Gender

Culinary Transitions: Understanding the Kitchen Space through Advertisements

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257 views

Kashyapi Ghosh1 and V. Vamshi Krishna Reddy2

1Ph.D Scholar, IIT Tirupati. ORCID: 0000-0001-5394-6076. Email: hs18d504@iittp.ac.in

2Assistant Professor, University of Hyderabad. ORCID: 0000-0003-0383-6287

Email: vamshi.vemireddy@uohyd.ac.in

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.13

Abstract

The kitchen is a ubiquitous space in the Indian domestic life. Yet there hasn’t been a lot of academic discourses around it possibly owing to its mundane nature. In this article, I aim to look into the gendered nature of the space through advertisements. Advertisements are digital documents of everyday life This article deliberates on the notion that the kitchen space in urban India is undergoing a change in representation and participation. This change is reflected in the advertisements, created keeping in mind the perception of its viewers. The gendered segregation of work done in the home space have been deliberated by a number of scholars. This article problematises those viewpoints and challenges DeVault’s notion of “womanly conduct” through the narrative of the advertisements.

Keywords: advertisements, gender, kitchen space.

Entangled Histories: Gender and the Community Mobilisations of the Ezhavas in Colonial Kerala

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307 views

Kavyasree R

Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Women’s Studies, University of Hyderabad,

kavyasreeraghunath@gmail.com, ORCID id: 0000-0002-5399-7217

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.05

Abstract

This paper explores how transnational historical approaches towards gender can provide a fresh perspective to locate women’s histories of colonial India and how such enquiries can widen the scope of exploring the rich archival sources available. By bringing in the recent scholarship in the area of gender and transnatioanal history, this paper would demonstrate the possibilities to unearth complex and entangled histories of women by bringing to the discussion the community consolidation efforts of Ezhavas, an erstwhile untouchable caste in the colonial Kerala, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the transnational character of the cultural and ideological transactions that shaped the Ezhava community mobilization in the wake of colonial transformations in the region, the paper would trace the specific ways in which such exchanges shaped the history of gender within the Ezhava movement. In doing so, this paper would point towards the need to go beyond both colonial and nationalist paradigms to unpack the intricate histories of gender, caste and regional social movements during the age of empire.

Keywords: Gender, Social Reform, Caste, Social Movement, Modernity, Transnational History

Performative Subjects & the Irresistible Lack of Understanding in David Mamet’s Oleanna: a Butlerian Discourse Analysis

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242 views

Hojatolla Borzabadi Farahani1 & Mariam Beyad2

1Department of English language, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran

2Associate Professor, University of Tehran. Email: n_bfarahani@yahoo.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.16

Abstract:

The present study tends to explore the constitution of power and its formative effects on David Mamet’s play, Oleanna, a very controversial work dealing with sexual harassment and political correctness. The analysis is going to be done applying views and results of Judith Butler’s notion of gender and identity trouble to the play first through explanation of related key concepts like difference, decentering, subject and language, and then utilizing them to analyze the roots of sudden, surprising transformations and role-reversals of the involved characters, John and Carol, through the three acts. Furthermore, it is tried to find out the causes of unavoidable violence within the contexts of the relations going between the characters.

Keywords: gender, identity, difference, decentering, performative, understanding, violence, discourses, language

Women and Cultural Transformation: The Politics of Representation in the Novels of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay

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211 views

Sudip Roy Choudhury

Ph.D Research Scholar, Raiganj University, West Bengal, India. Orcid: 0000-0003-4833-7975. Email id: sudiproychoudhury60@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.07

 Abstract

This paper begins by arguing that Bankimchandra, a pioneering novelist and nationalist thinker of India, sought to contain the nineteenth century ‘woman question’ within his nationalist project of ‘cultural transformation’. But this nationalist ideal is based on a gendered differentiation of the nation-culture into spiritual and material which has a far reaching implication in terms of his novelistic re-presentation of the nineteenth century ‘woman question’ and the ‘hierarchical inclusion’ of women in the political space of the nation. Hence, by contextualizing the works of Bankimchandra in a time of colonial encounter the present paper aims to bring out the complexities and paradoxes inherent in Bankimchandra’s formation of the strategy of re-presentation of women and reform in several of his novels.

Keywords: Colonial encounter, cultural transformation, nationalist consciousness, gender, social reform.

Clashing Masculinities: Amos Oz’s Panther in the Basement

168 views

Can Bahad?r Yüce

Indiana University, 1011 E 3rd St, Bloomington, IN 47405, cbyuce@indiana.edu, orcid.org/0000-0001-5904-8007. Email: cbyuce@indiana.edu

 Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.09

Received December 14, 2017; Revised March March 31, 2018; Accepted April 10, 2018; Published May 06,  2018.

 Abstract

In Middle Eastern fiction, the East-West discourse has largely been discussed through gender representations. Amos Oz’s 1998 novel Panther in the Basement follows this pattern by offering a complex portrayal of concurrent themes regarding the creation of the modern Middle East such as nation-building and empire. The novel narrates the friendship between a Jewish boy and a British soldier. The contrast between the boy’s emerging manhood and the soldier’s deficient masculinity suggests a reading of the tension between nationalism and colonialism through the realm of gender. The boy’s manliness features represent the idealism of the emerging nation-state whereas the soldier’s vulnerable masculinity represents declining imperial colonialism. The novel’s presentation of “clashing masculinities” indicates that a variety of masculinities exist, instead of one type of masculinity. This paper explores how Panther in the Basement offers cultural criticism by deconstructing the conventional conceptualizations of gender.

Keywords: masculinity, nationalism, colonialism, cultural criticism, gender, Amos Oz, the New Man, Middle Eastern literature.

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Reconsidering Performativity, Performance and Imagination: A Possibility in Erasing the Difference

170 views

Tapaswi H M

Doctoral research scholar, Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH), MAHE. ORCID: 0000-0002-6867-6088. Email: tapaswi.hm@gmail.com

 Volume 10, Number 1, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n1.04

Received October 30, 2017; Revised January 26, 2018; Accepted January 30, 2018; Published February 04, 2018.

 Abstract:

The overarching history of the term ‘performativity’ seems to have undergone variety of meaning starting from linguistic studies to gender. This variation in meaning, however, seems to differentiate the term ‘performativity’ from the other term which has the same root word, i.e. ‘performance’. The association between ‘performativity’ and ‘performance’ doesn’t seem to be studied extensively with reference to theatre. This article tries to examine the possible connection between these two terms and the role of imagination in the process of connecting these two terms. Taking into the account the idea of transformation of actor into a character and the role of imagination this article examines the subtleties of performance and performativity. The article discusses this connection with the help of an example from the mid-sixteenth century.

 Keywords: Performativity, performance, imagination, gender, actor, audience.

The Body Move: Revising Portuguese Female Poetry of the First Quarter of the Twentieth Century

201 views

Isabel Pinto

Research Centre for Communication and Culture (the Catholic University of Portugal), Faculdade de Ciências Humanas, UCP, Palma de Cima, Lisboa–Portugal.E-mail: vilhalpandos@hotmail.com

Volume 8, Number 4, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n4.05

Received August 25, 2016; Revised December 15, 2016; Accepted December 20, 2016; Published January 14, 2017

Abstract

The first quarter of the twentieth century in Portugal was characterised by a series of important historical and political events: the Regicide (1st February 1908), the fall of the Monarchy and establishment of the Republic (5th October 1910), and the First World War (1914-1918). By this time, women could not yet vote and they were systematically ignored in the debate of crucial social issues. Therefore, the main question here addressed is how poetry as free embodiment can take part in a gender revolution, promoting the feminist turn. The answer lies in the consequent breakout of female sentimental literature, which entitled women to reveal themselves, by enabling the poetic scrutiny of their intimacy through a particular focus on the body as prime referent. In this way, they dared to expose dreams, desires, fulfilments and despairs, firming an identity pact through poetry, and engendering a collective voice with social meaning. The published poems here analysed convey the idea that being a woman was something valuable and unique, and, at the same time, manage to inscribe female poets such as Virgínia Vitorino and Zulmira Falcarreira in the Portuguese intellectual mainstream.

Keywords: twentieth-century poetry; women; gender; body; feminism.

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Towards a Taxonomy of Masculinities: Mapping Hegemonic and Alternative Masculine Practices in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terror and That Long Silence

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Suraj Gunwant1 & Rashmi Gaur2

1Ph.D. candidate at the department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee. Email: suraj.15may@gmail.com. 2Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee. 

  Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.20

Received April 19, 2016; Revised July 04, 2016; Accepted July 15, 2016; Published August 18, 2016


 Abstract

This paper reads two early novels of Shashi Deshpande and maps the ways in which traditional and new alternative masculinities find juxtaposition in the chosen texts. Although Shashi Deshpande is regularly posited as an author of progressive feminist politics, whose fictions present a subjugated femininity under the oppression of a unitary and oppressive masculinity; this reading, however, complicates this position by exploring diverse and contradictory embodiments of manhood in her works. In so doing, this study submits that the presence of supportive or caring masculinities militates against the popular notion of a singular, oppressive and homogenous masculinity and problematizes the notion of pervasive and universal patriarchy. However, these caring or testicular masculinities do not find much textual endorsement. On the contrary, it is the traditional/ patriarchal masculinities that retain their dominance, which allows us to expose the novels’ unconscious support of the status quo.

Keywords: Shashi Deshpande, Masculinities, Gender

Between Tales and Tellers: Literary Renderings of Gender Fluidity in Comparative Study

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Oindri Roy

English and Foreign Language University, Hyderabad

Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF


 Abstract

The study pertains to the literary explorations of non-normative sexualities to look into the hypothesis that narratives of transsexuality and intersexuality embody the processuality of the interaction between literariness, the nature of the texts and experiences of non-normative sexualities, as the content of the texts. The scope of the paper comprises three texts – The Danish Girl (2002), The Pregnant King and The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story (2010). A comparative study is attempted to locate into the divergences and convergences in the texts based on: firstly, firstly, the functionality of literariness in the textual articulations of gender fluidity or the possibility of locating a similar (not same) literary value in the textual articulations of gender fluidity; secondly, whether (and how) the writing of gender fluidity influences literary forms/practices, the modifications and the re-creations, thus, entailed. The insights derived from the above comparative study about the literary aspects of narrating non-normative sexualities, may be used to enhance theoretical insights into the same i.e. experiences of non-normative sexualities or gender fluidities.

Keywords: Sexuality, transsexuality, The Danish Girl, The Pregnant King, The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story, gender Keep Reading

Theorizing Men and Men’s Theorizing: Mapping the Trajectory of the Development of Victorian Masculinity Studies

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145 views

Natasha Anand

IGNOU (New Delhi), India

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF


Abstract

This article presents an overview of critical studies on Victorian men and Victorian masculinity. It begins by defining masculinity and delineating how its sociology is typically understood as consisting of three main ‘waves.’ It then proceeds to tracing the early beginnings of Victorian Masculinity Studies through the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Subsequently, it provides a reading of major works on Victorian masculinity from the 1990s to the 2000s. In so doing, it argues how the trajectory of both literary and historical scholarship has moved away from the traditional focus on a unitary, homogeneous, and culturally sanctioned form of Victorian masculinity to the plurality of Victorian masculinities. Drawing from Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity, which posits a hierarchy of multiple masculinities engaged in power relations, the article reviews works that examine a series of dominant as well as subordinate masculinities as created, negotiated and sustained in the Victorian era. The article finally shows how the analysis of multiple forms of Victorian masculinity points toward the fluidity and instability of masculine identities thereby constructing the subject of Victorian masculinity as an ever-changing theoretical phenomenon embedded within historically, culturally and socially embedded discourse that is crucial not only to an understanding of Victorian studies but also to the academic study of both literature and history.

Keywords: hegemonic masculinity, masculinity vs. masculinities, subordinate masculinity, Victorian gender ideology Keep Reading

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