis all provide discussions which have deepened our understanding of the war, like the German government's punishment of women for "sexual treason," the extent of Vienna's devastation caused by hunger and disease, and the relationship between theatre and Austrian identity. Overall, the recent scholarship on this subject has demonstrated …

Birth Control And The Sixties: The Dialogue Surrounding The First Oral Contraceptive, Eden E. Baize

The Cardinal Edge

No abstract provided.

Homotextualité Réaliste: Cryptosexualité Et Subculture Homosexuelle Masculine Chez Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Vincent Sallé

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cette thèse étudie les romans du canon réaliste français, en particulier Le Rouge et le noir et L’Éducation sentimentale, sous l’angle d’une textualité parallèle ancrée dans la langue érotique et les pratiques et les lieux de la subculture pédéraste. Principalement étudiée jusqu’ici dans des corpus identifiés comme érotiques ou dans des passages représentant l’homosexualité, cette homotextualité est ici inscrite dans la diégèse hétérosexuelle qu’elle permet de relire de manière située et historicisée.

La période de 1830 à 1870 est perçue par l’histoire et la littérature comme un hiatus sur le thème de l’homosexualité, pris entre son histoire moderne à …

Puritan Patriarchal Construction Of American Sexual Morality And Woman's Worth: A Daughter's Response, Savannah Mather

Honors Projects

While modern conceptions of Puritanism regard it as an artifact of American history, whose woman-killing theologies are long buried and forgotten, the bible in my father’s closet and the recently leaked Supreme Court draft to overturn Roe. Vs. Wade would argue otherwise. Cotton Mather’s favorite book Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion outlined both the ideals and detriments of the Anglo-American female identity. In this text, white women were taught to absolve themselves of the “nakedness” in dress Puritan settlers associated Indigenous people with. A woman’s ability to align herself to the ideals of chastity determined her own and her …

Queer History In The Streets: A Walking Tour Of Portland, Maine, Megan Macgregor

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The University of Southern Maine’s Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer + Collection preserves the history of LGBTQ+ communities in Maine. The collection contains books, personal papers, photographs, and newspapers documenting the LGBTQ+ activism from 1970s to 1990s.

While three research publications have some out of the collection (one article and two thesis), no overall history about Maine’s LGBTQ+ community has been written. As a result many Mainer’s, queer and straight, know very little of the history. The instruction and outreach librarian and the staff of USM’s Special Collections wanted an opportunity to …

Seeking Margaret Baker: Identifying The Author Of Three Manuscript Receipt Books, Kimberley G. Connor

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This paper uses recipe contributors named in three early modern manuscript receipt books (Sloane MS 2485, Sloane MS 2486 and Folger V.a 619) to identify the author as Margaret Baker, daughter of Richard Baker the Chronicler (c.1568-1645) and Margaret Mainwaring (died c.1652). A familial connection is also made to Wellcome MS 212. The Margaret Baker example is used to argue for the necessity of identifying a broader range of receipt, or recipe, book writers in order to understand the spatial and temporal distribution of recipe book production, and their social context. In the case of Margaret Baker, additional information about …

Reconstructing The Confederate Widow: An Analysis Of The Wives Of Fallen Confederate Soldiers And Their Response To Reconstruction And The Post War Era, Christian Beasley

Campus Research Month

This study provides an analysis of how the post-civil war era and Reconstruction affected the financial, social, and political lives of the wives of fallen Confederate soldiers. Because men were the head of families and traditional breadwinners in the South, the widows of the 258,000 fallen Confederate soldiers had to reintegrate themselves into society and support their families without the assistance and comfort of a husband. Although this integration may seem straightforward, these widows struggled to overcome the economic and social difficulties laid before them, including the patriarchal traditions, mourning expectations, severe droughts, and unemployment that plagued these women. This …