Women's Words Research Articles

Women's Words: Essay on French Singularity, and: The Women of Paris and their French Revolution (review)

Women's Words: Essay on French Singularity, and: The Women of Paris and their French Revolution (review)

Women's Words: Essay on French Singularity by Mona Ozouf (review)

Women's Words: Essay on French Singularity by Mona Ozouf (review)

Jewish Women's Theology: A Literary Archaeology

In this paper, I demonstrate specific methods, developed from Jewish and black Womanist traditions, for the derivation of theology and ethics from contemporary Jewish women's literature and auto/biography. In order to recognize these texts as potentially theological, a radical shift in perception and interpretation is required. These texts bring to us Jewish women's experience. More, they contain the Jewish woman's response to that experience. I suggest within that response is an ethics, behind the ethics a theology. These texts then bring to us the theologies of our predecessors and contemporaries. In this paper, then, I explore the possibility that a baseline feminist approach to Jewish women's literature must begin here: viewing every Jewish woman's word as a potential declaration, each context a revelatory setting, all content an epiphany of the hitherto unrevealed and unread Jewish women's experience and situation, pains and glories, wisdom and silence.

A Woman's Words: Emer and Female Speech in the Ulster Cycle.Joanne Findon

<i>A Woman's Words: Emer and Female Speech in the Ulster Cycle.</i>Joanne Findon

Life into Story: The Courtship of Elizabeth Wiseman (review)

Reviews 211 geographer in resolving this dispute. The final chapter is on the lives and roles of two of the greatest Renaissance cartographers, Mercator and Ortelius. The relationship between the two m e n is revealing of cultural attitudes of the time, but perhaps the most significant points to arise from this chapter concern the changes m a d e in the semiotics and social significance of mapmaking by the intervention of advanced techniques in print reproduction. Finally, one should pause briefly to consider the physical characteristics of the book and the fine quality of its production, because these factors themselves are of the greatest importance to a work of this kind. Reaktion Books have succeeded in producing a work with 44 illustrations, including 8 full colour plates, that sells at a remarkably low price. The quality of paper is exceptionally high, as it needs to be for a layout in which high-resolution illustrations are not separated off from the text but are incorporated in it. The result is not only a book that is easy to read, without any irksome turning back and forth between text and illustration, but also one that is most attractive in appearance. Christopher Wortham Department of English University of Western Australia Chan, Mary, ed., Life into Story: The Courtship of Elizabeth Wiseman, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1998; cloth; pp. xlvii, 113; R.R.P. £35.00. In a fascinating series of documents, Professor Mary Chan presents the story of an aristocratic courtship which became a dangerous and threatening menace in the life of Elizabeth Wiseman, a thirty-seven year old widow. Pursued by Robert Spencer, a cousin of the powerful Earl of Sunderland, chief minister of James II, for her fortune of £20,000, Lady Wiseman was forced.to take refuge in the country, and keep out of his way, lest any meeting should give substance to his claims, or, even worse, his threats of claiming his o w n should materialise as rape. As Chan points out, the sequence of letters and evidences which were collected in anticipation of a law case takes us into the territory of the epistolary novel 212 Reviews of the eighteenth century. Elizabeth escapes Spencer, w h o becomes increasingly repugnant to her, by her o w n prudence, spirit, and determination, and the strong support of some of her family, especially three of her brothers. The story has its o w n fascination, which readers will enjoy. Of special interest to historians is therichdocumentation ofa familiar tale ofmarriage negotiations which went wrong. Although the participants are aristocratic, the story was a c o m m o n one, the product in part of the legal uncertainty around promises of marriage during the Early Modern period. According to canon law, which the secular courts would uphold, a verbal promise of marriage in the present tense was a binding marriage. Even if no sexual union took place, the couple was deemed to be married in the eyes ofGod and the world; neither was free to marry anyone else. This was where Spencer gained his power, as he had witnesses to swear that Elizabeth had made a verbal promise; as one said, even if he had not heard her vow, 'yet he saw her lips goe' (p. 100). Although the case never came to court, much of the verbal sparring turned upon words both spoken and written. Women's words were unreliable, it was said, hence although Elizabeth protested that she had never entertained his suit, Spencer was the more credible, first because he was a man, whereas Elizabeth was a w o m a n and therefore fickle, and secondly because Elizabeth's eldest brother and witnesses supported him. Over the three years of the dispute, the meaning of the case was canvassed through gossip and rumour: the Spencers tried to p u m p the neighbours in the country to find out where Elizabeth had taken refuge; Elizabeth's allies reported the views of Spencer's grandmother. All the while Elizabeth's younger brothers tried to get the meaning of the courtship story fixed in writing, as one of a suitor rejected. The story gives a chilling insight into...

Women's Words: Essay on French Singularity

Women's Words: Essay on French Singularity

"Making it": the components and process of resilience among urban, African-American, single mothers.

In contrast to the bulk of research on urban single mothers that focuses on risk and negative outcomes, this qualitative study of ten resilient mothers living in risky neighborhoods uses the women's own words to conceptualize resilience as an ongoing process of balancing risk and protective factors in eight domains. The findings question current assumptions about the universality of risk and protective factors, and point to new directions for program and policy.

Quilting a New Canon: Stitching Women's Words, and: Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (review)

Quilting a New Canon: Stitching Women's Words, and: Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (review)

Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality

Luana Ross writes, Native Americans disappear into Euro-American institutions of confinement at alarming rates. People from my reservation appeared to simply vanish and magically return. As a child I did not realize what a 'real' prison was and did not give it any thought. I imagined this as normal; that all families had relatives who went away and then returned. In this pathfinding study, Ross draws upon the life histories of imprisoned Native American women to demonstrate how race/ethnicity, gender, and class contribute to the criminalizing of various behaviors and subsequent incarceration rates. Drawing on the Native women's own words, she reveals the violence in their lives prior to incarceration, their respective responses to it, and how those responses affect their eventual criminalization and imprisonment. Comparisons with the experiences of white women in the same prison underline the significant role of race in determining women's experiences within the criminal justice system.

Inscribed (men's) bodies, silent (women's) words: Rethinking colonial displacement of Koreans in Japan

This article discusses the socio-historically generated effects of the discourse of decolonization in the case of Korean labor recruits in Japan. During World War II, tens of thousands of Koreans were forcibly brought to Japan by the Japanese military and government as laborers (or kyosei renko, in Japanese). While unreservedly recognizing that the discourse denouncing this violent displacement is indeed a discourse of resistance, the article takes a fresh look at the way in which one legitimate “colonial past” obscures other alternative pasts that may not appear to be central in terms of national-state-focused politics of decolonization. Analyzing the ways in which Korean women have appropriated the experience of male labor recruits, the article proposes that the domination of an “orthodox” version of the past of the oppressed people can create further layers of marginalization within the same group: by not paying attention to references other than those of national liberation—in this case, gender and gender-based exploitation—women are made to speak on behalf of men, rather than themselves. The article emphasizes the need to consider supplementing and revising the male-focused discourse of decolonization.

Dilemmas of interviewing women who have given birth in Pakistan.

This paper focuses upon dilemmas that arose when Pakistani women were interviewed about their birth experiences in Pakistan. The dilemmas are grounded in issues from my own background and research stance and the methodology used. These factors expose issues from my white Western heritage and entry to the research field, as well as dilemmas ranging from power within the method to the sensitivity around the role and accountability of the interviewer. The over-arching dilemma involves the heavy weight of responsibility incumbent upon me to interpret the women's words accurately and leave them unharmed by the experience of being interviewed.

Women's words: essay on French singularity

Translator's Note Introduction: Ten Women's Voices Madame du Deffand: Marie, or Fixity Madame de Charriere: Isabelle, or Movement Madame Roland: Manon, or Valor Madame de Stael: Germaine, or Anxiety Madame de Remusat: Claire, or Fidelity George Sand: Aurore, or Generosity Hubertine Auclert: Hubertine, or Stubbornness Colette: Gabrielle, or Gluttony Simone Weil: Simone, or Asceticism Simone de Beauvoir: Simone, or Greed Essay on French Singularity Notes Index

Women of Belize: Gender and Change in Central America.

Provides a vivid and evocative portrait of the dynamics of gender and the evolution of women's consciousness in this small but very complex multiethnic society. McClaurin's own voice throughout the book is eloquent and subtle, always attentive to both the private and the public implications of women's words.--Daphne Patai, author of Brazilian Women Speak: Contemporary Life Stories Insightful and inspiring.--O. Nigel Bolland, Colgate University has sensitively enabled three Belizean women to speak frankly about their difficult lives. [Her]self-awareness and interpretations deepen our understanding of these women and their environment.--Zee Edgell, author of Beka Lamb This engaging ethnography is set in the remote district of Toledo in Belize, Central America, where three women weave personal stories about the events in their lives. Each describes her experiences of motherhood, marriage, family illness, emigration, separation, work, or domestic violence that led her to recognize gender inequality and then do something about it. All three challenge the culture of gender at home and in the larger community. Zola, an East Indian woman without primary school education, invents her own escape from a life of subordination by securing land, then marries the man she's lived with since the age of fourteen--but on her own terms. Evelyn, a thirty-nine-year old Creole woman, has raised eight children virtually alone, yet she remains married of habit. A keen entrepreneur, she has run a restaurant, a store, and a sewing business, and she now owns a mini-mart attached to her home. Rose, a Garifuna woman, is a mother of two whose husband left when she would not accept his extra-marital affairs. While she ekes out a survival in the informal economy, she gets spiritual comfort from her religious beliefs, love of music, and two children. The voices of these ordinary Belizean women fill the pages of this book. Irma McClaurin reveals the historical circumstances, cultural beliefs, and institutional structures that have rendered women in Belize socially disenfranchised and economically dependent upon men. She shows how some ordinary women, through their participation in women's grassroots groups, have found the courage to change their lives. Drawing upon her own experiences as a black woman in the United States, and relying upon cross-cultural data about the Caribbean and Latin America, she explains the specific way gender is constructed in Belize. Irma McClaurin ia an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Florida.

Conscious and preconscious processing of food, body weight and shape, and emotion‐related words in women with anorexia nervosa

Conscious and preconscious processing of food, body weight and shape, and emotion‐related words in women with anorexia nervosa

Mistresses and Slaves: Plantation Women in South Carolina, 1830-1880

Marli Weiner challenges much of the received wisdom on the domestic realm of the nineteenth-century southern plantation - a worked in which white mistresses and female slaves labored together to provide food, clothing, and medicines to the larger plantation community. Although divided by race, black and white women were joined by common female experiences and expectations of behavior. Because work and gender affected them as much as race, mistresses and female slaves interacted with one another very differently from the ways they interacted with men. Supported by the women's own words, Weiner offers fresh interpretations of the ideology of domesticity that influenced women's race relations before the Civil War, the gradual manner in which they changed during the war, and the harsher behaviors that resulted during Reconstruction.

Selective processing of shape-related words in women with eating disorders, and those who have recovered.

This study sought to investigate whether women with anorexia or bulimia nervosa and women who had recovered showed cognitive bias towards shape, food and adolescent issues. A five-group analysis of variance design was used, in which the different client groups were the independent variables. The dependent variable was performance on an emotional Stroop task. Current anorexia sufferers (N = 31), current bulimia sufferers (N = 24), recovered anorexics (N = 23), recovered bulimics (N = 11) and women who had never suffered from eating disorders (N = 33) were recruited through health-care professionals, support groups and newspapers. Colour-naming times for target and comparison Stroop cards were measured. Women currently suffering from bulimia, and women who had recovered from anorexia, were found to be more distracted by shape concerns than women who had never suffered eating disorders and women who had recovered from bulimia. The results suggest that there may be an enduring cognitive bias among women who have recovered from anorexia. This is the first study in which impairment on an emotional Stroop task has been found to persist after recovery from a clinical condition.

This Side of the Mountain

This Side of the Mountain Sidney Saylor Farr If the Creeks Don't Rise . . . In the Appalachian mountains it used to be that promises were kept. A person's word was a bond. Ifa promise was made you could count on the fact tiiat nothing except death would keep it from being fulfilled. However , there could be extenuating circumstances, and people worked those into their verbal agreements. Father and Grandfather would say, "Ifthe Lord's willing and the creeks don't rise ..." Sadly enough, down through the years a man's (or woman's) word has become so watered down with extenuating eventualities that it does not have the same meaning. Today people will promise you anything, but it seems that they never remember from one day to the next the promises they have made. However, there are people in the mountains who still keep their promises; I include myselfamong them. I believe that giving my word creates a bond between other people and me. IfI tell you that I will do something or be somewhere at a certain time, I will be there. IfI see that I can't I will let you know. I will crawl ifI have to in order to let you know. I attribute this trait to my mountain upbringing. What I treasure most in my memories of Jim Wayne Miller is the fact that if he promised you to be somewhere, or do something, you could count on it being done! Jim Wayne Miller was a shining light for many people, and that bright light went out of our universe a year ago. We are trying to find our way without it. I remember how my mother would say, when something out of the ordinary happened, "Well children, it was so ordered ..." When I got older, I understood that she meant it was God's will. I remembered Mother's "It was so ordered" when I heard Jim Wayne had died. And that memory was a comfort. I love the images that arise when I hear the phrase "Ifthe Lord's willing and the creeks don't rise," because, literally, it means, "I will do this unless we have a big flood and the roads become impassable, or it is not God's Will." ...

Women's words: the Columbia book of quotations by women

Women's words: the Columbia book of quotations by women

Depression and anxiety among women in an urban setting in Zimbabwe.

One hundred and seventy-two women randomly selected from a Zimbabwean township were interviewed with a Shona screen for mental disorders and a semi-structured interview to assess symptoms suggestive of emotional distress, followed by the Present State Examination. Using criteria slightly stricter than threshold level 5 of the PSE-CATEGO-ID system, 30.8% of women had a depressive or anxiety disorder during the previous year. Nearly all disorders met Bedford College criteria for depression; 65% of these also had anxiety features. Only 0.6% of women had a 'pure' anxiety disorder not preceded by or associated with depression in the study year. Compared with London, the higher annual prevalence of disorders in Harare could mostly be accounted for by an excess of onset cases in the study year, 70% of which made a full or partial recovery within 12 months. The women's own words for these episodes included 'thinking too much', 'deep sadness' and a variety of terms describing heart discomfort, interpretation showing many of the latter to be expressions for grief, fear, or the possession of an insoluble problem, and 73% explained their symptoms as caused by a specific social stressor.

The Anchor of My Life: Middle-Class American Mothers and Daughters, 1880-1920

Relying on women's own words in letters and journals, Rosenzweig refutes the prescriptive literature of the times with its dire predictions of inevitable rifts between Victorian mothers and their daughters, the new women of the twentieth century. Instead Rosenzweig shows us mothers who rejoiced in their daughters' educational successes and, while they did not always comprehend the nature of the changes taking place, were only too happy to see their daughters escape some of their own restrictions and grief. Extremely useful to scholars and teachers of women's history and family history, The Anchor of My Life should also be fascinating to the general public for the accurate window that it provides on these complicated family relationship in our history. --Laurie Crumpacker , Department of History, Simmons College Drawing on a broad array of historical sources, The Anchor of My Lifechallenges the common assumption that mother-daughter relationships invariably are characterized by tensions and conflicts. This lively and moving book deserves a wide audience. --Emily K. Abel , author of Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women's Lives The relationship between mothers and daughters has been the subject of much research and study, in such fields as psychoanalysis, sociology, and women's studies. But rarely has the history and evolution of this relationship been examined. In The Anchor of My Life, Linda W. Rosenzweig draws on a wide range of primary sources--letters, diaries, autobiographies, prescriptive advice or self-help literature, and fiction--to reveal the historical nuances of this pivotal relationship. Rosenzweig's distinctive approach focuses on the interaction between mothers and daughters of the American middle class at the turn of the century, revealing that mothers and daughters managed to sustain close, nurturing relationships in an era marked by a major female generation gap in terms of aspirations and opportunities. Illustrated with photographs and portraits of the time, The Anchor of My Life provocatively challenges the facile, late twentieth-century assumption that the mother-daughter relationship is necessarily defined by hostility, guilt, and antagonism.