Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

Where Were The Lesbians In The Stonewall Riots? The Women’S House Of Detention & Lesbian Resistance, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

Where were the lesbians in the Stonewall Riots? They were jailed in the House of Detention for Women in Greenwich Village, New York City, two blocks away from the Stonewall Inn. Lesbians in the Women's House of Detention shouted from the windows to the rioters in the streets below, fueling the momentum of the Stonewall uprising. The women's prison was a site of lesbian confinement and resistance that inspired the 1969 uprising in Greenwich Village.

Polly Thistlethwaite is Chief Librarian at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She volunteered at the Lesbian Herstory Archives 1986 – 1997.

Leaking Women: A Genealogy Of Gendered And Racialized Flow, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

Through a feminist and critical race analytic, this paper theorizes the disruptions evoked by leaky women—actually doubly leaky women—those whose nipples, peri-menopausal uterus’ and mouths have “leaked” in ways that rupture/stain/expose the white-patriarchal-capitalist enclosure of work, home and the streets and then dared to leak again by suing for justice in court. In a closing coda, I address the race/class policing dynamics between she who leaks and the “respectable” [usually white] women recruited to plaster up the hole and cauterize the leaker.

“In The Beginning Was Body Language” Clowning And Krump As Spiritual Healing And Resistance, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In the neighborhood of HollyWatts in Los Angeles, dance allows a shift from existing as bodies presented as sites of threat and extinction to sources of spiritual empowerment. Clowning and Krump dancers—their subjectivity and their dancing bodies—negotiate survival from trauma and socioeconomic marginalization. I argue that the dancers’ performances act as embodied narratives of “re-membering in the flesh.” The performance acts as a spiritual retrieval and re-integration of traumatic memories and afflictions into memory through the body. Choreography and quotes from dancers support the claim that Krump and Clowning is “re-membering in the flesh” that enacts self-worth, self-defined sexuality, and …

Postpartum Celebrity Images: Influence On Self- Thoughts And Appearance Management Behaviours Of Postpartum Women, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Kim K. P. Johnson

Publications and Research

Within previous decades, opinions about pregnancy and post-partum behaviour featured in various news articles and within popular literature emphasized issues related to pregnancy and liquor; campaigns against teen pregnancy; pregnancy and weight gain; and pregnancy and dieting behaviour. Attention has shifted from these issues to appearance-related topics including rapid weight loss, exercise regiments and food restriction. For example, photographs of celebrities have provided visual evidence that women can gain weight during pregnancy, give birth and within weeks revert to a thin, pre-pregnant body size. A qualitative method was used to explore to what extent, if any, images of post-partum celebrity …