WGSS Undergraduate Research Day 2025
WGSS Undergraduate Research Day 2025
The Harriet Tubman Department is excited to announced the 2025 WGSS Undergraduate Research Day! Join us for presentations of research projects from students in the WGSS Department including students in the LGBTQ Studies program and the Black Women's Studies program. Student are invited to present their work from classes, internships, teaching assistantships, or independent studies in or related to the department. Presentations may be completed works or works in progress covering projects (in whole or in part) that are intended to be finished by the end of the academic year.
Students interested in presenting should email wgss@umd.edu with their presentation proposal by April 23, 2025. Everyone is welcome to join us to view presentations. To RSVP, follow the link in the sidebar.
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Program
12:00 PM - Holland Schmitz- Shaping the Sapphic City: New York City Lesbianism and Lesbian Pulp Novels 1945-1958
Graduating Senior, History Major, LGBTQ Studies Certificate, Minor in Science, Technology, and Ethics
This thesis explores the intersection between lesbian pulp novels and lesbian culture in New York City in the post-war, pre-Stonewall period (1945-1968). Lesbian pulp novels were a genre of cheap paperbacks that indulged audiences in the secret life of lesbians, from their sex and desire, to their friendships and unhappy marriages. Many lesbian pulp novels were set in New York City, specifically Greenwich Village, and most featured a lesbian or ‘generally queer’ bar setting. By reviewing the lesbian pulp novels as primary sources, it is evident the novels were written based on personal experiences of authors in real lesbian bars in New York City. The authors describe bustling New York streets, cozy corners for cruising, and bartenders encouraging women to divorce their husbands and embrace the lesbian lifestyle. From letters fans sent to the pulp authors, it is evident that the novels painted a picture of the Sapphic City (a play on Chauncey’s Gay New York), as the readers saw Greenwich as the lesbian mecca, and believed they could find love in the back of a bar.
12:20 PM - Brandee Kaplan- "American Angels: A Gay Fantasia on White Subjectivity"
Abstract: This thesis interrogates Angels in America as a theatrical expression of a reactionary liberal ideology, where aestheticized multiculturalism and emotional catharsis serve to obscure the play’s investment in white moral centrality. While Tony Kushner’s Brechtian epic has been lauded for its lyrical scope, political ambition, and compassionate treatment of the AIDS crisis, its approach to race remains evasive. Through a close reading of the characters Belize and Mr. Lies, this project analyzes how the play reproduces the “Magical Negro” trope and instrumentalizes Blackness as a moral resource for white characters. Drawing from media theory, Black studies, and critiques of liberal ideology, this work argues that Angels sustains a mythos of redemptive white subjectivity that displaces structural critique and ultimately fosters the cultural conditions in which such reactionary politics can thrive.
12:35 PM - Wren Massey- “Queer Monstrosities: An Exploration of Gender Performance Through Fashion and Horror."
I have been working on my Keystone for HHUM206 titled "Queer Monstrosities: An Exploration of Gender Performance Through Fashion and Horror." My research focuses on transgender and gender nonconforming experiences with gender roles, performance, and expectations. My final product is a collection of fashion sketches and two fashion photoshoots, but I have done research in popular media, academic papers, academic talks, and interviews that I have conducted. I will also have a 15 minute slideshow presentation prepared on my project for the Honors Humanities Keystone Symposium.
12:50- 1:00 PM - LGBT 200 Zine Project
Anisah Sofia Caicedo-Saleh, Patricia Kaimapo, Blake Keyes, Brian Crimy, Jayden Thornton, Logan Torreyson, Kierson Wilson
1:15 PM - Sequoia Smallwood- Internship with Advocates for Youth
1:30 PM - Camille Fabiyi- Title TBD
1:45 PM - Milvian Gonzlez- The rise in political conservatism amongst Latinas: a trauma response to geopolitical displacement.
This study explores how Latina women in the U.S. turn to Protestant Christianity as a response to trauma and as a strategy to access social capital and political belonging. Drawing from Chicana feminist methodologies and Pentecostal testimonies, it examines how migration experiences, spiritual rebirth narratives, and alignment with Christian nationalist ideals shape their religious and political identities. Engaging with cognitive dissonance theory, the research highlights the tensions these women may experience between empowerment through Protestantism and the discomfort of aligning with far-right ideologies, especially those that restrict women’s autonomy. This research contributes to feminist conversations on survival, agency, and respectability politics in faith-based communities.