Feminist Studies articles from September 2000

Feminist Studies archives from September 2000

PREFACE.
September 22, 2000... "What words of passage to that unlit place? What rites of sense?" So Meena Alexander asks in her poem, "Rites of Sense," in this issue of Feminist Studies, which takes as its point of departure current studies of women and gender in India...

"POINT OF DEPARTURE": FEMINIST LOCATIONS AND THE POLITICS OF TRAVEL IN INDIA.
September 22, 2000... This article is based on a travel story entitled "Points of Departure" set in a locus far away from the villages and bazaars of the Ladakh region of northern India which I have looked upon as areas of my "fieldwork" over the last decade. The...

RITES OF SENSE; PORT OF SUDAN.(Poem)
September 22, 2000... RITES OF SENSE In twilight as she lies on a mat I rub my mother's feet with jasmine oil touch callouses under skin joints upholding that fraught original thing bone, gristle, skin, all that makes her mine. All day she...

REINTERROGATING PARTITION VIOLENCE: VOICES OF WOMEN/CHILDREN/DALITS IN INDIA'S PARTITION.
September 22, 2000... The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 has long been a subject of contentious debates among scholars of South Asia. Today, partition continues to be deployed by various constituencies as a trope for constructions of Hindu-Muslim conflict...

COLLUDING PATRIARCHIES: THE COLONIAL REFORM OF SEXUAL RELATIONS IN INDIA.
September 22, 2000... At first glance, the sheer volume of social reform centering on women in nineteenth-century India leads one to assume that the British colonial state encouraged female emancipation. Conventional history narrates an incremental process of social...

A PREHISTORY OF RIGHTS: THE AGE OF CONSENT DEBATE IN COLONIAL BENGAL.
September 22, 2000... "I saw my daughter lying on the cot, weltering in blood." [1] This statement was part of the evidence given in court by Radhamonee, mother of eleven-year-old Phulmonee, who died of marital rape by her husband in 1890. The child's death was...

REFASHIONING MOTHER INDIA: FEMINISM AND NATIONALISM IN LATE-COLONIAL INDIA.
September 22, 2000... When U. S. journalist Katherine Mayo wrote her infamous 1927 polemic against Indian self-rule, she aptly titled her book Mother India. [1] The title referred to a central chapter of the book, which depicted in gruesome detail the horrors to...

THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN INDIA TODAY-NEW AGENDAS AND OLD PROBLEMS.
September 22, 2000... As many Western feminists may know, India has been home to a highly diverse and creative women's movement in the last two decades. Multitudes of women's groups and organizations, covering a broad political spectrum, from groups affiliated with...

RELIGION, RACE, AND THE DEBATE OVER MUT'A IN DAR ES SALAAM.(temporary marriage)
September 22, 2000... Mut'a is religiously prescribed...It is a laid down principle....If women don't accept it, it's their problem. Tahira Abbas (alias), an upper-class Ithna Asheri teacher in her midforties. Mut'a is just an attempt to give [prostitution]...

MASCULINITY, FEMININITY AND SERVITUDE: DOMESTIC WORKERS IN CALCUTTA IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
September 22, 2000... In a memorable scene in Aparajito, the second film of Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, the destitute Brahmin widow Sarbajaya watches her son learn to serve. She has recently obtained work as a cook in the household of a rich Brahmin, where her...

RE-CRAFTING CONTEMPORARY FEMALE VOICES: THE REVIVAL OF QUILT-MAKING AMONG RURAL HINDU WOMEN OF EASTERN INDIA.(Brief Article)
September 22, 2000... An almost forgotten tradition dating back to the eighteenth century, the making of sujuni kanthas, or embroidered quilts, was revived in the late 1980s, when the private not-for-profit organization Adithi set about developing programs to assist...

AN INTRODUCTION; THE DANCE OF THE EUNUCHS; THE FREAKS.(Poem)
September 22, 2000... I don't know politics but I know the names Of those in power, and can repeat them like Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru. I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar, I speak three languages, write in ...

CALLING KAMALA DAS QUEER: REREADING MY STORY.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2000... ... When I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the Bedroom and closed the door. He did not beat me But my sad woman-body felt so beaten. The weight of my breast and womb...

IN MEMORIAM.
September 22, 2000... Rhonda Williams, who served on the Feminist Studies Board of Editors from 1990-1995, died of cancer on November 7, 2000, at the much-too-young age of 43. At the time of her death she was the director of the Afro-American Studies Program at the...