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Articles 1 - 30 of 133
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Review Of Saida Hodzic. The Twilight Of Cutting: African Activism And Life After Ngos. Oakland: Univeristy Of California Press, 2017., Tobe Levin Von Gleichen
Review Of Saida Hodzic. The Twilight Of Cutting: African Activism And Life After Ngos. Oakland: Univeristy Of California Press, 2017., Tobe Levin Von Gleichen
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
With considerable fanfare, in Adieu !'Excision. Histoire et fin d'une tradition (Raymond Hounsa, 2009), Christa Muller rejoices in having saved Benin from FGM, the French text lauding eradication. The effort instigated by a Saarbrucken-based NGO, it has banned blades from the vicinity of vulvae. In 1996, on a state visit, Muller, then married to Saarland's governor Oscar Lafontaine, was asked by Benin's First Lady Rosine Vieyra Soglo1 to assist her Inter-African Committee (IAC) chapter by creating an association. This she did, launching I(N)TACT, e.V. and securing 300,000 Euros for the movement, a sum with strings, however. Berlin insisted on …
Perhaps Discomfort Is The Answer: Refusing Liberal Feminism And Imperial Cartographies Of Thinking/Feeling, Saida Hodzic
Perhaps Discomfort Is The Answer: Refusing Liberal Feminism And Imperial Cartographies Of Thinking/Feeling, Saida Hodzic
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs is an unsettling feminist ethnography that traces the movements of three objects: the endings of female genital cutting in Ghana, their relationship to anti-cutting campaigns and the forms of governance they instantiate, and the role anthropology and feminism have played in this governance since colonial rule. It makes the case that the three objects must be studied together: namely, that we need to understand the practice of female genital cutting alongside its endings; that cutting does not exist outside of anti-cutting campaigns; and that anti-cutting campaigns are entangled with both …
Ghosting Humanity: In Search Of An Ethics For The Disappeared, John Kaiser Ortiz
Ghosting Humanity: In Search Of An Ethics For The Disappeared, John Kaiser Ortiz
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This paper visualizes what an ethics of the disappeared might look like if the troubled ontology of ghosts and their (un)seen realities are posited as real as allied discussions of the victims of human trafficking and other instances of violence against women, including femicide and sexual slavery.
Review Of Walaa Alqaisiya. Decolonial Queering In Palestine. London: Routledge, 2023, Ankita Chatterjee
Review Of Walaa Alqaisiya. Decolonial Queering In Palestine. London: Routledge, 2023, Ankita Chatterjee
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Decolonial Queering in Palestine by WalaaAlqaisiya offers an in-depth study of the conquest of Palestine with respect to the variegated power structures of settler colonialism and underscores the political significance of a reformulated mode of decolonization. It argues for the need to interweave queer into the native Palestinian positionality termed as 'decolonial queering', so as to challenge the (hetero) sexualizing and gendered discourses embedded within both the Israeli/Zionist settler colonial regime and the Palestinian Nationalist visions of liberation. By the 'ethnographic' engagement with the works of Palestinian artists and activists from one of the prominent queer groups, alQaws, the book …
“I Live A Model Life, Now I’M Ready To Be A Top Wife”: Stereotypical Representations Of Black Women In Reality Television, Joy C. Enyinnaya
“I Live A Model Life, Now I’M Ready To Be A Top Wife”: Stereotypical Representations Of Black Women In Reality Television, Joy C. Enyinnaya
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Stereotypical representations of Black women have endured throughout various forms of media for decades, with one of the most recent platforms being reality television programming. The theory of encoding and decoding posit dominant stereotypes are key in television encoding. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper demonstrates that the dominant ideologies in the eleventh season of The Real Housewives of Atlanta are social class norms and negative depictions of Black women. I present evidence that RHOA continues to reinforce upper-class ideologies while perpetuating the Jezebel, Sapphire and the Strong Black woman stereotypes. I also identify a correlation with the strong Black …
Review Of Emergent Masculinities: Gendered Power And Social Change In The Biafran Atlantic Age. By Ndubueze L. Mbah. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019. 307 P. $ 33.20., Nadir A. Nasidi
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
For a long period of time, women played significant roles in many pre-colonial African societies, serving in various capacities as religious, political, and economic leaders. The exact roles and status of these women, however, differ contrastively from one society to another based on factors such as religion, culture, and social organization. Though this unpopular fact about African history receives little or no attention from scholars, few studies offer some insights into the history and transformation of the powers of female leaders in Africa (Weir, 2000; Ogbomo, 2005; Weir, 2006; Achebe, 2011; Akyeampong & Fofack, 2014). Along this intersection, Mba's Emergent …
Performing Dalit Feminist Youth Activism In South India: Rap, Gaana, And Street Theater, Pramila Venkateswaran
Performing Dalit Feminist Youth Activism In South India: Rap, Gaana, And Street Theater, Pramila Venkateswaran
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender 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 …
Review Of Lipstick Under My Burkha By Prakash Jha Productions., Urusha Silwal
Review Of Lipstick Under My Burkha By Prakash Jha Productions., Urusha Silwal
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
How do ordinary women find ways to exercise their personal and sexual rights in a society full of restrictions? To what extent they must go to live and breathe freely? All these questions and more are answered by Alankrita Shrivastava's second directorial film Lipstick Under My Burkha. This movie shows how sexual desires and fantasies of four women are suppressed by men both verbally and behaviorally in a small town of India. It is a conversation starter about gender equality, freedom and women's identity.
Visiting The House Of Bad's Mother: Queering Saadat Hasan Manto's “Thanda Gosht”, Namita Goswami
Visiting The House Of Bad's Mother: Queering Saadat Hasan Manto's “Thanda Gosht”, Namita Goswami
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender 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 …
Looking At The Nation Through A Lover's Eye: N. Padmakumar's Film, A Billion Colour Story, Shreerekha Pillai Subramanian
Looking At The Nation Through A Lover's Eye: N. Padmakumar's Film, A Billion Colour Story, Shreerekha Pillai Subramanian
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender 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 …
A History Of Ecofeminist: Socialist Resistance To Eco-Crisis In India, Gowri Parameswaran
A History Of Ecofeminist: Socialist Resistance To Eco-Crisis In India, Gowri Parameswaran
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This article traces the history of women's environmental activism in India after independence. The earliest organizing efforts came from women from indigenous communities who wanted to collectively push back against government and private encroachments into communal lands. From the 1970s to the late 1980s, ecofeminism became a dominant paradigm to analyze and respond to environmental issues globally. Indian feminists adapted the model to analyzing ecological issues locally while also pushing back against its essentialism and its blindness to social and economic inequities. Indian eco(feminist) socialists demanded a centering of the voices of the most vulnerable communities in environmental movements. In …
Subverting Patriarchal Interpretation Of The Ramayan Through A Feminist Lens: A Critical Study Of Sita's Ramayana, Shruti Chakraborti
Subverting Patriarchal Interpretation Of The Ramayan Through A Feminist Lens: A Critical Study Of Sita's Ramayana, Shruti Chakraborti
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender 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 …
Review Of Translocational Belongings: Intersectional Dilemmas And Social Inequalities By Floya Anthias, Orly Benjamin
Review Of Translocational Belongings: Intersectional Dilemmas And Social Inequalities By Floya Anthias, Orly Benjamin
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Social inequalities create violence and threaten to reduce democratic features of contemporary political lives. People are excluded, exploited, and discriminated against and easily left exposed to both state violence and (politically encouraged) sporadic violence. On what basis? On a long list of oppressive bases: class, gender, race/religion/ ethnicity/nationality/ religion/citizenship status, sexuality, age, ability, language, body shape, culture, sexuality, education, accent and many others.
Double Bind Of Muslim Women's Activism In Pakistan: Case Of Malala Yousafzai And Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Naila Sahar
Double Bind Of Muslim Women's Activism In Pakistan: Case Of Malala Yousafzai And Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Naila Sahar
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
A majority of Western2 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, …
Dissenting Bodies, Disruptive Pandemic: Farmers' Protest And Women's Participation In Mass Mobilisation In India, Paromita Chakrabarti
Dissenting Bodies, Disruptive Pandemic: Farmers' Protest And Women's Participation In Mass Mobilisation In India, Paromita Chakrabarti
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender 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 …
Feminists As Cultural ‘Assassinators’ Of Pakistan, Afiya S. Zia
Feminists As Cultural ‘Assassinators’ Of Pakistan, Afiya S. Zia
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender 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 implica- tions for rights-based activism in the Islamic Republic.
Reflections On Queer Literary Representations In Contemporary Indian Writing In English, Aakanksha Singh
Reflections On Queer Literary Representations In Contemporary Indian Writing In English, Aakanksha Singh
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This reflection 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 and indeed does create 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 …
South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
No abstract provided.
The Indian Mission Of The Institute Of Blessed Virgin Mary (Ibvm) Nuns: Convents, Curriculum, And Indian Women, Nilanjana Paul
The Indian Mission Of The Institute Of Blessed Virgin Mary (Ibvm) Nuns: Convents, Curriculum, And Indian Women, Nilanjana Paul
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This study focuses on the Indian mission of IBVM nuns, and the role played by them in the spread of female education in India. While acknowledging that missionaries were part of the imperial process, this study analyzes the work of Catholic nuns in India, their convents, and curriculum to show how their work advanced women's educational opportunities in India. In the process the study examines how Catholic nuns resisted the dominating attitude of the Catholic Church in India. The last section of the article examines how Christian influence under missionaries not only prepared good mothers and wives but also trained …
“Fiery Sparks Of Change”: A Comparison Between First Wave Feminists Of India And The U.S., Shoba Sharad Rajgopal
“Fiery Sparks Of Change”: A Comparison Between First Wave Feminists Of India And The U.S., Shoba Sharad Rajgopal
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
The celebration of the centenary of the 19th Amendment in 2020 has seen the resurgence of interest in the struggles of the Suffragette/Suffragist movement. This article examines the representation of first wave feminism in the developing world, with a focus on the Indian Subcontinent, from a postcolonial feminist perspective. As such, it critiques the colonialist perspective regarding women's movements of resistance in the developing world and links it to the critique of racism within the women's movements in the West. It discusses early feminists from India such as Tarabai Shinde whose spirited exposé of the double standards women were subjected …
Productivity To Precarity On Instagram: Digital Feminism In India During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Anhiti Patnaik
Productivity To Precarity On Instagram: Digital Feminism In India During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Anhiti Patnaik
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This paper examines how digital feminism deconstructed neoliberal 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 …
Networking Voices Against Violence: Online Activism And Transnational Feminism In Local-Global Contexts, Sutanuka Banerjee, Lipika Kankaria
Networking Voices Against Violence: Online Activism And Transnational Feminism In Local-Global Contexts, Sutanuka Banerjee, Lipika Kankaria
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender 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 …
Women's Agency And Pastoral Livelihoods In India: A Review, Aayushi Malhotra, Sailaja Nandigama, Kumar Sankar Bhattacharya
Women's Agency And Pastoral Livelihoods In India: A Review, Aayushi Malhotra, Sailaja Nandigama, Kumar Sankar Bhattacharya
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender 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 …
The Fundamentalist Nexus Of Neoliberalism, Rentier Capitalism, Religious And Secular Patriarchies, And South Asian Feminist Resistances, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Fundamentalist Nexus Of Neoliberalism, Rentier Capitalism, Religious And Secular Patriarchies, And South Asian Feminist Resistances, Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender 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.
Black Queer Times At Riis: Making Place In A Queer Afrofuturist Tense, Jah Elyse Sayers
Black Queer Times At Riis: Making Place In A Queer Afrofuturist Tense, Jah Elyse Sayers
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This paper posits a queer Afrofuturist mode of spatiotemporal production in queer and trans Black, indigenous and people of color’s navigation to and making of a queer beach to honor Black queer and trans histories and build Black queer and trans futures in opposition to multiple forms of displacement.
The Fantasy Of “Home”: Locating Dislocation, Loss, And Silence, Roksana Badruddoja
The Fantasy Of “Home”: Locating Dislocation, Loss, And Silence, Roksana Badruddoja
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
The meaning(s) of “home” are once again a robust conversation in the American national landscape as we continue to struggle over postcolonial empire-inspired borders. As a queer Person of Color, Woman of Color, and Mother of Color in the U.S.; an American offspring of Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant parents; and a professor of social inequalities, I am particularly concerned about thinking through neoliberal anti-liberatory U.S. racialization projects and the notion of “home” or what I call the “neoliberal home.” I concern myself with diverse languages, images, myths, and rituals through which “home” is represented and constituted, and from the dispatches of …
Artist Statement: Tutorial On Radiance, Kearra Amaya Gopee
Artist Statement: Tutorial On Radiance, Kearra Amaya Gopee
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Tutorials on Radiance explores a queerness beyond the physical body and extends to the lived environments of queer people. I am particularly focused on Anglophone Caribbean cultures of queerness. I will be looking specifically at the boundaries of the 2D image in relation to queerness, portraiture and visibility.
A Vacation Is Not Activism Part Iii —On Tourism And Ecosocial Disasters, Bani Amor
A Vacation Is Not Activism Part Iii —On Tourism And Ecosocial Disasters, Bani Amor
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
No abstract provided.
Review Of Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Anti-Blackness, And Schooling In San Francisco, By Savannah Shange, Durham: Duke University Press, 2019, Siobhan Brooks
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Alexis de Tocqueville, the French sociologist, in 1831 visited the United States to observe U.S. democracy, and in 1835 he wrote Democracy in America. One of the observations Tocqueville made was that slavery coexisted with ideals of freedom. This observation from almost 200 years ago informs Savannah Shange’s groundbreaking book, Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Anti-Blackness, and Schooling in San Francisco.
Review Of Melancholia Africana By Nathalie Etoke, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, Kristen Kirksey
Review Of Melancholia Africana By Nathalie Etoke, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, Kristen Kirksey
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
Melancholia Africana: The Indispensable Overcoming of the Black Condition by Nathalie Etoke, is equal parts ruminative meditation and urgent call to action for Black Africans and those in the diaspora. The titular concept, melancholia africana, is “an extensible concept that examines how sub-Saharans and people of African descent cope with loss, mourning, and survival in a practice of everyday life contaminated by the past.”