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Title: "Let Them Get Hazed": Conditional Coeducation at Wesleyan University, 1872-1912
Creator: Rau, Aviv Shafir (Aviv Shafir Rau) (Author), (Abigail Boggs) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2019-04-15
Description: In this critical university studies thesis, I explore the short-lived coeducation project at Wesleyan University from 1872-1912. In my first chapter, I assess Jacksonian norms of masculinity that shaped the antebellum campus and created ties of brotherhood between male students. Then, I analyze their responses to coeducation, noting that they queered women seeking an education. My second chapter discusses the post-1890s generation of college women, which scholars call "new women." Despite their strides at other universities, women faced growing male hostility at Wesleyan in these years. My last chapter unravels the assumption that students alone made women feel unwelcome by pointing out curricular changes and faculty biases that entrenched racist, sexist ideologies within the classroom. Ultimately, I argue that coeducation has historically come at a price. At Wesleyan and elsewhere, white middle-class women achieved conditional acceptance in the university only by weaponizing normative racial and class identities in a time of growing white, middle-class anxieties. Meanwhile, male students and administrators alike resisted coeducation through every avenue available to them, from fraternities and student publications to the curriculum itself. This thesis exists to read into, between, and past institutional narratives about coeducation. Seeking to undo the clear binary between the university and the commons, I argue that knowledge production, even when positioned as objective, has social, political, and economic consequences in the world beyond., 2019, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: A City Within a City: African American Literary Regionalism in the Works of Gwendolyn Brooks and August Wilson
Creator: Sculnick, Sarah Hayley Faith (Sarah Hayley Faith Sculnick) (Author), (Sarah Mahurin) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2014-04-15
Description: 2014, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1303, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: A Conscious Citizen: Sam Cooke, Racial Performativity, and the Crisis of Crossover Music
Creator: Rosenberg, Gabriel Jacob (Gabriel Jacob Rosenberg) (Author), (Patricia Hill) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2016-04-15
Description: This thesis aims to illustrate how black crossover music perpetuates a condition of racial crisis within the American music industry. By examining the artistic and economic strategies of the soul singer Sam Cooke through the lens of racial performativity, this thesis considers how dynamic performances of blackness trouble the boundaries and significations of race and genre. Historicizing the development of the “race music” industry and drawing connections to the work of musicians like Mamie Smith, Nina Simone, Beyoncé, and Kendrick Lamar, this thesis discusses the political implications of black sounds in the mainstream and thinks forward to the radical potential of “crossing over.”, 2016, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1670, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: A Simple Thank You: Debt, Gifts, and Gratitude at the University
Creator: Lopez, Iryelis (Iryelis Lopez) (Author), (Laura Grappo) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2017-04-15
Description: This thesis examines what I term "gratitude debt," an affective foil to financial debt that emerges via a triangular student-steward-donor relationship at the university. Drawing on the fields of critical ethnic and university studies, I analyze the tactics used by the Office of Stewardship to maintain institutional futurity., 2017, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1726, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: A Tangled Text: William Wells Brown's Clotel (1853, 1860, 1864, 1867)
Creator: Sommers, Samantha Marie (Samantha Marie Sommers) (Author), (Matthew Garrett) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2009-04-15
Description: 2009, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/265, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Advocating from the Margins: the Reproductive Justice Movement and the Politics of Oppositional Consciousness
Creator: Kirwood, Zachary null (Zachary null Kirwood) (Author), (Christina Crosby) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2012-04-15
Description: 2012, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/850, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Amorphous Roots: The Visualization of Liminality
Creator: Mizuno, Hibiki (Hibiki Mizuno) (Author), (Amy Tang) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2015-04-15
Description: In this thesis, I examine the work of three Korean/Korean American contemporary artists, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries and Nikki S. Lee, and their representation of home and belonging, traveling and displacement., 2015, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1460, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: An Un-American Enterprise: The Demise of the Reverse Peace Corps
Creator: Aron, Jae Sarah (Jae Sarah Aron) (Author), (Jonathan Cutler) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2011-04-15
Description: 2011, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/726, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Anti-Assimilable: (Re)defining Asian American Identity
Creator: Gao, Ocean (Ocean Gao) (Author), (Amy Tang) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2019-04-15
Description: Taking the form of a modified exhibition catalogue, this thesis is divided into two parts: the first, three relief prints; the second, three written chapters, where each chapter corresponds with one print. The visual arts component of my thesis imagines Asian America’s futurity, whereas the written chapters explore Asian America’s past and present, ultimately positing an Asian American identity that is defined as a non-normative, anti-State political formation., 2019, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/2128, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: At Corona Plaza: A Novella
Creator: Slattery, Jennifer Rachel (Jennifer Rachel Slattery) (Author), (Indira Karamcheti) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2009-04-15
Description: 2009, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/322, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Aztlan, Revisited: Towards a reconfiguration of Queer Chicano Literary Discourse
Creator: Ortiz, Michael (Michael Ortiz) (Author), (Patricia Hill) (Thesis advisor), (Amy Tang) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2017-04-15
Description: In this thesis, I work to provide a new framework for interpreting queer Chicano border literature. Much of the scholarly critique on the subject has simply sought to replicate the theoretical bent of the larger Chicano literary canon, an analysis that often fails in understanding the multiplicity of ways in which Queer racialized subjects navigate a space as fraught as the border. Thus, my goal is to incorporate other theoretical perspectives towards a new understanding of queer Chicano subjects in relation to the border. I analyze the work of two contemporary queer Chicano writers and the ways in which they represent the border and use it to subvert heteronormative discourses of identity, belonging, and home., 2017, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1876, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Beyond East vs. West: Critically rereading Asian American Art Today
Creator: Jarris, Daniel Kitaro (Daniel Kitaro Jarris) (Author), (Amy Tang) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2019-04-15
Description: This project is a critical analysis of selected artworks from contemporary Asian American artists Steven Young Lee and Byron Kim that moves beyond multiculturalist interpretations of ethnic art as a reflection of stereotypical conceptions of marginalized identity and experience. In moving beyond multiculturalism, this project engages with the larger critical and theoretical interventions these artists are making into understandings of Asian American art, racialization, objecthood, and personhood., 2019, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/2172, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Binding Commonalities: The Chronotopes of "Infinite Jest"
Creator: Roach, Zachary (Zachary Roach) (Author), (Matthew Garrett) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2017-04-15
Description: I argue that David Foster Wallace’s novel, "Infinite Jest," is most compelling in its regularity. By regularity, I mean a formal orderliness that contains the novel, even in its chaotic passages. My argument differs from critics who see "Infinite Jest" as a singular achievement; in addition, I disagree with readers who find the novel too complex. To structure my argument, I employ Russian philosopher M.M. Bakhtin’s concept of the “chronotope”—literally, “timespace”— which refers to the fusion of time and space as expressed in literature. Importantly, chronotopes function intrinsically and extrinsically (inside and outside of the novel). The chronotopes of "Infinite Jest" reveal the novel’s institutional existentialism. In the dystopian world of the novel, many characters occupy a chronotope of isolation: narrative function is minimal, as reflected by the descriptive form of the text. In contrast, characters recover narrative within communal institutions (a chronotope of recovery). Moreover, I argue that this chronotope of recovery allegorically reveals a chronotope of the writing program. In both institutionally enclosed chronotopes, the individual is given rules to follow and specific language to use. Finally, I argue that the writing program feeds back into Infinite Jest, allegorically indicating an all-encompassing chronotope of the program (programs as means of ordering society in a meaningful way). In addition to my textual analysis, I employ my original research of Wallace’s archive at the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas at Austin). I also use a number of critical sources. Of particular importance are Bakhtin’s “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” Mark McGurl’s “The Institution of Nothing: David Foster Wallace in the Program,” and Jeffrey Severs’ "David Foster Wallace’s Balancing Books: Fictions of Value.", 2017, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1750, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Booze, Brands, and Boys: The Politics of Selectivity and Exclusion in an American Sorority
Creator: Fine, Isabel Sarah Rosenberg (Isabel Sarah Rosenberg Fine) (Author), (Kerwin Kaye) (Thesis advisor), (Megan Glick) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2017-04-15
Description: This thesis examines Greek Life through a case study of one sorority, ABC, at one university in the fall of 2016. With the support of twenty-eight loosely-structured, in-person interviews, I explore what it means to be in a Greek-lettered organization at a Big State U through the lenses of selectivity and exclusion. While scholarly material provides essential theoretical frameworks, the majority of the data presented in this thesis come from raw and analyzed primary material, with secondary sources as supplement. This thesis argues that ABC is comprised of white, wealthy, and straight women. It is Jewish as per its sorority national charter, which places ABC at Big State U in an intermediary space between its peers’ whiteness and its peer’s anti-Semitism. While ABC is comprised of individuals, as a whole organization, it encourages its members to shed individual identity in favor of collective dedication to being in ABC in order to further the institution, its notoriety, and its perceived image around campus. This is a study of the intersection of identity, institution, and power. I contend that whiteness, and a strive for whiteness, become the norm through the practices of the Greek System at Big State U. In this sense, while this is a case study of a single sorority, perhaps it can also function as a case study of how national and societal ideologies of normativity, race-based exclusion, heterosexism, elitism, and anti-Semitism become expressed and disseminated in microcosm., 2017, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1722, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Broken Borders: Rhetorical Constructions of the 'lllegal Alien" and the National Body
Creator: Gapsis, Noah (Noah Gapsis) (Author), (Patricia Hill) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2010-04-15
Description: 2010, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/582, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Civic Engagement and Education Advocacy: The Past, Present and Future of the Parent Teacher Association
Creator: Distler, Amanda Rose (Amanda Rose Distler) (Author), (Patricia Hill) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2015-04-15
Description: This thesis analyzes the changing role of the Parent Teacher Association from its inception in the 1890s to today and provides a blueprint for practical change to return it to prominence as a valued and powerful education advocate. Using a strong foundation in civic engagement and the role of women throughout American history and providing a thorough background of the current public education crisis in America, this work highlights the untapped potential of a once-active, now passive PTA. Since its founding in the late 1800’s, the PTA peaked in membership rates and advocacy effectiveness in the mid-twentieth century and has been declining ever since. During its heyday in the 1960s, the PTA benefited the American public education system as an organization that boosted parent participation, built relationships within and among communities, and connected the nation in the fight for education excellence. While its strong federation model afforded the PTA opportunities to infiltrate nearly every public school district in the nation, the very flexibility that spiked its membership and effectiveness in the 1960s caused a fracturing of the PTA as an organization that once operated as one organism, to one that is now hyper-localized in individual neighborhoods. This work questions the legitimacy of the effectiveness of the PTA today, weighs its costs and benefits, and uncovers the ways in which the PTA institutionalizes inequality and immobility by allowing local branches at individual schools and districts, where parents can afford to donate significant time and money, the privilege of self-determination. In some neighborhoods, the PTA means attending galas, auctions and bake sales, while in many others, the PTA translates to cafeteria dinners during parent workshops on how to raise bilingual children. By exploiting the traditional American ideological backdrop of the American Dream, the PTA improves absolute mobility, while hampering the relative mobility of children across the United States. Today, the PTA is a passive echo of the organization it once was. This work concludes on a hopeful note, by offering solutions to the PTA’s current issues while acknowledging the PTA’s considerable potential to refocus and serve American families during the current education crisis and beyond., 2015, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1373, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Co-Dependent & Undoing: Learning to Love Beyond American Gendered Conditioning
Creator: Roe, Jordan Marisa (Jordan Marisa Roe) (Author), (Tira Palmquist) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2019-04-15
Description: This is a playwriting thesis completed in two parts. First is my play, Co-Dependent: After their initial connection, Pat and Henry want to love and be loved; but their gendered conditioning keeps them in the Friends-with-Benefits Zone. Despite their chemistry and attraction, their warped senses of self-worth make them afraid of vulnerability. Throughout the course of the play, they're challenged to show up for themselves and each other–to feel their fear and choose love anyway. Second is my paper, Undoing: Learning to Love Beyond American Gendered Conditioning. The paper examines Co-Dependent's themes and functions while analyzing the three main sources of research that informed my creative writing process: bell hooks' All About Love: New Visions, Susan Jeffers' Feel The Fear... And Do It Anyway, and Queer Eye: Love Yourself, Love Your Life., 2019, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/2200, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Configuring and Reconfiguring Chinatown: The Production of Desire in an Ethnic Enclave
Creator: Eng, Viviane (Viviane Eng) (Author), (Marguerite Nguyen) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2018-04-15
Description: The making of Asian American culture is a nuanced process, characterized by inherited customs from Asia that are modified, re-imagined, and reinvented. This project explores how Chinese American culture has been altered as New York's Chinatown continues to undergo rapid development and gentrification., 2018, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1984, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Contested Cities: Re-thinking the Global and Re-presenting the Local in Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles
Creator: DeRogatis, Talia Marie (Talia Marie DeRogatis) (Author), (Indira Karamcheti) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2015-04-15
Description: This thesis seeks new narratives for understanding globalization and its effect on world cities that are sensitive to local agency, non-Western contexts, and the effects that globally oriented urban development has on marginalized urban communities. Ultimately, I seek to expand the political horizons for such communities in contesting global urban development paradigms., 2015, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1426, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

Title: Cosplay: Re-Dressing American Identity
Creator: Goldsmith, Chelsea Anne (Chelsea Anne Goldsmith) (Author), (Brian Hoffman) (Thesis advisor)
Date: 2013-05-23
Description: 2013, Old URL: https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/etd_hon_theses/1059, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted (InC-NC)

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