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This short documentary on the Equal Rights Amendment features attorney Dianne Post and State Representative Jennifer Jermaine, and it examines the fight for passage at the federal and state level. This film attempts to answer the following questions: What is the ERA? What is its history? Why do we need

This short documentary on the Equal Rights Amendment features attorney Dianne Post and State Representative Jennifer Jermaine, and it examines the fight for passage at the federal and state level. This film attempts to answer the following questions: What is the ERA? What is its history? Why do we need it? How do we get it into the Constitution of the United States of America?

The text of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) states that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” The amendment was authored by Alice Paul and was first introduced into Congress in 1923. The ERA did not make much progress until 1970, when Representative Martha Griffiths from Michigan filed a discharge petition demanding that the ERA move out of the judiciary committee to be heard by the full United States House of Representatives. The House passed it and it went on to the Senate, where it was approved and sent to the states for ratification. By 1977, 35 states had voted to ratify the ERA, but it did not reach the 38 states-threshold required for ratification before the 1982 deadline set by Congress. More recently, Nevada ratified the ERA in March 2017, and Illinois followed suit in May 2018. On January 27th, 2020, Virginia finalized its ratification, making it the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

Supporters of the ERA argue that we have reached the required goal of approval by 38 states. However, opponents may have at least two legal arguments to challenge this claim by ERA advocates. First, the deadline to ratify was 1982. Second, five states have voted to rescind their ratification since their initial approval. These political and legal challenges must be addressed and resolved before the ERA can be considered part of the United States Constitution. Nevertheless, ERA advocates continue to pursue certification. There are complicated questions to untangle here, to be sure, but by listening to a variety of perspectives and critically examining the historical and legal context, it may be possible to find some answers. Indeed, Arizona, which has yet to ratify the ERA, could play a vital role in the on-going fight for the ERA.
ContributorsSchroder, Jude Alexander (Author) / Adelman, Madelaine (Thesis director) / Mitchell, Kathryn (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor, Contributor, Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
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A posthuman figure like the female cyborg challenges traditional humanist feminism in ways that make room for theorizing new subjectivities and feminist epistemologies. Rather than support a traditional feminism that assumes common experiences within patriarchal society and erases differences among women, cyborg feminism moves beyond naturalism and essentialism to acknowledge

A posthuman figure like the female cyborg challenges traditional humanist feminism in ways that make room for theorizing new subjectivities and feminist epistemologies. Rather than support a traditional feminism that assumes common experiences within patriarchal society and erases differences among women, cyborg feminism moves beyond naturalism and essentialism to acknowledge complex, individual, and ever-changing identity. Three films, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015), all offer such a vision of the female cyborg. In these films, the cyborg subject is a composite of machine and human—sometimes physical, dependent on the corporal mixing of flesh and machine, but just as often mental. Human sentiment, human memories, and human emotion merge with mechanical frames and electronic codes/coding to produce cyborgs. Importantly, every main cyborg in these films is coded as female. For each cyborg, a female body hosts preprogrammed sexuality and the emotions each creator thinks a woman should have, whether those are empathy, compassion, or submissiveness.

The cyborgs in these films, however, refuse to let categorizations like female, or even their status as human, alive, or real, restrict them so easily. As human-robot hybrids, cyborgs bridge identities that are assumed to be separate and often oppositional or mutually exclusive. Cyborgs reveal the structures and expectations reified in gender to suggest that something constructed can as easily be deconstructed. In doing so, they create loose ends that leave space for new understandings of both gender and technology. By viewing these films alongside critical theory, we can understand their cyborgs as subversive, hybrid characters. Accordingly, the cyborg as a figure subverts and fragments the coherency of narratives that present gender, technology, and identity in monolithic terms, not only helping us envision new possibilities but giving us the faculties to imagine them at all.
ContributorsMargolis, Madison Lawry (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Miller, April (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
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Description
There exists a prejudicial influence in the way that psychological thrillers depict their mentally-ill subjects. Accordingly, this creative project closely examines scenes from the following four seminal films: Psycho, Taxi Driver, American Psycho, and Joker -- each of which exemplifies four psychosocial themes that have a dominant presence within the

There exists a prejudicial influence in the way that psychological thrillers depict their mentally-ill subjects. Accordingly, this creative project closely examines scenes from the following four seminal films: Psycho, Taxi Driver, American Psycho, and Joker -- each of which exemplifies four psychosocial themes that have a dominant presence within the ‘psycho-thriller’ sub-genre. These include themes of toxic masculinity, urban corruption, social class, and latent trauma. Each of these are then discussed in terms of their presence and meaning within the genre -- particularly the method in which they reinforce prejudicial understandings of severe mental illness (SMI) despite reflecting the dominant beliefs of medico-scientific communities, criminological theorists, and psychoanalytic schools of thought of the eras in which they were released. Given that these theories continue to inform the public’s understanding of severe mental illness (SMI), this thesis seeks to expose how the enduring presence of these psychosocial themes within the ‘psycho-thriller’ subgenre has conflated the presence of mental illness with criminal disposition. After discussing the representation of these themes in each film, this paper highlights how psychological thrillers may function as instruments of advocacy for mental health in spite of their ‘horrific’ elements, and provides examples of how other entertainment media have helped normalize neurodivergence in a neurotypical society.
ContributorsHernandez, Martin (Author) / Miller, April (Thesis director) / Cavanaugh Toft, Carolyn (Committee member) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-12