Disclosing Enslaved Women’s Resistance in Puerto Rico’s History of Slavery
by Rosa M. O’Connor Acevedo, PhD Candidate, Department of Philosophy
50th anniversary
White Women’s Linguistic Terrorism
by Annie Ring, PhD Candidate, Department of Philosophy
J.L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words demonstrates that language is not just descriptive but in some cases is performative. That is, Austin’s speech act theory argues that language itself performs, changes, or does things in the world. Speech act theory classically considered institutions like marriage, where a pronouncement weds people into a legally binding relation, or boat christening, where naming and blessing a boat before the maiden voyage protects its passengers (Austin).
A Queer Quantitative Inquiry: Sexual Injustices and Social Contexts
My dissertation builds on a stance that views pleasure and safety as fundamental human rights. I am motivated by a wish to democratize pleasure for all, and specifically the questions, “What prohibits individuals from fully enjoying the sexual aspect of their humanity,” and “When it comes to sexual encounters, why do some groups of people consistently have a better and easier time than others?” I use critical feminist theory and queer quantitative methodology to examine how social contexts influence young adults’ experience with sexual injustices and sexual victimization.
Tempting Bad Taste: Unreading the Failure of Art, Fashion, and Food in Late Modernist Novels
by Min Young Park, PhD Candidate, Department of English
Nella Larsen’s Quicksand opens with a vivid portrait of Helga Crane’s room. It is brimming with furniture and garments of her “rare and intensely personal taste” (1). The emphasis on the privacy of her taste is easily overlooked as it is soon followed by a disturbing remark by a white priest who claims that “Naxos Negroes…had good taste” because “[t]hey knew enough to stay in their place” (3)...
Re-examining Context, Culture, and Medium: Gender in South Asian and South Asian American Graphic Novels
by Anu Sugathan, PhD Student, Department of English
My interest in graphic narratives as a research topic emerged during my master of philosophy studies. While contemplating my thesis, I discovered various Indian graphic novels by contemporary writers and artists that brought back memories of my childhood comic books like Balarama, Balabhumi, and Champak. However, unlike earlier comic books, these graphic novels stood out due to their distinctive style, paper quality, and thematic depth...
Power of the ‘Multitude’: Women’s Autobiographical Writings in Latin American Literature
by Magela Baudoin, PhD Candidate, Department of Romance Languages
Women’s autobiographical writing has historically faced devaluation within the realm of so-called “high” literature (Huyssen 2006). This marginalization stems from several factors: firstly, the misguided association of “literary” with “fiction,” which tends to discredit narratives perceived as not purely imaginative (Lejeune 1989; Molloy 1996); secondly, entrenched paradigms in modern Western thought...
‘Feeling With’ Other Bodies: The Posthuman in Latin American Cinema
By Marena Fleites Lear, PhD Candidate, Department of Comparative Literature
Aliens at Home: Myanmar Wives and the Exercise of Border Biopolitics in Yunnan, China
by Xiaobo Su, Professor, Department of Geography
Care: Samoan Feminism, Care Work, and Immaterial Labor
by Lana Lopesi, Assistant Professor, Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies
Illustrating Resilience: Children’s Picture Books for Oppressive Times
How might children’s literature help us respond to our current political climate? While all literature is politically (or at the very least, ideologically) motivated, a picture book that exemplifies political content for children is Maya Gonzalez’s When a Bully is President: Truth and Creativity for Oppressive Times. Not only is it an indirect comment on Trump but it also reframes US history through bully discourse in its reflections on colonization, slavery, war, and xenophobia. When read as political texts, picture books have the potential to inspire collective action or activism.