Traits of Womanist in Unigwe’s Night Dancer: Complementarity versus Culture

This thesis is an examination of feminist republicanism(s) in the north of Ireland between 1975 – 1986. This era is chosen as republican prison protest was rife, and due to this, fractures between the feminist and republican movements were opened. The aims of both republicanism and feminism overlap in their objective of self-determination. Despite these similarities, the two movements did not come to a natural nor total congruence. While it has been argued that there is a disjuncture between feminism and nationalism, this thesis argues for a new consideration of feminist republicanism(s) in the north. A niche collective of republican feminists developed during this time period and sought bodily, political and economic autonomy. In this thesis I map these aims onto historical narratives, jail-writings, journalism, documentary film and literary arts. The body of the thesis is divided into three sections: the representation of republican women within the history of the republican movement, with a particular focus on the prison protests held within Armagh Gaol; an examination of republican feminism within feminist periodicals such as Women’s News, Socialist Women’s Group, Belfast Women’s Collective, and Women Against Imperialism; and an interrogation of the representation of republican women in literary arts, including the works of Mary Beckett, Medbh McGuckian, Deirdre Madden, Brenda Murphy, and documentary films, Mother Ireland and A Kind of Sisterhood. The key aims of my research are: to assess the intersections of republicanism and feminism within cultural history and literature; to examine disparate strands of republican feminism(s) during the period; and how forms of literature can serve to reassess the interactions and intersections between the two movements. This thesis meets the original contribution to knowledge through the study of archival material received from Margaret Ward. This includes letters and ephemera which offers insight into the interactions between republicanism and feminism within activist journalism in Section Two of the thesis. To this end, my PhD explores a movement of women’s writing concerned with political crisis, gender and the nation during the ‘Troubles’ conflict. I use the plural republicanism(s) as a way of encapsulating the variant iterations of nationalist feminism, from militant republicanism in Armagh Gaol to a passive non-violent literary nationalist feminism. To do this, the thesis has drawn on the works of Theresa O’Keefe, Begona Aretxaga, Fiona McCann and Claire Hackett. This thesis also has an anti-imperialist feminist approach, which draws upon the work of feminist theorists bell hooks, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Nira Yuval-Davis. The PhD uses testimony as a tool of disruption and resistance against the exclusion from masculine-dominant historical narratives. This thesis draws parallels in literature, print and history between nationalism and feminism, and in drawing these comparisons I argue that women voicing their own history acts as a remedy to dominant patriarchal narratives which silence women. This examination of the interaction between nationalism and gender shows how women’s writing offers a paradigm shift in nationalist history as seen through a feminist lens.

Abstract:Across Africa in the early twenty-first century, autonomous women's movements have transformed the political landscape. With their support, African women are lobbying for constitutional reforms, entering political office in unprecedented numbers, and initiating legislation to expand women's rights. African women's movements have been emboldened by changes in international and regional norms concerning women's rights and representation, a new availability of resources to enhance women's status, and in many places, an end to conflict. In Botswana, the 1980s and 1990s were a period of heightened women's mobilization. Led by the women's organization Emang Basadi, the women's movement accomplished many significant victories, including winning a landmark citizenship case, prompting a comprehensive review of laws to identify instances of gender discrimination, issuing the first women's manifesto in Africa, and organizing workshops for political parties and women candidates. Some scholars have suggested that Emang Basadi's work was responsible not just for increasing women's representation in parliament, but also for broadening democracy in Botswana. Since 2010, however, a once vibrant women's movement has gone quiet. This article seeks to understand this development and to explore how the movement might be revitalized. The article concludes by drawing comparisons with other women's movements in the region and suggesting that the women's movement in Botswana, like others in the region, may be, in the words of one scholar, “in abeyance.”

Japan as the front-runner of super-aged societies: Perspectives from medicine and medical care in Japan.

Questions of agency and alliance have become central to feminist theories, and yet, neither agency nor alliance has proven easy to theorize or to enact. Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference suggests that these questions have proven so difficult for feminist and other progressive social movements because the contemporary politics of difference(s) or diversity fails to adequately articulate complexity. Without the ability to work with the complexity of inter-relation, the politics of diversity proves inadequate to power relations within and among differences and devolves into liberal pluralism and its attendant diversity management. Because complexity is located in the norms which materialize social relations and the values which social movements produce, it is necessary to investigate and theorize both ethics and politics in order to create an agency adequate to working alliances. Through historical case studies of how alliances work at particular moments in the histories of feminist, anti-racist, and queer social movements the book addresses central questions in feminist ethics and politics: questions of agency and action, universalism and relativism, the production of norms and values and their implication in regulator discourses, the construction of social movements, of publics and counter-publics, and the workings of alliances. Chapters are organized around case studies of how alliances work and do not work at particular moments in histories of social movements - the conjunction of movements around the politics 'race' and 'gender' in nineteenth century abolition and feminist movements, the articulation and dis-articulation of 'race,' 'gender,' 'sexuality,' and 'class' in the 1970s and 1980s, the formation of alliances and oppositions to produce a movement of the 'religious right' in the 1990s and possibilities for feminist and queer resistances to such moves.

The intersection of religion, culture and gender-based violence (GBV) continues to provoke critical debates in feminist scholarship and activism. Although substantial steps are noticeable in terms of addressing numerous forms of violence against women, religion and culture in the African context continue to promulgate harmful practices. Chika Unigwe’s novel, The Middle Daughter, highlights a world where religion, GBV, social norms, rape myths, silence and agency intersect, shaping women’s lived experiences. Nani, the protagonist, overwhelmed by the loss of her sister and father merely 2 years apart, is lured by a preacher – a wolf in sheep’s clothing – who shoves her into an abusive marriage. Raped but determined to keep the assault under the tongue, Nani further drifts away from her family, friends and community. Imprisoned and battered, yet, Nani’s silent resilience emerges – a quiet but radical strength that defies religio-sociocultural norms. This study is a review of African feminism in eradicating GBV. It discusses how Unigwe’s radical feminist lens unveils the competing female strength and the limits of silence as a form of women’s agency, thereby critiquing the dominant ‘soft’ African feminist approaches.Contribution: This study adopts a radical feminist theory to critique the ‘soft’ African feminisms which fail to serve women facing the intersectional forces of religion, culture and GBV. It argues that feminist activism in Africa has been going on for a lengthy period, yet the double standards embedded in religio-sociocultural beliefs and practices sustain women’s oppression.

Feminist movements assume a social, cultural, and political position, characterized by their heterogeneity, representing the diversity present in humanity. Within this plurality, Islamic feminisms are movements that aim to find in the Muslim community a space that can be shared between men and women in an ideal of equality, both in the public and private spheres. On the other hand, within the concerns of feminisms, the media took on one of the central issues. At the confluence between feminisms and the representation of women in the media, this study aimed to investigate the representation of Muslim women in the Portuguese press. To this end, informative pieces were collected from the Portuguese newspapers Observador and Público, methodologically using Critical Thematic Analysis, as stated by Brandi Lawless and Yea-Wen Chen (2019). The results showed that five critical themes stood out in the analysis: clothing, sport, fashion, migration, and gender issues. The critical theme that stood out most from the data analyzed was that relating to Muslim clothing, with this issue still being seen in the Western world as a form of oppression of women. Finally, it should be noted thatnews content focused mainly on the international context, meaning the media continues to perpetuate ignorance regarding the reality of Muslim women residing in Portugal.

This essay recognizes that representations of the ‘Muslim woman’ as the Othered ‘object’ of the ‘Western’ gaze and the domesticated ‘object’ which the Islamic apologists strive hard to defend, are both constructions and false antitheses of each other. It seeks not the ‘truth’ regarding the Muslim women in the world of social reality but to examine how various representations of the women are constructed and to what effects and consequences these representations are mobilized. The essay proceeds in three stages. The first stage shows how the patriarchy mobilizes the Qur’an and the Hadith in order to construct the woman as the negative, the inessential and the abnormal of the man so as to exert complete subordination over her. However, the very act of attempting to mute the woman in Islam is the most strident proof that she is engaged in resistance against patriarchal control and the degree of resistance must be judged by the degree of patriarchal control. The second stage demonstrates how patriarchy operates in colonial and neo‐imperial landscape: it legitimizes the appropriation of Muslim woman ‘possessed’ by the Other (as exemplified by the orientalist seduction fantasy in William Dalrymple’s The White Mughals), but, haunted by the fear of rape and anxieties regarding the sexuality of the White woman possessed by the Self, it attempts to maintain strict control over her (as in the cases of Miss Wheeler in the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 and Private Jessica Lynch in the Iraq War). This struggle over the feminine body is perfectly in line with Islam’s hyper‐anxiousness to hide the female body and rigorously ensure monopolic possession over her. The third stage shows how Taslima Nasreen, a late‐20th century feminist from Bangladesh, speaks the unspoken and thereby attempts to subvert the normative representation of the muted women in her autobiographical novella, entitled Āmār Meyebelā. In thus examining the representations of the Muslim women, this essay seeks an alternative ‘third space of enunciation’ and takes a distinct political stand located outside of the axis of the dichotomy of the ‘Western’ gaze and the construction of the Islamic theologians.

Monumental dispersals caused by the phenomenon of migration greatly affect the identities of people. Much like the process of globalization, migration is highly sexualized and gendered. To this extent, it is necessary to centralize women and their peculiar experiences in migration discourses and theories. Beyond the usual focus on the economics, politics and sociology of migration, which at any rate do not often adequately address gender-specific migratory experiences; this study takes a literary route that considers the fictional representations of migrant women in two of the novels of Chika Unigwe: The Phoenix (2005) and On Black Sisters’ Street (2008). The focus here is to underscore the validity and significance of gender as an imperative analytical premise in contemporary literary debates particularly by African migrants. In demonstrating how the inflections of gender portend different outcomes for men and women, the study significantly uncovers how the woman’s body is simultaneously the site of physical and symbolic migration. The essay traces the movement in transition and the impact of these and new environment on the bodies of female migrants and how the embodied motifs of migration ultimately alter the identities and realities of migrant African women in particular. In all, the essay hopes to expand some of the current theorizations on the new directions in the development of the fictional representations of Nigerian women as well as to contextualize the role of the emigre author in these developments.

Defining a world beyond cultural, ethnic and religious barriers demands a stream of constant discourse and deliberation in sphere between different groups. The underlying idea here is that deliberation and discourse produces an association between groups of difference through public argument and reasoning among equal citizens. The goal is to produce a deliberative process and discourse ethics in which the unforced force of better argument prevails. The intentions are noble: to acknowledge and pay attention to opinions of all members in a pluralized sphere with hope of creating a society and world in which we can share our values beyond cultural, ethnic and religious barriers. In this effort, recognition of 'Other' viewed through politics of difference, has emerged to challenge traditional notions of participation and citizenship. This paper will examine these themes in depth. In first section, it will introduce a theoretical framework for understanding and analyzing effectiveness of deliberation and discourse ethics in a pluralized sphere. The attention in second section will focus on clarifying confusion between politics of identity and difference; and examine notion of difference within boundaries of a social perspective. The final section will seek to explore extent to which conceptions of deliberative democracy is compatible with politics of difference and viability of difference as a discourse and deliberative resource.

Re-Writing Suburbia

This thesis uses ideas of the male gaze, as defined in the feminist film theory of Laura Mulvey, and dance theory to explore the representation of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. The male gaze theory was coined by Mulvey in her 1975 essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in which she focused on the various situations where females are asymmetrically and unequally portrayed in film. Erin Brannigan’s dance theory, as used here, focuses on the communicative, emotional, physical and artistic aspects of the medium of dance in film as a forum for human interaction and expression within specific oeuvres. The interrelationship of film and dance theories is paramount to this study as these theories help to identify and understand the representation of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. This thesis argues that the correlation between the male gaze theory and dance theories provides a significant strategy for highlighting the portrayal of women and the use of dance in Kuwaiti cinema. This thesis consists of a written and a practice component. The first acts as a guide to the latter. The written component maps the historical background of Kuwaiti cinema in relation to the representation of women and their dances. It also offers an outline of the feminist film and dance theories of Mulvey and Brannigan that I have used with the aim of investigating how women are represented and how dance by women functions in Kuwaiti cinema. The practical component is a documentary film about dance in Kuwaiti cinema. The film comprises archives, commentary and interviews that state the point of view of the interviewees as they discuss the reality of female representation and dance in Kuwaiti cinema. Furthermore, the documentary also establishes how Kuwaiti film censorship policy affects these elements. The argument discussed in this thesis is that the Kuwaiti films analysed here deploy the male gaze, as defined by Laura Mulvey and other feminist film theorists, but, because of the strict film censorship policy in Kuwait and the country’s traditional and religious outlook, this male gaze has been adjusted to historically specific parameters so as to ensure that the representation of women and dance in Kuwaiti cinema is appropriate to Islamic culture and the customs and traditions of Kuwaiti society.

‘Sort of part of the women’s movement. but different'

Letter from the Editors Robert Chiles, Devin R. Lander, Jennifer Lemak, and Aaron Noble New York State has always played a central role in American history. The pages of this journal are filled with New Yorkers whose creations and concepts, innovations, activism—and at times, errors—have changed the world. In fact, it was here in the Empire State that the women's rights movement was born in Seneca Falls in 1848. This year marks the centennial anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." Historians recognize that this proved a hollow promise, as many African American women (and men) would not have the real opportunity to vote until passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. However, the Nineteenth Amendment was a fundamental step in the right direction, and it would not have happened without New York. Voter approval of the New York State women's suffrage referendum in 1917 was the national movement's first electoral win east of the Mississippi River. At a moment when the Empire State's political influence was approaching its zenith—including forty-three seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and forty-five electoral college votes—the New York suffrage victory semaphored the approaching national triumph; and beginning in August 1920, women's suffrage was constitutionally guaranteed. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the planned celebrations in honor of the suffrage centennial have been curtailed or cancelled. However, by the time you receive this issue there will be a new statue in Central Park honoring women's rights pioneers Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth—New Yorkers all. This is the first statue in the park to depict real women. Other statues are in the works elsewhere in the state memorializing Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (Brooklyn), as well as one in Seneca Falls depicting Sojourner Truth, Quaker and early activist Marth Coffin Wright, a Seneca Woman (Laura Cornelius Kellogg), and the abolitionist and women's rights activist Harriet Tubman. At a moment of intense public debate about statues and historical memory, the unveiling of these monuments is a crucial step toward a more realistic presentation of our state's past, for even in 2020, women's representation in history still lags far behind that of men. [End Page vi] In honor of the suffrage centennial, this issue of New York History celebrates new historical research about the women's movement produced by women historians. Susan Goodier's article chronicles the African American activist Louisa Jacobs and the challenge of racism within the women's movement. Karen Pastorello's article discusses the variety of ways religion was used in the New York women's suffrage movement. Shellie Clark's article investigates gender and marriage roles in the nineteenth century through the lives of New Yorkers William Henry and Frances Seward. Lastly, our features (Artifact NY, Community NY, and Teach NY) all reveal dynamic ways the suffrage movement's history is being presented to the public throughout the Empire State. As we celebrate the long struggle of women's suffrage in New York State and across the nation, let us not forget the most important gift these women and men bestowed upon us—the right to vote. Be sure to exercise this right in November. Excelsior! The Editors [End Page vii] Copyright © 2020–2021 New York History

The representation of women in a political system is a good test of its claims to democracy. The claims that women make for representation are claims for their citizenship and at the heart of their engagement with politics. Political representation is therefore a fundamental feminist concern, although its importance has not always been acknowledged. The women's liberation movements that began in the 1970s were, in many countries, ambivalent about formal political representation. However, by the end of the twentieth century women's movements were active to secure equality of representation throughout the world. From the moment that women's movements were making demands on the state the issue of their political representation was in play. Whilst suffrage campaigns were explicit movements for political participation and representation, campaigns over rights to education, to paid work, to equal pay, to personal dignity and security, to sexual autonomy were also in part about the inclusion of women's interests in policy-making. Later movements for representation in legislatures and assemblies were movements for presence that challenged political arrangements and sought to insert women's interests into policy-making by ensuring they were amongst the policy-makers. The connection between agenda status for women's interests and the claim for equal political representation continues. Since the nineteenth century women's movement activists have demanded state action on a range of issues that includes anti-discrimination policies, anti-violence policies, reproductive rights, childcare and political equality.

1. Introduction: Women's Movements from the Asian Perspective Mina Roces 2. Feminism and the Women's Movement in the World's Largest Islamic Nation Sue Blackburn 3. Rethinking 'the Filipino Woman': A Century of Women's Activism in the Philippines Mina Roces 4. Chinese Feminism in a Transnational Frame: Between Internationalism and Xenophobia Louise Edwards 5. Transnational Networks and Localized Campaigns: The Women's Movement in Singapore Lenore Lyons 6. Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Feminisms in Twentieth Century Japan Barbara Molony 7. Feminism, Buddhism and Transnational Women's Movements in Thailand Monica Lindberg Falk 8. Following the Trail of the Fairy-Bird: The Search for a Uniquely Vietnamese Women's Movement Alessandra Chiricosta 9. The Hong Kong Women's Movement: Towards a Politics of Difference and Diversity Adelyn Lim 10. Military Rule, Religious Fundamentalism, Women Empowerment and Feminism in Pakistan Andrea Fleschenberg 11. Mapping a Hundred Years of Activism: Women's Movements in Korea Seung-kyung Kim and Kyounghee Kim 12. 'Riding a Buffalo Across a Muddy Field': Heuristic Approaches to Feminism in Cambodia Trudy Jacobsen 13. Rights Talk and the Feminist Movement in India Sumi Madhok