A year after Alyssa Milano’s tweet launched the #MeToo movement, survivors of sexual assault are being called ‘accusers’ in the media, and public opinion is swinging in favor of guilty men. #MeToo raised awareness but not understanding. What is rape? What is consent? As evidenced by the #MeToo movement and the backlash against it, clearly, as a society, we don’t know. Contact is a work of Creative Nonfiction that uses scenes and details from the narrator’s personal experiences to illuminate the micro-negotiations that occur in sex and seduction. In a world where women are still expected to stay small and stay out of the way, where we publicly decry but privately propagate the notion of being 'seen and not heard,' and where to be seen means to be sexualized, this narrator seeks to take up space and make noise. In Contact the personal is political and the political is personal.

Over the twentieth century, Camille Lucie Nickerson excelled in her multi-faceted career as an educator, musician, and interpreter for the advancement of musical education for generations of black students in New Orleans and at Howard University in Washington D.C. Nickerson devoted herself to furthering her musical education through private instruction with her father, Professor William J. Nickerson. She then graduated with a diploma from Southern University and with a B.A. and M.A. in music from Oberlin College. Nickerson’s leadership in musical associations on a local and national level enhanced her ability to reach audiences of all ages through her performances. She dedicated her life to musical education and the sharing Creole folk music, both personal attributes passed down from her father. While Nickerson was determined to preserve Creole folk music through her lecture-recitals, her wider purpose argued for a distinct recognition for Creole culture, thus, acknowledgment of her culture.

For decades, scholars have debated the significance of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), emphasizing its political, economic, and artistic impact. This historiography is dominated by the accomplishments of white men. In an effort to highlight the long-neglected legions of black women who contributed to WPA projects and navigated the agency’s discriminatory practices, this paper will examine WPA operations in New Orleans where unemployment was the highest in the urban south, black women completed numerous large-scale projects, and white supremacist notions guided relief protocol. By analyzing the New Orleans WPA Photography collection, along with newspapers, government documents, and oral histories, a new perspective of the WPA emerges to illuminate the experiences of marginalized black women workers, illustrate how the legacies of slavery and effects of segregation impact black women’s employment opportunities, and highlight how black women made substantive contributions to public projects in the face of societal constraints.

The Mental Health Memories project is an online archive created in order to display and preserve the personal histories of those with mental health experiences. The project aims to fill a void in available material culture related to the history of mental health and its preservation. Participants’ contributions include: oral histories, personal items, documents, and audio. Bringing together multimedia sources, the MHMemories website allows for the preservation of these items and stories through the digitization of contributions. This method allows for participants’ items to stay in their possession while also becoming part of the archive. In order to recruit participants, the Mental Health Memories project teamed up with the Psychiatric Stories Archive, based at California State University San Bernardino, and the San Bernardino County Behavioral Health Clubhouse. Three collection days facilitated the gathering of materials. The final product is the MHMemories.org/.com website which showcases the contributions of participants. The Mental Health Memories project helps to illustrate the diversity of mental health experiences.

Ethnicity, religion, class, and gender are important elements in determining the cultural texture of society. This study examines these components at an important junction in the history of the Pacific Northwest through the lives of students enrolled in two girls’ schools established by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur (SNDN) in the Willamette Valley in the 1840s. These girls, predominantly métis daughters of fur-trade settlers and their Indian wives, along with their Irish and Anglo-American classmates, represent the socioeconomic and cultural transformation of the region as the mixing that gave rise to the unique intermediary culture referred to as “fur-trade society” succumbed to American political and social domination. The primary interest of this study is the process of acculturation facilitated by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and the effect of this acculturation on the métis students. By using a sample of students drawn from the 1850 United States Federal Census of the Oregon Territory, documents relating to the fur trade, Catholic Missions, and early settlement, and standard genealogical and biographical sources, this study compares the two SNDN schools through an analysis of their academic and cultural purposes and ethnic lineage, socioeconomic class, and religious affiliation of other students. Furthermore, as a test of the success of their religious training and acculturation, this study examines the socioeconomic and ethnic characteristics of marriage partners and the students’ religious affiliation as adults, and looks for evidence of métis ethic identity. The resulting analysis uncovers a two-tier system of education that mirrored the bipartite social structure of fur trade: the SNDN tailored the educational offerings at the two schools to serve the different needs of their discrete populations of settlers. Subsequent to their schooling, servant class métis girls most often retained paternal religious and ethnic ties, while officer class daughters show less attachments to their Catholic religious roots and chose more ethnically diverse spouses. Finally, the exogamous martial patterns of both groups discount the presence of strong métis ethic identity.

Out of the politically charged atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s emerged a migration to "the land" and communes, which popularly became known as the back-to-the-land movement. This migration occurred throughout the United States, as well as many other countries, and included clusters of land based communities in southern Oregon. Within these clusters, lesbian feminist women created lesbian separatist lands and communes. These women were well educated, and politically active in movements such as the New Left, Civil Rights, Women's Liberation, and Gay Liberation. These lands or communes functioned together as a community network that developed and commodified lesbian art, which impacted and influenced the development of lesbian art over time. In Oregon, as of 2011, at least ten known lesbian lands still existed. This cluster belonged to an extended community that stretched down into California and over into New Mexico. Over a two-year period I collected, transcribed, and studied the oral histories of eight of the elders of the women's land movement in southern Oregon. The purpose of this study is to better understand this movement of lesbian feminists the development of lesbian art and culture over time. The lesbian feminist back-to-the-land movement made the conscious choice to disengage from the patriarchal mainstream rather than continue participation in their own oppression. They viewed lesbian feminist separatism and the creation of safe lesbian land as a way to reconstruct their self-identity and influence the continued self-perception of lesbians the world over through art and literature. Based on these oral histories and archival materials, it became evident that the women within the lesbian land communities developed and maintained land on which they could re-examine who they were, re-educate themselves and each other, learn practical skills, construct new identities, create art, and broadcast their creations out into the world through organized media networks. One of the key features of this construction of lesbian land culture was the desire to share--share power, share money, share responsibilities, share knowledge, share land, share lovers. On the one hand, ownership was eschewed as elitist and patriarchal, while simultaneously important to the continuity of women's land and its protection from what could be described as patriarchal profit motives. They developed infrastructure, altered language, created a spiritual practice, and made art. The material and artistic culture was created in concert with modes or mediums of transmission, casting it out to a much wider audience. These creative activities influenced and impacted women beyond Oregon, beyond the lesbian land communities, and beyond the 1970s. By examining the lesbian land movement in southern Oregon, we can better understand the impact on LGBTQ culture, and the continued albeit unintentional impact on the questioning of the gender binary and sexual identity. In other words, the feminist and queer questioning of identity construction and symbolic language began here.

Women in early modem England were expected to marry, and then to become housewives. Despite the fact that nearly fifty percent of the population was in this position, little is known of the expectations and realities of these English housewives. This thesis examines both the expectations and actual lives of middling sort and gentry women in England between 1500 and 1640.

This thesis analyzes medical manuals published in England between 1500 and 1770 to trace developing medical understandings and prescriptive approaches to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. While there have been plenty of books written regarding social and religious changes in the reproductive process during the early modern era, there is a dearth of scholarly work focusing on the medical changes which took place in obstetrics over this period. Early modern England was a time of great change in the field of obstetrics as physicians incorporated newly-discovered knowledge about the male and female body, new fields and tools, and new or revived methods into published obstetrical manuals. As men became more prominent in the birthing chamber, instructions in the manuals began to address these men as well. Overall these changes were brought about by changes in the medical field along with changes in culture and religion and the emergence of print culture and rising literacy rates.

The ubume is a ghost of Japanese folklore, once a living woman, who died during either pregnancy or childbirth. This thesis explores how the religious and secular developments of the ubume and related figures create a dichotomy of ideologies that both condemn and liberate women in their roles as mothers. Examples of literary and visual narratives of the ubume as well as the religious practices that were employed for maternity-related concerns are explored within their historical contexts in order to best understand what meaning they held for people at a given time and if that meaning has changed. These meanings and the actions taken to avoid becoming an ubume and to avoid interacting with one create a metanarrative that contributes to our understanding of the historical experience of women.

During the 1890s, a series of extra-legal and illegal activities known as "whitecapping" occurred in Sevier County, Tennessee. While the early episodes were based on traditional responses to deviant behavior in rural communities, whitecapping reflected the loss of community within the county. This study examines the relationship of whitecapping and community in Sevier County and how it changed during the 1890s. The several, often contradictory, social conditions which affected the life of every Sevier Countian are also examined to show the decline of community consensus during this period. Finally, the events galavanizing public opinion against the whitecaps are analyzed to understand their enduring effect on community in Sevier County.