USB Journals (Univ. Köln)
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Frontmatter and Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:
Taking its cue both from discussions about the ‘fourth wave’ of feminism that largely takes place in digital environments and from the growing interdisciplinary interest in podcasts, this special issue sets out to explore the aesthetics and politics of this medium with regard to matters of gender and sexuality. The field of podcast studies, advanced by pioneer Richard Berry (2006) and first substantial critical volumes such as Llinares et al.’s Podcasting. New Aural Cultures and Digital Media (2018) and Spinelli and Dann’s Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution (2019), evolves out of (digital) media and cultural studies, with increasing input from fan studies in particular. It thus partakes in a tradition of inquiry with close ties to feminist scholarship and concerns with agency and power. While podcasts engage with a huge array of topics across all spheres of pop culture, including erotic fan fiction as well as LGBTQ+ issues, they are seen as a medium characterized by orality and audience participation, offering intimate and authentic settings for commentary and information (still relatively) free from the constraints of editorship and commercialism of other media
Review: Jacobs, Laura, and Cecil Meeusen. “Coming Out of the Closet, Also on the News? A Longitudinal Content Analysis of Patterns in Visibility, Tone and Framing of LGBTs on Television News (1986-2017).” Journal of Homosexuality, 2020, pp. 1-25.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
What is it to be recognized, to be made visible? Is the representation of visual material solely dependent upon the media, or is the framing of LGBT people always fraught with questions of inequality and injustice? In their article, ‘Coming Out of the Closet, Also on the News? A Longitudinal Content Analysis of Patterns in Visibility, Tone, and Framing of LGBTs on Television News (1986 -2017)’ (2020), Laura Jacobs and Cecil Meeusen map the framing of LGBT people in Flanders, Belgium. Informed by recent arguments against discrimination towards homosexuality (Gerhards 2010; Hooghe and Meeusen 2013), and LGBT representation (Redman 2018), Jacobs and Meeusen interrogate the visibility of LGBT people in Belgian mainstream media
Review: Thomas, Lynn M. Beneath the Surface: A Transnational History of Skin Lighteners.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
Lynn M. Thomas’s new book, Beneath the Surface: A Transnational History of Skin Lighteners presents a history of lightening products centered in South Africa that is attentive to transnational ties. Her book asks a series of questions about why people have chosen to use skin lighteners throughout history and what these choices tell us about the politics of beauty, personal desires, social and economic transformations, and race. By tracing the history of lightening in South Africa, she demonstrates how a long history of this practice existed among Africans in South Africa. In doing so, she shows that skin lightening cannot just be explained by racism, but by an amalgamation of factors including gender, class, and sexuality (Thomas 2)
Review: French Post-Modern Masculinities: From Neuromatrices to Seropositivity by Lawrence R. Schehr
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
When he died in 2011, Lawrence R. Schehr left behind a peerless interdisciplinary body of work. His monographs and journal articles were in areas as diverse as gender and queer studies, literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as French language, culture and civilization. Although the title French Post-Modern Masculinities gives the impression that the monograph will address the entire post-modern period, Schehr concentrates on the last twenty years. As he explains French Post-Modern Masculinities, his latest monograph, sets out to examine the “changes in the representations and depictions of masculinity and masculine sexualities in the contemporary era of France” (1)
Dildos and Cyborgs: Feminist Body-Politics in Porn from the 1970s to Posthumanism
No full textThe article examines different – and in particular conflicting – feminist positions with respect to pornography which have been developed from the 1970s until today, focusing on the issue of the construction of sexual and gender identities. An analysis is carried out on how these identities in regards to the pornographic body are negotiated or even shifted within these different feminist discourses and practices. Starting with a brief examination of the discourse about pornography in the phase when the sexual revolution ended, subsequently the PorNO-campaign of the German feminist journal Emma – launched in 1987 – is discussed more precisely. This campaign represented anti-pornographic feminism which had been criticized by sex-positive feminism developing the so-called post-pornographic approach. The second part of the article looks into the post-porn discourse from the early eighties – Annie Sprinkle – until the queer-feminist-posthumanist intervention in the field of sexuality and pornography by Beatriz Preciado. Finally, the political potential of queer-feminist post-porn in subverting the existing regime of sexuality is considered
Frontmatter and Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the frontmatter and editorial:
“Passages to India. Literary and Socio-Political Perspectives on Gender Concepts in India” is dedicated to the investigation of the country\u27s prevailing gender concepts and gender politics. India is a country which appears to have a rather distinct history and agenda in this regard, particularly compared to Western feminist theories, concerns and histories. The articles assembled in this issue of Gender Forum offer insights into the status quo of feminist concerns in India and approach this topic from a variety of angles, including analyses of literary representations, religious discourses and socio-political developments, to medical-juridical concerns
A Palace of Her Own: Feminine Identity in the Great Indian Story
No full textAlong with the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, literally, is one of India’s “great stories”, and the ancient epic maintains its status as a culturally foundational text which, apart from philosophical- spiritual values, educational and religious instruction, contains and perpetuates ideas and ideals of ethical obligation (dharma), social norms and gender roles. Having inspired writers for centuries, references to the epic, its central legends or characters, are ubiquitous in literature. Two contemporary examples of explicit attempts to retell the epic in novel form are Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel (1989) and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions (2008). These shall be analyzed in the following, as the texts not only invite criticism for the ambitious attempt this poses on a formal and structural level, but furthermore allow a comparison of the way they present the interaction between gender and politics. Whereas Tharoor uses the epic to provide an allegorical frame and backdrop for a satirical narration of India’s political struggle for independence in the 20th century, Divakaruni chooses to retell the epic from the perspective of one of its heroines, Draupadi, thus reclaiming female agency in the famous tale of war between two families, hyper-masculine heroes and their devoted wives.
Frontmatter and Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:
In an interview published under the title “Friendship as a Way Of Life” Michel Foucault asks: This notion of mode of life seems important to me. Will it require the introduction of a diversification different from the ones due to social class, differences in profession and culture, a diversification that would also be a form of relationship and would be a “way of life”? A way of life can be shared among individuals of different age, status, and social activity. It can yield intense relations not resembling those that are institutionalised. It seems to me that a way of life can yield a culture and an ethics. (Ethics. Subjectivity and Truth 1994: 127-8
