Prostitute for a good reason: stars and morality in Egypt

“Prostitute for a Good Reason. Stars and Morality in Egypt” introduces briefly the history of Egyptian film industry, its current star system and the general evaluation of stars on the artistic and moral level. It examines whether and to what extent Egyptian stars may attain a quasi-mythical power and the kind of moral concepts that are conveyed through them. Hence, it touches on the process of how Egyptian audiences are inclined to read mass-mediated messages. In this context the study refers to the phenomenon of veiling that spread among actresses during the early 1990s and tries to relate it to relevant ideological tensions at work. Consequently, the study investigates the position of actresses, primarily top star Nadia al-Gindi. Her image and film persona seem to indicate a very specific interaction between prevalent ideological and moral concepts of different origins including Islamism and modernism on the one hand and cultural taboos of sexuality and power on the other.     

Beyond the Millennium: Black Women's Writing

Nasta's piece forms part of an oral contribution to the plenary session of the conference in which a variety of speakers discussed the many questions that the conference had raised. It focuses specifically on the location and history of black women's writing in Britain and attempts to address issues that have dominated critical and theoretical discussion for some years. The question as to how far we have moved on in our reading and assessment of these literatures is discussed; also the fact that perhaps debates we now see as being contemporary were also current in the experiences of earlier representations of Britain from a black or Asian perspective. Nasta makes some tentative suggestions in terms of how we might move forward.     

Haunted by the Lady Novelist: Metafictional Anxieties about Women's Writing from Northanger Abbey to The Carrie Diaries

This paper argues that the development of the identity of the professional woman writer as a ‘lady novelist’ in the mid-eighteenth century has had a lasting and detrimental impact on the status of women's writing that lingers through to the present, particularly in the critical discourse surrounding chick lit. The first part of this paper discusses the figure of the lady novelist and traces her centrality to criticisms of women's writing from the eighteenth century through to the twenty-first. The second part of this paper then examines the haunting presence of the lady novelist in the metafictional works of seven representative women writers: Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1818), Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (1856), Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868), L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), and Candace Bushnell's The Carrie Diaries (2010). By drawing a through-line that connects these texts, I argue for a renewed understanding of the ways in which Western women writers from the eighteenth century to the present are unified by a pervasive anxiety about being a ‘lady novelist’.     

Gendered testimonies: autobiographies, diaries, and letters by women as sources for Caribbean history.

This analysis of memoirs, diaries, and letters written by English-speaking women living in the Caribbean region since the early 1800s pays particular attention to testimony on their gendered life experiences. The analysis draws examples from five autobiographical writings, three memoirs, three diaries, and the letters of three women in its consideration of various aspects of the women's lives. The essay opens with an acknowledgement of the recent efforts of historians to incorporate women's experiences into the concept of "history" and a discussion of the ways that women's voices can be recaptured that notes the paucity of primary sources. The topics covered in the examined documents reveal information about motherhood and marriage, health and sexuality, domestic life and household management, the conditions and suffering of female slaves, the rearing and education of girls, the influence of Christian missionaries, and the general status of women.     

The feminist frontier: on trans and feminism

Against a back-drop of ongoing hostility between sections of feminism towards trans communities, and particularly feminist antagonism towards trans women, this paper explores the relationship between feminism and transgender. Through the use of original case study material, gathered by virtual methods, the paper explores events that have occurred since the millennium that are used to highlight particular epistemological and political tensions between feminism and trans. Central themes running through the case studies include the constitution of ‘woman’, the policing of feminist identities and spaces, and questions of bodily autonomy. In conclusion, the paper stresses the importance of rejecting trans-exclusionary feminism and of foregrounding the links between feminism and transgender as a key social justice project of our time.