Frances E. W. Harper and Pauline E. Hopkins: the uplifting of black women through literature

A presente dissertação tem como objetivo apresentar duas influentes autoras afro-americanas do século XIX, Frances E. W. Harper e Pauline E. Hopkins. Ambas as autoras, através de seus romances Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted (1892) e Contending Forces: a Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (1900) respectivamente, entrelaçam ficção e história com o propósito de criar novas alternativas de discurso, afastando-se, portanto, do oficial. Ademais, o presente trabalho propõe demonstrar como Frances Harper e Pauline Hopkins fazem uso do espaço literário com a finalidade de escrever a história do oprimido, permitindo, principalmente, que as mulheres afro-americanas dessem voz as suas experiências e as suas próprias histórias. Assim sendo, a literatura produzida por Frances e Harper e Pauline Hopkins será analisada como forma de empoderamento da comunidade afro-americana, principalmente como forma de aquisição de poder para as Mulheres Afro-Americanas.

Safety of tetanus toxoid in pregnant women: A hospital-based case-control study of congenital anomalies

Reported are the results of the Latin American Collaborative Study of Congenital Malformations (ECLAMC), a hospital-based case-control study of 34 293 malformed and 34 477 matched nonmalformed newborn controls. No statistical differences were found between the malformed and control groups, exposed or not exposed to tetanus toroid.

Women in the West

Padget, Martin, 'Women in the West', In: 'The Making of the American West: People and Perspectives', (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio), pp.239-258, 2007 RAE2008

Women writing woman: representations of gender and sexuality

Pykett, Lyn. 'Women writing woman: representations of gender and sexuality', In: Women and literature in Britain 1800 - 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.78-98, 2008. RAE2008

Practices of Ministerial Leadership of Korean-American United Methodist Clergywomen; Toward a Wesleyan Ecclesiology in a Global Context

This study documents, analyzes, and interprets Korean American United Methodist (KAUM) clergywomen‘s experiences in and understandings of the church. It examines contributions these (and potentially, other) clergywomen might make to Wesleyan ecclesiology generally, and particular ways United Methodists live out their faith in transitional, diverse, and global contexts. The project attempts to re-vision existing Wesleyan ecclesial discourse in the United Methodist Church (UMC) by recognizing and incorporating the contributions of racial-ethnic clergy as expressed through their leadership and practices of faith. A "practice-theory-practice" model of practical theology was used to pay systematic attention to the practical locus of the inquiries. Twenty Korean American United Methodist clergywomen were interviewed by telephone, using a voluntary sampling technique to ascertain how they both experienced the church and understood and lived out various practices of faith, including preaching, participation in and administration of the sacraments, preparation for ordained ministry, and other spiritual practices such as prayer, worship, retreats, and journaling. The dissertation summarizes those findings, provides contextual and historical interpretation, and then analyzes their responses in relation to Wesleyan theology, MinJung (mass of people) theology, and the theology of YeoSung (women who display dignity and honor as human beings). This study identifies the extraordinary call of the KAUM clergywomen interviewees to be bridge builders, strong nurturers, wounded healers, committed educators, breakers of old stereotypes, persistent seekers to fulfill God‘s call, and ecclesial leaders with ―tragic consciousness‖ who can disrupt marginality and facilitate the creative transformation of Han (a deep experience of suffering and oppression) into a constructive energy capable of shaping a new reality. According to this study, KAUM clergywomen‘s experiences and practices of faith as ecclesial leaders strengthen Wesleyan ecclesiology in terms of the UMC‘s efforts to be an inclusive church through connectionalism, and its commitment to social justice. MinJung theology and the theology of YeoSung, in their respective understandings of the church, broaden Wesleyan ecclesiology and enable the Church to be more relevant in a global context by embracing those who have not been normative theological subjects.

LISA SERGIO: HOW MUSSOLINI'S "GOLDEN VOICE" OF PROPAGANDA CREATED AN AMERICAN MASS COMMUNICATION CAREER

In 1937 Lisa Sergio, "The Golden Voice" of fascist broadcasting from Rome, fled Italy for the United States. Though her mother was American, Sergio was classified as an enemy alien once the United States entered World War II. Yet Sergio became a U.S. citizen in 1944 and built a successful career in radio, working first at NBC and then WQXR in New York City in the days when women's voices were not thought to be appropriate for news or "serious" programming. When she was blacklisted as a communist in the early 1950s, Sergio compensated for the loss of radio employment by becoming principally an author and lecturer in Washington, D.C., until her death in 1989. This dissertation, based on her personal papers, is the first study of Sergio's American mass communication career. It points out the personal, political and social obstacles she faced as a woman in her 52-year career as a commentator on varied aspects of world affairs, religion and feminism. This study includes an examination of the FBI investigations of Sergio and the anti-communist campaigns conducted against her. It concludes that Sergio's success as a public communicator was predicated on both her unusual talents and her ability to transform her public image to reflect ideal American values of womanhood in shifting political climates.

Organizing women as women: Hybridity and grassroots collective action in the 21st century

The Million Mom March (favoring gun control) and Code Pink: Women for Peace (focusing on foreign policy, especially the war in Iraq) are organizations that have mobilized women as women in an era when other women's groups struggled to maintain critical mass and turned away from non-gender-specific public issues. This article addresses how these organizations fostered collective consciousness among women, a large and diverse group, while confronting the echoes of backlash against previous mobilization efforts by women. We argue that the March and Code Pink achieved mobilization success by creating hybrid organizations that blended elements of three major collective action frames: maternalism, egalitarianism, and feminine expression. These innovative organizations invented hybrid forms that cut across movements, constituencies, and political institutions. Using surveys, interviews, and content analysis of organizational documents, this article explains how the March and Code Pink met the contemporary challenges facing women's collective action in similar yet distinct ways. It highlights the role of feminine expression and concerns about the intersectional marginalization of women in resolving the historic tensions between maternalism and egalitarianism. It demonstrates hybridity as a useful analytical lens to understand gendered organizing and other forms of grassroots collective action. © 2010 American Political Science Association.

READING AND RESPONDING: FINDING AND MAKING MEANING IN THE LIFE WRITING OF DIASPORIC IRANIAN JEWISH WOMEN

This project investigates the English-language life writing of diasporic Iranian Jewish women. It examines how these women have differentially imagined their diasporic lives and travels, and how they have in turn been imagined and accepted or rejected by their audiences. In the first chapter, I use “home” as a lens for understanding three distinct life writing texts, showing how the authors write about what it means to have a home and to be at home in contrasting and even contradictory ways. I show how, despite potential hegemonic readings that perpetuate unequal relationships and a normative definition of the ideal home, the texts are open to multiple contestatory readings that create spaces for new formulations and understandings. In the second chapter, I look more closely at the intersections between trauma stories and the life writing of Iranian Jewish women, and I argue that readers use life writing texts about trauma to support an egocentric reconstruction of American democracy and dominance. I also show how a critical frame for understanding trauma can yield interpretations that highlight, rather than ignore, relationships of power and privilege. In the final chapter of the thesis, I present a case study of two online reading groups, and I show that communal reading environments, though they participate in dominant discourses, are also spaces where resistance and subversion can develop.

Welfare Effort and Poverty from the Monetary and Capabilities Approach: A Cross-Country Analysis in Latin American and the Caribbean (1990-2010)

There is abundant empirical evidence on the negative relationship between welfare effort and poverty. However, poverty indicators traditionally used have been representative of the monetary approach, excluding its multidimensional reality from the analysis. Using three regression techniques for the period 1990-2010 and controlling for demographic and cyclical factors, this paper examines the relationship between social spending per capita —as the indicator of welfare effort— and poverty in up to 21 countries of the region. The proportion of the population with an income below its national basic basket of goods and services (PM1) and the proportion of population with an income below 50% of the median income per capita (PM2) were the two poverty indicators considered from the monetarist approach to measure poverty. From the capability approach the proportion of the population with food inadequacy (PC1) and the proportion of the population without access to improved water sources or sanitation facilities (PC2) were used. The fi ndings confi rm that social spending is actually useful to explain changes in poverty (PM1, PC1 and PC2), as there is a high negative and signifi cant correlation between the variables before and after controlling for demographic and cyclical factors. In two regression techniques, social spending per capita did not show a negative relationship with the PM2. Countries with greater welfare effort for the period 1990-2010 were not necessarily those with the lowest level of poverty. Ultimately social spending per capita was more useful to explain changes in poverty from the capability approach.

Women artists of the international avant-garde: the case of "Abstraction-Création" (1931-1936)

Women’s contribution to abstract art in the interwar period is a subject that, to date, has received very little attention. In this article we deal with the untold story of the participation of women artists in Abstraction-Création, the foremost international group dedicated to abstract art in the 1930s. Founded in Paris in 1931, the group took on the work of two previous collectives to become a platform for the dissemination and promotion of abstract art and consisted of around a hundred members. Twelve of these were women, whose writings and works were published in the group’s annual magazine, abstraction creátion art non figuratif (1932-1936), and who participated in a number of the group’s exhibitions. Compared to what had occurred in previous groups, the participation of women, although reduced in number, was comparable to that of the male artists and being members of the group had a generally positive impact on the women’s careers. However, all this came at the expense of relinquishing any gender specificity in their work and the public presentation of it, and demonstrates that the normalization of women’s contributions to the avant-garde could only be brought about alongside a questioning of the more dogmatic views of modernity.

Politics, Patriotism and Women in Ireland, Britain and Colonial America, c.1700-c.1780

The use of the consumer boycott as a political tool is commonly associated with pre-revolutionary colonial America and has been identified by historians as an important means through which American women were politicized. This article argues that from the late seventeenth century, Irish political discourse advocated the non-consumption of imported goods and support for home manufactures by women in ways that were strikingly similar to those used later in North America. In Ireland and, subsequently in the American colonies, the virtuous woman consumer was given an active public role by political and social commentators. Rather than being a “brilliantly original American invention,” as T. H. Breen has argued, the political exploitation of a consumer boycott and the promotion of local industry were among what Bernard Bailyn has described as the “set of ideas, already in scattered ways familiar” to the revolutionary leaders through the Irish experience. The article also argues that a shared colonial environment gave Irish and American women a public patriotic role in the period, c. 1700–1780 that they did not have in the home countries of England and Scotland.

Social support, network heterogeneity, and smoking behavior in women: The 10-town study

Purpose. Examine the associations among social support, network heterogeneity, and smoking behavior in a large sample of Finnish female municipal employees.

Fortification with low amounts of folic acid makes a significant difference in folate status in young women: implications for the prevention of neural tube defects

Background: Mandatory fortification of grain products with folic acid was introduced recently in the United States, a policy expected to result in a mean additional intake of 100 mu g/d. One way of predicting the effectiveness of this measure is to determine the effect of removing a similar amount of folic acid as fortified food from the diets of young women who had been electively exposed to chronic fortification.

Objective: The objective was to examine the effect on folate status of foods fortified with low amounts of folic acid.

Design: We investigated the changes in dietary intakes and in red blood cell and serum concentrations of folate in response to removing folic acid-fortified foods for 12 wk from the diets of women who reportedly consumed such foods at least once weekly (consumers).

Results: Consumers (n = 21) had higher total folate intakes (P = 0.002) and red blood cell folate concentrations (P = 0.023) than nonconsumers (women who consumed folic acid-fortified foods less than once weekly; n = 30). Of greater interest, a 12-wk intervention involving the exclusion of these foods resulted in a decrease in folate intake of 78 +/- 56 mu g/d (P < 0.001), which was reflected in a significant reduction in red blood cell folate concentrations (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: Cessation of eating folic acid-fortified foods resulted in removing 78 mu g folic acid/d from the diet. Over 12 wk this resulted in a lowering of red blood cell folate concentrations by 111 nmol/L (49 mu g/L). This magnitude of change in folate status in women can be anticipated as a result of the new US fortification legislation and is predicted to have a significant, although not optimal, effect in preventing neural tube defects.