Women's History Commons^™

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 …

Black Female Athletes’ Use Of Social Media For Activism: An Intersectional And Cyberfeminist Analysis Of U.S. Hammer-Thrower, Gwen Berry's 2019 And 2021 Podium Protests, Ariel Newell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Much attention has been paid to Black male athlete activism both historically and in the contemporary movement for black lives. Black female athletes have also made historic contributions as activists, and they continue to do so. However, Black female athlete activism has not always been acknowledged or heard. This is a problem, as Black women in American sports and society face overlapping racial and gender inequities and injustices that distinctly marginalize and oppress them. However, some Black female athlete activists (BFAAs) have begun using social media to challenge media narratives about themselves, to redefine what it means to be a …

The Making Of Everyday Hollywood: 1930s Film Influence On Everyday Women’S Fashion In Nebraska, Anna Naomi Kuhlman

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research examines the influence of film fashions on middle-class, Nebraskan women’s dress during the Great Depression (1932-1940). The Great Depression challenged the middle class: while standards of living remained high, the economic means to achieve those standards diminished. Despite the crisis, women strove to keep up with current fashion trends. While previous literature has examined how Hollywood directly affected trends and styles of the 1930s in major American metropolitan contexts, the manifestation of trends in the dress of middle to lower socio-economic classes in Middle America remains under-examined. Against the backdrop of Depression-era hardships specific to Nebraska’s agricultural economy, …

Fashioning The Flapper: Clothing As A Catalyst For Social Change In 1920s America, Julia Wolffe

Honors Program Theses

Fashion has been a catalyst for social change throughout human history. Fashion in 1920s America in particular reflects society's rapidly evolving attitudes towards gender and race. Beginning with how corsetry heavily restricted women for nearly four hundred years up until the twentieth century, this thesis explores how clothing has acted as a tool for societal progression following World War I and Women's Suffrage and during the Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, this thesis examines how the influence of jazz music and dance that originated from Black American communities led to the creation of the flapper evening dress. The …

An Examination Of Women’S Rights In South Korea: From “New Women” To Female Idols, Cece Trifoso

History | Senior Theses

Between 2000 and 2022, South Korean popular music and the accompanying entertainment industry contributed to a unique solidarity among young Korean women, whilst also perpetuating harmful stereotypes. The widespread popularity of all-girl music groups from Korea has motivated women around the world, including in Korea itself, to stand on their own and establish recognition without the influence of men. This relatively new era in Korean feminist thought requires historical contextualization in order to fully appreciate and comprehend its impact on a globalized society. The evolution of feminist thought in South Korea encompasses the accumulation of knowledge from various conversations on …

Desde El Fuego Que En Mí Arde: Performance, Literatura Y Cine Afro-Latinoamericano Producidos Por Mujeres Afrodescendientes En Perú, Cuba Y Brasil (1960–2000), Elena Ekatherina Chavez Goycochea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines different films, literary, and performance art pieces created by contemporary afro-descendant women from Peru, Cuba, and Brazil after the sixties with emphasis on the most relevant works of Conceição Evaristo, Sara Gómez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Lucía Charún-Illescas. I focus my research on the crucial role these artists played in the cultural identity formation of Latin America when inserting ‘race’ as a category of socio-political analysis and cultural production. How did their films, performances, and texts challenge national narratives and imaginaries after 1960? Although in the sixties, women improved their civil rights in different countries, the ‘mujer …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

The Good, The Bad, And The Bloody: Images Of Menstruation In Television And In Menstrual Activism, Elizabeth Tripp

Women's History Theses

My thesis investigates the origins and tactics of the menstrual health movement; examines contemporary representations of menarche (the onset of menstruation) in TV programs; and postulates how these two streams of discourse could and should form a more symbiotic relationship. My first chapter defines menstrual activism, which seeks to destigmatize menstruation, using two different frameworks. Menstrual humor is frequently utilized across efforts of destigmatizing menstruation. I argue that menstrual humor can advance the menstrual activism movement depending on the punchline.

Chapter Two assesses the menstrual status quo according to television. I analyze thirteen media portrayals of menarche that aired from …

Space-Praxis: Towards A Feminist Politics Of Design, Mary C. Overholt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Outside of the academy and professionalized practice, design has long been central to the production of feminist, political projects. Taking what I have termed space-praxis as its central analytic, this project explores a suite of feminist interventions into the built environment—ranging from the late 1960s to present day.

Formulated in response to Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatial practices, space-praxis collapses formerly bifurcated definitions of ‘tactic’/‘strategy’ and ‘theory’/‘practice.’ It gestures towards those unruly, situated undertakings that are embedded in an ever-evolving, liberative politics. In turning outwards, away from the so-called masters of architecture, this thesis orients itself toward everyday practitioners …

Article 6.21, Tatiana Stolpovskaya

Theses and Dissertations

Article 6.21 is a short documentary film that aims to examine the state of censorship around queerness in Russia today and its effects on personal lives in the queer community.

Twenty years after Russia decriminalized homosexuality, on June 30th in 2013, President Vladimir Putin signed Article 6.21 "for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values", also known as the "Gay Propaganda Law". Its broad and ambiguous wording allows the government significant leeway in deciding what kind of public queerness is punishable.

In 2020 Russia passed multiple constitutional amendments that affect many areas …

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 …

Fuitina: Love, Sex, And Rape In Modern Italy, 1945–Present, Antonella Vitale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The term fuitina in Sicilian dialect is a word used to describe a form of abduction, and is a variation of the more formal Italian term fuga, meaning a flight or escape. Fuitina, was essentially a sanctioned bride theft. Often, after the abduction of a woman, the abductor would seek a reparatory or rehabilitating marriage that would restore the woman’s “honor” and absolve the man of bride theft. Until 1981, the Italian legal system supported the practice of fuitina and rarely prosecuted men who kidnapped and raped women under the guise of this tradition. The practice of fuitina and …

What Do Women Want? The Feminist Pursuit Of Happiness, Hannah Ruth Ellen

Honors Theses

“What do Women Want?” My thesis asks whether women can genuinely seek freedom while also hoping for happiness. I look closely at how male theorists define happiness and liberty for themselves and for others, and in particular for feminized others. My two central chapters focus on theories of individual happiness, happiness sought through another or others, and the ways feminist thinkers reimagine happiness in relationship to women’s freedom. I apply feminist critiques to the concept of psychodynamic therapy as an anti-revolutionary tool designed to isolate and silence women into believing that coping with oppression is equivalent to genuine happiness. I …

Subtle Asian Womxn, Long Tran

Global Honors Theses

My involvement with the Global Honors Program culminates with a senior capstone project for T GH 496 Experiential Learning in Global Honors. Over the course of spring quarter, I had the opportunity to produce a documentary film, under the supervision of my faculty advisor, Dr. David Coon, to fulfill the requirements to graduate with a minor in Global Engagement and earn the full distinction from the program. My film actively engages with the intersection of the historical representations of Asian womxn and their lived experiences with dating. As of Wednesday, May 1, 2019, I have been able to interview 14 …

"La Llorona": Evolución, Ideología Y Uso En El Mundo Hispano, Raquel Sáenz-Llano

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis studies the evolution, ideology and use of the myth of La Llorona through time in the Hispanic World. Considering this myth as one of the most known traditional narratives of the American continent, I begin by providing visual, ethnohistorical and ethnographical insights of weeping in Mesoamerica and South America and the specific mention of a weeping woman in some Spanish chronicles to say how western values were stablished in “the new continent” through this legend. I suggest that during the postcolonialism the legend did not tell anymore about a mother that cries and search a place for their …

Gender, Politics, Market Segmentation, And Taste: Adult Contemporary Radio At The End Of The Twentieth Century, Saesha Senger

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This dissertation explores issues of gender politics, market segmentation, and taste through an examination of the contributions of several artists who have achieved Adult Contemporary (AC) chart success. The scope of the project is limited to a period when many artists who figured prominently in both the broader mainstream of American popular music and the more specific Adult Contemporary category were most commercially viable: from the mid-1980s through the 1990s. My contention is that, as gender politics and gendered social norms continued to change in the United States at this time, Adult Contemporary – the chart, the format, and the …

How Lucille Ball Fought The Patriarchy, While Lucy Ricardo (Indirectly) Contributed To Second-Wave (White) Feminism, Anam Rana Afzal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Author Stephanie Coontz argues that our most powerful visions of traditional families derive from images that are still delivered to our homes in countless reruns of 1950s television sitcoms. In actuality, the happy, homogenous families that we “remember” from America in the 50s were a result of the media’s denial of diversity. Also, women’s retreat to housewifery after working during WWII was in many cases, not freely chosen. In his study of sitcoms, Saul Austerlitz claims that once television arrived in American cities after the war’s end, its impact was immediate and incontrovertible, and no sitcom caught America’s eye as …

Strange Women: The Evaluation And Comparison Of Female Characters In Akira Kurosawa's Films, Alice Jiron Jang

History

The successes of Akira Kurosawa’s films have shaped and influenced Western views on Japan after World War II. While the male characters in Kurosawa’s films have been analyzed extensively, there is a focus on the subservience of this female characters. With the growing number of independent working women in a seemingly patriarchal society, it is important to study what has caused these women to break free from their traditional roles as housewife and mother. While some of Kurosawa's female characters are designed to be powerful and independent, others are submissive and obedient. The events that occur in postwar Japan have …

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. …

Spectral Bodies: Women's Resistance Across Time In North America, Whitney C. Evanson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project contrasts the lived experiences of feminists within the EZLN in Mexico with the historical persecution of community outsiders during the Salem witch trials. I want to explore the differences between a radical political and social movement (the EZLN), and the radical shift in history in which women were accused of witchcraft based on hysteria and rumors. There are parallels between the witch trials and the causes of the Zapatista movement in the ways that women's bodies were treated--their political usefulness to create fear and obedience from citizens by murdering them for their defiance, burying them in shallow graves. …

Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches

Communication Studies

This feminist critique looks into the way that gender, specifically females, are portrayed in some of Hollywood's top films involving Artificial Intelligence: Blade Runner, Her, and Ex Machina. These movies work as a perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies while maintaining the objectification and hypersexuality of women as normalized behaviors. Additionally, while some forms of empowerment are conveyed, the features illustrate women merely on a spectrum of extreme behavior; due to Heuristics and Cultivation Theory, these misrepresentations can be associated with women outside the surrealist realm of the depicted artificially intelligent worlds.

The Parton Paradox: A History Of Race And Gender In The Career Of Dolly Parton, Lindsey L. Hammers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With a career that has spanned over five decades, country music artist Dolly Parton has continually redefined her image and her music to remain relevant. By incorporating the musical and lyrical stylings of disco and other popular music genres into her songs, Parton moved beyond music’s color line to increase her popularity as an artist. This thesis shows how Parton established a distinct career that catered to different audiences as she traversed the musical color line and repackaged what feminism looked like to country music fans during the Women’s Movement of the 1960s. Placing Parton’s actions in conversation with music’s …

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 …

Imaging Her Selves: Black Women Artists, Resistance, Image And Representation, 1938-1956, Heather Zahra Caldwell

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses specifically on dancer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), pianist Hazel Scott (1920-1981), cartoonist Jackie Ormes (1911-1985), singer Lena Horne (1917-2010), and graphic artist, painter, and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012). It explores the artistic, performative, and political resistance deployed by these five African-American women activists, artists, and performers in the period between 1937 and 1957. The principal form of resistance employed by these women was cultural resistance. Using a mixture of archival research, first person interview, biography, as well as other primary and secondary sources, I explore how these women constructed personas, representations, and media images of African-American women to …

“The Bedroom And The Barnyard: Zoomorphic Lust Through Territory, Procedure, And Shelter In ‘The Miller’S Tale’” & Haunchebones, Danielle N. Byington

Undergraduate Honors Theses

“The Bedroom and the Barnyard: Zoomorphic Lust Through Territory, Procedure, and Shelter in ‘The Miller’s Tale’” is an academic endeavor that takes Chaucer’s zoomorphic metaphors and similes and analyzes them in a sense that reveals the chaos of what is human and what is animal tendency. The academic work is expressed in the adjunct creative project, Haunchebones, a 10-minute drama that echoes the tale and its zoomorphic influences, while presenting the content in a stylized play influenced by Theatre of the Absurd and artwork from the medieval and early renaissance period.

From God Terms To Gaga: The Bad Romance Between Motherhood And Female Suffragists In American Film, Mary Ellis Glymph

Masters Theses

Ninety-five years ago, the Nineteenth Amendment was passed by Congress, and women across America were given the right to vote. Nearly a century later, the long-gone figure of the female suffragist continues to subtly permeate American film, a reoccurrence that is not easily justified. Why would viewers in the English-speaking world continue an interest in a historically-contextualized feminist that seems, at first, to have little to do with what a “modern-day feminist” portrays?

Although the woman that history calls the suffragette hasn’t existed in America since 1920, representations of her in film and visual media have reminded viewers that this …

Pratfalls, Seduction And The Farce Of Marriage: How The Screwball Comedy Redefined American Preconceptions Of Traditional Feminine Morality, Fletcher Parrott Thornton Iv

History

No abstract provided.

Day Of The Woman?: Feminism & Rape-Revenge Films, Kayley A. Viteo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the horror film sub-genre of ‘rape revenge’ for the ways it reflects and helps to constitute broader public debates about women and feminism. In order to do so, it examines two well-known representatives of the sub-genre, Last House on the Left and I Spit On Your Grave. Both of these films were initially made in 1972 and 1978 respectively and were recently remade in 2009 and 2010. This thesis examines both the originals and the remakes of these films within and against their socio-historical context, with a specific focus on dominant discussions about feminism and women taking …

Silent Subversions, Derek Dubois

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Explores the concept of spectatorship in relation to gender in the earliest period of film history in the United States known as the silent era. Argues that a new mode of spectatorship emerges for women during the 1920s, which employs to advantage the extra-diegetic components of spectacle in theater design, new customized genres for female filmgoers, fandom, and exotic male film stars, such as Rudolph Valentino. Focuses primarily on feminist film theory and on cultural studies as methodological models.