Our Joan of Arc

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-167
Author(s):  
Nicole Bourbonnais
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Birth Control ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
New Negro ◽  
Joan Of Arc ◽  
Universal Negro Improvement Association ◽  
Gender Neutral ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sense Of Justice

This chapter uses the Jamaican Garveyite weekly New Negro Voice to examine gender dynamics and gender politics in the Harmony Division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in the early 1940s. While the UNIA promoted patriarchal structure and binary gender roles, the pages of the New Negro Voice and the meetings of the Harmony Division also provided space for alternative visions of gender roles and critiques of women’s subordination by both female and male Garveyites who valued women’s broader activities outside the home, argued that women’s full equality was pivotal to the future of the race, and praised Jamaican women’s political leadership. Similarly, alongside images of the nurturing, caretaking “race mother” or patriarchal “race man,” the sources highlight other means of status-claiming within the organization that were more gender-neutral, based on a member’s militarism, sense of justice, their level of commitment to the organization, etc. These principles allowed women like Maymie L.T. de Mena Aiken to exercise considerable authority at Liberty Hall and beyond. The complexity of these dynamics are explored in an examination of the debate over birth control, which split the leadership of the Harmony Division among rigid gender lines and tested the flexibility of Garvey’s ideology.

scholarly journals Gender Transgression as Heresy: The Trial of Joan of Arc

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Grigat ◽  
Gregory Carrier
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Traditional Authority ◽  
Political Aspect ◽  
Joan Of Arc ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Gender Transgression ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Church

Joan of Arc has exercised a hold on the imagination, both medieval and modern, far exceeding her limited military achievements. It is perhaps for this reason that the trial of Joan on charges of heresy, culminating in her conviction and execution, is typically interpreted in a cynical light. The primary theme of the literature is that the she was brought to trial and convicted for challenging the institutionalized power of state and church. The issue of gender transgression, which is repeated throughout the transcripts of Joan’s trial, is either ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. It is typical of the medieval narrative that belief systems no longer accepted today are not taken seriously, and this is done through reducing them to familiar categories. This paper aims to take the trial of Joan of Arc seriously by arguing that Joan really was a heretic because she was different from orthodox Christians in that she transgressed traditional gender roles. This issue played a major role in Joan’s trial and one can scarcely read two paragraphs of the record without issues of gender transgression being raised and denounced. Furthermore, gender transgression was explicitly identified as amounting to heresy, and theological arguments were given by learned experts to justify this connection. This is not to deny that Joan was a heretic on other grounds; her obstinate refusal to submit herself to the Church militant and insistence on her ability to interpret her own revelations are crucial issues. Likewise, we do not intend to deny the political aspect of her trial, but rather to argue that the defense and reinforcement of traditional authority structures cannot be demarcated from the issue of heresy and gender transgression.

Cross-border Migration and Gender Boundaries in Central Eastern Europe – Female Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-509
Author(s):  
Ágnes Erőss ◽  
Monika Mária Váradi ◽  
Doris Wastl-Walter
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Labour Migration ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Livelihood Strategy ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Dual Earner ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Boundaries

In post-Socialist countries, cross-border labour migration has become a common individual and family livelihood strategy. The paper is based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with two ethnic Hungarian women whose lives have been significantly reshaped by cross-border migration. Focusing on the interplay of gender and cross-border migration, our aim is to reveal how gender roles and boundaries are reinforced and repositioned by labour migration in the post-socialist context where both the socialist dual-earner model and conventional ideas of family and gender roles simultaneously prevail. We found that cross-border migration challenged these women to pursue diverse strategies to balance their roles of breadwinner, wife, and mother responsible for reproductive work. Nevertheless, the boundaries between female and male work or status were neither discursively nor in practice transgressed. Thus, the effect of cross-border migration on altering gender boundaries in post-socialist peripheries is limited.

Who’s holding up the sky? On Rymba, a novel by A. Bushkovsky

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-158
Author(s):  
A. V. Zhuchkova
Keyword(s):  
Gender Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Flood Zone ◽  
The Social ◽  
Russian North ◽  
And Gender

The article deals with A. Bushkovsky’s novel Rymba that goes beyond the topics typical of Russian North prose. Rather than limiting himself to admiring nature and Russian character, the author portrays the northern Russian village of Rymba in the larger context of the country’s mentality, history, mythology, and gender politics. In the novel, myth clashes with reality, history with the present day, and an individual with the state. The critic draws a comparison between the novel and the traditions of village prose and Russian North prose. In particular, Bushkovsky’s Rymba is discussed alongside V. Rasputin’s Farewell to Matyora [ Proshchanie s Matyoroy ] and R. Senchin’s The Flood Zone [ Zona zatopleniya ]. The novel’s central question is: what keeps the Russian world afloat? Depicting the Christian faith as such a bulwark, Bushkovsky links atheism with the social and spiritual roles played by contemporary men and women. The critic argues, however, that the reliance on Christianity in the novel verges on an affectation. The book’s main symbol is a drowning hawk: it perishes despite people’s efforts to save it.

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