Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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 …

Broken Reflection, Jenny Carpenter

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

“B, grab me my napkin, why don’t you,” Jim says, leaning back into the plush, bloodred chair at Spanky’s. Spanky’s is hardly a dinner date—I mean, it’s a sandwich place.

But it’s what Jim wants. And what he wants, he gets.

Still, I hesitate, thinking about telling him to just snatch it up off the ground himself. I’m not his slave. The napkin’s right in front of him.

Reflections On Queer Literary Representations In Contemporary Indian Writing In English, Aakanksha Singh

Journal of International Women's Studies

This reflective 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 to create much-needed 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 short …

Addressing Gender Disparities Through Folklore: A Cultural Study Of Female Child Appellation Among The Bāsukuma Of Tanzania, John P. Madoshi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Among the Bāsukuma, folklore plays a significant role in describing different issues pertaining to their society and culture. Gender is one of the important issues emulated through female appellation. Some of the female names describe a gender tug of war which involves not only married couples but also families of the couples. In this conflict, names particularly of female children are used by each side as a means of channeling a particular message which signifies grievances of the sufferers. Nevertheless, the appellation is done in such a metaphoric way as to call for a meticulous literary examination analysis.

Historical Sisters: Black Feminist Actions Across History And Literary Studies, Jazz A. Milligan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis seeks to understand how the actions of Black women from the past have inspired the modern Black female literary movement. This thesis focuses on three historical women: Phillis Wheatley, Elizabeth Freeman, and Cathay Williams, and their literary sisters: bell hooks, Barbara Smith, and Patricia Hill Collins. By viewing the lives of these historical women through a modern-day lens, we can understand how their actions created a ripple effect that Black women are still discussing today. Black feminism did not start in a vacuum, and the actions of everyday Black women have pushed us forward to being more accepting …

Transgressing Boundaries Of Identity, Geography And Time In Transmutadxos And La Mucama De Omicunlé, Lucinda Smith

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The literary works of Rita Indiana (1977) and Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro (1970) are recognised for exposing and challenging hegemonic ideas of identity, sexuality and power. The transgression of boundaries appears time and again in the fiction of both writers, whether these be boundaries of sexual or gender identity, desire, geography, time or even life and death. Using Rita Indiana’s novel La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) and Arroyo’s collection of short stories Transmutadxs (2016), the authors’ representations of such transgressions are the focus of this essay.

Further to addressing similar themes in their texts, both Rita Indiana and Arroyo Pizarro were …

Internalized Misogyny As Displayed By Aunt March In Little Women, Sydney Lofton

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

It seems that more women fight against each other than for one another. Women have developed a reputation for gossiping to disparage the reputation of each other, leveraging terms like “floozie,” “bimbo,” and “slut” against one another. While women will rage against men who support the patriarchy, women are often some of the strictest enforcers of its standards. In Kate Hamill’s playscript Little Women, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, it is Aunt March, not a man, who places pressure on Jo to assimilate to society’s expectation of women. This push of conformity may reflect Aunt March’s own …

In Search Of A Homeland: Jewish-American Women Writers And Their Struggle With Cultural Alienation, Alisa K. Burris

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the lives and fictional works of five Jewish-American women writers of the twentieth century within the complex context of cultural alienation. Authors Anzia Yezierska, Dorothy Parker, Grace Paley, Cynthia Ozick, and Marge Piercy are each featured in separate chapters that examine how personal experiences of estrangement weave through and influence their texts. As a result of this dissertation’s scrutiny, meaningful connections emerge between these diverse Jewish women authors and the transformation of painful struggles into profound journeys to seek belonging. Through their works’ literal and figurative pilgrimages to reach an ultimate homeland, all five writers creatively illustrate …

Pedagogies Of The “Irresistible”: Imaginative Elsewheres Of Black Feminist Learning., Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In her foreword to the groundbreaking anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Toni Cade Bambara (1983) famously argues that the great work of feminist writing is “to make revolution irresistible.” This statement is often read as a founding call of women-of-color feminism, and of feminist literary expression in particular. Yet Bambara’s notion of the “irresistible” extends beyond the page; throughout her works, she also uses the term as a key descriptor of her pedagogy, and her vision of the classroom. Bambara joins Audre Lorde and other Black feminist writer/teachers in insisting on a …