Women's Studies Commons^™

Reproductive Justice And The Black Panther Party, Dakota Mancuso

History in the Making

Despite the multitude of research available on the Black Panther Party (BPP), the group’s widespread social activism programs and their positive effect on the health of communities, is generally understated. These programs, known by the party as “survival programs,” provided a plethora of services meant to increase the standards of living of underserved people, all at no cost. Such programs included a series of People’s Free Medical Clinics, Free Breakfast for Children programs, and several Liberation Schools, including the widely successful Oakland Community School. When looking at these programs within the context of reproductive justice, or the framework of study …

Reproductive Abuse And The Sterilization Of Women Of Color, Bshara Alsheikh

History in the Making

Women of color have long suffered targeted and systematic racial discrimination and attempts to control their populations by the state. Well after eugenic rhetoric and policies’ prime in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Civil Rights movements of the mid-century, Chicana, Black, and Indigenous women continued to be victimized by state-sanctioned eugenic policy. This paper examines the way that eugenic rhetoric and policy evolved from the first sterilization laws in the nation passed in California that targeted criminality to later legislation and rhetoric that explicitly targeted racial minorities.

Mirabai: The Making Of A Saint, Nancy M. Martin

Religious Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters

This book traces the narrative genealogy of the immensely popular Indian saint Mirabai from the earliest manuscript references to her through colonial and nationalist formations to scholarly and popular portrayals in the decades leading up to Indian independence. This iconic sixteenth-century woman is renowned for her unwavering love of God, her disregard for social hierarchies and gendered notions of honor and shame, and her challenge thereby to familial, feudal, and religious authorities. Though verifiable historical facts regarding her life are few, stories about her have multiplied across social, linguistic, regional, and religious boundaries. With attention to who is telling which …

Using Queer Of Color Theory To Analyze Latinidad, Maria I. Castro-Mendoza

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

Queer of Color Theory (QOCT) has emerged as a new field of study with the rise of LGBTQ+ visibility in the modern day political landscape. QOCT is an extended analysis of queer theory that explicitly and intentionally takes into account race, imperialism, and colonialism. Queer of color theory can be used to create or expand upon an already existing theory, and has roots in Black feminism. Using queer of color theory as a method of analysis, this essay discusses the black and indigenous erasure within the Latinidad movement and seeks to examine those who have been systemically left out of …

The Changing Contours Of The Indian Public Sphere: Courtesans, Culture, And The British Invasion Of Oudh In Kenizé Mourad’S In The City Of Gold And Silver, Anurag Kumar, Isha Malhotra, Rishav Bali

Journal of International Women's Studies

The article explores the role of women in the Indian freedom struggle, particularly Begam Hazarat Mahal of Lucknow through Kenizé Mourad’s In the City of Gold and Silver (2010). The text explicitly and implicitly foregrounds the role of tawaifs (courtesans) in the culture and the literature of the public sphere prior to 1857 or the first Indian freedom struggle. Their participation in the freedom struggle was a response to the British attempt to reduce their role to strictly economic and sexual purposes. The article imbricates the issues of nationalism, gender, and sexuality by mining the invisible contributions of various groups …

Excavation Of Silenced Voices: (Re)Visiting Menka Shivdasani’S Frazil Through The Modern Feminist Discourse Of Indian Writing In English, Rangnath Thakur, Binod Mishra

Journal of International Women's Studies

The postmodernist phase of Indian English writing is characterized by the voices of many strong women expressing a feminist exploration of alternative discourses in women’s writing which are distinguished from the patriarchal framework of literary discourse. Along with Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, Imtiaz Dharkar, and Eunice de Souza, Menka Shivdasani is an active voice in contemporary Indian English poetry. Shivdasani is a prolific poet who has written poetry on various social, cultural, religious, and personal issues. Her four poetry collections include Nirvana at Ten Rupees (1990), Stet (2001), Safe House (2015), and Frazil (2018). Through her poetry, she has endeavored …

Why Ismat Chughtai Faced Trial: An Intersectional Reading Of The Reception Of “Lihaaf” In Colonial India, Mrinalini Raj

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this paper, I study Ismat Chughtai’s short story “Lihaaf” (“The Quilt,” 1942) side by side with her essay “The Lihaaf Trial” (English translation, 2000). I also analyze their reception of these texts in regards to their treatment of sexuality, women, and morality in the colonial period. I engage the texts through the lens of intersectionality. Multiple aspects affected the reception of Chughtai’s “Lihaaf” because it explores the intersection of multiple axes of oppression like gender, colonialism, class, and sexuality. During the colonial period in India, the British colonizers directly influenced Indian morality through laws and emphasized British cultural superiority. …

Assertion Or Transgression: A Critical Study Of Surpankha As An Unwelcomed Girl Child In Kavita Kané’S Lanka’S Princess, Nancy Sharma, Smita Jha

Journal of International Women's Studies

Kavita Kané’s Lanka’s Princess is the retelling of Ramayana3 from the perspective of the often misrepresented and misunderstood character of Surpankha,4 the daughter of rishi (sage) Vishravas and rakshasi (monster) Kaiskesi. Kavita Kané uses myths as a pretext to defy the idea of an ideal femininity in her book. Kané’s representation humanizes the character of Surpankha (translation: woman with sharp fingernails) who was born as the beautiful princess Meenakshi, but her defiant demeanor caused her brother Ravan to give her the name of Surpankha. Kané’s work exhibits the inner thought process of an unwelcome girl child in the family who …

Mothers Born Or Produced?: An Analysis Of The Mother-Daughter Relationship In Well-Behaved Indian Women, Shivalika Agarwal, Nagendra Kumar

Journal of International Women's Studies

The word motherhood has been used for centuries without thorough examination of what it encompasses. Literature exhibits the changing reality and needs of mothering irrespective of the outcome: imposed motherhood, and institutionalized mothers. Motherhood has been bifurcated in meaning as “the potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and to children; and the institution, which aims at ensuring that that potential-- and all women--shall remain under male control” (Rich 13). A woman’s biological capacity to bear and nurture a child has been a significant factor in the existence of human life. Another facet of this is the …

Redrawing The Contours Of Nationalist Discourse Through The Voices Of Courtesans-Turned-Warriors, Neha Arora

Journal of International Women's Studies

The last quarter of the twentieth century has seen the emergence of a “cult of pluralism” (Chakrabarty) in the writing of Indian history, thus challenging the standardized narrative of the nation. The hegemonic accounts of India’s struggle for independence, which have failed to acknowledge the involvement of many significant warriors, make the inextricable links between power, history, and representation quite apparent. One such exclusion is that of the tawaifs2 of Awadh.3 This hypocrisy combined with the facade of respectability has eclipsed the contribution of tawaifs, demoting them to singing and dancing girls merely. By looking at the role of Begum …

Traversing The Inner Courtyard To The Public Sphere: Exploring Lalithambika Antharjanam’S Short Stories As Narratives Of Protest In Early Twentieth Century Kerala, Revathy Hemachandran, Maya Vinai

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay analyzes women writing about their experience in the changing socio-cultural and political context of the early twentieth century and especially in the face of the global, national, and regional transformations that Kerala underwent. The essay argues that the short stories of Lalithambika Antharjanam subverted the popular representation of antharjanams in the early 20th century as impassive, oppressed, and vulnerable subjects and provided alternative ways to conceptualize an antharjanam as a feminist trailblazer with a strong voice of protest. Her writing exposes her first-hand experiences of gender discrimination practiced in families as related to her caste and family lineage. …

Draupadi’S Polyandry: A Study In Feminist Discourse Analysis, Saumya Sharma

Journal of International Women's Studies

Draupadi serves as a crucial link between warring characters in the Mahabharata (an ancient Indian Sanskrit epic), particularly through her polyandry. Born of fire, personifying purity, yet bound by a matrimonial covenant, she is caught in a complex marital relationship with five husbands that completely changes her life and also theirs. In consonance with the aims of gyno- criticism, literary depictions of women seek not only to reconstruct but also to critique patriarchal conventions. Drawing on the perspective of feminist critical discourse analysis (Lazar, 2005), with its tools of speech acts, presupposition, vocabulary, and modality, this paper seeks to examine …

Custodianship And Care: Women And Reading In Anita Desai’S Clear Light Of Day, Aruni Mahapatra

Journal of International Women's Studies

Several scholars have noted how the Indian state has been able to care for women only by placing them in custody of the family or the community, often overseen by male relatives. How do novels by Indian women writers intervene in this difficult social and legal problem? This paper answers this question by integrating feminist scholarship on the place of Indian women in postcolonial India with another scholarly tradition: the ethics of care. Conventionally, these two bodies of writing have not been in direct dialogue. This paper facilitates a conversation by close-reading Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day, a novel …

Reinventing Marginalized Voices: A Study Of Volga’S The Liberation Of Sita And Yashodhara, Kumari Ruchi, Smita Jha

Journal of International Women's Studies

The corpus of Indian women’s literature has the power to define the borders of community, class, and gender. Challenging the existing patriarchal set-up, writers from all corners of the nation speak not only to subvert the patriarchy but also to claim their authority and bring subdued voices to the fore. In Volga’s gynocentric retellings of the ancient epic “Ramayana,” Volga’s The Liberation of Sita and Yashodhara deconstruct the traditional epic by recentering female characters that were marginalized in the original. The Liberation of Sita and Yashodhara tell the story of Buddha’s wife after his unexpected departure, and they exemplify an …

Introduction To The Special Issue: Celebrating Unheard Voices Of Charismatic Women In Indian Writing In English, Smita Jha, Bhushan Sharma, Aruni Mahapatra

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.

Women's Interracial Friendships: Cultivating Coalitional Possibilities Across Difference Through Dialogue, Akie Fukushige Wenk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, I thread through the macro-structure as well as micro-operations of hegemonic ideologies, namely white-supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy (hooks, 1995, Valdes, 1996), that has historically plagued the United States, eventually gaining a global reach over time. I center interracial friendship between Black and White cis-women, where I locate coalitional possibilities that begin at the grassroots level. I situate this interracial relationship within the socio-ecological system where the personal meets the social (including racialized backgrounds). I use a series of analogies to equate these ideologies as toxins in the air, water, and soil. Soil is where we can work …

Finding The Why: Trauma's Origins And Effects In Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Hope Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the effects of Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, on its readers and the public discourse surrounding the central issue of systemic racism and incest. The central focus of the analysis is trauma in the novel: how Morrison captures that trauma in writing, how the reader encounters and interprets that trauma, and the effects of that trauma on the narrative and the reader. To construct this argument, I apply the lenses of reader response criticism, psychoanalysis, and trauma studies to the novel.

Morrison expressed concern that readers would miss the crucial message of why the …

A Speech On The Principles Of Social Freedom, Delivered In Steinway Hall, Monday, Nov. 20, 1871, Victoria C. Woodhull, Paul Royster (Editor)

Zea E-Books in American Studies

Spiritualist, stockbroker, publisher, activist for women’s suffrage, equal rights, and “free love,” Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838 –1927) was the first woman nominated to run for President of the United States. The Principles of Social Freedom was delivered to a packed New York City audience in 1871. It called for a revolution in the legal, social, and sexual situation of women, for their liberation from the “despotic” control of men, and for their social freedom to live and love as they might choose. Mrs. Woodhull based this radical reimagining of social norms on America’s own values of freedom and equality, and …

Neal, James, Wendy Chapkis

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Jim Neal is a 65 year old gay man born and raised in Galesburg, Illinois. Following his parents’ divorce at age 7, he moved with his mother and brother into their grandmother’s home. Neal discusses how, throughout his childhood, he witnessed predatory men in positions of power abusing boys; this served to inform his early perception of homosexuality. Those experiences also presented an internal struggle for Jim Neal between his own identity as a gay man and his perception of adult gay men. As a child, he found support in his family and closest community for his non-traditional gender interests …

50 Years Of Title Ix And Women's Athletics At Holy Cross, Archives & Distinctive Collections, Lisa Villa

Exhibits

Two major events in 1972 brought major changes to the College of the Holy Cross: the passing of Title IX and the admission of women as students. This exhibit commmemorates the 50th anniversary of Title IX and continues the celebration of the 50th anniversary of coeducation at Holy Cross by highlighting the founding and growth of women’s athletics at the College.

The Power Of Storytelling: A Case Study Exploring Black Studies Through Nigerian Women Writers, Genesis Flores, Gaetan Jean Louis, Alexa Victor

McNair Scholars Program

No abstract provided.

Ireland’S Response To Domestic, Sexual And Gender-Based Violence: An Interview With Orla O’Connor, Deirdre Kelly

Articles

Orla O’Connor is the Director of the “National Women’s Council of Ireland” (NWCI), the leading national women’s membership organisation with over
190 member groups. She has held senior management roles in several non-governmental organisations for over 25 years. Time magazine recognised her as one of the 100 Most Influential People in 2019 for her role as Co-director of “Together for Yes”, the successful national civil society campaign that was influential in Ireland voting overwhelmingly in favour of removing the Eighth Amendment from the Constitution, a landmark referendum, which led to the legalisation of abortion in 2018. In addition to campaigning …

The Avenging Women: Grendel’S Mother, Signy, And Kriemhild, Kayla J. Baur

Publications and Research

The three respective texts, the Old English poem Beowulf, the Old Norse The Saga of the Volsungs, and the Middle High German text Nibelungenlied, feature female characters who fulfill the avenging woman archetype. In each of the three works, the female character uses unfeminine strength or cunning to exact vengeance for being wronged. In Beowulf, the avenging woman takes the form of Grendel’s mother, whose descriptions of monstrosity are owed to her acts of bloodshed to avenge the death of her son. In The Saga of the Volsungs, the vengeful plot enacted by Signy reveals her unusual display of cunning …

Women's Work: The Sublime Is Now, Michelle Blackstone

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

What influences the lens through which we view art and the value we ascribe to it? This paper investigates the ways in which the historically gendered philosophy of “The Sublime,” a lack of institutional access, and traditionally gendered materials have acted as impediments for women in the arts. Discussion is given to the ways that masculine rhetoric in terms of “The Sublime” prevented women from attaining what was once considered the highest level of artistic achievement. Further attention is given to obstructions female artists face(d) in terms of gaining intuitional access within the art world. Finally, I examine the ways …

The Effects Of Marriage Before College Graduation On The Educational Attainments And Personal Fulfillment Of Saudi Women, Ahlam A. Alzahrani

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This research explored the effects of marriage before college graduation on the educational attainments and personal fulfillment of Saudi women. The purpose of this study was to gather and analyze data from women who were married before completing a college degree and women who were married after completing a college degree in order to measure how marriage has affected their lives in different ways. The data was gathered by surveying 215 Saudi women. According to the findings of the study, marriage before college graduation did limit educational attainment to some extent. The survey results suggested that a significant percentage of …

Archivo Y Memoria: Una Mirada A Tres Historias De Mujeres Esclavizadas En El Virreinato De La Nueva Granada De Finales Del Siglo Xviii, Luisa Carolina Julio Gomez

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Colonial documents preserve information that allows us to know the local Andean history of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. These manuscripts reveal forms of violence that shaped the subjectivities of the time and the resistance of oppressed women. This dissertation examines the effects of slavery and the response of three enslaved women to that colonial violence. This analysis seeks to better understand and make visible how the intersection between racism and patriarchy impacted the lives of three racialized women in the colonial context.

This dissertation focuses on the experiences, struggles, and resistance of three women present in the manuscripts consigned …

Daughterly Narratives In Search Of Voice: Fadwa Tuqan, Latifa Al-Zayyat, And Samar Attar, Rania Bedeir

Theses and Dissertations

A myriad of pressures and struggles affect Arab women as they are coming of age due to the familial and societal constructs they face. As daughters, they yearn for a voice amidst a plethora of generational boundaries, transmissions, and ideals. The intricacy of the psychological and interconnected structural factors is augmented by their gender in societies that are motivated, and often governed by, the implications of gender roles. While multiple layers of influence such as familial and sociocultural institutions affect how consciousness is formed, generational transmission, through the maternal figure, is paramount. Daughters, therefore, cannot narrate their personal stories without …

Dinesen’S Diana: The Transformative Power Of Symbols In Ehrengard, Aishwarya A. Marathe

Anthós

This analysis of Dinesen's Ehrengard aims to illuminate the subversive transformation of the titular character of the novel, using the literal and symbolic application of artistic power.

A "Misfit" Revision: Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable And Transitional Stardom In Postwar Hollywood, Emily Carman

Film and Media Arts Faculty Articles and Research

Director John Huston’s The Misfits (1961) was one of the most volatile productions of his career, with its ensemble cast headlined by a trio of screen icons: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and Montgomery Clift. Drawing on new archival research, I argue that The Misfits illuminates the transition from old to New Hollywood in terms of its behind-the-scenes star negotiations of Gable and Monroe, who had varying levels of creative control to appear in the film. My analysis of their respective deals underscores how The Misfits anticipates the shift from the female driven star system of Classical Hollywood to the male …

On Occupying: Women's Representation In The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Emma Hillstead

University Honors Theses

Scholars of peace and conflict studies have begun to investigate the impact the inclusion of women has on the success of peace talks that seek to resolve violent conflict. Many of these scholars have found that when women are included at the negotiating table, the likelihood for the conflict to come to a peaceful conclusion increases. With the historical, religious, and cultural nuances, this paper seeks to apply the existing research on this subject to that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This paper first analyzes the positionality of women within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically looking at access to power, then applies …