Wave Feminism Research Articles

Secular and Islamic Iranian Feminism: Goals and Achievements


 The Iranian feminist movement came to express its rejection of the reality based on male discrimination and the treatment of women as second-class citizens. Iranian feminism was influenced by the first Western feminist wave that called for equality between the sexes, the right to work and education, and the issues of hijab and veils, which were considered among the basic issues of Iranian feminism during the Shah’s era, especially after he followed the Westernization regime. It was natural for Iranian feminism in that era to come up with goals, proposals, and practices similar to Western liberal feminism. However, after the establishment of the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979, the scales shifted due to the impact of the revolution, so that Iranian feminism would be affected by its reality, to take the form of traditional and reformist Islamic feminism, approaching the demands of Western movements in the issue of political rights in particular, but rejecting the Shah’s regime and the issues it raised concerning women and the derogation of their rights, especially after the veil was banned in public places, in addition to issues of women’s political and social rights. Therefore, the goals and achievements of the two movements differed due to their influence on internal and external variables. Accordingly, our study represents a comparison of the eras of two different regimes: a secular one and an Islamic one, which was reflected in the nature, forms, goals, and achievements of Iranian feminism.
 

#WomanWorld Post-Feminism?

#WomanWorld is an instagram comic series created by @aminder_d with the sci-fi comedy genre by presenting the lives of a group of women who struggle for their survival in the post-extinction world of men. The #WomanWorld comic presents a series of characters who represent freedom of expression by carrying the feminist concept from the first wave to the post-feminist phase. With technology and social media networks, as well as the fourth wave feminism movement has been started, this study examines the extent of the content of feminism and post-feminism in this comic. Netnography and Textual Analysis are a method to know which one is Feminism and Post-feminism contained in this comic. This article shows how the storyline and characters in comics represent the concept of first to third wave feminism. By using post-feminism conceptual dialogue, this comic reverses its axis by creating an understanding that the desired world of women has been created, women are no longer struggling to get choices of life.

할리우드 영화의 여성 연대에 관한 연구

This paper analyzed how female solidarity is represented in Hollywood films and its characteristics. Three classifications of Conventional Solidarity, Affectional Solidarity, and Reflective Solidarity suggested by Jodi Dean are used as theoretical frameworks in order to explain this. Before the fourth wave feminism, female characters were often portrayed as holding each other in check and keeping their distance from others. However, since 2011, when the fourth wave feminism began, the relationship between women in movies has been represented differently than before. Women share value norms to accomplish common interests, have conventional solidarity, and sometimes get together in affectional solidarity in which they internally cooperate with each other through mutual consideration and love and they also unite in reflective solidarity that can coexist even in the differences. Solidarity is a driving force that may achieve something; in a male-centered society, female solidarity was regarded as difficult one to be formed however relationships between women are being rebuilt through solidarity.

Türkiye’de Dijital Feminist Aktivizm: Uzun Süredir Beklenen Dördüncü Dalga Feminizm Geldi mi?

Throughout different waves of feminisms, women have called attention to sexist political and social norms across countries. Starting from the first wave feminist demands of suffrage to third wave’s intersectional feminist politics, women activists have struggled to achieve gender equality in different contexts. With an emphasis on intersected identities, fourth wave feminism, also called digital feminism, endeavours to implement third wave’s concepts in the digital space, via blogs, websites, social media platforms. In Turkey, in the second decade of the 2000s, women have started to extensively use social media to combat patriarchy, particularly violence against women and femicide, and to increase communication and solidarity among women in line with the political opportunity structures in the country. Through digital platforms, women stimulate political change by exposing gendered discourses. However, due to government’s increased control on digital spaces, activists’ capacity to alter the social gendered structure has been limited. Nevertheless, digital spaces still have a great potential to work as counterpublics for marginalised groups, such as women.

The 1949 Version of Little Women wears more Feminism Features than the 2019 One

This paper will begin with a discussion of the historical context of the two film adaptations of Little Women and the novel of the same name, as well as their distinct intersections with various phases of feminism's development. Specifically, the Civil War and the suffrage movement supported as the history background for the novel penned by Louisa May. Then, the production history of Mervyn LeRoy's 1949 picture Little Women, which was produced in America soon after the end of World War II and the beginning of the first wave of feminism, will be discussed. Further, the background of the 2019 edition is the condition of the United States in the twenty-first century and the third wave of feminism with the Me Too Movement. Then, analyze at least five scenes from each film in terms of lens language, characters (particularly the two leading characters Amy and Jo in both films), etc to illustrate the thesis of this paper: the 1949 version of Little Women is more feminist than the 2019 adaptation. It is vital to emphasize that the defining characteristic of feminism is a woman's unwavering commitment to her own beliefs and decisions.

Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism and the Media—Contingent curation, archival activism, frictional relations

ABSTRACT Reflecting on the curation of the online exhibition ‘Forms Voices Networks: Feminism and the Media’, this article explores how a ‘contingent’ curatorial practice might enact a decolonial and feminist engagement with history. Discussing archival absences, the use of digital space, and how to represent global feminist histories, the article considers whether curation can resist, and imagine beyond, modernity’s colonial and patriarchal forms of knowledge production. Exploring a strategy of bringing diverse feminist stories into dialogue, it suggests feminist curation may entail creating sites of relation and potentiality, where material encounters can continue to engender routes for imagining history otherwise.

Can an archive be revolutionary?: how to document radical aspirations in a time of dissensus

ABSTRACT Can an archive be revolutionary? To answer this question, I turn to a set of archives and histories of social movements that were driven by women, radicals, and those seeking revolutionary historical changes. Through an argument that moves between scholarly conversations in the history of feminism in the United States and the histories of militant nationalism in India, I consider how archives have influenced histories of social movements. Archives, in their widest forms, should generate historical narratives that are open to revision. These sites for generating dissensus are an urgent necessity in a time of declining democratic and liberatory norms.

“Feminism, Punk Rock, and Subcultural Living”: The Forming of Courtney Love and Hole

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the sources of the anger in the early work of Courtney Love and rock band Hole, which—in contrast to much of today’s mainstream rock, pop, and indie music, which more often draws from singer-songwriter, country, and electronic forms—was inspired by confrontational punk, underground, and post-punk influences. I argue that Hole’s early work, especially debut album Pretty on the Inside, constitutes a coherent protest against the broken promises of the 1960s counterculture and the second wave of feminism. I consider the price paid by Love for playing the “angry woman” and lessons for today’s artists.

Archiving, exhibiting, and curating the history of feminisms in the global twentieth century: an introduction

ABSTRACT Following the ‘archival turn’ of the 1990s and early 2000s, scholars have understood archives as entwined in epistemic hierarchies of power. The study of gender and sexuality, alongside postcolonial approaches were central to this critical shift, advancing methods that both challenged the archive as a fixed entity of historical truth and broadened perceptions of where history is made. Queer and feminist historians have since drawn attention to the archive as a site of subject-formation and radical possibilities. Building on this foundation, this special issue offers fresh perspectives on the intersection of feminism and the archive. Situating feminism as practice, politics, and method, the contributions explore how archival and curatorial practices have shaped the history of feminisms, and how feminist methods have addressed archival lacunae. This introduction discusses the collected essays in the context of the historiographies of archiving, gender, and feminism.

Studying and Teaching Gender-Caste Histories in India: Problems, Possibilities, and Pleasures

Amid a larger context of political and social changes in India, this article reflects on a personal-academic trajectory and the problems, possibilities, and pleasures of teaching and researching histories of gender and caste in modern India at the University of Delhi for more than three decades. As a feminist historian, the author first points to some of the limitations in her early years of teaching courses on gender, where she occluded caste as a category of analysis. However, an examination of the conjunctions between anti-caste thought and gender through a Dalit feminist pedagogical lens led to shifts in her curriculum and academic scholarship. The article goes on to discuss how preparing and teaching courses on gender-caste histories pose many challenges in terms of queries from the university administration, curriculum design, pedagogic practices, and student responses. Classroom spaces are highly politicized in India, with pronounced gender, caste, class, and linguistic identities that often overlap with each other, which has implications for teaching and research. Finally, the article deliberates on the creative possibilities of such courses and pedagogical strategies, as students critique the crafting of mainstream history writing, feel drawn to new theoretical tools and methodologies that rely on different archival registers, and question the erasure of caste as an analytic, in the process also making the classroom a more democratic space.

In Memoriam: Mats Morell

In Memoriam: Mats Morell

A Brief Account of the Founding of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship

Elizabeth Robertson, professor at the University of Glasgow, reflects on the creation of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. Robertson identifies the beginnings of the society with The Medieval Feminist Newsletter, Third Wave Feminism, the renewed interest at universities in theory and feminism, and the need many scholars felt to study women of the Middle Ages. With this account of the society, its work, and the paths of the many people involved in the project, Robertson illustrates how the society remains relevant in our current social and political environment.

Religiosity and Spirituality in Linda Mary Montano’s Anorexia Nervosa

Abstract This paper presents a close-up reading of American artist and ex-member of the Maryknoll Sisters, Linda Mary Montano. Her performance in the video work, Anorexia Nervosa (1981) is analyzed in view of contemporary performance and video art by women artists in the second wave feminism. By positioning the experience of self-starving in the Catholic tradition of holy fasting and asceticism of self-starvation, this paper regards Montano’s video work as a continuation of Catholic women utilizing social agencies. Montano’s own performance in Anorexia Nervosa can be seen as one of many forms of keeping the faith while exercising contemporary art with a mission of disrupting social boundaries and norms. Montano’s understanding of the body as a vehicle of performance art is still resonant with her religiosity of elevating self-starving to a miraculous intervention. Her mundane narrative of the extraordinary supports her view that her life is art; art is life.

“Feminism is the Awareness of the Inequities That Exist Within the Intersections of Identity”: An Interview with Dr. Candice Maier

ABSTRACT PhD student, Jessica Holmes, interviews Dr. Candice Maier about the new wave of feminism and what it means to her. In this interview, Dr. Maier discussed the importance of intersectionality and the focus of feminism turning to not just women’s rights, but equity and justice for all oppressed populations. Dr. Maier discusses the need for ongoing self-reflection as well as a commitment to lifelong learning when it comes to understanding others’ experiences. This includes challenging ourselves as a society to collaborate with one another so we come together to create the change that is needed.

Empowering TNBGE and QTBIPOC Students through Clinical Group Practice in University Settings

Increasing visibility of transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive (TNBGE) people in the United States and in higher education has coincided with a call for more affirming and appropriate mental health services. Group therapy has been connected to positive outcomes for college students, but appears less available to or less popular among TNBGE students. This article will summarize the history of feminist, queer, and trans theories, feminist group therapy, and therapeutic groups for TNBGE people. Recommendations for facilitating TNBGE groups will be presented, drawing from the work of three queer university counseling clinicians with collective experience in facilitating LGBTQ + and exclusively TNBGE groups using queer, trans, and multicultural feminist theories. Considerations for facilitating LGBTQ + groups for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) will also be included, based on relevant literature and clinical experience. Limitations of the authors’ perspectives and recommendations will be outlined, as well as future directions for research and practice.

Embodied Histories of Gender and Generation in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland

‘Embodied Histories of Gender and Generation in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland’ by Dr Shonagh Hill examines a practice-as-research project that offered participants the opportunity to explore their experiences of gender and generation through a somatic movement workshop. Hill developed the workshop with Nicola Curry, the artistic director of Maiden Voyage Dance NI. Restrictive gender norms and violent conflict in Northern Ireland have cultivated a climate of repression that has impeded corporeal movement and expression in myriad ways. The practice-as-research was underpinned by the fundamental assertion of the value of embodied knowledge as a refusal of the silence and shame imposed on feminized bodies and as a means of engaging with the complexity of identity and lived experience. The workshop had two objectives: firstly, to examine the embodied experiences of different generations of ‘those who travel under the sign women’ (Ahmed 2017: 14), and, secondly, to address their relationship to feminism. The workshop’s attention to generational experience is set against a backdrop of sustained media focus on generational tensions articulated through a conflictual binary. Moreover, within the context of Northern Ireland, conflictual binaries serve to divert and stall progressive forces for change, and perpetuate ongoing crisis and collapse. The workshop findings highlight the need for intergenerational and intersectional models that might generate more complex ways of telling feminist histories of Northern Ireland, as well as a broader understanding of the invasive forces that shape embodied histories and of their legacy.

Feminist Histories

This Dialogues takes the 2017–18 exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 as a starting point to discuss Latin American art today, addressing its history, legacy, and contribution to positive social change through the prism of feminism. Seeking to challenge hegemonic readings of the categories of “Latin America” and “feminism” while reinstating the contribution of Latin American women, Latina/Latinx, and Chicana/Chicanx artists to art and critical thought today, the exhibition Radical Women proposed novel ways of displaying art from the region by embracing multiplicity, attending to the particularity of different contexts, and bringing to the fore common threads of critical and creative practice. Building on that premise, these contributions expand on the original exhibition’s time frame and consider the persistence of feminism and its changing status in Latin American art after 1985. They explore recent artistic practices, curatorial projects, and art historical scholarship; reflect on strategies of display, audience engagement, societal concerns, and epistemological premises; and consider different ways of conceptualizing Latin American and feminist identities, legacies, and genealogies today. By doing so, this Dialogues seeks to enrich and diversify our understanding of past and current practices, as well as highlight the intricate connections and resonances that exist between the two. Contributions by curators (Fajardo-Hill, Rjeille), scholars (Fernández, Lamoni), and artists (Antivilo, Motta) span issues in political activism, ecology, technology, education, genealogy, colonization, heritage, and memory. What emerges is a sense of the field’s present concerns and the ways this is shaping the future direction of feminism in Latin American art and art history.

Feminism Emergent: Prospects of NGOs in Pakistan

Feminism is a movement in which people struggle for the rights of women and their better prominence in all domains of life. Women got recognition through waves of feminism around the world in respect of their rights and status. In this regard, non-governmental organizations played a strong role to promote and reinforce feminist approaches that focus on the basic rights of women like education, economic development, legal aid and selfawareness, protection, and political participation. Therefore, the present research main objective is based on the prospects analysis of NGOs in perspective of feminist struggle in Pakistan. This is an e-research based on an analysis of web archives of NGOs working in Pakistan on women concerns. This also involved in-depth interviews with stake holders of these NGOs. Mix method research design was applied to analyze the prospects of 144 registered NGOs from a feminist perspective. Simple random and purposive sampling techniques were used to select samples for quantitative and qualitative data. The research findings showed that NGOs in Pakistan are struggling to accomplish feminism that contributing a great effort to raise the status of women in every field of life. It is needed to present factual understanding and accountability of NGOs in the concern of feminism and women empowerment

Methodology of Literary Criticism Based on the Theory of Feminism

Feminism is an organized movement to defend women's rights, whose roots go back to the Periods of European Enlightenment (Renaissance). Throughout its long history, this movement wanted to overthrow the patriarchal system and eliminate the rule of gender discrimination. Feminism officially began its activity at the end of the 18th century and has gone through a period full of ups and downs since then. The three important waves of this movement are considered to be one of its most important activities, whose basic goals are "preserving the right to vote for women, and emphasizing protest against gender, social and economic differences and inequalities." After the feminism movement, feminist criticism emerged followed the reflection of women's voices and their experiences in literature and started its activities from the second half of the 20th century. The works of famous writers such as “Virginia Woolf” and “Simon de Boir” are eminent examples of this movement. In this article, we have reviewed the methods that can be used to study literary works from the perspective of feminist criticism, as well as the things that a literary critic can do to write a good and interesting critique of a work based on the theory of feminism. The result showcased that Critics who take a feminist approach in criticizing literary texts do not deny the existence of differences between male and female characters in the works. It may be said that the view that women are different from men basically corresponds to patriarchal ideology, but it must be said that the third wave feminists do not deny the existence of a difference between men and women, and in their opinion, the difference between women and men can even be seen in the readiness or potential ability of women to establish interpersonal communication and recognize it as a symbol of compassion, empathy and kindness. In addition, we have also stated that it can be a good guide in the field of writing feminist criticism on literary and artistic works.

Nudity as Strategy: Examining Femen Sextremism Ideology to Weaponize Women’s Body

In the age of the new wave feminism movement, Femen stood out to be one of the heavily discussed topics of women's movements due to its controversial protest strategy. They are one of few feminist movements that utilize, or in their terms, weaponize, the naked body to deliver a political message. It generates various backlash, upon which they are accused of perpetuating western biased standards of beauty and marginalizing non-white women's experience. Despite the controversy, they gained international recognition from the birth of the movement in 2009 until recently. We explore the matters by examining the enabling factors supporting the global movement to endure the controversy over the last decade. We conclude that two factors play a crucial role in the movement's sustainability. First, how they encapsulate and translate the sextremism ideology into firm action. Second, Femen has developed a firm, organized, yet fluid social movement by establishing strong informal ties through soldier-like training.