Education

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“Toward A Queer Ecofeminism” by Greta Gaard

The following is a quick review of an article read for the Ecofeminism class in which I am a TA — yay! I’d like to figure out how to TA more… though apparently you cannot TA for a class you haven’t actually taken. Considering the changeover in classes occurring in my program in the past…

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The unexamined dissertation: not worth writing?

As some who read my blog may know already, I’m currently struggling with the process of writing my dissertation proposal. Despite writing being one of the things I do best and most easily, and for various reasons that aren’t important right now, I’ve had some nervous procrastination issues with writing this proposal. Thus my adviser…

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A Paean to the Librarian

My dissertation proposal research continues apace – sometimes stutteringly slowly, other times with a swiftness and surety which reassures me that I’m on the right path and doing the right thing. I need those moments, believe me! This is one of those moments. I’ve just gotten off the phone with the CIIS librarian who’s also…

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Woman in the Shaman’s Body

The apparently overwhelmingly powerful need to control women which some men appear to have is painfully expressed yet again in a form which is recorded by anthropology professor Barbara Tedlock’s research for her 2005 book Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion & Medicine. Granddaughter of an Ojibwe midwife and herbalist, and…

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Exploring power with rather than power over

In the same year as Ely & Meyerson’s amazing article regarding the malleability of masculinity, Euro-American columnist Nicholas D. Kristof and Asian-American lecturer and business executive Sheryl WuDunn — both also married, journalists, and Pulitzer Prize winners — publish Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. In a sweeping, journalistic writing style…

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Poetry is Not A Luxury & Mighty Be Our Powers

Closely examining our matrifocal past and present offers a solid basis from which to theorize a possible healthier future — one not damagingly based in androcentrism. Such a future will not come about on its own, of course; if women are to regain their rightful positions as cultural creators and leaders then they will have…

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Fascinatingly more on matrifocal societies

Both Sanday (reviewed by me here and here) and Du are anthropologically trained ethnographers researching indigenous societies. As previously noted, their work offers explicit epistemological modifications of great benefit for a more humane, feminized science. This is not the only valid methodology available, however, to a women’s spirituality scholar, as is demonstrated by the next…