The alternative food movement is often viewed as a more moral or ethical choice compared to the industrialized food system. Because the horrors of the industrialized food system have entered public knowledge through numerous documentaries and books, consumers are looking for an alternative. Purchasing local, organic, seasonal, and fresh produce is marketed as a solution. This thesis critiques the alternative food movement for its numerous flaws using an ecofeminist lens.

This dissertation is a multi-methodological project that examines the experiences of being both LGBTQ+ and disabled from an intersectional perspective through narratives constructed in virtual spaces. In this project, I address the question ‘how do individuals who identify as both disabled/chronically ill and LGBTQ+ negotiate these often contradictory identities?’ I also complexify this intersectional analysis by examining how LGBTQ+/disabled identities are constructed in relation to race, class, and gender. Additionally, by conducting virtual ethnography as the primary method of data collection, I explore questions pertaining to how members of LBGTQ+ and disability online communities engage in virtual identity construction and virtual community building. Through these projects I seek to bring disability and LGBTQ+ identities into the intersectionality literature and discourse that has frequently excluded, and at times even ignored, these positionalities.

This study focuses on the portrayal of women images in Russia, particularly the transformation from Soviet woman to modern woman based on the analysis of one of the oldest Russian women’s magazine- “Rabotnitsa”. The sample for this study covers two periods: three decades of Russia during the era of the Soviet Union period (1970-1990) and two decades of the Post-Soviet period (1991-2017). A total of 586 relevant images were identified; 311 images by Rabotnitsa over the three decades during the Soviet Union’s period by random sampling of 20 issues published by Rabotnitsa between 1970- 1990, and 275 images by Rabotnitsa by random sampling of 20 issues published in the Post-Soviet Union period. The study was analyzed using a quantitative content analysis and grounded in framing research. Goffman’s six categories of Gender Analysis guided this research with one category being appropriated from a study by Kang (1997). The findings displayed that the images of women in the Post-Soviet Union period did not significantly change from the images discovered among the last three decades of Soviet Union period in the fifth category by Goffman. However, circulation of stereotypical portrayal of women did change in two categories- “Licensed Withdrawal” and “Independence”.

Down syndrome, or Trisomy 21, is the most commonly occurring genetic condition, and yet there exists a great deal of misinformation and misconception about the lived experience and value of Down syndrome in society. Its construction as a disability is deeply intertwined with racist rhetoric and, despite changes in language, this construction of Down syndrome as a racialized disability category has immense implications in clinical and prenatal genetic counseling settings. This thesis seeks to examine the past and present of Down syndrome in conversation with reproductive justice, disability justice, and the current norms of practice in genetic counseling. In doing so, this thesis makes recommendations towards a disability-centered and actively counter-eugenic genetic counseling practice.

The current models for health care hold at their core a pathologization of fat bodies informed by discriminatory methods and ideologies leading to an explicit lack of quality medical care for those who fail to meet normative standards of health and size. This project is interested in examining alternative public health models that provide interventions into those systems. Specifically, this work will seek to understand how the grassroots movement, Health at Every Size (HAES), serves to interrupt current limited understandings of health and weight. HAES individualized, weight-neutral approach to health and wellness exists in seeming opposition to contemporary ideas around healthcare practices. In studying this alternative model, conventional ideas of health care towards fat patients will be understood to be informed primarily by discriminatory structural and ideological practices. In addition, by highlighting the healthcare industries’ investment in the medical industrial complex, this project aims to deconstruct and critique notions of health while increasing access to care that is informed by the realities of bodily difference. In addition, this thesis will argue for zines as important health information dissemination tools by first mapping and complicating its history, expanding on zines as an artistic and politicized medium, and finally emphasizing its capacity to communicate through alternative knowledges and distribution networks.

In what ways does the legal and political monitoring of “hate groups” and "hate group activities" benefit the American left? Possible victims of crimes? Law enforcement? The state? Specifically, in what ways does the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map” challenge and/or reiterate relations of power and knowledge? This thesis offers a feminist critical analysis of hate group surveillance and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s mapping of hate. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a progressive legal advocacy group that aids in the surveillance of “hate groups” and legislation against “hate crimes.” I investigate the assumptions grounding the SPLC’s rhetorical use of the term “hate” and analyze their surveillance and mapping in order to add to the growing body of literature that that seeks to rethink the institution of whiteness and the relationship between progressive groups and law enforcement. The SPLC’s “Hate Map” offers a visualization of “hate” while simultaneously ignoring and obscuring racism. This thesis is meant to produce an alternative reading of this map and the SPLC’s hate group surveillance. Using a critical feminist framework that is intimately linked to critical race theory and anarchist criminology, I interrogate the SPLC’s methods of mapping and surveillance as well as their connection to law enforcement and governmentality. In analyzing SPLC’s “Hate Map” and their “Law Enforcement Resources” page, I contend that the SPLC's use of "hate" in lieu of racism is a reflection of their uncritical analysis of systematic racism and state violence associated with whiteness. While I recognize SPLC’s important role in combating crimes against marginalized groups through advocacy and legal aid, I contend that their rhetoric around “hate” and use of mapping and surveillance may potentially collude with governmentality and state violence against historically disenfranchised populations.

In the United States today, there is a dominant cultural narrative telling us that tallness is desirable and enjoyed by those who experience it. Much of the existing research on height correlates tallness with promotions, higher salaries, and general happiness. However, this research does not take into account the limitations of some of the previous research which tends to accept tall people’s vocabulary of motives at face value as the totality of their experience as a tall person. In particular, tall women tend to have much more to say about their lives as tall women than simply that it has afforded them many advantages. Drawing from interviews with ten women who were of a height 5’11” or taller, I utilize feminist standpoint epistemology to investigate how the experiences of tall women can often differ from the dominant cultural narrative of tallness. My findings indicate that tall women are frequently the subject of unwanted height-related comments that draw attention to their tallness, creating and reproducing a state of self-consciousness related to their height. This self-consciousness is reinforced by social infrastructure, heteronormative gender expectations, and othering in the form of harassment and bullying. The tall women in my study learned to negotiate and avoid their height in situations that caused them discomfort, yet eventually accepted their height as a part of their identity after overcoming adversity in their childhood and youth. My research shows that the experiences of tall women are significantly broader than contemporary research discusses, and that height has a much deeper impact on self-perception than has previously been acknowledged.

At the height of their popularity in the 1990s, there were 140 feminist bookstores in the US and Canada (Onosaka 2006). Today, in 2017, there are thirteen left. Feminist bookstores began opening in the 1970s promoting ideas about lesbian separatism, woman only spaces, and nurturing a feminist community. Although many functioned as for-profit stores, many also operated community centers and non-profit organizations. Feminist bookstores provide an excellent site for scholars view decades of social movement organizing merging theory, practice, activism, and academics. As a social movement organization, feminist bookstores as are the quintessential node of academia and activism. Of the thirteen bookstores left, only two are located in the US South: Charis Books and More is in Atlanta, GA and Iris Books is in Gainesville, FL. During my yearlong ethnography, I gathered archival data, field notes and ethnographic data, interview data, and oral histories This is the first comprehensive ethnography of feminist bookstores which looks at the ways feminist theories are used by social movement organizations to create, maintain, and alter collective identities and to reach feminist movement goals. Through my study of these two bookstore owners, workers, and boards, I illuminate the social organization of feminist social movement organizations in the South. In chapter two, I show how the bookstores see the existence of a tangible space to allow for contestation about collective identities and “home work” as a successful social movement outcome. In chapter three, I find that participants believe that southern identity, which is steeped in understands of the past, have created a need for the bookstore’s longevities and for progressive communities. In chapter four, I demonstrate that due to the unique positioning of the histories of racism and slavery in the South, these feminist organizations believe a central problem of feminism is to actively name and confront racism within both the South and feminism. In the fifth chapter, using two gender disputes a decade a part, I argue that the narrative of gender progress understood as inclusion of queer issues as well as transgender and gender variant identities touted by many scholars (Whittier 1995; Jagose 1996; Armstrong and Crage 2006) inaccurately represents the intricacies within practices of feminism. When it comes to feminist identities, politics, and civil rights discourses, our current political climate has illustrated that there is not room for linear narratives of progress—within movements or individual identities. Focusing on the combination of histories and demographics, with an emphasis on race and queerness, this project analyzes how the US South provides a complex space to understand the challenges of intersectional and white feminist communities and social movements.

This thesis examines selections of Appalachian women’s personal narrative as well as Affrilachian Poetry written by Kentuckians Bianca Spriggs and Nikki Finney. This project’s goal lies in resisting oppression and erasure of Appalachian culture’s heterogeneity. Contrary to constructions of Appalachians as lazy, complacent, and white, many Appalachians organize communities of resistance from within the region itself. Challenging these representations, I argue that Appalachian feminists as well as Affrilachian poets create countercultures that disrupt monolithic, colonialist, and unquestioned constructions of Appalachia.

According to the World Resources Institute, Barbados is one of seven Caribbean countries ranked as being the most water stressed territories in the world. Prevailing drought conditions for the period 2010-2016 further compromised its water security while confirming predictions of a drier regional Caribbean climate. The simultaneous failing of at least 50-year-old water infrastructure at many points in the distribution network adds to these water stress conditions, and presents a financial burden to the local water utility in the form of lost revenues, and increased energy consumption for pumping. Climate change and its impacts are not gender-neutral, and water infrastructure projects developed to mitigate and or adapt to climate change impacts will have different degrees of gender dimensions, based on the social and economic contexts within which populations are embedded. Incorporating gender differences in climate projects is smart economics, and as such the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the first international fund to mandate the integration of a “gender-sensitive approach” throughout project life cycles. The Barbados Water Authority (BWA) is applying, with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (5Cs), for funding from the Green Climate Fund to pursue an Energy-Water-Nutrient Nexus for Sustainable Coastal Infrastructure (EWN-SCI) project. The proposed project will develop an interdisciplinary program in Barbados that implements demonstration sites with integrated water supply, resource recovery, and renewable energy management systems that are designed to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, support climate change adaptation strategies, build technical capacity in the Caribbean region, and share lessons learnt with the rest of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries. The overall goal of this research is to present practical guidelines, and approaches to mainstream and operationalize gender throughout the life cycle of water and wastewater infrastructure projects using an Energy Water Nutrient nexus project in Barbados. The objectives to guide this research are (1) to determine the institutional and legal frameworks that inform the types and extent of gender mainstreaming activities to be incorporated in the development of water and wastewater climate infrastructure projects in Barbados, (2) to characterize the current landscape for integrating gender into the design and management of water and wastewater infrastructure in Barbados, and (3) evaluate and recommend opportunities for gender integration in the life cycle of water and wastewater infrastructure in Barbados. Literature and tools for categorization of the gender dimensions of water and wastewater infrastructure (centralized and decentralized) projects in Small Island Developing States, and particularly Caribbean nations to determine the scope, and type of appropriate gender mainstreaming activities are limited. In the literature, gender equality as a goal of climate financing mechanisms was introduced retroactively for several multilateral climate funds due to sub-optimal project outcomes from gender blind projects. Projects implemented by these funds globally, post inclusion of explicit gender equality outcomes can provide direct, or indirect guidance on appropriate gender mainstreaming activities to be included in the development of water and wastewater infrastructure projects in Barbados. Case studies on water and sanitation gender vulnerabilities in Jamaica provide one of the few ideal sources of information on Caribbean gender mainstreaming activities. To inform objective 1, literature on Barbados’ population, socio-economic statistics, and national gender and climate change policies was used to determine the status and scope of institutional and legal commitments to gender mainstreaming the development of water and wastewater climate adaptive infrastructure in Barbados. To satisfy objective 2, a gender profile of technical and leadership roles at the BWA was created, and social media information, results of a water user survey, focus groups and interviews were analyzed to gain cultural context, and community insight on existing gender inequalities, impacts resulting from the types of water infrastructure projects pursued and their methods of implementation. The survey, focus groups and interviews were conducted in Barbados during the period 10/20/16 to 11/8/16. This period was characterized by unprecedented water shortages and interruptions which were reflected in the feedback from the data analysis. For objective 3, gender impacts of the infrastructural components of the EWN-SCI projects were described, and opportunities to address these concerns across the individual infrastructure project cycles were proposed. There are currently no legislative commitments to gender equality in water and wastewater resources management in Barbados. A Draft National Policy on Gender is presently before parliament but the policy does not address gender and water. The BWA has more men than women employed in technical (45% vs 3.5%), and leadership (9.1% vs 3.9%) roles which directly contribute to the design and management of the utility’s projects. Most of these individuals are in the middle or near the end of their careers (> 40 years of age), and thus present a timely opportunity to recruit, train and promote women to fill these roles. On social media (Facebook and Twitter), many individuals described the challenges experienced during the water shortages. Individuals also criticized the BWA for their lack of communication during this period. The lack of an online presence by the BWA represented a lost opportunity to engage its stakeholders on collaborative solutions that could temporarily or permanently alleviate the challenges. The water user survey revealed a statistical significant association (p ≤ 0.05) between gender and type of water storage container used at the household level. Men were more likely than women to report use of larger plastic buckets and tanks, while women showed a preference for smaller buckets and bottles. Identification and consideration of design parameters such as preference for type and size of storage receptacle, system elevation, position of cleaning access point, and need for a pump will facilitate or limit the successful adoption or adaptation of rainwater harvesting systems. The proposition of a research arm of the utility that could study gender dimensions of health impacts of water quality and water interruptions, and economic studies assessing feasibility of introducing a tariff structure on water provision were priority projects from the BWA. Investment in equipment at the national government lab, and at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Chemistry Department represents a skills building and economic empowerment opportunity for women who form the bulk of workforce at these institutions. The key recommendations identified from the Gender Impact Assessment for the model EWN-SCI Projects were to the need to identify clear gender objectives and targets prior to project implementation to ensure their incorporation in the project. Budgetary allocations to appoint a gender focal point who would coordinate these activities are also recommended. Job creation is one the main areas for distribution of project benefits for the EWN-SCI Project. Since the current skillsets for technical jobs at the BWA bias allotment to men, and at the UWI Chemistry Department there is bias in favor of women, targeted training and recruitment should be aimed at the under-represented sex for each position. Additionally the inclusion of socio-economic information as a criterion for prioritization of locations for intervention was recommended.