Afterword of Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe

Ch. 13 of Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe

Introduction to Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe

This essay describes the popular Bechdel Test—a measure of women’s dialogue in films—in terms of social network analysis within fictional narrative. It argues that this form of vernacular criticism arrives at a productive convergence with contemporary academic critical methodologies in surface and postcritical reading practices, on the one hand,…[Read more]

An analysis of pentateuchal laws pertaining to women either born or married into priestly and levitical families in ancient Israel.

This thesis uses ethology as a framework to examine Franz Marc’s paintings of animals. To perceive animals ethologically means acknowledging that animals feel, think, experience, and imagine the world. Ethology has come to include interpretive pursuits as well as traditional field studies, and as I show, Marc’s practice encompassed both asp…[Read more]

Women who stay informed throughout their pregnancy have the opportunity to have the best health outcomes for themselves and their baby. In the UK women use a variety of information systems, and rely heavily on the resources provided by the NHS. With a myriad of sources available to pregnant women, it is important to see how well their chosen…[Read more]

Jacqueline Taucar, in conversation with Thea and Dario Jackson, investigates the sculptural qualities of the Josephine Baker Mas for the Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival Festival in 2011. This article traces the conception, construction, and complexities of choreography for this carnivalesque reimagining of Baker in Paris of the twenties for a…[Read more]

This article examines the gender discourses at play in Lee Breuer and Maude Mitchell’s production “Mabou Mines DollHouse,” which re-imagines Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll House” as a literal dollhouse. By casting the male roles with little people (no more than four feet tall) opposite women (who stand at close to six feet tall), Breuer inverts the…[Read more]

The introduction of Disney’s first proprietary tween fashion collection, called D-Signed, marks an unprecedented expansion of synergistic marketing strategies for comprehensive lifestyle branding to the tween girl market in the United States. The production and exponential growth of this particular fashion collection allow girls to literally (at T…[Read more]

The Disney Channel hit show, Hannah Montana, constructs contemporary US girlhood and notions of femininity in relation to celebrity, such that its primary girl characters, Hannah Montana, Miley Stewart, and Lilly Truscott, as well as star Miley Cyrus, are positioned as particularly postfeminist subjects. In such a context, each of these girls can…[Read more]

This essay examines some of the curricular and pedagogical practices in place in English departments during the early years of the “Seven Sisters” — the women’s colleges of the late nineteenth century — to address contemporary issues in English studies. The experimental nature of the woman’s college allowed for pedagogical innovation, so that…[Read more]

While many have seen the equation between Macrina and Socrates drawn in the Treatise on the Soul and the Resurrection as Gregory of Nyssa’s attempt to honor his sister, a closer look at Gregory’s attitude about the relative power of Christianity at the end of the fourth century suggests the opposite: that the character of Macrina lends val…[Read more]

Three novels by Jane Austen are compared to three novels by Margaret Atwood in the context of reading and writing as feminist activities. Anna G. Jónasdóttir’s theoretical discussion of male authority supported by women’s alienated love elaborates the apparent truth of W.B. Yeats’ observation [borrowed from Mme de Stael] that “the desire of the w…[Read more]

This article explores the use of gender in the Religious History, demonstrating the multiple ways that Theodoret of Cyrrhus marked ostensibly male characters with traits associated in ancient medical literature with female bodies. Beyond simply depicting ascetics as extraordinary human beings, these complexly gendered portraits more importantly…[Read more]

Canadian feminists at the turn of the 20th century were interested in producing a collectivity that buttressed arguments for women’s social and political participation. In this process, the negotiation of class relations among women was of particular importance in giving this feminism political weight. Often Canadian writers who took a feminist…[Read more]

This essay focuses on the woman’s page in the Grain Growers’ Guide, edited between 1912 and 1917 by Francis Marion Beynon. I approach this material with questions that have become prominent in rhetorical studies of women’s writing. How were women called forth to speak, and what were their motivations to participate in public debate? How did woman…[Read more]