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Full-Text Articles in Anthropology
Practising Intimate Labour: Birth Doulas Respond During Covid-19, Angela N. Castañeda, Julie Searcy
Practising Intimate Labour: Birth Doulas Respond During Covid-19, Angela N. Castañeda, Julie Searcy
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
Birth doulas provide non-medical intimate support to pregnant people and their families. This support starts at the very foundation of life – breath. Doulas remind, encourage and accompany people through labour by breathing with them. However, the global COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted doulas’ intimate work, and they are forced to navigate new restrictions surrounding birth practices. Based on data collected from a qualitative survey of over five-hundred doulas as well as subsequent follow-up interviews with select doulas, we find intimacy at births disrupted and reshaped. We suggest that an analysis of doulas provides a unique way to think through the …
A Tale Of Two Trans Men: Transmasculine Identity And Trauma In Two Fairy-Tale Retellings, Jeana Jorgensen
A Tale Of Two Trans Men: Transmasculine Identity And Trauma In Two Fairy-Tale Retellings, Jeana Jorgensen
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
Transgender identities in fairy tale retellings are rare, but can reveal much about gender fluidity. Helen Oyeyemi’s novel Boy, Snow, Bird conflates transgender identities with mirrored falsehoods and fairytale spells, pathologizing a trauma victim who turns out to also become an abuser, while Gabriel Vidrine’s novella “A Pair of Raven Wings” depicts a queer transgender man with dignity, making it clear that the trauma he suffers is at the hands of bigots rather than being an invention of a sick mind or the cause of his transition. Pairing these fairy-tale retellings illuminates the topic of gender fluidity in fairy tales …
Making Space For Mothering: Collaboration As Feminist Practice, Julie Searcy, Angela N. Castañeda
Making Space For Mothering: Collaboration As Feminist Practice, Julie Searcy, Angela N. Castañeda
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
Our collaborative practice spans nearly a decade working together on data collection, writing, presentations, and publications as we’ve explored the intimate care that doulas provide to women in labor. In this essay, we use intimate labor as both a practice and a theoretical frame to think of collaboration as a feminist project that recognizes the expertise gathered from mothering and makes space for it in academia. Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (2010, 7) define intimate labor as “work that involves embodied and affective interactions in the service of social reproduction,” and suggest that it requires “bodily or emotional closeness, …
Quantifying The Grimm Corpus: Transgressive And Transformative Bodies In The Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen
Quantifying The Grimm Corpus: Transgressive And Transformative Bodies In The Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
What do bodies mean in fairy tales? Donald Haase’s engagement with the Grimms’ fairy tales has offered some hints, ranging from his attention to feminist scholarship on the Grimms to his multifaceted review of recent Grimm scholarship that addresses various meanings of bodies in the language and translation of their tales. Inspired by Haase’s work and encouragement, I created a database that lists every mention or description of a body in the Grimms’ tales and in five other European tale collections. I detailed the results of this quantitative investigation in my dissertation, generally treating all the tale collections as part …
Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes In Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen
Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes In Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
In a number of international fairy tale types, such as ATU 451 ("The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers"), the female protagonist voluntarily stops speaking in order to attain the object of her quest. In ATU 451, found in the collected tales of the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen as well as in oral tradition, the protagonist remains silent while weaving the shirts needed to disenchant her brothers from their birdlike forms. While this silence is undoubtedly disempowering in some ways as she cannot defend herself from persecution and accusations of wickedness, here I argue that the choice to remain silent …
Political And Theoretical Feminisms In American Folkloristics: Definition Debates, Publication Histories, And The Folklore Feminists Communication, Jeana Jorgensen
Political And Theoretical Feminisms In American Folkloristics: Definition Debates, Publication Histories, And The Folklore Feminists Communication, Jeana Jorgensen
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
What role does feminist theory play in American folkloristics, and which versions of feminism have become mainstreamed in the nearly forty years since folklorists first became attuned to the promises and premises of feminism? By attending to these issues, I hope to at least partially answer the question Alan Dundes asked in his 2004 Invited Presidential Plenary Address to the American Folklore Society: "What precisely is the 'theory' in feminist theory?" (2005, 388). In lamenting the lack of grand theory in folkloristics, Dundes remarks, ''Despite the existence of books and articles with 'feminist theory' in their titles, one looks in …