Andrea Oberhuber, Alexandra Arvisais et Marie-Claude Dugas, dir., Fictions modernistes du masculin-féminin : 1910-1940

Compte rendu de OBERHUBER, Andrea, Alexandra ARVISAIS et Marie-Claude DUGAS (dir.), Fictions modernistes du masculin-féminin : 1910-1940, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016, 314 p. (ISBN : 978-2-7535-4884-8)

'A Kind of Logic, A Kind of Dominant Logic': Navigating Colonialism, Honoring Black Mobility, and Thinking on Moving Through

My thesis thinks through the ways Newtonian logics require linear mobility in order to produce narratives of progress. I argue that this linear mobility, and the resulting logics, potentially erases the chaotic and non-linear motions that are required to navigate a colonial landscape. I suggest that these non-linear movements produce important critiques of the seeming stasis of colonial constructs and highlight the ways these logics must appear neutral and scientific in an attempt to conceal the constant and complex adjustments these frameworks require. In order to make room for these complex motions, I develop a quantum intervention. Specifically, I use quantum physics as a metaphor to think through the significance of black life, the double-consciousness ofland, and the intricate motions of sound. In order to put forth this intervention, I look at news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, Du Bois’s characterization of land in Souls of Black Folks, and the aural mobilities of blackness articulated in an academic discussion and interview about post- humanism.

Governmentality gone wild: How the separation of sex workers from 'communities' contributes to violence against sex workers

Sex workers are members of our communities, whether they are local or national communities. In law, mainstream media representations, and research sex workers are positioned as outside of or in opposition to communities. Even within marginalized communities sex workers are excluded when appeals to respectability politics are made. In this thesis I analyze three analytic sites from three areas of social life. The first chapter performs a textual analysis of The Bedford Decision (2013) and the resulting Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (2014) as an examination of law. The second chapter is an analysis of filmic discourse on community, sex workers, and violence in the mainstream film London Road (2015) as an examination of mainstream media. The third chapter draws upon empirical research, i.e. in-depth interviews with three current and former sex workers in Ottawa, Canada and analyzes the transcripts using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to center how sex workers’ understanding of their work, community, and the laws and policies that are supposed govern and protect them. In my preface and conclusion I discuss some of the ethical dilemmas I encountered while conducting this research. My findings suggest that sex workers are being positioned and understood as outside of communities in ways that contribute to violence against sex workers. The implications of this research suggest that people who speak in the name of communities—communities in the sense of local neighborhood communities, activist communities, and national communities—need to recognize that sex workers are part of their communities and be accountable to ensuring they are treated as members. Researchers who conduct research on sex work and sex workers need to be accountable to their participants and the impacts their research may have on laws and policies. Sex workers are an over-researched population yet their voices are largely misappropriated or silenced in popular research and policy debates.

EXHAUSTING AFFECTS: THE NEGOTIATION OF AFFECTIVE LABOUR, NEOLIBERAL SUBJECTIVITY, AND FEMINIST POLITICS AMONG ANTI-VIOLENCE WORKERS

This thesis explores the affective and political life of anti-violence labour, with particular attention to the ways that neoliberalism comes to bear on subjectivity, embodiment, and relationality among women responding to violence. In fall of 2015, I conducted qualitative interviews with six women engaged in the work of responding to violence. The participants in this project articulated rich descriptions of the affective life of neoliberalism and the demands of neoliberal subjectivity, drawing particular attention to the affective labour involved in navigating the political complexities of anti-violence organizations, negotiating burnout, and affectively self-managing in order to meet norms of professionalism. Bringing participant narratives into conversations with feminist theories of affect, I argue for an account affective labour that centers the specific, materially embodied experiences of that work and for an account of neoliberalism as a system of embodied and affective pressures.

The Gentleman-Scholar at Home: Domesticity, Masculinity, and Civility in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting

This dissertation examines the gentleman-scholar depicted at home in Dutch seventeenth-century genre paintings, focusing primarily on art created in the Northern Netherlands from the 1630s through the 1670s. The methodological approach is art historical but also pertains to history of architecture, history of dress, and gender studies. Employing the framework of the 'Ages of Man', this thesis investigates three related pictorial themes: the student, the scholar in his prime, and the aged scholar. Variations of male scholarly figures and the accoutrements of the study have a long history in Europe. Prototypical sources include religious history paintings of learned hermit-saints; artistic interest in the allegorical Saturnine persona; portraits of famous scholars; and the iconography of scholarly melancholy implied through vanitas allusions in portraiture and genre paintings. While the majority of Dutch genre paintings pertain to themes of women, male domestic routines form a small but important subset of this imagery and have not been studied. By the 1640s, this subject is readily identified by his setting, clothing, and actions. The ubiquity of scholarly attributes, such as books and globes, paired with the wearing of scholarly robes suggest the merits of intellectual curiosity and the privileges of studying as a pastime and designating a room as a study (studeerkamer). Distinct themes in genre also imply the challenges and rewards of scholarly activity pursued in concert with masculine civic and familial duty. Central to the development of this pictorial theme were: the innovative treatment of learned men by Rembrandt and his circle; the fijnschilder subjects of Dou; and the practice of amateur study by elite men, as suggested by the art of Vermeer. As this dissertation reveals, this convention did not grow to be consistent across the Northern Netherlands, nor was artistic interest limited to university towns. Rather, the larger relevance of scholars in Dutch society is evident in visual and literary sources. The domesticity of this figure in genre painting suggests that scholars mediated between an active and a contemplative life. Societal respect was garnered for scholars through their balance of familial and social duties with the honorable pastime of scholarly leisure.

Crises of In/Humanity: Posthumanism, Afrofuturism, and Science and/as Fiction

This thesis engages black critical thought on the human and its contemporary iterations in posthumanism and transhumanism. It articulates five categories of analysis: displace, interrupt, disrupt, expand, and wither. Each is meant to allude to the generative potential in different iterations of black thought that engages the human. Working through Sylvia Wynter’s theories of the rise of Man-as-human in particular, the project highlights how black thought on the human displaces the uncritical whiteness of posthumanist thought. It argues that Afrofuturism has the potential to interrupt the linear progression from human to posthuman and that Octavia Butler’s Fledgling proffers a narrative of race as a technology that disrupts the presumed post-raciality of posthumanism and transhumanism. It then contends that Katherine McKittrick’s rearticulation of the Promise of Science can be extended to incorporate the promise of science fiction. In so doing, it avers that a more curated conversation between McKittrick and Wynter, one already ongoing, and Octavia Butler, through Mind of My Mind from her Patternist series, expands our notions of the human as a category even at the risk of seeing it wither as a politic or praxis. It ends on a speculative note meant to imagine the possibilities within the promise of science fiction.

‘Learning to be Zen’: Women travellers and the imperative to happy

This paper follows the emotional management of lone, independent women travellers as they move through tourist spaces, based on my doctoral research Embodiment and Emotion in the experiences of independent women tourists (2012). Specifically, this paper will focus on ‘gendering happiness’ by arguing that women travellers are significantly compelled to feel and display characteristics of happiness, humour and ‘learning to be Zen’ in order to be successful travellers. The imperative to become, and remain, happy and humorous in the face of embodied, emotional and gendered constraints is a key feature of women’s reflections of their travelling experiences, mirroring the recent emergence of literature into happiness and positive thinking within feminist theory (Ehrenreich 2010, Ahmed 2010). Negotiating ‘bad’ emotions provides a powerful insight into the perceptions of women travellers; to remain happy can mask problematic power relations and other forms of resistance. This is not to say that emotional negotiation is not partly a form of effective resistance, rather, I wish to make room for the freedom to be unhappy and angry in travelling space without feeling failure for not achieving a successful travelling identity.

Rethinking Care Through Social Reproduction: Articulating Circuits of Migration

Care has come to dominate much feminist research on globalized migrations and the transfer of labor from the South to the North, while the older concept of reproduction had been pushed into the background but is now becoming the subject of debates on the commodification of care in the household and changes in welfare state policies. This article argues that we could achieve a better understanding of the different modalities and trajectories of care in the reproduction of individuals, families, and communities, both of migrant and nonmigrant populations by articulating the diverse circuits of migration, in particular that of labor and the family. In doing this, I go back to the earlier North American writing on racialized minorities and migrants and stratified social reproduction. I also explore insights from current Asian studies of gendered circuits of migration connecting labor and marriage migrations as well as the notion of global householding that highlights the gender politics of social reproduction operating within and beyond households in institutional and welfare architectures. In contrast to Asia, there has relatively been little exploration in European studies of the articulation of labor and family migrations through the lens of social reproduction. However, connecting the different types of migration enables us to achieve a more complex understanding of care trajectories and their contribution to social reproduction.

Women, Drug use and Imprisonment. Intersectional Approach

Research on women prisoners and drug use is scarce in our context and needs theoretical tools to understand their life paths. In this article, I introduce an intersectional perspective on the experiences of women in prison, with particular focus on drug use. To illustrate this, I draw on the life story of one of the women interviewed in prison, in order to explore the axes of inequality in the lives of women in prison. These are usually presented as accumulated and articulated in complex and diverse ways. The theoretical tool of intersectionality allows us to gain an understanding of the phenomenon of women prisoners who have used drugs. This includes both the structural constraints in which they were embedded and the decisions they made, considering the circumstances of disadvantage in which they were immersed. This is a perspective which has already been intuitively present since the dawn of feminist criminology in the English-speaking world and can now be developed further due to new contributions in this field of gender studies.

Estereotipos masculinos y femeninos en los zoologismos fraseológicos españoles y checos

El trabajo pretende mostrar los estereotipos de hombre y mujer en la sociedad occidental según los estudios de género para, más tarde, comprobar si dichos estereotipos se reflejan en la fraseología checa y española relativa a animales, es decir, en los zoologismos. El análisis se sustenta en las teorías de la lingüística cognitiva acerca de la metáfora conceptual y del lenguaje figurado convencional. Las conclusiones muestran una clara discriminación de ambos géneros en el lenguaje, siendo el femenino más afectado que el masculino.

Feminist Street Performances in Puerto Rico: Alternative Imaginaries Shifting the Ideal(ized) National Body

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

The Adolescent Empathy Paradox and Juvenile Offending

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Femininos de montar - Uma etnografia sobre experiências de gênero entre drag queens

The paper presents a discussion about gender and body in the drag queens experience at Natal city (RN). From the different concepts that characterizes the identity processes on subjects who perform gender transformation (transvestites, transsexuals and female impersonators), the justification for studying the drag character is observed as a means to understand matters that are important when you take such a position. Therefore, there is a need for a linkage between the various concepts responsible for this definition, in addition to considering the historical and cultural process responsible for the creation of such categories, identities and stereotypes among these individuals. In this sense it will be possible to carry out a critical analysis on the different social loads present in each representation, and understand what is at stake in the attribution of classifications and terminologies that are applied to different expressions of metamorphosis. This ethnography considers the debate from a field research conducted at LGBT social establishments and other performance spaces of these people, verifying their dynamics in these places and investigating relationships between performers, personas and characters and also backstage scene in which they participate

Leonie Herwartz-Emden / Verena Schurt / Wiebke Waburg: Aufwachsen in heterogenen Sozialisationskontexten. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2010 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Leonie Herwartz-Emden / Verena Schurt / Wiebke Waburg: Aufwachsen in heterogenen Sozialisationskontexten. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2010 (279 S.; ISBN 978-3-5311-7196-8)

Katja Koch / Kinan Darwisch (Hrsg.): Dimensionen religiöser Erziehung muslimischer Kinder in Niedersachsen. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2010 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Katja Koch / Kinan Darwisch (Hrsg.): Dimensionen religiöser Erziehung muslimischer Kinder in Niedersachsen. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2010 (132 S.; ISBN 978-3-9418-7556-2)