Affects in making white womanhood

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-65
Author(s):  
Katalin Halász
Keyword(s):  
White Womanhood

Performing Politics: Propaganda, Parody and a Women's Parliament

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-193
Author(s):  
Kym Bird
Keyword(s):  
Political Representation ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Feminist Theatre ◽  
Liberal Ideology ◽  
Material Feminism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
White Womanhood

The initial phase of women's drama in Canada coincides with the first wave of 19th-century Canadian feminism and the Canadian women's reform movement. At the time, a variety of women wrote and staged plays that grew out of their commitment to the political, ideological and social context of the movement. The 'Mock Parliament,' a form of theatrical parody in which men's and women's roles are reversed, was collectively created by different groups of suffragists in Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. This article attempts to recuperate these works for a history of Canadian feminist theatre. It will argue that the 'dual' conservative and liberal ideology of the suffrage movement informs all aspects of the Mock Parliament. On the one hand, these plays critique the division of gender roles that material feminism wants to uphold; they are testimony to the strength of a woman's movement that knew how to work as equal players within traditionally structured political organizations. On the other hand, they betray the safe, moderate tactics of an upper and middle-class, white womanhood who wanted political representation but no structural social change. These opposing tensions are inherent in theatrical parody which is both imitative and critical.

Being a Father and a Soldier in the Civil War, 1861–1865

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Jürgen Martschukat
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Young Men ◽  
The Other ◽  
Southern Culture ◽  
Confederate Army ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
Citizen Soldiers ◽  
The One ◽  
White Womanhood

The fifth chapter depicts the conflicting demands addressed to young men as family fathers on the one hand and as citizen-soldiers on the other hand. It discusses the Civil War and its effects on fathers, mothers, and family life through close readings of the diary and letters of Confederate soldier John C. West, who saw himself as fighting this war for his family and his country. While West was scared to death by the bloody battles and the fierce fighting of the Civil War, he nevertheless romanticized the war as a struggle for southern family life and patriarchal masculinity in his diary and letters. He portrayed his service in the Confederate Army as fulfilment of his masculinity in the name of white womanhood, southern culture, and family life, a message he sought to send to his wife and, in particular, to his four-year-old son back home.

The Not-So-New Southern Sexism

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-157
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
Working Women ◽  
White Men ◽  
Equal Rights Amendment ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
White Womanhood

The stereotype of southern white womanhood is anything but new, and manipulating it for political gain became a critical part of the Long Southern Strategy. The stereotype strips women of their power, intelligence, and strength, casting them as delicate and in need of constant protection. Antebellum southern white men manufactured that vulnerability to justify the strict laws segregating the races that would protect white women from predatory black men. This notion of southern white womanhood clashed with Second-Wave Feminism and the ultimately failed effort to secure an Equal Rights Amendment. The feminist loss, however, was a major GOP gain, as the Republican establishment realized that traditional gender roles could be the next way to appeal to southern white voters. In due course, the GOP’s messaging tapped into and perpetuated a Modern Sexism, characterized by a distrust of ambitious women, a demonization of feminism, and a growing resentment toward working women.

scholarly journals White Womanhood and/as American Empire in Arrival and Annihilation

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 130
Author(s):  
Meghan Johnston Aelabouni
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Hybrid Identities ◽  
American Science ◽  
The World ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
Parallel Construction ◽  
White Womanhood

American science fiction stories, such as U.S. historical narratives, often give central place to white, Western male subjects as noble explorers, benevolent colonizers, and border-guarding patriots. This constructed subjectivity renders colonized or cultural others as potentially threatening aliens, and it works alongside the parallel construction of white womanhood as a signifier for the territory to be possessed and protected by American empire—or as a sign of empire itself. Popular cultural narratives, whether in the world of U.S. imperialism or the speculative worlds of science fiction, may serve a religious function by helping to shape world-making: the envisioning and enacting of imagined communities. This paper argues that the world-making of American science fiction can participate in the construction and maintenance of American empire; yet, such speculative world-making may also subvert and critique imperialist ideologies. Analyzing the recent films Arrival (2016) and Annihilation (2018) through the lenses of postcolonial and feminist critique and theories of religion and popular culture, I argue that these films function as parables about human migration, diversity, and hybrid identities with ambiguous implications. Contact with the alien other can be read as bringing threat, loss, and tragedy or promise, birth, and possibility.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Schwadron
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
White Womanhood

This introductory chapter frames the book’s emphasis on the twenty-first-century Sexy Jewess, whose image proliferates in neoburlesque, comedy, mainstream film, and progressive pornography. A review of significant literature in Jewish studies, gender and sexuality studies, and dance and performance studies (1) introduces how performers complicate self-critical jokes of the excessive Jewish female body by playing up their differences, (2) historicizes the techniques that performers employ to mimic and master different ideas of sexiness, and (3) theorizes how performances of Jewish female identity use the body to participate in and parody notions of appropriate femininity as they relate to white womanhood.

The Cult of First Ladyhood: Controlling Images of White Womanhood in the Role of the First Lady

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (03) ◽  
pp. 484-513
Author(s):  
Megan Handau ◽  
Evelyn M. Simien
Keyword(s):  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
First Ladies ◽  
First Lady ◽  
The Public ◽  
White Femininity ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Hegemonic Femininity ◽  
White Womanhood

AbstractIn recent decades, scholars have begun to analyze the role of the first lady in American society. Though the relationship between gender ideologies and this identity has been analyzed, little attention has been paid to how other aspects of the first ladies’ identities could shape the way the public and the first ladies themselves view their role. In this article, we offer an intersectional analysis that considers historical notions of hegemonic femininity in relation to race. We assert that the role of the first lady is a raced-gendered institution that produces a controlling image of white womanhood that simultaneously privileges white femininity and subordinates black womanhood. We conduct an analysis of the autobiographies of six first ladies: Edith Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, “Lady Bird” Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama.

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