<p> Three dances, <i>On This Day, Panties and Pathologies </i>, and <i>Naked Spotlight Silver</i> were choreographed and performed in fulfillment of the requirements to complete an M.F.A. degree in dance. The performances took place at the Martha B. Knoebel Dance Theater located on the campus of California State University, Long Beach. <i> On This Day</i> premiered October 2012, <i>Panties and Pathologies </i> premiered March 2013, and Naked Spotlight Silver premiered October 2013. </p><p> This thesis examines how each project investigates choreographic approaches used in concert dance to communicate issues of gender and sexuality as well as participate in a discourse on identity politics. The three dance pieces attempted to confront themes of marriage equality, representation and the marketing of femininity, and queer identity representations in performance. Each piece was unique in its methodologies and served as an explorative approach to political communication and artistic development.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: A, page: 2438. Adviser: Peter Mortensen. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-242) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thèse (M.A.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 2008. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 1 février 2007). In ProQuest dissertations and theses. Publié aussi en version papier.

Thèses (M.A.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 2007. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 1 février 2007). In ProQuest dissertations and theses. Publié aussi en version papier.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2371. Adviser: Cameron McCarthy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 329-354) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> This is a quantitative, cross-sectional study designed to examine the relationship between sexist microaggressions and mental health. <i>Sexist microaggressions</i> refer to subtle communications of hostility and discrimination toward women. Sexist microaggressions are often difficult to detect, but they have the potential for harmful mental health outcomes. Despite a strong theoretical argument for the relationship between sexist microaggressions and mental health, limited empirical research exists documenting this relationship, partly due to a lack of an adequate psychometrically developed, quantitative measure of sexist microaggressions. Therefore, for the purpose of the study, a theoretically based quantitative measure of sexist microaggressions, including a stress appraisal of these experiences, was developed. Based on survey data obtained from 699 women, the <i>Sexist Microaggressions Experiences and Stress Scale</i> (the Sexist MESS) may be conceptualized as composed of seven interrelated factors. Furthermore, the results support the reliability and validity of the Sexist MESS as a measure of sexist microaggressions among women. Even further, scores on the Sexist MESS correlated significantly with scores on the <i>Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionaire-Dutch-30</i> (MASQ-D30), indicating a positive relationship between sexist microaggressions and general distress, anhedonic depression, and anxious arousal. Additionally, hierarchical multiple regression analysis determined that sexist microaggressions account for a unique portion of variance in mental health outcomes, above and beyond other known predictors (e.g., self-esteem, perceived social support, feminist identity development) of women&rsquo;s mental health, suggesting that sexist microaggressions are an important factor to consider in the conceptualization and treatment of women&rsquo;s mental health. Other service implications and recommendations for future research are discussed throughout.</p>

<p> Previous research highlights the relationship between gender and activism in various environmental justice (EJ) grassroots oriented contexts, including but not limited to: the coalfields of Central Appalachia, Three Mile Island, and the Pittston Coal Strike movement. However, little research examining the relationship between gender and activist&rsquo;s efforts in relation to hydraulic fracturing exists, primarily because this movement itself is relatively new. From 2012-2014, four communities and one county collectively organized in an effort to ban or enact a moratorium on the practice of hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracking. Anti-fracking activists in Northern Colorado deem this technological advancement as poorly controlled and dangerous to public health and the environment. On the other hand, pro-fracking activists argue that this process is highly engineered, adequately controlled, and necessary to boost and sustain local oil and gas development in Colorado and the United States. Historically, grassroots environmental justice organizations are often created and lead by poor and minority communities as these communities experience the brunt of problematic industry practices. The setting of Northern Colorado is unique in this sense because the communities trying to halt oil and gas development are opposite of what one might expect, as they are predominately white, middle class, and educated. Thus, my study fills current gaps that exist in the literature and adopts an intersectional approach to address the subsequent research question broadly: how do gender, race, and class intersect and impact the nature and extent of activist&rsquo;s efforts in Northern Colorado&rsquo;s Hydraulic Fracturing movement? Ultimately, I find that gendered and raced identities, such as &ldquo;mother&rdquo; or &ldquo;steward to the earth&rdquo; play an imperative role in explaining women&rsquo;s entry into the fracking movement, while men pull on a spectrum of identities. Furthermore, I find that traditional gendered divisions of labor help to elucidate the differing rates of participation among men and women in the movement, as well as the roles that activists fulfill in grassroots anti-fracking organizations. Ultimately, I argue that exploring gender, in conjunction with race and class on various analytical levels, contributes to a broader understanding of the nuances of activism in environmental justice movements.</p>

<p> Sovereignty, a mechanism of power around which a state is organized, has emerged as a way to understand the twenty-first-century biopolitical moment. Thinkers including Michel Foucault, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Roberto Esposito find sovereignty essential to understanding modern regimes of bodily domination and control. These thinkers look back to early modern England as an originary moment when older theories of sovereign power became attached to emerging modern political systems. Despite the sophistication of these arguments, however, no recent biopolitical theory accounts for the situation of women in historical or current system of power, nor do they discuss the role gender has played in the development of sovereignty.</p><p> My project addresses this ideological and historical gap by examining how sovereignty was being discussed, challenged, and appropriated by literary figures from 1588-1688. In the years leading up to and spanning the Interregnum, sovereignty splintered and became available to formerly disenfranchised individuals, especially women writers. Such women not only appropriated and challenged traditional sovereignty in their texts, but also influenced contemporary and future understandings of power, politics, and gender. Each of my four chapters serves as a test cases of a woman writer engaging with and transforming sovereignty. </p><p> I first examine Elizabeth Cary&rsquo;s closet drama <i>The Tragedy of Mariam, Faire Queen of Jewry</i> (1612); I then move on to Mary Wroth&rsquo;s epic romance <i>The Countess of Montgomery&rsquo;s Urania, Part 1</i> (1621) and <i>Part 2</i> (completed and circulated in manuscript 1629). In the third chapter, I examine Katherine Philips&rsquo; <i>Poems, </i> circulated in manuscript during the Interregnum, and published posthumously in 1667; my final chapter then moves to Margaret Cavendish&rsquo;s utopian fiction and work of natural philosophy, <i>The Blazing World.</i> These women challenged traditional notions of body and power, offering their own new understandings of sovereign agency; they enable us to more fully the genealogical progression of sovereignty and to incorporate the category of gender into twenty-first century understandings of biopolitics. </p>

<p> This study considered how youth relate, connect, and identify with Nature by exploring how Girl Scouts describe their ecological identities. The purpose of this project was to introduce reflection on ecological identity as a reflective tool for living in Nature, to learn about youth connectedness to and identification with Nature, to utilize arts-based research, and to contribute to the scholarly field of girls in adventure education. Thirty-four youth aged 14 to 16 participated in the pilot and research project phases of the study. The study was a descriptive and exploratory research project, utilizing the methodologies of case study and action research. Data collection methods were anecdote circle, survey, and art creation. Survey results indicate that development of the ecological self can be grown. Three themes emerged from artistic cartography on special places in Nature, including coming of age, earth grief or loss, and summer camp. A feminist, reflexive lens guided the work, culminating in the formulation of a four-point transformation agenda for ecological identity at camps. The four recommendations are that camp administrators and educators: (1) promote a participatory relationship with phenomena through direct experience, (2) expand perceptual experience for reflection, (3) interrogate power and marginality, and (4) advance bioregional thinking and active community citizenship. Future research could investigate the efficacy of implementations of the agenda at camps. New studies should recruit for greater participant diversity and examine how Nature connectedness is defined and developed for individuals without access to green spaces and places.</p><p>

Studies on gender in medieval and modern Sufism have tended to posit two extremes: Sufism as an oasis for women, away from the strictures of ‘orthodoxy,’ or Sufism as a haven for misogynistic views of women as temptations, distractions, and necessary evils. However, these simplistic characterisations cannot encompass the full range of the evidence, as we find many positive representations of women, and indeed female saints, alongside brutal anti-woman declarations. This study attempts to nuance these prevailing characterisations of medieval depictions of gender by providing further evidence of Sufi attitudes towards women and femininity. It does so via a comprehensive consideration of a prominent Persian Sufi poet, Farīd al-Dīn ‘Aṭṭār, in the context of select Persian and Arabic hagiographies, Qur’an commentaries, and qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’. Analysis of the material reviewed suggests that gender representations are not fixed, even within the work of a single author. I argue that these texts exhibit a striking disconnect between their conceptions of ‘woman’ as a category and the depiction of narrative women, especially Sufi women. I suggest that this tendency reflects a Sufi philosophy of gender-egalitarianism and that philosophy’s inherent conflict with predominant social hierarchies of the medieval Islamicate context. This study shows the utility of engaging the classical Islamic tradition with contemporary theory surrounding gender and identity, including corporeality theory and intersectionality theory. It also employs more traditional formalist literary critiques using the lenses of defamiliarisation and paradox/apophasis. Ultimately, this research reveals the need for careful, critical studies of medieval views on gender, and contributes to the bodies of literature on Islamicate sexualities and the construction of sainthood in Islam.