Second-wave Feminism Research Articles

Clones in Blackface and Drag: The Promise and Privilege of the Feminist Biotechnological Imaginary

This article discusses the visual culture of the feminist biotechnological imaginary, a technofeminist belief that a feminist society could be technologically engineered at the biological level. In the United States, many second-wave feminists embraced the possibility that reproductive technologies might facilitate women’s liberation from biological determinism. The idea that biology could become a tool for self-fashioning and diverse community building rather than a fixed determining force resulted in gender and race becoming mutable categories. Both race and gender became subject to technological intervention as well as technologies in themselves. Within the visual culture of the feminist biotechnological imaginary, images of clones served to examine the tension between unity and diversity in the feminist movement. Working in this context, the white women-identified artists Lynn Hershman Leeson, Cindy Sherman, and Eleanor Antin constructed representations of themselves in drag and blackface. I argue that these representations related to the visual culture of feminist clones and undermined gendered power structures while ultimately reinforcing existing racial ones.

An Analysis on Social and Individual Harmony in A Farewell to Arms—From the Perspective of Ecofeminism

Ecofeminism is the third wave of feminism after the first wave of feminism - liberal feminism in the 19th century and the second wave of feminism - radical feminism in the 1960s and 1970s[8]. Ecofeminism-the combination of the ecological environment movement and the feminist movement emphasizes the study of the internal relationship between the women oppressed by the patriarchal society and nature ruled by it. With the continuous development of industrial civilization, in the modern society, in order to develop social economy, human beings grab a large amount of natural resources resulting in that the growth and recovery of natural resources cannot keep pace with the speed of acquiring resources. While people seizes resources, waste gas, waste water and other pollutants produced by industrial and agricultural production are discharged into the nature, which seriously pollutes the natural environment, reduces the biodiversity and destroys the ecological balance. Such behavior further intensifies the contradiction between human and nature. We value the relationship between women and nature because there are certain commonalities between them. First of all, as the subject of procreation and rearing, women bear children with their own bodies. And we usually call nature as “mother”, endowing it with female characteristics. It is the creator of living things. It constantly produces resources needed by all living things on the earth and feeds everything with its own body. In this way, women are in accordance with nature. Secondly, in the patriarchal society, both of them are the objects of oppression hence there is an intrinsic bond between them. In this paper, the author analyzes the change of the relationship and the change of psychology between the hero Henry and the heroine Catherine in war background and in natural background which is destroyed by human. Meanwhile, the relationship between social environment and natural environment itself also is being pointed out. In such a way, the author intends to arouse the awareness of readers that the importance of achieving harmony between men and women as well as keeping balance between nature and the society, thus human beings may eventually find an approach to this haunting dilemma.

The Feminist Mother Figure in the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾

Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ (1982) is the first book of an eight-books set. The complete set is in the form of a diary and each book presents the title character Adrian Mole’s life and changing perspectives. This article focusses on the first book of the set. Even though the diary entries contain Adrian’s thoughts and reflections on various issues such as literature, friendship, love, sex, marriage, parenting and motherhood, his frustration about his mother is worthy of more attention. Adrian’s mother Pauline Mole can be considered as a perfectly fitting example of a feminist mother, who wants to be economically self-sufficient, reads influential feminist books of the second-wave feminism, joins feminist gatherings and meetings, and gradually transforms her life. However, Adrian compares her mother to the maternal ideal that is a selfless, altruistic and an unconditionally devoted figure. The contradiction between the maternal ideal he has internalized as the patriarchal norm and the way his mother behaves disappoints and frustrates him. The aim of this article is to discuss patriarchal notions of motherhood and the maternal ideal from a feminist point of view and Pauline’s representation as a feminist mother in the diary.

Similar Past, Different Future? How Feminist and Queer Criminological Pedagogy and Qualitative Methods Intersect and Diverge

While feminist and queer epistemologies in criminology have similar origins, dissimilarities based on key dimensions exist, with significant impacts for qualitative methods and methods education. Our article first explores approaches to qualitative methods that generally overlap between feminist and queer epistemologies, such as social change goals, common research methods, and intersectional analyses. We then focus on two broad examples to demonstrate how queer criminology and second-wave feminism diverge. Several recent incidents have crystallized a distinction between transgender inclusivity within queer criminology and transgender exclusivity motivated by trans-exclusionary radical feminism within feminist criminology. We also highlight sex-positive criminological approaches situated within queer criminology, which advocate broadly for decriminalization and harm reduction, compared to second-wave feminist approaches that view considerations of sex and sexuality differently. Lastly, we discuss topics that represent both convergence and divergence, such as the radical possibilities of both feminist and queer criminologies for abolitionist scholarship and methodology, while noting recent examples of the ways criminologists have or have not explored these possibilities. Throughout, we connect the theoretical and the methodological, illustrating the practical realities these similarities and dissimilarities lead to in qualitative research. Our discussion is rooted in principles of inclusive and intersectional pedagogy.

The Royal Commission on Human Relationships and the Australian Women’s Weekly, 1977–1980: The Personal, the Political, the Popular

ABSTRACT The Australian Women’s Weekly (the Weekly) has long been regarded as a publication that built its success upon espousing a traditional femininity to Australian women through its features on home, family and fashion. The advent of second-wave feminism in the early 1970s prompted swift and radical critiques of the role of women in Australian society, with women’s magazines one key focus for these critiques. To maintain its cultural relevance and mainstream appeal, it was necessary for the Weekly to keep pace with social change, compelling the magazine to question the role it played in perpetuating the inequality of women. This article explores the Weekly’s engagement with the Australian women’s movement of the 1970s, with particular emphasis on the ways in which the Royal Commission on Human Relationships influenced the publication’s reporting between 1977 and 1980. The Commission’s commitment to making the personal political through listening to people’s experiences, especially those of women, was replicated in the Weekly through its 1980 Voice of the Australian Woman project. Analysis of the magazine during this period reveals the ways in which the ideas of the Australian women’s movement had permeated the mainstream by the later 1970s.

Eco- Feminism in Arundathi Roy’s the Ministry of Utmost Happiness: A Critique

Eco-feminists believe strongly that nature and women have a bond as they share patriarchal oppression. Social-feminists differ from Eco-feminists in that Eco-feminism focuses on the role of gender in political economy. Eco-feminism emerged during the second wave of feminism in the United States between the 1970s and 1980s. Women perceive an interrelationship between classism, sexism, racism and environmental damage. Just as feminists struggled to eradicate gender discrimination, there is a need to overcome the challenges that climatic change has on humanity. Human oppression is linked with the exploitation of nature, hence it is considered a feminist issue. Eco-feminism uses the basic tenets of feminism to achieve equality between genders. Eco-feminists are of the idea that nature has to be maintained with mutual care and co-operation. Eco-feminism is an academic and activist movement which tries to eliminate exploitation of nature by human beings and any kind of exploitation of any kind. Some contemporary Indian novelists not only investigate female oppression, but also the biological, psychological, and social environment. Arundathi Roy is a contemporary Indian English writer who is acclaimed as a political activist and eco-feminist writer. In this paper, an attempt is made to unravel the demise of some birds and animals due to unethical modernization through scientific technology and also through re-habitation in Roy’s second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. This paper also traces how embracing nature can change the issues of gender as well.

The Problem of Substituting Differences in Sisterhood with Shared Victimization in Motherhood

Common oppression became the base for sisterhood in women writing during Second-wave feminism despite huge discrepancies. Written at a similar time, Top Girls (1982) and The Handmaid's Tale (1985) both present the problems of universal female solidarity. This essay will first explain how the differences sabotage sisterhood in both stories and how women's reactions to them further entrench those differences. And then, it further discusses the seemly unity both authors create by focusing on the pain in motherhood and finally concluding that the approach of reaching sisterhood with shared victimization in maternity is just another implication of patriarchy and that we should adopt a brighter and more diverse way of building solidarity.

From Menstruation to the Menopause: The Female Fertility Cycle in Contemporary Women's Writing in French by Maria Tomlinson

Reviewed by: From Menstruation to the Menopause: The Female Fertility Cycle in Contemporary Women's Writing in French by Maria Tomlinson Antonia Wimbush Tomlinson, Maria. From Menstruation to the Menopause: The Female Fertility Cycle in Contemporary Women's Writing in French. Liverpool UP, 2021. Pp 232. ISBN 978-1-8-34-846-2. £90.00 (cloth). Maria Tomlinson's compelling new book, From Menstruation to the Menopause: The Female Fertility Cycle in Contemporary Women's Writing in French, examines how menstruation, childbirth, and the menopause are represented in a range of contemporary fictional works by women writers from France, Algeria, and Mauritius. In her study, she draws attention to the potential of literature as a form of contestation and protest, arguing that since the twentieth century, women writers have sought to denounce "societal perceptions which stigmatize, marginalize, and undermine female bodily experience" (1). Tomlinson's original, cross-cultural, and comparative study brings together writers and texts from different geographical, social, and political contexts to spotlight key aspects of female bodily experience. The analysis, which draws on important discussions and debates within the feminist movement, is also inflected by sociological studies, ensuring that the work remain sensitive to the particularities of the socio-political context in which the women authors are writing. The book is structured geographically, with a separate chapter dedicated to literature from France, Algeria, and Mauritius. This structure is conducive to an intersectional approach, and in each chapter, Tomlinson reflects perceptively on how the sociocultural context, religion, and class, among other factors, influence the depiction of female bodily experience. It also enables conclusions to be drawn about how menstruation, childbirth, and the menopause are perceived in relation to each other within a particular society. The introduction gives a helpful overview of the study, its rationale and its methodology. It also explains why the author has chosen to study literature from these three Francophone countries: "not only do Mauritius and Algeria have a shared French colonial history, they have very different postcolonial cultural, [End Page 190] religious, political, and social compositions both to each other and to France" (9). Yet Tomlinson is also careful not to make France the central comparative point of the study. The introduction closes with an informative account of the use of social media by feminist activists in France and the Francophone world to promote body positivity. Chapter One outlines the theoretical framework of the study. It examines key concepts and ideas of French second-wave feminists, particularly Julia Kristeva and Annie Leclerc, in order to set up the thesis of the book; that is, contemporary Francophone writers are indebted to the work of the second-wave feminists, but they also nuance and update their ideas so that their writing is more intersectional. To elucidate this argument, Tomlinson also engages with postcolonial and intersectional feminists such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty. Chapter Two examines female bodily experiences in writing from France, drawing attention to the medicalization of this literature and its focus on the violence and trauma inherent in the bodily processes. This chapter unites work by established authors, such as Virginie Despentes and Marie Darrieussecq, with lesser-known voices such as Laurence Tardieu and Mazarine Pingeot. The following chapter turns to Algeria and argues that women's experiences of menstruation, childbirth, and the menopause are affected by Islamic and patriarchal traditions at the heart of Algerian society. The chapter studies novels by Maïssa Bey, Nina Bouraoui, Leïla Marouane, and Malika Mokeddem, four of the most celebrated contemporary women writers from Algeria. Chapter Five examines writing from Mauritius, focusing on novels by Ananda Devi and Shenaz Patel. Religion and patriarchy influence bodily experience in these novels too, but unlike in Algeria, Francophone literature from Mauritius is inflected by the Hindu religion and Indo-Mauritian cultural traditions. Despite the differences across the large corpus, it is striking that many of the texts attend to the violence and trauma inherent in women's experiences of fertility. One of the strengths of the book is the detailed close reading of the novels. At times, only a few pages of a particular novel are dedicated to the female fertility cycle, but Tomlinson draws out...

Screening Clara Schumann: Biomythography, Gender, and the Relational Biopic

Screening Clara SchumannBiomythography, Gender, and the Relational Biopic Julia Novak (bio) Clara Schumann, née Wieck, is known today as one of the most distinguished concert pianists of European Romanticism, a major influence on the development of the nineteenth-century piano recital, and a renowned piano teacher and composer.1 She is also remembered as one half of a famous musical couple, and as the subject of a secret romantic courtship and a spectacular legal dispute between her father and future husband. Clara began her career early as a wunderkind trained by her father Friedrich Wieck, and she fell in love with Robert Schumann at the age of sixteen. When Wieck opposed the match and slandered Schumann publicly, Schumann took him to court and finally obtained permission to marry Clara in 1840. The marriage lasted for sixteen years, until the end of Robert Schumann's life, during which Clara gave birth to eight children (one of whom died in infancy). In 1854, Robert Schumann was committed to an insane asylum following a suicide attempt, and he died there in 1856. Clara Schumann has been variously characterized as a devoted wife, mother of eight, and faithful curator of her husband's legacy, or depending on whom you ask, as a ruthless careerist and conservative impediment to her husband's genius—"that dreadful bitch Robert Schumann married" (Janice Galloway, qtd. in Novak 275). Like many other women who had been sidelined by androcentric music histories, she was resurrected by second-wave feminists in the 1980s and has since been turned into a cultural myth. From 1990 onwards, she was the face of the one-hundred deutschmark note. In 2019, the bicentenary of her birth, three major conferences were dedicated to Clara Schumann,2 as were numerous smaller events, concerts, newspaper articles, and radio features across the globe. Her life story has become highly mediated, narrated in biographies, letters, obituaries, concert programs, brochures of commemorative events, memorials, academic studies, documentaries,3 CD booklets, novels, and biographical motion pictures, or biopics. [End Page 1] In this essay, I focus on the four biopics made about the Schumanns: Träumerei (1944), Song of Love (1947), Frühlingssinfonie (1983), and Geliebte Clara (2008). In his landmark study of the biopic, George F. Custen reflects on the status of the genre as a form of life writing, concluding, "the fact that real names are used in biographical films suggests an openness to historical scrutiny and an attempt to present the film as the official story of a life" (8)—that is, as a form of biography. As such, the biopic is a medium that lays some claim to the authenticity of its narrative rather than presenting itself as fiction, even though it has license to stray from the historical facts.4 Dennis Bingham similarly frames the biopic as a form of biography, identifying the genre's "charge" as "enter[ing] the biographical subject into the pantheon of cultural mythology, one way or another, and to show why he or she belongs there" (10). That there is a strong gender dimension to the idea of biographical "worthiness" has long been a commonplace in biography studies. Narratives of women's lives are shaped by the standard paths and subject positions available to women at a given time. Drawing on gender-sensitive biography criticism and biopic studies, I will consider the four biographical motion pictures in relation to the Schumann "biomyth" as gendered manifestations of Clara Schumann's afterlife. Each film engages with the myth, sometimes confirming, sometimes contesting the image preserved of the subject in cultural memory. I will demonstrate not only how each film speaks to specific norms of femininity by appropriating and developing particular facets of the Schumann myth, but also how these shifts in Clara Schumann's cinematic representation are refracted through the changing conventions and possibilities of their medium. The Schumann Biomyth: Relational Biography and Gender In his reflections on Beethoven, Roland Barthes introduces—in passing—the notion of "bio-mythology" as a "system of meaning" that is created around a historical figure and serves as a totalizing explanation of the person's character, life, and work (149-154). Referring to Barthes's concept...

A Feminist Genealogy of Posthuman Aesthetics in the Visual Arts

This article reconstructs a feminist genealogy of the posthuman in the arts with specific focus on visual works conceived by female artists after the rise of what has been retrospectively defined as first-wave feminism. Even before the theoretical framework for cyborgs had been conceived and the term “posthuman” popularized, posthuman esthetics featured techno-mythologies, versions of cyborgs and rhizomatic bodily performativity. From its beginnings in the main avant-garde movements of the first half of the twentieth century (Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism) this genealogy analyses the second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s and its integral exploration of the body highlighted by performance art. The next stage was the third-wave feminism of the 1990s and its radical re-elaboration of the self: from Cyberfeminism and its revisitation of technology to the artistic insights offered, on the one hand, by critical techno-orientalist readings of potential futures, and on the other, by the political and social articulations of Afrofuturism and Chicanafuturism. Lastly, this genealogy covers the ways contemporary female artists are dealing with gender, social media, and the notion of embodiment, and it touches upon elements that will become crucial in fourth-wave feminism. This article is published as part of a collection dedicated to multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives on gender studies.

We Are Not Born Submissive: How the Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives by Manon Garcia

Reviewed by: We Are Not Born Submissive: How the Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives by Manon Garcia Mariah Devereux Herbeck (bio) Garcia, Manon. We Are Not Born Submissive: How the Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives. Princeton UP, 2021. Pp [i]-xiv; 234. ISBN 978-0-691-20182-5. $27.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-691-22320-9. $22.95 (paper). Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 The Second Sex finds renewed significance for the twenty-first century in Manon Garcia's We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy Shapes Women's Lives. Garcia's research is not based solely on the indisputable bible of second-wave feminism, nor does it claim to analyze every aspect of the feminist manifesto, however, she describes succinctly how de Beauvoir's philosophy is key to understanding women's submission (and eventual path toward liberation) in Western society: "this book is not primarily a book on de Beauvoir's philosophy but it argues that the best way to understand women's submission is to think with Beauvoir" (author's emphasis, 21). Garcia inspires the reader to return to the seminal text, as well as to the work of other influential thinkers from Catharine MacKinnon and Gayatri Spivak to Hegel and Martin Heidegger for answers to the following question: why do some women submit to and perpetuate the patriarchy? In response to this question, as well as to other related inquiries, the book relies heavily on The Second Sex as it peels back the layers of social, political, religious and historical factors that create and (re)affirm the gender hierarchy that determines submission as the only viable option for (many) women. In the work's preface and conclusion, Garcia book-ends her research with reflection on the relationship of her manuscript to the contemporary #MeToo movement and society's response to the women involved—seen as victims by some and by others as manipulators who are willing to submit to men in order to advance their careers. In chapter one, she guides the reader in a detailed examination of the definitions of "domination" and "submission," underlining, in particular, that "to submit" is paradoxically an active verb: "it is an activity in passivity: what the subject decides, whatever the degree of rationality or complexity of this decision is to not be the one who decides" (17). Unless one is threatened with violence or physically restrained, submission is the result of a conscious decision, and an appalling one at that since it requires that one renounce one's freedom, as Garcia demonstrates via Rousseau's The Social Contract: "to deprive [man's] will of all freedom is to deprive his actions of all morality" (2). However, for women, "submission is prescribed as the normal, moral, and natural behavior" (3). Subsequently, Garcia poses a series of related questions: Is submission feminine? Is femininity a submission? Are women masochistic? And [End Page 186] finally, importantly, she questions whether or not submission is the "experience of all women" (106). As Garcia deftly explains, to answer these questions, one must invert the examination of the hierarchy; instead of viewing it from the top down (Rousseau's and other male philosophers' point of view), we must view submission from the perspective of those who live it, in this case, women. Simone de Beauvoir's work provides an ideal launchpad for such an investigation given her "meticulous research on a multiplicity of diaries, memoirs of famous women, and studies in psychology and sociology" (97). Throughout her work, Garcia repeatedly appreciates de Beauvoir as a philosopher in her own right (independent from her partner, Jean-Paul Sartre), such that, at times, the book feels like a defense of de Beauvoir as much as a defense of a woman's right to freedom from predestined submission. This is not a slight of the book since Garcia's detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between the philosophers' approaches to existentialism are detailed and informative. In conclusion, Garcia demonstrates to what extent—contrary to the opening analysis of the definition of submission—women do not have a choice; one's destiny is "predetermined by social norms" (194). However, she does her best to end on a hopeful note...

The Spiritual Is Political: Why Feminism Needs a Superreal and Multitemporal Utopia

The article deals with the complex relationship between the spiritual and political in feminism and indicates the political nature of this relationship. The suffragettes had written The Woman’s Bible as an appeal to pious women in order to persuade them of the advantages of emancipation. Second-wave feminists deployed the imagery of witches and pagan goddesses as a metaphorical representation of the power of their resistance and as a way to recover continuity for women. The article analyzes the disagreements about spirituality between cultural and political feminists and concludes that they are due to an artificially constructed patriarchal dichotomy between the spiritual and the political. Some female theologians (Carol J. Adams, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel) do not subscribe to this dichotomy. On the contrary, they find spiritual potential in the women’s movement and an emancipatory one in the Bible. Feminist theologians have used the metaphor of feminists as prophets as the most vivid formulation of this idea. In much the same way as the biblical prophets put an end to ungodly practices, modern feminists expose the imperfections in patriarchy and strive for a better world. The author proposes that the goals of feminists as prophets can be best achieved by offering a feminist utopia inspired by past political achievements together with spiritual practices and imagery. She cites The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan and social networks from Belarus like #еволюция or #witchtok as examples of this approach.

A Feminist Reading of Limon and Zeytin: Motherhood and Gender Roles

The analysis of motherhood and gender roles has been one of the most crucial concerns for feminist theory. Throughout history, the conventional understanding of gender roles has resulted in the oppressed women in society. There are also the repercussions in parents’ roles in marriages mostly resulting in inequality in the division of labour due to the internalized roles that see men superior to women. This belief has affected and directed numerous marriages as a false model where the woman is loaded with all the domestic work as a housewife and man is the sole breadwinner who is exempted from domestic work and has loose connections also with childcare, which is also included in domestic affairs. As the wife and thus mother becomes the projected figure, it becomes quite hard to mention the possibility of the division of labour in marriages because conventional marriages favour the established understanding that only or predominantly mothers are responsible for childcare and housework and that fathers should be distanced from this process. Turkish cartoonist Salih Memecan’s comic books Annem, İşte Benim Annem and Sihirli Annem are among the comics portraying examples of the problems about the division of domestic work in marriages. Drawing an example of a rather long-established perception of gender roles within a family sphere, the author comes up with a marriage where the name and place of the wife figure, Çıtçıt (May) is quite diminished. Taking its departure from the ideas of the second-wave feminism, the purpose of this paper is to study Salih Memecan’s comic books Annem, İşte Benim Annem and Sihirli Annem in the light of feminist theory. Çıtçıt (May) and Babişko (Bubs) will be analyzed shedding light on their duties as parents and as a couple with regards to gender roles.

Genderrolhoudingen en modernisering: terug naar de essentie?

Gender role attitudes and modernisation: back to the essence? The influence of modernisation, self-expressive values, and educational level on gender role attitudes in Europe Despite several societal developments, such as educational expansion, the second wave of feminism, and modernisation, the trend towards more egalitarian gender role attitudes has stagnated. This study complements previous studies that explain this phenomenon by a growing focus on self-expressiveness and gender essentialism, which contradicts the initial expectations of modernisation theory. The aim of this contribution is to explore the role of modernisation at the country level in Europe, in the relation between educational level, self-expressive values, and gender role attitudes at the individual level. A multilevel model shows that more self-expressiveness and a higher educational level lead to more egalitarian attitudes. At the contextual level, self-expressiveness strengthens this relation. The results are in line with expectations from modernisation theory, rather than expectations from the egalitarian-essentialism hypothesis. The study closes with a discussion on the measurement of gender role attitudes, suggesting a multidimensional alternative. In addition, it is suggested that gender essentialism might influence behaviour, rather than attitudes. This provides implications for further research in uncovering the structural and cultural processes behind persisting gender inequality.

A Literary Exploration of Existential Feminism in the Novella The Moon Opera Through the Application of Intertextuality Theory

Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s in the western world, which focused on criticizing the patriarchal institutions or cultural practices throughout the society. Originating several centuries earlier, Chinese opera culture has been ahead of its time in demonstrating the male-dominated society’s oppression against women. As one of the principal founders of second-wave feminism, Simone de Beauvoir’s classical feminist theory in her book, The Second Sex, mainly introduced the sex-gender distinction. In this article, the author aims to reveal how Bi Feiyu, the writer of The Moon Opera, successfully conveyed existential feminist ideas, especially Beauvoir’s famous assertion that "one is not born but becomes a woman", through his careful selection of the art type Qing Yi (Qingyi is the main woman role in Peking Opera and often plays dignified, serious, and decent characters, which are mostly wives or mothers undergoing severe ordeal) and the portrayal of two generations of Qing Yi performers. In the process of analysis, the author not only examined Bi Feiyu’s application of intertextuality theory, but also derived conclusions from other mainstream feminist thoughts such as the feminist theory of the dressed female body and the transactional sex theory.

Black, Scott. Without the Novel: Romance and the History of Prose Fiction.

Black, Scott. <i>Without the Novel: Romance and the History of Prose Fiction</i>.

Ah!Nana’s Fairytale Punk-Comics: From the Comtesse de Ségur’s “Histoire de Blondine, Bonne-Biche et Beau-Minon” to Nicole Claveloux’s “Histoire de Blondasse, de Belle-Biche et Gros Chachat”

Abstract During its brief existence from 1976 to 1978 the French underground feminist magazine Ah!Nana represented a powerful medium to discuss various topics related to women, sexuality, and discrimination. One of its main goals was to challenge traditional (literary) female role models, including housewives, submissive mothers, and “damsels in distress.” Through the adaptation of fairy tales, a genre particularly suited through its imaginative worlds to challenge preconceptions and norms, Ah!Nana deconstructed and questioned binary gender roles and heteronormativity. This article analyzes cartoon artist Nicole Claveloux’s queer adaptation of the nineteenth-century fairy tale “Histoire de Blondine, Bonne-Biche et Beau-Minon” (Blondine, the Good Doe, and the Gallant Cat) by the Comtesse de Ségur. Claveloux addresses her queer parody to an adult audience, and conveys a new perspective on gender, sexuality, and humanness that is in line with Ah!Nana’s promotion of second-wave feminist standpoints and punk culture. She advocates the exploration of new sexual pleasures, and the disruption of bourgeoisie values, including binary gender roles.

Women Equity Strive in Society Depicted through Animation Film Characters

The purpose of this research is to identify the female representation depicted in the Disney Renaissance and to investigate why Disney characters struggle to claim their equity as women in their society. The research methods used in this study are classified as qualitative and descriptive. The documentation method and taking notes techniques are used to collect data. The research also employs two method concepts to analyze the collected data, including a gender equity approach analysis and Simone de Beauvoir's second-wave feminism theory. The data consists of linguistic units from various Disney Renaissance stories. The writer discovered three parts in the description of female representations based on data analysis of the female representations depicted in Disney Renaissance: rebel, wise, and adventurous women; confident, intelligent, and repellent of domestication women; and masculine, loyal, and ambitious women. Furthermore, data analysis of Disney characters' struggles in claiming their equality as women in their society reveals that they outperform patriarchal expectations, reject domestication, and practice emancipation by appropriating masculine attributes and roles.

The Woman Writer on Film and the #MeToo Literary Biopic

Abstract This article focuses on the representation of female authors’ lives in English-language literary biopics and how these representations relate to feminist contexts. Departing from previous research on biopics focusing on women (particularly women writers), this article identifies four categories of such films: the patriarchal literary biopic, in which the representation of an author’s life is related to patriarchal values, the second-wave feminist literary biopic, which is related to second-wave feminism, the postfeminist literary biopic, which is related to postfeminism, and finally the #MeToo literary biopic, a new category of films that has recently begun to emerge. By analyzing the films Colette (Wash Westmoreland, 2018) and Wild Nights with Emily (Madeleine Olnek, 2019), this article shows how these films correspond to the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo literary biopic is characterized by (a) excessive attention to difficult publication processes and the disclosure of women’s words, (b) emphasizing the persistent censoring of women’s words, (c) deconstructing the myths surrounding female authors, and (d) underscoring (female) solidarity and empowerment.

Transnational Dimensions of Moroccan Gender History

Transnational Dimensions of Moroccan Gender History