Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

"Abortion Will Deprive You Of Happiness!"Soviet Reproductive Politics In The Post-Stalin Era, Amy E. Randall

History

This article examines Soviet reproductive politics after the Communist regime legalized abortion in 1955. The regime's new abortion policy did not result in an end to the condemnation of abortion in official discourse. The government instead launched an extensive campaign against abortion. Why did authorities bother legalizing the procedure if they still disapproved of it so strongly? Using archival sources, public health materials, and medical as well as popular journals to investigate the antiabortion campaign, this article argues that the Soviet government sought to regulate gender and sexuality through medical intervention and health "education" rather than prohibition and force in …

Women’S Work, Stephanie M. Wildman

Gender and Sexuality Studies @ SCU

In 1982, when Lillian Garland, a receptionist at a West Los Angeles branch of California Federal Savings and Loan, took maternity leave to have a baby, she didn’t plan on spending several months away from work. But Garland suffered complications; the doctor delivered her daughter by Caesarean section and prescribed three months’ leave.

When Garland sought to return to work at Cal Fed, the bank told her that her job had been filled; no other positions were available. Garland, a single mother and now unemployed, couldn’t pay the rent on her apartment and was evicted. She agreed to let the …

Homelessness And The Mobile Shelter System: Public Transportation As Shelter, Laura Nichols, Fernando Cázares

Sociology

Those without housing often use public space differently than those who are housed. This can cause dilemmas for and conflicts among public officials as guardians of public space and goods. In this paper, we look at one such utilisation of space from the perspective of those who board 24-hour public transportation routes and ride the bus all night for shelter. We describe the results of a preliminary survey, observations and informal conversations with unhoused riders on the bus over three nights in one county in the United States. We found that a substantial number of the unhoused riders we surveyed …

Gender, Genre And Slavery: The Other Rowson, Rowson's Others, Eileen Elrod

English

Readers familiar with Susanna Rowson as the author of Charlotte Temple (1791, 1794) do not think of her as an abolitionist. But in 1805 Rowson articulated an anti-slavery position in Universal Geography, a textbook addressed to schoolgirls such as those she herself taught at the Young Ladies Academy in Boston. Condemning those who viewed sugar and slavery as a winning equation that would make them rich, Rowson denounced the “purchase and sale of human beings,” and insisted that anyone “enlightened by reason and religion” would oppose the “horrid trade,” and see it as she did, as “a disgrace to humanity.”1 …

Trade, Time, And The Calculus Of Risk In Early Pacific Travel Writing, Michelle Burnham

English

In the 2005 Common-place issue on early America and the Pacific, historians Edward Gray and Alan Taylor observe that the Atlantic studies paradigm, which moves "beyond nations and states as the defining subjects of historical understanding, turning instead to large scale processes" is also particularly "useful for understanding Pacific history" since "dis- ease, migration, trade, and war effected [sic] the Pacific in much the way they effected [sic] the Atlantic." A similar transfer of the Atlantic world model to the Pacific informs David Igler s insistence that, like the Atlantic, the Pacific world was "international before it became national."1 Igler …

The Poetics Of Professionalism Among Dialysis Technicians, Laura L. Ellingson

Women's and Gender Studies

The vast majority of care for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients is provided by skilled (but not formally educated) paraprofessional technicians. Using Goffman's (1959) framing of the performance of self in everyday discourse, this study examines discourse from dialysis technicians and technical aides to explore these paraprofessionals' construction and performance of professional identity and professional communication within the context of an outpatient dialysis clinic. Themes of professionalism—individualized care, vigilance, teamwork, and emotion management—are illustrated via poetic transcription of interviews with technicians. I contend that such representation offers validity equal to that of traditional research accounts while embodying alternative representational strengths.

"The Universal Alliance Of All Peoples": Romantic Socialists, The Human Family, And The Defense Of Empire During The July Monarchy, 1830-1848, Naomi J. Andrews

History

This article documents the procolonial rhetoric among romantic socialists in France during the July Monarchy (1830-48), demonstrating its pervasiveness. It argues that these years must be highlighted as key to the transition from eighteenth-century universalist ideas of humanity toward taxonomies of national, racial, and sexual difference that underpinned the rationale of empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. It explores the views on colonialism espoused by socialists such as Etienne Cabet, Pierre Leroux, Constantin Pecqueur, and Jean Reynaud; situates them in the broad socialist consensus on empire; and demonstrates the relationship between these men's socialism and their colonialism. …