Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Sexual Misconduct, Religion, And Culture, Alev Dudek

Alev Dudek

Pregnancy Denied, Pregnancy Rejected In Stephanie Daley, Susan Ayres, Prema Manjunath

Susan Ayres

This article offers a reading of Hilary Brougher’s film Stephanie Daley (2006), in which a teen is accused of murdering her newborn (neonaticide). Brougher depicts a “phenomenology of unwanted pregnancy” and an example of therapeutic jurisprudence. Part One examines Brougher’s treatment of the “shadow side of pregnancy,” and highlights barriers to the empathetic treatment of neonaticide. Part Two emphasizes the process of therapeutic jurisprudence as experienced by the two main characters. Brougher’s film provides a social narrative and phenomenology that may influence laws and legal responses and enlarge social understanding of unwanted pregnancy.

Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes In Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen

Jeana Jorgensen

In a number of international fairy tale types, such as ATU 451 ("The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers"), the female protagonist voluntarily stops speaking in order to attain the object of her quest. In ATU 451, found in the collected tales of the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen as well as in oral tradition, the protagonist remains silent while weaving the shirts needed to disenchant her brothers from their birdlike forms. While this silence is undoubtedly disempowering in some ways as she cannot defend herself from persecution and accusations of wickedness, here I argue that the choice to remain silent …

A Feminist Case For Leadership, Amanda Sinclair

Amanda Sinclair

No abstract provided.

The High Cost Of Dancing: When The Indian Women's Movement Went After The Devadasis, Teresa Hubel

Teresa Hubel

Introduction: On the other side of patriarchal histories are women who are irrecoverably elusive, whose convictions and the examples their lives might have left to us--their everyday resistances as well as their capitulations to authority--are at some fundamental level lost. These are the vast majority of women who never wrote the history books that shape the manner in which we, at any particular historical juncture, are trained to remember; they did not give speeches that were recorded and carefully collected for posterity; their ideals, sayings, beliefs, and approaches to issues were not painstakingly preserved and then quoted century after century. …

In Pursuit Of Feminist Postfeminism And The Blessings Of Buttercup, Teresa Hubel

Teresa Hubel

Introduction: I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking that the term “postfeminism” is often and perhaps most frequently used—by the mainstream media generally and by actual people—as a kind of casual dismissal of feminism that comes implicitly coupled with the suggestion that the cutting-edge place to be these days, with regard to women, is the one where the old victim mentality has been sloughed off and a new flying-free-of-those-chains approach to gender in all its diversity and in all its equal opportunity has been boldly embraced. Given the terms of this unstated argument, any criticism of this postfeminism automatically …

Defying Borders: Transforming Learning Through Collaborative Feminist Organizing And Interdisciplinary, Transnational Pedagogy, Terri Carney, Margaretha Geertsema Sligh, Ann M. Savage, Ageeth Sluis

Ageeth Sluis

The authors provide a case study of how a group of faculty members was able to initiate a transformation in student learning and institutional structures at a small university in the Midwestern U.S. through the introduction of collaborative feminist organizing and pedagogy. It details faculty-led initiatives that set the stage for innovative teaching and learning, and it describes the authors' experience in the face of resistance when introducing a global women's human rights course into the university's new core curriculum. Because of its divers, interdisciplinary and transnational content, this course challenged deeply ingrained disciplinary and pedagogical borders of both traditional …

Women's Studies At Umass Boston: Celebrates 25 Years 1973-1998, Sherry H. Penney, Jean Mcmahon Humez

Sherry Penney

What follows is an impressionistic overview of our program's first twenty five years, derived in part from our archives and in part from our collective recollections, and written by the current program director. As with any celebratory institutional history, it makes no claim to objectivity. Our aim is to look back at the main lines of our growth and development, and in so doing to acknowledge many of the individuals who have contributed to the building of the program over time. We gratefully acknowledge the work of our first archivist, UMass Women's Studies / Sociology graduate dian fitzpatrick who, in …

Popular Depression: How Literature Is Affecting The Female Image, Samantha Bloodworth

Samantha Murillo

This paper contemplates traditional representations of females in literature throughout history for the purposes of examining the effects produced upon women by linking traditional representations to increased depression rates among teenage girls and women. Specifically, I will be asserting that the consistent and frequent portrayal of weak women is causing females to be more inclined to identify themselves as depressed. This paper will be focusing on the works of Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, and Stephanie Myers and discussing their respective female characters by examining the language and cultural practices that create Western concepts of femininity to demonstrate how these characters intensify …

La Feminidad Como Objeto Artístico. Un Apunte Sobre Clayton Cubitt Y Su “Hysterical Literature”, Mariado Hinojosa

Mariado Hinojosa

No abstract provided.

Ethical Reasons And Political Commitments, Lisa Rivera

Lisa Rivera

Political commitments to resist oppression play a central role in the moral lives of many people. Such commitments are also a source of ethical reasons. They influence and organize ethical beliefs, emotions and reasons in an ongoing way. Political commitments to address oppression often contain a concern for the dignity and well-being of others and the objects of political commitments often have value, according to ideal moral theories, such as Kantian and utilitarian theory. However, ideal moral theories do not fully explain the ethical reasons political commitments engender. First, ideal moral theories do not explain the normative priority that agents …

Defying Borders: Transforming Learning Through Collaborative Feminist Organizing And Interdisciplinary, Transnational Pedagogy, Terri Carney, Margaretha Geertsema Sligh, Ann M. Savage, Ageeth Sluis

Margaretha Geertsema-Sligh

The authors provide a case study of how a group of faculty members was able to initiate a transformation in student learning and institutional structures at a small university in the Midwestern U.S. through the introduction of collaborative feminist organizing and pedagogy. It details faculty-led initiatives that set the stage for innovative teaching and learning, and it describes the authors' experience in the face of resistance when introducing a global women's human rights course into the university's new core curriculum. Because of its divers, interdisciplinary and transnational content, this course challenged deeply ingrained disciplinary and pedagogical borders of both traditional …

Defying Borders: Transforming Learning Through Collaborative Feminist Organizing And Interdisciplinary, Transnational Pedagogy, Terri Carney, Margaretha Geertsema Sligh, Ann M. Savage, Ageeth Sluis

Ann M. Savage

The authors provide a case study of how a group of faculty members was able to initiate a transformation in student learning and institutional structures at a small university in the Midwestern U.S. through the introduction of collaborative feminist organizing and pedagogy. It details faculty-led initiatives that set the stage for innovative teaching and learning, and it describes the authors' experience in the face of resistance when introducing a global women's human rights course into the university's new core curriculum. Because of its divers, interdisciplinary and transnational content, this course challenged deeply ingrained disciplinary and pedagogical borders of both traditional …

Defying Borders: Transforming Learning Through Collaborative Feminist Organizing And Interdisciplinary, Transnational Pedagogy, Terri Carney, Margaretha Geertsema Sligh, Ann M. Savage, Ageeth Sluis

Terri M. Carney

The authors provide a case study of how a group of faculty members was able to initiate a transformation in student learning and institutional structures at a small university in the Midwestern U.S. through the introduction of collaborative feminist organizing and pedagogy. It details faculty-led initiatives that set the stage for innovative teaching and learning, and it describes the authors' experience in the face of resistance when introducing a global women's human rights course into the university's new core curriculum. Because of its divers, interdisciplinary and transnational content, this course challenged deeply ingrained disciplinary and pedagogical borders of both traditional …

Spirit Injury And Feminism: Expanding The Discussion, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

To discuss spirit injury, it is at first necessary to articulate a space in the theoretical diaspora to conceptualize spirit injury as a concept deeply tied to the historical tradition of several theoretical frameworks. “Spirit injury” is a phrase popularized by critical race feminist Adrien Katherine Wing. It is a term utilized in critical race feminism (CRF) that brings together insights from critical legal studies (CLS) and critical race theory (CRT). Wing’s training is as a lawyer and legal scholar, not as a communication scholar, yet her work may help communication scholars more keenly theorize harm and violence. Her scholarship …

The "Rich Bitch": Class And Gender On The Real Housewives Of New York City, Michael J. Lee

Michael J Lee

This project offers the opportunity to examine the ways in which normative conceptions of class and gender cohere to produce an archetypal, trans-historical villain, what we term “the rich bitch.” In this essay, we employ the concept of irony to analyze how Bravo'sThe Real Housewives of New York Citycreates rich women as objects of cultural derision, well-heeled jesters in a populist court. The show primes its savvy, upscale audience to judge the extravagance of female scapegoats harshly in tough economic times. The housewives' class and gender flops are inter-related on the show. The lure of class status produces inconsiderate mothers. …

Imagining Woman Otherwise, Or Nothing: Sexuation As Discourse In Lacanian Thought, Rahna Carusi

Rahna M Carusi

My dissertation looks at the connections between Lacan’s four discourses and the sexuation graph in order to claim that sexuation is discursive and that, as Lacan presents it with the phallus as its quilting point, the sexuation graph is a narrative based on patriarchal hegemony, which is one of many possible narratives. I argue that through the hysteric’s discourse and a removal of the phallus as the Symbolic-Imaginary quilting point, we can begin to formulate new narratives of sexuated subjectivities. The textual objects I use for this project are literary and filmic works where women are the central topic or …

Surviving The Waterless Flood: Feminism And Ecofeminsim In Margaret Atwood’S The Handmaid’S Tale, Oryx And Crake, And The Year Of The Flood, Karen Stein

Karen F Stein

No abstract provided.

Carmen Naranjo, Cesar Valverde

Cesar Valverde

No abstract provided.

“El Humorismo Gráfico De Maitena Burundarena: De Lo Local A Lo Global; De Los Estereotipos A La Subversión”, Gema Pérez-Sánchez

Gema Pérez-Sánchez

No abstract provided.

Forest Of Eyes: Selected Poetry Of Tada Chimako, Jeffrey Angles

Jeffrey Angles

One of Japan's most important modern poets, Tada Chimako (1930-2003) gained prominence in her native country for her sensual, surreal poetry, and fantastic imagery. Although Tada's writing is an essential part of postwar Japanese poetry, her use of themes and motifs from European, Near Eastern, and Mediterranean history, mythology, and literature, as well as her sensitive explorations of women's inner lives make her very much a poet of the world. Forest of Eyes offers English-language readers their first opportunity to read a wide selection from Tada's extraordinary oeuvre, including nontraditional free verse, poems in the traditional forms of tanka and …

Problematic Paradice: Margaret Atwood’S Oryx And Crake, Karen Stein

Karen F Stein

No abstract provided.

Scheherazade In Dystopia: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Karen Stein

Karen F Stein

No abstract provided.

The Local Is Global: Broker For Human Rights “Florence Kitchelt, Connecticut Peace Activist And Feminist,” 1920-1961, Danelle L. Moon

Danelle L. Moon

In this paper, I will explore the role of local peace activist and feminist, Florence Ledyard Kitchelt (1874-1961) in supporting social justice, equality, and world peace. In 1924 Kitchelt accepted a paid position with the Connecticut League of Nation’s Association (CLNA), and for nearly twenty years she served as secretary and director of the organization. Working through the CLNA she canvassed the state promoting peace education and to building support for the League of Nations and the World Court. In 1925 she traveled to Geneva to study the League of Nations and attended the Assembly. Between the wars she worked …

The Cleavage Commotion: How The Press Covered Senator Hillary Clinton’S Campaign, Karen Stein

Karen F Stein

No abstract provided.

Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems Of Hiromi Itō, Jeffrey Angles

Jeffrey Angles

Itō, born in 1955 in Tokyo, is one of the most important and dynamic poets of contemporary Japanese literature. After her sensational debut in the late 1970s, she emerged as the foremost voice of the wave of women's poetry that swept Japan in the 1980s, writing about the female body, sexuality, abortion, migration, and international displacement with a frankness that revolutionized the way that poetry was being written in Japan. To date, she has published more than a dozen collections of poetry, several novels, and numerous books of essays. This book provides the first retrospective of Itō's career in English …

Wss Co-Sponsored Program Looks At Gender Stereotypes, Daina Dickman

Daina Dickman, MA, MLIS, AHIP

Feminist Publishing Subject Of Wss Program, Daina Dickman

Daina Dickman, MA, MLIS, AHIP

Gender Matters: Making The Case For Trans Inclusion, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The transgender communities are producing an important and nuanced critique of our gender system. For community members, the project is self-constitutive and, therefore, has an immediacy that also marks the efforts of other marginalized groups who have attempted to make sense of the world through description, interrogation, and, ultimately, a program for transformation. The transgender project also has universalizing elements because, existing within the gender system, each one of us embodies a particular gender articulation. It is through this articulation that we define ourselves in relation to the gender we were assigned at birth, the gender we choose, the gender …

Storming Politics: San José Women In The “Feminist Capital, 1975-2006,, Danelle L. Moon

Danelle L. Moon

No abstract provided.