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

Breaking The Gender Binary: Feminism And Transgressive Female Desire In Lucía Etxebarria's Beatriz Y Los Cuerpos Celestes And La Eva Futura/La Letra Futura, Lauren Applegate Jan 2013

Breaking The Gender Binary: Feminism And Transgressive Female Desire In Lucía Etxebarria's Beatriz Y Los Cuerpos Celestes And La Eva Futura/La Letra Futura, Lauren Applegate

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The popular texts of Spanish author Lucía Etxebarria have created a polemical social phenomenon in contemporary Spain for their blatant depiction of a world of violence, drugs, and experimental sex of the late-millennium youth culture of Generación X. These topics, along with Etxebarria's public persona and feminist ideology, have fomented much public criticism and given rise to discussion of the current status of feminism, gender norms, and women's authorship in Spain today. This article analyzes Etxebarria's novel Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes and her collection of feminist essays La Eva futura/La letra futura, demonstrating that Etxebarria's depiction of female desire …


The Methodological Imperatives Of Feminist Ethnography, Richelle D. Schrock Jan 2013

The Methodological Imperatives Of Feminist Ethnography, Richelle D. Schrock

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Feminist ethnography does not have a single, coherent definition and is caught between struggles over the definition and goals of feminism and the multiple practices known collectively as ethnography. Towards the end of the 1980s, debates emerged that problematized feminist ethnography as a productive methodology and these debates still haunt feminist ethnographers today. In this article, I provide a concise historiography of feminist ethnography that summarizes both its promises and its vulnerabilities. I address the three major challenges I argue feminist ethnographers currently face, which include responding productively to feminist critiques of representing "others," accounting for feminisms' commitment to social …


(Re)Pinning Our Hopes On Social Media: Pinterest And Women's Discursive Strategies, Katherine Gantz Jan 2013

(Re)Pinning Our Hopes On Social Media: Pinterest And Women's Discursive Strategies, Katherine Gantz

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Pinterest, the theme-based image-sharing website, has seen a predominantly female usership since its launch in 2010. Unique in both its design and its demographics in the US, the site has generated distinctive patterns of use, posing new questions about how women are claiming this particular spot in social media as their own. Supported by both feminist linguistic and social science research, this article undertakes a discussion of Pinterest's implicit and explicit gendered protocols of usership, which result in what I argue is an emerging women's online rhetoric. Through the examination of images and accompanying comments taken from the site, I …


Was That Ethical? Feminist Critics’ Response To The “Queerness” Of Modernist Women’S Writing, Meridith M. Kruse Jan 2013

Was That Ethical? Feminist Critics’ Response To The “Queerness” Of Modernist Women’S Writing, Meridith M. Kruse

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article employs insights from contemporary theories of ethical reading to conduct a case study of feminist critics’ reaction to the queerness of modernist women’s writing. My aim is to develop a set of practices and principles for ethically responding to queerness in literary texts and everyday life, as well as contribute feminist acumen to the current claim that the humanities are the best site to train students how to do justice to texts. The introduction utilizes theories of ethical reading set forth by Jane Gallop and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to develop a preliminary framework of ethical response. The subsequent …


From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner Jan 2012

From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Staying Home While Studying Abroad: Anti-Imperial Praxis For Globalizing Feminist Visions, Shireen Roshanravan Jan 2012

Staying Home While Studying Abroad: Anti-Imperial Praxis For Globalizing Feminist Visions, Shireen Roshanravan

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This paper hinges on the recognition that when study-abroad opportunities are presented and perceived as a means of access to global perspectives on women and gender, they reduce the problem of US-centrism in Women's Studies to a geographic rather than an epistemic limitation. According to this logic, physical travel away from the United States can serve as an effective method for overcoming US-centrism and attending to the "global," a curricular strategy that Chandra Mohanty and M. Jacqui Alexander call "the cartographic rule of the transnational as always 'elsewhere'" (Mohanty and Alexander 2010, 33). This cartographic rule reinforces hegemonic representations of …


Novas Cartas Portuguesas: The Making Of A Reputation, Ana Margarida Dias Martins Jan 2012

Novas Cartas Portuguesas: The Making Of A Reputation, Ana Margarida Dias Martins

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters), co-authored by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa, was banned in 1972 in Portugal for exploring sensitive issues such as women's oppression under the Catholic patriarchy. Given that police action against the authors soon became the focus of an international feminist protest in 1972-73, existing discussions of the book's reception often focus almost exclusively on what may be called its political life. I propose to approach the book from a new angle, with the purpose of uncovering its theoretical dimension as a literary-critical text that may have played an …


The Problem Of Protection: Rethinking Rhetoric Of Normalizing Surgeries, Amy Falvey Jan 2012

The Problem Of Protection: Rethinking Rhetoric Of Normalizing Surgeries, Amy Falvey

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This essay focuses on the rhetoric of protection that emerges around infants who face the prospect of normalizing surgeries. Frequently, decisions to proceed with normalizing surgeries are made by doctors and parents with "protection" of the infant as a motivating force. "Protection," in such contexts, typically refers to protection of the infant from the inhospitable world that lies in wait for an individual whose body does not conform to social, morphological, and biological norms. While this concern may be valid and important, this essay argues that there are alternative narratives or notions of protection that must also be acknowledged and …


Reflections On Intellectual Hybridity, Kimala Price Jan 2012

Reflections On Intellectual Hybridity, Kimala Price

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Drawing from the growing literature on interdisciplinarity and my own experiences as an intellectual hybrid, I discuss the personal and institutional challenges inherent in crossing disciplinary boundaries in the academy. I argue that boundary crossing is a natural occurrence and that the issue of (inter)disciplinarity is a matter of degree and of determining who gets to define the boundaries. Defining boundaries is not merely an intellectual enterprise, but also a political act that delineates what is, or is not, legitimate scholarship. This issue is especially salient to women's and gender studies during times of economic distress and educational budget cuts.


Questioning Appropriation: Agency And Complicity In A Transnational Feminist Location Politics, Joe Parker Jan 2012

Questioning Appropriation: Agency And Complicity In A Transnational Feminist Location Politics, Joe Parker

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In feminist circles agency is often opposed to complicity and associated with resistance to sexism and patriarchy, yet such binary oppositions make the political stakes of their presumed boundaries difficult to interrogate. By bringing location politics into dialogue with agency theory, boundaries of same/Other and location categories may move from a naturalized ground for political work to the contested center of a politics of resistance. I follow a Foucauldian interpretation of agency to reconsider the ethico-politics of established divisions of self and Other both individually and in terms of social movements. By following Gayatri Spivak, Meyda Yeğenoğlu, and Chandra Mohanty's …


Negotiating The Insider/Outsider Status: Black Feminist Ethnography And Legislative Studies, Nadia E. Brown Jan 2012

Negotiating The Insider/Outsider Status: Black Feminist Ethnography And Legislative Studies, Nadia E. Brown

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This essay bridges the gaps in the literature within legislative studies by illustrating the usefulness of feminist ethnography as a methodological intervention into studying legislative behavior. Black feminist epistemology is a useful tool for making new knowledge claims within an existing body of knowledge. I use anecdotes and examples from my fieldwork in the Maryland state legislature to expose how race and gender impact both the process and the outcome of data collection. I demonstrate how my experience as an African American woman researcher whose work centers on Black women Maryland state legislators, which I situate within Black feminist epistemology, …


The Politics Of Writing, Writing Politics: Virginia Woolf’S A [Virtual] Room Of One’S Own, Tegan Zimmerman Jan 2012

The Politics Of Writing, Writing Politics: Virginia Woolf’S A [Virtual] Room Of One’S Own, Tegan Zimmerman

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This article revisits A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s foundational 1929 text on women’s writing. I examine from a feminist materialist perspective the relevance of Woolf’s notion of a “room” in our globalized and technological twenty-first century. I first review Woolf’s position on the material conditions necessary for women writers in her own time and then the applicability of her thinking for contemporary women writers on a global scale. I emphasize that the politics of writing, and in particular writing by women, that Woolf puts forth gives feminists the necessary tools to reevaluate and rethink women’s writing both online …


Irish American Women: Forgotten First-Wave Feminists, Sally Barr Ebest Jan 2012

Irish American Women: Forgotten First-Wave Feminists, Sally Barr Ebest

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Numerous books have been written about American feminism and its influence on education and society. But none have recognized the key role played by Irish American women in exposing injustice and protecting their rights. Certainly their literary heritage, inherent knowledge of English, and membership in the single largest ethnic group gave them an advantage. But their dual positions as colonized, second-class citizens of their country and their religion gave them their political edge, a trait that has been evident since the Irish first stepped off the boat and that continues to this day. This essay focuses on the first wave …


Caught Between A Rock And A Hard Place: The Title Ix Generation, Mathematics, And The State Of Feminist Quantitative Social Science Research, Jill R. Williams Jan 2012

Caught Between A Rock And A Hard Place: The Title Ix Generation, Mathematics, And The State Of Feminist Quantitative Social Science Research, Jill R. Williams

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In this essay I reflect on the fortieth anniversary of the Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act of 1972 (Title IX), which prohibited discrimination based on sex in federally funded education programs in the United States and inspired educational programs that encourage girls to pursue math and science careers. I argue that despite the feminist underpinnings of Title IX, in recent years feminism has discouraged the advancement of women in math and science by excluding quantitative research from its publications, quantitative researchers from women's and gender studies programs, and quantitative training from its curriculum. I examine my own experience of …


From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner Jan 2012

From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Toril Moi Jan 2011

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Toril Moi

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner Jan 2011

From The Editors, Anna M. Klobucka, Jeannette E. Riley, Catherine Villanueva Gardner

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Amrita Basu Jan 2011

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Amrita Basu

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Jennifer Baumgardner, Amy Richards Jan 2011

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Jennifer Baumgardner, Amy Richards

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Deborah A. Castillo Jan 2011

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Deborah A. Castillo

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Rachel Blau Duplessis Jan 2011

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Rachel Blau Duplessis

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Agnieszka Graff Jan 2011

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Agnieszka Graff

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Elizabeth Grosz Jan 2011

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Elizabeth Grosz

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Joy A. James Jan 2011

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Joy A. James

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Michael Kimmel Jan 2011

Feminism And Feminist Scholarship Today, Michael Kimmel

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Feminist Debate In Taiwan's Buddhism: The Issue Of The Eight Garudhammas, Chiung Hwang Chen Jan 2011

Feminist Debate In Taiwan's Buddhism: The Issue Of The Eight Garudhammas, Chiung Hwang Chen

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In 2001, during an academic conference on Humanistic Buddhism in Taipei, Venerable Shi Zhaohui, accompanied by a few Buddhist clergy and laypeople, tore apart a copy of the Eight Garudhammas (Eight Heavy Rules), regulations that govern the behavior of Buddhist nuns. Zhaohui's symbolic act created instant controversy as Taiwan's Buddhist community argued about the rules' authenticity and other issues within Buddhist monastic affairs. This paper examines the debate over the Eight Garudhammas and situates the debate within Taiwan's cultural terrain as well as the worldwide Buddhist feminist movement. I argue that while Zhaohui's call resulted in the abolishment of the …


Healthism And The Bodies Of Women: Pleasure And Discipline In The War Against Obesity, Talia L. Welsh Jan 2011

Healthism And The Bodies Of Women: Pleasure And Discipline In The War Against Obesity, Talia L. Welsh

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

This paper explores how the discipline required for good health influences female embodiment. It examines the justification in the United States for a war against obesity and the criticism of that war made by Health at Every Size (HAES) proponents. It finds that a "good-health imperative" operates within both the fight against obesity and the size-acceptance movement. I question how such an imperative curtails the range of possibilities for pleasure. The self-monitoring required in eating and exercising for health demands a constant reading of one's behavior as good/healthy or bad/unhealthy. In addition, attention to health achieved through behavior modification draws …


Grappling With Gender: Exploring Masculinity And Gender In The Bodies, Performances, And Emotions Of Scholastic Wrestlers, Phyllis L. Baker, Douglas R. Hotek Jan 2011

Grappling With Gender: Exploring Masculinity And Gender In The Bodies, Performances, And Emotions Of Scholastic Wrestlers, Phyllis L. Baker, Douglas R. Hotek

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

We contribute to the sociology of sport and gender literature with an ethnographic analysis of scholastic wrestling by observing the current climate of masculinity and gender. Our results suggest that it is necessary to understand men and sporting behavior within a broader framework of gender, not just masculinity, because the behavior of high school wrestlers fell along a gender continuum between an orthodox masculinity and femininity. Our exploration of the body, performance, and emotion practices of scholastic wrestlers gives credence to the current critiques of a hegemonic masculinity in men's sports. We show that gender is not dichotomous and that …


New Age Fairy Tales: The Abject Female Hero In El Laberinto Del Fauno And La Rebelión De Los Conejos Mágicos, Patricia Lapolla Swier Jan 2011

New Age Fairy Tales: The Abject Female Hero In El Laberinto Del Fauno And La Rebelión De Los Conejos Mágicos, Patricia Lapolla Swier

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In totalitarian regimes, the Other is marginalized, prosecuted, and often eliminated from the national spectrum. While Spain is just beginning to confront the violations of the post-Civil War era, the nations of the Latin American Southern Cone have continued to struggle with the trauma and memory related to the violence perpetrated by the dictatorship. Through a psychoanalytic reading based on Julia Kristeva's theories of the abject and Joseph Campbell's investigations of myth within the hero's journey, I show how the young female heroes of El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) and La rebelión de los conejos mágicos (The Rabbits' Rebellion) …


The Rise And Fall Of Western Homohysteria, Eric Anderson Jan 2011

The Rise And Fall Of Western Homohysteria, Eric Anderson

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In this essay, I draw upon my pro-feminist background to describe the formulation of the concept of homohysteria and explain its heuristic utility in conceptualizing historical shifts in heterosexual men's gendered regimes. I suggest that in times of high homohysteria, heterosexual men are compelled to align their identities and behaviors with orthodox (hypermasculine) notions of men's masculinity. This is in order to avoid homosexualization. Conversely, heterosexual men retain considerably more gendered freedom in times of low or no homohysteria. I describe this as a cultural process related to homophobia and define the term homohysteria as men's fear of being homosexualized, …