USB Journals (Univ. Köln)
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Review: Deborah Caslav Covino: Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetic Makeovers in Medicine and Culture.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
The booming makeover industry, especially its intersections with reality-television programming, has captured much feminist academic interest as of late. Deborah Caslav Covino\u27s Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetic makeovers in medicine and culture, narrowly predates a flurry of publications exploring the American penchant for aesthetic transformation (Heller forthcoming 2006, 2007; McGee 2005; Wegenstein, under review; Weber 2005). Her work identifies the importance of the study of the makeover in popular culture, and sets a high standard with which to compare more recent investigations into makeover culture. Using Julia Kristeva\u27s theoretical conceptualizations of the abject from her Powers of Horror (1982), Covino traces the impetus behind the explosion of aesthetic surgical procedures. The cosmetic surgery industry markets its services almost exclusively to women, relying on Western ideologies of beauty and femininity for self-justification and product-promotion; thus, Covino focuses primarily on female subjects. She situates her work among feminist theory of cosmetic surgery, but determines that a new a mode of analysis is necessary in order to move beyond previously reductive interpretations of female cosmetic-surgery patients (as either victims or agents of makeover culture)
Frontmatter and Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the frontmatter and editorial:
Gender Roomours I is the first of two consecutive issues of gender forum to examine the intersection of gender and space. The five contributions featured in Gender Roomours I explore various spaces from a gendered perspective, engaging with the narrative space granted women in sick humour, the feminine spaces of the own childhood home, the frontier and wilderness masculinity in the Pacific Northwest, fictional representations of domestic architecture, as well as settings of confinement discernible within contemporary Irish Drama
Wrestling Teddy Bears: Wilderness Masculinity as Invented Tradition in the Pacific Northwest
Get PDFAt the turn of the last century, the tale - end of the great period of invented tradition, Americanism was steeped in or preoccupied with the rediscovery of American masculinity - displaced by Civil War and the economic depression and uncertainty of the Gilded Age - the closing of the frontier, and a growing appreciation of outdoor recreation. The result was division over the expansionist tendencies of proponents for war against Spain, continued labor resentment, and a reinvigorated surge of white supremacy. This paper follows an unorthodox avenue to investigate these themes and tensions. In exploring instances of turn-of-the-last-century human encounters with bears in hand-to-hand combat in the Pacific Northwest, I mean to demonstrate that notions of the frontier and environmental determinism constructed a new, wilderness masculinity distinct from changing expressions of urban masculinity. "The wilderness masters the colonist" -Frederick Jackson Turne
Review: Michael S. Kimmel, Jeff Hearn and R. W. Connell, eds.: Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
The publication of the book Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities marks a watershed moment for the field of critical men\u27s studies. Edited by leading researchers in the field, Michael S. Kimmel, Jeff Hearn and Robert W. Connell, the collection provides a rich overview of developments within critical men\u27s studies, primarily from a social science perspective, establishing the viability of, and productivity within, the field. The book includes key articles by those researchers who have had a meaningful impact on the development of the studies on men and masculinities, as well competent and interesting articles from newer, yet still accomplished, voices. The book provides a solid foundation upon which one could teach an upper level undergraduate or graduate course on critical men\u27s studies, largely from a social science perspective. However, those who come to the study of men and masculinities from the humanities may find a lack of representative articles because, as the editors assert in the introduction, "even though there are important debates from the humanities," "it is the social sciences that have produced the greatest amount of research on men and masculinities" (3). Consequently, the scholarship within the humanities does not find ample representation throughout the book. Certainly, providing what is perceived as "fair" representation across disciplines is a challenge for any book that seeks to provide an overview of such an interdisciplinary topic as the critical studies of men and masculinities
Review: Christina Wald. Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia: Performative Maladies in Contemporary Anglophone Drama.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
Christina Wald\u27s book is an ambitious, well-researched and meticulous study focusing, according to the jacket blurb, on "the interaction of theatrical performance, psychiatric and psychoanalytic theory, and the theory of gender performativity." Wald\u27s interdisciplinary approach covers substantial ground indeed, as she conducts a detailed analysis of ten recent Anglophone plays underpinned by an expert application of an impressive array of secondary sources, ranging from Karl Abraham to Slavoj Žižek. Structured into three substantial chapters preceded by a theoretical introduction that clarifies methodological issues, technical terms and introduces the key framework of performativity theory, the book places the three maladies under a historical and conceptual focus and establishes firm connections between these and theatrical case studies
The Black Lesbians Are White and the Studs Are Femmes: A Cultural Studies Analysis of The L Word
Get PDFShowtime\u27s popular series The L Word follows the lives and relationships of a group of middle class, primarily white lesbians living in Los Angeles, California. Because there are so few representations of lesbians airing on cable television in the United States, we argue that the representations that do exist must be continually critiqued. People use popular culture texts, like The L Word, to learn about themselves and others. We conduct a feminist cultural studies critique of the text and argue it is heteronormative and privileges whiteness. We also include qualitative data from a focus group with viewers of the show to support our analysis
Review: Stefanie Tannen. The Female Trickster: The Mask that Reveals, Post-Jungian and Postmodern Psychological Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
The increasing scholarly attention on the manifestation of tricksters in postmodern fictive narratives indicates the figure\u27s significance as a motif and stylistic novelty. Among those who have contributed valuable insights into this topic are Jeanne Rosier Smith and Jeanne Campbell Reesman. Tannen\u27s book supplements this growing body of literature in its creative and passionate accommodation of interdisciplinary perspectives. Although Hyde\u27s article "Where are the Women Tricksters?", included in Reesman\u27s volume, indicates that female tricksters are less prevalent in contemporary times, Tannen proclaims: "A female Trickster is among us. She stands visible at the crossroads of feminism, humor, depth, psychology and postmodernism, ready for us to unpack her bag of multiple meanings" (3)
Hystoriographic Metafiction: The Victorian Madwoman and Women’s Mental Health in 21st-Century British Fiction
Get PDFAt the turn of the new millennium British fiction obsessively returns to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this revisiting, authors often show a special interest in medical discourses and narratives surrounding women and madness and the ways in which these contemporary discourses were informed by constructions of gender and sexuality. Hence, mad doctors, madwomen and lunatic asylums have become popular characters and settings for these hystorical metafictions, which thematise doctors’ misreadings of patient narratives, that is, of both women’s physical symptoms and their own descriptions of them. Medical discourses and narratives surrounding madness are, then, exposed as reflections of the male doctor’s rather than the female patient’s anxieties, and in a wider context they thus signify society’s deepest fears and ideologies. Through a textual analysis of Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White (2002), Sebastian Faulks’ Human Traces (2005) and Maggie O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2004), this article points up that these recent examples of British historical fiction can themselves be read as gendered case histories of twenty-first-century British society and that, hence, they do not only critically explore past but also reflect present gendered issues concerning women’s mental health
The Owls Are Not What They Seem: Eccentricity and Masculinity in Twin Peaks
Get PDFThis essay asks the question: what is the function of eccentrics in American culture and attaches this question to recent research in “freaks.“ It argues that eccentrics occupy an ambiguous place in the American imagination, providing both incentives for a broadening of normative horizons and models of the human to be distrusted and feared. Using David Lynch’s television series Twin Peaks as its example, the essay shows how eccentric characters are used to push the boundaries of acceptable masculinities