‘Womanish epistles?’ Martha McTier,female epistolarity and late eighteenth-century Irish radicalism

This article examines the epistolary practice of Martha McTier, the sister of the Ulster Presbyterian radical and founding member of the United Irishmen, William Drennan. Drawing on literary analyses of the eighteenth-century epistolary form and Jürgen Habermas's account of the development of the public sphere, it argues that through her personal correspondence McTier was able to construct herself as a political subject, engaging in the oppositional discourse of the radical public sphere. The public reputation which McTier earned as a letter-writer and the fact that her correspondence was subject to government surveillance in the build-up to the 1798 Irish rebellion challenges the designation of the female letter as an essentially private medium, concerned with the personal and domestic, and suggests a more fluid relationship between women, letter-writing and the public and private spheres     

Results of a misspent youth: Joan Jett's performance of female masculinity

The article maps Joan Jett's performances from her days with the Runaways in the mid-1970s through her successful solo career in the 1980s to her recent affiliations with the riot grrrls in the 1990s. Unlike some critics, who, while acknowledging Jett's influence on generations of female rock performers, dismiss Jett as an inferior copy of male rock musicians, the author argues that Jett's various performances of female masculinity challenged conventional understandings of masculinity and femininity. The article explores how Jett's interest in punk enabled her to carve a space for herself in a male-dominated genre. It is further contended that as more spaces opened for women in the early 1990s, Jett's performances took a more aggressive stance on traditionally feminist issues and enabled her to use her sexuality as an offensive weapon.     

The Young-Girl in Theory

This essay situates Tiqqun's Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl within a long history of leftist art and theory that uses the figure of the girl to respond to, reflect on, and even to attempt to subvert the various subjective crises of late capitalism. At the same time, and reading Tiqqun against the grain, it asks whether the Young-Girl might be of any use for thinking through the new questions about subjectivity and representation that neoliberalism has presented for feminism.     

Painting between the lines: the Cape Verdean community of Colonial Dakar, 1920–1945

From the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, Cape Verdean immigrants to Dakar, colonial capital of French West Africa, became a small but important community in terms of significance in both the urban economy and the colonial framework of race and identity. They occupied important labor niches valuable to the colonizer such as painting and domestic work and attached those fields to a unique identity to which only they belonged. Able to capitalize on the ambiguity inherent to colonial race and identity policies, Cape Verdeans bridged categories common to state policies – particularly “foreign” and “native” – in ways not adequately captured by the concept of intermediaries often employed in examinations of immigrant populations to West Africa. Their insertion in Dakar reveals the permeability of such colonial concepts as well as the opportunities immigrants made in town.     

Feedback on Forensic Mental Health Assessments in a Juvenile Court Clinic Certification Program

Public-sector mental health systems have set forth specialized practice competencies for forensic mental health clinicians conducting court-ordered examinations. This study examined a sample of feedback letters to clinicians who submitted mid-training and final reports for review as part of the requirements for certification as a juvenile court clinician. The most common feedback points were insufficient/irrelevant historical data, problems with clarity/organization of the report, problems with interview/mental status examination, and problems with competency to stand trial data/opinions. Clinicians had fewer deficiencies in their final report compared to their mid-training report, supporting the perspective that forensic training and supervision is associated with better quality reports.     

Early Adolescent Gender Development: The Differential Effects of Felt Pressure from Parents,Peers, and the Self

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Most empirical research examining youth’s gender development measures felt pressure to conform to gender norms using a composite value of felt pressure from...