Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students have unique experiences on campus such as discrimination, exclusivity, and homo/transphobia. Stated simply, this research project intends to address these issues by 1) identify students' perceptions of gender identity and sexual orientation diversity on campus, 2) identify the experiences of LGBT students during their time at the institution, and 3) acknowledge suggestions from the student body for ways the University being studied is, or may continue to be, inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity. Through the application of the campus climate framework and modification of existing climate surveys, a student-centered campus climate survey was distributed to various classes and student organizations. After a distribution period of seven weeks, the analysis of the data brought about many findings. This study determined that, while students acknowledge that the University attempts to be inclusive, LGBT students continue to experience harassment and discrimination. Individual and systematic interventions as well as suggestions for resource expansion were also provided by students as a means to cultivate a more welcoming environment. With a concluding recommendation that research should continue to be conducted thoroughly and regularly, the University should consider this study the tip of an iceberg when attempting to understand students' perceptions of campus climate. More systematic and intersectional research needs be conducted on campus to determine the how varying student populations interpret everyday life on their college campus.

Bibliography: leaves 264-273. Ch. 1: Introduction -- Ch. 2: Religion -- Ch. 3: Princes men -- Ch. 4. School culture and impact -- Ch. 5: Discipline -- Ch. 6: Competition and success -- Ch. 7: Conclusions. "This study is an oral history based on interviews with fifty men who left Prince Alfred College (PAC) between 1960-65. The aim was to define the codes of masculinity that were accepted and taught at the school and any other definitions of masculinity that were occurring simultaneously" -- abstract.

My doctoral thesis focuses on the twentieth-century Scottish writer, Jessie Kesson, examining the effects of the cultural construction of gender from a feminist psychoanalytic perspective. Although my primary focus is on the detrimental effects traditional gender roles have on girls and women, recently published studies claiming that 'masculinity' is in a state of crisis are of particular value to my work. The reasons contemporary critics offer for this 'crisis in masculinity' vary widely. There are those who are convinced that women are to blame for abandoning their traditional roles as wives and mothers and moving too far into areas of society that are traditionally 'male'. This, they believe, results in a 'feminised' society that has an adverse effect on the development and well-being of boys and men. Those who support this argument generally believe that social, emotional and psychological distinctions between the genders are biologically inherent rather than socially constructed, and would prefer to see gender positions polarised rather than assimilated. At the other end of the scale are those who believe that the behaviours associated with traditional 'masculinity' are outmoded, fostering a form of emotional distrophy that is responsible for the increase in male suicide and autistic-like behaviours. Those who support this argument believe that males should develop a new set of behavioural traits more closely aligned to those traditionally thought of as 'feminine': traits like spontaneity, expressiveness, empathy and compassion. I have found the latter arguments exciting on two counts: firstly because an increasing number of male critics are joining female critics in acknowledging that many of the traits and behaviours traditionally associated with 'masculinity' are life-denying for both sexes; secondly, and most importantly, because these critics are echoing the findings of the feminist psychoanalytic critic, Jessica Benjamin, whose work I have found so stimulating. But, where critics have pointed to the problem ('masculine' behaviour) and recommended that it be modified to something more closely resembling 'feminine' behaviour, Benjamin has not only identified the source of the problem, she has developed a revised theory of human development, 'Intersubjectivity', which offers a positive and transformative approach to human behaviour. I examine Benjamin�s theory closely in Chapter Two, and make use of it in succeeding chapters. In May 2000, financed by the Bamforth Scholarship fund (with help from the Humanities Division of the University of Otago), I attended a conference at the University of St Andrews entitled 'Scotland: The Gendered Nation', which gave me a wider view of the concerns of contemporary Scottish writers and scholars. The paper I presented at the conference, "That great brute of a bunion!": the construction of masculinity in Jessie Kesson�s Glitter of Mica�, was published in the Spring 2001 issue of Scottish Studies Review. Following the conference I spent the rest of May in Scotland finding out more about Kesson and her writing under the generous tutelage of Kesson�s biographer, Dr Isobel (Tait) Murray, from the University of Aberdeen. Kesson wrote many plays for the BBC, and I was able to read Dr Murray�s copies of some of these unpublished works in the security of the Kings College Library, along with back copies of North-East Review to which Kesson contributed. In Edinburgh I visited the National Library of Scotland which holds back copies of The Scots Magazine containing pertinent articles by Kesson and her contemporaries. Then I travelled to those parts of North-East Scotland which feature most precisely in Kesson�s life and writing. My Scottish month was invaluable for its insight into the critical literary climate of Scotland, and for allowing me to reach Jessie Kesson imaginatively: through the boarded-up windows of the Orphanage at Skene; by the ruined Cathedral at Elgin; at the top of Our Lady�s Lane; and on the steps of her cottar house at Westertown Farm. [SEE FOOTNOTE] It was a privilege to trace Kesson�s footsteps and then to return to the other side of the world with a much keener sense of her 'place'. I would like to think this has carried over into my work, the structure of which is as follows: Chapter One gives a brief history of Jessie Kesson�s life and writing. Chapter Two focuses on Jessica Benjamin the feminist psychoanalytic critic whose work provides the main theoretical framework for my thesis. Chapter Three considers the expression of female sexuality in the novella Where the Apple Ripens, and the way society conspires to have it diminish rather than enhance a sense of female self-hood. Where the Apple Ripens is not Kesson�s first published work but, because it introduces the central concerns of my thesis through the experiences of an adolescent girl, I have chosen to begin with it rather than with The White Bird Passes and to work towards increasingly complex gender relations in succeeding chapters. In Chapter Four, The White Bird Passes, I look at the way Kesson depicts girls and women as instruments of male sexuality, controlled by a nervous patriarchy whose institutions (family, education, church) take away the promise of her female characters. Chapter Five is centred on The Glitter of Mica, and considers the consequences of a masculinity constructed around the destruction of 'the Mother'. Chapter Six considers the fate of the anonymous young woman in Another Time, Another Place, and examines the conventions of the social order that deny her self-definition. Chapter Seven also examines the social conventions that shape and limit the lives of Kesson�s female characters - this time in a selection of Kesson�s short stories and poems. In Chapter Eight I look at selected writers from the eighteenth to the twentieth-century whose work, in diverse and often contradictory ways, has contributed to an interrogation of gender in Scottish literature. This is not an historical and systematic survey of gender relations in Scotland; it is not even an historical and systematic survey of gender questions in Scottish literature. Rather, it is an impressionistic account of such matters in some selected Scottish literature - selected in part to cover some highly influential figures, and in part from Jessie Kesson�s more immediate context: feminine, rural, the North East. There is a place for such historical and systematic work, of course, and I hope that someone will do it. All I can hope for is that I may have provided some beginning but more importantly, that my work in this chapter will sharpen, further, an understanding of Jessie Kesson. I begin with the life and work of the poet, Robert Burns. As well as featuring in Kesson�s Glitter of Mica, Burns and his legacy are matters of influence in the gendered ideal of 'Scottishness' for both laymen and writers at home and abroad. Following Burns, I contrast the unconscious gender ideology which permeates Neil Gunn�s writing with the progressive awareness of gender issues that characterises the work of Lewis Grassic Gibbon and aligns the latter with Kesson�s. I then examine the idealised landscapes and sentimentalised characters of the Kailyard era and the hostile response of the anti-Kailyard writers. This leads into an examination of Hugh MacDiarmid�s poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. MacDiarmid, like Burns, was monumental on the Scottish literary scene and his efforts to rekindle the spirit of the primitive Scot through literature have made him influential with a smaller but equally significant group. What is of particular relevance to my work is that the ideal of 'Scottishness' fostered by writers such as Burns and MacDiarmid is heavily dependent on prescribed gender positions which promote the exploitation of women while rendering them subservient to men and politically powerless. It is from within this environment of gender-based Scottishness that Jessie Kesson and other women writers, were writing and arguing. Therefore, lastly, in Chapter Eight, I concentrate on those women writers whose work has the most relevance to the time, place and ideological content of Kesson�s writing: Violet Jacob, Catherine Carswell, Lorna Moon, Willa Muir and Nan Shepherd. The writing of all of these women is concerned with psychic well-being centred on human relations and/or self-determination and, of the five, the writings of Willa Muir and Nan Shepherd are considered more fully because of the particular contribution they make to my examination of Jessie Kesson: Willa Muir commented, both directly and indirectly, on gender matters. Nan Shepherd, quite apart from being a friend of many years to Jessie Kesson, wrote novels in which gender issues are entirely central. FOOTNOTE: I am indebted to Sir Maitland Mackie for giving me a guided tour of Westertown Farm, the setting for Darklands in The Glitter of Mica.

Bibliography: leaves 264-273. / iv, 273 leaves : charts ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / "This study is an oral history based on interviews with fifty men who left Prince Alfred College (PAC) between 1960-65. The aim was to define the codes of masculinity that were accepted and taught at the school and any other definitions of masculinity that were occurring simultaneously" -- abstract. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Education, 2001

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2005. / Bibliography: leaves 148-162.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Lo studio e la ricerca svolti, affrontano il tema delle trasformazioni che investono, nei contesti migratori, le rappresentazioni e i modelli relativi all'identità femminile, in particolare nel passaggio dalla prima alla seconda generazione, allo scopo di indagare sia rispetto a uno snodo strategico per il processo di integrazione della componente straniera, ma anche al fine di prendere in esame l'evolversi della nostra società, dal punto di vista della produzione di inedite identità. Questo lavoro si articola in due sezioni: una teorica, in cui si approfondiscono l'evolversi del concetto di identità nella tradizione culturale occidentale, fino all'attuale post-modernità, in rapporto alla dimensione culturale e all'appartenenza di genere, in particolare considerando l'agenzia di socializzazione della famiglia e il periodo dell'età adolescenziale e una empirica, in cui sono riportati i principali esiti di una ricerca qualitativa svolta nel corso degli anni 2005-2006, intervistando i componenti di 8 famiglie albanesi presenti in Italia, di cui facesse parte almeno una figlia adolescente. Ne è emerso un quadro composito dove la comunità albanese, presente ormai da diversi decenni nel nostro paese, tuttavia ancora particolarmente stigmatizzata, mostra, attraverso le speranze delle sue seconde generazioni femminili e la capacità di tenuta delle loro famiglie, creative costruzioni di identità ibride, nonché originali possibilità di integrazione. / The present study and analysis examine the transformations in the representations and the models of the female identity occurring in migratory contexts, particularly focusing on those from the first to the second generation. The aim of this research is both to study the strategic step for the integration process of the foreigner and the evolution of our society from the point of view of the birth of new identities. The study develops into two sections. A theoretic one that deeply goes into the analysis of the development of the identity concept from west cultural tradition until post-modernity. This approach takes into account the cultural dimension and the gender belonging, especially considering the family and the adolescence. The second part - empirical - summarizes the results of a qualitative research carried out between 2005 and 2006 interviewing the members of eight Albanian families living in Italy, composed of at least one adolescent daughter. The results show that the Albanian community, that despite living in our country for some decades now is still stigmatized, through the hopes of its second female generation and the "seal capacity" of the family, is able to creatively build hybrid identities, as well as original possibilities of integration.

The purpose of this project is to better understand the influences underlying gender differences in the brain using Four Core Genotype mice. Four Core Genotype mice are transgenic mice in which the SRY gene has been translocated from the Y chromosome to another location. This enables separation of the genetic sex and gonadal sex. For example, there are female mice based on sexual organs but their chromosomes are XY(UY- in mice). This allows us to determine whether sexual differentiation in the brain is due to genes or hormones. In this project, I looked at a sexually dimorphic area of the brain, the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis (BNST), which is twice as large in males than in females. I hypothesize that both chromosomes and gonadal hormones play a part in sexually differentiating the brain including the BNST and thus I predict that the size of the BNST will be the same in XX males (UUSRY) and XY females (UY-). I measured the BNST from five XX female (UU) and five XY male(UY-SRY) four core genotype mouse brains and confirmed that the BNST is larger in males than in females, as it is in normal mice (p= .057). I processed and measured the size of the BNST in ten brains of XX males and XY females to see if the size of the BNST matches the chromosomes or the gonads. The results had a trend in the data that suggested chromosomes play more of an effect on sexual differentiation of the BNST. The overall goal of this project is to contribute to research examining the causes of gender identity in humans by relating this work to other works in the field.

Few bodies consistently portray natural or unaltered forms. Instead, humans inhabit bodies imbued with sociocultural meanings about what is attractive, appropriate, functional, and presentable. As such, embodiment is always gendered. The social, extra-corporeal body is a central locus for expressing gender. Surgical body modifications represent inherently gendered technologies of the body. But psychomedical institutions subject people who seek gender-crossing surgeries to increased surveillance, managing and regulating cross-gender embodiment as disorderly. Using mixed research methods, this research systematically compared transgender and cisgender (non-transgender) people’s experiences before, during, and after surgical body modification. I conducted a content analysis of 445 threads on a message board for an online cisgender surgery community, an analysis of 15 international protocols for transgender-specific surgeries, and 40 in-depth interviews with cisgender and transgender people who had surgery. The content analysis of the online community revealed similar themes among cisgender and transgender surgery users. However, detailed protocols existed only for transgender consumers of surgery. Interview findings showed that transgender and cisgender people reported similar presurgical feelings toward their bodies, similar cosmetic and psychological motivations for surgery, and similar benefits of surgery. For both cisgender and transgender people, surgery enhanced the inner self through improving the outer gendered body. Despite these similar embodied experiences, having a cisgender gender status determined respondents’ abilities to pursue surgery autonomously and with institutional support. Ultimately, this research highlights inequalities that result from gender status and manifest in psychomedical institutions by identifying the psychosocial impacts of provider/consumer or doctor/patient interactions, relating gendered embodiment to regulatory systems of authority, and illuminating policy implications for clinical practice and legal classifications of sex and gender.

Academic interest in drag entertainers began in the late 1970s and has since been slowly growing. The literature has, thus, far largely examined entertainers’ life stories as well as whether drag reinforces or transgresses traditional gender roles. Little research has focused on the interactions between drag entertainers and their audiences. Based upon observational data and in-depth interview data, this study examines the tipping interactions that occur between an audience member and a drag entertainer during a drag show, positive and negative aspects of performing in drag, and rational techniques that entertainers use to encourage audience members to tip. In addition, it explores whether gender roles are reinforced or transgressed as well as the maintenance of the illusion of heteronormativity. Entertainers reported using several rational techniques to engage the audience, which included performing popular songs, wearing interesting outfits, and interacting with the crowd. These rational strategies were based upon the entertainer taking the role of the generalized other, the audience. Entertainers in this study discussed positive aspects of doing drag that made performing a positive symbolic experience for the performer. Through their stage performances entertainers reinforced traditional gender roles and, as a byproduct, also reinforced heteronormativity.