Women's Studies Commons^™

Book Review: Sex Trafficking: The Global Market In Women And Children, Moshoula Capous Desyllas

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Sex trafficking: The global market in women and children by Kathryn Farr

Book Review: The Capacity To Care: Gender And Ethical Subjectivity, Maureen P. Hogan

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of The Capacity to Care: Gender and Ethical Subjectivity by Wendy Hollway

Book Review: Betty Ford: Candor And Courage In The White House, Jessica Burstrem

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Betty Ford: Candor and Courage in the White House by John Robert Greene

Two Poems, Mary O’Donoghue

Journal of International Women's Studies

Two Poems by Mary O’Donoghue:

• Thanksgiving in Florida
• Manatee

The Byronic Heroine, Jessica M. Laffoon

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis examines the well-used character persona in Western literature, the Byronic hero which can be prominently seen in both George Gordon and Lord Byron’s poetry, as well as the juxtaposition to this hero, the Byronic heroine. Both hero and heroine are characterized by being sensitive, passionate, strong, and having self-destructing tendencies. These romantic heroes can be seen throughout many works of literature.

The Individual Resisting The Collective Through Faith, Hope, And Love, Jessica Hodgson

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Achieving Gender Equality Through Economic Empowerment, Danielle Sara Pactovis

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The implication that the social construct of our private lives [stereotyped gender roles associated with the nuclear family] controls the development of the public sphere is an ineffective way to define our role as architects. I propose that standards for equal rights need to be initiated in the public real,. Based on theory from the Modern Movement, architecture has potential as an economic and political means for improving the environment through building and urban planning. My interest in the social implications of architecture has led to exploring embedded gender distinctions in the urban environment, specifically studying how economic markets influence …

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.

The Limits Of “No-Limit”, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

One must acknowledge and even admire the passion that writer and photographer Ann Jones brings to the different causes she embraces as she meanders along the paths of her rather eclectic career, now spanning over three decades. Her first book, Uncle Tom’s Campus (1973), examines how her students, in a predominantly African-American college, were being shortchanged by the system. In the late 1990s, she took off across Africa in search of a legendary tribe ruled by women and supposedly noted for its embrace of “feminine” principles of tolerance, diplomacy, and compromise, and returned to publish a travelogue-cum-utopian Weltanschauung set in …

The Trouble With Rights, David L. G. Rice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Do human rights imply enforcement powers? Do they require police or armies? How many soldiers would it take to secure universal human rights? What sort of weaponry would suffice?

Low-Income Women's Access To Education? A Case Study Of Welfare Recipients In Boston, Erika Kates

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

In 2003 and 2004, the Massachusetts legislature dramatically changed state law to allow welfare recipients to engage in education and training to fulfill their mandatory work requirements. The research reported here had as its goal to document whether women who received welfare benefits between 2003 and 2006 knew about, and took advantage of, these historic changes. A fundamental supposition of the research described here is that low-income women should have access to substantive educational opportunities to improve their employment and earnings; raise children with educational aspirations and achievements; enhance their civic participation; and contribute to the state’s human capital resources.

Gestures Toward Cross-Species Reciprocal Relations In Contemporary Poetics, Mary Newell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In this essay, I explore some embodied bases of ethical attitudes toward human/ animal exchanges in the texts of three contemporary authors: Mary Oliver, Heller Levinson, and Adrienne Rich. Since other species share with humans varieties of agency, sentience, and purposive activity, I suggest that reciprocity is a fundamental aim in cross-species relations. Phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty depicts the correlation between embodied actions and attitudes, for example, between the hand movement of grasping and an appropriative attitude toward the natural world. His concept of reciprocity, grounded in the experience of one hand touching another, provides a reference for encounters that …

April Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Women Come Last in Afghanistan ” by Ann Jones. Salon.com. February 6, 2007.

Global Health And Global Hegemony, Randall Kuhn

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As the new director of a unique graduate program in Global Health Affairs, coming from the world of basic research, I have been faced with the need to reconcile a central paradox of American power and hegemony: I conduct my work as an American citizen and often with U.S. government funding in the hope that it will make a positive or at least neutral impact on my world. Yet my government (not only under the present administration) initiates imperial adventures that cause untold damage to the health, welfare, and survival of individuals throughout the world.

Oppressing Women: Who Benefits And How?, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Women are the world’s oldest marketable commodity. “Good” women are marketed by their fathers, or brothers, to other men as wives. “Bad” women are incarcerated, raped, killed, or prostituted. Methods of marketing women range widely in kind: from simple one-on-one bargains, where two men exchange daughters or sisters; to exchange of women for material goods; to use of women to pay debts; to renting out women by the hour or minute to other men for sex.

Peddling A Distinguishable Female Form: Late Nineteenth-Century Advertising Of Cosmetics Hair Products And Corsets In British Women's Magazines, Cathleen A. Rhodes

English Theses & Dissertations

This project examines advertisements for cosmetics, hair products, corsets, and various other mechanical and chemical body alteration devices to uncover an emphasis, manifested through the female body, on gendered differences. Beauty products accentuated feminine physical attributes in order to emphasize differences that were much subtler than the discourse on gender would suggest. In essence, to make the bodily difference closer to the differences the discourse on gender proclaimed.

Primary source material includes visual and textual advertisements from women's periodicals from 1870 — 1900. Periodicals have been chosen for popularity in their respective time periods as well as for their varied …

Lynching The White Imagination: Changing The Dynamics Of Lynching And Rewriting The Cult Of True Womanhood In Grimke, Johnson, And Terrell, Melissa L. Antonucci

English Theses & Dissertations

Despite critics'ack and forth argument over the merits, or lack thereof, of a uniquely black theatre experience, black women playwrights, much like their male counterparts, were once wholly invisible to the white community. But what makes their invisibility unique is their absence in the black world and in literary scholarship. Unfortunately, modern scholarship has oftentimes dismissed these exceptionally powerful plays, cataloging them as poorly written and lacking stylistic and formal elements. It was only recently that they were included in a highly male-dominated history of African American theatre and art. The question of their use of sentimentality, however, remains unanswered. …

Introduction To Women’S Bodies, Gender Analysis, Feminist Politics At The LFórum Social Mundial, Laura Roskos, Patricia Willis

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Feminism In The Space Of The World Social Forum, Ara Wilson

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite clear affinities, the integration of feminism into the World Social Forum remains uneven, in ways reminiscent of well-known histories of women’s movements with various lefts. This essay draws on observations of the 2005 WSF at Porto Alegre, Brazil and the 2006 African Social Forum in Bamako, Mali, as well as secondary literature, to explore the articulation of transnational feminism and the World Social Forum. Using concrete practices, texts, and spaces, I discuss different dimensions of the interaction of feminism with the WSF, including political norms, political geography, and historical trajectories. The relation between feminism and the WSF hinges not …

Ways Of Being: Feminist Activism And Theorizing At The Global Feminist Dialogues In Porte Alegre, Brazil, 2005, Amanda Gouws

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article attempts to capture some reflections by an African feminist scholar and activist on the activism and academic debate at the Global Feminist Dialogues (FD) in Porte Alegre, Brazil in January 2005. The activism and the space for dialogue is a feminist space that includes different types of feminism, but is also a space that attempts to build a movement within diverse feminist networks. This form of activism is contrasted with the depoliticization of activism caused by gender mainstreaming in Africa. The academic debate at the FD takes place in the intersections between activism and theorizing and opens a …

Social Fora: Representing Resistance And Alternatives? Critique And Alternative Interpretation From A Feminist Perspective, Magdalena Freudenschuss

Journal of International Women's Studies

The World Social Forum is only one in the worldwide process of social fora, which mark a new phase in the era of globalisation. This critical form of globalisation from below challenges neoliberal hegemony and sets up a space to develop alternatives symbolised by the Forum’s motto, “Another World is Possible.” Collectively, the fora make up a part of the forces of global resistance, but in a more concrete way, opinions on resulting strategies and aims diverge concerning the foras’ character and function. At the same time, criticism is formulated inside the fora, leading to heavy debates. Among these critiques …

Transnational Feminisms And The World Social Forum: Encounters And Transformations In Anti-Globalization Spaces, Janet Conway

Journal of International Women's Studies

What would it mean to place feminism(s) – as movement(s), politics and ethics – at the centre of our understandings of the World Social Forum? The author argues that transnational feminisms have been among the significant forces constituting the WSF, although this has been uneven across different time-spaces and scales of the WSF. She further asserts that transnational feminisms, understood as movement(s), politics and ethics, are making particular and irreducible contributions to contemporary emancipatory movements in and beyond the WSF. This study historicizes and analyzes some major expressions of transnational feminism at the WSF with implications for understanding the inter-relationality …

Is ‘Another’ Public Sphere Actually Possible? The Case Of “Women Without” In The European Social Forum Process As A Critical Test For Deliberative Democracy, Nicole Doerr

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper presents results of a cross-national comparative research project on the case of democracy in the European Social Forums (ESFs) process over the period from 2003 to 2005. The various progressive social movements engaged in the European Social Forums process try to construct “another world” and “another public sphere” internally within their own practices of participatory and deliberative democracy in public forums. This includes fighting discriminations against women in general and women from non-western European parts of the world in particular. I take as my point of departure the case of “women without,” that is women activists who lack …

Parallel Or Integrated ‘Other Worlds’: Possibilities For Alliance-Building For Sexual And Reproductive Rights, Barbara Klugman

Journal of International Women's Studies

The author proposes that the paradigms within which struggles for reproductive and sexual rights are waged fail to engage with those dimensions of sexuality and reproduction that are inscribed into the broader organization of social and economic life nationally and globally. In the case of reproductive rights she argues that the possibility of delivering quality reproductive health services is determined not only by ideological struggles regarding people’s right to control their sexual and reproductive selves but also by the extent of the state’s commitment to delivery of services as well as global factors influencing state capacity, such as debt, or …

The Silences Between: Are Lesbians Irrelevant? World Social Forum, Mumbai, India, 16-21 January, Susan Hawthorne

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this essay, I reflect on my experience at the Mumbai World Social Forum in 2004. I begin with a discussion of silence as methodology in research with, by and about lesbians. I examine the silence around lesbian politics as well as the silences between lesbian activists and those they encounter in discussion, political activism and research settings. I explore some of the differences and similarities between Australia and India both within the mainstream culture and in the freedoms or otherwise of lesbians. I then go on to describe the workshop I organized for the Mumbai World Social Forum on …

India Sutra, Susan Hawthorne

Journal of International Women's Studies

The complete “India Sutra” appears in The Butterfly Effect by Susan Hawthorne (Spinifex Press, 2005).

Naked Protest: Memories Of Bodies And Resistance At The World Social Forum, Barbara Sutton

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article draws on memories from the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in order to examine the role of naked bodies in relation to politics. Focusing on a specific moment within the flurry of (embodied) activities at the World Social Forum, this piece explores the tensions, contradictions, and opportunities arising from the use of nakedness as a political tool. The naked body is examined as a subject of political resistance and as an object of repression, highlighting how the meanings of nakedness are marked by gender and connected systems of social inequality. The analysis shows that while …

A Liberatory Space? Rumors Of Rapes At The 5th World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, 2005, Sara Koopman

Journal of International Women's Studies

Rumors were that 90 women were raped in the youth camp at the Fifth World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, in January of 2005. Later reports were that there had been two. Yet the rumors speak to how the space of the forum is socially produced and what sort of space it is. How does space then shape the forum and what we can do from there? Lefebvre argues that revolutionary festivals are an important challenge to the abstract space of capitalism. Revolutionary festivals can liberate us, but our bodies must be free if we are to create a revolutionary …

Gender In The Bamako Polycentric World Social Forum (2006): Is Another World Possible?, Aurelie Latoures

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper explores a gender analysis of the Bamako Polycentric World Social Forum, 2006. Thus far, gender has been marginalized in the World Social Forum process, despite the progressive tone of the project for “another world,” indirectly alluding to gender equality. The Bamako WSF 2006 is an interesting case study to assess gender institutionalisation, as for the first time African women activists were massively integrated into the discussions. Additionally, national organizers dedicated a specific venue for gender issues, the Women’s World. What was the impact of these two features for the “engendering” of the WSF?

“Otro Mundo Es Posible”: Women Power In The Vi Caracas World Social Forum And The Bolivarian Revolution, Renée Kasinsky

Journal of International Women's Studies

This is an insider’s account of the participation of a Boston delegate at the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela in January 2006. She relates the stories of women who attended the WSF and those women who through their leadership in their communities create a new world order based on the major themes of the WSF. The health and welfare missions created by the Bolivarian revolution of Hugo Chávez are testimony to the theme of the forum that through the process of participatory democracy “Otro Mundo Es Posible”.