Women's Studies Commons^™

Book Review: Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization And Middle-Class Identity In Contemporary India, Anne Waldrop

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-class Identity in Contemporary India by Henrike Donner

Book Review: Liberating Shahrazad: Feminism, Postcolonialism, And Islam, Sanaa Benmessaoud

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of Liberating Shahrazad: Feminism, Postcolonialism, and Islam by Suzanne Gauch

Book Review: If I Could Write This In Fire, Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of If I Could Write this in Fire by Michelle Cliff

Book Review: “Baad Bitches” And Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films, Chloe Wayne

Journal of International Women's Studies

Review of “Baad Bitches” and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films by Stephane Dunn

Introduction: Winning And Short-Listed Entries From The 2007 Feminist And Women’S Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition, Yvette Taylor, Michelle Addison

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Speech, Silence And Female Adolescence In Carson Mccullers’ The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter And Angela Carter’S The Magic Toyshop, Catherine Martin

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper examines the relationship between adolescent female characters and silence in Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) and Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop (1967). The established body of criticism focusing on McCullers’ and Carter’s depictions of the female grotesque provides the theoretical framework for this paper, as I explore the implications of these ideas when applied to language and speech. In a white Western society, where a woman’s sexuality, appetite and articulation are controlled and suppressed, this paper asks: what options for expression are there, for women whose speech is always limited to their body, and …

Beyond ‘Helping’: Gender And Relations Of Power In Non-Governmental Assistance To Refugees, Alice Szczepanikova

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article pursues critical gender analysis of conditions of non-governmental (NGO) assistance in the Czech Republic. The study scrutinises practices of assistance in local, low-threshold NGOs working with immigrants, asylum seekers and/or recognized refugees. Although they provide refugees with essential support, this research shows that the NGOs can foster rather than challenge unequal power relations that define refugees primarily as dependent clients. They produce highly feminised spaces of assistance where these power relations produce gendered ‘criteria of belonging’ (Ong, 1996, 738) that impact differently on refugee women and men. The organisations have, often unacknowledged, vested interests in producing certain client …

Women’S Political Representation In Post-Conflict Rwanda: A Politics Of Inclusion Or Exclusion?, Carey Leigh Hogg

Journal of International Women's Studies

Though references abound to Rwandan women holding the world’s highest percentage of parliamentary representation at 56%, what is rarely addressed is the confluence of two opposing trends in Rwanda’s post-conflict environment: that the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)-led government has advocated for women’s greater political inclusion under the premise that women will ‘better’ the political climate, while simultaneously excluding any form of political dissent or ethnic identification. This article ventures into uncharted territory by asking two questions: first, does the discourse surrounding the Government of National Unity’s (GNU) campaign to increase women’s participation in formal politics uncritically assume that women parliamentarians …

The War On Terrorism As State Of Exception: A Challenge For Transnational Gender Theory, Sarah Blake

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this article, I explore the contributions of theoretical engagements of bare life and states of exception to gender theory in relation to the U.S.-led ‘war on terrorism,’ beginning in 2001. I discuss connections between the ongoing struggle over representations of the ‘Third World Woman,’ among feminists and the mainstream discourse that established the United States’ invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and imprisonment of an extralegal class of ‘detainees’ as an inevitable, natural consequence of exceptional difference. In addition I highlight the responsibility academics, including feminist academics, to consider their own positions in relation to the economic, political and representational …

To What Extent Was The Relationship Between Feminists And The Eugenics Movement A ‘Marriage Of Convenience’ In The Interwar Years?, Clare Makepeace

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article extends and questions historians’ recent inquiry into feminists’ relationship with the eugenics movement. It compares the work of three leading feminists – Eleanor Rathbone, Eva Hubback and Mary Stocks – with that of the Eugenics Society by focusing on the interwar campaigns of family allowances, birth control and voluntary sterilisation. Drawing upon National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship annual reports, personal correspondence and published articles, it challenges historians’ assumptions that Rathbone and Stocks courted eugenic support; instead it exposes the pragmatism of an ailing eugenics movement. However, by demonstrating Hubback’s ardent eugenic commitment, it also provides new …

‘Seeing Through A Glass Darkly’: Wollstonecraft And The Confinements Of Eighteenth-Century Femininity, Naomi Jayne Garner

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay applies Luce Irigaray’s theories of the speculum and subversive mimesis to Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman. I argue that Wollstonecraft reveals the limitations of eighteenth-century femininity by using her text as a mirror that distorts and also reflects the image of womanhood at the men who have prescribed an idealised version of femininity. Anticipating Irigaray, Wollstonecraft exposes and undermines this male ideal through mimicry of the masculine position. I begin by assessing modern interpretations of Wollstonecraft’s feminism, her characterisation as a masculine writer and how this can be viewed as a deliberate feminist tactic …

Mapping The Global Landscape In Women's Diasporic Writing, Martha Addante

Dissertations

As a contribution to the theory of cognitive mapping, the dissertation examines the ways in which contemporary novels by women writers of diasporic literature offer new conceptual maps of the present global space. This study argues there is a need for alternative mapping strategies that locate the female diasporic subject within the new global political economy. Fredric Jameson's theory of cognitive mapping and Arjun Appadurai's model of global flows provide a useful framework for mapping global space, yet each must be filtered through a feminist critique and modified by a feminist politics. Ultimately, the dissertation argues for a feminist theory …

Feminist Perspectives On Rape, Rebecca Whisnant

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Although the proper definition of rape is itself a matter of some dispute, rape is generally understood to involve sexual penetration of a person by force and/or without that person's consent. Rape is committed overwhelmingly by men and boys, usually against women and girls, and sometimes against other men and boys. (For the most part, this entry will assume male perpetrators and female victims.)

Virtually all feminists agree that rape is a grave wrong, one too often ignored, mischaracterized, and legitimized. Feminists differ, however, about how the crime of rape is best understood, and about how rape should be combated …

Oppressed, Empowered, Compatriot Woman: Rawa's Online Construction Of Gendered Ideographs, Heather L. Floyd

English Theses & Dissertations

In this paper, I define the ideograph and explain its central role in the strategic communication of two very different entities invested in the advancement of women' sights in Afghanistan: the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an Afghan feminist organization, and the Bush Administration, during the early years of the war in Afghanistan. I employ the rhetorical conceptions of Lloyd Bitzer (1966) and Richard Vatz (1999) to explore the Bush Administration's and RAWA's intentions by analyzing textual and visual ideographs in the context of the rhetorical situation.

In its mission and goals, RAWA repeatedly champions women as …

Relationships Between Black Female College Students' Relationships With Their Fathers And Adult Romantic Attachment, Nicole A. Dock

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The current study examined the relationships between the quality and quantity of time that young Black female college students spent with their fathers during high school as related to romantic attachment and fear of intimacy. Although researchers have investigated the impact that early attachment bonds to mothers have for later psychosocial development, much less research has examined how attachment to fathers may be associated with psychosocial adjustment in young adulthood. In particular, there is a lack of information on how relationships to one's father or father figure may be associated with adjustment in young women from culturally diverse populations.

To …

Woman Has Two Faces: Re-Examining Eve And Lilith In Jewish Feminist Thought, Diana Carvalho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the religious history of American feminism, Jewish feminist biblical interpretation shifted attention away from Eve as a viable example of women's identities. Instead, Lilith, the independent, "demon" and "first wife" of Adam is praised as a symbol of female sexuality for "Transformationist" Jewish feminists. Re-claiming Lilith as the "first Eve," "Transformationist" Jewish feminists turn scripture on its head. Eve's creation and her actions in Genesis are interpreted as a product of patriarchy and male dominance, while Lilith in the midrashic narrative, the Alphabet of Ben Sira, is used by Jewish feminists to reclaim their identities on religious and …

Glsen Safe Schools Map, Betsy Parsons

Betsy Parsons Collection

1997 DeLome road map which was altered by Betsy Parsons in June 2009 to indicate the success of GSLEN's Safe Schools work in Maine. Parsons noted the locations of Gay-Straight Alliances, student groups located in Schools.

Review Of Left Of Karl Marx: The Political Life Of Black Communist Claudia Jones By Carol Boyce Davies, Duke University Press, Durham, 2008., Rashad Shabazz

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Kathryn Kramer

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

What Are The Implications Of Flânerie In The Feminine At The Beginning Of The Twenty-First Century? Reflections Of An Ethnographer At Work On The Plaça De Catalunya In Barcelona, Nadja Monnet

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

While undertaking an ethnography of a public square in Barcelona, I have been led to wonder about the figure of the flâneur and the difficulties of conceiving this figure in the feminine. Two theories about urban space are in conflict: one views public space as continuing the patriarchy of private space; the other sees public space as a site of freedom and self-development for women as well as men. This same tension is present in analyses of the figure of the flâneur, a figure often evoked when anthropologists work in urban contexts

The Nomadic Experiment Of A Steppe Land Flâneuse, Dianne Chisolm

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Imagine the flâneuse in Ulaan Bataar, with its streets unnavigable for pedestrians, and its ever-shifting ger neighborhoods that abut onto crumbling Gulag architecture, not to mention its fierce resurrection of Genghis Khan whose portrait engraved into the overlooking hills declares the city’s imperious nomadic autonomy. This paper investigates the mobilization of the 21st-century flâneuse by the contrary material forces of nomadism and urbanism that confront and transform her as she stumbles, drifts and speeds through Mongolia's city and steppes. The focus of investigation concerns the (im)possible conjunction of nomadism and flânerie on the frontier of the urban and the edge …

Walking The Wall: Global Flâneuse With Local Dilemmas, Kinga Araya

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

In the essay I will critically introduce and discuss some of my key “walking” performance artworks that emphasize the phenomenon of walking and talking in-between different countries, cultures and languages. More specifically, since my infamous walking away from Poland, while on a student trip in Florence, Italy in 1988, I have been trying to exercise my freedom of movement and speech while living in Italy, Canada, Germany, and currently, in the USA. The desire to make artworks that would express some of the walking ideas was very important to me.

Kyoto Blog: 87 Days In Kyoto, Lori Ellis

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

In February, the streets are quiet. Buses are silent. Only eyes are revealed beneath hats and scarves, and yet I feel welcomed. I am bowed into and out of restaurants, stores, temples, galleries, and gardens. Within these orderly frames there are constant delights for the eye, ear, nose and palate. I am seduced and consumed by the sensual. By May, I have fallen into and out of love with every quarter of the city many times over. The forces and rhythms that affect my developing relationship with Kyoto are recorded by the almost daily entries of the Kyoto Blog.

Site-Seeing, Meggan Gould

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

In Site-seeing, I look to address the disciplinary structures surrounding photographic vision through a series of photographs in which I have removed the camera from its habitual proximity to the eye, allowing it greater corporeal liberty. Through this series of mobility-induced images, I seek to explore the visual experience of embodied interstitiality, of being at neither point A nor point B, but caught in motion between the two.

Stroller Flâneur, Katerie Gladdys

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Pushing a baby stroller, I examine the minutiae of my suburban neighborhood, searching for patterns and narratives in the genealogies of architectural structures and topographies while simultaneously searching for items of interest for my son. My resulting observations collage both real and imagined systems into metaphors of community. The methodology informing this video is a gendered riff on the practice of the flâneur where the necessity of childcare becomes a platform for textualizing suburban space.

Review Of Revolutionary Women In Postrevolutionary Mexico By Jocelyn Olcott, Duke University Press, Durham, 2005., Gianfranco Piccone

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Review Of Specters Of Mother India: The Global Restructuring Of An Empire By Mrinalini Sinha, Durham And London: Duke University Press, 2006., Sharon Pillai

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Congress And The Era, Emily Yoder

Anthós

The Equal Rights Amendment was a constitutional amendment that guaranteed that the "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." In this paper I will analyze the policy process in the critical years from the ERA's discharge from committee in 1970 to its passage through Congress in 1972 through both primary documents and scholarly opinion. By thoroughly examining the controversy over the ERA through the views and strategies of those advocating and opposing it, I will show how the momentum for social change characterized …

She's Walking . . ., Henry Gwiazda

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Council For Iwu Women Inspiring Students, Graduates, Rachel Hatch

News and Events (Discontinued Series)

No abstract provided.