Ebere Oparaeke
"'I'm a black woman, we been doin this!' How black women conceptualize and enact agency in the home birth space"

There currently is limited research about the motivations and experiences of black women who give birth at home, and instead it is framed as a choice for advantaged, white women. With the assumption that giving birth at home allows women more control over their birth, this project focuses on how black women who have given birth at home think about birth, how they create birth spaces that prioritize their decisions, and what particular experiences or challenges black women may face in deciding their place of birth. Using a reproductive justice framework, this project seeks to understand the current state of planned home birth for black women in the context of health disparities, limited choices for place of birth, and challenges in accessing a range of options. This thesis positions black women who give birth at home within the history of black reproduction that extends generations to assert that black women make the decision to home birth within unique historical legacies. The narratives collected indicate that black women’s creation of agentic home birth spaces is done through the support they foster from providers and family, their rejection of medicalized birth spaces, and their ability to access the care they seek. In this agentic space, they are truly able to experience birth as an empowering and life-changing process. Advisor: Lisa Kane Low and Leseliey Welch

Katherine Irani
"Violence and Voicelessness: Experiences of Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence on College Campuses"

Media coverage of sexual assault on college campuses has resulted in an uprising of social media campaigns and student activism. The student-led movement has called for extensive policy changes in higher education. However, intimate partner violence (IPV), has fallen to the margins and not received the same attention. Consequently, the survivor-centered movement and policy changes have centered the experiences of only a certain type of survivor, making it difficult for IPV survivors to seek justice and support from their institutions. Furthermore, the movement has largely failed to take into account the intersections of social identity and how marginalized social identities are accounted for within school policies and services. In this thesis, the experiences of college student survivors of IPV are centered and their experiences with whom they have worked with and sought support from are examined intersectionally, both in experience and identity. The purpose of qualitative interviews with student IPV survivors (n=24) is to better understand their experiences receiving services from their schools and working within these systems. Of the 24 students interviewed, 18 did not receive the help or support that they needed from their school. Based on their experiences, this thesis argues that within intersectional theory both identities and experiences are marginalized within the violence prevention movement. Advisor: Anna Kirkland

Sophia Kotov
"Let's Talk About Non-Monogamy: Self-Labeling, Actual Practice, and What Happens in the Interstices"

Among life’s milestones include one’s first kiss, high school prom, engagement, wedding, and having children. Not only is monogamy a deeply ingrained norm, it is tied closely to personal identity. This thesis explores the experiences of individuals who depart from this pervasive norm. Two overarching questions guide this exploration: 1) How do college students talk about their non-monogamous relationships?; and 2) What factors contribute to a college student’s decision to pursue such a relationship? For the first question, I focus on how non-monogamous individuals approach labeling their relationship, as well as if they describe their non-monogamy to be an innate characteristic or a personal choice. In answering the second question, I describe the impacts of the social pressure of monogamy, the role of gender, and the present day context of dating and hook-up culture on college students’ decisions to be in a non-monogamous relationship. Advisor: Dean Hubbs

McKenzie Campbell
"Fifty Shades of Agency: The Impact of Fifty Shades of Grey on Sexual Agency in America"

The immense popularity of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey was due to the book’s erotic rendering of a largely heteronormative tale of taboo sexual encounters. This book created a unique space for women in the United States to question their own sexuality and specifically, their sexual agency. In The Agency Line: A Neoliberal Metric for Appraising Young Women’s Sexuality, Laina Bay-Chang defines sexual agency as the neoliberal imperative to make choices about ones sexual agency. Through Chang’s model, the paradoxical understanding of sexual agency highlights the performative nature of hegemonic femininity and traditional gender roles in America that are enacted by main characters, Christian and Anastasia while engaging in BDSM. This thesis offers a detailed literary analysis of the text in relation to textual consumerism and fandom, the question of sexual agency more generally, and what it means to obtain sexual agency through reading practices in 2016. Advisor: Ruth Tsoffar