Gendered Violence

Pre-print draft of an article to be published in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing

In the work of Zimbabwean novelist Yvonne Vera, land is shown to be a complex and contested resource to which the typically abject fates of her female protagonists are inextricably bound. As she put it in a 2001 interview shortly before the publication of her final novel: " the connection between women and land in Zimbabwe is negative ". This article situates Vera's work in the context of debates over Zimbabwean land reform, and considers examples of how the " negative " connection between women and land is articulated in her fiction through contrasting leitmotifs of abjection and habitat, culminating in the cautiously redemptive conclusion of her last published novel, The Stone Virgins (2002). The discussion draws on Silvia Federici's work on women, the body and primitive accumulation and on Jason Moore's theory of negative-value in the capitalist world-ecology, to account for why, in Vera's work, the female body is invariably positioned, abjectly, at the nexus of colonial governance and what David Moore has described as Zimbabwe's postcolonial regime of " violent accumulation " .

Violation by way of the distribution of sexual images or image-based sexual abuse or non-consensual “pornography”, or more colloquially and simply, “revenge porn”, entail the online, at times offline, non-consensual distribution, or sharing, of explicit images of someone else seeking revenge, entertainment or political motive. Although male ex-partners are reported as the main perpetrators, current partners, (ex-)friends of both victims and perpetrators, people known to the victim, people seeking revenge for friends, Internet hackers and trolls, amongst others, may also be involved (Tyler, 2016).

The negative impact it has on victims is significant and profound in terms of physical and psychological health and well-being, as with many other forms of gender and sexual violence and abuse. Victims report a host of negative effects: feelings of humiliation, shame, embarrassment and reputation damage with intimate partners, family, friends, work colleagues and, in public; sexual shame,  sexual problems and body image issues with intimate partners; education and employment disruptions; becoming paranoid and hyper-vigilant, and concerned for their personal safety. For example, some have reported being stalked, harassed and threatened with gang rape because of their personal information was also made public. Some victims have even taken their own lives (Citron & Franks, 2014).

It is within this precarious context—between bodies and institutions—that we contend feminist communication scholar–teacher–activists should commit to more expansive communication-based theorization and study of gendered violence as opposed to gender- based violence. Conceptualizing violence as gendered rather than gender based not only opens up possibilities for more expansive and intersectional analysis of gendered and racialized bodies but also centers rather than obfuscates the role of institutional and colonial violence in the production of the precarity of marginalized bodies on U.S. campuses.

In this chapter, I analyze a particular type of rape case that has appeared relatively recently in courts in the United States-what has been termed a post-penetration rape case. More specifically, I argue, on the basis of one particular case, Maouloud Baby v.

L’article est une restitution problématisée d’un terrain de recherche mené en Italie dans un centre anti-violence accueillant des femmes victimes de violences conjugales. L’étude s’inscrit dans une approche sémio-pragmatique, enrichie par les apports de l’interactionnisme symbolique, et s’appuie sur un dispositif de focus group au sein duquel les femmes ayant subi des violences ont été confrontées aux représentations que les campagnes institutionnelles véhiculent d’elles. L’analyse consiste en une mise en dialogue entre le corpus médiatique et la parole des enquêtées faisant émerger les effets de « ventriloquie », les injonctions et les paradoxes qui caractérisent le traitement médiatique de ce problème public.

This article presents the results of a fieldwork study conducted in Italy in an anti-violence center for female victims of domestic abuse. Based on a semio-pragmatic approach combined with symbolic interactionism (in the form of focus groups), the study explores how victims of domestic violence react to representations of their own situation of victimhood in institutional media campaigns against domestic abuse. The creation of a dialogue between the media corpus and women’s testimonies brings to light the effects of institutional‪‪ ‪« ‪ventriloquism‪ »‪ as well as the injunctions and paradoxes that characterize media coverage of this public problem.‪

Studies in legal pluralism have contributed to the framing and understanding of legal systems in the developing world. This article utilises the conceptual framework of legal pluralism as an all embracing field in which the inter-connectedness of state and non-state laws can be more deeply explored, and through which grassroots realities including local actors' internalisation of international human rights laws can be analysed. In terms of 'pluralism' this article examines some of the numerous units of non-state law or regulation operating on the ground in addition to or instead of formal state law. In this way, the role and contribution of studies in legal pluralism within the global north/global south debate becomes one that elucidates the resilience of non-state laws and norms in the face of contemporary global changes and state legal reforms. Working from a grounded theory paradigm, and drawing on the discourse of women victims of violence, accused and their families in eight states of India, the data presented here highlight various aspects of the limits of law's capabilities, the power of informal laws operating on the ground and the relationship of formal law with family and community non-state laws and norms. 1 They further highlight how through the lens

Existing legal responses to sexual assault and harassment in the military have stagnated or failed. Current approaches emphasize the prevalence of sexual assault and highlight the masculine nature of the military’s statistical composition and institutional culture. Current responses do not, however, incorporate masculinities theory to disentangle the experiences of men as a group from men as individuals. Rather, embedded within contestations of the masculine military culture is the unstated assumption that the culture universally privileges or benefits the individual men that operate within it. This myth is harmful because it tethers masculinities to military efficacy, suppresses the costs of male violence to men, and positions women as perpetual outsiders. Debunking the myth of universal male privilege in heavily masculinized institutions would advance gender equality and shift the law reform focus. It would bring sexual assault, domestic violence, and sexual harassment into the sa...

This is a study of the gendered aspects of armed conflict. It explores gender relations between men and women and demonstrates how different groups of women and men experience, participate in and respond to ethnically-constructed armed conflict in southeast Bangladesh. It examines in which ways and to what extent their experiences in the conflict have been gendered. It is also a narrative about people’s longing to belong, and an attempt to understand the gendered embodiments of nationalism in a post-colonial location in the global south, Bangladesh.
The concepts of gender and ethnicity are integral to much feminist research in the field of conflict and peace studies, which has looked at the transformations of conflict, interrogating the power relations between women and men, and addressed, more recently, the added symbolic meaning and representation of gendered violence in conflict. However, studies have focused either on the ‘material reality’ or on the symbolic aspects of gender and ethnicity, and have rarely focused on the situated and contested aspects of gender relations between women and men in historically specific armed conflict. This thesis moves beyond a structural assessment of conflict and avoids a gender versus culture analysis; its aim is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of different groups of women and men in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The research offers a three-level investigation: it looks at whether and how structural inequalities contribute to the making of the armed conflict and gendered violence; it provides a discursive analysis of narratives of sexual violence against women; and it offers an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences of women and men in the nationalist movement and armed conflict. The study considers the spatial, material, relational and changeable aspects of the nationalist movement and armed conflict to reveal that the experiences of different groups of women and men have been gendered in heterogeneous ways.
The research demonstrates that the conflict in the CHT is a highly gendered phenomenon, yet ‘situated’ so that women and men, and Bengali and Jumma people, experience the conflict in different ways. Economic exploitation and state assimilation of the Jumma people are obvious factors in the making of the conflict; however, the phenomena of gendered violence and the subjectivity of Jumma women to sexual violence during and after the armed conflict are not merely the effects of male supremacy or the international politics of militarisation. What the Jumma women experience in the conflict is much more complex. Their lived experiences are informed by their ethnicity, nationality, culture and gender. Likewise, the responses of the Jummos and civilian Bengalese are informed by: their political goals, collective sentiment and sense of belonging; nationalist ideologies, political values and practices; a longing to demonstrate a difference and a culturally distinctive identity; performing chosen and appropriate roles; and the desire and ability to negotiate with shifting lifestyles, embodying their experience of the material situation, and the repetitions of daily life in a changing society. It is the contestations of all these factors, which illustrate the complexity of the phenomenon of gendered violence and the gendered aspects of the conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
This study recognises that the state, as a momentous social actor, contributes to the making of the nationalist projects and ensuing conflict with gendered violence. But the women and men living the conflict are agents in their own lives, and never victims per se. The findings are based on my ethnographic fieldwork, narrative interviews with Jumma women and men, semi-structured interviews with Bengali women, men, mediators and actors, and library research on the topic. Meanings in this research are co-constructed between me as a feminist researcher and my interviewees, and do not necessarily reflect any general ‘truths’.

Misogyny Online explores the worldwide phenomenon of gendered cyberhate as a significant discourse which has been overlooked and marginalised. The rapid growth of the internet has led to numerous opportunities and benefits; however, the architecture of the cybersphere offers users unprecedented opportunities to engage in hate speech. This book weaves together data and theory from multiple disciplines. Its data sources include a meticulously archived collection of cyberhate that I received over the course of two decades working as a journalist – has already been recognised by scholars and public figures as providing a powerful, original, and timely statement about the rapidly escalating international gendered cyberhate problem and its harms. It has also been commended for offering a major contribution to the interdisciplinary study of emerging communication technologies, contemporary manifestations of hate speech, digital citizenship, internet governance, and digital divides.

Crime and Fear in Public Places consists of an important tool to advance the international urban safety agenda as it provides readers with a view on the debate over safety and public places, taking a multidisciplinary approach that takes into consideration several fields of knowledge. The cutting-edge research contained in this book incorporates different perspectives on the phenomenon of crime and fear in public places and fosters the co-production of safety, which is a basic principle contained in the Guidelines, thus contributing towards more cohesive societies and safer cities for all. Juma Assiago, Head, Safer Cities Programme, UN-HABITAT With expertise from a diverse range of disciplines, this compilation achieves a thorough investigation of how individual mobility, social and built landscapes, and policies interact and relate to crime and fear in public places. Insightful and creative, with implications to make communities safer and improve public health. Professor Douglas Wiebe, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA Numerous organizations call for resilient and safe spaces. Many people dream of enjoying vibrant places. Yet, crime and fear in public space threatens these ideals. This book offers timeous information and practical suggestions towards safe places-indeed, a valuable toolkit for everyone working towards inclusive change in public space. Professor Karina Landman, University of Pretoria, South Africa No city environment reflects the meaning of urban life better than a public place. A public place, whatever its nature-a park, a mall, a train platform or a street corner-is where people pass by, meet each other and at times become a victim of crime. With this book, we submit that crime and safety in public places are not issues that can be easily dealt with within the boundaries of a single discipline. The book aims to illustrate the complexity of patterns of crime and fear in public places with examples of studies on these topics contextualized in different cities and countries around the world. This is achieved by tackling five cross-cutting themes: the nature of the city's environment as a back-drop for crime and fear; the dynamics of individuals' daily routines and their transit safety; the safety perceptions experienced by those who are most in fear in public places; the metrics of crime and fear; and, finally, examples of current practices in promoting safety. All these original chapters contribute to our quest for safer, more inclusive, resilient, equitable and sustainable cities and human settlements aligned to the Global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The armed conflict in northern Mali has developed significantly  since it broke out in 2012. The overwhelming result of this study is that its respondents are in unanimous agreement that the root causes of the violent conflict in Mali are marginalization and discrimination. The conflict is nurtured by the pervasive stratification between almost all groups in the society. The cleavages run between geographic locations, genders, ethnic groups, generations and classes, and enables hierarchies between those that dominate and those that are dominated. Marginality serves as a place of resistance for many groups, also northern women since many of them have grievances that are linked to their limited access to public services and human rights. For these women, marginality is a site of resistance that motivates them to mobilise men to take up arms against an unwilling government. The Islamists have exploited the vacuum left behind by the absent government,
through their provision of services such as health care and employment. They have also used the stratification between social classes to gain the support of impoverished communities and offer some sort of social mobility to both poor women and men.

Esta pesquisa tem o objetivo de avaliar a efetividade da persecução penal de 34 processos judiciais de feminicídio consumado no Distrito Federal – DF, em contexto de violência doméstica e familiar contra a mulher, nos anos de 2016 e 2017, à luz das diretrizes nacionais. Utilizou-se metodologia de análise longitudinal prospectiva com utilização de método misto quantitativo e qualitativo, com recurso à análise temática. Complementou-se o corpus com análise dos prontuários médicos da vítima na rede pública de saúde e entrevistas semiestruturadas a familiares das vítimas. Analisaram-se as variáveis de tempo e resultado processual. Verificou-se elevada taxa de condenação entre os processos julgados em plenário do júri (95,6% dos julgados), com pena média de 20 anos de reclusão, em tempo médio até o julgamento de 694 dias e com 91% dos réus presos preventivamente durante o julgamento. Todavia, em nenhum caso houve indenização em favor de familiares da vítima na sentença condenatória. Apontam-se áreas de aperfeiçoamento para a investigação criminal e atuação processual com perspectiva de gênero: necessidade de juntada de antecedentes do agressor, entrevistas a familiares, realização e juntada de perícias, especialmente estudos psicossociais, proteção aos familiares, e não uso de argumentos discriminatórios.
Palavras-chave: Pesquisa documental. Feminicídio. Fluxo processual. Efetividade. Perspectiva de gênero.

Santa Muerte is a new religious movement that originated in Mexico. It centers on devotion to death. It has come under fire from the Catholic Church, the Mexican State, and mass media across the Americas. In misrepresentations that are often racist, and sexist, Santa Muerte has been portrayed by the above institutions as a ‘narco-saint’, that is a saint worshiped by narcotraffickers, and the religion portrayed as one that only violent, barbaric males follow This article counters this erroneous depiction suggesting that devotion to death is women's work. I detail how Santa Muerte has long been appealed to by women who have been at the fulcrum of the expansion of the movement. I describe how knowledge of Santa Muerte continues to be germinated by women who through gynocentric thanatological praxis are empowered and fashion spaces in which to deal with the violence, precarity and poverty that riddles the Mexican post-colony.

The Northeast of India is one of the most important yet most isolated regions of the country. There was a time when it was situated in the trade route and human migration of the Southeast Asian civilizations. Difficult to administer, the British left this region to its own means and methods, thus initiating the process of its “peripheralization”. Over the years, the governments in “mainland India” have not been able to assimilate the northeast into the “mainstream” while keeping intact its traditions and culture. The frustration resulting from this alienation as well as the inability of the multi ethno-linguistic communities to think of themselves in unified terms has led to a vicious circle of violence – insurgency and counter-insurgency, which has further reinforced the well circulated myths about the dangers of the northeast among the rest of the Indian population. In between the conflicts over identity, natural resources, migration, displacement, socio-political exclusion, and so on the community that becomes the worst sufferer is that of the womenfolk. Many writers from the Northeast have written about the culture and problems unique to this region and what resonates through all their works is the anguish suffered by the people, especially the women, in their tryst with violence and exploitation. Writing becomes a way to engage the voices that emerge out of this region that is both literally and metaphorically at the margin. It is a way of political intervention and opening up this alienated land bound with myths and false ideas to a more realistic and pragmatic perspective. In this paper I would like to explore the gendered nature of the violence and exploitation faced by the women of this region through some works of literature.

Gísla saga has often been described as “enigmatic,” and the riddles posed by Iceland’s best-known murder-mystery indeed appear irresolvable. At least equally puzzling, I suggest, is Gisli’s “confession” of his subsequent act of vengeance through an obscure bit of skaldic verse, which has not received similar attention. Setting aside the psychological and forensic approaches traditionally brought to bear on the saga’s persistent enigmas, I offer that Gisli's “confession” forms the crux of an unnoted narrative structure, made plain by the saga’s treatment of  medieval Icelandic concepts of masculinity and femininity. In so doing, I identify an undetected analogue in Norse myth to the events that precipitate the saga’s “whodunit,” as well as reexamine widely-held assumptions about the view of gender enunciated in the saga, particularly as articulated in Carol Clover‘s seminal 1993 article, “Regardless of Sex.”

Il focus ha riguardato gli stereotipi  che dal XVIII secolo ad oggi sono emersi nelle relazioni fra i generi al fine di dimostrare che le radici della violenza non sono naturali, ma il risultato di pratiche culturali e di configurazioni storiche.Nella convinzione che la violenza contro le donne sia una questione principalmente  maschile, mi sono concentrata sulla virilità e sulla mascolinità.Nel trattare questi argomenti,i media dovrebbero tenerne conto, senza patologizzare o naturalizzare comportamenti estremi,ma puntando alla loro prevenzione.Ho analizzato le campagne di sensibilizzazione realizzate nel nostro paese in merito alla violenza contro le donne.Infine, grazie al contributo di Stefano Ciccone dell'Associazione Maschile Plurale, ho proposto nuove modalità comunicative per affrontare questo tema così delicato.

The culture of gender discrimination is not a new thing for Indian society. Its roots are seen from ancient times, which have flourished in the form of female harassment, neglect, exploitation. Because of which women, representing 50% of the population of India, are today victims of violence on a large scale in the middle of the country. According to the reports of various government and non-governmental institutions, the crimes against women are increasing day by day instead of decreasing, so to reduce the rate of crimes against women, by the Government of India and the justice system of India And strict instructions and laws are also being made by the state. While there is no decrease in crimes against women. This is the reason why under the research paper "Crime against women in the 21st century", the study of the causes of crime against women in the 21st century and the efforts made by the Government of India for the prevention of crime against women Although it was done, an attempt was made to find out the hidden reasons behind the reduction in crime with the woman, however, an analysis has been made based on the data obtained from the study. Keywords-Crime against women , Constitutional Provisions ,Nature of Crime against women , female insecurity , women safety.

From the earliest feminist press to Twitter, women have used technology to create and sustain narratives that demand attention and redress for gendered violence. Herein we argue that the #MeToo boom was made possible by the digital labor, consciousness-raising, and alternative storytelling created through the #YesAllWomen, #SurvivorPrivilege, #WhyIStayed, and #TheEmptyChair hashtag networks. Each of these hashtags highlight women’s experiences with interpersonal and institutionally-enabled violence and each was precipitated by high-profile news events. Alongside an examination of Twitter networks, we consider the social and cultural conditions that made each hashtag significant at particular moments, examining the ideological and political work members of these hashtag networks perform. We find that feminist hashtags have been successful in creating an easy-to-digest shorthand that challenges and changes mainstream narratives about violence and victimhood.

Trolling is often enacted against women and minority groups on social media platforms, such as Twitter, as a means of limiting or undermining participation in virtual space(s). This chapter considers trolling as a form of gendered and symbolic violence. Drawing on an analysis of British national newspaper reports focusing on cases of trolling, we demonstrate that trolling can be viewed as a 'silencing strategy'. Trolling leaves its victims in a powerless position as freedom of expression for perpetrators is defended via social media ideologies. The initial promise of social media – to provide democratizing spaces – in practice creates space for the percolation of misogynist, sexist, racist, and/or homophobic attitudes. The chapter focuses on trolling in the form of rape and death threats, women as doubly deviant when deemed to be entering men's (online) domain(s), responses to trolling, and feminist activism.

This article is featured on skeletonsaint.com a website dedicated to providing easy to read, informational pieces on Santa Muerte to the wider world beyond academia and devoted to bringing real voices of Santa Muerte devotees to counter the many erroneous and negative representations in the media and beyond which mar our understanding of the New Religious Movement and create racism and religious bigotry.

"Ni una más" è il grido di protesta con cui le madres e gli attivisti conducono la loro lotta contro omertà e impunità che caratterizzano il fenomeno del femminicidio di Ciudad Juárez, città messicana al confine con gli Stati Uniti. Le relazioni tra violenza, misoginia, memoria e rappresentazione nella "città delle morte", sono esplorate attraverso un approccio interdisciplinare.
Francesca Guerisoli analizza le modalità con cui l'arte e le forme creative si oppongono al femminicidio, costruendo un orizzonte simbolico nel quale si colloca una battaglia culturale e politica transnazionale nel tentativo di ristabilire una memoria pubblica occultata dal sistema politico ed economico dominante. L'arte nata in relazione alla violenza e al femminicidio è indagata attraverso la descrizione delle opere e delle pratiche messe in atto da collettivi locali e da artisti che operano anche a livello internazionale, come Teresa Margolles, Lorena Wolffer, Ursula Biemann, Santiago Sierra, Regina José Galindo, Francis Alÿs.
Il progetto d'arte partecipativa Zapatos Rojos di Elina Chauvet, nato nel contesto di Juárez, è divenuto il simbolo più popolare della lotta al femminicidio nel nostro Paese. L'analisi critica mette in rilievo il significato della marcia di scarpe rosse e il valore che il progetto, nato in una realtà specifica, esprime anche in tutti quei contesti in cui la relazione asimmetrica tra i sessi porta al femminicidio.

Il libro ha ottenuto il patrocinio di Amnesty International - Italia: "Per la capacità di andare oltre i fatti del femminicidio, sapendo ispirare nel lettore un desiderio concreto di cambiamento. Un libro che non soltanto racconta, documenta alla perfezione e denuncia una piaga del nostro tempo con chiara fermezza, ma che trasforma l'arte in strumento per contrastare silenzio ed omertà".

postmedia books 2016
240 pp. 147 ill.
isbn 9788874901562

This Article makes a feminist case for acknowledging women's acts of violence as consistent with—not threatening to—the goals of the domestic violence movement and the feminist movement. It concludes that broadly understanding women's use of strength, power, coercion, control, and violence, even illegitimate uses, can be framed consistent with feminist goals. Beginning this conversation is a necessary—if uncomfortable—step to give movement to the movement to end gendered violence. The domestic violence movement historically framed its work on a gender binary of men as potential perpetrators and women as potential victims. This binary was an essential starting point to defining and responding to domestic violence. The movement has since struggled to address women as perpetrators. It has historically deployed a " strategy of containment " to respond to women as perpetrators. This strategy includes bringing male victims of domestic violence within existing services, monitoring exaggerations and misstatements about the extent of women's violence, and noting the troublesome line between perpetrator/victim for women. This strategy achieved specific and important goals to domestic violence law reforms. These goals included retaining domestic violence's central and iconic framing as a women's issue, preserving critical funding sources and infrastructure to serve victims, and thwarting obstructionist political challenges largely waged by men's rights groups. While acknowledging that these goals were sound and central to the historic underpinnings of domestic violence law reforms, this Article considers for thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts. The author extends a special thanks to Courtney Groszhans, Annie Malka, and the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law for grant support and research and editing assistance.

Existing legal responses to sexual assault and harassment in the military have stagnated or failed. Current approaches emphasize the prevalence of sexual assault and highlight the masculine nature of the military’s statistical composition and institutional culture. Current responses do not, however, incorporate masculinities theory to disentangle the experiences of men as a group from men as individuals. Rather, embedded within contestations of the masculine military culture is the un- stated assumption that the culture universally privileges or benefits the individual men that operate within it. This myth is harmful because it tethers masculinities to military efficacy, suppresses the costs of male violence to men, and positions women as perpetual outsiders.

Debunking the myth of universal male privilege in heavily masculinized institu- tions would advance gender equality and shift the law reform focus. It would bring sexual assault, domestic violence, and sexual harassment into the same frame as the military mental health crisis and even mass solidier-on-soldier shootings. This would reveal the gender equality implications of military mental health and disen- tangle masculinities and military efficacy. Debunking the myth of univeral male privilege would yield more vigilance to how law reforms can exacerbate hyper-mas- culine violence. It introduces new entry points to gendered violence in the military, expanding the focus from incident-based responses to recruiting and training.

This paper is the result of three year participatory action research project undertaken by the Aboriginal Woman's Action Network in collaboration with Women's Anti violence agencies based in Vancouver BC. It examines the implications of implementing Restorative Justice reforms in cases of violence against Indigenous Women and Children in Native communities along the Fraser River.

This study investigates how standards of hegemonic femininity in Kazakhstan are utilised by the public in online spaces to police Kazakh women's bodies, glorify national culture, and normalise violence against women who do not conform to these standards. Drawing upon discourse analysis as the primary method for examining available comments on Facebook and Instagram, this paper is one of the first studies of modern Kazakh nationalism from a critical gendered perspective that situates discourses about Kazakh women in the context of sexual violence and demonstrates the "weaponisation" of women's bodies and the normalisation of violence against them in online spaces.

Starting from Hirsch and Smith’s concept of a feminist counterhistory and referencing the theoretical framework of cultural trauma, this paper undertakes a (re)reading of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God as construction of gendered counter-memory. Such an interpretation would enable recognition of the political function of the novel as an identity matrix of African-American womanhood. Expanding upon the classical, post-Lacanian approach to trauma studies and its postcolonial reconfigurations, I use a poststructuralist framing of collective trauma, and the Saussurian concept of signification, to highlight the struggle for self-determination of an oppressed community as it is signified upon by its oppressors through violently imposed discourse. I further question the complicity between conventional forms of narration and the hegemony of an external signifier, and I trace this patterned mechanism of aggression within the linguistic and diegetic fabric of the novel, in order to expose Hurston’s literary methodology of collective memorialization and the way it challenges canonical representations of trauma.

Applications are invited for a four-year PhD, fully-funded through the Irish Research Council. The student will be based at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University with full access to the DCU Library, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Doctoral Hub, and other resources. This PhD position is part of the Project ‘They are Here Too: Gendered Violence in the South Asian Immigrant Community in Post-COVID Ireland’ led by Dr. Arpita Chakraborty.

The position is open for EU citizens and comes with a €18,000 stipend and fully paid fees for four years, flexible work hours, and graduate training and travel expenses for conference presentation. With previously determined work objectives and work plan, it is a unique opportunity to work towards the creation of a community space for migrant women as part of the project. Applications from non-EU citizens are very welcome, but the fees covered will be partial.

As part of the project, the PhD fellow will work along with the PI to achieve the objectives of the project in terms of conference organisation, presentation, publications and other forms of public dissemination. The fellow will co-author and publish articles and edited volumes with the PI, alongside working on their thesis.

This article is based on the research and development of a theatre drama in 2016, Silent Sisters. I consider how the Partition of India-Pakistan, when over ten million people were displaced, is remembered in diasporic contexts of Britain. These recollections and representations may be explored in terms of three main registers. The first broad context may encompass memories and artefacts that are directly from the period of mass displacement, the latter extremely rare in that most people were too caught up in the urgency of carrying only bare essentials if anything at all. The second series of contexts may refer to free-floating representations, created in and on different time-spaces, but once embedded in semiotically rich contexts about a Partition recreated take on new meanings and resonances that can be equally emotive. Relatedly, the third case is of how objects and memories become part of a generative archive that encompasses a range of media on the theme of Partition – a canon that is potentially endless. In this case, the archive is pieced together out of ‘skipping memories’ and tendrils that remain, tangible and intangible. It is an intersensory and fragmentary archive that is not just retrospective but also future-orientated in terms of what the fragment might catalyse to create wider synergies, whether they be visual, narrativised, sung, embodied, recited, enacted, digitalised, imagined and/or created.

This article examines the depoliticization of violence against women in indigenous communities. It argues that there is a pressing need to examine the ways in which gendered
violence is explained, addressed and often sanctioned in indigenous communities.
The article draws on Crenshaw’s concept of political intersectionality and examines responses to gendered violence in indigenous communities through two groups: Aboriginal women in Canada and Sa´mi women in Scandinavia.

Abstract: This essay analyses “Sherezade en el bunker” [Scheherazade in the bunker], a pandemic tale by Marta Sanz (2020). After presenting Sanz’s poetics linked to her commitment to gender issues and as a way of intervening in the world, an analysis of the tale itself (its structure and content) is proposed. This is followed by a reflection on the meanings of the tale, highlighting the choice of the famous Scheherazade, protagonist and narrator of “The Thousand and One Nights”, to address the issue of gender violence during confinement.

Resumen: En el presente ensayo se analiza “Sherezade en el búnker”, un cuento pandémico de Marta Sanz (2020). Tras presentar la poética de Sanz vinculada a su compromiso con las cuestiones de género y como forma de intervenir en el mundo, se propone un análisis del cuento en sí mismo (su estructura y contenido). A continuación, se plantea una reflexión sobre los significados del cuento destacando la elección de la célebre Sherezade, protagonista y narradora de “Las mil y una noches”, para abordar el tema de la violencia de género durante el confinamiento

During the onslaught of the Islamic caliphate on Kobanî, Syria, media outlets across the globe broadcast pictures of brave and often unveiled Kurdish women fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a quintessentially male force of destruction. The images of women fighting Islamist male aggressors aroused outrage, admiration, and pity among observers. But had all Kurdish fighters been male or had women fought for ISIS, viewers might have reacted differently. To examine some of the most widely disseminated gendered pictures and videos of the Syrian uprising in the media, this article draws on Mohja Kahf’s three categories, which typify how Muslim women, Arab women, or both are perceived by the Anglophone reading and viewing public: the first is victims; the second, escapees; and the third, pawns of patriarchy and male power. While this typology helps in examining gendered images of the Syrian uprising, it also obscures the socioeconomic realities on the ground.

In spite of the fast growing literature on indigenous peoples and self-determination, there is a striking absence of research into the gendered processes and effects of indigenous self-determination or more generally, indigenous women and self-determination. This article examines the intersectionalities between indigenous self-determination and indigenous women’s rights with a particular focus on the question of violence against women. It contends that for indigenous self-determination to be successful, it must also address the question of violence against indigenous women. The article argues for a specific human rights framework that simultaneously accounts for indigenous self-determination and human rights violations of indigenous women.

This article examines the lingering presence of the female militant figure in post-war Sri Lankan women’s writing in English. Through a careful demarcation of the formal–aesthetic limits of engaging with the country’s competing ethno-nationalisms, the article seeks to uncover the gendered hierarchies of Sri Lanka’s civil war in two literary works: Niromi de Soyza’s autobiography Tamil Tigress (2011) and Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012). The reading draws attention to the writers’ attempt to “historise” the LTTE female fighter and/or suicide bomber within Sri Lanka’s complex colonial past and its implications for the recent history of conflict. The individual motives of the female fighters to join the LTTE, the article contends, remain ideologically susceptible to, if not interpellated by, the gendered hierarchies both within the military movement and Tamil society at large. A literary portrait of such entangled hierarchies in post-war Sri Lankan texts, the article reveals, helps expose the hegemonic (male) discourses of Sri Lankan nationalism that tend to undermine the war experiences of women.

Available as OnlineFirst read: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021989417723414

Artikkelini käsittelee väkivaltaa tehneiden naisten esittämistä suomalaisissa iltapäivälehdissä. Iltapäivälehtien sensaatiomainen naisten väkivallan käsittely pohjautuu naiseuden ja väkivallan välisen kontrastin korostuneisuudelle, jota naisten tekemästä väkivallasta uutisoitaessa sekä hyödynnetään että tuotetaan. Artikkelissani keskityn tarkastelemaan naisten väkivaltaiseen toimintaan liitettyä toimijuutta iltapäivälehtien rikosuutisjutuissa ja sen myötä naisille rakentuvaa olemusta. Aineistonani ovat Iltalehden ja Ilta-Sanomien vuosien 2009–2011naisten tekemästä väkivallasta kertovat rikosuutisjutut sekä naisten väkivaltaa ilmiönä tarkastelevat artikkelit. Analyysini kohdistuu subjektipositioihin, joihin väkivaltaa tehneet naiset asemoidaan heidän toimintaansa kuvattaessa. Jäsennän toimijuuden rakentumista aineistossa hyödyntämällä sosio-semioottisia modaliteettien käsitteitä, joiden avulla erittelen toimijaan nähden ulkoisesti tai sisäisesti määrittyvän toiminnan kuvauksia. Analyysini kuvastaa, kuinka erityisesti sensaatiomaisimpaan naisten väkivallan uutisointiin liittyy usein paitsi väkivallan esittäminen epäillyn naisen sisäisestä halusta johtuvana myös naisten asemoiminen petollisiksi, väkivaltaisen olemuksensa tarkoituksellisesti ja feminiinisyyteen liitettyjä merkityksiä hyödyntäen piilottaviksi.