Women's Studies Commons^™

A Labor Of Livingness: Oral Histories Of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women, Robin Mcginty

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Anchored in the political subjectivity of formerly incarcerated Black women, “A Labor of Livingness: Oral Histories of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women” is a project situated at the intersections of Black geographies and Black Feminist thought that considers a re/imagination of the ‘living prison’ experiences of formerly incarcerated Black women. I offer the term “a labor of livingness” as the liberatory articulation and everyday practices of resistance to the prison as a site of ‘living death’ that is reflective of the carceral experiences of currently and formerly incarcerated Black women. Attentive to the prison as a repository of epistemological knowledge production, …

The Important Role And Contradictions Of Italian Women Image In Fashion, Magazines And Cinema During The Fascist Period, Lu M. Gomezdelatorre

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper discusses the tools of propaganda used by the fascist regime in fashion and cinema, and it focuses on the sets of opposing images used within these tools, and how they contributed to shaping the identities of Italian women during the time of the fascism in Italy. Moreover, this thesis attempts to demonstrate that fashion and films that aligned with the values of the regime and were seen as models of the fascist culture were also full of contradictions. Therefore, instead of unifying the nation, increasing national pride, and eliminating social gaps, they engulfed the regime in a series …

Téacsúil Fionnachtain, Alan Delozier

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Gothic Girlhood And Resistance: Confronting Ireland’S Neoliberal Containment Culture In Tana French’S The Secret Place, Mollie Kervick

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

The Secret Place (2014) exposes a persistent Western cultural impulse to contain the emotions of teenage girls when they demonstrate control over their lives. In the Irish context, the dismissal of teenage girls is resonant of a containment culture in which controlling women’s bodies and minds has been essential to upholding heteropatriarchal ideals. Resistance to the novel’s unresolved supernatural elements by readers and critics and the lack of sustained academic scholarship also point to an unsettling complacency with the neoliberal impulse to contain female emotion and lived experience in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Crime On The Periphery: Tana French’S Criminal Geography, Deirdre Flynn

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

This article will analyze how Tana French conceptualizes spatiality, focusing on her use of liminal spaces, edgelands and peripheries, as the settings for her crime scenes. Instead of more traditional Irish literary urban-rural binaries, French exploits the interface of both places, reflecting a contemporary post-industrial, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. In particular, in In the Woods (2007) the untamed woodland behind the housing estate in Knocknaree becomes an interfacial zone between the rural and urban, past and present. In The Likeness (2009), Whitethorn House sits at the edge of the village geographically, politically, and historically. In French’s first two novels peripheral spaces …

Tana French: An Interview With Brian Cliff, Brian Cliff

Critical Inquiries Into Irish Studies

No abstract provided.

Socio-Cultural Determinants Of Women’S Homelessness: A Study Of Dar-Ul-Aman, Multan, Mahwish Rasheed, Tayyaba Batool Tahir, Zahid Zulfiqar

Journal of International Women's Studies

Home is an integral element of the Pakistani family system, and the idea of home is deeply embedded in Pakistani women’s consciousness. The prime objective of this study is to explore the socio-cultural factors responsible for women’s homelessness. This study highlights various determinants that lead women to leave their homes. The issue of women fleeing from their homes is a matter of disregard in Pakistan’s culture, such an action is considered as an issue of family’s self-image, respect, and honour. In the present study, Marxist and feminist lenses have been used to indicate women’s secondary status that is responsible for …

A Review Of The Cultural Gender Norms Contributing To Gender Inequality In Ghana: An Ecological Systems Perspective, Portia Nartey, Ozge Sensoy Bahar, Proscovia Nabunya

Journal of International Women's Studies

While significant progress has been made in improving the wellbeing of women and girls around the world, a gender gap still exists between men and women which is very evident in Ghana. Gender inequalities continue to persist in Ghana because of cultural gender norms that exalt and favor men and put women in subordinate and subservient roles. These cultural gender norms hinder women’s development and widen gender inequality between men and women in different system levels of society. Therefore, there is a need to examine the influence of these cultural gender norms on women’s lives using a systems framework to …

Book Review: Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That A Movement Forgot, Shauntey James

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Education Trap: Schools And The Remaking Of Inequality In Boston, Gisselle Rodriguez Benitez

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Film Review: Gaza Mon Amour, 2020. This Palestinian, Drama Film With Spanish Subtitles Was Directed By Brothers Arab Nasser And Tarzan Nasser And Written By The Brothers And Fadette Drouard. Produced By Rani Massalha, Marie Legrand, Michael Eckelt. Distributed By Versatile Films., Tucker Nadeau, Manal Al-Natour

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Our Slaps, Meenakshi Verma

Journal of International Women's Studies

"Our Slaps" raises the question of whether and at all traumatized mothers, who once used to be abused daughters, can confess and escape their psychic hinterlands without being tricked into becoming abusive by subconsciously switching their role identity from a victim to a persecutor. The poem achieves this by boldly offering that rare chance to one such mother who ultimately dares to lay the first cornerstone of intention for a healthy legacy of unabused women. Despite being trapped in a hopeless vicious cycle, this mother struggles to allow her young daughter to keep her innocence intact by deliberately curbing her …

Grandma, Widowhood And Her Family, Prateeti Ghosh

Journal of International Women's Studies

The Sati Abolition Act (1829) followed by the Hindu Widow Remarriage Act (1856) could not wholly eradicate the discrimination against Bengali widows in their own families. After almost 300 years, in the 21^st century, as it is witnessed by the narrator, in a few Hindu Bengali patriarchal traditional families, widows are deprived of their basic human rights such as choice of food, clothing etc. Discrimination against widows i.e., gender inequality, as a matter of fact, originates from her own family or the in-laws’ family. To eradicate inequality, awareness education should be given to both the victims as well as …

Pakistan’S Heuristic Her-Story Via Lahore, Afiya Shehrbano Zia

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite the reference to the ‘long Partition,’ the idea of Pakistan has a hurried history: the word originated in the 1930s, the Lahore Resolution of 1940 pledged to realize the Two-Nation Theory and shortly after, in 1947, Pakistan was created. Seventy-five years on, unresolved questions of national identities and the ‘woman question’ remain large and elusive and I propose, the palimpsest city of Lahore is deeply and symbolically representative of these irresolute matters. Regardless of the veracity of the claim that Lahore is Pakistan, the core struggles, victories and losses of the country’s her-story can easily be recalled through the …

Women And Land Snails Consumption In The Southwest Region Of Cameroon, Forka Leypey Mathew Fomine

Journal of International Women's Studies

Both marine and terrestrial species of snails are consumed in most countries worldwide, including Southwest Cameroon where it is an age-old practice among various ethnic groups. Before the introduction of snail farming in the Southwest Region of Cameroon in the 1990s, all the residents who ate snails acquired them through gathering.

There is significant internal variation in the history of land snail consumption among four ethnic groups: the Banyang, Mbo, Balung, and Bakweri. The long history of land snail consumption among the Banyang and Mbo can be attributed to their geographical proximity to the eastern region of Nigeria, where the …

Mothers And Daughters: Reclaiming The Besieged Body Of Woman In Ashapurna Debi’S Trilogy, Subhadeep Ray, Goutam Karmakar

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper offers a close reading of the intergenerational trilogy by Ashapurna Debi, one of the first-canonized women-novelists of post-independence India: Pratham Pratisruti (The First Promise), 1965, Subarnalata, 1967, and Bakul Katha (Bakul’s Story), 1974. Reconstituting a history of almost two centuries and countering the colonial/postcolonial grand narratives, these novels act as a saga of Bengali Hindu lower and middle-class women’s plight under and resistance against a patriarchal social order operating at the most intimate levels of domestic relationships. Ashapurna Debi’s treatment of the intricacies of gender inequality and a woman’s response to the violence …

The Predicament Of The Vulnerable: Dalit Lives In Keeranur Hamlet, India, Jeeva M, Bijin Philip, Vinesh Raj V

Journal of International Women's Studies

Dalit people and Dalit women especially experience deep prejudice and pressures in Indian society. This paper highlights these challenges in a specific region of India, the village of Keeranur. The authors explore how to eradicate inequality and how Dalits can live with dignity in society as human beings. Both researchers and Dalits themselves as victims also propose alternative conditions to their current lives. We have gathered first-hand information from 67 Dalit women who reside in the village of Keeranur. In India, four states account for 50% of the Dalit population, according to the 2011 census. Tamilnadu and the hamlet of …

The Voices Of The Divorced: Reasons For Early Divorce Among Emiratis In Abu Dhabi, Fakir Al Gharaibeh, Muneera Majed Al Ali

Journal of International Women's Studies

There has been a growing interest, especially among Emirati organizations concerned with family development, in the rising rates of early divorce in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The purpose of this research is to identify the reasons for early divorce among Emiratis. The authors selected 2,162 Emirati early divorcees who were registered with the Family Development Foundation (FDF) in Abu Dhabi and who received services from the (FDF) between 2012 and 2018. Among those, 200 divorcees agreed to participate in this study. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS. Results found that the most common reasons for early divorce were the …

“Other” And “Othering” In The Intersectionality Of Inequalities: Alevi Women’S Experiences In Private And Public Spaces, Tuğba Metin Açer

Journal of International Women's Studies

Turkey is one of those geographies where ethnic and sectarian communities live together. Ethnic and sectarian differences in social life create a fragile structure in terms of "othering" and position groups against one another. Alevis are one of the several ethno-religious communities of Turkey that are positioned against Sunni Muslims. In Turkish literature, othering experiences of Alevis are discussed within the framework of totalizing discourses by reducing this issue to the category of sects, thus creating inequality in the social space which is generally related to the Alevis’ ethno-religious identity. Furthermore, it is observed that women’s experiences are ignored in …

Representations Of Arab Women In Hollywood Pre- And Post- 9/11, Eiman A. Eissa, Hala A. Guta, Rana S. Hassan

Journal of International Women's Studies

Many scholars argue that the image of Arabs in Hollywood has always been tainted by prejudice and stereotyping. However, little attention is paid to women's representation in general or the influence of 9/11 on that representation. This paper compares portrayals of Arab women in popular Hollywood films before and after 9/11. A purposive sample of 76 Arab female characters from 40 popular Hollywood films is used to conduct a content analysis, comparing portrayals in films released before and after 9/11. Popular Hollywood films are defined as films with at least 50,000 reviews that score seven or more on the International …