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Articles 1 - 22 of 22
Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
The Spiritual Prodigy, The Reluctant Guru, And The Saint: Mirabai And Collaborative Leadership At Hari Krishna Mandir, Nancy M. Martin
The Spiritual Prodigy, The Reluctant Guru, And The Saint: Mirabai And Collaborative Leadership At Hari Krishna Mandir, Nancy M. Martin
Religious Studies Faculty Articles and Research
This article explores the life and influence of Indira Devi Niloy (1920–1997) who in 1949 began to encounter the sixteenth-century saint–poet Mirabai during her meditative trance states. She would recount songs, stories, and teachings that the saint gave to her as well as scenes from Mirabai’s life that she witnessed as an observer and at other times experienced directly as a participant. Their ongoing relationship would have a tremendous influence on Indira Devi as well as her guru Dilip Kumar Roy (1897–1980) and the increasingly international community that grew up around them. Their interactions and Indira Devi’s reports in turn …
Interrogating Silences In The Postcolonial Classroom, Sheema Khawar
Interrogating Silences In The Postcolonial Classroom, Sheema Khawar
Feminist Pedagogy
In this paper I explore my experiences as visiting faculty teaching English language and Feminist Studies courses at a private university in Karachi, Pakistan. While balancing these different fields I aimed to integrate feminist pedagogies (Keating, 2007; Hooks,1994; Swarr and Nagar, 2010) and strategize with other politically aligned faculty to draw out important issues in our courses. I was faced with the challenging task of constructing syllabi attendant to the training of students in the ‘canons’ of the field and finding course content that allowed us collectively to engage with critical conversations on regional issues. Formal academic publication processes have …
Women Parliamentarians In India Since 1991: Challenges And Opportunities, Vatsala Bhusry
Women Parliamentarians In India Since 1991: Challenges And Opportunities, Vatsala Bhusry
Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs
India gained a new economic orientation in 1991 following the policy of economic liberalization. It offered the opportunities to close the gender gap in various fields including the political field as visualized in the original goal of the Indian constitution. However, there is an acute underrepresentation of women at the national political level and there is a lack of evidence-based research studies to analyze this gap. This study maps the political trajectories of 13 elected women leaders holding offices at the national level since 2019. To better understand the challenges and opportunities at both macro and micro levels they came …
South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
No abstract provided.
Networking Voices Against Violence: Online Activism And Transnational Feminism In Local-Global Contexts, Sutanuka Banerjee, Lipika Kankaria
Networking Voices Against Violence: Online Activism And Transnational Feminism In Local-Global Contexts, Sutanuka Banerjee, Lipika Kankaria
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Contemporary feminism manifests itself in the form of blogs, hashtags, e-magazines, and digitally planned protests through online communities that address the prevailing concerns of feminists in the digital age. This feminist approach to digital activism aims to reclaim the power of technology which is inherently hegemonic and masculinist by creating alternate spaces and modes of protest. Transnational feminism is increasingly being shaped by online discourses and the new digital space enables social movements in shaping feminist solidarity and complex netizen identities. This paper adopts discourse analysis of online contents that question the prevalent patriarchal system in South Asia and thus …
Two Poems, Mohammad Shafiqul Islam
Two Poems, Mohammad Shafiqul Islam
Journal of International Women's Studies
The poems “Other Fish to Fry” and “Lives of Others” reflect on how South Asian women fall victim to social systems and prejudices about gender. The first poem, “Other Fish to Fry,” metaphorically presents a mother bird and its kids, who represent women suffering from discrimination and torture. “Lives of Others” also depicts women who migrate to Middle Eastern countries in order to earn money and bring solvency to their families. But over time, they are victimized by landlords and brokers who regularly torture them. As a result, both poems address violence against South Asian women, including heinous crimes such …
Networking Voices Against Violence: Online Activism And Transnational Feminism In Local-Global Contexts, Sutanuka Banerjee, Lipika Kankaria
Networking Voices Against Violence: Online Activism And Transnational Feminism In Local-Global Contexts, Sutanuka Banerjee, Lipika Kankaria
Journal of International Women's Studies
Contemporary feminism manifests itself in the form of blogs, hashtags, e-magazines, and digitally planned protests through online communities that address the prevailing concerns of feminists in the digital age. This feminist approach to digital activism aims to reclaim the power of technology which is inherently hegemonic and masculinist by creating alternate spaces and modes of protest. Transnational feminism is increasingly being shaped by online discourses and the new digital space enables social movements in shaping feminist solidarity and complex netizen identities. This paper adopts discourse analysis of online contents that question the prevalent patriarchal system in South Asia and thus …
Introduction: South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Introduction: South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Journal of International Women's Studies
These are turbulent times for the many countries that form the Global South. South Asian nation-states are no exception; the last half century has ushered in liberalization of economies, forced structural adjustments, climate chaos, criminalization of indigenous and lower caste populations, and rapid technological changes. All these forces have resulted in massive upheavals often manifested in political, economic, and social crises. Experts observe that in times of instability, the most marginalized groups, already the target of social violence, are disproportionately subjected to enormous stress, anxiety, and insecurity. In South Asia, women, as one such group that faces multiple intersectional oppressions …
Hinduism As A Political Weapon: Gender Socialization And Disempowerment Of Women In India, Aindrila Haldar
Hinduism As A Political Weapon: Gender Socialization And Disempowerment Of Women In India, Aindrila Haldar
Master's Theses
There is a growing use of religion as a political tool to control Hindu women in India, contributing to a rise in gender inequality. Immediate authoritative patriarchal domains such as household and politics, continuously speak of “protecting” Hindu women by disregarding their voices and needs. Consequently, potentially creating a loss of agency among women. This research will use inductive reasoning to understand the position of Hindu women in modern Indian society. Particularly, through the understanding of the involvement of religion in the political and household sphere. Hindu women are highly influenced by the expectations of what being an ”ideal” woman …
Recovery After The Rupture: Linking Colonial Histories Of Displacement With Affective Objects And Memories, Aarzoo Singh
Recovery After The Rupture: Linking Colonial Histories Of Displacement With Affective Objects And Memories, Aarzoo Singh
disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory
The notion of home and belonging, specifically in the context of South Asian postcolonial diasporas, is connected to past traumas of colonization and displacement. This paper addresses how trauma, displacement, and colonialism can be understood through and with material culture, and how familial objects and items emit and/ or carry within them, emotional narratives. I turn to the affective currency that emit and are transferred on and down from objects, by diasporic subjects, to access the possible reclamation of otherwise silenced narratives within colonial and postcolonial histories. By following the events of the Partition of India in 1947 as a …
Sacks Of Mutilated Breasts: Violence And Body Politics In South Asian Partition Literature, Antonia Navarro-Tejero
Sacks Of Mutilated Breasts: Violence And Body Politics In South Asian Partition Literature, Antonia Navarro-Tejero
Journal of International Women's Studies
The partition narratives of South Asian authors are testimony to the fact that women of all ethnic and religious backgrounds were the greatest victims of the newly created border between India and Pakistan in 1947. Women’s bodies were abducted, stripped naked, raped, mutilated (their breasts cut off), carved with religious symbols and murdered to be sent in train wagons to the “other” side of the border. Taking Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Ice Candy Man/Cracking India (1988) as a narrative example of the importance of women’s point of view and as central figures of the violent conflict, we will examine the symbol …
Going With The Flow: Using Menstrual Education As A Tool For Empowering Post Pubescent Nepali Girls, Graceann L. Cadiz
Going With The Flow: Using Menstrual Education As A Tool For Empowering Post Pubescent Nepali Girls, Graceann L. Cadiz
Master's Theses
Global discourse and research evidence on the benefits of girl’s education show that prioritizing girl’s education is the most successful strategy of breaking the cycle of poverty, gender inequality, and overpopulation. Moreover, there is a growing interest in closing the gender gap in education, but there has been insufficient attention to the specific needs of girls experiencing menses or menarche within schooling environments. The beginning of menstruation represents a pivotal event in development of the adolescent girl but is under-recognized and deemed insignificant with a culture of silence present throughout the rest of their lives. While providing access to education …
Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis
Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Gender In Motion: Negotiating Bengali Social Statuses Across Time And Territories, Mayurakshi Chaudhuri
Gender In Motion: Negotiating Bengali Social Statuses Across Time And Territories, Mayurakshi Chaudhuri
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Hindu Indian Bengalis as an ethno-linguistic and transnational group have negotiated their social locations historically, contemporaneously, and transnationally. In this dissertation, I examine and argue how transnational migration is the most recent in a long line of Bengali strategies to negotiate their social location vis-à-vis other populations in India. Since the early years of the nineteenth century, in Bengal specifically, a series of socio-political dynamics have reshaped and reconstituted Bengali social status. These dynamics can be observed across various geographic scales - national, regional, and local -- and have continued to inform their contemporary gender relations. En route to this …
Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
Linguistic uses of ‘sisterhood’ provide a window into disparate understandings of relationality among virtual and actual interlocutors in women’s development across vectors of caste, class, ethnicity and nationality. In this essay, I examine the trope of ‘sisterhood’ as it was employed at a women’s development project in Janakpur, Nepal, in the 1990s. I demonstrate that the use of this common signifier of kinship with culturally disparate ‘signifieds’ created a confusion of meaning, and differential readings of the politics of relationality. In my view, ‘sister,’ as used at this project, was a multivalent, strategically deployed, and divergently interpreted term. In particular, …
Im/Possible Lives: Gender, Class, Self-Fashioning, And Affinal Solidarity In Modern South Asia, Coralynn V. Davis
Im/Possible Lives: Gender, Class, Self-Fashioning, And Affinal Solidarity In Modern South Asia, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
Drawing on ethnographic research and employing a micro-historical approach that recognizes not only the transnational but also the culturally specific manifestations of modernity, this article centers on the efforts of a young woman to negotiate shifting and conflicting discourses about what a good life might consist of for a highly educated and high caste Hindu woman living at the margins of a nonetheless globalized world. Newly imaginable worlds in contemporary Mithila,South Asia, structure feeling and action in particularly gendered and classed ways, even as the capacity of individuals to actualize those worlds and the “modern” selves envisioned within them are …
Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, And Defecating Men: The Power Of Storytelling In Maithil Women’S Tales, Coralynn V. Davis
Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, And Defecating Men: The Power Of Storytelling In Maithil Women’S Tales, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
What can we learn about the way that folk storytelling operates for tellers and audience members by examining the telling of stories by characters within such narratives? I examine Maithil women’s folktales in which stories of women’s suffering at the hands of other women are first suppressed and later overheard by men who have the power to alleviate such suffering. Maithil women are pitted against one another in their pursuit of security and resources in the context of patrilineal formations. The solidarities such women nonetheless form—in part through sharing stories and keeping each other’s secrets—serve to mitigate their suffering and …
Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers In Maithil Women's Expressive Forms, Coralynn V. Davis
Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers In Maithil Women's Expressive Forms, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
Ponds are ubiquitous in the Maithil region of Nepal, and they figure prominently in folk narratives and ceremonial paintings produced by women there. I argue that in Maithil women's folktales, as in their paintings, the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women's perspectives and the importance of women's knowledge and influence in shaping Maithil society, even as this register shift occurs within plots featuring male protagonists. I argue further that in the absence of a habit of exegesis in their expressive arts, and given the cross-referential, dialogic nature of expressive practices, a methodology that draws into interpretive conversation …
Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis
Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
In this article, I examine the values and meanings that adhere to objects made by Maithil women at a development project in Janakpur, Nepal – objects collectors have called ‘Janakpur Art’. I seek to explain how and why changes in pictorial content in Janakpur Art – shifts that took place over a period of five or six years in the 1990s – occurred, and what such a change might indicate about the link between Maithil women’s lives, development, and tourism. As I will demonstrate, part of the appeal for consumers of Janakpur Art has been that it is produced at …
'Listen, Rama’S Wife!’: Maithil Women’S Perspectives And Practices In The Festival Of Sāmā-Cakevā, Coralynn V. Davis
'Listen, Rama’S Wife!’: Maithil Women’S Perspectives And Practices In The Festival Of Sāmā-Cakevā, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
As a female-only festival in a significantly gender-segregated society, sāmā cakevā provides a window into Maithil women’s understandings of their society and the sacred, cultural subjectivities, moral frameworks, and projects of self-construction. The festival reminds us that to read male-female relations under patriarchal social formations as a dichotomy between the empowered and the disempowered ignores the porous boundaries between the two in which negotiations and tradeoffs create a symbiotic reliance. Specifically, the festival names two oppositional camps—the male world of law and the female world of relationships—and then creates a male character, the brother, who moves between the two, loyal …
Feminist Tigers And Patriarchal Lions: Rhetorical Strategies And Instrument Effects In The Struggle For Definition And Control Over Development In Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Feminist Tigers And Patriarchal Lions: Rhetorical Strategies And Instrument Effects In The Struggle For Definition And Control Over Development In Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
This article offers an analysis of a struggle for control of a women’s development project in Nepal. The story of this struggle is worth telling, for it is rife with the gender politics and neo-colonial context that underscore much of what goes on in contemporary Nepal. In particular, my analysis helps to unravel some of the powerful discourses, threads of interest, and yet unintended effects inevitable under a regime of development aid. The analysis demonstrates that the employment of already available discursive figures of the imperialist feminist and the patriarchal third world man are central to the rhetorical strategies taken …
Towelheads, Diapers, And Faggots: Reviving The Turban, Jasbir Puar
Towelheads, Diapers, And Faggots: Reviving The Turban, Jasbir Puar
Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)
In the days and weeks following the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11, there has been a rapid proliferation of mocking images of a turbaned Osama bin Laden, not to mention of the turban itself. In a photo-montage circulating from Stileproject.com, even George Bush has been sporting a bin Laden-esque turban. Another internet favorite is a picture of bin Laden superimposed into a 7-11 convenience store scene as a cashier. Posters that appeared in midtown Manhattan only days after the attacks show a turbaned caricature of bin Laden being anally penetrated by the Empire State building. The …