Feminism

I’ve been thinking a lot about our intersectional event. I’m glad we were able to showcase some of what we’ve been doing this semester, and I think it was a really good idea to have the portrait gallery leading up to our event because it drew a lot of people in and it sparked conversations between people who were unable to attend our event. It’s unfortunate that putting the zine together produced so much stress and anxiety for so many people, but the end result was really amazing. I’m so glad we have it to remember each other and this semester by.

(This is the altered project Riva and I collaborated on)

I really enjoyed making this portrait and having Cindy help me choose the style of drawing and the type of horse. In the portrait she is with her horse Winston and they are both thinking about skiing together. Cindy was in the Special Olympics for skiiing so I drew her with her special olympics medal on since she was extremely proud of it.

I'm sad that we don't have more time to discuss international feminism, at the same time that I am glad that we did what we did during this course. If I were indeed to have written a paper on international feminism, I would have written on the position of Westernized culture as a marker of progressivism in both Americanah and Persepolis, and the issues of cultural imperialism that come with it. I would specifically focus on close readings of sections of Persepolis and of Americanah which discuss the main characters' childhoods. This is where I saw that ideals of Western and Westernized, often American, culture were seen as the progressive, the new, the exciting. There's the famous example of Satrapi's shopping for a Metallica tape in a "black market", of sorts, for instance.

There are so many moments at Camphill that ran through my head when I first read this prompt. Our week at Camphill Village was incredibly rewarding and incredibly challenging for me personally. My experience with my villager Gaby was also full of ups and downs. One moment that particularly stood out happened when Gaby gave me a tour of her house, Helios.

Of all of the pieces that went into our last hurrah, I am most proud of our zine. I think it really provided a way for each of us to express something that was important to us, a chance to just get our thoughts out into the open, with no expectation for response or conversation. I know a lot of the people outside of our 360 were definitely intrigued by the zine; trying to explain it to them, I found that it was easiest just to say that this is a small slice of our 360 put on paper for the campus to see. I know that getting it together was a little rocky, but even if it didn't turn out perfect, I'm still glad that we had the idea to do it, and that everyone really pulled together and contributed in a way that was meaningful to them.

Given my fascination with Waring, if given the time to write an international feminism paper, I would engage with the idea of nego-feminism as it relates to Waring's argument, and also compare accounts of women entrepreneurs in the Global South. Sophomore year, I took a class on women in the Global South and was captivated by how these business owners compete, gather stock, and appeal to tourists in order to put food on their tables. I am currently working for an NGO that provides space and materials for women in India to become entrepreneurs, but this is through the aid of an NGO. I would love to see if there are any accounts of female entrepreneurs in the Global South defining their version of economics and how they came to those conclusions.