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Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

A New Heroic Figure: Female Protestors And Precarity In Puerto Rico, Guillermo Rebollo Gil Jan 2016

A New Heroic Figure: Female Protestors And Precarity In Puerto Rico, Guillermo Rebollo Gil

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This paper offers a critical look on an isolated, failed incident of protest carried out by a young Puerto Rican woman and her two children. In doing so, it explores the possibilities of radical political thought and action on the island. Furthermore, by situating this event within the larger context of danger—physical, social and discursive—that women in Puerto Rico are subjected to, it seeks to question the manner in which female protestors’ vulnerability and agency challenge those on the left to formulate gender-progressive strategies for emancipation. Lastly, it is argued here that this protestor features as new type of radical …


More Wounding Than Wounds: Hysterectomy, Phenomenology, And The Pain(S) Of Excorporation, Heather Hill-Vasquez Jan 2016

More Wounding Than Wounds: Hysterectomy, Phenomenology, And The Pain(S) Of Excorporation, Heather Hill-Vasquez

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Focusing on the pain experience of hysterectomy, this article applies and interrogates the foundational descriptive process on which phenomenology is based and suggests that feminism and phenomenology are more compatible than previously asserted. Building upon the work of feminist philosophers who have also explored how feminist and phenomenological approaches share similar methods and intentions—especially in connection with the former’s significant attention to lived experience as a source for the theory feminism employs—the article engages with the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Samuel Mallin who maintain a consistent attention to the body in their phenomenological approaches. Arguing that Mallin’s method of …


Bodies And Contexts: An Investigation Into A Postmodern Feminist Reading Of Averroës, Reed Taylor Jan 2016

Bodies And Contexts: An Investigation Into A Postmodern Feminist Reading Of Averroës, Reed Taylor

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In this article, I contribute to the wider discourse of theorizing feminism in predominantly Muslim societies by analyzing the role of women’s political agency within the writings of the twelfth-century Islamic philosopher Averroës (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198). I critically analyze Catarina Belo’s (2009) liberal feminist approach to political agency in Averroës by adopting a postmodern reading of Averroës’s commentary on Plato’s Republic. A postmodern feminist reading of Averroes’s political thought emphasizes contingencies and contextualization rather than employing a literal reading of the historical works.


Do You Understand? Unsettling Interpretative Authority In Feminist Oral History, Katherine Fobear Jan 2016

Do You Understand? Unsettling Interpretative Authority In Feminist Oral History, Katherine Fobear

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article interrogates interpretative authority in feminist oral history through a critical Indigenous lens. I argue that critical Indigenous theory provides a useful and needed understanding of participants’ agency and the active role they have in shaping the research. Feminist oral history as a methodology has a long and well-established lineage of exploring difficult questions of power in the relationship between the researcher and the participants. While many feminist oral historians have actively interrogated issues surrounding power within their own research, there are relatively few works that press beyond looking at the one-sided hierarchical relationship between the oral historian and …


From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner Jan 2016

From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Future Of Chicana Studies: An Intergenerational Conversation With Historian Vicki L. Ruiz And Filmmaker Virginia Espino, Lori A. Flores Jan 2016

The Future Of Chicana Studies: An Intergenerational Conversation With Historian Vicki L. Ruiz And Filmmaker Virginia Espino, Lori A. Flores

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


A History Of Their Own: A Conversation With Vicki L. Ruiz, Anupama Arora, Laura K. Muñoz, Sandrine Sanos Jan 2016

A History Of Their Own: A Conversation With Vicki L. Ruiz, Anupama Arora, Laura K. Muñoz, Sandrine Sanos

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Creating Consciousness, Creating A Legend: A Conversation With Virginia Espino, Historian And Producer Of No Más Bebés (2015), Anupama Arora, Laura K. Muñoz, Sandrine Sanos Jan 2016

Creating Consciousness, Creating A Legend: A Conversation With Virginia Espino, Historian And Producer Of No Más Bebés (2015), Anupama Arora, Laura K. Muñoz, Sandrine Sanos

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


I Will Tell Your Story: New Media Activism And The Indian “Rape Crisis”, Rukmini Pande, Samira Nadkarni Jan 2016

I Will Tell Your Story: New Media Activism And The Indian “Rape Crisis”, Rukmini Pande, Samira Nadkarni

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article analyzes the mediatized representations of the Indian “rape crisis” that gained global attention in the aftermath of the brutal gang rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey in New Delhi in 2012. While much attention was given to Leslie Udwin’s documentary on the incident, India’s Daughter (2015), which was subsequently banned by the Indian government, there were several other creative responses that attempted to negotiate with the meaning of the event. This article examines two such texts—the multimedia short story We Are Angry (2015) and the augmented-reality comic Priya’s Shakti (2014). Both these texts declare their intention to function as …


Female Perceptions Of Islam In Today’S Morocco, Fatima Sadiqi Jan 2016

Female Perceptions Of Islam In Today’S Morocco, Fatima Sadiqi

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This paper is based on a survey, 25 interviews, and observation. According to the results so far, Islam means three things for women in today’s Morocco: faith, culture, and politics. Islam as faith is generally perceived as a personal relationship with God. Such a relationship is seen as both rewarding and empowering, but also private. Women who perceive Islam as faith observe the Islamic rituals and may or may not wear the veil. Women’s perception of Islam as faith is a rather poorly understood topic in research in a heavily space-based patriarchy, probably because of its intimate relationship with the …


“Strong Women Make Strong Nations”: Women, Literature, And Sovereignty In Paula Gunn Allen And Virginia Woolf, Kristin Czarnecki Jan 2016

“Strong Women Make Strong Nations”: Women, Literature, And Sovereignty In Paula Gunn Allen And Virginia Woolf, Kristin Czarnecki

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This essay places Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas alongside Paula Gunn Allen’s The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Reading these landmark texts together helps establish a transnational dialogue essential to twenty-first-century literary and feminist studies. A Room of One’s Own and The Sacred Hoop resonate with each other in striving to recuperate women’s history and literature, long denied or suppressed by patriarchal tenets and texts. A fruitful dialogic also emerges between Three Guineas and The Sacred Hoop, both of which argue for the eradication of patriarchy in favor of female-centric social …


Moving Forward/Looking Back: Reclaiming And Revising Our Feminist Past And Searching For Solidarity, Cassandra Denise Fetters Jan 2015

Moving Forward/Looking Back: Reclaiming And Revising Our Feminist Past And Searching For Solidarity, Cassandra Denise Fetters

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Interweaving personal anecdotes, feminist theory, and literary and popular culture references, this article attempts to provide answers to the question of how we build a social movement and establish solidarity among women while still recognizing and respecting difference. The article traces historical accounts of feminists contending with the “difference impasse” and argues that we should return to and revise the feminist thought that preceded us, weaving together theories from our feminist past with contemporary models, including those of feminist psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin and her ideas of “mutual recognition” and intersubjectivity. Drawing on fictional accounts from literature by women writers, the …


From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner Jan 2015

From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


She Had A Name That God Didn’T Give Her: Thinking The Body Through Atheistic Black Radical Feminism, Marquis Bey Jan 2015

She Had A Name That God Didn’T Give Her: Thinking The Body Through Atheistic Black Radical Feminism, Marquis Bey

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The article attempts to demonstrate the necessity of acknowledging the body when considering the current Black Lives Matter movement, give an account of Black female and trans erasure, and ultimately (re)affirm the lived embodiment of Black, female, and trans bodies, all through an atheistic lens. Atheism here, while indeed denying the existence of gods, has as its primary concern affirming life. Too often is theology, as theologian Anthony Pinn says, “a theology of no-body”; thus atheistic feminist Blackness, as understood here, seeks to entrench the body rather than abstract it. Atheistic feminist Blackness reinscribes and affirms the subjectivity and humanity …


“You Have To Confess”: Rape And The Politics Of Storytelling, Tara Roeder Jan 2015

“You Have To Confess”: Rape And The Politics Of Storytelling, Tara Roeder

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article examines the discourse of rape in contemporary culture, paying special attention to the courtroom setting, where rape victims are often required to tell cohesive, linear narratives that underscore their blamelessness if they hope to be believed. Because of deeply entrenched cultural myths about rape, the type of story often required for the successful prosecution of perpetrators may require rape victims to construct narratives that do not accurately reflect their lived experience. Writers such as Susan Brison, Patricia Weaver Francisco, and Alice Sebold engage with the complex politics of rape and its telling in their memoirs. While constructing stories …


She Legislates, He Scandalizes: Reenvisioning The Impact Of Political Sex Scandals On Assemblywomen In New York, Hinda Mandell Jan 2015

She Legislates, He Scandalizes: Reenvisioning The Impact Of Political Sex Scandals On Assemblywomen In New York, Hinda Mandell

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

A rash of three political sex scandals within the span of less than two years, from 2012 to 2014, shook the New York State Assembly. All of the sex scandals involved male politicians accused of sexual harassment of female staffers and subordinates. This study investigates how New York State assemblywomen were impacted by the scandals of their male colleagues, exploring the “contagion” of scandals (Adut 2008). Interviews were conducted with eight assemblywomen in 2014, although all 33 assemblywomen serving in the legislature at the time of this research endeavor were invited to participate in a research interview. Findings indicate that …


The Power And Joy Of Derby: Women’S Participation, Empowerment, And Transformation In A Flat-Track Roller Derby Team, John Paul, Sharla Blank Jan 2015

The Power And Joy Of Derby: Women’S Participation, Empowerment, And Transformation In A Flat-Track Roller Derby Team, John Paul, Sharla Blank

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In what ways do sports make a difference in the lives of the people who play them? In this paper, we employ a sporting feminist perspective to answer this question and detail how women benefit from the sport of roller derby. Our analyses are structured around the themes of the body (exploring examples of bodily empowerment and reconceptualization); the team (highlighting feminist themes of loyalty and team as family); and the crowd (identifying the ways in which derby is “sold” to the crowd, as well as the ways in which athletes use derby to challenge conceptions of beauty, desirability, and …


Precarious Pedagogies? The Impact Of Casual And Zero-Hour Contracts In Higher Education, Ana Lopes, Indra Angeli Dewan Jan 2014

Precarious Pedagogies? The Impact Of Casual And Zero-Hour Contracts In Higher Education, Ana Lopes, Indra Angeli Dewan

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Precarious work is associated with and characterizes the effects of neoliberal policy—the transference of economic risk onto workers, the erosion of workers’ rights, the flexibilization and casualization of work contracts, self-responsibility, financial insecurity, and emotional stress. In the Higher Education (HE) sector, the number of insecure academic jobs, especially zero-hour contracts for hourly paid teaching and short-term contract research, has grown exponentially in recent years in response to the structural and fiscal changes within universities, which reflect these global shifts. This paper presents findings from a pilot study conducted with academics on casual contracts in HE institutions in England and …


Decolonizing Higher Education: Black Feminism And The Intersectionality Of Race And Gender, Heidi Safia Mirza Jan 2014

Decolonizing Higher Education: Black Feminism And The Intersectionality Of Race And Gender, Heidi Safia Mirza

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Drawing on black feminist theory, this paper examines the professional experiences of postcolonial diasporic black and ethnicized female academics in higher education.1 The paper explores the embodiment of gendered and racialized difference and reflects on the power of whiteness to shape everyday experiences in such places of privilege. The powerful yet hidden histories of women of color in higher education, such as the Indian women suffragettes and Cornelia Sorabji in late nineteenth century, are symbolic of the erasure of an ethnicized black feminist/womanist presence in mainstream (white) educational establishments. The paper concludes that an understanding of black and ethnicized female …


Beginning With The Body: Fleshy Politics In The Performance Art Of Rebecca Belmore And Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Samantha Balzer Jan 2014

Beginning With The Body: Fleshy Politics In The Performance Art Of Rebecca Belmore And Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Samantha Balzer

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article examines what I term the "fleshy" politics of Rebecca Belmore's 2002 Vigil and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's contributions to the 2009 version of the performance project Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility. Focusing on the embodied performances of both Belmore and Piepzna-Samarasinha, I read the skin of the artist as a site where complex politics develop. This analysis is broken into three sections: the first considers the relationship between the performing body and the performance space; the second attends to specific movements each artist makes; the third focuses on garments worn in each …


Teaching Postcolonial Literature In An Elite University: An Edinburgh Lecturer’S Perspective, Michelle Keown Jan 2014

Teaching Postcolonial Literature In An Elite University: An Edinburgh Lecturer’S Perspective, Michelle Keown

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This reflective essay explores some of the pedagogical challenges I have faced in teaching postcolonial literature and theory at the University of Edinburgh. There are particular social dynamics at work at Edinburgh that make engaging with intersectionality, particularly in the context of colonialism and racism, a rather complex endeavor. Edinburgh is a Russell Group university, and our undergraduate constituency is overwhelmingly white, middle class and British, with a high proportion of students coming from British public-school backgrounds. Many of these students approach postcolonial writing with well-meaning liberal intentions, but often adopt what Graham Huggan (2001) would term an exoticizing perspective …


From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner Jan 2014

From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Mother Of A New World? Stereotypical Representations Of Black Women In Three Postapocalyptic Films, Karima K. Jeffrey Jan 2014

Mother Of A New World? Stereotypical Representations Of Black Women In Three Postapocalyptic Films, Karima K. Jeffrey

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This essay explores three cinematic representations of Black matriarchs who play prophetic roles in redeeming humanity in the midst of apocalyptic change: Ika (Quest for Fire), Kee (Children of Men), and The Oracle (The Matrix trilogy). Not only do these courageous women resist the politics of domination, rebelling against a dying status quo, but they "give birth" to the leaders needed to rebuild a world in chaos and decay. One film ends with a pregnant woman rubbing her belly as she stands on the precipice of evolutionary change; another positions a mother and newborn adrift, waiting to be found by …


Feminist Interruptions: Creating Care-Ful And Collaborative Community-Based Research With Students, Kelly Concannon, Laura Finley, Nadine Grifoni, Stephanie Wong Jan 2014

Feminist Interruptions: Creating Care-Ful And Collaborative Community-Based Research With Students, Kelly Concannon, Laura Finley, Nadine Grifoni, Stephanie Wong

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article describes a feminist community-based research project involving faculty and student collaboration to evaluate a dating and domestic violence awareness initiative. Using a critical ethics of care that emphasizes relationships and allows for constant reflection about power dynamics, role, positionality, and emotions, the authors reflect on what was learned during the research process. Faculty and student researchers share their perspectives and offer suggestions for future feminist collaborative research projects. Significant lessons learned include ensuring that all are invested from the outset of the project, guaranteeing that student researchers understand why their role is so critical in community-based research, and …


Professor Xavier Is A Gay Traitor! An Antiassimilationist Framework For Interpreting Ideology, Power And Statecraft, Michael Loadenthal Jan 2014

Professor Xavier Is A Gay Traitor! An Antiassimilationist Framework For Interpreting Ideology, Power And Statecraft, Michael Loadenthal

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Ideology is an integral component in the reproduction of power. Integral to this central tenet of statecraft is the regulation of identity and proscribed methods of social engagement—positive portrayals of "good citizenry" and delegitimized representations of those challenging hegemony. Through an Althusserian and linguistic analysis, positioning the X-Men movie franchise as an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), one can examine the lives of mutants portrayed in the text as indicative of preferred methods of state-legitimized sociopolitical interaction. This metaphorical and textual analysis is used to discuss the lived realities of queer persons resisting hegemony, and is located in the bodies and …


Portrait Of The Feminist As A Publisher: A Conversation With Urvashi Butalia, Anupama Arora, Sandrine Sanos Jan 2014

Portrait Of The Feminist As A Publisher: A Conversation With Urvashi Butalia, Anupama Arora, Sandrine Sanos

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Introduction: Education, Intersectionality And Social Change, Lena Wånggren, Maja Milatovic Jan 2014

Introduction: Education, Intersectionality And Social Change, Lena Wånggren, Maja Milatovic

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Critical Spaces: Processes Of Othering In British Institutions Of Higher Education, Aretha Phiri Jan 2014

Critical Spaces: Processes Of Othering In British Institutions Of Higher Education, Aretha Phiri

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Global recession and the economic crisis have affected contemporary British society in predictable ways. But this age of austerity has also unveiled the continued sinister machinations of whiteness. While not necessarily homogeneous, austerity rhetoric, as it is currently conventionally deployed, works to perpetuate white masculinist privilege and further entrenches the normative value of whiteness, while simultaneously masking and marginalizing those ethnic minority populations traditionally othered from mainstream sociopolitical discourse. More specifically, recent austerity measures adversely affect the situation of women and the future of feminist theory and practice in British higher education. This paper investigates and problematizes the deployment of …


Queer Desires And Critical Pedagogies In Higher Education: Reflections On The Transformative Potential Of Non-Normative Learning Desires In The Classroom, Jennifer Fraser, Sarah Lamble Jan 2014

Queer Desires And Critical Pedagogies In Higher Education: Reflections On The Transformative Potential Of Non-Normative Learning Desires In The Classroom, Jennifer Fraser, Sarah Lamble

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article considers what a queer approach might offer in addressing some of the challenges of higher education in the contemporary neoliberal landscape. Despite a rich literature on queer issues in the classroom, most of the existing scholarship has focused on engaging queer students, being a queer teacher, or teaching queer content in the curriculum. Very little work has focused on what it means to take a queer approach to pedagogic techniques or how such an approach might impact educational practices more broadly. We ask: What does it mean in theory and practice to “queer” our teaching methods? What role …


Teaching Against Hierarchies: An Anarchist Approach, Stephanie Spoto Jan 2014

Teaching Against Hierarchies: An Anarchist Approach, Stephanie Spoto

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The state of California spends more on prisons than on colleges and universities, and the fact that these two budgetary figures are often compared shows the relationship between the two state institutions. Our classrooms, starting from a very early stage, not only prepare children to be productive members of the consumer economy but educate them for complacency in the face of state violence and mass incarceration. In attempting to move away from hierarchical models of education, this article looks at the feminist pedagogical theory of bell hooks and antiauthoritarian and anarchist theorists such as Jacques Rancière and Derrick Jensen in …