Rokeya Sakhawat Hosain's Gyanphal and Muktiphal: A Critique of the Iconography of the Nation-as-Mother

2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-216
Author(s):  
Kalyani Dutta
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
The Ideal

Our focus is more specifically textual as we attempt a recovery and celebration of early feminist writings. We are introduced to two allegorical fables by the early-20th-century Bengali educa tionist and writer, Rokeya Sakhawat Hosain. Hosain's stories are feminist critiques of anti- colonial nationalism, which are still relevant and continue to delight with their irony and pene trating intelligence. In these two stories we find the ideal and the weak mother of the nation dealt with allegorically, the polemical purpose being to advocate the education of women in the interests of building a strong society and nation.

Biological Determinism and the Ideological Roots of Student Classification

1983 ◽  
Vol 165 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Selden
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Social Equality ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Biological Determinism ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
Student Classification ◽  
The Ideal

The issue of student classification was historically tied to the popular eugenics movement in the early 20th century. Supporters of this movement envisioned the ideal society as a biological meritocracy. They assumed that human betterment could take place only through controlled breeding. Biology would determine the human future. In the 1920's and 1930's this belief in biological determinism was joined with the assumption of differential biological worth. This combination of ideas supported programs of racial discrimination, immigration restriction, and student classification. The paper focuses upon the ways in which notions of differential biological worth were repeated, refined, and reintroduced as a basis for educational policy and for student classification. The work and influence of the eugenists and student classifiers Alfred E. Wiggam, H. H. Goddard, and Leta Hollingworth are analyzed. The paper proposes that the contemporary educator's emphasis upon student classification generally ignores the historical relationship between biological determinism, student classification, and the broader political issues of social justice and social equality. They are issues that are ignored at society's peril.

scholarly journals “Between the Useful and the Beautiful”: Reading, Power and Pleasure in the Residencia de Señoritas (1930-1936)

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 006
Author(s):  
Débora Betrisey Nadali
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Gender Perspective ◽  
University Women ◽  
University Studies ◽  
Cultural Differentiation ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

In the early 20th century many spaces of female sociability in Spain were characterised by the creation of habits, dispositions and forms of knowledge in University women. One of those spaces was the so-called Residencia de Señoritas [the Young Women’ Hall of Residence], founded in 1915. This institution developed tutelary practices for the education of women that went to Madrid to undertake University studies. As part of the residents’ training in refined behaviour and politeness rules, the cultivation of certain reading practices were considered a legitimate and useful aim by the educators. Following historical, social and anthropological studies that depart from a consideration that universalizes these reading practices, this essay uses a gender perspective to analyse the shaping of female readership in the context of the Hall of Residence’s Library (1915–1936). The library is understood as a space that provides and sustains reading as a practice set in a network of processes of social and cultural differentiation.

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