Digital Commons Network^™

Cyberqueers In Taiwan: Locating Histories Of The Margins, Terri He

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this paper I direct the focus to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) online communities in Taiwan. On the one hand, I argue that such online communities in Taiwan are worthwhile researching and deserve special academic attention because they touch upon Taiwan’s perpetual difference in the world as a de-facto, thereby questioning how a transnational perspective permanently influences or even changes the way national identity is or is not formulated. On the other, against the backdrop of globalisation, I highlight the fact of under-theorisation of issues and politics of sexuality dissidence in a non-western, non-dominant location and culture such …

Awakening The 'Mere Pulsation Of Desire' In Silas Marner, Melissa Raines

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In George Eliot's Middlemarch, the narrator reflects on those crucial events which shape pathways in our lives. For Tertius Lydgate, this occurs with the chance opening of a book to a particular page:

[T]he first passage that drew his eyes was on the valves of the heart. He was not much acquainted with valves of any sort, but he knew that valvae were folding doors, and through this crevice came a sudden light startling him with his first vivid notion of finely adjusted mechanism in the human frame.'

For Lydgate, this seminal instant is the one which inspires him to …

Liberated Jokes: Sexual Humor In All-Female Groups, Janet Bing

English Faculty Publications

Females have formerly been under-represented in jokes. Many scholars have claimed that joke making is primarily a male activity, particularly in the domain of sexual jokes. In this paper, I discuss sexual jokes that women share with each other both in all-female groups and by e-mail. After reviewing some widely held assumptions about women and jokes, I explore liberated women's jokes, including their structure, use of stereotypes, and subversive ideas. Finally, I discuss why humor theory is incomplete without the inclusion of a female perspective and suggest that women should tell more jokes.

[Introduction To] The Latino Body: Crisis Identities In American Literary And Cultural Memory, LáZaro Lima

Bookshelf

The Latino Body tells the story of the United States Latino body politic and its relation to the state: how the state configures Latino subjects and how Latino subjects have in turn altered the state. Lázaro Lima charts the interrelated groups that define themselves as Latinos and examines how these groups have responded to calls for unity and nationally shared conceptions of American cultural identity. He contends that their responses, in times of cultural or political crisis, have given rise to profound cultural transformations, enabling the so-called “Latino subject“ to emerge.

Analyzing a variety of cultural, literary, artistic, and popular …

Arab Women’S Education And Gender Perceptions: An Insider Analysis, Amani Hamdan

Journal of International Women's Studies

Studies focusing exclusively on the connection between Arab Muslim women’s educational pursuits and their gender perceptions, and how their gender perceptions may have changed as a result of living in two different cultures, are rarely conducted. Additionally, the factors that may influence an Arab Muslim woman’s educational pursuits seem seldom investigated. This article is highlighting some factors that may influence Arab Muslim women’s gender perceptions. In researching Arab Muslim women’s experiences, I considered the diversity and multiplicity of their race, ethnicity, class, and experience. How Arab Muslim women construct the gender aspect of their identities and how these identities may …

Rocking The Cradle To Rocking The World: The Role Of Muslim Female Fighters, Farhana Ali

Journal of International Women's Studies

Attacks by the mujahidaat are arguably more deadly than those conducted by male fighters and could motivate other Muslim women to adopt suicide as the tactic of choice. The use of Muslim women to conduct martyrdom, or suicide, operations by male-dominated terrorist groups could have implications on the jihadi mindset, challenging more conservative groups such as Al Qaeda, to reconsider the utility of the Muslim woman on the front lines of jihad. These terrorist groups will likely exploit women to conduct operations on their behalf to advance their goals and achieve tactical gain.

Muslim women are increasingly joining the global …

Bad Ass Or Punk Ass?: The Contours Of Street Masculinity, Christopher W. Mullins, Robin M. Cardwell-Mullins

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

In this article, we examine the utility of R.W. Connell’s conceptualization of hegemonic and subordinate masculinities through the examination of qualitative interviews with active criminal offenders in Saint Louis, Missouri. The article describes contours of “bad ass” masculinity, the hegemonic form, and “punk” masculinity, the primary subordinate form. After an examination of the nature of these masculinities, we discuss how these elements of the cognitive map of the streets are refractions of mainstream masculinities, exploring the convergences and divergences that emerged in the data. Finally, we point out how the work on masculinities is important to gender studies and feminist …

“A Highly Ambiguous Condition”: The Transgender Subject, Experimental Narrative And Trans-Reading Identity In The Fiction Of Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter, And Jeanette Winterson, Jennifer A. Smith

Dissertations

This dissertation examines how the constantly evolving gender identity o f a text’s transgender subject relates to the text’s narrative structure and shapes the orientation o f the reader to the text. Accordingly, this project examines how these transgender narratives deploy experimental stylistic techniques that enhance the reader’s experience of ceaseless transitioning by revealing gender as a constant process that never solidifies onto a body and by highlighting the text’s own status as process rather than finalized product. Further, this project examines how a transgender subject and his/her relationship to the body, culture, and narrative is involved in the re-vision …

Naccs 33rd Annual Conference, National Association For Chicana And Chicano Studies

NACCS Conference Programs

Linking Local and Global Struggles for Social Justice: Transnational Chicana and Chicano Studise
June 28-July 2006
Hotel Fénix and Hotel Morales

Editorial, Zdenka Kalnicka

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Mmatshilo Motsei, Hearing Visions Seeing Voices, 2004, Jacanamedia, South Africa. Isbn 1-919931-51-1, R139.95, Pp. 189., Mechthild Nagel

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Women, Water And The Reclamation Of The Feminine, Colleen Kattau

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper examines the relationship between water and women particularly in terms of representative cultural expressions that underlie women's recovery of water as a fundamental human right, and explores how deep knowledge and trust of earth's bounty sustains viable and effective social change campaigns such as the right to water movement. Drawing principally upon the sociocultural analysis of ecofeminist thinkers such as Vandana Shiva and Carolyn Merchant, as well as William Marks's work on water, I critique the nature-culture dichotomy underlying approaches to water as a 'resource', and try to undermine the accepted hierarchy of 'power over nature' which by …

Review Of Silvia Federici Caliban And The Witch: Women,The Body And Primitive Accumulation (2005, Autonomedia,Nyc), Ann Fergusun

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Oedipus' Wake: The (Neo-)Masculinization Of The Self In Late Twentieth-Century American Women's Memoir, Thomas Johnson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Without pretensions to exhaustiveness, this study briefly examines the mid- to late-twentieth-century flowering of western theory and criticism built around autobiographical writing and follows the feminist branch(es) of that theory and criticism through a reading of the following four memoirs: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, All the Lost Girls by Patricia Foster, Lying by Lauren Slater, and Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Using both Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory as they relate to literature, I argue that the selves these four women write in their memoirs are not selves built around the model historically set for women by …

The Unknown Struggle : A Comparative Analysis Of Women In The Black Power Movement., Elizabeth Michele Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis comparatively analyzes the experiences and roles of women in the United States and Caribbean Black Power Movements. Using the Black Panther Party and Trinidadian National Joint Action Committee as case studies, the researcher isolates similarities and differences among women in these two regions of the African Diaspora. Black Feminist and Caribbean Feminist theoretical perspectives aide in understanding how the interlocking social forces of race, class, and gender impacted women participating in the Black Nationalist movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's.

"A Word Can Make All The Differences" : Translating Caribbean Feminist Discourse And Simone Schwarz-Bart's Pluie Et Vent Sur TéLuméE Miracle, Stacey Lynn Diliberto

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

How is a literary text—and the culture it represents—translated? Is the translated text a hindrance to the unique voice of an author, or is it beneficial for the circulation of the text in a culture that is not the author’s own? Must the translator be an insider to the author’s culture, or can any translator take up the task of interpretation? This thesis seeks to investigate these questions by examining the English translation of Simone Schwarz - Bart’s Pluie et Vent Sur Télumée Miracle. Barbara Bray, the translator of Pluie et Vent, renames the book in English as The Bridge …

Feminist Theory And The Right-Wing: Shiv Sena Women Mobilize Mumbai, Tarini Bedi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Feminist scholars engaged in the study of women and religion often grapple with the problem of how to theorize the phenomenon of women’s attraction to, and active involvement in politico-religious movements characterized by strongly “patriarchal” authority structures, and by ideologies that either seem to denigrate women or assign them to subordinate social and symbolic roles. This paper looks at some of the approaches that have been taken by feminist scholars to this issue. It reviews some key adaptations of feminist theory to the rising phenomena of women’s public participation in religious, right-wing agendas. It specifically explores the relevance of feminist …

Family Caregiving To Aids Patients: The Role Of Gender In Caregiver Burden In Uganda, Walter Kipp, Denis Tindyebwa, Ednah Karamagi, Tom Rubaale

Journal of International Women's Studies

The objectives of the study were: 1) What is the burden of care for male and female family caregivers of AIDS patients? and 2) Which factors influence the family care burden for AIDS patients at home? A questionnaire was completed by 29 male and 91 female family caregivers of AIDS patients living in four rural areas in western Uganda. Participating caregivers were selected from a patient list of the home-based care program for AIDS patients and then interviewed. The responses from the questionnaire were used to calculate care burden scores for caregivers of both genders and the scores in each …

Lottiamo Ancora: Reviewing One Hundred And Fifty Years Of Italian Feminism, Miguel Malagreca

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay examines the struggle of Italian feminism for transforming long rooted beliefs and gender roles in Italy since the late nineteenth century. I specifically focus on the legal, political and symbolic levels. First, I describe the historical formation of Italian feminism and its relation with literature and politics. Next, I examine the emergence of new feminist groups, and their involvement with the late 1960s protests. I then briefly explore the issues of divorce, labor and family laws during the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, I summarize the progress of the lesbian and queer movements in their struggle for recognition and …

How Does Change Happen? Women's Rights And Development Conference, Kaushalya Perera

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This was the question that was the central focus of the 10th International Forum of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID). The Forum was held in Bangkok, Thailand from October 27th-30th, 2005. The AWID is an international organization, founded in 1982, and hosts an international forum every three years.

Ethnic And Gender Identity In Hip-Hop Among Three Female Emcees In The Netherlands, Shoshana Walter

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This field study project examines how female rappers in the Netherlands transgress notions of what it means to be Dutch and what it means be female. Based on interviews with three female rappers, as well as academics and participants in the hip hop scene, the author explores the significance of self identification within the current political and social context of the Netherlands. Beginning with a history of hip hop, an analysis of globalization and the Dutch hip hop scene, and a review of relevant current events, a firm foundation is established on which issues of identity, ethnicity, and gender in …

Producing Norms: Same-Sex Marriage, Refiguring Kinship And The Cultural Groundswell Of Queer Coupledom, Rob Cover

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Poststructuralist feminism, postmodern inquiry, queer theory and various radical and liberal-humanist forms of lesbian/gay rights have worked to undo the claim to the naturalness of masculine-feminine and male-female complementarity in sex and relationships. That is, the rhetorical grounding of the very notion of relationship ‘coupledom’ has been put in question over the past half-century and opened the possibility of a radical reorganisation of modern kinship. The destabilising impact on much contemporary western legislation concerning family, children, IVF access, adoption, immigration rights and social security centers on whether or not the subject of that legislation is ‘single’ or ‘coupled’. Such legislation …

Doers Of The Living Word: Gospel Ideology And The African American Womanist Novel, Rebecca Erin Huskey

Dissertations

In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison issues a charge and illuminates the challenge that she and other African American writers face in defining the self through a racially oppressive language:

Neither blackness nor "people of color" stimulates in me notions of excessive, limitless love, anarchy, or routine dread. I cannot rely on these metaphorical shortcuts because I am a black writer struggling with and through a language that can powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive "othering" of people and language which are by no means marginal or already and completely known and …

Book Review, Robert W. Gordon

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Course Description Booklet -- Women's And Gender Studies -- Summer And Fall 2006

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Information and Materials

Undergraduate and graduate courses offered through the Women's and Gender Studies Program. WIth descriptions and teaching faculty.

Uneasy Transvestism? Fashioning A Space For The Single Woman In Sex And The City, Nicola Rodie

Journal of International Women's Studies

‘Uneasy Transvestism? Fashioning a Space for the Single Woman in Sex and the City’ is essentially an exploration of the ways in which fashion is used within the programme to explore the parameters of the female body, and in particular, to define a sexually fluid space for the single woman. I approach the material from a cultural studies methodology, trying to especially decipher the meanings inherent in the visual language of the programme, and its use of clothing to costume its four female protagonists. Intrigued and influenced by theorists such as Butler, Hollander and Garber, but largely relying on …

Embodied Knowledge: Writing Researchers’ Bodies Into Qualitative Health Research, Laura L. Ellingson

Gender and Sexuality Studies

After more than a decade of postpositivist health care research and an increase in narrative writing practices, social scientific, qualitative health research remains largely disembodied. The erasure of researchers’ bodies from conventional accounts of research obscures the complexities of knowledge production and yields deceptively tidy accounts of research. Qualitative health research could benefit significantly from embodied writing that explores the discursive relationship between the body and the self and the semantic challenges of writing the body by incorporating bodily details and experiences into research accounts. Researchers can represent their bodies by incorporating autoethnographic narratives, drawing on all of their senses, …

Cultivating Dissent: Queer Zines And The Active Subject, Angela Connie Asbell

Theses Digitization Project

Performs a rhetorical analysis of several zines that deal with gender and sexual identity and outlines some shared aesthetics and ethos of zines and zinesters, then connects the rhetorical and stylistic choices of zinesters to their searches for political and personal identity.

The Example Of Barbara Johnson, Pamela Caughie

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

"Buffy Vs. Dracula"'S Use Of Count Famous (Not Drawing "Crazy Conclusions About The Unholy Prince"), Tara Elliott

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.