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Custodianship And Care: Women And Reading In Anita Desai’S Clear Light Of Day, Aruni Mahapatra

Journal of International Women's Studies

Several scholars have noted how the Indian state has been able to care for women only by placing them in custody of the family or the community, often overseen by male relatives. How do novels by Indian women writers intervene in this difficult social and legal problem? This paper answers this question by integrating feminist scholarship on the place of Indian women in postcolonial India with another scholarly tradition: the ethics of care. Conventionally, these two bodies of writing have not been in direct dialogue. This paper facilitates a conversation by close-reading Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day, a novel …

Trans-Formation: Establishing Interdisciplinary Support For The Transgender Experience Through Historical, Biological, And Religious Lenses, Gaymarie Vaughan

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

Quite frankly, nothing could be more relevant to a modern discussion about what it means to be human than the emergence of discourse on transgender identity. By looking at the long history of human evolution, the impact that the progressing fields of science and medicine have had on human development, and the human need for bodily autonomy, it should be taken for granted that transgender issues belong in public discourse and that transgender people deserve to enjoy the same rights and freedoms all other humans share. This research advocates for best and most inclusive societal practices for transgender individuals by …

Women's Interracial Friendships: Cultivating Coalitional Possibilities Across Difference Through Dialogue, Akie Fukushige Wenk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, I thread through the macro-structure as well as micro-operations of hegemonic ideologies, namely white-supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy (hooks, 1995, Valdes, 1996), that has historically plagued the United States, eventually gaining a global reach over time. I center interracial friendship between Black and White cis-women, where I locate coalitional possibilities that begin at the grassroots level. I situate this interracial relationship within the socio-ecological system where the personal meets the social (including racialized backgrounds). I use a series of analogies to equate these ideologies as toxins in the air, water, and soil. Soil is where we can work …

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CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Radical Futures, Isabela Escobedo

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Courageous Cuentos Vol. 6 2023

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Editors’ Introduction, Aurora Matzke, Louis M. Maraj, Angela Clark-Oates, Anyssa Gonzalez, Sherry Rankins-Robertson

English Faculty Articles and Research

"When we proposed this special issue, we sought to illuminate the conceptual and embodied contact zones we discuss above. Tensions that, for us, were centered by scholars and attendees who participated in any of the three CCCC Feminist Workshop between 2021-2023 when the majority of the editors of this special issue co-chaired. During that time frame, CCCC’s shifted from in-person to fully online to hybrid due to COVID-19 and attempted to move toward more national and international attendance inclusivity. With this organizational backdrop, it was during the 2021 CCCC Feminist Workshop that we grappled with coalition as a commonplace."

Ireland’S Response To Domestic, Sexual And Gender-Based Violence: An Interview With Orla O’Connor, Deirdre Kelly

Articles

Orla O’Connor is the Director of the “National Women’s Council of Ireland” (NWCI), the leading national women’s membership organisation with over
190 member groups. She has held senior management roles in several non-governmental organisations for over 25 years. Time magazine recognised her as one of the 100 Most Influential People in 2019 for her role as Co-director of “Together for Yes”, the successful national civil society campaign that was influential in Ireland voting overwhelmingly in favour of removing the Eighth Amendment from the Constitution, a landmark referendum, which led to the legalisation of abortion in 2018. In addition to campaigning …

From Aura To Awra: Toward A Tropical Queer Decolonial Performativity In The Philippines, John Paolo Sarce

English Faculty Publications

If datíng is to literary texts, awra is to queer decolonial performances. From the works of Bienvenido Lumbera and Walter Benjamin, this paper discusses the queering of the term aura and how it operates in tropical performances and discourses, through beki (gay language), as awra. The sign “awra” is resuscitated from the imperial lexis and queered by the topical imagination in the Philippine media. Three media texts expound these claims: Awra Briguela’s song “Clap, Clap, Clap, Awra”; Maymay Entrata’s dance “Amakabogera”; and the noontime TV game show “Beklaban,” a portmanteau of Beki (gay) …

Women's Work: The Sublime Is Now, Michelle Blackstone

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

What influences the lens through which we view art and the value we ascribe to it? This paper investigates the ways in which the historically gendered philosophy of “The Sublime,” a lack of institutional access, and traditionally gendered materials have acted as impediments for women in the arts. Discussion is given to the ways that masculine rhetoric in terms of “The Sublime” prevented women from attaining what was once considered the highest level of artistic achievement. Further attention is given to obstructions female artists face(d) in terms of gaining intuitional access within the art world. Finally, I examine the ways …

“I Don't Know Where The Lesbians Are”: Exploring Lgbtq+ Women’S Experiences Of Place And Community, Ashley M. Green

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines LGBTQ+ women’s experiences of place and community in Central Florida. Through the use of in-depth interviews and virtual ethnography, I begin to answer the following questions: 1. To what extent does geographic location contextualize how LGBTQ+ women experience place and community?, 2. How do LGBTQ+ women within a similar geographic location utilize virtual spaces for the purpose of building community?, and 3. How are the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality significant to LGBTQ+ women’s experiences of place and community? This project provides a glimpse into the phenomenon of consuming community, which speaks to the ways in …

Attempted Book Bans: The Censorship Of Queer Themes In The 1950s, María J. Quintana-Rodriguez

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This article aims to explore queer book banning during the 1950s in response to Cold War national defense tactics. The decade witnessed the formation of the first public LGBTQ+ rights organizations in the United States as well as a rise in queer literature and publications. This publicization of queerness in society was seen as a rejection of traditional societal norms and threatened the Cold War-imposed gender ideology. In addition, the fear of Communist expansion led to the conflation of homosexuals and Communists, categorizing queerness and queer-related themes as immoral and as an interference in the United States' fight for democracy. …

The Effects Of Marriage Before College Graduation On The Educational Attainments And Personal Fulfillment Of Saudi Women, Ahlam A. Alzahrani

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This research explored the effects of marriage before college graduation on the educational attainments and personal fulfillment of Saudi women. The purpose of this study was to gather and analyze data from women who were married before completing a college degree and women who were married after completing a college degree in order to measure how marriage has affected their lives in different ways. The data was gathered by surveying 215 Saudi women. According to the findings of the study, marriage before college graduation did limit educational attainment to some extent. The survey results suggested that a significant percentage of …

Archivo Y Memoria: Una Mirada A Tres Historias De Mujeres Esclavizadas En El Virreinato De La Nueva Granada De Finales Del Siglo Xviii, Luisa Carolina Julio Gomez

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Colonial documents preserve information that allows us to know the local Andean history of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. These manuscripts reveal forms of violence that shaped the subjectivities of the time and the resistance of oppressed women. This dissertation examines the effects of slavery and the response of three enslaved women to that colonial violence. This analysis seeks to better understand and make visible how the intersection between racism and patriarchy impacted the lives of three racialized women in the colonial context.

This dissertation focuses on the experiences, struggles, and resistance of three women present in the manuscripts consigned …

A "Misfit" Revision: Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable And Transitional Stardom In Postwar Hollywood, Emily Carman

Film and Media Arts Faculty Articles and Research

Director John Huston’s The Misfits (1961) was one of the most volatile productions of his career, with its ensemble cast headlined by a trio of screen icons: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and Montgomery Clift. Drawing on new archival research, I argue that The Misfits illuminates the transition from old to New Hollywood in terms of its behind-the-scenes star negotiations of Gable and Monroe, who had varying levels of creative control to appear in the film. My analysis of their respective deals underscores how The Misfits anticipates the shift from the female driven star system of Classical Hollywood to the male …

Review Of Carrying All Before Her, By Chelsea Phillips, Jennifer Buckley

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Chelsea Phillips’s Carrying All Before Her: Celebrity Pregnancy and the London Stage, 1689-1800, by Jennifer Buckley

Subversive Cartography: Teaching Mary Prince And Saidiya Hartman, Carolina Hinojosa

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This chapter utilizes Hartman’s methodology of retrieval to create a map1 in StoryMap JS2 (“the map” or “this map”) that analyzes multiple geographic spaces in The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave Narrative and Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. The map is an archive or a witness to some of the geographical spaces Mary Prince lived (and was sold) as an enslaved woman seeking freedom and the places in which Saidiya Hartman has conducted research or visited in Ghana as a “free” woman. Layering the past over present creates a …

Chawton House And Its Library: Legacies And Futures, Kim Simpson

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In a review of Women’s Writing, 1660-1830: Feminisms and Futures, Paula Backscheider draws attention to “the miracle that is Chawton House, whose conferences nurtured these essays” in the collection. This essay will examine the legacy of this unique institution and explore the futures for the organization both as heritage site and as home to a substantial collection of women’s writing of the long eighteenth century. The community encouraged and nurtured by Chawton House since it opened to the public in 2003, as is so often the case with all things related to Jane Austen, complicates divisions between the academic …

Why Austen, Not Burney? Tracing The Mechanisms Of Reputation And Legacy, Marilyn Francus

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

During the 200^th anniversary of Austen’s death in 2017, the narrative of Austen’s rise to fame and her ongoing celebrity circulated throughout modern culture. But how did this happen? When Austen died in 1817, it was not obvious that Austen would become the archetypal British woman writer. Frances Burney was far more famous in her lifetime than Austen was in hers, and Burney’s novels (particularly Evelina and Cecilia) achieved as much, if not more, critical acclaim than Austen’s works. By comparing the afterlives of Jane Austen and Frances Burney, the factors that shape legacy come into focus—and scholars …

“Before I Am Quite Forgot": Women’S Critical Literary Biography And The Future, Susan Carlile

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

“‘Before I am Quite Forgot’: Women’s Critical Literary Biography and the Future” extends the conversation about literary “worth” in the twenty-first century as it still judges and ignores women authors of the past. Specifically, this essay explores the role of women’s literary historical biography as a primary marker of worth and as a means of shaping legacy. I also discuss my (perhaps more non-traditional) experience—both my personal circumstances and particular material conditions—writing the critical biography Charlotte Lennox: An Independent Mind. Without a substantial biography that shows the scope of Lennox’s mind, her significant corpus, and her interventions in literary history …

Forgotten Encounters: The Legacy Of Sculptresses And Female Muses, Laura Engel

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Sculpture as a medium is inherently connected to legacy making. In producing three- dimensional monuments designed to withstand the test of time, women artists provided evidence of the lasting quality and permanence of their creative acts. This article examines the actress, sculptress and novelist Anne Damer’s sculpture of the famous actress turned Countess Eliza Farren (c. 1788), paying particular attention to the relationship between sculpture as a static art form that captures tactile embodied presence and the ephemerality of performance. Farren’s involvement in Damer’s staging of the private theatricals at Richmond House (Farren directed and Damer starred) suggests that their …

Introduction: Shaping The Legacy Of 18th-Century Women, Marilyn Francus

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Vainuku, T., & Duffy, R. (Directors). (2022). Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’T Exist [Documentary]. Netflix., Ashley P. Ferrell

Feminist Pedagogy

Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist (2022) revisits the complicated fame and misfortune of former college football player Manti Te’o. The documentary traces the arc of Te’o’s athletic career at the University of Notre Dame alongside his relationship with his girlfriend that resulted in intense public scrutiny and gendered ridicule in 2013. Untold offers feminist pedagogues a catalyst for engaging students in critical discourse around the relationships between collegiate sport and race, gender, and sexuality. In this review, I provide a summary of the documentary’s main points and framing, and then discuss at least two ways in which this media …

Gender Washing Autocracies In Egypt: Drawing On The Presidency’S Of Anwar El Sadat And Hosni Mubarak, Menat Aly

Theses and Dissertations

Research Question:

The main research question this study seeks to address is: Why did the autocratic regimes of Anwar el Sadat and Hosni Mubarak choose to advance women’s rights?

Hypothesis:

Autocratic governments under Sadat and Mubarak used gender instrumentally, and their focus on empowering women in their societies was functional to promoting their vision of "modernization" internationally and to enhancing their image, while at the same time concealing their autocratic practices.

Research Problem

Authoritarian [1]systems in the Arab world have long used different tactics in order to consolidate their regimes. Indeed, one such tactic is the use of gender …

Full Issue: Volume 1, Issue 2, Editorial Board

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

No abstract provided.

On Becoming A Woman: A Body Horror Examination Of Dance Nation, Marley Goldman

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This paper explores how the darker recesses of the human body’s potential, that of blood and seeping carnage, have long been associated with the feminine; and women themselves find dark catharsis in the genre of body horror. The concept of the monstrous feminine has been studied extensively in fields of gender studies, media studies, and psychoanalysis, all seeking to explain why the gendered experience can be portrayed so aptly through horror. The paper close reads Dance Nation, a feminist play exploring puberty and gendered anger, alongside two works of body horror: Jennifer’s Body (2009) and Hatching (2022). The paper …

A Meditation On Afrosurrealism, Black Gender, And The Non-Human, Logan K. Shanks

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

Quotidian Black life is characterized by our ability to alchemize violence into generative life-sustaining properties of matter. In this paper, I will measure Black matter based on anything produced and engaged by Black collectives. While Black existence is not tied to white violence, descendants of enslaved Black people enter our worlds of worlds greeted by a white captor. It is not until we consciously recognize that we are in his dream that we can work to escape the white captor’s circadian rhythms. Through this paper, I will tease out the contradictions of our Black living-unliving. I will employ an anti-methodological …

Trans Futures In The Present Moment, Willow Grace Eckmayer

University Honors Theses

The current climate for trans folks in the U.S. remains increasingly hostile and many researchers have called attention to the "joy deficit" within the existing trans literature (Shuster & Westbrook, 2022). This study investigates what trans individuals are currently doing to survive, thrive, and resist in a belligerent socio-political climate. To answer this, five community conversations with 25 participants were held using a semi-structured conversation guide. Within the analysis, the central theme that emerged was that trans individuals are using their communities to create radical futures. Our communities are supporting us through mutual aid and radical acts of care, which …

Benefits And Barriers: Women's Access To Mobile Tech In Iran And The Mena Region, Antonia Felix

Educational Leadership Department Publications

While the 17% gender gap in mobile internet use in the MENA region reveals that women have less access to the benefits of mobile money apps and other technology, 60% of women in the region do go online via mobile phones to make purchases, access credit, send money to family members, assist in their children’s education, receive government benefits, and engage in other activities that improve their lives. Barriers preventing women from mobile internet access, however, typically fall into three categories: lack of access, illiteracy and/or lack of digital skills, and safety concerns. The author participated in a panel presentation …

“We Need To Have A Place To Vent And Get Our Frustrations Out”: Addressing The Needs Of Mothering Students In Higher Education Using A Positive Deviance Framework, Melissa León

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the experiences of mothering students at four different colleges using a positive deviance (PD) framework. PD is an approach that seeks to identify positive behavioral patterns that help members of a community overcome structural barriers (Gross, et al. 2017). The Positive Deviance Framework was applied to investigate how some mothering students are successful in college and how their experiences could potentially help new or struggling mothering students. Eleven mothering students were interviewed to determine what interventions could assist mothering students who lack representation in the traditional college environment, a situation that often leads to feelings of isolation. …