History of Gender Commons^™

Moving The Goalposts: American Sports Coverage In Newspapers And The Construction Of Gender, Race And Sexuality In The Olympics In 1928, 1932, 1936., Jacob Havers

All Theses

This thesis takes an in-depth look at the media coverage of women in the Olympics in 1928, 1932 and 1936. Specifically following the track athletes Kinue Hitomi, Louise Stokes, Tidye Pickett and Mildred “Babe” Didrikson the thesis explores how by being athletic women they had their identities as feminine figures heavily questioned and scrutinized in newspapers at the global level. The harshest of these critics was often the American media, who held strict standards of race, gender and sexuality in the late 1920s-mid 1930s. They sought to uphold these standards at the global scale, and the American media’s interrogation of …

Race, Sex Work, And Spatial Segregation In Storyville, New Orleans, Paige M. Magoto

All Theses

Storyville, New Orleans, operated as a legalized vice district from 1897 to 1917. This 38-block area facilitated sex work and prostitution “across the color line,” perpetuating and encouraging the practice of white men seeking sexual acts from Black women and women of mixed-race descent. I engage with multiple interacting subsections of historiography within this thesis project. The historiography spans Southern history from the early nineteenth century in the Old Antebellum South until the early twentieth century in the Progressive Era. The broader historiographic dimensions of labor and sexuality were also influential in curating this research project, engaging with the evolving …

The Rise And Fall Of The Contagious Diseases Acts: An Examination Of The Legislative Influences, Medical Discourse And Repeal Arguments, Elizabeth Henderson

All Theses

The Contagious Diseases Acts (CDA) were the most important legislative intervention concerning sexuality in the nineteenth century. The CDA was a public health measure passed to address the spread of venereal disease amongst the British Army and Navy, and targeted Britain's most vulnerable women – sex workers – because they were blamed for being the presumed cause and primary mode of spreading venereal disease. This resulted in the legalization of what critics of the CDA would call surgical assault, or instrumental rape, of working-class women suspected of being sex workers. Historians who study sexuality and sex work in Britain have …

Bechen-Rivera, Liam, Devon Rosano

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Liam Bechen-Munoz is a 38-year-old trans man living in Portland, Maine. He grew up in a conservative Catholic town in Massachusetts before attending the University of Maine in Farmington, where he performed and did activism as a member of the Queer Student Alliance. After coming out, Bechen-Munoz faced discrimination and experienced getting fetishized online. He is a queer musician who has dealt with substance abuse but became sober in November of 2023. In this interview, Bechen-Munoz discusses some of the challenges he has faced, especially around coming out.

Señoritas On And Off The Silver Screen: How Chicana Women Organized For Equality And Challenged The Cultural Prison Of Sexualized Media Representations In The First Half Of The Twentieth-Century, Rossandra Paloma Martinez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research is personal for me due to lived experience and day-to-day situations where I have felt the pressures of unattainable beauty standards and society’s fluid definition of beauty and femininity surrounding Chicana, Latinas, Mexican, and Mexican-American women. What inspired me to pursue these issues and topics was the work of Dr. Vicki Lynn Ruiz in her book From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America. This research focuses on rival and contested images of Chicana, Mexican, Mexican-American and Latina labor advocates and activists from the early twentieth as opposed to sexualized and eroticized packaged caricatures that Hollywood …

Gonzalez- Rodriguez, Alex, Robert Mitchell, Devon Rosano

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Alex Luna Gonzalez Rodriguez is a 25-year-old transgender woman who was born in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. She first came out as bisexual to the only “out” gay person in high school before later discovering she was trans while attending college. She went to the University of Southern Maine after hearing about it on the radio in Austin, Texas. When she came to Maine, she discovered what she described as “the real me.” She discusses her journey of self-discovery and the challenges and support she has faced along the way. She discusses how life was different in Mexico, Texas, and Maine, …

Gardner, Ed, Ethan Bent

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Ed Gardner is a 62 year old gay male currently living in Falmouth and working in Portland. He grew up in Lewiston Maine and moved to Portland as a young adult. Starting from scratch, Ed was able to buy and sell buildings and found tremendous success over his long career as a real estate agent. Over the course of his life, Ed has fundraised and donated to a variety of Maine’s LGBTQ organizations. He was involved directly with the establishment of the Equality Community Center by first hosting LGBTQ tenants in his office space, and then helping to raise money …

Burdin, Johannah, Samantha Rouillard

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Johannah Burdin shares her story as a lesbian/queer woman experiencing southern Maine in the 1990s. Her story touches on topics involving coming out, relationships, a traumatic incident that left her disabled, activism, and much more. She was active in her youth in spreading awareness on the AIDS/HIV crisis, education on safe sex, and spent her evenings at popular Portland gay bars, like Sister’s Bar and Limelight/The Underground. Although she is not much into drinking, she recognized these were some of the few spots queer people could go to make community and relationships. Johannah also shares her story of becoming a …

Bilodeau, Richard, Maggie Powers

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Richard Bilodeau is 54 years old and identifies as a gay man. He grew up in Portland, attending Deering High School. He is married to his partner Scott and they went on their first date in 1988. He studied applied clinical chemistry at the University of Vermont and began his career in the Maine Medical Center lab. He earned his bachelors and master's in business from the University of Southern Maine. Currently, he works as a professor in the School of Business and Honors Program. Over the years, he also had ownership in alternative health and TV programming businesses. He …

Leighton-Cory, Jocelyn, Bella Shannon

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Jocelyn identifies as a Queer woman but also aligns with the label Gender-Queer. They are 40 years old and currently live in the city of South Portland where they serve as a member on the City Council and also work as a managing director at Space Gallery in downtown Portland. Jocelyn was born in Bangor, Maine, and lived there for a year before moving briefly to South Princeton, Maine, and eventually settling in Princeton, Maine, where they grew up. Jocelyn was raised by their single mother along with their older brother and younger sister. They received their B.A. in Arts …

Parker, Heidi, Tegan Bryne

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Heidi Parker is a 47-year-old lesbian, who uses she/her pronouns. Heidi Parker grew up in the South and Seventh-Day Adventist. One of her favorite parts about living in the South and still one of her favorite things today is the mountains. Heidi Parker has moved to a few places around the United States; including New York, Maine, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Morrow Beach. Heidi Parker worked as a PE teacher before getting a higher degree in Sports Management. After getting her degree, she moved to New York and worked at Syracuse and then moved to Maine to work …

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.

Lo, Q, Rheros Iliad Kagoni

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Q Lo is a 45 year old transgender man, the son of two Chinese immigrants who grew up in New York. Q discusses growing up as a queer person of color, how his gender and sexual identity was impacted by the lack of representation he saw around him, how his upbringing in Chinatown influenced his view of the world, and how his immigrant parents influenced his relationship with school, work and creativity. Q talks about attending college, dropping out of college, and his experiences going to MECA in Portland Maine while grappling with the classism and privilege he was experiencing …

Farnsworth, Susan, Larisa Filippov

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Susan Farnsworth is a 75 year old lesbian who has lived in Maine for over 50 years. She currently resides in Hallowell, ME, but has lived all over Maine and other places in New England. Farnsworth is an attorney and has her own law practice where she helps a variety of clients with their legal problems. She realized she was a lesbian while she was in law school during her marriage to a man. Farnsworth attended Bates College for her undergraduate degree before going to the University of Maine School of Law in Portland. The multiple political organizations she has …

Chann, Marpheen, Kendall Garland, Meghan Horner

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Marpheen Chann is a Cambodian, Asian-American, gay man living in Portland, Maine. He was born in California to an immigrant mother and later moved to Maine, then adopted by a white, Evangelical family. He spent his childhood in the church and would later attend Valley Forge Christian College. Then later transferring to USM to earn a Bachelor’s in Political Science and later attended Maine Law. Chann participates in advocacy work with organizations, such as the Equality Community Center and is the president of Khmer Maine. He currently works for the Good Shepard Food Bank as their Community Impact Manager.

Please …

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 …

From Handmaids To Princesses: How Identity And Politics Impact Definitions Of Biblical Rape, Gabrielle R. Isaac-Herzog

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

The politics of sex in the Bible are complex. They are impacted and limited by the time of the stories, as well as the political landscape and laws of the region. However, since many modern religions have emerged from the text of the Hebrew Bible, it is important for scholars to continue the work of critically examining the texts in the contemporary context. This paper offers a textual analysis of several biblical stories through a feminist and decolonial lens. Through the generation of a taxonomy by which these stories can be categorized, this paper posits that the biblical definitions of …

Anti-Pornography Feminism, Kinktok, And Consent: What We Can Learn From The Sex Wars And Leather/Sadomasochistic History, Nic Cloyd

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Sex education and LGBTQA+ history have long been censored and removed from curriculums across the United States. As this information has disappeared from our education systems, important values like consent and boundary setting have become increasingly obsolete despite the modern body autonomy movement. Leather and SM culture, which began post-WWII and reached their peak in the 1970s during the sexual liberation, have become increasingly important as their ethical and moral codes have been lost over time to the HIV/AIDs epidemic and censorship from second and third wave feminsism. Two prominent movements, anti-pornography and sex-work exclusionary radical feminism, have worked to …

Domestic Arts, Dates, Drugs, And Dress Codes: Scripps College's Early Attitudes Towards Gender, Sexuality, And Women's Education, Kathleen Mchale

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how Scripps College's administration, faculty, and students dealt with expectations of gender roles and sexuality during the first two decades of the college's existence. It looks at the historical development of women's colleges, Scripps' curriculum and aims, architecture, residence life, rules and regulations, and applied these areas to discuss how students and other Scripps community members responded to norms about gender and sexuality.

Ekart, Donna, Gretchen Muehle, Brooke Hall

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Donna Ekart is a 53-year-old queer, femme woman living in Portland, Maine. Ekart grew up in Manhattan, Kansas surrounded by both her immediate and extended family. Ekart moved to Portland, Maine with her wife when she was in her mid-forties. Ekart came out as queer to her friends and family when she was 40-years-old. She has been involved in LGBTQ+ organizations including Equality Maine, which is Maine’s biggest queer organization whose aim is to secure full equality for the LGBTQ+ community in Maine through political action, community organizing, education, and collaboration. Ekart’s religious identity and relationship with the Catholic Church …

Miraculous Monstrosity: Birth And Female Sexuality In The Illuminated Scivias And Cloisters Apocalypse, Jenna M. Mckellips

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper compares the illuminations in two medieval apocalypses, the Cloisters Apocalypse and Hildegard von Bingen’s Scivias, to inspect their similar constructions of female sexuality, motherhood, and monstrosity. It first analyzes the monstrosity of female sexual organs found in Hildegard’s portrayal of the Church and the Mother of the Antichrist. The paper then goes on to consider the uncanny slippage between images of birth and death in the Cloisters’s depiction of John and the Woman of Revelation 12. Ultimately, the paper not only explores the monstrosity of female bodies in apocalyptic manuscripts, but also concludes that medieval women’s …

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 …

Medieval Futurity: Essays For The Future Of A Queer Medieval Studies, Will Rogers, Christopher Michael Roman

New Queer Medievalisms

This collection of essays asks contributors to take the capaciousness of the word "queer" to heart in order to think about what medieval queers would have looked like and how they may have existed on the margins and borders of dominant, normative sexuality and desire. The contributors work with recent trends in queer medieval studies, blending together modern concepts of sexuality and desire with the queer configurations of eroticism, desire, and materiality as they might have existed for medieval audiences.

Serving With Pride: Military Experience And The Formation Of The Queer Female Identity In Mid-Century America, Kathlene Ward, Elizabeth Escobedo, Susan Schulten

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

At the inception of World War II, the United States military adapted to include women within its ranks with the creation of the Women’s Army Corps. Likewise, psychology’s implementation into military procedures legitimized systematic exclusion and removal of queer persons seeking military involvement. Such factors resulted in a particularly unique environment for queer servicewomen. The birth of the Cold War brought about a new wave of heterosexual expectations that forced queer individuals in the U.S. military even further into the closet. This project seeks to uncover how gender and sexuality expectations placed upon queer women serving in the World War …

Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

History Honors Papers

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure poses questions about sexual coercion and governmental corruption that resonate today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context regarding Isabella. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the value of abstinence. I put these characters’ claims into dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and extensive scholarship on Shakespearean England. I argue that abstinence is the axis around which Measure’s main characters revolve, and that Measure locates these characters’ abstinences as competing performances of manhood and …

La Modernité Tunisienne Dévoilée : Une Étude Autour De La Femme Célibataire, Madison Wagner

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explains recent accounts of discrimination and cutbacks in reproductive health spaces in Tunisia. Complicating dominant analyses, which attribute these events to the post-revolution political atmosphere which has allowed the proliferation of islamic extremism, I interpret these instances as a manifestation of a deeply rooted stigma against sexually active single women. I trace this stigma’s inception to the contradictory way that Habib Bourguiba conceptualized modernity after independence, and the responsibility he assigned to Tunisian women to embody that modernity. This responsibility remains salient today, and is putting Tunisian women in an increasingly untenable and vulnerable position.

After independence, Bourguiba …

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.

Single, Unwed, And Pregnant In Victorian London: Narratives Of Working Class Agency And Negotiation, Virginia L. Grimaldi

Madison Historical Review

Unmarried working women who got pregnant in Victorian London and were abandoned by the fathers were in a sticky situation. If a woman kept the baby, she would unlikely be able to provide for it, especially under the ‘Bastardly Act’ of the 1834 Poor Law, which deemed all illegitimate children under the sole responsibility of the mother. If she concealed her pregnancy and abandoned the child, or risked her life by having an illegal abortion, she would at best be held liable for infanticide, at worst, dead. One institutional option available to these vulnerable mothers was the London Foundling Hospital …

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, …