Search

This article surveys the discussion around teaching and reading Ovid's upsetting stories of sexual violence, especially in the context of the #MeToo era, and suggests that such stories offer modern readers the opportunity to investigate the power dynamics that allow such acts to happen at all. The case study for this approach is the myth of Philomela, Tereus, and Procne in Metamorphoses 6, and by applying a narratological lens to the passage, we can see how characters like Philomela are empowered through speech and communication, while aggressors like Tereus, deprived of direct speech, are stripped of agency by the narrator., In an increasingly polarized society, racism, xenophobia, sexism, LGBTQ+phobia, and other forms of discrimination mark out significant numbers of people as less than others. All share one common factor: a [...]

Luce Irigaray's mimesis is a political action born out of the recognition that women's position in society is based upon the ideal image of masculinity. It is, thus, a strategy that aims to articulate the specific position of women within the phallocentric culture in order to destabilize the foundations of this culture. Three of Harold Pinter's film adaptations--Accident (1967), The Go-Between (1971), and Betrayal (1983)--portray women in intricate relationships with men; consequently, the women are seen by some critics as liberated, yet ultimately, they are commodified. When it comes to the institution of marriage, Irigaray's mimesis theory together with a broad-spectrum feminist critique, see this 'liberation' as a mirage. Keywords: Harold Pinter / mimesis / commodification / patriarchy / power / sexual, THREE SHADES OF COMMODIFICATION Luce Irigaray uses theater terminology to represent women's oppression in the patriarchal social order. In Speculum of the Other Woman, she compares the philosophical discourse to [...]

This study looks into the identity of brown female artists living in the post-colonial society of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan today. It examines the role, status, and ideals of a handful of women artists and educators from the '80s, mostly members of the Women Action Forum, who have helped define the current identity of Pakistani women by initiating feminist debates. The concept of feminism in post-colonial society is multidimensional and needs to be explored to combat the misconstrued and imposed identity of Pakistani women as miserable, second-grade citizens of the third world. Dominant religions and cultural practices in this region designate woman to a distinct status in society. In Islam, women are seen as the followers of Fatima--the leader of all Muslim women in paradise--and are ranked amongst the greatest humans (Qutbuddin, 2006, 249) while Hinduism considers them as devis--divine beings (Pintchman, 2011). With this socio-cultural mind set and confirming the persuasive relationship between feminist aesthetics and feminist theory as proposed by Hilde Hein (1999), we analyse works of selected female artists and aim to understand the current wave of feminism here. The investigation adopts ethnographic methods of research along with established approaches to historiography that involve discussing, collecting, documenting, digitizing and analysing the information. Keywords: Identity politics, Post-colonial narratives, Art activists, Women in art, Decolonial Feminism, Feminism in the global South, April 2021 Introduction The answer to the most significant identity question 'Who am I?' is pre-conditioned today. Several political, social, or economic factors determine the response to this question. One [...]

Brazil and Portugal are two countries that, although geographically located on different continents, share a history (from 1500 to 1822 when Brazil was a Portuguese colony) and the same language (Portuguese), and both have very high rates of domestic violence and situations of gender inequality. Growing fundamentalist and ultraconservative parties around the world are threatening gender equality and women's conquest for rights. In Portugal and Brazil, new parties with extremist discourses and ideologies that perpetuate patriarchal societies are also growing. It is crucial to continue breaking paradigms and remembering history, particularly the moments marked by the struggle for human rights. Many women have fought for their rights, advocated for gender equality, and worked toward building women's citizenship in and through education. Looking particularly at Brazil's post-independence period, we conducted a diachronic comparative study of feminist activist artists from these two countries and found inspiring examples of feminine resistance and resilience. We analysed different female approaches that surprised us with their originality and creativity. We looked at the similarities and differences between how Portuguese and Brazilian women with access to culture and art--painting, music, literature, etc.--positioned and manifested themselves in the face of these social and cultural inequalities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The women artists that we studied have reached professional status as artists, which has allowed them to become financially independent. Thus, they have been able to leave the private sphere and enter the public and international sphere. Keywords: Art activism, Equal rights, Feminism; Gender biases, Women empowerment., April 2021 Introduction At the turn of the 19thCentury, a group of pioneering women from Portugal and Brazil used creative and artistic practices as a form of activism, criticism, and [...]

The ideological ambiguity of Jane Austen's Emma has received copious critical attention. Many observe that while the novel openly endorses conservative ideologies, it also expresses feminist ideas. Wayne C. Booth [...]

Late eighteenth-century thinkers often viewed connoisseurship as a masculine enterprise, but Jane Austen counters this stereotype by presenting women as informed and discerning viewers of visual art. The Oxford English [...]

In this reflective piece, the new editors of the historic journal Men and Masculinities explicate how key tenets of Raewyn Connell's scholarship informed their expanded vision of the journal. It begins with a meta-analysis of empirical research published in the journal for the last 20 years, and highlights its emphasis on contemporary scholarship from various disciplines and fields. Each facet of the journal's new vision is relayed thereafter, including its feminist perspective, international focus, and interdisciplinarity. It concludes with efforts by the editors to actualize their vision in the service of broadening the field of gender, boyhood, and masculinity studies. Keywords: boyhood, feminism, masculinities studies, Connell, Founded over 20 years ago, the journal of Men and Masculinities has been a central scholarly outlet for empirical research in the growing field of gender, boyhood, and masculinity studies. [...]

The topic of female pleasure is frequently suppressed in Ovid's Ars amatoria. Yet because pleasure is an unavoidable subject for a teacher who professes techniques of love, the moments in [...]

This article explores Ovid's Heroides 15 (the Epistula Sapphus) through a post-human feminist approach, engaging with the most recent scholarly debate on (Ovid's) Sappho's polysemous poetic language, polyphonic narrative, and gender fluidity. Drawing from recently published works that explore the intersections between posthumanism and antiquity, I show that Her. 15 is resituated within the 'posthuman turn' and accordingly reinterpreted as an expression of Ovid's and Sappho's poetic identity. Sappho's self-identification with her polymorphic poetry, assimilation into the natural world, and transitional sexual identity serve to both downplay and destabilize her role as a poetic subject, while at the same time enhancing her (and Ovid's) poetic creation. The idea of poetry as a self-shaping force is articulated by the agency that certain poetic objects (e.g., the letter, the poem, the verses), as well as other animate or inanimate natural elements (e.g., the branches and birds), hold within the epistle. Ovid has Sappho forego her poetic agency and question her literary skills; however, her poetic identity is also reaffirmed and strengthened precisely by the composition of her epistle. The displacement of the 'human' poet thus serves to enhance the centrality of the artistic, literary work. This dialectic between the limits of Sappho as a poet and the boundlessness of her poetry persists until--and reaches its peak at--the end of Her. 15, where Sappho anticipates her self-murder. Her (foretold) leap in the waters of the Leucadian Sea (217-220) can be interpreted both as a form of self-annihilation and as a means of stressing the permanence and timelessness of her own and Ovid's poetic talents., Morremo. Il velo indegno a terra sparto, rifuggira l'ignudo animo a Dite, e il crudo fallo emendera del cieco dispensator de' casi. E tu, cui lungo amore indarno, e lunga [...]

INTRODUCTION In the 2019-20 academic year, Washington University School of Law celebrates 150 years of admitting women. Phoebe Couzins and Lemma Barkeloo enrolled in 1869, (1) four years before Bradwell [...]

Agency has been much discussed in both popular and academic feminist discourse, particularly in the context of empowerment and sexual practices. Following a third-wave emphasis on women's ability to respect women's choices and ability to exercise agency free from domination, postmodern feminist scholars have critiqued such a view as thoroughly implicated in discourses of neoliberal individualism and compulsory self-discipline. However, these critiques have not entirely succeeded in providing convincing alternative approaches for incorporating concepts and experiences of change and intentionality within frameworks which emphasise the governmentality of discourses of empowerment. Thus, this essay explores the benefits of shifting the frame of the discussion of agency from sexuality to self-harm, a practice and experience which is under-theorised within feminist thinking. Existing theorisations of self-harm, in which ideas of choice and self-determination are both centred and refused, highlight the particular importance of incorporating considerations of embodiment into discussions of agency. Therefore, the discussion uses a phenomenological perspective, as articulated by Sara Ahmed, to conceive of self-harm as an embodied, relational, and repeated act. Exploring each of these facets of self-harm highlights the need to explore theorisations of agency as messy and uncertain, reflecting the multiple pulls which can be exerted upon the body and to which the body can respond; as exercised by emplaced bodies which exist within contexts of necessity, wherein actions might be neither freely chosen nor entirely unwanted; and as continuous rather than discrete, never fully completed but rather a constant process of negotiation which exists in relation to complex personal and social histories. This return to the body, and the multiple and messy experiences of embodiment, highlights the benefits of both grounding feminist theorisations of agency within phenomenological considerations and of avoiding binary frameworks in which the possession or absence of agency are placed in discrete opposition. Centring uncertain and indeterminate embodied experiences might allow for a more productive platform for future feminist thinking. Keywords: Self-harm, embodiment, agency, phenomenology, experience, May 2020 Introduction Agency has been a hot-button topic over the past 20 years, both in popular and academic feminist discourse, particularly in the context of empowerment and sexual practices. [...]

What business do we have to speak of Bronte novels in relation to ourselves? For scholars of color, how do we engage with canon without reifying our own marginality within the rubric of Victorian empire and exclusion? This essay performs what I call 'reading in the aftermath,' akin to Christina Sharpe's reading 'in the wake': a willingness to confront a racist past and its distorting aftereffects on life today. Turning to contemporary afterlives of Victorian texts, this article applies Asian and Asian Americanist critique, such as Anne Cheng's Ornamentalism, to explore a recent Bronte adaptation, Patricia Park's Re Jane. In her novel, Park uses the language of Jane Eyre as a tool to critique the classic's own critical legacy, ridiculing the pedantry of Anglo-American feminism imposed upon younger women of color. Multicultural afterlives and adaptations, I suggest, present opportunities to conjoin past and present, drawing Bronte studies into current discussions on race, racism, and ethnic American literatures., One late night of research, I came across the image of Afong Moy, 'The Chinese Lady,' featured in a historic lithograph of 1835. The first known Chinese woman to be [...]

Author(s): Carol Iannone [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) New York, USA 'I killed feminism. Why did I do that? Rats. I did not mean to do that,' Gillian Flynn reports thinking [...]

Abstract: According to Helene Cixous, 'woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently from their [...]

Race, sex, and species in Joyce's Ulysses form what Claire Jean Kim calls 'taxonomies of power' that are culturally co-constituted and mutually reinforced, as animalized speech and the famous emasculation scene of the Circe episode make clear. Alternately approached with longing, pain, grief, and fear, the text's domestic space is an over-determined cipher that that reveals the limits of pure freedom from systemic and psychological constraint. Instead, feral movements in the Circe episode mark neither a flight from categorization, nor a capitulation to it. Leopold Bloom's identity, while outside of standard classification (as an amalgamation of racial, sexual, and animal others), is used to reinscribe the norms such identities can potentially upend. Though the text fails to subvert power structures, several feral movements in the Circe episode present Leopold Bloom as performing multiple unstable identifications at once, offering small but potent ruptures in the text's regulatory forces. Keywords: James Joyce / modernism / gender / animality / race, Seventy-five years before Jacques Derrida gave the talks that would become The Animal That Therefore I Am--in which the author famously considers what his naked body looks like before a [...]

After the Cold War, the changing global policy is challenged with various security gaps and the new war and peace conditions. It is possible to examine these new facts with a gender-based approach. The critical contribution of feminist theories to global politics literature has also partaken in the conceptual analysis of peace theories. In the meantime, the state-centric analysis has led to the change of dominant epistemological patterns, such as rational choice. This study will examine the conditions, examples and theoretical debates of feminist peace in the light of those current debates. In particular, the S/RES/1325 (2000) will be discussed with reference to its contribution to the feminist theories in the peace studies by evaluating its limitations and critics. Keywords: Feminist theory, global politics, peace studies, S/RES/1325 Soguk Savas sonrasinda donusen kuresel politika, farkli guvenlik aciklari, yeni savas ve baris kosullariyla kendini gostermektedir. Bu yeni olgulari toplumsal cinsiyet bakisiyla da incelemek mumkundur; kuresel politika alaninda feminist kuramlarin literature sagladigi elestirel katki, baris kuramlarindaki kavramsal analizlerin alanini gelistirmistir. Ayni zamanda, devlet merkezli analiz, rasyonel secim gibi guclu epistemolojik kaliplarin, degismesini saglamistir. Bu calisma feminist barisin kosullarini, orneklerini ve teorik tartismalarini guncel konular isiginda, literatur taramasiyla ele alacaktir. Ozellikle Birlesmis Milletler Guvenlik Konseyi'nin 1325 sayili kararinin BMGK 1325/2000 uygulama alanlarini ve sinirlarini degerlendirerek, kuresel politikada feminist teorilerin baris calismalarina katkisini inceleyecektir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Feminist teori, kuresel politika, baris calismalari, BM Guvenlik Konseyi 1325 numarali karar., Giris Baris calismalari icinde feminist yaklasim, kuresel politikanin guncel ve onemli kuramlari arasindadir. Cinsiyet kimliklerine atfedilen toplumsal roller ve bu rollerin devletler arasi iliskilere yansimasi kacinilmazdir. Feminist teori, bu iliskilere [...]

Soguk Savas sonrasinda dönüsen küresel politika, farkli güvenlik açiklari, yeni savas ve baris kosullariyla kendini göstermektedir. Bu yeni olgulari toplumsal cinsiyet bakisiyla da incelemek mümkündür; küresel politika alaninda feminist kuramlarin literatüre sagladigi elestirel katki, baris kuramlarindaki kavramsal analizlerin alanini gelistirmistir. Ayni zamanda, devlet merkezli analiz, rasyonel seçim gibi güçlü epistemolojik kaliplarin, degismesini saglamistir. Bu çalisma feminist barisin kosullarini, örneklerini ve teorik tartismalarini güncel konular isiginda, literatür taramasiyla ele alacaktir. Özellikle Birlesmis Milletler Güvenlik Konseyi'nin 1325 sayili kararinin BMGK 1325/2000 uygulama alanlarini ve sinirlarini degerlendirerek, küresel politikada feminist teorilerin baris çalismalarina katkisini inceleyecektir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Feminist teori, küresel politika, baris çalismalari, BM Güvenlik Konseyi 1325 numarali karar. After the Cold War, the changing global policy is challenged with various security gaps and the new war and peace conditions. It is possible to examine these new facts with a gender-based approach. The critical contribution of feminist theories to global politics literature has also partaken in the conceptual analysis of peace theories. In the meantime, the state-centric analysis has led to the change of dominant epistemological patterns, such as rational choice. This study will examine the conditions, examples and theoretical debates of feminist peace in the light of those current debates. In particular, the S/RES/1325 (2000) will be discussed with reference to its contribution to the feminist theories in the peace studies by evaluating its limitations and critics. Keywords: Feminist theory, global politics, peace studies, S/RES/1325, Giris Bans çalismalari içinde feminist yaklasim, küresel politikanin güncel ve önemli kuramlari arasindadir. Cinsiyet kimliklerine atfedilen toplumsal roller ve bu rollerin devletler arasi iliskilere yansimasi kaçinilmazdir. Feminist teori, bu iliskilere [...]

Latin American Feminisms are Flourishing Today Judith Butler has recently pointed to the particular differences in Latin American feminisms (Yancy, 2019) that distinguish them from the #MeToo movements. Butler suggests [...]

This essay analyzes indigenous women's collective action that improves indigenous women's lives and increases their agency in a Kaqchikel Maya town. The women whose work I consider come together under the structures of a patriarchal organization, the Principe de Paz evangelical church. I extend Patricia Hill Collins' concept of motherwork and Nancy Naples' concept of activist mothering to what I call comadre work, or care work that women enact for each other through creative kin networks. Women practice comadre work as they pool physical and financial resources, teach each other to read and write in Spanish, and speak for themselves in public spaces, resulting in women's increased ability to advocate for themselves and their families in various non-religious domains of life. While they do not self-identify as feminists, my analysis of their actions highlights how their comadre work is feminist because it supports and improves women's well-being. This work is based on 20 months of non-continuous research between 2009 and 2016 with the 13 women in the group from the Principe de Paz Evangelical church in Santa Catarina Palopo, Solola, Guatemala. I rely on participant-observation and interviews with women, all of which I conducted in Kaqchikel Maya. I conclude that Kaqchikel women use a homosocial space within a patriarchal institution to further women's agendas. Recognizing indigenous women's gender-based activism is critical to being more inclusive of indigenous women in the feminist movement and scholarship. Keywords: comadre work, indigenous, women, Introduction 'Wakamin kan jeb'el nuk'aslem' [Now my life is good] (2)--Maria (3) (personal communication, July 3, 2015) Maria is a 45-year-old indigenous Kaqchikel (4) woman in Santa Catarina Palopo, Solola, [...]

The two special issues in volume 20 of the JIWS on Latin American women's movements and feminisms were born out of conversations between ourselves and journal editor Diana Fox. Our [...]

Despite more than three decades of feminist critique, archaeological scholarship remains predominantly focused on the exploration of patriarchal narratives and is, therefore, complicit in reinforcing structural inequalities. Questions must be asked of how the construction of archaeological knowledge affects representation and impacts upon our 'archaeologies'. This article explores the relative absence of gendered approaches within archaeology through the lens of later medieval archaeology, with a micro-focus on castle studies in Britain and Ireland. Are there reasons for the silence in relation to gender in the archaeology of the later Middle Ages, and what lessons are there for bringing about a more inclusive archaeology? Keywords: later medieval archaeology, castle studies, gender, feminism, Introduction In archaeology, the story of the past is largely told through the experiences of men. There have been noticeably fewer explorations of the wider spectrum of gendered identities and [...]

Anne Thackeray Ritchie and Angela Carter both recreated the classic tale Beauty and the Beast. This article analyses these recreated tales using the new historicist and feminist theories. The analysis allows for a discussion of how each tale conforms to and/or contrasts with expected gender roles. Thackeray and Carter reflect particular ideas about gender within their tales. Writing in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively, the women published within particularly patriarchal social contexts - Ritchie slightly more so than Carter. The limiting social contexts allowed for minimal, if any, diversion from the status quo of expected gender behaviours. These social contexts impacted on the writers of these centuries and their texts. However, writers such as Thackeray and Carter did not simply accept the patriarchal expectations thrust upon men and women but actively commented against them within their tales. These women writers developed tales that were commentaries on the gender expectations of their social contexts. Although both of these centuries were saturated with patriarchal ideas encouraging particular rigid behaviours for men and women, Thackeray and Carter sought to recreate these limiting gender expectations through publishing dynamic tales. Each writer includes characters and relationships in their tales, which are alternatives to their societies' patriarchal expectations of men and women. By creating new narratives into their Beauty and the Beast tales, these women writers both question and critique patriarchal rule and provide alternatives to it., Author(s): Monique Banks (corresponding author) [1] Introduction The genre of fairy tales has a rich history, stemming back centuries. Originally shared as adult entertainment, the genre soon became literature for [...]

As the #MeToo movement has spread from the upper echelons of Hollywood to the halls of Congress, what has most struck me is the startling disconnect between the movement's feverish [...]

This article considers how season one of Netflix's Jessica Jones functions as a feminist revenge narrative that situates the titular protagonist as a survivor of patriarchal abuses at the hands of her ex-boyfriend and supervillain Kilgrave. The article explores how Jessica embodies Sara Ahmed's concept of the feminist killjoy. Jessica is a feminist anti-hero who provides an alternative, angry, superhumanly strong avatar of women's everyday negotiations with misogynist excesses. The article reads her as a flawed character who importantly fails the perfectionism tied to postfeminist and neoliberal requirement of contemporary women. This makes her both sympathetic and resonant in the current moment of feminism. As both a symbolic figure and a site of catharsis, the article considers Jones's journey to greater forms of agency in her fight against Kilgrave., In an early promotional poster for the first season of Netflix's Jessica Jones (2015--) the titular character Jessica (Krysten Ritter) glares at the viewer while standing in front of a [...]

ABSTRACT The emotion of anger is complex and double-sided; anger is like fire, not only potentially destructive, but also potentially creative as it can alert us to transgression or injustice [...]

ABSTRACT This article opens with a personal anecdote with a Buddhist teacher in the late 1980s, in which I ground my reflections on anger. I draw on the teachings about [...]

This paper explores the cultural and social phenomenon surrounding Sonydsang, a bronze statue symbolizing the so-called 'comfort women'--young women who were drafted for military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Fifteen Years War (1931-1945). After the 2015 agreement between South Korea and Japan over the issue of the 'comfort women,' Sonydsang has developed into the Sonyosang phenomenon: voluntary citizen activism involving protecting the statue from being removed and installing replicas and variations of the statue in South Korea and abroad. Using the methods of art history and visual culture studies, the paper analyzes Sonydsang and the Sonyosang phenomenon in relation to the anti-colonial, patriarchal nationalism, and feminism that had reemerged in South Korea by 2015, examining how these discourses generate active interaction and participation with the statue from the viewers. It also discusses how these discourses either perpetuate the image of the 'comfort women' as frail victims or, instead, transform it into one of empowered activists, generating solidarity among emancipated spectators and the subalterns of power. Keywords: 'comfort women', statue of the 'comfort women', Sonydsang, Korean nationalism, feminism, military sexual slavery, The Sonyosang Phenomenon: Nationalism and Feminism Surrounding the 'Comfort Women' Statue One of the most popular and controversial works of contemporary public art in South Korea is a bronze statue [...]

Allusions to Lorine Niedecker in the work of contemporary poets Elizabeth Willis, Liana Quill, and Pattie McCarthy construct a shadow literary history that advances Niedecker's contributions more effectively than literary scholarship. Deploying allusion in ways deeply consonant with Niedecker's ethos, these works establish systems of referral that counter the more competitive, exclusionary modes of the traditional trope and offer fresh ways of understanding affinities among women writers.Keywords: feminist poetics / allusion / Lorine Niedecker / contemporary poetry, In Elizabeth Willis's 1995 The Human Abstract, Liana Quill's 2010 50 Poems, and Pattie McCarthy's 2012 marybones, I first noticed an alternate paradigm of lyric and lineage, in which poets [...]

In more than a half century of writing fiction, Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez has crafted his share of fairy tales, but the story of Sleeping Beauty, or Briar Rose, seems to hold special meaning for him. Allusions to this fairy tale have appeared in several of his works, but Garcia Marquez does more than just allude to Sleeping Beauty. He gives readers new incarnations of Briar Rose, reimagining her as a dead Caribbean dictator, a beautiful woman asleep on an airplane, and an adolescent girl christened Delgadina by the nonagenarian who falls in love with her. Garcia Marquez's depictions of Briar Rose get progressively more ludicrous, as he mocks humanity's unhealthy romantic obsessions and our almost desperate need to believe in ' happily ever after.' Garcia Marquez distorts the Sleeping Beauty archetype to show how absurd and even dangerous it is, challenging readers to re-examine their own romantic fantasies.Keywords: Gabriel Garcia Marquez / sleeping beauty / fairy tales / feminism / Yasunari Kawabata, In more than a half century of writing fiction, Garcia Marquez has crafted his share of fairy tales. Numerous critics have analyzed the presence of mythic and fairy tale characters [...]

L'auteure explore le developpement de l'intersectionalite- cette approche feministe aux differents champs d'enquetes- dans le contexte de la loi sur les droits humains internationaux. Tout d'abord ce texte remet en memoire le developpement et les limites de la CEDEF qui avait comme mandat de proteger les droits humains internationaux des femmes. Ensuite il retrace les multiples usages de l'intersectionalite a l'interieur de la sphere domestique en mettant l'accent sur les origines de la loi. On connait peu les debuts de ce nouveau concept surtout de son role de protecteur aupres des femmes quand il s'agit de la discrimination raciale. (CEDR). Des recherches recentes apportees par l'auteure ont note l'interet des Nations Unies pour l'ntersectionalite lors de la violation massive des droits humains et les violences sexuelles envers les femmes en Bosnie-Herzegovine et au Rwanda. Ce texte envisage la possibilite d'elargir les cadres des droits humains internationaux pour etablir une protection domestique et transnationale pour les femmes., The acceptance of an intersectional vocabulary at the international level opens up a space for feminist engagement. It offers the future possibility for feminist dialogue within the law--as opposed to [...]