History of Gender Commons^™

Johnson, Myke, Marwa Abdalla, Colleen Fagan

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Myke Johnson (she/her pronoun) is a 64 year old Unitarian minister currently living in Portland Maine with her partner of 24 years. She is from Michigan and later moved to Texas and Wyoming with her family. She is the oldest out of 9 children. She grew up Catholic and found herself being an activist during her college years. She became a feminist and was part of the Women's Peace Encampment, March on Washington, Marriage rights campaigns and many more. She got her doctorate degree in the Feminist Liberation Theology Program and became a minister in Massachussets. She then continued to …

Naming Rape: The Social Practice Of Power, Agency, And Victimization In The Italo-Ethiopian War, 1936-1940, Caroline Waldron Merithew

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper, “Naming Rape,” shows how and when rape got named as part of the movement against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. I show that activists used the term strategically at certain points and specific places of the struggle to sway opinion and move the international community to challenge fascist violence and expansionism. Naming rape was something new for antiwar activists at this time.

Bunker, Lisa, Molly Roberts, Jesse Lucas

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Lisa Bunker is an author who lives in Exeter, New Hampshire and worked at WMPG at the University of Southern Maine for fourteen years during her process of coming out as transgender. She is the author of Felix Yz and an upcoming book called Zenobia July, but spent most of her life in broadcast radio before she left to pursue a full time career in writing.

Citation

Please cite as: Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, University of Southern Maine Libraries. …

Brooks, Frank, Rachel Spigel, Elizabeth Wise Horan

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Frank Brooks is a 64 year old Social Worker and Social Work educator born and raised in Maine. He when came out as gay in 1976, he was in a heterosexual marriage and he has a son from that marriage. He was involved in an LGBT parent's group, LGBT social worker's group, volunteered for the AIDS project, worked on referenda and political campaigns, and was a board member of both the MLGPA (now Equality Maine) and the MCLU (now ACLU of Maine). His life's work has been serving the LGBTQ community through both activism and social work. …

Depictions Of Catholic And Protestant Bodies In Elizabeth (Dir. Kapur, 1998), Jennifer M. Desilva, Alison R. Orewiler

Journal of Religion & Film

This article uses the film Elizabeth (dir. Kapur, 1998) as a portal for understanding the interstices between modern and early modern conceptions of religion as it is read on the body. Elizabeth examines the period of religious and political unrest immediately before and after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603), compressing the late 1550s through the early 1570s into a comprehensive statement on the relationship between the body, heresy, and corruption. This article investigates how lower body activities and functions, like dancing, sex, and defecation, were linked in both the film and early modern minds to immorality, corruption, …

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. …

"A Most Disgraceful, Sordid,Disreputable, Drunken Brawl": Paul Cadmus And The Politics Of Queerness In The Early Twentieth Century, Samuel W D Walburn

The Purdue Historian

This paper examines the work of Paul Cadmus from 1930 to 1948. Over the span of nearly three decades, Cadmus's art evolved from covert depictions of queer culture to an explicit depiction of the politics of queerness in immediate postwar America. Cadmus’s legacy is unique because his art documents the shifting conceptualizations of gender and sexuality in the first half of the twentieth century. He is also notable because he so masterfully maneuvered the liminal space between private and public, painting subversive images immersed in covert queerness early in his career and later using queer art as a tool of …

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 …

Book Reviews: Recent Books On Pornography: From Discussions Of Harm To Normalization, Robert Brannon

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Nine books addressing the specific harms linked to adults’ viewing of heterosexual pornography are examined. All were published since 2010, and range from some that are opposed to all pornography, to others that approve of pornography. The books differ considerably in scope, quality, and scientific rigor. Several include discussions of the feminist anti-pornography movement, in the U.S. and worldwide, from 1975 to the present. These accounts range from criticism of the anti-pornography movement to praise and appreciation. This collection of books provides a useful view of the remarkable diversity of thought about all issues connected with pornography’s effects on adult …

Vim Parat: Patterns Of Sexualized Violence, Victim-Blaming, And Sororophobia In Ovid, Melissa Marturano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation argues for the importance of understanding the depiction of sexualized violence and rape in the Roman poet Ovid’s extensive corpus through the modern feminist concepts of victim-blaming (blaming victims of sexual abuse for their own abuse) and sororophobia (female figures participating in misogyny). It explores sexualized violence and rape in Ovid long-form, examines the discernible patterns that emerge and the deviations from them as he depicts that violence throughout his texts, and more importantly, introduces victim-blaming and sororophobia into an analysis of these patterns. Despite the fact that previous scholars have done substantial analyses of the patterns of …

Adda F. Howie: "America’S Outstanding Woman Farmer", Nancy Unger

History

In 1894, forty-two-year-old Milwaukee socialite Adda F. Howie seemed a very unlikely candidate to become one of the most famous women in America. And yet by 1925, Howie, the first woman to serve on the Wisconsin State Board of Agriculture, had long been “recognized universally as the most successful woman farmer in America.”¹ Howie’s rise to fame came at a time when the widely accepted ideas about gender were divided into the “man’s world” of business, power, and money, and the “woman’s world” devoted to family and home. Yet Howie, rather than being vilified for succeeding in the male …

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 …

Settlement In The Old Northwest Frontier And The Merging Of Culture, 1750 -1790, Sandra K. Ellefsen

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

SETTLEMENT IN THE OLD NORTHWEST FRONTIER

AND THE MERGING OF CULTURE, 1750 -1790

An Abstract of the Thesis by Sandra Ellefsen

During the late 1700s, the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountain Chain became the main corridor that precipitated settlement into Kentucky. Along this frontier line, settlers had to contend with various Native American tribes, and settlement on the frontier from the beginning of colonization irrevocably altered the Native American way of life. Warfare, encroachment, and disease caused the Native American population to decline drastically in the process of contact; often as a result, Native tribes chose to adopt many …

Berger, Fred, Wendy Chapkis

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Fred Berger was born in 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio. He went to college at University of Rochester and New York University in the 1960s. His older brother, who was part of the Israeli Olympic Team, died tragically in the attacks in Munich in 1972. Fred Berger moved to Portland, Maine in 1981 and played a central role in the gay community from 1981 to 1989 when he moved to Massachusetts to go to Social Work school. During the 8 years in Portland, he helped found the AIDS Project (with Frannie Peabody, Kristen Kramer, and Susan Cummings Lauren) and served …

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 …

The Willfulness Of A Missing Frame: Ahmed Zaki And The Politics Of Visual Resistance, Miriam M. Gabriel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ahmed Zaki (1949-2005) is one of Egyptian cinema’s most prominent leading actors, with work spanning three decades of critical films that informed a generation’s visual register of masculinity. However, the beginnings of his career were marked by public skepticism around his place as a leading actor due to him being “too dark” and “too poor”; as his career continued to flourish, those very markings of racing and classing Zaki because a foundation for increasingly stamping his public image with the “authenticity” of an Egyptian citizen. At a particularly neoliberal moment in the Egyptian economy, that of the early 80s, new …

Closer Ties: The Dutch Caribbean And The Aftermath Of Empire, 1942-2012, Chelsea Schields

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the unique trajectory of decolonization in the Netherlands and its former Caribbean colonies and argues that sexual and reproductive politics have played a pivotal role in forging a postcolonial commonwealth state. Using sexual politics as a lens, “Closer Ties” explores how postcolonial ties between the Netherlands and its former Caribbean dependencies have strengthened rather than severed in the aftermath of colonial rule. This alternative ending of empire challenges the assumed trajectory of decolonization and locates the drama of imperial dissolution in debates over sexual and reproductive rights in Europe. Looking to the circuits of trans-Atlantic exchange across …

Depending On Sex? Tongue, Sieve, And Ladle Shaped Pendants From Late Iron Age Gotland, Meghan P. Mattsson Mcginnis

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Artifacts of female dress such as brooches and pendants have long been objects of interest to scholars of late Iron Age /early medieval Scandinavia. They figure in dating and tracing stylistic developments, and their presence is often (controversially) used to help assign gender to burials. There are three types of pendants which constitute a type of feminine adornment unique to Viking Age Gotland: the so-called tongue, sieve, and ladle pendants. The purpose of this paper is to examine these pendant types and the possible symbolic and magical functions behind their forms and manner of use, and how these functions intersected …

Eighteenth Century Women And The Business Of Making Glass Music, Kate M. Hepworth

History

During the relatively short period from the mid-to-late eighteenth century when glass musical instruments were manufactured and gained popularity, several women made names for themselves in the realm of avant-garde musical performance. The lives of three female glass instrument players: Anne Ford, Marianne Davies, and Marianne Kirchgassner, show how these successful performer-entrepreneurs operated in an age of emerging feminine public identity. Their journeys reveal much about the gender dimensions of the age, the role of music in the modern era, the consumption of it, and their approach to business. The financial opportunities presented to women looking to challenge the limitations …

Mestiza, Métis, American: How Intermixture On United States Borders Shaped Local, Regional, And National Identities, Carla L. Mendiola

History Theses and Dissertations

This project compares mestizaje in Mexican American communities of the Texas-Mexico border and métissage in Franco American communities of the Maine-Canada border, from the pre-contact period to the 20th-century. Exploring the central themes of intermixing, borders, and identity, the paper shows the long-standing presence of mixed-ancestry groups in the U.S. and investigates how social and geopolitical borders have been used to racialize and exclude these groups from U.S. history, and, ultimately from acceptance as part of U.S. identity. The comparison of Texas’s Lower Rio Grande Valley and Maine’s St. John River Valley follows the development of these communities and recognizes …

Time Travel, Labour History, And The Null Curriculum: New Design Knowledge For Mobile Augmented Reality History Games, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the 'null curriculum'. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to …

Moser, W. Jo, Wendy Chapkis

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

W. Jo Moser is a mother, photographer, political activist, and lesbian. She has experience working in childcare and is passionate about child welfare. Moser has a unique perspective as a lesbian parent being in a romantic long-term relationship with her partner of several decades. She sheds light on what living in San Francisco was like as a queer-identifying person in the 60s, 70s, and early-80s. There were experiences of social isolation she shared. This isolation was due to the fact that she did not always feel accepted in lesbian communities, but also felt that she had to prove herself to …

She Would Not Be Silenced: Mae West's Struggle Against Censorship, Charlotte N. Toledo

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Mae West, an actress during Hollywood's Golden Age, used her fame on stage, in films, and on the radio to offer social commentary on relationships between men and women in society. Her irreverent style of addressing issues of female sexuality and power certainly caught peoples attention and made them think about these issues in new ways. At the same time, her racy delivery made her a target of stage, film, and radio censorship. She refused to be silenced and continually pushed against restrictions to deliver he message of empowerment in her trademark provocative manner.

Higher Education: The Impact On Bosnian Women Who Came As Refugees To The United States, Belma Sadikovic

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the impact college education has on Bosnian refugee women who resettled to the United States. The research findings help us better understand the effect higher education has on female students who came to the United States as refugees, their self-sufficiency and their overall integration into their new society. Using Kunz’s refugee theory and Bourdieu’s theory on social and cultural capital as a theoretical framework, the study explores socio-cultural factors that enable and constrain the ability of Bosnian women to navigate the facets of higher education, and how those factors affect their self-sufficiency and overall integration. The participants …

A City Room Of One's Own: Elizabeth Jordan, Henry James, And The New Woman Journalist, James Hunter Plummer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis considers the portrayal of the female journalist in the works of Elizabeth Jordan and Henry James. In 1898, Jordan, a journalist and editor herself, published Tales of the City Room, a collection of interconnected short stories that depict a close and supportive community of female journalists. It is, overall, a positive portrayal of female journalists by a female journalist. James, on the other hand, uses the female journalists in The Portrait of a Lady, “Flickerbridge,” and “The Papers” to show his discomfort toward New Journalism and the New Woman of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. These …

No Foreign Despots On Southern Soil: The American Party In Alabama And South Carolina, 1850-1857, Robert N. Farrell

Master's Theses

During the 1850s in the South, the American Party, also known as the Know Nothing Party, rallied southerners culturally and politically around nativism, an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic ideology. This thesis studies nativism in the Deep South and challenges existing scholarship by Tyler Anbinder and William Darrell Overdyke. Anbinder claims that southern Know Nothings held little in common with their northern counterparts and exhibited only regional characteristics. Overdyke maintains that the American Party in the Deep South participated in the national organization, but he argues that nativism appeared only as an incidental component.

An analysis of private papers, speeches, and newspapers …

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

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 …

“Patriotism Is Not Enough”: Edith Cavell’S Life And Death In Anglo-American Context, Erin B. Blackledge

Honors Theses

In October 1915, British nurse Edith Cavell was killed by the Germans for aiding in the illegal liberation of Allied soldiers. In the wake of her death, the British government created a propaganda firestorm to garner both domestic and foreign support for the war. In particular, the propaganda featuring Cavell was highly gendered and over the course of multiple generations has generated a diverse, and often polarized series of social and political responses in both Britain and the United States. Through the examination of government documents, newspapers, and popular culture, such as film and children’s novels, this thesis examines the …

Bomb-Dropping Bombshells: An Analysis Of The Motivations And Accomplishments Of The All-Female 46th Taman Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment, Yasmine L. Vaughan

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

The 46^th Taman Guard Bombers Aviation Regiment was an all-female regiment of bomber pilots enlisted by the Soviet military during World War II. Nicknamed the Night Witches by Germans soldiers, they flew over 24,000 combat missions in three years and produced twenty-four Heroes of the Soviet Union. Although gender equality in Soviet Russia made this regiment possible, equality was not what made them successful. To understand their achievements, their motivations must be examined. When the Germans invaded, these women were driven by patriotism to join the fight. Enduring the harsh frontlines, this regiment owed their success to their …