Feminine Position Research Articles

Gender Roles, Suicidal Ideation, and Self-Harming in Young Adults

This study investigates whether positive and negative conventional gender roles relate to suicidal ideation and self-harming in different ways among young adults. Participants completed an online survey about previous self-harm, recent suicidal ideation, and positive and negative aspects of conventional masculinity and femininity. Logistic regression analyses showed that negative femininity positively predicted self-harm and recent suicidal ideation status. Positive femininity was unrelated. Positive masculinity was negatively related to suicidal ideation and self-harming while negative masculinity was negatively related to self-harming only. The findings suggest that it is not the conventional feminine gender role per se that is associated with suicidality but specific negatively evaluated aspects. Conceptualizing gender as a multivariate construct may be useful in the gender socialization theory of suicidal behavior.

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns by Daniella Kostroun (review)

Reviewed by: Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns by Daniella Kostroun Sybil M. Jack Kostroun, Daniella , Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011; hardback; pp. xiii, 273; R.R.P. £55.00; ISBN 9781107000452. This is a book about words - ambiguous words, weasel words, brilliantly parodied in Blaise Pascal's Provincial Letters - words that underlay one of the most bitter and obscure religious struggles in seventeenth-century France, a struggle that was never what it seemed and that, in the end, gave no one the victory. Royal demands for unreserved acceptance of an imposed formulary - demands that curiously parallel similar demands in Britain at the same time -raised issues of conscience and obedience that underlay much of the intellectual and political development of the country in the hundred years before the Revolution and provided the legitimation for resistance to absolute authority. The theological issues had a long history. They had come up since the early Fathers in various forms and were, effectively, logically insoluble. Whether the fortunately dead Cornelius Jansen had ever promulgated the heresies attributed to him was an issue of fact that created a separate problem. But why did a convent of nuns, a modestly well-endowed convent but only one among hundreds in France, become the flashpoint of the struggle? Much has already been written on this subject and Daniella Kostroun's purpose is not to reassess some of the more classical claims. Readers will look in vain for any discussion of the leadership role in reform the convent may have had in the early part of the century or the importance of the petites écoles in the later period. They may also find few references to the religious inspiration of the nuns and the distinction between their reformed Rule and the more participatory life of Orders who undertook care for the wider community under the inspiration of St Vincent de Paul. Kostroun, after a brief genuflection towards the sociological context of the rising noblesse de robe, is primarily concerned to explain how, without making claim to theological understanding, the women who led the convent, from Angelique and Agnes Arnauld onwards, could present themselves as true [End Page 263] and orthodox servants of God and the Church 'using the figurative language of pious example' (p. 244). In true Biblical tradition, any setback could be accepted as a discipline sent by God to try their faith. Luckily, the material available is enormous and she painstakingly recounts the way in which, with some assistance from prominent men like Antoine Arnauld, they were able to exploit the feminine positions acceptable during the period to maintain their own independence. Kostroun also demonstrates their ability to use all the loopholes and special considerations available to stall Louis XIV's attempts to close them down. It provides excellent evidence - if more is needed - that bureaucratic complexity was alive and well four hundred years ago. The tedious and complex diplomatic and international context that influenced Louis's tortuous path are set out with considerable clarity, as are his struggles with his own bishops both Gallican and Ultramontane. The nuns, as they pick their way through this field full of calthrops, call on patrons like the queen of Poland for moral and practical assistance, smuggle written material out of the convent, and keep detailed journals as evidence of their lives and difficulties. Some of the most telling passages are those that show how different nuns, faced with a one-on-one meeting with Péréfixe, Archbishop of Paris, their ultimate superior, handled his mixture of blandishments and threats and maintained their position of equality before God. In general, Kostroun concentrates on the leaders of the community - and although the triennial election of abbess was a key point in their programme it is noticeable that reelection was the common practice - and the exhortations they delivered to those beneath them suggests that the congregation did not always share their commitment. In her conclusion, Kostroun argues that these women are part of a feminist movement in seventeen-century France. Using the language of agency and discourse and following Barbara Diefendorf, she proposes...

Mulher, semblante e corpo: entre o empuxo à mulher na psicose e o sintoma da coqueteria histérica

Lacan situates the concept of semblance on the line that goes from the symbolic to the real, gateway to his last theoretical elaboration devoted to the clinic of knots. Departing in pursuit of the real, the symbolic finds the semblance, finds the being and fails for not recognizing that failure. The case which I called “Regina” illustrates this failure: the subject in the quest for making oneself exist as a woman in a sexual relationship that does not exist, finds in her partner the abyss of his own lack-of-being. Despite the profusion of phenomena that chop her body, Regina is a neurotic subject. The case allows us to observe the distinction between the psychotic feminization with the “push towards woman” and the feminine position, which for this subject, presents itself as the hysterical coquetry to the extent that in neurosis the feminine falls into the not-all phallicto the extent that in neurosis the feminine falls into the not-all phallic.

Rescuing Masculinity: Captivity, Rescue and Gender in American War Narratives

A traditional way to persuade young American people they should go to war is to promise them war produces conditions in which they will behave heroically. This tack has been especially effective with young American men, who often learn to equate heroics with masculinity, ostensibly a single, immutable state of power and control that once achieved cannot be altered, and one that occurs in male bodies exclusively. As reflected in many popular American war narratives of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, instead of war's bolstering and confirming masculinity, what can be observed are repeated instances of males attempting to perform this purportedly stable gender condition and, instead of exhibiting traditional forms of masculinity, the men manifest traditional femininity, of being out of control and in need of help. This paradox is especially evident in the trope of captivity and rescue, when in trying to perform heroic masculinity men make decisions that lead them into forms of captivity and subsequently the least powerful and in control feminine position of having to be rescued. As a result, this trope challenges traditional American masculinity and the persuasive tack used to lure young people into the American military, not only in condemning as foolhardy the John Wayne efforts of those requiring rescue, but also in blurring traditional distinctions between male rescuers and female rescued. Because the captivity and rescue trope reveals how the urgency to perform masculinity ironically can result in the performance of femininity, it clarifies the precarious and mutable nature of masculinity even under war conditions that, according to the truism, are supposed to convert a (feminine) boy into a (masculine) man. While the repercussions of this situation? of being promised a masculinizing condition and finding oneself in its opposite? can be dire enough for the physical, mental and emotional well-being of the individual, the presence of the trope indicates how such masculinist thinking and its repercussions are also dangerously manifested in war narratives at the national and strategic levels. The notion that war is a gateway, if not the gateway, to masculinity normalizes and even makes seem necessary a nation's using combat to resolve its conflicts. Given these conditions, war can appear to be the only and most natural solution. In a discussion about captivity and rescue during combat it might seem crucial to analyze recent films like Blackhawk Down (2001) or Rescue Dawn (2006). Clearly, one might reason, these films, both based on actual events first depicted in written texts, face head-on the issue of masculine gender when male combatants are captured and require rescue. Were there time or space, one might invest in such analysis of the male soldiers in Blackhawk Down who arrogantly enter combat in Somalia with insufficient weapons, plans, and supplies but are armed heavily with militaristic bravado and a firm belief in their masculine ability to get some. One might also explore the depiction in Rescue Dawn of US Navy pilot Dieter Dengler's persistent and finally successful efforts in 1965 to free himself from his captors after having been shot down over Laos. These texts and others like them, however, are concerned with explicit cases of captivity and rescue, thus making the situations they depict seem aberrant, as isolated and atypical cases of immutable masculinity gone awry. What is more compelling instead is how this trope is quietly and unobtrusively embedded in texts that are not explicitly concerned with captivity and rescue, that do not represent as abnormal or crazy males trying to perform masculinity in combat, that try to normalize as masculine a broad range of gender behaviors. Those texts and scenes that gender critics have overlooked as constructing masculinity are more interesting to explore, as is how this trope can be used to elucidate the rhetorics of war used in various genres and at various discursive levels. …

Cross-Generational Gender Constructions. Women, Teenagers and Technology

Despite the supposed inroads of feminism, gender equality and new ‘democratic’ means of technological communication, adult women and teenage girls in the UK continue to emphasise what Valerie Walkerdine has termed the ‘habitual “feminine” position of incompetence’ (2006, 526). This article draws on two complimentary research projects in order to investigate the cross-generational gender constructions women and teenagers articulate. Drawing on Negra's notion of a ‘cover story’ (2009, 44), this article suggests that we can read the claims and practices of the women and teenagers in terms of how they frame new ideologies of femininity. Further, the continual recourse to an essential feminine position of exclusion is detrimentally shaping not only technological use, but also the wider operationalization of gender in public and private arenas. Focussing specifically on the female populations of the research projects, we demonstrate how gender continues to emerge and be produced by women and girls in negotiated, but highly problematic ways. Rather than considering gender as a determining force, it emerges here as a carefully constructed tool for engagement, and as a distancing device facilitating a claim of, and towards, disinterest. The two projects suggest implications for future mediations and relations with new media technology; they also suggest that across generations, women are detrimentally fixing and restricting potential and actual performances of gender through the evocation of a more traditional femininity.

Psychological Problems Derived from Mastectomy: A Qualitative Study

Advances in treatment of breast cancer have not avoided using mastectomy in all cases, and when this happens, we are dealing with a woman who is suffering from psychological problems. In order to study this issue we have carried out a research with the collaboration of The Andalusian Association of Women with Mastectomies (AMAMA) in Seville, which provided us with a sample of 46 mastectomized women. The objective of this study is to analyze in depth the psychological reaction of women to mastectomy through its different stages from diagnosis to surgical treatment. We chose a cualitative method so as to explore the subjective components of psicologycal respons. As a result, we found in studied women: (a) The “fracture” of the “corporal imaginary” related to the disappearance of a valuable organ, linked to the feeling of loss of personal attractiveness, low self-esteem and avoidance of social relationships. (b) The problem with “femininity” has been linked to the issue of “desirability”, something innate in the “feminine position”. (c) Many of them keep in mind the idea of mutilation, as a “hole” which is impossible to integrate. (d) Finally, we demonstrate how certain features of personality made them especially vulnerable to the explained phenomena.

Les scarifications comme après-coup du féminin. Les vicissitudes d’un masochisme bien mal tempéré

They establish an access to the psychic functioning and offer a stage in which spread multiple psychopathological configurations. Self-cutting begin in the following of the puberty revealing the traumatic dimension of the feminine and its integration as a deferred action. The mobilization of the masochisms dynamic can be carrier of a trophic dimension through the feminine masochism which allows an access to a feminine position. On the contrary the masochism can lethalized coming along with a refusal of the feminine, either still, get organized in a perverse development, the search for pain and for bleeding becoming a modality of enjoyment and the expression of a masquerade of the femininity.

The Postfeminist User

This paper is part of a preliminary investigation toward a postfeminist analysis of “the user.” It critically examines the pervasive liberatory rhetoric of interactivity through situating it within a widespread cultural context also rife with liberatory rhetoric: postfeminism. Two media properties, heavily marketed for interactivity, are examined: the first three films of the Final Destination film series and the reality television program Big Brother (US). I situate each as postfeminist texts, and then analyze their interactivity through this lens, demonstrating the utility of applying postfeminism to technology study. Following the feminist method of analyzing popular texts as modes of understanding feminine ideals, thereby articulating contours of a feminine subject position, I argue that analyses of postfeminist culture are productive broadly applied to cultural products, such as interactive media, augmenting feminist media theory. To understand ideals of technological usership, one must understand the culture in which they are embedded. Therefore, articulating the contours of the user as a subject position benefits from understanding postfeminist cultural sensibilities. Through this analysis, I describe the user, contrary to much new media theorizing, as exhibiting an illusory rhetoric of agency, hyperembodiment suffused with temporality and mobility, and an interactivity better understood as ongoing assessment and adjustment.

Gender Roles in Latina/os and Whites: The Influence of Sex, Ethnicity, Language and Nativity

This study demonstrates that ethnicity, gender, language, and nativity affect Latina/os’ and whites’ attitudes about gender roles. Participants in the study completed a priming task (word sorting) in either English or Spanish. They completed a questionnaire packet measuring sex roles and attitudes about gender roles. A three-way interaction was found between gender, ethnicity, and primed language, such that white women endorse the most liberal views, followed closely by Latina women and then white men. These three groups all endorsed significantly more liberal views in the Spanish language condition than in the English language condition. The Latino males endorsed the most traditional views across both conditions. Main effects were also found for sex and primed language on one’s own attitudes about gender roles: Women and those primed with Spanish endorsed more liberal attitudes about gender roles than men and those primed with English, respectively. In addition, in each subgroup, participants reported less traditional views for themselves than they reported for their ethnic groups. Ethnicity predicted only Affective (positive) Femininity on the Sex Role Inventory, and parent’s nation of birth also predicted some subscales (Assertive Masculinity, Aggressive Masculinity, and Affective Femininity). In addition, whether a participant’s mother worked outside the home is the only item that predicted the Submissive Femininity/marianismo subscale.

Gender B(L)Ending and Elegiac Composition: A Queer Reading of Tibullus 1.8

Tibullus 1.8 offers a prime example of the theatrical manner in which characters are arranged onto the elegiac stage. The puer Marathus adorns himself in front of a mirror, as if he were a courtesan in Roman comedy, in the hopes of attracting an unresponsive girl named Pholoe. He arranges his locks in various modes, puts on make-up, gets a manicure, and wears tight-laced shoes (1.8.9-14). Nikoloutsos (2010) has interpreted this account as an allegory for the practice of writing elegy in late 1st-century-B.C.E. Rome. Yet, despite this interesting metapoetic reading, the significance of Marathus’ transvestism for the construction of gender in Tibullus Book One as a whole has been left unexplored. Borrowing Butler’s concept of drag as a practice that exposes the imitative nature of gender and challenges established definitions of man and woman as polar opposite categories (1990), this paper will argue that in poem 1.8 Tibullus fashions a puer whose body serves as a site for the performative reiteration of gender norms and simultaneously undercuts the active/passive binarism. Marathus’ oscillation between masculine and feminine positions, I shall further argue, bears resemblance to, and thus can shed more light on, the Tibullan narrator’s own gender fluidity and his failure to adhere to the hegemonic model of virtus. Marathus’ cultus demonstrates that gender is, as Butler has put it, “a stylized repetition of acts” (1940: 140), a practice that requires that a set of certain rules be followed or ‘cited’ visually and behaviorally. However, in Marathus’ case the participation in this citational process results in the production of a queer (= strange, odd, ambiguous, eccentric) body. Marathus strives to change his sexual identity and become the amator of Pholoe by paradoxically enhancing his androgynous appeal as a puer delicatus. Although this strategy of approaching the opposite sex makes no sense at the erotic level - indeed, Pholoe rejects Marathus (1.8.49-50) - it does at the poetic level. Tib. 1.8, I shall argue, produces an interesting blending of genre and gender. Marathus is portrayed as tener (1.8.51), a term used by Tibullus in Book One to refer to the delicacy and refinement of his art (Nikoloutsos 2007). Pholoe, on the other hand, is described as dura (1.8.50), a pejorative term that Latin elegists use to refer to epic poetry (e.g., Cairns 1984, Kennedy 1993, Keith 1994, Wyke 2002, Miller 2004). Pursuing the metapoetic connotations behind Pholoe’s construction further, I shall consider various passages (Hor. Carm. 1.33-6-7, 2.5.17, Stat. Silv. 2.3.10), which emphasize the duritia of Pholoe and link her with the epic, heroic world.Building on James’ observation that Marathus embodies features of the elegiac poet-lover (2003), I shall argue that the gender indeterminacy of the boy calls attention to the queerness of the Tibullan narrator best illustrated in 1.2, 1.3, and 1.5. Tibullan poetry, I shall conclude, renders puer and vir not as antithetical, but as homologous categories.

The Pearl of Great Price

The sandplay process of Anna Rose is unusual in that her seven trays, created over seven years— while illustrative of an individuation process—consist mostly of carefully sculpted sand, with just a single figure visible in the first and last trays. As is often true of clients suffering severe early childhood trauma, the trays appear barren and stark. However, they reveal a deep engagement with the unconscious, highlight her struggle with opposites, and with an astonishingly dynamic cohesiveness, progress toward the containment and safety of the positive feminine and culminate in the discovery of the Pearl of Great Price.

Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song. (Gallica, 10) by Helen Dell

1136 Reviews main alteration is to adopt modern paragraphing, which facilitates easy reading, especially of the epic Gui, which runs to 12,920 lines. Weiss's translation is flowing and colourful, and supported by comprehensive footnotes which defend her choice ofwords, draw attention to previous editorial corrections, and point out manuscript variants. She takes pains to avoid any am biguity ofmeaning, as in her translation of Ta mer de Bretaine' in line 750 as 'the Breton coast\ combining both nuances of the original phrase. In sum, this is an excellent scholarly edition of both texts,which it is to be hoped will contribute to a renewed critical interest in insular romance. Queen's University Belfast Mariana Neilly Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvere Song. By Helen Dell. (Gallica, 10) Cambridge: Brewer. 2008. x+227 pp. ?50. ISBN 978-1-84384-164-7. Helen Dell's study focuses on issues thathave been explored indepth in troubadour scholarship but, as of yet,mostly neglected with regard to theNorthern French lyric tradition. Her work aims in part, therefore, to counteract criticism which has privileged not only the Southern poetry, but also the 'high-style' chanson over the pastourelle and the chanson defemme. Dell adopts a psychoanalytic line of enquiry to support her argument, a primarily Lacanian reading of how genre affects the expression of desire by both masculine- and feminine-voiced poets. Dell begins by setting out her 'kaleidoscopic methodology' (p. 20), consisting of three sets of paired chapters that 'follow each other on the basis of difference' (ibid.). Thus her firstchapter on masculinity in trouvere lyric is followed by one on femininity in the system, her third chapter on masculine desire followed by one on feminine desire, and her fifthchapter on 'chronotopic' relations to feminine desire followed by an investigation of itsapplication tomasculine desire. The layout seeks to enable 'a turning of the kaleidoscope for each chapter so that the relations between the terms shake down into a different pattern with different differences emerging (ibid.). The first two chapters on the song system successfully introduce the complex ities of categorizing the feminine voice in trouvere lyric, showing how genre and gender are irrefutably linked, the subjugated feminine position being associated with the low-register chanson defemme. Dell's decision to focus solely on feminite textuelle rather than attempting to establish the identity of the 'female' poet, as some trobairitz scholarship has done, shows her dedication to an essentially the oretical approach. In certain places, however, it is hard for her to strike the right balance between psychoanalytic interpretation and close reading. Her analysis of themutable feminine voice is, for example, accompanied by a rather protracted discussion ofAristotle, Lacan, and JudithButler,which somewhat overshadows her generally perceptive interpretation of the trouverematerial. The subsequent chapters on desire centre on the dichotomy between the high style chanson and the low-style pastourelle, and on feminine desire as expressed in the chanson d'ami. Dell's treatment of the latter is instructive, challenging critical MLR, 104.4, 2009 1137 neglect of the feminine expression of reciprocal desire in trouvere lyric.However, the resulting equality between desirer and desired that this exposes simultaneously manages tounravel her Lacanian methodology. Dell struggles tofit thisdiscrepancy into her overall argument, describing reciprocal desire as a bland, vanilla configu ration' (p. 99) that devalorizes the chanson cVami through lack of conflict, a theme which ostensibly now enters the discussion in order to provide an answer to the difficultquestion Dell has posed herself. It is inher study of the chronotopes' of desire?a termborrowed fromBakhtin? thatDell's line of enquiry becomes harder to follow. The last of the paired chapters explore masculine and feminine relations to space and time and how these affect and inform expressions of desire. Her analysis of the feminine-voiced poetry in cludes a lengthydiscussion of Freud's case studyDora, in an attempt to provide a comparison with the position of the female trouvere. In Chapter 6Dell's treatment of 'masculine space-times' inexplicably includes a scientific formula to calculate speed in the poetry (given as time divided by distance travelled), describing the male-voiced poet as one whose 'temporal versatility ismirrored in his spatial mo bility (emblematized...

REDESIGNING FEMININITY:MISS MARJORIBANKS'S DRAWING-ROOM OF OPPORTUNITY

Margaret Oliphant's work has of late received renewedattention for her portrayal of heroines who struggle against the confines of proper middle-class femininity – who are at once sympathetic and yet do not fit the model of the submissive Victorian domestic angel – andMiss Marjoribanks(1866) is no exception. Without fully discounting the Victorian notion that there is a proper place women ought to occupy,Miss Marjoribanksraises complex questions about how that place is defined and limited. Recent scholarly attention to the novel highlights Oliphant's sustained engagement with the issue of how far propriety and custom circumscribe a woman's place. Such examinations, however, fail to address the extent to which Oliphant demonstrates the flexibility of cultural notions of a woman's place by focusing the action ofMiss Marjoribanksalmost entirely on the heroine's creation of a very specific physical place for herself – her drawing-room. ExaminingMiss Marjoribanks's portrayal of how a Victorian woman might capitalize on the centrality of the drawing-room in shaping cultural notions of feminine identity, this essay argues that once Lucilla Marjoribanks has established the drawing-room as a physical and ideological space that will contain her actions, she uses this space and all it represents to expand the boundaries of her cultural place. By focusing specifically on the work its heroine undertakes within her drawing-room and by asserting that a woman's power lies in the possibility for feminine taste to accomplish action, Oliphant's novel, like her heroine, operates within the “prejudices of society” while simultaneously offering a means to exploit those prejudices. This architecturally-motivated re-reading of Oliphant's novel in turn suggests a re-reading of Oliphant's own career. For I would argue that novels operated for Oliphant the way that drawing-rooms do for Lucilla: they provided a culturally-sanctioned place in which to locate herself, and thereby reaffirm her respectable feminine position, even while she undertook projects that challenged Victorian assumptions about gendered identity.

Gender Socialization of Female Adolescents with Scoliosis

Objective. To detect specific features of gender identity and factors determining this specificity in female adolescents with scoliosis. Material and Methods. We examined 50 female adolescents aged 13 to 16 years (mean age 14.8 years) with Grade IIIIV scoliosis which underwent surgical treatment in Novosibirsk NIITO. Examination included clinical interview, observation, psychodiagnostic testing, and projective techniques. Patients were examined preoperatively in two stages. Results. Specific features of the gender identity in female adolescents with scoliosis include distorted emotional-evaluative body image, reduced repertoire of allowable gender behavioral stereotypes, marked dominance of gender representations corresponding to conventional feminine model of sex-role behavior, external reference, and pronounced selfacceptance dependence on external appraisals. Conclusion. Cosmetic defect significantly influences the identity formation in adolescent. One of the most important factors affecting the feminine-type gender attitude formation is a close codependence between female adolescent and her mother translating a passive feminine position as a compensatory mechanism for overcoming of cosmetic appearance defect.

On Philosophical Style

Irigaray and Le Dœuff diagnose the problem of woman and philosophy in terms of love. The differing solutions to the problem can be found in their styles. Irigaray's style is loving and dialogic, transforming the inherent structure of love and reminding us of the traditional feminine position defined by men. Le Dœuff's style is critical and pluralistic and relates to her perception of the feminine way of philosophical writing. These styles take into account the undervaluation of the feminine in the apparently `neutral' practices of philosophizing and surpass the traditional or unreflected notions of the feminine style. Ultimately, the consciously `subjective' styles, with the inherent aims of self-reflectivity and openness for other persons and texts, prove necessary when striving for truth and objectivity. Thus, Le Dœuff and Irigaray question the standard notion of philosophical style as neutral `non-style'.

‘All The Monarchies Of This World Are Going Down The Hill’

The monarchy longed for at the beginning of the Long Restoration period by at least some English-speaking people was not a reinstating of the human kingship, but a very different matter altogether. When Trapnel declared (in The Cry of a Stone) that ‘all the monarchies of this world are going down the hill,’ she defiantly predicted the final end not just of monarchy, but of Cromwellian rule. This essay explores the strategies developed in Trapnel's pamphlets to make it possible for the famished body of the woman prophet to bear a revolutionary message. It shows that Trapnel's divided position – between the public and the private, between associatively feminine positions and resonantly masculine ones – opens up these discursive possibilities at the beginning of the Long Restoration period. Prophets might mask the significance of their own voice, but they could make some very radical points through the person and voice of their God.

Recodifications of academic positions and reiterations of desire: change but continuity in gendered subjectivities

This article argues that the analysis of changes in the social position of women needs to distinguish between levels of social practice and psychic subjectification. The argument draws on Lacan's conception of the relationship between subjectivity, desire and sexual difference to describe gendered aspects of subjectivity embedded within the (re)organisation of social fields. The data is taken from a comparative case study of undergraduate modules in four universities, and the analysis identifies gendered differences in the tutors' pedagogic and disciplinary practice. These differences suggest that while the practice of the female tutors, in different ways, constituted recodifications of existing disciplinary and pedagogic practices, these instances of recodification can simultaneously be interpreted as gendered identifications with an external, feminine position in relation to the dominant structures of the Symbolic Order. Thus, while change may be instituted at the level of practice within specific social fields, at the level of subjectification the recodifications that mark such changes can be read as a reiteration of primary gendered identifications.

Transformational and Transactional Leadership: Association With Attitudes Toward Evidence-Based Practice

Leadership in organizations is important in shaping workers' perceptions, responses to organizational change, and acceptance of innovations, such as evidence-based practices. Transformational leadership inspires and motivates followers, whereas transactional leadership is based more on reinforcement and exchanges. Studies have shown that in youth and family service organizations, mental health providers' attitudes toward adopting an evidence-based practice are associated with organizational context and individual provider differences. The purpose of this study was to expand these findings by examining the association between leadership and mental health providers' attitudes toward adopting evidence-based practice. Participants were 303 public-sector mental health service clinicians and case managers from 49 programs who were providing mental health services to children, adolescents, and their families. Data were gathered on providers' characteristics, attitudes toward evidence-based practices, and perceptions of their supervisors' leadership behaviors. Zero-order correlations and multilevel regression analyses were conducted that controlled for effects of service providers' characteristics. Both transformational and transactional leadership were positively associated with providers' having more positive attitudes toward adoption of evidence-based practice, and transformational leadership was negatively associated with providers' perception of difference between the providers' current practice and evidence-based practice. Mental health service organizations may benefit from improving transformational and transactional supervisory leadership skills in preparation for implementing evidence-based practices.

The Dancing Body without Organs

This article deals with the process of using dance performance as a way of representing feminist research. It aims to document this process through the author's own experiences of choreographing and performing a solo contemporary dance piece that embraced feminist agenda of representing a positive feminine identity. The article derives from Gilles Deleuze's theoretical concept of Body without Organs in an attempt to disread the dancing body and inhabit an alternative molecular femininity. The article concludes that a dance performance has potential to succeed as a research presentation. However, the researcher needs to proceed cautiously by retaining a close connection to the audience's experiences yet assuming a clear theoretical vision.

AngloModern: Painting and Modernity in Britain and the United States (review)

Reviewed by: AngloModern: Painting and Modernity in Britain and the United States Maggie Humm AngloModern: Painting and Modernity in Britain and the United States. Janet Wolff. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 172. $45.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper). A new book of essays by Janet Wolff is always a welcome event. This one was written over a long time scale ("The 'Jewish Mark' in English Painting" is 1993-1994), and four of the six essays are published elsewhere; hence, AngloModern is less a unified argument than a collection of stimulating pieces. Wolff's focus is on the "social coordinates of the production of 'modernism,'" rather than on the dismantling of the canon (6). But her book does add additional and important arguments for re-envisioning constructions of modernism. Wolff's own lens is explicitly gendered as she explores constructions of masculinity and ethnicity, and engagingly clarifies her own class, gender and ethnic locations as a "resident alien" (the title of her 1995 book). The first of the six slim chapters, "Women at the Whitney: 1910-30," describes an exhibition which Wolff was invited to propose to the Whitney (a proposal later abandoned). The invitation encouraged Wolff into detailed reflections about modernist aesthetics and the "complex social networks of friendships, patronage and personal relationships and exhibition histories" (17-8). Wolff's deft handling of a range of information is stimulating; my guess is that she is an inspiring teacher. Chapter two is a case study of the American artist Kathleen McEnery, who exhibited at the key 1913 Armory Show in New York. She was later "rediscovered" and included in the 1987 inaugural exhibition of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC. Wolff situates McEnery in her historical context, interweaving issues of class, gender and geography [End Page 188] to arrive at a nuanced conclusion that "the questioning of aesthetic evaluations is merely raised and not answered by the critical questioning of the canon and its exclusions" (67). I agree with Wolff that re-envisioning has to be a much more complex process than simply one of "rediscovery." During my own visit to the National Museum in Washington, the docent certainly chose to privilege "canoninic" women artists—such as Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun and Mary Cassatt—rather than rethink the terms by which women's art is defined. In chapter three, Wolff revisits her oft-cited work on the invisible flâneuse, and addresses the recent work of Parsons, Nava and Wilson on women's use of public space (omitted in Wolff's earlier revisiting in Resident Alien).1 Wolff proposes that rather than validating hitherto marginalized feminine practices (shopping) as flânerie, we acknowledge the city's more indeterminate discourses. Although this is a sophisticated approach, if Wolff had consulted working class women's autobiographies she might have favored a more positive feminine geography of modernism.2 Chapter four attempts the conceptually difficult task of producing a non-essentialist concept of the feminine through an examination of Simmel and Benjamin and an excellent reading of the work of Gwen John. Other fruitful dialogues could take place with feminist philosophers of "femininity"—see for example Sandra Bartky's attack on the centring of women's bodies in "normative" femininity (a key theme for art historians) and Biddy Martin's work on lesbian performativity, a discussion replete with possibilities for any rethinking of the gaze.3 The final chapters focus on the English artist Mark Gertler, Bloomsbury and discourses of the Jew as Other in modernity. Wolff claims that Bloomsbury's decorative art shows that the "influence of the avant-garde movements elsewhere in Europe was nonexistent here"; I find this comment odd, given that Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant worked with the most technically innovative textile designer, Allan Walton, in the 1930s, and that Bell's earlier (1913) Painted Omega Screen (Tents and Figures) reflects the work of several French artists including Derain. While it might be true, as Wolff claims, that Bloomsbury's "friendship networks worked on a system of patronage and brokerage" it is worth remembering that one obvious reason for Bloomsbury solidarities was to protect its many gay, bi-sexual and pacifist...