The Wild Beasts springs from my desire to thank my ever-expanding queer chosen family and mentors for their strength. Working through the often violent and othering aspects of the lens and photographic histories I create floral portraits responding to each person’s being and our relationship. Using the 19th century, 8x10 large format view camera—the same used by colonialists and ethnographers to “capture” the divinity of Nature—I erect each as a traditional still life studio setup at the threshold between the natural world and that constructed by humans. These environments speak both to the character of each friend and also to the use of Nature against queer people in most legal systems across the planet. We are deemed unnatural and made criminals through inequitable semantics. The 8x10 negative becomes a portrait, a darkroom contact print that is gifted to each of The Wild Beasts, an intimate artifact of my gratitude. At these borders I lash at the histories of oppression, remaking these lineages and tools into spaces for empathy, tenderness, and love.

Children begin to develop their understanding of gender in preschool, yet there is a dearth of research focused on understanding how preschool teachers affect the gender identity development of young children. Guided by Rokeach's belief systems theory, this qualitative case study explored the pedagogical strategies and perceptions of 4 Sacramento County, California preschool educators related to the gender identity development of young children. Interview data were collected and coded to derive 12 participant-specific themes and 3 common intersecting themes, which showed that teachers' perspectives on gender identity development were influenced by social rules, biases, and a lack of pedagogical knowledge related to more expansive definitions of gender. As a result of the lack of pedagogical knowledge, there was only 1 gender-related instructional strategy concerning gender roles, and this strategy was used by only 1 of the 4 respondents. Although they may have shown confusion relating to aspects of gender, these preschool teachers demonstrated a genuine interest in learning how to create safe spaces for gender exploration in the preschool classroom. These findings have led to the creation of a professional development series designed to educate preschool teachers about gender identity development, provide them with opportunities to develop curricula, and allow them to reflect upon their cisgender-related biases. Educators, administrators, and policymakers may find it useful to apply the results of this study and resultant project when creating educational programs and college-level curricula and policies. The results could also help educators create affirmative educational environments for all children, regardless of their biological sex, gender identity, or gender expression.

South Asian same-sex attracted women in the United States experience discrimination and marginalization that puts them at an increased risk for mental health issues. Research shows their rates of counseling and psychotherapy use are low due to perceptions of stigma, lack of knowledge, and concerns about culturally insensitive treatment plans. Mental health providers lack the literature needed to inform culturally sensitive treatment plans to address these concerning gaps in services, and an extensive literature review found no studies on the lived experiences of this population. Guided by feminist theory, this research study examined how discrimination, oppression, and marginalization mold women's lived experiences; this knowledge aims to serve as a means to advocate for social and political change for this population. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of this population. An emergent hand coding analysis, using experiential anecdotes, of data collected from interviews of 10 participants generated 10 major themes and 25 subthemes of experiences. Themes included importance of cultural values; familial relationships; marital life plan; intersectionality; and discrimination from gender disparity, patriarchal hierarchy, and sexual modesty. The study contributes to social change initiatives by providing culturally and contextually practical information to mental health professionals, counselor educators, and educational institutions that provide services to this population.

This thesis works to establish a literary theory and cultural studies as a theoretical lens with which we can view harmful emerging pop culture phenomena like the so-called alt right. The premise is supposed in three parts, with the first being a simple introduction to the Pepe character and how he is grounded in literary studies through a comparison of Sherlock Holmes and his early fandom. The second part is a survey of the legacy of Jim Crow and I present the evidence that Pepe is very much Crow’s spiritual successor in their shared preoccupation with white anxiety. The third is a discussion of language in which I bridge the use of memes as language with how that language effectively communicates. Ultimately, Pepe the Frog is able to tap into the pop culture collective through a democratizing of language facilitated by digital spaces on the internet, and his proliferation is made readily viral by the racist language he speaks through ala Jim Crow era anxieties.

This study explores how the social tags are employed by users of LibraryThing, a popular web 2.0 social networking site for cataloging books, to describe works on Asian women in representing themes within the context of intersectionality. Background literature in the domain of subject description of works has focused on race and gender representation within traditional controlled vocabularies such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). This study explores themes related to intersectionality in order to analyze how users construct meaning in their social tags. The collection of works used to search for social tags came from the Association of College and Research Libraries’ list on East Asian, South and Southeast Asian, and Middle Eastern women. A pilot study was conducted comprising of a limited sample in each of the three domains, which helped generate a framework of analysis that was used in application for the larger sample of works on Asian women. The full study analyzed 1231 social tags collected from 122 works on Asian women. Findings from this study showed that users construct a variety of intersections relating to gender and ethnicity for works on Asian women. Overall findings from this showed that gender and gender-related constructs were the most common subject of tags employed for works on Asian women. Users more often referred to geography rather than ethnicity when describing the materials on Asian women. Interesting themes to emerge involved how gender and other constructs differed among the three domains. Tags describing the majority of East Asia, such as Chinese and Japanese were most common in the East Asian dataset. Countries not considered the “majority” in South and Southeast Asia were often used, such as Indonesia and the Philippines. Themes of sexuality and religion were much more prevalent in the Middle Eastern set of tags. Social tags act as a mechanism for social commentary. Researchers have access to a plethora of constructions available to them through these social tags; such abundance of information is a valuable resource to understanding how the general populace understands intersections and constructs identity.

The pervasiveness of sexual violence on college campuses poses a significant problem for students and administrations that seek to promote healthy, safe, and equitable access to higher education. Although federal legislation under Title IX prohibits sexual violence as a form of gender discrimination, cultural climates that promote sexual violence—or rape cultures - continue to inform student experiences on college campuses. This thesis roots the discourse on campus sexual violence in the specific localized context at Scripps College. As a women’s college situated in a small, interconnected consortium of co-ed liberal arts colleges, the case of Scripps College raises critical questions about the ways in which gender and sexism play out on women’s bodies, and influence students’ experiences with embodiment on campus. In this thesis, I present a feminist analysis of the current institutional policies that address sexual violence on campus, in addition to the perspectives of eight student activists currently involved in gender justice work at Scripps College. Due to the fact that each of the Claremont Colleges, including Scripps, is currently in the process of re-evaluating their policies and grievance procedures that address sexual violence on campus, now is a key time to reflect on the past, present, and future of the Claremont Colleges and the role that these institutions play in either deconstructing or reinforcing patriarchal structures of power.

In this thesis, I explore Latino masculinities and contest their uniformity through transforming an oral history conducted with my father into a collection of short stories. Following storytelling traditions of Latino/Mexican culture, I converted an oral history interviews with my dad into a collection of short stories. From these short stories I extracted themes relating to the micro and macro manifestations of gender policing. Drawing from Judith Butler's Theory of performativity and Gloria Anzaldua's theory of Borderland identities, I rethink masculinity and offer Jose Esteban Munoz's theory of disidentification. With these theories in conversation, I analyze the themes of the short stories I present. In Chapter One, I investigate the potential of verguenza and respeto, or shame and respect, to complicate masculinity. In Chapter Two, I critically analyze my father's interaction with INS officials during his interview to become a U.S. resident. In these two sets of stories, I use disidentification to uncover the third space relationship with masculinity. I see this relationship at the intersections of race, class, gender and ability, the identities which come together to leave my father in the borderlands. Ultimately, I complicate masculinity through these analyses, offering a space for a nonoppressive masculinity.

Elizabeth Waltenburg es una artista contemporánea argentina. En su muestra, despierta!, las obras en óleo sobre tela representan a mujeres, niños y animales en fondos extraños y deprimidos. Ella utilize simbolismo de animales y figuras femeninas para discutir el feminismo actual. Ella trabaja en un tiempo complicado por el feminismo, el postfeminismo, la critica de ambos, y un sistema de comunicación global. Su trabajo marca una tendencia hecho por la confusión de todos estos movimientos. Esta tesis discute su trabajo en el contexto de la historia de representaciones de mujeres, de niños y de animales para llegar a una mejor comprensión de los que hace ella. English: Elizabeth Waltenburg is a contemporary Argentine artist. In her show, “Wake Up!”, the oil on canvas works represent women, children and animals on strange and depressed backgrounds. She uses the symbolism of feminine and animal figures to comment on contemporary feminism. She works in a complex era marked by feminism, post-feminism, criticism of both schools and a system of global communication. Her work incorporates elements from all the issues above. This thesis discusses her work in the context of the history of representation of women, children, and animals in order to arrive to a better comprehension of the kind of work she does.

This is a creative thesis in the form of a screenplay titled “Andalusia” in which a woman, Katherine, searches for meaning in her life. After suffering through a childhood wrought with tragedy, disappointment, and chaos, Katherine strives to create a healthy reality in which she can thrive. After failing miserably at this once, she takes a different path and finds herself hidden away in her dead father’s house writing about the Mississippi Delta town of Andalusia.

British imperialism of the Ottoman Empire is analyzed in terms of power and influence. Changes in gender roles, nationalism, and culture are all examined through the lens of imperialism. The discourse flows thematically and discusses brief histories of both Britain and the Ottoman Empire. The construction of the Imperial Museum created a unified image of the nation through the collection of material items. As a result of European imperialism, the Ottoman Empire developed a sense of national culture.