Cultural Representations of Gender Vulnerability and Resistance

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Introduction

   • Maria Isabel Romero-Ruiz, Pilar Cuder-Domínguez

   Pages 1-12Open Access

3. Gender Vulnerability, Resilience and Resistance

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

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   2. Growing Resilient in Irish Magdalene Laundries: An Analysis of the Justice for Magdalenes’ Oral History Project (2013) and Kathy O’Beirne’s Autobiography Kathy’s Story: A Childhood Hell Inside the Magdalen Laundries (2005)

      • Elena Cantueso-Urbano

      Pages 15-32Open Access

   3. Becoming Resilient Subjects: Vulnerability and Resistance in Emma Donoghue’s Room

      • María Elena Jaime de Pablos

      Pages 33-52Open Access

   4. Of Mice and Women: Gendered and Speciesist Violence in Joyce Carol Oates’s ‘Martyrdom’

      • Maria Sofia Pimentel-Biscaia

      Pages 53-69Open Access

   5. ‘Nobody Kills a Priest’: Irish Noir and Pathogenic Vulnerability in Benjamin Black’s Holy Orders

      • Auxiliadora Pérez-Vides

      Pages 71-88Open Access

4. Gender Vulnerability, Agency and Interdependencies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 89-89

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   2. Crime Fiction’s Disobedient Gaze: Refugees’ Vulnerability in Ausma Zehanat Khan’s A Dangerous Crossing (2018)

      • Pilar Cuder-Domínguez

      Pages 91-109Open Access

   3. Detection, Gender Violence and Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie Series

      • Beatriz Domínguez-García

      Pages 111-128Open Access

   4. Resisting Binaries: Vulnerability, Agency and the Sovereign Subject Through a Feminist Critical Gaze

      • E. Guillermo Iglesias-Díaz

      Pages 129-146Open Access

   5. Trans-National Neo-Victorianism, Gender and Vulnerability in Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2005)

      • Maria Isabel Romero-Ruiz

      Pages 147-165Open Access

5. Gender Vulnerability and Trans*/Post* Identities

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 167-167

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   2. The Vulnerable Posthuman in Popular Science Fiction Cinema

      • Rocío Carrasco-Carrasco

      Pages 169-186Open Access

   3. Trans* Vulnerability and Resistance in the Ballroom: The Case of Pose (Season 1)

      • Juan Carlos Hidalgo-Ciudad

      Pages 187-205Open Access

   4. A Trans Journey Towards Resistance: Vulnerability and Resilience in the Dystopian Narrative of Manjula Padmanabhan

      • Antonia Navarro-Tejero

      Pages 207-226Open Access

6. Back Matter

   Pages 227-233

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This Open Access book considers the cultural representation of gender violence, vulnerability and resistance with a focus on the transnational dimension of our contemporary visual and literary cultures in English. Contributors address concepts such as vulnerability, resilience, precarity and resistance in the Anglophone world through an analysis of memoirs, films, TV series, and crime and literary fiction across India, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the US, and the UK. Chapters explore literary and media displays of precarious conditions to examine whether these are exacerbated when intersecting with gender and ethnic identities, thus resulting in structural forms of vulnerability that generate and justify oppression, as well as forms of individual or collective resistance and/or resilience. Substantial insights are drawn from Animal Studies, Critical Race Studies, Human Rights Studies, Post-Humanism and Postcolonialism. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender Studies, Media Studies, Sociology, Culture, Literature and History.

Grant FFI2017-84555-C2-1-P (research Project “Bodies in Transit: Genders, Mobilities, Interdependencies”) funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe.”

• post-human
• transnational
• gendered violence
• sociopolitical
• migration
• crime fiction
• science fiction
• dystopian fiction
• postcolonialism
• Open Access

“The current volume is an important contribution, making up for the gap in the existing scholarship adopting the concept of vulnerability in the field of humanities. Its focus on the cultural representation of gender-based vulnerability and the possibilities of resistance in a transnational context makes the volume a special collection of eleven case studies. Each chapter adopts Judith Butler’s concept of vulnerability as a human condition for studying various English language-based cultures from a Mediterranean perspective. The focus on the gendered materializations of precarity makes the volume a fascinating read, tracing down the movement of the concept through a rich collection of case studies. It is an indispensable read for a diverse group of scholars for its multidisciplinary approach, drawing from Animal Studies, Critical Race Studies, Human Rights Studies, Post-Humanism and Postcolonialism within a feminist framework of vulnerability.”

— Erzsébet Barát, associate professor in gender studies and linguistics, University of Szeged and Central European University

 

“A heart-felt welcome to this most needed approach to the study of precarity and vulnerability, innovatively analyzed from transnational feminist perspectives. The volume examines an impressive wide range of cultural representations of gender-based vulnerability in diverse settings of the Anglophone world. Emanating from the in-depth scrutiny of representations of precarity, vulnerability and the responses to them, such as resilience and resistance, within the international project “Bodies in Transit 2”, this volume showcases the intense current debates around agency, relationality, trans* identities and post-identities through an interesting and pertinent selection of cultural materials from Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, the UK and the U.S.A. Undoubtedly, a most useful collection for those working in Gender Studies, Vulnerability Studies, and Cultural Studies.”

— Belén Martín-Lucas, Professor in English, U. de Vigo (Spain), co-editor of Narratives of Difference in Globalized Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan 2017)

• Universidad de Málaga, Málaga, Spain

  Maria Isabel Romero-Ruiz

• COIDESO, University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain

  Pilar Cuder-Domínguez

Maria Isabel Romero-Ruiz is Lecturer in Social History and Cultural Studies at the University of Málaga, Spain. She specialises in the social and cultural history of deviant women and children in Victorian England, as well as in contemporary gender and sexual identity issues in Neo-Victorian fiction.

Pilar Cuder-Domínguez is Professor of English at the University of Huelva, Spain, where she teaches the literature and cultures of Great Britain and Anglophone Canada. Her research deals with the intersections of gender, genre, race, and nation.