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Narratives Of Reproductive Control In The American Eugenics Movement, Cassandra M. Provost Mar 2024

Narratives Of Reproductive Control In The American Eugenics Movement, Cassandra M. Provost

Honors Theses

In this paper, I will explore the eugenics movement as a pseudo-scientific political, social, and legal phenomenon which had a devastating historical impact on America’s most vulnerable women, as well as briefly discuss its residual effects on contemporary reproductive rights conversations, through the lens of literature. Using an interdisciplinary discourse and narrative analysis approach, I identify two distinct themes within the explored narratives: (1) the importance of a government’s attempt to override a person’s autonomy by destroying the person’s ability to reproduce, and (2) the impropriety of actions based on a negative attitude toward disabled or undesirable persons. In my …


Women’S Votes, Women’S Voices, And The Limits Of Criminal Justice Reform, 1911–1950, Carolyn B. Ramsey Jan 2021

Women’S Votes, Women’S Voices, And The Limits Of Criminal Justice Reform, 1911–1950, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

Deriving its vigor from the work of grassroots organizations at the state and local levels, the League of Women Voters (LWV) sought, in the first half of the twentieth century, to provide newly enfranchised women with a political education to strengthen their voice in public affairs. Local branches like the San Francisco Center learned from experience—through practical involvement in a variety of social welfare and criminal justice initiatives. This Article, written for a symposium commemorating the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, assesses the role of LWV leaders in California and especially San Francisco in reforming three aspects of the criminal …


Is This A Christian Nation?: Virtual Symposium September 25, 2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law Sep 2020

Is This A Christian Nation?: Virtual Symposium September 25, 2020, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.


Marielle Franco, Rhaissa Sanches Jan 2020

Marielle Franco, Rhaissa Sanches

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Marielle Franco was a Black, Brazilian activist (1979-2018) who rose from the favelas (poor areas) of Rio de Janeiro to be elected as a councilwoman in Rio's election of 2016. Franco was known for exposing the violence waged in the favelas by Brazil's military and police under the "pretense of maintaining law and order," as well as how the militia wields power over those who live in the favelas. In addition to detailing Franco's life, activism and death, this paper also explains the history and development of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the negative attitudes held …


Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, And Michelle Obama: Performing Gender, Race, And Class On The Campaign Trail, Ann C. Mcginley Jan 2009

Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, And Michelle Obama: Performing Gender, Race, And Class On The Campaign Trail, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

The 2008 Presidential campaign highlighted three strong, interesting, and very different women -- Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Obama -- who negotiated identity performances in the political limelight. Because of their diverse backgrounds, experience, and ages, an examination of how these three women performed their identities and the public response to them offers a rich understanding of the changing nature of gender, gender roles, age, sexuality and race in our culture. This essay suggests that optimism that Obama's race and gender performances may have removed the stigma from "the feminine" may be misplaced, at least when it comes to …


The Trial Of Susan B. Anthony For Illegal Voting, Douglas O. Linder Jan 2007

The Trial Of Susan B. Anthony For Illegal Voting, Douglas O. Linder

Faculty Works

More than any other woman of her generation, Susan B. Anthony saw that all of the legal disabilities faced by American women owed their existence to the simple fact that women lacked the vote. When Anthony, at age 32, attended her first woman's rights convention in Syracuse in 1852, she declared that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all the others, was the right of suffrage. Anthony spent the next fifty-plus years of her life fighting for the right to vote. She would work tirelessly: giving speeches, petitioning Congress and …


Anti-Essentialism, Relativism, And Human Rights , Tracy E. Higgins Jan 1996

Anti-Essentialism, Relativism, And Human Rights , Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

Confronted with the challenge of cultural relativism, feminism faces divergent paths, neither of which seems to lead out of the woods of patriarchy. The first path, leading to simple tolerance of cultural difference, is too broad. To follow it would require feminists to ignore pervasive limits on women's freedom in the name of an autonomy that exists for women in theory only. The other path, leading to objective condemnation of cultural practices, is too narrow. To follow it would require feminists to dismiss the culturally distinct experiences of women as false consciousness. Yet to forge an alternative path is difficult, …


Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West Jan 1990

Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

During the 1980s a handful of state judges either held or opined in dicta what must be incontrovertible to the feminist community, as well as to most progressive legal advocates and academics: the so-called marital rape exemption, whether statutory or common law in origin, constitutes a denial of a married woman's constitutional right to equal protection under the law. Indeed, a more obvious denial of equal protection is difficult to imagine: the marital rape exemption denies married women protection against violent crime solely on the basis of gender and marital status. What possibly could be less rational than a statute …