European Journal of Women's Studies recent issues

Editorial: Writing across the Borders

Bono, P., Lukic, J. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:40:12 PDT

Dangerous Liaisons

Ugresic, D., Bursac, E. E. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:40:56 PDT

Crossing the Borders of Identity Politics: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk

Buikema, R. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:02 PDT

This text seeks to rethink the relationship between literature and the gendered construction of national boundaries. It does so by proposing a reconsideration of the terms singularity, difference and literariness while analysing two talked-about and best-selling postcolonial novels, Disgrace (1999) by J.M. Coetzee and Agaat (2004) by Marlene van Niekerk.

Migrants' Art and Writings: Figures of Precarious Hospitality

Setti, N. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:08 PDT

Time, precarious lives and memories and multiple narrations related to crossing borders constitute the key meanings of a series of contemporary pieces of works produced by migrant artists and writers (Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Marwan Rechmaoui, Jumana Emil Abboud and Hoda Barakat). Through an analysis of some of their works, this article focuses on some spatio-temporal images, actions and metaphors related to movement (crossing, walking through, passing borders). Then it questions the exploration of narratives in visual arts, especially the relationship between imaginary fiction and reality stories. Theatre may become the very place where contemporary tales of migrant people are translated, (re)told, performed. The very meaningful notion of hospitality becomes a theatrical practice in one of the most relevant spectacles of the Théâtre du Soleil, Le Dernier Caravansérail (Odyssées) (2003). Another aspect of this creative hospitality — Leïla Sebbar’s Mes Algéries en France — concerns the interweaving of memories belonging to opposite sides of divided countries, after the colonial wars. This work of collection, transcription, translation from one to another gives an example of writing (as fiction and narrative) as a repairing work but also of revelation of unknown connections.

Writing across the Borders of the Self

Bridger, B. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:10 PDT

The aim of this article is to demonstrate a methodology that ‘writes across’ the separation (border?) between theory and practice. It refers to French feminist writers of the 1970s and 1980s, often categorized under the heading of ‘écriture féminine’, who were concerned with how language operates and with the relationship between language and the formation of the self. The article consists of a short preface introducing a piece of autobiographical writing driving home(3). The piece brings into collision incidents, objects and time frames in an attempt to dissolve the borders between fact and fiction, personal and impersonal, private and public, poetic writing and analysis. In the act of writing driving home(3) the author also attempts to generate knowledge. driving home (3) searches within the anecdotal and autobiographical for methodological indicators. The how and why of the author’s writing practice run across, over and around each other, acting as short and inconclusive pathways within the investigative structure of the whole.

Explorations, Simulations: Claude Cahun and Self-Identity

Gravano, V. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:11 PDT

The purpose of this article is to construct a critique of some works by the French artist Lucy Schwob, better known as Claude Cahun, who was active between 1910 and 1950. A writer and photographer, Cahun was at first very close to symbolist positions; later she was closer to the surrealist movement. Her work and her life, continually suspended between genders, and between ‘normality’ and ‘deviance’, have so far been analysed mainly through gender studies. This article attempts to restore the inherent complexity of her poetic work and aesthetic. It tries to widen the field of study to deal with the representation of alterity, through reversing the stereotypical representation.

Musical 'Contact Zones' in Gurinder Chadha's Cinema

Guarracino, S. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:11 PDT

This article explores strategies of cultural representation in the production of Gurinder Chadha, a British director of Sikh origin. Chadha’s work is located in what Marie Louise Pratt defines as ‘contact zones’, negotiating between US, European and Indian audiences. The result is a directing style that puts together ‘East’ and ‘West’, Bollywood and Hollywood, in an in-between space that has been radically reconfigured through hybridization. This happens in particular through her use of music and soundtrack, from the documentary I’m British but ... (1990), up to the recent Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Bride and Prejudice (2004). Here, many and diverse musical languages are put together through the representational strategies of parody and kitsch, deconstructing the idea of cultural identity in the very gesture that creates it.

Book Review: Situating Displacements in Transnational Feminisms: Epistemological Practices in the Story of the Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves

Phoenix, A. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:12 PDT

Book Review: Feminist Women's hEalth Activism Across the Globe: Tracing the History and Impact of Our Bodies Ourselves: Kathy Davis The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels across Borders Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007, 277 pp., ISBN 978-0-8223-4066-9

Douglas, J. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:12 PDT

Book Review: Hopeful Feminist Stories: Kathy Davis The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels across Borders Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007, 277 pp., ISBN 978-0-8223-4066-9

Poleykett, B. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:13 PDT

Book Review: Revisiting Feminist Questions and Collaborations Across Politics of Location: Kathy Davis The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels across Borders Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007, 277 pp., ISBN 978-0-8223-4066-9

Fay, M. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:14 PDT

Book Review: Towards a Truly Transnational Feminism: Kathy Davis The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels across Borders Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007, 277 pp., ISBN 978-0-8223-4066-9

Ralston, M. — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:15 PDT

Books Received

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:16 PDT

List of Referees 2009

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:41:18 PDT

Celebrating Intersectionality? Debates on a Multi-faceted Concept in Gender Studies: Themes from a Conference

Lewis, G. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

Dirigism and Deja Vu Logic: The Gender Politics and Perils of EU Enlargement

Weiner, E. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

This article examines the transference of the European Union's equal opportunity directives to the new post-socialist accessor states, most especially to Bulgaria and Romania. Drawing upon 13 interviews in Bulgaria and 12 in Romania with local institutional stakeholders — e.g. trade union deputies, ministry officials — the article shows how politico-ideological differences have bred very different gender sensibilities across Europe, East and West. It further reveals how these disparities have been downplayed, if not wholly ignored in the EU's extension eastward. The study concludes that continued disregard of the historical and cultural specificities of power relations between men and women in the formerly socialist, new EU member states threatens the efficacy of the EU's `gender equality agenda' and more generally, the integrity of the EU as a self-purported democratic body.

Life below a `Language Threshold'?: Stories of Turkish Marriage Migrant Women in Denmark

Liversage, A. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

In many immigrant groups, women gain less command of the host country language than the men. Using life story interviews with marriage migrants from Turkey, now living in Denmark, this article investigates this limited language learning, linking it to these women's lives as they primarily unfold in three social locations: households, workplaces and language schools. During their first years in Denmark a gendered division of work may relegate the women to the Turkish- or Kurdish-speaking home environment. When they subsequently enter work, their poor Danish skills only allow them access into jobs with little host country interaction. The available language education becomes fragmented after childbirth and often remains inadequate to substantially raise the women's command of Danish. Furthermore, national legislation may unintentionally impede language learning. As a result, even women with expressed ambitions of acquiring Danish may continue living below a `language threshold' that precludes them from gaining broader access to host country resources.

New Technologies and New Spaces for Relation: Spanish Feminist Praxis Online

Nunez Puente, S., Garcia Jimenez, A. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

In recent decades, Spanish feminist praxis has diversified its theoretical proposals and objectives, presenting the use of the new virtual communities from perspectives that bring it closer both to cyberfeminism and to technofeminism. The purpose of this article is to consider and explore in depth the construction and the use of the new technologies and internet in the new spaces for relationships in this feminist praxis. The article analyses the theoretical and agency proposals presented by two of the founders of the most significant portals in recent years in Spain: E-leusis, founded by María Angustias Bertomeu, and Mujeres en Red, founded by Montserrat Boix. From a position closer to the essential utopia defended by Bertomeu, Spanish feminist praxis has advanced towards a kind of technofeminism that Montserrat Boix herself has transformed into what she has denominated social cyberfeminism.

Book Review: Approaching Gender: Mary Holmes What is Gender? Sociological Approaches London: Sage, 2007, 209 pp., ISBN 978-0-7619-4713-4

Phoenix, A. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

Book Review: A Woman's pIlgrimage To Recover Her Mother: Jacqueline Walker Pilgrim State London: Sceptre, Hodder and Stoughton, 2008, 338 pp., ISBN 978-0-340-96078-3

Robertson, I. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

Book Review: Mapping Gendered Middle-Class Identities in Contemporary India: Henrike Donner Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-Class Identity in Contemporary India Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, 215 pp., ISBN 978-0-7546-4942-7

Kothari, A. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

Book Review: Contemporary Bestselling Children's lIterature and Its Discontents: Lilijana Burcar Novi val nedolznosti v otroki literaturi: kaj sporoata Harry Potter in Lyra Srebrousta [New Wave of Innocence in Children's Literature: Conservative Backlash and the Significance of Harry Potter and Lyra Silvertongue] Ljubljana: Sophia, 2007, 205 pp., ISBN 978-961-6294-91-1

Vidmar-Horvat, K. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

Book Review: Taking Stock of Antisocial Behaviour Policies: P. Squires, ed. ASBO Nation: The Criminalisation of Nuisance Bristol: Policy Press, 2008, 383 pp., ISBN 978-1-84742-027-5

Tisdall, K. — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

Books Received

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:03:22 PDT

Editorial:`Black is Beautiful' in European Perspective

Davis, K. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:34 PDT

Virginal Facades: Sexual Freedom and Guilt among Young Turkish Women

Ozyegin, G. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:34 PDT

Charged with personal, societal and legal significance, the hymen, as a fold of flesh, has the power to rule the sexual identities of unmarried women in Turkey. This article examines the forms and associated meanings of contemporary challenges to virginity rules among educationally advantaged, upwardly mobile young women. The article demonstrates that in the process of negotiating often contradictory expectations of their sexual behavior, young women cultivate purposefully ambiguous identities related to their state of virginhood. The author calls these identities ` virginal facades' and explores their complex and contradictory implications. The author highlights an important normative shift from a focus on the physical reality of virginity to a focus on the moral expression of virginity, and emphasizes the intricate connection between social class and women's sexuality experienced by some young women as sexual guilt.

Pluralism and the Interpretation of Women's Human Rights

Alvarez, S. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:34 PDT

Since conflicts of human rights can be translated into conflicts of values, this article looks into the sources and extension of value pluralism for a better understanding of the sort of conflicts of human rights that women face in multicultural contexts. Furthermore, a proper understanding of personal autonomy as a founding value underlying individual rights can contribute to an interpretation of women's human rights that takes account of both their untouchable core as well as their contextual meaning. As conflicts of fundamental rights most often take place in a scenario of strong pluralism, the article considers cases of conflicts of rights in multicultural societies focusing on the overlapping values to be balanced. Religious freedom, education, neutrality, equality or toleration are some of the issues to be addressed: all of these are important and should be evaluated considering their further implications for women as well as for the other individuals involved.

Palimpsests: The Female Body as a Text in Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body

Maioli, F. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:34 PDT

This article analyses Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body, discussing its use of the female body as a text and, more specifically, as a palimpsest. The article aims to demonstrate that the novel's genderless narrator uses the beloved's body as a palimpsest since in trying to celebrate it, s/he is unable to depict it as it is and merely inscribes a set of meanings onto it. The female body is described through two major sets of images: as a landscape, via a colonial language, and as a diseased body, via an anatomical language. The article discusses this particular use of the female body as a traditional way of describing it, which is confirmed by the novel's wide use of literary references from canonical texts. The novel, then, appears to be positioned outside a feminist or lesbian tradition, since it is not able to represent the female body in a new and fertile way and draws too much on an all-male literary tradition, configuring itself as a palimpsest just like the body it is trying to describe.

Gender and Sustainable Consumption: A German Environmental Perspective

Vinz, D. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:34 PDT

The debate about sustainability and gender at the international level is characterized by a strong presence of international women's networks from the South. However, in Agenda 21 — the UNCED programme for sustainability in the 21st century — the situation of women in the North is barely visible. Nevertheless, Agenda 21 recommends that all states pursue strategies of sustainability at national and local levels. Therefore, it is necessary to contribute to the sustainability debate from a Northern feminist perspective. This article discusses relevant contributions from feminist scholars in Germany and looks at the arguments that have been brought forward in the context of developing a strategy of sustainable development in Germany from a gender perspective. Second, results of gender studies in relevant fields of sustainability are discussed, using the distinction between explicit and implicit gender aspects. Finally, research perspectives for developing concepts of linking socioecological transformation with empowerment are presented as a specific feminist claim to sustainability.

Open Letter: Golden Boys, Marxist Ghosts and Nomadic Feminism

Alvanoudi, A. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:34 PDT

Book Review: EMBODYING THE SEXED SUBJECT IN A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN Virginia Woolf, translation by Maria Milagros Rivera Garretas Un cuarto propio (A Room of One's Own) Madrid: horas y Horas, Coleccion La Cosecha de Nuestras Madres, 2003, 152 pp., ISBN 84-96004-02-3

Bengoechea, M., Wilson, C. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:34 PDT

Book Review: BADNESS: RE-EXAMINED Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley, eds Bad Girls of Japan New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 222 pp., ISBN 1-40496-946-9 (hbk), ISBN 1-4039-6947-7 (pbk)

Khatrichettri, N. — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:35 PDT

Call for Papers The European Journal of Women's Studies Special issue: `Feminist Technoscience Studies' Associate editor: Nina Lykke, Linkoping University; Guest editor: Cecilia Asberg, Linkoping University Volume 17(4) November 2010

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:35 PDT

Books Received

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:44:35 PDT

Editorial: `Difficult Dialogues' Once Again

Lewis, G. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST

The Second Sex's Continued Relevance for Equality and Difference Feminisms

Changfoot, N. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST

This article argues that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex continues to teach academic feminism why difference feminism holds productive and generative potential for feminists and why equality feminism has been consistently subject to criticism since the second wave of feminism. Using Hegel's master—slave dialectic as a lens to interpret subjectivity in The Second Sex, this text reveals an aspect of equality feminism that relies upon masculine subjectivity, a subjectivity that inherently constitutes otherness. This reliance on masculine subjectivity is anathema to difference feminism because the otherness inherently constituted by such subjectivity simultaneously and paradoxically constitutes women's ongoing subordination. In assuming equality with men by adopting masculine subjectivity, women are not immune to constituting (other) women as other. Difference feminisms, on the other hand, start from where women are as they choose to see themselves socially, economically, racially, sexually. The Second Sex reveals that difference feminisms imagine freedom in order to identify the difference that would empower women, not strictly towards sex equality with a stable referent (such as the contested referent of the white, middle-class, able-bodied, heterosexual woman or man), but towards emancipatory projects that make a difference for women themselves. The Second Sex portends that such imagined freedom has not been actualized, thus the present remains circumscribed by power that subordinates the difference(s) in question. When read alongside The Second Sex, the tension between equality and difference feminisms can still be read as feminisms that coexist with one another, each with their limitations, each with productive potential and cautionary rejoinders.

Doris Lessing, Feminism and the Representation of Zimbabwe

De Mul, S. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST

This article examines the complex intertwinements of feminism, anti-colonial Marxism and imperialism in the work of the recent Literature Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, particularly in her writings on colonial Africa and the travelogue African Laughter. The article outlines the implications of these intersections for the representation of Zimbabwe against some political, aesthetic and epistemological developments in Lessing's oeuvre. Through a reading of African Laughter, the article argues that a crucial tension is at stake between Lessing's political project of giving voice to black Zimbabweans and the western female protagonist as the authoritative subject of this project. The aim is to render an innovative perspective of Doris Lessing's status as a feminist icon, which she gained in the wake of her acclaimed novel The Golden Notebook (1962), by proceeding from postcolonial feminist scholarship.

A Space of Our Own: Non-Formal Education for Elder Women in Andalusia

Pietila, P. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST

This article studies the participation of a group of elder females in a local health promotion association. The research is based on fieldwork carried out between 2004 and 2007 in an Andalusian agro-town. Drawing on ethnographic data collected, the participation of the women in the association and its influence on and significance for them are examined in terms of sociability, the public sphere and empowerment. The association serves as a special space for these women, who have highly gendered roles and thus a limited social sphere. It encourages them to have their own relationships, time and space. Their participation in the association promotes a consciousness of their particular needs and brings new interests into their lives.

New Materialism and Feminism's Anti-Biologism: A Response to Sara Ahmed

Davis, N. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST

In a recent article, Sara Ahmed castigates so-called new materialist theorists for their accusations of a biophobia evident in feminism. Biophobia is taken simply to be the claim that feminists do not engage with biological detail in their theorizations, which is demonstrably not the case. However, an elaboration of new materialist usage of biophobia reveals that they are proposing a particular conceptualization of what an engagement with the biological means. They theorize an entanglement and non-separability of the biological with/in sociality, and what they criticize in much feminism is the conventional assumption that the biological and the social are two separate and discrete systems that then somehow interact. If the new materialist arguments are fully contextualized and then applied to the supporting examples given in the article, the new materialist critique is actually borne out.

Book Review: Looking Left of Karl Marx To (Re)Claim a Pioneer of Radical Black, Anti-Racist, Anti-Imperialist, Transnational Feminism: Carole Boyce Davies Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007, xxvii + 311 pp., ISBN 13-978-0-8223-4096-6

kennedy-macfoy, m. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST

Book Review: Queer Inquiry and the Relevance of Sexuality: G.E. Haggerty and M. McGarry, eds A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007, 478 pp., ISBN 978-1-4051-1329-8

Ludwin, K. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST

Book Review: Women's hIstory and Postwar Italy: Penelope Morris, ed. Women in Italy 1945--1960: An Interdisciplinary Study Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006, ix + 245 pp., ISBN 1-4039-7099-8

O'Rawe, C. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST

Book Review: Reading Gendered Sanctions On Iraq: Yasmin Husein Al-Jawaheri Women in Iraq: The Gender Impact of International Sanctions London: IB Tauris, 2008, 228 pp., ISBN 978-1-84511-648-4

Sjoberg, L. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST

Books Received

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:29:27 PST