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The newspaper columnist Carmen de Burgos Seguí caused a sensation in 1903 when she called for a public discussion on divorce, then illegal in Spain. The fierce debate that ensued among Spain's leading thinkers—politicians, academics, feminists, journalists, and others—is collected in Divorce in Spain. This milestone volume ultimately contributed to Spain's legalizing divorce in the 1930s—a victory for women's rights that was subsequently rolled back by the Franco dictatorship and not regained for over fifty years. The opinions showcased here illuminate the uniqueness of feminism in early-twentieth-century Spain: because ideas about marriage and the role of women in society were anchored in Catholic teachings, feminist arguments focused on rights to education, divorce, and employment instead of on suffrage.
The newspaper columnist Carmen de Burgos Seguí caused a sensation in 1903 when she called for a public discussion on divorce, then illegal in Spain. The fierce debate that ensued among Spain's leading thinkers—politicians, academics, feminists, journalists, and others—is collected in El divorcio en España. This milestone volume ultimately contributed to Spain's legalizing divorce in the 1930s—a victory for women's rights that was subsequently rolled back by the Franco dictatorship and not regained for over fifty years. The opinions showcased here illuminate the uniqueness of feminism in early-twentieth-century Spain: because ideas about marriage and the role of women in society were anchored in Catholic teachings, feminist arguments focused on rights to education, divorce, and employment instead of on suffrage.
This casebook investigates how diverse writers from across East, South, and Southeast Asia and their diasporas have engaged with the struggle for gender justice. Each chapter analyzes works of literature originally written in Bengali, Chinese, English, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Marathi, Thai, and Vietnamese.
Aimed at both specialists and nonspecialists, Gender Justice and Contemporary Asian Literatures addresses such subjects as gender imparity in male-dominated professions; the lives of migrant sex workers and caregivers; the fight against reproductive, family, non-partner, and intimate partner violence; and norms of shame and silence surrounding violence against women. Informed by the author's deep knowledge of literature, history, culture, law, and social conditions, this book will be a resource for instructors and students in gender studies, women's studies, ethnic studies, Asian studies, Asian American studies, Asian diaspora studies, comparative literature, and world literature.
One of the most important American authors and public intellectuals of the twentieth century, Ralph Ellison had a keen and unsentimental understanding of the relationship between race, art, and activism in American life. He contended with other writers of his day in his examination of the entrenched racism in society, and his writing continues to inform national conversations in letters and culture.
The essays in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ralph Ellison will help instructors in colleges, high schools, and prisons teach not only the indispensable Invisible Man but also Ellison's short stories, his essays, and the two editions of his second, unfinished novel, Juneteenth and Three Days before the Shooting . . . . In considering Ellison's works in relation to jazz, technology, humor, politics, queerness, and disability, this volume mirrors the breadth of Ellison's own life, which extended from the Jim Crow era through the Black Power movement.
One of the most commonly taught slave narratives, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is rightly celebrated for its progressive and distinctive appeals to dismantle the dehumanizing system of American slavery. Depicting the abuse Jacobs experienced, her years in hiding, and her escape to the North, the work evokes sympathy for Jacobs as a woman and a mother. Today, it continues to inform readers about gender and sexuality, power and justice, and Black identity in the United States.
Part 1 of this volume, “Materials,” discusses different editions of the work and suggests background readings. The essays in part 2, “Approaches,” explore Jacobs's literary techniques and influences, drawing on autobiography theory, medical humanities, and theology, among other perspectives. Contributors also propose pairings with historical and recent literary works as well as teaching approaches involving visual arts, geography, archives, digital humanities, and service learning.
By the time they encounter Romeo and Juliet in the classroom, many students have already been exposed to various, and sometimes incongruous, manifestations of Shakespeare's work. This volume makes a virtue of students' familiarity with the preconceptions, anachronisms, and appropriations that shape experiences of the work, finding innovative pedagogical possibilities in the play's adaptations and in new technologies that spark students' creative responses.
The essays cover a wide area of concerns, such as marriage, gender, queer perspectives, and girlhood, and contributors embrace different ways of understanding the play, such as through dance, editing, and acting. The final essays focus on decolonizing the text by foregrounding both the role of race and economic inequality in the play and the remarkable confluence of Romeo and Juliet and Hispanic culture.
Migration from the Indian subcontinent began on a large scale over 150 years ago, and today there are diasporic communities around the world. The identities of South Asians in the diaspora are informed by roots in the subcontinent and the complex experiences of race, religion, nation, class, caste, gender, sexuality, language, trauma, and geography. The literature that arises from these roots and experiences is diverse, powerful, and urgent.
Teaching South Asian Anglophone Diasporic Literature embraces an intersectionality that attends to the historical and material conditions of cultural production, the institutional contexts of pedagogy, and the subject positions of teachers and students. Encouraging a deep engagement with works whose personal, political, and cultural insights are specific to South Asian diasporic consciousness, the volume also provokes meaningful reflection on other literatures in an age of increasing migration and diaspora.
This volume brings a diverse range of voices—from anthropology, communication studies, ethnomusicology, film, history, literature, linguistics, sociology, theater, and urban geography—into the conversation about film from the People's Republic of China. Essays seek to answer what films can reveal or obscure about Chinese history and society and demonstrate how studying films from the PRC can introduce students to larger issues of historical consciousness and media representation.
The volume addresses not only postsocialist fictional films but also a wide variety of other subjects including socialist period films, documentaries, films by or about people from ethnic minority groups, film music, the perspectives of female characters, martial arts cinema, and remakes of South Korean films. By exploring how films represent power, traditions, and ideologies, students learn about both the complexity of the PRC and the importance of cross-cultural and cross-ideological understanding.
Over the past several decades, writers such as Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, Octavia E. Butler, and Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner have explored climate change through literature, reflecting current anxieties about humans' impact on the planet. Emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinarity, this volume embraces literature as a means to cultivate students' understanding of the ongoing climate crisis, ethics in times of disaster, and the intrinsic intersectionality of environmental issues.
Contributors discuss speculative climate futures, the Anthropocene, postcolonialism, climate anxiety, and the usefulness of storytelling in engaging with catastrophe. The essays offer approaches to teaching interdisciplinary and cross-listed courses, including strategies for team-teaching across disciplines and for building connections between humanities majors and STEM majors. The volume concludes with essays that explore ways to address grief and to contemplate a hopeful future in the face of apocalyptic predictions.
An oasis community in Morocco hopes to stop a devastating drought by sacrificing black cows to satisfy the spirits. But the wise elder Bassou secretly plans a different solution: to sabotage the motorized pumps that have lowered the water table and nearly destroyed the subsistence farming and herding that support the local way of life. The young newlywed Yidir agrees to help him and eventually becomes a part of the broader fight for Moroccan independence from French colonial rule.
Portraying an indigenous community undergoing radical change, Le sacrifice des vaches noires reflects on notions of modernity and tradition, science and spirituality, free will and fate, and considers the moral obligations of individuals and community. First published in French in 1992, the novel received international acclaim and is regarded as the single best work about Amazigh culture in southeastern Morocco. It was adapted into the award-winning film Atash (Thirst) by the Moroccan director Saâd Chraïbi in 2000.
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