Special Issue:
Gendering Bodies, Institutional Hegemonies

This issue of Feminist Studies explores the ways institutions — legal, governmental, medical, educational, and household — participate in the gendering of bodies and are themselves gendered. At any given historical moment, dominant and resistant meanings of “women,” “gender,” and “sexuality” are socially and politically constituted in institutions through cultural struggles. The authors in this issue discuss how birth control, assisted reproduction, transsexual transition, hegemonic masculinity, abortion, and domestic violence are each articulated and contested in imperial law and economic discourses (Sreenivas), in medical procedures (Whitehead et al. and DasGupta), in university research regulations (Barnes and Munsch), and in the official practices of presidents (Mattingly). Our authors elucidate how such institutions are gendered, not just in terms of staffing by males, females, and nongender conforming people, but also in the ways they constitute gender relations in their everyday operations. The articles point to the continuing need for institutional histories and ethnographies that are feminist in conception and design. They also provide openings into more progressive gender and sexuality politics by underscoring the contradictions within all institutions.

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Mytheli Sreenivas
Birth Control in the Shadow of Empire: The Trials of Annie Besant, 1877–1878
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Doreen J. Mattingly
The Limited Power of Female Appointments: Abortion and Domestic Violence Policy in the Carter Administration
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Interview with Carol Collins
Moving through Cancer (Art Essay)
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Liberty Walther Barnes and Christin L. Munsch
The Paradoxical Privilege of Men and Masculinity in Institutional Review Boards
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Jaye Cee Whitehead, Kath Bassett, Leia Franchini, and Michael Iacolucci
“The Proof Is in the Pudding”: How Mental Health Practitioners View the Power of “Sex Hormones” in the Process of Transition
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Kathryn Kein
Recovering Our Sense of Humor: New Directions in Feminist Humor Studies (Review Essay)
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News and Views

Claire Willey Sthapit
Gendered Impacts of the Earthquake and Responses in Nepal
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Susannah Bartlow
White Fear in Universities: The Story of an Assata Shakur Mural
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Creative Work

Order the creative work from 41.3 (2 pdfs)

• Meredith Rapport Gringle
  Motherhood Discourse as Neoliberal Project: Poem Performances (Poetry)
  
• Sayantani DasGupta
  Christiane Amanpour and the Quest for the Jewish Egg (Short Story)
  

Cover Art

Front cover center image: Carol Collins. Reality, 2014. Digital photography montage. Permission of Carol Collins.