South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

Keeping And Challenging Familial Attachments: The Bakla Within Contemporary Mainstream Filipino Film, Abraham James A. Mata

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Throughout Filipino television and film, it is difficult to ignore the almost always apparent bakla. The bakla, often portrayed as either an effeminate gay man or a trans woman, largely appears as a side character in many Filipino films. Many depictions of this queer figure in the past have cast them as merely comedic relief or perverted figures. However, within the past two decades of the 21st century, many Filipino films have been produced with a central bakla character. Through an analysis of five mainstream films from the years of 2013-2023, this project is seeking to answer how mainstream depictions …

Journey, Movement, Affect And Rhythm: Migration Through North Indian Folk Songs, Sangeeta Gupta, Shambhavi Gupta

International Journal on Responsibility

This paper captures the lived experiences and affect associated with migration, through the folk songs of North India. While migration is usually studied as a larger demographic movement involving temporary or permanent displacement and departure, our project captures the pain and apprehension it entails. We have tried to retrieve the vital connection between gender and migration through an analysis of folk songs about the experiences of women. These songs passed down as a part of the oral tradition, articulate how a woman engages and interacts with migration – both due to her marriage and also when her husband leaves home …

Intersectionality In Canada's 'Caregiver Program': The Impact Of Race, Class, And Gender On Filipina Women In The 'Global Care Chain', Taylor Simsovic

Culture, Society, and Praxis

This paper explores the experiences of migrant Filipina caregivers in Canada under the Live-in Caregiver's Program (LCP) and the subsequent Caregivers Program (CP), focusing on the intersecting factors of race, class, and gender. Through a literature review, the study investigates the distinct and precarious position occupied by Filipina migrant caregivers, who face marginalization by the Canadian government. The framework of the 'global care chain' proposed by Aggarwal and Das Gupta (2013) and the concept of the 'international transfer of caretaking' presented by Parreñas (2000) are employed to illuminate the devaluation of 'women's work,' particularly that performed by migrant Filipina and …

Lesbian-Essaying Through Textual In(Ter)Ventions In Memoir, Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

In this exegetical essay, I show how I have deployed linguistic and non-linguistic strategies in the writing of my memoir in order to make my lesbian identity as a writer visible on the page without explicitly stating it. Using the theoretical ideas of Teresa de Lauretis and Nicole Brossard, I assert that a non-conventional approach to the writing of memoir is how a lesbian writer can challenge heteronormative writing standards, particularly in the Philippine literary system, within which I had allowed myself to be molded in my past writing practice. Some of these textual in(ter)ventions—both inventions and interventions—are narrative structure, …

The Influence Of Gender On Female Business Owners In Ho Chi Minh City, Abby Busis

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Ho Chi Minh City is commonly referred to as a developing business hub, largely due to the rapidly increasing number of private enterprises. Since the implementation of the Doi Moi in 1986, Vietnam’s private business sphere has grown tremendously, and women have played a large role in this development. Today, women own just under a quarter of formal enterprises in Vietnam, but this impressive statistic does not consider the many challenges these women have faced.

Through in-depth interviews with female business owners themselves, along with an online survey, this study determines how gender influences these business owners’ professional experiences. Gender …

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

Modern Mythologies: The Epic Imagination In Contemporary Indian Literature, Sucheta Kanjilal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project delineates a cultural history of modern Hinduism in conversation with contemporary Indian literature. Its central focus is literary adaptations of the Sanskrit epic the Mahābhārata, in English, Hindi, and Bengali. Among Hindu religious texts, this epic has been most persistently reproduced in literary and popular discourses because its scale matches the grandeur of the Indian national imagining. Further, many epic adaptations explicitly invite devotion to the nation, often emboldening conservative Hindu nationalism. This interdisciplinary project draws its methodology from literary theory, history, gender, and religious studies. Little scholarship has put Indian Anglophone literatures in conversation with other …

The Role Of Personal Laws In Creating A “Second Sex”, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Indira Jaising

All Faculty Scholarship

The cultural construction of gender determines the role of women and girls within the family in many societies. Gendered notions of power in the family are often shrouded in religion and custom and find their deepest expression in Personal Laws. This essay examines the international law framework as it relates to personal laws and the commonality of narratives of litigators and plaintiffs in the cases from the three different personal law systems in India.

The Multidimensionality Of Schoolgirl Dropouts In Rural Bangladesh, Tiffany Yancey

Master's Theses

This thesis outlines the underlying causes for girl dropouts in the secondary school system of rural Bangladesh and assesses the barriers that affect adolescent girls and their families. The complex dynamics of the historical context within the patriarchal-dominant structure of society creates a system that hinders girls’ education and forces them into marriage at an early age. Poverty and lack of parental involvement in schools, as well as societal traditions and lack of government infrastructure play an enormous role and are the main structural factors that are linked to schoolgirl dropouts in this study. This thesis also analyzes previous education …

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, …

Police-Building And The Responsibility To Protect: Civil Society, Gender And Human Rights Culture In Oceania, Charles Hawksley, Nichole Georgeou

Nichole Georgeou

Forthcoming: This book examines how the United Nations and states provide assistance for the police services of developing states to help them meet their human rights obligations to their citizens, under the responsibility to protect (R2P) provisions. It examines police-capacity building ("police-building") by international donors in Timor-Leste, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea (PNG). All three states have been described as "fragile states" and "states of concern", and all have witnessed significant social tensions and violence in the past decades. The authors argue that globally police-building forms part of an attempt to make states "safe" so that they can adhere …

Becoming A Georgian Women, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

Making Monotheism: Global Islam In Local Practice Among The Laujé Of Indonesia, Jennifer W. Nourse

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

This paper explores the complex interaction between state-sanctioned Islam and local religious practice in Indonesia's periphery. In 1982 in the "county" of Tinombo, Central Sulawesi, immigrant Reform Muslims convinced the regional government to ban a spirit possession ritual performed by the indigenous Laufe people. Reformists claimed that Laujé spirit mediums were possessed by satanic spirits. Insulted by Reformists' claims that Laujé rites were pagan and they themselves were not Muslims, prominent Laujé went to officials in the government asking to rescind the ban. In their arguments, Laujé borrowed the rhetoric of Reform Islam. The ban was rescinded in 1984. Once …