Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Basil Bunting And The Challenges Of Literary Translation From Persian Into English: A Case Of Rūdhakī, Emadeddin Naghipour

Languages and Cultures Publications

The purpose of this study is to analyze Basil Bunting's literary translation. It turns to the theories of translation by Steiner, Benjamin, and Eco, among others, to study Bunting’s translation of Rūdhakī’s ‘Dandaniyyeh’ poem, a 10th century qaṣīdah replete with mesmerizing musicality and with a form galvanized in its originating language, time, and locale. A deep contrastive analysis of its translation into English by the poet, Bunting, shows the difficulties that can arise from literal translations of classical Persian poetry.

Sport, Space And Gender: Embodying Alternate Girlhoods With The Wolves, Kim Solga

Department of English Publications

What does it mean to throw like a girl? If we empower girls to throw – and to kick, to jump, to fly through the air like never before – how does that space-making impact the humans into which they grow? Does staging girls at sport help us to understand sport as a space-making activity every girls needs, and to which every girl has a right? This article reflects on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Wolves as it explores the relationship between the practice of sport and the practice of gender.

Millennial Representations Of Medieval Religious Schism In Western Media: An Iconographic Analysis Of Dante’S Inferno 28 And The Twenty-First Century Films Dracula Untold And Kingdom Of Heaven, Nafise Shajani

Languages and Cultures Publications

Dante Alighieri’s Inferno 28 is the place of the sowers of discord and scandal who are responsible for causing a split within their own communities; among them in the ninth bolge of the eighth circle is Muhammad whose mutilated body represents the division he brought to Christianity. A historical contextualization of the Inferno, however, confirms that the hostility between Christianity and Islam had emerged earlier with the rise of Islam as a political power in the seventh century. This paper examines Medieval and twenty-first century visual representations of this division within Christianity, which mirror the schism within Inferno 28. …

Final Experiential Learning Report: The Stratford Festival Archives & Ecuador Women’S Empowerment Trip, Julia Campbell

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

To fulfil my SASAH experiential-learning requirement, I worked as an intern at the Stratford Festival Archives in 2017 and travelled to Ecuador as part of a Women’s Empowerment trip in 2018. At the Festival, my colleague and I were responsible for designing the Archives’ first-ever digital catalogue. We researched the provenance of each costume piece, which often included looking through design bibles and conducting informal interviews. We then photographed and wrote detailed descriptions for each costume piece. By the end of the summer, my colleague and I had written over 300 complete entries, laying the groundwork for future interns. My …

Virus Interruptus: An Arendtian Exploration Of Political World Building In Pandemic Times, Rita A. Gardiner Ph.D, Katy Fulfer

Education Publications

Building upon a series of blog posts and conversations, two feminist scholars explore how political community, trust, responsibility, and solidarity are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore the ways in which we can engage in political world-building during pandemic times through the work of Hannah Arendt. Following Arendt’s notion of the world as the space for human togetherness, we ask: how can we respond to COVID-19’s interruptions to the familiarity of daily life and our relationship to public space? By extending relational accounts of public health and organizational ethics, we critique a narrow view of solidarity that focuses on …

(Un)Filtered Females: Exploring The Changing Representation Of Women In Cigarette Advertising, 1920-1940, Sophia Belyk

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

Throughout the first half of twentieth century, the act of smoking transitioned from being an exclusively male to a predominantly female practice. Indeed, by the end of the twentieth century merely being female was considered a serious risk to developing a smoking habit. This cultural shift is reflected in contemporary cigarette advertising, in which women begin as attractive accessories to male smokers and gradually become depicted as smoking independently. These advertisements were actively engaged with the social worlds of the women they targeted, drawing upon their contemporary concerns and values, namely those of women’s liberation and an increased attention placed …

To Include Or Not To Include: Men And The Liberian Women's Peace Hut Initiatives Towards Transformational Justice, Florence Wullo Anfaara

Africa Western Collaborations Day 2020 Abstracts

No abstract provided.

Experiences Of Social Reproduction Among Migrant Women In The Brong-Ahafo Region Of Ghana, Jemima Nomunume Baada

Africa Western Collaborations Day 2020 Abstracts

No abstract provided.

Politics Versus Policies: Fourth Wave Feminist Critiques Of Higher Education’S Response To Sexual Violence, Rita A. Gardiner Ph.D, Michelle Shockness, Jennifer Almquist, Hayley Finn

Education Publications

This article uses the lens of fourth wave feminism to examine media accounts of institutional and student responses in two cases of sexual violence at institutions of higher education. Competing discourses reveal a disconnect between what institutions say they do and students’ actual experiences of the institutional handling of sexual violence cases. When policies, actions, and values are not fully aligned, institutions of higher education are unable to respond to societal and institutional injustices. Hence, recommendations for better alignment between institutional values and actions are proposed.

Politicizing The Absence Of Sex: Asexuality As A Tool For Radical Feminism, Rikki N. Bergen

Women's Studies and Feminist Research Presentations

No abstract provided.

Defined By Both Absence And Presence: Virginity As A Marker Of Girlhood, Rikki N. Bergen

Women's Studies and Feminist Research Presentations

Through reference to scholars from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, this essay will explore the cultural obsession of using virginity as a marker of girlhood or womanhood, and the effect that this has on women and girls.

A Directors Perspective Of Iconoclast Collective, Diyana Noory

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

In February 2016, Diyana co-founded ICONOCLAST with five of her good friends from the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities (SASAH): Sama Al-Zanoon, Nara Monteiro, Emma Cohen, and Emily Wood. ICON is an arts and culture collective based at Western, and it is funded by SASAH and the Arts and Humanities Students Council (AHSC). Diyana and her co-founders had already been drawn to each other by their shared interests in art, culture, and progressive politics, and they wanted to create a community centered on these values. Here, Diyana reflects on her experiences as Director of ICON for …

Pornography: For Consumption, Not Creation: The Radical Nature Of The Commercial Sex Industry, Rikki N. Bergen

Women's Studies and Feminist Research Presentations

With use of texts by Adrienne Rich and Gayle Rubin, this essay will consider the moral panic produced by conservative interpretations of the sex industry and how consumerist acts of sex are inherently radical.

Building And Maintaining Lgbtq+ Picture Book Collections, Alissa Droog, Danielle Bettridge, Alyssa R. Martin, Ashleigh Yates-Mackay

FIMS Publications

The LGBTQ+ community has had to continuously fight for their rights, including their right to be represented in the library. This toolkit provides instruction on how to develop and manage a library collection of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books. It is split into four sections that include a guide to evaluating materials, recommended picture books, a guide to fighting censorship, and a list of recommended resources.

Not So Charming: Analyzing Disney’S Non-Hegemonic Male Characters, Rikki N. Bergen

Women's Studies and Feminist Research Presentations

Focusing entirely on the 1991, animated, edition of the Disney story of Beauty and the Beast this essay navigates Disney's use of non-hegemonic male figures as a comedic outlet contributes to the power imbalances maintained between different displays of masculinity.

Hannah And Her Sisters: Theorizing Gender And Leadership Through The Lens Of Feminist Phenomenology, Rita A. Gardiner Ph.D

Education Publications

This article explores how feminist phenomenology can add conceptual richness to gender and leadership theorizing. Although some leadership scholars engage with phenomenological and existential inquiry, feminist phenomenology receives far less attention. By addressing this critical gap in the scholarship, this article illustrates how feminist phenomenology can enrich gender and leadership scholarship. Specifically, by engaging with the work of four women existential phenomenologists - Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young, and Sara Ahmed, the rich diversity of phenomenological inquiry is explored. First, Arendt shows the benefits of conceptualizing leadership as collective action, rather than as concentrated in one person, …

‘Innocence Is As Innocence Does’: Anglo-Irish Politics, Masculinity And The De Cobain Gross Indecency Scandal, 1891-3, Cal Murgu

FIMS Publications

This article reconstructs the circumstances of the little-known Edward S. W. De Cobain gross indecency scandal in the early 1890s. I examine its significance to Victorian notions of class, Anglo-Irish politics and gender performativity through an analysis of newspaper reporting, personal correspondence and court documents. Edward De Cobain, Member of Parliament for East Belfast, became the focus of attention after serious allegations of attempted buggery were launched against him. De Cobain absconded from Britain upon word of the charges, but he continued to maintain his innocence while abroad until his eventual incarceration in 1893. In this article I revisit this …

Beyond Borders: Nature, Revelation, And Identity In Atwood’S Surfacing, Emily Denommé

2016 Undergraduate Awards

Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing studies the effects of the delineation of identity at a time in Canadian history where the question of Canadian national identity was evolving, becoming a marker that was more clearly defined and more consciously sought out by Canadian artists and citizens. Atwood’s novel can be considered in light of these historical developments, but Surfacing’s interest in the establishment of borders of exclusion and inclusion is not an affirmation of the positive effects such identifiers can bring. Instead of the perhaps typical celebration of the collective identity that such group identifiers as nationality can bring, this novel reveals …

A Revised Feminist Analysis Of Disordered Eating And Weight Preoccupation, Angel Leung

2016 Undergraduate Awards

Eating disorders (EDs) are often emblematized by the upper-class young white woman anorexic or bulimic, an archetype that constructs disordered eating as pathological and depicts it in a singular and comprehensible manner. Personal narratives of body dissatisfaction (rooted in both literature and qualitative research), as well as my own subjectivity as a poor East Asian-Canadian woman, will equip me with the theoretical frameworks and insights by which I problematize the homogenization of problematic eating. Subscribing to the tradition of interjecting first-person perspectives into research that is so characteristic to feminist theory, I demonstrate how a subject as visceral and commanding …

Through Google-Colored Glass(Es): Design, Emotion, Class, And Wearables As Commodity And Control, Safiya Umoja Noble, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

This chapter discusses the implications of wearable technologies like Google Glass that function as a tool for occupying, commodifying, and profiting from the bio- logical, psychological, and emotional data of its wearers and those who fall within its gaze. We argue that Google Glass privileges an imaginary of unbridled exploration and intrusion into the physical and emotional space of others. Glass’s recognizable esthetic and outward-facing camera has elicited intense emotional response, partic- ularly when “exploration” has taken place in areas of San Francisco occupied by residents who were finding themselves priced out or evicted from their homes to make way …

Food Figures At The Forks: The Intersection Of Feminist And (Post)Colonial Politics Of Food Imagery In Kiran Desai’S The Inheritance Of Loss, Maryam Golafshani

2016 Undergraduate Awards

In Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture, Anita Mannur argues that food offers ‘an alternative register through which to theorize gender, sexuality, class, and race’ in literature by and about the South Asian diaspora. The use of food in these texts is not merely a figurative flourish, but rather an ‘important vector of critical analysis in negotiating the gendered, racialized, and classed bases of collective and individual identity’ of South Asian bodies. Food is always already political; it must not merely be tasted, but must be read in terms of how it (re)presents and (re)produces intersecting power differentials. …

Towards Romantic Syncretism: Liminal And Transitory Women In The Work Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Michelle Bunton

2016 Undergraduate Awards

Throughout his career, Dante Gabriel Rossetti struggled with a poetic and visual synthesis of the ideal with the sensual, exploring and attempting to resolve the complex paradox of Victorian sexuality, a feat not easily achieved during an era of such fervent morality. Developing his own Romantic Syncretism, Rossetti presents a synthesis of multifaceted symbolism and allegory in his work, combining pagan and Christian themes to create a liminal space in which the divided natures of his female subjects, their object versus subject-hood, are unified. His approach to Christian symbology, via a fleshy and aesthetic representation of the female form, retains …

Dutiful Daughters (Or Not) And The Sins Of The Fathers In Iqbalunnisa Hussain’S Purdah And Polygamy, Teresa Hubel

Faculty Publications

Poet and editor Eunice De Souza has described the neglect of 19th and 20th century writing by women as a “distortion” of “the history of Indian writing in English which is far more rich and varied than the accounts in these histories would suggest.” Iqbalunnisa Hussain's 1944 novel Purdah and Polygamy , though superbly clever in its irony and always brave in its depiction of injustice, is one such piece of literature that has fallen away from history. Against the historical representation of Muslim women as followers of the minority politics of their men, this essay situates Hussain within a …

Pursuing Freedom: Simone De Beauvoir And Hannah Arendt, Rita A. Gardiner

Women's Studies and Feminist Research Publications

How do we judge what is right while, at the same time, respect the freedom of others? In considering this question, I bring Simone de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt into dialogue to better understand how the pursuit of freedom necessitates a willingness to judge others. In my discussion, I explore how these writers treat the themes of ambiguity, oppression, and revolution. By comparing how they relates these themes to freedom, we see how liberty is interconnected with personal, accountability and a willingness to question our beliefs

From Tawa'if To Wife? Making Sense Of Bollywood's Courtesan Genre, Teresa Hubel

Department of English Publications

Introduction:

Although constituting what might be described as only a thimbleful of water in the ocean that is Hindi cinema, the courtesan or tawa'if film is a distinctive Indian genre, one that has no real equivalent in the Western film industry. With Indian and diaspora audiences generally, it has also enjoyed a broad popularity, its music and dance sequences being among the most valued in Hindi film, their specificities often lovingly remembered and reconstructed by fans. Were you, for example, to start singing "Dil Cheez Kya Hai" or "Yeh Kya Hua" especially to a group of north Indians over the …

Critique Of The Discourse Of Authentic Leadership, Rita A. Gardiner Ms

Women's Studies and Feminist Research Publications

This article considers the new management discourse of authentic leadership is deeply problematic because it fails to take into account how social and historical circumstances affect a person’s ability to be a leader. It examines some of the arguments made by proponents of authentic leadership theory, and contrasts these claims about authenticity with Hannah Arendt’s concept of uniqueness, as well as considering Heidegger’s notion of authenticity as resoluteness. It also looks at the ways in which authentic leadership fails to address issues related to power and privilege by looking specifically at how silence operates. The author argues that it is …

A Mutiny Of Silence: Swarnakumari Devi's Sati, Teresa Hubel

Department of English Publications

Aim:
To discuss how Swarnakumari Devi's family connections as much as her sex contributed to why her work faded from the memory of nationalist India.

Introduction:

The historical context that helped to produce the writing of Swarna-kumari Devi Ghosal also gives us a glimmer into some of the possible reasons why her work faded from the literary memory of nationalist India. Some of that context is hinted at in the back pages of her collection of short stories in English, published in 1919 by Ganesh and Co., Madras. Reminding us of the inescapable connection between capitalism and knowledge, these back …

Harm Or Mere Inconvenience? Denying Women Emergency Contraception, Carolyn Mcleod

Philosophy Publications

This paper addresses the likely impact on women of being denied emergency contraception (EC) by pharmacists who conscientiously refuse to provide it. A common view—defended by Elizabeth Fenton and Loren Lomasky, among others—is that these refusals inconvenience rather than harm women so long as the women can easily get EC somewhere else nearby. I argue from a feminist perspective that the refusals harm women even when they can easily get EC somewhere else nearby.

Referral In The Wake Of Conscientious Objection To Abortion, Carolyn Mcleod

Philosophy Publications

Currently, the preferred accommodation for conscientious objection to abortion in medicine is to allow the objector to refuse to accede to the patient's request so long as the objector refers the patient to a physician who performs abortions. The referral part of this arrangement is controversial, however. Pro-life advocates claim that referrals make objectors complicit in the performance of acts that they, the objectors, find morally offensive. McLeod argues that the referral requirement is justifiable, although not in the way that people usually assume.

Infertility And Moral Luck: The Politics Of Women Blaming Themselves For Infertility, Carolyn Mcleod, Julie Ponesse

Philosophy Publications

Infertility can be an agonizing experience, especially for women. And, much of the agony has to do with luck: with how unlucky one is in being infertile, and in how much luck is involved in determining whether one can weather the storm of infertility and perhaps have a child in the end. We argue that bad luck associated with being infertile is often bad moral luck for women. The infertile woman often blames herself or is blamed by others for what is happening to her, even when she cannot control or prevent what is happening to her. She has simply …