How Women Navigate Autonomy in the United States and the Forces Working Against Them

Abstract

How Women Navigate Autonomy and the Forces Working Against Them is centered around women, society, and power dynamics. Papers from the Native Americas Colloquium, Literary Modernisms Course, and Philosophy and Religious Studies Proseminar work in concert to build the author's argument in parts one through three, respectively. In part one, the dehumanization of Native women through Colonial iconography to further the aims of white supremacy and the resulting definition of Native womanhood as created by these settler colonists is examined. In part two, the movement of women from object to subject through three narratives by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Nella Larsen is explored. Finally, in part three, the project concludes with the inequitable application of the values of chastity and hospitality to men and women, and how these two values are used to control behavior, specifically that of women.