T
HIS IS THE SCHEDULE FROM 2019. THIS SERVES AS AN ARCHIVAL DOCUMENT. SEE THE 2020 SCHEDULE FOR THIS YEAR'S SCHEDULE.
The Feminist Research Colloquium showcases the student research conducted through McGill University's Institute of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies.
This year's colloquium is on April 15 and 16 at Research Common Room A at McLennan Library of McGill University.
Seven honours students in the Gender, Sexuality, Feminist, and Social Justice Studies major and thirteen graduate students in the Option in Women and Gender Studies will present their work.
Day 1: April 15, 2019
Opening Remarks and Pastry: 9:00- 9:15
HIS IS THE SCHEDULE FROM 2019. THIS SERVES AS AN ARCHIVAL DOCUMENT. SEE THE 2020 SCHEDULE FOR THIS YEAR'S SCHEDULE.
The Feminist Research Colloquium showcases the student research conducted through McGill University's Institute of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies.
This year's colloquium is on April 15 and 16 at Research Common Room A at McLennan Library of McGill University.
Seven honours students in the Gender, Sexuality, Feminist, and Social Justice Studies major and thirteen graduate students in the Option in Women and Gender Studies will present their work.
Day 1: April 15, 2019
Opening Remarks and Pastry: 9:00- 9:15
Alex Ketchum and Vanessa Blais- Tremblay
Panel 1: 9:30-10:30 Labour
Panel 2: 10:45-12:15 Gender and Colonialism: Missing Histories, New Analyses
Chung-Chih Hong: An Unheard Story: The Impact of Christianity on the Pangcah Women’s Traditional Power
Heather Porter: Linking Genealogies of Islamophobia and Gendered and Racialized Colonial Hierarchies in the Americas
Lunch: 12:15-1:15
Panel 3: 1:15-2:35 Histories of Sexualities, Genders, and Embodiments
Panel 1: 9:30-10:30 Labour
Chair: William Hébert
Dominique Grégoire: From Fashion Magazine to Activist Community: How Diverse Storytellers Changed Teen Vogue's Storytelling
Fraea Graziani: Understanding Sex Work: Why Representation Matters for Sex Workers
Catherine Jeffery: Liberating Labour: Critical Utopianism and the Future of Work
Panel 2: 10:45-12:15 Gender and Colonialism: Missing Histories, New Analyses
Chair: Vrinda Narain
Viviane Cottle: Public Perception of Restorative Justice in Canada: The Case of Terri-Lynne McClintic*** (content warning: see abstract)Chung-Chih Hong: An Unheard Story: The Impact of Christianity on the Pangcah Women’s Traditional Power
Heather Porter: Linking Genealogies of Islamophobia and Gendered and Racialized Colonial Hierarchies in the Americas
Panel 3: 1:15-2:35 Histories of Sexualities, Genders, and Embodiments
Chair: Nicole de Brabandere
Hosanna Galea: Nature as Divine: An Analysis of the Feminine in Hildegard of Bingen
Emma Chambers: The Greatest Social Taboo: The Discursive Production of Child Sexuality As The Ultimate Oxymoron
Ben Kirsebom: Reconstructing AIDS Narratives: Race, Space, and Queer Politics in Oakland, California in the 1980s and 90s
Kyle Stewart: Locating Ideology in the Fat Body
Day 2: April 16
Panel 5: 9:30-11:00 Gender, Sexuality, and Belonging
Kate Glen: Life After Death Star: Masculinity and Misogyny Through Musical Mashup*** (content warning: see abstract)
Megan Batty: Gender Performativity and Embodiment in the Lindy Hop
Sophie Ogilvie-Hanson: Human Aesthetics, Virtual Bodies: The Construction of Pop Avatar Miquela
Coffee Break
Panel 4: 3:00-5:00 Addressing Gender-Based and Sexual Violence in Educational Settings
Panel 4: 3:00-5:00 Addressing Gender-Based and Sexual Violence in Educational Settings
Chair: Marc Ducusin
Anuradha Dugal: Bringing a Critical Race Framework to On-Campus Efforts to End Sexual Violence
Esther Armaignac: The Pedagogical Power of Fiction: Addressing Gender- and Sexuality-Related Issues through Popular Culture and Fiction Writing
Natalia Incio Serra: Peruvian Indigenous Female Student Lives: An Exercise of Resilience
Esther Armaignac: The Pedagogical Power of Fiction: Addressing Gender- and Sexuality-Related Issues through Popular Culture and Fiction Writing
Natalia Incio Serra: Peruvian Indigenous Female Student Lives: An Exercise of Resilience
Day 2: April 16
Panel 5: 9:30-11:00 Gender, Sexuality, and Belonging
Chair: Alanna Thain
Yasmeen Shahzadeh:Idle Citizenry: Investigating the Representation of Women in Jordanian Civic Education Textbooks
Abbey-Leigh Heilig: Sexuality, Sport, and the City: A Literature Review
Kiersten van Vliet: Disco, Affect, and Public Cultures in Montreal’s Gay Village
Panel 6: 11:15-1:15 Constructing Gendered Identities Through Music and Culture
Abbey-Leigh Heilig: Sexuality, Sport, and the City: A Literature Review
Kiersten van Vliet: Disco, Affect, and Public Cultures in Montreal’s Gay Village
Panel 6: 11:15-1:15 Constructing Gendered Identities Through Music and Culture
Chair: Lisa Barg
Marta Beszterda: Women Composers in (Post)-Communist Poland: Challenges for Feminist Research in Polish MusicologyKate Glen: Life After Death Star: Masculinity and Misogyny Through Musical Mashup*** (content warning: see abstract)
Megan Batty: Gender Performativity and Embodiment in the Lindy Hop
Sophie Ogilvie-Hanson: Human Aesthetics, Virtual Bodies: The Construction of Pop Avatar Miquela
Final Remarks
Vanessa Blais- Tremblay and Alex Ketchum
Emma Chambers
The Greatest Social Taboo: The Discursive Production of Child Sexuality As The Ultimate Oxymoron
As recently as the 1960s, the figural Child was viewed as being sexually precocious, so what happened between then and the present, that has made child sexuality an oxymoron? In this thesis, I argue that American discourses concerning abuse and desire in general sexuality are displaced on the figural Child. Therefore, the representation of the Child is ultimately and necessarily symptomatic of adult discourses on sexuality. The purpose of investigating the proliferation of discourse surrounding child sexuality in the 1970s and 1980s is to showcase that laws, policies, and morals, were never truly about the child, but rather the figural Child and its relationship with adults. This investigation transpires first through analyzing the discursive proliferation made by feminists concerning sexual abuse, which was ultimately displaced on to the figural Child, and therefore aided in the production of the Child as sexually innocent. Then, by evaluating NAMBLA’s desire to end pedophilia-panic and age of consent laws, which functioned similarly to that of radical feminist theories at this time, insofar as both displace discourses of adult sexuality onto the figural Child. And finally, through considering the discursive proliferation precipitated by the Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor and how it challenged the hegemonic discourse pertaining to the figural Child during the 1970s. Although, because discourse is a system of knowledge that determines what is acceptable, true, or false, by those in positions of power, the Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor’s challenges were proven futile by their gatekeepers: the adults of America.
Hosanna Galea
Catherine Jeffery
2018/2019 GSFS Honours Students
The Greatest Social Taboo: The Discursive Production of Child Sexuality As The Ultimate Oxymoron
As recently as the 1960s, the figural Child was viewed as being sexually precocious, so what happened between then and the present, that has made child sexuality an oxymoron? In this thesis, I argue that American discourses concerning abuse and desire in general sexuality are displaced on the figural Child. Therefore, the representation of the Child is ultimately and necessarily symptomatic of adult discourses on sexuality. The purpose of investigating the proliferation of discourse surrounding child sexuality in the 1970s and 1980s is to showcase that laws, policies, and morals, were never truly about the child, but rather the figural Child and its relationship with adults. This investigation transpires first through analyzing the discursive proliferation made by feminists concerning sexual abuse, which was ultimately displaced on to the figural Child, and therefore aided in the production of the Child as sexually innocent. Then, by evaluating NAMBLA’s desire to end pedophilia-panic and age of consent laws, which functioned similarly to that of radical feminist theories at this time, insofar as both displace discourses of adult sexuality onto the figural Child. And finally, through considering the discursive proliferation precipitated by the Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor and how it challenged the hegemonic discourse pertaining to the figural Child during the 1970s. Although, because discourse is a system of knowledge that determines what is acceptable, true, or false, by those in positions of power, the Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor’s challenges were proven futile by their gatekeepers: the adults of America.
Hosanna Galea
Nature as Divine: An Analysis of the Feminine in Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sybil of the Rhine, was a medieval mystic and German Benedictine abbess living and working amongst the lush landscape of the German County Palatine of the Rhine (1098—1179 CE). This thesis will explore the rich message found in Hildegard’s theology that works to reevaluate the hierarchical dualism between men and women that prevailed during the twelfth century. I argue that Hildegard’s notion of embodied spirituality functions as a feminizing force in the universe. This phenomena is envisioned as deeply rooted in the power of the earth as well as the power of the Cosmos. In order to situate her theology within her time and place I begin by providing a biography of Hildegard’s life. In order to show how Hildegard’s notion of the Cosmos is, in effect, a feminizing force, I argue that Hildegard’s project is to re-envision positively the general assumption that women were considered less spiritual and more ‘earth-bound’ than men. Despite the cultural beliefs about women prevalent in the twelfth century, Hildegard’s theology celebrates women’s bodies and their connection to the earth as a representation of the heavenly divine. Far from affirming the hierarchical dualisms of her day, both nature and the divine are viewed through a holistic and equal spiritual vantage point as deeply interconnected. Hildegard re-imagines the heavens as effectively earthly in nature, and thus, as essentially feminine.
Fraea Graziani
Understanding Sex Work: Why Representation Matters for Sex Workers
This paper examines how sex workers and the sex industry have been/are represented in terms of the language and terminology used to describe their work, experiences, and identities. When tackling questions of representation - especially of a highly heterogeneous industry and population like sex work and sex workers - language and its interpretation/meaning are highly significant. Thus,there is great need to distinguish between everyday vernacular and academic definitions, especially when using terms that have broad meaning within cultural and social imagination. Using a thematic content analysis, this research compares and contrasts the textual representations of sex work and sex workers presented in the academic literature with the account rendered in Andrea Werhun’s memoir Modern Whore (2018).
Dominique Grégoire
From Fashion Magazine to Activist Community: How Diverse Storytellers Changed Teen Vogue’s Storytelling
By drawing a relationship between diversity in hiring practices and the shift towards more political and social justice oriented content at Teen Vogue, this paper examines the ways in which leaders have mobilized changing media platforms to create a space for activism, resistance, and community building. Through an analysis of Teen Vogue’s online content between 2015 and 2017, this work identifies the shift in the platform’s content away from a focus on celebrities, beauty and fashion towards more political and social justice-oriented content such as LGBTQ2SIA+ issues, disability rights, racism, police brutality, presidential elections, governmental policies and much more. Particularly, this work examines the relationship between this shift and the appointment of Elaine Welteroth as editor-in-chief in 2016, the youngest and second person of colour to hold this position. In researching and reviewing Welteroth’s contributions to Teen Vogue, this work argues that diversity in hiring practices, particularly in decision-making positions, enables possibilities for creating change behind the scenes, while simultaneously bringing forward new perspectives, topics, and identities. Through intersectionality and standpoint theory, this work aims to shed light on the importance of representing diverse audiences as well as the possibilities that both new media and social media open up for self-representation, community building and activism.
Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sybil of the Rhine, was a medieval mystic and German Benedictine abbess living and working amongst the lush landscape of the German County Palatine of the Rhine (1098—1179 CE). This thesis will explore the rich message found in Hildegard’s theology that works to reevaluate the hierarchical dualism between men and women that prevailed during the twelfth century. I argue that Hildegard’s notion of embodied spirituality functions as a feminizing force in the universe. This phenomena is envisioned as deeply rooted in the power of the earth as well as the power of the Cosmos. In order to situate her theology within her time and place I begin by providing a biography of Hildegard’s life. In order to show how Hildegard’s notion of the Cosmos is, in effect, a feminizing force, I argue that Hildegard’s project is to re-envision positively the general assumption that women were considered less spiritual and more ‘earth-bound’ than men. Despite the cultural beliefs about women prevalent in the twelfth century, Hildegard’s theology celebrates women’s bodies and their connection to the earth as a representation of the heavenly divine. Far from affirming the hierarchical dualisms of her day, both nature and the divine are viewed through a holistic and equal spiritual vantage point as deeply interconnected. Hildegard re-imagines the heavens as effectively earthly in nature, and thus, as essentially feminine.
Fraea Graziani
Understanding Sex Work: Why Representation Matters for Sex Workers
This paper examines how sex workers and the sex industry have been/are represented in terms of the language and terminology used to describe their work, experiences, and identities. When tackling questions of representation - especially of a highly heterogeneous industry and population like sex work and sex workers - language and its interpretation/meaning are highly significant. Thus,there is great need to distinguish between everyday vernacular and academic definitions, especially when using terms that have broad meaning within cultural and social imagination. Using a thematic content analysis, this research compares and contrasts the textual representations of sex work and sex workers presented in the academic literature with the account rendered in Andrea Werhun’s memoir Modern Whore (2018).
Dominique Grégoire
From Fashion Magazine to Activist Community: How Diverse Storytellers Changed Teen Vogue’s Storytelling
By drawing a relationship between diversity in hiring practices and the shift towards more political and social justice oriented content at Teen Vogue, this paper examines the ways in which leaders have mobilized changing media platforms to create a space for activism, resistance, and community building. Through an analysis of Teen Vogue’s online content between 2015 and 2017, this work identifies the shift in the platform’s content away from a focus on celebrities, beauty and fashion towards more political and social justice-oriented content such as LGBTQ2SIA+ issues, disability rights, racism, police brutality, presidential elections, governmental policies and much more. Particularly, this work examines the relationship between this shift and the appointment of Elaine Welteroth as editor-in-chief in 2016, the youngest and second person of colour to hold this position. In researching and reviewing Welteroth’s contributions to Teen Vogue, this work argues that diversity in hiring practices, particularly in decision-making positions, enables possibilities for creating change behind the scenes, while simultaneously bringing forward new perspectives, topics, and identities. Through intersectionality and standpoint theory, this work aims to shed light on the importance of representing diverse audiences as well as the possibilities that both new media and social media open up for self-representation, community building and activism.
Catherine Jeffery
Liberating Labour: Critical Utopianism and the Future of Work
This paper examines the potentials for utopianism in the context of the future of work. Within the exploitative conditions of capitalism, a reduction or elimination of work could be a utopian possibility. The rise in automation can simultaneously serve as a narrative of fear and one that promises a utopian potential as robots, artificial intelligence, and other forms of technology make life for humans easier. However, this utopianism, as it relies on the glorification of technology, plays into colonial fantasies and fails to offer a liberatory possibility for all. In contrast, movements which focus on worker agency, such as autonomist Marxism, call for a refusal of work rather than an end of work inevitably enforced through automation. Borrowing the concept of refusal, this paper uses queer theory to note the possibilities that reside within radical negativity. This sort of refusal can provoke radical utopian visions that must be critical and intersectional if they are to be of assistance in imagining a utopian future of work.
Ben Kirsebom
Reconstructing AIDS Narratives: Race, Space, and Queer Politics in Oakland, California in the 1980s and 90s
This thesis challenges the pervasive white subject of queer history by focusing on the diverse narratives of gays and lesbians in Oakland, California from the post-WWII era to the present. I highlight the importance of queer spaces and networks of support in Oakland before, during, and following the AIDS crisis to illustrate the historical evolution and present-day struggles of the city’s queer communities. I take as my starting point that the personal lives of historical queer subjects are political and use oral histories and archival documents to show the human side of political history. In this paper, I focus on Oakland during the 1980s and 1990s and the ways in which the city’s institutions and minority communities dealt with the complexities of AIDS. I begin by highlighting local political issues, such as the debate over syringe exchange programs, public health concerns, and the augmenting housing crisis. Then I analyze the vast network of community resources in Oakland at the time, from larger organizations such as the AIDS Project of the East Bay and the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency to smaller resources specifically for communities of color. The diverse range of programming and support services for HIV-positive individuals in Oakland illustrates the city’s importance as a space for racialized queer people as well as the ongoing importance of coalition building and social justice organizing.
Kyle Stewart
Locating Ideology in the Fat Body
The aim of this project is to investigate the ways in which certain peoples are relegated towards death by political institutions, and the ways in which the devaluation of these lives is justified ideologically. The project further seeks to examine the ways in which their “slow deaths” function to further entrench existing ideologies and advance a neoliberal imperial agenda. The paper is centrally concerned with Lauren Berlant’s conception of “slow death,” and the particular slow death of the fat body, drawing on queer theory and post-structuralist notions of the body. Thus, the project maps out the ideologies of desire manifesting during this late capitalist moment, finding that the late capitalist body is always in movement towards or against the possibility of obesity, and the desirable body is the always-unobtainable body. Ideology produces the “lack” we find in ourselves, medicalizing and commodifying this “lack,” especially the “lack”[ing] of the fat body, which represents an ‘excess’ of late capitalism manifesting as a contradictory lack [of control, of beauty, etc.]. We can spend as much as we have to create bodies which would purport to resolve this perceived lack, not realising that the “lack” is irresolvable. While obesity is a natural response to late capitalist inundation, its link to comorbid health problems should not be dismissed, but must be recognized as a natural consequence of the medicalization of the psychoanalytic “lack,” and therefore constitutes a manufactured relegation of bodies towards poorer health outcomes by late capitalist society (notably food multinationals, the advertising complex, and medical institutions which can profit from fat[ter] bodies).
Public Perception of Restorative Justice in Canada: The Case of Terri-Lynne McClintic
Viviane Cottle
Content warning: this presentation involves speaking about serious/violent crimes including sexual assault of a minor. No details or graphic images will be used but please take care of your needs regarding this presentation.
Restorative alternatives to punitive justice have been proposed by social justice advocates in Canada since the 1980s. Such alternatives include increased victim-offender encounters and the implementation of Indigenous Healing Lodges and youth diversion programs. In 2016 and 2017, Statistics Canada gathered insights regarding public perception of restorative justice options and punitiveness. The conclusions of these reports suggested a widespread acceptance of restorative justice’s potential, depending on the context and the crime as well as support for rehabilitation when possible. However, when faced with the case of Terri-Lynne McClintic, who in 2010 was convicted of first-degree murder of eight-year-old Tori Stafford and was transferred to an Indigenous Healing Lodge after self-identifying as Indigenous, the public outcry was explicitly against this transfer. The victim’s family, their friends and community protested against this transfer and requested that she return “back behind bars”. This presentation introduces this paradox as a way to examine the ways in which gender and Indigeneity interact with crime type and affect public perception of restorative justice. I draw on a mixed-methods approach: I conduct a quantitative analysis on the National Justice Survey of 2016, as well as a critical discourse analysis of media surrounding the Terri-Lynn McClintic (notably, news articles that include citations from the public and social media posts collected from Facebook). With a view towards greater implementation of restorative justice initiatives in Canada, I argue that the effectiveness of restorative justice initiatives requires community support and engagement not only in the processes, but in the principles of inclusion, healing and reparation.
An Unheard Story: The Impact of Christianity on the Pangcah Women’s Traditional Power
Chung-Chih Hong
This presentation examines the dismantling of Pangcah women’s traditional power as a result of their encounter with Western Christianity. Current narratives of the disintegration of Pangcah matrilineality focus on the effect of Taiwanese mainstream patriarchal society. Even Pangcah women believe there is no choice but to discard their traditional entitlement to accommodate the male-dominated culture (Hong 2014). As more than 50% of Pangcah people claim to be Christian today, the Church established by Western missionaries is still cherished by many indigenous groups for its “contributions” under the name of civilization and development, including education and medication projects. In this sense, among the forces that have worked to dismantle indigenous women’s traditional powers, Western Christianity has rarely been examined in the context of Taiwan. Only a few studies examine how Western missionaries demanded Pangcah people to abandon their traditions (McCall 1995; Shi 2007; Lin & Chen 2008), yet none analyzes the impact of the Church, which built on the Western patriarchal mentality, on Pangcah traditional practices. In this presentation, I investigate how colonial regimes, including Western Christianity, smuggled the patriarchal mindset into the Pangcah community over the past hundred years. I draw on scholarship that contextualizes the impact of Christianity on various indigenous communities worldwide (Deloria & Vine 1973; Pickles & Rutherdale 2005; Anderson 2012); on the history of overseas missions organized by the protestant church in the 19th and 20th century (Mackay & MacDonald 1900; Ion 2006, 2009; Chiu 2008); on the relationship between colonial states and the Church (Sia, 2018); and on recent scholarship that examines changes in Pangcah society and family structure since the early 1900s (McCall 1995; Huang 1997; Chuang and Lee 2003). In examining the consequences of the encounter between Christianity and Pangcah women, my research brings new light to the long-neglected issue of Pangcah women’s traditional power as yet another casualty of colonization.
Linking Genealogies of Islamophobia and Gendered and Racialized Hierarchies in Early European Colonial Projects
Heather Porter
In this presentation, I argue that Islamophobia, via its transatlantic crossing with the Spanish colonists, was foundational to the burgeoning concept of race and the reification and constitution of gender and sexuality in the early colonial era in the Americas. Within genealogies of racialization and colonization, theories of Islamophobia are often non-existent or rarely engaged. While prominent scholars such as Meyda Yegenoglu (1998) and Anne McClintock (2013) have recognized the inherent connections between race, sexuality, gender and imperialism, analyses of the hegemonic entanglement of each of these constructions with Islamophobia as it existed in this time period have yet to be analyzed cohesively. When acknowledged, Islamophobia is misrepresented either as a recent matter (post Cold War), as a special issue that only pertains to (non-Black) Muslim communities, or it lacks a crucial analysis of its hegemonic entanglements with gender, sexuality and race. In other words, despite the fact that the field of Islamophobia Studies continues to grow and that the timeline in which this phenomenon has been analyzed expands to as early as 1492 and before (Grosfoguel and Meilants (2006), Rana (2007), Mignolo (2006), Islamophobia’s role in the colonial projects of the Americas continues to be sidelined within critical race theories.
My presentation provides a summary of contemporary academic literature on genealogies and theorizations of Islamophobia. In making visible the gaps, invisiblizations and missed opportunities for theoretical and historical connectivities that exist in this body of scholarship, I discuss the damage that such exclusions bring to interdisciplinary scholarship and marginalized communities while at the same time arguing for the urgency of its inclusion in studies and disciplines that straddle the fields of colonialism, racialization, gender, and sexuality.
Bringing a Critical Race Framework to On-Campus Efforts to End Sexual Violence
Anuradha Dugal
This presentation examines the difficulties and benefits of bringing a critical race feminist framework to current understandings of sexual violence on campus. The analyses of afro-feminist scholars such as Kimberle Crenshaw and Robyn Maynard, as well as of critical feminists Shereen Razack, Sara Ahmed and Sunera Thobani, influence many of the diverse activists and community organizers on campus (such as METRAC, YWCA, RQCALACS and AWRSAC). Feminist community organizations regularly interact with different parts of the university: administration, service provision units, faculty members, and students. In this presentation I build on my knowledge of existing collaborations offering intervention and prevention on campus. I examine first how community groups use a critical race theoretical framework to define and understand the root causes of sexual violence (including rape culture) and power relationships. Then I trace this analysis into their various partnerships within universities, and particularly McGill. Finally, I examine how their critical race or intersectional approaches are received by this university and make their way into the actions taken by administration. My research, set up through text analyses, conversations and email interviews, has shown that there is a gap within McGill’s policies and procedures and its stated goals to support all students. McGill’s policies and procedures barely acknowledge the intersectional nature of oppressions that underpin sexual violence. My initial analysis shows that the feminist goals of community groups and the institutional goals of universities can be sites for mutually beneficial connections, and also troubling challenges. This presentation recommends ways to overcome this gap to better address the needs of survivors facing multiple oppressions.
The Pedagogical Power of Fiction: Addressing Gender- and Sexuality-Related Issues through Popular Culture and Fiction Writing
Esther Armaignac
This presentation will explore two ways in which fictional narratives can be mobilized in CEGEP-level classrooms to raise awareness about gender- and sexuality-related issues. What is the extent of the pedagogical power of fictional narratives? How can popular culture and creative practices be used to engage teenagers in discussing gender roles, conventional and normative narratives related to gender, sexual consent and harassment? Fictions are powerful narratives that emotionally affect readers. In this sense, they can function as strong critical tools in classroom environments (Johnston, 2011, Leavy, 2009). First, I explain how analyzing women’s roles in mainstream movies can help students develop critical thinking about women’s representation. Paradoxically, a number of female characters in popular movies such as Wonder Woman (Wonder Woman, 2017), Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games, 2012-2015), Ripley (Alien, 1979-1997), and Hermione Granger (Harry Potter, 2001-2011) simultaneously create and question normative discourses related to gender, class, race, age and sexuality (McRobbie, 2006, Bordo 1993, Hall, 1997, Dyer, 1997, de Lauretis 1987, Butler, 1990, Melzer, 2006, Stacey, 2003). Second, I underline how fiction writing can be used to engage students with issues related to sexual consent and harassment. Drawing on scholarship that defines fiction-writing in a classroom environment as a form of participatory practice (MacDonald and al., 2011), I argue that creativity can be an important aspect of student mobilization. Adolescence and young adulthood are important times for the development of identity: teenagers are often living apart from their family for the very first time and being exposed to gender- and sexuality-related unsafe or harassing behaviours (Bastable and Dart, 2008, Kelly et al., 2005). Creating fiction allows students not only to develop critical thinking towards popular culture’s representations, but also towards their own lived experiences.
Peruvian Indigenous Female Student Lives: An Exercise of Resilience
Natalia Incio Serra
Peru is a dangerous country for women (Thomson Reuters Foundation 2018). Regardless of recent efforts to change this situation, gender-based violence permeates all social spaces and practices. Yet the situation for Indigenous girls is even worse. In Peruvian society, Indigenous girls are denied a voice in public affairs: they are subalterns and exist outside of the hegemonic power structure (Spivak 1988). Exclusion, discrimination, and other forms of violence affect their ability to access personal and academic development opportunities that could have an impact on their lives. Despite this oppressive environment, Indigenous Peruvian girls draw on a wide range of resources to survive. In this paper, I build on photovoice and semi-structured group interviews I realized in 2018 to contextualize the life and school experiences of four Peruvian Indigenous girls between thirteen and seventeen years old from Quechua communities. Specifically, I explore the resourcefulness of these young women in the context of their transit towards adulthood, where they face different types of violence in a non–Western perspective. I draw on resilience theory (Rutter 1987; Masten 2001 Cyrulnik 2003) to understand how Indigenous girls’ emotional strength helps them to cope in adverse conditions. I also utilize pragmatic identity theory (Levitan & Carr- Chellmann 2018) to question the identity formation processes in this particular cultural framework. Lastly, I examine the role of Peruvian education in relation to Indigenous girls’ identity formation. I argue that the personal and cultural identities of these girls are strongly interwoven protective factors that are not reflected in the national curriculum and thus in their schooling process. The school, far from being a safe place of learning, is a space of risk and struggle.
Idle Citizenry: Investigating the Representation of Women in Jordanian Civic Education Textbooks
Yasmeen Shahzadeh
This paper investigates the representation of women in Jordan’s secondary school Civic Education textbooks. Despite ongoing curriculum updates in a bid to modernize the curriculum in cooperation with local and international stakeholders, the Jordanian Civic Education curriculum lacks equal representation of men and women. Following Smith’s “textually mediated social organization” model (Smith, 1993), I argue that examining the notions of “masculine” and “feminine” citizenship and gendered civic duties represented in Civic Education textbooks can inform discussions about social organization in Jordan. First, I introduce the core elements of the Jordanian Civic Education curriculum. Second, I present the results of a discourse analysis of the ways in which women are represented in the 9th grade textbooks for Civic Education, which are standardized across the country. I focus specifically on the use of gendered language and photos in this textbook to illustrate the ways in which women are largely invisible in citizenship studies in Jordan. Additionally, I focus on the use of gendered language and narratives to address the ways in which the responsibilities of male and female citizens are constructed differently to highlight possible ways this re-enforces male superiority over women in society. Lastly, I juxtapose these representations to those of Jordanian men and masculinity in these textbooks, building upon the research of Alayan & Al-Khalidi (2012) and Kubow & Kreishan (2014) on curricular development in Jordan. Crucially, this paper will shed light on the complex ties between curricula and social organization on a larger scale, and the importance of critically tackling the inclusion of women in education and society.
Sexuality, Sport, and the City: A Literature Review
Abbey-Leigh Heilig
Nationalism Studies scholars have established that exclusions based on identity are inherent to the creation of nationalist discourses. From this starting point, I examine the concept of settler homonationalism as defined by Jasbir Puar (2007) and Scott Morgensen (2010) in relation to Canadian nationalist discourse. What forms can discourses of Canadian sexual citizenship take, and how have they changed and/or been contested since Quebec banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in 1977? How do such discourses interact with other axes of power such as race and gender—what kinds of identity-based exclusions do they create? In this presentation, I analyze discourses around sexuality and inclusion in the national body politic in the context of large-scale sporting events as sites nationalist spectacles. Nationalism studies scholar Anne McClintock (1993) has argued that moments of nationalist spectacle are crucial to national identity formation. This literature review will provide scaffolding for my own research into these areas. I aim to create a new theoretical framework that can account for issues of sexual citizenship in relation to nationalist spectacle and sport in Canada. To do so, I draw on and connect recent scholarship in four fields of study: Nationalism Studies, Global City Studies, Geographies of Sexuality, and Geographies of Sport. Nationalisms are particularly dangerous when they remain implicit; this research aims to make them and their impact in Canada a little more visible.
Disco, Affect, and Public Cultures in Montreal’s Gay Village
Kiersten van Vliet
This presentation explores music and dance scenes in Montreal’s gay community in the early 1980s. The role that music and dance plays in queer identity formation has been studied in relation to particular music performers, genres, practices, and receptions, but these studies are often not situated in praxis nor historicized to a time and place (Barkin, 1999; Doty, 1993; Hawkins, 2015; Peraino, 2006). Considering the social geography of Montreal’s early “gay village” as a public culture, I will explore the queer structures of feeling, the forms of personal affective life that emerged in that period. Further, I draw upon Sara Ahmed’s theory of queer phenomenology to find moments of disorientation and reorientation in lived experiences related to the dance floor, emphasizing “the intentionality of consciousness, the significance of nearness or what is ready-to-hand, and the role of repeated and habitual actions in shaping bodies and worlds” (2006). This theoretical framework will help me access the peripheral and, at times, ephemeral queer archive of feelings (Cvetkovich, 2003), of which its material evidence is dispersed in Montreal’s institutional and independent archives, such as the Archives gaies du Québec, McGill University’s Rare Books and Special Collections, Concordia University’s Special Collections on Montreal nightlife, and the ARCMTL, an independent archive of Montreal’s music and art history. By centering the queer dance floor to challenge the binarisms of mind and body, public and private, psychic and social, exceptional and quotidian, creator and consumer, I illuminate the connections that made up the context of Montreal’s queer music and dance scenes around 1980—the time of Quebec’s first referendum to separate from Canada. In particular, I interrogate Montreal’s status as “disco’s second city” (Straw, 2014) and the relative longevity of the genre in the city’s discothèques.
Women Composers in (Post)-Communist Poland: Challenges for Feminist Research in Polish Musicology
Marta Beszterda
The entanglements of gender with communist politics in Poland between 1945–1989 provide a complex case for feminist musicologists studying the history of the Polish New Music scene. The understanding of gender equity by local composers and musicologists of the post-war generation is significantly different from the premises of Western feminist musicology. For example, internationally-renowned Polish women composers born post-war frequently express reluctance towards embracing feminist narratives in contextualizing their craft, even though they simultaneously recall gender-based challenges in their careers. Similarly, in the Polish academy, to this day issues of gender remain understudied relative to the growing body of research on gender in Western musicology, despite the fact that the archive shows a striking disproportion between women and men composers’ participation in Warsaw’s contemporary music scene under communism. The above reveals the need for alternative theoretical frameworks and research practices for investigating the issues of gender and music in communist Poland. In this presentation, I draw on recent interviews I conducted with composers in order to introduce a new framework that better accounts for gender politics under communism and contextualizes the realities of the profession of composer in the Polish state-funded and -controlled classical music scene. By doing so, I integrate the discourse around the (im)possibility of a shared feminist narrative across the former Iron Curtain (Slavova 2006, Cervonka 2008, Grabowska 2012) with the field of musicology. Lastly, by reflecting on contemporary music scenes in Europe as transnational spaces where the East/West categories are negotiated (Jakelski 2016), I also work towards building a theoretical model instructive for the feminist study of music in the Eastern-European region.
Life After Death Star: Masculinity and Misogyny Through Musical Mashup
Kate Glen
This presentation contains lyrics with explicit language and depictions of sexual violence. I am happy to provide a copy of my paper for those who wish to engage with the topic and the content in a different time and place.
A “mashup” is the combination or two or more existing recordings to create a work that can be understood both as a new, composite work, as well as an interaction between the original sources. Paul Booth (2012) establishes video mashups as a site of cultural revisionism and creation of cultural meaning which relies on a 21st century audience’s familiarity with the particular source texts to make ideological or critical connections between them. Tisha Turk (2010) further states that mashup videos can be read as the creator’s “public discourse with its source narrative.” According to Turk, analyzing this public discourse not only illuminates what the source texts say about each other but also reveals the mashup creator’s ideas about narrative, gender, and representation. In this paper, I examine whether purely audio mashups can also demonstrate how the audience and creator construct ideas of gender representation and narrative. While intertextual references and representations of race have been explored in relation to the practice of sampling in hip hop (Demers 2003, Roth-Gordon 2012, Williams 2013), these analyses seldom address how gender is represented or communicated in composite works. Richie Branson and Solar Slim’s album Life After Death Star remixes each track of Notorious B.I.G.’s iconic album Life After Death with musical and audio samples from George Lucas’s Star Wars film trilogy. Each of these source materials has their own narratives and representations of gender, and in this sense, mashup produces a dialogue between the gendered ideas contained in the original texts. Building on the work of Booth and Turk, as well as incorporating Justin Williams’ methodology of musical quotation, allusion, and intertextuality in hip hop recordings (2014), I examine the mashup of original sources in Life After Death Star. I argue that the album subverts the traditional hierarchy which values white music and privilege above others while still reifying conventional structures of masculinity and misogyny.
Gender Performativity and Embodiment in the Lindy Hop
Megan Batty
Swing dancing, an improvised form of partner dance with jazz music, experienced a global revival starting in the 1990s. Although vibrant swing dance scenes have sprung up across Canada, the most prestigious and established swing dance scene is located in Montreal. Much of the recent scholarship on swing dancing has been centered on the socio-musicological dimensions of swing dance (Wells, 2014, Tucker, 2014, and Sékiné, 2017). In this presentation, I will revisit the Montreal swing dance scene with a focus on theorizing how gender performativity and embodiment practices are central to this dance practice. Drawing on my personal experience learning, teaching and performing the Lindy Hop, this presentation will reposition the human body as a source of knowledge within the study of swing dance. I first look to Lisa Wade’s work on dance partnerships within the Lindy Hop (Wade 2011). She argues that Lindy Hoppers’ control over their bodies is an essential part of the dance for both partners: They do not reproduce an active/passive binary, but rather negotiate artistic choices jointly and in real time. I take this argument further by examining the gendered implications of this negotiation process. Drawing on Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity (Butler 1988, 1990), I consider how gender is a performative act that is reinforced, challenged or otherwise changed through bodily motion within a dancing partnership. Within this discussion, I will draw on scholarship in embodiment in dance studies to centralize the role of the body. I look to work on black social dance and embodiment by Robinson (2015) and Kraut (2015) to inform my analysis of the embodied techniques adopted by Lindy Hoppers. In this presentation, I suggest that the practice of switching roles while dancing can be used as a conscious tactic to challenge gendered hierarchies within the practice of social dancing the Lindy Hop.
Human Aesthetics, Virtual Bodies: The Construction of Pop Avatar Miquela
Sophie Ogilvie-Hanson
Digital alterations to sound and image are ubiquitous in the popular music industry, where photoshop-enhanced art is an accepted pairing to glimmering vocal production and electronic instrumentation. This blurry distinction between real and rendered is toyed with by Instagram it-girl Lil Miquela, a virtual avatar created by the Los Angeles-based startup Brud. In addition to her success as a figurehead for fashion campaigns with Ugg and Prada, Miquela has released music on Spotify and Youtube. The song “Hate Me,” produced by chart-topper Baauer, is a typical EDM and R&B-inflected pop song: its overly auto-tuned vocals and layered synthesizers make it largely indiscernible as “non-human” amongst its neighbors on the streaming charts. In this presentation, I argue that Miquela’s music and her engagement with political issues such as Black Lives Matter, LGBT rights, and DACA protections are constructed as strikingly conventional. In this way, Miquela can evade concerns about authorship and conform to standard influencer conventions. I interrogate Miquela’s representation as left-wing or “woke” to argue that her political affiliation and her innocuous musical persona are rather two means to the same end: attempts to shroud her primary function as an “influencer,” i.e. a vehicle to sells things. Drawing on feminist and posthumanist discourse (Braidotti, 2013, Weheliye, 2002) as well as on musicological literature on electronic audiovisual practices (Richardson, 2012), I suggest that Miquela’s use of posthumanist imagery simultaneously critiques the construction of online identities while reveling in this digital medium as both creative and capitalistic.
Ben Kirsebom
Reconstructing AIDS Narratives: Race, Space, and Queer Politics in Oakland, California in the 1980s and 90s
This thesis challenges the pervasive white subject of queer history by focusing on the diverse narratives of gays and lesbians in Oakland, California from the post-WWII era to the present. I highlight the importance of queer spaces and networks of support in Oakland before, during, and following the AIDS crisis to illustrate the historical evolution and present-day struggles of the city’s queer communities. I take as my starting point that the personal lives of historical queer subjects are political and use oral histories and archival documents to show the human side of political history. In this paper, I focus on Oakland during the 1980s and 1990s and the ways in which the city’s institutions and minority communities dealt with the complexities of AIDS. I begin by highlighting local political issues, such as the debate over syringe exchange programs, public health concerns, and the augmenting housing crisis. Then I analyze the vast network of community resources in Oakland at the time, from larger organizations such as the AIDS Project of the East Bay and the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency to smaller resources specifically for communities of color. The diverse range of programming and support services for HIV-positive individuals in Oakland illustrates the city’s importance as a space for racialized queer people as well as the ongoing importance of coalition building and social justice organizing.
Kyle Stewart
Locating Ideology in the Fat Body
The aim of this project is to investigate the ways in which certain peoples are relegated towards death by political institutions, and the ways in which the devaluation of these lives is justified ideologically. The project further seeks to examine the ways in which their “slow deaths” function to further entrench existing ideologies and advance a neoliberal imperial agenda. The paper is centrally concerned with Lauren Berlant’s conception of “slow death,” and the particular slow death of the fat body, drawing on queer theory and post-structuralist notions of the body. Thus, the project maps out the ideologies of desire manifesting during this late capitalist moment, finding that the late capitalist body is always in movement towards or against the possibility of obesity, and the desirable body is the always-unobtainable body. Ideology produces the “lack” we find in ourselves, medicalizing and commodifying this “lack,” especially the “lack”[ing] of the fat body, which represents an ‘excess’ of late capitalism manifesting as a contradictory lack [of control, of beauty, etc.]. We can spend as much as we have to create bodies which would purport to resolve this perceived lack, not realising that the “lack” is irresolvable. While obesity is a natural response to late capitalist inundation, its link to comorbid health problems should not be dismissed, but must be recognized as a natural consequence of the medicalization of the psychoanalytic “lack,” and therefore constitutes a manufactured relegation of bodies towards poorer health outcomes by late capitalist society (notably food multinationals, the advertising complex, and medical institutions which can profit from fat[ter] bodies).
2018/2019 Women and Gender Studies 602 Graduate Students
Public Perception of Restorative Justice in Canada: The Case of Terri-Lynne McClintic
Viviane Cottle
Content warning: this presentation involves speaking about serious/violent crimes including sexual assault of a minor. No details or graphic images will be used but please take care of your needs regarding this presentation.
Restorative alternatives to punitive justice have been proposed by social justice advocates in Canada since the 1980s. Such alternatives include increased victim-offender encounters and the implementation of Indigenous Healing Lodges and youth diversion programs. In 2016 and 2017, Statistics Canada gathered insights regarding public perception of restorative justice options and punitiveness. The conclusions of these reports suggested a widespread acceptance of restorative justice’s potential, depending on the context and the crime as well as support for rehabilitation when possible. However, when faced with the case of Terri-Lynne McClintic, who in 2010 was convicted of first-degree murder of eight-year-old Tori Stafford and was transferred to an Indigenous Healing Lodge after self-identifying as Indigenous, the public outcry was explicitly against this transfer. The victim’s family, their friends and community protested against this transfer and requested that she return “back behind bars”. This presentation introduces this paradox as a way to examine the ways in which gender and Indigeneity interact with crime type and affect public perception of restorative justice. I draw on a mixed-methods approach: I conduct a quantitative analysis on the National Justice Survey of 2016, as well as a critical discourse analysis of media surrounding the Terri-Lynn McClintic (notably, news articles that include citations from the public and social media posts collected from Facebook). With a view towards greater implementation of restorative justice initiatives in Canada, I argue that the effectiveness of restorative justice initiatives requires community support and engagement not only in the processes, but in the principles of inclusion, healing and reparation.
An Unheard Story: The Impact of Christianity on the Pangcah Women’s Traditional Power
Chung-Chih Hong
This presentation examines the dismantling of Pangcah women’s traditional power as a result of their encounter with Western Christianity. Current narratives of the disintegration of Pangcah matrilineality focus on the effect of Taiwanese mainstream patriarchal society. Even Pangcah women believe there is no choice but to discard their traditional entitlement to accommodate the male-dominated culture (Hong 2014). As more than 50% of Pangcah people claim to be Christian today, the Church established by Western missionaries is still cherished by many indigenous groups for its “contributions” under the name of civilization and development, including education and medication projects. In this sense, among the forces that have worked to dismantle indigenous women’s traditional powers, Western Christianity has rarely been examined in the context of Taiwan. Only a few studies examine how Western missionaries demanded Pangcah people to abandon their traditions (McCall 1995; Shi 2007; Lin & Chen 2008), yet none analyzes the impact of the Church, which built on the Western patriarchal mentality, on Pangcah traditional practices. In this presentation, I investigate how colonial regimes, including Western Christianity, smuggled the patriarchal mindset into the Pangcah community over the past hundred years. I draw on scholarship that contextualizes the impact of Christianity on various indigenous communities worldwide (Deloria & Vine 1973; Pickles & Rutherdale 2005; Anderson 2012); on the history of overseas missions organized by the protestant church in the 19th and 20th century (Mackay & MacDonald 1900; Ion 2006, 2009; Chiu 2008); on the relationship between colonial states and the Church (Sia, 2018); and on recent scholarship that examines changes in Pangcah society and family structure since the early 1900s (McCall 1995; Huang 1997; Chuang and Lee 2003). In examining the consequences of the encounter between Christianity and Pangcah women, my research brings new light to the long-neglected issue of Pangcah women’s traditional power as yet another casualty of colonization.
Linking Genealogies of Islamophobia and Gendered and Racialized Hierarchies in Early European Colonial Projects
Heather Porter
In this presentation, I argue that Islamophobia, via its transatlantic crossing with the Spanish colonists, was foundational to the burgeoning concept of race and the reification and constitution of gender and sexuality in the early colonial era in the Americas. Within genealogies of racialization and colonization, theories of Islamophobia are often non-existent or rarely engaged. While prominent scholars such as Meyda Yegenoglu (1998) and Anne McClintock (2013) have recognized the inherent connections between race, sexuality, gender and imperialism, analyses of the hegemonic entanglement of each of these constructions with Islamophobia as it existed in this time period have yet to be analyzed cohesively. When acknowledged, Islamophobia is misrepresented either as a recent matter (post Cold War), as a special issue that only pertains to (non-Black) Muslim communities, or it lacks a crucial analysis of its hegemonic entanglements with gender, sexuality and race. In other words, despite the fact that the field of Islamophobia Studies continues to grow and that the timeline in which this phenomenon has been analyzed expands to as early as 1492 and before (Grosfoguel and Meilants (2006), Rana (2007), Mignolo (2006), Islamophobia’s role in the colonial projects of the Americas continues to be sidelined within critical race theories.
My presentation provides a summary of contemporary academic literature on genealogies and theorizations of Islamophobia. In making visible the gaps, invisiblizations and missed opportunities for theoretical and historical connectivities that exist in this body of scholarship, I discuss the damage that such exclusions bring to interdisciplinary scholarship and marginalized communities while at the same time arguing for the urgency of its inclusion in studies and disciplines that straddle the fields of colonialism, racialization, gender, and sexuality.
Bringing a Critical Race Framework to On-Campus Efforts to End Sexual Violence
Anuradha Dugal
This presentation examines the difficulties and benefits of bringing a critical race feminist framework to current understandings of sexual violence on campus. The analyses of afro-feminist scholars such as Kimberle Crenshaw and Robyn Maynard, as well as of critical feminists Shereen Razack, Sara Ahmed and Sunera Thobani, influence many of the diverse activists and community organizers on campus (such as METRAC, YWCA, RQCALACS and AWRSAC). Feminist community organizations regularly interact with different parts of the university: administration, service provision units, faculty members, and students. In this presentation I build on my knowledge of existing collaborations offering intervention and prevention on campus. I examine first how community groups use a critical race theoretical framework to define and understand the root causes of sexual violence (including rape culture) and power relationships. Then I trace this analysis into their various partnerships within universities, and particularly McGill. Finally, I examine how their critical race or intersectional approaches are received by this university and make their way into the actions taken by administration. My research, set up through text analyses, conversations and email interviews, has shown that there is a gap within McGill’s policies and procedures and its stated goals to support all students. McGill’s policies and procedures barely acknowledge the intersectional nature of oppressions that underpin sexual violence. My initial analysis shows that the feminist goals of community groups and the institutional goals of universities can be sites for mutually beneficial connections, and also troubling challenges. This presentation recommends ways to overcome this gap to better address the needs of survivors facing multiple oppressions.
The Pedagogical Power of Fiction: Addressing Gender- and Sexuality-Related Issues through Popular Culture and Fiction Writing
Esther Armaignac
This presentation will explore two ways in which fictional narratives can be mobilized in CEGEP-level classrooms to raise awareness about gender- and sexuality-related issues. What is the extent of the pedagogical power of fictional narratives? How can popular culture and creative practices be used to engage teenagers in discussing gender roles, conventional and normative narratives related to gender, sexual consent and harassment? Fictions are powerful narratives that emotionally affect readers. In this sense, they can function as strong critical tools in classroom environments (Johnston, 2011, Leavy, 2009). First, I explain how analyzing women’s roles in mainstream movies can help students develop critical thinking about women’s representation. Paradoxically, a number of female characters in popular movies such as Wonder Woman (Wonder Woman, 2017), Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games, 2012-2015), Ripley (Alien, 1979-1997), and Hermione Granger (Harry Potter, 2001-2011) simultaneously create and question normative discourses related to gender, class, race, age and sexuality (McRobbie, 2006, Bordo 1993, Hall, 1997, Dyer, 1997, de Lauretis 1987, Butler, 1990, Melzer, 2006, Stacey, 2003). Second, I underline how fiction writing can be used to engage students with issues related to sexual consent and harassment. Drawing on scholarship that defines fiction-writing in a classroom environment as a form of participatory practice (MacDonald and al., 2011), I argue that creativity can be an important aspect of student mobilization. Adolescence and young adulthood are important times for the development of identity: teenagers are often living apart from their family for the very first time and being exposed to gender- and sexuality-related unsafe or harassing behaviours (Bastable and Dart, 2008, Kelly et al., 2005). Creating fiction allows students not only to develop critical thinking towards popular culture’s representations, but also towards their own lived experiences.
Peruvian Indigenous Female Student Lives: An Exercise of Resilience
Natalia Incio Serra
Peru is a dangerous country for women (Thomson Reuters Foundation 2018). Regardless of recent efforts to change this situation, gender-based violence permeates all social spaces and practices. Yet the situation for Indigenous girls is even worse. In Peruvian society, Indigenous girls are denied a voice in public affairs: they are subalterns and exist outside of the hegemonic power structure (Spivak 1988). Exclusion, discrimination, and other forms of violence affect their ability to access personal and academic development opportunities that could have an impact on their lives. Despite this oppressive environment, Indigenous Peruvian girls draw on a wide range of resources to survive. In this paper, I build on photovoice and semi-structured group interviews I realized in 2018 to contextualize the life and school experiences of four Peruvian Indigenous girls between thirteen and seventeen years old from Quechua communities. Specifically, I explore the resourcefulness of these young women in the context of their transit towards adulthood, where they face different types of violence in a non–Western perspective. I draw on resilience theory (Rutter 1987; Masten 2001 Cyrulnik 2003) to understand how Indigenous girls’ emotional strength helps them to cope in adverse conditions. I also utilize pragmatic identity theory (Levitan & Carr- Chellmann 2018) to question the identity formation processes in this particular cultural framework. Lastly, I examine the role of Peruvian education in relation to Indigenous girls’ identity formation. I argue that the personal and cultural identities of these girls are strongly interwoven protective factors that are not reflected in the national curriculum and thus in their schooling process. The school, far from being a safe place of learning, is a space of risk and struggle.
Idle Citizenry: Investigating the Representation of Women in Jordanian Civic Education Textbooks
Yasmeen Shahzadeh
This paper investigates the representation of women in Jordan’s secondary school Civic Education textbooks. Despite ongoing curriculum updates in a bid to modernize the curriculum in cooperation with local and international stakeholders, the Jordanian Civic Education curriculum lacks equal representation of men and women. Following Smith’s “textually mediated social organization” model (Smith, 1993), I argue that examining the notions of “masculine” and “feminine” citizenship and gendered civic duties represented in Civic Education textbooks can inform discussions about social organization in Jordan. First, I introduce the core elements of the Jordanian Civic Education curriculum. Second, I present the results of a discourse analysis of the ways in which women are represented in the 9th grade textbooks for Civic Education, which are standardized across the country. I focus specifically on the use of gendered language and photos in this textbook to illustrate the ways in which women are largely invisible in citizenship studies in Jordan. Additionally, I focus on the use of gendered language and narratives to address the ways in which the responsibilities of male and female citizens are constructed differently to highlight possible ways this re-enforces male superiority over women in society. Lastly, I juxtapose these representations to those of Jordanian men and masculinity in these textbooks, building upon the research of Alayan & Al-Khalidi (2012) and Kubow & Kreishan (2014) on curricular development in Jordan. Crucially, this paper will shed light on the complex ties between curricula and social organization on a larger scale, and the importance of critically tackling the inclusion of women in education and society.
Sexuality, Sport, and the City: A Literature Review
Abbey-Leigh Heilig
Nationalism Studies scholars have established that exclusions based on identity are inherent to the creation of nationalist discourses. From this starting point, I examine the concept of settler homonationalism as defined by Jasbir Puar (2007) and Scott Morgensen (2010) in relation to Canadian nationalist discourse. What forms can discourses of Canadian sexual citizenship take, and how have they changed and/or been contested since Quebec banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in 1977? How do such discourses interact with other axes of power such as race and gender—what kinds of identity-based exclusions do they create? In this presentation, I analyze discourses around sexuality and inclusion in the national body politic in the context of large-scale sporting events as sites nationalist spectacles. Nationalism studies scholar Anne McClintock (1993) has argued that moments of nationalist spectacle are crucial to national identity formation. This literature review will provide scaffolding for my own research into these areas. I aim to create a new theoretical framework that can account for issues of sexual citizenship in relation to nationalist spectacle and sport in Canada. To do so, I draw on and connect recent scholarship in four fields of study: Nationalism Studies, Global City Studies, Geographies of Sexuality, and Geographies of Sport. Nationalisms are particularly dangerous when they remain implicit; this research aims to make them and their impact in Canada a little more visible.
Disco, Affect, and Public Cultures in Montreal’s Gay Village
Kiersten van Vliet
This presentation explores music and dance scenes in Montreal’s gay community in the early 1980s. The role that music and dance plays in queer identity formation has been studied in relation to particular music performers, genres, practices, and receptions, but these studies are often not situated in praxis nor historicized to a time and place (Barkin, 1999; Doty, 1993; Hawkins, 2015; Peraino, 2006). Considering the social geography of Montreal’s early “gay village” as a public culture, I will explore the queer structures of feeling, the forms of personal affective life that emerged in that period. Further, I draw upon Sara Ahmed’s theory of queer phenomenology to find moments of disorientation and reorientation in lived experiences related to the dance floor, emphasizing “the intentionality of consciousness, the significance of nearness or what is ready-to-hand, and the role of repeated and habitual actions in shaping bodies and worlds” (2006). This theoretical framework will help me access the peripheral and, at times, ephemeral queer archive of feelings (Cvetkovich, 2003), of which its material evidence is dispersed in Montreal’s institutional and independent archives, such as the Archives gaies du Québec, McGill University’s Rare Books and Special Collections, Concordia University’s Special Collections on Montreal nightlife, and the ARCMTL, an independent archive of Montreal’s music and art history. By centering the queer dance floor to challenge the binarisms of mind and body, public and private, psychic and social, exceptional and quotidian, creator and consumer, I illuminate the connections that made up the context of Montreal’s queer music and dance scenes around 1980—the time of Quebec’s first referendum to separate from Canada. In particular, I interrogate Montreal’s status as “disco’s second city” (Straw, 2014) and the relative longevity of the genre in the city’s discothèques.
Women Composers in (Post)-Communist Poland: Challenges for Feminist Research in Polish Musicology
Marta Beszterda
The entanglements of gender with communist politics in Poland between 1945–1989 provide a complex case for feminist musicologists studying the history of the Polish New Music scene. The understanding of gender equity by local composers and musicologists of the post-war generation is significantly different from the premises of Western feminist musicology. For example, internationally-renowned Polish women composers born post-war frequently express reluctance towards embracing feminist narratives in contextualizing their craft, even though they simultaneously recall gender-based challenges in their careers. Similarly, in the Polish academy, to this day issues of gender remain understudied relative to the growing body of research on gender in Western musicology, despite the fact that the archive shows a striking disproportion between women and men composers’ participation in Warsaw’s contemporary music scene under communism. The above reveals the need for alternative theoretical frameworks and research practices for investigating the issues of gender and music in communist Poland. In this presentation, I draw on recent interviews I conducted with composers in order to introduce a new framework that better accounts for gender politics under communism and contextualizes the realities of the profession of composer in the Polish state-funded and -controlled classical music scene. By doing so, I integrate the discourse around the (im)possibility of a shared feminist narrative across the former Iron Curtain (Slavova 2006, Cervonka 2008, Grabowska 2012) with the field of musicology. Lastly, by reflecting on contemporary music scenes in Europe as transnational spaces where the East/West categories are negotiated (Jakelski 2016), I also work towards building a theoretical model instructive for the feminist study of music in the Eastern-European region.
Life After Death Star: Masculinity and Misogyny Through Musical Mashup
Kate Glen
This presentation contains lyrics with explicit language and depictions of sexual violence. I am happy to provide a copy of my paper for those who wish to engage with the topic and the content in a different time and place.
A “mashup” is the combination or two or more existing recordings to create a work that can be understood both as a new, composite work, as well as an interaction between the original sources. Paul Booth (2012) establishes video mashups as a site of cultural revisionism and creation of cultural meaning which relies on a 21st century audience’s familiarity with the particular source texts to make ideological or critical connections between them. Tisha Turk (2010) further states that mashup videos can be read as the creator’s “public discourse with its source narrative.” According to Turk, analyzing this public discourse not only illuminates what the source texts say about each other but also reveals the mashup creator’s ideas about narrative, gender, and representation. In this paper, I examine whether purely audio mashups can also demonstrate how the audience and creator construct ideas of gender representation and narrative. While intertextual references and representations of race have been explored in relation to the practice of sampling in hip hop (Demers 2003, Roth-Gordon 2012, Williams 2013), these analyses seldom address how gender is represented or communicated in composite works. Richie Branson and Solar Slim’s album Life After Death Star remixes each track of Notorious B.I.G.’s iconic album Life After Death with musical and audio samples from George Lucas’s Star Wars film trilogy. Each of these source materials has their own narratives and representations of gender, and in this sense, mashup produces a dialogue between the gendered ideas contained in the original texts. Building on the work of Booth and Turk, as well as incorporating Justin Williams’ methodology of musical quotation, allusion, and intertextuality in hip hop recordings (2014), I examine the mashup of original sources in Life After Death Star. I argue that the album subverts the traditional hierarchy which values white music and privilege above others while still reifying conventional structures of masculinity and misogyny.
Gender Performativity and Embodiment in the Lindy Hop
Megan Batty
Swing dancing, an improvised form of partner dance with jazz music, experienced a global revival starting in the 1990s. Although vibrant swing dance scenes have sprung up across Canada, the most prestigious and established swing dance scene is located in Montreal. Much of the recent scholarship on swing dancing has been centered on the socio-musicological dimensions of swing dance (Wells, 2014, Tucker, 2014, and Sékiné, 2017). In this presentation, I will revisit the Montreal swing dance scene with a focus on theorizing how gender performativity and embodiment practices are central to this dance practice. Drawing on my personal experience learning, teaching and performing the Lindy Hop, this presentation will reposition the human body as a source of knowledge within the study of swing dance. I first look to Lisa Wade’s work on dance partnerships within the Lindy Hop (Wade 2011). She argues that Lindy Hoppers’ control over their bodies is an essential part of the dance for both partners: They do not reproduce an active/passive binary, but rather negotiate artistic choices jointly and in real time. I take this argument further by examining the gendered implications of this negotiation process. Drawing on Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity (Butler 1988, 1990), I consider how gender is a performative act that is reinforced, challenged or otherwise changed through bodily motion within a dancing partnership. Within this discussion, I will draw on scholarship in embodiment in dance studies to centralize the role of the body. I look to work on black social dance and embodiment by Robinson (2015) and Kraut (2015) to inform my analysis of the embodied techniques adopted by Lindy Hoppers. In this presentation, I suggest that the practice of switching roles while dancing can be used as a conscious tactic to challenge gendered hierarchies within the practice of social dancing the Lindy Hop.
Human Aesthetics, Virtual Bodies: The Construction of Pop Avatar Miquela
Sophie Ogilvie-Hanson
Digital alterations to sound and image are ubiquitous in the popular music industry, where photoshop-enhanced art is an accepted pairing to glimmering vocal production and electronic instrumentation. This blurry distinction between real and rendered is toyed with by Instagram it-girl Lil Miquela, a virtual avatar created by the Los Angeles-based startup Brud. In addition to her success as a figurehead for fashion campaigns with Ugg and Prada, Miquela has released music on Spotify and Youtube. The song “Hate Me,” produced by chart-topper Baauer, is a typical EDM and R&B-inflected pop song: its overly auto-tuned vocals and layered synthesizers make it largely indiscernible as “non-human” amongst its neighbors on the streaming charts. In this presentation, I argue that Miquela’s music and her engagement with political issues such as Black Lives Matter, LGBT rights, and DACA protections are constructed as strikingly conventional. In this way, Miquela can evade concerns about authorship and conform to standard influencer conventions. I interrogate Miquela’s representation as left-wing or “woke” to argue that her political affiliation and her innocuous musical persona are rather two means to the same end: attempts to shroud her primary function as an “influencer,” i.e. a vehicle to sells things. Drawing on feminist and posthumanist discourse (Braidotti, 2013, Weheliye, 2002) as well as on musicological literature on electronic audiovisual practices (Richardson, 2012), I suggest that Miquela’s use of posthumanist imagery simultaneously critiques the construction of online identities while reveling in this digital medium as both creative and capitalistic.