Transnational Feminist Research Articles

Daoist feminist leadership for international peace: the case of Jeannette Rankin

ABSTRACT Introducing the concept of Daoist–feminist hybridity to international relations (IR) scholars, this article makes a novel contribution to current debates over global feminism concerning the relevance and attractiveness of feminism in non-Western societies, the need to build transnational feminist solidarities, and the urgent need to decolonize feminism. Drawing upon the Daoist philosophy of Laozi’s Daodejing, which expresses an early and Indigenous form of non-Western feminism, the article constructs a model of Daoist feminist pacifist leadership as illustrated through the case of Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973), an influential women’s suffrage advocate and global peace activist who was the first elected congresswoman in the United States (US) and the only congressional representative to vote against US involvement in both World Wars I and II. As the article demonstrates, Rankin’s unwavering commitment to pacifism not only reflects core values of Daoist philosophy intermeshed with her twentieth-century feminism, but also illustrates the value of empathic engagement between Daoist thought and modern feminism, as making such connections can help to build alliances and partnerships among international feminist peace leaders today in the US, China, and elsewhere.

Intimacy and Darkness: Feminist Sensibility in (Post)socialist Art

This article assembles feminist articulations scattered across art histories and theories of Eastern and Central Europe, in order to reveal their potential, not only for foregrounding postsocialist feminist perspectives, but also for enriching the vocabulary and expanding temporal geographies of transnational feminist debates. By attending to intuitive, latent, reluctant, proto-, para-, unofficial and soft feminisms, this article establishes a peculiar feminist sensibility that is attuned to Central and Eastern European women artists’ approaches to everyday, embodied and affective experiences via the critical endorsement of intimacy and darkness.

The politics of knowledge: Feminist strategies for transformation

In my commentary, I take up the challenge of finding an academically fuelled strategy to make the necessary deep inroads into the Sustainable Development Goals by looking at lessons learnt from the struggles of the transnational feminist movement involved in UN multilateral debates and the transformative work of feminist political ecology on the ethics of care and caring-with others, including more-than-human others. I propose these feminist strategies offer some insights in how to shift dominant knowledge systems.

Reproductive Justice Beyond Borders: Global Feminist Solidarity in the Post-Roe Era.

The global impact of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization and the backlash towards reproductive justice that it represents warrant a global feminist response informed by broad theoretical and geopolitical lenses. We consider how a solidaristic, transnational feminist movement might learn from Latin American feminist movements that have been successful in uniting broad coalitions in the fight for reproductive justice as situated within far-reaching political goals. The success of such a global movement must be decolonial and must contend with the fact that overlapping realities of global inequality, severe poverty, extractivism, and western-backed violence are fundamentally implicated in reproductive justice.

Introduction: Translating Transnational Feminisms

Introduction: Translating Transnational Feminisms

A Phenomenological Account of the Conditions of Transnational Feminism

In Sites of Exposure, John Russon draws on the resources of phenomenology to describe how human life, while not having a “given” form specified in advance, nonetheless takes speci􀏔ic shape through practices by which we become committed to certain ways of living. This means that our lives are simultaneously a matter of living with a speci􀏔ic reality—what Russon calls “home”—and having to respond to an outside to which we are “exposed.” I argue here that Russon’s analysis is especially useful for feminist philosophy and its attempt to grapple with the possibility of universal principles of justice across cultural contexts, developing this philosophical framework in conversation with Serene Khader’s efforts to furnish a set of core values for transnational feminist praxis that, while universal in their opposition to sexist oppression, are not imperialist, and with Saba Mahmood’s critique of the parochial character of Western conceptions of freedom.

Ask a Feminist: Jennifer Fluri Discusses the Gender Politics of the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan with Sandra McEvoy

On this episode of Ask a Feminist, Sandra McEvoy speaks to Jennifer Fluri about what the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan means for Afghan women and for the feminist movement in Afghanistan. Jennifer’s expertise as a geographer and her transnational feminist perspective are sorely needed in this perilous moment. As the withdrawal was underway, we heard familiar concerns—voiced by pundits and politicians—about the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban. But the broader context of the long US occupation, its effects on gender relations, and the history of women’s organizing in Afghanistan makes for a much more complicated picture. Jennifer—a professor of geography at University of Colorado, Boulder, who has worked in and on Afghanistan for almost twenty years—illuminates this complex history in this conversation with Sandra, who is clinical associate professor of political science at Boston University and a member of the Signs editorial board. This episode is available as a podcast at http://signsjournal.org/feed/podcast/signs-ask-a-feminist.

Multilingual Experimental Literature and Transnational Feminist Solidarities: Erín Moure and Kathy Acker

Multilingual Experimental Literature and Transnational Feminist Solidarities: Erín Moure and Kathy Acker

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Claiming the Erotic and Intimate Self: The Sexual Agency of Adolescent Girls in Trinidad and Tobago

This study explores the sexual agency of adolescent girls in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). Using Black, Caribbean, and transnational feminist frameworks this work examines the genesis and complexity of adolescent girls' sexual agency, specifically how girls begin to develop ideas of sexual attraction and intimacy, messages they internalize from family and community, and the agentic ways they actualize their feelings and desires. It considers the historical, economic, and political contexts of postcolonial T&T, and implications for future exploration of young women's and girls' sexual agency, not only in T&T, but among Caribbean women in the Diaspora. Themes analyzed in this study demonstrated that girls were knowledgeable about intimacy and sex. They identified specific moments when they are aware of sexual attraction and distinguish from other forms of love. Most girls learn about sex from trusted adult relatives who are not their parents, from peers, biology, sexual and reproductive health and health and family life courses at school, and via the internet. They read the institutionalized environments as unresponsive to their concerns and interpret their parents' lack of communication or admonishments as signals that talk about sex is taboo. Consequently, they seek information outside of the purview of adults to satisfy their needs. They want to understand how to navigate trust and consent; how to choose good partners; how to balance their future goals with a desire to have intimacy and sexual relationships in the long run. By tapping into their personal desires and motivations around sex they manifest early forms of social and political agency.

Malaysia dalam Arus Feminisme Global: Pembangunan Wanita dan Hubungan Antarabangsa Malaysia

Feminism is a discourse and movement that aims to change the gender imbalance in a patriarchal society. Feminism has proliferated, covering four mainstreams and evolving 'from the bottom up'. The dynamics, focus, and struggle that start from the community up to the international level show the inclusive involvement of state and non-state actors. Using Feminism approaches in Politics and International Relations, this paper explains how the dynamics of women's development in Malaysia have become part of contemporary global feminism. When the UN celebrated International Women's Day in 1975, Malaysia played an active international role in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). It established a local agency, the National Advisory Council on the Integration of Women in Development (NACIWID). The paper is divided into three major parts. First, interactions between feminism and International Relations will be explored. Second, because of gendering politics, the framework of women in development (WID), women and development (WAD), as well as gender and development (GAD) have become a benchmark for explaining women's emancipation in policy formulation. Finally, the study also applies the model in Malaysia. Arguably Malaysia's earliest roles and international activism explain the inclusion of Malaysia's lessons in transnational feminism and the country's contribution to women's development despite the prevalent patriarchal attributes.

Transnational Feminist Itineraries: Situating Theory and Activist Practice

Transnational Feminist Itineraries: Situating Theory and Activist Practice

Torn apart! Transnational feminist researchers’ geopolitical positionality in (pre-) COVID-19 times

In this article, we examine the ‘geopolitical positionality’ of transnational feminist researchers caught between hostile countries (home-field). We define geopolitical positionality as the researchers’ position influenced by international politics, discourses, and practices by core powers and hegemonic states. By revisiting our fieldwork experiences, we interrogate how our geopolitical positionalities have a great impact on the process of feminist knowledge production and researchers’ well-being amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. In the era of global trade wars, the geopolitical positionality of transnational researchers requires more scholarly attention; however, a focus on this geopolitical positionality remains practically nonexistent in feminist geography. This article works to fill this void by reflecting on our fieldwork experiences in the geopolitical tensions between China and the US (for Ruwen Chang) and between South Korea and Japan (for Jaeyeon Lee). By sharing our vulnerabilities and hardships concerning our fieldwork prior to and during the COVID-19 crisis, we aim to accomplish two goals. First, by showing the vulnerability of transnational feminist researchers who are caught between hostile countries (home-field), we hope to create a space of compassion and support in/beyond academia. Second, with our analysis of geopolitical positionality, we demonstrate that transnational knowledge is precariously produced across imaginary and material boundaries between the personal, the academic, the national, and the geopolitical.

Outside, Looking In: Alternative Legacies and Futures for Surveillance Studies

In this dialogue, gender and women’s studies professors Toby Beauchamp (UIUC) and Ronak K. Kapadia (UIC) reflect on their early encounters with surveillance studies and the field’s shifting relationship to transnational feminist and queer of color scholarship. By exploring these alternative genealogies for surveillance scholarship, they also consider new directions in the field that engage the environmental humanities, queer and trans studies, and disability studies.

A Transnational Feminist Perspective on the US-NATO Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan: In Conversation with Malalai Joya

A Transnational Feminist Perspective on the US-NATO Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan: In Conversation with Malalai Joya

Playing for oman Ghana: Women’s Football and Gendered Nationalism

Feminist scholars of nationalisms acknowledge the gendered character of national identity. Due to their association with heterosexual masculinity, national sports teams are one avenue through which gendered nationalisms manifest. Football (soccer) represents the peak of sporting masculinity and national identity around the world. Following the inaugural Women’s World Cup in 1991, women’s football continues to gain global popularity, raising questions about what new forms of nationalism can take root through this sport. Recent transnational feminist research has highlighted how, despite feminist resistance, patriarchal forms of gendered nationalism persist. Using the case of Ghanaian women’s football, I examine how reactions to the national team shape and reveal understandings of gender and national identity. I find that whilst state institutions use their support of the women’s team to shore up heteropatriarchal national identity, some spectators and fans discursively advocate for a recognition of women footballers as citizens and workers. These findings have implications for how activists and scholars engage the gendered construction of national identity.

From tourism to solidarity: transnational feminism and world music in the UK

Transnational feminism has become a prevalent paradigm in feminist theory, but its connection with creative practices such as music remains unclear. This article addresses the relationship between music, culture and feminism and considers the extent to which world music creates spaces for transnational feminist praxis. Applying Chandra Mohanty’s ‘tourism’, ‘exploration’ and ‘solidarity’ models for internationalising feminism, I question whose feminism is performed and negotiated at WOMAD, one of the most influential international music festivals in Europe. I argue that world music encounters have the potential to both help and hinder the cause of feminism across borders as music can reinforce and resist power inequalities between women from different places and cultures and intercultural music encounters can create the conditions for locating transnational feminist discourse within specific struggles and working through the mutualities and tensions between different feminisms. In doing so, I seek to show the value of bridging feminist geography and musicology, as the former can be used to critically analyse the plurality of feminisms at play in musical contexts, while the latter can illustrate how transnational feminist work is being undertaken outside the explicitly political realm and how expressive means of communication may disrupt assumptions about empowering/disempowering feminisms and exemplify the complex intersections between feminism, place and culture.

‘It’s High School. Everybody Gone Judge Yuh’: school as a social world where Afro-Caribbean girlhood experiences are created

ABSTRACT School operates as a space/place where girls must navigate and negotiate different aspects of their identities further adding to the complexities of Black girlhood. The scantiness of sociological scholarship surrounding Black girls from the Dutch West Indies elucidates this article’s importance. I conducted audio- and video-recorded interviews with nine Afro-Caribbean girls ages 14–17 years old. The interviews were interpreted using an Afro-Caribbean transnational feminist framework which specifically centres the lives of the girls. Findings reveal that Afro-Caribbean girls navigate school by negotiating their decisions about their hair, appearance, and dress to resist heteronormative ideas in Sint Maarten. This paper is a part of a larger project where I examined how Afro-Caribbean girls from the island of Sint Maarten conceptualise what it means to be a girl and to understand how they narrate, navigate, and negotiate their girlhood experiences.

For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900–1938

For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900–1938

From gunshots to hashtags: Transcultural curating in the #MeToo era

After the #MeToo movement kicked off in the United States in 2018, it found its way to China and has triggered a number of exhibition projects around the country, organized by young activists, artists and curators, which have galvanized transnational feminist exchanges in the past few years. The article analyses exhibitions such as The Voiceless Rise Up: #MeToo in China, Her Story: Eliminating Gender Violence 2020, Above Ground: 40 Moments of Transformation and Stand by Her, which consisted of works documenting sexual assault and the #MeToo movement in China, as well as of artworks that are dealing with issues concerning sexual assault, the One Child Policy, motherhood, queerness and empowerment. These exhibitions and the #MeToo movement, respectively, demonstrate a growing transnational interconnectedness among activists fighting towards common feminist goals. What is more, these exhibitions are under constant scrutiny and fear of being cancelled, which is evidence of an exhaustive struggle for the official acceptance of women’s rights and ‘radical’ artworks. This article gives an overview of these projects, their transnational interconnectedness, as well as their perception and reaction of the general public, the press and censors. The article argues for a shift from women-centred exhibitions to exhibitions with a strong activist/feminist agenda that are also part of an unprecedented transnational framework.