Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Sex Ratio In Mumbai, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

Gender equity has been a prominent aspect of equity concerns in public policy. The gender dimension has led to widespread advocacy and focused attention on equity in other than economic areas, such as education, health, decision-making, violence against women and political participation. The human development approach offers a capability-based approach to gender equity in development that is a departure from traditions focused on income and growth. Gender concerns have given the approach the power and flexibility to encompass aspects of inequality that would otherwise go unremarked. Its sensitivity to gender in turn has made it sensitive to a range of …

Women Of African Descent: Persistence In Completing A Doctorate, Vannetta L. Bailey-Iddrisu

Vannetta L. Bailey-Iddrisu

This study examines the educational persistence of women of African descent (WOAD) in pursuit of a doctorate degree at universities in the southeastern United States. WOAD are women of African ancestry born outside the African continent. These women are heirs to an inner dogged determination and spirit to survive despite all odds (Pulliam, 2003, p. 337).This study used Ellis’s (1997) Three Stages for Graduate Student Development as the conceptual framework to examine the persistent strategies used by these women to persist to the completion of their studies.

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 …

Global Feminism: Feminist Theory’S Cul-De-Sac, Elora Halim Chowdhury

Elora Halim Chowdhury

Global feminism has been critical of the earlier notion of "global sisterhood" and its uncritical attachment to commonalities of women's oppression around the world. However, in this article I argue that global feminism curiously remains inadequately accountable for its differential attitude toward issues of difference and inequality among communities within the U.S. versus those alleged differences and inequalities across the U.S. borders. Consequently, global feminism, using a universal human rights paradigm, constructs for itself the role of the heroic savior, reminiscent of colonialist civilizing mission (Abu-Lughod 2002) and in line with current U.S. imperialist interventions. Strategies for countering this newly …

The Reactionary Road To Free Love: How Doma, State Marriage Amendments And Social Conservatives Undermine Traditional Marriage, Scott Titshaw

Scott Titshaw

Much has been written about the possible effects on different-sex marriage of legally recognizing same-sex marriage. This article looks at the defense of marriage from a different angle: It shows how rejecting same-sex marriage results in political compromise and the proliferation of “marriage light” alternatives (e.g., civil unions, domestic partnerships, or reciprocal beneficiaries) that undermine the unique status of marriage for everyone. In the process, it examines several aspects of the marriage debate in detail. After describing the flexibility of marriage as it has evolved over time, the article focuses on recent state constitutional amendments attempting to stop further development. …

Belief And Performance, Morrison And Me, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

A chapter discussing the lessons I learned from Toni Morrison's THE BLUEST EYE that continue to guide me. The insights gained from that novel have informed my intellectual work and my ability to navigate the U.S. academy.

Reconstructing The Society: Iranian Women's Movement, Esmaeil Zeiny

Esmaeil Zeiny

The condition of women in Iran has been always a controversial issue, subject of much debate, commentary, reporting, and analysis. The Iranian women have traditionally been deprived of a myriad of their basic rights and have suffered from male centered ideologies and male authority that treat women as weak and irrational. The rampant discriminatory policies have also impacted negatively on their lives from the cradle to the grave. The perpetrators are by and large men, and women are always victims in such a patriarchal society. Victimizing women dates back to the pre-Islamic era in Iran as according to Will Durant …

’Reinvigorating The Queer Political Imagination’: A Roundtable With Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, And Karma Chávez Of Against Equality, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Introduction: Left Intellectuals And The Neoliberal University, Margot Weiss, Naomi Greyser

Margot Weiss

Intellectual Inquiry Otherwise: An Interview With Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Margot Weiss

Margot Weiss

Counting The Gaza Dead: False Equivalences, Distorted Dichotomies, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

A critique of disaggregating casualty counts by gender.

Silent Subversions, Derek Dubois

Derek M Dubois

Explores the concept of spectatorship in relation to gender in the earliest period of film history in the United States known as the silent era. Argues that a new mode of spectatorship emerges for women during the 1920s, which employs to advantage the extra-diegetic components of spectacle in theater design, new customized genres for female filmgoers, fandom, and exotic male film stars, such as Rudolph Valentino. Focuses primarily on feminist film theory and on cultural studies as methodological models.

Exiles And Home, Leila Farsakh

Leila Farsakh

I have been away from home for over 20 years. But what is home in my case? An Arab woman born to a Palestinian father and an Italian mother, married to a German man and mother to an American daughter, I had traveled a long way. I asked my mother once whether "Hon casa?" (Is this home?). I was 2 years old then, and we had just arrived at my grandfather's house in Italy after a long journey from Jordan. I was just starting to talk, but could only do so by mixing the two languages I was born with: …

Nietzsche And Lou, Eros And Art : On Lou’S Triangles And The « Exquisite Dream » Of Sacro Monte, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

No abstract provided.

Nietzsche And Eros Between The Devil And God’S Deep Blue Sea: The Problem Of The Artist As Actor–Jew–Woman, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

In just one aphorism in The Gay Science, Nietzsche arrays “The Problem of the Artist” in a complex, highly reticulated constellation. Addressing every member of the excluded grouping of disenfranchised “others,” Nietzsche turns to the destitution of a god of love keyed to the self- or inward-turning absorption of the human heart. His ultimate and irrecusably tragic project to restore the innocence of becoming requires the affirmation of the problem of suffering as the task of learning how to love. Nietzsche sees the eros of art as what can teach us how to make things beautiful, desirable, lovable in the …

Great Men, Little Black Dresses, & The Virtues Of Keeping One’S Feet On The Ground, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

One can use phenomenology, along with the usual tools of scholarship and analysis, to make the point that the promises of the 1960’s and 1970’s especially those of the women’s movement, have yet to bear significant fruit in the academy. Hence, for everybody’s non-thingly phenomenology of non-practice, a handy-dandy wiki-check on the net yields the claim that “U.S. Department of Education reports indicate that philosophy is one of the least proportionate, and possibly the least proportionate, fields in the humanities with respect to gender,” with a rather dismal addendum reporting that in “2004, the percentage of Ph.D.s in philosophy going …

Women Power Connect Obituary Mrinal Gore: Vibhuti Patel, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

On 17th July 2012, Mrinal Gore passed away. With her demise, an era of women freedom fighters with feminist sensitivities in praxis is over. Inspired by Quit India Movement under leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, 14 year old young girl Mrinal became active in the freedom movement. Drawn to political and social causes, she gave up a promising career in medicine in order to organise the poorest and most powerless. She married her comrade, Shri Keshav Gore and when he died at a young age in 1958, she founded Keshav Gore Smarak Bhavan which provided democratic platform to progressive forces for …

It's All About Connections:Utilizing Webinars And Online Learning To Enhance Education, Diane M. Fulkerson

Diane M. Fulkerson

No abstract provided.

Rights Of Adolescent Girls In India: A Critical Look At Laws And Policies, Saumya Uma

Dr. Saumya Uma

Queers Resisting Zionism: On Authority And Accountability Beyond Homonationalism, C. Heike Schotten, Haneen Maikey

C. Heike Schotten

A critical response to Jasbir Puar and Maya Mikdashi's "Pinkwatching and Pinkwashing: Interpenetration and Its Discontents"

Poisoning The Well, Or How Economic Theory Damages, Julie A. Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

Contemporary mainstream economics has widely “poisoned the well” from which people get their ideas about the relationship between economics and ethics. The image of economic life as inherently characterized by self-interest, utility- and profitmaximization, and mechanical controllability has caused many businesspeople, judges, sociologists, philosophers, policymakers, critics of economics, and the public at large to come to tolerate greed and opportunism, or even to expect or encourage them. This essay raises and discusses a number of counterarguments that might be made to the charge that current dominant professional practice is having negative ethical effects, as well as discussing some examples of …

Virginia Woolf's Publishing Archive, John K. Young

John K. Young

Woolf the publisher remains that “drab figure in the gray overalls” for many Woolf scholars, despite an abundance of archival material documenting Woolf’s role as publisher. The most familiar Woolf archives are of course the manuscripts and drafts, many now in print, that have inescapably changed the way we read Woolf’s published texts.

A Review Of "Moonrise: The Power Of Women Leading From The Heart", Marianne Rogoff

Marianne Rogoff

Is Dismissing The Precautionary Principle The Manly Thing To Do? Gender And The Economics Of Climate Change, Julie Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

Many public debates about climate change now focus on the economic "costs" of taking action. When called on to advise about these, many leading mainstream economists downplay the need for care and caution on climate issues, forecasting a future with infinitely continued economic growth. This essay highlights the roles of binary metaphors and cultural archetypes in creating the highly gendered, sexist, and age-ist attitudes that underlie this dominant advice. Gung-ho economic growth advocates aspire to the role of The Hero, rejecting the conservatism of The Old Wife. But in a world that is not actually as safe and predictable as …

Michelino: A Gay Short Story, Michael C. Vocino

michael c vocino

A chapter, a gay short story, about a central character in an as yet unpublished novel.

Carlos: My First Time With A Man, Michael C. Vocino

michael c vocino

Short story of a young man's first sexual encounter.

Robby : A Gay Short Story, Michael C. Vocino

michael c vocino

A gay short story dealing with gay life, culture in the 1970s and 1980s and how one reluctant individual deals with his sexuality.

A Dangerous Professor Loses A Friendship, Michael C. Vocino

michael c vocino

A brief essay/short story based on the author's experience as a gay university professor and how creative teaching methods ended one of his vital friendships.

Jon And His Dead Lover, Michael C. Vocino

michael c vocino

Short story about a doctor who discovers a crime.

Six Crosses, Michael C. Vocino

michael c vocino

Brief short story or observation about life in a small southern Italian town.