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Gender and Jewish Identity

Nashim No. 22, Special Issue: Gender and Jewish Identity
Consulting Editors: Elisheva Baumgarten, Sylvia Barack Fishman

Gender scholarship, in both the social sciences and the humanities, shares many interesting parallels with identity studies. Both have been salient and productive areas of research within the various fields of Jewish Studies over the past three decades. The essays in Nashim 22 investigate a wide range of factors that affect women’s and men’s identities, social, religious, and political.

How did Jewish women leaders a century ago see themselves, and how were they seen by others? When 18-year-old women soldiers were sent to impart literacy skills to immigrant women on Israel's periphery, who were the learners and who were the teachers? Why would some ultra-Orthodox women take on standards of modesty going beyond the strict standards of their sects? Can women poets, writing in Hebrew, appropriate a stake in the world's literary and mythic corpus? What concepts of maleness and femaleness emerge when feminist analysis is applied to a famous Talmudic story? How are new roles emerging for women in the twenty-first century affecting the leadership of Orthodox Jewry? Can a biblical woman's voice emerge via the paintbrush of an Orthodox Jewish man? And, finally, whom do we call "mother"? These questions and more are addressed in Nashim 22. 

Everyday Life in Postwar Sierra Leone

Africa Today 58.2, Special Issue: Everyday Life in Postwar Sierra Leone
Guest Editors: Aisha Fofana Ibrahim, Susan Shepler

Most scholarly observers of postwar societies focus at the level of the state, security apparatus, or legislative changes, or they evaluate the success of reconstruction programming. In contrast, with a focus on everyday life in postwar Sierra Leone, the essays in this special issue focus on changes at the level of people’s lived experiences, where the authors believe reconciliation and social reconstruction really take place. The central problematic of the essays is creativity in the formation of new identities and cultures and the remaking of gender, generational relationships, and urbanization. The essays in this issue interrogate the changes wrought by war in totality and examine the emergence of new cultural forms that challenge political, social, economic, and religious discourses and practices in postwar Sierra Leone.  They examine, on the one hand, the seemingly contradictory processes shaped by fissures and breaks, and on the other hand, the continuity that accompanies social life. The topics range from the tactics local Civil Society Organizations are using to cope with funding shortages as international flows dry up, to changes in the identity of people with disabilities, to food as a locus for memory of the war and in discourses of corruption and survival. A pair of articles discuss the phenomenon of okada (motorcycle taxi) drivers, a set of young men, assumed by many to be ex-combatants, navigating new livelihoods and new social identities in postwar Sierra Leone. The final article assesses the state of the so-called “youth crisis” ten years after the end of the war.  These essays provide multiple perspectives on social transformations in postwar Sierra Leone, acknowledging the shifting social and political landscape in which people draw on multiple discursive and material resources to make their everyday lives, and in the process, to remake their society. 

Jewish Women Recording, Reflecting, Revisioning

The cover photo of Nashim, No. 21 (Spring 2011, on the theme of "Women in the Responsa Literature,"
under the consulting editorship of David Golinkin), shows a close-up of a phenomenon unheard of until a very few years ago: a woman's hands scribing a traditional Torah scroll.* The hands are those of Shoshana Gugenheim, one of the world's first women Torah scribes. In her article "A Torah Scroll" (Read for Free) in the issue, Judith Margolis, Nashim's Art Editor, calls attention to Shoshana's work and to her involvement in two related and remarkable projects by Jewish women scribes and artists.

The Women's Torah, completed in Seattle, Washington, on October 15, 2010, with the help of many hands, hearts, and spirits, is not only the first Torah scroll to be written and embellished by an international community of women; it is also the first Torah scroll to be literally sewn together in community. READ MORE.

Women of the Book: Jewish Women Recording, Reflecting, Revisioning, a midrashic (interpretive) scroll based on the form and content of a traditional Torah scroll, is being created on 54 parchment panels (the number of Torah portions) by 54 Jewish women artists from around the world. It is an international, multi-denominational installation that acknowledges the centrality of women’s voices in the texts of our lives. READ MORE.

Lidia Rosanski, Parashat Mishpatim, created for Women of the Book. Etching. 65 × 42 cm.

Sharon Rosenzweig, Parshat Behar, created for Women of the Book. Acrylic. 50 × 70cm.

*Photo of Shoshana Gugenheim by Rebekah Raleigh

Memory studies and Gender studies link insights

JMEWS 8.1, Special Issue: Gendered Memory in the Middle East and North Africa: Cultural Norms, Social Practices, and Transnational Regimes

While memory studies have long excluded the Arab Middle East, many Arab countries have recently started to come to terms with their violent pasts. This special issue of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, entitled “Gendered Memory in the Middle East and North Africa: Cultural Norms, Social Practices, and Transnational Regimes,” presents five case studies from Lebanon, Morocco, and Iraqi Kurdistan, where spaces have opened up for the production of alternative or counter forms of remembering. The papers brought together in this issue tie in with two different fields of research—memory studies and gender studies—linking theoretical insights from both fields to gain a deeper understanding of the ongoing processes of societal and political change in the Middle East and North Africa. The papers explore the tensions and interactions between different forms of memory politics. They seek to answer the question: To what degree did officially controlled efforts to process primary experiences, historiography, public images, and debates into a unified and simplified make-up of narrative, iconic, and ritual elements catered to the wider audience change over time? Introduced and edited by Bettina Dennerlein and Sonja Hegasy, this special issue addresses the broad spectrum of rituals and material manifestations of memory culture, which are a form of representation that gradually changes social orders, particularly in situations of accelerated transformation. Iraq, Lebanon and—the countries dealt with in research articles by Bettina Dennerlein, Susan Slyomovics, Karin Mlodoch, Andrea Fischer-Tahir, and Sune Haugbolle—provide strong examples of how political change is mediated through competing views of the past that always also interpret the present and constitute and prescribe models for the future.

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JMEWS, extremely timely and important

Marcia C. Inhorn, Ph.D,  William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University is the editor of the Journal of Middle East Womens Studies (JMEWS.) She spoke with us about the journal and its unique scholarly impact.

IU PRESS/Journals: What is it about JMEWS that energizes you the most as a scholar?

Marcia Inhorn: JMEWS is now the major scholarly site for Middle East gender scholars across the globe. The journal publishes the work of senior feminist scholars, as well as many young scholars, who are pushing Middle East gender studies in fascinating new directions. The new work in this area is extremely timely and important, especially given events in the Middle Eastern region during the past decade and, most notably, during the past year.

IU PRESS/Journals: Why do you think JMEWS is an important contribution to the body of scholarly research in your field? What difference does it make? 
 

Marcia Inhorn: JMEWS highlights the importance of Middle Eastern women throughout history and in the contemporary period. In addition, JMEWS is the only journal that actively welcomes contributions on Middle Eastern masculinities and sexualities. So much is changing in the Middle Eastern region, in terms of gender, sexuality, politics, social media, and the like. The gender studies scholars who publish in JMEWS are capturing these transformations in very nuanced fashion. The journal offers its readers a wide spectrum of issues to consider, and is truly eye-opening for those who are unfamiliar with the Middle East region.

IU PRESS/Journals: What influence or impact do you hope that your research has on the world and culture?

Marcia Inhorn: For the past 25 years, I have been following the gender impacts of infertility and the emergence of assisted reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), in the Middle Eastern region. I have explored the transformative effects of these technologies on women’s lives, as they search for solutions to their childlessness. In addition, I have explored the impacts of the newest assisted reproductive technologies to overcome male infertility, a condition that is a highly prevalent but hidden across the region. Men’s engagement with these technologies is the theme of my new book, The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East (Princeton UP, 2012), which explores the dynamic transformation of masculinity in conjunction with these new technologies.  The book is a humanizing portrayal of the joys and sorrows of ordinary Middle Eastern men, as they engage in assisted reproduction with the women they love. It debunks many stereotypes of “hegemonic” masculinities in the Middle East, as brought to us by both Western media and some scholars.

IU PRESS/Journals: How would it benefit scholars of different disciplines to read the work of scholars outside their field of expertise?

Marcia Inhorn: At the current historical moment, there is no world region more important than the Middle East. Readers of JMEWS will realize that the Middle Eastern region is not monolithic in its history, languages, religions, cultures, and many other important social attributes.The transformations continuously occurring in Middle Eastern women’s and men’s lives are important, and are part and parcel of the revolutionary protests being enacted across the region today.

IU PRESS/Journals: Who do you hope will read the articles in JMEWS?

Marcia Inhorn: Scholars in Gender Studies, Middle East Studies, Islamic Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, Religious Studies, and History. Educated lay readers interested in empirically based knowledge about Middle Eastern gender.

IU PRESS/Journals: Is there anything else you would like to say to students in your area of research that would entice them to explore the articles in the journal?

Marcia Inhorn: JMEWS has a fantastic new website, which provides visitors with excellent entrée into the journal, its editorial board, its authors, and its essays. Find it here: www.jmews.org.

Marcia also has a website: http://www.marciainhorn.com.

Food Justice

Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 5.1

Since the beginning of its existence, the U.S. has heavily relied on low-wage workers of color to produce, pick, process, pack, or purvey our food. Interestingly, this population is often denied access to the same food that they help to produce because of certain racial barriers. In order to combat inaccessibility to wholesome and nutritious food, it is obligatory to first examine U.S. government food policy and the racial structures surrounding it.

Low-wage laborers of color carry out U.S. food policy and allow food prices to remain diminutive. In fact, the statistics of the matter are shocking. Today Latinos comprise 77 percent of the hired crop labor force in the United States. At least 62 percent of the U.S. meatpacking and poultry-processing workforce is Latino and black. One-third of Wisconsin’s entire dairy farm workforce is Spanish-speaking. Restaurants employ some thirteen million workers, and are the nation’s largest employer of immigrants. According to the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York, 165,000 restaurant workers are employed in New York City. From that number, low-wage, low-benefit jobs are filled largely by “workers of color, and particularly immigrants of color, who are concentrated in the industry’s “bad jobs.” White workers tend to disproportionately hold the few “good jobs.”

In this edition of Race/Ethnicity, we have selected articles from academia as well as those detailing experiences of community activists and practitioners. Sisters of the Soil by Monica M. White examines a model for long-term, self-identified responses to social and environmental injustice in which the community challenges the structures that contribute to the racial and class-based barriers to accessing healthy food. With methodic insight, Sean Sellers and Greg Asbed convey The History and Evolution of Forced Labor in Florida Agriculture, which transports the reader through centuries of experiences that shaped the slave trade in Florida. Bama Athreya thoroughly examines the multi-exploitative global trading practice in West Africa in White Man’s Burden and the New Colonialism in West African Cocoa Production. In Human Rights from Field to Fork, Joann Lo and Ariel Jacobson reveal the struggles of the millions of workers travailing as they labor in various sectors of the U.S. food industry’s “food chain.”

In examining two significant areas of the overall food movement in the U.S.—food security and food justice— Eric Holt-Giménez and Yi Wang, the authors of Reform or Transformation? The Pivotal Role of Food Justice in the U.S. Food Movement, offer a transparent assessment of the ongoing debate within the larger food movement regarding the implicitly exclusionary racial and classist structure of the food industry. David Billings and Lila Cabbil provide a glance at the racial structure that operates in the food system and, arguably, other major institutions throughout this nation in their article, What’s Race Got to Do with It?  In The Struggle for Control of America’s Production Agriculture System and Its Impact of African American Farmers, Gary Pennick painstakingly details the historical experience of black farmers across the South. In describing a “choice-less” situation in their piece, Race and Ethnicity from the Point of View of Farm Workers in the Food System, Nelson Carrasquillo and Richard Mandelbaum dissect the institution of slavery in the United States, bringing us face-to-face with the same foundational dilemmas facing the twenty-first century field worker.

Most essential in this publication are the writings by two workers who boldly share their horrific experiences from working on the “kill floor” and on the “cutting line” at two major meat processing plants in the Midwest. Enduring the back-breaking and degrading tasks associated with these jobs, the workers disclose truths and afford readers a dive into today’s meatpacking and processing operations― an industry that once held up highly skilled and well-paid employment for a huge portion of Midwestern workers. They emotionally impart the vulnerability of life and limb as they work under wildly intense “line speeds”― speeds not meant for humans, but for fully automated machinery― in order to provide for their families. Their stories appear in All About Tyson, by a writer who wished to remain anonymous, and Mohamed Shiekh Osman’s Story by Garat Ibrahim.

Order a subscription by visiting Race/Ethnicity at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=racethmulglocon.
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Poets and Writers

Today’s Crop of International Literary Magazines

Sixty years ago Americans were introduced to the work of authors from around the globe in the pages of New World Writing, a “new adventure in modern reading,” published biannually from 1952 to 1959 by New American Library. During its seven-year run, the journal highlighted literature out of Argentina, Ghana, Japan, and elsewhere alongside poetry and prose by influential American authors, setting the stage for today’s crop of international literary magazines. Transition (dubois.fas.harvard.edu/transition-magazine), founded two years after New World Writing ceased publication, recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. READ MORE.

Jewish women and gender studies

Conversation with Deborah Greniman about the journal Nashim.

Why do you think Nashim is an important contribution to the body of scholarly research in your field? What difference does it make?

When the idea of creating a journal of Jewish women’s and gender studies first occurred to me, my first thought was that this was such an obvious thing that such a journal must already exist. I checked, and it didn’t. We are still the only print journal in the field.

With our themed issues (an idea that came, if I recall correctly, from Shulamit Reinharz), we are creating important basic collections of articles in many areas relating to Judaism, Jews and gender – collections that can be used in course work or to help frame approaches to researching a particular area. Feminist and gender studies mandate an interdisciplinary approach, and we’ve leveraged that to create useful bodies of material in areas as diverse as spirituality, women in the economy, reproductive politics, book lore, poetry, the visual arts, sexuality, and halakhah. Our collections on Yemenite and Iranian Jewish women shed light on unique cultural worlds and on issues like migration and acculturation.

What influence or impact do you hope that your research has on the world and culture?

Before the advent of feminist studies, Jewish studies was by and large a men’s club, and even the few brilliant women who managed to enter the field found themselves almost exclusively studying the activities and writings of men. Feminist studies in Judaism broadens the field immensely, from the point of view not only of the subject matter but also of the perspectives brought to bear on it. As the leading focused scholarly organ in this field, we insist that the articles we publish reflect the use of rigorous feminist analytic methods and be well grounded in Jewish knowledge. Our goal is to create a useful body of knowledge, for academics in many fields and for Jewish life beyond the academic world.

We take pride in the integration of regular features on Jewish feminist art into our scholarly corpus. We hope thereby to expand the ways of thinking about and looking at the cultural and social issues raised in our pages. We believe deeply in the interaction of scholarship, art, and life, and in the mission of feminist studies not only to broaden the knowledge base, but to open minds, enrich our culture, and create a better world.

How would it benefit scholars of different disciplines to read the work of scholars outside their field of expertise?

If you’re in any field of the social sciences or the humanities, Nashim has probably published something in that field. Conversely, when you find an article in your field, you’ll probably find next to it an article bringing the perspective of another discipline to a related subject. Scholars need discipline to ground their work, but that doesn’t mean hacking the world of knowledge into disciplinary pieces.

*Deborah Greniman is the managing editor of Nashim.

Serious feminist scholarship in religious studies

 

 

Interview with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

Why do you think JFSR is an important contribution to the body of scholarly research in your field? What difference does it make?

In the mid 1980s when Prof. Judith Plaskow and I founded the JFSR as a peer-reviewed journal, established theological journals were not interested in publishing intellectual feminist work and feminist journals were not very much interested in serious feminist scholarship in Religious Studies and Theology. JFSR has filled that gap while also changing the field toward recognizing feminist work more broadly. Because of JFSR, feminist scholarship in religion is always visible on library shelves and online. The journal also remains the central cultivator of feminist conversations in diverse scholarly and praxis arenas. Because of our long history, we also serve as an archive, conveying the richness of feminist scholarship in religion to the next generation of scholars and activists.

From the beginning we invited critical contributions from feminists in different religions and global religious contexts as well as critical reflection on feminist practices. We invite not only scholarly contributions but also knowledge and reports of feminist arguments and praxis in different religions around the world. Thus the journal is not beholden to a specific academic discipline or religious community. JFSR’s conversation spans the disciplines and religious life around the globe. We hope to make diverse feminist scholarship available to American and international audiences.

The journal publishes the work of feminist scholars in the academy as well as teachers and activists. It understands itself as a forum for discussion and dialogue between wo/men from different religious and diverse feminist perspectives. We look for contributions that employ, not only gender critical- but also a race, class, and colonial critical-perspectives. We believe we are accountable not only to the academy but also to wo/men in religious communities around the world. We thereby hope to engender a critical constructive discussion about religion not only among feminist intellectuals but also among the wider public.

What influence or impact do you hope that your research has on the world and culture?

Since religion and culture are intertwined, critical feminist scholarship in religion seeks to change people’s mindsets internalized in and through cultural customs, religious education and preaching. It does so not only by critically analyzing malestream texts and scholarship but also by articulating religious visions and actions for social-cultural-religious change. In articles, roundtables, and special sections the JFSR attempts to open up new ways of thinking and new scholarship on religion. At the same time it seeks to give wo/men the intellectual tools to question established religious authorities that deny full citizenship to wo/men in religion.

How would it benefit scholars of different disciplines to read the work of scholars outside their field of expertise?

Since the JFSR is interdisciplinary we hope that feminist scholars in other disciplines will seriously engage the work done in feminist studies in religion. Millions of wo/men around the world define their identity and work in terms of their religion. Feminist scholars in other disciplines can no longer overlook this. At a time when religion is in the news every day, feminist scholarship may no longer ignore the work done by their feminist colleagues in religion. Any serious discussion on religion in classrooms across the country needs to seriously engage the research of scholars in religion. The JFSR seeks to be a bridge between feminist scholars in other disciplines and those in religious and theological studies.

Fred Aman on Global Legal Studies

Interview with Fred Aman, editor,  International Journal of Global Legal Studies

What is it about global legal studies that energizes you the most as a scholar?
 

Studying law from a global perspective means rethinking many things that might otherwise be taken for granted: the centrality of states to legal ordering, the relevance of national boundaries to law making and law enforcement, the association of legal traditions with particular cultural traditions. Global legal studies turns these expectations on their heads – highlighting the overlap between public and private sectors, the multiple sources of legality and legal consciousness, the interdependence or intertwinement of institutions within and across national boundaries. Global legal studies concentrate on particular forms of transnationalism (i.e., transnationalism with global purposes) and it overlaps to some extent with comparative and international law, but what has been particularly exciting to me has been the challenge to rethink domestic law processes from a global perspective – as checks and balances, and the very notion of democratic representation, shift in relation to the dynamic contexts of globalization.

Why do you think IJGLS is an important contribution to the body of scholarly research in your field? What difference does it make?

The initial inspiration for starting IJGLS was our realization that a new body of law was emerging along with the globalization of capital, new forms of cultural exchange, and the rise of transnational migration in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. Twenty years ago, when we published our first volume, there were well-established journals on international and comparative law, and newer journals on transnational law, but no academic legal journal was devoted specifically to this new legal field. Recognizing that global law involved important new groups of legal actors, especially in the transnational private sector, we designed the journal to be interdisciplinary as well as international. And in the hope that the journal would catch the imaginations of younger professionals and rising scholars, we instituted a double peer review system involving both student and faculty editorial boards. The journal is dedicated to innovative scholarship on global processes and law in the broadest sense of both terms. We have never been concerned to draw lines between what is “global” and what isn’t; our purpose is to draw scholars who are prepared to see connections in areas of the law that do not have a pre-determined institutional (or even national) location, but that have global significance in some way.  Some of our symposium themes have been ground-breaking – for example, on feminism and globalization, globalization and education, and (seriously) globalization and baseball. These were firsts. The journal fulfills its mission well in giving scholars pursuing cutting edge scholarship in the gray zones uncharted by more conventional approaches to law not only a place to publish but an established audience prepared to appreciate their work. In that regard, the symposium conferences are also integral to the journal’s mission, as they give scholars, practitioners and sometimes policy makers a chance to meet and exchange ideas in person. 

What influence or impact do you hope that your research has on the world and culture?
   

My research has focused primarily on what I call “the domestic face of globalization.” To explain: I have been interested in understanding trends in domestic law – particularly administrative law and regulation – from a global perspective. These were my areas of specialization during my years of law practice, and I had many opportunities to see how flexible these legal processes are, depending not only on key actors’ understandings of the law, but also their perceptions of the world around them.  In my thirty-five years as an academic, my research has emphasized the ways administrative agencies function not only between the public and private sectors, but also between different arrangements of checks and balances, different visions of democratic representation, and even different understandings of sovereignty in the global milieu. I am fundamentally interested in improving the prospects for democracy and social security in the broad sense – and I hope my research contributes to an understanding of law’s potential role in these areas.  I have always thought about and taught law as a way of helping people build relationships, and to realize their interest in the well being of others. Administrative law and global legal studies may seem a long way from that aspiration, but I hope that anyone who reads my work will find resources there for similar hopes.

Is there anything else you would like to say to students in your area of research that would entice them to explore the articles in the journal you publish?

The world is changing quickly, and with it, legal institutions, our expectations of law, and law itself.  Today’s law students learn the law, to be sure, but they also learn how to think about law – and how to teach themselves, as they will have to do for the next forty or fifty or more years of their legal careers.  The IJGLS is dedicated to emergent areas of law in precisely this sense. The articles are wide ranging in terms of theme, scope and aims, as well as in their conceptualization of globalization or whatever aspect of it is relevant to each project. There is rich browsing there on many a topic. But the journal is also an archive of innovation in legal scholars’ efforts to keep pace with a new area of law – and this makes it potentially relevant to anyone interested in how to think about the currents of legal change from midstream.