Women's History Commons^™

Women With A Cause: Art, Representation, And Feminist Progress In Eighteenth-Century France, Darby Marie Leahy

Master's Theses

Throughout the eighteenth century the Age of Enlightenment transformed public discourse across Western Europe. In France, the salons of Paris became the primary institutions of Enlightenment thought. Hosted by women, the salons possessed a unique atmosphere in which men and women were regarded as intellectual equals. My thesis focuses on the role the female hostesses, salonnières, had in initiating French movements for gender equality that continued with great momentum throughout the French Revolution. By using popular artwork, literature, and memoirs I show how the efforts of French women to achieve gender equality helped give early rise to feminism.

"There Was Something Grotesque": The Application And Limits Of Respectability In The Daughters Of Bilitis, Elizabeth Diane Greer

Master's Theses

Living in both the “deviant” and “normal” worlds, the leadership of The Daughters of Bilitis generally adhered to a respectable and assimilationist public persona as evidenced through political activities and the publication of their periodical The Ladder. Due to this juxtaposition, the largely middle-class, white membership exhibited socially conservative views in order to make long-term social change, leading to an inherent contradiction between maintaining their middle-class identity and public respectability. Seen from the organization’s founding in 1955 until its collapse in 1970, these contradictions and the focus on respectability politics adds to the existing scholarship on the DOB.

The …