Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Book Review: Emerging Voices – South Asian American Women Redefine Self, Family And Community, G. Asha

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Emerging Voices – South Asian American Women Redefine Self, Family and Community, edited by Sangeeta R. Gupta

Facing The Medusa: Confronting The Ongoing Impossibility Of Women’S Studies, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, Laura Gillman

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Introduction:

When feminism is defined in such a way that it calls attention to the diversity of women’s social and political reality, it centralizes the experiences of all women, especially the women whose social conditions have been least written about, studied, or changed by political movements. When we cease to focus on this simplistic stance “men are the enemy,” we are compelled to examine systems of domination and our role in their maintenance and perpetuation. Lack of adequate definition made it easy for bourgeois women, whether liberal or radical in perspective, to maintain their dominance over the leadership …

Beyond The Campus: Some Initial Findings On Women’S Studies, Careers And Employers, Maryanne Dever, Liz Day

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Introduction:

(I)nstitutions of higher learning are being transformed by the discourses of economic rationalism and the marketplace so that many practitioners are discovering first-hand how readily Women’s Studies programs become vulnerable to arguments made against maintaining allegedly “useless” and “non-vocational” areas of study (see Griffin 1998, Kessler-Harris and Swerdlow 1996). The reconfiguration of higher education within a broadly consumerist logic and growing rates of unemployment and underemployment among university graduates in many western societies also mean that not just administrators, but students (and their families) are now inquiring into the vocational relevance and the long-term “rewards” of specific …

‘A Hybrid In All Sorts Of Ways’: Teaching Women’S Studies In The Academy, Sue Jackson

Journal of International Women's Studies

Introduction:

There has been much discussion of late of the decline in women’s studies in the British academy. Discussion has ranged around the institutional closing down of women’s studies departments and programmes, and around the experiences of students on women’s studies degrees. What is it like, though, to be a lecturer in women’s studies in an academy, which often feels like an alien and unwelcoming place to be. What brought lecturers in women’s studies to their discipline, and how do they see their future? What constrains do they face on their current work? Can women’s studies challenge traditional academic structures? …

Weaving Women’S Studies Into The Institutional Web: A Case Study, Frances Kraljic, Inez Martinez

Journal of International Women's Studies

Kingsborough Community College [KCC], one of six in the City University of New York [CUNY], a University containing eleven senior colleges, a medical and a law school, and a Graduate Center, is the first and only community college in CUNY to have a Women’s Studies [WS] Program. It took a long, long time to obtain this Program, and it has taken multi-faceted efforts to weave it into Kingsborough’s life in such a way as to (thus far) keep it. Because we believe that WS are particularly important at the community college level, we are sharing the story of the development …

Feminist Science Studies At German Universities - A First Account, Smilla Ebeling, Helene Götschel

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Introduction:

Feminist science studies, which do not have a unified term so far in the German debate, regard mathematics, science and technology within their historical and social context (Heike Kahlert 1996, Heike Wiesner 1994). This critical contextualization of math-natural scientific thinking and acting is not regarded as a task of the corresponding disciplines but is linked to other disciplines like the history and philosophy of science, didactics or science and technology studies. Therefore, feminist science studies cannot be worked out within mathematics, science and engineering at all because they do not make sense within the scientific self-understanding (Margarete …

‘First In The Nation Since 1970’: Thirty Years Of Women’S Studies At San Diego State University: Lessons And Strategies, Susan E. Cayleff

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Hitting And Missing The Mark: Feminist Inquiry And Pedagogy In United States Women’S Studies Graduate Programs, Phyllis Baker, Siqin Yang

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Introduction:

This essay looks specifically at reflection in these areas undertaken in one sector of women’s studies: the master’s degree in women’s studies in the United States. That graduate education in women’s studies is the focal point of this essay is especially timely because graduate programs in women’s studies are experiencing substantial growth. This essay addresses one aspect of graduate education: the correspondence between feminist intellectual inquiry and pedagogy in master’s programs in women’s studies. In particular, the essay aims to assess women’s studies at the graduate level by asking graduate students what they think about the attention …

Rethinking The Women’S Studies Ph.D. In Canadian Universities, Katherine Side

Journal of International Women's Studies

Introduction:

This paper considers the future of the Ph.D. in women’s studies in Canada. It argues that it is important to continue to develop and to offer the existing doctorate in women’s studies in Canada because it contributes in significant ways to the scholarly environment for students and faculty in universities. However, it cautions against developing and offering additional Ph.D. programmes in women’s studies without simultaneously considering and challenging the current, lean fiscal climate, for post-secondary education and the implications of this context for women’s studies. After briefly mapping out this climate, this paper offers, for the explicit purpose of …

Creating An Activist Voice: Re-Storying The Self In The Light Of Contemporary Feminist Understandings Of Power And Subjectivity, Lekkie Hopkins

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Introduction:

From 1992-1995 Sandy Newby was enrolled as a mature aged undergraduate student in a course in human services and applied women’s studies at an Australian University. In this paper, in an attempt to uncover the complex processes of re-storying the self in the light of contemporary feminist understandings of subjectivity and power, I explore some dimensions of Sandy’s encounter with such knowledges during her time at university. The narrative focus of this paper is both on Sandy’s engagement with the learning process and on my own experience as a feminist teacher and researcher/biographer. I draw particularly on …

International Conference: “Societies In Transition – Challenges To Women’S And Gender Studies”

Journal of International Women's Studies

Call for participation and tentative program for the “Societies in Transition – Challenges to Women’s and Gender Studies” conference (June 28 – July 1, 2001), Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg i.O./ Lower Saxony, Germany.

Her Mistress’S Voice: Gynophonocentrism In Feminist Discourses, Mikko Keskinen

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the article:

I will trace the metaphors of voice in the discourses of feminisms as articulated by Judith Fetterley, Kaja Silverman, Julia Kristeva, and Hélène Cixous. I will analyze the presuppositions of their vocal or sound imagery, paying special attention to the implications of the essentialism/constructivism opposition. It is not my intention to provide a comprehensive account of voice in feminisms, nor to make sweeping generalizations on the basis of a very limited corpus. Moreover, in spite of their differences in cultural background, period, and main area of study, the four theorists to be read are, as it were, …

Book Review: Gender Policies In The European Union, Carmel L. Rosal

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Gender Policies in the European Union, edited by Mariagrazia Rossilli

Duty, Honor, Rape: Sexual Assault Against Women During War, Kevin Gerard Neill

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Introduction:

In contrast to dutifully killing the enemy, a soldier is not supposed to rape a woman, at least in theory. But rapes occur in war. They always have, and often in settings and upon a scale that is difficult to comprehend. Accordingly, rape in times of war has a direct effect upon the society where the conflict takes place. More specifically, it affects women, and this violence against them can have the added, profoundly negative effect of eroding their particular social and environmental conditions. As difficult and emotional this issue may be, though, rape in war is …

Red Ink In The Silence, Olga Barrios

Journal of International Women's Studies

A play in three acts

How I Learned That My Gods Had Come Back To Me, Dianne Hunter

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Business Of Charity: The Woman’S Exchange Movement, 1832-1900, Carolyn J. Lawes

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of The Business of Charity: The Woman’s Exchange Movement, 1832-1900 by Kathleen Waters Sander

Could We Be Any More Feminist? Make Me Barf: Responses To Art At A Women’S University, Rhoda Zuk, Patricia Baker

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Seeking Transformative Justice For Women: Views From Canada, Karlene Faith

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the article:

My purpose here is to situate gender as a key factor in a historical movement toward prison abolition. A shift toward restorative or transformative justice, theoretically, is reintegrative in that it benefits the offender, the victim and the community. The first offenders to be diverted from prison to any new program are generally those with the least serious offences and/or those who pose no risk of committing violence; women commonly fall into this category, but, as discussed, very few community alternatives exist for them. The last section addresses some of the key issues facing women in prison, …

A Feminist Genealogy Of The Woman’S Christian Temperance Union: Re-Membering Our Selves, Dorothy A. Lander

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the article:

The purpose of my memory work project and this article is to begin to create a “history of the present” (Dean, 1994) through collective remembering in Lipsitz’s (1988) sense of “shared experiences and perceptions about the past that legitimate action in the present” (p. 288). I adapt Nasstrom’s (1999) analysis of memory and narrative and women’s activism to the memory work with my WCTU family, friends and neighbours in the farming community in Ontario where I grew up. We “become historical actors who intervene between the past and the present, continually reframing the movement” (p. 134).

International Labor Policies And The North American Free Trade Agreement: Are Women Getting Their Fair Share?, Gregory A. Kelson

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Introduction:

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has always been a document of controversy. On the surface, NAFTA opened trade among its three primary parties -- Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Realistically, however, it has been a cause for tension -- mainly between the governments of the United States and Mexico. The two countries have used NAFTA and its labor side agreement, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), to dictate its economic and labor policies in each other’s countries.

This article will argue that more must be done to protect the rights of female …

Challenging Thredbare Masculinities: Hazel Carby’S Race Men, Stephen Hall

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Race Men by Hazel Carby

Book Review: Sex And Social Justice, Kay Mathiesen

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Sex and Social Justice by Martha Nussbaum

Hurting, Burning, Pilar Greenwood

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Poems, Ranjini Thaver

Journal of International Women's Studies

Five poems by Ranjini Thaver:

• Fish for Thought
• The Prodigal Poor
• Ode to My Sister
• Paper Dolls at Graduation
• Genesis

The two poems on poverty are intimately related to my emotional [first hand] and intellectual [second-hand] experiences with poverty. As a poor child growing up in apartheid South Africa, I agonized over the inability of affluent men and women of all races to understand the beauty and dignity of the poor despite our outer appearance. Now that I am educated and affluent I understand emotionally why this was so. At the intellectual level most well-meaning scholars and activists respond to …

Race, Gender And Performance In Grace Nichols’S The Fat Black Woman’S Poems, Maite Escudero

Journal of International Women's Studies

From the Article:

In a world of diverse cultures and societal beliefs, marginalized groups often share common experiences. Recurrent themes in the literature of black peoples include anti-imperialism, racism, sexism, exile, ‘cultural schizophrenia’, language, otherness and home to ancestors, just to name a few. Yet, there is no single black voice: black writing can come from everywhere in the world – America, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and Britain. As a result, an individual may become torn between conflicting expressions by others within the same cultural group. What is at issue here is the recognition of extraordinary variation of subjective positions …

More Than A Room And Three Guineas: Understanding Virginia Woolf’S Social Thought, Brigitte Bechtold

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper begins with a brief survey the basic arguments of interest to feminist social thinkers and activists that are found explicitly in Room of One’s Own (1929), Three Guineas (1938) and other essays. It then turns to insights provided by Woolf’s fiction, which helps us understand, illustrate and generalize the themes of the essays. The following part outlines the usefulness of Woolf’s diaries, which both provide a rich database of personal acquaintances and experiences that have become the content of her thinking. The diaries are helpful in developing our understanding that Woolf’s socioeconomic though does not merely attack male …

Poems, Kimberly Zittel

Journal of International Women's Studies

Four poems by Kimberly Zittel:

• Symbiosis
• On Sane Restoring
• Perception
• Cathedral of the Pines

Over 30: Portraits Of Unmarried Women, Barbara Colombo

Journal of International Women's Studies

Nineteen million adult women remain unmarried in the United States alone. This represents a significant trend and an anomaly of our time. The touring photograph-text exhibit, Over 30: Portraits of Unmarried Women, created by Colorado Artist, Barbara Colombo, addresses this issue with a collection of black and white photographic portraits of heterosexual women over thirty years of age who remain unattached, some unwillingly, some by design. Several newly published books on the topic and over fifty magazine articles, from Newsweek to Essence, focus on the unmarried woman. The unmarried women featured in Over 30 are between the ages …

Medusa, Andrea Nicki

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.