Writing Lebanese Feminist History

In this chapter, Nicole Khoury analyzes the editorials in one of Lebanon’s most successful feminist journals, Al-Raida. Through examining the first decade of Rose Ghurayyib’s editorials, she recovers a part of Lebanese feminist history that has been largely ignored. The editorials illustrate that arguments for gender equality in the midseventies were grounded in liberal feminist theory. Written during the violent civil war, and the period of foreign influences, the editorials mark a shift in the focus of the Lebanese feminist movement to postcolonial feminist theory, a shift that changed the way the movement articulated its goals. While the editorials first addressed an English-speaking elite Lebanese audience, they later began to focus on a collective activism that defined women’s needs and goals within the larger national and international context, marking an important shift in Lebanese feminist history.

#MeToo, the ICTY, and Intersectionality in Postsocialist Global Capitalism

In this essay, we theorize and analyze (some of) the intercultural and intersecting structures that undergird rape and its representation in #MeToo via testimonial examples from rape survivors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). While we recognize the importance of the ICTY’s ruling and of #MeToo, we remain critical of the conditions that necessitated them and that continue to mark women’s bodies as vulnerable. Utilizing both postsocialist and postcolonial feminist theory as a lens, we specifically look to how bodies are articulated both as capital/property and, in the same international judicial frame, vessels for punishment and justice. We focus on how the ICTY defined justice for rape on a mediated international stage, how identities and cultures were situated discursively in the trial, and the implications for thinking through justice for intersectionality in #MeToo. Our claim is that the symbolic and material equation of women/women’s bodies as property is foundational to the operations of capital. With this framework in mind, it may be useful to consider how undoing capital may in turn challenge the normalization of women’s precarity, victimization, and therefore, experiences of sexual violence.

Environmental, Eco - Criticism and Eco - Feminist Perspectives in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance & Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills

This paper attempts a reading of Rohinton Mistry’s novel A Fine Balance (1997) and Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills (1985) envision insights from recent developments in eco-criticism and eco-feminism. Through Gender theory eco-feminism substantiates the silence of women in Linden Hills. Eco-criticism is a form of literary criticism based on ecological perspectives. It investigates the relation between human and the natural world in literature, such as the way in which environmental issues, cultural issues concerning the environment and attitudes towards nature are presented and analyzed. One of the main goals of eco-criticism concerns the environment and attitudes towards nature and ecological aspects. This form of criticism has gained a lot of attention during recent years (approximately since 2000) due to greater social emphasis on environmental destruction as a result of increased technology. It is hence a way of analyzing and interpreting literary texts. Eco critics investigate such things as the underlying ecological values, what, precisely, is meant by the word nature, and whether the examination of “Place” should be a distinctive category, gender or race. By examining the eco critical discourse in A Fine Balance, the paper posits that Mistry’s vision of development in India is predicated on the conditions of sustainability. The Ecological Feminism is an interdisciplinary movement which interrogates the new ways of thought process concerning natural world, diplomacy, and mysticism. Eco-feminist speculation has exacting and important association between females and natural world. Eco-feminism understands the suppression of women and their mistreatment in phrases of the subjugation and operation of the environment. Naylor discusses gender conditioned with eco-feminism perspectives. She scrutinizes United States as a “Place”, in relation to race of Linden Hills. The postcolonial feminist theory contends that through novel, A Fine Balance comparing with Linden Hills, Mistry interrogate the difficulties of maintaining natural and human diversity in the contemporary economic and social development in the Indian subcontinent. The aspects of paper are tailoring sustainability, ecology, eco - feminism and environment, urbanization and modernization, creation of ecological imbalance and the use of nature ‘as an end to all means’.

Oppression and Emancipation of African American Women in Suzan Lori Parks’ Venus

The aim of this paper is to critically explore various challenges faced by oppressed and suppressed African American women in the western societies. It also explores the varied emancipatory efforts they make when striving to absolve themselves of the forces of oppression and dehumanization as portrayed by Suzan Lori Parks in her play, Venus. The paper uses the postcolonial feminist theory of the Subaltern as the basis for the analysis to thoroughly examine the play extrinsically and intrinsically. In her play, Suzan- Lori Parks portrays African American women facing the turbulence of racism, discrimination and inequality in the western socio-geographical setting. She confidently and aesthetically reveals various challenges hindering the progress and life fulfilment of the African American women through the heroine of her play. The paper traces the history of Venus, unveils the cruelty of the European mentality and racial discrimination against African women. It also shows the rights of African women and identifies new ways for them to express their identities. Finally, the paper reveals that despite the obvious and prevalent acts of discrimination for African women for over the years, the problem persists. However, unlike the pre–Civil Rights era, today’s discrimination is less readily identifiable.

Intifada Incantation #2

This work examines how June Jordan's poetry dedicated to solidarity is a pedagogical and epistemological framework in SOLHOTLex and in engaging Black girls around the interconnectedness of the occupation of Palestine and the genocide of Syrians under the Bashar Al Assad regime. It begins to answer the questions of how frameworks like womanism and postcolonial feminist theory inform engagement around solidarity in SOLHOTLex and organizing Black girls while examining what critical engagement and organizing looks like when the voices of Black girls are in symphony with the rest of the world's resistance struggles.