1,741,310 research outputs found
Intersections: Gender Law and Literature
No full textThe 2009 Intersections: Gender Law and Literature is a program showcasing Women's and Gender Studies student papers, projects and presentations.College of Arts and Scienc
Synchronizing the Self: online gaming, avatars and identity
No full textOnline game playing has attracted much attention of scholars in recent years, entailing a lot of debates on the conflicts between the virtual and the real, the physical body and the digital body, as well as between human and machine. Significantly, all of these conflicts make the issue of identity/identification more complicated and important than ever before. This study employs the avatar, the virtual character in online games, as a research object. It aims to explore the changes in the issues of identification and identity in the information era; it upholds the perspective of embodiment; it develops an interdisciplinary structure; it scrutinizes the concepts of the body, sex, and gender, in online gaming; and unifies its finding through the prism of synchronicity. Synchronicity, as one of the most significant findings of this research, is considered and utilized as a school of thought emerging from the technical capacity of embracing multiple spaces at the same time. It embarks on rethinking and reframing the relationship between time and space. Synchronicity, in conjunction with the embodiment principle, forge the “missing link” zigzagging among multiple theories from different disciplines. The approach to this research on the avatar is from cultural and gender studies. It is theoretical and text-based, rather than empirical. This work is interdisciplinary, but is framed within these two discursive domains. Through the construction of an interdisciplinary argument, this dissertation shows that a combination of media, cultural analysis, feminist theory and phenomenology of the body is capable of integrating an understanding of the avatar across several disciplines. By focusing on the interaction between the player’s body and the avatar, as well as the performance, switchover and the “choosability” of gender in online gaming, this research confirms the epistemological shift from materiality to embodiment. This shift is highlighted and theorized in the synchronicity environments, for instance, in online game playing. In this vein, through an phenomenologist elaboration of three synchronous bodies which are emerging and co-existing in the course of online game playing, I define the body as an assemblage activated by the life dynamic. The body is not necessarily flesh, but should certainly be capable of embodiment. In such a context, for an individual player, gender is an option which entails gender performance, and even gender switchover. As a result, gender can be neither or both feminine and masculine. Based on these observations, this dissertation argues that the individual level of identification has both been enlarged and empowered in this information era. This dissertation also makes a contribution to feminist methodology. It shows the potential of feminism as both a research field and a perspective. I understand feminist theory as a research perspective that can be applied to many possible objects of research, more than a specific academic discipline or research domain. Feminist theory as an academic perspective is inherently interdisciplinary, and foregrounds not only the immanently embodied nature of human being, but also notions of multiplicity and difference
Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies
No full textThis course offers an introduction to Women's and Gender Studies, an interdisciplinary academic field that asks critical questions about the meaning of gender in society. The primary goal of this course is to familiarize students with key issues, questions and debates in Women's and Gender Studies scholarship, both historical and contemporary. Gender scholarship critically analyzes themes of gendered performance and power in a range of social spheres, such as law, culture, work, medicine and the family
Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies
No full textThis course offers an introduction to Women's and Gender Studies, an interdisciplinary academic field that asks critical questions about the meaning of gender in society. The primary goal of this course is to familiarize students with key issues, questions and debates in Women's and Gender Studies scholarship, both historical and contemporary. Gender scholarship critically analyzes themes of gendered performance and power in a range of social spheres, such as law, culture, work, medicine and the family
Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies
No full textThis course offers an introduction to Women's and Gender Studies, an interdisciplinary field that asks critical questions about the meanings of sex and gender in society. The primary goal of this course is to familiarize students with key issues, questions and debates in Women's and Gender Studies, both historical and contemporary. Gender studies scholarship critically analyzes themes of gendered performance and power in a range of social spheres, such as education, law, culture, work, medicine and the family. WGS. 101 draws on multiple disciplines--such as literature, history, economics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, political science, anthropology and media studies-- to examine cultural assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality. This course integrates analysis of current events through student presentations, aiming to increase awareness of contemporary and historical experiences of women, and of the multiple ways that sex and gender interact with race, class, nationality and other social identities.  
The Legacy of the Maoist Gender Project in Contemporary China: A Feminist Research on Women's Oral Life Narratives
No full textThis research uses feminist theories to analyze women’s oral life stories, especially the various ways the Maoist gender idea manifests itself in the lives of Chinese women today. Building on Judith Butler’s theories of “gender as performance”, it introduced the concept of gender as a “project” to convey both conscious manipulation at the collective level, and personal agency for individuals. This research includes detailed analysis of four cases: a rural migrant worker, an older urban woman who lived through the Mao era, a lesbian artist, and a woman who studied and lived in the West before returning to China. The analysis of content is complemented by a discussion of the structure and language of each narrative, including an innovative interviewing method of “telling and retelling”, hybrid narrative language—various mixtures of official dialect, regional dialects, and imported terms, as well as visual representations. Drawn on feminist studies on gender and self-narration, this research explores the various ways a feminist approach can document and theorize gendered experiences and subversive strategies.
Xin Huang has a PhD degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of British Columbia, and is a Chiang Ching-Kuo Post-doctoral fellow in Women’s and Gender Studies and the Centre for Race Autobiography Gender and Age Studies at UBC. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality in contemporary China. She also has been involved in various research projects on gender and sexuality in Chinese popular culture, and Chinese immigrant women in Canada. She is currently working on her post-doctoral project: The “Taming” Of Maoist Women: Changing Representations of Gender In China in Personal Photo Albums.Women's and Gender Studies, Centre forUnreviewedThe Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies (CWGS) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) offered a weekly lecture series for the fall and winter semesters. This series brought together scholars that focussed on issues related to women and the study of gender/sexuality. The series included post doctoral and visiting scholars, faculty both from CWGS and additional departments engaged in research relevant to the mission of the centre.Postdoctora
‘Ow god, die snobs zien ons weer aan voor een levend laboratorium’ Participatief internetonderzoek over/met Marokkaans-Nederlandse jongeren
No full textThis article covers participatory Internet research strategies with Moroccan-Dutch youth. As the Internet is not a singular entity, informants were stimulated to research with the author the variety of their digital experiences by inviting them to draw an Internet map. Additionally, inviting informants to save and select instant messaging conversation transcripts enabled the collection of non-publicly accessible Internet communication. Not only do these strategies facilitate a bridging of the gap between researchers and informants, they are also useful to make informed decisions about what to include and exclude in the study of digital culture
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