This thesis examines how Black queer men and transmasculine individuals navigate Black heteronormative and White queer spaces in New Orleans. Over the last few decades, articles, including anthropological and sociological, have focused on the relationship between race, gender performance, sexuality, and emotional expression among men such as Christian (2005), which analyzed how Black queer men expressed their masculinity within queer spaces (Christian 2005). This thesis builds on this literature to explore how societal and cultural pressures of masculinity can hinder Black queer men institutionally, socially, and romantically.

Homophobia was suggested to be one of the primary causes of oppression among women (Griffin 1987, Ireland 1993). Female -- athletes were historically coupled with lesbian identities due to their involvement in the traditionally male domain of sport. As increasing numbers of women attempt to transcend specific socially defined boundaries, it was suggested that the phenomenon of homophobia would function to help maintain conventional sex role socialization practices and to inhibit the advancement of the female athlete (Griffin 1987; 1988, Bennet 1988) . This study specifically addressed homophobia in women's intercollegiate athletics. The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which homophobia exists among, and towards, female intercollegiate coaches. In depth interviews addressing this issue were conducted with seven female coaches and administrators from one NCAA Division IA university athletic program. The interviews resulted in the formation of nine categories relative to the presence of homophobia in women's intercollegiate athletics. These categories were hiring, recruiting, personal image, public image, coach-athlete relationship, abuse of power, intimidation and control, gender equity and roots and reasons. The greatest effects of homophobia appeared in the categories of hiring and recruiting followed by public image and intimidation and control. NOTE: Both archival copies of the manuscript were missing pages 47 and 49.

The New Woman described in short fiction and editorial articles in British periodicals not only presented the ideal New Woman to readers, but served to shape the perceptions of the reader depending on the demographic of the targeted reading audience for that specific periodical. The audience for specific British periodicals featuring the New Woman included conservative families whose youth saw the New Woman figure as a role model. The New Woman figure easily connected to readers, particularly young, female middle-class readers, who easily identified with her because she possessed similar socioeconomic characteristics. Just as there were many New Women characters in these periodicals experiencing triumph and turmoil, the real-life New Women reading these stories experienced similar trials and tribulations. Facing adversity, the New Women endeavored to shed a traditional domestic stereotype in British society in the periodicals whose audience was receptive to this progressive, yet still moderate figure.

The purpose of this study was to describe how gender was portrayed and to determine how gender roles were depicted and defined in a selection of Modern and Postmodern American plays. This study was based on the symbolic interaction theory of gender that suggests that social roles are learned over time and are subject to constant reinforcement. The significance of this study was derived from the broad topic of gender because gender issues are relevant to a variety of fields and exploring the effects of gender in one field contributes to the understanding of gender in another field. The plays in this study were Votes for Women, Robins; Trifles, Glaspell; Our Town, Wilder; Moon for the Misbegotten, O'Neill; The Glass Menagerie, Williams; Death of a Salesman, Miller; A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry; Funnyhouse of a Negro, Kennedy; Uncommon Women and Others, Wasserstein; Fefu and Her Friends, Fornes; spell #7, Shange; Fool for Love, Shepard; Fences, Wilson; Oleanna, Mamet; and How I Learned to Drive, Vogel. Two of the study's research questions explored the types of gender roles and behaviors that the characters presented. Two questions focused on considering if the time period or the sex of the playwright were factors in the presentations of gender. Gender behaviors were divided into four categories: Behavior Characteristics, Communication Patterns, Sources of Power, and Physical Appearance. Using narrative analysis techniques, the plays were analyzed for the specific traits in each category. The majority of the characters were assigned traditional gender roles and displayed traditional gender behavior traits. Based their gender roles and behavior in their roles, characters faced limitations that confined their actions and restricted their choices. Characters experienced consequences for their behaviors, and female characters received harsher punishments for deviant behaviors than male characters. Gender portrayal in Modern plays was more in keeping with traditional patterns than in Postmodern plays. Female playwrights presented more diverse roles for female characters and often explored gender as a major theme in their plays. Where applicable, race, in concert with gender, was an additional factor that governed characters' behaviors by further restricting behavior or possible actions.

Loyalty to the self, family, and husband create interesting tensions for feminine characters in Appalachian literature. Traditional views of loyalty dictate that the Appalachian woman chooses to be loyal to her husband and family while abandoning her self loyalty. Appalachian women writers define the terms of loyalty and the conflicts these three levels create. Furthermore, studying a progression of novels from 1926 to the present shows that feminine loyalty trends have changed. This argument focuses on examining loyalty trends of feminine Appalachian characters, studying the contentions among those loyalties, specifically showing how loyalty patterns have changed in literature, and offering speculation on why these loyalty patterns have changed progressively in Appalachian literature. The study includes five Appalachian novels: The Time of Man by Elizabeth Madox Roberts, The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow, Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, and The Midwife's Tale by Gretchen Morgan Laskas.

Author and activist Abby Morton Diaz (1821-1904) was a member of the Brook Farm Transcendental community from 1842 until it folded in 1847. Although critics have long recognized that Brook Farm played a role in Diaz's intellectual preparation, they have not attempted to demonstrate its influence through a study of her writings. In this study I will examine in detail two of Diaz's novels and two long essays, with passing references to other works, that reveal how the utopian socialism practiced at Brook Farm influenced Diaz as a writer and reformer. In all her writings Diaz emphasized the importance of education for women so that they may successfully fulfill their roles as wives, mothers, and their children's first teachers. Her philosophy is reflected in the reform initiatives she supported: the Women's Educational and Industrial Union and the Nationalist Party.

My research examines the enslaved black woman's reclamation of self through the use of voice and resistance from enslavement into freedom. I argue that the enslaved black woman's voice was one that grew stronger and louder, in an effort to have her story heard, through her attempts of reclamation of self and transition from slave to a free woman. I begin with an introduction to the purpose of my research. Chapter one describes my approach to my research. Chapter two describes the conditions of slavery for black women. Chapter three describes enslaved black women's mechanisms of resistance. Chapter four examinations the reclamation of self in slavemade quilts and the controversial Underground Railroad Quilt Code. Chapter five examines the reclamation of voice in Harriet Jacobs' narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written under a pseudonym, Linda Brent, after she escaped from slavery. Chapter six examines the reclamation of womanhood is Dr. Anna Julia Cooper's text, A Voice from the South. My conclusion describes how these historical events are still relevant to present-day society.

This thesis discusses how the gender dynamics and religious festivals of the Yoruba people in Isaga Orile were not affected by colonialism. The study draws on various accounts, particularly from the Church Missionary Society’s journals, to attest to colonialism's restructuring of male political hegemony. Focusing on two major festivals, Gelede and Oro, the study argues that men's inclusion in Gelede reinforces female supremacy, while the Oro society shows men's hegemony and restrains women from its activities. The study found that gender dominants in these festivals played complementary roles by mirroring female and male roles within the Isaga Orile political system. The study concludes that these festivals strengthened political and gender dynamics in pre-colonial times and continued to do so during the British colonial regime, providing opportunities for women and men to assert their dominance and complement each other's roles in society, despite the restructuring of male political hegemony by colonialism.

The scholarly consensus is that the early essays “Il mare dell’oggettività” and “La sfida al labirinto” are two of the most important Italo Calvino wrote on his literary poetics, influencing the metaphors and problematics of his entire corpus: the sea of objectivity, the labyrinth, chaotic flux, a rational cogito subjectivity, binary oppositions etc. The essays were made available to a general public in the collection Una pietra sopra in 1980, part of a selection of texts handpicked by Calvino himself. Curiously, the 1986 English translation titled The Uses of Literature does not contain these important and influential essays, making them unavailable to an Anglophone audience. These essays are here now translated, accompanied by a critical commentary by the translator about their relevance and importance to Calvino’s corpus. The problematics discussed in these essays would re-emerge, with remarkable consistency, in the metaphorical imagery Calvino deployed throughout his career. Nevertheless, Calvino evolves the problematics significantly throughout his career, almost inverting his original stance. Rather than this being an inversion, however, the translator argues that Calvino’s evolution represents a dialectical movement propelled by contradiction, and that therein lies the actual poetics or the stylized mode of thought that these essays inaugurated. Viewing the essays in this light renders them, and Calvino’s entire corpus, ripe for dialogic encounter and collision with otherwise parallel philosophical traditions and schools of thought.

Tony Kushner's two-part play Angels in America uses stereotypical depictions of gay men to deconstruct traditional gender dichotomies. In this thesis, I argue that Kushner has created a continuum of gender performativity to deconstruct these traditional gender dichotomies, thereby empowering the effeminate and disempowering the masculine. I closely examine Kushner's use of Brechtian and Aristotelian tenets in the first Broadway production of the play to demonstrate that Kushner sought to induce social awareness of gay male oppression, contingent on the audience's perception of Kushner's deconstruction of the traditional gender dichotomy. I also scrutinize the role of the closet and its implications in the play, primarily analyzed with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's theoretical framework, suggesting Kushner's partiality to openly gay men who can actively participate in the cessation of gay male oppression.