Women's Studies Commons^™

Being A Lesbian Librarian, Collection Development In Lesbian Librarianship, And Archives As Lesbian Spaces, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Edited talk From Pratt SILS Gender LIS Panel curated by Dinah Handel on March 27th, 2015
Co-presenters include: Sian Evans; #artandfeminism Wikipedia Editathon & Jen LaBarbera; Filling in the Margins: The use of Queer Theory, Feminist Standpoint Theory, and Critical Race Theory to build inclusive archival collections
This talk remarks on the role of the librarian to provide lesbian-specific content.

Tape-By-Tape: Digital Practices And Cataloguing Rituals At The Lesbian Herstory Archives, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This essay will outline the digital collections of the Lesbian Herstory Archives with an emphasis on process and workflow. The paragraphs below will describe the efforts put forth by the all- volunteer collective, and their dedication toward making materials accessible through the use of digital technology to preserve, catalog, and exhibit lesbian herstory. Interviews with Archive Coordinators, called “Archivettes”, Rachel Corbman on the Online Public Access Catalog, Saskia Scheffer on Photos, and Maxine Wolfe on Audio, will provide examples of LHA digital practices in the creation and maintenance of the Photo Collection, OPAC, and Audio Tape Digitization projects. Additional mention …

Opening Remarks To Outing Lorraine At The Schomburg Center, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This article is an edit of the opening remarks for the event held on May 22nd, 2014 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as part of the In The Life Series supplying Black LGBT programming coordinated by Steven Fullwood. Outing Lorraine included panelists: Alexis DeVeaux, Joi Gresham, and Steven Fullwood and was moderated by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz. Opening remarks provide a biographical description of Lorraine Hansberry's life, prepare the audience for a conversation on the implications for "outing" a black iconic figure, details the purpose for use of primary and secondary sources when, and provides a bibliography for …

“Documenting The Untold Stories Of Feminist Activists At Welfare Rights Initiative: A Digital Oral History Archive Project.”, Cynthia Tobar

Publications and Research

This chapter recounts the creation of a digital oral history archive documenting the Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI), a grassroots student activist and community leadership training organization located at Hunter College. The author examines, through these oral history interviews, social movement activity at the level of a grassroots organization as exemplified by WRI, which was developed to aid student welfare recipients to become agents of social change and actively involve them with policymaking. The project depicts the experiences of members in this feminist grassroots organization and provides us with new insights to the origins of advocacy, documenting the singular historical importance …

Racism, Sexism Problems For Women Of Color, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Queer Pedagogical Desire: A Study Guide, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

This essay explores the queer pedagogical desires that attended my writing of the Study Guide for the documentary film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Jim Hubbard, 2012). The analysis takes up Robyn Wiegman’s central question in Object Lessons, “What is it we expect our relationship to our objects of study to do?”, which is of particular importance to the discipline of queer studies insofar as the field is oriented around the desire to meld social justice with critical pedagogy. The queer professor’s desire in the case of the Study Guide-as-object was to create a text that …

‘A River Is Not A Woman’: Re-Visioning Finnegans Wake In Eavan Boland’S ‘Anna Liffey.’, Melissa Dinsman

Publications and Research

"This essay argues that Eavan Boland's 1994 poem “Anna Liffey” is, in part, a re-visioning of James Joyce's famous river-woman and mother, ALP. Although Joyce's deconstructive tendencies provide an added challenge for any author looking to engage with Finnegans Wake, Boland manages to reclaim ALP, both channelling and challenging Joyce's portrayal of the Liffey as “Anna Livia Plurabelle.”--From the Journal.

Inequalities For Women Take A Toll On Everyone, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Surviving The City: Resistance And Plant Life In Woolf’S Jacob’S Room And Barnes’ Nightwood, Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

In Jacob’s Room (1922) and Nightwood (1936), Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes use plant life to express a profound ambivalence about the masculine-inflected ordering functions of art and morality. They show that these processes codify lived experience and distance it from the feminine and sexual. To counter this turn towards the urban inauthentic, both novels depict non-urban spaces to upend conventional notions of usefulness. They fixate on evanescent flowers, wild forests, and untillable fields as sites of resistance whose fragility and remoteness are strengths. In Jacob’s Room, I argue that the eponymous protagonist is destroyed by his conventional education …

Joan Rivers And Queen Elizabeth, Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Rachilde, Marguerite Eymery Vallette (1860-1953), Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

This is a biographical overview of the life and principle works of the French author Rachilde, a.k.a. Marguerite Eymery Vallette (1860-1953), one of the few women writers working in the masculinist field of fin-de-siecle or decadent fiction.

`The Only Beguiled Person?': Accessing Fantomina In The Feminist Classroom., Kate Levin

Publications and Research

This article explores how Eliza Haywood's 18th-century novella Fantomina serves as an allegory for the challenges of maintaining a feminist classroom.

Frey-Spurlock Studies Women’S Roles In Society, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Maätita Studies Issues Of Motherhood, Sexuality, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Ibroscheva Looks At How The Media Portrays Women, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Problematizing "Autonomy" And "Tradition" With Regard To Veiling: A Response To Seval Yildirim, Anissa Helie

Publications and Research

Debates related to Muslim women’s dress, specifically, often pit religious freedom, individual liberty, and cultural rights against women’s rights and gender equality. Hélie's response to Yildirim (specifically her discussion of national and international legal responses to “headcoverings”) does not focus on legal aspects, but rather on gendered practices and their ideological roots.

Hélie adopts a global lens, recognizing that whilst historical and socio-political specificities are crucial to grasp the nuances of each context, questions related to dress codes in Muslim contexts nevertheless relate to issues affecting our world at large. Hélie discusses two main aspects of Yildirim's argument - namely: …

Bad Girls And Biopolitics: Abortion, Popular Fiction, And Population Control, Karen Weingarten

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

A Process Archive: The Grand Circularity Of Woman's Building Video, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

“Globalized Philomels: State Patriarchy, Transnational Capital, And The Femicides On The Us-Mexican Border In Roberto Bolaño’S 2666”, M Laura Barberan Reinares

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Gloria E. Anzaldúa’S Decolonizing Ritual De Conocimiento, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s work makes up one of the many Chican@ works that contribute another history, a history repressed by the national discourses on both sides of the border. Influenced by antecedents of U.S. Hispanic Literature who superposed “official” history with another history, Chicano activists had already enacted a retrieval of pre-conquest histories to revive their people’s historical consciousness. As Saldívar-Hull states in “Mestiza Consciousness and Politics: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/ La frontera,” the publication of Borderlands/ La Frontera distinguished itself from the Chicano movement’s as it unveiled the curtain that hid the Aztec goddesses and kept aspects of pre-conquest history …

I Promise I Won't Say 'Herstory': New Conversations Among Feminists, Jannelle Ruswick, Alycia Sellie

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Sources On Lesbian Subjectivities For The Production Of Lesbian Of Color Identity Formation Through Literature, Art, Film, Or Documentation: An Annotatated Bibliography, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Historically, coming out as a lesbian and then forming an identity of a "lesbian of color" includes seeking out like voices and stories. Librarians who hold an understanding of the lesbian of color coming out process as well as the fluidity of language in Queer Studies will be better equipped to service lesbian of color patrons. This paper holds three tools for reference librarians: A literature review outlining the history of lesbian of color identity formation, secondly, a bibliography with interdisciplinary humanities reference annotations that source lesbians of color in literature, film, performance art, and identity, and thirdly, a model …

Hillary's Pants Suit And Lindsay's Birthday Suit, Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

This is an article about Hillary Clinton and Lindsay Lohan.

The Lgbtq Short Story, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

“The LGBTQ Short Story” is a lengthy entry in the three-volume encyclopedia LGBTQ America Today, edited by queer scholar John Hawley. The entry explores the characteristics of the genre and synthesizes the work of the top 25 living queer short story writers.

Introduction: The Sexual Body, Shelly J. Eversley, Jennifer L. Morgan

Publications and Research

Introduction to the special issue, "The Sexual Body," edited by Shelly Eversley and Jennifer L. Morgan.

"Unrighteous Compact": Louisa May Alcott's Resistance To Contracts And Promises In Moods, Nina Bannett

Publications and Research

Alcott’s first adult novel, Moods, initially published in 1864, presents oral promises between women as extralegal alternatives to standard legal contracts between men and women. In the 1864 edition of Moods, Alcott's protagonist, Sylvia Yule, fails to understand the constraints of marriage as a type of contract, and the results are dramatic. In fact, Alcott undermines the idealized marriage plot so crucial to her later, wildly popular works like Little Women (1868-69). In the 1864 Moods, Alcott boldly questions both legal contracts and oral promises characteristic of nineteenth-century conceptions of romantic love and heterosexual friendship.

Young Activists And The New 'No Wave': Two Anthologies For A Feminist Future, Alycia Sellie

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

From Center To Margin: A Feminist Journey In The Roman Catholic Church, Susan A. Farrell

Publications and Research

Using a socio-religious approach to autobiography, a sociologist traces her development within the Roman catholic Church and her journey from the center of that religious faith to the margins. As a Feminist sociologist critiquing the institution and its practices which exclude women from ordination, Women-Church, an umbrella organization of feminist groups within the Roman catholic tradition, is used as an example of what a more inclusive religious organization could look like.

No Woman Is An Object: Realizing The Feminist Collaborative Video, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

Feminist video does collectivity exceedingly well. Certainly other politicized cultural movements and individuals work through this method, and, of course, feminists also produce work in collaboration in film and other media (as Julia Lesage testifies above). However, I assert that there is a profound natural mechanics to women's work in video that makes the medium's method, theory, and theme the interactive and politicized subjectification of the female sex. Film and patriarchy share the project of women's objectification-they make victims. Video and feminism see women as complex, worthy selves-they produce subjects. In feminist collaboration: video, the medium (inexpensive, debased, nonprofessional), the …

Sexual Slander And Working Women In "The Roaring Girl", Mario Digangi

Publications and Research

Though scholarship of the early modern era focuses on the character of Moll Frith when considering the gender ideology contained in Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker's "The Roaring Girl," the play's other female characters are also of interest. The "citizen wives" of the play are women who, though married, work outside the home. Their special status in the emerging capitalist marketplace of the early modern era gave rise to unique anxieties about their economic power and sexual availability. These anxieties in turn made these women especially susceptible to slander against their sexual reputation and thus respectability in the community. An …