Mary Wollstonecraft, Hester Ann Rogers, and the Textual/Sexual Enthusiasms of Women’s Life-Writing

2019 ◽  
pp. 110-141
Author(s):  
Andrew O. Winckles
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Female Desire ◽  
Print Publication ◽  
Writing Genres ◽  
Scribal Publication ◽  
Print Publications

Chapter Four examines women’s life-writing and the formation of an “erotic imagination” within life-writing as a genre. It begins by examining the Account of the Experience of Hester Ann Rogers (1793), one of the most influential works of Methodist life-writing, and reads it as against her earlier manuscript versions of the work. This reading reveals some of the ways and reasons Methodist women navigated different publication platforms and life-writing genres (private diary, semi-public scribal publication, print publication) in order to reach different audiences. Specifically, it examines Rogers’ status as a Methodist “mystic” who, in her diaries and manuscript works, represents a deeply erotic female mysticism that is edited out of her print publications. The chapter then turns to Rogers’ contemporary, Mary Wollstonecraft, to consider how both women use the life-writing genre to re-write the terms and conditions of female desire while textually re-orienting this desire away from the male gaze.

scholarly journals Exhaustion and possibility. The wor(l)dlyness of social work in (G)local environment worlds during a pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 54-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona B Livholts
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Writing Genres

Exhaustion is not about being tired. It is an intense feeling of restlessness, of insomnia, and awakening when I ask myself: have I exhausted all that is possible? Such a state of restlessness and wakefulness represents a turning point for having enough, and opens for new possibilities to act for social change. This reflexive essay departs from the notion that the language of exhaustion offers a wor(l)dly possibility for social work(ers) to engage in critical analytical reflexivity about our locations of power from the outset of our (g)local environment worlds. The aim is to trace the transformative possibilities of social change in social work practice through the literature of exhaustion (eg. Frichot, 2019 ; Spooner, 2011 ). The methodology is based on uses of narrative life writing genres such as poetry, written and photographic diary entrances between the 4th of April and 4th of June. The essay shows how tracing exhaustion during the pandemic, visualises a multiplicity of forms of oppression and privilege, an increasing attention and relationship to things, and border movements and languages. I suggest that social work replace the often-used terminology of social problems with exhaustive lists to address structural forms of racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, which has been further visualized through death, illness, violence, and poverty during the pandemic. I argue that the language of exhaustion is useful for reflexivity and action in social work practice through the way it contributes to intensified awareness, attention, engagement, listening, and agency to create social justice.

scholarly journals A Revival of Life Writing Genres in Language Pedagogy Settings: The Case of Diary Writing

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (2 (4)) ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
Elena Xeni
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Written Language ◽  
The Self ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Language Pedagogy ◽  
Diary Writing ◽  
Writing Genres

The article discusses a number of issues contributing to the efficient teaching of a foreign language. Studying Diary Writing as a unique literary genre (a text disclosing the self of the author) the author of the article believes it is very important that students should have diaries since such an assignment highly contributes to the improvement of a written language.

Feminist Cringe Comedy: Dear Dick, The Joke Is on You

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-129
Author(s):  
Lori Marso
Keyword(s):  
Male Gaze ◽  
Female Desire ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Feminist Community

AbstractFeminist cringe comedies eschew the conventions of romance and sentimentality in favor of comedy that discomforts. Cringe comedies are one example of what I call feminism's visual realisms, so named for doing feminist political work by evoking laughter and the cringe. The cringe pulls us inward in our posture, while laughter opens us to others. This bodily response to cringe comedies interrupts the fantasies of the male gaze and makes space for spectators to acknowledge the excessive, complicated, and seemingly shameful realities of female desire. My primary example is Jill Soloway's television adaptation of Chris Kraus's I Love Dick, a series that builds on the feminist legacy of avant-garde director Catherine Breillat. Departing from politically correct narratives and comforting or sentimental affect, I Love Dick achieves feminist community through the appeal, the cringe, and the irruption of laughter.

scholarly journals Sources: Guide to Reference: Essential General Reference and Library Science Sources

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
Laura Graveline
Keyword(s):  
Library Science ◽  
General Reference ◽  
Print Publication ◽  
Print Publications ◽  
The Web

ALA's classic print publication, Guide to Reference Books, was replaced in 2009 with the online Guide to Reference. As the online introduction states, the web subscription version of the Guide to Reference serves as a gateway with interactive features that the former print guide never could have replicated. Indeed, because print publications are by their nature hampered by size limitations, the online guide simply can provide more cross referencing, offer more extensive comparative evaluations and annotations of sources, and become more global in coverage.

A Dictionary of Gender Studies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Gender Studies ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Bell Hooks ◽  
Double Burden ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Postgraduate Level ◽  
Subject Areas ◽  
And Gender

Over 430 entriesThis new dictionary provides clear and accessible definitions of a range of terms from within the fast-developing field of Gender Studies. It covers terms which have emerged out of Gender Studies, such as cyber feminism, the double burden, and the male gaze, and gender-focused definitions of more general terms, such as housework, intersectionality, and trolling. It also covers major feminist figures, including Hélène Cixous, bell hooks, and Mary Wollstonecraft, as well as groups and movements from Votes for Women to Reclaim the Night. It is an invaluable reference resource for students taking Gender Studies courses at undergraduate or postgraduate level, and for those applying a gender perspective within other subject areas.

scholarly journals Ecce Homo—Behold the Human! Reading Life-Narratives in Times of Colonial Modernity

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 300
Author(s):  
Nandini Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Dense Matrix ◽  
Life Narratives ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Writing Project ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Culturally Informed ◽  
Writing Genres ◽  
Ecce Homo

The essay explores Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s Krishnacaritra—published in 1886—the life of a humanised god, as engaged in cross cultural dialogues with John Robert Seeley’s Ecce Homo, Natural Religion, and The Expansion of England in particular, and the broader European tendency of naturalising religions in general. It contends that the rise of historicised life writing genres in Europe was organically related to the demythologised, verifiable god-lives writing project. Bankimchandra’s Krishnacarita is embedded within a dense matrix of nineteenth century Indian secular life writing projects and its projection of Krishna as a cultural icon within an incipient nationalist imagining. The essay while exploring such fraught writing projects in Victorian England and nineteenth century colonial Bengal, concludes that ‘secularism’ arrives as not as religion’s Other but as its camouflaging in ethico-cultural guise. Secularism rides on the backs of such demystified god life narratives to rationalise ethico-culturally informed global empires.

Life Writing Genres on the Move: The Year in Finland

Biography ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-68
Author(s):  
Maarit Leskelä-Kärki
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
Writing Genres

scholarly journals A Bedroom Story

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (15) ◽  
pp. 8-24
Author(s):  
Arnau Vilaró Moncasí
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Female Desire ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
Chantal Akerman ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Relationship

The films of Chantal Akerman explore one of the key issues in the representation of female desire: the debate about the mechanisms of a language which, according to Laura Mulvey, is based on a male gaze founded on scopophilia, voyeurism, and fetishism. This article uses the film La captive (2000) and the desire between its two protagonists, Ariane and Simon, to reconsider the link established in feminist theory between language, the gaze, and desire. My hypothesis is that the confinement of Akerman’s female protagonist, expressed through the two dimensions of submission and intimacy, takes an approach to female desire that constitutes an alternative to the forms of the gaze associated with the male tradition of representation. This approach engages in a close dialogue with the concept of desire posited by Emmanuel Levinas, whose ideas had a huge influence on Akerman’s understanding of how to film the Other, as well as the relationship between the image and its observer.

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