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

Reproducing The Homonormative Family: Neoliberalism, Queer Theory And Same-Sex Reproductive Law, Eliza Garwood Feb 2016

Reproducing The Homonormative Family: Neoliberalism, Queer Theory And Same-Sex Reproductive Law, Eliza Garwood

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper seeks to highlight the often overlooked interconnectivity of the cultural sphere and the economic sphere, particularly focusing on same-sex reproductive law and neoliberalism. Using The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, specifically highlighting its implications for same-sex couples, this examination demonstrates the way that policy and legislation frequently echo normative ways of being, encouraging the “good”, productive neoliberal citizen and/or family. This article is informed by Foucault’s notions of governmentality and biopower, problematising this limiting legislation, arguing that it is grounded on an internalised ideal of the traditional family, discouraging more transgressive or creative family formations. Specifically, I …


Trauma, Shame And Performance: Towards A New Topography Of Affects In Black Queer Identities, Maite Escudero-Alías Jan 2016

Trauma, Shame And Performance: Towards A New Topography Of Affects In Black Queer Identities, Maite Escudero-Alías

Journal of International Women's Studies

Haitian American feminist and lesbian activist MilDred Gerestant has become one of the most acclaimed gender performers who best illustrates the malleability of gender, race and sexuality in the reconstruction of black queer identities. Drawing on interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks like trauma studies, queer theory and affect theory, my contribution analyses MilDred’s gender performances as creative attempts to surpass negative affects often attached to minority identities. By exploring the affect of shame as a productive enactment of transformation and hope, rather than as a source of numbness and suffering, this article aims to offer an alternative epistemological paradigm of feminist feeling …


Reading As Act Of Queer Love: The Role Of Intimacy In The “Readerly” Contract, Lee Ronald Jan 2013

Reading As Act Of Queer Love: The Role Of Intimacy In The “Readerly” Contract, Lee Ronald

Journal of International Women's Studies

The following paper has been revised from my 2001 MA thesis, which asked ‘Is it possible to define a strategy for reading queer?’ This includes an investigation of how the traditionally stable categories of reader/text/author may be redefined by queer strategies that instead force instability and flux. In the three years that have elapsed since first conceiving of this piece, I argue that the potential of queer reading is still one that has not been adequately explored. As I acknowledge, ‘whilst the queer does flag the fluctuating nature of sexual identity… it may also be used to unpack broader patterns …


Intersectionality Queer Studies And Hybridity: Methodological Frameworks For Social Research, Aristea Fotopoulou Jan 2013

Intersectionality Queer Studies And Hybridity: Methodological Frameworks For Social Research, Aristea Fotopoulou

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article seeks to draw links between intersectionality and queer studies as epistemological strands by examining their common methodological tasks and by tracing some similar difficulties of translating theory into research methods. Intersectionality is the systematic study of the ways in which differences such as race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and other sociopolitical and cultural identities interrelate. Queer theory, when applied as a distinct methodological approach to the study of gender and sexuality, has sought to denaturalise categories of analysis and make normativity visible. By examining existing research projects framed as ‘queer’ alongside ones that use intersectionality, I consider the …