Wesleyan Home → Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies → Theses

Theses Written in WMST/FGSS (1990-2009)

For Prize-winning essays, click here.

 

2009

The Medical Profession and the Lost Promise of Legalization: Creating the Abortion Provider Shortage - Heather A. Sheriff

Achieving 'Gender Parity' at Wesleyan University: Admitting Women, Maintaining Patriarchy - Daniel Trent Grassian

The Praised and the Damned: Muslim Women and the Politics of Adultery - Aaliya Zaveri

Borderland Bodies: Queering Intersectional Health Activisms - Jill Jaffe

Location and Legitimacy in Women's Studies: New Perspectives on Race and Gender in the American Academy - Lesley Chapman

2008

Re-Interpreting Spanish Feminism: Strength and Influence in the Campaign for Abortion Reform - Larissa Slovin

'Hijacking the Movement:' The Saxe-Alpert Controversy, Media Politics and the Making of Radical Feminism in the U.S., 1974-1976 - Anne K. McSweeney

Signing on, Getting Off: How Heterosexual Internet Pornography is Damaging Sexual Development and Identity Formation - Natalie S. Tran

The Touch Project: Performing Gender Across and Through Our Skins - Kelly Klein

2007

Between the Goddess & the Demon - Daniella A. Schmidt

Writing the Woman, Women Writing: Reconceiving the Brothers Grimm - Ruby Stardrum

More Coffins than Cradles: Low Fertility in Bologna, Italy - Erin Waters Teske

Contesting Tradition & Engaging Modernity - Leigh Gabrielle Senderowicz

The Terms of Maternal Obscenity: Breastfeeding & Discursive Desexualization - Margaret Ellen Davis

Food and Sex: Subverting the American Kitchen 1940-2007 -Joanna Nava Goetzel

Exploring Women's (Hetero)sexual Desire at Wesleyan - Sarah Ellen Faeth

Mainstreaming, Sanitation, & the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force - Paige Mercyd Kruza

2006

LGBT Youth Suicide Prevention in Massachusetts - Zach G. Strassburger

Body/Space: Metaphor, Materiality, and Mapping - Jenevive Tatiana Nykolak

H.D. and the Search for a Beminist Language - Rebecca Anne Appel

Writing for Recognition: Individuals & Community in Ethnic Lit. - Maureen Brookes

'No Boys Allowed': Queering Woman - Identified Space - Aurora Maoz

Binary - Resistant Bodies - Caitlin E. Slattery

Developing the Abayudaya: Queering the Family and Development - Sarah Gunther

2005

Investigating Indo-Chic: Popular Representations of Fashionable India – Pia Kaur Sahni

Which Door Will You Buy?  Advertising in the Naturalization of Compulsory Binary Gender – Alix Strunk

Bodies of Knowledge – Arianna Rachel Gutlove Thompson

 

2004

Was It Good for You? – Valentina DiPippo

Privatization Politics: Feminism and Motherhood in the New South Africa – Emma Ruby  Sachs

The Price of the Act: Lesbian Gender, Race & the Performance of Difference –  Gina Katharine Zorzi

Because It Is Better to Travel than to Arrive- Amy Fornari

Trans/Scendence: Ethical Possibility in Intersex Management – Brittany J. Allen

 

2003

Fat Matters: The Meaning of Fat in the Contemporary U.S. – Cara Herbitter

S/M Communities and the Criminalization of Sexual Deviance – Julia Marcus

The Good Sisters – Lauren Briskin

Female Sexuality in Homer’s The Odyssey – Jenny Gassman-Pines

Confronting the Breast Cancer Culture – Claire Lutgendorf

Queering Utopia: Genderfucking and the American Dream – Piper Sledge

Sex on the Brain – Anna Christensen

Benevolently Colonize This – Joanne Alcantara

 

2002

Genital Surgeries – Karen Ben-Moshe

Old Jersey Meets New Jersey: Theorizing and Creating Gender Rebellion – Hope Dector

The Experience of Girls Raised by Lesbian Parents – Marianna Litovich

Pornography and It’s (Dis)Contents: Feminism, Sexuality, and the University   –     Abigail Boggs

Scientific Femininity: Gender Roles in Scientific Literature and Popular Culture  –      Taniza Holmes

Victims, Workers, Enemies, Slaves: (De)constructing Prostitution in Feminism –        Erin Collins

 

2001

Ghetto Bitches and Pussy Power: A Reconstructing of Feminism – Laura Grappo

Psychological Objectivity – Elisabeth Stein

 

2000

Beautiful Stranger: Destabilizing Gender in Leigh Bowery’s Costumes – Sandy J. Cleary

Tracing the Cultural Roots of Women’s Health in India – Kalyani A. McCullough

Where Bi? Who Bi? How Bi?: The Problematic of Bisexual Identity – Joshua E. Hecht

Animal Rights, Care Ethics and the Law – Evan T. Leonard

‘Don’t Want to Be This’ – Anabelle C. Singer

Homomutiny: Pirates, Queers, and the Poetica of Casting-off – Jessica L. Arndt

 

1999

Doctoring Medicine: Six Doses of Physician-Activism – Margo D. Simon

Whores and STDs – Mary Danilena Weaver

Exhibiting Sperm: Visualization and Reproductive Sciences – Christine L. Hanssmann

Gendered Bytes and Digital Genes: The Transformation of Bodies through Cyberspace –    Tamara Goldberg

Two Ends, a Needle  and a Thread: Three Stories for Women – Leander Deborah Altifois

Eramos Mineros, no Mas (We Were Miners, No More) – SaraT L. Mayer

A Feminist Analysis of Smoking and the Anti-Tobacco Movement – Kathryn E. Judge

 

1998

‘Vagina Dentata’: Images of Aborting Women, 1840-1933 – Amy Davenport

Immigrating Minds: The Mother/Daughter Relationship of West Indian Families –     Michelle Berkeley

Taking it to the Limit? – Shenandoah C. Pearce-Anderson

Nella Larsen: A Struggle for Self-Determination – Jessica A. Golden

Controversial Contraception, Suspicious Science – Abigail R. Bass

 

1997

It’s Not ‘My Geisha’ – Patricia Y. Whong

Lyke a Mother and Not Lyke a Stepdame: Elizabeth I, Edmund Spenser and Ireland – McKenna Kerrigan

Gender Differentials in Health Outcomes for HMO vs. FFS Health Insurance –        Stacy E. Sneeringer

 

1996

HIV/AIDS and Women of Color in the United States – Hong Thi Vu

Contemporary Responses to the Construction of Madness – Tracy Jill McNamara

Birth of a Color – Mia Lee

Nature and Culture in the New World Order – Ady Ben-Isreal

Reconfiguring Subjectivity: Chavez, Cisheros, and Moraga – Rachel McLaughlin

Women, Equality, and Reproductive Freedom – Deborah Bari Baker

Portraits – Colleen J. Pickett

Literary Gifts: On Chukovskaya’s Akmatova Journals – Ginger Beth Lazarus

The Emergence of the Immoral Woman – Alison N. Baker

 

1995

Eve’s Legacy – Rose M. Gower

Germs Embodied: Tuberculosis and the Logic of Health and Illness in America –        Alisa McQueen

 

1994

Wombs and Wounds: Disrupted Desires – Ayana Smith

The Transformation of the Birthing Event – Michelle Dawn Seelig

Feminism Without ‘Women’ A Theory for Anti-Rape Politics – Isabelle Barker

Defending the Moral Order – Lauren Weber

 

1993

 Lesbian Perspectives on Body Image and the Lesbian Community – Sara Anne Auerbach

Re-Forging the Master’s Tools: An Analysis of Diversity in Progressive Politics – Katherine P. Booth

Mothers in the Fatherland: Nationalism and Sexuality in the Algerian Revolution – Karina A. Eileraas

‘Soft News:  Newspaperwomen and the Sensational Press, 1880-1915 – Kristine D. Gual

Erotics as Politics: The Intersections of Feminism and Sexuality – Michelle N. Khazai

‘Catchin’ Babies’: The Demise of the Granny Midwife… - Rosemary Polanco

Excessive Clitorizing: Margins, Details, and Monsters of the Female Body – Audrey Prins-Patt

Unearthing an Identify… - Miriam Schacht

Dressing Up and Fleshing Out: Butch/Femme Erotics and Politics All Tied Up – Tristan Taormino

 

 1992

Beyond Technophobia: Gender, Technology, and Domination – Jessica Beebe

Multiple Personality:  Lesbian Subjectivity and Transgression in Violette Leduc’s La Batarde and Kate Millett’s Flying – Susan Kleinman

Revisioning Knowledge: Towards an Anti-Colonial Feminist Epistemology – Jennifer J. Langdon

Women’s Health: The Domain of God and the Doctor? – Andrea T. Seebaum

 

1991

Rewriting Sexuality:  The Well of Loneliness and Lesbian Subjectivity – Deborah A. Cohler

Layers of Meaning: The Multitextual Gone With the Wind – Eva M. Pendleton

Feminist Fairy Tales and Moral Pornography: Revising Social and Sexual Roles in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber – Alisa B. Rosen

 

WMST Essays

2009 - Negotiating the Boundaries of Inclusion: An Analysis of Immigration Discourse in Rural Western North Carolina - Megan E. Vees

2006 - Brutal, Baroque and Banal: An Exploration of the Implications of the Use of the Word Kitsch in Contemporary Reviews of Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" - Emma Rose Silverman

2005-Trespassing through Monoracial Worlds:  A Self-Reflective Essay on Creating Multiracial Identity – Maria Morse

2005 – (Breast) Milk: It Does a Body Good – Rebecca Yael Bak

2003 – Empowerment on the Agenda: Women and the World Bank’s Changing Development Discourse – Simca Horwitz

2002 – The State as the Father, the State as the Husband: Deconstructing Paternalism and Discourses on Morality in U.S. Welfare Policy – Katie Burk

2000 - In Light of Trauma: Negotiating Agency and Survival in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye – Caitlin Dougherty

2000 – Women Maquiladora Workers in Transnational Networks: Transforming Ideologies of Gender – Haydee Caldero

2000 - Male Infertility and Masculinity in Historical Context: The Baby Boom Era – Flavia Graf

1999 – Gender-typing and Language Acquisition in Early Childhood and their Role in the Formation of Gender Differences in Linguistic Practices: Evidence and Implications from Theories and Research – Farrah Mahmood

1999 – My Two Dads: “New” Gay Fathers and the Changing Conception of the Family – Alicia Horwitz

1997 – Race and “Racelessness”: Refiguring Television Images of Asian American Women in the Age of Liberal Multiculturalism – Lisa Ko

1997 – The Estrogen Deficient Woman: Menopause, Hormone Replacement Therapy, and Cultural Contestation – Tara Herman

1997 - A Politics of Sex Difference: The Authoritative Constraints of Truth and Progress – Sarah Benatar

1996 – The Technoscientific Body Politic: Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Evelyn Fox Keller and the Practice of Science Studies – Allison Dimond

1995 – Popular Psychology and Reproductive Technology: A Critique of Self-Help Literature for the Infertile – Erika Malm

1995 – Population Policies and Family Planning in Mexico: Conflicts in Implementation – Katherine Forbes McNeill

1994 – “Strictly Feminine Furniture”: The P