<p> In 1916, Ellen Quinlan Donnelly aka Nelly Don started a fashion empire from her humble Kansas City home. She became one of the wealthiest and most celebrated American women in business with a career that spanned well into the 1960s. The Nelly Don Empire reportedly sold more dresses in the 20th century than any other single person in the United States, and she started as a Lindenwood College student. </p><p> This study investigated Nell Quinlan Donnelly the &ldquo;Grand Lady&rdquo; of the garment industry beyond her millionaire status and revolutionary business leadership at Donnelly Garment Company. The reexamination of Nell Quinlan Donnelly&rsquo;s 60 year relationship with Lindenwood College began in 1907 as the first married student to attend. Donnelly graduated in 1909 with a Seminary Diploma and later became a phenomenal business, civic, and educational leader. </p><p> The significance of Nell Quinlan Donnelly&rsquo;s relationship with Lindenwood College has been identified by her recognition of the changing role of young women post World War II. Donnelly, a visionary leader, and a member of the Lindenwood Board of Directors and several other administrative boards, encouraged developing programs that focused on mathematics and computer science. Donnelly challenged Lindenwood education leaders with the idea of &ldquo;reaching beyond traditional confines of Liberal Arts programs and to expand student experiences that would offer &lsquo;unlimited opportunities&rsquo; for young women&rdquo; (Lindenwood Board of Director notes 1944 &amp; 1962; Ebling &amp; Kavanaugh, 1980). The foresight of &ldquo;unlimited opportunities&rdquo; afforded to young women as envisioned by Nell Quinlan Donnelly would prove her to be a woman ahead of her time and one of Lindenwood&rsquo;s most loyal and dedicated educational leaders.</p><p>

<p> This dissertation considers the characteristics of a sacred feminine perspective toward death and dying in today&rsquo;s United States. A sacred feminine perspective as brought to the deathbed by women healers respects the sanctity of life; intuitively adopts a holistic perspective; and <i> witnesses</i>, not observes, the dying through active engagement on physical, psychological, and spiritual levels. A sacred feminine perspective affirms the dying person&rsquo;s journey as one of self-acceptance and release. To explore this perspective&rsquo;s healing power, I pose the following question: <i> How can end-of-life caregiving and religious perspectives on dying be integrated toward a spiritual feminist perspective to create a new paradigm of care for the dying person?</i> </p><p> To answer this inquiry, I explored from a phenomenological perspective the stories from end-of-life caregivers, primarily in the United States, as well as literature from other healing modalities to develop a framework that may be used by those assisting the dying. The methodologies I utilized for this study are women&rsquo;s spiritual ways of knowing, including spiritual feminist hermeneutics. In my research, I applied narrative analysis&mdash;integrating organic and intuitive inquiry methods&mdash;to relevant literature, including stories from end-of-life caregivers about the types of care used in their work, as well as their interpretations of the dying persons&rsquo; experiences. This methodological integration allowed me to achieve a more nuanced understanding of the human experience of dying, and to develop and enhance skillful means for the sacred work of midwifing death. </p><p> In this theoretical study, I propose a model called the Body-Soul-Spirit Positionality Paradigm, which holds that each person lives as well as dies primarily through one of three dimensions of self: the body, the soul (defined here as feelings and thoughts), or the spirit. A major objective of this dissertation is the development and illustration of the Body-Soul-Spirit Positionality Paradigm as a practical/theoretical framework for addressing the specific physical, emotional/mental, and spiritual needs of the dying person to help them truly rest in peace. </p><p> By understanding the dying person&rsquo;s positionality, the end-of-life doula will be able to provide personalized access to effective healing modalities such as the implementation of positionality blessing cards.</p><p>

<p> The New Journalism Movement chronicled a decade of social turbulence in America by breaking the rules of traditional journalism and embracing narrative elements in the writing and publication of literary nonfiction. The magazine publishing industry was controlled by men, and the history of this transitional time in journalism has been chronicled by men, neglecting to recognize the significant contributions of women working in their midst. This study shines a light on the historical narrative that defines our understanding of the significance and key contributors to the New Journalism Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. </p><p> To better understand the way social change was defined by the writing of New Journalists, a more inclusive history of those who contributed is essential. This study provides a narrative analysis of representative magazine writing by Joan Didion, Gail Sheehy, and Gloria Steinem to recognize their contributions and to illustrate how gender influenced the style, content and perspective of the New Journalism Movement.</p><p>

This thesis describes the way 50 women in London experienced motherhood. It is based on in-depth interviews with 25 working-class and 25 middle-class women, living with their husbands, with 2, 3 or 4 children, at least one of whom was under 5. First, the views on motherhood of biological perspectives (psychoanalysis and ethology) and social perspectives (sociology and social anthropology) are critically reviewed and the framework and methods for the empirical study are spelled out. Central to this framework is the distinction between two dimensions of experience: immmediate response (enjoyment or irritation) to caring for children, and, sense of meaning and purpose which may or may not be experienced in such care. The main body of the thesis is a description of the women's experience in terms of these two dimensions. Successive chapters outline the irritation which the women expressed with the demanding nature of preschool children; with the organization and setting of child care; and with the sense of loss of individuality felt in motherhood. A following chapter describes the sense of meaning and purpose which the women conveyed as arising from feeling needed and wanted by their children and from investing hopes, dreams and ambitions in them. From these accounts, a four-fold typology of experiences of motherhood is developed. The influence of a husband's practical help and emotional support on a woman's experience is also examined. Throughout, social class differences are a particular focus of attention. A third dimension of experience, satisfaction with maternity, is then distinguished and the limitations of conventional measures of satisfaction are drawn out by a comparison of the interviewer and self-reported assessments. Finally, an attempt is made to place the women's experience in a cross-cultural perspective which highlights the difficult and demanding circumstances in which they cared for their children.

<p>Crossing the Invisible Fence: The Quality of Mentoring Relationships in the Careers of Successful Women Patricia A. Velazquez ABSTRACT Despite a substantial disparity between the levels of professional success achieved by women as compared to men, many women achieve professional success in their fields. This study utilizes thematic analysis of in-depth interviews to explore the life experiences of a sample of eight professional women. The questions that guided this research were (1) How are early relationships related to women?s capacity to envision a professional future and to utilize mentoring relationships? and (2) What are the factors that contribute to women?s success? The interviews were conducted and analyzed using a narrative approach. Eight consistent themes were identified in the lives of these women that contributed to their career success. These themes are the experience of attunement, esteem-building messages, sources of inspiration, challenges that were overcome and that promoted increased-self-esteem, notable personal qualities, a clear career path, and success defined in terms of contribution to others. Furthermore, mentoring and early relationships played an important role in these women?s success, and the quality of early relationships was found to have shaped the kind of mentoring experienced as helpful. In particular, attunement and empathy in a mentor were essential. Interestingly, good mentors were not found to be gender specific. KEYWORDS: MENTORING, ATTUNEMENT, INTERSUBJECTIVITY, INVISIBLE FENCE, NARRATIVE APPROACH, CAREER SUCCESS

<p> The purpose of this research study was to analyze the success of the Peace Corps&rsquo; Municipal Development Program in its role as a change agent in the empowerment of rural Guatemalan women, and includes an exploration into the intercultural factors that may have affected the outcomes. I used my Peace Corps site of Santa Cruz El Chol, Guatemala as the case study for this research. I reviewed literature in five areas to use as a foundation to guide my research. This included literature regarding Guatemalan history and Guatemalan women&rsquo;s issues, women&rsquo;s empowerment in the international development context, Peace Corps, change agentry, and intercultural relations. I obtained data from four different groups. I interviewed a focus group of female leaders from El Chol, obtained questionnaires from 42 rural women from El Chol and its surrounding villages, interviewed three Peace Corps Guatemala staff members, and gathered surveys from 18 returned Peace Corps volunteers. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered via open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions, and scale-based questions. An analysis of the findings revealed implications in three areas. The first area focused on Guatemalan women who are especially vulnerable to institutional and domestic violence, which leads to a lack of educational and economic opportunities and continues to prevent their empowerment. Next, the Peace Corps volunteers were generally satisfied with their service, but felt traits of Guatemalan society and culture prevented them from positively influencing women&rsquo;s empowerment. Additionally, findings revealed that Peace Corps volunteers served as change agents in that they saw themselves and were seen by others as positive role models for the Guatemalan women with whom they worked. Finally, time management styles, differences in perception of gender roles, and direct versus indirect communication styles sometimes clashed to cause issues in U. S. American and Guatemalan abilities to work effectively together.</p><p>

abstract: This project explores the federal government’s efforts to intervene in American Indian women’s sexual and reproductive lives from the early twentieth century through the 1970s. I argue that U.S. settler society’s evolving attempts to address “the Indian problem” required that the state discipline Indigenous women’s sexuality and regulate their reproductive practices. The study examines the Indian Service’s (later Bureau of Indian Affairs) early twentieth-century pronatal initiatives; the Bureau’s campaign against midwives and promotion of hospital childbirth; the gendered policing of venereal disease on reservations; government social workers’ solutions for solving the “problem” of Indian illegitimacy; and the politics surrounding the reproductive technologies of birth control, abortion, and sterilization. Using government records, ethnographies, oral history collections, personal narratives and life histories, and Native feminist theory, this dissertation documents a history of colonial gendered violence, as well as Indigenous women’s activism in protest of such violence and in pursuit of reproductive autonomy. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2015

<p> A review of sociological literature reveals a long history of the study of gender, and an increased popularity in the application of feminist theories and ideas to sociological research. As transmitters of the discipline, introductory-level textbooks have been heavily studied over the past quarter-century to assess the accuracy with which they portray the field of sociology. In order to update the literature available on the topic, this study analyzed the current cohort of top-selling, introductory-level sociology textbooks for coverage of feminist theory and gender issues. Each of the ten textbooks was read cover-to-cover and coded for both latent and manifest data using a coding sheet. The researcher found a notable increase in the incidences of both feminist theories and gender issues within the current cohort of textbooks. The specific treatment of each topic varied widely across books, and within each book the topics were presented one-dimensionally and were ghettoized to feminized chapters. Definitions of feminist theory and feminism within the books primarily described liberal feminism and little else, and discussions of both feminist theory and gender were most heavily featured in the gender and family chapters. Generally, the gender issues present in the textbook sample were mostly to do with women, and erased non-binary experiences of gender. Additionally, an intersectional approach to discussions of gender was applied about one-third of the time. This study concludes that the current textbook cohort is still far from the ideal model, and the feminization and marginalization of these topics is likely due to the textbook production cycle and the specific phenomenon of textual isomorphism.</p><p>

<p> <i>From Syrian Sea to Shining Sea</i> is a collection of poetry that reflects the lives of Arab-Americans. Whether they may be first generation, Muslim, or immigrants, there is a piece within their self that reflects a longing for the homeland, ties to the motherland, and struggles that arose as a result of the Syrian Civil War. As a first-generation, Arab-American, Muslim woman I wrote these poems through the raw lens that is my experience. </p><p>

<p> The image of Eve leaning toward the serpent and reaching for the forbidden fruit lives at the heart of the predominant creation myth of the Western world and still reverberates in its psyche. At the same time, a singular and literal interpretation of Eve has dominated cultural discourse and psychological life: Eve is understood as the one who brought death and depravity to humanity and is cast as Everywoman. The Eden story has been implicated in the patriarchal narrative regarding the inferiority of women&mdash;if every woman is Eve, then <i>Woman</i> holds the fall of humanity from divine grace in her guilty hands&mdash;as well as in narratives contributing to racism and environmental degradation. This hermeneutic inquiry asserts this interpretation and these implications are highly questionable and deeply problematic, then reconsiders Eve and her transgression in cultural-historical, mythological, and archetypal contexts&mdash;seeking to deliteralize and recover the complexity of this figure. Close attention to these contexts reveals Eve to be a mythic figure deeply linked to Goddess traditions during a great mythological shift as Goddess mythologies were being supplanted by Sky Father mythologies, and an exemplar of a larger mythic motif of feminine transgression. The resulting depth psychological reading of Eve&rsquo;s transgression shows Eve as a particular style of consciousness, demonstrating specific archetypal dynamics, characteristics, and ways of knowing.</p><p>