Women's History Commons^™

Queering The Carceral Cycle: Women's Resistance To The Carceral State, Ashley Ruderman-Looff

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

Building upon feminist and queer scholarship that recognizes mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex as elements of an inherently violent carceral state, Queering the Carceral Cycle excavates and analyzes twentieth-century incidents in which women resisted the state’s criminalization and/or punishment of multiply marginalized women. I argue that the state’s response to women’s acts of resistance prompted the development of new carceral strategies and technologies that expanded the carceral state’s investment in control and punishment. Moreover, by critically embracing a Foucauldian scheme known as the “carceral cycle,” I demonstrate how the state traps multiply marginalized women in a seemingly endless recurrence …

Building Bridges: Church Women United And Social Reform Work Across The Mid-Twentieth Century, Melinda M. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--History

Church Women United incorporated in December 1941 as an interdenominational and interracial movement of liberal Protestant women committed to social reform. The one hundred organizers represented ten million Protestant women across the United States. They organized with the express purposes of helping to bring peace on Earth and to develop total equality within all humanity.

Church Women United was the bridge between the First and Second Wave of Feminism and the bridge between the Social Gospel and Social Justice Movements. Additionally they connected laterally with numerous social and religious groups across American society. As such, they exemplify the continuity and …