Resistance and Resilience: Naga Women’s Voices in Temsüla Ao’s <i>These Hills Called Home</i>

<em>Concept understanding is very necessary in various things as well as understanding about balancing roles in a family, it needs the understanding of feminism concept. The concept which initiated by Gayatri Chakrasvorty Spivak becomes a reference, as the identity of women in post-colonial feminism is understood as an awareness of women's differences. Third world women are considered to have a greater burden of oppression than first world women. The burden is based on colonial and imperial oppression of gender, race, ethnicity and religion, so that women's identity in postcolonial feminism is directed at a more productive domain to understand identity based on nationality awareness. Gayatri Chakrasvorty Spivak as one of the postcolonial theorists carefully sees that sexual oppression directed at third world women is an oppression that leads to subaltern sovereignty. Therefore, a transformation of subaltern women's awareness is needed by understanding the differences in women's experiences as the basis that woman empowerment is important to be able to form women who are more active and productive, and contribute positively to their families and communities. Overcoming subaltern in families who have a patriarchal tradition is certainly not easy, many things and efforts must be carried out. Providing space and opportunities for women is one of the efforts to uphold justice for women to take roles. Efforts to make a superior family can not be separated from the role of women. The existence of cooperation between parts of the family becomes the perfection and excellence of a family.</em>

Social media platforms have been acclaimed as providing immense potential for the empowerment of diverse societal groups regardless of gender, caste, class or race. But studies on women’s online experiences have authenticated the hindrances faced by women in access and engagement in social media discourses. This study aimed to assess the pattern of social media use, influences and hindrances faced by tribal Naga women of North East India in their engagement in social media public platforms. Data was collected through a questionnaire survey of 360 female respondents from the States of Nagaland and Manipur. The results showed that WhatsApp Messaging is the most popular platform (n=338) among Naga women, followed by YouTube (n=298) and Facebook (n=286). About seventy-four per cent (74.55%) of the respondents stated that they access social media several times daily. Using social media for news and information ranked the highest (95.93%) followed by social relationships (92.51%). It was observed that social media exposure and usage has positively increased Naga women’s gender awareness (97.16%) as well as their awareness of political and civic issues (96.15 %). However it has not significantly increased their public opinion expression (20%) on socio-political and civic issues. The main hindrances in engagement on social media discussions were Lack of Knowledge about issues (73.98%), followed by a Lack of Interest (71.13%) and a Lack of Time (62.14%). Based in the findings, despite the hindrances and low level of engagement in social media public discourses, it was concluded that Naga women’s information seeking behaviour being the main motivation behind social media could be a positive indicator for the development of their agency.

Higher education institutions have historically enabled and aided epistemicide, or the marginalisation, annihilation and devaluing of the knowledge of those beyond university walls. Twenty-first century universities therefore face the important task of transforming teaching and research in ways that broaden epistemic access, incorporate various knowledge systems, and ensure local relevance. Here, academic feminism, especially postcolonial feminism, and community engagement may provide a way forward, as both projects serve to deconstruct the binary between ‘knower’ and ‘non-knower’, contributing to epistemic justice. In isolation, however, these projects have not yet made enough progress in pursuit of university transformation. This essay offers a preliminary exploration of the connections between community engagement and postcolonial feminism, and the ways in which a mutually beneficial relationship between the two may enhance each project's contribution to epistemic justice. It brings together literature on feminism and community engagement, linking this literature to the ideas of postcolonial feminism. Focus on postcolonial feminism specifically emerges from the recognition that universities do not only need to transform, but also decolonise. Ideas put forward in this writing are interspersed with my subjective memories and recollections of my lived experiences, spanning two universities and continents.

Post-colonial literature as an extensive genre includes diasporic, immigrant feminist genres too. The advocate of Post-colonial theory Edward Said has proposed the concept of ‘otherness’. This is considered to be an important theory, especially for diasporas from South Asia bearing a colonial past. It also helps in understanding the effect of power relations between the colonizers and the colonized, the reason for otherness and alienation experienced by immigrants in their respective host lands. The representation of women as an object, sexual toys, and a maid before post-colonial had its transformation with the debut of postcolonial literature. Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex had a huge effect on the readers in the transformation of stereotyped ideologies and myths about the female gender. Later with the advent of The Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, the females were made to think of their rights, independence, identity, and the need to achieve them. Many post-colonial feminist writers took it as their prime responsibility to propagate and advocate the rights, efficacies, and strengths of women to the patriarchal chauvinists. The writers who move from one country to another occupy significant positions between culture and countries. They realize that their culture or identity doesn’t remain the same as it was earlier. Identity evolves, grows, and is subject to many changes. The act of writing makes him/her explore both cultures of homeland and hostland. Memories of homeland are kept alive in his thoughts and imagination in fact, becomes a channel between the self and the world. (Shailja, 2008, 52)
 Post-colonial feminists, who work for the advancement of women, also challenge the assumption that the gendered oppression is the primary force of 23 patriarchy. They question the approbation of the oppression as it leads to the misrepresentation of their lived experiences. Currently, they struggle to fight the gender oppression within their own society to preserve and safeguard the dignity of their women. Thus, the concepts of freedom, equality, and rights to women, stem from the Enlightenment based on the egalitarian beliefs and principles and have become the main area of concern for the postcolonial feminists of today. In short, postcolonial feminism is not just literature written by women, but literature of women voicing their experiences from within. This principle has created a welcoming ambiance for many of the women writers in Indian Writing in English to use literature as a vehicle to present the true state of Indian society, its treatment of women, and the psychological traumas of women due to their own traditional and cultural barriers. To this school of post-colonial transformed feminist ideologies belong the works of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This paper aims to discuss the reformed feministic perspectives with special reference to Sister of My Heart and Oleander Girl.

'Interculturalism', like 'diaspora' and 'transnationalism', is a multivalent term, and one which has been contested for reifying differences between cultures while eliding differences within cultures. In this chapter, 'interculturalism' denotes a discursive space which accommodates differences and commonalities, allowing us to expand the paradigms through which we read women's poetry. The imperatives of our contemporary travelling culture, manifested in the transnational flow of people, information and finance, have impacted in significant ways upon the priorities of first- and second-wave feminism: the struggle for civil and social justice, the exploration of identity politics and the task of recovery. At the beginning of the 1990s, the woman writer could persuasively be defined by feminist theorists such as Susan Stanford Friedman as a 'Penelope [who] exercises her agency as a weaver/writer within and against' a patriarchal tradition. Today's Penelope also works within the expanded contours of a world wide web and, whether by choice or through necessity, she demonstrates that migrancy and travel are not male prerogatives. In the lived experience, as in the poetics, of many women, 'home' is a condition of 'dwellingin- displacement'. Received notions of nation, place and female space are reconfigured in the global circuitry of diaspora, migration and the information superhighway.

\She is lost to time and place\

No abstract available.

Pioneers across war zones: The lived acculturation experiences of US female military expatriates

This paper considers how subtextual suggestions of childhood abuse overshadow the centrally presented narratives of sex addiction in Steve McQueen’s Shame and adolescent daughter-father incest in Tom Roth’s The War Zone. Drawing on these films as companion pieces, we discuss how the unseen, unspoken, and physical conveyance of emotion – understood as affect triggered by life experience – is able to capture the trauma of familial child abuse, the disavowal of these histories, and the inescapable and exclusive relationship of co-traumatized siblings.

This paper presents the emergent findings of a larger research project on the lived experiences and career outcomes of female migrant architects from the Commonwealth in the UK architectural profession. I will employ a postcolonial feminist analysis, and the paper will, in particular, focus on considering the key challenges related to occupational closure hurdles. In the UK, architecture is a regulated profession. The geographic origin of qualifications is often used as a part of a professional project and closure mechanism, which can be used as a basis for exclusion. Adopting an intersectional framework merging with postcolonial feminist theory with the literature on professionalisation and professional closure, this paper addresses the question: how does the geographic origin of their architectural qualification influence the experiences of female migrant architects from the Commonwealth living and working in the UK? With a commitment to feminist research design, I am carrying out fifty semi-structured interviews with female migrant architects from Commonwealth countries. One of the key findings indicates that the re-qualification and re-certification requirements for labour market participation in the UK can create significant challenges for them. Some of the requalified migrant architects' lived experiences indicate that instead of successfully crossing occupational closure hurdles in terms of re-qualification, intersections of race, gender and migrant status significantly impact their experience at work. This research intends to contribute to the literature on professionalisation and closure of architecture by examining the intersections of migration, race and gender – an intersection hitherto underexamined in the context of architecture.

Decolonial and postcolonial feminism has ushered in a historic shift in feminist discourse, confronting dominant Eurocentric ideologies and campaigning for an inclusive and holistic understanding and conceptualization of oppression, gender, and power. To strengthen the agency of African women and challenge the predominance of western conceptions, this chapter explores decolonial and post-colonial feminism within the contexts of the global south. The chapter also explores the use of decolonial and postcolonial feminism in indigenous movements and policy advocacy across the African continent, offering a synopsis of the drawbacks of western feminist perspectives in capturing the diverse lived experiences of African women, scrutinizing the ongoing impact of neo-colonialism, and harnessing indigenous African feminist epistemologies. This chapter suggests a decolonized and postcolonial feminist movement that promotes gender equality, empowerment, and autonomy for African women by opposing patriarchy and neo-colonialism while embracing indigenous feminist epistemologies.

In the context of the entwined discourses of caste and feminism, this essay examines the significant influence of Meena Kandasamy’s literary works in elevating underrepresented voices, especially Dalit women. The study investigates her depiction of Dalit women as strong agents of resistance rather than helpless victims of oppression by placing her writings within the frameworks of intersectionality, postcolonial feminism and Dalit literature by examining her major works including ‘The Gypsy Goddess’, ‘When I Hit You’ and ‘Ms. Militancy’ in detail to show how she challenges Brahmanical patriarchy, critiques gendered and caste-based violence and subverts popular feminist narratives that frequently ignore caste. It also assesses her writings’ wider sociopolitical influence highlighting how she helped to create a more inclusive view of gender equality in India and reshape feminist discourse to make caste a primary axis of analysis. It also explores the difficulties and disputes surrounding her writings considering how difficult it is to accurately portray Dalit experiences in a culture that is firmly rooted in caste hierarchy. This study promotes consistent attempts to empower Dalit women via literature, activism and group action and emphasizes the critical need to incorporate marginalized viewpoints into mainstream feminist and literary discourses.

Since February 2022, the war in Ukraine has ushered in a new era of war documentation, with TikTok emerging as a central platform for showcasing daily life in conflict zones. This shift has given rise to “war influencers,” a distinct group of content creators who transform war zones into consumable units of content by using platform-specific vernaculars to convey their lived experiences. We present a typology of war influencers: (1) Celebrity-War Influencers, who leverage their well-established mechanisms of fame to transition into wartime advocacy; (2) User-War Influencers, who harness the powerful dissemination capabilities of platforms to spotlight their sites of trauma, thus rising from anonymity to online fame. Utilizing digital ethnography, we analyze 97 videos from Ukrainian TikTok creators, examining User-War Influencers from the onset of the war. We identify three primary styles employed by these influencers: (1) POV storytelling, using point-of-view templates to connect audiences with personal war testimonies; (2) memetic content, juxtaposing war sights with trending memes to enhance engagement and shareability; and (3) playful politainment, combining entertainment and political commentary through features like LIVE to fundraise and mobilize global audiences. Bridging war photography, citizen journalism, and influencer culture, we argue that war influencers leverage platform affordances and user interactions to amplify war zone visibility, foster civic engagement, and shape global perceptions of conflicts. In doing so, they contribute to the construction of social epistemology, redefining the collective processes through which knowledge about war zones is mediated and understood online.

The objective of the article is to define the impact of cultural environment and childhood period on shaping the personality of Ukrainian historian Hanna Kyrylivna Shvydko. The author also attempts to establish her family relations with several previous generations. Research methods: analysis and synthesis, comparative analysis, source research heuristics. Obtained results: the nature of Hanna Kyrylivna Shvydko attitudes and personality traits were shaped in the environment of national Ukrainian patriarchal traditions. Key factors that contributed to shaping her personality were particularly difficult early stages of her life, everyday problems pertinent to the postwar life (after World War II), status of a half-orphaned child, social and legal restrictions due to the family’s belonging to the social stratum of collective farmers. This combination contributed to shaping a life-affirming and humanistic outlook, high moral and ethical standards, strong-willed character, and extraordinary capacity and endurance in performing work. In addition, her own life experience (largely similar to the fate of her native people) allowed Hanna Shvydko to understand and even sense the trials that generations of Ukrainians had faced in retrospect of previous centuries. All of this resulted in an extremely sophisticated capability to interpret the events of the past as accurately as possible, which is the main professional mission of a historian. Brief conclusions: the peculiarities of living within the framework of patriarchal traditions in a Ukrainian village in a large family and being “open” to neighbors and the entire village community, provided some support in difficult life situations, but also played a role of moral control, and thus had a constant moral and educational impact. Accordingly, respect for one’s own personal dignity, the value of one’s honor, and the desire to be in good moral balance encouraged community members to choose the “correct” way of life (in accordance with the established tradition). These were the conditions that shaped Hanna Shvydko’s personality. Practical significance: the article will contribute to a better understanding of factors that shaped the personality of the prominent Ukrainian historian Hanna Shvydko. Scientific novelty: on the basis of source research heuristics, the knowledge of Hanna Shvydko’s genealogy is supplemented with new data and the most significant factors in shaping her personality are analytically characterized. Type of the article: heuristic and analytical.

Urban imaginaries in Indian literature have become pivotal in deconstructing not only the spatial organisation of cities but also the lived experiences and embodied resistance of those navigating them. This chapter examines how gendered and caste-based urban experiences are articulated in literary representations of Indian cities, drawing upon the spatial theories of Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, Edward Soja, and David Harvey. These theorists underscore the city as a palimpsest — a contested site of social production, symbolic control, and resistant imagination. Through a close reading of selected Indian English literary texts—including Meena Kandasamy’s The Gypsy Goddess and Anjum Hasan’s Lunatic in My Head—this chapter foregrounds how informal settlements, gendered geographies, and public/private dichotomies function as terrains of negotiation. The works reveal how marginalised communities (Dalit, working-class, and female protagonists) inscribe the urban landscape with narratives of trauma, desire, and survival. The “walking subject” of de Certeau (2011) finds its Indian counterpart in the defiant female flâneur, who tactically appropriates urban space despite its patriarchal surveillance. Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) notion of “the right to the city” echoes through these literary voices, asserting space not as an inert backdrop but as a site of ongoing struggle and redefinition. The contested spatialities in Indian cities, especially in Bangalore, Delhi, and small-town Northeast India, reflect a dynamic interplay of neoliberal urbanisation, ecological precarity, and socio-spatial inequality (Harvey, 2008; Massey, 2005). Simultaneously, Soja’s (1996) “thirdspace” emerges in feminist speculative fiction by authors like Samhita Arni, where mythic and futuristic cities become spaces of both rupture and reimagination. This chapter argues that Indian English literature reconfigures the city not merely as a setting but as a character that bears witness to fractured identities and subaltern aspirations. It highlights how gendered, caste-inflected, and ecologically burdened urban sites can no longer be treated as peripheral in urban theory or literary discourse. Rather, they are essential to understanding how cities in India are constantly being re-read, rewritten, and reimagined.