Synopses & Reviews
Changing Narratives of Sexuality engages with women's sexuality, exploring marginal as well as dominant stories in which sexuality may figure overtly or covertly as the subject.
This impressive collection brings together a broad range of arenas in which sexuality is embedded. From storytelling to women's engagement within state institutions, the narratives of unmarried women and stories of religious influence on women's subjectivities and sexualities, stories on television and in print media. Sexuality is explored in a wide range of national contexts in the global South - Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Palestine, South Africa.
Exploring these different narratives of sexuality, told by and about women, the book examines tensions and contradictions in the constructions of gender, sexuality, and women's empowerment, and analyses what scope exists for women to subvert repressive norms and conceptions of heterosexuality, in varying disciplinary and geopolitical contexts.
Synopsis
Changing Narratives of Sexuality examines the tensions and contradictions in constructions of gender, sexuality and women's empowerment in the various narrations of sexuality told by and about women. From storytelling to women's engagement with state institutions, stories of unmarried women and ageing women, a sex scandal and narrations of religious influence on women's subjectivities and sexualities, this impressive collection explores sexuality in a wide range of national contexts in the global South.
The authors analyse what scope exists for women to subvert repressive norms and conceptions of heterosexuality, interweaving rich, contextual detail with theoretical concerns.
About the Author
Charmaine Pereira is the co-ordinator of the Initiative for Women's Studies in Nigeria, a leading research organisation. She is the author of multiple books on gender and higher education and writes on questions of citizenship, sexuality and rights.
Table of Contents
PART I. Negotiating Desire?
1. 'Rewriting Desire as Empowerment in the Women and Memory Forum's Storytelling Project'; Mona Ali, NY State University
2. Islam in Urban Bangladesh: Changing Worldviews and Reconfigured Sexuality'; Samia Huq, BRAC University, Dhaka
3. 'Loving and Fearing: Township Girls' Agency amidst Sexual Risk'; Deevia Bhana, University of Kwazulu Natal
PART II. Body Politics and Sexualities
4. "Reporting Anita": Nudity in Nigerian Newspapers'; Charmaine Pereira and Bibi Bakare Yusuf, Co-Founder Cassava Republic Press, Abuja
5. 'Unmarried in Palestine: Embodiment and (dis)Empowerment in the Lives of Single Palestinian Women'; Penny Johnson, London
6. 'Aging Women and the Culture of Eternal Youth: Some Personal and Theoretical Reflections from a Feminist over Fifty in Brazil'; Cecilia Sardenberg, Universidad Federal do Bahia
PART III. Changing Institutions?
7. 'Narratives of Egyptian Marriages'; Mulki Al-Sharmani, University of Helsinki
8.'Gender and Sexuality Activism in Beijing: Negotiating International Influences, National and Local Processes; Susie Jolly, University of Sussex, Brighton