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

Using “Evil” To Combat “Evil”: The Regulation Of Prostitution In Renaissance Florence, Lilah F. Abrams Apr 2017

Using “Evil” To Combat “Evil”: The Regulation Of Prostitution In Renaissance Florence, Lilah F. Abrams

Young Historians Conference

In accordance with the general opinions towards women at the time, the establishment of the Office of Decency (known as the Onestá) in Florence, Italy during the Renaissance served to dehumanize the women participating in the profession. While many argue that the Florentine Onestá was established to preserve the city’s image, the ultimate intention of the ordinances was to use women as tools to regulate male behavior. Drawing on the remaining ordinances established by the Onestá as primary source material, this paper identifies the utilization of prostitutes to restrict the defiling of “virtuous” women by men through regulations on attire …


Challenging Queer As “Neoliberal”: The Radical Politics Of South Asian Diasporic Lesbian Representational Culture, Sri Craven Jan 2017

Challenging Queer As “Neoliberal”: The Radical Politics Of South Asian Diasporic Lesbian Representational Culture, Sri Craven

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay contributes to transnational feminist and queer interests in neoliberalism, sexual politics and representational cultures that all circulate globally today. It reads Deepa Mehta’s film, Fire (1996), and Suniti Namjoshi’s literary venture, Goja: An Autobiographical Myth (2000). Each processes the question of lesbian visibility as a question of female labor and class relations among women. By analyzing representations of lesbian life in the context of laboring female bodies, the article challenges the dismissal of queer politics as neoliberal in India. Sexual identity politics, as critics argue, often dovetails with neoliberalism’s project of protecting elite and bourgeois subjects’ interests at …