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The witch hysteria that overtook Christian Europe during the Early Modern era inspired a mass paranoia over the conspiratorial belief that the Abrahamic religion’s personification of the world’s evils, also known as Satan, the Devil, demons, or Lucifer interchangeably, was attempting to rise up and cause harm to Christian communities during this time period. It was believed that in order to achieve this goal the Christian version of the Devil had been recruiting humans within Christian communities and turning these chosen humans into witches by granting them the ability to wield magical powers to spread their destruction, murder, and terror amongst their own neighbors and families. Over the course of the late sixteenth and seventeenth century in England, the impact of the witch hysteria resulted in the publication of illustrated witchcraft pamphlets through London’s printing houses, where news of witch trials would be recounted in detail. When compared against illustrations from other English pamphlets published during this same time period, the witchcraft pamphlets stand out as distinctly different through their portrayal of female witches as caricatures with the heavy visual symbolism representing the believed malicious capabilities that witches possessed against society. A comparison of witchcraft pamphlets against other pamphlets printed in different genres and countries also showcases the hypocrisies in which the witchcraft illustrations that are supposed to be presenting the sins of witches has been tamed down, with the witches always being portrayed as fully clothed despite the text going into detail on the accused sexual perversions of the witches, which indicates the printing houses had taken marketing into account. Likewise depictions of female witches versus male witches in illustrations show the female witches as ugly caricatures wearing lower-class clothing, while male witches are shown wearing garments of a higher class, and holding higher positions in

I thought I could be ridden hard and put away wet, wet, wet. I thought death and rape and drunkenness and unrequited love were functions of a typical life, a this-is-how-it-goes kinda world. But, as I’ve emerged from hellish muck, there has been a realization: the way we treat each other and the soil, the aching earth, needs to change. “A Personal History of Invasive Hands and Endangered Lovers” explores the relationship between intimacy and pain through a history of ecology and consumption, a melancholy of sorts. It amplifies trauma as a call-to-action and refuses to sit and take it. Although full of fracking and forest fires and sex, this collection doesn’t fail to find the small, soft moments humanity will lose if it continues to not be careful. I view the collection as a light shot from a flare gun in the middle of the Atlantic’s belly. Best read with a glass of local booze or hot blunt or on top of a mountain.

In this article, I discuss Algernon Swinburne’s and Dora Greenwell’s engagement with the myth of Proserpine through an analysis of the motif of the garden, which takes central stage in both accounts. The examination will illustrate how the authors’ outlined images of the garden challenge the dominant representation of the motif within Western literary tradition, offering a re-interpretation of the myth as social commentary.

In her "Deconstructing Feminine and Feminine Fantastic through the Study of Living Dolls," Raquel Velázquez analyzes the treatment of one idiosyncratic image within the fantastic genre, and one that also has a special impact on the configuration of the feminine: the doll. On the one hand, she examines the evolution of this fantastic motif in order to determine whether it involves a transformation of how the feminine fantastic is represented. On the other hand, she establishes some correlations between the image of the fantastic doll, and the development of processes such as the dollification of women or the humanization of the doll as it is identified in contemporary society. This is seen as an exemplification of how both the alleged feminine fantastic (which is questioned here), and the feminist fantastic adjust, alter, or adapt, in the same way as the society in which it is contextualized or integrated.

Several conservative sectors and employers are embracing equality objectives, including financial institutions, for example, more importantly, there has been a change in attitude and support towards the LGBT+ issues, which has been noticed in other professions and companies, including law and accountancy. The LGBT group includes Lesbians, Gay, Bisexuals and Transgender sexual orientation. Gay men and heterosexuals have also been observed to be in these groups. If we talk only about sexual orientation, we should avoid using the label “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender” More than one of these labels can recognise and identify a person. The organization should review and structure LGBTQ including workplace policies and procedures. The research identifies major contributors, recent trends, contexts and supports in the field of study. The paper adopted, systematic literature reviews and network reviews, bibliometrics and network analysis (NA), to evaluate the research events that have taken place in this topic, collecting a sample of 195 documents from the Scopus database. After analysing different viewpoints, such as the initial data structures, bibliometrics and network, the study is an essential basis for the understanding of LGBTQ, its current indications, and the environment in which the analysis advances. The goal of the researchers is to identify major contributors, as well as identify the currently being investigated variables. such as discrimination in the workplace, LGBTQ inclusion and promotes for additional directions in the field of LGBTQ inclusion at workplace.

This research investigates the political communication channel of the Aceh’s woman legislators to the community. After the period of political conflict in Aceh, women participation in the public sphere as a legislator is shown to be increasing in quantity. However, their coverage on the media regarding their performance and activity as Aceh’s women’s legislators is still lacking. These women representatives have not been received enough recognition within the community. This study aims to reveal the political communication channel of these women’s legislator to the constituents. This study was conducted in the Aceh Legislative Body using a descriptive qualitative method. The data were collected through interviews and documentation. The results of the study suggest that the political communication channel utilized by the women’s legislators is mostly public communication, group communication channel, and social communication channel. They conducted face to face communication with the constituents when taking their aspiration and explaining the policy and programs that they have conducted, are conducting, and will conduct.

While there are creative pieces theorizing about Tamar and her inclusion in both David and Jesus’ genealogies, there is a lack of research comparing King David’s genealogy in I Chronicles 2 with the kingly genealogies of the same time. Comparing the two shows that genealogies in the surrounding nations—Assyria, Babylonia, etc.—are lacking women. In contrast, the Old Testament is filled with kingly genealogical records that list and name women. This thesis will touch on the differences and similarities between the kingly records/genealogies, theorize and explore the levirate marriage custom and matrilinear descent, and attempt to provide a better understanding of Tamar and what set Ancient Israelite society apart from the surrounding cultures.

Depictions of Satan had started off with a grotesque and monstrous figure, but depictions of and attitudes towards the character shifted with the publication of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. However, although the aesthetics of the figure shifted, I argue that William Blake’s renderings of Satan continue the tradition of rendering them as monstrous and grotesque in a new way, in that Blake renders Satan as a hermaphrodite. Attitudes towards hermaphrodites has shifted over time, but the attitude of regarding them as unnatural or monstrous harkens back to ancient Greece, and these attitudes were only furthered with time and the advent of modern medicine. Ambiguous sex was both lauded and reviled in Blake’s time, where in theory it was regarded as a pinnacle of humanity, but in actuality it was regarded as nature’s mistake that needed rectifying. I argue that this is a tradition that Blake continued.

This article examines Southeast Asian Americans (SEAA) academics in the U.S. academy, relating their complex positionalities within higher education to their communities and societies. While many educational studies have been done on SEAA students, almost none focus on professional scholars and college faculty. Combining cultural-structural critique with close analysis of public writings and personal interviews, the article finds that that SEAA are ignored, and/or tokenized in the Ivory Tower due to structural as well as epistemological issues. It indicates that the public discourse and policies about Southeast Asians in academia not only neglects racial and class hierarchies, but obscures issues of gender equity, mentoring, discrimination, hiring, tenure, and retention. To explain how and why Southeast Asian professors are “missing,” this article seeks to: 1) built a more critical framework and interdisciplinary methodology for studying SEAA in academia in ways that are intersectional, anti-racist, and comparative 2) challenge dominant narratives of Asians and Asian Americans as they pertain to SEAAs and 3) reveal participants’ own stories of agency and belonging in their communities and institutions.

The aim of this essay is to address the challenges and problems in communicating with horses and interpreting their communication in everyday handling and training situations. We seek ways to learn more about equine communication and agency in the prevention of cruelty against animals and in enhancing animal welfare. We ask how it would be possible to learn to read the subtle signs of equine communication and agency in a sensible, sensitive, and ethical way to increase the health and wellbeing of horses that humans interact with. We have placed this theoretical examination in a multidisciplinary framework that consists of humananimal studies, feminist posthumanities, cultural and literary studies, and equine social science, as well as applied insights from, for example, discussions on power, ethics, and politics. Our emphasis is on the need for situated knowledges, among scientific and tacit knowledges, in order to ‘become with’ a horse in a relationship based on mutual communication and trust. These different types of knowledges are central to an ‘animal politics’ that is organised politically on behalf of animals and motivated by an ethics of care and responsibility, echoing recent requests for a relational ethics in interactions with animals in multispecies societies and more-than-human worlds.

Expressive Arts Therapists are uniquely situated as both artists and mental health counselors working in psychological pedagogy rooted in systems of oppression. Given the arts-based approaches to the therapeutic relationship, it can be unethical to offer these approaches without acknowledgement of the ways in which the arts intersect with social justice, and justice is only viable if practitioners critically review the clinical mental health education they are consuming from the institutions they learn in, specifically trauma-informed mental health research assimilation and treatment approaches for Expressive Arts Therapists in training, practice, and education. A review of the literature in this paper hopes to illuminate the necessity for Expressive Arts Therapists to creatively and critically inquire about mental health research and arts-based therapeutic practices in order to provide care to LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities, where self-as-instrument is creatively engaged in pedagogy and practice, where the internal is reflected externally, for the Expressive Arts Therapist and the “other”, within and without the therapeutic relationship. Experiential learning with techniques from poetics, Playback Theatre and performative writing allow space to explore, creatively, social justice nuances, specifically, in historically oppressed systems, such as the mental health system. This thesis includes the author’s arts-based reflections on this literature review through poetics and performative writing explorations of their lived experience as an expressive arts therapy student, intern in the mental health field, and lesbian identified single-Mom-by-choice.

A significant component of contemporary arts is performance art. Two spearheads of the birth of performance art are the Serbian artist Marina Abramovic, and the American Chris Burden, both of whom worked primarily in the 1970s. Abramovic and Burden have often been compared for the similar characteristics of their work: both artists create intense, provocative, and violent work. While Abramovic uses these aspects of her work to make political or social commentary, and connect to her audiences on a humanistic level, Burden uses these aspects without creating a deeper meaning or inspiring thoughtful dialogue. By exploring several comparable works by both Abramovic and Burden, we can understand that Burden’s works are regressive and have little to no artistic merit; with a closer look, we see that Burden uses his position as a white, American man to create work that is harmful to both women and minorities. However, critics then and now have acclaimed Burden’s work as “innovative” and “avante-garde.” They praise his willingness to break boundaries by making work of an extreme nature, yet leave Abramovic out of the conversation despite the merits of her work, thus illustrating a substantial gendered bias. After conducting in-depth analytical comparisons of the two artists’ work, and observing how their race and gender positionalities come into play in their respective works, we understand that critics and historians have unfairly commended Chris Burden, and ignored important aspects of Marina Abramovic’s contribution to art history. This thesis sets out to question Chris Burden’s historical canon as a performance artist, and rather, emphasize the foundation that Abramovic truly set.

Kitagawa Utamaro’s Edo period prints (approx. 1770-1800) frequently feature prostitutes from Edo's officially licensed entertainment and pleasure ward. These prints were by no means portraits—instead, they were closer to advertisements for the pleasure district. Utamaro erased individuality from these women, placing them into stereotypical roles or personalities to appeal to potential customers of the ward. Utamaro glamorizes the life of courtesans for profit; and in this blatant objectification of women, the stories of these women are lost and glossed over. Who were these women, and what did their daily life actually look like? How does Utamaro betray this in his idealized depictions?

New Mexican visual art and culture, as molded by state-sanctioned endeavors, is often casted in order to conceal the tension, conflict, and violence of settler colonialism and imperialism. Widely known myths of empire, such as the Tricultural myth, create a visualizing enterprise through which settler colonial logics transit and create political material reality. This thesis explores the following questions: How do New Mexican Hispanos and queer Chicanxs position themselves in relation to the logics of settler colonialism and empire? How are they positioned in relation to settler colonialism and empire? On the one hand, I argue that the state of New Mexico and the University of New Mexico prop and mitigate the shaping logics of settler colonialism and empire through visual regimes, culture and discourse. Through a settler colonial and queer of color critique, I deploy a visual analysis of the stolen Zia Pueblo sun sign, Conquistador statues, and the Three People’s murals. On the other hand, I offer a disruptive alternative to the visualizing enterprise of New Mexico. I frame my analysis with religious affects and queer of color critique to examine how erotic devotionalism, when cast by queer and transgender people of color, can be utilized as a liberatory tool. I spotlight the art of (J)Ade Cruz and Alma Lopez to envision how worldmaking aesthetics create a future-present rooted in racialized queer feeling, bodies, and ways of relating that are inherently anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-US-empire-sensorium.

Border-crossings —both geographical and metaphorical— are a fertile territory for critical and fictional discourses that explore the forging of gendered personal, social, and cultural identities. The notion of the border becomes a political, material, discursive or symbolic limit, a space of conflict, resistance and negotiation, where power relations are articulated. In this dissertation I analyze the following border-crossing narratives and films: The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros; Jo també soc catalana and El último patriarca, by Najat El Hatchmi; Retorno a Hansala, by Chus Gutiérrez, and Sin dejar huella, by María Novaro. My study has a transnational approach, since it includes both Iberian and Latin American works that portray women living in vulnerable, liminal spaces, and crossing geographical, metaphorical, and cultural borders. I address the concept of the border as a methodological tool to compare the experiences of women from different generations and geographical contexts in order to analyze diverse social practices and ideologies that create exclusionary demarcations. The women portrayed in these works challenge hegemonic constructions about fixed identities and unmovable bodies and, by extension, they represent other marginal subjects as they uncover asymmetrical power relations, emphasizing the existence of other voices claiming new agencies as subjects of knowledge, pointing to the need for a reflection on the socio-cultural hierarchies that define and delineate the forms of knowledge production. I draw from Walter Mignolo’s concept of “border thinking” and feminist critics such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Chandra Mohanty to engage in an intercultural and intertextual dialogue with these works, emphasizing the role of gender in the construction of cultural and symbolic borders and the ability of women to create real and metaphorical borderlands to contest dominant gender ideologies. The texts studied here emphasize the discourse of resistance a

Bridal wear has traditionally been viewed as big white dresses. But as times change, so do brides’ preferences for bridal wear. Jumpsuits, rompers, short dresses, and other “non-traditional” choices are experiencing an increased demand in the market. Unfortunately, brides who seek these options are often not met with a promising assortment. This study examined primary consumers of non-traditional bridal wear. Specifically, we sought to find out whether women who belong to the LGBTQ community choose to consume more non-traditional bridal wear compared to heterosexual brides. The study also examined through which channels (e.g., online, in store, etc.) consumers predominantly purchase non-traditional bridal wear. We conducted an exhaustive review of literature, and it revealed a research gap. According to our research, we found that brides who are part of the LGBTQ community are more likely to prefer non-traditional bridal wear and that they are most likely to shop online. Thus, the findings have indicated a viable market for non-traditional bridal wear which will reassure bridal buyers and marketers in their decisions to carry a more inclusive range of bridal wear.

The rise to prominence of the #MeToo Movement in October 2017 opened the floodgates to sexual harassment and assault allegations in all fields and levels of employment, across the United States and the world. This movement has crucially revealed is that women often wait months or even years before reporting, if they report at all. Looking at US state legislative bodies, I argue that gendered power dynamics between men and women suppress allegations and promote harassment. Using interviews and data analysis, this paper identifies different factors that may delay or hinder reporting, with a specific focus on gendered power dynamics and dynamics of formal and informal power.

Music therapy assisted childbirth is an approach of music therapy in which a licensed and credentialed professional utilizes music therapy interventions to address a variety of goals during childbirth. There is a lack of literature and missing knowledge on the topic, associated with an increased rate in traumatic birth cases, mothers with post-traumatic stress disorder, and postpartum anxiety and depression. The literature review provides a summary of the historical context of feminist theory and feminism, as well as brief descriptions of music therapy, guided imagery and music, and familiar music interventions. One of the primary goals of this type of treatment is pain reduction. The focus of this literature review will primarily be to identify the efficacy of music therapy in reducing labor pain. Through the literature review, commonly used music therapy interventions for labor will be identified, as well as their effectiveness in managing pain, reducing anxiety, and promoting a positive birth experience. In order to do this, the history of feminism and feminist theory, music therapy practice, and obstetrics will be examined. Secondarily, this literature review will address the accessibility of music therapy assisted childbirth within the United States.

This thesis explores the mind-body experience through an arts-based research approach to examine, and redefine the emotional capacity and usefulness of males through societal determinants that limits and hinders men from living their authentic selves. Through the lens of a metaphoric “Man Box” 112 men participated in a workshop recreating their personal narratives of socialization through, style of dress, coping mechanisms, belief systems and who they should be as men through society's standards. In the “Man Box,” male bonding, and emotional feelings are discouraged, while the objectification of women, material property and physical/emotional strength are encouraged. This research investigates the mind-body approach as a positive shift to increase quality of life while decreasing symptoms of anxiety, depression, subjective well-being, poor mood, shame, and body image. Effects for sexual orientation were also explored, but due to the inconsistency of the information, the data remained inconclusive. Methodological shortcomings of more specific studies limited the results and, therefore, further investigations are needed to strengthen and expand upon art-based research in DMT, with the consideration of personal narrative and poetry as therapy. Information about the usefulness of the mind-body approach in practices, career choices and various aspects of life are discussed.

The lack of representation of women in Aceh parliament, indicates that women were left behind in every decision-making related to the development of the Aceh region. Though women are the largest group in this area. This paper intends to examine the political communication of women legislative members in Aceh by focusing on: opportunities and challenges for Acehnese women in the public sphere. This study uses qualitative research methods with a case study approach. The results of the study show that with the legalization of the Law no. 12, 2003 on the Public Election and Law on the Aceh Government no. 11, 2006, women engagement in public sphere as the legislative members becomes possible. The challenges for Acehnese women to be present in the public sphere as members of the legislature are: stereotyping of women involved in politics, patriarchal culture that is still thick, women's political communication competence is low, thus raising doubts for voters, awareness of women to be present in public sphare that minimal, low voter trust in women legislative candidates, concerns about the ability of women legislative candidates to divide their time between private and public sphare, interpretations of religion that are understood to differ in the community and commitment and sincere intentions of political parties in providing assistance to women legislative candidates . It is hoped that women should increase the competence of themselves in political communication and give the understanding to the community about the importance of women's presence in the Aceh parliament.

I am interested in investigating the question: How does experience, in a Latinx environment, affect the “coming out” process for queer, Latinx, men? Additionally, the aim of this research is to discover whether Queer Latinx peoples retain their cultural identity/consciousness or abandon it. This project is relevant to analyze whether Latinx culture impacts peoples to abstain from or retain their cultural identity/consciousness. I also hope that this research can prove whether an amalgamation of standpoint theory and Situated Knowledge can come together to affect the process of (re)claiming identity; as the Latinx man claims their sexual identity. This research aims to analyze if queer Latinxs reclaim their cultural identity. I hope that this research can expand upon the ideas of theories like assimilation, cultural retention, and identity/consciousness. I would like to note that, unfortunately, I will have to limit my research to the biological sex of male(s), as this topic has not been explored from a male perspective (Acosta. “How Could You Do This To Me?”). The purpose of this research is to encourage others to look into this phenomenon, rather than to establish my own theory, and to inform others of the processes involved in "coming out" and help queer individuals to navigate their experience.

Vagina dentata is the myth of the toothed vagina; in most iterations, it serves as a warning to men that women’s vaginas must be conquered to be safe for a man’s sexual pleasure (Koehler, 2017). The vagina dentata myth has been carried forth from ancient ancestors in numerous cultures all over the world (Koehler). It is one of many destructive cultural myths that guides discourses about sex and women’s bodies. In this paper, I explore a recent articulation of the myth, the 2007 film Teeth, and I argue that in this film, the vagina dentata is made more complicated. While some audience members might read the film as a warning to men about women’s potential destructiveness, to others, the film represents the vagina dentata as a means for a young woman to fight back against rape culture while also offering a scathing critique of the purity movement prevalent throughout the early 2000s. In the early 2000s, the purity movement swept across the nation; one of its goals was to address the oversaturation of sex in the media (Strange, 2007). The purity movement was based on the rejection of the sex-obsessed culture in the US and its influence became so vast that public schools across the country began to teach abstinence-only sexual education (Strange). As of March 1, 2016, only twenty-four states and the District of Columbia are required at the state level to teach sexual education (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2016). While the purity movement dominated much discourse around sexuality in the 2000s, in 2018, a new movement developed and thrust sex back into the social spotlight. The #MeToo movement spread across the US in a matter of hours; it provided victims of sexual assault and rape a public platform to clearly illustrate the damages rape culture bring about (Garcia, 2017). Rape culture is not the fault of any one person, but it is the product of repeated engagement in rhetoric which propagates myths about sex, consent, and women’s bodies. Destructive myths