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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Decolonizing The Western Perception Of Afghan Women: A Feminist Critique, Parwana Azimi
Decolonizing The Western Perception Of Afghan Women: A Feminist Critique, Parwana Azimi
Honors Theses
Abstract: Feminist theory and activism have often been reduced to singular movements from Western literature and history. Thus, the exploration of Feminist theory is often limited to Western ideology and values. In doing so, Western Feminism has primarily promoted the rights of Women living in developed countries while leaving women in developing countries or otherwise out of the discussion of women’s rights and status. Most often, women's rights struggles outside of the West are seen as colonial projects which portray Muslim women as helpless and requiring liberation from their cultures. A prominent example of this is the case of Afghan …
Breaking The Rule Of Silence: Childbirth And Gendered Power In Efuru And The Joys Of Motherhood, Sunday Elliott Uguru
Breaking The Rule Of Silence: Childbirth And Gendered Power In Efuru And The Joys Of Motherhood, Sunday Elliott Uguru
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This study examines the thematic preoccupation of childbirth in the formative period of feminist discourse in African literature through a critical study of selected novels of Igbo women of southeastern Nigeria. The novels studied represent the earliest published African texts in English by women. The period under focus falls within the emerging stage of Nigerian literary tradition in its written form with a dominant presence of men. This study investigates the women novelists' perspective toward the failure of male authored works to represent women's childbirth experience. Through a critical reading of Flora Nwapa's Efuru and Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of …
“Young In Deed”: Feminine Affect And Agency In Young Adult Shakespeare Adaptations, Juliana Hall
“Young In Deed”: Feminine Affect And Agency In Young Adult Shakespeare Adaptations, Juliana Hall
English
Approaching the cultural behemoth that is Shakespeare can be daunting, especially for young audiences; the language is antiquated and can be difficult to understand, and, due in part to the age of these works, the content is often rooted in bigoted ideologies. Young adult (YA) novel adaptations have begun reintroducing readers to Shakespeare, not only significantly enhancing the narratives, but encouraging readers to play with Shakespeare’s language in new, accessible, and exciting ways. By looking at two twenty-first century YA novel adaptations of Shakespeare’s original plays alongside the accompanying source material, I analyze how female protagonists engage with their emotions …
Examining “Empowerment”: Insights Into The Murshidat Program In Morocco, Hannah Mckenzie
Examining “Empowerment”: Insights Into The Murshidat Program In Morocco, Hannah Mckenzie
Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection
Following the 2003 terror attacks in Casablanca, the Moroccan government issued a series of reforms, including the introduction of the new program in Rabat that would train murshidat, women religious guides who would then go on to work in mosques and other public spaces all across the country. The intention of this program, the state claimed, was to 1) promote a moderate Islam and 2) empower women. In this research, I have consulted existing literature and conducted interviews with scholars and activists in the realm of women’s rights to explore various sides of this question: How does the work of …
Changing The Subject Of Sati, Deepa Das Acevedo
Changing The Subject Of Sati, Deepa Das Acevedo
Faculty Articles
Charan Shah's 1999 death was widely considered to be the first sati, or widow immolation, to have occurred in India in over twenty years. Media coverage of the event focused on procedural minutiae-her sari, her demeanor-and ultimately, several progressive commentators came to the counterintuitive conclusion that the ritually anomalous nature of Charan's death confirmed its voluntary, secular, and noncriminal nature. This article argues that the "unlabeling" of Charan's death, like those of other women between 1999 and 2006, reflects a tension between the nonindividuated, impervious model of personhood exemplified by sati and the particularized citizen-subject of liberal-democratic politics in India.
In Pictures And Words: A Womanist Answer To Addressing The Lived Experience Of African American Women And Their Bodies—A Gumbo Of Liberation And Healing, Yolandé Aileen Ifalami Devoe
In Pictures And Words: A Womanist Answer To Addressing The Lived Experience Of African American Women And Their Bodies—A Gumbo Of Liberation And Healing, Yolandé Aileen Ifalami Devoe
Antioch University Dissertations & Theses
Whether it is claiming a radical self-love for one’s body or dissatisfaction of one’s body, the experiences of African American women and their bodies cannot be divergent from the sociocultural contexts in which they live. Seeking to reveal how gender, race, and sexual orientation impact the lived experiences of African American women and their bodies, this study will bring attention to and provide a more nuanced understanding of the historical and sociocultural ramifications of the Black female body. Historically, inadequate attention has been given to an intersectional approach to understanding the experiences of the Black female body. It is understood …
The Pedagogies Of Sex Trafficking Postcolonial Fiction: Consent, Agency, And Neoliberalism In Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street, M Laura Barberan Reinares
The Pedagogies Of Sex Trafficking Postcolonial Fiction: Consent, Agency, And Neoliberalism In Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street, M Laura Barberan Reinares
Publications and Research
Amnesty International’s 2015-16 push for the decriminalization of sex work sparked yet another international debate on sex trafficking, with the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), together with a long list of celebrities and iconic feminists such as Gloria Steinem, claiming that such measure will only worsen sex trafficking, among other problems, and myriad pro-sex work feminists vouch-ing exactly the opposite.1 This dispute is by no means new-as of 2018, it remains at an impasse-but, interestingly, while sociologists and women’s studies scholars have been discussing sex trafficking issues for decades now, and despite its intimate relation to postcolonialism and globalization, …
We Are One: Singing, Sisterhood, And Solidarity In Appleton-Area Women's Choirs, Lauren Vanderlinden
We Are One: Singing, Sisterhood, And Solidarity In Appleton-Area Women's Choirs, Lauren Vanderlinden
Lawrence University Honors Projects
Despite its relatively small population, the city of Appleton has a large and thriving women’s choir community. Between the Lawrence Academy of Music Girl Choir, which serves hundreds of girls every year, and Cantala, the women’s choir at Lawrence University, opportunities for involvement in nationally-recognized female-voice ensembles range from second grade all the way through to college graduation. Using the theories of Foucault, Bourdieu, Butler, Green, and Bentham, this project explores the women’s choir culture of Appleton in an attempt to discover the core values of these two influential programs. I accomplished this by conducting ethnographic research in the form …
The Aesthetics Of Hysteria In Feminine Melodrama; On Fang Fang's Water Under Time (2008), Li Guo
The Aesthetics Of Hysteria In Feminine Melodrama; On Fang Fang's Water Under Time (2008), Li Guo
Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications
Water under Time, the novel by the reputed Chinese fiction writer Fang Fang, appropriates and reconstructs the conventions of the hysteric narrative as an affective form of feminine history telling and writing. The novel, which accounts Hankou city’s past through the heroine’s life story, illustrates how feminine hysteria provides a gendered lens of reconstructed historical authenticity via the panorama of China’s early Republican period, the anti‐Japanese War, and the present new millennium. Transcending the official historical accounts, Fang Fang’s narrative features women’s innovative reconfiguration of contesting historical discourses about the city, the community, and the nation. This study of Water …
Mormon Feminism: Not An Oxymormon, Alexa Himonas
Mormon Feminism: Not An Oxymormon, Alexa Himonas
Summer Research
Far from being an oxymoron, Mormon feminism is rich, complex, and very much a reality. To highlight this diversity, I conducted a large scale survey (over 1,000 respondents) about the beliefs of Mormon feminism and the connections Mormon feminists found between feminism and their faith. I also studied Mormon feminist literature, blogs and podcasts. This paper argues that Mormon feminist beliefs and actions often simultaneously oppose and uphold different teachings of the Mormon Church (known by its proper name as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS Church). In particular, beliefs about female ordination, gender roles, and …
Telling Our Own Stories: A Study On Hmong-American Women, Identity, And Education, Mysee Chang
Telling Our Own Stories: A Study On Hmong-American Women, Identity, And Education, Mysee Chang
Antonian Scholars Honors Program
“Assimilation” is used to describe how immigrants adapt and integrate into the culture and society of the new country (Gordon 1964). The literature on assimilation often focuses on how higher education functions as a way to assimilate immigrants into the dominant culture. The literature is primarily about social mobility and not enough attention has been given to the subjective aspect of assimilation. The purpose of my study is to better understand and explore the lived-realities of second-generation Hmong-American women. How do Hmong-American women come to understand their identities? How does higher education influence this process of identity development? Five second-generation …
Questioning Appropriation: Agency And Complicity In A Transnational Feminist Location Politics, Joseph D. Parker
Questioning Appropriation: Agency And Complicity In A Transnational Feminist Location Politics, Joseph D. Parker
Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research
In feminist circles agency is often opposed to complicity and associated with resistance to sexism and patriarchy, yet such binary oppositions make the political stakes of their presumed boundaries difficult to interrogate. By bringing location politics into dialogue with agency theory, boundaries of same/Other and location categories may move from a naturalized ground for political work to the contested center of a politics of resistance. I follow a Foucauldian interpretation of agency to reconsider the ethico-politics of established divisions of self and Other both individually and in terms of social movements. By following Gayatri Spivak, Meyda Yeğenoğlu, and Chandra Mohanty's …
Preservice Literacy Teachers In Transition: Identity As Subjectivity, Mindy Legard Larson
Preservice Literacy Teachers In Transition: Identity As Subjectivity, Mindy Legard Larson
Faculty Publications
This research addresses the complexities of identity development of elementary and middle school preservice literacy teachers during their teacher education program using a poststructural feminist theoretical lens. This research investigated two questions: 1) How do preservice teachers develop their identity as teachers of literacy in the midst of authoritative discourses? 2) What kinds of strategies and discourses do preservice literacy teachers use to negotiate the competing discourses of literacy during student teaching? The results indicated that the identities of the preservice literacy teachers were in transition during their teacher education program and authoritative discourses were at work constituting their subjectivities …
Female Agency And Oppression In Caribbean Bacchanalian Culture: Soca, Carnival, And Dancehall, Kevin Frank
Female Agency And Oppression In Caribbean Bacchanalian Culture: Soca, Carnival, And Dancehall, Kevin Frank
Publications and Research
In this essay Kevin Frank discerningly analyzes agency and gender in public sexual performances emanating out of what Paul Gilroy identifies as part of the compensatory politics of the subordinated within Black Atlantic culture, Jamaican dancehall (dancehall reggae/ dancehall queens).