Women's Studies Commons^™

Reflections On The 3rd International Feminist Dialogues: Notes From A Newcomer, Janet Conway

Journal of International Women's Studies

The World Social Forum Nairobi 2007 was the first time the author participated in the Feminist Dialogues and this article records her first impressions and limited analysis of that event. This article includes discussion of who was in attendance and information on a panel presentation by the African Feminist Forum.

A Conversation With Onyango Oloo At The Wsf Nairobi 2007, Patricia Willis, Onyango Oloo

Journal of International Women's Studies

Onyango Oloo, National Coordinator for the Kenyan Social Forum 2006 and who also served on the Nairobi Organizing Council for the World Social Forum Nairobi 2007, has gained notoriety as an outspoken advocate for women’s leadership at the World Social Forum. His widely circulated article, “Gendering WSF Nairobi 2007 - Conceptual Underpinnings,” raised expectations among some readers about the role women would play at the Nairobi forum. In this interview, completed in the midst of that event, Onyango reflects on the evolution of his own feminist consciousness and the tactics he feels need to be implemented in order to infuse …

Eve's Side, Rebecca Lauren Gidjunis

English Theses & Dissertations

Imagine that Eve came to earth one day to tell her side of the creation story. Perhaps she'd say that she came first, not Adam, or tell us that God is actually a matronly woman, with round hips and sagging breasts. Maybe she'd sing of sensuality, body, and female wisdom.

Unfortunately, most of us in Judeo-Christian theology have been privy to only one side—Adam'. By allowing Eve and her daughters to speak, I claim women's stories as essential to our overall understanding of the divine. In Eve 's Side, I allow women to see themselves in God and God …

Balancing Rosie And June: A Study Of Lynchburg College Postwar Alumnae And The Impact Of The Feminine Mystique, Dinah Watson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

In 2003, the movie Mona Lisa Smile debuted describing the frustrations that many college women may have faced in the years after World War II. Wellesley College was the elite all-female institution that openly and proudly prepared its young women with the proper rules of etiquette and correctness. Despite Wellesley’s own excellent academic reputation, its close proximity to the prestigious single-sex male college, Harvard, made it even more appealing and convenient for the Wellesley girls to find a “suitable” husband. The novice young art instructor, Katherine Watson, was unique in that she wanted to offer her students not only a …

Placards: Mkr Society, Edna Saffy And Grady Johnson

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Name cards for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society event designating the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Farm a National Historic Landmark, March 3, 2007.

Review: 'Challenging Liberalism: Feminism As Political Critique', Rebecca Whisnant

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In Challenging Liberalism: Feminism as Political Critique, Lisa Schwartzman brings her sharp interpretive and critical perspective to bear on the vexed relationship between feminism and liberal political philosophy. Noting (as have others before her) that the latter's central values -- such as autonomy, individual rights, and equality -- are both indispensable to and sometimes problematic for feminism, Schwartzman argues that these values must be reinterpreted in light of the insights gained from an alternative, non-liberal, and specifically feminist philosophical methodology. In this book, she explains why such an alternative methodology is needed, outlines some of its distinctive features, and …

A Benchmark Report On Diversity In State And Local Government, Carol Hardy-Fanta Phd

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

The Pipeline to Public Service Initiative asked the McCormack Graduate School’s Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston to ascertain the racial diversity in state and local government. The project had the following three goals:

--To identify the race (and gender) of those holding top-level positions filled through gubernatorial appointments, e.g., secretaries, commissioners, directors, deputy commissioners/directors, and undersecretaries, in the Commonwealth’s executive offices and major departments.

--To compile the same information for members of the most influential boards and commissions in the Commonwealth filled through gubernatorial appointments.

--To assess the diversity of elected …

Introduction: Identity, Difference And New Feminisms, Celia Roberts, Melanie Waters

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

The Missing Rhetoric Of Gender In Responses To Abu Ghraib, Alexandra Murphy

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper explores Western responses to the torture inflicted upon Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib facility near Baghdad. More specifically, however, this paper examines responses to photographic representations of this torture, which began to surface in the April of 2004. The analysis that follows engages closely with the status of the photographs as images, arguing that existing critical interpretations fail to account for the particular issues and problems that the visual image presents. Through detailed reference work by Judith Butler and Susan Sontag, this paper will also interrogate the limitations of recent theoretical approaches to the …

As You Wear: Cross-Dressing And Identity Politics In Jackie Kay’S Trumpet, Alice Walker

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper explores the theories and practices of cross-dressing through the lens of Jackie Kay’s novel, Trumpet (1998). In the course of Trumpet, Kay explores the life of a fictional protagonist, ‘Joss Moody,’ who was born a woman but lived as a man. With close reference to recent critiques of cross-dressing, this paper conducts a detailed analysis of identity, gender, and personal autonomy as they are constructed within the terms of Kay’s text. Furthermore, it works to illustrate the complex ways in which gender and individuality intersect in contemporary cultures, while exposing the logic of gender binarism to intense …

The Lady In The Looking-Glass: Reflections On The Self In Virginia Woolf, Stephen Howard

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay addresses Virginia Woolf’s exploration of the concept of the self through reference to a range of her prose writings. In these writings, Woolf questions whether the self is unitary, constant and finally knowable, or fragmented, unstable and inscrutable; whether the self is merged with other people, and constructed from interactions with the world; and whether or not a durable and fixed self-image is a necessary prerequisite for successful social interaction. Woolf’s engagement with the conventions of biography is examined primarily through the lens of two short stories: ‘The Lady in the Looking-Glass’ and ‘An Unwritten Novel.’ I argue …

Cyberqueers In Taiwan: Locating Histories Of The Margins, Terri He

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this paper I direct the focus to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) online communities in Taiwan. On the one hand, I argue that such online communities in Taiwan are worthwhile researching and deserve special academic attention because they touch upon Taiwan’s perpetual difference in the world as a de-facto, thereby questioning how a transnational perspective permanently influences or even changes the way national identity is or is not formulated. On the other, against the backdrop of globalisation, I highlight the fact of under-theorisation of issues and politics of sexuality dissidence in a non-western, non-dominant location and culture such …

Feminism And The Politics Of Representation: Towards A Critical And Ethical Encounter With “Others”, Amy Hinterberger

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay begins from the position that a speaking subject in feminism occupies a place of power and authority which requires a commitment to an ethical involvement in the representation of ‘others.’ Specifically, this essay will address feminist concerns of speaking for others and the concerns raised by the dangers of representing across differences of race, sexuality, gender and cultures. First, it will critique feminist claims to political effectivity as a solution to ethical representation. Second, it will look at how hierarchies of oppression and privileged ontological positions are inconsistently represented in feminist discussions. Lastly, it will briefly examine how …

Journalists In Feminist Clothing: Men And Women Reporting Afghan Women During Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001, Corinne Fowler

Journal of International Women's Studies

The following discussion is based on an extensive survey of UK mainstream television news reports broadcast between September and December 2001 during the military attacks on Afghanistan, known as Operation Enduring Freedom. Also conducted was a survey of British radio and print media published and produced within the specified period. I argue that the 2001 news media coverage of Afghanistan was an important precursor to current debates about Muslim women in Europe and the United States since it highlights many of the contradictions and hypocrisies housed within western public discourses on women’s rights. Detailing numerous examples, I contend that the …

Cyberfeminism In The Arab World, Dalia Al Nimr

Archived Theses and Dissertations

The Internet has become a viable source of news, information, entertainment, and social integration for people worldwide. The Internet is also a medium where gender identity operates vehemently. Feminists, in particular, hailed the medium as a domain where women can assert their identities without patriarchal constraints and can challenge their stereotypical portrayal in the media. But does the Internet provide such utopianism? A content analysis of 18 websites targeted at Arab women shows that the Internet is marred by the same gender stereotypes that have pigeonholed women for decades, circumscribing them in their domestic roles as housewives and mothers and …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …

On Island: Women Artists Of Monhegan, University Of New England Art Gallery

Exhibition Catalogues

On Island: Women Artists of Monhegan is the catalogue from the University of New England Art Gallery’s July 26 - September 23, 2007 exhibition featuring works by 36 women artists who capture the essence of Monhegan Island and its role in the history of American fine art. There is a powerful sense of place, from dramatic, swift changes in light, color and nuance, to giant cliffs, swirling tide pools, and rocks that come in all sizes and hues, as well as island life and people. Their art covers the most recent 50 years on an island that has attracted artists …

Sex, Drugs, And Mingling Spirits: Teaching Nineteenth-Century Women Poets, Cheryl Walker

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

Book abstract:

Twentieth-century modernism reduced the list of nineteenth-century American poets to Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and (less often) Edgar Allan Poe. The rest were virtually forgotten. This volume in the MLA series Options for Teaching marks a milestone in the resurgence of the study of the rest. It features poets, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Lydia Huntley Sigourney, who were famous in their day, as well as poets who were marginalized on the basis of their race (Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alexander Posey) or their sociopolitical agenda (Emma Lazarus, John Greenleaf Whittier). It also takes a fresh look at poets …

Women & Kids Learning Together Summer Camp: An Intensive Learning Experience For Students And Participants, Mary Ann Bokkon, Michelle Glorioso, Jane Olmsted

Gender & Women's Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Multiplicity And Gendering The Holy Grail In The Da Vinci Code And The Mists Of Avalon, Victoria Anne Villasenor-Oldham

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis explores how both texts - The Da Vinci Code and The Mists of Avalon - write femininity onto the Holy Grail in seemingly problematic ways, and the way in which women's voices, through the feminization of the Grail, are often silenced.

Sex And The City: A Postmodern Reading, Antoinette Christine Di Guglielmo

Theses Digitization Project

Sex and the City was a television show that aired on Home Box Office from 1998-2004. The tv show succeeded because of feminist's wanting a modern woman's drama rich in episodes about consumption, women's sexuality, financial independence, fashion and contemporary relationship dynamics. The characters captured and perpetuated just that. The modern take on the ideologies that drive women's perception of personal fulfillment, body image, consumerism, social behavior and values and romantic relationship dynamics made this tv show the phenomena that it became.

Review Of Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women In America, 1850-1900, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Like Naomi Z. Sofer's Making the America of Art (2005) and Anne E. Boyd's Writing for Immorality (2004), Susan Williams Reclaiming Authorship seeks to recreate and analyze how American women authors in the second half of the nineteenth century understood their own authorship. All three include Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Constance Fenimore Woolson as subjects, but Williams includes authors who did not conceive of their authorship in a high cultural mode (Maria Cummins, Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Abigail Dodge), and she traverses the careers of Alcott and Phelps so as to emphasize their movements in and out of …

Speech: Retirement Luncheon Fscj, 2007, Edna Louise Saffy

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

A farewell speech at her retirement luncheon at Florida State College in Jacksonville.

Ivy Leaves, 2007, Ivy Leaves Editorial Staff

Ivy Leaves

The 2007 edition of the Anderson University journal of art and literature, Ivy Leaves.

The names of the known editors for this issue of Ivy Leaves were Jessica Sopolosky, Charlie Grant, Phyllis Goins, Joshua Rigsby, Robbie Cobb, Wayne Cox, and Eric Whitlock.

Becoming A Nun, Becoming A Man: Taiwanese Buddhist Nuns’ Gender Transformation, Hillary Crane

Faculty Publications

This paper explores apparent contradictions in the gender identifications of Taiwanese Buddhist nuns. Because the texts and teachings of their tradition provide conflicting messages about women's spiritual abilities, the nuns create a complex gender cosmology as a means to accommodate textual contradictions without rejecting any textual statements. This strategy allows the nuns to assert that they have spiritual abilities equal to those of men without rejecting or contradicting textual statements that they do not. Without denying that they are women (and that they are therefore threatening to men) the nuns primarily identify with the male gender. Compartmentalizing and contextualizing gender …

The Global Gag Rule: Implications For Feminism, Ngo Funding, And Women’S Global Health, Amanda L. Breeden

Graduate Research Papers

This research project examines the effects of the Mexico City Policy on feminism, non governmental organizations (NGOs) funding, and women's global health. The paper argues that the Mexico City Policy, also known as the Global Gag Rule, is a form of hegemonic discursive and cultural imperialism that silences women and NGO voices. In doing so, the policy decreases access to reproductive health care, increases the feminization of poverty, and removes reproductive decision-making from women.

The research maintains this argument through review of the literature surrounding this issue. This literature review includes an examination of the history of the U.S. policy …

Gender Lessons On The Fields Of Contemporary Japan: The Female Athlete In Coaching Discourses, Elise M. Edwards

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Dr. Edwards' contribution to : Kelly, William W., and Atsuo Sugimoto. 2007. This Sporting Life : Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan. Yale CEAS occasional publications, v. 1; Yale CEAS occasional publications, v. 1. New Haven, Conn.: Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University.

Awakening The 'Mere Pulsation Of Desire' In Silas Marner, Melissa Raines

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In George Eliot's Middlemarch, the narrator reflects on those crucial events which shape pathways in our lives. For Tertius Lydgate, this occurs with the chance opening of a book to a particular page:

[T]he first passage that drew his eyes was on the valves of the heart. He was not much acquainted with valves of any sort, but he knew that valvae were folding doors, and through this crevice came a sudden light startling him with his first vivid notion of finely adjusted mechanism in the human frame.'

For Lydgate, this seminal instant is the one which inspires him to …

Review Of George Eliot, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Oxford's publication of 'Bite-sized biographies of Britain's most fascinating historical figures' brings to mind Pascal's famous apology for the length of his letter: 'I have not had time to make it shorter'. Would Rosemary Ashton, who has written both long and short biographies, agree that it is more taxing to produce a 'bite-sized' account that a long one? Brevity demands clear aims, selection of salient points, stringent compression. These tests Rosemary Ashton passes with enviable ease, combining compression with elegance. She begins by summarizing her aims: 'In this study, originally written for the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I …

Review Of George Eliot And Nineteenth-Century Psychology: Exploring The Unmapped Country, Michael Davis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Michael Davis packs a dense yet deft discussion of George Eliot's relationship with the scientific theories of mind of her contemporaries into this short book. Revisiting the novels and essays, and to a lesser extent the letters, he adds to our understanding of her place as a thinking novelist by his careful negotiation of intellectual positions, his weaving of the discussion among such Eliot contemporaries as Darwin, Spencer, Lewes, Huxley, Alexander Bain, W. B. Carpenter, and E. S. Dallas, and his engagement with recent studies in the field by Gillian Beer, Sally Shuttleworth, K. K. Collins, Tess Cosslett, David Carroll, …