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Reyna Grande’s 2012 memoir The Distance Between Us exemplifies the ongoing influence of the Latin American testimonio on contemporary life writing by immigrants to the United States from the Southern hemisphere, in order to effect social change. Specifically, Grande’s text aims to mobilise readers to facilitate immigration reform for the so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as minors. The memoir further showcases how Mexican immigrant writers such as Grande continue genre-blending traditions in Chicana feminist literature in an effort to find an appropriate expression for their complex experiences with migration as gendered, raced, and classed individuals. In doing so, Grande produces a unique form of life writing that is equally inspired by oral narrative, testimonio, autobiography and memoir.
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This article analyses experiences of crafstmanship within a group of women weavers. It looks at the process of mastering the art of textile-making amidst the tensions of a creative act, living on the margins and striving for recognition. The research methodology aims at closing the gap between researchers and the researched. The theoretical-methodological arguments are based on participatory research combined with the feminist perspective of giving visibility to the women´s history, which involves an act of research done as (self-)formation. Participant observation, discussion groups and talking circles allowed the collection of material for the analysis of the experiences. We came to the conclusion that the researchers and the women weavers (the researched) produce an aesthetics at a point of interface between their art studio and education environments, whereby women artisans were inspired to see their work from another perspective and recognise their craftwork, and they were challenged, along with the students as well as the professor, to think about teaching and learning in youth and adult education through handcrafted work. In this process, we come to elaborate a feminist hermeneutics
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This paper seeks to understand what constitutes vulnerability among healthcare users in relations and social interactions with their healthcare providers. While many authors see vulnerability as an intersection of more or less permanent categories, such as gender, sexuality, social class, or ethnicity/race etc., we point to much more subtle and situational forces at play. In particular, we argue that vulnerability results from patients’ situational or contextual in/capability or un/willingness to communicate. We apply an interactional theory, namely a group-centred and relational approach (Choo, Ferree 2010; Giritli-Nygren, Olofsson 2014; McCall 2005) that focuses on particular marginalised groups and studies their relations to dominant groups. We build on ethnographic research with two different groups: (1) elderly patients in a long-term care unit; (2) foreign-born women who received care during their pregnancy and childbirth in Czech healthcare facilities and maternity wards. Our research includes participant observation in hospital settings and ethnographic in-depth and semi-structured interviews with healthcare users as well as providers.
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Based on 14 biographical-narrative interviews, using an intersectional approach to examine multiple discrimination based on age, gender, and ethnicity, we analyse the subjective reflections of young Vietnamese migrants from the second and the 1.5 generation on their integration into the Czech labour market. We analyse ethnicity and gender as socially constructed identities in the specific context of the labour market, school, and family. Important advantages that appear in the biographies of young Vietnamese migrant women and men influencing their positions in the labour market are their level of education, their knowledge of Czech and Vietnamese culture and language, and specific work experience. Focusing on potential discrimination and marginalisation, we can say that the young Vietnamese we interviewed often move between two identities – Czech and Vietnamese – to overcome potential disadvantages. Due to a high level of acculturation, they more frequently identify themselves with the Czech majority. At the same time, they derive benefits from the social and cultural capital of being a member of the Vietnamese minority. On the other hand, this advantage can inverse into disadvantage and young Vietnamese could fall into the trap of only occupying work positions that relate to their ethnic origin. For the reasons mentioned above, the Vietnamese in our study seek to acquire the highest possible cultural capital – the highest possible education and position in a prestigious profession, regardless of gender – as their strategy for overcoming potential disadvantage and avoiding the trap of ‘migrant’ labour-market niches their parents occupied.
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Review of book by Vianello, M., Hawkesworth, M. (eds.). Gender and Power. Towards Equality and Democratic Governance
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Although important demographic shifts have generated both an interest and profound transformations in sociocultural interpretations of ageing and old age, the experience of growing older is still perceived negatively and is often measured according to how successfully people adapt to the current Western ideals of later life. In the light of recent research on cultural and literary representations of ageing, this article critically addresses contemporary American writer Erica Jong's mid-life and later works from feminist and gender perspectives. It shows how the author's writings contest the narrative of decline and ageism and incorporate some aspects of positive ageing in terms of body image. Yet, instead of following the model of successful ageing, Jong offers alternative views of ageing femininities and sexuality that enable a different narrative of growing older to emerge. The writer's work also shows that socially and culturally constructed gender and power relationships can be deconstructed, which allows for new forms of self-expression that are not moulded into anti-ageing discourses and their neoliberal imperatives.
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This paper contains following book review: Bartholomaeus, C. Riggs, D. W. 2017. Transgender People and Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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This paper contains following book review: Alen, L. 2018. Sexuality Education and New Materialism. Queer Things. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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This paper contains following book review: Lamb, S., Gilbert, J. (eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Sexual Development: Childhood and Adolescence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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This study focuses on how the Caribbean diaspora is reflected in the novel Levente no. Yolayorkdominicanyork by the New York–based Dominican artist Josefina Báez. Through dialogues and anecdotes the author depicts the everyday life of a community of women living in an apartment building located in a Hispanic neighbourhood in New York. In a close reading, I read the apartment building, called ‘Ni é’, as a metaphor of a glocal community. The novel can thus be read through the lens of the postcolonial debate about centre and periphery. I also analyse the work through the lens of the thirdspace theory, which is an especially important concept for some feminist critics of gentrification of the social space, such as Gloria Anzaldúa and Barbara Hooper. My analysis of specific scenes from life on the periphery that the Ni é building and its inhabitants embody draws mainly on the theoretical work La subversión feminista de la economía by the Spanish feminist theorist Amaia Pérez Orozco. Orozco’s critique of capitalist economy and her philosophy of microeconomics is compared with Josefina Báez’s representation of the notion of home.
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The article attempts to capture the current value shifts taking place in the game industry by looking at the debate on the contemporary digital game Kingdom Come: Deliverance by the Czech development studio Warhorse. For the purposes of contextualisation, the article also reflects on a case known as Gamergate, which served to highlight certain issues in the conception of games and questions about representation and diversity in games. Digital games are no longer the domain of young men alone as gamers now come from all genders and many age groups. Through a gender analysis of this digital game and a discussion/analysis of the controversy surrounding the historical authenticity of representation that has arisen around it, the article highlights the difficulties associated with trying to achieve historical accuracy. A digital game is considered a work of fiction that has its own rules of truthfulness within its own fictional universe. Increasingly, open-world games allow for the suppression of the leading role of the narrator that the game designers created. This tendency is only expected to grow stronger. The role of education and critical engagement with the game medium also need to be considered in the study of this issue.
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In his contribution, the author presents the concept of a cabinet of (pop)cultural curiosities, which is based on the prefigurement of Mannerist and Baroque cabinets, or the so-called Wunderkammer, Kunstkammer, etc. He uses this concept to interpret the work of the Czech rap band Čokovoko, relying on the theory and history of the camp phenomenon, which is based on aesthetic transgressions, ironic attitudes and the stretching of the boundaries between taste and tastelessness. The metaphor of the cabinet of curiosities allows to describe and explore the specific ways in which the peculiarly frivolous play with themes concerning women and their stereotypical position as passive objects is performed in the band’s compositions against the background of the transformation of various (pop) cultural codes.
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This article focuses on the cordel as an idiosyncratic manifestation of Brazilian popular culture. It sets the results of original research on cordel gender representations within the specific social, cultural, and political contexts in which they originated/emerged. The article is based on research grounded in cultural studies and this discipline’s insistence on the critical importance of race, gender, and religion. The author argues that cordels – poems printed in cheap booklets with an illustrated cover and marketed to the mass public – offer important insights into existing social and gender norms in Brazil. Whereas in the past the genre was dominated by men authors and upheld conservative Catholic values, nowadays it has creatively adapted to the changing social realities. A comparative analysis of specific titles written in rural Brazil in the second half of the 20th century and titles written in the early 21st century by emerging women authors in an urban setting reveals starkly different patterns of gender representation. Contemporary authors – many of them women – are well aware of the cordel’s importance as a tool in the socialisation and apprehension of cultural meanings of gender. They represent gender through the cordel in ways that are subversive and serve to undermine the existing patriarchal norm. The cordel today continues to develop into a genre which is open and pluralistic in its multiple gender representations that reflect Brazil’s diverse social realities.
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