This week has been one of my favorite weeks at college, ever.  I think it has a lot to do with the conversations we’ve been having in class.  I’ve been connecting things from this class to lots of things in my life outside of class, I’ve been reading more, thinking more, smiling more, and writing.  I feel really lucky to have been a part of reading what we’ve read and saying what we’ve said this week, and I feel sad to be saying goodbye to this unit.  I hope that we can make graphic novels as exciting as academic writing (I’m laughing at myself because the response to that seems so glaringly obvious to me: YES! OF COURSE WE CAN!)  

Anyways...

With all of this talking of "Breast-Giver," I thought it would be relevant to reference Jess Dobkin, a performance artist.

The Lactation Station

Note: the image for the ad is not an accurate representation of the exhibit. It was not as if people were coming up to women and receiving breast milk directly from them. I think that one of the reasons why this exhibit was so impressive was because of the formality of it. Dobkin got several women to donate samples of their breast milk, which was then pasteurized. Samples were given to visitors of the exhibit. Sometimes a woman would offer commentary on her diet throughout pregnancy, as some noticed differing subtle tastes.

Rethinking the Future of Learning Institutions....

Reading “Goblin Market” as a Feminist Text

            With its rhyming cadence and fable-like narrative, “Goblin Market” might easily be interpreted as a children’s poem. However, it is also the tension between these two elements—form and content—that evokes the question of whether or not “Goblin Market” might be considered a feminist text. Despite the cadence and use of a tone often found in children’s literature, “Come buy, come buy: /…Bloom-down-cheeked peaches, /Swart-headed mulberries, /Wild free-born cranberries,” (4-11) the protagonists in this fable-like narrative encounter mature and sexually suggestive situations. When Laura and Lizzie encounter the goblin men and their fruit, the language of the poem maintains its child-like tone but the words are also sensual and mirror the sexuality that emerges as a reaction to the fruit. It is this sexuality that is at stake throughout “Goblin Market”. By choosing to create tension between form and content, Christina Rossetti highlights female sexuality and desire in her poem. Doing so in a form so closely resembling a fable allows Rossetti to discuss female sexuality and desire in a public forum, which her position as an English female writer in the 1800s would not have allowed her to do more explicitly. Subsequently, “Goblin Market” functions as a feminist text through its acknowledgement of female sexuality and desire.

I was recently asked to post about assessing the impact of NGOs in Ghana.  Here are some resources that I found:

Be sure to check out the Institutes, Think Tanks and Reports section of your course guide.  It lists several websites that will have reports from major non-profits in West Africa.

In addition to the general social science article resources (e.g. JSTOR, ProQuest, Google Scholar, etc.) two databases that will have international NGO reports would be:

• Columbia International Affairs Online
• PAIS International

Search these databases for keywords like (NGO or non-governmental organization or intergovernmental organization) and (accountab* or monitor* or evaluat*).  Here are links to two productive searches I ran in Google Scholar's Advanced Search screen:

       To purpose the ambiguous wanderings of my forming identity, I must first name myself.  By associating with resolute terms I mean to say I commit to them, taking both the burden and the pride of my self-claimed appellations, determinately thrusting myself under the weight of them. Inextricable from these things, they are a part of me. I take on their responsibility, actively challenging the connotations of those labels as I perceive them while also bearing in mind how I am perceived by outside of myself. I name myself a woman, resolutely. I name myself a feminist, resolutely. I name myself my mother’s daughter, resolutely. While I have been able to immerse myself in struggling with these few realms of self-discovery, troublingly, what I struggle most with is to claim my name as a Black woman.