Complex Female Agency, The “Final Girl” Trope, And The Subversion And Reaffirmation Of Patriarchy: The Cases Of Western & Mena Horror Films,
2022
Bridgewater State University
Complex Female Agency, The “Final Girl” Trope, And The Subversion And Reaffirmation Of Patriarchy: The Cases Of Western & Mena Horror Films, Majdoulin Almwaka
Journal of International Women's Studies
This research explores gender representation in horror films through a detailed analysis of the archetype of the “final girl” to see whether she could be a source of power and agency for female audiences. Contemporary research has often disregarded the impact of horror films in shaping stereotypes. In recent years, feminist film theory studies of horror films focused predominantly on analyzing the dichotomy between masculinity and femininity while highlighting instances of women's victimization. This becomes a critical case to study as it will explore the film’s complex female character concerning a feminist role model with the connotations it brings to …
Amalgamation Of East And West In The Art Of Amrita Sher-Gil,
2022
Bridgewater State University
Amalgamation Of East And West In The Art Of Amrita Sher-Gil, Prachi Priyanka
Journal of International Women's Studies
An avant-garde aesthete and one of the pioneers of modern art in India, Amrita Sher-gil (1913 – 1941) was a remarkable combination of sensitivity and sensuousness. Her artworks show an array of influences that were sourced from her Indo-Hungarian origin, and her encounters with French and Italian discourses. An iconoclast at heart, she was a social rebel who lived life on her own terms. Some of her works include ‘Village Scene’, ‘In the Ladies Enclosure’, ‘Self-portrait as a Tahitian’, ‘Red Brick house’, ‘Hill Scene’ and the South Indian Trilogy, ‘Bride’s Toilet’, Brahmacharis’ and ‘South Indian Villagers Going to Market’. Her …
Multilingualism And The Social Status Of Women In The City Of Osijek In The 19th And Early 20th Centuries,
2022
Bridgewater State University
Multilingualism And The Social Status Of Women In The City Of Osijek In The 19th And Early 20th Centuries, Ljubica Kordic, Visnja Lachner
Journal of International Women's Studies
The authors strive to present the social status of women in Croatian cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries on the example of the multilingual city of Osijek. The main goal of the paper is to determine the social position of women at that time and to examine whether and to which extent it was influenced by their knowledge of three languages spoken in the multilingual milieu of the city: Croatian, German, and Hungarian. The corpus of the research encompasses job announcements and advertisements related to women in two local newspapers in the German language Die Drau …
Reconsidering The Victorian Angel In The Light Of Butler’S Concept Of Performativity,
2022
Bridgewater State University
Reconsidering The Victorian Angel In The Light Of Butler’S Concept Of Performativity, Monia Chouari
Journal of International Women's Studies
Amid the fast changes and repercussions of the French and Industrial Revolutions in the 19th century, women's critical status in the transitory period in Britain stimulated the Victorian elite, namely women novelists like Elizabeth Gaskell, to raise the complex issue of femininity and womanhood to establish femininity as an agency. Interrogating the predominant concept of a woman as an angel, this study sets forth to examine the mechanisms of the building-up of women characters wrestling with the Victorian ideal of the angel for a sweet home that has been established by leading figures and theorists of domestic ideology such …
Special Issue: Revisiting Women’S And Gender Studies Across Interdisciplinary Research,
2022
Bridgewater State University
Special Issue: Revisiting Women’S And Gender Studies Across Interdisciplinary Research, Monia Chouari
Journal of International Women's Studies
No abstract provided.
"Dear Stanford: You Must Reckon With Your History Of Sexual Violence" By Seo-Young Chu,
2022
CUNY Queens College
"Dear Stanford: You Must Reckon With Your History Of Sexual Violence" By Seo-Young Chu, Seo-Young J. Chu
Publications and Research
In 2000 a Stanford professor raped me. My rape is now older than I was. (I’m still not as old as he was.) The more time passes the more I’m struck by Stanford’s apathy and fecklessness about sexual violence. I wrote a letter asking Stanford to stop compounding the abuse and to reckon with its rape culture. This letter—including the “Incomplete Compilation of Links to Sources Documenting Stanford’s History of Sexual Violence, in Chronological Order”—should be mandatory reading for administrators, faculty, students, alumni, and stakeholders at both Stanford and CUNY. #MeToo #MeTooAcademia
Gendered Violence And The Family: An Analysis Of The 14th-Century Epic "Lion De Bourges",
2022
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
Gendered Violence And The Family: An Analysis Of The 14th-Century Epic "Lion De Bourges", Ashley Paige Holt
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation is the first to focus on gender roles within the fourteenth-century French epic Lion de Bourges and the first work to feature extensive translations into English of this medieval text. Using the cyclical dismemberment and reunification of the Bourges family as a lens, it brings into focus the various members of the family, their relationships, and the larger thematic questions about family and society put forward by the poet. Chapter one interrogates the notion of the king as a national father figure as well as the spread of injury and violence from the father/king to the members of …
Climate Disasters, Mass Violence, And Human Mobility In South Sudan: Through A Gender Lens,
2022
Georgetown University
Climate Disasters, Mass Violence, And Human Mobility In South Sudan: Through A Gender Lens, Marisa O. Ensor
Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal
This article examines the links between gender, mass violence, climate change, and displacement in South Sudan. I argue for risk-informed gender-sensitive strategies that incorporate local capacities and sources of resilience. When civil war engulfed South Sudan again in 2013, egregious human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence, were perpetrated with near complete impunity. As the national army was divided along Dinka-Nuer ethnic lines, soldiers from each faction turned against each other in a deadly pattern of revenge and counter-revenge attacks that soon spread across the national territory. Inter-communal conflicts also intensified, often centering on competition over land for pasture, …
The Fundamentalist Nexus Of Neoliberalism, Rentier Capitalism, Religious And Secular Patriarchies, And South Asian Feminist Resistances.,
2022
Montclair State University, NJ
The Fundamentalist Nexus Of Neoliberalism, Rentier Capitalism, Religious And Secular Patriarchies, And South Asian Feminist Resistances., Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Journal of International Women's Studies
In two case studies from Pakistan, which I then link to Afghanistan (under the Taliban before and after the Soviet/US proxy war there) as well as the Farmer’s Movement in India—I wish to proffer an intersectional analysis of debates around the issue of women’s rights in the global south. Feminist artivism (art-as-activism), can help build solidarities to mount resistances against globally-inflected state repression in our age of neoliberal economic and religious fundamentalisms, which, working in tandem, seek to roll back the rights of women and minorities in and across South Asia, as elsewhere.
Feminists As Cultural ‘Assassinators’ Of Pakistan,
2022
Wesleyan university
Feminists As Cultural ‘Assassinators’ Of Pakistan, Afiya Shehrbano Zia
Journal of International Women's Studies
Pakistan’s annual Aurat March (Women’s March) signifies a milestone in the culture of feminist protest, but a tense impasse follows a series of encounters between sexual and religious politics, and this has serious implications for rights-based activism in the Islamic Republic.
Double Bind Of Muslim Women’S Activism In Pakistan: Case Of Malala Yousafzai And Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy,
2022
University at Buffalo
Double Bind Of Muslim Women’S Activism In Pakistan: Case Of Malala Yousafzai And Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Naila Sahar
Journal of International Women's Studies
A majority of Western feminist studies has dealt with women from the third world as a homogenous entity of poor and passive victims without agency, who need saving and thus need to be spoken for. Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak have both underscored the urgency of seeing and dealing with third world feminism in terms of a genre that is different in socio-cultural background from Western dynamics, and they emphasize the importance of being wary of the ways in which Western feminism creates the 'discursive homogenization and systematization of the oppression of women in the Third World' (Mohanty, …
Looking At The Nation Through A Lover’S Eye: N. Padmakumar’S Film, A Billion Colour Story,
2022
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Looking At The Nation Through A Lover’S Eye: N. Padmakumar’S Film, A Billion Colour Story, Shreerekha Pillai Subramanian
Journal of International Women's Studies
Cinematic response in India to social justice movements, even when aimed at rectifying communal violence and tensions, reifies entrenched orders separating Hindu from Muslim, citizen from the ‘Other,’ native from the diasporic. To the polyphony of films focused on interfaith love, a recent indie film adds a new ‘look’. Narasimhamurthy Padmakumar’s, A Billion Colour Story (2016) focalizes on a child’s point of view in a black and white filmic narration to dismantle old hatreds and re-ignite love of culture and nation for the very diversity that has become pixelated, walled, entombed and reactionary. More like Nollywood in its reliance on …
Performing Dalit Feminist Youth Activism In South India: Rap, Gaana, And Street Theater,
2022
Nassau Community College, New York
Performing Dalit Feminist Youth Activism In South India: Rap, Gaana, And Street Theater, Pramila Venkateswaran
Journal of International Women's Studies
Young Dalit men and women are changing the narrative of casteist oppression in India. Youth activists perform protest songs in the genre of rap and gaana, using elements of slam poetry and rap from African American artists and blending them with local musical innovations. The performances have deliberate messaging, signaling particular caste and gender injustices, both current and historical. This paper will analyze Dalit youth performances of rap, gaana, and street theater (koothu) in South India, particularly in Tamil Nadu, to understand the poetics of protest against caste and gender oppression. It will look at the notion of space in …
Subverting Patriarchal Interpretation Of The Ramayan Through A Feminist Lens: A Critical Study Of Sita’S Ramayana,
2022
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Telangana, India
Subverting Patriarchal Interpretation Of The Ramayan Through A Feminist Lens: A Critical Study Of Sita’S Ramayana, Shruti Chakraborti
Journal of International Women's Studies
“Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for us more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival”, writes Adrienne Rich in her seminal essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision”. Rich firmly advocates that women authors should create spaces for subversion of patriarchal values and ideals through their literary works. Revisionist mythmaking, from a feminist literary perspective, evolves through challenging a preceding text which predominantly manifests androcentric ideas. The present paper aims to examine a female reinterpretation …
Women’S Agency And Pastoral Livelihoods In India: A Review,
2022
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, BITS PILANI, Pilani Campus, India
Women’S Agency And Pastoral Livelihoods In India: A Review, Aayushi Malhotra, Sailaja Nandigama, Kumar Sankar Bhattacharya
Journal of International Women's Studies
The role of women in promoting and sustaining pastoral livelihoods remains an under-researched area across the world. Often, studies discuss pastoralism as a male-oriented enterprise, thus overshadowing or ignoring the part played by women in such livelihood practices. In India, where pastoralism itself is essentially a neglected area of research, such discussions remain even sparse. Pastoral communities depending on migratory livestock rearing practices for their livelihoods exhibit gender-based differences in their everyday life in terms of division of labour, mobility patterns, and rights over resources. Women play different roles and responsibilities at the household and community levels that remain intertwined …
Dissenting Bodies, Disruptive Pandemic: Farmers’ Protest And Women’S Participation In Mass Mobilisation In India,
2022
H.R. College of Commerce and Economics, University of Mumbai
Dissenting Bodies, Disruptive Pandemic: Farmers’ Protest And Women’S Participation In Mass Mobilisation In India, Paromita Chakrabarti
Journal of International Women's Studies
While authoritarian states promoting neoliberal forms of governance have taken advantage of COVID-19 to weaken the foundations of civil society, there has also been a significant rise in contemporary struggles for a more democratic society during and around the pandemic. From December 2019 to November 2021, India has seen a significant number of protests. The timeline of collective resistance against the state and its divisive, violent and neoliberal agenda represents a critical juncture in Indian politics. This paper focuses on the farmers’ protests that started from last November and recently ended in a stunning, hard-earned victory. In a sector that …
Visiting The House Of Bad’S Mother: Queering Saadat Hasan Manto’S “Thanda Gosht”,
2022
Indiana State University
Visiting The House Of Bad’S Mother: Queering Saadat Hasan Manto’S “Thanda Gosht”, Namita Goswami
Journal of International Women's Studies
This essay reads Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story, “Thanda Gosht” (1950), depicting women’s experience of sectarian brutality during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, to delineate the postcolonial significance Gayatri Spivak’s concept of originary queerness. Manto’s synecdoche (“cold meat”) for an unnamed and raped female corpse, her Sikh abductor and violator, as well as for the story’s readers, (re)figures reproductive heteronormativity as a process of unknowing that emplaces a gendered taxonomy, even when its victims are silent. Rather than reinforce sexual difference as a finished itinerary, however, Kulwant Kaur’s repeatedly piercing question—who she is—queers “Thanda Gosht” by taking us …
Reflections On Queer Literary Representations In Contemporary Indian Writing In English,
2022
University of York, UK
Reflections On Queer Literary Representations In Contemporary Indian Writing In English, Aakanksha Singh
Journal of International Women's Studies
This reflective piece explores the importance of thinking beyond labels and categories for queer desires and queer expressions of love. Knowability and visibility of these desires through labels and categories has the potential to create much-needed awareness. This visibility, however, can inadvertently also create borders and perpetuate rigidity about queer desires, confining them to certain norms and limitations. The piece then reflects on mass media’s role in creating these borders, particularly through the coverage of Pride Parades in India. Then by examining contemporary texts such as Amruta Patil’s Kari (2008), Himanjali Sankar’s Talking of Muskaan (2015), and Parvati Sharma’s short …
Networking Voices Against Violence: Online Activism And Transnational Feminism In Local-Global Contexts,
2022
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Durgapur in India
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 …
Productivity To Precarity On Instagram: Digital Feminism In India During The Covid-19 Pandemic,
2022
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani
Productivity To Precarity On Instagram: Digital Feminism In India During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Anhiti Patnaik
Journal of International Women's Studies
This paper examines how digital feminism deconstructed neo-liberal ideals of technological productivity in India during the Covid-19 pandemic. By creating a productivity scale, I delineate new social disparities and risk factors brought on by the unprecedented shift to a work-from-home digital economy. Through theories of biopower, I argue that technology is not neutral, apolitical, or unequivocally in favour of equal access and human rights. The creation of a new social group termed the ‘technoprecariat’ during lockdown is discussed using a ‘cripqueer’ approach to digital feminism. I extend Judith Butler’s early work on gender performativity to the neo-liberal ideal of gender …
