Women's History Commons^™

The Women Of Justice: Narratives Of Women Attorneys In California During The 1960s And 1990s, Sarah Zion

Master's Theses

This thesis interviews two women attorneys who have not previously shared their stories to relate their experience of going to law school and entering the field after graduation. The study of women lawyers and their stories is not a new topic, however, there is a focus in the scholarship to only explore the tales of the women who reached the big firsts, such as first female lawyer or first female judge. By providing interviews of women who have not reached these big accomplishments, the field gains a more rounded understanding of the history of female lawyers. The two women interviewed …

Myths, Museums, Mothers, And The Power Of Letitia Carson, Hailey Brink

University Honors Theses

Letitia Carson was a trailblazing Black Oregon pioneer woman whose life offered remarkable and unprecedented departures from the white pioneer status quo. Letitia's story presents numerous points at which she could be heralded for her successes; her pregnant journey across the Overland Trail, giving birth in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, cultivating and maintaining two separate homesteads, challenging and conquering two lawsuits against administrator Greenberry Smith, her midwifery and community involvement, and lastly, becoming the first Black woman to own land in Oregon in 1862. And yet, her story fell to obscurity, only to be revived nearly a century …

Haunted Homelands: Mary Hunter Austin's Search For Belonging In California's Central Valley, Aimee M. Maddalena

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From childhood, Mary Hunter Austin resisted the social conformity expected of a young girl in 1850’s Carlinville, Illinois. Instead, causing her mother to “shed tears of vexation,” she was outspoken, opinionated, and read the “wrong” books, which, according to her mother, “was what made you queer so that people didn’t like you.” Young Mary had a rich inner life and was drawn in a spiritual, mystical way to the minutiae of the natural world. Also, she questioned the strict social structure that caused her mother to be outcast as a widow, while, at the same time, young women were beginning …

The Queer Life Of Lorena Hickok, Samantha D. Leyerle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life of Lorena Hickok, a remarkable woman whose story has been glossed over throughout history. Hickok was an accomplished journalist and writer, and her life offers a fascinating glimpse into being queer in the early twentieth century. While much has been written about Hickok’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, this thesis aims to go beyond their connection to examine Hickok’s entire life and experiences in greater detail. Through analyzing her work as a writer, as well as her personal correspondence and unpublished autobiography, this thesis illuminates the quiet details of defining moments in history, including the Great …

Writing As Liberation: Challenging Yemeni Patriarchal Practices, Sheema Alamari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Patriarchal societies create an environment where men hold power and women are often treated as second-class citizens or are often held as having an inferior status. Throughout history and across cultures, literature has provided a platform for writers to share their stories and express themselves. However, Yemeni women have often been silenced and marginalized due to limited education and censorship. In recent times, Yemeni and Yemeni-American women have turned to storytelling as a means of creative expression and emotional release. This thesis analyzes Zubaida “Jasmine” Sharif’s memoir, Caged in America: One Woman’s Journey Through the Veil, and Nadia Al-Kowkabani's …

“Such An Immoral Creature”: Widowed Women And The Board Of Pension Commissioners, Lyndsay Rosenthal

Canadian Military History

Widows’ pensions were a vital source of income following the loss of a spouse during and after the war. While soldiers enlisted with the promise that their families would be taken care of, accessing state assistance could be exceedingly difficult. In addition to proving their husband’s death was connected to their wartime service, widows also had to meet contemporary ideals about gender, sexuality and motherhood. These pensions provided more financial support than any other social welfare system available at the time. However, pension regulations governed widows’ daily lives and influenced major life events such as marriage and childrearing.

Reproduction: The Ultimate Enemy Of Racial Passing In Harlem Renaissance Literature, Veronica Kordmany

Student Theses

"In this essay, I examine three texts that consider the repercussions of passing for Black Americans. Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) serves as a namesake for this general idea, as two light-skinned African American women represent the divisionary approach to racial passing. In George S. Schuyler’s Black No More (1931) we see a passing Black man’s virility being tested as he enters an ‘alternate universe’, in which a scientific invention grants him full access to the wondrous white world he’d always dreamed of entering. Finally, in the middle of this textual spectrum is Angelina W. Grimké’s 1919 short story, “The Closing …

Woman Flytrap, Brianna Jo Hobson

Student Theses and Dissertations

Woman FlyTrap is a short story zine collection that explores the topic of sexual violence through the perpetrator and victim relationship with an explicit lens. Replete with cultural and entomological themes and motifs, Woman Flytrap seeks to remind survivors that we are not alone. In our bodies or in our lives. Neither in the world. There are over a million insects to every human, proving that there is strength in numbers. All five stories in the collection present different abstracts: revenge, transformation, justice, healing, body image, self-harm, mourning, etc. There is also a playlist and a section about the author. …

The Working Class Birth Of Birth Control, Jake Whitney

Great Plains Graduate Review

The most popular image of the historic fight for birth control is connected to the Women's Liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s. Prior to that, the struggle is tied to Women’s suffrage. Regardless of the starting point, the common understanding of the fight for birth control is one along gendered lines. Historians like Linda Gordon in the book Women’s Body, Women’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America keep with this line of thought. Although most historians currently view the struggle for birth control through a gendered lens, the organized discourse of birth control began as a …

Silent Voices, Stolen Imagery, And Subjected Violence: Plains Native American Women In Historiography, Bobbie J. Roshone

Great Plains Graduate Review

This paper delves into the historiography of Indigenous women’s history and experiences on the Great Plains have been recorded. The main question when approaching this subject was, “what does a review of the historiography reveal about how historians have addressed Indigenous women’s history in the Great Plains?” The overwhelming consensus was that Indigenous women’s history of the Great Plains was minimal in regard to articles, however, there was a growth of autobiographies and other historiographical works throughout the same time period. This would lead to a directed look at how individual women in Indigenous Plains history had a larger impact …

The Impact Of Gender Roles, Political Environments, And Social Environments On Women Activists In Peru From The Mid-1800s To The Mid-1900s, Kathleen Johndrow

Great Plains Graduate Review

Going back into the colonial era, and certainly post-independence, women in Peru were discussing their political and civil rights, and questioning not only their status, but the status of workers, indigenous people, and those in poverty. In fact, within the handful of names that have appeared as well-known Peruvian women activists, they all concentrated on class as well as gender, and incorporated race in terms of indigeneity as well. In doing so, the women involved in working for increased equality created or joined different organizations over time. What led women to join one group versus another, and were there groups …

Kathleen Hanna: An Investigation Into Riot Grrrl, Elena Haffner

Audre Lorde Prize

A zine on the third-wave feminist movement riot grrrl and one of its most prominent members, Kathleen Hanna.

The Railsplitter And The Pathfinder: The Relationship Between Abraham Lincoln And John C. Frémont, Kourtney Yantis

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This study serves as an analysis of the connections between Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States and John Charles Frémont as a Civil War general. Lincoln’s position within history is solid, unlike that of John C. Frémont. The thesis will elevate Frémont to a higher status as a historical figure by arguing that the emancipation edict that he issued for Missouri in August of 1861 would influence Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary emancipation proclamation of September 1862, even though Lincoln repealed Frémont’s decree. In biographies of each man, their interactions are merely a small part of the stories of their …

"If These Walls Could Speak": Judson College And The Formation Of The New Baptist Woman, 1838-1930, E.Gabrielle Walker

Dissertations

Southern Baptist women’s collegiate education and experiences led to their questioning traditional Baptist gender roles and interpreting religion to fit a modern, progressive worldview. Judson College established in 1838 in Marion, Alabama, created a space for its Baptist students to consider socially appropriate ways, outside of doctrinal boundaries, to serve God, themselves, their families, and humanity. Judson remained theologically and culturally conservative, perpetuating inherited religious and social notions of female subordination to men, while increasingly offering students more progressive curricula to meet changing economic and cultural realities. In compliance with white Southern and Baptist conservative values, Judson’s students generally accepted …

I Belong Here Too: An Oral History Of The Immigration Of Bangladeshis To New York City, Subat Matin

Masters Theses, 2020-current

I Belong Here Too is an oral history project which consists of twenty interviews of the Bangladeshi community in New York. The oral histories touch on many aspects of Bangladeshi-American life, history, memory, identity, culture, and the struggles of being an immigrant. It tries to put the interviewees experiences in a larger historical context in order to understand how the Bangladeshi community in Brooklyn, New York has grown and the challenges they faced as immigrants in a new city. The two chapters of this thesis examines the oral history processes and the difficulties of Bangladeshi immigrant women. The project is …

Working For The Benefit And Advancement Of Women: Three Women's Organizations That Commemorated The American Civil War, 1880-1920, Annette F. Guild

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In the past forty years, scholars and members of the public alike have obsessed over the complex legacy of the American Civil War (1861-1865). As debates over Confederate monuments and the United States’ racial past have frequently emerged in politics, many Americans have disagreed as to how the Civil War should be remembered. In examining the evolution of Civil War memory in American society, numerous scholars have noted the important role that women’s organizations played in influencing the Civil War’s collective memory in the fifty years following the conflict. However, while scholars have noted the significance of these organizations for …

Ladies Of Distinction: Examining Twentieth Century African American Socialites And Civil Rights, Mackenzie Mason

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Discontent post-war Philadelphians had a full list of problems which the city had been dealing with since the beginning of the Great Depression. Conditions in the city had deteriorated so badly that by the late 1930s, a group of young middle-to-upper-class professionals who called themselves “Young Turks” began advocating for postwar progressivism in the city. These wealthy white male lawyers, architects, and university professors frequently met and discussed their reformative ideas within intellectual associations and gentleman’s clubs. During this same time period and inside the same city, two African American women born into affluent families in Philadelphia desired to design …

“She Didn’T Know I Was In The Room”: The Effects Of Hatfield’S Illustrations On Readers’ Interpretations Of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Mason Repas

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

When Charlotte Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," was first published in New England Magazine in 1892, staff illustrator Joseph Hatfield created three realistic-style images to accompany the text. Research suggests that Gilman had no control or influence over these images, which altered readers' perception of her story about the dangers of the rest cure for female hysteria. While Hatfield faced artistic limitations and his intentions are not discoverable today, the choices and details in his illustrations support interpretations of the short story as a piece of horror fiction in which his cohesive series of images is a more reliable …

Mothering As Feminism, Meera Patel

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This critical essay proposes the concept of mothering-as-feminism, with the intention of interrogating American ideals of mothering and caregiving. Reforming the way we view mothering, as it relates to feminism, requires a re-evaluation of the American role of women and mothers—and how they are portrayed (and therefore seen and understood), valued, and supported. Focusing on the evolution of feminist theory throughout the past 70 years, as well as personal and secondary experiences, I demonstrate how political and social change occurs generationally and is dependent on the education of our children. Ultimately, I show the important role children’s literature plays …

Asking For It: Gendered Dimensions Of Surveillance Capitalism, Jessica Rizzo

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Advertising and privacy were once seen as mutually antagonistic. In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans went to court to fight for their right to be free from the invasion of privacy presented by unwanted advertising, but a strange realignment took place in the 1970s. Radical feminists were among those who were extremely concerned about the collection and computerization of personal data—they worried about private enterprise getting a hold of that data and using it to target women—but liberal feminists went in a different direction, making friends with advertising because they saw it as strategically valuable.

Liberal feminists argued that in …

Exposing The Governmental Amnesia Of The Human Rights Violations That Occurred In The Magdalene Laundries, Sarah G. Gallagher

Student Theses

Throughout history, Ireland is not regarded as a champion in the area of human rights discourse, but in recent years it has found itself present in it. Pre-secularized Ireland violated human and women’s rights in institutions such as the Magdalene Laundries. Within these institutions, girls and women were subjected to various types of abuse (e.g., sexual, physical, emotional, and mental). After their time in the Laundries, they faced a life of silence and shame due to the stigma of being incarcerated in a Laundry. Due to the stigma, survivors were unable to discuss their experiences in the Laundries as they …

Devil In The Details: Witchcraft In Reformation England, Angela A. Luna

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of the English Reformation’s impact on perceptions of witches and the transformation of witchcraft as a crime prosecutable in courts of law. It demonstrates English diabolism characterized by the use of animal familiars, body markings, and pacts with the Devil, which helped to shape the English witch trials.

Femininity In Medieval Scandinavia: How Paganism Forged Gender Equality, Erin M. Caffey

Graduate Theses

The brutality of the Vikings and the conquests of medieval Scandinavian men have often garnered the majority of interest from the media, the armchair historian, and the scholar alike, with the pursuits and lives of their female counterparts seldom discussed. Medieval Scandinavian women’s lives though, when examined, are just as enthralling as those of the men. And while their stories are not necessarily as full of bloodshed or glory, the lives of women, those seen in both mythology and memory, provide an insight into the secular and religious foundations of medieval Scandinavian communities. Through an examination of various mythological texts, …

Black Women White Standards, Carrie Selwood

The Civil Rights Movement (HIS/BLS 347) Zine Project

No abstract provided.

The Invisible Influence: How Women And Enslaved People Shaped Colonial South Carolina, Abigail Doyle

All Theses

Colonial American studies often focus on the movements, actions and influences of white males and while their actions are significant to understanding the past, it leads to a one-sided view of history. In the colony of South Carolina, women and people of color were important figures that influenced society and made a lasting impact for future generations. Ann Drayton and Eliza Lucas Pinckney both became female planters in the absence of male figures in their life and thrived in their roles. Drayton and Lucas-Pinckney were legitimate agents of colonization and slavery. Quash/John Williams, who was a former slave of Eliza …

Acquitted By Reason Of Paroxysmal Insanity? Science And Gender In The Nineteenth-Century Murder Trial Of Mary Harris, Emmalee Morgan

History Honors Program

The acquittal of Mary Harris in 1865 demonstrates the culmination of new social and scientific ideologies through the strategy of her defense counsel and the utilization of expert medical witnesses. While at the same time, the prosecutorial strategy embodied the opinions of gender and insanity that were being phased out.

The aim of this project is to demonstrate the overlap and reciprocal influence of science, law, and society, with narratives of gender acting as consistent undertones in these three realms. The trial and acquittal seem to fall in line with the idea that the insanity plea is a sham — …

An Exhibition Of Women's United States Air Force Uniforms, Michelle Robinson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The new Women in the Air Force exhibit under development at the Hill Aerospace Museum, located at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is long overdue. The exhibit is set to replace the existing display in order to more accurately and comprehensively represent women’s continuing legacy of service to our nation. The uniforms in the Hill Aerospace Museum collection constitute the focal point of the new exhibit. Material culture methodologies form the foundation of this exhibit work; seeking to provide greater understanding of women’s military experience and history through the analysis of their uniforms. This approach therefore utilizes uniforms, the museum’s …

Community In The Cell: Queer Women’S Space And Place In New Orleans, Jordan Hammon, Jordan Hammon

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines queer women’s history and space/places of community in New Orleans using spatial analysis and feminist theory to fill the silences. The Special Citizens Committee for the Vieux Carré laid the foundation for regulating queer women and transmasculine people starting in the 1950s. Even after the committee ended, New Orleans Police Department and the Vice Squad had the power to invade and harass places of community for queer women and transmasculine people. Despite this hostility, queer women and transmasculine people resisted and made a place for themselves in New Orleans. As a result of their persistence through visibility …

The Story Of Jennie Steers: An Examination Of Race, Gender, And Lynching In Northwest Louisiana, Lauren Smith

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As the nineteenth century ended, the American South entered a new century equipped with the foundations of a Jim Crow society. Through political intimidation, segregation, and racial violence—most notoriously through the practice of lynching—white Southerners reasserted white supremacist rule. Yet the lynching of Black men in this era is more often documented than the plight of Black women at the hands of white mobs and local authorities. By focusing on Jennie Steers, a woman lynched outside of Shreveport, Louisiana in 1903, this project sheds light on the violent history of Northwest Louisiana and the ways in which Black women navigated …

Amorous Poems And Passionate Letters: An Analysis Of The Contributions Of Two Female Authors To The Literary Scene Of 16th Century Italy, Ava Buchanan

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Vittoria Colonna and Chiara Matraini were well known women in intellectual and public Italian society during the 16^th century. However, the history surrounding their individual impacts has often been limited due to the common practice of grouping these two women together or focusing more intently on their male connections. This thesis aims to advance women’s history on the Early Modern period by providing holistic accounts of Vittoria Colonna and Chiara Matraini’s careers that provide a better understanding of the unique contributions that these women made to distinctly female literature in the Early Modern period in Italy. This thesis utilizes …