Global Feminisms, Transnational Political Economies, Third World Cultural Production

Third wave feminism is located historically in relation to de-industrialization in the 1980s and the 1990s’ boom in information technologies and transnational finance, which exponentially increased disparities of wealth and power worldwide. Given the global context of third wave feminism’s emergence, this article argues for a consideration of the many forms and expression of feminism the world over, and of the ways they converge with and diverge from western feminisms, both politically and culturally. After briefly discussing the economically oppressive and culturally homogenizing tendencies of globalization, the article looks at the democratizing potential of today’s global media networks. I end with analyses of recent work by Lília Momplé and Nadine Gordimer which demonstrate how these texts grapple with questions of neocolonial domination and unprecedented flows of capital, labor, commodities, and culture as they affect women and are addressed by feminists in Africa

What Characteristics of a CityAttract Educated Millennials?

From the Washington University Senior Honors Thesis Abstracts (WUSHTA), Spring 2018. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research. Joy Zalis Kiefer, Director of Undergraduate Research and Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences; Lindsey Paunovich, Editor; Helen Human, Programs Manager and Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences Mentor: Maria Canon and Bruce Peterso

Feminism and Islamic Tradition

Feminism and Islamic Tradition explores the territory mapped by Fatima Mernissi in Sultanes oublées (1990) and Le Harem politique: Le Prophète et les femmes (1987) in relation to that charted by Assia Djebar in her latest novel Loin de Médine (1991). The aim is to see why Maghrebian feminists as different as Mernissi and Djebar—a liberal democratic sociologist and a postmodern writer—have begun to move into Arab-Islamic cultural-political spaces which, until recently, have been occupied mainly by various Islamic fundamentalist factions and other right-wing groups such as conservative nationalists in the Maghreb. The essay delineates the change between these writers\u27 recent work and their earlier writing. It then considers their revaluations of Islamic tradition in light of the work of feminists and other progressives in Muslim countries who are resisting the growing power of Islamic fundamentalisms in various geopolitical contexts while at the same time contesting western orientalist views of Islam and Muslim culture

CUSTOMIZABLE FLASH FOR COMPUTING DEVICES

A computing device (e.g., a mobile phone, a camera, a tablet computer, etc.) may include a camera for capturing images (including a sequence of images that form videos). The camera may also include a flash or other light emitting element. As image processing has advanced and camera processors have become more powerful (in terms of processing cycles per given unit of time), the camera may capture images and perform image processing to generate processed images of relatively high quality even in low light conditions without necessarily requiring use of the flash. However, the flash may provide additional functionalities that may be unrelated to image capture (e.g., operating as a flashlight). Techniques described in this disclosure may provide an interface by which to configure the flash for use in providing the additional functionalities, allowing configuration of brightness, color temperature, strobe settings, etc

The barzakh and the bardo: challenges to religious violence in Sufism and Vajrayana Buddhism

In the twenty-first century, religious violence has become endemic in our world. Scholars are divided on the true motivations for such violence, however. While some perceive inherent incitements to violence embedded in religion itself, others blame other factors—primarily, competition for resources, which then co-opts religious feeling in order to justify and escalate conflict. This dissertation proposes that more fruitful answers to the riddle of religious violence may lie in the relationship between collective identity and religious allegiance. Identity construction is liminal and, as such, experiential. Hence, this study applies the analytical lens of liminality to explore possible understandings of religious violence. Taking the position that liminal passages are natural and unavoidable aspects of lived experience, it argues that the fixation on doctrinal certainties and religious ideals common among perpetrators of religious violence functions largely to oppose the ambivalence and uncertainty characteristic of liminality. It further posits the hypothetical phenomena of reactive projection and autonomic liminality as reactions to liminal experience, leading to eruptions of violence. The Tibetan Buddhist bardo and Sufi barzakh constitute religiously sanctioned instances of liminality. Although these passages are conventionally perceived as postmortem locales, both systems include broader metaphysical understandings, making their transformative potential profoundly relevant to spiritual practice during this lifetime. I argue that a close reading of the bardo and the barzakh demonstrates the capacity of religious tradition to offer compelling alternatives to the fixation on the extreme views typically implicated in religious violence. I further propose that the nondualistic, inclusive worldview implicit in understandings of the bardo and barzakh may prove useful in promoting a practice of “reflective interiority”—not only in disrupting the rigid mindset of those moved to perpetrate religious violence, but also in shifting the moral fixity sometimes associated with the scholarship on religious violence

The development of tentative norms for soccer skill tests on the college level.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Gaius Lucilius: his life and work.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Look Who\u27s Talking Now: Representation of Female Characters in Children\u27s Chapter Books

Literature is an aspect of a child’s environment that can influence a child’s gender development. Throughout the twentieth century, female characters have been underrepresented in comparison to male characters in award-winning children’s picture books. Based on past research, the aim of the current study was to investigate the representation of female characters in contemporary and popular children’s chapter books. A content analysis was conducted for 22 New York Times Middle Grade bestsellers, including 9 female protagonist books and 13 male protagonist books. Character counts and dialogue counts were coded for each book. Male characters outnumbered female characters with a ratio of 1.4:1. Male characters spoke more than female characters with a ratio of 1.7:1. Female characters were represented significantly less than 50% of the time and spoke significantly less than 50% of the time. Also, female characters spoke significantly less than was expected when accounting for their lower character counts. Female characters and male characters were represented more equally in character counts and dialogue counts in female protagonist books than male protagonist books. The current study confirms the conclusions of past research that female characters are underrepresented, as well as demonstrating that female characters are also underrepresented in dialogue. These findings indicate a continuing problem of gender inequality in children’s literature

Margin to Margin, China to Jamaica: Sexuality, Ethnicity, and Black Culture in Global Contexts

The Pagoda (1998), de Patricia Powell, examina la interrelación entre sexualidad, género y etnicidad en la Jamaica de finales del siglo XIX, sobre todo a través del personaje de Lowe, un emigrante chino que es violado durante la travesía, da a luz a la hija del violador blanco, y vive durante 30 años haciéndose pasar por hombre. La mujer de Lowe, Sylvie, una mulata que se hace pasar por blanca, cría a “la hija”. Aunque la narración de Powell se basa en nociones tradicionales de política de la identidad en su evocación del sistema de “contratación” en la Jamaica colonial tras la abolición de la esclavitud, la dinámica textual —sobre todo las estructuras de repetición y enumeración— revelan la permeabilidad, fragilidad y mutabilidad de varias dimensiones interrelacionadas de la identidad social y subjetiva. The Pagoda marca un cambio en la escritura afroamericana, traspasando el Atlántico para explorar las conexiones entre las culturas de la diáspora de África y Asia.Patricia Powell’s The Pagoda (1998) examines the entanglement of sexuality, gender, and ethnicity in late 19th century Jamaica, mainly through the character of Lowe, a Chinese immigrant who is raped during the “middle passage” bears the child of the white rapist, and lives for 30 years passing as a man. Lowe’s wife Sylvie, a mulatta passing as a white woman, raises “the daughter.” While Powell’s narrative relies on traditional notions of identity politics in its evocation of indentureship in colonial Jamaica after the abolition of slavery, the textual dynamics notably structures of repetition and enumeration —disclose the permeability, fragility, and mutability of several inter-related dimensions of subjective and social identity. The Pagoda marks a sea change in African American writing, moving beyond the Black Atlantic to explore connections between African and Asian diasporic cultures