Gender Studies: Faculty Publications

Asexuality refers to people who are not sexually attracted to others. Asexuality exists on a spectrum and the definition can vary from person to person. For example, those who identify as asexual may still engage in sexual activity. Others may identify as aromantic, gray asexual, demisexual, reciprosexual, akoisexual, or aceflux. All of these terms refer to a variety of ways in which people experience asexuality depending on context. Asexual identity, as with all types of sexual identity and attraction, may change over time. Additional research is needed into the prevalence of asexual identity in the population, the formation of asexual communities, and the effects of discrimination and marginalization among individuals who identify as asexual.

In this article, I engage with the scholarship and praxis of Caribbean feminists and post-colonial scholars, using the term brackish (the place where salt and freshwater meet) as a metaphor, to (re)think Black Caribbean feminisms as ecologies that produce aliveness despite harsh regional conditions. I argue that over many decades, Caribbean feminists have built and sustained vibrant ecologies of thought and practice to address the ways in which we are all similarly and disparately impacted by social, political, economic, environmental, and other conditions within the region and by each other, and have adopted ethical ways to coexist. I posit that engaging with Caribbean feminist ecologies helps us to think about all the ways in which we are connected in this environment, whether literally or metaphorically, and how for Black, and specifically Black Caribbean people, our physical environment, and our relationships with living nonhuman or other-thanhuman beings can tell us much about what it means to create and sustain life generous and interspecies.

In this article the authors perform a transnational feminist analysis of marketing strategies deployed in compassionate consumption. This strategy communicates to the consumer that consuming equals doing good. Using public-facing website data, the authors conduct a discourse analysis of alt-profit corporations, a term they coined to demonstrate yet another widespread strategy of late capitalism. Applying a transnational feminist perspective, they postulate that these alt-profits (meant to invoke “alternative” and “altruistic” actions by corporations) McDonaldize their marketing strategies to capitalize on consumer interests for sustainability, fair trade, “women’s empowerment,” and a desire to consume artisanal goods. They further argue that artisans from the Global South serving consumers in the Global North are framed as gendered and globalized in a way that helps sales. This is done purposefully using text and graphics, including digital storytelling, buzzwords, and vibrant photography. Contrary to the Marxist framework of alienation, artisans are presented as workers who find joy in their work. Alt-profits invite consumers to buy products and appreciate the unique experience of “meeting the artists.” The authors conclude that the formulaic pattern of communication used by alt-profits is both distinct to them yet also common in publicizing any compassionate consumption and ultimately negates the reality of current global markets necessitating exploitative capitalist structures such as opaque and unsustainable supply chains.

This article revisits the "crack baby epidemic" of the 1980s and 90s through a critical disability lens. It examines how newly available rights-based discourses of disability underwrote the overlapping figures of the "crack baby," the "crack mother," and the "welfare queen" in ways that called up historical narratives of the Black family as fundamentally impaired. This racialization of disability was contrasted by a seemingly incommensurate process, wherein disability was increasingly incorporated into the national tableau of multicultural difference. I argue that in a moment marked by the institutionalization of multicultural neoliberalism, disability held the suggestive power of antiracism, which productively enabled the racial violence of state neglect. It thus presents a feminist disability genealogy that takes account of the history of welfare reform through and against the contemporaneous history of US disability rights and its crucial legislative victories. This draws attention to the racialized and gendered subjects hailed in different relation to the state: the "crack baby" vs. the special needs Child, the "welfare queen" versus the independent, productive disabled citizen. It also highlights the division between deserving and undeserving forms of dependency consolidated in welfare legislation in the 1990s. Ultimately refusing the perpetuation of anti-Black racism through deployments of disability, I perform a coalitional reading that makes feminist sense of the historical relationship between disability and anti-Blackness in this era.

This chapter interrogates how contemporary popular media depict Title IX as a tool to fight sexual assault on U.S. college campuses. Projansky traces the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) increasingly expansive feminist definition of Title IX. She shows that the OCR has shifted from a more literal application of Title IX to equal access to admissions and sports, to a more interpretive application to the hostile environment sexual harassment produces, culminating in a 2011 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) that explicitly states that Title IX prohibits sexual violence. Projansky then analyzes how mainstream media have responded to this association. Using case studies of the CNN documentary The Hunting Ground and coverage of Emma Sulkowicz’s performance art, “The Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight),” Projansky details media celebration of both individual and collective anti-rape activism that uses Title IX and is facilitated by social media. She shows that media now tend to accept victims/survivors’ perspectives on sexual assault, as well as feminist arguments that rape is pervasive and that institutional structures, such as universities, implicitly support rape. In short, this chapter articulates how media, as well as government and judicial policy, take up emergent feminist interpretations of sexual violence This chapter discusses the Title IX policy developments related to sexual violence and identifies the feminist logics therein. The association between Title IX and sports is simple and direct: sports are an aspect of education and therefore if someone is denied access to sports on the basis of sex, they do not have equal access to education. The initial application of the law to college admissions and sports relied on the principle of equality and was relatively straightforward in that admission to a university or to that institution's sports program is a priori required for access. The chapter looks at how mainstream commercial media mobilized and embraced feminist understandings of sexual violence as structural and collective activism as necessary. It addresses the feminist activist figure, particularly as she appears in The Hunting Ground, and second of Sulkowicz and "The Mattress— looking more closely at both the possibilities and the problematics in the emergent feminisms.

The history of Western political theory, Norman Jacobson wrote, is a history of “various structures of solace.” Beginning with the ancient Greeks and persisting through the modern era, canonical works evinced a recognizable “rhythm,” despite other deeply discordant features: occasioned by worldly crises, they aimed first to stoke fear in readers—fear the authors attributed to specific political conditions—and then offered a comforting “resolution,” a vision of sound public order that had vanquished, or at least properly managed, “men’s dread.” This pattern of thought and expression was disturbed, Jacobson argued, by the unprecedented disasters of the twentieth century. The brutal realities of world war, totalitarianism, and nuclear weaponry could be counted upon to provoke fear, but these collective experiences seemed to resist assimilation into any, even the most creative or carefully wrought, “structure of solace” . . .

The term “lesbian and gay families” often refers to the families of lesbians, gay men, and their children. The updated term “queer families” more explicitly applies to a broader range of sexually diverse families, and is less strongly tied to traditional notions of the nuclear family, and includes child-free families, families of choice, and/or fictive kin. With changing social attitudes toward LGBTQI+ individuals and marriage equality, research on queer families is becoming more prominent in mainstream sociology. However, there are opportunities to improve our understanding of gender identities and expression in relation to the social construction of families.

Boston’s Old North Church and Historic Site welcomes about 200,000 visitors annually. Many arrive at the three-century-old church as part of their patriotic pilgrimage along Boston’s Freedom Trail, a 2.5-mile path that includes museums, churches, meeting houses, burying grounds, parks, a ship, and some historic markers believed to represent critical moments in early American history. Most visitors to Old North expect to learn more about silversmith and patriot Paul Revere’s “midnight ride” and the lanterns that hung in the Old North Church steeple on April 18, 1775. However, when they stand inside the historic edifice, they quickly discover that it has unexpected stories to tell. The Old North Church functions as a living classroom. Its materiality introduces visitors to the hard histories of slavery, colonialism, racism, and religious conflicts. This article shows the evolution of interpretations of the Old North Church. The staff at Old North Illuminated, the non-profit organization that preserves and interprets the church’s history, relies upon the materiality of the church alongside new archival research to reinterpret its history. The current on-site interpretation reflects the staff’s growing awareness of the church’s complicity in histories of racism, slavery, and colonialism in the Atlantic World. Critical research discoveries since 2016, paired with the racial reckonings of the past 10-15 years, have allowed the staff to reinterpret the church’s history in more inclusive ways that will enable visitors to engage with the inequitable revolutions of our times.

El Consulado de México en Salt Lake City se estableció en 1911 en medio de importantes transformaciones económicas. Por una parte, un número creciente de ciudadanos estadounidenses buscaban invertir en negocios y bienes raíces en México; por otra parte, se expandieron las oportunidades laborales en los campos betabeleros, las minas y la construcción de caminos ferroviarios, oportunidades a las que un número creciente de mexicanos acudieron. Dentro de este contexto, el Consulado facilitó las relaciones comerciales a la vez que veló por los derechos, la salud y el bienestar de los mexicanos residentes en la región. Promover la cultura también formó parte de la misión consular. En colaboración con las principales instituciones cívicas, gubernamentales, educativas y religiosas, el Consulado enriqueció la vida cultural con la celebración de fiestas patrias, pláticas sobre la historia mexicana y el establecimiento de bibliotecas. A partir de esto, el libro revela cómo el personal del Consulado, sus familias y los mexicanos residentes en Utah han formado parte integral del tejido social de este estado. Se subraya, desde una región menos conocida en estudios consulares, la historia de colaboración entre el Consulado y las diferentes entidades gubernamentales, cívicas, religiosas y educativas. Esta historia de colaboración es una historia que sigue vigente. Este libro representa una colaboración entre el Consulado de México en Salt Lake City, el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Utah, el Observatorio de la Relación Binacional México y Estados Unidos y el Archivo Histórico Diplomático de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, resultado del programa de Apoyo a la Investigación sobre la Historia de las Relaciones Internacionales de México en el Extranjero, Isidro Fabela 2022, promovido por la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, a través de la Jefatura de Unidad para América del Norte y la Dirección General del Acervo Histórico Diplomático.

Dis/articulation offers critical insight into exclusionary practices embedded in global commodity chains. In Fiji, powerful actors engage in dis/articulation strategies to limit access to kava consumption domestically while ensuring its availability to Western audiences. Repurposing colonial rhetoric associated with Fijian kava consumption, state officials and lead firms portray kava as over-consumed, unhealthy and harmful in relation to Indigenous Fijians who are its primary producers, harvesters and domestic consumer base. These same actors (e.g. state officials and lead firms) promote kava to Western markets, publicizing it as healthful and beneficial to primarily white consumers. Their marketing and promotional efforts perpetuate colonial tropes and racialized discourses in an effort to simultaneously decrease value domestically (via downgrading) and increase value abroad (via upgrading). This study advances our understanding of the lesser-known historical and relational dimensions of race in global commodity chains.

Research Areas: Education & Educational ResearchBusiness & EconomicsPublic Administration

Gender and sexually diverse (GSD) individuals disproportionately experience worse outcomes, bias, discrimination, and inequities in their care. Many avoid seeking healthcare due to fear of discrimination and mistreatment. One method for improvement focuses on specific GSD medical care training for undergraduate medical education (UME) learners. Efforts to standardize GSD care in UME are present, as displayed by the competencies put forth by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC); however, these attempts resulted in broad themes that can be challenging to implement. The need for specific and easily implementable learning objectives exists. Methods We aimed to create a set of learning objectives specific to GSD care by utilizing the Delphi Method to develop consensus. Three hundred and seventy-nine individuals were invited to participate in this study, which involved four iterative rounds of expert participation. In round one, the expert panel received an initial questionnaire comprising published learning competencies and items. The panel was requested to review and propose additional items. The research team then consolidated and structured these items into learning objectives. In round two, the expert panel was asked to review these objectives and edit language to reflect appropriate, inclusive language. In round three, the expert panel was asked to rate the importance of each learning objective using a 5-point Likert scale (1 =not at all important; 5 =extremely important). In round four, experts were given the overall panel's mean and mode rating for each objective, reminded of their rating, and asked to make a final rating. Learning objectives rated 4 or 5 ("very important" or "extremely important") by at least 80% of experts were determined to be at consensus. The researchers then further examined objectives that had 100% respondent rating of either 4 or 5, thus achieving universal consensus by our expert panel. Results Although 59 individuals agreed to participate in the study, 31 individuals engaged in at least one round of the iterative process as part of the expert panel. The initial questionnaire comprised 30 competencies published by the AAMC and 32 published overlapping learning items. After round two, 79 learning objectives were created. This process eliminated 28 objectives, resulting in 51 succinct objectives that used inclusive and patient-centered language. Conclusion These learning objectives can easily be integrated into existing curricular structures in UME. They can be utilized to improve curricular education for future health professionals, with the final goal of improving health equity for GSD individuals.

Sustainability is an idea that is celebrated, loathed, or deemed entirely useless given its many meanings and approaches. While scholars broadly agree it must include merging ecology, economy, and equity, there remain serious challenges, such as how each dimension is weighted, integrated, and presented. Definitional issues and disciplinary foundations are another chronic problem even as the number of sustainability programs in higher education continues to grow. At the same time, colleges and universities across the country are reaffirming their commitment to equity education, recognizing the critical importance of graduates' abilities to speak across differences and bridge ethnic divides. This article offers consideration of how a systems thinking assessment tool, designed to match those created by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, might support general education requirements while advancing both sustainability and equity. In this article, we share a rubric and strategy designed to clarify definitional issues and make the inseparability of equity and sustainability explicit at institutions of higher education.

One might assume that a show dedicated to portraying pregnant and birthing women’s stories levels the playing field regarding reproductive experiences. However, this assumption is complicated by our history of white privilege and neoliberal intentions. Using Judith Butler’s concept of a “grievable life,” I examine how mothers are acknowledged (or not) in the BBC television programme Call the Midwife. Butler argues that society often disregards certain lives, categorising them as less important along racial, class, and socioeconomic lines. Call the Midwife mirrors these prejudices, treating some lives as more “grievable” while promoting a white saviour narrative that overlooks individual levels of precarity. Although the show successfully highlights women’s issues and presents a variety of experiences, it ultimately diminishes specific mothers through a white feminist lens that prioritises individual power over collective redistribution, as noted by Koa Beck. While Call the Midwife does commendable work by focusing on reproductive women and offering nuanced portrayals, it risks reinforcing the victimisation of certain mothers, which undermines its claims of highlighting injustice. As the series has evolved, its approach to storytelling has shifted, often lacking an intersectional perspective when constructing narratives about motherhood. Ultimately, the show’s potential to foster a more inclusive representation of motherhood is hindered by its reliance on reductive narratives that fail to fully acknowledge the complexities of diverse perspectives. In addition, its specific (and unrealistic) emphasis on white women nurses coming to the rescue underscores a white saviour rhetoric that is problematic when the production is a historical one.

This volume is designed to work in conjunction with the 2007 study, also referred to here as Volume 1. Those using this theme study to prepare National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmark nominations on World War II home front properties are urged to read both the chapters in the original theme study and the relevant chapter(s) in this update. The original theme study offers critical background for the history covered in detail in this volume and in-depth and comparative information for nominations related to its themes. Paying careful attention to these contexts is essential for, as the original theme study notes, “the task of identifying places that can tell the home front story is a challenging one.”