1st Edition
Women in Transition Crossing Boundaries, Crossing Borders
This volume brings together scholars, students and writers as well as artists from around the world. By choosing a thematic focus on "transition" in women’s lives, we present research on women who have crossed biological, geopolitical and political borders as well as emotional, sexual, cultural and linguistic boundaries. The international approach brings together different cultures and genres in order to emphasize the links and connections that bind women together, rather than those which separate them. The chapters consider the ways in which the changes and transitions women undergo influence the world we live in. We are particularly interested in the idea of crossing borders and how this influences identity and belonging, and the theme of crossing boundaries in the context of motherhood as well as sexual orientation. The topic is timely given the waves of migration all around the world in recent times. The contributors deal with issues central to contemporary life, such as gender equality and women’s empowerment, as well as understanding women’s identities and being sensitive to fluid concepts of gender and sexuality.
Introduction: Women in Transition
Claire Williams and Maria-José Blanco
Part I: Crossing Boundaries
Body and Mind
1 Mònica Rovira (Filmmaker, Barcelona, Spain)
The Making of To See a Woman
2 Diana Aramburu (University of California, Davis, USA)
Exposing the Monstrous Double: The Body in Crisis in Meritxell Bosch’s Graphic Autobiography
3 Maria-José Blanco (King’s College London, UK)
Filling in the Gaps between Childhood and Menopause in Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama
4 Edward Scrivens (Oxford University, UK)
Dichotomies of the Feminine: Mediating Women and the Boundaries of the Primordial in Ancient Egyptian Textual Culture
Motherhood
5 Anna Johnson (Writer, UK)
Cascading Transitions: Becoming a Writer and Engaging with Neurodiversity in Response to Motherhood
6 Feifei Zhan (SOAS, University of London, UK)
The Ambiguity of Pain: Self, Fragments and Female Connection in Chen Ran’s A Private Life
Part II: Crossing Borders
Exile and Diaspora
7 Marcia Thompson (Artist, London, UK)
Vanishing Lines
8 Tuna Erdem and Seda Ergul (Performing Artists and Academics, London, UK)
Border Crossing Bibliophiles: Just in Bookcase by Istanbul Queer Art Collective
9 Indrani Karmakar (Rhodes University, South Africa)
Transitional Figures: Partition, Victimhood and Agency in Two Fictions by Jyotirmoyee Devi
10 Marta Arnaldi (University of Oxford, UK)
Transnational Melancholia: Depression and Exile in Italian Women’s Poetry from Early-Modern to Contemporary Age
Space and Place
11 Sandra Daroczi (University of Bath, UK)
Narrative Horse Power in Julia Kristeva’s Fiction: Reading Movement in Meurtre à Byzance (2004) and Thérèse mon amour (2008)
12 Claire Williams (University of Oxford, UK)
‘Putting the Fish in the Stream’: The Intersection of Literature and Biography in Guidebooks to (Clarice Lispector’s) Rio and (Maria Ondina Braga’s) Braga
13 Adalgisa Giorgio (University of Bath, UK)
Reading Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels with the Grain: The View of a Female Academic from Southern Italy
14 Suzan Bozkurt (Independent Scholar, UK)
Stepping out into Cyberspace: How Women Negotiate Digital Spaces in Politics, Economics and Culture
Biography
Maria-José Blanco is a Group -Analyst (IGA, London). She has an academic background in Spanish literature and language. Since 2008 she has taught at the Spanish, Portuguese and Latin-American Department at King’s College London.
Claire Williams is Associate Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Peter’s, College. Her research focuses on women's writing, minority writing and life-writing from the Lusophone world.
CONTRIBUTORS Mònica Rovira (Filmmaker, Barcelona, Spain), Diana Aramburu (University of California, Davis, USA), Maria-José Blanco (King's College London, UK), Edward Scrivens (University of Oxford), Anna Johnson (writer, UK), Feifei Zhan (SOAS, UK), Marcia Thompson (artist, UK), Tuna Erdem and Seda Ergul, Istanbul Queer Art Collective (London, UK), Indrani Karmakar (Rhodes University, South Africa), Marta Arnaldi (University of Oxford), Sandra Daroczi (University of Bath, UK), Claire Williams (University of Oxford, UK), Adalgisa Giorgio (University of Bath, UK), Susan Bozkurt (Independent Scholar, UK).
