Journals @ The Mount

Lin, Hui-Ling

BOOK REVIEWD Is For Daring: The Women Behind the Films of Studio D. Gail Vanstone. Toronto:Sumach Press, 2007; B& W photos; 280 pages; ISBN 978-1-894549-67-7; $28.95 (paper). Film is a powerful medium shaping the politics of visual representation of women.It has remained a critical focus of feminist academic interest across various disciplines. Theexamination of Canadian feminist film theory and feminist activism cannot be completedwithout a discussion of Studio D, the world’s first and only government funded women’s filmstudio. Founded by Kathleen Shannon in 1974, Studio D was a key player in shapingCanadian National feminist culture, particularly during the period of the 1970s to 1990s.Gail Vanstone’s book, D is For Daring: The Women Behind the Films of Studio D,provides a comprehensive overview of Studio D, its internal dynamics and dilemmas withinthe studio and the National Film Board, and its relations to other women’s and feministgroups. Situating herself as a feminist cultural studies scholar as well as a person who hasbeen impacted greatly by the documentary films Studio D produced, Vanstone offers anintimate look at materials collected from a wide range of sources, including archivaldocuments and photos as well as in-depth interviews with Studio D founders, members,staff, and filmmakers. Surprisingly, many of these materials have never before been madeavailable. The breath and depth of the materials collected in this book provide a fresh lookof the history of Studio D’s struggles and achievements as well as its role, both complicitin and potentially disruptive on, construction of Canadian nationhood.The focus of this book is not a critical analysis of Studio D films, but rather theimpact the women behind Studio D made on Canadian women’s movements, nationalfeminism, and Canadian cultural industries. During its twenty-two years of operation, StudioD regarded filmmaking as a practice of feminist activism, insisting on the right of ordinarywomen to be filmmakers, to tell their stories from their own perspectives and in their ownvoices, and of recovering women’s voices hidden throughout history. However, there havebeen abundant critiques of Studio D and the films it produced over the years. Most of thesecritiques target the privileging of white English-speaking middle-class feminists within theStudio, and their failure to consider the racialized and classed experiences of otherCanadian women. While recognizing the validity of these critiques, Vanstone reminds usthat Studio D constantly struggled with limited resources and funding support from thegovernment while their request of more ethnically inclusive staffs was constantly denieddue to budget cuts.This is an excellent textbook for courses on Canadian feminist film history andcultural studies. As a feminist film scholar myself, one whose life has been touched andtransformed by feminist theory and women movements, I can well relate to Vanstone’spassionate curiosity about the role of and contributions made by Studio D. This book is notmerely a tribute to the legacy of Studio D, however. Vanstone asks several critical33.2, 2009www.msvu.ca/atlantisquestions in re-thinking how to more productively view Studio D’s role as a feministinstrument of change in Canada. It is also the first in-depth record of those feministpioneers, reminding us what we can do now and what is left to be done in the future.Hui-Ling LinUniversity of British Columbia

English

D Is For Daring: The Women Behind the Films of Studio D

Belisle, Donica

BOOK REVIEWMinds of Our Own: Inventing Feminist Scholarship and Women’s Studies in Canadaand Québec, 1966-76.  Wendy Robbins, Meg Luxton, Margrit Eichler, and FrancineDescarries, editors. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008; xiv+398 pages;index; bibliography; ISBN 978-1-55458-037-8; $38.95 (paper).Comprised of 40 essays by members of Canada’s first generation of self-identified feministscholars, as well as three chapters by the editors, Minds of Our Own is a detailed look atthe emergence of feminist curricula and scholarship in Canada between 1966 and 1976.Together its varied essays represent contributions by researchers who have worked in allof Canada’s provinces, with southern Ontario being most heavily represented. Most of thepieces are by white women; two are by women of colour and two are by men. Certain themes are prominent throughout the collection, including the influence of Simonede Beauvoir, Margaret Mead, and Betty Friedan upon some writers’ initial forays intofeminism. Contributors also state that observations of their mothers’ experiences,encounters with marriage and motherhood, participation in consciousness-raising groups,political activism, and desires to understand women’s lives sparked their commitments. Intheir attempts to gain degrees, study feminist issues, and secure advancement, writersencountered sexism at all levels. Some were denied entrance to graduate school becausethey were female, for example; others were denied tenure because their peers perceivedresearch on women as unsuitable for the academy. A further theme is the importance ofcollegial support. Generally viewed with suspicion by male faculty, feminist scholarsbetween 1966 and 1976 banded together to take care of each others’ children as well asto teach team courses, gain maternity benefits, organize feminist conferences, and createjournals, including Atlantis and Resources for Feminist Research.Minds of Our Own is an important collection, lending documentary and analytical insightinto the emergence of Women’s Studies and feminist scholarship in Canada. Among itsstrengths is its comparison of feminist scholars’ activities in Québec with the rest ofCanada. Whereas the former tended to integrate feminist scholarship into existingdisciplines, the latter tended to create Women’s Studies courses and programs. Thecollection’s inclusion of 40 submissions, as well, enables the volume to avoid constructinga singular narrative about the rise of Canadian feminist scholarship, and to instead presenta multiplicity of voices and interpretations. Yet at 40 essays and 400 pages the book doesget unwieldly, and if included in undergraduate courses it will become necessary forinstructors to assign specific selections. 34.1, 2009www.msvu.ca/atlantisMinds of Our Own admirably fulfills its goal of documenting the emergence of feministscholarship in Canada. Yet it does serve another purpose. Exploring the personal andprofessional lives of a remarkable group of scholars, it contributes to the social andintellectual history of feminism. It reveals that individual fulfillment was a strong motivatorfor many feminist scholars in Canada during this period; it also demonstrates that whilemany feminisms existed prior to 1976, liberal and materialist feminisms dominated theacademy. More than this, by exploring over three dozen women’s careers from the 1950sonward, Minds of Our Own offers a compelling portrait of the feminist scholarly life inCanada during the latter half of the twentieth century. Characterized by geographical andsocial mobility, as well as by tragedies, disappointments, and accomplishments, this lifewas both intensely difficult and richly rewarding. Donica BelisleAthabasca University

Minds of Our Own: Inventing Feminist Scholarship and Women’s Studies in Canada and  Québec,  1966-76.

Rogers Healey, Robynne

BOOK REVIEWAgents of Empire: British Female Migration to Canada and Australia, 1860s – 1930.Lisa Chilton. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2007; illustrations; viii + 240pages; ISBN 978-0-8020-9474-2; $27.95 (paper).Studies of the British Empire have resulted in a generous literature in the past decade. LisaChilton’s book is an important addition to this historiography. Applying a nuanced readingto the records of British female emigration societies, private organizations, and governmentbodies, Chilton provides readers with a multi-faceted understanding of the agency ofemigrators and emigrants – the agents of empire. Through her analysis of the emigrators– women who directed emigration in Britain, the matrons who accompanied emigrants, andthe female reception workers who welcomed emigrants to the far reaches of empire – andemigrants Chilton draws four inter-related conclusions. She argues that upper- and middle-class British women sought to transform female migration by empowering themselves. As“avid and effective self-promoters” (14), the emigrators exploited fears and concerns aboutfemale migration to situate themselves as the heroes of carefully-crafted and widely-circulated “safe-passage narratives,” securing respectability and power for themselves andtheir work. Chilton points out that while the success of the narratives is debatable, thesuccess of the emigrators is not. Their success went far beyond the mere number ofemigrants they sent to Australia and Canada. In chapters that consider emigrators’attempts to alter the portrayal of domestic service work as a viable ‘career path’ for middle-class women and the efforts of women in the dominions to wrest control of reception workfrom local men and from women in Britain, Chilton insightfully demonstrates how femaleemigrators manoeuvred themselves into positions of power and transformed femalemigration. The gains made by emigrators in the late nineteenth century were underminedin the years after WWI when female-controlled voluntary agencies were amalgamated andtaken over by the state. One of Chilton’s most interesting arguments is that the empowerment of the emigratorscame at the expense of the emigrants – the very women the agents relied on for theirsuccess. In an intricate dance of power and agency, the emigrators needed to empoweremigrants to leave Britain at the same time they had to make them dependent on the workof the emigration agencies. How did emigrants respond to this? Chilton’s careful readingof emigrants’ "letters home" – problematic in that they were “solicted, selected, and editedby the emigrators” (98) – gives her some entrée into the emigrant experience. Shecontends that emigrants were also agents, effectively using various strategies to maximizetheir own experience and relating to the emigrators on their own terms. Unfortunately,since the aboriginal inhabitants of Canada and Australia are absent from the emigrationsocieties’ records, they rarely appear in this book. Nonetheless, Chilton’s work is an33.2, 2009www.msvu.ca/atlantisimportant contribution to understanding the agency of the empire’s women in managingperceptions of gender and class. Robynne Rogers Healey Trinity Western University

Agents of Empire:BritishFemale Migration toCanada andAustralia, 1860s – 1930

Thrift, Samantha C.

BOOK REVIEWPower Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances. Aimee Carrillo Rowe. Durham andLondon: Duke University Press, 2008; xix+252 pages; appendices; ISBN 978-0-8223-43117-2; $23.95US (paper).In Power Lines, Aimee Carrillo Rowe taps into contemporary debates over the purpose andvalue of academic feminism’s institutional power, particularly for those marked as“outsiders-within” due to their non-normative racial, gender, or sexual identities. Drawingon twenty-eight interviews with self-described academic feminists (ten women of colour,eighteen white women), Carrillo Rowe investigates the sites of tension and possibilityinforming these women’s varying efforts to form transracial feminist alliances in theirinstitutional environments. She conducts a rigorous rhetorical analysis of these women’sresponses and, in doing so, sheds light on the tangible political conditions which havefostered segregated feminist alliance building within the U.S. academy.A primary objective of this work is to produce a rough methodological mapping of strategiesfor transracial feminist alliance building. Carrillo Rowe persuasively advocates a paradigmshift characterized by feminists’ vulnerable listening (instead of defensive reaction), theembrace of transracial tension (not its denial), and the refusal to take refuge in feminist“innocence” in moments of sisterly betrayal. While these conclusions are not in themselvesrevelatory, the path Carrillo Rowe took to reach them is fascinating. The conversations withher interview subjects reveal, for instance, several white feminists’ inability to verballyarticulate the racialized terms informing their (usually) segregated alliances, while manywomen of colour characterize their “institutional intimacies” (25) more defensively, in termsof professional survival: “‘An ally is someone who won’t block my way’” (154).In a compelling move, Carrillo Rowe emphasizes the affective quality of feminist alliances,which she describes as an interface between intimacy and power. Noting that “whom welove is political,” the author advocates a self-reflexive and compassionate feminist project(called the “politics of relation”). She adeptly negotiates her own relational politics as anAnglo-Chicana queer feminist researcher (or Chicana falsa) throughout the analysis,asking, for instance, in what ways has her identity as a feminist researcher “split bycategories, by worlds and words” (xix) fostered (dis)connections with her interviewsubjects? The author entreats us, as feminist scholars, to (re)consider the politics of ouraffective communities - that is, the people and groups with whom we live, work and makeconnections (25-26) -  and the ways in which those ties risk reproducing hegemonic powerrelations and subaltern identities.34.2, 2009www.msvu.ca/atlantisPower Lines is a significant and timely contribution to the ongoing project of transracialfeminist alliance building, particularly in an American cultural context becoming increasinglyidentified as “post-racial.” By asking how feminist academics can better practice ourpolitics, Carrillo Rowe has produced a study that stands as more than a theoreticalexploration of U.S. third world feminist and postcolonial scholarship (although that is well-represented here). Power Lines is also a valuable tool to guide academic and non-academic activists who are engaging in bridge work at the interstices of identity politics.Samantha C. Thrift McGill University

Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances

Malinen, KelleyAnne

Classification/classification erronée : Iniquités fondées sur l’identité dans le milieu postsecondaire canadien et mondial: Introduction

Shearman, Mary

BOOK REVIEWSexing the Teacher, School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies. Sheila L.Cavanagh. Vancouver, British Columbia: UBC Press, 2007; viii+230 pages; ISBN 978-0-7748-1375-4; $29.95 (paper).As part of UBC Press's Sexuality Series, Sheila L. Cavanagh's provocative work criticallyinterrogates how sex scandals revolving around female teachers in Canada, the UnitedStates and England have hinged on a few specific examples. Cavanagh examines themoral panic and reaction to female teacher sex scandals in recent years, while pointing outthat there is little data showing that this has been happening more frequently than in thepast (4). She traces media sensationalism through psychoanalysis to changingexpectations and perceptions of female teachers, how once innocent gestures are nowinappropriate, and why women are more vulnerable contemporaneously to charges ofmisconduct. Carefully, and respectful of instances of assault and harassment, Cavanagh posits thatfemale teachers engaging in relationships with their students can sometimes be read asinstances of queer desire as these liaisons upset heteronormativity, heterosexual time, andgender roles. Cavanagh looks at instances when the “victim” in question disputed thedangerous and predatory designation of their lover/teacher and claimed an active role inthe seduction. In these cases, the teen's ability to speak to the issue was determinedimpossible due to the harm they necessarily endured from the interaction. Cavanagh againtreads the dangerous territory of youth and sexuality but emerges with a balanced analysisof how institutional regulation is likely harming those it wishes and claims to protect. In this book Cavanagh uses an impressive myriad of feminist, film, postcolonial,psychoanalytic, and queer theories to explore a controversial topic leading to a seeminglyairtight argument.Mary ShearmanSimon Fraser University34.2, 2009www.msvu.ca/atlantis

Sexing the Teacher: School  Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies

Ajandi, Jennifer

BOOK REVIEWWomen’s Studies on the Edge. Joan Wallach Scott, editor. Durham and London: DukeUniversity Press, 2008; 210 pages+Contributors+Index; ISBN 978-0-8223-4274-8;$22.95US (paper).The edited collection in Women’s Studies on the Edge illustrates and brings attention tosome difficult conversations taking place in the corridors of academia. They areconversations I overhear at universities in which I work. As a new academic in Women’sStudies, I have known no reality other than this particular subject of discussion: “how dowe increase the enrolment of students who major in Women’s Studies?” This edited bookcontributes to the historical perspective of such debates, which is necessary for newacademics who work in Women’s Studies or other social justice programs; it echoes thefrustration and anxiety experienced by many experienced scholars who fear thedismantling or institutionalized disciplinarity of Women’s Studies.The sites of analysis presented in this collection are not a cohesive whole in the sense thatthe authors do not agree on the current state of the field of Women’s Studies. In fact, manyof the authors critique each others’ perspectives and the debates which are put forward arecontentious: Has Women’s Studies become too conventional, too theoretical, too practical,or too integrated into the dominant structure of the academy? Has it lost its critical edgeand political grounding?  Different arguments are put forth which at times support and atother times challenge these positions. However, a common thread which runs throughthese chapters points to the corporatization of academia as a major influence on how thefield of Women’s Studies is experienced today by both academics and students. Thedevelopment of Women’s Studies as an interdisciplinary program challenged the statusquo of traditional knowledge production, methodology, and pedagogy in the university andthe community. The contributors to this collection outline their struggle to preserve thefoundation of this scholarship while responding to a changing political climate and the needto integrate new social justice initiatives and identities into the Women’s Studieslandscape. Some of the riveting themes explored in these chapters include theintersectionality of Gender Studies with Cultural Studies, studies of Imperialism andGlobalization, Post-Colonial and Anti-Racist studies, and Transgender Studies. This bookis appropriate for graduate courses and upper level undergraduate courses. Jennifer AjandiOntario Institute for Studies in Education - University of Toronto34.1, 2009www.msvu.ca/atlantis

Women’s Studies on the Edge

Cowan, T.L.

Book ReviewPrecordial Thump. Zoe Whittall. Holstein, Ontario: Exile Editions, 2008. 91 pages;ISBN978-1-55096-115-7; $19.95 (paper).Zoe Whittall’s latest collection, Precordial Thump, is preoccupied with lies, truths,the erotics of ambulances and emergency medicine, and the quotidian details of a stoop-smoker. Formally, this collection is a mixed bag. Ranging from seemingly journalisticnarrative poems - a straight-shooting-straight-from-my-diary-style Third-Wave poetics - toa number of finely imaged, truncated lyrics, the poems here insist on the value of theeveryday and personal observation, and normalize the existence of a young woman whosetake on the world is filtered through an urban, queer feminist sensibility and sense ofhumour. There are moments of magic in these poems: breathtaking images like “Weunderstand the wet // city is a smell, and the air pants against our garden grade faces”draw readers into a world of broken-down love affairs, set predominantly against a beat-upToronto landscape. These images function like snapshot poetry: momentary photospunctuate the poems and draw our attention to Whittall’s humour, always a central devicein her work. I found the poems I enjoyed most were those that were smart enough to makeme laugh.  At several moments throughout my reading, I found a literality of language andimage that overstated certain points; some of the poems could have used paring in orderto arrive at the daily nuggets that Whittall is so adept at seeking out and unwrapping. Ultimately, Whittall’s exploration of lies and truths through the lens of tworelationships flows a bit inconsistently, and I couldn’t tell whether or not to trust the revengefantasy that runs throughout the book. I think that the strongest moments of this explorationlie in some of the more formally experimental pieces that force a sharpness, which I did notfind in the more prose-heavy pieces. The charming intelligence of Precordial Thump is, tomy mind, found in Whittall’s insistent and conscious use of a queer hipster vernacular,which is showcased, for example, in “Halloween, With Pink Eye”: I dress as a white lie,a unicorn, a school girlall of the above, blended.Prefer the magical over the deformed, lopsidedor undead. . . .I, pink eye you, when the fire alarm rings,34.1, 2009www.msvu.ca/atlantisthe dance floor emptiesthe firetrucks provide a spotlight,the scrappy underage Britney drag queenand I toss her Cabage Patch Kid baby.You smoke, while I pursue perfect quips.Smear pink across your jaw. Poems such as this one reveal Whittall to be one of the best chroniclers of hergeneration of urban dykes. T.L. Cowan University of Calgary

Precordial  Thump

McKeen, Wendy

Stephen ,  Jennifer

Wendy McKeen talks with Jennifer A. Stephen

BOOK REVIEWMadwomen: The Locas Mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral. Randall Couch, trans. anded.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008; x+168 pages; ISBN 0-226-53190-2;$25.00 US (paper).This collection of poetry features some of the most compelling work of Chilean poetGabriela Mistral. Parts of the Locas mujeres (madwomen) series appeared in otherpublications of her work, Lagar 1 and 2, however, upon the poet's death they were neverpublished in one volume in their entirety. Mistral's series of poems contemplatingMadwomen are all in this collection allowing the reader to consider this body of her workin its entirety. As thoughtfully translated by Couch, these poems are visceral and sometimes affronting(the first line of the first poem is “I killed a woman in me,” 31) demonstrating a major shiftfrom her more romantic and sentimental earlier pieces. Mistral's writings situate andconsider “the madwoman” at the centre of stories and action, in opposition to their usualdesignation on the margins. Through her poems she questions the circumstances thatthese women have enco untered resulting in the label “mad.” This is best illustrated by herpieces inspired by Greek Tragedy including “Clytemnestra” and “Cassandra” the two finalpoems in the book that complicate the male-centred version of the Orestia (along withanother poem featured earlier entitled “Electra in the Mist”). These two poems arepowerful read alongside each other, telling the story from each woman's uniqueperspective and difficult position.  Mistral's poems are dense with imagery for the reader to consider, some of which reoccurthroughout the book, including fire demonstrating the variety of emotions burning fromthese iconic women's souls and lives. It is a sensory treat to unpack her “Madwomen.” Mary ShearmanSimon Fraser University34.2, 2009www.msvu.ca/atlantis

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D Is For Daring: The Women Behind the Films of Studio D

Minds of Our Own: Inventing Feminist Scholarship and Women’s Studies in Canada and Québec, 1966-76.

Agents of Empire:BritishFemale Migration toCanada andAustralia, 1860s – 1930

Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances

Classification/classification erronée : Iniquités fondées sur l’identité dans le milieu postsecondaire canadien et mondial: Introduction

Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies

Women’s Studies on the Edge

Precordial Thump

Wendy McKeen talks with Jennifer A. Stephen

Madwomen: The Locas Mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral

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