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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law

2014

University of Rhode Island

Articles 1 - 16 of 16

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

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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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.

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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.

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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.

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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Neoliberalism And Public University Agendas: Tensions Along The Global/Local Divide, Peter Wanyenya, Donna Lester-Smith Jan 2014

Neoliberalism And Public University Agendas: Tensions Along The Global/Local Divide, Peter Wanyenya, Donna Lester-Smith

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Over the last decade, internationalization efforts have accelerated at leading postsecondary institutions in North America and elsewhere, with universities now aggressively competing for the most talented students worldwide. With the focus on recruiting international students, one of the major attendant objectives has seemingly been a social-justice-oriented agenda on tackling pressing global issues; the local has indeed become the global. However, not everyone is ostensibly benefiting from this new global focus. For some, their local issues and conditions are increasingly precarious and nonprioritized in institutional and broadening neoliberal governmental agendas. In the Canadian context, various Indigenous and low-income racialized communities, youth …

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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.

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Feminist Praxis, Critical Theory And Informal Hierarchies, Eva Giraud Jan 2014

Feminist Praxis, Critical Theory And Informal Hierarchies, Eva Giraud

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article draws on my experiences teaching across two undergraduate media modules in a UK research-intensive institution to explore tactics for combatting both institutional and informal hierarchies within university teaching contexts. Building on Sara Motta’s (2012) exploration of implementing critical pedagogic principles at postgraduate level in an elite university context, I discuss additional tactics for combatting these hierarchies in undergraduate settings, which were developed by transferring insights derived from informal workshops led by the University of Nottingham’s Feminism and Teaching network into the classroom. This discussion is framed in relation to the concepts of “cyborg pedagogies” and “political semiotics of …

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