Part of a panel discussion in the Use and Influence of the New Testament seminar

The aim of this course is to explore the cultural constructions of gender and sexuality in the literature of Medieval and Renaissance Southern Europe. We will approach questions such as the status of women and the context of misogyny, the societal role of same-sex relations, the presentation and visualization of sexuality, desire and the body. We…[Read more]

In this essay, I discuss salient themes of The Child to Come: Life After the Human Catastrophe (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). I hold that The Child To Come’s main thrust is this: ‘The issue is not that there is no future but rather that there is no sure way of orienting toward that future, either to save it or to survive it’. The chall…[Read more]

Anhand der Science-Fiction Animes “Captain Future”, “Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs” und “Cowboy Bebop” wird eine bestimmtes Narrativ innerhalb des Genres des Science-Fiction Anime stichprobenartig über drei Jahrzehnte hinweg betrachtet und die vorzufindenden Geschlechterkonstruktionen beleuchtet: Jede dieser Erzählungen handelt von den A…[Read more]

The tension between feminism and national liberation is a commonplace of political mobilization across the postcolonial world. This essay traces how postcolonial nationalist and transnational feminist agendas were brought into conflict during the defense of a thesis on the novels of the Syrian writer Ghada al-Samman (b. 1942) that took place in…[Read more]

Call for Papers

The literary relation between Parvin E’tesami and Walt Whitman remains a largely unexplored field. This article analyzes the connection between “God’s Weaver” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider” to shed light on Parvin’s creative reception of Whitman. Creating a mixed-breed spider, combining characteristics from both
Whitman’s insect and the Persi…[Read more]

This article considers how state-mandated veiling and unveiling reinforce modern capitalism. State regulations regarding veiling incorporate the female body into the political economy of the commodity form. In addition to serving as an empty signifier to be filled with exchange value for the male observer, the veil operates as an ideological…[Read more]

Draft Version des Beitrags: In dem vorliegenden Artikel möchten wir der Frage nach den Möglichkeiten eines weiblichen bzw. feministischen Zugangs zu wissenschaftlicher Forschung in verschiedenen Hinsichten beleuchten. Wir werden uns dem Thema exemplarisch anhand des Forschungsfeldes der Primatologie zuwenden, wobei die Antwort auf die Frage, w…[Read more]

A review of the 2017 retrospective of painter Mernet Larsen at the Tampa Museum of Art.

Her Father’s Name (1876) is one of Marryat’s most radical and intriguing novels, featuring Leona Lacoste, a cross-dressing heroine, and Lucilla Evans, a textbook hysteric who falls in love with her. For centuries, the diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ was conveniently applied to any woman who exhibited transgressive behaviour, whether it be through sexual…[Read more]

Whereas many women writers were reticent on the issue of property, or vehemently opposed to improving the position of wives, Florence Marryat used her public platform to campaign for change. As such, her work forms an important contribution to our understanding of women and property in the nineteenth century. In this paper I discuss the ways in…[Read more]

Florence Marryat (1833-99) was a novelist, editor, playwright, spiritualist, singer and actress. She wrote nearly seventy novels during her varied career, most of which were dismissed by critics but loved by her reading public. Much of the opprobrium aimed at her originated from fellow women authors such as Eliza Lynn Linton and Marie Corelli, but…[Read more]

Reproductive justice and gestational surrogacy are often implicitly treated as antonyms. Yet the former represents a theoretic approach that enables the long and racialised history of surrogacy (far from a new or ‘exceptional’ practice) to be appreciated as part of a struggle for ‘radical kinship’ and gender-inclusive polymaternalism. Recasti…[Read more]

As surrogacy services expand globally, more and more nations are moving to ban the practice. Calls for its abolition couched in feminist terms returned to prominence in international public life in 2012. The resurgence follows a lapse since the heyday of the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering…[Read more]

This article analyzes the connections between Lorde’s representations of blindness in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and its connection to lesbian sexuality.

Feminist resistance has been crucial for Argentina’s recovery from the military dictatorship of 1976-1983. Alicia Partnoy was “disappeared” into one of hundreds of torture centers sardonically called “Little Schools.” After her release and exile to the United States, she published her poetic testimony, The Little School, with Cleis Press in 1986.…[Read more]

Inspired by my work on the Women in Book History Bibliography, this presentation takes a different angle on discussions of women’s texts in digital archives. The WBHB collects secondary sources on women’s writing and labor over a broad range of languages, subjects, geographic locations, and time periods. Because we collect secondary sources, we…[Read more]

This paper highlights the multiple modalities through which writer, activist, and educator June Jordan materialized a placemaking pedagogy, grounded in the art of structural critique and using language in the service of social change. In this paper, I show how Jordan “implicitly instructs” her students and young readers in cultivating a str…[Read more]