Introduction to the Special IBMR Issue on the World Christian Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition

Forty years ago, David B. Barrett, then based in Nairobi, Kenya, put the finishing touches on the first edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia. A second edition was produced in 2001, and now a third edition is in circulation, prepared between 2015 and 2019. This special issue of the IBMR reflects a core part of the methodology of the World Christian Encyclopedia, namely, interaction with World Christianity from different disciplinary perspectives and geographic locations. This introduction to the issue features reflection on articles on global Catholicism, missions, women and gender studies, religious freedom, Christianity in the Middle East, and refugees.

‘Doing’ or ‘using’ intersectionality? Opportunities and challenges in incorporating intersectionality into knowledge translation theory and practice

Intersectionality is a widely adopted theoretical orientation in the field of women and gender studies. Intersectionality comes from the work of black feminist scholars and activists. Intersectionality argues identities such as gender, race, sexuality, and other markers of difference intersect and reflect large social structures of oppression and privilege, such as sexism, racism, and heteronormativity. The reach of intersectionality now extends to the fields of public health and knowledge translation. Knowledge translation (KT) is a field of study and practice that aims to synthesize and evaluate research into an evidence base and move that evidence into health care practice. There have been increasing calls to bring gender and other social issues into the field of KT. Yet, as scholars outline, there are few guidelines for incorporating the principles of intersectionality into empirical research. An interdisciplinary, team-based, national health research project in Canada aimed to bring an intersectional lens to the field of knowledge translation. This paper reports on key moments and resulting tensions we experienced through the project, which reflect debates in intersectionality: discomfort with social justice, disciplinary divides, and tokenism. We consider how our project advances intersectionality practice and suggests recommendations for using intersectionality in health research contexts. We argue that while we encountered many challenges, our process and the resulting co-created tools can serve as a valuable starting point and example of how intersectionality can transform fields and practices.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND WOMEN’S POLITICAL REPRESENTATION: AN ANALYSIS OF WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE IN FORMAL POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN TURKEY FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

Today, the necessity of addressing development not only with its economic dimension but also with its social and environmental dimensions has been accepted by the international community. Alternative Women and Development approaches that emerged in the 1970s also emphasized that the idea of development without women would not be possible, and that the main development is possible with the empowerment of women as important actors of development. It is a dominant view that is agreed in the literature on women and gender studies that one of the most important tools for achieving empowerment, which is conceptualized as “gaining the ability of women to make strategic life choices”, is their participation in decision-making mechanisms. In this context, it is vital for women to participate in formal politics with their own perspective in order to solve their own problems based on their own gendered experiences. In this study, inadequate political representation of women in Turkey, as a candidate to be among the developed countries, is discussed from a gender perspective in terms of reasons, results and solutions. Keywords: Political participation, gender, women and development, empowerment.

The History and Function of Sisterhood in Turkey: Bacıyan-ı Rum Organization in Medieval Era

Bacıyan-ı Rum (Anatolian Sisters Organization) is known as the world's first women's organization in history, but very few pieces of literature exist about this medieval organi­zation. Thus, the aim was to reach up to all available historical documents about the topic and systematically analyze the nature and function of such an organization in the medieval era. Preliminary findings show that no written documents existed in English nor other languages except the Turkish language. It was also observed that this topic has emerged as an exciting area for many disciplines in recent times, leading to a sudden develop­ment of recent write-ups on such a topic. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce and explore the historical antecedent and functions of Bacıyan-ı Rum Organization to readers and other professionals interested in history, ethics, women, and gender studies. Kinds of literature were reviewed across history, eco­nomics, politics, travelogues, art, sociology, and anthropology to provide an extensive and detailed understanding of such a remarkable phenomenal women organization that existed in the Islamic world of the Medieval Era in Anatolia, Turkey.

THE BENEFITS OF TEACHING #METOO IN THE CONTEXT OF WOMEN’S LIBERATION HISTORY

This essay acknowledges the importance of examining the #metoo movement in global, cross-cultural, international contexts as scholars. Yet it also argues for teaching the social media (SM) movement in a grounded historical context as growing out of other moments of women’s liberation movement history in which women came together to tell their story, sharing their personal experiences that led to political action, particularly when teaching the hashtag movement in introductory women and gender studies courses. The author shares her efforts to do so online at a south-eastern technical university in the United States in the Spring of 2019. Not as part of evaluations but as part of a teaching unit within the course, she asked her nearly 50 students, both male and female, to compare and contrast the SM movement to consciousness-raising groups in which women had met face-to-face to share their experiences in an earlier time in movement history. All 300 student posts and reflections posted in the week under examination were scrutinized by the instructor, and their thoughts and conclusions analyzed. In this article, a sample of four is explored.

Towards innovative teaching pedagogies in gender research: A review of a gender research methods class

This commentary examines the teaching of research methods in Women and Gender Studies in the Gender Studies Unit of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. It interrogates how the course has increased the awareness of students in the methods of conducting research and how the research they conduct has implications on marginalized populations. The course also highlights the need for a growing body of knowledge that engages the experience of black women in Africa and the African diaspora. The course draws the attention of students to the agency of women through the reading and teaching of various research methods in Gender Studies. An ethnographic approach is adopted using participant observation in the course covering a period of one semester. Also, a critical perspective is applied in discussing the particular epistemological standpoint deployed by the course instructor. In other words, the black feminist epistemology serves as an important strategy for increasing global-minded consciousness of how a course in gender research methods engages the agency of black women using Hip Hop pedagogy. Keywords: Gender Research Methods, Black Feminist Epistemology, Global-Minded, Black Consciousness, African Feminism.

Tal Dekel, Transnational Identities: Women, Art, and Migration in Contemporary Israel. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016. 171 pp.

Transitional Identities: Women, Art and Migration in Contemporary Israel, translated from the original Hebrew (the name of the translator is not given), focuses on the experiences of three different groups of migrant women artists living in Israel. Dekel, who herself migrated to Israel as a 12-year-old from the United States, is interested in the double perspective that immigrants bring to their lives in the new country: both as outsider and insider, Israeli and/or “other.” Dekel, who lectures both in the department of art history and in the women and gender studies program at Tel Aviv University, has a particular interest in gender and transnationalism in contemporary art and visual culture. Her first book, ...

Writing with Blood: The Transformative Pedagogy of Teaching Students to Write Manifestos

Given that manifestos are an understudied genre of writing, few undergraduate students learn about their history, style, and potential political impact. This essay reviews the history of manifestos, followed by descriptions of teaching students to write their own manifesto in an upper-division women and gender studies course I teach on radical writings. The rewards and possibilities of manifesto writing, alongside the hazards of teaching manifesto writing in a formalized institutional setting like academia, are explored.

Art in Women and Gender Studies

In this talk, I want to examine the place of art in women and gender studies, and how these areas draw upon the interdisciplinary promise of feminist theory when considering cultural production. Art history has been part of women’s studies and the work of women artists is studied, but in the pre-dominant switch to gender, sexuality and representation in course structures, I want to draw attention to areas of enquiry that are missing from debates about feminisms in relation to contemporary art. I will refer back to different understandings of the role of art within the women’s movement in the 1970s and to the situation of women artists in the art world then and now which are contributing to this situation. Artists and artworks have produced a visual language for feminist protest and produced works which are strongly issue-based and politically engaged with regard to feminist issues, but visual art itself is marginal in most women and gender studies by comparison with research on mass media, film and literature. Studying gender, sexuality and representation (the dominant course, where feminism appears in arts curricula and visual arts in gender studies), art emerges again as a key area of interest, but this provides a very specific focus on certain types of visual representation and I will argue, as a result, other formulations of the relations between aesthetics and politics are not at the centre of these debates.