beloved women's studies coursework
The assignment I was most proud of came at the end of my time in Maastricht. Professor Hans Maarse of my Public Health Policymaking course asked us all to pick a public health concern or topic of interest and apply it to one of the overarching themes of the course. We were to decide our focus and write a detailed paper and give a final presentation on it as well. I chose ethic dilemma as my overarching course theme and decided to pick a contemporary women’s health issue that was timely and poignant. The result was “A Medical Professional’s Right to His Moral Beliefs in Consideration to Unwanted Pregnancies: An Ethical Dilemma in the Field of Public Health,” a work that captured my attention, the attention of my peers, and the sincere interest of my professor. Reading between the lines of the first paragraph of my paper shows that I found my calling.
This paper marked the meshing of my interest in professional, academic writing and the application of feminist theory and knowledge. I loved writing my paper and delivering my presentation proved even more successful. Public Health Policymaking allowed me to incorporate all of my interests while also learning more about women and the entire spectrum of the reproductive health care system—a topic which continues to grasp my interest and find its way into my studies and reading lists day in and out.
This paper marked the meshing of my interest in professional, academic writing and the application of feminist theory and knowledge. I loved writing my paper and delivering my presentation proved even more successful. Public Health Policymaking allowed me to incorporate all of my interests while also learning more about women and the entire spectrum of the reproductive health care system—a topic which continues to grasp my interest and find its way into my studies and reading lists day in and out.
| ethical_dilemmas_in_public_health.pdf |
For our final project, my Introduction to Women’s Studies Professor Michele Martin-Baron asked each student to craft an imaginary museum exhibit that would work as an installation at the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights National Park in upstate New York. My exhibit, Encountering the Clitoris: Women’s “Pleasure” Through The Ages, laid the foundation for a huge exhibit that would span time and cultures to document women’s plight for pleasure over the years. The made up exhibit, as it currently stands, has multiple parts. The essay includes a basic introduction to the topic, a section about the motivation for creating the project, an introduction to desire, and five comprehensive exhibits within the timeline followed by a list of suggested exhibit inserts that would create a fuller timeline if included. The five included exhibits are “1559: Matteo Realdo Colombo takes credit for discovering the clitoris;” “1810: Saartjie Baartman aka Venus the “Hottentot,” Comes to London;” “Early 1900s: Freud and Femininity; Early 1900s: Hysteria and The Invention of the World’s First Vibrator;” and “2009: Pierre Foldes and Odile Buisson perform a ground-breaking G-spot study.” I wanted my exhibit to introduce viewers to an intersectional, cross-cultural view of women and pleasure—the implications of how the project affects the audience and what they make of it is up to them.
| museum_exhibit_on_pleasure.pdf |
One of the biggest accomplishments of both of my degrees came at the close of Rhetorics of Feminist Activism when Professor Michele Polak asked us to create our own final exam utilizing the skills we learned in her course and our worlds to creatively analyze a topic of our choice. I chose a topic that perplexed me throughout the course: reclamation. At the time, I did not understand the importance of reclaiming the rhetoric that depicted certain gendered ideals, and I wanted to learn more about why others did. What came out of my unsure intrigue is a beautiful, three-part scrapbook full of rhetorical choices and images that speak volumes, followed by a “letter” to my audience that describes my purpose and creation. The front cover of the scrapbook seeks to break down stereotypes while also playing into them, too. It is pink with a fuchsia-colored pink felt heart covered in silver glitter and rhinestones spelling out the title: Slut.
Following a trend of learning more about reclamation, I dedicated my manifesto project to unpacking the word “slut” in Introduction to Women’s Studies. Modeled after Valerie Solanas’s radically controversial “SCUM Manifesto” and Joreen Freeman’s rhetorically creative “The Bitch Manifesto,” our manifesto assignment asked us to pick a topic of controversy and talk about it in a way reminiscent of the styles of Solanas and Freeman. They listened to the cries of women around them—women who were treated unfairly at home, women who were treated as the “other” in the workplace, women who were deemed pariahs because of their biological sex or gender performance. Both the letter from my Slut. scrapbook and my Slut Manifesto speak to my interests in reclamation and rhetorical choice and agency.
Following a trend of learning more about reclamation, I dedicated my manifesto project to unpacking the word “slut” in Introduction to Women’s Studies. Modeled after Valerie Solanas’s radically controversial “SCUM Manifesto” and Joreen Freeman’s rhetorically creative “The Bitch Manifesto,” our manifesto assignment asked us to pick a topic of controversy and talk about it in a way reminiscent of the styles of Solanas and Freeman. They listened to the cries of women around them—women who were treated unfairly at home, women who were treated as the “other” in the workplace, women who were deemed pariahs because of their biological sex or gender performance. Both the letter from my Slut. scrapbook and my Slut Manifesto speak to my interests in reclamation and rhetorical choice and agency.
| dearest_world.pdf |
| slut_manifesto.pdf |
During the fall semester of my senior year I took a course that challenged me to think about place and nature in ways that I had never done before. Gender and Geography, taught by Women’s Studies professor Jessica Hayes-Conroy, had a significant focus on wildlife, nature-cultures, and place-making activities. I was forced to think about gender and feminism in terms of zoos and society’s construction of wilderness therapy. Needless to say, the course provided me with some texts that were of a completely foreign nature to me. For the course’s final project, Professor Hayes-Conroy asked each of us to pick a topic for research. I wanted to learn more about Long Island, my homeland, and what makes it the place that it is. In my paper entitled “THE CONSTRUCT OF THE ISLAND: A feminist research approach to analyzing the dialogue we use to describe geographical attractions on Long Island, New York,” I wrote:
Long Island, New York is made up of countless beaches, shopping strips, and tourist attractions all described at length and in by various means in order to attract customers and viewers to each of the different places. … The words on the pages of each site and paper create the dialogue that constructs the culture of Long Island. Through an analysis of various texts that depict one of Long Island’s most popular geographical attractions—the Robert Moses State Park on Fire Island, New York —I hope to learn about the depicted traits of the Island. …By studying the Robert Moses State Park, the importance it holds on the Island, and current posts and tourist listings about the park I hope to learn how and in what way language constructs the culture of Long Island’s attractions.
I decided to take a feminist political ecology approach to analyzing Long Island and the way in which we construct it as a place in order to see if the attractions there are gendered through language.
| the_construct_of_the_island_.pdf |
