Between Library and Research Centre: Metadata and Criticism

Abstract: In order to promote the transfer of information and the development of knowledge, university librarians should proactively work with the academic community in well-organized transdisciplinary teams—involving teachers, researchers, students, and experts in various subjects. The concept of this very innovative practice has been developed and tested by the Faculty of Humanities Library, Lisbon University, and the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, focusing on the role played by libraries in canon-formation. We will now proceed to build an interactive website to publish our theoretical perspectives along with bibliographic records (UNIMARC format), including metadata related to marks of use. Furthermore, Richard Garnett’s “The International Library of Famous Literature” (London 1899), bio/bibliographical essays on Garnett as a scholar and librarian, and critical essays on the anthology will be published there. A link to the English edition is the next follow-up. Finally, two volumes of the Portuguese anthology (ca. 1910), based on the English one will also be made available on the website.

Unbelievable Bodies: Audience Readings of Action Heroines as a Post-Feminist Visual Metaphor

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2013

Doing feminist research in a masculine paradigm

This paper aims to do three things; firstly the authors will present a case for their argument that marketing can be viewed as a masculine paradigm, secondly a critical perspective of traditional research methodologies within marketing and consumer research will be developed and, finally, the authors will share their own experiences of adopting alternative approaches and engaging in research reflexivity.

Feminist epistemology meets the masculinity of marketing and consumer knowledge: a contemporary rendering of a decade-long debate

In this paper I outline possibilities for, and issues arising from, opposition towards the dominant ideologies and practices of marketing knowledge (Hirschman 1993) through an engagement with feminist epistemology (Longino 1991, Harding 1987). Feminist epistemology is a political branch of naturalised epistemology (Quine 1969) primarily concerned with critique of constructions of gender, gender norms and gendered interests within the production of knowledge (Anderson 1995) and with theorising, grounding and legitimating feminist knowledge making practices (Harding 1987). It is most often associated with the feminist critique of science, and with feminist science and technology studies (Haraway 1987, Wajman 1997). Feminist epistemology asks the question, ‘what is the nature of the feminist critical project as a way of knowing?’ (McLennan 1995:392). This paper outlines the basis of the feminist critique of knowledge generally, and as applied to marketing knowledge, offers description of the three main epistemological approaches to this question and suggestions for their application in practice. The paper progresses important work by consumer behaviour theorists (Bristor and Fischer 1993, Hirschman 1993) on the potentials of feminist ways of knowing for marketing and consumer behaviour by moving beyond the tripartite of feminist approaches outlined, and extending the discussion to take into account the development of situated knowledges theory (Haraway 1989, 1997), which has become so important in the decade since these papers were written. It joins ongoing conversations in consumer behaviour and marketing that share similar feminist concerns (Catterall et al 1997, 2000, 2005, Bettany and Woodruffe Burton 1999, 2005, and Hogg et al 1999, 2000) but in this contribution it takes a slightly tangential approach, seeing marketing knowledge in terms of its epistemic culture by using a model of masculinity in academic cultures from feminist theory (Wagner 1994) to help conceptualise it as such. The dominant masculine ideology of marketing knowledge both in execution (Penaloza 1994, Bristor and Fischer 1994, Fischer and Bristor 1993, Woodruffe 1996), and values (Hirschman 1993, Brown 2000, Desmond 1997) has been well documented over the past fifteen years. However, although the basis of this, how is it manifested and how a feminist informed marketing knowledge could be achieved, have been addressed somewhat in the literature (Bristor and Fischer 1993, Hogg, Bettany and Long 2000) an updated rendering is necessary which focuses specifically on epistemology and situates this discussion within a cultural framework. To do this I use the notions of cultural masculinity in academic disciplines developed by Wagner (1994) of ‘organisational egocentrism’, ‘fake collectivity’ and ‘de realisation’. With these, I raise important and specific issues around the notion of the masculinity of marketing knowledge, and then present an outline of feminist epistemologies to illustrate how different feminist approaches to knowledge would address these concerns.

On the conservatism of post-Jungian criticism: competing concepts of the symbol in Freud, Jung and Walter Benjamin

The renewed interest in analytical psychology by academics working in the humanities has led to the emergence of a post-Jungian field of cultural criticism, at the theoretical core of which stands Jung's theory of symbolism. This article examines the centrality of symbolism to both Freud and Jung's psychology and explains how the differing concepts of the symbol lead to their divergent theories of interpretation in psychology and art criticism. Acknowledging the advantages of Jung's more expansive account of the symbol, it argues that Walter Benjamin's critical engagement with Jung nonetheless provides a useful correction to the problematic conservatism inherent to his concept of the symbol and its contemporary application.

Engaged Disengagement: Reframing as Feminist Critique in Vanessa Place’s Tragodía

This essay positions Vanessa Place’s Tragodía (2011) as an instance of reframing as contemporary feminist cultural critique. An enquiry into allegory, hermeneutics, and the performative use of indifference in Place’s conceptual writing generates insights into new narrative conditions produced by Place’s work. Tragodía does not represent trauma but rather generates trauma through a poetic practice that has a bipartite structure: conceptual writing (allegory) and Place’s performances of the narratives. Place’s performance is read in this analysis as an ancillary act of reframing that raises the question of what might be at stake in the performative use of indifference. Understood as a strategy of failure, Place’s performance parallels the lack of mediation in the conceptual act of reframing. Positioned counter to the linguistic deformation of the subjects' speech acts and the erasure of affect that occurs in the legal narratives through the act of interpretation, the refusal to interpret implicit in the act of reframing in Tragodía is an ethical gesture, a paratextual pathway to metamorphosis. In its refusal to interpret, Tragodía creates a site of contextual resistance to the oppression of the subjects’ organic narratives by the institutional language of the law, and offers a new textual field of meaning-making.

History of Art and Art Criticism: A System in Crisis

This article aims to reconstruct the critical debate regarding the examination of the crisis in the disciplines of art history and criticism with a particular focus on the proposal formulated by U.S. theorists who contributed to October journal. The discrediting of many modernist critical methods, particularly that of Clement Greenberg – the formalist diktat – marked the birth of the journal and gave rise to proposals set forth by critics committed to a new approach. Their divergent positions, nonetheless, have contributed to undermining the traditional concepts of the autonomy of art and criticism. The proposals discussed over the course of publication were the result of a reappraisal of the disciplinary instruments of art history and criticism pursuant to the crucial cultural changes which took place in the 1980s.

Breaking the Pattern and Creating New Paths – Feminist Mizrahi Women Artists in Israel

This article addresses the work of Mizrahi women artists, i.e., Israeli-Jewish women of Asian or African ethnic origin, using the artist Vered Nissim as a case study. Nissim seeks to affirm the politics of identity and recognition, as well as feminism in order to create a paradigm shift with regards to the local regime of cultural representations in the Israeli art scene. Endeavouring to find ways of undermining the rigid imbalances between different social groups, she calls for a comprehensive reform of the status quo through artistic activism. Nissim employs a style, content, and medium that disrupts the accepted social order, using humour and irony as unique weapons with which she takes liberties with conventional moral, social, and economic values. Placing issues of race, class and gender at the centre of her work, she seeks to undermine and problematize essentialist attitudes, highlighting the political intersections of different identity categories as the critical analysis of intersectionality unfolds.

Quest/ion of Identities in African American Feminist Postmodern Drama: A Study of Selected Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks

Innovative and unconventional, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks belongs to the continuum of African American playwrights who have contributed to the quest/ion – the quest for and question – of identities for African Americans. Her plays are sites in which the quest/ion of identities for African Americans is pursued, raised and enacted. She makes use of both page and stage to emphasize the exigency of reshaping African Americans’ identities through questioning the dominant ideologies and metanarratives, delegitimizing some of the prevailing stereotypes imposed on them, drawing out the complicity of the media in perpetuating racism, evoking slavery, lynching and their aftereffects, rehistoricizing African American history, catalyzing reflections on the various intersections of sex, race, class and gender orientations, and proffering alternative perspectives to help readers think more critically about issues facing African Americans. In my dissertation, I approach three plays by Parks – The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990), Venus (1996) and Fucking A (2000) – from the standpoints of postmodern drama and African American feminism with a focus on the terrains that reflect the quest/ion of identities for African Americans, especially African American women. I argue that postmodern drama and African American feminism provide the ground for Parks to promote the development of a political agenda in order to call into question a number of dominant ideologies and metanarratives with regard to African Americans and draw upon the roles of those metanarratives as a powerful apparatus of racial and sexual oppressions. I also explore how Parks engages with postmodern drama and African American feminism to incorporate her own mininarratives in the dominant discourses. I argue that Parks in these plays uses postmodern drama and African American feminism to encourage reflections on intersectionality in order to reveal the concerns of African Americans, particularly African American women. Her plays challenge the dominant order of hierarchy and patriarchy, while in some cases urging unity and solidarity between African American men and women by showing how unity and solidarity can help them confront race, class and gender oppressions. Furthermore, I discuss how the utilization of postmodern techniques and devices helps Parks to transform the conventional features of playwriting, to create incredulity toward the dominant systems of oppression and to incorporate her mininarratives within the context of dominant discourses.

Revisiting girlhood : defining a postmodern/popular feminist culture /

It has bee1l said that feminism is dead, but in fact feminism is alive in popular cultural fonlls that offer pleasure, style, fUll and advice, as well as political messages that are internalized alld continuously enacted in the lives of North American female youth. This thesis discusses popular feminism with respect to mainstream girls' cultural discourses in music alld magazine reading. Specifically this thesis examines the importance of Madonna, Gwen Stefani, and the Spice Girls, in addition to the numerous girl magazines available on the market today, such as Seventeen and YM. Focusing on the issue of the feminine versus feminist polarity and its importance to girls' culture, this thesis attempts to demonstrate how popular feminism can be used as a mode of empowerment and illustrates the mode of consumption of popular feminist texts that frames female selfimage, attitude, behaviour and speech. Through the employment of popular feminist theories and a discourse alld semiotic analysis of musical lyrics, performance and style, in addition to magazine reading and advertisements, this thesis highlights the use of active media reading and being by girls to gaill an understanding with regards to social positioning and postmodern political identity. More fundamentally, this thesis questions how popular feminism disables, questions and critiques popular ideologies ill a patriarchal society.

The shifting terrain of feminist theory and activism : university-based women's centres and third wave feminism

This thesis, based on the results of an organizational ethnography of a university-based feminist organization in Southern Ontario (the Centre), traces how third wave feminism is being constituted in the goals, initiatives, mandate, organizational structure, and overall culture of university-based feminist organizations. I argue that, from its inception, the meanings and goals of the Centre have been contested through internal critique, reflection, and discussion inspired by significant shifts in feminist theory that challenge the fundamental principles of second wave feminism. I identify a major shift in the development and direction of the Centre that occurs in two distinct phases. The first phase of the shift occurs with the emergence of an antioppression framework, which broadens the Centre's mandate beyond gender and sexism to consider multiple axes of identity and oppression that affect women's lives. The second phase of this shift is characterized by a focus on (trans) inclusion and accessibility and has involved changing the Centre's name so that it is no longer identified as a women's centre in order to reflect more accurately its focus on mUltiple axes of identity and oppression. Along with identifying two phases of a major shift in the direction of the Centre, I trace two discourses about its development. The dominant discourse of the Centre's development is one of progress and evolution. The dominant discourse characterizes the Centre as a dynamic feminist organization that consistently strives to be more inclusive and diverse. The reverse discourse undermines the dominant discourse by emphasizing that, despite the Centre's official attempts to be inclusive and to build diversity, little has actually changed, leaving women of colour marginalized in the Centre's dominant culture of whiteness. This research reveals that, while many of their strategies have unintended (negative) consequences, members of the Centre are working to build an inclusive politics of resistance that avoids the mistakes of earlier feminist movements and organizations. These members, along with other activists, actively constitute third wave feminism in a process that is challenging, contradictory, and often painful. A critical analysis of this process and the strategies it involves provides an opportunity for activists to reflect on their experiences and develop new strategies in an effort to further struggles for social justice and equity.