Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Emperor! By Dr. Lanny Fields, Holly Roy

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

A Study Of West African Slave Resistance From The Seventeenth To Nineteenth Centuries, Adam D. Wilsey

History in the Making

Accompanying the dawn of the twenty-first century, there has emerged a new era of historical thinking that has created the need to reexamine the history of slavery and slave resistance. Slavery has become a controversial topic that historians and scholars throughout the world are reevaluating. In this modern period, which is finally beginning to honor the ideas and ideals of equality, slavery is the black mark of our past; and the task now lies before the world to derive a better understanding of slavery. In order to better understand slavery, it is crucial to have a more acute awareness of …

A Clash Of Paradigms: The Clash Of Civilizations In The Worldviews Of Samuel Huntington And Osama Bin Laden, Eric Massie

History in the Making

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the "Clash of Civilizations" theory has become an unavoidable aspect of academic debate between those scholars who either endorse or angrily reject its thesis of a conflict between Islamic and Western societies. During these academic debates, scholars have often compared the world views and beliefs of Samuel Huntington and Osama bin Laden in order to demonstrate the development of a similar intellectual trend in Western and Islamic societies. The comparison, however, is often made casually, without serious examination or analysis of the significant similarities and differences in their ideas. Due to the …

The Development Of Literature In The Suffrage Movement: Western Successes From Eastern Lessons, 1848-1911, Michelle Dennehy

History in the Making

Female suffragists in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century fought to gain more protection under the law than the laws had granted women in entire history of the nation. The suffragist movement symbolically began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, in which the "Declaration of Sentiments" dictated women’s precise requests for equality. This early industrialism-era suffrage campaign focused mainly on the East coast of the United States, while the nation expanded into the West. Ironically, while the first generation suffragists experienced many failures in their efforts for suffrage, the second generation found many successes in …

Dead Fish In The Desert: A Brief Photo-History Of The Salton Sea, Alicia Gutierrez

History in the Making

Located around 150 miles to the east and south of Los Angeles lies an unburied treasure and an ecological hotbed of debate. While you may not find the treasure in the archetypal sense, you’ll find it in a still, stagnant, and salty body of water in the middle of the desert, the Salton Sea. Considered by many to be an ecological disaster, or a big puddle of sewage, few people take the time to see or smell past all these negative characteristics and find the history behind it. The Salton Sea was once a human-made desert Riviera, but now, it’s …

The Ideological Scalpel: Physician Perpetrators, Medicalized Killing And The Nazi Biocracy, Matthew D. Fuller

History in the Making

With the conclusion of the Nuremburg Doctor’s trials in August 1947, the role of German physicians in the concentration camps of Europe became a widely discussed and researched topic in the historiography of the Holocaust. Like many other perpetrators indicted by the Allies following the Second World War, German physicians claimed to have been swept up in the mass indoctrination of the National Socialist movement and had ultimately become powerless cogs within the Nazi totalitarian regime. While this claim may be true in some cases, the historiography of German physicians-turned-killers reveals different sources of motivation which allowed doctors in the …

Chiune Sugihara: A Psychohistorical Study Of A Rescuer Of Jews During The Holocaust, Christina Alanne Perris

History in the Making

This article seeks to analyze the actions of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, a rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust, utilizing a personality model developed by social scientists Samuel and Pearl Oliner. The Oliners’s altruistic personality model centers on the idea that individuals who became rescuers have a distinct personality that responds to the complex interaction between three components: 1) the external circumstances they are confronted with; 2) internal characteristics that goad them into action; and 3) their ultimate decision to take action. Although no two‐dimensional model is ever complex enough to capture the intimate complexity of a human personality, the …

In Pursuit Of The Sixth Star: An Analysis Of Literature And Tactics From The 1911 California Woman Suffrage Campaign, Sarah Trevino Promnitz

History in the Making

California reorganized their efforts and in 1911 campaigned for a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the franchise. In order to combat fierce opposition and to increase public awareness of the proposed amendment, California suffrage advocates developed new forms of campaign literature and tactics. An analysis of 1911 suffrage campaign literature uncovers that the campaign was based upon the core arguments of innate womanly virtue and the need to create an inter-class coalition of women dedicated to the suffrage cause. The campaign to gain the franchise was considered a radical movement at the time, and an attempt to alter fundamentally the …

Slavery And The Search For Belonging In Modern Sudan, William Fant

History in the Making

For many Sudanese, the migration of Islamic society into Sudan has produced difficulties in identifying belonging. Centuries in the making, Sudan has become a split nation in which the south has retained much of its African identity, while the north has become increasingly Islamized. While no discernable traits separate the divided portions of Sudan, the division has allowed the dominant north to forcibly gain control of the entire nation. This phenomenon has led to increased discontent among the regions, resulting in civil war and the reintroduction of slavery. Although the physical division in Sudan is as blurred as the ethnic …

Home Lands: How Women Made The West, Oceana Collins

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

Art, Activism, Access: 40 Years Of Ethnic Studies At Ucla. Fowler Museum, Ucla., Chris Moreland

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

Preserving Local History: The Important Role Of The Small Museum, "Unofficial" Mcdonald’S Museum And Original Store Site, Jennifer Ferguson

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

A Watershed Event For A Watershed Community: The Development Of Flood Control For The Santa Ana River Basin, Adam Scott Miller

History in the Making

Southern California receives the vast majority of its yearly rainfall in the relatively short time period between the months of December and March. Occasionally, this intense rainfall creates floods that have historically threatened and devastated the communities of this region. The twentieth century proved challenging for local flood control agencies. California experienced tremendous population growth, resulting in migrants settling on the existing floodplains. Unaware of the periodic, hidden menace, newcomers were ruined when rivers and their tributaries flooded. It became clear that a significant change in flood control methods was required. In 1936, Congress passed the Flood Control Act appropriating …

The Western Media And The Portrayal Of The Rwandan Genocide, Cherice Joyann Estes

History in the Making

On December 9, 1948, the United Nations established its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Genocides, however, have continued to occur, affecting millions of people around the globe. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda resulted in an estimated 800,000 deaths. Global leaders were well aware of the atrocities, but failed to intervene. At the same time, the Western media's reports on Rwanda tended to understate the magnitude of the crisis. This paper explores the Western media's failure to accurately interpret and describe the Rwandan Genocide. Recognizing the outside media’s role in mischaracterizations of the Rwanda situation …

Lopez V. Seccombe: The City Of San Bernardino’S Mexican American Defense Committee And Its Role In Regional And National Desegregation, Mark Ocegueda

History in the Making

This article examines Lopez v. Seccombe, one of the earliest successful desegregation court cases in United States history. The legal challenge was decided in 1944 in the City of San Bernardino, California and desegregated city parks and recreational facilities, specifically the Perris Hill “plunge” or pool. The decision of this case set precedent for other local desegregation challenges, including the much more celebrated Mendez v. Westminster decision in 1947, and eventually had influence on the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. This study will focus on the Mexican American barrio in San Bernardino’s Westside, …

Including The ‘Invisible Middle’ Of Decoloniality, Su-Ming Khoo, Anique Vered

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article traces a conversation around how to theorise and approach the inclusion of experiences, concepts and bodies situated in the ‘invisible middle’ of decoloniality. If coloniality is an immense, lengthy process resulting in colonial/modern structures (Mignolo 2007) comprising the ‘colonial present’ (Gregory 2004), ‘decoloniality’ requires surfacing, baring and bringing to bear the invisibilities and erasures of bodies that exist and resist with, through and in spite of colonial extraction and appropriation.

We explore and connect different ideas of ‘being in the middle’ of decoloniality, paying particular attention to the notion of ‘the invisible middle’ in embodied practices of solidarity …

Mothers As The Middle-Ground Between The Mountain And The State, Hasret Cetinkaya

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper analyses how the ‘Peace Mothers’ in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan are structurally located in the middle-ground between familial relations and the state, as they strive to come to terms with their children’s interpretation of the politics of decolonisation through the project of Kurdish democratisation and ‘revolution’. Such a politics takes its dominant form in the vehicle of The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a movement who see themselves as a decolonial and left-wing militant group, and whose membership is both young and committed to radical political transformation. At stake for the mothers of these members who have become an …

Decolonizing The Womb: Agency Against Obstetric Violence In Tijuana, Mexico, Ester Espinoza-Reyes, Marlene Solís

Journal of International Women's Studies

Obstetric violence is a human rights violation that consists of actions or omissions of healthcare personnel that harms people during pregnancy, childbirth or puerperium. Some practices through which it is expressed are the mistreatment, unnecessary procedures, denying of medical attention or provoking damage either physically or mentally. In particular, we understand obstetric violence as the result of a colonization of the womb, that is, of the occupation of the concept of motherhood by the dictates of patriarchal ideology (Fineman, 1991; Ehrenreich, 1993) and of the Colonial/Modern Gender System, proposed by Lugones (2007). The objective of this paper is to analyze …

Analysing Contemporary Women’S Movements For Bodily Autonomy, Pluriversalizing The Feminist Scholarship On The Politics Of Respectability, Dyuti Chakravarty, Alice Feldman, Emma Penney

Journal of International Women's Studies

We began this project intending to theorise the respectability politics within the Irish Repeal (pro-choice) movement through the lenses of postcolonial and Black feminism, and through the experiences of members of Pinjra Tod, a movement seeking the right to mobility for Indian women students. Instead, we found ourselves excavating the inextricable links between respectability politics and the representational politics of academic knowledge production (Cruz in Collins-White et al 2015) in relation to Irish Women’s Studies and the racialised politics of representation in the Repeal campaign. Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman living in Ireland with her husband on a work visa, …

Commoning Molecules: Decolonising Biological Patents By Gender Hacking Protocols, Maddalena Fragnito

Journal of International Women's Studies

By making reference to the political context of “molecular invasion” (Critical Art Ensemble 2002), this article will compare two practices of production and administration of hormones to highlight the consequences at stake when business property extends over bodies and cells of humans, animals and plants.

On the one hand, I will examine DIWO (Do It With Others) biohacking workshops that synthesise pharmaceutical hormones and share the know-how by using open-source protocols and participatory workshop methods. I will refer to these specific practices as exemplary of a growing approach to the topic which represents a new field combining biohacking, activism, art, …

“Valli” At The Border: Adivasi Women De-Link From Settler Colonialism Paving Re-Enchantment Of The Forest Commons, Deepa Kozhisseri

Journal of International Women's Studies

The forests of Attappady Hills part of the Western Ghats in Kerala homeland to Adivasi people is a frontier region where a settler population is now predominant. This paper aims to bring the concept of borders as a heuristic device to interpret gender-ecology-indigeneity in Attappady. The conversations among Adivasis, between Adivasis and settlers, between Adivasi women and their children become in media res dialogues of their border subjectivity. This was an empirical study in Attappady in which life experiences, oral history and myths were studied using narrative analysis. The paper discusses four findings: First how land dispossession disproportionately impacted Adivasi …

Decolonizing The Anti-Extractive Struggle: Amazonian Women’S Practices Of Forest-Making In Ecuador, Andrea Sempértegui

Journal of International Women's Studies

In October 2013, a group of indigenous women from the southeastern Ecuadorian Amazon started the “March of Life”. This 250-km long march – organized and led entirely by female representatives from the Achuar, Shuar, Zapara, Kichwa, Shiwiar, Andoa, and Waorani indigenous organizations – proceeded from the Amazonian city of Puyo to the capital city of Quito and was a response to the 11th oil licensing round in their territories. After this symbolic and arduous march, Amazonian women have continued to organize as a network and as active members of their indigenous organizations against renewed attempts by the government of licensing …

“I Used To Think You Were Just A Story”: Imagined Violence In Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ A Red Girl’S Reasoning, Hannah Barrie

Journal of International Women's Studies

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ 2012 short film A Red Girl’s Reasoning dismantles the narrative of colonial sexualized violence in its representation of the protagonist, Delia, enacting retributive violence against white men. Tailfeathers’ tense eleven-minute film depicts a First Nations woman seeking violent vengeance against white men who have sexually assaulted Indigenous women. This essay explores the political and transformative potential of such stories of revenge, examining A Red Girl’s Reasoning’s fictional representation of violence against the colonial oppressor alongside J. Halberstam’s discussion of imagined violence. I argue that this story of violent revenge is productive in its utopic depiction of a counterreality …

Embodied Liminality And Gendered State Violence: Artivist Expressions In The Mmiw Movement, Rachel Presley

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines four multimedia artivist artefacts at the nexus of the missing and murdered Indigenous women’s (MMIW) crisis. I position artivism as a decolonial methodology that radically alters our attunement to embodied aesthetics, contending that feminist artivists employ a radical imagination to liberate the body/body politic. Decoloniality must be an enacted praxis, and for many Indigenous feminists, creative and artistic practices provide a transformative pathway towards “making” and “living out” one’s indigeneity as knowledge and tradition-bearers. Each of the four exhibits illustrate the ways in which settler politics are narrated and resisted through and by the Indigenous body. My …

Ghostly Others: Limiting Constructions Of Deserving Subjects In Asylum Claims And Sanctuary Protection, Maria E. Vargas

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this article, I examine the different constructions of deserving subjects in the new Sanctuary Movement and how sexuality, gender, whiteness, and class create an ostensibly inclusionary agenda that produces ghostly others. Punitive anti-immigrant legislation in the United States has incited mass protests to defend the rights of undocumented migrants. In 2007 this pro-immigrant movement sought to deploy the sanctuary strategy as practiced in the Central American Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s. Using the case of Sulma Franco, a Guatemalan lesbian who was granted Sanctuary by the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin, I illuminate the limitations of deservingness under …

A New Genealogy For Critical Oa Publishing: Towards A Politics Of Intersectional Transnationality, Rebekka Kiesewetter

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this article, I suggest opening out from the digital genealogies critical strands within the Open Access (OA) movement usually associate themselves with: I propose a genealogy of OA publishing that takes into consideration feminist and decolonial transnational publishing initiatives that have been active in non-digital realms before, and in parallel to what these critical strands have highlighted as their digital origins. The ways in which these pre-digital initiatives organised and mobilised feminist and decolonial transnational struggle through publishing might offer new insights for contemporary critical OA – specifically, with regards to questions around how to confront uneven hierarchies of …

Designing Research To Dismantle Oppression: Utilizing Critical Narrative Analysis & Critical Participatory Action Research In Research On Mothering And Work And Beyond, Nicole Dillard

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper seeks to explore Critical Narrative Analysis (CNA) and Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) as valuable methodologies in research for their potential to challenge the inherent absoluteness of master narratives through the personal and counter-narratives of research participants, while also providing participants an action-oriented emancipatory opportunity to lead the change needed in their organizations, communities and society at large.

Citing a previous study which explored how patriarchal, colonially-structured master narratives have played a significant role in reproducing the limited views which dominate American understanding of working mothers, the author will demonstrate how CNA and CPAR combined can expose how …

Decolonial African Feminism For White Allies, Deirdre Byrne

Journal of International Women's Studies

Feminism is a word, a discourse and a political position that is frequently met with suspicion in African circles. There are various reasons for this distrust. Some (often those in disciplines that have proactively embraced decoloniality) hold that feminism is a western colonizing construct, which has been imposed on the country by imperialists. This response implicitly or explicitly accuses feminism of complicity with a colonizing agenda that desires the subordination of African epistemologies. Others equate a feminist political position with an uncritical anger and aggression towards men. They argue that, far from being antagonistic towards men, women need to make …

The Salon Is Now In Session: A Reflection On Unisa’S Decolonial Reading, Motlatsi Khosi, Lenka Vráblíková

Journal of International Women's Studies

How can we – those who are involved in institutions of higher education as researchers, students, educators and administrators – contribute to the decolonial project? How can we dismantle colonial structures in ways that speak to and from our practices of teaching and learning? And how are we to engage with what has become known as ‘Decolonial Theory’ in our everyday practice inside the university? As follows from the work of thinkers and educators such as bell hooks, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, the control of the means of producing and reproducing knowledge is key for sustaining coloniality but …

On Witches, Shrooms, And Sourdough: A Critical Reimagining Of The White Settler Relationship To Land, Abby Maxwell

Journal of International Women's Studies

Through an exploration of witches, mycelium, and fermentation, this research seeks to forward a critically anti-colonial project of reimagining the white settler relationship to land. The centuries-old socio-ecological crises being unveiled today are secondary only to the reigning logic-project of whiteness, which operates through gendered and racialized erasure, displacement, and subjugation, always toward the further spreading of whiteness. To unlearn this logic, white settlers must attune to the pulse of another substrate; unearth other stories as a means of unlearning and reorienting ourselves. In my position as a white settler and cis queer woman living and learning on the territories …