Women's Studies Commons^™

The Virtue Mentality, Rachel Eckhardt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my study of early feminist fiction and contemporary queer intentional communities, highly ambitious and nearly impossible aspirations emerged as a singular uniting theme. From early feminist novelists to the intrepid founders of lesbian lands, utopian women share a passionate commitment to transform the world. This thesis engages with feminist concepts of virtue and how they influence utopian projects in both fiction and in life, whether the word “virtue” itself is used to describe the project or not. Virtue has made a lasting impact on contemporary feminist utopian projects that sometimes creates conflict and often undermines its liberatory aspirations. When …

Ceasing To Run Underground: 20th-Century Women Writers And Hydro-Logical Thought, Annie M. Cranstoun

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Starting from two central ecopoetic convictions—the constitutive role of environment in human experience (and vice versa), and text’s ability to connect with the world—this dissertation then moves in a different direction from most ecocritical projects. Instead of looking at the ways literary representation flows back into nature in the forms of attitude, praxis, and policy, this study focuses on the earlier part of the loop: the emergence of text from environment, particularly its aquatic parts, via the faculty of the imagination. In its scrutiny of images that spring directly from matter and its faith in the concept of a personal …

Creating With Anger: Contemplating Vendetta. An Analysis Of Anger In Italian And Spanish Women Writers Of The Early Modern Era, Luisanna Sardu Castangia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the vast gamut of human emotions, anger is one of the most complex, provocative, and enduring. From Greek philosophers working in antiquity to today’s most recent theories on emotions, most scholars agree that anger has a multifaceted nature. This near universal agreement across the barriers of time and geography stems from the following facts: in order to exist, anger involves the participation of other emotions; anger does not have an opposite; anger leads an individual to engage in an act of self-analysis and in an evaluation of other individuals; and, finally, anger inspires action to right a wrong that …

Empowerment From Within: Supporting Palestinian Women’S Struggle Against Violence, Ortal Bensky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent reports by the United Nations and local non-governmental organizations present a troubling increase in incidents of violence against Palestinian women in Palestine. These are cases of domestic violence, where the attackers are Palestinians, and political violence, where the attackers are Israeli settlers and soldiers. These violent incidents include attacks on body and property. Most incidents are neither dealt with by the Palestinian authorities nor by the Israeli government and judicial system. There is not sufficient international pressure to enforce justice. The purpose of this study is to offer alternative ways to prevent violent crimes, enforce relevant laws, and provide …

Research In Brief - 'My Story Ain’T Got Nothin To Do With You' Or Does It?: Black Female Faculty’S Critical Considerations Of Mentoring White Female Students, Kathleen E. Gillon, Lissa D. Stapleton

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Previous literature on mentoring, specifically that of cross-cultural mentoring, has provided some insight into the intricacy of race in mentoring. However, much of this literature has focused on the mentoring relationship of a White individual mentoring a person of color. This qualitative inquiry critically explores the experiences of six Black female faculty who have mentored White female students in higher education graduate programs, focusing specifically on how they enter into these cross-cultural mentoring relationships. Using Black feminist thought, our findings suggest that while individual Black faculty may have unique experiences entering into mentoring relationships with White female students, a Black …

Fearless Friday: Jasmine Matos, Jasmine S. Matos

SURGE

This week Surge is honored to highlight Jasmine Matos for Fearless Friday!

Originally from the Bronx in NYC, Jasmine is here at Gettysburg majoring in Health Sciences and minoring in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She now finds herself in her last semester at Gettysburg College and is trying to make the most of it. She’s the Captain of B.O.M.B. Squad, a member of the Black Student Union (BSU), a member of the Latin American Student Association (LASA), and she works in the Admissions Office. [excerpt]

Film Review: Maestra, Lobna Ismail

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Maestra (2011), documentary, directed by Catherine Murphy.

Book Review: Gut Feminism, Carolyn Laubender

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Gut Feminism by Elizabeth A. Wilson. Duke University Press, 2015.

Book Review: Provocations: A Transnational Reader In The History Of Feminist Thought, Maia L. Butler

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Provocations: A Transnational Reader in the History of Feminist Thought, edited by Susan Bordo, M. Cristina Alcalde, and Ellen Rosenman. University of California Press. 2015.

Book Review: Polygyny: What It Means When African American Muslim Women Share Their Husbands, Lara Watkins

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Polygyny: What It Means When African American Muslim Women Share Their Husbands by Debra Majeed, University Press of Florida. 2015.

Book Review: India's Working Women And Career Discourses: Society, Socialization And Agency, Jayne Howell

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of India’s Working Women and Career Discourses: Society, Socialization and Agency by Suchitra Shenoy-Packer. Lexington Books. 2014.

Book Review: Domestic Violence And The Islamic Tradition, Esraa Osama

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition by Ayesha S. Chaudhry. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Book Review: Cora Dubois: Anthropologist, Diplomat, Agent, Robert A. Mcmanus

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Cora DuBois: Anthropologist, Diplomat, Agent (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology) by Susan C. Seymour. University of Nebraska Press. 2015.

Book Review: Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, And Rebellion Before The Sixties, Lauren Rackley

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties by Amanda H. Littauer. University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

The Term, Chick Lit, Carol Smallwood

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Discovering My Own Black Feminism: Embarking On A Journey To Explore Kenyan Women's Oppression, Glory Joy Gatwiri, Helen Jaqueline Mclaren

Journal of International Women's Studies

All Black women have experienced living in a society that devalues women of African descent. Control of Black women ideologically, economically and in political life functions perfectly to form a highly discriminative but effective system that is designed to keep Black women in a submissive and subordinate place. As a PhD student, in a reflective journey with my research supervisor, I engage in a struggle to define my own Black feminist perspective in preparation for exploring the oppression, disadvantage and discrimination experienced by Kenyan women who are living with vaginal fistula. I maintain that women’s gender oppression is not incidental …

Multilevel Analysis Of State Variations In Women's Participation In Household Decision-Making In Nigeria, Esther O. Lamidi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Although the past two decades featured burgeoning research on issues affecting women’s lives in Nigeria, the existing studies of women’s status and decision-making autonomy in the country leave important gap in their representations of the high level of sociocultural heterogeneity in the country. Using a nationally representative survey data, the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS, n = 26,306), this study examines variations in women’s decision-making autonomy across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory in Nigeria. A series of multilevel linear regression models revealed that Nigerian women’s levels of participation in household decision-making varied significantly across states …

The Changing Patterns And Lived Experiences Of Women Pursuing Higher Education Post-Marriage In India, Satarupa Dutta

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study explores from a phenomenological stand point, the lived experiences of thirty Indian women and struggle to pursue higher education post marriage. It encompasses the life-worlds of two distinct generations—women who had achieved higher education post-marriage, at least 20 years ago (pre-1994); and married women who are currently enrolled with a university. Using the life course perspectives’ concept of time and social ecology, the experiences of these women have been analysed thematically to understand the changing patterns in these women’s perception of a) self which includes identification with oneself, individual behaviour, motivational level, multiple roles management, concept of space …

Taking Action: The Desiring Subjects Of Neoliberal Feminism In India, Hemangini Gupta

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper reflects on an emergent brand of feminist activism in India that responds to everyday sexual violence against women in public. I focus specifically on the efforts of middle class women who organize through online media to conduct interventions in urban Indian public spaces. I review these recent feminist interventions and locate them within a historical review of the women’s movement in India to suggest that contemporary feminist organizing embodies and reflects India’s turn to neoliberalism in the 1990s. While neoliberal reforms have been analyzed within the terms of political economy, this paper extends existing research to consider how …

Resisting The Male Gaze: Feminist Responses To The "Normatization" Of The Female Body In Western Culture, Diane Ponterotto

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper attempts to present a feminist critique of the social and political promotion in Western culture of a univocal model of female corporeity imposed on women, and consequently detrimental to female subjectivity and agency. Starting from the Foucauldian position concerning social oppression determined by the disciplinary gaze of power structures, the paper discusses perspectives of resistance to the patriarchally-motivated scrutiny of the female body, and to the mass-media induced coercion of conformity to the normatized model for the female body in contemporary society.