Women's History Commons^™

Defining Womanhood: Ancient Greek Inspirations For Our Modern Ideas, Carrie Selwood

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

What does it mean to be a woman today? Perhaps to start exploring an answer to that question, we need to look to history, to one of the cultures that has profoundly influenced our own: ancient Greece. The myths and culture cultivated by the Greeks in the first millennium BCE are of deep import to many modern societies, and they are still utilized as a common cultural touchstone for diverse populations. But what is the point of harkening back to a dead civilization from two thousand years ago to talk about modern womanhood? What can those women, the real ones …

Reconsidering Dorothy Day: The Distinctly American Catholic, Emma Strempfer

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Dorothy Day’s (1897-1980) life and work fell during a period of rapid social change in America. She lived as a bohemian radical and a self-proclaimed anarchist when she entered the political scene as a journalist for The Call. Disillusioned with hypocrisy and censorship on far-left socialist media, she explored and deepened her faith. Following conversion to Catholicism, Day founded the Catholic Worker. She worked to publish stories on as many different individuals as possible, even sometimes for her story, living alongside them for weeks. When aiding the poor directly, her approach was individual-based. She stressed financial freedom, and …

Redefining Roman Women: Powerful Benefactresses & Patrons Of The Early Roman Empire, Jacqueline Elia

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

The history of the Roman Empire has thus far been largely dominated by male narratives. With ancient literary sources predominantly having been written by and for wealthy male audiences, a dangerously limited scope of the Roman Empire has been perpetuated as marginalized groups such as women have been left out of the historical record. Despite what mainstream history has been led to believe by authors such as Livy and Tacitus, Roman women were not simply one-dimensional, domestic creatures who acted as passive witnesses to male dominance. Rather, middle-elite women throughout the empire frequently existed outside the bounds of the domestic …

“A Scepter Of Terror Or A Sword Of Freedom”: Elaine Brown’S Time In The Black Panther Party, Maeve Plassche

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

This project highlights the activism of Elaine Brown, who was the only female chairperson of the Black Panther Party. It looks to enhance the way in which the Black Panther Party is remembered, by placing gender and gender relations in the center of the conversation. Even though women were crucial participants in the Party, they often did not receive the respect that their male counterparts did, and the historical scholarship, using male-centered sources, reiterates this point. While conducting research in the Dr. Huey P. Newton records, located the Stanford Libraries, I delved into the newspapers, internal Black Panther Party documents, …

Women In Roman Republican Literature: The Use Of Mulier In Sallust And Plautus, Emily Conley

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Language and word choice are critical tools that allow an author to communicate how they want the audience to receive and think about a character or situation. Authors often will use colloquialisms or euphemisms to imply something about the characters that either cannot be said or is not appropriate to say. This is especially true of words used for women. There are several Latin words meaning ‘woman’ or ‘female’. In this thesis, I focus on the most common three: mulier, femina and puella. Because these terms can implicitly comment upon the social positions of characters, their fundamental meanings are …

Review Of Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise Of Evangelical Christianity In Early America By Catherine A. Brekus, Edward E. Andrews

History & Classics Faculty Publications

Reviews the book Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) by Catherine A. Brekus.

“In Her Shoes”: Victorian Lady Explorers In Imperial Africa And Their Relationship To Contemporary Travellers Of A Commercialized, Nostalgic Landscape, Mary Smith

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Smith uses the framework of the Cape to Cairo trek to illuminate both the problematic maternalist feminism of early 19th century women, and to draw parallels with contemporary nostalgia for a romanticized and racialized past.

“The Honorable Order Of Flappers": A Historical Discussion On Defining The Flapper, Carolyn Dedeo

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

The Greek pantheon has a particular relevance to America in the 1920s—driven by a lightning bolt wielding Zeus, industry and urban life flourished with the large scale introduction of electricity; Zeus’s jealous wife Hera wielded a power of her own as women gained suffrage with the Nineteenth Amendment; automobiles and telephones connected the country with the speed of the fleet footed Hermes; despite Prohibition, Dionysus orchestrated what became a seemingly endless bacchanalian romp.

In the most famous of Greek myths, three goddesses fell into a dispute over which of them was the most beautiful: the politically powerful Hera, the seductive …