Prominent Women Research Articles

THE FLORISTIC WORLDS OF MODERNIST WOMEN’S PROSE: DOROTHY RICHARDSON, VIRGINIA WOOLF, AND DARIYA VIKONSKA

The article concerns the issue of the functioning of floral imagery as a distinctive manner of female self-expression in the space of prominent women writers’ fancy for modernist literature at the beginning of the 20th century. The selected short stories written by British women authors Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf as well as those by the Ukrainian writer Dariya Vikonska are the subject matter of the article. According to the comparative, structural-semiotic and feminist critique approaches to the texts of the women writers mentioned the main semantic codes of floral symbolism were revealed and the key images of flowers were singled out and characterized. The notional connotations of plant symbolism as a means of art expression of female self-identification, a deep essence of the personality of a woman and the mystique of the feminine “self” have been rooted in the organic connection between a woman and nature. At the same time some peculiarities of the individual manner of the writings by D. Richardson, V. Woolf, and D. Vikonska were elucidated in the article. It was noted that Dariya Vikonska resorts to concrete plant images, while the British authors involve both concrete and abstract flower images which allows them to go beyond the emotional world of their female protagonists and approach the horizon of the philosophical notions of life, death, and time. A distinctive feature of D. Vikonska’s writing is a coloration of her floral symbolism as well as an ecclesiastical realization of the feminine identity as a dominant aspect of her texts. On the other hand, the female-centered poetical prose of both D. Richardson and D. Vikonska as a proper trait of their artistic consciousness points to certain homoerotical elements in their writings, Conversely, a deep reflexiveness of the literary expression and a tendency towards the impressionistic manner of writing brings closer together the writing manner employed by D. Vikonska and V. Woolf. Keywords: modernism, women’s prose, flowers, floral imagery, floral symbolism, feminine identity.

Critiquing Concubinage: Sumiya Koume and Changing Gender Roles in Modern Japan

ABSTRACTIn 1893, Sumiya Koume (1850–1920) wrote an essay for the prominent women’s journal Jogaku zasshi (Women’s Education Magazine) entitled ‘I Recommend Against Becoming a Geisha or Concubine’. In it, she critiqued both roles and exhorted women who were serving as geisha not to become concubines. She did not mention that she herself had worked as both a geisha and a concubine (tekake or mekake). By the time she wrote her essay, she had also served as a political activist as well as a social reformer and missionary. Sumiya’s life sheds light on the transitional nature of the early Meiji era, specifically the period of flux between the formal abolition of concubinage in 1882 and the advent of the state-sponsored ‘good wife, wise mother’ (ryōsai kenbo) paradigm in 1899.

Male Portraits by Assamese Women Writers

This article reflects how women writers in Assam create their male characters from the standpoint of their own vulnerable and precarious existence in a patriarchal society. The author has interviewed prominent Assamese women writers Mamoni Raisom Goswami, Anuradha Sharma Pujari, Rita Chowdhury, Arupa Patangia Kalita, Manorama Das Medhi, Leena Sarma, Moushumi Kandali and Karabi Deka Hazarika over the years to write this piece.

Women in Prosthodontics: A Brief Look at Pioneers, Leaders, and Inspirers.

There are several women pioneers in prosthodontics, and each deserves recognition and admiration for all she has achieved in helping bridge the gender gap in dentistry. Women have come a long way from being first depicted as a thieving woman assistant in early 1523 to becoming award-winning, Board-certified clinicians, program directors, department chairs, and deans of dental schools. However, current female resident membership in the American College of Prosthodontists is less than 40%. Women in leadership roles are still scarce, and advancement is still needed. This article provides a brief summary of the history of prosthodontics, highlighting prominent women prosthodontists and their stories, while providing inspiration for future prosthodontists, men as well as women.

Calling for Collaboration: Women and Public Service in Dorothy Moore's Transnational Protestant Correspondence

AbstractThe study of early modern letters has flourished in the last 15 years, producing an abundance of literature and digital projects. Studies of women's letters and of the male‐dominated republic of letters have tended to self‐segregate, but thanks to Carol Pal'sRepublic of Womenand the groundbreaking work of several other specialists, prominent women in the republic of letters are now regaining their reputations. The ‘star of Utrecht’ Anna Maria van Schurman and the ‘incomparable’ Lady Ranelagh are indeed stellar examples. Within their constellation, Dorothy Moore, a relative of Ranelagh and fellow member of the Hartlib circle, engaged in correspondence with leading intellectuals in Ireland, London, and the Dutch Republic, in hopes of clarifying together how educated women could serve the transnational Protestant public of which they were members.Through examining key letters, this article argues that Moore used correspondence not to promote pre‐formed ideas or pursue a particular career, but rather to engage in collaborative problem solving and unofficial public service. Moore's letters demonstrate that she felt called to serve the public but, lacking literal ‘calls’ (appointments) and a steady income, required innovative advice and practical assistance. Although Moore's brief but intense correspondence with André Rivet helped develop her theory of women's vocation, it did not identify new ways for women to serve the Protestant public as a whole. Nevertheless, Moore could use strategic circulation of letters addressed to Ranelagh as a means of edifying select audiences, while collaborating with and eventually marrying John Dury provided further opportunities.

Rescuing female desire from revolutionary history: Chinese women’s cinema in the 1980s

ABSTRACTThis paper examines Chinese women’s cinema in the 1980s, focusing on Army Nurse (Nüer Lou, dir. Hu Mei, 1985) and Women on the Long March (Mati shengsui, dir. Liu Miaomiao, 1987), both war films directed by two of the most prominent women directors who appeared on the scene in post-socialist China. While female desire is routinely repressed in mainstream war films, Army Nurse and Women on the Long March give voice to women soldiers and their personal memories. My close reading of the films focuses on the ways in which female desires are represented in their narratives and aesthetics. In doing so, I aim to explore the re-emergence of female desire, which was repressed in one way or another during the Mao era, in women’s cinema of the 1980s in mainland China.

Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution, 1979–1983 ed. by Nicole Phillip-Dowe and John Angus Martin

Reviewed by: Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution, 1979–1983 ed. by Nicole Phillip-Dowe and John Angus Martin Robert Sierakowski (bio) Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution, 1979–1983 Nicole Phillip-Dowe and John Angus Martin (ed.), Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. 189 pp. In the space of several days in October 1983, the Grenada Revolution, the first socialist revolution in the English-speaking Caribbean, came to its truly shocking conclusion. Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the charismatic and internationally renowned leader of the New Jewel Movement (NJM), was treacherously assassinated along with several associates as part of an internal power struggle with other members of the revolutionary movement. Six days later, the United States administration of Ronald Reagan – which had long antagonized and threatened the People's Revolutionary Government– dispatched American military forces in a full-scale invasion of the tiny island nation (with the complicity of regional governments). The revolution's inspiring promise of a popular transformation that would provide health, education, and employment for the masses had not only been crushed by foreign intervention, but also discredited by the fratricidal violence within the NJM itself. This new edited volume by Nicole Phillip-Dowe and John Angus Martin returns to the dramatic events of the early 1980s and "captures the Grenada Revolution from a Grenada perspective" (xi). Aside from one essay, all of the papers were written by Grenadian authors from various personal perspectives and academic disciplines. The 12 chapters were selected from 16 papers presented at a 2016 University of the West Indies Open Campus conference held in Grenada. Given the more than three decades that have passed since the revolution's tragic denouement, the writers seek to foster a more nuanced and complex interpretation, transcending Manichean visions of "saints and devils, martyrs and traitors", as Shalini Puri puts it (176). Indeed, some of the early chapters prove rather polemical and controversial revisions of received wisdom. Lawrence A. Joseph, for example, looks back on the March 1979 uprising that toppled the regime of Eric Gairy, arguing that in strictly juridical [End Page 203] terms "the revolution" amounted to a mere coup d'état by "usurpers" (17), given the NJM's inability to impose a new institutional order through democratic elections. Joseph Ewart Layne, on the other hand, writes from the first-hand perspective of a revolutionary leader who spent 26 years behind bars following the American invasion for his role in the events of 1983. While he offers something of a mea culpa for NJM errors and abuses, he insists that it was the leadership's "missteps in strategy formation and implementation" that led to the disastrous outcome, rather than "ideological conflict and personal ambition for power" (29–30). Many of the chapters in volume's middle section look back on the revolution's four-and-a-half years of social transformation in areas such as women's rights, youth engagement, and church–state relations. In many of these spheres, the papers aim to document both the hope, creativity, and promise of these idealistic revolutionary projects, while acknowledging the far messier historical realities. Nicole Phillip-Dowe's chapter on the National Women's Organization (NWO) established during the revolution demonstrates the many successes of this group in educational and social projects directed at children, as well as its leading role in community development, such as improving roads and cleaning up neighbourhoods. At the same time, she shows how the NWO functioned as a subsidiary of the NJM and, despite successful reforms (such as the Maternity Leave and Equal Pay Laws), it remained very difficult for prominent women to balance party work and family obligations. In her chapter, Claudette Joseph describes her experiences as a part of the revolution's Young Pioneers movement as a child, recalling the early 1980s as a period with "a deep sense of community, national pride and patriotism" (79). Her memories of childhood in the revolutionary era are extremely positive, as she reflects on the various initiatives that she personally experienced during that heady period of social transformation. As with Phillip-Dowe's discussion of the NWO, however, Joseph also details the darker aspects of the years of New Jewel rule, such as...

Prohibitionist Protests by Women in India’s Northeast

The body of women in India’s northeast is both racialized and gendered as the region continues to be constructed through the binaries of post-colonial sate-society conflicts and often treated as the ‘other’ of the nation state. A conflict centric approach however has mostly focused on women’s interventions in the society from the perspective of their ‘peace making’ capacities and thus obscuring some other significant roles performed historically by organized women power in the region: activities that predate and, in fact, in some crucial ways influence their gradual mobilization towards the role of peace making. Some of the prominent women led social movements that began in the decades of 1970s and 1980s around the issue of alcohol prohibition had gradually transformed into movements taking up issues of human rights violations and peace negotiations besides others. In this context it is interesting to look into the instances of anti-alcohol or prohibitionist protests undertaken by women in India’s northeast, specially focusing on prominent women’s groups in the states of Manipur and Nagaland, that points at the complex roles played by women’s groups in crafting a public space for the women to articulate their opinion in these societies even when they face challenges from within and without and come to terms with the dilemmas of having to take some difficult position both against the state and the community.

Verse Epitaphs and the Memorialisation of Women in Reformation England

AbstractDuring the late twentieth century, scholars became interested in the ways in which early modern England adapted to the Reformation and how change was represented in popular culture. In the last fifteen years, there has been a particular focus on how Protestantism affected the relationship between the living and the dead. In 2000, for example, Ralph Houlbrooke's studyDeath,Religion,and the Family in England,1480–1750identified a failure on the part of the post‐Reformation church to replace old funerary customs with new, yet two years later inBeliefs and the Dead in Reformation England, Peter Marshall argued persuasively that the Reformation engendered a ‘cultural transformation’ in the understanding of both death and the dead. By, Scott Newstok'sQuoting Death in Early Modern Englanddescribed a paradox in which a Protestant nation that scorned Catholic death rituals became engrossed in commemorating its own dead through poetic memorialisation.This article surveys 21st century historiographical debates in order to contextualise women's verse epitaphs during the sixteenth century. In particular, it looks to the broadside literature that was the epitome of cheap print as a means of reflecting popular religious attitudes. It shows how several verse epitaphs of prominent women in Tudor society, such as William Elderton'sA proper new balad in praise of my ladie marques(), highlight issues of continuity and change in religious beliefs surrounding the memorialisation of pious women and the role of the supernatural.Video abstract (click to view)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyzjk8AaCP8

Transgender subjects, fairytales, and red light districts: strategies of subversion in Tunisian women’s writing under Ben ‘Ali

ABSTRACTThis article analyses three Arabic novels by prominent Tunisian women writers published in the decade preceding the mass protests of 2010: Mas‘ūdah Abū Bakr’s Ṭurshqānah (1999), Faḍīlah Al-Shābbī’s al-‘Adl (Justice, 2005), and Fatḥīyah al-Hāshimī’s Maryam tasquṭ min yad Allāh (Maryam Falls from the Hand of God, 2009). These novels are interpreted as alternative political discourses that work to expose the methods of regulation and normalisation in Tunisia under Ben ‘Ali. While each has a different focus, they share a number of common themes: the tension between the individual and the collective, the intersection of gender with class as a site of disenfranchisement, the effects of a politically oppressive environment on the autonomy of the physical body, and the way strategies of control effect the lived experience of urban space. Based upon the strongly voiced critique embedded in these texts, the writers’ notable positions within their own local literary contexts, and the neglect to which their work has been subject in the West and larger Arab world, I ultimately argue for more inclusive reading practices in modern Arabic literature.

Looking through Misogyny: Indian Men's Rights Activists, Law, and Challenges for Feminism

From faint beginnings in scattered solitary actions in the 1990s, Men's Rights Activists (MRA) have emerged in India as a well-organized social movement, with careful political outreach through social media, legislative lobbying, and street action. They represent a range of ethnic and religious groups, include several prominent women leaders, and reflect some diversity of class positions. Their common target is the cynical misuse of civil and criminal laws relating to marriage and domestic violence, in particular, the simultaneous deployment of multiple laws. Based on my ethnographic work with these groups, I profile MRA understandings of law, equality, and gender in this article. Rather than focus on their obvious misogyny, I examine their arguments in order to explore the internal and external challenges to feminist jurisprudence thrown up by this mobilization. These include attending to unanticipated fallouts of protective legislation and the connotations of symbolic equality standards. I argue that MRA discourses are a crucial site for tracing contestations of gender and the formation of subjectivities.

Gendering Political Agency in the Maghreb

Gendering Political Agency in the Maghreb

‘The Paradise for Women’: How Oscar Wilde was Embraced by the Women of America

This article explores the influence of prominent literary and society women on the success of Oscar Wilde’s lecture tour of North America in 1882, when he was a minor poet with a fashionable reputation in London. At that time, several commentators remarked on his popularity with women, and contrasted this with the hostility often exhibited towards him by men. Key influencers included Mrs. Frank Leslie and Jane Cunningham Croly, who shaped public opinion through their ownership or editorship of organs of the press. Others who championed Wilde, including Kate Field, Jane Tunis Poultney Bigelow, Marietta Paran Stevens and Anne Lynch Botta, wielded immense power through their patronage of emerging writers and artists. Had he not secured the public approval of these women and gained entry to their homes, Wilde would have struggled to generate positive publicity for his erudite lectures.

Feminine Angst in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath


 Women have been struggling to liberate themselves from subjugation by their male counterparts from times immemorial. The various factors responsible for their suppression were misogyny, romantic glorification and patriarchy. Illogically romanticized, they are not permitted to play a significant role as independent, self-assured individuals and this was compounded by other unfair social, political and biological factors. As a result, they did not enjoy a contented position in society. History inclined to link man to wisdom and biological dominance and women were associated with confined concerns of household chores and childcare.
 
 This provoked some prominent women in America and England to launch a movement called feminism demanding equivalent rights and equal status for themselves. They also resisted the menacing power of the literature that portrayed a woman as a subordinate to patriarchy. To end this suppression and exploitation they set out to create a literature of their own. As such, most of the feminists got entangled in a twofold approach. On the one hand, they wanted an authentic voice to assert its sovereignty, and, on the other, to make their mark felt along gender defined lines, so as to mend laws governing their social, psychological and biological behaviour. Still, some of the women writers felt the brunt of male dominance and oppression so enormously that they developed the feelings of resentment and vengeance against them. In this, Sylvia Plath, a vigorous and highly competitive and self-centered woman of the fifties was no exception. The aim of the paper is to highlight that Sylvia Plath who at first relished the domination of her male counterparts, at the later stage of her life became a sworn enemy of male dominance and aggressively challenged the patriarchy. Her feminine angst transformed her from a lamb to a lioness hunting for men’s head.

Narcyza Żmichowska (1819–1896) – pisarka, działaczka społeczna, nauczycielka

Narcyza Żmichowska należy do grona najwybitniejszych kobiet XIX stulecia. Realizowała się na wielu płaszczyznach, do których zaliczała się działalność pisarska, społeczna i pedagogiczna. Wychodziła z nowoczesnymi postulatami dotyczącymi kształcenia kobiet, wyznaczając im drogę kariery zawodowej. W swoich pracach ukazywała obraz rodziny oraz rolę i znaczenie poszczególnych jej członków. Stała na straży cennych wartości, takich jak miłość, uczciwość, patriotyzm.

My Approach to Biography: Rosa Luxemburg, Hildegard von Bingen, Hannah Arendt

In this memoir of the origins and making of her film Hannah Arendt, Margarethe von Trotta places it in the context of her two earlier film biographies of prominent women: Rosa Luxemburg (1986) and Vision (original title: Vision—Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von Bingen, 2009). The three films share the challenge of blending public and personal lives, intellectual and emotional personae. The making of Rosa Luxemburg involved problematic research in the archives of the German Democratic Republic. The twelfth-century context of Hildegard’s life proposed other challenges, especially with regard to the relative lack of a visual record of the period. All three films profited from troves of personal letters. Von Trotta describes her slow “falling in love” with Arendt, a process abetted by the discovery of Arendt’s vulnerability. The decision to focus on the years of the Eichmann trial and controversy aided the juxtaposition of Arendt’s vulnerability with her public voice.

Women in Indian Puppetry: Negotiating Traditional Roles and New Possibilities

As new possibilities open up to women in India’s changing economy, women puppeteers are transforming the face of both traditional and contemporary forms of Indian puppetry. An investigation into the work of several prominent women puppeteers, from rural and urban settings, shows the range of challenges these women artists face as well as the important contributions they are making to grow and sustain India’s puppetry arts.

Prominent Women in Behavior Analysis: An Introduction.

Today is an exciting time for women in behavior analysis. Over the years, multiple articles have documented increases in women’s participation in behavior analysis (e.g., McSweeney and Swindell 1998; McSweeney et al. 2000; Myers 1993; Poling et al. 1983; Simon et al. 2007). Contemporary data, however, depict an even more striking degree of participation. For example, 82.2 % of Behavior Analyst Certification Board® (BACB®) certificants are female,1 including 68.3 % of those who are certified at the doctoral level (i.e., BCBA-D™). These data represent a 148 % increase in female certificants over the last 15 years. The Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) reported that 52 % of their full members in 2014 were women (personal communication ABAI, April 7, 2015).2 Female authors accounted for 55.5 % of authors who published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) in 2014. These data represent a 142 % increase since the first volume of JABA was published in 1968. In addition, 27.1 % of authors who published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) in 2014 were female. These data represent a 115 % increase since the average from 1978 to 1982. Given the representation of women in behavior analysis, a demographic population that is typically a minority in other scientific disciplines (National Science Foundation 2015), has increased substantially over a relatively short period of time (~20 years), we thought it an important time to provide accounts from the perspectives of prominent women who experienced behavior-analytic academic training and professional environments over this period of time and get advice based on what they learned.

Iraqi Nationalism in the Novels of Maysalun Hadi

This article discusses work of Maysalun Hadi, one of Iraq's most prominent women novelists. Throughout her work, Hadi's books deal with themes of national identity and nostalgia for glory days of pan-Arabism that are consistent with country's pre-2003 ruling Ba'thist ideology. Yet, reading and analyzing her works offer a more comprehensive and nuanced look at this identity, including a limited acceptance of pluralism along with solidarity with Iraqi resistance.Since American-led invasion of 2003, nationalism and national identity have become core subjects of literature. While some authors, such as Generation of Nineties (Jil al-Tis'inat), question validity of former state-sponsored nationalism, others, usually writers of older generations, refined art of writing the national (al-riwaya al-wataniyya). In doing so these older writers use a special blend of factors from which their national novels are made. It consists of benchmarks of life in Iraq during 1990s and impact of post-2003 crisis. This article will focus on one such writer, Maysalun Hadi and her version of (Iraqi) national novel. In addressing components of her national novels, this article will also identify contradictions, blank spaces, and hidden areas in her writing, such as her relationship with Ba'th Party, her Sunni inclinations, her sympathy for Iraqi resistance, and her pan-Arabism. This article, which places Hadi in context of a historical period and literary trends, is first English-language study of an female novelist.1Since she published her first novel in 1996, Maysalun Hadi has become one of Iraq's most prolific novelists. Along with exiled writers Alia Mamdouh, Hadiya Hussein, and Haifa Zangana, Hadi, who still lives in Iraq, is one of Iraq's most prominent female writers. One of main reasons for her central role in literary field is seemingly cohesive and constructive version of nationalism that pervades her novels and stands in stark contrast to deconstructive reexamination of basics of nationalism found in writings of younger generation. For many readers and reviewers both in Iraq and wider Arab world, this version is easier to consume.2This article will explore Hadi's version of nationalism - a product of 1990s and post-2003 Iraq - by describing and analyzing her positions on some issues that figure prominently in her work: wars, sanctions, exile, relations between exiles and those who remained, Islam, American occupation, resistance to occupation, violence, sectarianism, and historiography.3 The last subject is closely related to a second question: Hadi's attitude to Ba'th regime and Saddam Husayn before and after their downfall. While these issues figure in many other novels of that period, not every writer adopts same positions.This study is based on reading of seven novels: Yawaqit al-Ard (The Rubies of Earth, 2001), Al-'Uyun al-Sud (Black Eyes, 2002), Al-Hudud al-Barriyya ( Land Borders, 2004), Nubu'at Fir'awn (Prophecy of Pharaoh, 2007), Hulm Wardi Fatih alLawn (Light Rosy Dream, 2009), Shay al-'Arus (The Bride's Tea, 2010), and Hafid al-Bi-Bi-Si (The BBC Grandson, 2011).4 This article will not discuss each novel individually, nor is it concerned with their style or artistic value. Instead, it will underline novels' political themes, from which a specific view of nationalism emerges: national identity and pan-Arabism, a limited acceptance of political Islam, a negative view of developments in post-Saddam Iraq, opposition to sectarianism, a benign attitude toward Ba'th, and nostalgia for Nasserism. Other writers and intellectuals in contemporary Iraq show a completely different brand of nationalism.THE LIFE AND LITERARY CAREER OF MAYSALUN HADIMaysalun Hadi was born in Baghdad in 1954. …

The history of dermatology at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

There is little written about the history of women in dermatology. In this paper, we summarize the information obtained from archival records from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, one of the first medical schools for women, where several of the early prominent women in dermatology obtained their medical degrees and practiced. Among others, graduates include Rose Hirschler, MD, and Margaret Gray Wood, MD. The school and its graduates made important contributions to dermatology and to the advancement of women in the field. The history of women in dermatology is not well documented, and this historical research provides background in the biographies of pioneering women in an effort to preserve and honor their important work.