History Commons^™

Beyond Nationalism? Blank Spaces At The Documenta 1955 – The Legacy Of An Exhibition Between Old Europe And New World Order, Mirl Redmann

Artl@s Bulletin

Was the first documenta really beyond nationalism? documenta 1955 has been widely regarded as conciliation for the fascist legacy of the exhibition “Degenerate Art” (1937), and as an attempt to reintegrate Germany into the international arts community. This article employs published and archival sources in order to understand if and how documenta was impacted by the legacy of nationalism in post-fascist Germany. A biographic sketch of Antonio Corpora (1909-2004) shows how the purportedly “universalist” selection criteria employed by documenta erased cultural specificity and solidified nationalist conceptions of center and periphery.

“Tell Me, Bambi Or Yogi Ever Hunt You Back?” The Windigo Myth: A Metaphor For Imperialism And Mental Illness, Christine Carlough

Senior Capstone Theses

The Canadian indigenous myth of the windigo, originating from Algonquian-speaking tribes of the subarctic Northeast like Ojibwe and Cree, is a manifestation for a multitude of fears. This myth originated hundreds of years ago in order to explain the horror and lack of understanding of a mental illness, which would later be known as Windigo Psychosis. Windigo Psychosis is a culture-bound syndrome for an insatiable desire to consume human flesh. A culture-bound syndrome is recognizable and unique only within a specific society or culture, so in other words, Windigo Psychosis is specific to this area in Canada due to a …

Kulaw, Jake, Nikki Farmer

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Jake Kulaw is a white transman born in Buffalo New York, who now lives in Portland Maine. His pronouns are he, him, his. Jake is a high school health teacher in Portland Maine, who is an activist and is involved in community engagement. He is passionate about teaching high school students on LGBTQ+ identities and safe sex. He talks first on his childhood and feeling like he was born in the wrong body. He had a lot of depression and turned to drugs and alcohol in high school and received substance abuse treatment in Albany New York. He talks on …

Queen Nanny, A Case Study For Cultural Heritage Tourism: The Archaeology Of Memory And Identity, Lacy Risner

Liberal Arts Capstones

This research project is intended to provide a foundation of knowledge of the Maroon culture in Jamaica, through the legends of one of their most prominent founders, Queen Nanny, as an aid for those who want to educate themselves before approaching community leaders about tourism development. Documentation of Queen Nanny’s life is contested and shrouded in mystery. Yet, that is part of what makes her memory so powerful. The various roles that Queen Nanny is associated with feature her adamant pursuit of an independent life for herself and her Maroons. Whether she is catching bullets or teaching the Maroons how …

Griffith, Kirsten, Beth Gibson

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Kirsten Griffith is a thirty-six year old woman living in Portland Maine. In this interview, she discusses her life from her early childhood up to the present day. Kirsten is part of the LGBTQ community and identifies as a femme lesbian. She is active in Portland Maine’s LGBTQ community and works with Pride Portland, the Equality Community Center and Maine Trans-net. Kirsten is a full-time student at Mount Holyoke and is the primary caregiver of her younger brother. Kirsten discusses living in California, learning about her sexuality, and her involvement in community projects through this interview.

Citation

Please cite as: …

Robinson, Richard, Jessica Toomey, Billale Fulli

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Richard Robinson is a sixty-seven-year-old gay man from Bangor, Maine. Rich knew from the moment he was born, he says, that he was gay. However, in order to avoid the consequences of coming out -- discrimination he could encounter from the Catholic church and the homophobic society at large -- Rich hid his sexuality for a large portion of his life. Rich was married to a woman for eighteen years. At the age of forty-one, he finally came out to his wife and to the rest of his family -- including his twin brother, John, who was also gay. After …

Sacerdoti-Ravenscroft, Sebastiane, Samantha Round, Kaitlynn Werner

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Sebastiane Sacerdoti-Ravenscroft is a non-binary lesbian, who uses they/them/theirs pronouns. They’re currently working on their Graduate degree in Psychology at the University of Southern Maine, as well as working at CIEE Maine, launching a podcast about mental health with their wife, and they are acting Chair of Pride Portland! During the interview, religion, mental health, activism, and family dynamics are discussed, as Sebastiane explains their life in Maine after living in many different places across the globe.

Citation

Please cite as: Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Collection, Jean Byers Sampson …

Koen, Susan, Michelle Pelletier, Skyler Hebert

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Susan Koen in a lesbian women who has participated in many political and feminist movements throughout her lifetime. She was raised in New Orleans, but moved around a lot during her life, giving her a vast array of life experiences. She participated in the Anti-Nuclear Movement of the 70s and co-wrote a book called Ain't Nowhere We Can Run: A Handbook for Women on the Nuclear Mentality. In addition to this, she has studied and participated in a number of feminist collectives, including the Off Our Backs newspaper, the Women's Pentagon Action, and the Maine Won't Discriminate campaign. Koen wrote …

Growing Up Deaf In Appalachia: An Oral History Of My Mother, Elizabeth Shelton Tipton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the life experiences of a rural, Deaf Appalachian woman, Jane Ann Shelton, a second generation Deaf child born to Deaf parents from the communities of Devil’s Fork (Flag Pond, Tennessee) and Shelton Laurel (Madison County, North Carolina). Over two hours of videotaped interviews were interpreted and transcribed, followed by various other communications to describe the life of a rural, Deaf Appalachian woman without a formal high school degree. As an advocate and a political lobbyist in Tennessee during the 1980s and 90s, she was unparalleled by her peers (deaf or hearing) in her efforts to “enhance …

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 …

Drew, Lala, Erika Chadbourne, Kate Brezak

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

LaLa Drew is a Black, queer, Georgia born, Maine native. Drew was raised in Gray, Maine with their adoptive family. Drew is a writer, poet, activist, performer, artist, teacher, and inspirational catalyst for change. Much of Drew’s community engagement focuses on raising awareness about the black identity and embodiment. They teach an after-school program in Lewiston, Maine where they help students learn about climate change, capitalism, and racism. Drew is also known for their work as a writer. Their work has been published in Ms. Magazine, The Maine Sunday Telegram, The Deepwater Column, and the Portland Phoenix. They write about …

Lindsey, Ian-Meredythe, Zackary Caron

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Ian-Meredythe Lindsey moved around often during their childhood due to their parents being transferred for jobs. They lived in Oregon, Colorado, and finally Maine. Ian-Meredythe identifies as a non-binary transgender individual who considers themselves pansexual. Ian-Meredythe speaks in depth about their experiences with the erasure of themselves due to their gender identity and sexuality due to those not fitting within the gender-binary. Ian-Meredythe also focused on their experiences within the theatre, as they see very little room for non-binary individuals and storylines within the mainstream theatre productions. Ian-Meredythe focused on their involvement with Equality Maine, as well as their own …

Robedee, Matthew, Hannah Gorham, Jason White

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Matthew (Mat) Robedee is a 35-year-old gay man who lives in Portland, Maine. For seven years, he was a health and outreach worker and former prevention programs manager for the Frannie Peabody Center, in Portland. He has also worked with organizations such as Portland Pride and Equality Maine and is currently a real estate agent.

Mat grew up in Buxton, Maine. In elementary school, he revealed to a friend that he thought he was gay. His friend reprimanded him, telling him never to tell anyone about his secret. That event set the tone for years to come, and Mat hid …

Maxwell, Daralyn, Susam Cousins, Kelly Dyer

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Daralyn Maxwell, Dal for short, is a 67 year old transgender woman. Dal lives in Freeport Maine but has moved around the northeast throughout her life. In this interview Dal covers experiences she has had throughout her life. Dal came out as a trans woman later in her life and she values her experiences that brought her to where she is today. Dal covers her experience working in bars and restaurants as a male presenting person where she helped women escape domestic violence. Dal also covers her coming out story, from being outed to her boss, to coming out to …

Keppel, Bobbi, Megan Mcknight, Janine Rynkowski

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Bobbi Keppel is an 87-year old bisexual activist. Her father was a civil rights activist and union organizer; in part because of this, she felt she was a born “disruptor.” As a child, Bobbi Keppel was ill and struggled with being a “sickly kid.” She later married and had two children. During her marriage, she came out as bisexual with the support of her husband. She is a contributor to the classic anthology “By Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out” (edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Ka'ahumanu). For many decades, Keppel has been an educator on issues of bisexual …

Wilbur, Russell, Riley Kirk, Sam Penley

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Russell Wilbur grew up in Waterville Maine. At the age of fifteen he dropped out of school and began working at a chicken plant and shining shoes. Russell faced a lot of hard times with his family for his mother was mentally ill, physically and mentally abusive and his siblings were all very homophobic. With a difficult childhood and unsupportive family Russel began to drink to cover up the pain of his childhood. During this time Russell began to sell drugs which resulted in him going to prison for a year. In 1975 Russel became clean and sober and began …

Drew, Gia, David Kersey, Katie Prior

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Gia Drew is a 52-year old transwoman who serves as the director of Equality Maine: an organization in Portland, Maine that provides educational programs to support the LGBTQ+ Community of Maine. Her life experience has greatly prepared her for this role, and she shares that with us in this interview. Her story is vast as it spans over several topics (as indicated in the “keywords” section), several different states, and two very different regions of the country. Gia struggles with coming out as trans for her entire young adult life as she navigates bisexuality, hypermasculinity, social pressure in K-12 schools, …

“Blessed Within My Selves”: The Prophetic Visions Of Our Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This essay discusses the intellectual and poetic work of Audre Lorde and its significance for contemporary global movements for liberation. My discussion considers Lorde’s theorizing of difference and power, as well as her poetic work, as prophetic interventions within the context of the 1960s to the early 1990s. I argue that Lorde’s intellectual and literary work is the result of a black woman’s embodied experiences within the intersections of many struggles—notably, the ones against racism, sexism, and homophobia. This strategic positionality becomes, as I discuss, the centrality of Lorde’s prophetic vision of collective and inclusive liberation: one that permeates past …

Review Of Darkness Now Visible: Patriarchy’S Resurgence And Feminist Resistance. By Carol Gilligan And David A. J. Richards. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 172p. $20.59., Bekeh Utietiang Ukelina

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The authors argue in the book that Trump’s election shows the power and presence of patriarchy in American society and how gender can become the optics and hermeneutics of seeing things within a patriarchal framework.

Review Of The Economies Of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing For Lgbti Rights In Uganda, By S.M. Rodriguez. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2018, Katharina Wiedlack

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The Economies of Queer Inclusion interrogates the politics of international LGBT activism and its effects on the kuchu (LGBTQIA) people in Kampala, Uganda. It deconstructs Western ideas about Uganda, using counter-storytelling from an anti-racist, decolonial, feminist and queer people of color perspective, merging historic discourse analysis, qualitative sociology and various ethnographic forms such as autoethnography.

Editorial: Media Activism, Sexual Expressions, And Agency In The Era Of #Metoo, Bekeh Utietiang Ukelina

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The problem is that sexism, homophobia, and all forms of gender discrimination remain patently a problem in our society. Sometimes, these are echoed in language and most times in policies and practices that remain deeply unjust. The erroneous stereotypes about women ingrained in our polity and economic systems have often led to the exclusion of women from positions of leadership.

Sexual Real Estate: Repatriation, Reterritorialization, And The Digital Activism Of Nicole Amarteifio’S Web Series An African City, Tori Arthur

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

When Nicole Amarteifio, a Ghanaian born-United States raised repatriate to Ghana, uploaded the first episode of An African City to YouTube on March 2, 2014, she began a transnational televisual movement. The series, with two seasons completed and aired and a third season in the works, is a global powerhouse that not only shifts narratives about African mass media production and consumption, but also challenges limited notions of African life, especially for a new generation of the continent’s women. As the first of its kind on the African continent, the web series not only reconfigured the West African media landscape …

Seduction As Power? Searching For Empowerment And Emancipation In Sex Work, Jennifer Chisholm

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

A longstanding debate within feminism has been whether sex work is empowering or ultimately disempowering for those who engage in it. This essay seeks to contextualize discourses about seduction, prostitution, and sexual tourism as they relate to Brazil and to make a preliminary assessment as to the ways in which the act of seduction might be empowering for Brazil’s sex workers. Based on ethnographic research and borrowing from literary theory, tourism theory, and interdisciplinary theories of power and agency, I argue that seduction has the potential to be empowering for Brazilian prostitutes who can capitalize on the racial and ethnic …

The Trans Complaint: Contributions To The Disagreement About Desire, Brandon L. Aultman

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Trans studies has been argued to be at a defining crossroads. The discipline needs to reorient itself toward new theories of transness and subjectivity or face its own dissolution. This means contesting received dogmas of gender-determination, identity, history, and narrative convention. This essay examines how recently proposed uses of narratives, poetry, and satire can enable such contests in generative ways. It theorizes the trans complaint as an index for how popularly and academically mediated trans cultures, or intimate publics, might turn toward ordinary life theories in order to understand desire, fantasy, and their interlocking complexities of making a life.

Women’S “Empowerment” In The Bangladesh Garment Industry Through Labor Organizing, Chaumtoli Huq

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

By critiquing empowerment in international development discourse and reconceptualizing it, the article shows how Bangladeshi garment workers have used the trade union space to achieve socio-economic empowerment despite barriers to labor organizing. Further, it argues for the development of working class women’s leadership.

Homosocial Desire In Tsitsi Dangarembga’S Everyone’S Child, P. Jane Splawn

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper explores the subtle explorations of homosocial desire in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s 1996 film Everyone’s Child. In her deft, though subtle, treatment of the social bonds among young males in the film, the filmmaker opens a space for queer readings. Societal inscriptions of gender and sexuality are also queried, as a teen engages in sex work to provide for herself and her orphaned siblings. While the film has been described as a film “about AIDS and orphans” (Lee, 2006, p.135), the paper proposes that Everyone’s Child is so much more than this. The paper considers the work of Sommerville (2000) …

Imperatrix, Domina, Rex: Conceptualizing The Female King In Twelfth-Century England, Coral Lumbley

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article draws on methods from transgender theory, historicist literary studies, and visual analysis of medieval sealing practices to show that Empress Matilda of England was controversially styled as a female king during her career in the early to mid twelfth century. While the chronicle Gesta Stephani castigates Matilda’s failure to engage in sanctioned gendered behaviors as she waged civil war to claim her inherited throne, Matilda’s seal harnesses both masculine and feminine signifiers in order to proclaim herself both king and queen. While Matilda’s transgressive gender position was targeted by her detractors during her lifetime, the obstinately transgender object …

Blessed Assurance: A Postmodern Midwestern Life, Marcelline Hutton

Zea E-Books Collection

In this book, a historian of women’s lives turns the lens on her own experience. Her story is “Midwestern” for its work ethic, modesty, faith, and resilience; “postmodern” for its sudden changes, strange juxtapositions, and retrospective deconstruction of the ideologies that shaped its progress. It describes a life in and out of academia and a search for acceptance, recognition, equality, and freedom.

The author of three books on women’s experiences in Russia and Europe, Dr. Marcelline Hutton traces her personal journey from traditional working-class La Porte, Indiana, through college, graduate school, marriage, motherhood, divorce, and independence in Iowa City, Southampton, …

The Inclusion Of Displaced Women In The Women, Peace, And Security Agenda, Ava Strasser

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

On October 31, 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, which stresses the importance of women’s involvement during times of conflict as decision-makers in peace-building processes. While this resolution and the broader Women, Peace, and Security agenda are dedicated to including women in important post-conflict reconstruction processes, the international community; comprised of states, international organizations, and civil society; has been criticized for its failure to implement this agenda. Further, it is evident that displaced women are a large population whose voices are widely left out of the post-conflict reconstruction processes. Within the discourse regarding the experience of displaced …

The Female Worker: An Analysis Of Women Residing Along The Moroccan-European And U.S.- American Borderlands, Marlen G. Renderos

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My independent research project is a comparative study focusing on women experiences among the Mexican-U.S. borderlands and Moroccan-European borderlines. For the Mexican-U.S.American context, I will focus on females maquiladora workers and stay-at-home wives. For the Moroccan-European context, I will focus on the mujeres mulas – women mules. My paper will discuss the ways in which society and governments run under a male-dominated lens contributing to the placement of women in vulnerable positions.