This dual thesis seeks to explore the implications of socioeconomic class position for the formation of gender and sexual identities. Utilizing social theories of class and gender, I suggest that because a disadvantageous class location frames social relations in terms of privilege and movement, gender and sexual identities are thus similarly conceptualized; effectively, gender performance and sexual behaviors become attached to notions of value and movement. I turn to Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street to think through the nuances of such an argument, highlighting the experiences of foiled characters Sally and Esperanza to realize how classed confines and gendered expectations literally and figuratively shape their understandings of social relations and movement.

This thesis focuses on four women-directed films as a way to illustrate some characteristics shared by the new Catalan creative documentary: El cielo gira ( The Sky Turns, dir. Mercedes Álvarez, 2004), Nedar (Swim, dir. Carla Subirana, 2008), La plaga (The Plague, dir. Neus Ballús, 2013), and Penèlope (Penelope, dir. Eva Vila, 2018). My aim is to highlight their alternative cinematographic strategies, which stray from the hegemonic discourses of documentary filmmaking. In so doing, I analyze these films from three different angles: the relationship between the filmmaker and the material world; the alternative modalities of time; and the haptic connection between the spectator and the screen. Instead of preparing a traditional thesis in manuscript form, I engage with these films through a video-essay, the most appropriate mode of academic rhetoric and presentation to address this topic (Keathley 190). Entitled Cinema “Turns”: Catalan Creative Documentary, my video-essay articulates my study into three parts: in the first part, I analyze the limits of the realist discourse; in the second, I focus on how these films approach temporality; and in the third, I address their haptic visuality. To view the accompanying video essay, please download the additional file below.

It is intrinsic to modernity the expansion of the philosophical detachment from the religious view as critical reason takes place in science, art and the worldview of modern man. Through Kant's reflections, in The Religion within the limits of reason alone (1793), we will seek to understand this process of rupture between faith and reason which explains the prevailing thought in postmodernity. We chose the renowned writer, José Saramago, and his works of religious nature as our objects of study, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) and Cain (2009), as they represent, in the Portuguese language, the voice of the man who is still attracted by the literature of literatures – composed by the Pentateuch and the other canonical books. The author wishes to understand, question and to find the contradictions in believing in an absent, flawed and guilty God. Instigated by the importance in which the "Marys" are portrayed in the Apocryphal Gospels, and to further condemn this God, Saramago recreates in his parodies, a postmodern and anti-religious gospel whose eroticized reinvention of the biblical women - the "Marys", Eve and Lilith - results in the demystification and humanization of the characters and the destabilization of patriarchal discourse. Thus, before analyzing the creation of a new myth of women and their role in Saramago, we will study what was postulated by the feminist theorists, Simone de Beauvoir (2016) and Luce Irigaray (2017), which determine the place of the woman as the "Other", by an exclusionary monologic language that puts her at the service of the elaboration of the universalizing male, which also occurs in the saaramguian language.

The following research was a biographical narrative that examined the lived experiences of male and female church leaders and their perspectives on the social, moral, and religious implications of female church leadership. The purpose of this research was to explore the ideologies and identities of women leaders within the faith ministry, the definitions of ministry and leadership, the role of women in church ministry, and their understanding of marketplace ministry. I employed conflict resolution theories relating to power, change, and mental modeling as the basis of analysis for evaluating the impact of church policies and practices on the utilization of female church leaders. Twelve church leaders were invited to participate in this research, comprised of six women and six men from three different church denominations. Results found that the organizational culture had a mediating impact on gender equality and effectiveness of female church leadership. In a sense, female clergymen undermined and challenged the previously well-established patriarchal power within the church, leading to disruption and interpersonal conflicts. Seven salient themes emerged from the analysis: 1) struggle for gender equality; 2) gender vs. competence; 3) male dominated church culture; 4) gender bias and discrimination; 5) kingdom culture debate; 6) women resisting women, and 7) the significance of voice. The research also introduced the strategies for overcoming the patriarchy with critical consciousness and empowering clergywomen via the REFRESH Model.

<p>In this thesis, I explore the manner in which loneliness has been presented culturally, scientifically, politically, and academically as the asocial antithesis of happiness. I suggest lonely people are presented throughout these discourses as misfits, trapped by their lonely feelings and in danger of entrapping others. I further put forth that the impetus to understand and promote a conception of loneliness as depressive and alienating is politically inflected, strengthening neoliberal models of sociality that rely upon particular notions of good citizenship. As a consequence, Western scientific, academic, and cultural discourses continue to reinforce particular brands of “productive” intimacy (heterosexual, middle/upper class, able-bodied, white, monogamous partnerships), while strategically policing the lonely person’s presumed immaturity, negativity, and illegibility.</p> <p>The thesis begins by considering how recent scientific studies are lodged in evolutionary models, with the implication that they position loneliness as an abnormal and dangerous setback to Western sociability and its progress. As a corollary, I demonstrate that contemporary cultural narratives such as Dan Savage's "It Gets Better Project" that have surfaced in order to address queer, teen suicide, bullying, and violence tend to frame loneliness as a degenerate feeling that warrants survivalist tactics and adaptations away from queerness. In scientific and cultural discourses alike, then, loneliness has become stuck onto queer subjects and can only be understood as a condition that infects a sub-set of weak and vulnerable subjects. Judged for their seeming narcissistic and unhappy tendencies, queer sexualities come to be considered dangerous and contagious, and lonely queer bodies are being represented in scientific, cultural, and social media narrativizations as the reason for a larger, Western failed happiness.</p> <p>The body of the thesis deepens and extends these concerns by analyzing the marked tension between the figurative language that speaks of loneliness as a pathology and an (a)political desire for selfish individualism. I suggest that in light of the current failures of Western sociality what is needed is a space for an understanding of the everydayness of loneliness and its potential to be political. Drawing on critical work on affective politics, this thesis makes a space for the lonely queers among us. Focusing attention on four key areas— the science of loneliness, lesbian narcissism, childhood sexuality, and queer disability—I argue that loneliness is neither an exceptional trauma, nor is it extraordinary: rather, it is every subject’s inheritance. By envisioning loneliness as possibly pleasurable as much as it is traumatic, and by seeing the act of declaring oneself lonely as a political strategy, I argue that we may be encouraged to re-evaluate the ways in which we experience relationality, human empathy, and sociality. Moreover, our shared loneliness as Western subjects may actually have the potential to rupture the rigidity of societal paradigms (sexism, ableism, classism, racism, and homophobia) that are based upon exclusion, upward mobility, and capital gain.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

A written thesis to accompany the M.F.A. Exhibition Mending What’s Invisible, in which the artist’s personal experiences and memories explore the cultural identities and femininity in Korea and the US. These identities are explored by using traditional Korean motifs, embroidery patterns, and the visual images of the artist's childhood photographs in the projects of “Reconnecting of Nostalgia” and “Mutating”. Also the visual clips of the artist's hometown is demonstrated in the video project “Things I hated” that discusses criticalities of Korean cultures and a sense of nostalgia for childhood in Korea. The project comes out of a personal need to connect the artists' different identities but also wants to create an awareness of the conflict between different cultural understandings of Korea and the US.

The purpose of this research was to develop a questionnaire to be used to identify barriers and facilitators to women faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academics. The phenomenon known as the leaky pipeline, a theoretical model describing why women are underrepresented in STEM disciplines, was examined. Women have long been underrepresented in STEM professions despite an increase in the number of women earning STEM degrees, suggesting women are faced with barriers that prevent them from achieving equal representation with men. The literature has identified several potential barriers, both historical and new, such as biological inequalities, family responsibilities, commitment differences, competitive differences, gender stereotypes and implicit biases, work environments, and job preference. Major facilitators included mentors and specific policy/program implementation. Barriers and facilitators to faculty members at Western Kentucky University will be identified objectively through the use of this questionnaire in a future study.

The Marquis de Sade has a notorious reputation amongst academics as a continuous figure of fictional and cultural studies. His characters, stories, and writings carry weight in modern interpretations of gender dynamics, pornographic aesthetics, and the alternative fantastical. This thesis will explore the Marquis de Sade’s most famous characters, Justine and Juliette, as means to define the Marquis’ significance to 21st Century Western culture production, particularly in Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. Exploring the female protagonists (or main characters) of the separate works, the correlations of subjugation, constructed morality, and the constructs of femininity become important markers for understanding the Marquis’ dissemination of his philosophies on gender, violence, and indulgent sexuality that leads to conversations on pornographic aesthetics in our modern period. Despite being dead for nearly 200 years, the Marquis de Sade’s relevance parades on in ideologies regarding female identity and sexual desires of the extreme.

This thesis is built on the knowledge and experience I learned working with CURB and as a member of L.A. No More Jail, particularly in the ongoing fight against the Mira Loma gender responsive “Women’s Village” Jail expansion, which is part of a larger jail building boom on going in California right now. I write this thesis to engage in the reimagining of justice that abolitionist community organizers, formerly and currently incarcerated people and others who work to challenge the prison industrial complex have been envisioning for California.

My thesis explores the act of violation in the context of trauma and healing through the use of personal narratives and experimental film. My research allows personal storytelling to transform into a larger and more universal theme of generational trauma and dysfunction. Through a feminist lens, I challenge social norms of body autonomy for the sick and abused, capitalism’s social effects on the poor, and passed down maternal lessons from the women who are doing the best that they can with the lives and opportunities that they have been given. This work is created in spite of the labels my mother, the women before her, and I may hold. It is an act of resistance to who and what is allowed to be seen or heard. It is my confession, but it is not my confession alone.