This article focuses on Jewish women’s experiences of the amen meal ritual. The central intention of this meal is to achieve many recitations of the word “amen” in response to benedictions recited for different sorts of food. The women’s voices and experiences, reflected in in-depth interviews with participants and participant observa…[Read more]

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) includes several provisions concerning trade facilitation such as advance ruling, duty drawback, use of information technology, post clearance audit, and single window.One important aspect of USMCA is the inclusion of de minimis threshold for imports. De minimis is a valuation ceiling for goods…[Read more]

The question this article addresses is how the WTO supports and deals with digital trade. This article briefly discusses the historical advancement of the Internet, defines the concept of digital trade and its development in the international market. The article then analyzes how existing WTO agreements have dealt with digital trade. The article…[Read more]

In his 2004 novel GraceLand, Chris Abani unsettles notions of youth “empowerment,” or “resistance,” creating a restless oscillation between cynicism and idealism. On the one hand, pervasive violence and restricting
norms seem to debilitate the novel’s characters, leaving little room to negoti- ate the constraints of their bleak lives in the slums…[Read more]

This article examines the global African modernism of Amos Tutuola through the lens of his nonhuman folkloric creatures. Though the work of the early Nigerian novelist is often characterized as modernism’s inversion, or “traditional,” Tutuola in fact articulates a succession of surreal monsters in The Palm Wine Drinkard (1952) and My Life in the B…[Read more]

We live in a moment of “apocalyptic time,” the “time of the end of time.” Ours is a moment of global ecological crisis, of the ever-impending collapse of capital. That we live on the brink is too clear. What is not, however, is our ability to imagine the moment after this dual crisis. In recent years, African artists have begun to articul…[Read more]

This paper presents a reading of Sarah (Genesis 11:29-23:19) as a proto-trans(gender) figure. The author addresses the problem of cisnormativity and its impact on biblical interpretation. In particular, throughout this paper Sarah is presented as a character who has been cisnormalised within the literary tradition of the Biblical text in order to…[Read more]

This course was first taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in fall 2018.
It addresses feminism, gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, and critical race and ethnic studies in conjunction with translation studies.

While male illustrators including Alberto Vargas (1896–1982), George Petty (1894–1975), and Gil Elvgren (1914–1980) are synonymous with the field of early-twentieth-century pin-up art, there were in fact several women who also succeeded in the genre. Pearl Frush (1907–1986), Zoë Mozert (1907–1993), and Joyce Ballantyne (1918–2006) each establi…[Read more]

Book chapter exploring the queering of identity in Bioshock, including analysis of masks and carnivalesque culture in the game. The chapter argues that Bioshock presents an opportunity to queer identity and cultural systems, but forecloses on that possibility and instead reinscribes violence. Finally, the chapter uses its close analysis of the…[Read more]

Video game culture has a long, ongoing history of problems with representation and inclusivity, as a wide variety of forces have constructed video games and gaming as masculine. Against this
background, the popular gamer-oriented web series The Guild (2007–2013) appears to offer a unique counterperspective, presenting a gender-diverse cast and f…[Read more]

The Nakba not only resulted in the loss of the homeland, but also caused the dispersal and ruin of entire Palestinian communities. Even though the term Nakba refers to a singular historic event, the consequence of 1948 has symptomatically become part of Palestinian identity, and the element that demarcates who the Palestinian is. Palestinian exile…[Read more]

Hinging on the concept of transvestism, this article traces a trajectory that goes from Alfonsina Storni’s re-appropriation of the women’s page in the guise of a male persona, through Alejo Carpentier’s contributions to a fashion column disguised as Jacqueline, to Clarice Lispector’s unsettling use of the page addressed specifically to women i…[Read more]