Friday, February 12, 2010

Researcher By: Shannon Doran Post #5

The actual definition of feminism
The term feminism can be used to describe a political, cultural or economic movement aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women. Feminism involves political, cultural and sociological theories, as well as philosophies concerned with issues of gender difference. It is also a movement that advocates gender equality for women and campaigns for women's rights and interests.[1][2][3][4][5]
According to Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker, the history of feminism can be divided into three waves. The first feminist wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the second was in the 1960s and 1970s, and the third extends from the 1990s to the present.[7] Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements. It is manifest in a variety of disciplines such as feminist geography, feminist history and feminist literary criticism.
Feminism has altered predominant perspectives in a wide range of areas within Western society, ranging from culture to law. Feminist activists have campaigned for women's legal rights (rights of contract, property rights, voting rights); for women's right to bodily integrity and autonomy, for abortion rights, and for reproductive rights (including access to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection of women and girls from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape; for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; against misogyny; and against other forms of gender-specific discrimination against women. Although the terms "feminism" and "feminist" did not gain widespread use until the 1970s, they were already being used in the public parlance much earlier; for instance, Katharine Hepburn speaks of the "feminist movement" in the 1942 film Woman of the Year.
During much of its history, feminist movements and theories were led predominantly by middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America. However, at least since Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech to American feminists, women of other races have proposed alternative feminisms. This trend accelerated in the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the collapse of European colonialism in Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia. Since that time, women in former European colonies and the Third World have proposed "Post-colonial" and "Third World" feminisms. Some Postcolonial Feminists, such as Chandra Talpade Mohanty, are critical of Western feminism for being ethnocentric.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism - cite_note-Mohanty-17Black feminists, such as Angela Davis and Alice Walker, share this view.

Researcher By: Shannon Doran Post #4

Feminist movements i the 1940's: Bra Burning Movement


The history of the brassieres is inextricably intertwined with the social history of the status of women, including the evolution of fashion and changing views of the body.

Women always have used a variety of garments and devices to cover, restrain or elevate their breasts. Brassiere-like or bikini-like garments are depicted on some women athletes in the seventh century BCE in the Minoan era. Similar functionality could be achieved by both outerwear and underwear.

From the 16th century onwards, the undergarments of wealthier women were dominated by the corset, which pushed the breasts upwards. In the latter part of the 19th century, various alternatives were experimented with, splitting the corset into a girdle-like restraining device for the lower torso, and transferring the upper part to devices suspended from the shoulder.

By the early 20th century, garments more closely resembling contemporary bras had emerged, although large-scale commercial production did not occur till the 1930s. Since then bras have virtually replaced corsets (although some women prefer camisoles), and have become a multi-billion-dollar industry dominated by large multinational corporations. Over this time the emphasis has largely shifted from functionality to fashion.

Researcher By: Shannon Doran Post #3

I will be researching John Winslow Irving Part 3 (Last part, don't worry.)

In recent years, his three most highly regarded novels, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany, have been published in Modern Library editions. Owen Meany was adapted into the film Simon Birch (Irving required that the title, and character names, be changed because the screenplay's story was "markedly different" from that of the novel; Irving is on record as having enjoyed the film, however[6]). In 2004, a portion of A Widow for One Year was adapted into The Door in the Floor, starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger.

In a New York Magazine interview in 2009, Irving stated that he has begun work on a new novel, based, in part, on a speech from a play by Shakesbeare, "Richard II." The novel is tentatively titled, "In One Person."

Post #1 Summarizer

In chapter one it explains that Jenny Fields, Garps mother, went to jail for hitting a soldier. The soldier tried to reach under her skirt so then she hit him with a scalpel. Jenny works in a hospital, she is a nurse. She takes care of Sergeant T.S. Garp whi is slowly dying. Jenny uses him to get herself pregnant.

By: Stephanie Lizzul

Researcher By: Shannon Doran Post #2

In this post I will be discussing John Winslow Irving once again (Part 2)

Quotes By John Winslow Irving


  • "The building of the architecture of a novel-- the craft of it--is something I never tire of."
  • "In this way, in increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss."
  • "I spend about two to three months planning the path of the book in my head before I write the last sentence of the novel. From there I work back to the beginning. From the day I think of the last sentence to the book's publication date, not more than a semicolon has changed."
  • [on his process for writing novels:] "I can't imagine what the first sentence is, I can't imagine where I want the reader to enter the story, if I don't know where the reader is going to leave the story. So once I know what the last thing the reader hears is, I can work my way backward, like following a roadmap in reverse."[15]
  • "A reader told me recently, in London, said that ‘well, I read that you write the last sentence first, so I always read your last sentence first.’ And I said, ‘oh, no, you're not supposed to do that.’"[16]
  • "Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student -- and not a good one -- and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved."[17]
  • "When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened."
  • "I feel more a part of the wrestling community than I feel I belong to the community of arts and letters. Why? Because wrestling requires even more dedication than writing because wrestling represents the most difficult and rewarding objective that I have ever dedicated myself to; because wrestling and wrestling coaches are among the most disciplined and self-sacrificing people I have ever known"
  • "As a child, when something is denied you -- when there is a subject that is never spoken of -- you pretend it's for the best. But when I was denied information about someone as important as my actual father, I compensated for this loss by inventing him."
  • "The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable -- some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control."

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Researcher Shannon Doran Post #1

John Irving Part #1:


John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt, Jr. on March 2, 1942) is an American Novelist and Academy Award winning screenwriter. Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978. Some of Irving's novels, such as The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, have been bestsellers and many have been made into movies. Several of Irving's books (Garp, Meany, A Widow for One Year) and short stories have been set in and around Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire where Irving grew up as the son of an Exeter faculty member, Colin F.N. Irving (1941), and nephew of another, H. Hamilton "Hammy" Bissell (1929). (Both Irving and Bissell, and other members of the Exeter community, appear somewhat disguised in many of his novels.) Irving was in the Exeter wrestling program both as a wrestler and as an assistant coach, and wrestling features prominently in his books, stories and life.He won the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award for 1999 for his script of The Cider House Rules.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

illustrator-post#12

page#288 passage#11
"please don't do that," he says. she can certainly feel he's not interested, and she lets him go. she lies down besides him, then rolls away, putting her back to him. the bed sloshes violently as bill tries to wriggle between them, but mrs. ralph elbows him so hard in his thick rib cage that the dog coughs and abandons the bed for the floor.



yeah ... not the best picture i have drawn. sorry about that. i just pretty much wanted to draw the kind of awkward moment when it was least grafic ... understood? so what is your comments? did i get the moment down?



-meagan betances
2/2/2010

illustrator-post#11

page#261 passage#6
helen was looking at the eternal husband. she said, "it's a strange book for a women to give to another woman's husband."



i tried to put the expression of garps wife's face in a drawing but ... i do not know. i think i did not get it. what do you guys think? should she look more upset?



-meagan betances
2/1/2010

illustrator-post#10

page#239 passage#1
in the yellow pages of garp's phone directory, marriage was listed near lumber. after lumber came machine shops, mail order houses, manholes, maple sugar, and marine equipment; then came marriage and family counselors.



a complicated and nonsensical image of a phone book came to thought. a prett pointless description but since he gave the extra time to actually talk about it thought i might as well draw it. agree?



-meagan betances
1/31/2010

illustrator-post#9

page#211 passage#1
"i'll miss you," she whined
"no, no," garp said. "don't miss me."
"i love you," she whispered, and let her slim head bump awkwardly against his shoulder.



well ... this part just made me laugh so i just had to try drawing it out. i tried getting the vibe that was going on in the moment. do you guys think i did that okay?



-meagan betances
1/30/2010

illustrator-post#8

page#190 passage#6-8
"mother did someone cut her tongue off?"
"precisely," jenny said.
"jesus," garp said.



first picture that poped in my head was some girl with a cut off tongue. so what do you guys think about my picture? funny but does it get the point?



-meagan betances
1/29/2010

illustrator-post#7

page#164 passage#4
she died a week later. when garp went to her room, it was whisked clean, the bed stripped back, the windows wide open. when he asked for her, there was a nurse in change of the floor whom he didn't recognize --- an iron-gray maiden who kept shaking her head. "fraulein charlotte," garp said. "she was herr doktor thalhammer's patient."



the image you get from this part is just how garp must have looked just standing there in a empty room. how did this part make you guys feel?



-meagan betances
1/28/2010

illustrator-post#6

page#142 passage#10-11
"dogs?" johanna said. "rabid dogs! biting you on the way to the bathroom."
"no," i said. "not dogs."



i thought that it was so silly what johanna said and that it would be funny to see exactly what was going through her mind. do you think this is the idea she had?



-meagan betances
1/27/2010

illustrator-post#5

page#112 passage#6-7
"it's wet outside, all over," cushie said to him. "where can we go?"
garp had thought that. in the infirmary, he knew, were sixty empty beds.




it was a little upsetting the idea of empty beds while there are people who could be using them. so that is sort off why i drew this part. does it upset you guys too?



-meagan betances
1/26/2010