Abstract(s) of the Week!

You know, I really do look for absurd abstracts in fields other than womyn's studies, and sometimes find them. Unfortunately, they're almost never as good as the stuff one finds in journals like, say, Feminist Formations. So screw it. Here are a couple from that seminal publication.

Navigating Public Spaces: Gender, Race, and Body Privilege in Everyday Life

Samantha Kwan

Borrowing from and refining Peggy McIntosh's (1988) ideas on white privilege, this article introduces the concept of "body privilege" and examines how a lack of body privilege materializes in everyday life. Interviews with forty-two "overweight" women and men reveal a body privilege continuum distinctly patterned by gender and race. Specifically, while a majority of participants are not able to experience a level of comfort when navigating public spaces, women generally report more instances of body nonprivilege. Moreover, a number of Hispanic and white women experience a heightened level of "body consciousness" that leads to some form of "body management." This article documents and discusses this body privilege and its racial and gendered embodiment, along with differences between body privilege and McIntosh's original concept. It also discusses how body privilege sheds new light on crucial debates regarding cultural ideals, women's bodies, and agency.

Unmirroring Pedagogies: Teaching with Intersectional and Transnational Methods in the Women and Gender Studies Classroom

Dawn Rae Davis

As the U.S. academy increasingly markets "the global" and "diversity" for undergraduate student consumption, feminists face new challenges with respect to the decolonizing goals of teaching. Analyzing race, gender, and culture intersections that inform epistemological desires in the Women and Gender Studies classroom, this article examines the potential of a "pedagogy of unmirroring" to engage students in a decolonizing process of learning that facilitates intersectional and transnational feminist methods. The analysis draws from personal teaching experiences to argue that the languages of postcolonial feminist studies can be applied to a politics of knowledge in the classroom by rendering self–other relations of empire visible to the "mirror" of student perceptions in ways that help them confront epistemological desires rooted in imperialist assumptions.

Update: The pirate whose parrot cussed out a TSA employee the other day has an abstract every bit as goofy as these, and Wart-related to boot. He also notes that the Colorado Court of Appeals apparently will publish its decision in the Wart case tomorrow. Can't wait.