Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://rportal.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/handle/20.500.12235/219

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Start date: 2013Subject: search.filters.subject.gender

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    (英語學系, 2019-09-??) Rowland Chukwuemeka Amaefula
    Expressions of transgendered behavior in Nigerian drama have mostly been regarded as either comedy or mere feminist assertiveness. They have scarcely been seen as what they really are: acquisition of non-binary identities with which to resist oppression. Since such topics are seen as taboo in most parts of Africa, there is scant academic inquiry on transgender issues in the continent’s literature, especially in drama. In order to open up scholarly discourses in this area, this study uses Judith Butler’s “Gender Performativity,” and then, through textual analysis and close reading, interrogates Stella Oyedepo’s The Rebellion of the Bumpy-Chested (2002), with a view to identifying how characters resist oppression by rejecting culturally-assigned gender roles and dress patterns. It argues further that, in protest plays, characters cross-dress (in itself, a form of performance) to acquire new individualities with which they dislocate the oppressor into an image of frailty, thereby defeating an unfavorable status quo.
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    Trying to Grow Out of Stereotypes: The Representation of Disability, Sexuality and the “Modern” Disability Subjectivity in Firdaus Kanga’s Novel
    (英語學系, 2018-03-??) Rimjhim Bhattacherjee
    Firdaus Kanga’s novel, Trying to Grow, tells the story of Brit Kotwal, a young Parsi boy with osteogenesis imperfecta, negotiating his life in the Bombay of the 1970s. From the beginning, this semi-autobiographical work draws our attention to the common religious and medical perceptions of disability in Indian society. This paper proposes to study how the novel focuses on several aspects of the lived reality of a person with “brittle bones” who does not grow more than four feet tall. The paper also explores how the novel focuses on and confounds the commonly perceived notion of the asexuality of disabled individuals. Brit’s voice is extremely aware and articulates positions of difference within disability and sexuality discourses. He is able to occupy what can be called a truly modern disability subjectivity. But, this paper shall show that Brit presents the reader with this modern, emancipatory rhetoric of disability because of the privileges of his gender and class status in the Indian context. Within the same text, Brit’s disabled female cousin is literally andfiguratively mute and meets with a very different fate. The paper shall thus investigate and try to complicate the representation of disability, sexuality and the “modern” disability subjectivity in Kanga’s novel.
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    Ungendered Narrative: A New Genre in the Making
    (英語學系, 2018-09-??) Khuman Bhagirath Jetubhai, Madhumita Ghosal
    This paper focuses on ungendered narrative with reference to select fictional works, to shed light on the elements that define the genre. One or more characters with an undisclosed gender are the focal point of the narrative. The paper discusses techniques that authors employ to keep gender hidden, such as employing inventive gender-neutral pronouns or not using them at all. First- and second-person points of view are also common modes of narration, as “I” and “you” are gender-neutral. In depicting characters, authors consciously merge masculine and feminine stereotypes to create gender-secretive characters. The heterosexual love interest that has hitherto ruled the creative world is thus replaced by endless gender possibilities with which a couple may identify. Love, rather than the characters’ gender, is at the forefront of these works. These narratives confront readers with the importance they assign to gender and heir habit of pigeonholing certain behaviors, characteristics, and tendencies into a binary gender system. They force readers to question gender segregation and the consequences of choosing to defy the gender one is assigned at birth. Ultimately, these narratives ask whether gender matters in life.
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    (英語學系, 2019-09-??) Rowland Chukwuemeka Amaefula
    Expressions of transgendered behavior in Nigerian drama have mostly been regarded as either comedy or mere feminist assertiveness. They have scarcely been seen as what they really are: acquisition of non-binary identities with which to resist oppression. Since such topics are seen as taboo in most parts of Africa, there is scant academic inquiry on transgender issues in the continent’s literature, especially in drama. In order to open up scholarly discourses in this area, this study uses Judith Butler’s “Gender Performativity,” and then, through textual analysis and close reading, interrogates Stella Oyedepo’s The Rebellion of the Bumpy-Chested (2002), with a view to identifying how characters resist oppression by rejecting culturally-assigned gender roles and dress patterns. It argues further that, in protest plays, characters cross-dress (in itself, a form of performance) to acquire new individualities with which they dislocate the oppressor into an image of frailty, thereby defeating an unfavorable status quo.
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    (英語學系, 2020-03-??) Leo Chia-Li Chu
    This paper will examine the ambivalences and contradictions in post-handoverHong Kong cinema through the lens of gender, border, and the body politic inthree crime films. The first of them, Intruder (恐怖雞 Kongbu ji, 1997),released when sovereignty over Hong Kong had just been transferred fromBritain to China, may evoke a “crisis of masculinity” through itsborder-crossing female antagonist; in contrast, the portrayal of women, as wellas transgender and queer people, in Ming Ming (明明, 2006) and I Come withthe Rain (2009), appears to be more nuanced. Reading the three films againstone another and against established narratives about the city, I intend toinvestigate how these films adopt gendered narratives and the questions ofborder in the construction of identity politics in post-handover Hong Kong. Byjuxtaposing the fluid, unstable, and multi-faceted bodies of fictional characterswith the city’s history, this paper argues that the representation of past andfuture in these films reflects the struggle to narrate anxiety and hope inpost-handover Hong Kong.
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    Trying to Grow Out of Stereotypes: The Representation of Disability, Sexuality and the “Modern” Disability Subjectivity in Firdaus Kanga’s Novel
    (英語學系, 2018-03-??) Rimjhim Bhattacherjee
    Firdaus Kanga’s novel, Trying to Grow, tells the story of Brit Kotwal, a young Parsi boy with osteogenesis imperfecta, negotiating his life in the Bombay of the 1970s. From the beginning, this semi-autobiographical work draws our attention to the common religious and medical perceptions of disability in Indian society. This paper proposes to study how the novel focuses on several aspects of the lived reality of a person with “brittle bones” who does not grow more than four feet tall. The paper also explores how the novel focuses on and confounds the commonly perceived notion of the asexuality of disabled individuals. Brit’s voice is extremely aware and articulates positions of difference within disability and sexuality discourses. He is able to occupy what can be called a truly modern disability subjectivity. But, this paper shall show that Brit presents the reader with this modern, emancipatory rhetoric of disability because of the privileges of his gender and class status in the Indian context. Within the same text, Brit’s disabled female cousin is literally andfiguratively mute and meets with a very different fate. The paper shall thus investigate and try to complicate the representation of disability, sexuality and the “modern” disability subjectivity in Kanga’s novel.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Ungendered Narrative: A New Genre in the Making
    (英語學系, 2018-09-??) Khuman Bhagirath Jetubhai, Madhumita Ghosal
    This paper focuses on ungendered narrative with reference to select fictional works, to shed light on the elements that define the genre. One or more characters with an undisclosed gender are the focal point of the narrative. The paper discusses techniques that authors employ to keep gender hidden, such as employing inventive gender-neutral pronouns or not using them at all. First- and second-person points of view are also common modes of narration, as “I” and “you” are gender-neutral. In depicting characters, authors consciously merge masculine and feminine stereotypes to create gender-secretive characters. The heterosexual love interest that has hitherto ruled the creative world is thus replaced by endless gender possibilities with which a couple may identify. Love, rather than the characters’ gender, is at the forefront of these works. These narratives confront readers with the importance they assign to gender and heir habit of pigeonholing certain behaviors, characteristics, and tendencies into a binary gender system. They force readers to question gender segregation and the consequences of choosing to defy the gender one is assigned at birth. Ultimately, these narratives ask whether gender matters in life.