Lindsay Maroney, 2006
Women in Baseball: Feminine in Appearance, Masculine in Performance

In the winter of 1943, the male labor shortages created by World War II led to the shutting down of many minor league baseball teams while threatening to shut down the major leagues.1 Philip K. Wrigley, the owner of the Chicago Cubs and a pioneer softball patron, saw that threat and proposed the idea of starting a professional girls’ softball league. click here for more...

Alison Holliday, 2006
Educated American Women: Career Paths to Motherhood?

The press is misrepresenting the choices that college-educated women are making. There are many articles these days about the “best and the brightest” American women choosing their “career paths to motherhood”, choosing their home and family over their careers. College-educated women in the 70s and 80s wanted to mix career and family, so they eagerly became “superwomen”. click here for more...

Alexandre P. Wolf III, 2006
Ten Percent of Phillips Academy’s Untold History:
A Case Study of the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Community

The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Rights Movement predates the 1930s; those oppressed have always fought for their freedom. Alfred Kinsey who published two texts: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), stated that through his research had determined that one in ten people were homosexuals. This brought homosexuality as a norm to the forefront of national media, he is also credited for starting the sexual revolution that allowed the GLBT community a chance to express themselves. click here for more...

Michael Naughton, 2006
The Popularized “Housewife” in Advertisements

In the periods before, during, and after World War II, popular magazine advertisements provided a glimpse into the outside world for readers. While seeing what items the advertisers wanted them to purchase, women also saw in the advertisements how other women acted and lived in an idealized world. Obviously, the scenes depicted in these ads were not representative of real life, yet many women forgivably believed that they, too, should live in the ways the ads portrayed women to live. click here for more...

Stacy Naughton, 2006
Kiss of the Spider Woman: Analysis of Traditional and Revolutionary Concepts in Sexual Relationships According to Gender Identification

In Kiss of the Spider Woman, author Manuel Puig introduces controversial concepts of homosexuality and political revolt in Argentina. Puig uses two incarcerated men to convey the complicated relationship between two prisoners but also to illustrate the existence of both traditional and revolutionary ideology in sexual relationships between men. Molina, a homosexual window dresser, seems to represent the revolution in sexuality by his sexual preference towards men while Valentin seems to uphold the traditional role of heterosexuality through his sexual preference for women. click here for more...

Erin Lanzo, 2006
Living in the Outer Layers: Gender Roles in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s portrait of Zimbabwe

Dante, in his Inferno, describes the eight layers of hell—each tier reserved for a specific type of person who commits a specific type of crime—all encircling the center layer which is designated for those who execute the most powerful of crimes. The Rhodesian society depicted in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions resembles this circular image of separation; each gender, class and race resides in a different layer surrounding the center which holds the culturally neutral dominant, white, wealthy, European men. click here for more...

Susan Ho, 2006
Women in China: Interpreting the Influences

The proper role of Chinese women in society has changed dramatically throughout the course of history. In Imperial China, women stayed at the bottom of society, following the prevailing Confucian ideals of the time. Practices such as footbinding, which objectified women as mysterious beings and objects of sexual desire for men, were prevalent during this time, but shifted toward the end of the Qing dynasty as Chinese intellectuals called for reforms that were echoed by the Christian missionaries who were present in China during the turn of the 19th century. click here for more...