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Electronic Theses and Dissertations

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Full-Text Articles in History of Gender

Who Tells Our Stories?: An Analysis Of Lgbtqia2s+ Community-Museum Collaboration In Northeastern Wisconsin, Frances Kerkhof Jun 2026

Who Tells Our Stories?: An Analysis Of Lgbtqia2s+ Community-Museum Collaboration In Northeastern Wisconsin, Frances Kerkhof

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, histories of LGBTQIA2S+ individuals have been excluded from mainstream conversations and censored from public records. This exclusion was evident in how LGBTQIA2S+ history is retold in museum spaces. Over the past few decades, public institutions have shifted how LGBTQIA2S+ histories are communicated, with efforts to include more diverse histories and perspectives. During the summer of 2025, I conducted a museum ethnography of the Neville Public Museum’s Telling Our Stories: LGBTQ+ Voices of Northeastern Wisconsin to answer the research question: How does community engagement enhance the representation of the LGBTQIA2S+ community in a local museum in Northeastern Wisconsin? Through this …


The Women’S Renaissance: An Analysis Of Gender Expectations And Experiences In Early Modern Europe, Taryn Shelnutt-Beam May 2024

The Women’S Renaissance: An Analysis Of Gender Expectations And Experiences In Early Modern Europe, Taryn Shelnutt-Beam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 1976 Joan Kelly released her influential article “Did Women have a Renaissance?” Kelly argued that women did not enjoy any of the benefits of the period. Rather, she claimed, the lives of women were actually worse after the 1400s than they had been before. Since 1976, new primary documents authored by women have been discovered. Moreover, new access to relevant writings by authors like Francesco Barbaro, Pier Vergerio, Leonardo Bruni, Juan Luis Vives, and Erasmus make revisiting Kelly’s arguments possible. This thesis uses a sample of these texts to explore women’s experiences and create innovative avenues to explore in …


Powerful And Powerless: Reconfiguring The Agency And Supremacy Of Women In Selected Festivals In The Yoruba Town Of Isaga Orile, 1900-1958, Olusegun Olatunji May 2023

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. …


"Death Can't Touch Them Now": Aids Response And Memorialization In Louisville, Kentucky, 1982-1992., Olivia A. Beutel May 2022

"Death Can't Touch Them Now": Aids Response And Memorialization In Louisville, Kentucky, 1982-1992., Olivia A. Beutel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to address the role of the queer community in Louisville, Kentucky during the AIDS epidemic. Beginning with the first reported AIDS death in the city in 1983 throughout the 1980s, dialogue focused on those living with AIDS, specifically on education for prevention and aid to those afflicted by the disease. Individuals in the queer community—gay men, lesbians, bisexual men and women, transgender men and women, and others—created resources that were not being provided by the larger city government. Then, in the 1990s, national attention to the AIDS Memorial Quilt encouraged people to participate in rituals of commemoration, …


The Political Act Of Writing Feminism- Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain And The Utopian Vision, Mashall Momin Dec 2021

The Political Act Of Writing Feminism- Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain And The Utopian Vision, Mashall Momin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Feminist Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain lived a life of seclusion and oppression like many middle-class Muslim women in colonial India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. During this period, Rokeya used writing as a tool to fight against the oppression women faced from the patriarchal society and reimagined their gendered position in society. Rokeya wrote two novels, Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag, both set in feminist utopian societies. In these works, Rokeya expresses that the problem to the oppression of women can be traced to the purdah system or the seclusion of women, the solution is to grow …


Viewing History Through A Lens: The Influence Of Film On Historical Consciousness, Brittany Bales May 2020

Viewing History Through A Lens: The Influence Of Film On Historical Consciousness, Brittany Bales

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an interdisciplinary study of the significance of contemporary film in our understandings of gender, race, and sexuality in Georgian England. I argue that while films set in this period may lack the subtleties and depth of the realities that make up the Georgian era, they are still valuable in informing current discussions concerning race, gender, and sexuality. By examining such films, we learn not only more about the Georgian period and how it is presented and understood by contemporary audiences, but these films tell us much about our own biases, attitudes, and society.


Queering Black Greek-Lettered Fraternities, Masculinity And Manhood : A Queer Of Color Critique Of Institutionality In Higher Education., Antron Demel Mahoney Aug 2019

Queering Black Greek-Lettered Fraternities, Masculinity And Manhood : A Queer Of Color Critique Of Institutionality In Higher Education., Antron Demel Mahoney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drawing heavily on Roderick Ferguson’s (2012) theory of institutionality, this dissertation constructs a counter-historical genealogy of racialized gender in higher education and U.S. society through the formation of black Greek-lettered fraternities. Ferguson argues that with the insurgence of minority resistance globally and domestically during the mid-twentieth century, hegemonic power took a new form. Instead of rejecting minority difference, power’s new network attempted to work through and with minority difference in an effort to absorb and restrict these radical formations within state, capital and academy frameworks—producing narrow or one-dimensional minority subjectivities. Established at the turn of the twentieth century, black Greek-lettered …


Resistance To Statism In Frontier Era Upper East Tennessee, 1760-1820, Casey Price May 2019

Resistance To Statism In Frontier Era Upper East Tennessee, 1760-1820, Casey Price

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes efforts among frontier settlers of Upper East Tennessee to resist particular elements of state-craft from the 1750s until 1820. Building on the work of James C. Scott, this study suggests that some residents of the area may have resisted acceding to what they considered the negative aspects of residing within state sovereignty. These included, taxation, land enclosure, organized religion, and regulation of economic activity. Analyzing from outside the lens of the state, this study attempts to explore why organized government remained largely ineffective and widely disregarded in the Upper East Tennessee region even as governance rapidly and …


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. …


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 …


Breaking The Cycle Of Silence : The Significance Of Anya Seton's Historical Fiction., Lindsey Marie Okoroafo (Jesnek) May 2017

Breaking The Cycle Of Silence : The Significance Of Anya Seton's Historical Fiction., Lindsey Marie Okoroafo (Jesnek)

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the feminist significance of Anya Seton’s historical novels, My Theodosia (1941), Katherine (1954), and The Winthrop Woman (1958). The two main goals of this project are to 1.) identify and explain the reasons why Seton’s historical novels have not received the scholarly attention they are due, and 2.) to call attention to the ways in which My Theodosia, Katherine, and The Winthrop Woman offer important feminist interventions to patriarchal social order. Ultimately, I argue that My Theodosia, Katherine, and The Winthrop Woman deserve more scholarly attention because they are significant contributions to women’s …


The Cultural Creation Of Fulvia Flacca Bambula., Erin Leigh Wotring May 2017

The Cultural Creation Of Fulvia Flacca Bambula., Erin Leigh Wotring

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study presents a scholarly and popular historiography of Fulvia Flacca Bambula with criticism of the presentation and interpretation of Fulvia as a historical character in context. Source bias caused by Augustan propaganda is widely recognized within scholarly and popular treatment of Fulvia but little attention is given to the influence of rhetoric and moral philosophy on the invective and anecdotal narratives used as source evidence in discussion of Fulvia as a Roman matron. Through assessment of traditional Roman rhetorical and literary conventions employed during the late Republican and early Imperial periods with attention to the influence of elegiac constructs …


"The Quality Of Women's Intelligence" : Female Humanists In Renaissance Italy., Julie Myers-Mushkin Dec 2016

"The Quality Of Women's Intelligence" : Female Humanists In Renaissance Italy., Julie Myers-Mushkin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the advent of humanism in Renaissance Italy impacted women, namely those who were raised within intellectual families and granted educational opportunities not before afforded to members of their sex. In quattrocento Italy, learned women began to circulate their writings and participate in the humanist milieu, and the intellectual lives and published works of these female humanists all in some manner contested Renaissance patriarchy and gender perceptions. As such, this thesis challenges the conception that the Renaissance further disenfranchised women and offers a framework for analyzing and appreciating the ways in which women participated in the academic …


Prudery And Perversion: Domination Of The Sexual Body In Middle-Class Men, Women, And Disenfranchised Bodies In Victorian England, Ashley Barnett Dec 2016

Prudery And Perversion: Domination Of The Sexual Body In Middle-Class Men, Women, And Disenfranchised Bodies In Victorian England, Ashley Barnett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research argues that with the rise of the middle-class, Victorian England saw the development of a power model in which middle-class men, middle-class women and disenfranchised bodies of children and lower-class women suffered from the demands of bodily domination. Because the bodily health of middle-class men was believed to represent national health, it was imperative that he dominate his body, particularly with regard to sexual urges. Consequently, the bodies of women with whom he sought sexual release suffered from forms of bodily domination as well. Through an analysis of journals and private writings of those living in Victorian England, …


Under The Shadow Of The Awful Gallows-Tree: The Murder Trials Of Thomas Dula And Ann Melton As A Case Study In Gender And Power In Reconstruction Era Western North Carolina, Heather L. Miller May 2015

Under The Shadow Of The Awful Gallows-Tree: The Murder Trials Of Thomas Dula And Ann Melton As A Case Study In Gender And Power In Reconstruction Era Western North Carolina, Heather L. Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a micro-history that explores everyday life on a small scale by tracing the common, if elusive lives of Thomas Dula, Ann Melton, and Laura Foster, and the communities they lived in, to explore the culture in which they lived—and died. Reactions to the murder unleashed an outpouring of discourse embedded in broader, national debates concerning gender roles. The dominant cultural theme that emerged from the murder trials as reflected in middle-class newspapers maintained that true women did not kill and real men acted as gentlemen and defenders of women’s honor. The project mines a wealth of primary source …