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Conceiving
Motherhood
The
Jewish Female Body in Israeli Reproductive Policy
By Elana Bloomfield
Haverford
College
Within many traditional Jewish texts,
women’s
bodies are portrayed as fertile vessels through which they can birth
children and fulfill their nation-building roles. When Zionism arose as
a prominent Jewish movement in the mid-1800s, Theodore Herzl envisioned
this nationalist movement as an alternative to religious Judaism.
Nevertheless, he accessed the Jewish narratives of female fertility as
a means of enabling Jewish survival and of contrasting the newly
masculinized Jews. Women’s natural, passive fertility became a
fundamental part of the nation-building endeavor and a necessity to
Jewish survival. Women’s reproduction became not only a physical
necessity but also a social role and a means of her political
enfranchisement. Although the pronatalism in the early era of Israel’s
statehood maintained loose tethers between the reproductive policies
and religious narratives, the recent and nearly unilateral support for
modern fertility treatments tightened those connections and galvanized
the religious subtexts within Israeli society. These treatments,
particularly in vitro fertilization, facilitate women’s national duty
to bear children, appealing to a complex narrative of nationalism which
affirms the reproductive role of the female body.
pdf
‘The
Good and
Bad of that Sexe’
Monstrosity
and Womanhood in Early Modern England
By Alletta Brenner
University
of Oregon
This paper examines constructions of
gender in
early modern England as a way of understanding the emerging of
modernity in a period of extreme social and political upheaval. Through
a study of portrayals of women as monstrous in the English popular
press in the second half of the seventeenth century, the author
describes how fundamental changes in the way that the public made sense
of the world—increasingly according to the modernist perception that
the universe is made up of an orderly and defined a system of inherent
and infallible relationships—led people and things that defied the
categories ascribed them to seem monstrous and threatening. Gender, as
a contested site upon which questions of culture and politics have
often played out over the ages, became a particular focus of attention
during this period. In this context, women came to be seen as a
threatening force, and described with great frequency in the popular
press as monstrous creatures to be feared and loathed. pdf
Deterritorialized
Women in the Global City
An
Analysis of Sex Trafficking in Dubai, Tokyo and New York
By Janice Phaik Lin Goh
University
of Washington, Seattle
Sex
trafficking is a global phenomenon that involves the recruitment,
harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the
purpose of a commercial sex act. According to the U.S State Department,
600,000 to 800,000 individuals are trafficked across international
borders every year. While globalization has inadvertently facilitated
the trafficking of women, it has also allowed for an international
awareness and consensus about the atrocities underlying sex
trafficking. Yet, despite the proliferation of international
institutions, conventions and agents united by a common agenda to
combat trafficking, sex trafficking still a growing, transnational
process. While it is easy to assert that developing countries lack the
political and legal infrastructures to combat trafficking, how do we
account for developed cities that serve as destination countries for
similar rights violations? Why are women and children still being
exploited as sex slaves despite the existence of domestic and
international laws that are meant to protect them? Through an analysis
of three developed global cities of today, Tokyo, Dubai and New York,
this paper will reveal the legal, social and political factors patterns
that directly and indirectly facilitate sex trafficking. pdf
Student
Outcomes from a Study Abroad Program
The
Impact of Having a Diverse Group of Students
By Eugene Edgar, Anthony Kelley, and
Ed Taylor
University
of Washington, Seattle
This
case study positions one study abroad program’s goals within the larger
U.S. debate as to the purpose of study-abroad programs (the
neo-liberal-free market vision as opposed to the notion of global
citizen). In this study, 19 racially and gender diverse students
completed a ten-week study abroad program in Port Elizabeth, South
Africa. Using a pre-post questionnaire and excerpts from student
papers, a range of outcomes were documented. Student changes were noted
in global mindedness, beliefs, and understanding of South Africa
culture. The group diversity, setting, service learning activities, and
structured reflection sessions played a critical role in achieving
these outcomes. pdf
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