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Spectators, Sponsors, Or World Travelers? Engaging With Personal Narratives Of Others Through The Afghan Women's Writing Project, Bethany Mannon Jan 2018

Spectators, Sponsors, Or World Travelers? Engaging With Personal Narratives Of Others Through The Afghan Women's Writing Project, Bethany Mannon

English Faculty Publications

This article studies the Afghan Women’s Writing Project and proposes three conceptual tools for examining the ways readers and editors of digital storytelling projects interact with writers and texts. The author advances discussions of personal narrative and the role this form of writing plays in transnational feminism and forms of humanitarian activism that increasingly take place online. Digital storytelling projects effectively circulate these personal accounts, but they benefit from scholarship that advises self-critical approaches to representing their subjects.


Eat It: Sex, Food And Women's Writing [Book Review], Marc Ouellette Jan 2014

Eat It: Sex, Food And Women's Writing [Book Review], Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Simply put, Eat It: Sex, Food and Women's Writing surpasses its rather immodest claims. This is no mean feat, for the editors allow that they have collected short stories, nonfiction shorts and poetry that, as the back claims offers, hinge "on the carnal." More than that, the gathered works purportedly address the ways in which experiencing food entails nothing short of "power, biology, social obligation, experimentation, nourishment, pain and pleasure." The authors treat the topics, ranging from the politics of potatoes to tricks for field dressing deer, with a blend of seriousness and humour befitting the material. What becomes clear …


My Iranian Sukkah, Farideh Dayanim Goldin Jan 2009

My Iranian Sukkah, Farideh Dayanim Goldin

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Every year after Yorn Kippur, my husband Norman and I try to bring together the pieces of our sukkah, our temporary home for a week, a reminder of our frailty as Jews. Every year we wonder where we had last stored the metal frame, the bamboo roof, and the decorations. Every year we wonder about the weather. Will we have to dodge the raindrops and the wind once again this year for a quick bracha before eating inside? Will our sukkah stand up? Will there be a hurricane?


Feathers And Hair, Farideh Dayanim Goldin Jan 2003

Feathers And Hair, Farideh Dayanim Goldin

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Plucking chickens the kosher way is quite an art. According to the laws of kashrut) a chicken should not be cooked or even brought close to a source of heat until it is kashered-bled, salted, and rinsed. The use of fire to sear feathers or hot water to loosen quills is absolutely forbidden. Poultry processors today use the force of air to pluck feathers for kosher markets; but when I lived in Iran, during the '60s and '70s, this job had to be done manually.


Blood Lines, Farideh Dayanim Goldin Oct 2002

Blood Lines, Farideh Dayanim Goldin

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) The salty ocean air was pleasantly mixed with smoke rising from gas grills using volcanic stones, plain old-fashioned ones using regular coals, and smokers using mesquite wood chips. As my American husband and I stepped out of our car and walked around to the back yard of the Bechars, the only African Sephardi family in Virginia Beach that Fourth of July, the aroma of sizzling hot dogs and hamburgers stirred our appetite. In her all- American neighborhood, Sonia welcomed us with a platter of spicy Tunisian meat and herbs rolled in phyllo dough and fried to perfection. I …


Only Friendship, Farideh Dayanim Goldin Jan 2002

Only Friendship, Farideh Dayanim Goldin

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) My Jewish daughter befriended a Muslim woman in her Islam class last Fall. She asked me where she could buy rosewater, saffron, and cardamom to make halwa. My kosher daughter was celebrating the end of Ramadan, Eide-fetr, with her first Iranian, her first Muslim friend.


Decision, Edith White Jan 2000

Decision, Edith White

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Smoke, Rénee Olander Jan 2000

Smoke, Rénee Olander

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


What Does That Mean?, Carolyn Rhodes Jan 2000

What Does That Mean?, Carolyn Rhodes

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Why Are Those Women So Angry? (Alienating People Of Good Will), Janet Bing Jan 2000

Why Are Those Women So Angry? (Alienating People Of Good Will), Janet Bing

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Until quite recently, I dismissed criticisms of "angry feminists" as a sexist stereotype. I was tired of hearing people say, "I believe in equal pay for equal work, but I dislike those bra-burning feminists!" Perhaps I'm too young, but almost all of my friends are feminists, and I have yet to meet anyone who has burned her bra, so this comment always strikes me as bizarre. However, recently I have begun to think seriously about the power of stereotypes and the ability of people to disregard messages they do not want to hear. I now realize that feminists …


Songs Of A Turning Body, Luisa A. Igloria Jan 2000

Songs Of A Turning Body, Luisa A. Igloria

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Why Are Those Women So Angry?, Janet Bing Jan 2000

Why Are Those Women So Angry?, Janet Bing

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Until quite recently, I dismissed criticisms of "angry femini sts" as a sexist stereotype. I was tired of hearing people say, "I believe in equal pay for equal work, but I dislike those bra-burning feminists!" Perhaps I'm too young, but almost all of my friends are feminists, and I have yet to meet anyone who has burned her bra, so this comment always strikes me as bizarre. However, recently I have begun to think seriously about the power of stereotypes and the ability of people to disregard messages they do not want to hear. I now realize that …


Two Birds On A Postcard, Farideh Dayanim Goldin Jan 2000

Two Birds On A Postcard, Farideh Dayanim Goldin

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph)My sister, Nahid, is four years younger than me. She suffers from osteomyelitis, which began from an infected umbilicus at birth, the result of unsanitary conditions at Morsalin hospital in Iran. She was given massive doses of antibiotics to help fight the infection, followed by surgery at the age of one to drain the affected area. Despite these efforts, the top of Nahid 's right femur was eroded by the infection. It left her with a hanging hip and a severe limp.


Pai Dos Burros, Luisa A. Igloria Jan 2000

Pai Dos Burros, Luisa A. Igloria

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Cover Girl Run For Cover, Rénee Olander Jan 2000

Cover Girl Run For Cover, Rénee Olander

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Excerpts From "Death Journal", Nancy Olthoff Jan 2000

Excerpts From "Death Journal", Nancy Olthoff

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


White Women, Black Revolutionaries: Sex And Politics In Four Novels By Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin Jan 2000

White Women, Black Revolutionaries: Sex And Politics In Four Novels By Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

As early as 1959, the white South African novelist, essayist, and short story writer Nadine Gordimer wrote an essay, "Where Do Whites Fit In?" As the black struggle for power intensified and finally achieved its primary goal of black majority rule in 1994, Gordimer continued to reflect upon this question. Her eighth novel, July's People (1981), is a psychological and political fable. It celebrates a white woman's readiness to reject the relationships and privileges that bind her to the white world and her readiness to embrace the new South Africa of an emancipated black majority. The novels written before July's …


Androgyny Or Catastrophe: Doris Lessing's Vision In The Early 1970s, Nancy Topping Bazin Jan 1999

Androgyny Or Catastrophe: Doris Lessing's Vision In The Early 1970s, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Doris Lessing's novels of the early 1970s offer readers a rare kind of wisdom one which has been nourished by Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism, which she admires. Unlike Lessing's earlier fiction which was simply influenced by the ideas of Sufism, three of her novels-Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Summer Before the Dark (1973), and The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)-are literally Sufi fables-that is, symbolic stories, each of which "illuminates truth" (qtd. in Shah, The Sufis 14). The Sufi truth illuminated by these novels is that "life is One," and that because we have …


Southern Africa And The Themes Of Madness: Novels By Doris Lessing, Bessie Head, And Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin Jan 1995

Southern Africa And The Themes Of Madness: Novels By Doris Lessing, Bessie Head, And Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

However different their lives, Doris Lessing, Bessie Head, and Nadine Gordimer share the common heritage of having grown up in southern Africa. All three were profoundly affected by that experience. Their responses to the colonialist, racist, and sexist attitudes that permeated their lives have determined, to a major extent. the nature of their fiction. Their novels reflect the grotesque situations and bizarre human relationships created by prejudice, injustice, and the desire to dominate. These three authors focus on the mad nature of this social and political situation in southern Africa. In their works, dystopian and utopian visions of the future …


Postmortem Diagnoses Of Virginia Woolf's 'Madness': The Precarious Quest For Truth, Nancy Topping Bazin Jan 1994

Postmortem Diagnoses Of Virginia Woolf's 'Madness': The Precarious Quest For Truth, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

The reputation of British writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is now well established. Her brilliance as a writer is seldom contested, and her place in the literary canon is assured. Whether interested in literary traditions, textual studies, applied feminism, or postmodern theory, most scholars and critics admire what she had to say and how she said it. The variety, volume, and quality of her writings are impressive; her skill as a writer is seen not only in her eight novels but also in her essays, diaries, letters, short stories, biographies and nonfictional works A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas …


Marge Piercy's Small Changes: Welcome To The Sexual Revolution, Nancy Topping Bazin Jan 1991

Marge Piercy's Small Changes: Welcome To The Sexual Revolution, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Marge Piercy's novel Small Changes is encyclopedic in its incredibly detailed, all-encompassing feminist analysis of female and male behavior in the late 60's and early 70's. The behavior of the younger generation is compared and contrasted with that of their parents. The overall impression given by the novel is that, despite the very different life-styles of the two generations, very little change has, in fact, occurred. At the end of the novel, sexism prevails and no significant threat to male control of the power structure has developed. From examination of the title, Piercy seems to place her emphasis not upon …


Women And Revolution In Dystopian Fiction: Nadine Gordimer's July's People And Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Nancy Topping Bazin Jan 1991

Women And Revolution In Dystopian Fiction: Nadine Gordimer's July's People And Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Nadine Gordimer's July's People (1981) and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) are both dystopias, nightmare visions of the future. Both of the worlds depicted come into being because of revolutionary coups. However, in both cases, the revolutions were in progress long before the actual takeovers, and there were opportunities for citizens to have prevented these dystopian situations from coming to pass. Yet, because changing the direction of political events requires energy, solidarity, bravery or at least some self-sacrifice, most citizens are reluctant to become involved. Nadine Gordimer and Margaret Atwood understand this attitude because they have felt that way …


Teaching Literature In The 1990'S: Meeting The Challenge, Nancy Topping Bazin Jan 1990

Teaching Literature In The 1990'S: Meeting The Challenge, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

English teachers are currently beset by a variety of political forces vying for their attention. Education has become big news again for the first time since October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union inaugurated the Space Age by launching Sputnik, the first man-made satellite. In 1957, astonished at the Russians' success, Americans panicked and decided that their math science, and foreign language training was inadequate. Recent survey~ showing the superiority of Japanese and European students over American students have provoked serious concern about the quality of education going on in American public schools and in our colleges and universities. The …


The Spherical Vision, Nancy Topping Bazin Jan 1987

The Spherical Vision, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Virginia Woolf's experiences as a manic-depressive influenced her vision of reality and, in tum, her aesthetics. Manic-depression is a "cyclic" illness-cyclic in the sense that the manic-depressive moves alternately between two extreme psychological states. Hence, he experiences reality in terms of two opposite perspectives. Psychotic depression involves what Jung describes as the experience of the "shadow." That is, looking into the unconscious, the individual sees his own reflection. He takes a risk in looking, for as Jung says, "The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because …


The Evolution Of Doris Lessing's Art From A Mystical Moment To Space Fiction, Nancy Topping Bazin Jan 1985

The Evolution Of Doris Lessing's Art From A Mystical Moment To Space Fiction, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

After publishing ten major novels, Doris Lessing has begun writing what she calls '·space fiction'· for her new series entitled Canopus in Argos: Archives. In a review of the first two novels published in this series, namely, Shikasta ( 1979) and the Marriages Between Zones Three. Four, and Five (1980)1. Jean Pickering stresses that many of Doris Lessing's most avid readers were initially attracted to her because of her insights about the female experience and because of her allegiance to nineteenth-century realism." Pickering suggests that Lessing's growing interest in space fiction and Sufism (Islamic mysticism) has …