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

Fierce Allegories: Teaching Anne Finch’S Fables In A Course On Satire, Sharon Smith Dec 2023

Fierce Allegories: Teaching Anne Finch’S Fables In A Course On Satire, Sharon Smith

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

This essay outlines an approach to integrating Anne Finch’s work into an advanced undergraduate and/or graduate course on eighteenth-century satire, focusing particularly on her satirical verse fables. This approach encourages students to question common critical assumptions about women and satire, most particularly that women avoided satire due to its association with aggression and politics—assumptions Finch’s fables are well-suited to challenge. The essay focuses particularly on Finch’s verse fables "Upon an Impropable Undertaking," “The Eagle, the Sow, and the Cat,” and “The Owl Describing Her Young Ones.” In these poems, written in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, Finch employs violent …


“Before I Am Quite Forgot": Women’S Critical Literary Biography And The Future, Susan Carlile Jun 2023

“Before I Am Quite Forgot": Women’S Critical Literary Biography And The Future, Susan Carlile

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

“‘Before I am Quite Forgot’: Women’s Critical Literary Biography and the Future” extends the conversation about literary “worth” in the twenty-first century as it still judges and ignores women authors of the past. Specifically, this essay explores the role of women’s literary historical biography as a primary marker of worth and as a means of shaping legacy. I also discuss my (perhaps more non-traditional) experience—both my personal circumstances and particular material conditions—writing the critical biography Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind. Without a substantial biography that shows the scope of Lennox’s mind, her significant corpus, and her interventions in literary history …


Where Are The Women?: An Ecofeminist Reading Of William Golding’S Lord Of The Flies, Hawk Chang Oct 2021

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 …


Review Of Eighteenth-Century Women’S Writing And The Methodist Media Revolution, By Andrew O. Winckles, Rebecca Nesvet May 2021

Review Of Eighteenth-Century Women’S Writing And The Methodist Media Revolution, By Andrew O. Winckles, Rebecca Nesvet

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

No abstract provided.


Melusine, Invisible Leadership And The Future (In The Past), Jan Shaw May 2020

Melusine, Invisible Leadership And The Future (In The Past), Jan Shaw

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper considers the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine from the late Middle English romance Melusine. By invoking contemporary leadership theory, this paper identifies leadership maneuvers in Melusine that are similar to those often practiced by women today, but the discourses of gender identity then ultimately render Melusine’s leadership invisible, just as leadership discourses today often render female leadership invisible. By uncovering the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine and identifying commonalities with the leadership of women today, this paper aims to improve our understanding of the contemporary problem of the marked …


Review Of Women’S Periodicals And Print Culture In Britain, 1690–1820s: The Long Eighteenth Century, Lisa Maruca Apr 2020

Review Of Women’S Periodicals And Print Culture In Britain, 1690–1820s: The Long Eighteenth Century, Lisa Maruca

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

Review of Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain


Women & Tolkien: Amazons, Valkyries, Feminists, And Slashers, Robin A. Reid Dr. Jul 2018

Women & Tolkien: Amazons, Valkyries, Feminists, And Slashers, Robin A. Reid Dr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper reports on an early pilot project that asks women who self identify as readers or fans of Tolkien's work and/or teachers who have taught Tolkien's work, and/or scholars who have published on Tolkien's work to answer a few open-ended questions about their reasons for enjoying his work. By "women," I mean anybody who identifies as a woman. By "Tolkien's work," I mean any of his published novels, stories, poems, or academic essays. The study arises from the question that is often asked of fans of Tolkien's work: why do women so enjoy it, given the relatively minor narrative …


Anna Larpent And Shakespeare, Fiona Ritchie May 2018

Anna Larpent And Shakespeare, Fiona Ritchie

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

Anna Larpent (1758-1832) is a crucial figure in theater history and the reception of Shakespeare since drama was a central part of her life. Larpent was a meticulous diarist: the Huntington Library holds seventeen volumes of her journal covering the period 1773-1830. These diaries shed significant light on the part Shakespeare played in her life and contain her detailed opinions of his works as she experienced them both on the page and on the stage in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London. Larpent experienced Shakespeare’s works in a variety of forms: she sees Shakespeare’s plays performed, both professionally and by …


Wishing For The Watch Face In Jonathan Swift’S “The Progress Of Beauty”, Jantina Ellens May 2018

Wishing For The Watch Face In Jonathan Swift’S “The Progress Of Beauty”, Jantina Ellens

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

This article illuminates the technological underpinnings of Jonathan Swift’s satire, “The Progress of Beauty” (1719), by exploring how eighteenth-century poetics of beauty and scientific progress pit human against automaton. This article ranges from the ego of masculine technological display to women’s self-identification with the automaton to suggest that Swift’s speaker blazons the aging prostitute’s body with the hope that it might resurrect a lost ideal, the beautiful watch face. Instead, readers are confronted with the vision of Celia who, with her chipped paint, greasy joints, and faulty mechanisms, reminds them that humanity continues to break through its enamel. When readers …


What's In A Name? New Vision For Abo, Laura Runge Oct 2017

What's In A Name? New Vision For Abo, Laura Runge

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

Introduction to the new vision statements for the journal.


Embodying Character, Adapting Communication; Or, The Senses And Sensibilities Of Epistolarity And New Media In The Classroom, Jodi L. Wyett Jun 2017

Embodying Character, Adapting Communication; Or, The Senses And Sensibilities Of Epistolarity And New Media In The Classroom, Jodi L. Wyett

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

This essay describes a classroom role-playing activity that incorporates both modern social media and the tools of eighteenth-century composition. Students communicate with each other as characters in the assigned novel, by either texting, tweeting, or writing longhand with quill pens. The exercise aims to help students grasp the sometimes-elusive historical contexts of eighteenth-century writing as well as the ways in which we interpret and adapt those contexts and their attendant modes of communication when we read for meaning in our own moment. My experiences suggest that the activity is particularly effective at helping students to reflect upon their own interpretive …


“Less Of The Heroine Than The Woman”: Parsing Gender In The British Novel, Susan Carlile Jun 2017

“Less Of The Heroine Than The Woman”: Parsing Gender In The British Novel, Susan Carlile

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

This essay offers two methods that will help students resist the temptation to judge eighteenth-century novels by twenty-first-century standards. These methods prompt students to parse the question of whether female protagonists in novels—in this case, Daniel Defoe’s Roxana (1724), Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (1759), and Charlotte Lennox’s Sophia (1762)—are portrayed as perfect models or as complex humans. The first method asks them to engage with definitions of the term “heroine,” and the second method uses word clouds to extend their thinking about the complexity of embodying a mid-eighteenth-century female identity.


Review Of Amanda E. Herbert, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, And Friendship In Early Modern Britain, Angela Rehbein Mar 2015

Review Of Amanda E. Herbert, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, And Friendship In Early Modern Britain, Angela Rehbein

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

Review of Amanda E. Herbert, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain. New Haven: Yale UP, 2014. xi, 256 pages: illustrations; 24 cm. ISBN 978-0-300-17740-4.


Extremes Of Gender And Power: Sycorax’S Absence In Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Brittney Blystone Nov 2014

Extremes Of Gender And Power: Sycorax’S Absence In Shakespeare’S The Tempest, Brittney Blystone

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.


Review Of Stephen Bending, Green Retreats: Women, Gardens And Eighteenth-Century Culture, Nicolle Jordan Oct 2014

Review Of Stephen Bending, Green Retreats: Women, Gardens And Eighteenth-Century Culture, Nicolle Jordan

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

Review of Stephen Bending. Green Retreats: Women, Gardens and Eighteenth-Century Culture. New York: Cambridge UP, 2013. X +312 pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-107-04002-1.


Mcwilliams, Ellen. Women And Exile In Contemporary Irish Fiction, Maureen T. Reddy Aug 2014

Mcwilliams, Ellen. Women And Exile In Contemporary Irish Fiction, Maureen T. Reddy

Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought

No abstract provided.


“The Woman” And The Women Of Sherlock Holmes, Cassandra Poole Jun 2014

“The Woman” And The Women Of Sherlock Holmes, Cassandra Poole

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Women appear in nearly every Sherlock Holmes novel and short story. The vast majority are victims. Against the recurring oppression of women and women’s sexuality in the Holmes canon, a few exceptional female characters escape their Victorian gender roles. One rises above all others. She is “the woman,” Irene Adler, whose strength, intelligence, and independence have made her a recurring star in extra-canonical books, television shows, film adaptations, and Sherlockian fan fiction. This essay focuses on women and women’s sexuality within and beyond the Holmes canon to explore our enduring fascination with “the only woman to ever best Sherlock Holmes.”


The Female Quixote As Promoter Of Social Literacy, Amy Hodges Apr 2013

The Female Quixote As Promoter Of Social Literacy, Amy Hodges

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

In Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, the unruly Arabella clashes with the eighteenth century’s conception of England as an orderly, unromantic site of commercial trade. Arabella’s romances prompt her to expect certain power structures from English society; she invites others to see her body as a spectacle and expects that her actions will solidify her status as a powerful woman. Yet Lennox reveals that English society sees Arabella’s body not as powerful, but as an object upon which they may construct their own potential site for the exchange of knowledge, an objectification that neither Arabella nor Lennox are prepared …


Madam Britannia: Women, Church, And Nation, 1712-1812, By Emma Major, Kathryn Stasio Apr 2013

Madam Britannia: Women, Church, And Nation, 1712-1812, By Emma Major, Kathryn Stasio

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

No abstract provided.


Cultivating Resources In Hard Times, Catherine Ingrassia Apr 2013

Cultivating Resources In Hard Times, Catherine Ingrassia

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

No abstract provided.


Supporting Women Scholars: How To Get Things Done In Hard Times, Mona Narain Apr 2013

Supporting Women Scholars: How To Get Things Done In Hard Times, Mona Narain

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

No abstract provided.