Book of Judith

This painting is one of many versions of the biblical story of Judith beheading Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi, a well-known female painter of the Baroque period. Although she gained acclaim as a painter, few women of her time had the opportunity to become an artist, a privilege afforded to her in part because her father owned a studio and painted, as well. In the Bible, Holofernes, an Assyrian bully and enemy to Israel, slaughtered his way into the city of Bethulia, a town at the entrance…

known as Third Wave Feminism. After fighting for legal and social equality by standing up against patriarchal oppression, the goals of feminists broadened to break down concepts of gender, sexuality, and the body (Rampton). Queer Theorists such as Judith Butler branched from this new movement in Women’s Studies to examine the reality of identity and attack the problematic perception of heteronormativity, the belief that humans are normally heterosexual and distinctly male or female. In The…

Feminist theory is a fairly new approach to the IR discipline and the aim is to produce knowledge that helps inform practices to improve the lives of women. Feminists use the experience of women to make research that is beneficial to women. In doing so they believe that their viewpoints might uncover aspects of reality that is hidden by more conventional approaches. Feminists believe that by paying attention to experiences of women IR theories might be reformulated and the understanding of world…

being shed on this issue, whether it is being ignored in the news, looked over in books, or forgotten on websites, and so on. People are not doing enough to educate themselves or save themselves from this major downfall in our society. This is such an important topic that should be discussed by many, but is not. It seems that there are very few who are genuinely concerned when compared. In an article written by Judith Resnik entitled; Arbitration, Transparency, and Privatization: Diffusing…

When I registered for the course, I was in the process of signing up for classes I had to take. I didn’t have a choice in most of them, so I didn’t do much research into what each lesson plan held. However, during our first day, I was pleasantly surprised by the goal of the class – learning about literary criticism and, more importantly, the theories that went along with it. I felt confident because I already had experience in these fields, and this class would just throw me into the deep end of…

The question of whether the relationship between Feminism and Postmodernism is or has been a productive one (especially for the former) is one that has been asked for a generation now. In its wake has emerged philosophies and theories which have profoundly challenged, if not altered, the shape and direction of Feminism, much to the ongoing dismay of many of its advocates. While the often-contentious discourse around these “two leading currents of our time” (17) did not begin with the debate that…

Expectations and standards for women in society are unrealistic and outrageous. These thoughts of what a woman should be like and how they should behave have been around for centuries. Woman are often times looked down upon when they don’t look like how society tells them to and this can cause a number of things to go wrong in their self image and life. Unfortunately these high expectations have had an extremely negative impact on females. In Margie Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll” she discusses the…

The 1965 Barbie advertisement supports Judith Butler’s theory in Gender Trouble of gender performativity. In the performativity of women, certain actions associated with femininity have been repeated to form a concrete idea of what a true woman is. Butler supports this idea with the statement that the “expectation produces the very phenomenon that it anticipates” (Butler xv), meaning that the constant pressure for women of all ages to be feminine, demure, and motherly creates the idea that there…

Gender inequality is an issue that has been happening for thousands of years, affecting cultures from all around the world. Women have endured since ancient times the title as the inferior being, the “other” gender besides the man, the weaker and less valuable specimen. This gender inequality created a huge difference between men and women, placing women’s rights under men’s jurisdiction, which dictated what women were and were not allowed to do. This issue was analyzed by the French and…

This, however, does not excuse man’s blatant disregard for the woman’s humanity and perceived inferiority. Judith Butler argues that sex is a matter of interpretation and contrary to Beauvoir, it is not natural. Perhaps the most or one of the most famous quotes in Beauvoir’s the Second Sex, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” further dives into the…