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This paper employs digital ethnographic methods to explore the Facebook fan group for the popular podcast My Favorite Murder. We argue that the My Favorite Murder podcast and Facebook group, while providing a potentially unique feminist online space for its members in its early days, quickly devolved into a toxic space rife with conflict and ultimately destroyed by white-centred feminism and white supremacy. We explore failed gatekeeping practices in relation to other Facebook podcast fan groups that have met a similar demise. Finally, we question whether truly inclusive anti-racist feminist spaces can exist in capitalistic models of media production and consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doreen Massey's academic repertoire, as a human geographer and political thinker, is almost unmatched. This review essay catalogues my experience of 'meeting' Massey through the eyes of David Featherstone and Diarmaid Kelliher, the editors of this collection of selected political writings. Highlighting Massey's contributions to theories of relationality, space, place, politics and praxis, I show how the collection captures her ability to synthesise everyday struggles and global political-economic processes. We also meet Massey in her various, intersecting guises: academic, political organiser, person. Where the book brings forth a vision of Massey as scholar and as public intellectual, I further comment on how her contributions are framed within geography and particularly her influence on feminist geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moreover, Tripp thoroughly examines the three cases of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia to explain why they have diverged from the rest of the MENA yet converged with each other in adopting women's rights policies. To answer the question, Tripp argues that the authorities in the Maghreb have adopted women's rights policies to strengthen their domestic and international legitimacy. [Extracted from the article]

Feminist classrooms employ a variety of teaching strategies that empower students and inspire equity and justice. In this paper, we argue that integrating student-made documentary filmmaking into the college classroom is a powerful and effective form of feminist teaching. Specifically, feminist pedagogy views students as knowledge creators and demands collaborative, non-hierarchical learning experiences. These outcomes suggest that documentary filmmaking is a compelling and effective way to engage students in our increasingly visual and video-based culture. Based on our experiences teaching sociology at a women's college in the U.S., we illustrate the impact that documentary filmmaking has for student learning, empowerment, and justice work. We also develop and strengthen students' technical, multi-media skills, arguing this outcome expands feminist pedagogy to meet contemporary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isobelle Barrett Meyering's I Feminism and the Making of a Child Rights Revolution 1969-1979 i makes plain that feminism takes seriously the rights of children and especially girls, and also that feminism has never been a project led exclusively by white women. I Feminism and the Making of a Child Rights Revolution 1969-1979 i presents a rich and expansive account of the entwined movements of feminism and child rights on this continent we now call Australia. An account of a ten-year-old schoolgirl's participation in a conference captures how feminist concern with girls is expressed as concern for the I women they are expected to become. i It is significant that the "child" of central interest to the feminist movement appears as a girl not a boy, let alone a trans or non-binary child. [Extracted from the article]

Caste in the South Asian context is a deeply felt phenomenon, practised through bodily and sensory regimentation, and the prescriptive social organization of bodies in space. These relationships between caste and embodiment have historically been closely regulated in norms around the partaking, sharing and cooking of food, and meat in particular. This paper examines how these gastronomic prescriptions endure and take on new meanings in digital food media, which disrupts physical space and food's relationships to the body and sensory experience. Drawing on two years of ethnography with creators who produce home-cooking content in the emerging Indian "creator economy," this paper considers how caste is embodied, articulated and remediated online during a time of violent Hindu nationalist food politics in India. How is caste articulated even when it is not explicitly named by creators in their posts? How are caste-based disgust and humiliation, and conversely, caste intimacy elicited by creators as they labor for the creator economy? Bringing together feminist and anti-caste theories of experience, articulation and embodiment, the paper theorizes caste as affect, and in doing so, illuminates how it comes to have a digital life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its proclamation of universal suffrage in 1952, Bolivia fits into Samuel Huntington's "second short wave of democratization" (1943–1963). In 1952, all women and men gained the right to vote, marking a significant step towards democratization by including previously excluded groups. Literate women had already obtained municipal voting rights in 1945 under a populist government aiming for broader political participation. However, women first voted in 1947, after the oligarchy overthrew this government in 1946 and sought to regain power by repressing the opposition parties and previously marginalized sectors. Unexpectedly, it supported women's suffrage for national elections by the late 1940s. What prompted various political parties to support women's suffrage in the late 1940s? This paper explores how women in Bolivia gained the right to vote and what role the feminist movement and power struggles played in obtaining women's suffrage. Beginning in the 1920s with a study of the emergence of the feminist movement and its evolution during the decades of the 1930s (the Chaco War) and 1940s, the paper culminates with an assessment of feminism's impact on public opinion as well as the importance of the growing politicization of women in the 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the process of co-producing an animated film about the migration journeys of Colombian women resident in Antofagasta, Chile. It first establishes the relationship between feminist epistemologies and arts-based methodologies, which hinges on embodiment. It then turns to a detailed discussion of using film co-production as a research method for accessing and expressing embodied experiences of migration. This discussion highlights how moments of discomfort (Gokariksel, Hawkins, Neubert, and Smith, 2021) experienced by the researcher motivated the search for a more collaborative methodological approach that was better attuned to lived experience. This included striving towards more inclusive practices with respect to recruitment, anonymity, and confidentiality. Moments of discomfort also revealed how care and caring responsibilities are entangled with research, and how they gender possibilities of participation and production for community co-producers and artists, as well as for researchers. Finally, through discomfort, lessons were learned about the politics of representing experiences of migration, violence, and endurance, as well as joy. The paper concludes that, whilst by no means a panacea, collaborative arts-based research methods can offer an innovative toolset for exploring embodied experience and for navigating the relational and representational complexities attendant to research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how research on gendered violence among Brazilian migrant women in London has been translated through a range of creative engagements. It argues that these can challenge traditional forms of knowledge production, and advance intersectional feminist struggles through a logic of translocation. Yet it also challenges homogenous artistic encounters through developing 'creative translation pathways' which delineate different configurations of how researchers, artists, and participants using varied art forms. The paper focuses on two 'creative translation pathways' that capture different interpretative framings around the same research project. The first reflects a curatorial perspective through Gaël Le Cornec's verbatim theatre play, Efêmera, which foregrounds her interpretation of Brazilian women's stories adding a metatheatrical dimension to strengthen the narrative and connection with the audience. The second is a co-produced collaborative engagement, We Still Fight in the Dark, with community drama group, Migrants in Action, based around experimental workshops to produce an audio-visual film and installation where survivors' perspectives and well-being are paramount. While both creative translation pathways reflected translocational feminist goals in raising awareness around gendered violence with a view to transform them, each had tensions around the individual, collective, artistic and therapeutic logics in the process of knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

French law 2004-228 and Quebec's Bill 21 has prohibited wearing conspicuous religious symbols while discharging public duty, especially as teachers in public school. This has aroused robust public debate because it disproportionately affects Muslim women wearing hijabs. This paper investigates the philosophical/ethical argument on both sides of the debate. The key research question is whether liberal feminists have the justification to support the hijab ban. The paper outlines different types of liberal feminism and their views on just social arrangements. The paper uses Gheaus's concept of gender justice and Kabeer's definition of gender empowerment to structure the debate, stating that feminists will support the ban if it enhances empowerment and makes society more gender-just or internal working of social arrangements, at least procedurally just. The paper draws on the utilitarian argument, Nussbaum's and Sen's articulation of the Capability Approach and the importance of identity, and Bourdieu's concept of Habitus, Doxa, and Symbolic Violence. The paper argues that there are strong arguments on both sides. Still, liberal feminists concerned about structural inequalities, economic empowerment, and individual freedom may not be convinced that the Hijab ban makes society more gender-just or improves individual empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on findings from 15 focus group interviews held with 65 young (aged 18–25) women university students in Turkey who describe themselves as feminists, this paper attempts to reconcile gender and youth studies and introduces social generation as a theoretical tool. The paper demonstrates how these feminist university students, as the members of a generation who had lived all their lives under the Justice and Development (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi- AKP) governments, articulated the difficulties of being young and a woman at a specific conjuncture in Turkey during which the gender regime has been going through a period of deterioration. They discussed their process of transition from childhood to youth, and expressed how in this process they became aware of a social gaze that repositioned them as 'young women' and thus forced them to face the social and political challenges of being a young woman at this specific conjuncture. Feminism did not only empower them to confront these challenges but also turned them into subjects of opposition in a political regime which had adopted an anti-gender agenda and which at the time of the research decided to withdraw from the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combatting violence against women, also known as the Istanbul Convention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changes to art on artefacts attributed to females in the Late Nordic Bronze Age (ca. 1100–500 BC) from a gender critical, feminist perspective. Traditionally, Scandinavian research has focussed on the art of male artefacts, which is believed to represent a cosmological narrative, whilst female art has been considered devoid of cosmological motifs – concomitantly, it is often assumed that prominent social standing was reserved males. Through analytical discussion, the paper shows how the same motifs as are considered cosmological in male objects can be found on female objects, too, in compositions diverging from the male use, suggesting a gender differentiated use of art and association to cosmology. Through a gender theoretical lens, the paper explores what the social use of the art on these objects may suggest regarding identity and power relations in society, linking up with a reconfiguration of female identity at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how gendered spaces are configured within local socio-cultural systems of beliefs and in what way energy interacts with cultural constructions in an Indigenous village of the Brazilian Amazon. Particularly, this paper explores the perceived changes brought by fuel availability and affordability on gendered division of space and local cosmologies. Ethnographic techniques were adopted in the collection of primary data, particularly participant observation and in-depth interviews were best suited to understand the lived experiences of these changes. This paper found that access to cooking gas and fuel for transportation can partially shift pre-existing gendered spaces and, in turn, gendered practices. However, this shift does not challenge pre-existing hierarchies of power which still limit women's freedom of movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alcohol and Other Drug Facilitated Sexual Violence (AODFSV), known as "drink-spiking," is the administration of alcohol or other drugs to someone without their consent, with the intent to harm them. Investigation into portrayals of AODFSV in the Australian news media is needed. Using feminist critical discourse analysis, this paper investigated the portrayal of AODFSV in the Australian news media in the past ten years. 226 articles were included for analysis and three themes were identified. Firstly, "how the media constructs the drink spiking narrative," uses the "cautionary tale" that warns women about the dangers of the night-time economy and reinforces and perpetuates victim-blaming and rape myths. Secondly, "how the media normalises the drink spiking discourse" focuses on the substances used in drink spiking, the settings, the construction of the perpetrator and the victim as well as the depictions of sexual violence. Thirdly, "how the media shapes responses from emergency services" including police and hospital staff. This paper highlights the way the media creates and reinforces drink-spiking discourse, which constructs drink-spiking as individual behaviour rather than a culturally embedded issue. Such ideology perpetuates victim blaming and rape myths. We argue for critical and thoughtful reporting on AODFSV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental education has the potential to extend its transformative potential by reframing social and ecological justice as always interconnected. This paper introduces vulnerable reading as a method for unsettling anthropocentric and colonial influences on how educators conceptualise and respond to environmental precarity through a socio-ecological lens. It has emerged from a six-month walking project during which the authors developed vulnerable reading practices as they walked with young children, educators, and a weedy landscape in Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia. With a focus on reimagining pedagogies to be inclusive of multiple weedy ideas, bodies and voices, the paper uses empirical examples of practice to illustrate how vulnerable reading across temporalities, scales, disciplines, and genres draws attention to the complex relations humans share with weedy worlds. The paper shows how vulnerable reading is a feminist and anticolonial practice that makes visible the complexity of relations humans share with more-than-human worlds and is an example of ecosocial justice in action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public spaces are central to social interactions and cohesion, overall urban life, and therewith sustainable urban development. They can play key roles in increasing social interactions and women's empowerment. The literature lacks empirical research on the state of women's use of public spaces and these spaces' effects on women's social interactions and empowerment in Middle Eastern cities in the Kurdistan Region, where women historically enjoyed greater freedom. This paper addresses this gap by presenting insights from a comparative cross-border study with women in two Kurdish cities, Sanandaj and Sulaimani. In doing so, the paper contributes an empirically based theorization of urban public place-making, and debates its effects on the empowerment of women in the context of Kurdish urbanisms. The study developed a survey instrument to measure women's interactions with and in public spaces and their related empowerment in these two cities across five main factors. Despite the local women's limited interaction with and in the public spaces of these two Kurdish cities, the findings show a strong positive relationship between women's interactions in public spaces and their empowerment. The results also suggest that socio-political and related socio-spatial changes have contributed to a decreased relevance of traditional meeting and leisure spaces but have increased the use of malls as commodified spaces, particularly in Sulaimani. The study debates the specificities of urban public spaces in Kurdish cities, and commonalities as well as differences compared with developments elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kara Walker is best known for her depictions of sexualized violence and gendered racism during slavery in the form of black paper silhouettes. Scholars such as Salamishah Tillet argue that Walker's art, along with art by some of her post-civil rights contemporaries, offers 'aesthetic interventions' to problematic racial histories as part of a larger project of memory reclamation and justice. Walker's A Subtlety, Or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant is another such interventionist project. Debuting in the Williamsburg neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York in May of 2014, A Subtlety explores how a figure like mammy 'survives as a cultural force that influences and reflects a national conscience' (Wallace Sanders [2008]. Mammy: a century of race, gender, and southern memory. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 12). And yet, to say that the historical rootedness of the title, sugar sphinx sculpture, and molasses-covered walls and cherub-faced small figures throughout the installation were ambiguous to some spectators, is an understatement. Hundreds of photographs and videos were uploaded to social media sites with people making gestures towards the figure that some critics deemed highly inappropriate. This paper explores how A Subtlety both understands and undermines representations of Black women's bodies and how Black artists in the African diaspora contend with complex cultural signs of the past in the present. Utilizing studies of Black feminist theory and visual culture, I argue that Walker's A Subtlety – and her art more broadly – offers theoretical and geographic space to ponder where Black pleasure and collective memory can exist in systems of misogynoir, as well as in the Black nostalgic imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019 Ofsted introduced cultural capital (CC) into the Early Years Inspection Handbook and defined it as 'essential knowledge' related to 'educated citizenship'. This paper investigates Ofsted's use of CC to critically examine the potential implications for early years work. Due to the feminised nature of early years work, a critical feminist approach is engaged to explore the potential impact of introducing CC into the regulation of the sector. This paper examines the differences between Ofsted's use of CC, CC's theoretical origins, and analyses sector responses. Our contention is that how Ofsted have employed CC may represent 'symbolic violence' against the working-class women working in the early years, by further devaluing their habitus and sustaining the stratification of society through forms of capital. This paper is the first to interrogate CC in Ofsted's early years documentation, and will have an international impact for any countries following UK education practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a cultural analysis of the popular Kuwaiti TV series Men Sharea El Haram (translated as From Haram Street). Combining religion, class, race, nationality, and patriarchy, Haram Street showcases pertinent issues that today's Kuwaiti society has to face. Attending to the scarcity of previous research on vernacular communities and their salient concerns, this paper explores the following research questions: How does Men Sharea El Haram capture the intersecting nature of women's resistance? What does a feminist Kuwaiti vernacular look like, and how does it intersect with privilege? The analysis outlines how Men Sharea El Haram touches upon several silenced themes in the conservative Kuwaiti society of Kuwait, showing the many and varied ways in which Kuwaiti women are oppressed and showcasing the ways in which women can—and do—resist. Together, the findings provide a deeper understanding of several central issues in Kuwaiti society, especially around masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of testimonio methodology, born from Chicana/Latina feminist thought and epistemologies as a way of exploring the languaging and knowledge production practices of minoritized communities as a platform to share their/our wisdom/voices in applied linguistics. As such, testimonio is a methodology that allows racialized scholars and accomplices to foreground their/our languaging and knowledges and thus disrupt deficit framings. This paper explores the benefits of using testimonios in applied linguistics as one way of disrupting epistemological racism. Drawing on examples from three different youth who took part in a multiyear culturally sustaining systemic functional linguistics oriented program we show the power of using various types of testimonios to examine/understand the languaging and literacies practices of racialized youth. Implications indicate that the co-creation of knowledge/understanding is what makes testimonios a powerful and insightful methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to reflect on the ways in which a non-metropolitan academic feminist community engages with digital media to reimagine the discipline of Women’s Studies, and consequently feminist politics. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a Women’s Studies Centre at a university in Tamil Nadu, India, this paper moves away from the framework of the digital as simply enabling or empowering, and instead seeks to examine these digital cultures as shaped by the particularities of their geographic coordinates, and as part of a larger media environment which is characterised as much by continuities as it is by innovations. In doing so, it attempts to understand feminisms as media phenomena that are actively shaped by and shaping media technologies and discourses. It argues that Women’s Studies scholars in these locations, operating from hybrid geographical and digital places, enable the possibility of decentring feminist scholarship and thus allow for a reframing of the digital. To do this, it focuses on three distinct areas of engagement—the co-creation of knowledge in Tamil language Wikipedia, interactions on social media platforms, and their engagements with little magazines in their online avatars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concurrent with increasing social and legal discussions of coercive control, literary scholars are turning their attention to analyses of an emergent genre labelled 'domestic noir'. Adding to earlier work, particularly that of Deborah Philips (2021), 'Gaslighting: Domestic Noir, the Narratives of Coercive Control', Women: A Cultural Review 32:2, pp. 140–160 and Meg Vann (2019), 'Genre and Gender: Reading Domestic Noir through the Lens of Feminist Criminology', TEXT Special Issue 57, pp. n.p., this paper contributes a therapeutic history of interventions for domestic violence, highlighting the history of the concept of control contextualized by its emergence from second wave feminism. Critical analysis of two novels, Ilsa Evans' Broken (2007) and Kathryn Heyman's Storm and Grace (2017), demonstrate writers centralizing feminist critiques of coercive control in domestic noir in the Australian context. This paper highlights the significance of women's fictional representations of coercive control as sites of discursive sociocultural resistance and temporal political contextualization within the genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on prior research that establishes the connection between femininity and gay men by adding sexual position identity, or one’s sexual role as a top, bottom or versatile, to the argument. Using concepts of hegemonic masculinity and censure, the paper examines the historic link between feminine pursuits of fashion and aesthetics and gay identity as well as contemporary views of ‘gayness’ to argue that gay men are censured by other gay men in order to conform to heteronormative expectations of gender. The mechanism for the censure is invoking the word ‘bottom’ to criticise gay men who have feminine traits. Data were gathered from casual interviews, conversations, blogs and vlogs and demonstrate the underlying tension between masculinity and femininity within the gay, male community and how the community has co-opted heteronormative concepts of gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gender, Place & Culture journal has announced the winners of the Annual Award for New and Emerging Scholars. This year, the award was shared between Maria Teresa Braga Bizarria and Alexandra Lamiña. Maria Teresa's paper explores affective atmospheres of care in gender studies, focusing on urban gardens in New Zealand and the intersectional power dynamics and practices of care within them. Alexandra's paper examines the experiences of Kichwa women in Ecuadorian Amazonia and their enactment of Indigeneity in urban settings, challenging settler-mestizx urban notions. Both scholars will use the award to present their papers at upcoming conferences. [Extracted from the article]

This study examines the emergence of care as a commoning practice within grassroots movements by focusing on Sōgidan, an activist group supporting rough sleepers in San’ya, Tokyo. San’ya is yoseba (day labor auction market), a historical urban margin turning into a service hub. Produced as cheap, disposable labor in the process of Japanese modernization, Japan’s day laborers were enclaved in yoseba and left without social protection after the economic bubble burst. However, they were not merely victims; they embodied a rebellious subjectivity, actively breaking away from the oppressive society. Despite welfare provisions after the 2000s, many day laborers refused aid and continued to sleep on the streets. Through extensive archival research, ethnographic observation, and in-depth interviews, this paper illuminates how Sōgidan has developed strategies of care to relate to the underclass, the historical others who refuse aid. Sōgidan embodies and carries forward the underclass movement, which uniquely echoed feminist ethics of care. It also initiates the creation of the radical commons, reconfiguring the distance between individuals and collectives, and sharing precariousness differently from capitalist norms. By linking Sōgidan’s practices to feminist ethics of care, this research contributes to opening up new perspectives of care and in(ter)dependence toward the commons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the decolonial feminist potential of multi-layered arts-research collaborations for critical research committed to advancing migrant justice. It reflects on the art-research collaborative project, 'stitching voices, stitching bodies', investigating the gendered, racialised, colonial and geopolitical dynamics of violence and resistance of Latin American migrant women. Collaborators included the author and visual artist Nina Franco, twenty anonymous Latin American survivors of violence, three Latin American women activists and a filmmaker, a British-Caribbean sound engineer and an Irish-Caribbean video editor. Through our art-research methodological engagements, the relationship between the researcher, artists and participants was significantly altered as we alternated between and simultaneously occupied those positions. Exchanging and complementing our skills and sensibilities, we tried new ways of working and overlapped various layers of expression to collectively produce knowledge that enhanced understandings of and multiplied affects concerning intimate border violence. Through our art, we were able to envision, explore and represent intimate border violence, coloniality and resistance to these in audio-visual and visceral ways that grasped and multiplied embodied affects not only for research participants and collaborators but also audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Manjula Padmanabhan's Escape and The Island of Lost Girls using the agential realist and philosophical posthumanist methodologies of Karen Barad and Francesca Ferrando. While Escape has received some critical attention within academic circles, scholarly examination of this duology as a whole is surprisingly missing. I examine the conflict between transhumanist Generals and posthumanist Meiji, and consider its implications for the ongoing debates around gender. Does the duology posit posthumanism as an adequate solution to the gendered Othering and biological essentialism seen in the texts? Can posthumanism create an alternative space for people like Meiji, who contravene not only the human binary constructions of gender, but the constructions of human itself? As a posthuman figure, what possibilities does Meiji have for exercising agency? Though the texts see gender non-conforming identities as merely a money-making tool, torture device, or trauma response, I conclude that the figure of Meiji-Smaug expresses an intra-active, agential, posthuman self that neither prioritizes nor erases sex/gender, rather they no longer remain organizing principles of identity and society. This makes for a fruitful and situated collaboration between posthumanism and feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a drama-based method to illustrate the responses of healthcare and legal systems to women experiencing coercive control. This approach involved writing a play using the first-person narrative voice of a victim-survivor. We presented the play at the Stop Domestic Violence Conference (Gold Coast, Australia) in 2021. The central character, 'Kate', provided an embodied performance that enabled the conference participants to see, feel and understand experiences of coercive control from a personal perspective. We followed the trajectory of coercive control from the beginning of an intimate relationship to the time of separation. We showed how the process of coercive control escalates from love bombing, reproductive coercion, isolation, and technology-facilitated abuse until a point of police intervention. As Kate told her story, the conference audience witnessed the barriers and challenges faced by survivors of coercive control, and the emotional, financial, and psychological impacts that are intensified in geographically remote environments. They watched Kate navigate health and other systems meant to help women experiencing domestic and family violence, but that ultimately failed to deliver. Finally, the drama-based approach allowed us to present a feminist embodiment of coercive control and an innovative method for communicating inter-disciplinary research findings on domestic abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we expand the Foucauldian question of what is thinking doing? We approach the question in the context of reading as an entirely ontological enterprise. Aligned with the special issue theme of reading as a "long preparation," and prompted by Deleuze's discussion of "reading with love," we link the two to present how reading with love has been enacted in our work, both collective and individual, as transformative and intensive. The feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz, and her own readings of Deleuze and Foucault, prompts us to envisage what it is to think like a feminist and read with love after the ontological turn. As ontological, reading is neither consumption nor the acquisition of knowledge but an act of creation, an act of freedom, an act of love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual humility (IH) is a promising construct that has often been linked to religion and spirituality (R/S). In this paper, we provide a narrative review of the literature on this intersection, analyzing articles (n = 43) found through database searches. Consistent with previous reviews and critiques, we find that definitional confusion around IH is exacerbated by inconsistencies in how it is related to R/S and that empirical research has been mostly limited to cross-sectional studies. We call for greater interdisciplinary collaboration, more care in relating R/S to definitions of IH, and consideration of the relevance of apophatic theologies (i.e. so-called 'negative' theologies that emphasize what cannot be known about the divine) and relational spirituality in making connections between IH and R/S. We also note that the research on IH and R/S has largely focused on Christianity. We conclude by offering feminist and postcolonial critiques of IH in relation to R/S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Alicia Little’s presentation of foot-bound women in her travelogues and periodical essays. Her exploration of the anti-footbinding movement saw the dissemination of Western feminist ideas in China. However, as the article demonstrates, this cross-cultural exchange was a dominantly Western feminist movement compromised by an enlightenment project based on the notion of modern womanhood or colonial modernity. To understand the background, the article gives an overview of the history of footbinding, followed by the representation of foot-bound women in Little’s travelogues to unpack the idea of modern womanhood. Her presentation of Christianity offers important clues to understanding her writings on the anti-footbinding movement. This article also explores how Little presents her feminist and Christian ideas of modern womanhood, that are at odds with the traditional Chinese womanhood. In contextualizing Little’s role in the anti-footbinding movement, this paper reveals the complicated dynamics between Western feminism, the patriarchal Chinese society, and foot-bound women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the intersection of culture, ethnicity, gender, and religion, this paper offers insights into the lived experiences of Nigerian women by adopting Nkomo and Ngambi’s multilevel framework on African women’s leadership to understand their work-family experiences in the Nigerian banking sector. Employing data from interviews with eleven Northern women and ten Southern women who live in the following states: Kano, Kaduna; Akure, Lagos, Ibadan; and Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, the findings confirm the existence of patriarchal systems at the macro (social), meso (organizational), and micro (individual) levels of social action that shape Nigerian women’s work-family experiences. Nevertheless, as tradition and modernity interact to provide a hybrid social space within which these women negotiate the different levels, they demonstrated the ability to redefine femininity and womanhood and reject constraints that confine them. The women from both regions resisted conformity to the patriarchal systematic ideologies and cultural processes that placed them in a disadvantaged position. Despite social and cultural criticisms that restrict women’s movement and career options, their agency was evident in their narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMy comment addresses a theme in several of the papers in this collection that gestures to the limits of queer theory, as a body of scholarship developed mainly from within Euro-American feminist frameworks. I will ask if perhaps groundedness in place and historical specificity might suggest registers of ‘queerness’ that exceed the potentials of queer theory. Particularly considering precarity - a sense of embodied vulnerability to each other - this piece will examine the potentials of frameworks that are rooted in place-based ideas about reciprocity, kinship, and intimacy as integral to understanding queer precarities. Indeed, such a view might suggest that what is ‘queer’ is often framed through a normatively modern and often colonial rendering of binary gender, and sexuality as fixed in sexual identity. It will ask what an archive of queer precarity might look like, and what geographies it might suggest if we decentred queer theory. Simultaneously, the essay will ask how forms of reciprocity, indebtedness, kinship, and homemaking that exceed the limits of coloniality might open up registers for queerness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are histories describing in detail the development of early childhood education (ECE) around the world, yet not enough is known about this in the Middle East and the information on the origins of ECE in Iran is scarce and fragmentary. This article is the first of its kind to present an overview of the main developments rendering possible the establishment of the first kindergartens in Iran. In our account, we connect this genealogy of early childhood education in Iran to various trajectories: 1) the work of intellectual reformers; 2) the Iranian feminist movement; 3) the Constitutional Revolution in Iran (1906–1911); 4) religious reformist beliefs in Shia; 5) the missionaries' schools; 6) the Armenians' schools and 7) the age of girls' marriage. As we demonstrate, early childhood education in Iran emerged before the industrial revolution. It was mainly provided for intellectual and influential families, focused on physical education accompanied by music, while religious education was marginal. Our genealogical explorations indicate that compared to kindergartens in Britain and Europe, Iranian early childhood education has been an instrument for intellectual societal reform. It was the fruits of a transplanted tree nourished by various local cultural-socio-political trends and religious beliefs. The paper concludes with an assessment of the importance of local and international influences on the emergence of early childhood education and the need to explore this history with an intersectional approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the population decline in Balkan countries in the last three decades, since 1990. It researches the scale of depopulation in the Balkans and analyses the causes and possible consequences of the population decline. It argues that the failure of imposed neoliberal economic policies in the Balkan countries in the 1990s caused deindustrialization, GDP stagnation and high unemployment rates, especially of young people. Together with the shift in values from traditional to neo-liberal ones which promote materialism, hedonism, consumerism and liberal middle-class feminism, it caused dramatic reduction in fertility (live births per woman) as well as a significant brain drain and economic emigration from the Balkan countries in the last 30 years. Depopulation is becoming a limiting factor for sustainability of Balkan societies. It imposes a long-term danger for demographic survival of these societies, and generates an array of other negative economic, social and political consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the racialized experiences of industrial closure and economic restructuring of the former Pilpilco coal mine through oral histories and feminist arts-based methods. We argue that Pilpilco's industrial closure illuminates the layers of historical violence exerted on bodies and land as inseparable categories to colonize and extract resources and labour in the Chilean coal basin in Mapuche land. Pilpilco's industrial closure illustrates how coloniality operates in Latin America, perpetuating racial, gender, political and social hierarchical orders and prescribing value to certain peoples and territories while disenfranchising others (Quijano, 2000, Lugones, 2008). The article reflects on the colonial wounds that continue to harm inhabitants and their environments, prolonging their inability to heal intergenerational pain. Finally, we analyse residents' creative strategies to reclaim Pilpilco's land through heritage recognition, women's solidarity, and alliances with indigenous struggles. The study expands the reach and depth of deindustrialization studies, providing insights into how processes of industrialization, deindustrialization, and reindustrialization unfolded through the entanglements of settler colonialism and indigenous dispossessions, authoritarian regime and political repression, and neoliberalism and social demobilization. It also contributes to the field by providing a perspective on industrial closure from women's experience – those unpaid care workers who sustained life in coal mining communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers of radical feminist writer Monique Wittig (1935–2003) are now available for researchers to consult in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. This article provides an account of the provenance of the collection, its holdings and its passage to the Beinecke. In particular, it explores what has and has not survived and highlights the timeliness of the opening of Wittig’s papers in terms of current speculation around the history and archiving of feminism as a movement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Entrepreneurship is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon that is associated with value creation and considered a driver of economic development. While Africa exhibits a strong upsurge in the number of women entrepreneurs, the continent is still struggling in terms of gender equality and women's empowerment. The region is entrepreneurially disadvantaged, with a low degree of female participation in this field and a large gender gap in favor of men. Therefore, this paper aims to present original insights into female entrepreneurship from the context of Morocco, exploring the motivations and barriers to women entrepreneurs in the service sector. It adopts a multi-level integrative framework and combines feminist and institutional theory to capture the agency and enabling factors along with institutional regulative and normative constraints associated with female entrepreneurship. The paper adopts an interpretative qualitative research approach capitalizing on in-depth interviews with twenty women entrepreneurs in the service sector. The data is analyzed using thematic coding and identified factors are classified into micro-meso-macro levels. The findings highlight the importance of integrating multiple lens and levels of analysis to capture the complexity of the phenomenon and illustrate the imbrication and interplay of enablers and constraints and contribute theoretically and empirically to knowledge on female entrepreneurship in the North African context and a factor-driven economy through the case of Morocco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A plethora of research has focused on how the pandemic has shifted human relations with space, place and wellbeing. Yet, to date few have focused on how the return to public spaces after extended periods of lockdown is impacting subjective wellbeing, particularly amidst a context with fluctuating levels of risk, rapidly changing policy demands and expectations, and different affective responses to such regulations. In this paper we re-turn with the voices of 17 women who were living in Aotearoa New Zealand during the early stages of the pandemic and working in the sport or fitness industry before, during and after the first national lockdown. Drawing upon insights from feminist materialist theory, we explore how indoor fitness studios materialised as 'riskscapes' in women's negotiations of the affects that shaped their re-turn. Whereas some women experienced fear and anxiety in re-turning to familiar spaces 'made strange' through new risks, responsibilities, routines and objects (i.e. sanitizer, floor markings), others came to new appreciations for the importance of human connection offered through shared movement experiences. Conceptualizing these different affective relations as processes of becoming, we trace the multiple and more-thanhuman relations through which wellbeing and risk were co-implicated in particular ways of knowing-moving-becoming in the re-turn to fitness. Recognising the effects of continued uncertainties, this paper contributes material feminist insights through women's affective engagements with the social world, surfacing more-than-human wellbeing in the processes of re-turning to familiar spaces 'made strange' in and through pandemic space and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper backtracks many commentaries on Bhai Vir Singh's master piece novel Sundri, enunciated by scholars of Punjab studies, feminist studies, and critical theory. While contesting that these exegetical commentaries rendered by the scholars of aforesaid domains have displaced and decentered the spirit of the text, the paper presents a fresh lens that endeavors to redeem this important text and its spiritual essence. In doing so, we grapple to decolonize a subaltern voice, that we feel, has been reduced to a feeble murmur in the aura of assertive contestations and many interpretations dissecting the textual body of Sundri. The paper will also be published by Naad Pargaas as an introduction to Bhai Vir Singh's 'Sundri' that was translated from its 16th Punjabi edition by Prof. Puran Singh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed heated debates in Western societies on how neoliberal discourse has 'hijacked' feminism, but little is discussed about neoliberal feminism in non-Western societies. This paper analyses the self-representations of an emerging digital community in China – female PhDs, with a focus on how they create and circulate alternative self-representations to challenge the biased portrayals in mainstream media. In confronting the de-sexualizing or over-sexualizing media narratives, female PhD influencers have localized the popular notions of neoliberal feminism and constructed a neoliberal feminist subject who manages to 'have it all' – namely, knowledge, career, family, as well as physical beauty. Besides discursive confrontations, female PhD influencers also cash in on their cultural capital to earn extra income. Despite the individualist tendency in neoliberal ideology, these female bloggers are not isolated from one another but facilitate a digital community that gathers young women with academic dreams. Believing in the slogan that 'women help women,' young women seek career advice and emotional support online, giving rise to the imagined 'academic sisterhood.' This paper argues that the Western solution of 'collective action' is less viable in authoritarian states and thus calls for a transnational perspective to study neoliberal feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2021, a girl named Du Meizhu revealed on Weibo (Chinese Twitter) of having been emotionally and sexually abused by the top-tier idol Kris Wu. The incident gained publicity over the month and climaxed in mid-July, when netizens started the hashtag #girls help girls# on Weibo. Rapidly topping the trending list, this incident led to heated discussions around the case and women's social status in contemporary Chinese patriarchy. Yet unlike its #MeToo counterpart, the hashtag had been taken down hastily within hours, cutting its practitioners off from further engagements. In this paper we nonetheless propose a more positive interpretation of the incident. Combining Massumi's affect theory with Foucault's heterotopia, we argue that Weibo users constructed themselves an affective heterotopia in the hashtag #girls help girls#. Through an affective textual analysis of the posts in the hashtag, we argue that while vulnerable to censorship, the affective force in this heterotopia is ultimately untameable to the discursive regime, potentially leading to concrete feminist ends. In so doing, we offer methodological insight for understanding online feminist discussions in the particular context of contemporary China, adding to scholarship that transcends the global North orientation in feminist theory and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Play is a highly valued pedagogy in early learning settings around the world. Supporters of play have emphasised the benefits of this approach in promoting children's development and learning and their alleged freedom to choose, explore, and follow their interests. Feminist research, however, has shown that play contexts can be key sites that perpetuate gender inequalities. Building on this scholarship, I apply a critical feminist lens to examine the gendered effects of a recent shift in a Canadian province towards full-day play-based learning in kindergarten. Analysis of ethnographic data collected in two classrooms reveals that not all children may benefit from play-based learning. Instead, the findings show that the play settings in this study implicitly propagated patriarchal values that upheld hierarchal gender divisions and legitimized sexist practices among children in play. Specifically, in this paper I examine the subordination of girls through role allocations in the big blocks center. Given these findings, I discuss the need for critical gender literacy and transformative action among early education stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the one-child policy in China, post-80s women have experienced dramatic social, economic, and political changes that differ from previous generations. This article explores post-80s women’s experiences of beautification in their different life stages from a feminist perspective, drawing upon 14 in-depth interviews with post-80s women to examine their perception of beauty and beauty practices in different life stages. Three main themes emerged that were intricately associated with two distinct life stages. During their transition from schoolgirls to young women, (1) participants perceive their younger selves as naïve, passive receivers of the beauty culture. When transitioning from young women towards becoming wives and mothers, (2) their values regarding beauty shift from emphasizing outer beauty to emphasizing inner beauty. (3) They also transition to embracing natural beauty standards. This paper argues that these women’s perceptions of beauty and beauty practices are fluid and change across different life stages. ‘Trivialised’ everyday beauty discourse exists to enable them to negotiate beauty practices and gender roles. This research suggests that young Chinese women, especially those leaving high school and entering university, would benefit from readily accessible academic feminist knowledge and debate regarding beauty culture to facilitate critical thinking and informed decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do women in the Iranian diaspora contribute to change in their homeland? Drawing on narrative accounts from activists and advocates, this paper offers insight into whether and how change occurs in relation to diasporic initiatives. The results highlight women's perceived success in public education and awareness-raising activities that focus on procedural, discursive and legislative change. At the same time, despite enjoying freedom in the diaspora, diasporic women continue to face operational constraints like those in the homeland and must minimise risk. The findings are timely given the feminist uprisings that have engulfed Iran in 2022–2023, the coherence of which rests upon the patient and persistent work of those that have come before. This research holds significance for practitioners in diasporic communities, and researchers interested in agents and drivers of change in repressive operating environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For 49 years, the right to abortion was taken for granted—inhaled by every girl, every woman—by all people assigned female at birth in the United States. This right no longer exists. In 2022, with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, the Supreme Court removed federal protection for the legal right to abortion and therefore women's agency over their bodies. This paper will contextualize abortion as part of a continuum that encompasses gender, motherhood and the meaning of reproduction and reproductive rights as sociocultural and intrapsychic phenomena. The expectation that mature female-bodied people are child-desiring women persists and is not conceptualized as optional. It is the original choice women do not have. The next choice women no longer have, if they become pregnant, is whether or not to continue a pregnancy. The Dobbs decision means the cultural reinstatement of female de-sexualization, along with the suffocating and silencing of agency—a negation of women's voices, desire, power and subjectivity—a recipe for psychological destabilization. Personal and clinical material will illustrate these points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the burgeoning literature on how women construct resistance, project their agency and sculpt a positive identity for themselves. It employs feminist critical discourse analysis as a framework to examine how Nigerian blogs on gender issues constitute a discursive site for sociopolitical action, the interrogation and deconstruction of gendered social structures and the amplification of women's voices(s). The article analyzes discursive strategies used in the blogposts to resist gender inequality, women's exploitation and female subjugation while constructing a positive image for women and emphasizing their empowerment. The results reveal three main strategies: (1) denouncing patriarchy and gender discrimination, (2) countering toxic gender narratives and (3) calling out sexist attitudes and praising women who resist such behaviour. Together, these mechanisms contribute to a sociopolitical critique of systematic gendering of privilege aimed at social transformation and Nigerian/African women's emancipation. Implications of the study for research on marginalized, disenfranchised groups are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novel forms of social media created 'by-and-for' women offer potentially new ways of communicating and constructing sex education. In this paper, we consider how Instagram is being used by sex educators to deploy discourses of resistance and erotics to educate about sex. Our method consisted of a combined critical discourse (CDA) and content analysis of Instagram posts (n = 200) from a small sample of influential feminist/queer sex education accounts that use informative text and illustration-based posts. Framed by Carmody's concept of ethical erotics, we identify four discursive categories in such Instagram content: pleasure positivity; communication and dynamic consent; sex as an experience not a performance; and challenging heteronormative constructions of sex. We argue that the affordances of Instagram provide a platform for the promotion of sex education that centres pleasure and ethical erotics to rectify limited and harmful heteronormative representations of sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marxism-feminism is a vital field with diverse voices and different political agendas for social justice, from the defense of land and water to the reorganization of production. The anthology Marxist-Feminist Theories and Struggles Today aims to grasp the originality and relevance of that tradition. The book represents a variety of contributions, defined as Marxist feminist by their authors, who presented papers at the Marxist Feminist Congress in Vienna in 2016. This was the second International Marxist Feminist Conference, the first having been initiated by the feminist section of the Berlin Institute of Critical Theory. Drawing on different theoretical frameworks and practices of Marxist feminism, the edited anthology provides an invitation to converse about our understanding and practice of engaging gendered, racialized heterocapitalism for a better global future. This book symposium and its reviewers demonstrate the richness of the resulting conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]