Teaching Feminist Theory and Criticism: Has Feminist Theory Become Mainstream?

In Women, Subjectivity, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Humanism in Feminist Film Theory, I investigate some of the ways in which feminist (film) theory relates itself to, and distinguishes itself from, theory in general. If one imagines that feminist theory is something that is distinct from theory due to a specifically political causal history, then feminist theory will be inclined to relate itself to theory confrontationally. If on the other hand feminist theory is understood as something which follows from, or responds to, work done in a prior or dominant theoretical domain, then it might be condemned in perpetuity to being asymmetrically dependent upon that prior domain. Both these possibili ties^?that feminist theory confronts another theoretical discourse, or that feminist theory is inevitably subordinated to a prior theoretical dis course^?risk leaving feminist theory in just the sort of disadvantaged, marginalized position vis-?-vis that prior domain that women occupy within patriarchy. One of my objectives in this paper is to dissolve the exclusionary, dichotomized opposition between theory and feminist theory by indicating just the degree to which, by engaging in feminist theory, we also engage in, and modify, theory. More specifically, I offer a symptomatic account of a critical strategy which one encounters generally, both in theory and in feminist theory. This strategy involves organizing a debate around two antithetical positions. Moreover, the privileged position?the anti-humanist posi tion, in the particular case I consider?creates its antagonist through the use of oversimplifying and reductive caricaturizations of that position. Anti-humanism, under one description or another, is the positively valued term of a binary pair, and humanism, as the antagonist of anti humanism, becomes the negatively valued term. Now, anti-humanism is a framework which organizes and directs much recent and contempo rary theoretical work, including work by feminists. There are various anti-humanisms on the market these days, just as there are various modernisms, various postmodernisms, and so forth. Nevertheless, part of what distinguishes the construction of the debate around an appar ently self-evident opposition between anti-humanists and humanists is a governing set of directive ideas about what marks the difference; that there are identifiable directive ideas shared by various anti-humanists

Reviewed by: Rape and Resistance by Linda Martín Alcoff Ellie Anderson (bio) Linda Martín Alcoff, Rape and Resistance Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2018; 269 pp. Concerns about sexual harms have burst into public view in recent years, culminating in the #MeToo movement. This movement is part of a resurgence of feminism that some are calling the fourth wave. Yet discourse about rape and other sexual violations within this movement has generally accepted existing theoretical frameworks inherited from liberalism, which emphasize verbal consent and individual freedom. In Rape and Resistance, Linda Martín Alcoff argues that it is high time to reconsider these frameworks. Being legalistic in nature, verbal consent fails to do justice to the complexity of sexual encounters and sexual violations. And, given that feminist theory has for decades taken issue with the abstract ideal of individual freedom, we also need to reframe talk of violation in a way that takes a bigger picture of the formation of our individual selves within our cultures and histories. In the face of these insufficient conceptual resources, we need nothing short of a new account of sexual normativity. Rape and Resistance is a must-read that cuts to the core of contemporary feminist theory and public discourse. Feminists and anti-feminists alike have worried in light of recent events that liberalism is not up to the task of accounting for the complexity of sexual encounters, yet it has not been clear what kinds of alternative norms might take the place of liberal ones. Part of the challenge is that feminist and queer theory have for decades deflected the very idea of norms, beginning with the sexual libertarianism theorized by Gayle Rubin in the wake of the sexual revolution. Rubin, inspired by [End Page 275] Foucault’s worries about the ways that sexual norms serve disciplinary functions to normalize “deviant” individuals, advocates a tolerant approach to sexual diversity (Rubin 1984). Alcoff argues that this approach, according to which all norms around sex and oppressive and should be removed, renders sexual accountability unintelligible: accountability is unthinkable outside of norms. An absence of norms makes it impossible to register sexual violation as a harm, since the notion of harm is normative. Alcoff compellingly argues in Rape and Resistance that the current dominant discourse around sexual violation is still libertarian in its logic. For Alcoff, in contrast, sex is a normative issue, and must be considered as such in order to do justice to survivors of sexual violation. While worries about the normalizing tendencies of sexual morality are well grounded given the violent history of excluding non-normative sexualities, Alcoff points out that normativity is different from normalization (77). The conflation of the two in much recent feminist and queer theory following Rubin has led to a wholesale rejection of norms that is performatively contradictory, given that suggesting that “norms are bad” is a normative statement. Alcoff reminds us that “In reality the practice of norming, theoretical and otherwise, is simply the ubiquitous and unavoidable practice of judging” (77). Following Foucault’s late work on self-making and normativity, Alcoff offers a thin ethical account centered on the notion of self-making in relation to others. She seeks to offer “guide-ropes but without scripts” (121). For her, agents are responsible for the development of their sexual selves, but responsibility is complex and intersubjective. Additionally, rather than being an issue of power rather than sex (paceSusan Brownmiller), sexual violation for Alcoff is about sex, and sex concerns our subjectivity and will (12). Alcoff combines feminist theory with Foucauldian, hermeneutic, and phenomenological frameworks in order to challenge additional assumptions at the heart of the zeitgeist. For one, she worries that the proliferation of survivor-discourse is a form of the “confessional” speech that Foucault describes in The History of Sexuality as serving to entrench power rather than resisting it. For another, she argues that feminist theory’s critiques of experience and first-person authority should not amount to wholesale rejections of these concepts, for this would render it impossible to take sexual violation as a violation. In this respect, Alcoff’s view picks up on the spirit of Ann J. Cahill’s 2001 book...

About the Contributors

This research was conducted to find out how the representation of women's feminism is shown in the film Brave. Brave is an animated princess-themed film created by Pixar Animation Studio and Walt Disney Pictures. This type of research is descriptive qualitative using Vladimir Propp's narrative analysis method. The subject of this research is the film Brave which is seen from its narrative structure. Meanwhile, the research object to be analyzed is the representation of women's feminism. the purpose of this study is to find out how the representation of women's feminism is shown in the film Brave. The conclusion of this study is that the Brave film narrative tries to present elements of feminism by breaking female stereotypes. However, this film failed to break the working pattern of the patriarchal system. The film's narrative actually marginalizes women by repeating, affirming, and even justifying stereotypes of women in the film's text, through the selection of conflicts, story development, and the climax at the end of the story. Brave narrates stereotypes about women's work, character, behavior, way of thinking, sexuality, and appearance, as well as their relationship with men. These stereotypes appear in the characters Merida and Elinor.

his is an interesting historical moment to reflect on feminist state theory. Both the response to the global financial meltdown and the widely celebrated U.S. presidential election signal a faith in the role and promise of state- based politics. Yet it is also true that currents of recent scholarship in a variety of settings have decentered the state. Political theorists of violence, law, and biopolitics have expanded the concept of sovereignty to address distinctly non- state- based contexts, while transnational feminist studies of citizenship have critically dismantled the logic of state sovereignty. The field of development studies has elabo rated the need to broaden notions of security beyond military understandings to include the fulfillment of basic needs, and feminist analyses of violence against women have creatively recast our understanding of security. Feminist scholars have also scrutinized the internally contradictory and disciplinary apparatuses of welfare policies. Across various regions, feminists are contesting both the paring down of the state’s welfare responsibilities and the intensification of security functions in post- 9 /11 geopolitical alliances. When taken together, this historical conjuncture and these various critiques of sovereignty, security, and welfare call for more complex modes of engagement with states. Within feminist theory, states occupy a vexed space. Whereas states have often supported feminist goals, states are also the locus of many of the problems that occupy feminists, such as militarism, moral regulation, and the cheapening of women’s labor. This special section of the journal explores this central, and old, tension within feminist state theory, offering a perspective that foregrounds geographic location. This emphasis on location emerges from a philosophical suspicion of the universalizing gestures of state theory. Despite the feminist normative opposition to views from nowhere in particular that purport to be relevant everywhere, feminist state theory has staged its key debates with little specification of state contexts. Geographic coordinates and national histories remain largely undescribed in classics within the field of feminist state theory. 1 What do we mean when we speak of “the state,” and how does location inflect our understandings? The articles in this section presume that feminists in different locations vary in their relationship to states and that these differences potentially affect the orientation of their theoretical scholarship on the state.

Hacking the System Kate Ott (bio) Much has changed in the landscape of religious studies publishing in the past thirty years. Certainly, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) has indeed made a significant impact not only in print material but also by creating conversations and networks of feminist and womanist scholars across the globe. New media, particularly social media, allow for even greater participation and ease of access as Gina Messina-Dysert notes in her introduction to this roundtable. While I certainly agree that “technology can be used as a tool to advance dialogue and expand movements committed to feminist ideologies” (136), such technologies are much more than a tool at this point. Given the form and use of social media, we are in a co-constitutive relationship with these technologies. As feminist scholars, we need to ask two questions: How do we exploit inclusive and democratic platforms to support feminist studies in religion? and How are the systems that build these spaces shaping our engagement? On the one hand, there are those who would critique JFSR for “buying into” the established academic system of peer review, print publication. On the other hand, JFSR intended from the start to diversify what counted as scholarship and actively recruit a diversity of scholars, like publishing writings in the Living It Out section and producing roundtables that feature a variety of scholars across religious, racial/ethnic, seniority, and feminist stances. JFSR has also used its financial stability to host gatherings at academic meetings to expand its network of scholars, not to mention the number of scholars who have served on the boards. In this regard, while functioning within the establishment, JFSR has changed the academic system through publication of feminist scholarship and development of feminist scholarly networks. If we assume religious studies in 1985 was a patriarchal institution/discipline, JFSR sought not only to add scholarship and voices to the field but also to change the landscape of religious studies more broadly. As we move into a digital age of knowledge production, we as feminist scholars should continue to do what we do well and examine the full ecology of the system. In technological language, JFSR used the peer-review journal platform to [End Page 140] provide new, diverse content; build stronger networks for feminist and womanist scholars; and in perhaps small ways, reengineer the platform by including art and poetry By the same token, JFSR (the journal and the people) has reinforced aspects of the platform that can be critiqued to which social media and digital publishing in particular are designed to respond. For example, peer-review supports wider academic communities’ standards of knowledge production that preference unique, original work written in language limited to experts that is slow to be published in a linear format that decreases the opportunity for critique and dialogue. Conversely, blogging provides a space for immediate publication and the platform tends to require more accessible language and encourages dialogue and critique through comments systems and free sharing of the published material. Anyone with an e-mail account and Internet access can publish a blog—so it seems that an example of a social media platform like a blog provides a utopic response to the closed systems of peer-review journals even when those journals publish content that aligns with feminist values. With good reason, the system of print peer-reviewed journals and book publishing needs to be questioned as the primary benchmark for standards of knowledge production.1 On the one hand, journals can be exclusive, are subject to the personal politics of boards and advisors, and are increasingly shaped by capitalist market forces (just reflect for a moment on your most recent decision to assign, or not, an $80 course book). On the other hand, social media platforms have their own limitations that we ought not ignore. In fact, many of us make the mistake of assuming that the “open” nature of social media automatically means we are reaching a larger, more diverse audience. However, research related to social networks shows that they are much more homogeneous than most of us would like to admit. Recent findings in the General Values Survey by the...

Engaging Jewish Feminist Diversity Issues:Seven Concepts and Several Questions Marla Brettschneider (bio) and Dawn Robinson Rose (bio) In many non-Orthodox U.S. congregations today, Jewish children grow up relatively unaware of the traditional separation between men's and women's roles in Judaism. This fact alone stands as quiet testimony to the changes produced by a multifaceted Jewish feminist movement. In fact, few congregations have remained completely immune to feminist movement in Jewish community life. But as we hope to show in this article, much more remains to be done. Similar to feminisms that have emerged from numerous other U.S. minority communities, Jewish feminisms have relied tremendously on developing insights that have grown from intersecting webs of feminist and other communities. Unlike most other minority feminisms, however, Jewish feminism in the U.S. [End Page 180] has paid little attention to the dynamics of multiculturalism within its understanding of itself. Further, as Jewish communities have been homogenized in (U.S.) American minds and media (Jewish or otherwise) as "almost" white, Ashkenazi, middle-class, liberal, and materialist, the diversity of U.S. Jewish feminists is also pigeonholed and/or erased from visibility, along with the diverse roots and origins of many U.S. Jews. Despite how much Jewish feminisms have impacted Jewish life, for a variety of reasons their multiculturalism remainsunseen, under-acknowledged, and unexamined. It is, therefore, important for Jewish feminists to examine diversity issues among ourselves and as Jews within a larger feminist movement. In the following pages, we offer seven concepts to begin this discussion: accessibility, particularism/universalism, legitimacy, authority, boundaries, accountability, and relationship. Our aim, of course, is not to limit discussion to these specific categories. Rather, we hope that by naming issues and formulating questions within a coherent cluster of concepts, we will facilitate an examination of power and diversity within Jewish feminism while also illuminating concerns of Jewish feminists within a multicultural feminist movement. Accessibility How are contemporary Jewish feminists, particularly in the U.S., finding the material to build their feminisms as Jews? Grounding oneself primarily within Jewish, religious, secular, and/or non-Jewish communities involves risks, privileges, and limitations. The educational backgrounds of the co-authors illustrate two opposing/complementary paths that exemplify Jewish feminists' issues of accessibility to resources vital to our activity. These resources include a web of institutions and organizations, a variety of feminist and Jewish theories and methods, mentors and peers. Rose received her Ph.D. in Jewish Theology from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), concentrating in Jewish feminist theology and ethics. At that time, no courses were offered at JTS on Jewish women—much less on Jewish feminism. Thus, perhaps ironically, she turned to the Union Theological Seminary, a liberal Christian institution across the street from JTS, for courses on feminist theory, and for comrades, peers, and a dissertation advisor. Brettschneider, on the other hand, received her Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from New York University, where she focused on feminist, gender, and queer theories and built a vibrant peer group who [End Page 181] now are her close friends and colleagues in academia. In this secular setting, Brettschneider was left to her own devices regarding her training in Jewish studies. In either case, what constitutes preparation and risk-taking differ. We must ask: "how do various types of Jewish feminist training provide long-term strength for taking those risks?" Without substantial educational background in both Judaism and feminism, Jewish feminist academics risk bad scholarship, in which superficial methods, fragments of history, and misunderstood theories may be affixed to opposing paradigms. Similar problems of access exist outside academia. Whether one's primary sources are activist communities, Jewish texts, and/or feminist theory, developing deep feminist and Jewish lives that inform Jewish feminist work is difficult. Emotionally and politically, Jewish feminists also need—in a primary way—other feminists in all their diversity: communities of feminists sharing, celebrating, protesting, learning, and processing. Particularism-Universalism To understand Jewish feminism in its multicultural context, we must examine the relationships between particulars and universals. Patriarchal philosophies in the West often aspire to universal principles specifically divorced from the particularities of those principles' roots and applications. Feminism and multiculturalism have...

In her article You Just Don't Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists, Ann Tickner tries to understand and explain the misunderstandings or nonconversations between feminist and conventional IR scholars. She acknowledges that one of the motivations for her article stems from her own sometimes unsuccessful attempts to engage in substantive and meaningful conversations with mainstream IR scholars. I agree with Tickner that these troubled engagements indeed exist and that many feminist IR scholars, myself included, have encountered similar situations. I am, therefore, thankful to Ann Tickner that she is raising the issue in public and placing it on the agenda of the IR community. The importance of Tickner's article should not be underestimated. For one, she questions the silencing practices of the conventional IR community toward feminist scholarship. Moreover, she is not only trying to find a possible explanation for these misunderstandings, but is also looking for ways to break through these silences. Finally, her formulation of the problematic provides us with the opportunity to exchange views on the reasons why these troubled engagements are occurring. It is in this spirit of exchanging views and searching for explanations that I am writing a reaction to Ann Tickner's article. I will argue that her explanation based on an analogy of cross-cultural communication is intriguing, but is grounded in certain assumptions about the IR community which need to be revisited. When we do this, it appears that the encounters between feminist and other IR scholars are very complex and messy and that the analogy of cross-cultural communication provides only a partial explanation of a particular reality. This, in turn, forces us to search for alternative or additional explanations. In the remainder of this essay, I will discuss the assumptions behind Tickner's argument and offer some suggestions for a different view on the (multiple) factors affecting the acceptance of feminist scholarship within the IR community. For her explanation of the troubled engagements between feminist and conventional IR scholars, Tickner borrows Deborah Tannen's idea that everyday communications between women and men are leading, just like cross-cultural communications, to all sorts of misunderstandings. Tickner suggests that, analogous to the situation described by Tannen, feminists and conventional IR scholars operate within different realities and epistemologies which make their conversations subject to misunderstandings. She recognizes three such misunderstandings: [F]irst, misunderstandings about the meaning of gender as manifested in the more personal reactions; second, the different realities or ontologies that feminists and non-feminists see when they write about international politics, as evident in comments that feminist scholars are not engaging in the subject-matter of IR; third, the

Toward a Transgender Critique of Media Representation Thomas J Billard (bio) and Erique Zhang (bio) Shifts in media production and consumption along with the emergence of digital technologies have facilitated quantitative increases and (per some critics) qualitative improvements in transgender representation across print media, film, and television.1 The biggest influence on trans media representation has come via social media and other platforms for sharing usergenerated content, which now provide the lion's share of trans media representations. Unlike those of newspapers, studio films, and broadcast television, however, social media representations are not produced by members of the cisgender majority, for members of the cis majority; they are overwhelmingly trans produced. As such, to critique these digital media representations is not to critique regimes of representational power or the machinations of hegemonic media systems. Rather, it is to critique how transgender people choose to represent themselves and the identities they hold. Studies of trans media thus far have tended to employ perspectives from feminist theory and queer theory to analyze transgender representation.2 [End Page 194] However, doing so has posed analytic problems for the burgeoning field of trans media studies. To articulate these problems, we draw on Cáel M. Keegan's analysis of trans studies' position vis-à-vis women's and queer studies, as well as TJ Billard's extensions of that analysis in the specific domain of trans media studies.3 By no means do we assume either feminist theory or queer theory to be monolithic in their approaches; rather, we endeavor to describe the central tendencies of these broad interdisciplines as they exist in their institutionalized forms. Moreover, we draw from sociology of culture frameworks to propose a mode of transgender representational critique that attends to the specificities of trans identity and experience rather than evaluating representation in terms of "good" or "bad." Feminist approaches to media studies often maintain a model whereby men dominate women and patriarchy works through media narratives to maintain male dominance.4 Misogynist representations are "bad" and those that oppose it are "good."5 Trans media representations challenge this thinking by disrupting the hierarchy of domination that feminist theory posits. Where does the trans man fall in the hierarchy of patriarchal domination? Does he now dominate women by virtue of his transition? Where does the trans woman fall? Is she now dominated by men, or—as trans-exclusionary radical feminists have argued—does she dominate "real" (i.e., cis) women by virtue of the sex she was assigned at birth?6 Where does the nonbinary person fall, whose existence challenges the binary required for this hierarchical understanding of power? While much feminist theory is invested in a model of binaristic sexual subordination, queer theory is invested in deconstructing the binary gender system as a means of "unravel[ing] heteronormativity."7 Queer theorists often interpret transness either as "some 'ultimate form' of queerness that manifests literally the metaphor of gender transgression" or as an anti-queer impulse toward binary conformity.8 From a queer theoretical perspective, [End Page 195] then, transgender representations should be evaluated as "bad" to the extent they uphold the validity of binary gender identity and "good" to the extent they disrupt the binary gender system.9 Trans identity disrupts this theoretical model, as trans people variously identify with and against a binary gender system in a complex field of valid identities.10 Accordingly, transgender media representations cannot be simply read through the queer political fantasy of counter-normativity. Beyond their theoretical limitations, both approaches also present methodological shortcomings: feminist and queer theories claim to offer a "more rigorous excavation of subjectivities" than sociological accounts, but they have tended to do so via analyses that superimpose the anti-patriarchal and antinormative political investments of the theorist onto the objectified trans figure.11 Put differently, these theorists project their own universalized interests onto the trans figures whose identities they claim to excavate. Consider, for instance, two competing readings of the film Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990) by Black feminist theorist bell hooks and queer theorist Judith Butler. For her part, hooks reads the representations of trans women in Paris as "bad" because they uphold the subordination of Black women...

Although feminist legal theory has had an important impact on most areas of legal doctrine and theory over the last two decades, its contribution to the debate over constitutional interpretation has been comparatively small. In this Article, Professor Higgins explores reasons for the limited dialogue between mainstream constitutional theory and feminist theory concerning questions of democracy, constitutionalism, and judicial review. She argues that mainstream constitutional theory tends to take for granted the capacity of the individual to make choices, leaving the social construction of those choices largely unexamined. In contrast, feminist legal theory's emphasis on the importance of constraints on women's choices has led to a neglect of questions of citizenship and sovereignty within a democratic system. By comparing mainstream constitutional theory and feminist theory, Professor Higgins highlights the existing limitations of both. She argues both that mainstream constitutional theory must take into account feminist arguments concerning constraints on individual choice and that feminist theory must take seriously the mainstream debate over democratic legitimacy. Integrating these distinct concerns, she suggests a framework for constitutional interpretation that reflects a feminist conception of citizenship under conditions of inequality.

Reviewed by: Figures of Resistance: Essays in Feminist Theory Montré Aza Missouri Figures Of Resistance: Essays In Feminist Theory Teresa de Lauretis. Ed. Patricia White. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007, 310 pp. Figures of Resistance is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on feminist film theory and lesbian representations by pioneering feminist scholar Teresa de Lauretis. The book is introduced and edited by Swarthmore College professor Patricia White, who contextualizes both de Lauretis’s essays and her theoretical frameworks within the larger body of feminist thought. The essays are organized in such a fashion as to highlight the breadth both in time and in theoretical understandings of Teresa de Lauretis’s arguments. By examining not only the scholarly work of de Lauretis but also her life as a proponent of feminist thought, providing a biographical glimpse of de Lauretis’s experiences, White achieves the longstanding aspiration of the American feminist movement as the personal is political. For researchers in the areas of cinema and semiotics, approaching these disciplines from a feminist and/or queer theoretical framework, much of this book will be familiar territory as many of de Lauretis’s most noted arguments on these subjects are presented in this text. Chapters such as “Rethinking Women’s Cinema” (based on an article originally published in 1985 in the New German Critique), in which de Lauretis highlights the challenges in identifying a distinctive feminist film aesthetic and feminist film theory, are testimony to the relevancy of this work, as it continues to question the progress of women’s cinema in forging a distinguishing practice and theory outside of the conventional parameters of the dominant cinematic paradigms. In “Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation,” de Lauretis engages in a close reading of homo-sexual and hommosexual lexicon and of lesbian literary text in reckoning with the paradoxes of female homosexuality. And in “Public and Private Fantasies in David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly,” de Lauretis deconstructs the cinematic representations of Orientalism and its fantasy of the submissive Asian woman, postcolonialism, and male homosexuality in Cronenberg’s innovative twist on the Giacomo Puccini opera Madame Butterfly. Figures of Resistance is highly charged with de Lauretis’s most compelling discourses on representations of gender and sexuality. This collection of essays by Teresa de Lauretis is essential to discussions on gender and sexual representations in film, media, and culture as these works critically examine the dichotomies of feminist and queer theories. Although there is no lack of complexity in the arguments presented in this book, this work remains accessible to individuals for whom feminist thought and queer theory are new terrain. For readers of film studies, feminist theory, queer theory, and gay and lesbian studies, Figures of Resistance is a key text not only because it presents critical arguments in these fields but also because it chronicles the work of a prolific feminist theorist and, in so doing, historically locates the course of feminist thought. [End Page 55] Montré Aza Missouri Howard University Copyright © 2009 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

‘What is Woman that thou art mindful of her, or the Daughter of Woman that thou dost care for her?’ The question posed by this revision of Psalm 8:4 has troubled feminist theological scholarship in myriad ways over the last thirty years. To be sure, even within non-theological feminist scholarship, the question of what defines ‘womanhood’, how woman is biologically, socio-culturally, emotionally and spiritually constituted, has been explicitly addressed and hotly debated. In theological feminist scholarship, the question has often remained underground and implicit but nevertheless central. In regard to this question's specific relation to the doctrine of sin, the debate has had a complex history in feminist theological scholarship. It will be argued, after the history of the debate has been sketched, that the terms of the debate have been limited from the outset by a reaction to one stream of Protestant thought. The debate itself is therefore theologically thin, and in need of further fleshing out. It will be the thesis of this essay that the theological inadequacies of the feminist debate over the nature of women's sin in effect undercut the intentions of feminist scholarship to heal the wounds inflicted by sexism, and that a hamartiology such as that found in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics may promise a way beyond the impasse.

Gender and nation operate in a powerful and dynamic relationship. As analytical categories, multidirectional and interlinked imaginaries, and sites of practice, they shape cultural and social relations as well as policy and legal frameworks that have historically disadvantaged women, nonbinary genders, and nonconforming men. Feminist scholarship on gender and nation in the South Asian context (including its diasporas) marks a rich theoretical and empirical contribution to the field. It examines the impact of nationalism (as an ideology, a political doctrine of self-determination, and a set of practices about nation and “nationness”) on gender and foregrounds revisionist histories of women’s contribution to nationalist struggles. It emphasizes the intersectionalities of gender, nation, community, caste, and class as contiguous, overlapping, and at times competing categories which fuel violence against minority and/or “transgressive” women, men, and queer subjects. In this work, the state, as an institution governing life within the nation, is marked as a central unit of analysis because of its operations of power and interpellations of citizenship; the latter being of specific concern to women’s movements engaged in advocacy for legal and policy reforms for gender equality and equity and scholar-activists working on citizenship rights for nonbinary gender, queer, and trans communities. Feminist positions, scholarship, and directions on the politics of South Asian postcolonialities, the governmentalities of its states, armed conflicts, and contestations over religion, language, culture, sexuality, caste, and territory have produced, therefore, a rich body of work on gender and nation as twin categories of fundamental relevance and import, powerful yet unstable, requiring ongoing performative work.

What has been the contribution of Higher Education Research & Development (HERD) to feminist scholarship? This analysis utilises Acker and Wagner’s definition of feminist scholarship as having the following characteristics: puts women and gender at the centre of analysis, deconstructs unequal power relations, works toward improving women’s lives, values participant voices, emphasises care and collectivity, and acknowledges researcher positionality and reflexivity. We analyse the articles published in HERD over 40 years using a methodology adapted from Hart’s analysis of the Journal of Higher Education, the Review of Higher Education and Research in Higher Education. As feminist scholars, we are heartened by the outcomes of our analysis, while noting gaps and opportunities for feminist scholarship. We recognise the work of the feminist scholars who have published in HERD, many of whom we highlight in this article. This article is a starting point for a sustained analysis of feminist scholarship in higher education, with scope to apply the methods of this analysis to intersectional feminisms and examine the scholarly contributions of queer, non-binary, Indigenous and global south higher education researchers. There remains significant work to be done in conducting, publishing, citing and evaluating feminist and intersectional scholarship in higher education.

Since the 1960s, feminist curriculum scholarship and social and political activism have been entangled in mutually influential ways. Feminist engagements with difference demonstrate the complex ways the field of curriculum studies is immersed in the cultural, social, and political commitments of the wider communities in which it inhabits. As second-wave feminist scholars grappled with their understandings of and resistances to the “Man” of liberal humanism occurring in the United States amid the social and political upheavals occurring in the United States beginning in the late 1950s, feminist curriculum scholars engaged in related academic endeavors. For example, prevalent themes in these “early” feminist curriculum scholars’ work included taking up feminist themes of “the personal as political” and women’s solidarity as a political strategy enacted to resist patriarchy. By the 1980s, however, feminist scholars began to decenter the universal, humanist subject amid widespread critiques of the lack of inclusivity in second-wave feminisms. These efforts helped complexify our understandings of the “we” of feminism(s) and feminist curriculum studies. These decenterings led to what some have called an identity crisis in both mainstream and academic renderings of feminism(s), characterized by two distinct and oftentimes factionalized feminist approaches for understanding difference. The first was the adoption of identity politics as the foundation for theories and activisms directed toward emancipatory ideals and outcomes. From this perspective, solidarity within identity groups became a feminist strategy on which to build knowledge projects and activisms. The second, sometimes categorized under the umbrella of poststructural feminism(s), understood freedom as deriving from a rejection of identity as static, and instead dismissed the notion of foundational subjectivity as a precursor for both feminist scholarship and political activism. In feminist curriculum studies, these developments led to troublings of teachers’ autobiographical subjectivity and challenges to historical accounts that include the interrogation of humanist notions of representation, reflection, and linearity, for example. Not all relationships with feminism(s) fit into this category, however. The political and cultural environment of the 1980s included the rise of a highly mobilized New Right, characterized in the United States by the Reagan and Bush Sr. presidencies, a deteriorating job market in Western economies, deregulation, an acceleration of asymmetrical flows of global capital, transnational trade agreements, and the exploitation of non-Western job markets for cheap labor. This led to new and different intertwinings of feminism and neoliberal capitalism. As a result, both mainstream and academic feminism(s) were increasingly engaged with the paradoxes and contradictions of postfeminism, a concept utilized to characterize both an acknowledgment and rejection of feminism(s) during this era. By the second decade of the new millennium, a fourth wave seemed imminent, brought on by global responses to the September 11, 2001, bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and hashtag movements such as #me too and #Bringbackourgirls movements. As bodies, capital, and the material world mingle and flow in newly explored and complex ways, emergent trends in feminist curriculum studies include an increased interest in the non-human, posthuman, and more-than-human worlds and the ways they intra-act with feminist new materialist theories and post-anthropocentric worlds.