Browsing by Subject "Feminism"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Circles and Circles: Notes on African Feminist debates around gender and violence in the 21 Century
    (2010) Bennett, Jane
    This article set out to sketch a terrain in which there are multiple, differently rooted, conversations among African feminists about gender and violence. There are few resolved debates, and many ways in which discussion which leads, in a pan-African gaze, towards mutual understanding and cohesive strategizing remains a naÁ¯ve idea. It is safe to suggest that the terms “gender” and “violence” remain simultaneously deeply entwined and infinitely separable. In the past few years, there have been vibrant, critical discussions on the nature, shape and direction of “women’s movement” organizing, and in African contexts, there are four overarching debates which have circled continually through intellectual writing on “women’s movements”, activist organization at several levels, and within numerous fora. The first debate concerns the meaning of the state. This debate is interlinked with a second: the meaning of the interaction between the North and diverse initiatives concerned with “women’s human rights,” “South-based feminisms,” and “gender-alert social justice”. The third debate concerns the very existence of a “women’s movement” and the fourth concerns access to reproductive health and to freedom from gender based violence.
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    Coming to voice : identity and change in the teaching of writing to women
    (1997) Schuster, Anne; Thesen, Lucia
    As a teacher of creative writing, the researcher is interested in the most effective and appropriate approach to the teaching of writing to women. This study considers two approaches to the teaching of writing - writing as self expression, and writing as social practice. It outlines the theoretical framework of these two approaches, in terms of three key concepts - self, language and change. It looks at the implications of these approaches in terms of their approach to autobiography and in terms of 'the writing scene' - the context for women writers - and in particular, it looks at how women are affected by the approaches. The study then explores the implications of a feminist poststructuralist approach to the teaching of writing. The theoretical framework of this approach is discussed, again in terms of the three key concepts of self, language and change; and the approach is then 'translated' into the practical research of the study. Positioning itself as feminist advocacy research, it takes the form of an action research study where a series of writing workshops is designed and then facilitated in a selected group of women participants. The study analyses the process, the writing produced in the workshops, and the interviews with the participants after the workshops, in terms of how they reflect the central concepts, self, language and change of the feminist poststructuralist approach. The study concludes with a summary of the essential ingredients of a poststructuralist approach, it comments on the generalisability of the research to other groups, and comments on the research process in terms of the researcher's intentions as a piece of feminist advocacy research. In line with feminist research, the researcher is concerned that this dissertation is written in such a way as to be of practical use to a teacher of writing who might like to adopt a feminist poststructuralist approach. With this in mind, a complete set of workshop outlines is given in Appendix A, a complete set of handouts in Appendix B, and some resource material for teachers in Appendix C. Bibliography: pages 121-129.
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    Exploring the role of the postmodern feminist voice in the development of the school language text
    (1997) Perumal, Juliet Christine; Esterhuyse, Jan
    Commencing with an abbreviated herstorical review of the various strands that comprise feminism's rich tapestry, this study proceeds with an enquiry into the postmodern feminist challenge against patriarchal ideological extravagances that have valorized Enlightenment significations of knowledge. Building on the postmodern feminist insight, that the discourses that constitute women as deficit Other permeate every aspect of the social configuration, language as a social and cultural construct is examined with a view to ascertaining the extent to which it has aided and abetted in the definition, deprecation and exclusion of women and our realities in a male supremacist society. In surveying the sexual/textual pedagogic terrain, the study proceeds from the premise that texts as cultural artifacts are crucial in the transmission of cultural attitudes, values, and the construction of gendered identities. Exploring the Communication, Literacy and Language component of the Outcomes-Based Learning document, and the interim core English second language syllabus, currently at the centre of educational debate, the study attempts to show that despite the documents' rhetoric to promote gender sensitivity and inclusivity, their allegiance to androcentric multilingual and multicultural concerns entrench phallogocentric binarism, thus making them complicit in furthering patriarchal ideology. The study concludes with a few recommendations for further research in the area of feminist pedagogy.
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