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Coda: Storytelling As A Cultural Context In Vona Groarke’S Hereafter, Niamh Macgloin

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Hereafter: The Telling Life Of Ellen O’Hara: An Interview With Vona Groarke, Elizabeth Brewer Redwine

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Feminist Phenomenology And First-Person Narrative: Understanding Gender And Social Conflict In Anna Burns’ Milkman, Sushree Routray, Rashmi Gaur Professor

Comparative Woman

In her magnum opus Milkman (2018), Anna Burns employs a subversive and artfully crafted first-person narrative, deftly exposing the arduous and tumultuous struggles encountered by individuals who dare to defy the confines of traditional gender roles. Through a relentless and unflinching narrative, the novel fearlessly confronts the harrowing manifestations of psychological torment, the insidious spectre of relentless stalking, and the manipulative machinations of gaslighting, all the while fervently interrogating the notion of a fixed and immutable gender identity. In a relentless odyssey toward self-realization, the protagonist's journey unfurls against a backdrop of traumatic events and the unyielding pressures imposed by …

Performance Art As A Site Of Socio-Spatial Resistance: Challenging Geographies Of Gendered Violence, Egle Karpaviciute

Journal of International Women's Studies

By researching the intersections of art, geography, and violence, this paper interrogates performance art and its capacity to question one’s gendered existence in space/place. Through an analysis of two performance art pieces—J. Hawkes’s Playing Kate (2018) and Cassils’s PISSED (2017)—I explore the connections between art, gendered bodies, and space/place, while establishing a link between and across feminist and trans* gendered tyrannies. While discussing feminist and trans* performance art, this paper probes the felt and lived harms that are experienced by feminist women and trans* individuals in gendered locales and addresses ways in which art can challenge socio-spatial violence. Overall, through …

The Social Sinthome, Ryan Engley

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Much of the critical discourse on social media misidentifies its problematic features as bugs, or problems to solve. Supposed solutions to these problems tend to focus on individual actions. We should delete the apps, own our own data, never click on recommended videos, and realize that we are the product. But if predatory algorithms succeed by individuating people—selling people “choice” and “options” as it harvests user data—then an entire online ecosystem arranged through the logic of that design can neither be meaningfully challenged nor effectively understood at the level of the individual alone. Transformative action addressing social media can only …

Goddess And Mortal: The Celtic And The French Morgan Le Fay In Tolkien’S Silmarillion, Clare Moore

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Few characters change more in their depiction throughout ‘traditional’ Arthurian literature than Morgan le Fay, who transitions from the benevolent and supernatural Queen of the Isle of Apples to the mortal sister of King Arthur with a complicated relationship to her brother and his court. These two versions of the Arthurian enchantress are represented in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Vita Merlini and the French Vulgate Cycle, and they parallel two of Tolkien’s prominent female characters in The Silmarillion: Lúthien and Aredhel. Establishing parallels between Monmouth’s Morgen and Tolkien’s Lúthien demonstrates both a connection to the Celtic tradition and a departure …

“Where Do We Belong?”: A Brief Collection Of Immigrant Daughter Musings, Andrea Amado-Fajardo

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

My friend groups have always been ethnically and racially diverse. Once, while pouring over pictures from my quinceañera celebration, my mom laughed and pointed out that my friend group could be on the cover of a magazine that celebrates diversity. I think that children of immigrants understand each other on an instinctive level, so we flock to each other. Regardless of mom’s and dad’s countries, we feel this shared sense of displacement. We’re too different from “typical American” kids, and we’re “too American” when we go back to our parents’ countries. For most of my life, this feeling went unsaid.

From Divinely Equal To Violently Oppressed: Brutality Against Women In The Bible, Shana Clemence

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

The Old Testament tells us the first woman on earth, Eve, was created from the rib of the first man, Adam. To many, this symbolizes equality between the sexes. A historical theologian said, “to be formed from the side symbolically indicates equality rather than domination or subjection” (O’Loughlin, 1993). Wheelwright-Brown (2020) stated how the effect of mankind’s view of Eve’s brave choice to partake of the fruit of the tree of life had serious, harmful consequences for women:

There’s the effect it had on men, and the way they have been subtly influenced to perceive women and think of women. …

Téacsúil Fionnachtain, Alan Delozier

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Gothic Girlhood And Resistance: Confronting Ireland’S Neoliberal Containment Culture In Tana French’S The Secret Place, Mollie Kervick

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

The Secret Place (2014) exposes a persistent Western cultural impulse to contain the emotions of teenage girls when they demonstrate control over their lives. In the Irish context, the dismissal of teenage girls is resonant of a containment culture in which controlling women’s bodies and minds has been essential to upholding heteropatriarchal ideals. Resistance to the novel’s unresolved supernatural elements by readers and critics and the lack of sustained academic scholarship also point to an unsettling complacency with the neoliberal impulse to contain female emotion and lived experience in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Clubbing Criminals: The Hirschfeld Centre And The Emergence Of Queer Club Culture In Dublin, Ann-Marie Hanlon

Irish Communication Review

Ireland in the 1970s and 80s was an extremely hostile place for the LGBT community: male homosexuality remained a criminal offence and social, legal and political oppression was the norm. This article documents the emergence of a nascent queer clubbing scene in Dublin in this period and investigates the historical intersection of partying and politics in a DIY translocal music scene defined by the sexual politics of the time. In particular, this research focuses on exploring the social and political importance of Ireland’s first purpose built queer club, Flikkers, which opened in the Hirschfeld Centre, Temple Bar on St. Patrick’s …

Understanding Women’S English Writings As A Paradigm Of Resistance, Mudassir Ali Shah, Humaira Riaz

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women face numerous political, economic, cultural, and religious barriers in the world. To remove the barriers, fight for survival, and pave their way for development, women show resistance in politics, legislation, literature, theatre, songs, marches, art, sports, movies, and seminars. The previous studies have explored patriarchy as the best reason for women's resistance to fight against male-domination, ideological divisions, policies, traditions and cultures, and religion to claim their individual identity and equality. The present study demonstrates the role of literature in awakening society and explores how writing helps in resistance and maintains the struggle of liberation for the vulnerable section …

Thereby Hangs A Tail: Creation And Procreation In Medieval Werewolf Romances, Vicki Blud

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

How do you make a werewolf? Moreover, who makes a werewolf, and why? In medieval romance, the latter questions are often the more pressing, since the transformation of man into wolf is connected less with lunar phases than with human interference—especially the intervention of an unfaithful wife. Following in the pawprints of Marie de France’s lai of Bisclavret, these romances are noted for their “courtly” wolves and antifeminist slant, but they also offer unusual perspectives on procreation. While in Aristotelian thought the generative principle was broadly associated with the male partner, the male werewolf of medieval romance is most often …

Visions: “If You See Her Face You Die”: Orientalist Gothic And Colonialism In Bithia Croker’S Indian Ghost Stories., Preeshita Biswas

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This paper analyzes Bithia Mary Croker’s ghost stories of the British Raj to argue that Croker in her texts reframes the eighteenth-century Orientalist Gothic writing tradition to critique British imperial presence in India. I specifically discuss two of Croker’s short stories, namely “To Let” (1893) and “If You See Her Face” (1893) published in her anthology of Indian ghost fiction To Let (1893). The paper traces how Croker uses two distinct characteristics of eighteenth-century colonial Indian society–-the tradition of nautch performances and the architectural space of the dak bungalows–-which continued into early-nineteenth century British India under the vigilance of …

Women’S Acts Of Childbirth And Conquest In English Historical Writing, Emma O. Bérat

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay explores how female characters in historical literature written in high to late medieval England shape land claims, political history, and genealogy through their acts of childbirth. Recent scholarship has shown how medieval writers frequently imagined virginal female bodies – religious and secular – in relation to land claim, but less work exists on how they also used the non-virginal bodies of mothers and vivid descriptions of childbirth to assert rights to land and lineage. This essay examines three birth stories associated with conquest or claims to contested lands from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, William of …

Where Are The Women?: An Ecofeminist Reading Of William Golding’S Lord Of The Flies, Hawk Chang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The absence of female characters and their voices in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) has been previously examined. On the surface, this fiction focuses on the struggle and survival of a group of boys who are left alone on a Pacific island against the background of nuclear warfare. The only presence of women in the story seems to be the aunt via a boy’s narration. However, when approaching the fiction through the lens of ecofeminism, we can find a range of feminized entities which are metaphorically embodied in the natural surroundings of the secluded island. The boys’ interactions …

Deconstructing The Hailing Of “Mother India”, Nandini Gupta

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper focuses on the gendered discourse of nationalism by studying the iconography of “Mother India”. It will also examine the ways through which the representation of motherhood as national allegory creates a gendered meaning of nationalism. By tracing the historiography of “Mother India”, it will also highlight how men during the Indian nationalist period took the center stage as protectors while women were left behind as m(others) of a vulnerable nation that needs to be protected.

Religious Women And Peacebuilding During The Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’, Dianne Kirby

The Journal of Social Encounters

The focus of this essay is on the critical and various roles, still largely unrecognised, played by religious women during the conflict in Northern Ireland. Working at the margins of society rather than in the corridors of power, they made important contributions to peace-building that ranged from grass-roots activism to secret talks. As well as contributing to the crucial work of community groups, educating the young and tending to the old, religious women established innovative and independent organisations offering succour and support to victims of the ‘Troubles’. Motivated by faith, they adhered to a value system that eschewed the violence, …

The Boy In The Text: Mary Barber, Her Son, And Children's Poetry In Poems On Several Occasions, Chantel M. Lavoie

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

The Boy in the Text: Mary Barber, Her Son, and Children’s Poetry in Poems on Several Occasions

This paper reconsiders the work of Dublin poet Mary Barber, whose collection of poems appeared in 1733/34. There she acknowledges the assistance of Jonathan Swift, and frames her poetry as a pedagogical aid to her children’s education—particularly that of her eldest son, Constantine. Barber’s relationship with Swift has received much critical attention, as has her focus on her own motherhood—sometimes in critiques that suggest both of these hampered the quality and scope of her work. This paper asks readers to look at her …

Queering History With Sarah Waters: Tipping The Velvet, Lesbian Erotic Reading And The Queer Historical Novel, Naoise Murphy

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay outlines how Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet (1998) illuminates the challenges involved in doing queer history. Waters’ lesbian historical novel queries the ‘official’ historical record and reflects on a fundamental tension in queer historical research; the distinction drawn between social constructedness and essentialism, alterity and continuity. Through playful re-enactment of the work of the academic researcher, the novel protests against being read as an authentic depiction of Victorian lesbian sexuality. Instead, it offers a postmodern metafictional response to the field of queer history, which broadens the questions we ask of the discipline. By enacting the process of historical …

The Medicalisation Of Gender Nonconformity Through Language: A Keywords Analysis, Angelo Cosma Galluzzo

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

Language is an important part of the way gender nonconformity is legislated and medicalised. In 2012, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) changed the nomenclature of the ‘gender identity disorder’ (GID) to ‘gender dysphoria in the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to reduce the social stigma attached to transgender identities. While the recognition of gender nonconformity by the medical authorities has led to some beneficial consequences, scholars have shown that the language of pathology has narrowed the definitions of gender nonconformity and has created social stigma. I use the web pages of five major health providers of English-speaking …

Hettie Jones And Bonnie Bremser: Complicating Feminist And Beat Master Narratives, Nancy Effinger Wilson

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The Beat master narrative suggests that all Beats ignored racism; the feminist wave model suggests that there was no feminist activism between the first and second wave of feminism and no attention to the intersection of race and gender prior to the third wave. Both models discount and in the process erase the efforts by Beat writers Bonnie Bremser and Hettie Jones who challenged racism and sexism before the more visible civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s. Employing Milton Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity to analyze the intercultural/interracial attitudes present in Bonnie Bremser’s Troia and Hettie Jones’ …

Kate O’Brien: Queer Hauntings In The Feminist Archive, Naoise Murphy

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The archive of Irish writer Kate O’Brien is a notable example of how queerness haunts the mainstream of feminist literary spaces. The 2019 Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) exhibition Kate O’Brien: Arrow to the Heart, which set out to restore this censored novelist’s place in the archive of twentieth-century Irish writing, provides a case study of these dynamics. Queer and feminist perspectives on the archive, with a focus on affect, hauntings and Sara Ahmed’s “queer use,” illuminate the conflicting epistemologies regulating the O’Brien archive. Reading this exhibition as an Irish queer, affective experience collides with entrenched structures of power …

The Skits, Sketches, And Stories Of Motherscholars, Lauren E. Burrow, Chrissy J. Cross, Heather K. Olson Beal, Shaunna Smith

The Qualitative Report

“MotherScholars” are those who creatively weave their maternal identities into their scholarly spaces. With this article we invite readers along a collaborative friendship study of our own participatory arts-based journey to understand, reclaim, and identify personal and professional benefits only realized once we acknowledged and embraced the blended reality of Mother Scholarhood. Our work is presented as a curation of individual skits, sketches, and short stories that were created during a collective 8-week time span in a shared virtual space. We open our story to interpretation and interaction through the lenses of our readers.

Voices Of The Dead: A Documentary Research On The Scottish Women Of Calcutta, Sayan Dey, Tanmay Srivastava

Journal of International Women's Studies

The process of writing, understanding and interpreting the histories of the European colonizers have always been infected with different forms of social, cultural, gender, and racial hierarchies. With respect to the gender perspective, usually, it is observed that historical narratives that are associated with European colonization in general and the colonization of India by the Europeans in particular are highly heteronormative and patriarchal in nature. In other words, the various socio-historical narratives that make an effort to eulogize the ‘contributions’ and the ‘sacrifices’ of the European colonizers mostly talk about European men and systemically and epistemically fail to acknowledge the …

Posters, Handkerchiefs And Murals: Visual Gender Separation During The Troubles, Bradley Rohlf

Irish Communication Review

The Troubles in Northern Ireland provide a complex and intriguing topic for many scholars in various academic disciplines. Their violence, publicity and tragedy are common themes that elicit a plethora of emotional responses throughout the world. However, the very intimate nature of this conflict creates a much more complex system of friends, foes and experiences for those involved. While the very heart of the Irish nationalist movement is founded on liberal and progressive concepts such as socialism and equality, the media associated with it sometimes promote tradition and conservatism, especially regarding gender. This critical study examines a sociopolitical struggle through …

Feminist Comforts And Considerations Amidst A Global Pandemic: New Writings In Feminist And Women’S Studies—Winning And Short-Listed Entries From The 2019 Feminist Studies Association’S (Fsa) Annual Student Essay Competition, Carli Rowell

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

"A Generation Of Wonderful Jews Will Grow From The Land": The Desire For Nativeness In Hebrew Israeli Poetry, Hamutal Tsamir

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article examines the ways in which the desire for nativeness is constructed in Israeli Hebrew poetry through several historical episodes: H. N. Bialik’s poem 1896 poem “In the Field”; the poets as pioneers/immigrants in the 1920s, in contrast to the “nativist” poet Esther Raab; and the “nativist” poets of the 1950s (Statehood Generation), focusing on Moshe Dor. The desire to be native—to belong to the land in a way that is natural, self-evident, and therefore absolute and unquestionable— is one of the constitutive desires of nationalism in general, and of Zionism in particular. In Bialik’s poem, written during the …

#Me Too In Bangladesh: Can You Change?, Shampa Iftakhar

Journal of International Women's Studies

With the global rise of the #Me Too movement and hashtag, sexual harassment has become a buzzword. The term “sexual harassment” was initially used to refer to a workplace phenomenon (Farley 1978, Mackinnon 1989). However, since the pioneering work on the issue, it has become clear that sexual harassment is inclusive of public space, educational institutions, and the home. It has been defined as “unwanted sexual advances, request for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature” by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1980). Two types of harassment are identified: the first is a “quid …

Imperatrix, Domina, Rex: Conceptualizing The Female King In Twelfth-Century England, Coral Lumbley

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article draws on methods from transgender theory, historicist literary studies, and visual analysis of medieval sealing practices to show that Empress Matilda of England was controversially styled as a female king during her career in the early to mid twelfth century. While the chronicle Gesta Stephani castigates Matilda’s failure to engage in sanctioned gendered behaviors as she waged civil war to claim her inherited throne, Matilda’s seal harnesses both masculine and feminine signifiers in order to proclaim herself both king and queen. While Matilda’s transgressive gender position was targeted by her detractors during her lifetime, the obstinately transgender object …