‘English Vinglish’ and Bollywood: what is ‘new’ about the ‘new woman’?

Bollywood’s transnational mechanisms offer a unique space to study gendered subjectivity. My article studies a specific Bollywood movie, English Vinglish (2012) to draw out the profile of the ‘new woman.’ Persistently, I question the ‘new-ness’ to the construction of women when the ‘new’ reiterates the values of tradition, nation, and family. The ‘new’ seems to exist as a particular and unique transaction between local traditions and the global spread of populations that make limiting conceptions of woman, nation, or family, anomalies in a world propelled by expanding market needs and demands. The ‘new’ while offering possibilities for women, concomitantly carries different exclusions based on class, religion, language, and other identities. Understanding the formation of gender under contemporary conditions of transnationalism requires attentiveness to an insidious partnership of possibilities and exclusions that makes it simplistic to think in terms of progress or regress.     

Gendered Couchsurfing: women from Western Europe and East-Asia contesting de-sexualised cosmopolitanism

Couchsurfing is a social-networking site for hospitality exchange. To promote the site, the organizer, Couchsurfing.org, creates the discourse of Couchsurfing cosmopolitanism to emphasize the value of sharing with strangers and tolerance of cultural difference in Couchsurfing practice. This study argues that the discourse production is under a patriarchal system, in which the experience about women’s fear of men’s harassment and according practice are concealed. By conceptualizing the sexed-and-gendered body in Couchsurfing, this study exposes the power, knowledge and social relation in the cross-cultural context of Couchsurfing, represented not only in women’s feeling, performance and interaction but also in their embodied cosmopolitanism. The comparison between with Western-European and East-Asian women’s experience is also included in the analysis. It highlights the effects of the gender role inscribed on women’s body which makes a difference in women’s cross-cultural interaction as well as their embodied cosmopolitanism.     

藏族妇女教育历史回顾

藏族妇女教育是藏族教育的重要组成部分。本文通过回顾藏族妇女教育的近现代史,透视藏族社会妇女教育的发展历程,指出藏族妇女教育仍是不容忽视的重要问题。     

基于女性主义视角的我国居住空间历史变迁研究

女性主义的研究扩展到建筑学与规划学领域。其实自古以来的居住空间规划与设计都是权力外化的体现,女性虽然有使用权,但却没有支配权。女性与居住空间的关系不仅是衡量女性自身发展状况的重要维度,也是折射居住空间随社会进步的一面镜子。文章从女性主义出发,认为居住空间是女性气质化的空间,以历史的角度说明居住空间中女性角色地位的变化,研究历史对当今居住空间的影响,初步探索女性与居住空间关系的基本构架。     

银川城市生活需求的性别差异及规划建议——基于女性主义视角的研究

本文在引入西方女性主义地理学以及城市居民行为空间和生活需求研究的基础上,以银川市为案例,实地调研和问卷调查分析了当今城市社区生活需求的性别差异,对中国两性居民在城市中的生存状态及其对满足生活需求的基础设施的评价,总结居民生活需求的性别差异特征。文章充实了国内关于生活需求性别研究的实证研究,指出性别差异在城市社区规划和建设中被忽视和女性通常处于弱势地位的现实,提出今后城市建设需重视公共交通和步行交通的规划,强调公共设施的人性化和多元化,加大社区服务力度,提高女性居民的社区参与度。     

Political Tourism: Elizabeth Simcoe’s Maps and Views of Canada (1791–1796)

Abstract

Elizabeth Simcoe (1762–1850) travelled from England to Canada in 1791 and returned to her home, Wolford Lodge, in Honiton, Devon, in 1796. She was accompanying her husband, John Graves Simcoe (1752–1806), who had just been appointed Lieutenant Governor of the newly formed province of Upper Canada. Throughout their travels, Elizabeth recorded her Canadian experiences in her diaries and sketchbooks. She drew, corrected and copied maps for her husband. Upon their return to England they offered to the king an album of 32 works and a map, all drawn on birch bark. The map and the album acted as a report to the king of her husband’s political achievements in Canada and her engagement as a cartographer.     

Hydatidosis of a Pregnant Woman of the 3rd Century bc,Greece

Analyses of cremains of three individuals from a 3rd‐century‐bc hydria revealed a calcified hydatid cyst among commingled bones of a man, woman and fetus. The free cyst likely belonged to the pregnant woman who may have died of hydatidosis, a disease known in Greece since the 5th century bc . Hydatid cyst finds are rare in the literature. This is the first cyst found with cremains and in Greece. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.