Search

Begin New Search Topic Gender Issues Political Geography Europe

51. Mothers and Daughters in Transition and Beyond

Author:
Emilie L. Bergmann
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
With Spain's political changes, including the enfranchisement of women, in the late 1970s, and feminist theories that challenged stereotypical views of motherhood, Spanish women writers began to create more varied depictions. This essay briefly discusses the work of Montserrat Roig, Esther Tusquets, Ana Maria Moix, Nuria Amat, and Maria Mercè Roca, but its focus is on two writers' inscription of motherhood in terms of autonomy and mutual dependency: Carmen Martín Gaite's creation of maternal 'interlocutors,' and Soledad Puértolas's memoir, Con mi madre (2001) in which she writes with extraordinary honesty of the closeness and the silences she shared with her mother.
Topic:
Demographics, Gender Issues, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe and Spain

52. Out of the Glass Niche and into the Swimming Pool: the Transformation of the Sirena figure in Concha Méndez's Surtidor: Poesías

Author:
Nicole Altamirano
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
The present study is an exploration of revisionist mythmaking in Concha Méndez's Surtidor: poesías (1928), specifically of the Generation of 27 poet's appropriation and inscription of the androcentric myth of the siren/mermaid into female discourse, as seen through three poems: "Nadadora," "Natación," and "Bar". Through an analysis of these poems I show that Méndez dismantles the conventional "sirena" figure and revises her to suit a modern woman. In her appropriation of the "sirena," Méndez replaces the antiquated siren/ mermaid of masculine hegemonic discourse with an athletic, capable, and liberated water woman who decides her own destiny. In presenting a woman who frees herself from the restrictions of male subjectivity, Concha Méndez proposes an alternative model for female iconography—a siren singing a song rarely listened to, a song of feminine freedom and self-determination that would set the poet apart from her contemporaries for many years.
Topic:
Demographics, Education, and Gender Issues
Political Geography:
Europe

53. Discourse of Silence in Alcanfor and "Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyora"

Author:
Kathleen M. Glenn
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Contemporary Spanish literature abounds in narratives where silence has an important function. In the fiction of Cristina Fernández Cubas it has epistemological implications. Mercè Rodoreda and Maria Barbal employ a rhetoric of silence to call attention to the situation of women who are obliged to remain silent and suffer without protest. Carme Riera and Dulce Chacón utilize silences, and acts of breaking silence, to emphasize the lack of voice of marginal beings and to highlight sexual, socioeconomic and political inequalities. In the present paper, I focus on the role of silence in a novel by Barbal and a story by Riera.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Gender Issues, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Europe and Cuba

54. Women Writing on Physical Culture in Pre-Civil War Catalonia

Author:
P. Louise Johnson
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Anna Maria Martínez-Sagi is a largely forgotten but immensely evocative voice in the liberal-progressive press of nineteen-thirties' Spain. In particular, she is remarkable for being one of very few female writers of the time who were also active sportswomen, as well as being fiercely Catalanist and pro-women, in an inclusive sense. This article looks at her contribution to the debate on physical culture in Catalonia at the time, with reference to other writers concerned with the subject, and aims to capture in some small way the energy and humour which characterized her columns and reports.
Topic:
Education, Gender Issues, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Europe, Spain, and Catalonia

55. Genocide in Kosovo

Author:
Adam Jones
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
The campaign of genocidal assault and "ethnic cleansing" waged by Serb forces in Kosovo in 1998-99 was characterized, above all other atrocities, by the gender-selective mass-murder of the "battle-age" males. The present article seeks to plea this campaign of "gendercide" against non-combatant men in the broader context of the Balkans wars of the 1990s-including the five worst massacres in Europe since the aftermath of the Second World War, all of which clearly reflected the gendercidal underpinnings of the Serb strategy. The military "logic" of the strategy is examined, as are the harbingers of gendercide that were evident in Kosovo after the imposition of Serb police-state in the early 1990s. An analysis of the key atrocities of the 1999 war in Kosovo follows, along with some concluding comments about the taboo treatment accorded the subject in the feminist I.R. literature. The Kosovo war also offered an excellent opportunity to analyze the representation of gender and violent victimization in the mass media. A broad sample of media commentary is presented to demonstrate that "unworthy" male victims tend to be marginalized or ignored entirely in mass-media coverage. A trio of common marginalization strategies discussed, and a theoretical framework of "first-order", "second-order", and "third-order" gendering is proposed to clarify the deficit in coverage. This deficit is then contrasted with the attention given to the victimization experiences of "worthy" victims, such as women, children, and the elderly. Finally, the small handful of responsible and insightful media reports on gender-selective atrocities against Kosovar men is evaluated for the alternative it may offer to "effacing the male" from coverage of war and violence.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Gender Issues, and Genocide
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Eastern Europe, and Kosovo

56. Indeterminate and Inhuman: Georgette Leblanc in L'Inhumaine (1924)

Author:
Maureen Shanahan
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for European Studies at Cornell University
Abstract:
This essay argues that L'Inhumaine, directed by Marcel L'Herbier, succeeded as a display of avant-gardism but failed as a heterosexual romance due to misquotation of heterosexual paradigms and its citation of gay, lesbian, and queer signs of the era. Georgette Leblanc, who was the film's lead actress and a principal financial contributor, signified as too “authoritative” both to collaborators and critics, yet her role in shaping the narrative has not been acknowledged. Leblanc scripted the principal character, the singer Claire Lescaut, as an “inhuman woman” who refuses marriage, fails to mourn her suicided male suitor, and is reviled by other women, suggesting post-war women who persisted in their careers and failed to mourn male losses from the Great War. In one scene, when a theater audience breaks into partisan factions rioting over Lescaut's “inhumanity,” two garçonnes or mannish women appear to take Lescaut's side against others in the audience, a scene staged in part by Leblanc's lover Margaret Anderson, co-editor of the Little Review. The presence of the garçonne couple suggests Leblanc and Anderson's desire to connote a lesbian meaning to the “inhuman woman” and to address a lesbian spectator. In addition, Leblanc's age, on-screen persona, and her partnership with a younger male actor disturbed the contemporary ideological ordre familial in post-war France. Instead, both Leblanc and Jaque Catelain, the male lead, resembled other public queer figures, such as Sarah Bernhardt and Jean Börlin, the lead dancer for the Ballets Suédois. In its emphasis on theatrical performance, audience relations, masking and deflected emotions, L'Inhumaine produces a slippage between the visible and invisible and permits multiple spectatorial positions.
Topic:
Gender Issues and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Europe and France

57. Conference-Workshop on the Northern European Initiative

Author:
Denise M. Horn
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Security and Democracy
Abstract:
Heather Conley began the session with a report regarding the current plans for US policy in the region. Generally NEI is considered a success story, thus the US is now retooling its policies by asking where the US should go in a post-enlargement world, and asking how to use this policy elsewhere.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Genocide, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

58. Onward, Liberal Soldiers? The Crusading Logic of Bush's Grand Strategy and What Is Wrong with It

Author:
Edward Rhodes
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Security and Democracy
Abstract:
As pressures mount to strike before summer weather forecloses military options for the year, the debate whether the United States should undertake a preventive war against Iraq moves inexorably toward the center of the American political stage, despite the understandable reluctance of many Americans to think about the difficult trade-offs and troubling questions such a war would raise. Proponents of the war focus on the dangers of leaving Saddam Hussein in power. Opponents focus on the morality, military risks, and international political costs of undertaking a preventive war, on the possibilities of containing Saddam Hussein's influence and deterring his use of weapons of mass destruction without resort to war, and on the difficulties of building stable political institutions in the region after a victory.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Genocide, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

59. Rape as Genocide: The Legal Response to Sexual Violence

Author:
Dr. Frances T. Pilch
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Security and Democracy
Abstract:
The last decade has witnessed a profound transformation in the treatment of sexual violence in international law. The overwhelming evidence of the widespread use of rape as a policy tool in the former Yugoslavia, combined with the tragedy of the genocide in Rwanda, in which rape was also widely prevalent, has led to a legal reconceptualization of sexual violence in internal and international conflicts. The ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, have genuinely broken new ground as they have confronted cases dealing with the complexities of rape, torture, and genocide. They have struggled with determining the legal definition of rape and finding a balance between the rights of witnesses and defendants. The revolutionary changes that have taken place in this area of the law in large part reflect the growing mobilization and influence of non-governmental organizations articulating the importance of the rights of women, and the increasing importance of the presence of women advocates, prosecutors, and judges.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Genocide, Human Rights, and International Law
Political Geography:
Europe, Yugoslavia, and Sierra Leone

60. Bulgarian Women : Mentality and Life Strategy

Author:
Raya Staykova
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, City University of New York
Abstract:
For the future generations the period of rapid global changes taking place in East European countries during the last 10 years of the 20th century probably will be a social and economic miracle. These changes are dramatic for the societies and they cause personal crises through damaging the standard of life as well as changing people's system beliefs and mentality. Regardless the distress and hurdles presented by the environment these changes are not going along with serious conflicts and social and economic transformation continues to be implemented withstanding the difficulties and barriers.
Topic:
Development, Gender Issues, and Non-Governmental Organization
Political Geography:
Europe and Bulgaria