Exploring the process of designing, producing, directing and starring in a multimedia feminist re-interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet set in a contemporary social media landscape.

Mohammad Khordadian is a gay, Iranian American dancer and entertainer who immigrated to the United States from Iran shortly after the 1979 revolution. Since his arrival to the United States, Khordadian has produced countless instructional and presentational dance videos which garnered enormous popularity among diasporic Iranians and Iranians in Iran alike. I locate a tension between his adoration by the public and the immense anxiety that male Iranian dancers can induce in other Iranians. Khordadian invokes the historical evolution of the archetypal Iranian male dancer/entertainers written about in Persian literature and poetry --the 12 to 16-year-old, handsome boys with older lovers. As Orientalists linked these sinful relationships to male homosociality and sexual repression in Islam, the memory of the male dancer has been repressed out of an Iranian desire to fold into the pale of Western modernity. Khordadian, with his over-the-top gestures (what I will call “queer gestures”), the transnational circulation of these gestures through instructional videos, and his lived experience as a gay Iranian man, transgresses the boundaries set by heteronormativity and Orientalism. However, this is not without a myriad of complications.

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This thesis looks at how the rule of law fails to achieve justice for Indian-American survivors of domestic violence in a multitude of ways, corresponding to class and religious positionality, as well as documentation status, and how the Indian community mobilizes in response to these failures by creating alternative modes of justice for survivors. Historically, these alternatives have taken form as direct service organizations, providing culturally and linguistically accessible services to survivors. I contend that these are helpful on an individual level, working to interrupt cycles of violence, but not at the collective level – stopping these cycles altogether. Given the systemic nature of sexual violence, working from transformative justice principles is an ideal modality of organizing, but not feasible given the structure of Indian-American communities today. In the interim between present post-violence work and future integration of transformative justice, I argue that pre-violence educational models are the most effective way to see tangible, generational, systemic change. Modes of resistance through educational initiatives aimed towards Indian youth ages ten to eighteen against rape culture will more effectively deter the cycles of intra-community violence from occurring, specifically when oriented from sites of religious worship and/or cultural centers – spaces that create a sense of Indian identity. These educational spaces currently do not exist as an intra-community effort, so I analyze various feminist pedagogies as well as an example of this work being done within other communities to extend these praxes back to the Indian community.

The client-therapist relationship is an essential part of therapy and is central in helping clients achieve therapeutic goals as the joining process facilitates the change process. However, in an effort to create a space for change, there is a possibility that professional boundaries may become blurred wherein a client may express a sexual attraction toward their therapist. To explore this phenomenon, the researcher employed convergent parallel mixed method design to explore the experiences of Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFTs) who have experienced sexual attraction from their clients. The study was conducted online through a secure forum. Implications for clients, therapists, and the field of marriage and family therapy are discussed. The research suggests that education and training are critical in assisting therapists when dealing with sexual attraction issues.

The Gnostic Mass of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (E.G.C.) suggests a heterosexual gender binary in which the female Priestess seated on the altar as the sexual and fertile image of the divine feminine is directed by the male Priest’s activity, desire and speech. The apparent contradiction between the empowered individual and the polarized gender role was examined by comparing the ritual symbolism of the feminine with the interpretations of four Priestesses and three Priests (three pairs plus one). Findings suggest that the Priestess’ role in the Gnostic Mass is associated with channeling, receptivity, womb, cup, and fertility, while the Priest’s role is associated with enthusiasm, activity, phallus, lance, and virility. Despite this strong gender duality, the Priestesses asserted that their role was personally and spiritually empowering, and they maintained heterosexual and polarized gendered roles are necessary in a transformative ritual which ultimately reveals the godlike unified individual.

The aim of this research is to analyze the impact of gender on the work of Latin American rabinas within Conservative congregations in Latin America. The fact that women’s roles in Latin America and in Judaism have been traditionally linked to nurturing and caring serves as the point of departure for my hypothesis, which is that the role rabinas play within their congregations is also linked to those traits. In this research I utilize a social scientific approach and qualitative methodology, conducting personal interviews with the rabinas. While this work proves that Conservative congregations in Latin America are gendered, my research demonstrates that this gendered division of labor does not have a negative impact on the work of rabinas. On the contrary, by embracing attributes of womanhood and motherhood rabinas become imah (mother) on the bimah (pulpit), educating, caring, and nurturing their congregations in a special and unique way.

This thesis examines the complex and conflicting arguments surrounding the crime of rape in early modern England and how the important literary texts, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadias, explore the issue of rape. The thesis explores Sidney's attitude toward a system that sanctioned systematic sexual violence towards women as expressed in the text; as part of this it explores the way that the text differentiates rape from seduction.

This presentation discusses the impact of unwanted sexual contact and survivors in the collegiate setting from the family studies perspective. Specifically, this research examines the association between gender and service utilization on measures of resilience and coping in survivors of unwanted sexual contact at the University of North Alabama. The presenter identifies the disparity found between resiliency and coping when students utilized victim support services (i.e., formal reporting procedures, counseling services and/or a victim support advocate) following an incident of unwanted sexual contact. Because gender was a significant predictor of resilience, coping and service utilization, differences in coping subscale measures are identified. The university’s Campus Climate Survey data is briefly examined along with the implications of findings and recommendations for changes in family studies professionals and family advocate roles on college campuses.

Although many advocates believe that the increased representation of transgender people in mainstream fiction will lead to more understanding for the transgender community, many transgender scholars (Page, Richards) are critical of representation that is created without any involvement of actual transgender people. Some fear that the more radical perspectives of trans lives are being erased and replaced with a homogenous idea of the kinds of trans people who are “acceptable” (cárdenas). To avoid this homogeneity, it is important to allow for a multiplicity of trans perspectives and empower transgender people to have agency over their own narratives. The goal of this project is to highlight how trans agency in story telling can benefit trans fiction and take it beyond simply providing a “trans 101” for cisgender audiences. It will also address how the internet has benefitted trans creators by providing a platform for a variety of trans voices to share their stories. By analyzing fiction that centers on transgender experience and is created by transgender people, this thesis will explore the topics and issues addressed in trans stories and the diversity in the perspectives shown. Internet-based fiction such as webcomics and web series will be examined, as well as a trans authored anthology that was funded online. Examining these stories may show us what we are missing by relying on the current homogenous mainstream representation and open our eyes to the importance of empowering transgender people to tell their own diverse, radical stories.