Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Where Are The Women?: An Ecofeminist Reading Of William Golding’S Lord Of The Flies, Hawk Chang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The absence of female characters and their voices in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) has been previously examined. On the surface, this fiction focuses on the struggle and survival of a group of boys who are left alone on a Pacific island against the background of nuclear warfare. The only presence of women in the story seems to be the aunt via a boy’s narration. However, when approaching the fiction through the lens of ecofeminism, we can find a range of feminized entities which are metaphorically embodied in the natural surroundings of the secluded island. The boys’ interactions …

‘Convicted Of Patricide?’: Robert Frost’S Nationalism In The Eyes Of Contemporary Arab-American Women Writers, Eman K. Mukattash

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Given the culturally expansive nature of the American literary tradition of today, the question of the relevance of Robert Frost’s poetry to the poetry of contemporary Arab-American women writers is an issue worth digging into. Writing almost one hundred years ago does not make Frost’s poetry out of date. Frost’s poetry is as relevant to today’s America as it has been to the America of his days. And this can be ascribed to the multiplicity of perspectives he presents in his poetry as he examines crucial questions lying at the core of America’s “grand narrative of national development.” (Westover 2004: …

Short Story: “Villain’S Suicide”, M. M. Vinodini, Translated By Afsar Mohammed

Journal of International Women's Studies

As B.R. Ambedkar stated in Annihilation of Caste, day laborers only suffer grueling labor on subsistence wages owing to their terror of punishment given to those who question it. This story reminds readers that so-called ritual impurity or untouchability has never stopped non-privileged caste people from being violated through touch and sexual abuse. The agitation over the 2012 Delhi gang rape and the more recent revelations of #MeToo occur amidst a long history of low-income Dalit women and girls routinely facing rape and other forms of repeated sexual assault from powerful landowners whose word can stop or start their wages. …

Short Story: “Block”, M. M. Vinodini, Translated By K. Purushotham, Edited By Bonnie Zare

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite India’s Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act of 2013 (and with a 2020 Amendment awaiting approval), it is likely that at least one million people work as manual removers of human waste, helping the 60% or more of Indians who do not have access to flush toilets. The story “Block” puts us inside a manual scavenger’s mind as we accompany Jilakaramma on her rounds in Andhra Pradesh. M. M. Vinodini writes about this labor with true empathy. Entering the daily life of someone who carries out this very stigmatized job creates new understanding of the …

Sexual Violence Against Dalit Women: An Analytical Study Of Intersectionality Of Gender, Caste, And Class In India, Ajay Kumar

Journal of International Women's Studies

Dalits belong to the lowest caste in India; they are excluded from the four-fold Varna system of Hinduism, treated as fifth Varna “panchama”, and characterized as “untouchables”, and, consequently, they have historically and culturally suffered caste-based social exclusion from their civil and political rights. There are more than 200 million Dalits in India, and Dalit women constitute half of this population, which is about 16.3% of the total female population of India, and of this population, about three-fourths of women live in rural areas2. Dalit women’s problems are not only related to gender and economic deprivation but also discrimination related …

Dalit-Futurist Feminism: New Alliances Through Dalit Feminism And Indian Science Fiction, Priteegandha Naik

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article analyses the novel Generation 14 by Priya Sarukkai Chabria from a convergent perspective of Dalit Studies (which encapsulates Dalit literature and Dalit feminism) and science fiction. I suggest that Indian science fiction that discusses caste with reference to the emerging technoscientific culture can be termed Dalit-futurism. I define this concept by drawing on the tradition of Dalit literature and science fiction and suggest that the Dalit-futurist texts seek to mutate caste to foreground its arbitrary structure. This paper uses the vocabulary of science-fiction criticism to analyze the mutation of caste in the fictional world and draws parallels with …

Dalit Women In History: Struggles, Voices, And Counterpublics, Tarushikha Sarvesh, Rama Shanker Singh, Tehzeeb Alam

Journal of International Women's Studies

History is a projection of realities from the historian's lens and parameters. The popularity and acceptance of historical accounts depend much on hegemonic structures and knowledge. The Dalit community was marginalized within the Indian economic, social, and political historiography. Gradually, with the rise of Dalit consciousness, men—the better-positioned gender of the community—tried to express their vulnerabilities from a masculinist perspective. The literature written also projected women only as extensions of male protagonists. Though the traumas Dalit women have faced due to intersectional realities are separate from that of men, they could not find a place in early literature as complete …

Who Will Speak For The Pasmandaa Women? —Dalits, Women, Muslims, And The Politics Of Representation, Rafia Kazim

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article questions the deliberate omissions of disadvantaged Dalit Muslim women, also known as Pasmandaa women, from feminist, Dalit, and subaltern discourses. To understand the multiplicative nature of oppression and discrimination that these women are continually subjected to, this article foregrounds the intersectionality framework to get a nuanced picture of intersecting vertices of discrimination. It argues that by excluding these severely disadvantaged women from their respective agenda, feminist and Dalit activists have contributed towards their perpetual marginality. Underlying such unaccounted absence of these women is an insouciant attitude of the Pasmandaa leaders towards them. Their approach towards the non-representation of …

Mother’S Story: The ‘Third Space’ For Emancipation In Dalit Women’S Life Narratives, Parveen Kumari, Anupama Vohra

Journal of International Women's Studies

In India, Dalit women wrestle not only with gender and economic deprivation, but also discrimination associated with caste and untouchability, which results in the denial of their social, economic, and political rights. Today, Dalit women’s life narratives form an important segment of not only Dalit literature but also world literature. The narration of their sufferings due to gender and caste forms the basis of these narratives. The articulation of the past, which is a "narrative strategy of reminiscence", is the most crucial aspect of Dalit women's life narratives. While narrating the past, Dalit women try to negotiate direction for the …

Insidious Interlocking Of Gender And Caste: Consequences Of Challenging Endogamy, Mayurakshi Mitra

Journal of International Women's Studies

The Caste system in the Indian subcontinent is characterized by hierarchy or gradations according to occupational status. The evaluative standard that places a caste higher than others or lower compared to the rest is rooted in the Hindu Dharmashashtras. The high and the low are opposed to each other because of their associations with notions of purity and impurity in terms of the nature of their occupations. Since each caste is regarded as a closed group, special emphasis is placed on eating, physical contact, and marriage. Out of these three, the institution of marriage plays a significant role in the …

Dissenting Dalit Voices: An Analysis Of Select Oral Songs Of Dalit Women In Kerala, Anne Placid

Journal of International Women's Studies

The caste and gender configurations in literary and socio-historic spheres that misrepresent or eliminate Dalit women’s voices in mainstream chronicles uphold the notion that caste subjugation has been unresponsively endured by Dalit women. This depiction of the gendered caste subaltern in the mainstream narratives is interrogated and countered by the oral songs of Dalit women in Kerala. This paper examines how the songs as the sites of the register of the voices of Dalit women hold cultural and historic significance carrying the bearings of the Dalit feminist standpoint. The oral songs which contain the feminist consciousness of the gendered caste …

Absence In Presence: Dalit Women’S Agency, Channar Lahala, And Kerala Renaissance, Binu K D, Manosh Manoharan

Journal of International Women's Studies

In the patriarchal milieu of Kerala, the woman’s world is overshadowed by male suppression and cowed silence; the Dalit woman, however, seems to never take it lying down. As is evident from the Channar revolt of the 19th century, Dalit women have never been silent victims in history. This is in stark contrast to the upper-caste women who tend to succumb to caste patriarchy in silence. Drawing on the Channar or Shannar women’s historic revolt for the right to cover their breasts, this paper engages with the question of Dalit women's agency in the social reform movements during the period …

“We Are Working For A Caste-Free India”: An Interview With M. M. Vinodini, Bonnie Zare

Journal of International Women's Studies

The present interview with M.M. Vinodini extends the context of her two stories printed in this issue, “Block” and “Villain’s Suicide” and the contemporary context for Telugu Dalit women writers. It enables readers to consider the combination of factors that must align for a woman and therefore, a secondary citizen of a severely stigmatized community to take action and protest through activist organizing and creative storytelling. Discrimination, self-respect, and assertion are repeated themes in Vinodini’s body of work and here she discusses changing views of caste among young people, the reception of her work, the ongoing mistreatment of sanitation workers, …

Casteing Gender: Intersectional Oppression Of Dalit Women, Bhushan Sharma, K. A. Geetha

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

The Queer Omaha Archives: The First 5 Years, Amy C. Schindler

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Kick-off LGBTQ+ History Month by learning more about Nebraska’s LGBTQ+ history and how archivists and librarians are preserving and sharing the past today. Presentation for the NCompass Live, a program of the Nebraska Library Commission. The Queer Omaha Archives in UNO Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections launched in 2016 as the first dedicated LGBTQ+ archival and book collection in Nebraska. In the collecting initiative’s first 5 years it has grown to over 80 cubic feet and 3 GB of personal papers and organizational records, 50 oral history interviews, and 3,000 books. In this session, you will be introduced to some …

Mentalités And The Search For Total History In The Works Of Annalistes, Foucault, And Microhistory, Jason U. Rose

The Hilltop Review

In this brief essay, the links between the Annales, the works of Michael Foucault, and microhistory are analyzed through the theoretical lens of histoire des mentalités (mentalités). Common threads that link these approaches include the willingness of using outside fields of analysis as well as the willingness to work with vagueness in search of those who Foucault calls, “lost people.” Relatedly, each of these groups and individuals are willing to analyze all aspects of the historical record to fully understand the minds, cultures, and histories of past people. The key to recognizing the relationship of these approaches involve knowing and …

Woman In The Wild: Tales Of A Lake Superior Medic & The Role Of Women In Remote Area Medicine [Poster], University Of Northern Iowa. Women's And Gender Studies Program.

Women’s and Gender Studies Program Documents

No abstract provided.

Missy, Issue 1 (2021), Greg Parker

Missy: LGBTQ+ Literary Magazine

• Managing Editor: Greg Parker
• Associate Editors: Grace Marion, Michael Martella
• Outreach Coordinator: Emily Stewart
• Art Editor: Liz Parks
• Faculty Advisor: Tyler Gillespie

Ua19/16/2 Women's Basketball Press Releases, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

Press releases, photos and game statistics for WKU women's basketball team from August to December 2021.

The Isom Report - Fall 21, Jaime Harker, Theresa Starkey

Isom Report

The official newsletter of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies.

The Conscience Of Little Women: Beth's Epic, Mcewen Baker

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

From its conception, and through countless retellings, there is no doubt that Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is an American classic that has stood the test of time. Kate Hamill’s stage adaptation affirms and extends this legacy; the playwright adopts a contemporary feminist approach that defies gender norms and exclusivity in casting and encourages an actor-centered approach. This essay explains the importance of this adaptation and its influence on my portrayal of Beth March in Belmont University’s Fall 2021 production. It touches on the often overlooked significance of the second youngest sister as well as how my personal battle with …

Covid-19: Tougher On Women?, Aika Dietz

Research Briefs

Women are receiving the worst effects of the COVID-19 recession.

"Writing Unspeakable Things: Speechlessness, Abjection, And The Ethics/Aesthetics Of (Not) Representing Sexual Violence In Three Korean American "Comfort Women' Novels", M Laura Barberan Reinares

Publications and Research

This article analyzes “comfort women” novels by the Korean American authors Therese Park, Nora Okja Keller, and Chang-rae Lee in terms of the ethics and aesthetics of representing sexual violence through language. I specifically look at these authors’ stylistic strategies to describe rape in writing and how they (more or less successfully) avoid voyeuristic portrayals of the “comfort women” by controlling the narrative point of view and relying on traumatic “speechlessness” and abjection. Building on relevant notions from the fields of photography, cinematography, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, this analysis suggests that in-progress representations of rape in language become a futile project …

“Have You Come Out?”: Refutation Of Segdwick’S Theorization Of The Closet In Another Country And Lot: Stories, Mary Ross

Honors Projects

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick outlined in her book entitled Epistemology of the Closet a paradigm of expressing queer sexuality when it is known and when it is not know. In response to Sedgwick closet paradigm, Marlon Ross wrote his essay entitled “Beyond the Closet as a Raceless Paradigm” in which he demonstrated that Sedgwick’s paradigm is not applicable to marginalized class and racial groups. He also made a call to action to change the necessity of the closet paradigm when discussing queer sexuality. In this paper, I put James Baldwin’s Another Country and Bryan Washington’s Lot: Stories in conversation with Sedgwick …

La Autenticidad Y El Yo: Un Análisis Sobre La Experiencia Urbana De Las Mujeres Indígenas En Ecuador, Madison L. Mcclellan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As research on the urban indigenous experience continues to expand, considerations of how indigenous populations understand, express and introspect upon their being indigenous in the city still proves an underexplored topic. The generalizing notion that indigenous persons are staticーin temporal, migratory and identity termsーcategorically conflicts with the growing trends of rural to urban migration patterns. Even more, deep-rooted indigenous-rural associations engender identity disorientations among indigenous women living in the city. The city becomes a space of self-confrontation and re-construction as indigenous women encounter questions of authenticity and shame.

Based in literature on identity, performance, authenticity and shame, this research considers …

Harvesting The Truth About Salt Mining: An Assessment Of The Factors And Demographics That Influence Women To Become Salt Miners, Katwe Uganda, Amelia Simmonds

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Traditional and rudimentary methods of salt mining have been used to harvest salt from Lake Katwe in Uganda for over 400 years. Even though these methods are effective in extracting salt, they are proven to be hazardous to the miners. Though not often acknowledged, the role of women in salt mining operations is significant as they make up half of the workforce in East Africa. Regardless of the health risks associated with the mining sector, the number of women involved in small-scale salt mining increases by the year. The main objective of this study was to gain a better understanding …

Draagmoederschap: Surrogacy In The Netherlands, Olivia Murray

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In this paper, I investigated surrogacy in the Netherlands by interviewing four surrogates and one intended parent about their experiences. I found that the participants shared several common experiences and opinions, especially related to why they chose to be surrogates, how surrogates and intended parents negotiate their relationship during and after pregnancy, the tensions of passing on parenthood and merging families, the (non-binding) contracts that surrogates and parents create, Dutch law, and commercial surrogacy. I argue that much of the discourse around surrogacy relitigates many of the arguments made in favor and against sex work, in that it sets surrogacy …

Women's And Gender Studies Newsletter, V7, Fall 2021, University Of Northern Iowa. Women's And Gender Studies.

Women's and Gender Studies Newsletter

Inside this Issue

Programming News --- 3
New Graduate Students Highlights --- 6
Second-Year Student Highlights --- 8
Awards & Scholarships --- 10
Alumni Update --- 11
Notables & Quotables --- 12

Article: Anti- Love Jihad Law: An Analysis Of Women’S Religious And Marital Rights, Snehal Sharma

Gender and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

In November 2020, Uttar Pradesh government enacted an ordinance – ‘Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020’. Since the ordinance has made the process of religious conversion and interfaith marriage complicated and prolonged in the state, it is commonly known as ‘anti- love jihad law’. This paper analyses and lays out the potential impact of this ordinance on inter-religious marriages, and how it conflicts with women’s religious, marital, and bodily autonomy. Here the author discusses the procedures of anti-conversion ordinance along with the Special Marriage Act (1954) and personal laws related to marriage to assess their impact on inter-religious couples …

Confirmation Bias Susceptibility: Social Domains, Metacognitive Self, And Gender, Emily N. Roush

Student Publications

Confirmation bias is a daily and commonly under-recognized cognitive bias, one in which requires more research. More specifically, confirmation bias is when individuals seek out information to confirm beliefs and reject opposing views. This phenomenon is readily studied in economics and psychology to name a few. However, confirmation bias is often neglected in an empirical setting. Thus, with a gap in the literature, this study tested the susceptibility of confirmation bias in college students, and utilized social domains, Metacognitive Self Score (MCS), and gender to predict the level of confirmation bias. Using a between-subjects design, participants were randomly assigned to …