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Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.53, No.2 2018

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Faces Of Bg: Diverse Backgrounds, Many Stories, One Community, Holly Shively

Honors Projects

If you ask people who have been around Bowling Green State University for at least a decade, they’ll tell you the university seems more diverse, but some people find that, based on statistics, the university isn’t diverse enough. Despite BGSU having roughly 77 percent of students being between the ages of 18 and 21 years old and 78 percent being white, smaller communities flourish within the larger BGSU community. FacesofBG.com is a website that explores diversity at Bowling Green State University through the motto “Diverse backgrounds. Many stories. One community.” Through educational components like diversity in the local news and …

Reconstructing The African And African Diasporic Woman: Gender, Race, Class And The Making Of A Constructive Radical African Feminist, Patchani E. Patabadi

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation analyzes the story of the African woman migration from a generational perspective. It discusses Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter (1979) as the foundation of the African woman’s migration story and the evolvement in the female identity construction. It then uses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah as a new, yet different and more contemporary approach to the same subject. In other words, this dissertation explores how the contemporary approach to storytelling and identity construction has changed the African woman’s migration story and her identity construction since Mariama Bâ dealt with them nearly forty (40) years ago. It analyzes the …

Imaging The Woman Through Tanzanian Women’S Maxims, Shani Omari, Fikeni E. M. K. Senkoro

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women’s maxims, as well as other forms of oral literature in Tanzania, are a popular genre. They are verbal arts that can be self-addressed or addressed to a fellow woman among womenfolk. This paper intends to examine the role of these maxims in imaging women in Tanzania. This study was prompted by the findings of previous studies regarding the portrayal of women in Kiswahili literature where, generally, women are depicted as inferior beings compared to men, partly due to the fact that most authors are men. Hence, we found it imperative to investigate women’s maxims that are created and uttered …

Gender, Race And Justification: The Value Of Critical Discourse Analysis (Cda) In Contemporary Settler Colonial Contexts, Caroline Hodes

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper outlines an approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) that can be used to examine multiple forms of textual data as part of decolonial practice in any national context that is struggling to acknowledge both its colonial past and its ongoing colonial present. The author provides an explanation of what CDA is followed by a discussion of the methods used in a larger multi-level analysis focused on the impact of the defense witness testimony in a Canadian Pacific salmon fisheries case. The larger project has recently been published in the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice. This paper will …

The Pedagogy Of Difference: Co-Producing Feminist Consciousness Across Borders, Patricia Mohammed

Journal of International Women's Studies

How has a movement built on the consciousness of sisterhood become so fragmented between the end of the 20th and into the second decade of the 21st century? As different political tendencies, widely varying economic conditions and cultural dissimilarities emerged in global struggles to achieve diverse visions of women’s and gender equality, the current feminist movement appears to be characterized by chasms between the east, west, north and south rather than viewed as a movement whose basic tenets are parallel across racial, geographic and social barriers. By looking at lived examples of confrontations, and through a deliberate process of self-reflexive …

Ecofeminism In The Speculative Fiction Of Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, And Margaret Atwood, Cara Williams

Honors Scholar Theses

The aim of this article is to explore the speculative fiction works of three prominent, female speculative fiction writers: Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood,and Octavia Butler through an ecofeminist lens. Ecofeminism, as first coined by Francois D'Eaubonne in 1974, is a philosophy that compares the oppression and abuse of women to that of the environment. This article notes how Le Guin, Atwood, and Butler portray women and the environment in post-apocalyptic science fiction. Specifically, this article looks at how these authors explore food acquisition and consumption in their various worlds. This article asks the question, how does our relationship …

From Heo To Zir: A History Of Gender Expression In The English Language, Brodie Robinson

Senior Honors Theses

With the growing presence of the LGBTQ+ community on the global stage, the matter of gender has been rushed to the forefront of the public consciousness. News outlets have hotly debated the topic of gender expression, a topic which has motivated mass demonstrations and acts of violence, and this has promoted a linguistic conversation at the international level.

This thesis is intended to provide the historical context for the contemporary debate on gender expression in the English language, and explores both the grammatical background (the Indo-European origins of linguistic gender, the development of the modern pronoun system, etc.) and the …

La Ciudad Como Espacio De La Marginalidad: Un Acercamiento Crítico A Un Oso Rojo, Mariana Pensa

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

Nos proponemos realizar un análisis del film argentino Un oso rojo (2002, dirigido por Israel Adrián Caetano). Un punto de entrada para el análisis nos remite al concepto mismo de lo que es una ciudad, tal como Lewis Mumford lo expone en su canónico artículo “What is a city?”. Si la ciudad se constituye, al decir de Mumford, en espacio simbólico de “unidad colectiva”, en donde los hombres realizan sus actividades mas “útiles”, las preguntas a las que nos llevan estos conceptos serán ¿cuál es el estatuto de una ciudad recorrida por la violencia? ¿Cómo el espacio refiere y significa …

Seccll Conference Program 2018, Georgia Southern University

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

Conference Program

Beyoncé As A Semiotic Resource: Visual And Linguistic Meaning Making And Gender In Twitter, Tumblr, And Pinterest, Addie L. Sayers China

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At the intersection of digital identities and new language and social practice online is the concept of searchable talk (ST). ST describes the process of tagging discourse in a social networking service (SNS) with a hashtag (#), allowing it to be searchable by others. Although originating in Twitter, ST has expanded into other SNS, and is used therein not only to mark language-based posts, but also multimodal posts and images. While scholars have elucidated the structure and function of ST, their studies have primarily examined ST within language-based posts; few have researched ST with respect to images and other types …

Becoming A Woman Of Isis, Zoe D. Fine

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine how terrorism is produced and consumed in communication. Using discourse analysis, I investigate how terrorism is constituted in the accounts of four women described in online news reports as having joined, or almost joined the so-called Islamic State (IS): “Alex,” constructed as having been lonely and flirted with IS; “Khadija,” presented as a schoolteacher turned member of IS’s all-women’s brigade; Laura, described as a woman whose partner abandoned her, who met a man online, and who brought her son with her to join IS; and Tareena, referred to as a health worker who brought her …

Student Engagement Curriculum For The Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus, Michael Angelo Caban

Capstone Collection

This paper is a guide for a student engagement curriculum for the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus(PGMC). Included are the theoretical frameworks for youth empowerment and development, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer/Questioning, and more (LGBTQ+) empowerment, and intercultural training design and facilitation that are at the center and the considerations an intercultural trainer and youth programmer and facilitator should constantly regard. The main purpose of this is to put forth a document that PGMC, as well as any group or organization, can use to empower LGBTQ+ young people, as well as their straight allies, and to develop leaders in their schools …

“La Culpa Es De Los Tlaxcaltecas”: Gender, The Burden Of Blame, And A Re-Examination Of The Myth Of La Malinche, Erin M. Lanza

Student Publications

This paper explores Elena Garro’s short story “La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas.” Supplementing close readings with analyses drawn from relevant authors and theorists, I highlight the key ideas regarding gender, identity, memory, and history that Garro weaves into her text, and I consider Garro’s emphasis on patriarchal control, the internalization of female culpability for the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, and women’s role in constructing and reconstructing historical discourses. By travelling into her own and Mexico’s past, Laura Aldama, one of the main female protagonists in the story, not only challenges gendered histories but also reveals how patriarchal thought continues …

How Drag Culture Resolves Tensions In Victorian Shakespearean Cross-Dressing; Or, Slay, Feste, Slay, Isaac Robertson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In 2017, Madame Le Gateau Chocolat, a black drag queen, sashayed onto the stage of the Globe theater to portray Feste in Emma Rice’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. This bold move not only gave anxiety to its investors (eventually leading to the stepping down of Emma Rice), but also raised questions about the validity of drag performance within Shakespeare plays. Shakespeare has historically been inseparable with traditional cross-dressing (both in performance and in the narrative itself), although the relationship has not always been cordial. In Victorian England, cross-dressing was often set equal to homosexuality or moral deviance, and …

The Personal As The Political: The Everyday Resistance Of Lgbtq+ Woc In The Netherlands, Sofia Del Valle

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Netherlands is often a country characterized by tolerance and inclusion, especially in regards to sexual diversity. Having legalized same sex marriage in 2001, one of the first in the world to do so, the Netherlands has secured its spot on the map as one of the top “gay friendly” countries. However, upon further examination, we find that tolerance within the Netherlands is not all that it seems. Many scholars and activists argue that Dutch tolerance, rather than a strive for LGBTQ+ equality, is a guise to perpetuate racism and xenophobic political agendas. Such a debate necessitates an understanding of …

The Women Of Dho Tarap: Gender Roles, Challenges, And Change In Dolpo, Nepal, Luke Testa

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

By collecting and examining first first-hand accounts of women and men from Dho Tarap, this report illustrates the many challenges that women report facing throughout their lives in Dolpo, offers a conceptual framework for understanding the significance of gender, and highlights women’s thoughts on change. The difficulties that women face appear to be due to cultural concepts that suggest that women are less capable than men, social norms that provide various learning and growth opportunities to men but not to women, and customs that result in women experiencing discriminate treatment in the home and community. Through an analysis of the …

Spenser’S Narrative Figuration Of Women In The Faerie Queene, Judith H. Anderson

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Concentrating on major figures of women in The Faerie Queene, together with the figures constellated around them, Anderson's Narrative Figuration explores the contribution of Spenser's epic romance to an appreciation of women's plights and possibilities in the age of Elizabeth. The figures she highlights encompass the idealization of Una, humanized by parody; the historicized fixation of Belphoebe; the cross-dressed complexity of Britomart; and the psychological misery of Serena, a throwback to Amoret. They range from cartoons to a fullness sharing numerous features with the Shakespearean women salient in recent debates about character. The critical lens most revealing for each …

Penalizing Pregnancy: A Feminist Legal Studies Analysis Of Purvi Patel's Criminalization, Abby Schneller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Purvi Patel is an Indian American woman who, in 2015, was the first U.S. citizen to be convicted under feticide statutes for allegedly attempting her own abortion. Though her 2015 conviction was overturned the same year, the feticide conviction was significant as a legal precedent as well as part of a larger trend criminalizing pregnant women of color. With an eye towards the greater pattern of the criminalization of other pregnant women of color (Boyd, 1999; Faludi, 1991; Humphries, 1999; Mahan, 1996; Roberts, 1997), in this thesis I employ a feminist legal studies methodology and the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality …

Foreign Language Anxiety, Sexuality, And Gender: Lived Experiences Of Four Lgbtq+ Students, James Donald Mitchell

Dissertations and Theses

The relationship between foreign language anxiety and gender identity has been largely a quantitative endeavor that has shown contradictory results. Furthermore, sexual identity has not been researched in foreign language anxiety literature. A qualitative account of LGBTQ+ language learners with different gender identities has been absent from the literature. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between foreign language anxiety and sexual and gender identity. To gain insight into this relationship, this qualitative study investigated the lived experiences of four LGBTQ+ foreign language university students who represented three gender identities. Data were collected through multiple, in-depth …

The Victorian Body, Peter J. Capuano

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The nineteenth century is extremely important for the study of embodiment because it is the period in which the modern body, as we currently understand it, was most thoroughly explored. This was the era when modern medical models of the body were developed and disseminated, when modern political relations to the body were instantiated, and when modern identities in relation to class, race, and gender were inscribed. While questions about the distinctions between personhood and the body were studied by the ancients, nineteenth-century developments in technology, economics, medicine, and science rendered such categories newly important for Britons who were the …

Disoriented Nationalist Discourse Of The Wenxuan Group Amidst Manchukuo’S Anti-Modern Chorus, Chao Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Disoriented Nationalist Discourse of the Wenxuan Group amidst Manchukuo's Anti-Modern Chorus" Chao Liu analyzes the proposal of "native-land literature" made by left-wing Chinese writers in occupied northeast China. As it turns out, inheriting the nationalist discourse of the May Fourth Movement and further radicalizing it via a "new romanticism," those writers over-emphasized the socio-political function of literary production and took native-land literature as the most effective tool for nationalist mobilization. Accordingly, they repelled modern civilization as it was associated with the colonists, relying instead on natural wilderness and primitive force and thus adopting subject matters as well …

Feminist Voice In The Works Of Indonesian Early Woman Writers: Reading Novels And Short Stories By Suwarsih Djojopuspito, Aquarini Priyatna

Journal of International Women's Studies

Suwarsih Djojopuspito is among the most important early Indonesian women/feminist writers. This research intends to emphasize her rightful position among the first Indonesian feminist writers. Focusing on her very important novel Manusia Bebas (published originally in Dutch as Buiten het Gareelin 1940), one collection of short stories, Empat Serangkai (1954), and a novel written in Sundanese, Marjanah (1959), I argue that feminist spirits and ideas have actually been existing and elaborated in works by women writers in the era prior to the Indonesian New Order (1966-1998) as exemplified by Suwarsih’s works. What is important in these works is that …

Women Nationalists In Nineteenth And Twentieth Century Ghana And Zimbabwe: Case Studies Of Charwe Nehanda Nyakasikana And Yaa Asentewaa, Abdul Kuba

Journal of International Women's Studies

Nation and nationalism have been associated with masculinity. Nations and states are often envisioned through heroic narratives. According to these narratives, nations are formed through the blood and toil of fore-fathers not fore-mothers. Women’s roles in nation-building are regarded as supportive, relegating them to the background as supporters of their male counterparts. Heroines receive little or no attention in the historiography of national struggles. Pedagogically, heroines are understudied in most African school systems. It is easier for one to encounter names of nationalists like Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Nelson Mandela (South Africa), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso) among other …

Sexual Violence And The Limits Of Laws’ Powers To Alter Behaviour: The Case Of South Africa, Tameshnie Deane

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite having one of the most inclusive and progressive constitutions in the world, South Africa (SA) has one of the highest rates of sexual offences globally. This article measures the extent of sexual violence, causes, developments and challenges in research, policy and practice in relation to sexual violence against women. It analyses the causes and responses to sexual violence in a largely South African context. Through different reports and literature reviews this paper will analyze the role that social traditions and norms play in the commission of sexual violence. By analyzing a prominent rape case, the author will deliberate on …

Women Confronting Death: War Widows’ Experiences In The South Caucasus, Nona Shahnazarian, Ulrike Ziemer

Journal of International Women's Studies

Widowhood is an under-recognized, albeit significant, aspect of life all over the world. The scant literature on contemporary narratives of widowhood among women as a consequence of conflicts indicates that this aspect of lived experience is relatively underexplored. Although loss is integral to life in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in the South Caucasus, it has been overlooked because of the unsettled politics in the region. Since the end of the full-scale war in 1994, the self-declared, internationally unrecognized republic has been locked in a protracted conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. This longstanding conflict has had severe consequences for society in this …

Epic Of The Commander Dhat Al-Himma, Melanie Magidow

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Bengali Art House Cinema, Women’S Subjectivity, And History: Satyajit Ray’S Use Of Silence In Charulata (1964) And Devi (1960), Lakshmi Quigley

Journal of International Women's Studies

Unmediated representations of women’s everyday subjective experiences of historical events are difficult to find in discourses about masculinity and femininity. Discussions often centre on normative expressions of sexual difference, explaining the ways in which patriarchy was reconstituted rather than focusing on women’s experiences. Late nineteenth century strands of nationalist thought in the Bengal relied on gendered ideas about the nation, self, and society in their representations of womanhood, which served as a symbol of the nation. Various historians have explored the idealised versions of women that these discourses presented, but often these studies fail to examine portrayals of the subjective …

Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a so-called post-racial America, a new gay identity has flourished and come into the limelight. However, in recent years, researchers have concluded that not all men who have sex with other men (MSM) self-identify as gay, most noticeably a large population of Black men. It is possible that a tainted history of Black enslavement in this country that is inextricably linked with ideas of space, surveillance, subversion, and survival inform a Black male’s self-identification as being “on the down low” (DL). This begs the question: What does mainstream society view as gay-ness and how is the DL constructed …

Decolonizing Gender-Based Violence Advocacy: The Development Of An Undocumented Survivor Resource Training, Zulema Aleman

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

The field of advocacy for the end of gender-based violence has constantly grown. Some could say that there is continual action taking place at multiple levels to ensure the protection of survivors, but the direction is often influenced by the perspective of those in positions of power. Regardless, both the social and legal movements have focused primarily on gender and often disregarded how other social identities, such as immigration status and race, intersect with sexual violence and thus create a range of experiences. The undocumented community is one of these groups who face higher rates of gender-based violence due to …