A
pril 12th will include a full day of student presentations. The events will take place in McGill's IGSF seminar room (3487 Peel, 2nd floor).
The undergraduate honours students will present their thesis projects. The graduate students from WMST 602 will discuss their ongoing research projects.
Here is a google form to attend the FRC (will help us know how much food to order:9 AM: Introductions
by conference organizers Dayna McLeod and Alex Ketchum
9:15- 10:03: Undergraduate Panel 1: Liminal Spaces in the Transnational Context
Chair: Dayna McLeod
9:15-9:25: Sarah Gaudio, "The Discursive Construction of Multipartner Relationships"
9:26-9:36: Lifan Cheng, "King For a Day: Exploring Queer Diasporic Pageants Among Filipino Temporary Domestic Workers in Singapore"
9:37- 9:47: Ashna Naidoo, "Understanding Indo-Caribbean Feminism: An Exploration of Domestic Violence, Resilience, and Diaspora"
9:48-10:03: Question and Answer Period
10:03-10:13: Break
with coffee, tea, and snacks provided by the IGSF
10:13- 11:36: Graduate Panel 1: Feminist Activisms, Media Representations, Philosophical Frameworks, and Ritual Dynamics
Chair: Alanna Thain
10:13-10:28: Esli Chan, #ProtestToo: An Analysis of Hong Kong Feminism during the pro-democracy Anti-ELAB Movement and in the Post-National Security Law Era
10:29-10:44: Maya Krishnan, National Politics and Identity Discourses through Gender-Based Violence Coverage in Indian News Media
10:45-11:00: Grégoire René, Challenges to the Use of Conceptual Engineering in Feminist Philosophy
11:01-11:16: Ana de Souza, Masculine Publics and Feminine Domestics: Visibility of Women-led Ritual
11:16-11:36: Question and Answer Period
11:36-11:46: Break
with coffee, tea, and snacks provided by the IGSF
11:46-12:49: Undergraduate Panel 2: Gender Experience Across Educational, Digital, Social, and Legislative Spaces
Chair: Brian Lewis
11:46-11:56: Jude Sexsmith, "Trans Pasts* Online: Self Imaging on Instagram as a Contemporary Memory Project"
11:57-12:07: Kaileigh-Anne Grnak, "Exploring Queer Pedagogies: The Potential for Queer Transformation of Cisheteropatriarchal Pedagogies in Quebec/Canadian Early Childhood Education"
12:08-12:18: Andrea Oraka, "Mapping Transphobia in Canada: A database dedicated to tracking and framing the anti-trans social and legislative shift in the 2020s"
12:19-12:29: Rain Hye, "Can (Trans)formative Justice Exist in the Mainstream Anti-Violence Movement?"
12:29-12:49: Question and Answer Period
12:49-1:20 Lunch
Catered by the IGSF (vegan and vegetarian options will be made available)
1:20- 2:43: Graduate Panel 2: Gender Perceptions, Parental Rights Legislation, Sex Education, and Philanthropic Feminism
Chair: Alex Ketchum
1:20-1:35: Tianna Kloepfer, What Do You Think a Teacher Looks Like? Using Participatory Visual Methods to Evaluate Students’ Gender-Based Perceptions of Teachers
1:36-1:51: Adela Czyzewska,Impacts of Parental Rights Legislation in Canadian Publicly Funded Catholic Secondary Schools: Methods
1:52:2:07: Arianna Politi, Pornucation: Exploring the Role of Pornography in Sex Education.
2:08-2:23: Avishi Gupta, Neoliberalism, Philanthropic Feminism and Mahila Samakhya
2:23-2:43: Question and Answer Period
2:43-2:53: Break
with coffee, tea, and snacks provided by the IGSF
2:53- 3:55: Graduate Panel 3: Goddesses, Erotics, and the Divine
Chair: Bobby Benedicto
2:53-3:08: Jaleh Ebrahimi, Emotions and Erotics in an Iranian Educational Tale
3:09-3:24: Swati Chauhan, Recentering the Goddess: Devotional Hymns and Śrividyā Tantric Traditions in Kashmir
3:25-3:40: Katie Chandler, Sacred Venom and Divine Landscapes: An Environmental and Feminist Analysis of the Goddess Manasā in the Sundarban Mangrove Forest
3:40-3:55: Question and Answer Period
3:55-4:05: Break
with coffee, tea, and snacks provided by the IGSF
4:05- 4:52: Graduate Panel 4: Feminist Resistance, Forced Child Marriage, and Reproductive Justice
Chair: Natalie Stoljar
4:05-4:20: Rebecca Haines, Feminist Resistance in Myanmar's Anti-military Movement: The Cases of Sister2Sister and the Spouses of People's Soldiers
4:21-4:36: Boroka Zita Godley, Education, Traditions of Family Construction and Societal Expectations: Visualising the impact of child early and forced marriage and unions (CEFMU) on adolescent girls in the North of Brazil
4:37-4:52: Zoe Levy, What makes a ‘good’ abortion?
4:52-5:00 Closing Remarks
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Abstracts (in alphabetical order)
Undegraduate Joint Honours
Kaileigh-Anne Grnak
Joint Honours Gender, Sexuality, Feminist, and Social Justice Studies and International Development Studies
Exploring Queer Pedagogies: The Potential for Queer Transformation of Cisheteropatriarchal Pedagogies in Quebec/Canadian Early Childhood Education
In light of growing social pressures to ensure “parental rights” in educational settings at the expense of gender-diverse students in North America, my thesis explores how binary gender is reproduced in Canadian preschool classrooms through play, focusing on the province of Quebec. I argue that the Quebec preschool classroom is a site for the reproduction of the cisheteropatriarchy, gender binary, and stereotypical gender roles through an analysis of ethnographic case studies. In my presentation, I will focus specifically on the third chapter of my thesis which analyzes four gender non-normative pedagogical models of play; notably, the Egalia model, the Hjalli model, counter-stereotypical interventions, and drag pedagogies. I investigate how these models aim to challenge the gender binary in an attempt to find a pedagogy that would best disrupt the reproduction of the gender binary in Canadian/Quebec preschools. I highlight aspects of each gender-expansive pedagogical model that best support the dismantling of the gender binary, cisheteropatriarchy, and stereotypical gender roles in Canadian and Quebec early childhood education settings. Research at the intersection of queer studies and education, like that of this thesis, is important to challenge the transphobic and homophobic agenda of the Parental Rights Movement that endangers not only trans and gender-diverse students but hinders the educational potential of the classroom for all students.
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Ashna Naidoo
Joint Honours Political Science and Gender, Sexuality, Feminist and Social Justice Studies
Understanding Indo-Caribbean Feminism: An Exploration of Domestic Violence, Resilience, and Diaspora
My presentation and thesis as a whole, rooted in the personal experiences of an Indo-Caribbean woman, aims to explore the phenomenon of intergenerational trauma within the Indo-Caribbean community and understand the genesis of Indo-Caribbean feminism in the context of colonial legacies. Through a comprehensive examination, the study seeks to uncover the historical, racial, and gender dynamics contributing to the emergence of Indo-Caribbean feminist discourse. The thesis begins by delineating Indo-Caribbean identity, tracing historical narratives, and elucidating communal gender norms, providing a contextual framework for understanding the evolution of Indo-Caribbean feminist thought. I will further examine the oppressive structures disproportionately affecting Indo-Caribbean women within the Caribbean context, using intersectionality to dissect societal expectations surrounding womanhood and highlighting the resulting stigma, particularly regarding mental health issues. My thesis also delves into the catalysts driving Indo-Caribbean feminist advocacy, focusing on the pervasive issue of domestic violence. By drawing from historical resistance movements to contemporary instances of tragedy, the study emphasizes the necessity for grassroots feminist initiatives and culturally sensitive interventions to address the systemic nature of domestic violence. Utilizing Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality and insights from Indo-Caribbean authors, the study advocates for a comprehensive approach to addressing intergenerational trauma and fostering inclusive feminist advocacy. My presentation seeks to exemplify the urgency of Indo-Caribbean feminism in challenging oppressive structures and promoting collective healing within the community.
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Andrea Oraka
Joint Honours in Political Science and GSFS
Mapping Transphobia in Canada: A database dedicated to tracking and framing the anti-trans social and legislative shift in the 2020s
My presentation explores the thematic components and manifestations of transphobia in Canada, which is part of my thesis’ greater narrative on the implications of living within and challenging gendered understandings of family and nationhood. Looking at the period from 2020-2024, I created a database of news articles detailing/centring discussions and events related to the transgender community in Canada and the topic of “Gender”. Firstly, the database sets out to contextualize the anti-trans social legislative shift in Canada through a visualization of the distribution of cases within Canada, looking at the nation broadly and across provinces. Subsequently, I categorize incidents of anti-trans /anti-gender rhetoric and actions in the database into three main themes: limiting access to social services, attacking trans ontology and the right of these communities to exist, and Restricting access to/teaching of gender education to youth and in youth spaces. These themes are directly referenced in the various cases and summarize the objectives of transphobic policies and discourses in Canada. Finally, the primary goal of my thesis is to understand the socio-political dynamics of transphobia in Canada. The database connects the aforementioned themes with documented instances of transphobia to understand how these themes manifest in society through informational networks, communities, and legislative institutions.
Undergraduate Honours in GSFS
Lifan Cheng
King For a Day: Exploring Queer Diasporic Pageants Among Filipino Temporary Domestic Workers in Singapore
My thesis focuses on the migrant experiences of Filipino tomboy (a term used to describe masculine-identifying lesbians in the Philippines) and transgender male domestic workers in Singapore. Drawing on participant observations and in-depth interviews with Filipino domestic workers in Singapore, I explore the gender and sexual identities, expressions of masculinity, same-sex relationships, as well as diaspora communities and informal economy of Filipino lesbian and trans domestic workers in Singapore.
In my presentation, I will specifically focus on my third chapter, where I use the “Mr. Hunks” pageant, a diasporic event staged by and for tomboys and trans man domestic workers, as a case study to provide an ethnographic analysis of the making of multiple tomboy and trans masculinities on stage. In addition, I demonstrate the intimate link between contestants’ embodiments of various schemas of masculinities on stage and their performances of compensatory manhood acts in their daily lives. Focusing on the interplay of gender and sexuality in the lives of these domestic workers, I argue that pageant participation also serves as a means for migrant workers to reclaim their dignity, acquire validation, and obtain admiration in the figure of the King, thereby resisting the reductive perceptions of their employers and the host country that relegates them to the identity of disposable, invisible, and undesirable foreign maids.
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Sarah Gaudio
The Discursive Construction of Multipartner Relationships
My presentation examines the discursive construction of multipartner relationships. My research gathers news articles through Proquest Canadian Newsstream from the past 10 years that engage in discourse about polyamory and polygamy. I will compare the two concepts, as well as differentiate between news articles that discuss white polygamists, for example those who practice polygamy in the Latter Day Saints Church in British Columbia versus brown, Muslim and immigrant communities that practice polygamy across Canada. Polyamory news articles tend to focus on the individual, they are predominantly lists telling women they should not open up their relationships because it will cause jealousy within the relationship. News articles on white and Canadian communities that practice polygamy focus on social anxieties surrounding marriage; the message is that marrying two or more people just is not right because our institution of marriage does not work that way. Polygamy practiced by Muslims and immigrants is about how it is harmful to women, and the need to implement interventionist measures. I argue through this comparison that Canada sees multi-partner relationships as non-normative but tolerable, however, uses polygamy to continue to intervene and police racialized communities within and outside of the country.
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Rain Hye
Can (Trans)formative Justice Exist in the Mainstream Anti-Violence Movement?
The Canadian anti-violence movement has come a long way from its grassroots beginnings in the 1960s and ‘70s. The professionalization of the anti-violence sector combined with the criminalization of sexual and domestic violence has left the sector with a myopic attitude towards developing resources that address cycles of sexual violence for both those who experience harm and people who cause harm. My thesis examines a Salal Sexual Violence Support Centre’s (Salal SVSC) alternative justice program, Reimagining Justice, at the end of its first iteration of service provision. This program takes from the fields of restorative justice, transformative justice, and the anti-violence sector, and attempts to provide resources grounded in non-punitive approaches to sexual and gender-based harm. My presentation will focus on sections of Salal SVSC’s Reimagining Justice process document, provided to me by the former Reimagining Justice project lead. I pay particular attention to the organization’s values, how the guide exists in relation to grassroots transformative justice resources, and specific process-related details outlined in it that point to a shift in the broader landscape of anti-violence movement work in Canada.
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Jude Sexsmith
Trans Pasts* Online: Self Imaging on Instagram as a Contemporary Memory Project
My thesis investigates how trans people digitize and present archival* materials on social media as a project of self-imaging, arguing that–through two types of Instagram accounts–they effectively construct records that can be understood as contemporary and informal memory projects. In looking to broaden an understanding of what can be used as archival material, what contributions count as self-imaging, and what a record of the past necessarily has to look like for a community, I draw on insights from trans, archival, as well as digital and social media studies to understand how Instagram as a platform alters these factors to construct an alternative archive experience. To do so, I will highlight how both personal Instagram pages and archival accounts–those whose goal it is to construct a representation of a collective past–engage in the construction of their records (or self images) and how the qualities of the platform limit, but ultimately encourage and support this project. Focusing on how Instagram pages act as a space for community interaction, in my presentation I will argue that these self-imaging pursuits reach out to and connect their audiences. The accounts not only expand the reach of these materials by documenting history and the passage of time, but further create an environment in which representation can be offered and discussed online.
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Graduate Student Abstracts (in alphabetical order)
Esli Chan (she/her)
PhD Student, Political Science (Gender Studies Option)
Department of Political Science
#ProtestToo: An Analysis of Hong Kong Feminism during the pro-democracy Anti-ELAB Movement and in the Post-National Security Law Era
From 2019-2020, the #MeToo movement in Hong Kong coincided with the pro-democracy Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (anti-ELAB), the latter of which protested authoritarian government measures. Together, these two movements conjoined to form the #ProtestToo movement. While many participants in the anti-ELAB movement promoted feminism and vice versa, gendered violence remained a feature of the anti-ELAB movement. This research explores how feminism was conceptualized during the Anti-ELAB protest movement from 2019 to 2020. Through an analysis of the #ProtestToo movement, I will explore the theoretical future of Hong Kong feminism in the post-National Security Law era.
The objective of this research is to establish the theoretical underpinnings of Hong Kong feminism, which uniquely straddles both Western and Chinese influences. I will explore how the reception of feminism in Hong Kong is differentiated by its family values, gender roles, and national identity. Methodologically, I evaluate how events related to the #ProtestToo movement, such as the Mother’s Rally, are discussed within Telegram chats used by anti-ELAB protestors from 2019 to 2020. I use a critical discourse analysis and a manual topic modelling approach to assess these events and reveal underlying themes related to Hong Kong feminism.
I anticipate that issue-linkage and hierarchization dominated the protest agenda, where feminism was incorporated into the anti-ELAB movement for strategic rather than ideological purposes. Individualistic expressions of #MeToo would be met with gendered hateful language if it conflicted with the collective mentality of movement mobilization. Despite a fractured #ProtestToo movement, new ideological tenants of Hong Kong feminism emerged during this time, rooted in the cultural contexts of the matriarchy and an ethics of care. Lastly, this research identifies that there is a limited appetite for localized ideological and grassroots feminism in Hong Kong in the post-National Security era.
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Katie Chandler (she/her)
PhD student, Religious Studies
Sacred Venom and Divine Landscapes: An Environmental and Feminist Analysis of the Goddess Manasā in the Sundarban Mangrove Forest
The goddess Manasā of northeast India and Bangladesh is known as the goddess of snakes, associated with snakebite poison and healing, the power to control snakes, and as a protective aid invoked against dangerous natural forces. Her worship extends across a vast geo-cultural area known as the Bengal Delta, which includes parts of India and Bangladesh. This delta contains the Sundarban mangrove forest, a dense area of the region in which Manasā is worshipped as a protector goddess through ritual performances, including reenactments of sacred texts, and the development of affective bonds with the goddess by communities that live and work in the forest. These communities were classified by the British colonial government as Muslim, Hindu, Adivasi, or Christian. Since then, scholars have continued to rely on these colonial categorizations, using the term “syncretic” to describe differing religious communities who venerate the same deity, such as those within the Sundarbans. This vast geographic range in which Manasā is worshiped along with the religious diversity of her worshippers makes it challenging to analyze Manasā-centric practices within the confines of normative socioreligious categories, such as Hindu or Muslim.
Given the unique threats that the environment of the Sundarbans poses to local communities, specifically venomous snakes and the difficulty in acquiring snakebite treatment, coupled with the multi-religious contexts within which Manasā is worshipped, I argue that the academic tendency to strictly adhere to colonial categories is reductive. Viewing the environment as agentive in the development of religious practices challenges these outdated colonial categorizations, allowing for a deeper, more nuanced insight into the religious networks surrounding Manasā. Understanding the environment as an active agent in the construction of religious formations acts as a decolonial and ecofeminist approach by means of decentralizing normative socioreligious categories and recontextualizing colonial categorizations.
References
Jalais, Annu. Forest of Tigers: People, Politics and Environment in the Sundarbans. New Delhi: Routledge, 2010.
Jones, Kenneth W. “Religious Identity and the Indian Census” in The Census in British India: New Perspectives, ed. N. Gerald Barruer. 73-101. Delhi: Manohar, 1981.
Uddin, Sufia M. “Religion, Nature, and Life in the Sundarbans,” Asian Ethnology 78, no. 2 (2019): 289-310.
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Swati Chauhan (she/her)
PhD Year 2, Religious Studies, School of Religious Studies
Recentering the Goddess: Devotional Hymns and Śrividyā Tantric Traditions in Kashmir
I explore the religious history of Śrividyā (lit. “auspicious knowledge”) in Kashmir, a northern region in the Indian subcontinent. Śrividyā is a tantric tradition (system of esoteric ritualistic worship) centered on the worship of the goddess Tripurasundarī as the ultimate being and cosmic mother. So far, scholars have primarily focused on Śrividyā traditions based in South India. In addition, most studies of Hinduism in Kashmir have concentrated on delineating philosophical texts dedicated to the god Śiva. My doctoral research addresses these two gaps to foreground the Śrividyā traditions in Kashmir by bringing attention to devotional hymns to its goddess Tripurasundarī in the Pañcastavī.
The Pañcastavī (c. 15th century) is an early modern Sanskrit collection of five devotional hymns to Tripurasundarī. In the context of Hindu goddess traditions, the Pañcastavī is innovative in many ways. It stresses the feminine nature of divinity by outlining the physical attributes of the goddess. It also refers to yogic traditions by visualizing the human body as comprising six energy centers and Tripurasundarī as the vital energy that flows through them and sustains human life. My research is the first systematic study that highlights the ubiquitous but hitherto undiscussed aspects of Śrividyā goddess worship in Kashmir through a textual analysis of the Pañcastavī.
I review the backdrop of Śrividyā traditions, my multi-lingual work with the Pañcastavī, and the methodological frameworks informing my philological research. I highlight how gendered identities (both of religious practitioners and Śrividyā’s central goddess Tripurasundarī) are conceptualized in early modern Hindu devotional hymns. My presentation will be of interest to scholars of Religion, literature, and Gender Studies as I examine the intersection of gender as a social construct and a femininely defined divinity through the devotional-tantric hymns in the Pañcastavī.
Bibliography
PRIMARY TEXT: Bhagavadgītā in Sarada Script. Indic manuscript 36. Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University Library and Archives, Montreal.
SECONDARY SOURCES: Brooks, Douglas Renfrew. Auspicious Wisdom: The Texts and Traditions of Śrīvidyā Śākta Tantrism in South India. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
Fisher, Elaine. ““Just Like Kālidāsa”: The Making of the Smārta-Śaiva Community of South India.” In Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South India, 57–98. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017.
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Adela Czyzewska (she/her)
MA Student, Department of Integrated Studies in Eduction (DISE)
Impacts of Parental Rights Legislation in Canadian Publicly Funded Catholic Secondary Schools: Methods
This thesis project delves into the repercussions of parental rights legislation on LGBTQ2S youth in publicly funded Catholic secondary schools in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Recent legislative changes in these provinces concerning pronoun usage and exposure to diverse gender and sexual identities directly affect LGBTQ2S students, who already encounter heightened discrimination within Catholic educational settings. This presentation outlines the intended methodology and methods, including the adoption of Dorothy Smith's Institutional Ethnography (IE) and the use of semi-structured interviews and textual analysis. These approaches aim to address two central research questions:
1. How does parental rights legislation in Saskatchewan and Alberta impede the creation of safe spaces for LGBTQ2S+ students in publicly funded Catholic schools?
2. What factors contribute to resistance among students and educators in the face of institutionalized discrimination?
Institutional Ethnography examines the everyday experiences of participants as shaped by systemically and textually enforced structures known as ruling relations (Campbell and Gregor 2002). Drawing on standpoint theory, IE uses individuals' experiences as an entry point to understand broader social relations (Smith 2005). Research will begin with semi-structured interviews with recent graduates and current educators, aiming for diversity across LGBTQ2S identities, geographic locations, and teacher positions. Textual analysis of institutional documents at the church, government, and school level will complement interview data, providing insights into how policies influence everyday experiences.
This research expects to uncover increased paranoia among allied educators, suppression of student expression, and silence on LGBTQ2S topics due to religious homophobia and provincial legislation. The study hopes to uncover pockets of resistance through channels such as social media. Existing research on LGBTQ2S experiences in publicly funded Catholic schools is limited, particularly in Saskatchewan. Additionally, the intersection of the current Canadian political climate with LGBTQ2S youth in Catholic schools remains unexplored.
Reference List
Campbell, M. L., & Gregor, F. M. (2002). Mapping social relations: a primer in doing institutional ethnography. Garamond Press.
Smith, D. E., & Griffith, A. I. (2022). Simply institutional ethnography: Creating a sociology for people (Ser. Institutional ethnography: studies in the social organization of knowledge). University of Toronto Press.
Smith, D. E. (2005). Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people. Rowman Altamira.
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Ana de Souza (she/her)
PhD student, Doctor of Philosophy programme with Gender and Women’s Studies option
School of Religious Studies
Masculine Publics and Feminine Domestics: Visibility of Women-led Ritual
The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated lockdowns and extraordinary measures in countries around the globe. Beginning in March 2020, strict regulations or outright prohibitions were imposed on group activities outside the home. In Quebec, this also applied to places where communities gathered for worship. The Hindu communities in the Montreal area were distinctively impacted by these measures. For these communities, their access to the particular god they worship is bound up in the physical space of the temple and in the physical object of the murti (मूर्ति), a statue depicting the god in its distinctive attributes. The pandemic restrictions in Quebec, as elsewhere, precluded direct physical access to the god for these communities. Consequently, the communities adapted to the circumstances and turned to different kinds of digital engagement.
The Gujarati community in the Montreal area publicized some of their activities on their publicly-visible Facebook page. These activities featured women-led rituals, conducted inside the homes of community members at domestic shrines. These women-led rituals were considerably different from the ordinary, male-led rituals conducted inside the public space of their temple (Hancock 2019). The pandemic restrictions, therefore, precipitated public access to a profoundly domestic space. In these spaces, the gendered dimensions of normative behaviour during rituals is reversed from public norms. This paper will argue that the public visibility of these domestic spaces was an exceptional reversal of the gendered norms for rituals. While it was an exceptional reversal, it fundamentally maintains the division between masculine public spaces and feminine domestic spaces. Although this reversal of the dynamics that ordinarily structure the social imaginary of this community was temporary, it indicates the high degree to which public space is identified with masculine action and domestic space with feminine action. Consequently, the community’s social imaginary and its ordinarily implicit, internal dynamics can be delineated by outsiders (Taylor 2004).
References
Hancock, Mary. 2019. Womanhood in the Making : Domestic Ritual and Public Culture in Urban South India. First ed. New York: Routledge.
Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Public Planet Books. Durham: Duke University Press.
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Jaleh Ebrahimi, (she, her)
PhD Students in Islamic Studies with a Concentration on Gender and Feminism
Emotions and Erotics in an Iranian Educational Tale
Tales serving as educational materials in 19th-century Iran, often contain moments of love and intimacy between individuals of the same or opposite sex. These tales, influenced by Islamic culture and the long-lasting Iranian tradition of storytelling, play a significant role in repositing cultural and social norms. To gain a nuanced understanding of these norms, particularly regarding gender dynamics and erotic intimacy, educational tales are pivotal sources as they portray how these issues were regulated and taught to students.
Although numerous studies have been done on gender dynamics and erotic intimacies of the 19th century, a significant period of heteronormative transformation in Iran, there is a gap in understanding these gender norms and intimacies beyond sexual acts and in relation to the emotions underlying them.
To address this gap, a textual analysis has been conducted on one of these educational tales titled Ḥusayn-i Kurd-i Shabestarī, a rich source encompassing both homo- and heterosexual intimacies, providing insight into the emotions among the characters depicted in the story. By focusing on the historical dimension of emotions, I explored the prevalence of forgotten emotions during this era, examining their correlation with the normalization of certain types of erotic intimacies.
This approach not only fosters the scholarly dialogue of intimacy and its complexity but also contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the historical dimensions of emotions linked with erotic relationships. Additionally, it emphasizes the concept of lost emotions and the integration of erotics and forgotten emotions.
References
Carson, Anne. Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay. Princeton University Press, 1986
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity. University of California Press, 2005.
Zipes, Jack. Buried Treasures: The Power of Political Fairy Tales. Princeton University Press, 2023.
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Boroka Zita Godley (she/her)
PhD Candidate in Education and Gender, Department of Integrated Studies in Education
Education, Traditions of Family Construction and Societal Expectations: Visualising the impact of child early and forced marriage and unions (CEFMU) on adolescent girls in the North of Brazil
Despite progress made in recent years, the situation of child, early and forced marriage and unions (CEFMU) continues to affect over 12 million girls every year worldwide (Fan & Koski, 2022). Brazil, which has the 4th highest rate of CEFMU globally, with over 36% of girls married before their 18th birthday, and the highest rate of the practice in Latin America, has been understudied and merits further scholarly attention (UNICEF, 2023). This study seeks to explore how CEFMU can be studied through participatory visual methodologies, with a particular focus on drawing (Guillemin, 2004; Mitchell et al., 2011; Jellema et al., 2022); and Photovoice (Wang & Burris, 1997; Nyariro et al, 2017). Particular attention will be paid to:
1. The advantages and limits of this methodology.
2. The scope and diversity of research conducted using this methodology.
3. The positionality of researchers using this methodology, including their socio-economic and geographic backgrounds, and the disciplinary lenses through which they employ this methodology.
In this study, I find that the drawings and Photovoice have been used as a research method by researchers in certain regions (principally the Global North), and field interesting and diverse results which centre the focus on the experiences of the participants, highlighting their voices and experiences about numerous important social issues. I also find that drawings and Photovoice have not yet been used to explore the issue of CEFMU in Brazil. This research shall therefore pave the way for further use of participatory visual methodologies in interdisciplinary research, encouraging dialogue, collaboration, and coordination between interconnected disciplines, and shall promote the voices of participants, including marginalised people, in research, policy, and practice.
Selected References
Fan, S. & Koski A. (2022). The health consequences of child marriage: a systematic review of the evidence. BMC Public Health, 22(1). DOI: 10.1186/s12889-022-12707-x
UNICEF. (2023, July). Child marriage: Child marriage threatens the lives, well-being and futures of girls around the world. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/protection/child-marriage
Guillemin M. (2004). Understanding illness: using drawings as a research method. Qual Health Res, 14(2), 272-89. doi: 10.1177/1049732303260445. PMID: 14768462.
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Avishi Gupta (she/her)
Master’s candidate – History (Thesis) with Gender and Women’s Studies Department of History
Neoliberalism, Philanthropic Feminism and Mahila Samakhya
This paper aims to evaluate the impact of the 1991 liberalization of the Indian economy on the national development policy and strategy for women’s empowerment. It does so through a case study of the Mahila Samakhya Programme. Launched in 1988, Mahila Samakhya was a state-led programme aimed at organising women, predominantly in villages, into small groups or sanghas to achieve national objectives for women’s empowerment and education.
By focusing on the wealth of literature on the core ideology and mobilisation strategies of the programme, I intend to argue that the programme stifled radical feminist action and restricted the participants’ agency to the realm of ‘informal’ and the ‘family’. This form of state-led neoliberal feminism reproduced the dynamics of colonial civilising missions, which relegated social reform to the realm of private and political and economic reform to the public without adequately addressing the intersections between these categories. Following the economic liberalisation, the Indian state actively transferred the responsibility of women’s empowerment to Western funders, thereby distancing itself from the realm of social development and concentrating solely on politics and the economy. This arrangement can be understood as a form of neo-colonial philanthropic feminism, steadily eroding or fragmenting state sovereignty and responsibility in the realm of social reform. Further, I argue that this emergent development dynamic created new and more precarious categories of labour for women. I argue this, particularly about the role of Sahayoginis or the primary mobilisers within the programme.
This paper is majorly a review of existing secondary literature on the programme and neoliberal theory. Based on this review it aims to propose eerie parallels between the colonial discourse on the ‘women’s question’ and state-led ‘women empowerment’ in the era of neoliberal governance.
Bibliography
Sharma, Aradhana. “The State and Women’s Empowerment in India: Paradoxes and Politics.” In Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism, edited by Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal, 93-113. Duke University Press, 2014.
Sharma, Aradhana. “Crossbreeding Institutions, Breeding Struggle: Women’s Empowerment, Neoliberal Governmentality, and State (Re)Formation in India.” Cultural Anthropology 21, no. 1 (2006): 60–95.
Sharma, Shubhra. “Neoliberalization” as Betrayal. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119208.
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Rebecca Haines (she/her)
PhD Student, Sociology Department
Feminist Resistance in Myanmar's Anti-military Movement: The Cases of Sister2Sister and the Spouses of People's Soldiers
In this paper, I conduct a comparative case study of two of the most unique feminist initiatives that have emerged since the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar: Sister2Sister and Spouses of People’s Soldiers. Sister2Sister is a feminist collective aiming to influence the ideological framing of the anti-military resistance and the attitudes of the Myanmar public more broadly. In a series of social media campaigns and media productions, they have drawn attention to ongoing sexism, racism, violence against civilians, and abuse of power, as perpetrated by the Myanmar military and within the resistance movement itself. Spouses of People’s Soldiers is a feminist collective that supports the families of soldiers who have defected from the Myanmar military. It aims to enable more defections through facilitating linkages between the spouses of already defected soldiers and those of soldiers still in the military.
Through the comparison of these two cases, I examine the differing feminist tactical repertoires developed as part of Myanmar’s anti-regime resistance movement. In addition, I analyze the positioning of feminist groups among the heterogeneous constellation of resistance actors, and their orientations toward the tactics of the wider resistance (including its armed actors).
The case studies are elaborated based on three sources of data: interviews with key organizers and participants, participant observation in live online sessions and/or planning meetings, and a review of social media campaign data (mostly on Twitter/X and Facebook). While the paper aims to engage with theoretical concepts and situate these cases within social movement literature, it also has a core objective of documenting emerging feminist strategies within Myanmar’s anti-regime resistance movement since 2021. These initiatives are little known and largely undocumented at present but represent critical examples of feminist innovation in social movement tactical repertoires.
Indicative References:
Anonymous. 2022. “Role Call: A Gendered Examination of Men and Women in Myanmar’s Armed Resistance.” Anonymous.
Coder, Anne-Marie, and Mary Elizabeth King. 2015. “Women in Civil Resistance.” In Women, War and Violence: Typography, Resistance and Hope, Vol. 2., eds. Mariam M. Kurtz and Lester R. Kurtz. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
Hedström, Jenny. 2022. “Militarized social reproduction: women’s labour and parastate armed conflict.” Critical Military Studies 8, no.1: 58–76.
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Tianna Kloepfer (she/her)
MA Student in Educational Leadership, Department of Integrated Studies in Education
What Do You Think a Teacher Looks Like? Using Participatory Visual Methods to Evaluate Students’ Gender-Based Perceptions of Teachers
Over time, teaching has been considered to be a female dominated profession (Weiler, 1989). Social influences have assumed teachers to have gendered traits and perceptions of educators, making connections with the female teacher being a mother figure in the classroom to nurture the development of her students (Gallman and Mallozzi, 2020). In my thesis, I will be exploring the gender-based perceptions that elementary school students have on their teachers to look at how gender stereotypes can impact a student’s perception of their teacher, and how they are viewed as the authority figure in the classroom. I will specifically be looking at how children perceive their teachers through drawing, prompting them to draw an image of what they think a teacher looks like. For this presentation, I will explain the methodology behind using an arts-based methods approach for collecting the data through an analysis of participatory visual methods. I will make connections to how participatory visual methods, like drawing, are useful when collecting data with children, and how this method will best suit my research. By using participatory visual methods, my goal is to be able to gain a deeper understanding of children’s experiences by creating a research space where they are encouraged to feel confident and creative through participation (Hickey-Moody et al., 2021).
References
Gallman, S., & Mallozzi, C. (2020). Playing school: female elementary school teachers’ stories of childhood games and post-feminist tomorrows. Educação & Realidade, 45(2). https://doi.org/10.1590/2175-623699892
Hickey-Moody, A., Horn, C., Willcox, M., & Florence, E. (2021). Arts-based methods for research with children (Ser. Palgrave pivot). Palgrave Macmillan.
Weiler, K. (1989). Women's history and the history of women teachers. The Journal of Education, 171(3), 9–30.
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Maya Krishnan (she/her)
Ph.D. Student, Department of Sociology
National Politics and Identity Discourses through Gender-Based Violence Coverage in Indian News Media
This project focuses on Indian media and political representations of gender-based violence (GBV), specifically femicide and contributes to the core methodological and substantive core themes of the 2024 McGill Feminist Research Symposium. News coverage of GBV in India is leveraged within news representations of ongoing Indian political debates and identity-based political discourses. In turn, the way political discourse becomes intertwined with GBV coverage has implications for ongoing ethnic tension and conflict.
I use qualitative discourse and content analyses of approximately 500 news reports of GBV in India within four major English-language newspapers. Each newspaper occupies a different political placement across the Indian right- to left-wing political spectrum and feature state-varied and regional coverage. Specifically, this paper asks how the English-language Indian news press covers GBV, specifically femicide.
GBV is often understood as an apolitical issue, divorced from concurrent political and electoral debates. Moreover, eradicating GBV in India is popularly conceptualized as a national or unifying issue. This is in part because similar rhetoric patterns to describe GBV are employed across the political spectrum of Indian newspapers despite their clear political leanings.
India is a strategic site for comparing the differential news media treatment of GBV for several reasons. First, the country is characterized by a significant majority-minority cleavage with both ethnicity and religion occupying a central role in the identities of both Hindus and Muslims as well as related ongoing political conflicts. Contemporary national politics in India can be characterized by increasingly diffused exclusionary Hindu-nationalist discourse and values which have reflected in growing ethnic and religious conflict across the country. Secondly, GBV in India has and remains statistically highly prevalent, with recent data since the COVID-19 pandemic indicating more than 1 in 3 married women have experienced DV/IPV. Further research has highlighted the role of ethno-religious, caste, and other social inequalities in enhancing vulnerability to DV/IPV and limiting access to institutional recourse. This presentation focuses on the different patterns emerging within data collection as well as preliminary implications.
References:
Ravindran S, and Shah M. (2023) “Unintended consequences of lockdowns, COVID-19, and shadow pandemic in India.” Vol. 7: 323-331.
Sardinha, L, et al. (2022) “Global, regional, and national prevalence estimates of physical or sexual, or both, intimate partner violence against women in 2018.” Lancet. 399 (10327): 803-813.
Schutte, Sebastian., et al. (2021) “How Fear of Violence Drives Intergroup Conflict: Evidence from a Panel Survey in India.” Terrorism and Political Violence. Vol 35. Iss. 2 (229-247).
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Zoe Levy (she/her)
PhD Student, Sociology Department
What makes a ‘good’ abortion?
In June 2022, The United States Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that the Constitution of the United States does not protect the right to abortion, reversing a forty-nine-year precedent set by the ruling made in Roe vs. Wade in 1973 that protected legal abortion access across the country (Kirstein 2022). Following this ruling, abortion was banned in thirteen states and severely restricted in an additional fifteen states across the U.S. (Artiga et al 2022). Post-Dobbs, media discourse has repeatedly centered people forced to travel out of state to access abortion for extreme reasons.
The stories people tell about pregnancy and abortion have long been central to the struggle of gender and power in society (Ehrenreich and English 1973). Further, they have a major impact on which policies and legislation are deemed acceptable. It is therefore crucial to explore the abortion stories that are being told post-Dobbs, and more specifically, to examine how these stories serve to define what ‘good’ abortion is. In my proposed discourse analysis, I will explore how this ‘good’ abortion seeker is constructed in media coverage on abortion.
My proposed analysis will build on literature from sociology, history, gender studies and media studies. News outlets have been selected for the project on the basis of their popularity as measured in monthly viewership and print distribution. This analysis used MAXQDA software to analyze the selected articles. By engaging multiple bodies of literature, this analysis brings key scholarship into conversation. My findings will have immediate implications across disciplines, as well as for reproductive health organizational strategy, journalists and public policy that center abortion information and access.
References:
Artiga, S., Hill, L., Ranji, U., and Gomez, I. 2022. “What Are the Implications of the Overturning of Roe V. Wade for Racial Disparities?” Kaiser Family Foundation. Retrieved October 16, 2022 (https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policty/issue-brief/what-are-the-implcations-of-the-overturning-of-roe-v-wade-for-racial-disparities/).
Ehrenreich, B and English, D. 1973. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. New York, NY: Last Work Press.
Kirstein, M, Dreweke, J., Jones, R.K., and Philbin, J. 2022.“100 Days Post-Roe: At Least 66 Clinics across 15 US States Have Stopped Offering Abortion Care.” Guttmacher Institute. Retrieved October 18, 2022 (https://www.guttmacher.org/2022/10/100-days-post-roe-least-66-clinics-across-15-us-states-have-stopped-offering-abortion-care).
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Arianna Politi (she/her)
MA Education & Society
Pornucation: Exploring the Role of Pornography in Sex Education.
Pornography is readily available at the click of a button, on any medium, without any proper age restrictions put in place (Srinivassan, 2021). In 2017, PornHub, one of thousands of pornographic websites, claimed to have 28.5 billion views (Castleman, 2018). More and more young people are getting exposed to pornography via the internet. Studies have shown that on average, the first time a child watches pornographic content is between the ages of 11 – 13 (Children’s Commissioner, 2023). This is problematic, as these children have little to no education on sex and are exposed to a large variety of porn, some of which promotes violence towards women and sets unrealistic expectations about what sex should look like.
For this presentation, and to tackle this complex issue of pornography and sex education, it is necessary to diversify methodological approaches. Arts-based methodologies offer the benefit of being able to explore traditionally taboo and difficult topics, as they extend traditional research knowledge boundaries. These methodologies go against traditional white, colonial knowledge making processes, therefore making them inherently feminist as it counters a western positivist paradigm. They also provide participants with greater power in the research process (Boyell et al, 2016). The participatory arts-based methodology that I will be utilizing is collage. Collage incorporates working knowledge and allows for a “deep understanding of materials and reliance on intuitive and imaginative thinking” (Harper, 1987). This presentation will delve into how collage as a participatory arts-based methodology can be used as an effective and intuitive research method when investigating attitudes and feelings towards discussing pornography in a classroom setting. This presentation links to the bigger issue of how we can tackle the increasing problem of how pornography can alter children and adolescents’ perceptions of sex and increase harm to themselves and others.
Selected References:
Boydell, K. M., Hodgins, M., Gladstone, B. M., Stasiulis, E., Belliveau, G., Cheu, H., Kontos, P., & Parsons, J. (2016). Arts-based health research and academic legitimacy: transcending hegemonic conventions. Qualitative Research, 16(6), 681-700. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794116630040
Harper, D (1997) Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a small shop. Berkeley & Los
Angeles, CA: University of California Press
Srinivasan, A. (2021). The right to sex : feminism in the twenty-first century (First American). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Grégoire René (he/him)
PhD Student, Philosophy (Gender and Women’s Studies option)
Challenges to the Use of Conceptual Engineering in Feminist Philosophy
Over the last few decades, the use of conceptual engineering (CE) in feminist philosophy has been increasingly influential. Conceptual engineers try to modify existing definitions of concepts (or create new concepts) to fit some objective. Largely influenced by the work of Sally Haslanger on the concept of women, those in feminist theory often see political potential in CE for the fight against patriarchal domination. Typically, conceptual engineers first start by determining flaws in a definition, before developing a better alternative, and finally implementing it so that speakers will adopt it. Kate Manne, for example, developed a new definition for the concept of misogyny which understands it as any action aimed at enforcing the patriarchal social order (rather than a set of individual beliefs that one might hold) (Manne 2017). This, she claims, provides better tools to dismantle patriarchal oppression.
There is now a growing literature which questions the ability for conceptual engineers to implement their project. Rooted in metasemantics (that is the study of how concepts come to have a particular meaning), some have for example argued that the political tools necessary for the full implementation of CE are incompatible with liberalism (Queloz and Bieber 2022). This presentation will try to sketch another potential problem with the implementation of CE, that of resistance to belief change. While most agree that CE needs some type of institutional mechanisms to ensure its uptake in a community of speakers, this task become more complex when one wants to implement CE for feminist political purposes in a community that is already imbued with patriarchal beliefs. To understand why, I will use Gibbons’ (2022) framework to argue that under patriarchy, we have reasons to think that agents will deliberately impede the efforts of feminist CE in its implementation. This, while not necessarily fatal to the overall project of CE, creates a significant roadblock to its implementation in the context of feminist activism and scholarship.