Women's History Commons^™

Writing, Performance, Resistance: Examining Feminist Ideology And Theory In Theatre Since The Second Wave, Olivia Cross

Theater Honors Papers

This project seeks to identify and analyze how feminist theatre is informed by theory and activism in its resistance against white, heteronormative, and patriarchal hegemony offstage through onstage representation. By identifying three consistent themes of gender & sexuality, race, and trauma and the methods used to effectively convey them to an audience, feminist theatre displays how advocacy takes unique forms to uproot the status quo. Furthermore, this research highlights how theatre is a viable and rich outlet for feminist intellectual history, displaying its versatility as a frame of analysis.

Introduction: Conversations On Abortion Rights And Bodily Autonomy In The Eighteenth Century And Today, Vicki Barnett Woods, Manushag N. Powell

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This piece serves as an introduction to the discussions of bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, revised from roundtable presentations held at ASECS 2023. This collection of essays contributes to the resounding responses of frustration and anger toward the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The collection was written and presented by eighteenth-century scholars who have a comprehensive knowledge of the eighteenth-century legal, social, and medical histories that center around reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.

Writing And Choreographing: The Double Dilemma Of Chinese Immigrant Women, Na An

Dance Written

This thesis focuses on the double dilemma of Chinese immigrant women. From reflecting on my own experience to interviewing nine Chinese immigrant women to sharing embodied knowledge in dance, this paper is an inquiry into the question, "What does it mean to be a Chinese immigrant woman in the USA?" Through my writing and choreographic practice, my research explores how place, identity, and choreography are closely and mutually interactive. I analyze the dilemmas in two spaces: 'gender ideology in China' and 'Chinese immigrant women in the United States.' From the Mao era to modernizing markets in post-Mao China, from the …

Aesthetics & Politics: A Brief History Of Japan & The Us’S 20th Century, Ricky Brown

Theatre Thesis - Written Thesis

This paper is a look at the combination of aesthetics and politics and how that combination effected the lives of black Americans, Japanese women and the people of Korea under Japanese occupation during the early 1900s.

Interview With Jenny Cavenaugh, Jennifer Jones Cavenaugh, Wenxian Zhang

Oral Histories

Growing up in New York City, Jennifer Jones Cavenaugh earned her BA in Policy Studies from Dartmouth College in 1982, and her MFA in Dramaturgy from Brooklyn College in 1992. After receiving her PhD in Theater History and Dramatic Criticism from the University of Washington in 1995, she served as Assistant Professor of Theater at the University of Denver for three years before joining the faculty of the Louisiana State University, where she earned her tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor of Theater in 2003.

In 2005, Dr. Cavenaugh was named the Winifred Warden Endowed Chair of Theater at …

Women Of The Dalit Unrest: Rewriting Bodies, Reinforcing Resistance, Suddhadeep Mukherjee

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The paper aims to take the scholarship on corporeal feminism and Dalit Studies forward by focusing on the Dalit woman’s body. The body is not treated as an inert surface in this paper but is considered as a transformative medium that can alter its embedded codifications and significations through transgressive performances in the face of systemic and systematized caste violence. In doing so the gendered body not only challenges to rewrite the Dalit epistemology from the vantage of resistance but also initiates a rethinking of Indian feminism. The paper begins with a discursive discussion on the importance of the gender …

Healing Through Mother Earth, Taylor A. Russell

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis deals with mental health, with a focus on Black women. Historically, Black women are often so compromised, being constant caregivers and helping everyone else, that they forget to help themselves, not having the time and financial means to do so. If we go back in the time of slavery, many Black women were taking care of slave owners' children and suckling the white women’s babies instead of their own. By the time they got home and after diligently caring for other people’s children they were focused on their own children, who they had been away from for hours …

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 …

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 …

Through The Stage Door, A Spotlight On 'Backstage' Work: Women Designers And Stagehands In Theatrical Production, Victoria Nidweski

Women's History Theses

The narrative within theatre history has been predominantly male, especially regarding those who work in technical production. When historians speak to women’s participation in theatre, the focus is often on performers, directors, and playwrights. Women designers are treated as anomalies, with a paucity of scholarship written about women stagehands. This thesis applies a social perspective to analyzing women’s experiences in theatrical production, attempting to dismantle the gendered hierarchy of theatrical labor. Rather than focusing on individual achievements, I grouped women as cohorts. The first cohort comprises pioneer women designers; I examine how women gained the skills necessary for United Scenic …

Stranger Compass Of The Stage: Difference And Desire In Early Modern City Comedy, Catherine Tisdale

Doctoral Dissertations

In periods of social and political upheaval like ours, it is more important than ever to interrogate constructions of identity and difference and to understand the histories of alterity that separate us from one another. Stranger Compass of the Stage: Difference and Desire in Early Modern City Drama reimagines the cultural and social effect of alien, foreign, and stranger characters on the early modern stage and re-envisions how these characters contribute to, alter, and imaginatively build new epistemologies for understanding difference in early modern London. Resisting the field’s current critical inclination toward English identity formation, this project works intersectionally to …

A Devised Ethnodrama: Conscious Voices, Sonia Pasqual

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Using techniques of storytelling, dance, poems, and monologues in the process of re-enacting life stories, the ensemble display issues that may be impeding society’s growth—discrimination against body image, blackness, females, and LGBTQ individuals. In addition, engagement in storytelling and performance can help the audience increase their cognitive skills, empathy, and ability to live a communal life. This evidence-based practice can transform lives and society. It has the potential of continuing to other faculties and with other departments, such as film, musical, and additional narratives. This specific work could be extended out beyond art and education into populations of any communities …

"With The Commodity In The Hand": A Practical Investigation Of The Intersection Of Material Culture With Performance Theory, Katharine M. Given

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the intersection of performance theory and material culture through the practices of garment reconstruction. In chapter 1, I examine key theorists in the fields of material culture and performance studies and articulate the connections between the two fields. In chapter 2, Using practice as research, I recount the experience of building reproduction garments from the eighteenth century using historically appropriate tools and methods, as well as the experience of wearing those garments. Finally, in Chapter 3, I walk through a possible historical examination of my encounter with these reconstructed garments, and consider the way in which feminine …

Fashion As Freedom - The Bustle And Women Of The Late Victorian Era, Sydney A. Everett

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

In contrast to the general bias of Americans, the First- and Second-Bustle periods allowed the women of the time to find freedom through changes in the Victorian fashion. The women of the 19th century were able to achieve freedom through the bustle periods between 1867 and 1889 by gaining freedom of movement more so than through any of the other fashions, first by gaining social and economic benefit through smuggling items in their bustles and finally, through being able to remove the bustle for athletic wear. This research uses primary research sources and contemporary scholarly essays to analyze how these …

'Once Famous In An Odd Way': Curiosity And Queerness In Late 19th-Century American Male Impersonation, S.C. Lucier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis depicts the emergence of one particular iteration of the popular female actor within 19^th century performance, the male impersonator, and identifies the ways in which this theatrical expression was related to and affected by similar amusements of the period. Public amusements of this period include a diversity of experiential entertainment that was primarily geared toward working and lower-middle class males. Included in these types of illegitimate theater is the variety hall. Male impersonators were the height of theatrical fashion not only in New York City, which is the focused landscape of this paper, but this type of …

Flipping The Script: Gabriela Silang’S Legacy Through Stagecraft, Leeann Francisco

Humanities and Cultural Studies | Senior Theses

Flipping the Script: Gabriela Silang’s Legacy through Stagecraft is a chronicle of the scriptwriting and staging process for Bannuar, a historical adaptation about the life of Gabriela Silang (1731-1763) produced by Dominican University of California’s (DUC) Filipino student club (Kapamilya) for their annual Pilipino Cultural Night (PCN). The 9th annual show was scheduled for April 5, 2020. Due to the limitations of stagecraft, implications of COVID-19, and shelter-in-place orders, the scriptwriters made executive decisions on what to omit or adapt to create a well-rounded script.

In this chronicle, scriptwriters’ choices in character development and musical elements in the show are …

International Influence On The Development And Reception Of Cello Playing In England, 1870–1930: Robert Hausmann, Auguste Van Biene, And Guilhermina Suggia, Hannah E. Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The development of cello playing in England in the late nineteenth century was driven largely by the efforts of expatriate and visiting performers trained elsewhere. Performers from abroad, with the support and admiration of British institutions and audiences, elevated the technical level of cello playing and helped to increase the quality and quantity of solo repertoire being written and performed. They also expanded the degree of acceptance that British audiences held for the cello, both as a solo instrument and as an instrument that could be played in public by women. This study explores the impact that three such cellists, …

Little Egypt: A Critical Biography, Katherine Vecchio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Structured as a biography, this thesis investigates the origins of Little Egypt—a stage name assumed by multiple women performing either the danse du ventre or the hoochie-coochie—and considers the character’s cultural legacy. The work draws on nineteenth and twentieth century newspapers, advertisements, photographs, and official publications and archival records from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Chapter one takes a new look at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and shows how the presence of dancers performing the danse du ventre on the Midway Pliasance was turned into a flashpoint of controversy by the popular press. This controversy would be key …

Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance And U.S. Musical Theatre, Phoebe Rumsey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I claim the collective emotional connections and historical explorations characteristic of musical theatre constitute a nostalgic impulse dramaturgically inherent in the form. In my intervention in the link between nostalgia and musical theatre, I look to an area underrepresented in musical theatre scholarship: social dance. Through case studies that focus specifically on how social dance in musical theatre brings forth the dancer on stage as a site of embodied history, cultural memory, and nostalgia, I ask what social dance is doing in musical theatre and how the dancing body functions as a catalyst for nostalgic thinking for …

"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 …

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

Restoration Raillery: The Use Of Witty Repartee To Gain Power Within Gendered Spaces Of Restoration London, Bonnie Soper

Madison Historical Review

“Restoration Raillery: The Use of Witty Repartee to Gain Power within Gendered Spaces in Restoration London,” examines the creation of gendered spaces to gain political and social power through the use of satire and wit in poetry, theater, and the court of Charles II in Restoration London. During the Restoration period, mentions of wit and incivility in print and theatre increased over previous eras due to the heightened importance placed on wit as a tool to gain popularity within the court of Charles II. At the same time, witty repartee and well-executed satire provided political power to men within Parliament, …

Revolutionary Every Day: A Dramatic Exploration Of Women And Their Agency In The Black Panther Party., Kristen Michelle Walker

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

This capstone project is centered around Black Panther women and explores what it means to be a revolutionary black woman dealing with politics surrounding gender in both private and public spaces during the late 1960’s and beyond. In addition, the project includes an original fictional play based on the experiences of Panther women around the world. In addressing the social conditions that impacted female Panther activism and agency, together the capstone project and play operate as a commentary on power, gender relations, and society in and around the Black Panther Party.

Theatre Women And Cultural Diplomacy In The Transatlantic Anglophone World (1752-1807), Sandra Perot

Doctoral Dissertations

Anglophone theatre provided a solid cultural bridge between Britain and America and served as an influential, informative, and accessible mode of social, political and cultural exchange transported throughout the eighteenth-century transatlantic world. Unlike works focusing on colonial American restrictions on theater, or examining its subsequent role in constructing American nationhood and identity, I explore how theatre served to both cultivate and challenge transatlantic connections. I show that actresses and women playwrights played a distinctive role in this process; they exercised agency in helping shape Anglo identity, influenced the formation of the cult of celebrity, challenged physical gendered spaces and normative …

Research And Study Of Fashion And Costume History Spanning From Ancient Egypt To Modern Day, Kaitlyn E. Dennis Miss

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Through a generous donation to Morehead State University, research has been conducted on thousands of slides containing images of artwork and artifacts of historical significance. These images span from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the inaugural dress of every first lady of the United States. The slides are in the process of being recorded and catalogued for future use by students in hopes of furthering academic comprehension and awareness of the influence of fashion and costume history through the ages. Special thanks to the family of Gretel Geist Rutledge, faculty mentor Denise Watkins, as well as the Department of Music, Theatre, and …

Ann Kenyon, Lady Magician And Card Manipulator, Michael Claxton

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years Of American Dialogue On Sex, Gender, And The Nuclear Family, Amy Brooks

Masters Theses

This thesis is a two-part work. Its components, a written paper and a one-night symposium/film screening event entitled Tennessee Williams: Gender Play in 2015 and Beyond, have been closely coordinated with my dramaturgical research for the February 2015 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The written inquiry is structured around a chronological, selected American production history of Cat; this history, rendered in a series of three case studies, will (1) synthesize preexisting analyses of Cat’s dramaturgical profile, its impact on American theater, and its position in Williams’s oeuvre; …

From Pants To Pearls: Rodgers And Hammerstein’S Affect On Post Wwii Women, Alison Dees

DISCOVERY: Georgia State Honors College Undergraduate Research Journal

With the ending of World War II, the returning American veterans forced working women out of their war-time jobs and back to the home where they were to become views and mothers. During this time of transition, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein formed a partnership through which they would create musicals that were very different from the typical Pre-1945 musicals which featured all male casts and songs dealing with what it was like to be in war.

The new musicals featured a heroic main character that always falls for the dainty girl next door. This girl next door would always …

Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press And Fluxus, Meghan A. Dellacrosse

Theses and Dissertations

"Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press and Fluxus," positions Knowles’ Big Book (1966) as a case study of historical methodology and interdisciplinary artistic practice in the post-war period. This comprehensive analysis of Big Book, a work of art no longer extant, contextualizes its publisher, Something Else Press through Dick Higgins’ concept of “intermedia,” and important lesser-known junctures relevant to Fluxus and the group’s leader George Maciunas are illuminated. Knowles' early and lesser-known silkscreen paintings are also examined.