FEMINIST AND GENDER STUDIES
PANEL COORDINATOR: Sonia Villegas López (Universidad de Huelva).
Departamento de Filologia Inglesa. Facultad de Humanidades. Campus de El Carmen.
Avda. 3 de marzo s/n. Huelva 21071.
villegas@dfing.uhu.es
PANEL 1: COMUNICACIONES
“Animal Domestication and Nineteenth-Century Gendered Topographies”
Claudia Alonso Recarte, U. Castilla-La Mancha
Abstract:
The bond between women’s and animals’ oppression through physical and/or verbal
violence, the silencing of their voices, and their relegation within constructs such as
“wild”, “instinctive” and “emotional” has been especially noted by feminist scholars
since the 1990s. The object of this paper is to analyze the manner by which animal
domestication contributed to the nineteenth-century separation between the muchgendered private and public spheres in Britain and America. There is an evident linkage
between agency and passiveness that falls within the province of the verb “to
domesticate”: dominium represents property over which the dominus, that is, the head
of the household, exercises his power. Inevitably, domestication is of course
representatively exercised within the spatial structures of the domus, or home. It follows
that the act of the dominus domesticating the dominium involves, in a way, the growing
privatization of the object until it becomes a “product” or “commodity.” In regarding
the status of domestic animals as commodities, I begin with a few observations on how,
in the male public domain, the domestication of animals (either through breeding or
through their acclimatization in zoos and menageries) not only accentuates the
imperialist and scientific domination of the bourgeois man of modern civilization, but
furthermore suggests a subdual of women through the connotations brought on between
animals and women as the negative elements in Victorian up-down hierarchical value
dualisms. I then turn to consider the emergence of pet-keeping in the bourgeois private
spheres to examine how the cult of domesticity draws on non-human others to
legitimize the ethos of kindness that was to be the moral purpose of true womanhood. I
finish with a few remarks on the social consequences resulting from the semiotic
connection between types of pets and the economic status of women.
KEY WORDS: nineteenth century, animal domestication, gender, private and public
spheres, pets.
“‘...it’s generally women, you know, at the root of this sort of thing’: Monstrous Female
Figures in Sarah Waters´s The Little Stranger (2009)”
Lea Heiberg Madsen, U. de Malaga
Abstract:
The Victorian medical and cultural perceptions of the female body, wracked by its
instabilities resulting from menstruation, menopause or puberty, have continued to echo
across the centuries. In The Little Stranger (2009) Sarah Waters re-produces, in a
1940’s context, such Victorian echoes and shows how the Victorian constructions of
woman as monstrous persist in culture despite the passing of time, and that a woman’s
body and sexuality remain at the core of her “monstrousness”. This paper discusses how
Waters’s latest neo-Victorian novel revisits the trope of female monstrosity and “in its
simultaneous exploration of past and present“ reveals the powerful and lasting
intertextuality between medicine, culture and literature. Offering the figure of the
monstrous female a kind of double revision, the novel re-presents, and goes behind, the
traditional constructions of female monstrosity, suggesting that the translation of
medicine into culture was and remains particularly pertinent for women.
Keywords: female monstrosity, Sarah Waters, _The Little Stranger_, neo-Victorian revision, medicine.
“The portrayal of women in Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy”
David Griffiths, U. de Cantabria. Escuela Universitaria de Turismo de Altamira
Abstract:
This paper seeks to explore the portrayal of the key female characters in The
Regeneration Trilogy, a series of historical novels comprising Regeneration (1991), The
Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995). Although pride of place in the
narrative is undeniably given to the two leading male protagonists, Dr William Rivers
and Second Lieutenant Billy Prior, this study will endeavour to demonstrate the
enriching dimension that the female characters bring to Pat Barker’s depiction of the
social fabric of British society set against the tumultuous backdrop of The Great War.
Whilst the world of “ordinary” working-class women in The Trilogy is largely
portrayed by Barker as expanding during WWI, the men’s world has shrunk to one
marked by enforced passivity in the stagnant trenches of France, a scenario that
produces “unmanly” hysterical reactions in the form of war-related neuroses. The idea
of heroic warfare being inculcated in young males as “The Great Adventure” is made all
too ironic as the reader witnesses WWI becoming more of a “Great Adventure” for
certain female members of society --albeit perhaps a short-lived one-- than for their
male counterparts. Barker artfully explores this contradiction in her depiction of certain
female characters, especially within the family setting of Ada Lumb and her daughter
Sarah, the latter destined to play an important supporting role in The Trilogy as Billy
Prior’s girlfriend and fiancé. Nonetheless, despite presenting the changing expectations
of some women who belong to the working-class stratum of society, the author fights
shy of idealising them. Barker’s vision likewise contemplates the ways in which women
are locked into the prevailing values system and how they often maintain a curiously
ambiguous relationship with the very patriarchal system that has proven so influential in
their oppression.
KEYWORDS: female, expectations, Great Adventure, patriarchal, WWI
PANEL 2: COMUNICACIONES
“The Politics of Location in The House On Mango Street”
Macarena García-Avello Fernández-Cueto, U. de Oviedo
Abstract:
Literary re/presentations can function as effectual instruments to render visible women´s
concerns, while providing them with a channel to communicate their particular
experiences. Sandra Cisnero´s The House on Mango Street (1984) attempts to fill a void
within Anglo-American feminism by raising important questions regarding the “politics
of location” and how this applies to Chicano women, for whom intersectional multiple
discrimination becomes a central issue. Within this framework, the author focuses on
the extent to which subjectivity is closely interwoven to space, particularly to the social
organisation of women in specific spaces. This paper undertakes an analysis grounded
in the novel in order to disclose the problems presented by its “politics of location”,
along with issues concerning intersectionality and the matrix of domination. This leads
us to consider the different “positionings” occupied by the thirteen-year-old protagonist,
Esperanza. Following Adrienne Rich, this study starts from the particular, that is,
Esperanza´s body as a space mapped by different circumstances, in order to proceed
towards the most general, the intersection between sex, race, ethnicity, social class,
sexuality, etc. The house plays an important role through this passage, representing the
dividing line that separates the private self from the public world in which the house is
placed, in this case the Mango Street, one of the neighbourhoods that brings into being
the city of Chicago. The different positionings occupied by Esperanza lay a stress on
space as both relational and political, for as each layer is unfolded, the artificiality of the
boundaries is highlighted. Furthermore, this paper also considers how the body-subject
can be the starting point for establishing a series of bonds used as “spaces of
resistance”.
Keywords: The House on Mango Street, politics of location, Chicana, intersectionality
“‘A Stranger Within Our Gates’: Onoto Watanna’s Japanese Romances”
Natalia Rodríguez Nieto, U. de Salamanca
Abstract:
The figure of Onoto Watanna is not only significant for having produced Miss Num’s of
Japan (1899) considered the first contribution to the novel genre in English North
America by an author of Asian ancestry, but also for her adoption of an alien literary
identity. Despite being of mixed English-Chinese ancestry, she chose a Japanese literary
persona whose cultural disloyalty has frequently provoked the dismissal of her works.
Just as the female protagonist of her later novel entitled The Heart of Hyacinth (1903),
Watanna inhabited a culturally schizophrenic space in between West and East,
whiteness and otherness, femininity and ethnicity. This paper is an approach to both the
figure of Watanna and her fictional character Hyacinth since both challenge Western
cultural assumptions from a female perspective. Watanna's appropriation gesture had
very significant implications in her development of a literary career as a woman writer
with ethnic bonds since she opted for difference by rejecting to adopt a white
mainstream alter-ego; turned the cultural stigma of her Chinesesness into an asset; and,
took advantage of the positive reception of her female condition although only in
relation to her pretended Japaneseness. Her constructed identity was not simply a
marketing strategy but an intelligent tactics to carry out a critique of Western and
predominantly white society from a female perspective in works such as The Heart of
Hyacinth (1903) whose protagonist, Hyacinth, holds a similarly alien and critical
position to that of Watanna. As explained here, both author and character struggled to
validate her culturally differing identity and spread a boundary-crossing feminist
message addressed to Japanese and North American audiences; Hyacinth as a defiant
character that rebels against both patriarchy and cultural imperialism and Watanna as an
intelligent author who takes advantage of her alienated positioning and brings into
question both cultural and patriarchal axioms.
PANEL 3: COMUNICACIONES
“‘She Began To Scrutinize’: The Subversive Gaze In Brick Lane By Monica Ali”
Noemí Pereira Ares, U. de Santiago de Compostela
Abstract: The present paper intends to study the subversive implications of the
narratological technique of focalization in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane. Relying on
postcolonial and gender studies, I argue that, in Brick Lane, Ali uses focalization to
subvert the prevailing centrality of both the white Western gaze--“the imperial gaze” as
defined by Kaplan (1997)--and the male gaze. To this effect, Ali has created a narrative
in which the main focalizer, Nazneen, is a Spivakian subaltern female character, a
character who, moreover, is recurrently looking at and scrutinizing Western and
Eastern, white and coloured, dressed and undressed, male and female bodies.
KEY WORDS: Brick Lane, focalization, imperial gaze, male gaze, subversion.
“Camping on Stage: Reading Gender Subversion in Charles Ludlam’s Camille”
Elena Igartuburu García, U. of Oviedo
Abstract:
Although dominant gender stereotypes are nowadays contested in many different
contexts, there is still certain reluctance, in general, to accept that the arts can play a
really meaningful part in the struggle for political subversion and representation. This
qualm becomes even stronger when dealing with camp, performance and theatre. The
general understanding of these forms as connected closely to entertainment seem to rob
them of all their political potential. Nonetheless, works such as those of Charles
Ludlam, a 70s American playwright and driving force the theatre of the Ridiculous,
allow readings, through the discourse of camp, that do not only destabilize gender
stereotypes but also help inscribing alternative notions of gender and sexuality. Thus,
Camille appears as an example of how camp can be both used and read as a strategy that
disrupts dominant ideals of gender and sexuality. Through an inscription of other
subject positions, other ways of being human, such as homosexuality or travestism,
within mainstream narratives and discourses, does not only breaks down their continuity
and coherence, but also creates a space for the inclusion of these othered subjectivities
in their own terms within public spheres.
Key words: theatre of the ridiculous, drama, camp, queer, gender subversion, Charles
Ludlam, Camille
“The Post-patriarchal Astronaut as Father: Michael Lopez-Alegria in Manuel Huerga’s
documentary Son and Moon (2009)”
Sara Martín Alegre, U. Autónoma de Barcelona
Abstract: Manuel Huerga’s documentary Son and Moon (Diario de un astronauta)
(2009) is a singular cultural hybrid: a film made in English by a Catalan production
team and focused on the magnetic personality of Spanish-American astronaut Michael
Lopez-Alegria (active 1992-2012). Son & Moon is of particular interest from the point
of view of Gender Studies, particularly of Masculinities Studies. Huerga documents
specifically Lopez-Alegria’s worries as a father of a 7-year-old son who resists his
father’s attempts to stay in touch despite the distance, imposed by Lopez-Alegria
record-breaking seven-month stay in space, on board the ISS. Astronaut and film defend
the idea that a father (a parent?) has the right to sacrifice part of his family life for the
sake of his career but also that this choice must be justified to children, in this case to
the son. I believe this might offer a post-patriarchal angle from which to consider the
contemporary male astronaut, both in the light of his golden age patriarchal
predecessors and of the gaps in Huerga’s film in relation to female astronauts (and
indeed, to daughters).
Keywords: Astronaut, masculinity,
documentary, Michael Lopez-Alegria
Masculinity Studies,
science
non-fiction,
PANEL 4: MESA REDONDA
“The Lost Female Tradition II: Predecessors, Contemporaries And Successors Of James
Joyce In Irish Writing”
Coordinadora: Margarita Estévez Saá (U. de Santiago de Compostela)
Participantes: María Jesús Lorenzo Modia (U. de A Coruña), José María Tejedor
Cabrera (U. de Sevilla), José Manuel Estévez Saá (U. de Santiago de Compostela)
Abstract:
The purpose of this round table is to share the initial results of the research project “The
Lost Female Tradition: Predecessors, Contemporaries and Successors of James Joyce in
Irish Writing” (FEM2010-16897). This is the second part of a previous round table, in
which we presented the objectives, hypothesis and methodology of the project. On this
occasion, we shall focus on academic results. Therefore, the members of the round table
will explain the thematic and formal features of texts by Irish women writers that have
clearly influenced James Joyce’s literary production, as well as the impact of the great
Irish genius on the work of Irish women writers who came after him. Maria Edgeworth,
Sydney Owenson, Somerville and Ross, Julia O’Faolain and Emma Donoghue will be
some of the authors whose literary output will be assessed with James Joyce’s figure
and work as referents.
KEYWORDS: James Joyce, gender studies, Irish literature, Maria Edgeworth, Sydney
Owenson, Somerville and Ross, Julia O’Faolain, Emma Donoghue
PANEL 5: MESA REDONDA
“Violent Women: Popular Postfeminist Notions of Agency and Empowerment”
Coordinadora: Mª Belén Martín Lucas (U. de Vigo)
Participantes: Pilar Cuder Domínguez (U. de Huelva), Beatriz Domínguez García (U. de
Huelva), Andrea Ruthven (U. de Vigo)
Abstract: When discussing women and violence, classic feminist paradigms have
focused typically on women as objects of patriarchal violence, both structural and
individual. In more recent years, attention has been paid to the multifarious implication
of women in violent acts, whether in the domestic sphere or in public ones such as the
military and terrorism. The “bad girls” with guns and martial arts dexterity are a
common trope in popular versions of postfeminist womanhood, especially influential as
a role model for girls and young women of the 21st century. Through the analysis of
specific texts and visual representations, we propose to expose in this session the
cooptation of key feminist concepts of agency and empowerment at the hands of
conservative antifeminist popular discourses that once again come to exploit,
symbolically and literally, women’s bodies and reinforce a masculinist capitalist culture
that continues to foster violence. We sustain that women’s participation by consent in
this kind of structural violence constitutes in fact one more subtle kind of gender
violence.