History of Gender Commons^™

The Queer Life Of Lorena Hickok, Samantha D. Leyerle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life of Lorena Hickok, a remarkable woman whose story has been glossed over throughout history. Hickok was an accomplished journalist and writer, and her life offers a fascinating glimpse into being queer in the early twentieth century. While much has been written about Hickok’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, this thesis aims to go beyond their connection to examine Hickok’s entire life and experiences in greater detail. Through analyzing her work as a writer, as well as her personal correspondence and unpublished autobiography, this thesis illuminates the quiet details of defining moments in history, including the Great …

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 …

Promoting The Consumer Citizen: Seals, Spectacles, And The Gendered Consumer In Depression-Era America, Danielle B. Wetmore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will argue that New Deal legislation accounted for increased importance placed on consumers and the articulation of consumer citizenship as female during the Great Depression. Once New Deal programs and legislation determined and legitimized the consumer citizen, the consumer citizen exercised influence though purchasing power. Analyzing the ways the federal government defined women as consumer citizens through programs like the National Recovery Administration’s Blue Eagle Campaign offers important insight into who was considered to have a voice. Notions of citizenship define groups by who has the necessary attributes and qualifications—in this case the means to purchase goods—to be …

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 …

James Buchanan And Ideals Of Manhood In The Election Of 1856, Ryan Lockwood

Theses and Dissertations

James Buchanan was the only lifelong bachelor to be elected President of the United States. While not seen as disqualifying in and of itself, his single status was often commented upon. Analysis of the campaign literature reveals competing ideals of manhood in the lead up to the Civil War.

"A War Within A War": Policing Gender And Race In New York City During World War Ii, Emily Brooks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During World War II, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Police Commissioner Lewis Valentine launched aggressive policing campaigns in New York City against crimes of “vice” or “immorality” that they believed threatened the order of the wartime city. The municipal leaders argued that racialized and gendered threats posed by prostitutes, juvenile delinquents, gamblers, and disorderly persons weakened the nation’s ability to mobilize healthy troops and to compete in a postwar world. While the war disrupted racial and gender hierarchies in the increasingly interracial city, Valentine and La Guardia connected America’s global security to policing at home. This dissertation follows patrolmen, policewomen, …

Women And Work: African American Women In Depression Era America, Sarah Ward

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project explores whether African American women met similar public sentiments as Caucasian women during the Depression Era and how gender dynamics changed within African American households in urban America as well as the effect of the crisis on a populace that was not new to the work force. Historical statistical analysis and emphasis on labor policy are used to garner information. The Great Depression sparked an abrupt shift in not only the American economy but also American ideology regarding male and female gender dynamics. Despite discouragement from entering the workforce due to dominant masculinity, employment rates rose amongst Caucasian …

Representations Of García Lorca In American Poetry: Articulating And Floating Metaphor Of The Historical Connections Between Spain And The United States, Carlos Aguasaco

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Butch Between The Wars: A Pre-History Of Butch Style In Twentieth-Century Literature, Music, And Film, Karen Allison Hammer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Butch Between the Wars is a pre-history of “butch,” a twentieth-century masculine style that became an identity category for lesbians in the 1940s and ’50s. Between the two world wars and in the early postwar period, women used the energy of butch to create literature, music, and character on film. Butch-styled artists expressed a muscular orientation to the world, one with close associations to lower and working class black and white masculinities. Those who were recognizably lesbian and those with less clearly defined sexualities challenged the idea that strength, authority, and independence are qualities “naturally” bound to the male body. …

The Politics Of Shorter Hours And Corporate-Centered Society: A History Of Work-Time Regulation In The United States And Japan, Keisuke Jinno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Shorter working hours drew much attention as a means of fighting unemployment and crisis in capitalism during the first half of the twentieth century. Nowadays, shorter work-time is rarely considered a policy option to fix economic or social issues in the United States and Japan. This dissertation presents a history of work-time regulation in the United States and Japan to examine how and why its developments and stalemate took place.

In the big picture, developments of work-time regulation during the first half of the twentieth century were a part of concessional modifications of class relations, a common phenomenon in many …

Woman Energy: How Our Lesbian Past Informs Our Lesbian Future, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Sinister Wisdom Issue 3, published the year 1977 holds an essay by poet Adrienne Rich, titled, “It is the lesbian in us...”; The cover of the same issue has art by photographer Tee Corinne. Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal. This non-fiction creative essay written by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz reflects on the first year of Sinister Wisdom's publication as a celebration of 40 years through this special edition anniversary print for which only 1000 have been printed. The essay remarks on the shift in lesbian identity and community and the potential impact of the Sinister Wisdom journal …

Archiving The '80s: Feminism, Queer Theory, & Visual Culture, Margaret A. Galvan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Archiving the '80s: Feminism, Queer Theory, & Visual Culture locates a shared genealogy of feminism and queer theory in the visual culture of 1980s American feminism. Gathering primary sources from grant-funded research in a dozen archives, I analyze an array of image-text media of women, ranging from well known creators like Gloria Anzaldúa, Alison Bechdel, and Nan Goldin, to little known ones like Roberta Gregory and Lee Marrs. In each chapter, I examine how each woman develops movement politics in her visual production, and I study the reception of their works in their communities of influence. Through studying hybrid visual …

Toilet Talk, Michael Blake

Theses and Dissertations

Toilet Talk explores both formal and autobiographical themes related to desire, sexuality, and the relationship between public and private space. My work and research aims to reposition and queer the industrial object and its promotion of hyper masculine ideals.

"Model Mamas": The Domestic Partnership Of Home Economics Pioneers Flora Rose And Martha Van Rensselaer, Megan J. Elias

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Ten Days That Shook San Francisco: History And Myth, Paul Vandecarr

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

November 1978: a popular religious and civic leader from San Francisco named Jim Jones leads over 900 people—mostly African-Americans and many from San Francisco—to murder and suicide in a remote jungle community of Guyana called "Jonestown." Though far from San Francisco, the catastrophe strikes at the heart of the city's public life. Only nine days later, on November 27, ex-police officer and city Supervisor Dan White enters San Francisco City Hall and assassinates Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. These two events—which devastated San Francisco's African-American and gay communities—formed a defining moment in the city's turbulent and ongoing attempt …

"Fifty Years After" Symposium Explores The Legacy Of Christine Jorgensen, Omar Portillo

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

There is a rich history of people who have deliberately constructed their bodies and challenged the binary sex-gender system. On November 22, CLAGS presented a symposium in which scholars, trans. activists, service providers, and artists revisited the life of one of the most famous of them — Christine Jorgensen — and considered her impact on our understanding of gender identities five decades after her "sex change" made headlines. Guest speakers - among them C. Jacob Hale, Hugh McGowan, Joanne Meyerowitz, Mariette Pathy-Allen, Ben Singer, Dean Spade, Chris Straayer, Susan Stryker, and Dinh Tu Tran — traced Jorgensen's life and the …