Women's Studies Commons^™

The Other Side Of Everything, Dir. Mila Turajlić (Hbo Europe, 2017), Dragana Obradović

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

The Other Side of Everything is a documentary about an apartment in Birčaninova 20, a leafy street in Belgrade, Serbia. It is the family home of Mila Turajlić, the film’s director (known for her much-lauded film Cinema Komunisto from 2010), who uses this well-appointed interior to explore the intimacy of history.

General, Dir. Antun Vrdoljak (Hrvatska Radiotelevizija, 2019) The Diary Of Diana B., Dir. Dana Budisavljević (Pff, 2019), Sanjin Pejković

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

Ideologically charged arguments about truth, often linked to fabrications of the past, have been discussed for decades in post-Yugoslav countries. They have also contributed to memory conflicts in different discourses. In addition to relativizing historical facts, marginalization of one’s own crimes and enlargement of others have also contributed to fragmentation of the truth and the emergence of parallel stories about the historical past.

Review Of Gender In 20th Century Eastern Europe And The Ussr, Edited By Catherine Baker. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, Katharina Wiedlack

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

The anthology Gender in 20th Century Eastern Europe and the USSR is a collection of fourteen essays on a wide range of gender-related topics, from motherhood to concepts of masculinity, sexuality, and professional work.

Lilijana Burcar, Restavracija Kapitalizma: Repatriarhalizacija Družbe [Restauration Of Capitalism: Re-Patriarchization Of Society], Sophia, Ljubljana 2015, Iva Kosmos

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

In her book Restavracija kapitalizma: repatriarhalizacija družbe (Restauration of capitalism: Re-patriarchization of society), Lilijana Burcar compares the systemic and structural conditions of women’s position in socialism and capitalism.

Chiara Bonfiglioli, Women And Industry In The Balkans. The Rise And Fall Of The Yugoslav Textile Sector. (I.B.Tauris 2019, 230 Pages, 1st Ed.), Agata Zysiak

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

“For us it was much better, for us personally, for people it was much better during socialism than it is today, in any case.” (p. 1) This quote from a textile worker opens Chiara Bonfiglioli’s book, but the story presented is by no means a nostalgic tour exploring collapsed factories or reproducing homo-sovieticus stereotypes.

Kristen Ghodsee. Second World, Second Sex. Socialist Women’S Activism And Global Solidarity During The Cold War. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2018. Isbn 978-1-4780-0181-2 (Pbk), 328 Pp., Renata Jambrešić Kirin

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

While most recent feminist studies on the socialist heritage are preoccupied with the conjunctures of postcolonial and postsocialist conditions of the 1990s and beyond, Kristen Ghodsee’s book Second World, Second Sex (2018) evokes the most vibrant decade of women’s global activism marked by joint initiatives of women from both socialist and decolonized societies from the Global South.

Transfat Representation, Jessica "Fyn" Asay

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study defines and analyzes representation of transfats, those who are both transgender and fat, through the examination of two popular media texts, Jabba the Hutt from The Return of the Jedi and Pat from the Saturday Night Live tv program in the 1990’s. I analyze these two texts using a queer feminist media studies lens to reveal the media construction of a transfat representation that is rooted in racism, transnormativity, and fatphobia and that positions the transfat body as non-normative and grotesque through the use of abject horror and fear. My analysis reveals how racism, transnormativity, and fatphobia shape …

The Validity Of Online Learning And Teaching Of A Spanish Using An Online Delivery Mode, Rosalind Arthur

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

Incorporating Online learning as an optional delivery mode of instruction in tertiary institutions with traditional campuses has been the trend in recent years. The question is whether it should be offered universally or with some discrimination. The presenter teaches Spanish at an HBCU which has been offering some general education courses online during the summer.

Needless to say, while online programs are lucrative, it behooves the instructors and institutions to ascertain the viability of the product in terms of the learning needs of the target population. Must enrollment into these courses be open to all or be vetted in order …

El Asadito Y El Cumple: Personajes Y Espacio Como Formas De Significado, Mariana Pensa

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

El asadito y El cumple: personajes y espacio como formas de significado

En este ensayo se realiza una aproximación a los filmes El asadito (2000) y El cumple (2002) ambos dirigidos por el cineasta argentino Gustavo Postiglioni. Nos detendremos especialmente en la función connotadora del espacio y los personajes en los dos filmes, que remite tanto a una atmósfera espacial sofocante como a personajes alienados, anclados en una innacción existencial.

Observaremos cómo se va construyendo la tensión, expresando así la radiografía de un grupo de personajes que tienen una memoria común, y que se constituyen en síntomas y a la …

Conference Program 2020, Seccll Conference

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

SECCLL Conference Program for 2020

“When Someone Sees Me, I Am Nothing Of The Norm”: Examining The Discursive Role Power Plays In Shaping Lgbtq+ Health Information Practices, Vanessa L. Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, A. Nick Vera

Faculty Publications

This paper examines how discursive power shapes LGBTQ+ community health information practices. Informed by analysis of 10 information world maps drawn by SC LGBTQ+ community leaders, our findings indicate that while community can be a valuable construct to reject mainstream discourses of regulation and correction, it inevitably is fraught and not representative of all LGBTQ+ individuals. Findings can inform strategies for community leaders to facilitate more equitable information flow among members by identifying key structural elements impeding this flow at the community level.

The Role Of Mentoring In Tenuring And Promoting Women At The University Of Dayton, Laura Vorachek, Sarah Critchfield

Reports from the Gender Equity Research Fellowship

Report from Gender Equity Research Fellowship, 2019-20:

Retention of women and underrepresented minority faculty is an important consideration for the University of Dayton. This study critically examines current practices for supporting women faculty through the tenure and promotion process at UD, focusing in particular on the mentoring of pre-tenure faculty. A survey and interviews with early career faculty found gender discrepancies in mentoring experiences. Despite lower retention of female faculty, women report more receiving more mentoring and more satisfaction with mentoring than men. The study also found that the type of mentoring received (formal or informal) had a significant impact …

Executive Summary And Recommendations: Developing Best Practices To Support Equity For Lgbt*Q+ Identified Faculty And Staff At The University Of Dayton, R. Darden Bradshaw

Reports from the Gender Equity Research Fellowship

Over the course of the academic year 2019-2020, under the sponsorship of the Women’s Center and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and with the support of the Provost’s office through a Gender Equity Research Fellowship, Dr. Darden Bradshaw engaged in a yearlong qualitative study examining policies, practices and perceptions of equity for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBT*Q+) faculty and staff on the University of Dayton campus.

The study participants included 35 self-identified LGBT*Q+ faculty and staff members from the University community who participated in one-on-one interviews, focus group sessions or both as well as 13 senior administrators who …

Developing Best Practices To Support Equity For Lgbt*Q+ Identified Faculty And Staff At The University Of Dayton, R. Darden Bradshaw

Reports from the Gender Equity Research Fellowship

This report presents the results of a year-long qualitative study, grounded in queer and feminist theories, undertaken between August 2019 and May 2020, during which time I examined policies, practices, and perceptions of equity for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBT*Q+) faculty and staff on the University of Dayton campus. Faculty and staff participants from the University community participated in one-on-one interviews or focus groups. Senior administrators were also interviewed.

The data was analyzed in emergent and interpretivist manners to bring together the participants voices to portray, as much as possible, the multi-faceted experiences of being LGBT*Q+ on a Catholic …

Autoethnography Of Laughter: Transforming Identity By Teaching Composition And Linguistics Through Humor, Olya Cochran

Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation is a story composed of humorous and humor-related experiences, lived by me as an immigrant student and instructor. I reflect on how those experiences influenced the transformation and performance of my teaching identity and shaped my humor-based pedagogy for Composition and Introductory Linguistics courses. The work is considering the effects of humor on my linguistic and cultural competences as well as my teaching practice. Along with that, the work provides an overview of scholarship on humor in education and the ways practicing academics utilize humor in their teaching and teaching identities. To reflect on how and why …

On The Basis Of Sex: Personal Status Law Reforms And Economic Growth, Kylie Bring

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how law reform toward gender equity has an impact on economic growth in Arab countries in the Middle East. Personal status law reform granting women economic, social, and personal freedoms is spreading across the region and showing substantial change. Using case studies of major PSL reforms in Tunisia and Morocco, this thesis outlines qualitative and quantitative evidence to support the case that gender equity benefits the economic growth of the given country.

Stray Thoughts And Desire Paths—A Dialogue, Jenna Butler, Yvonne E. Blomer

The Goose

In this dialogue, authors, teachers, and environmentalists Yvonne Blomer and Jenna Butler discuss the ways in which our desire paths—our intents for our lives—have changed since the start of the pandemic. Covering women's writing, feminism, daily life during the pandemic, environmentalism, and race, this dialogue is an act of allyship from two women of different backgrounds writing together.

The Development Of Literature In The Suffrage Movement: Western Successes From Eastern Lessons, 1848-1911, Michelle Dennehy

History in the Making

Female suffragists in the United States at the turn of the 20th Century fought to gain more protection under the law than the laws had granted women in entire history of the nation. The suffragist movement symbolically began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, in which the "Declaration of Sentiments" dictated women’s precise requests for equality. This early industrialism-era suffrage campaign focused mainly on the East coast of the United States, while the nation expanded into the West. Ironically, while the first generation suffragists experienced many failures in their efforts for suffrage, the second generation found many successes in …

Including The ‘Invisible Middle’ Of Decoloniality, Su-Ming Khoo, Anique Vered

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article traces a conversation around how to theorise and approach the inclusion of experiences, concepts and bodies situated in the ‘invisible middle’ of decoloniality. If coloniality is an immense, lengthy process resulting in colonial/modern structures (Mignolo 2007) comprising the ‘colonial present’ (Gregory 2004), ‘decoloniality’ requires surfacing, baring and bringing to bear the invisibilities and erasures of bodies that exist and resist with, through and in spite of colonial extraction and appropriation.

We explore and connect different ideas of ‘being in the middle’ of decoloniality, paying particular attention to the notion of ‘the invisible middle’ in embodied practices of solidarity …

Mothers As The Middle-Ground Between The Mountain And The State, Hasret Cetinkaya

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper analyses how the ‘Peace Mothers’ in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan are structurally located in the middle-ground between familial relations and the state, as they strive to come to terms with their children’s interpretation of the politics of decolonisation through the project of Kurdish democratisation and ‘revolution’. Such a politics takes its dominant form in the vehicle of The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a movement who see themselves as a decolonial and left-wing militant group, and whose membership is both young and committed to radical political transformation. At stake for the mothers of these members who have become an …

Decolonizing The Womb: Agency Against Obstetric Violence In Tijuana, Mexico, Ester Espinoza-Reyes, Marlene Solís

Journal of International Women's Studies

Obstetric violence is a human rights violation that consists of actions or omissions of healthcare personnel that harms people during pregnancy, childbirth or puerperium. Some practices through which it is expressed are the mistreatment, unnecessary procedures, denying of medical attention or provoking damage either physically or mentally. In particular, we understand obstetric violence as the result of a colonization of the womb, that is, of the occupation of the concept of motherhood by the dictates of patriarchal ideology (Fineman, 1991; Ehrenreich, 1993) and of the Colonial/Modern Gender System, proposed by Lugones (2007). The objective of this paper is to analyze …

Analysing Contemporary Women’S Movements For Bodily Autonomy, Pluriversalizing The Feminist Scholarship On The Politics Of Respectability, Dyuti Chakravarty, Alice Feldman, Emma Penney

Journal of International Women's Studies

We began this project intending to theorise the respectability politics within the Irish Repeal (pro-choice) movement through the lenses of postcolonial and Black feminism, and through the experiences of members of Pinjra Tod, a movement seeking the right to mobility for Indian women students. Instead, we found ourselves excavating the inextricable links between respectability politics and the representational politics of academic knowledge production (Cruz in Collins-White et al 2015) in relation to Irish Women’s Studies and the racialised politics of representation in the Repeal campaign. Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman living in Ireland with her husband on a work visa, …

Commoning Molecules: Decolonising Biological Patents By Gender Hacking Protocols, Maddalena Fragnito

Journal of International Women's Studies

By making reference to the political context of “molecular invasion” (Critical Art Ensemble 2002), this article will compare two practices of production and administration of hormones to highlight the consequences at stake when business property extends over bodies and cells of humans, animals and plants.

On the one hand, I will examine DIWO (Do It With Others) biohacking workshops that synthesise pharmaceutical hormones and share the know-how by using open-source protocols and participatory workshop methods. I will refer to these specific practices as exemplary of a growing approach to the topic which represents a new field combining biohacking, activism, art, …

“Valli” At The Border: Adivasi Women De-Link From Settler Colonialism Paving Re-Enchantment Of The Forest Commons, Deepa Kozhisseri

Journal of International Women's Studies

The forests of Attappady Hills part of the Western Ghats in Kerala homeland to Adivasi people is a frontier region where a settler population is now predominant. This paper aims to bring the concept of borders as a heuristic device to interpret gender-ecology-indigeneity in Attappady. The conversations among Adivasis, between Adivasis and settlers, between Adivasi women and their children become in media res dialogues of their border subjectivity. This was an empirical study in Attappady in which life experiences, oral history and myths were studied using narrative analysis. The paper discusses four findings: First how land dispossession disproportionately impacted Adivasi …

Decolonizing The Anti-Extractive Struggle: Amazonian Women’S Practices Of Forest-Making In Ecuador, Andrea Sempértegui

Journal of International Women's Studies

In October 2013, a group of indigenous women from the southeastern Ecuadorian Amazon started the “March of Life”. This 250-km long march – organized and led entirely by female representatives from the Achuar, Shuar, Zapara, Kichwa, Shiwiar, Andoa, and Waorani indigenous organizations – proceeded from the Amazonian city of Puyo to the capital city of Quito and was a response to the 11th oil licensing round in their territories. After this symbolic and arduous march, Amazonian women have continued to organize as a network and as active members of their indigenous organizations against renewed attempts by the government of licensing …

“I Used To Think You Were Just A Story”: Imagined Violence In Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ A Red Girl’S Reasoning, Hannah Barrie

Journal of International Women's Studies

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ 2012 short film A Red Girl’s Reasoning dismantles the narrative of colonial sexualized violence in its representation of the protagonist, Delia, enacting retributive violence against white men. Tailfeathers’ tense eleven-minute film depicts a First Nations woman seeking violent vengeance against white men who have sexually assaulted Indigenous women. This essay explores the political and transformative potential of such stories of revenge, examining A Red Girl’s Reasoning’s fictional representation of violence against the colonial oppressor alongside J. Halberstam’s discussion of imagined violence. I argue that this story of violent revenge is productive in its utopic depiction of a counterreality …

Embodied Liminality And Gendered State Violence: Artivist Expressions In The Mmiw Movement, Rachel Presley

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines four multimedia artivist artefacts at the nexus of the missing and murdered Indigenous women’s (MMIW) crisis. I position artivism as a decolonial methodology that radically alters our attunement to embodied aesthetics, contending that feminist artivists employ a radical imagination to liberate the body/body politic. Decoloniality must be an enacted praxis, and for many Indigenous feminists, creative and artistic practices provide a transformative pathway towards “making” and “living out” one’s indigeneity as knowledge and tradition-bearers. Each of the four exhibits illustrate the ways in which settler politics are narrated and resisted through and by the Indigenous body. My …

Ghostly Others: Limiting Constructions Of Deserving Subjects In Asylum Claims And Sanctuary Protection, Maria E. Vargas

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this article, I examine the different constructions of deserving subjects in the new Sanctuary Movement and how sexuality, gender, whiteness, and class create an ostensibly inclusionary agenda that produces ghostly others. Punitive anti-immigrant legislation in the United States has incited mass protests to defend the rights of undocumented migrants. In 2007 this pro-immigrant movement sought to deploy the sanctuary strategy as practiced in the Central American Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s. Using the case of Sulma Franco, a Guatemalan lesbian who was granted Sanctuary by the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin, I illuminate the limitations of deservingness under …

A New Genealogy For Critical Oa Publishing: Towards A Politics Of Intersectional Transnationality, Rebekka Kiesewetter

Journal of International Women's Studies

In this article, I suggest opening out from the digital genealogies critical strands within the Open Access (OA) movement usually associate themselves with: I propose a genealogy of OA publishing that takes into consideration feminist and decolonial transnational publishing initiatives that have been active in non-digital realms before, and in parallel to what these critical strands have highlighted as their digital origins. The ways in which these pre-digital initiatives organised and mobilised feminist and decolonial transnational struggle through publishing might offer new insights for contemporary critical OA – specifically, with regards to questions around how to confront uneven hierarchies of …

Designing Research To Dismantle Oppression: Utilizing Critical Narrative Analysis & Critical Participatory Action Research In Research On Mothering And Work And Beyond, Nicole Dillard

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper seeks to explore Critical Narrative Analysis (CNA) and Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) as valuable methodologies in research for their potential to challenge the inherent absoluteness of master narratives through the personal and counter-narratives of research participants, while also providing participants an action-oriented emancipatory opportunity to lead the change needed in their organizations, communities and society at large.

Citing a previous study which explored how patriarchal, colonially-structured master narratives have played a significant role in reproducing the limited views which dominate American understanding of working mothers, the author will demonstrate how CNA and CPAR combined can expose how …